Ambush and Betrayal

Greenwyrm Vale, 28th & 29th of Sow

General Summary

With three of his friends trapped in quicksand, Hado cast Bull’s Strength on Ballamin to aid in pulling out Zoltan, Tamara and Thurstan before they suffocated in the mire. Meanwhile, Marvroth and Terey reacted quicker than the gnome when they emerged from their teleportation in a small hut. Quickly grappling and subduing the magician, and breaking his nose in the process, the frightened mage revealed that they had not teleported far – a mere 1/4 of a mile or so. Tying up the hapless con artist and stripping his base of operations of anything of use or value, they left him bound and helpless, agreeing to let someone know he was there before he starved to death.
Back on the road, the group spent an uneventful night. At dawn, the group on watch noticed what looked like some carrion birds hovering a couple of miles further down the road. Using the Cloak of the Raven Queen, Hado transformed himself into a raven and flew ahead to investigate. He found a partially overturned carriage peppered with arrows with 8 bodies strewn around it and the horses apparently fled. All the luggage from the carriage had been ransacked. Hado noticed that one of the bodies appeared to still be breathing and alerted his companions.
Bringing the injured man back to consciousness, they gathered that, just before dawn, the carriage had been ambushed, though the man did not know by whom. It was then that some of the group noticed that the circling birds did not appear to be birds at all, but were in fact Winged Kobolds, armed with bows. The attempted to head for cover without alerting the kobolds to their presence, until Marcel pointed to the sky, seemingly just noticing the creatures and screamed “WHAT ARE THOSE!”, causing the flying creatures to dive-bomb the party and attack.
During the fight, it soon became clear that the whole thing was a setup. The surviving carriage passenger used the distraction of the kobolds to attempt to fire a poisoned crossbow bolt at Thurstan, but his aim was poor. Marcel then took advantage of a distracted Hado, punching his spiked and poisoned gauntlet into the back of Hado’s skull. Neither assassin was able to take down their target and the group soon overwhelmed them, taking down the kobolds with ease and subduing both the fake carriage passenger and Marcel Toth, now revealed to have been an assassin for the Platinum Covenant all along.
Unable to make either fanatic reveal much in the way of information, they executed the first man. Marcel spat out only that they would never reach their destination for the Platinum Covenant was more powerful than they could imagine before biting off his own tongue and releasing a concentrated dose of poison into his system, killing him instantly.
Vials of Midnight’s Tears on both assassins confirmed that they had most likely attempted to poison the party’s breakfast water earlier in the day and more troubling was that Marcel had, apparently, retrieved his tainted holy symbol from the Temple of Luna the previous night. The party hoped he had not harmed any of the temple devotees in the process, but with the loss of the carriage, their urgency to travel north was even more pressing.

Report Date

11 Aug 2018