January 10th, 974
Previously in Archea…
After departing the newly captured fortress of Mira’Thar, the party accepted Colonel Varnes’ second offer: they would remain independent adventurers while serving as trusted outside agents of the Reclamation. Varnes would occasionally ask them to undertake missions on the coalition’s behalf, but they would remain free to decline requests they found objectionable. In return, they pledged to protect the Reclamation’s secrets and, for the moment at least, accepted their first assignment—to travel south and persuade the isolated Orc tribe living near the Circle of the Second Growth to consider joining the growing alliance.
Not all the players had been present for the meeting beneath Mira’Thar, so the session opened with a brief review of Varnes’ four offers. The possibility of embracing undeath in the service of Soulreaper was dutifully considered—and promptly rejected. The party unanimously reaffirmed its earlier decision to remain living, independent agents. The consensus around the table was that continuing to work with the Reclamation while retaining the freedom to disagree offered the greatest opportunity to influence the rapidly changing political landscape.
Attention then returned to Wolfpine.
The players laid out the village on the map and accounted for the whereabouts of every member of the party during the previous session’s reconnaissance. Ant quietly joined Merrythought among the prisoners in the inn’s cellar, while Cassyndra and Zborch accompanied Wolfgang and Hunkle into the village disguised as prospective recruits. Calder and Gareth remained concealed outside Wolfpine alongside Mukden, prepared to enter the village when the attack began. Heka continued to serve as the party’s messenger and aerial scout, relaying information between the separated groups as plans steadily evolved.
After considerable discussion, the party settled on a simple but aggressive strategy. Rather than attempting to recruit disillusioned guards or gradually undermine Horace Bell’s authority from within, they would concentrate nearly the entire group inside the inn and launch a sudden, overwhelming strike against Bell’s headquarters. If all went well, the leadership of the tax farmers would be eliminated before they understood they were under attack. The surviving guards could be dealt with afterward.
With their preparations complete, Calder and Gareth entered the village openly and presented themselves to Horace Bell as yet another pair of wandering adventurers in search of employment.
Bell, entirely unaware that he was about to interview the people who intended to overthrow him, eagerly welcomed them inside.
The Assault on the Inn
With every member of the party finally in position, only one question remained – when would they strike?
The answer came while Horace Bell was still in the middle of his recruitment speech.
Having warmly welcomed Calder and Gareth, Bell launched into his familiar mixture of patriotism, civic duty, and entrepreneurial tax collection. The Crown, he explained, needed loyal men and women willing to “help citizens understand their tax obligations.” The work paid well, the opportunities were plentiful, and with the war underway there had never been a better time to join his growing organization. Around him, clerks worked steadily through ledgers, the Revenue Mage observed the proceedings, hired thugs lounged around the common room, and no one suspected that nearly every “new recruit” inside the inn was, in fact, a member of the same adventuring party.
The party had considered a variety of more subtle approaches before settling on a direct assault. They briefly discussed winning over some of Bell’s less enthusiastic guards, but ultimately decided that speed and surprise offered the greatest chance of success. Their objective was simple: remove Bell’s leadership before the remainder of his men could organize an effective response.
The signal came without warning.
Steel flashed.
Spells erupted.
The carefully cultivated illusion of Bell’s orderly headquarters dissolved into chaos almost instantly.
The opening seconds of the battle could scarcely have gone better for the party. Acting before their opponents had time to react, they immediately concentrated their attacks on the inn’s most dangerous occupants. The Revenue Mage was cut down almost before he could cast a spell. Even more fortunate was the fate of one of Bell’s seemingly harmless clerks. Unknown to the party, he too possessed magical abilities and might have become a significant threat had he survived long enough to reveal them. Instead, he was struck down in the opening exchange before anyone—heroes or villains alike—fully appreciated the danger he represented.
The assault immediately divided into two simultaneous battles.
Above, the common room erupted into a fast-moving melee as Zborch, Wolfgang, Cassyndra, Hunkle, Calder, Gareth, and Chorizo —who had chosen a considerably less conventional entrance through a nearby window—overwhelmed Bell’s startled headquarters staff before they could establish any meaningful defense.
Below, Ant put the second half of the plan into motion.
