| Current Campaign: New Blood For An Old Sword | |
| Episode 5: "The Defenders of Eatonshire" | |
| Year: 1763 Fall | |
| Location: Eatonshire | |
| PCs: | |
NPCs:
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| Previous Episode: "Trickery at Taros" | |
| Next Episode: "Deliverance" | |
| Previous Campaign: The Knights of Eaton | |
Story
Act One
The Silent Wake docked in Kandorr and Carlo left the employ of Artemis on bad terms. They were disturbed by the despondency and desperation of the people of Kandorr and the refugee tent city beyond its walls. Carlo found Kandorr's populace hostile and unreceptive to mercenaries, and Clay learned that the mercenary guild-house had been burned to the ground. Carlo hired Clay, Angus, Kylie, Kamil, and Ambrose to accompany him. They decided to pose as agents of the church on a charity mission and tarried in Kandorr for a week, gathering information and supplies for the perilous trip west to Eatonshire. Ambrose checked in at the charterhouse, where he was warned by the magus captain that several of his charges had attached themselves to a contingent of horsemen who meant to fortify Eatonshire; they rode out three weeks ago but never reached the city. The mage warned them against taking the main road directly to Eatonshire.
As they left the city, a voice called out to them and they saw Valrick, the cabin boy for the Silent Wake, sitting astride Bancroft. Valrick said he had been insulted by Artemis and the captain, so he quit the ship, stole the lord's horse and kit, and wished to join them. Kamil expressed doubt, but Valrick dazzled them with a display of his knife skills. Carlo welcomed him to the group, warning him of the danger ahead. They rode together out of the west gate and past the tent city. Their intent was to journey south to Greendale to avoid the well-trod main road between Eatonshire and Kandorr and then cut north to approach Eatonshire from the smaller, less-traveled road.
On A Road Less Traveled
On their journey, they passed emptied villages and the smoldering ruins of towns, bodies littering the shoulder of the great road. Valrick tracked a recent mass of movement headed over the hills outside Greendale, where they encountered a gruesome sight: the corpses of the horsemen out of Kandorr hanging from trees in the peach orchard of House Windsor. They rode to the manor and found it sacked, with the corpses of servants and livestock slaughtered alike. Ambrose entered the ransacked main hall and discovered a young squire alive but sorely wounded, lying beneath the body of a house guard. They unpacked Artemis's enchanted pavilion, stowed the young boy inside, and rolled it back up.
They arrived in Greendale, which had enlisted a company of Inyaré rangers from Elys to help defend the area around the city. They were escorted through the main gate where they met Shogar Cromwell, Lord Lieutenant of the city. He introduced Carlo and Clay to their local compatriots in the Dread Legion, thirty survivors of the Battle of Rainbow Bay who swam to shore and fled south, regrouped outside of Greendale, and reconstituted as a platoon. They were led by Lieutenant Redpike, a half-orc of great reknown who was discovered near-death by Shogar and restored to health—Redpike had since pledged himself to the defense of Greendale. Shogar provided the group a license of passage and Redpike detached half of his platoon under Carlo's command for the purposes of reinforcing Eatonshire, and after a day of rest, the group rode out north the next morning.
The trek across the bleak, still countryside was unsettling and the group kept morale up by telling stories, singing, drinking, and playing road games. On the fourth day of the trip, they arrived at Old Oak Tor to bear witness to another dismaying tableau: the families of those lords who lived outside the walls of Eatonshire City hanging from many trees. They spent the day cutting bodies from the trees and burying them as the warmage and former cleric, Gavril, blessed the grave. During the ceremony, Ambrose discovered a group of serfs hiding in a nearby gully and they assured the frightened peasants they meant no harm; one man among them, Erdric, said they were hiding from local brigands who were hunting for their women.
Incensed upon hearing this, Clay suggested they lie in wait and ambush the brigands. They drafted a plan and used Edric as a lure, dressing him as a traveling tinker with a cart of goods. When the brigands arrived on the road, the group attacked them and slew all but their leader, a Grief Eater deserter named Tarn. Carlo recognized Tarn as one of the platoon members who burned his village and he interrogated him, learning the possible whereabouts of his children and of the likely troop movements of the Grief Eater host. He killed Tarn and left him in the ditch alongside the other dead brigands.
