2023/02/15

Last time in the Iron Kingdoms: Purchasing intelligence.

After the party had completed their raid on the dragon's tongue river, things for them were rather quiet. With them tending to their respective businesses and day jobs. Abe spent his time back at Undertow serving drinks as well as spending some of his off hours with Kita and Avross. Hector and Xavier were mostly spending their downtime relaxing and waiting for the next dumpster fire that they would be involved in. Shakes was working at his shop, working on some of the laborjacks that were coming in to be repaired. Finally, Charlotte was assisting the high captains in the management of the city as best as she could, mostly providing insight as well as filling out some paperwork that was necessary to keep things running smoothly. During this time Charlotte was one of the first to learn that more ships had gone missing and that there was still no solid clues as to the cause. The ships were going missing to the north, which was a strong indicator of Ordic involvement though there was no further evidence to further that assumption. At this time Charlotte was informed that there was another mission for her and the party, they were going to be sent to the heart of Ord to negotiate with some bandits that High Captain Riordan had dealt with previously to attempt to purchase a captured Ordic code book.

The code book had been stolen by a group of bandits known as the Silent Footsteps, a fairly successful bandit group that operates out of the Almare Woods to the east of Ord's capital, Merin. The bandits had stolen the code book and had little use for such a thing, however they knew that Five Fingers would be interested and sent out an offer to Riordan to sell the book to Five Fingers. The party was being sent both as traveling to just outside of Merin would be a risky undertaking, but also the party's presence would show the Silent Footsteps that Five Fingers was taking their offer seriously. The party was given 5,000 gold to negotiate with for the code book and was sent into Ord via a river boat that dropped them off on the Ordic bank a little ways upriver from Five Fingers.

The journey towards Almare Woods wasn't particularly difficult, though it was made longer by the party having to avoid the major roads and the patrols that would be on them. As the party approached the woods, the Ordic military presence increased further, beyond what would be expected from someplace relatively close to the capital. The party was able to avoid any attention as they made their way into the woods, which once away from the roads and railways was a fairly dense forest that was easy to get lost in. The party did manage to avoid getting lost in the woods and eventually came across signs that people were camping in the woods for what looked to be the long term. With the odds that there were two unrelated groups of people camping out in these woods being rather low, the party followed the signs until they were approached by one of the Silent Footstep's scouts. As the party was wearing the agreed upon sign for their meeting they were then led to the main camp and presented to the head of the Silent Footsteps, a woman by the name of Favia.

Favia and Charlotte began negotiating in earnest for the code book, with Charlotte coming out of the gate playing hardball for Five Fingers. Charlotte was unimpressed with only being shown the first page of the code book and demanded to see the rest to make sure that they weren't being scammed or the deal was off. Favia acquiesced to Charlotte's demands and soon the party could see the entirety of the code book that the Silent Footsteps had stolen. The first thing that the party noticed, was that the code book was rather damaged, apparently Ord had attempted to destroy the code book to prevent it from falling into enemy hands and a number of pages were badly damaged. The damage wasn't so bad as to make the code book useless, though it did mean that there was a little more work for Five Fingers to get anything out of the code book. Eventually Charlotte and Favia settled on a price of 4,000 gold for the code book, though Abe slipped the bandits another 250 gold when Charlotte wasn't looking. With their prize recovered, the party began to make their way back towards the safety of Five Fingers.

The journey back had a large complication in that the Almare woods seemed to be being searched by the Ordic military for something. The party assumed that the Silent Footsteps had drawn too much attention to themselves with their raids, though despite the party being mostly unaffiliated, Ord finding a Five Fingers special forces team deep in their territory wouldn't be looked kindly upon. The search of the woods was a rather methodical affair, with soldiers systematically combing the woods looking to flush out the Silent Footsteps and anyone else using the woods for nefarious purposes. The party wasn't keen on fighting their way out of this net for them to have to run the rest of the way back to Five Fingers under enemy pursuit. And unfortunately for the party as well the wind wasn't on their side for them to easily set fire to the forest and escape in the panic. As they were deliberating, another scout from the Silent Footsteps returned to them and offered a way out of the woods for them.

The Silent Footstep's plan was that they and the party would assault a lightly guarded outpost on the trade road, with the bandits leading the military into the swamp where any attempts to find them would be futile at best. The party would then be free to return to Five Fingers with their new code book. As the party didn't really have any better ideas they agreed to the plan, and before long they found themselves at the outpost along the trade road. The outpost was a wooden fort with a wall that was guarded by some volley cannons and some slugger crews. The party was more than the light guard was prepared for however and the wooden gate for the fort came crashing inwards after but a few swings from Abe and the jacks. The defenders were quickly overwhelmed as the attacks came from both within and without now, and soon the fort fell with the Silent Footsteps fleeing to the nearby swamp and the party travelling south back towards their pickup point along the Dragon's Tongue River. The rest of the trip was mundane and the party was able to deliver their prize to the high captains.