After a few days R&R - that is to say rest and recruitment - we found ourselves gearing up and getting ready to leave Yeoldelands. Our plan was to hit those blasted caves where the forces at the Baron’s new keep came from - to destroy the problem you must first find the source, after all. We got to the caves relatively quickly - Rarder has been here before and showed us the way.
After trying one cave, which Rarder promised was full of those small, scamplike creatures, we found it empty - until two gigantic ogres charged us with some sort of cobbled together siege weaponry! We managed to escape and I flung a torch onto the ram, burning it down - at least we won’t have to deal with that again, although two loose ogres will surely come to be a problem in the future.
We then had a breather outside and tackled another cave - this one was full of orcish beings, slightly larger than the small ones we chased away from Four Shields Fort but just as easy to slay! We cut a few of them down and managed to make a large swathe of them surrender - they were a sorry looking bunch - probably hadn’t had their morning gruel or rum yet, or whatever it is they consume. We still had to find their leader, and after a bit of noseying around we broke into his room just as he was escaping with two of his bodyguards. Naturally, we cut them down, but one of my companions had overstretched themselves and was fatally slashed by the leader’s scimitar - after skewering him through the neck with his spear!
Now we are reorganising ourselves - we’ve got a bunch of orcish prisoners, and a fort in great need of repair. Looks like we found ourselves a willing and eager workforce…