Waiting among the prisoners in the cellar, she cast Darkness upon the stairway connecting the basement to the inn above. The spell transformed the narrow passage into an impenetrable wall of magical blackness just as the two guards stationed below attempted to rush upstairs in response to the fighting.
Instead of reinforcing their comrades, they found themselves climbing blind into confusion.
Ant followed immediately, engaging them inside the darkness where her newly acquired Devil’s Sight allowed her to see normally while the guards stumbled helplessly through magical darkness.. One guard fell during the struggle while the second, recognizing the hopelessness of his position, surrendered rather than continue a fight he could neither see nor win. With the cellar secured, the prisoners were finally free.
Meanwhile, events on the first floor concluded with remarkable speed. Bell’s headquarters collapsed almost as quickly as it had been attacked. Only Chorizo lost his life overthrowing the tax collector’s regime. Hunkle’s reaction to the news consisted of a brief acknowledgment followed by the observation, “Nobody cares.” Having already treated the enthusiastic little warrior throughout the planning stages as an eminently replaceable combat asset, the party accepted the loss with surprising equanimity. Fortunately for Chorizo, magical companions proved rather easier to replace than adventurers, and the little warrior would return before long.
Another guard surrendered, the innkeeper was taken into custody, and Horace Bell himself was struck down by Zborch before he could mount any meaningful resistance. Though battered into unconscious, Bell stubbornly clung to life.
Not everyone, however, had been caught inside the trap.
During the confusion, Bell’s second clerk escaped to the upper floor. There he gathered the two guards who had been sleeping above the common room and fled through a second-story window before the party realized they had slipped away. Racing through the streets of Wolfpine, the fugitives reached the remaining guards just as Captain Wilkes began organizing the remaining men at arms. Bell’s headquarters had collapsed in seconds, Wolfpine itself was not yet secure
The battle for the inn had been won.
The battle for Wolfpine, however, had only just begun.
Captain Wilkes Takes Command
With Bell’s headquarters secured, the party took stock of the situation. Prisoners were gathered together, the liberated villagers cautiously emerged from the cellar, and interrogation of one of the captured mercenaries quickly revealed that most of Bell’s men had not originally come from Wolfpine at all. They had answered Horace’s call for paid employment before arriving in the village, expecting little more than routine security work.
One important question, however, remained unanswered.
“Where’s Wilkes?”
The answer arrived quickly.
While Bell’s improvised government had collapsed in seconds, Captain Wilkes had wasted no time preserving what remained of its military strength. Gathering the two guards who had escaped from the inn together with the seven men who had been patrolling the village, he withdrew across the square and occupied the village smithy—the same building in which Bell had been storing confiscated property collected from the townsfolk. The surviving clerk who had escaped through the upstairs window abandoned any thought of heroics and instead sought refuge inside the fortified building alongside the guards.
Unlike Horace Bell, Wilkes inspired some modicum of respect.
As Bell had proudly explained during the previous day’s recruitment tour, Wilkes had once served as a sergeant in the Crown Army before accepting promotion to captain under Bell’s authority. More importantly, he possessed the instincts of a professional soldier. Rather than launching a futile counterattack, he concentrated his surviving men, selected defensible ground, and prepared for a siege.
The villagers, meanwhile, had reached a rather different conclusion.
With Bell overthrown, they naturally assumed that the heroes who had liberated Wolfpine would now solve rather more mundane problems as well. Questions immediately began flying from every direction.
Who would govern the village?
What should become of Bell’s prisoners?
How should confiscated food and livestock be distributed?
Who possessed legitimate authority now?
The party’s collective response could best be described as polite but determined avoidance.
Having demonstrated considerable enthusiasm for overthrowing governments, they proved markedly less interested in creating new ones. Wolfgang reminded everyone that the party already had another mission awaiting them in Briarfall Forest, while the others quietly resisted every attempt by the grateful villagers to draft them into an impromptu village council. The fate of Wolfpine would, if at all possible, become someone else’s responsibility.
Wilkes, however, refused to make leaving quite so easy.
The party attempted to negotiate with the defenders barricaded inside the smithy, demanding Wilkes’ unconditional surrender while offering fair treatment to those ordinary guards who laid down their arms. Wilkes answered with a demand of his own: safe passage for himself and his remaining men.
Neither side proved willing to yield.
