With the Bone Keep cleansed of all evil, Brother Amos, Master Thief Alf, and I have turned our righteous gaze upon bandit menace in the forest. We came up with a rather ingenious plan—to poison a barrel of fine wine, and trick bandits into drinking it.
For that purpose we got a cart, two donkeys, and had dwarves ride it back and forth between Keep at the Yeoldelands and Redwood. After two days we were ready to give up on the idea, just to be approached by the bandits.
Amos might call himself "Father," but his silver tongue left me shocked. What patron is he really worshipping? Is it lawful at all? Thinking on his feet (at least I hope so), he blurted out that we too are bandits, stalking the dwarves.
Taken by this turn of events I opted for simply playing a mute brute, and let him do all the talking. A bit of rigmarole latter, Amos, Alf, Artzua, Attila, myself, and a band of eight bandits were escorting the cart to the bandit tower.
Arnas, the bandit leader, was most talkative. He spilled the beans on everything:
- Saydir is their leader, but is rarely visiting. He controls many outposts like this one.
- Radler is his second-hand man and is currently running the tower.
- They steal goods, and smuggle them somewhere south-east of Redwood.
- They have an alliance with the "strongest" monsters from the Caves of Chaos. And not only that, they actually sell them captured humans and demihumans.
The tower and the premises look promising. I can already envision our future base of operations, from where we will plunder dungeons and towers and keeps and other monstrous lairs!
Arnas led us through the tower, explaining everything as we go. Finally, he introduced us to Radler, a giant of a man, seated on a mock throne. Amos led the word, but Radler was thoroughly unimpressed. Seeing that this isn't going anywhere, we decided to resort to good old violence.
Few minutes latter the room was littered with bodies of dead bandits, and filled with sounds of incoming ones. Our tactical superiority allowed us to pick 'em one by one—at least until the two big, smelly bastards joined.
Suspiciously similar to the one that butchered Luxia and Ostador, but unlike him these two were able to speak some broken common. Apparently they called themselves Balto and Bimfur. Alf took a stalwart stance, and took some serious pounding from Balto, whilst Amos was healing him.
Few bolts later and the Balto was no more. To say that enraged Bimfur would be an understatement. Alf and I switched place, and I immediately grievously wounded the hulking monster, drawing immense satisfaction... And that one soon fell as well. Bloodied and frenzied, I stared at the remaining bandits, ready to split them open.
There are slaves in the cellars to be freed. And tower to be cleansed. There will be no mercy.