Expedition 0: On the Nature of Dice (Agamemnon)

It has been ... challenging to write this journal entry.  It is not readily apparent which of the details of this past week are most salient.

Two adventurers have arrived in Zelkor's seeking to join the Great Downward Engineering Company.  Mortimer is a quiet but fearsome orc.  I feel an immediate kinship to him because his demeanor and his behaviour are not giving us a bad name.  He wields a simple peasant weapon, a scythe, reinforced for war.  Fizban is a human alchemist.  I've never associated with an alchemist before.  I once knew a halfling with a penchant for firecrackers, but that ... ended poorly.  Fizban is much further up the power curve.

I suppose the three most significant events other than our newest compatriots are the bird, the bandits and the goblins.

The bird's name is Afrit.  He is a fiendish crow of great size who lives atop one of the towers of Castle Calaelen.  I talked to him.  He mistook me for a follower of Orcus because this mace we picked up apparently bears his markings - good to know.  Being an orc probably contributed to his assumptions.  We had a conversation in infernal and arrived at an agreement: we would try to avoid getting in each others' way.  We are marking all our animals with a mark to let Afrit know they are off limits to his predations, and otherwise leaving him alone; to his benefit is knowing that no adventurers will be storming the castle to de-roost him.  Yet.

The goblins ... I did not enjoy that encounter.  They were very challenging, as goblins always are if they catch you unawares.  They were a patrol of about twelve who severely weakened us with a vicious volley of crossbow bolts as their first action and attempted to force our surrender as their second.  Orcs do not surrender to goblins.  Shades was none too keen in the idea either.  Jax did not want to lose his acquisitions.  Mortimer, the heavily wounded Snook (they were wise to target him first; dwarves and goblins do not mix well) and I agreed that their first volley was by far the worst they could do, and so since we were still standing (except Snook who was more leaning on a horse) we might as well have at it.

And have at it we did, so that within a few strikes the yellow bastards turned and fled.  Not fast enough though.  The cat, the orc and I managed to keep pace and eventually we ran them down, interrogated their leader, then killed them all.  One less goblin patrol but, more importantly, we have a lot more of an idea what's going on down in the Mouth of Doom.  I am now certain that this is the best entryway for us into Rappan Athuk.  We have taken one of their patrols, we know that not all the goblins from that stinking hole are this well trained or this motivated, that they are led by an Orcite zealot called Tribitz who wields power from a city called Greznek, where Morask is king.  There are opportunities here.  As my father used to say, weak goblins are second only to a falchion in terms of tools most useful to a powerful orc.  There are options we need to explore.  Mosswood seems like an unknown quantity at this point.  That makes it a poor option.  Especially given the banditry in this area.

That brings me to point three: the bandits.  The patrol from Tarrent's Junction let us know of the bounty on bandits.  Their information was a little lacking in specificity, it later turned out when, at Zelkor's, we found out that the bounty was actually on specific bandit leaders.

We did ambush a bandit encampment.  We determined through observation that they were primed to jump the Brawler, a barge carrying furs for sale up north.  In retrospect I judge them to be reasonable combatants, but our planning and the stealth of our rogue completely neutralised them.  With their night watch knifed and the rest of them asleep in their tents, several 'judiciously placed' fire bombs and two charging orcs led to four dead and three surrenders almost immediately.  We took their surrender and escorted them back to the shithole.

En route we learned that they really were the very least of the bandits in the area.  They were selfish, they were inconsiderate, but they were not, by and large, sadists.  They had turned to banditry rather than make an honest living, but their modus operandi was to storm river boats for their goods, not to murder everyone in sight.  In fact they told us quite freely that they had ceased associating with the bulk of the bandits in the area because these others were far too ferocious and villainous.  I do commend them for this.  There is such a thing as a lesser evil.

Not all the party feels comfortable with the slaughter we brought on these people.  I am.  I do not revel in death, or in killing, despite my ancestry.  I did not enjoy their deaths.  But they rolled the dice.  They chose this life path.  They chose to deprive others of their livelihoods.  How many children turn to thievery because their merchant parents lose their livelihoods to bandits?  How many of those children become hard, become evil?  I don't believe life is just, but if you roll the dice, you accept the consequences.  These people inflicted harm on others for personal gain, and then they rolled badly and fate harmed them in return.  It doesn't matter whether they deserved this; this is how the dice landed.

I do not feel bad, but I understand why others do.  The stalwart paladin, unsurprisingly, took no delight in what happened but recognised that those who breach the law to harm others will be brought to account by the law.  However he also recognised that the intent of the law is to do good, and so realised an opportunity in all this.  Shades is actually an entitled lord in this place, and so on his authority we took the three surviving bandits into his custody rather than see them executed.  The paladin, the bird and I returned the bounty on these three out of our own pockets, and they are now resident in the castle with us.

I am not certain how this will turn out.  Javier I think will take to whatever task he is given.  Barak is harder to read.  Karina though ... it was her husband who led the bandits, and he died at our hands.  I think we underestimate her grief.  If we want to turn these three to good, we may have some work to do.  Still, we rolled the dice.  Let's see how it goes.

I will leave it there.  I must return to Zelkor's Ferry.  I have another appointment with Uldman.  I have an idea.