Kara and I arrived on the coast of Rathkeale on Friday afternoon. The sounds of work in the air, tents were going up, hammering could be heard. I had never been to this part of the mainland before so this area was all new to me. The unknown can have a powerful tug, and I was following it like a dragon to a gold hoard.
There were invaders in Rathkeale, and we had agreed to meet up at a spot not far from the coast, down the road a bit from Rock Wood. Later we were to find out why we could not go to Rock Wood directly, as it was occupied by hostile forces, but not the ones we thought.
All of the islands and some of the mainland had been invaded by Green shirted humans.
I realized I had made a mistake in where we had gathered when I heard that Sir Eldridge and a few others had decided to try to try to save Daoud’s Brewery on one of the islands. We have not heard from him since. I hope Eldridge’s time on the beach was better than ours on the mainland.
We knew the invaders were planning on landing hordes of invaders and had sent several scouting parties that had set up beacons. Our job was to extinguish the beacons any way we could. The paths were rough and step, it seemed like where ever we went they had put the beacons where we had to climb hills. It took several hours of close quarter fighting to extinguish all of them.
With a feeling of a job hard fought and well done we returned to camp only to discover that one of our own was missing.
Now I was pretty much in the front line fighting most of the night. While we had a lot of magic support, we did not have a lot of fighters. So I was pretty busy and active. I later learned that several of the invaders had drawing of some of our party and that they were trying to take them, alive, hopefully.
When we almost back to camp is when we realized Evie was missing; Evitta, most recently of Voranis. Some seer magic was thrown and it was shown to be impossible to recover her that night. However we learned she was to be moved the next day and we decided to try to take her back first thing in the morning.
Sir Shandar showed up with a map that Invictus had put together that had several areas they had scouted on the main land where the invaders had set up outposts. The areas were very varied, food stores, lumber camps, mysterious magic areas, forges, etc. each would have its own unique ways of dealing with the invaders.
Once we started out in the morning, we quickly figured out where they were moving Evie and were able to recover her. As we were most of the way to the forge we decided to continue directly there. I won’t go into to many details of the fighting, but the area was very well guarded. We spent a long time breaking through there line, and defeating the smith that was there. I will say this about the smith, he really put his Heart into this fight, attacking and attacking [to soon? I am a bad person, move along nothing to see here].
The rest of the daylight was occupied by the various camps the invaders had set up. We were able to defeat all of them, often with brute force, once with a large amount of money. Clontarf castle will have a lot of firewood this winter.
We had been hearing all day that the invaders had set up some kind of fort. After eating dinner and regrouping our forces we prepared to set out to fully kick them off the mainland. Unfortunately many of our number had pressing business and were unable to continue. So with a reduced force, and less support we started toward their stronghold.
The path to the fort was also well guarded. They had set out scouts and watches and knew we were coming. It was hard fought and I felt at any time we could be overrun. When the path was narrower we had a decent front line. When the path widened out, we were outnumbered, out weaponed, and were extremely lucky to make it to the castle.
We had heard they had a fort, we were wrong, they had a castle. Draw Bridge, crenulations, inner bailey, fortified walls, everything. They must have worked for weeks putting this together. It was magnificent. If we thought the open field/path fighting was difficult, this was worse. With our reduced force, and the enemy behind walls with healers this was tough. The first victory came when we were able to pull down the drawbridge with heavy rope we had found. We later realized we actually broke the drawbridge and were unable to close it later.
At this point I must tell a quick story, earlier in the day; JB had asked for help from his gods, they had put a pike in his hands and the ability to use it; for a limited time. JB with a pike was a frightening thing. He had no fear, no instinct for self-preservation, just a stabbing machine. Now my attitude towards necromancy is well known. Zermarx cost me a lot. But whoever decided to use necromancy to make JB an Undead killing machine with a pike in his hands that night, a killing machine that could be raised again and again and again, was a genius.
We fought our way into the inner bailey, only to see the invaders retreating to an inner building. At this point we thought we had something we could win. The reaming forces were locked in a building that we could pick apart one at a time. But they must have had some forces in reserve because they started to attack us from outside the castle; suddenly the siegers were the sieged.
With this new threat we quickly pushed our way into the building to limit ourselves to one front. This must have sent some kind of signal to the rest of the forces in the area because as soon as we retreated into the building, it seemed like the invaders numbers exploded outside.
