In practice, five hours of intense and difficult play got them most of the way there. The Torgai Foothills—which, only two weeks ago, had been some of the most desolate territory in all T’Rain—were tonight overrun by roving bands of characters Good and Evil, Bright and Earthtone. Every bit of open land was littered with skeletons of departed characters and infested by ransom thieves fighting pitched battles against hastily formed coalitions of ransom carriers. Zula and Wallace joined up with one such group that was carrying a total of eight thousand gold pieces. It was reduced to a quarter of that size by successive ambushes and then joined another coalition with ten members, which later split up because, as they belatedly found out, they were going to different places: apparently, different REAMDE files specified different coordinates. Everything was hard fought and required multiple scouting missions, feints, and probing attacks.