Village in Trouble

Sunday 9th March
After the loss of Diego, a new person joins the party (Paul's new character), a Djaffir named Amhat al Hazar, who seems a pleasant chap.

After some time travelling with the Djaffiri caravan, we need to go a different way from them, North to the Great Library. We accept Amhat into the party on the grounds that he can heal :)

Instead of a strider, he is riding a one-humped Aht-Ra (a camel).

We travel through the savannah, and one night Amhat wakes us when he has a nightmare - he says that it was a message from his god telling him about a village 3 days away that is under the influence of evil magic. The rest of us decide that we will help out. The detour is not too far away from our direction of travel.

We arrive at a Mandellan farming village, who allow us to stay in a store room. They seem fine, saying that the Kang only come by twice a year to collect taxes.

While snooping around the first afternoon, we get the impression that something is wrong, but nothing obvious springs to view.

The headman invites us to a feast that evening. We are a little suspicious, so Arturo examines the food, to find that one dish is poisoned with a sleeping draught. He laces it with his poison antidote, so that we are not affected, but we pretend to fall asleep. The Mandellans then strip us of our clothes and carry us outside and put us into a suspended cage! Not quite what we had in mind.

Arturo manages to unlock the cage while Cyrilian keeps the two guards in conversation to distract them. He finds out that the village is controlled by "the Master", who has told them to capture people of our description.

We head for the hut where we were allowed to stay, where Arturo and R'Keet find all of our kit. Cyrilian and Amhat stay behind to deal with the two guards. Once we have got our kit, Arturo and I go back to help the others. One of the guards runs away, and the other is quickly defeated.

We return to the hut to barricade ourselves in, while we armour up. Two groups of villagers approach the hut, so Arturo drops a Staff of Death bolt into one group, injuring 6 of them. Arturo then casts "See in the Dark" on me (R'Keet) :) so I fly out of the hut so that I can attack from outside.

At one point Arturo uses the Staff of Death on his own location to take a large number of attackers down. This makes most of them run away leaving only two of those identified as "Shadow Warriors" behind.

We quickly take these two down, and there is a break in the combat as all of the enemy has retreated. We call for the headman to come out...