Within The Weakened City
The group arrived at Giant's Head Ridge and viewed Eatonshire in the distance. Using his spyglass, Clay saw scant trace of the typical bustling activity within its walls. He did, however, view scouts within the woods opposite their position on the other side of Eatonshire. He passed the spyglass to Carlo, who recognized the scouts as Crow Cloaks. They realized that the mercenary host must not be far behind. "We must hasten to the court of lords of the city," said Ambrose.
As they arrived at the outer wall, the group was challenged by soldiers at the gate. Carlo observed their haggard countenance and shabby gear and recognized the war-haunted look in their eyes. Clay delivered Shogar's license and informed the gate chief of the scouts outside the city. The group was permitted entry and the gate chief sent a runner along with them with orders to assemble an emergency war council.
The council was held in the high court and there the group met Prince Kane, youngest brother of Garn, who ran the city defense with a skeleton crew of seasoned knights and soldiers. Kane was at odds with Lord Chamberlain Ludrik Serafin, who led a small contingent of nobles who felt that House Simonson had forsaken the throne, and the war council deteriorated into a fracas. Carlo tried to break up a physical struggle and in the process forcefully toppled Ludrik, who immediately demanded the mercenaries be thrown in the dungeon for bringing ruin to the country. Simonson reminded him that the Dread Legion was recruited to assist in their defense and Ludrik demanded Carlo be flogged for insulting the dignity of the office. Kane refused this demand and Carlo volunteered to duel with the chamberlain, who agreed and reminded Kane of the Eatonshiran custom that dueling a point of honor during wartime required the death of one of the combatants. Kane reluctantly consented to the tradition on the condition that Ludrik's supporters withdraw their complaint and yield unreservedly to the will of House Simonson. They agreed.
The men cleared the courtroom of obstacles and adversaries dueled. Ludrik was a skilled and powerful swordsman but Carlo found a weakness in his style and exploited it by letting the chamberlain wind himself. Ludrik landed two wounding blows to Carlo's chest and shoulder but Carlo parried his third swing and smashed Ludrik beneath the jaw and thrust his sword upwards, killing the lord. The hall fell silent as Carlo removed his helm and knelt before Kane, who absolved him and recruited his men as guardsmen of Eatonshire. Carlo assigned Clay as his second and Ambrose as his war-mage and they went about assessing the strength of the city.
Eatonshire Faces The Crow Cloak Host
The Crow Cloaks arrived at the city walls at dusk siege engines in tow, and Quent the Wolf rode forth to deliver his terms to the assembled lords on the wall.
"Lords of Eatonshire, I bid you surrender your defense and open the gates to your city. Assembled before you is a host who have taken far greater cities with far inferior means than what we now possess. Surrender and the lords of your city will be permitted safe passage to Kandorr. Deny us entry and see your walls crumble, your lords ransomed, your city sacked, and your freemen sold into bondage."
Kane refused Quent's offer and the mercenaries prepared for siege. Clay was learned in mercenary history and knew that Quent the Wolf was a brilliant siege tactician—he warned Kane that their defense must be sound, but that the odds were against the city even though they faced so small an invasion force. Carlo insisted he could muster a defense but needed time to do so. Kane was at a loss for suggestions but agreed that desperate measures must be taken. Ambrose suggested that Kane permit him entry into the sacred crypts of the temples, where he might access forbidden grimoires kept by the priests therein. Kane assembled the various priests of the city temples and proposed Ambrose's plan and the high priestess of Calda, Esmoth, volunteered an aged scroll taken from a heretic many decades ago. Scribbled upon the parchment was the litany and ingredient list for Shadow-Thrall of Vile Aspect, a curse that required the skull of a venerable warrior and the spoken name and location of a victim.
Kane dispatched Clay and Carlo to secretly exhume the remains of the old Cozann soldier buried in the royal cemetery. They worked at night as Ambrose held the lantern and Kylie kept watch while Valrick scouted the position of Quent with two other rangers. Once the skull was secured, Ambrose read from the scroll and both the scroll and skull dissolved in a whirl of dust to be replaced by a faintly glowing specter adorned in a tattered funerary shroud. It hovered before Ambrose, waiting. Minutes passed and they heard ragged breathing in the dark distance. Kylie drew his sword and saw a silhouette lurch towards them: it was one of the scouts, pierced by arrows. He told the group of Valrick's discovery and murder and, before he died, revealed the position of Captain Quent. Ambrose passed this on to the specter, who coiled into a thin stream and glided off and over the city wall. They raced to the ramparts and watched the camp and shortly afterward they heard an alarm raised and cries of "assassin!" from within the enemy compound. Carlo raised his spyglass and viewed Quent's ravaged body being carried from a tent and attended to by their war magi. It was evident he was beyond saving.
