Old Cusa continues his story.
The rest of the night passed uneventfully. As we each took our turn on night watch, we also dug a grave large enough for the 7 bodies. I had the middle watch, and after the sun came up I examined the bodies, and found that there were no signs of torure or other forms of questioning. The parson said some words over the bodies during his watch, and the last watch was Alvin who finished filling in the grave before fixing breakfast for us all. He mixed the meat of the giant snails with the large eggs, and then accidentally burned the mixture. The result was foul tasting, but did not make anybody sick. We got out of the camp and started following the tracks an hour or two before noon.
We followed the tracks through a sequence of game trails. At one point we had to avoid what we were fairly sure were some carnivorous plants that we later learned were named Grinning Monkey Orchids, that did indeed ambush animals of human size. Later, at a place where the path passed by a small waterfall, we were accosted by 4 Saurids, one of which was as large as a troll. A voice boomed out in Mountain Saurid "Why have you come this way, fools". The Saurid's seemed to want to talk, or rather they seemed to prefer to shake us down for our treasure without taking the risk and trouble of attempting to kill us first. The others seemed willing to negotiate, but I decided to be rude and belligerent to the warriors, which I like to think had the effect of making the others seem more reasonable by comparison. A deal was almost struck wherein we would give them certain valuables we were carrying in exchange for the kidnapped doctor, this was when the Saurids admitted that they did not have the doctor any more, but that all they were offering was to tell us was more about the kidnapping, and who has the doctor now and where they were going. This was considerably less than my party had been bargaining for, but eventually a new deal was struck, We offered the 2 poison sacks we had gotten from the Snails, and copies of navigation charts and photorealistic drawings made with magic ink in exchange for what they would tell us.
The Saurid leader told us that they were hired by two human women (neither of whose names he knew). One had curly hair and an unusual set of armor made from a Cheshire (a lizardlike creature that attacked by leaping down from trees upon their targets. The other woman was only described as smaller than the first. They both carried guns and rode buffs (which he said would not be able to get through the mountains on the route that they were traveling. He had led the attack against the camp, which had more guards than he had been led to expect, and he lost some warriors, which he was still quite upset about. The two women had forced the doctor to keep researching the stepwell fountain for a few days, then decided that it was time to retreat, taking the doctor with them. The women ordered this group of Saurids to stay in the camp and attack us, but they decided not to, instead leaving the camp a few hours after the women left with the doctor. We somehow missed the tracks of the women's buffs..
The Saurid leader did not mention whether the women ordered the murder of the other 7 expedition members, nor whether it it happened while the women were still present or not. I susspect the women did not want Dr Bouchet to witness the murder (and thus realize how likely his own probable fate was), and ordered them to slay the helpless prisoners after they had left.
The Saurids, rather than attack us as they were hired to do, instead sold us the above information and pointed out the route we should take to follow them. The party we were following was the two human woman on buffs, the Dr on foot, and 1 hulk, and 1 normal saurid (from a different tribe than the ones who sold us the information).
We resolved to push hard to catch up with our quarry, Taking one normal night's rest, then force marching for a day with a short night rest, before repeating. The first night of the chase we camped by a stream, as I hoped to do some fishing while on watch, but in the dimness, I did not at first notice the patches of Grinning Monkey Orchids along the streambank, and I got bit a few times before I got out. I had to do some wading in the stream to retrieve my fishing kit, and since there was not a safe place from which to both fish and keep watch on camp, I abandoned my plans to fish and simply kept watch.
By the mid afternoon of the 2nd day of the chase we came upon a gully that we had great difficulty maneuvering, and there were a few scrapes and bumps. I still don't know how they got the buffs down that slope. It was there we found the campsite that they had abandoned the morning of the previous day. We still had several hours of daylight at that point and were less than 2 days behind, so we felt we were catching up fast.
Session goal, 350, conflicts 400, 75 individ, 825 + journal Statistics:Posted by ChrisDDickey — Mon Sep 14, 2020 1:42 pm
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