2023/02/22

Last time in the Iron Kingdoms: Cracking the code

The code book that the party had purchased from the Silent Footstep's was already paying dividends. Five Fingers had intercepted a transmission from a mysterious Ordic vessel known as the Gannet that said that it's mission to raid Five Fingers shipments was a success and that it was returning to port to resupply. Unfortunately the transmission didn't refer to where the ship was returning to, but at the very least it was a solid lead on what was sinking ships. To capitalize on this knowledge, Five Fingers began working rather hard as to where such a ship could be harbored at. The largest port on the Ordic coast is the port of Berck, which is the home of the majority of the Ordic fleet, and while it would make sense that a military ship sailing for Ord would be moored there, none of Five Finger's spies had heard of a ship by that name. That left the rest of the coast where a secret base could be hidden. Hector asked the universe as to the size of the ship so as to better narrow down where it might be. He returned with the answer that the ship was about 16,000 tonnes which implied that it was using a deep water port. The search had also discounted anything along the Bay of Stone as Five Fingers would have seen the craft by now. The transmission narrowed the possible locations to either near the Khadoran boarder up north or along the cliffs just outside of the Bay of Stone.

Five Fingers was able to get a good look at the cliffs and didn't see anything, however the northern coast was a bit too long of a journey to get accurate information from in a short time frame. As they were racing against the clock of the Gannet leaving port again, the party asked the high captains if they had any objections to asking a favor of Kommander Strakov to send Khadoran intelligence to the area. With no objections, the party went to the assault kommander and asked if he was willing to look into the matter on behalf of Five Fingers. Khador was more than willing to do such a thing, as they were backing Five Fingers, as well as if such a ship was that close to their borders it was likely a defense against Khador and if Five Fingers removed it that was good for everyone but Ord. Khador sent out some reconnaissance vessels and within a day's time received word that while there didn't appear to be any base on the coast itself, there was signs of activity on an inland lake known as Mere Dorou.

With the location of the Gannet most likely figured out, the new question was what to do about it. Obviously the ship needed to be disabled at the very least, as the havoc it was causing to the shipping lanes was crippling to Five Fingers. The issue was the distance between Mere Dorou and Five Fingers, any force large enough to deal with the Gannet and the base's defenders would be noticed before they got close enough to do anything. That is with one exception, Mere Dorou is only 10 or so miles from the Khadoran border and still rather close to the coast. Five Fingers was able to get Kommander Strakov conveniently move the Khadoran border guard away from the coast so that Five Fingers could land a force to attack the base. The party was placed in charge of the operation and allocated a force 250 strong supplemented with 25 warjacks to attack the Gannet.

As the hastily assembled strike team was preparing to leave Five Fingers, the party was approached by Kita who requested to come with. While Kita was only partially trained as a fighter, she wanted to help the party and her new home of Five Fingers. Kita also supported her request by saying that if the assumptions that the Gannet was a new class of ship, then it stood to reason that it would have bleeding edge arcantrik machinery, and that she could be of use with regard to those. Charlotte allowed Kita to accompany them, something that gave Abe doubts as to if Kita was just another soldier to Charlotte. Charlotte explained that Kita while far younger than the party, was old enough and experienced enough to make her own decisions, and Charlotte wasn't about to force someone away from their own path. With the tension abated the party sailed to the Khadoran coast and then began preparing their assault.

Five Fingers had sent a “Diplomatic Envoy” to the Khadoran border guard a couple miles up the coast to further give Khador plausible deniability for their actions. From there the party came across their first issue with the raid: Ord and Khador's poor relations meant that Ord had a fairly sizable border defense force along the passable bits of the border, and while the force wouldn't be likely to catch a handful of people sneaking across, it would definitely notice anything large enough to threaten the base. The party decided to split their force and use Ord's suspicion of Khador to their advantage, many of the warjacks were sent north to the edge of the mountains and commanded to fire upon the hills to draw the defenses to investigate. After the force was noticed they were to retreat and at that point the party and the rest of the force were to attack the border in force. The plan went off without a hitch and soon the party was in open conflict with the border guard. The party and their force were victorious, though in a rather pragmatic decision the party gave the order to run down the retreating defenders so that the base would get as little warning as possible. The party regrouped their forces and rested up for a little bit before double timing it towards the base.