There was one door and two windows, we used one of their shield they had left behind to blockade the door, but the invaders decided to do one better and used their shields to blockade the windows. They then climbed on top of the walls and attacked us from the position of height.
Without our magical support we would not have lasted 5 minutes. With it, we were able to hold the door while the thinky people did something with constellations and a door that lead to a secret room.
After trading blows with the invadors outside for what seemed like hours, I noticed it had gotten kind of quiet outside, that is when I heard one of them say something like “if they have opened that door I am leaving” and they did.
Looking around the room I realized that most of the rest of the party had gone through the door without letting the ones guarding the door know. Grabbing our dead and our discarded gear the last of us entered the room.
Confusion, mud, green light in a circle, I was not sure what was going on. I quickly noticed a being that others called the navigator in some kind of green protective circle, knowing to leave the thinky things to thinky people; I concentrated on the other monsters in the room.
There were three of them. one was only effectible by axes, and hit with so much force as to totally negate armor, the second only effectible by hammers, the third only by magic. Earlier in the day I had bought an axe from the woodsman, kind of lucky.
I was able to defeat each of the monsters in turn but by some magic I did not understand they kept getting up and attacking more. Switching my tactics to wounding instead of killing I had brought down two of the monsters and made their ability to damage us less when the navigator noticed me.
Things got kind of weird, I liked him/her/them? I went to them inside the circle, they asked me questions which I answered truthfully and as fully as I possible could. Looking back at the questions these were the kind of questions an invader would ask to get information on a future target. I wanted to answer their questions; I will have to investigate ways of blocking this in the future.
Suddenly in the middle of them asking me about the females in Blackwood the protective circle went out. Quickly recovering my wits, I attacked the being. Here is where my thanks go out to the thinky people, they did something to end the circle and the effect the being had on me. Together with several people from outside the circle we all attacked and killed the thing.
Unfortunately I had to return to Clontarf province in Blackwood at this point and do not know any more.
Sir Duke Tao Ya Kang
Ooc
New site that is huge, fantastic fighting, amazing castle, good monster concepts, new plot. Good times.- James
To clarify a few things for Tao:
Friday was an interesting night, though not in the ‘traditional’ Rathkeale way. I was excited to be on the field for most of a weekend, even if I had to leave Saturday night (though it was really sunday morning when Tao and I departed back to Clontarf). Tao covered a large part of what happened, but he was missing some details. The posters he mentioned contained two things, a drawing of a woman of the realms and strange runes (which turned out to be ordering the invaders kill or capture whoever was on the poster). The invaders tried to take some of the party members, mostly women, though Gordon did get snatched at one point. A lot happened that night, including Evie’s capture, though once were got back to camp, we learned going after her that night would be a suicide mission.
The first thing we did Saturday was incept the caravan that was transporting Evie from one place to another. After untying her, we swung by their forge. The invaders fought with weapons straight off the forge, no time to cool them apparently. Though I don’t believe I ever got hit with such a weapon, I saw other did. Basically, the sword maintained its integrity, but also covered whatever it hit in molten metal. No one could even do anything until the metal cooled enough on its own, but we also had to act fast, before the metal solidified any corpses that might have been covered in the metal. To defeat them, we had to take out the forge, and while I never learnt how they actually did that, I was the one who left a burn mark on the forge master.
Many other events that day went similarly, one was with undead, one with some sort of elemental person in the middle of a C.O.P.. Then we walked back to camp, and the war tent that had been set up. After deliberation, the party decided to hit three encampments in a row. After a rather steep hill and robbing a food storage room, I walked with the rest of the party to the next encampment, I believe it had a ritual(?), but I had to go back to camp for personal reasons, so I missed that encampment and Tao paying off the lumber mill. Though after grabbing some dinner, I was able to return to the fight.
After this, there’s not much Tao didn’t touch on. There was a puzzle to get into the room with the green circle Tao talked about. Basically, I had to shine a light I received from using a divine aid that a voice in my head told me to use (the voice was from seer spells, but came back from time to time) on banners hanging up, then we had to make the constellations on the banner using a light grid thing (I used my seer magic on the solution and not what the thing was called). It was at this point I realized I was going to be of little use to the party in a room where I could spill any of the secrets I have, so I stayed put for the most part, providing cover for the makeshift forge of the blacksmith and any dead bodies that I got a chance to grab, figuring the person who was making people speak can’t grab who he can’t see (which probably isn’t true).
Hope that gave light on a few more things,
Kara Niðisdóttir