Keep on the Borderlands - The Path of Evil - Session 9

Day 4-6 – Burg Liechenstein

Lucien seethes at the Captain, but controls his outward appearance. Better to not show any emotion - give him no reason to be guarded against... eventualities.

Walking away with Talmark, Lucien grumbles a bit at their sparse take from the outing. "Resources provide opportunities just as much as happenstance, without one, we would need the other."

He thinks to himself, this could be a long endeavor indeed with barely above subsistence earning.

“Come on Talmark. Let us go to the blacksmith and see what we can get for these weapons.”

At the Minotaur Blacksmith they meet Berowalt. Despite his rough appearance, Berowalt turns out to be surprisingly courteous.

As they enter the door he greets Talmark and Lucien with enthusiasm.

“Good morning to you my good fellows. What can old Berowalt do for you today.”

The Minotaur is a typical blacksmiths work house. The building itself is about 20-foot-high and has a 5ft parapet upon the flat roof. The lower floor is occupied by a forge, bellows and other items. Scanning the room the characters note that the smithy is used to shod horses and mules, weapons are made, armour repaired and other types of smithing and armouring are undertaken. Berowalt has two assistances. In the workshop there are various pieces of equipment being made or are ready for use including 2 long swords, a mace, a suit of man-sized chain mail and 11 spears.

Lucien and Talmark explain that they had been hunting monsters and had killed a tribe of goblins and liberated their weapons, which they would like to see if the smith would like to buy.

“By the blessing or Irori my friends of course I would. Metal is hard to come by here and it is in great demand. If they are man size weapons I can put them into good order and sell them to needy defenders of either the caravans or the Burg and if they are something else then I can use them for scrap metal, melt them down and re-use them.”

They open the canvas roll containing the various weapons that they had taken from the goblins. Berowalt carefully goes through them and says. “Look they’re all a bit small, excepting this morning star. I’ll give you 2.5gp for each of the 11 small short swords, 3.75gp for the small long sword, 7.5gp for the each of the 7 small short bows and 4gp for the medium morning star. That’ll come to a total of 88gp. How does that sound my good fellows?”

[DM’s Note: Effectively Berowalt will give ½ the value of a medium sized weapon and ¼ the value of a small weapon as per pages 142 and 143 of the Core Rule Book.]

Later, when he is alone, Lucien's thoughts turn towards more felonious options... turning on a small caravan ourselves sounds profitable; we'd need to ensure we could blame a monstrous attack, plant evidence and such, maybe return the goods to the caravan company for a reward...? We could not sell them anywhere nearby without arousing suspicion, so it would have to be a return for reward. We'd really need to establish more trust and a reputation here first - but it is an intriguing idea. If Malandir proves himself trustworthy, perhaps gaining his input on drafting the plan, his take on precautions to mitigate eventual discovery...

The characters have now liquidated most of the loot from Cragmaw Caves with the exception of the small statue (which they haven’t appraised yet) and the two potions (which Lucien and Kord identified as being potions of Cure Light Wounds).

Total value as follows:

110gp: bounty from collecting ears

  50gp: reward for saving Sildar

  88gp: from selling liberated weapons

  32gp: in coins looted from the bodies of the monsters

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270gp total

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Total xp earned was 4,020 with Talmark, Lucien and Kord each receiving 730xp and each mercenary receiving 365gp.

It takes Lucien casting two Cure Light Wounds on the 4^th day and Lucien and Kord both casting two Cure Light Wounds on the 5^th day, together with the men at arms resting to get the party totally healed. Lucien and Kord take the opportunity to lord it a bit over them about how the priests of Asmodeus take care of the men of True Spear Mercenary Company.

"True Spear, we regret that we both have not the resources or arts in sufficiency to have healed you all up during the battle, but be assured, your continued health and safety is a definitive portion of our concerns.”

We both are praying and working towards having the resources to do better by you all. Where we could let time and rest take its course, instead we are ministering to your wounds now, and providing divine healing.

Per, do not think your bravery went unnoticed. You are an example to your fellows, and you will be first."

On the morning of the 6^th day the party are ready to adventure again.

The following table provide an overview of finances so far.

Just so the characters know, NPC personalities are rolled on a random table which has 20 personality types. NPC’s generally have between 1 and 3 personality types, depending on a random roll and the nature of the NPC’s (ie major NPC’s have more personality). NPC personality traits are only revealed to the characters as they become known through interaction. Thus there is a 1 in 20 chance that, for example, a character such as Captain Knight Wallache, is Dishonest. It’s difficult to tell if an NPC is dishonest until they rip you off.

DEW