The Prisoner and the Town
2 April. Three hours of rowing, then the fastest day's work in the campaign.
They had a prisoner in a boat and four and a half miles of open water to fill, so they asked him things. It turned into the single most informative half-hour the party has ever had, and it set the agenda for everything that followed.
His name is Orik Vancaskerkin. He is from Riddleport. He was hired in Magnimar — the same city the sheriff had gone to for soldiers — by a woman who told him she would be "dealing with some unsavoury sorts" and neglected to mention which.
"Goblins would have been all right. I'd have kept her from getting killed by goblins. That's no big deal. But bugbears and fiends and the rest of that weren't really on my to-do list."
A gold piece a day, which he noted is very good money for mercenary work. Surrendering had seemed like a good option.
What she is doing
He gave up all of it, unprompted, in one long breath, and none of it has been contradicted since.
She wants to be turned into some kind of monster, and she has already started.
The earlier attack on Sandpoint was not a raid. It was to get a priest's body out of his mausoleum. She took it back up to Thistletop, burned it and sacrificed it on an altar to her goddess, and one of her arms turned into a demon-looking scaly thing.
And she believes that if she sacrifices the whole town — burns it down, kills a great many people, alongside a ritual — she gets the rest of the way transformed.
He said this the way a bodyguard would: as gossip he had half-overheard while standing in a room he did not want to be in.
He also gave them the fiend. Somewhere in the ruins under Thistletop there is a sealed door with something trapped behind it, and she has been hunting for it. She has not found it yet — "but there's not a lot of places down there. I figure she'll find it eventually." She was waiting until she had it out before attacking, on the grounds that it would improve her chances considerably.
And then, unasked, he gave them the shape of the next four months.
"You hitting Thistletop and killing the bugbear and a bunch of those fire dog things and some goblins is likely to make her rethink waiting on the fiend before attacking. If I took a morale defeat like that, I might want to try to make them mad about it, and then use it, and move more quickly."
Somebody said it back to him plainly: if the bugbear was what held them together, she has to move before they notice he's gone. Orik agreed.
That is the campaign. The party kicked a hornets' nest and rowed home, and the man they kidnapped told them so on the way.
The other things he said
On the goblins. They do not cooperate well inside a tribe, let alone between tribes. "It was only the promise of being able to burn Sandpoint to the ground that appealed to them." She treats them as expendable, and she has been sending Ripnugget, the Thistletop warchief, out on his giant lizard to bring in the other Lost Coast tribes.
On the approach. Through the Tickwood, over Ravenroost, across the Turandarok — north and south at the same time. The southern side means bridges. On the north side there is a wall, but "the trees grow right up onto the wall."
That last part he had from Tsuto, the half-elf, whose plan he had preferred to the bugbear's: "frontal assaults didn't really do it for me." When told the party already had Tsuto in a cell, he brightened.
"He's kind of a jerk, just saying."
On Nualia herself. Platinum blonde. And when the party asked about the child — she was pregnant when she supposedly died in the fire, five years ago — Orik looked genuinely confused.
"There's no child. I didn't see any kids. Why? Did y'all lose a child?"
Pressed, he added one detail: she has a lot of scars on her belly.
Nobody in the boat liked that answer. "I don't want to think about what a child raised for five years in that kind of situation would be like." Grace has not let go of it since.
Hiring him
Back in Sandpoint, Orik went briefly into a cell — next to Tsuto, who he recognised at once — and somebody suggested killing them both. Then Stone walked up and looked him in the face.
"If you are paid your one gold a day, will you transfer your allegiance to us and fight with us in this fight — understanding that if you're lying to me, I will kill you in the middle of this fight?"
"Given that I've been captured, that pretty much absolves my previous contract. If you want to contract me now, that'd be fine."
Stone took a gold piece out of his pouch, put it in the man's palm, and turned to the others: "I've got him."
Orik: "Yes, sir. Do you want me to punch him to death, or can I get my swords back?"
Thalanadil checked him for enchantments — no compulsion, no suggestion, nothing on him at all — and then checked his sincerity, and found him straightforward, honest, and entirely logical. Got hired by a pretty woman in a city; discovered the job came with bugbears; surrendered at the first honest opportunity. Believable.
Stone kept him at arm's length anyway. "If I die in this fight, he's going down before me."
The clock
They came home by boat and reached the wharf around midday. It was day three or four since Hemlock left. He might be back tomorrow. He might not.
The fix was Roland, on a fast horse, down the Lost Coast Road, to find the column and force-march it home — with two wagons behind him so the soldiers could ride the last stretch and arrive rested rather than arriving flat.
Stone volunteered first and was talked out of it: the best defenders stay. And the DM said the quiet part plainly, because Roland's player had lost the timeslot to a shift change.
"Since Roland's player can't play any more right now — his work shift got moved — we could just send Roland if you want. He'll be an NPC."
A ranger was the right man for it regardless. "He can hide and move and manoeuvre, and knows his way in the woods, and worst comes to worst he can get there."
He rode out about an hour after they landed.
Raising the town
Stone's opening proposal was to stand in the square and blow his horn until people came to see what the noise was. There is a bell in the cathedral. They used the bell.
The speech went to Lucian, and the argument for it took about four seconds. "I'm from here. People will recognise me." — "And you're a cleric. They'll listen to you." — "When Lucian speaks, people listen."
