Joining a caravan

Our party decides to splash out on 2 horses and a cart to aid them in their travels. They manage to join a 10-strong caravan convoy for free that is headed north. Free because we are last! On our first day we wallow in the rare opportunity to indulge in our own activities! M (M= Morlaf, B=Breylec, J=Jutiapa, L=Lawrence and G=Gondar) sleeps a lot and makes acquaintances with the caravan in front (Very friendly people headed to Moldavia). They are farmers and before long Morlaf knows a lot about radishes. B makes friends with the caravan leader. A big, well armed human called Boris Magluf and his assistant.

The next few days go by semi-uneventfully. J is bored. She takes to walking alongside the caravan! G and M chat lots and compare silly spells, L takes up sewing and poetry. B practices his jack-of-all-trades approach to life. He drives the cart, continues practicing his sword swing, and gets involved in all manner of physical activities. Being the most alert he starts hearing and spotting weird things. Thinks nothing of it as this path goes through a forest, which is home to many a weird creature. On day 6 M’s boredom reaches a climax. He tries to entertain G and himself by meddling with chaos and a newly acquired spell. It goes all tits up (surprise!) and for some inexplicable reason starts roaming around naked and catches a cold! B’s boredom has more predictable results: someone’s broken sword! (they were lucky it was not their head!). M offers to fix to the sword promising nothing worse could possibly happen to an already broken item. He then proceeds to summon a gigantic bolder to fall on it from a huge height, crushing it, loosing it forever and only just getting away alive! His sincere apologies fortunately find fertile ground. Who would mess with such a "powerful" wizard anyway? He is then offered a glass of water, which he accepts in his high state of mental fatigue and … well he goes invisible! (Un-)fortunately this is noticed by no one! Various other silly activities take place that fail to distract L from a truly noble activity: He is composing an epic poem about our adventures!

Day 9 however distracts even L. Well .. 7 well armed, rough fighter-type people stopping the caravan and then headed directly to your cart would! Clearly inspired by his epic poem he grabs his crossbow and firmly plants an arrow in the shoulder of the chap that looked like their leader! If there was any doubt about these people’s intentions, it is clearly now too late to ask! B’s quick thinking saves our bacon once more. He charges our cart into 3 of the men. It quickly gets VERY messy. G summons a slowly creeping mist that surrounds us all. Soon the remaining caravan is out of sight and cannot be heard! Jutiapa fails to jump on to the cart in front but does ok for herself by draining the life force out of a near-by assailant. This gives her a split second and manages to hop onto our now charging cart. Some people manage to jump out of the way in time, while others are ran over by two horses and a cart, surely to bother us never again! One chap grabbing onto to the side of the cart is convincingly strangled by M’s animated whip and forced to let us go.

By this time things are happening very fast. Almost as fast as our now safely out of control horses. This is not necessarily a bad thing as long as they keep running away with us with them. L temporarily incapacitates the other 3 by casting grease and making them trip and stumble over each other. At the same time his arrows are still going strong and with M and J firing freezing rays in every direction this is looking good.

Unfortunately numbers overcomes us and one person clinging to the cart sends J and L falling into the inside of the cart unconscious, mortally wounded. He does not last long though and soon we are free from out attackers. The horses are well and truly out of control now. They swerve suddenly and the cart begins to topple over! L and J get knocked about some more and are in critical condition. M "jumps" off and is slightly hurt. B’s fighter training comes in handy and manages to escape. G is of course safe! He manages to stabilise the more critically hurt J but L gets butchered even further by his clearly clumsy attempts at 1^st aid. The mist is beginning to disperse now and M courageously screams out for help! Of course his radish -cultivating friends are long gone and is shut up by the commanding, stout, shaken-but-not-stirred figure of B. Their attempt to calm their horses earns M some more pain!

With their attackers out of sight, M leaves B in G capable hands and set off for help. Help in the form of shelter and badly needed rest and rudimentary healing for our injured. M being not the best choice for interacting with strangers gets a door slammed in his face but refuses to give up. Eventually arranges a few night’s stay in a stable not too far away. M returns to his friends by which time the horses are beginning to calm and B has begun construction of a make shift stretcher with L precious material he bought for sewing! Leaving the damaged cart behind we head off for a much needed rest.

Once safely indoors the horses get secured and L and J’s condition stabilised. It is not long after the M is slumped into a limp heap sleeping soundly, while B goes the whole night on guard!