Eatonshire Besieged
The Crow Cloaks manned their stations and launched a searing attack upon the city walls, sending flaming debris into the city and deploying magical propellants to destroy the watchtowers along the central gate. Ambrose and Clay led teams of men to extinguish the fires, but there were magical properties that accelerated the heat of the debris and before the flames could be extinguished the city's grain store and larder were completely destroyed. The group reckoned the city had approximately two months worth of food. The siege continued throughout the evening and Kane's forces repelled the enemy host until Crow Cloak sappers successfully dug and caved in a tunnel beneath the outer wall. The ramparts crumbled and Kane, Gavril, and many of the lord commanders were killed in the collapse. Carlo ordered the remainder to fall back into the inner curtain while he and Clay fended off the enemy assault to buy time for the retreat. Clay was sorely wounded and Kylie helped him back to the inner wall. They blockaded the advance and watched in horror as the Crow Cloaks wreaked havoc on those poor souls left in the outer city. In the following days, the Crow Cloaks catapulted debris and corpses over the wall into the inner curtain, creating a fetid mess and sowing terror. Carlo rallied the surviving fighters and for two weeks they fought off three heavy advances by the Crow Cloaks.
Desperate to even the odds, Ambrose assembled the city's remaining priests and clerics early one morning and issued a directive to comb their libraries and temples for summoning aids and meet at the Tabernacle of Solace at nightfall. That evening Ambrose led the assembled clergy in a ceremony to summon an envoy of Kalamir. The invocation was tightly focused and drew from the life energy and collected artifacts in the room, thus concentrating the potential power of the envoy. The ceremony lasted all evening and at dawn Ambrose, exhausted, uttered the final prayer as the first rays of light traced the stained glass and illumed the temple. There was a moment of silent calm that was broken when a priest was bodily hurled into the nave and decapitated in mid-flight by an unseen force.
Ambrose gazed in horror as two more priests were cut down as they stood there puzzled; he recognized that a demon was in their presence and he shouted at the others to begin a binding ceremony. The clerics, being robed and unarmed for the ceremony, were ill-equipped for combat and so the invisible demon had little difficulty cutting them apart. The remaining magi assaulted the thing with their spells, but the lengthy ceremony had left most of them depleted of magical energies and so their attacks did little damage to the sinister creature. Ambrose clutched the last full powerstone and unleashed a salvo of spells, one of which blinded the demon and sent him into a panic. It lashed out in all directions, a whirling maelstrom in a mist of blood, and in this frenzy, it killed Ambrose and brought the temple down around it.
Clay's morning patrol was investigating the clamor when they saw the temple collapse and an unseen force slam into the buildings across the street. He ordered his archers to target the whirlwind of debris and they unleashed a deadly volley at it. Enraged, it changed course and slammed straight into Clay's group and began killing them. Carlo shouted for the alarm and in moments the streets were alive with combat, as the demon cut down scores of men and pushed its way to the Gate of the Sun. Clay was wounded in the fracas and Kylie dragged him out from under the maelstrom and towards the temple ruins, where he scoured the debris for any remnants of healing medicine. Carlo ordered the remainder of his seasoned warriors to form a shield wall and corner the demon—they successfully confined it to the west thoroughfare and closed in to attack it as one. The demon deflected their attack and instead of countering, abruptly rushed the gate and smashed the portcullis down. Horrified, Carlo shouted at his men to advance and kill the creature but by the time they were within spearing distance it had blasted the main door and pushed its way into the outer bailey.
The Crow Cloaks fell back in horror at the oncoming behemoth, a many-armed horror coated in red and black gore and spitted with spears and arrows. One of the Crows tracked it with a [scorpion] and fired a deadly bolt, striking the creature directly in its chest. It howled and staggered and the Crow Cloaks descended on the creature and cut it down. They turned and rushed the opening created by the demon and clashed with Carlo's forces. The skirmish was intense and brutal and the Eatonshirans, being too afflicted by hunger, thirst, and sickness, were no match for the experience, superior weapons, and rested vigor of the Crow Cloaks.
Bloodied and wounded, Carlo ordered a surrender. He threw down his sword at the feet of Orianus Blacktooth and was taken prisoner along with the other mercenaries and anyone of noble blood; the rest of the able-bodied fighting men were shackled and marched east to be sold into slavery.
Meta
- House Croydan has set up a provisional government as Garn rules in exile from Erelaan,