For a time the confrontation settled into an uneasy stalemate. The party debated a variety of possibilities—from simply waiting the defenders out to more elaborate attempts at deception—but each proposal ultimately gave way to the same conclusion.
If Captain Wilkes would not come out…
…they would have to go in.
The Fall of the Smithy
Eventually, the party’s discussion shifted from negotiation to infiltration.
After considering a variety of increasingly elaborate schemes—including knocking on the door under cover of invisibility, creating diversions, and simply smashing their way inside—the party settled on a plan that everyone immediately recognized as considerably more promising.
“Okay,” someone observed. “Now we’re talking.”
Cassyndra had recently mastered Fireball.
The first step was reconnaissance.
Protected by Invisibility, Hunkle, Cassyndra, and Calder quietly approached the smithy while Heka circled overhead. Rather than rushing blindly into another battle, the invisible scouts carefully peered through the windows, locating Wilkes and his remaining guards, identifying the layout of the building, and confirming where the defenders had chosen to make their stand. Every Stealth check succeeded. The defenders never realized they were being observed. Satisfied that they understood the situation inside, the three quietly withdrew and rejoined the rest of the party to compare notes and settle upon a final plan.
A short time later, the same trio returned.
Again protected by Invisibility, they slipped silently into the smithy itself, once more avoiding detection as they moved into carefully chosen positions around the building. Only after everyone was exactly where they needed to be did Cassyndra quietly shape a sphere of flame in her hands.
Then she threw it into the smithy’s kitchen.
The fireball detonated with devastating force. Though the stone walls largely contained the magical explosion, sheets of flame burst outward through the windows while smoke and sparks erupted from the building. Two guards died instantly. Wilkes survived the blast—badly burned, considerably angrier than before—and the explosion became the long-awaited signal for the remainder of the party to charge.
What followed was brief, violent, and remarkably one-sided.
Zborch, already responsible for bringing down Horace Bell during the assault on the inn, now hurled himself into the fight with equal enthusiasm as the remainder of the party stormed the smithy from outside. With invisible allies already positioned among them and attackers converging from every direction, Wilkes’ remaining defenders found themselves caught between enemies on two fronts. Deprived of both surprise and room to maneuver, organized resistance collapsed quickly. The two surviving guards surrendered in short order, while Captain Wilkes himself fell fighting alongside the last remnants of Bell’s organization.
Aftermath
With Captain Wilkes dead and the last of Bell’s group defeated, the party finally had an opportunity to examine the fruits of their victory.
Cassyndra recovered two spellbooks from the fighting, greatly expanding the possibilities for future magical study. Bell’s headquarters and the smithy together yielded confiscated property, supplies, and the surviving members of Horace Bell’s organization. Four guards and Bell’s surviving clerk were taken prisoner, Innkeeper Thomas Crown awaited an uncertain fate under guard, and Horace Bell himself remained very much alive despite Zborch’s determined efforts to convince him otherwise.
For the people of Wolfpine, however, victory immediately gave way to more practical concerns.
Who would govern the village?
Who should receive the confiscated grain, livestock, and equipment?
What should become of Bell’s prisoners?
Would the old village leadership simply resume its duties, or had Bell’s brief occupation permanently changed the community?
The villagers repeatedly attempted to draw the party into answering these questions.
The party proved remarkably resistant.
Having demonstrated considerable enthusiasm for overthrowing governments, they showed far less interest in constructing replacement ones. Wolfgang, in particular, repeatedly reminded everyone that Colonel Varnes had entrusted them with another mission entirely. Briarfall Forest—and the isolated Orc tribe waiting there—would not come any closer while they debated village politics.
After politely but firmly declining every invitation to join an impromptu village council, the party concluded that the future of Wolfpine would ultimately have to rest in the hands of its own people.
How We Left the Characters
- Four guards, Bell’s surviving clerk, Innkeeper Thomas Weaver, and Horace Bell are prisoners.
- Cassyndra has recovered two spellbooks for future study.
- The confiscated goods remain in the smithy awaiting redistribution.
- Wolfpine has been liberated, though its political future remains uncertain.
- Mukden continues to wait outside the village, ready to resume the journey south.
- The party’s next destination remains Briarfall Forest, where Laveleen, the Circle of the Second Growth, and the isolated Orc tribe await