Father Zantus stood on the cathedral steps and introduced him to anybody who had not met him. Lucian used thaumaturgy to carry his voice and rolled persuasion with advantage, and told the town straight: reasonable suspicion of a goblin attack within days, riders wanted for the farms, militia to report.
It landed. Two boys of fifteen or sixteen volunteered to ride out to the outlying farms, and sensibly asked for a writ first. The mayor stamped one.
What the town actually had, once counted:
| The militia ledger | About forty names — many of them farmers living outside the walls, who would have to come in |
| Able to fight | Forty to fifty, some with bows, once assembled |
| On hand immediately | Six guardsmen and six acolytes from the temple |
| Siege weapons | None |
Useful facts about goblins, freely given: they hate dogs, they are frightened of horses, and they are not enthusiastic swimmers.
Taking the town apart
The bridges came first. The party wanted them gone; what they settled on was dismantling rather than demolishing — pull a twenty-foot section of planking so it can be put back cheaply afterwards, and pile junk in the middle of what remains so anything crossing has to clamber over it.
Tanner's Bridge came apart that afternoon. The southern crossing stayed, because that is the one Hemlock's column will come up, and everyone knew it.
There were barrels of explosives in town already, earmarked by the city engineer to collapse the tunnels under the glassworks if it came to that. Repurposing them for the bridges got a good ten minutes and was dropped.
Loggers and foresters went out to push the Tickwood back from the north wall.
Artillery turned into the best scene of the afternoon. There is no engineer in Sandpoint — only Das Korvut the blacksmith, who can make metal parts and has never built a siege engine. Then Brodert Quink wandered up, mildly, to point out that the party had rather disturbed the town, and to mention that he had engineering drawings.
A small catapult: two or three days. A scorpion — a Roman-style torsion bolt-thrower — one or two. The scorpion won on build time. The sawmill supplied the timber, Korvut the metalwork, and they asked for it on a wheeled mount so it could be moved.
The holdouts
Then the militia came to the party with the question nobody wants: are we defending every wall, or falling back?
Falling back means the stone buildings — the town hall, the garrison, the cathedral — because stone does not burn. And Ven Vinder of the general store said no. He was not leaving his shop. Jargy Quinn of the Hagfish said no, he was not letting the Hagfish burn either. And people started agreeing with them.
Stone did not try persuasion.
"You can choose to die wherever you want to die. It's whether or not it makes a damn bit of difference at the end of the day that matters. Stay in your Hagfish if you want to, but do not expect us to come save you."
A fourteen. It half landed — "they get their dander up a bit, but they do kind of settle back" — and they were still not happy. What actually moved them was the argument he made afterwards, calmly:
"Businesses can be rebuilt. And that's why we're trying to keep the goblins out instead of letting them in and fighting in the town. The better we can come together with sufficient numbers to keep the goblins out, that's what's going to increase the chances of your shop and your tavern surviving."
They nodded. They still did not like it. Nobody was put on the wall.
This is a decision the campaign has not finished paying for.
Two arguments and a maid
Daverick and Sarah were shouting at each other outside the cathedral, and Father Zantus was standing in the doorway watching and not intervening. Daverick is a dwarf in his forties — young, for a dwarf — immaculately groomed, and wanted schedules, written roles, a proper support unit and designated fallback positions. Sarah is a Shoanti acolyte of a nature god in her early thirties and wanted scouts north now.
Lucian agreed with both of them and split them up. Sarah went east into the woods with Joran, an acolyte with a longbow who looked like he knew what to do with it, and a couple of loggers who knew the trees. Daverick was sent round every work crew to collect status reports and bring back what anybody needed.
"I don't need him to tell people how to do their job."
The pedantry that made Daverick insufferable in the square made him the only man in town who knew whether anything was actually finished.
Then Bethana, the halfling maid from the Rusty Dragon, came into the garrison frightened. Ameiko had put on her leather armour and drawn her sword.
The problem with Ameiko dying is not Ameiko. With her father dead and her brother in a cell, she is the last of the line, and the glassworks and the Rusty Dragon go into the ground with her.
Persuasion did not work. She rolled well against it, and her case was good:
"Look, this is my town. My family's been here from the start. If it's in trouble, I'm going to fight. It's not like I haven't fought before. It's not like I don't know what I'm doing."
She is proficient with the sword. She also had a concussion from two days earlier.
Flightless proposed challenging her to a contest of strength and locking her in the town jail when she lost. Ameiko: "Really? You try to throw me in a jail, I might pull my sword out. I'm not a member of your guard."
What actually moved her was Lucian solving the real problem instead of the stated one. He offered to go to Mayor Deverin and get a legal succession arranged, so that the Rusty Dragon and the glassworks survive her whatever happens.
She took it — food, shelter and the sick — and attached a condition.
"Afterwards, I've got a sword and I'm proficient with it, and you're going to need all the fighters you can get, especially if Hemlock doesn't get back before the battle."
Bethana hugged Lucian's leg, said thanks, and went back to cooking. "People need to eat if they're going to fight."
Where it ended
Just before ten o'clock, with the town about as ready as one day allows and the rest of the logistics pushed into chat between sessions. Then the DM said what the next session was going to be.
"We will have a large-scale battle — the Battle of Sandpoint. I have a system for working out large-scale battles, because I don't think we need to dump a hundred-plus tokens on the board."