Loose threads: None.
Participants: Khirl Galesinger, Nasdac, Ninivit, Tara Tula.
Locations: Watchers' Holy Lands.
Short summary: The party set out to help the main settlement of the Watchers' Tribe fight back against the invading serpentfolk, muddling through despite not knowing Draconic. They helped kill a force of casters, then went to destroy a group of constructs employed by an enemy engineer, and finally ended the threat of the assassins that ambushed them afterwards, which was enough for the kobolds to defeat the last group of serpentfolk in the area and claim victory.
Full Report
The Unknown of the City of Srasthadra ramped up their war of conquest against The Watchers' Tribe after finding a cache of huge iron warriors to use as shock troops. Once news reached First Landing, we organized a group and set out to help the Watchers of the main settlement fight them, and I'm glad to say we succeeded...but none of us knew Draconic when we set out, so it was pretty awkward when we reached their town and realized that. Mother Imikh was apparently helping out at a different war front, but the priestess who greeted us knew a basic translation spell, so even though we couldn't understand her we were able to get our orders to meet with their camp near the battleground.
We arrived the next day. Tara had a more advanced translation spell she could prepare, so we had an easier time getting directed to their captain-general (? he led the army in any case), High Priest Cyrano...who spoke Common anyway, but the spell still helped. The high priest was clearly glad for reinforcements, even if we were supposedly late and they didn't think much of our numbers. (Mostly they saw us as bait that might get lucky, according to Tara, and he also said it was a shame the strongest of us were "blasphemers", whatever that means.) After that he decided we'd be a "small strike force" and briefed us on the situation.
They'd battled the serpentfolk for a few days and were being pushed back by the extra muscle of the iron warriors, as well as serpentfolk assassins targeting their priests — those and the mages would be our focus. Three primary skirmishes were happening: a southeast battle between the priests and serpentfolk casters, a southwest one involving Watcher infantry and cavalry fighting iron warriors and serpentfolk soldiers, and finally a prolonged northwest battle where Watchers were holding out against a combined force of serpentfolk using terrain advantage on the hills. (Should I be calling them Srasthadrans?) Long story short, we were told to start by assisting either of the closer southern battles, and we chose the southeast to see if we could intercept the assassins somewhere near the priests.
It was raining that morning, and it continued as we made the journey. Visibility wasn't great, but we definitely saw more dead kobolds than dead serpentfolk on the way, and found that the Watchers were pressed back from where the scouts had reported they'd be. Our part in the fighting was against some soldiers, a trio of mages with the high ground (who could turn invisible and kept calling pools of poison onto our ground), and also a powerful caster they call a bone prophet who could potentially dominate minds and summon undead. We had a Watcher priest and his apprentices on our side, though, and slowly took down the mages after we finally killed the prophet. One of the apprentices was poisoned to death early on, and almost definitely wasn't alone even after our involvement, but with the mages dealt with and the rain clearing up we were all free to lick our wounds as best as we could and keep moving.
Our group went west after that, because if we could help the Watchers there, they'd be able to back up the northern battle even if we couldn't. When we arrived we didn't find any Watchers, though, or any bodies, just tracks made by the enemy and their wagons. (Maybe the Watcher cavalry won the southwest battle and took off, leaving just the
enemies that retreated or snuck by, but I was tired and forgot to
ask the cavalry what had happened once we met.) We followed the tracks further west until we found a trio of stationary iron warriors, and a Srasthadran engineer of some kind working on them. They were a lot faster than you'd think and could definitely fight hard, but we coordinated our attempt at an ambush pretty well and destroyed them one by one — it helped that we knew ahead of time to prepare for their weakness to electricity. The engineer had a lot of alchemical bombs and was no slouch, but that didn't pose nearly as much threat with the constructs down, so they fell to us too. Before we could stop it, they did manage to light a signal flare near the end, though.
We knew it spelled trouble, but we couldn't make enough distance from the site while also healing our wounds from the fight. (I made it sound smooth and it sort of was, but any good attack from those iron giants was still a serious problem, and the alchemical potions Khirl and I took to exploit their weakness also made the engineer's bombs even more painful.) It was some minutes later when the squad of Srasthadran assassins took us by surprise with invisibility, bows, and crossbows; they seemed like an elite unit, using individual fighting styles and tactics we didn't have much preparation for. One of them managed to cast a field of magical darkness after a while, which made it close to impossible for Tara and I to defend ourselves or coordinate much with the other two who could (thankfully) still see in it.
Khirl was able to direct me out of the darkness and did some really impressive fighting while surrounded on his own, according to what Nasdac saw, and she's an incredible shot in her own right who was constantly putting in a lot of work to pick off assassins around us. Tara's a really powerful cleric, so she was critical to keeping us alive with her healing magic in the meantime, and she even dispelled the darkness after a bit, so I didn't have to fight blindly for very long. (My familiar is nibbling at my arm: yes, Eudonia helped us a lot with her own store of healing magic, I was getting to that.) The assassins were very capable and we were totally spent by the end of the fight, but they must have gotten disorganized when we put up more of a resistance than the occupied Watchers could and entered their melee range, because they missed me with a lot of their shots and I'm really not an agile ysoki. Whatever it was, it was still a scary uphill battle until the darkness was dispelled, but afterwards we saw that Khirl and Nasdac had killed one, and we were able to do the same to the rest.
We were way too wounded and low on resources to safely continue, so we made plans to turn back and inform High Priest Cyrano of the results, and also offer the Watchers a spell Tara had prepared to make a hot spring which could heal a lot of wounded people who rested in it. Before we left, we saw the Watcher cavalry return from the north, and one of them who knew some Common let us know that they'd won the battle up there. Apparently someone had already gotten the news to the high priest, since according to the cavalier he had proclaimed the land we'd fought on won, thanks to something in Draconic I later learned meant "Scaleless". (Which refers to us, I'm pretty sure, so that was an unexpected compliment.) We still headed back to the high priest as we were told to do, and the cavalier said their unit would go north again, but before that we invited the cavalry to the spring like Tara wanted.
And...that's all there is to report about our corner of the war effort, I think. I'm glad Srasthadra's forces were repelled, obviously, but the casualties on the Watcher side were pretty heavy...so, even more than that, I'm just thankful the four of us made it out intact. It definitely could have gone a lot worse.
- Ninivit, with Tara Tula, Nasdac, and Khirl.