Wherein the Warband Is Defeated in Detail…

• As Finn flanks wide through the ruins of the city in an attempt to reach the jail area while Arn and Brum consider their next options and Zistral continues his race up the hills, the minotaur bellows a warning: they need to retreat if they value the lives of their now captured friends who, per the beast, now belong to his master. Long before any of the rest of the warband can get into position where they may aid their captured brethren, the minotaur withdraws with the captured Lan-Fan and Thorn.
• Arn blinks to the other side of the force wall that he’d erected, then advances on the remaining gnolls, much to Brum’s irritation. The dwarf is forced to take an alternate route, eventually reuniting with Finn.
• One of the Fa’iel ambushed by the gnolls who managed to escape, Aslam al-Khalaf is in the village, trying to find a way to rescue his surviving allies. Aware of the abrupt chaos that has erupted, he investigates, then observes Finn attempting to sneak. Out of curiosity, he follows.
• Things get worse: Arn is targeted by bowmen, then drops a small force dome over himself … but then ends up falling down. Zistral, who has arrived by this point, charges forward, intent on rescuing the wizard, but is quickly targeted by gnoll defenders who manage to bring him down to the warband’s dismay. Gnolls murder a slave before them, causing Arn to use knowledge provided to him by his disembodied ‘ally,’ Lashiel, to teleport away. Finn, who has engaged hostiles at range, and Brum, who is racing toward a building with archers, are forced to withdraw, though they first make sure that Zistral is not going to be slain. Unseen by all, Aslam assassinates a gnoll, then pulls back himself, opting to trail Brum and Finn.
• Retreating to the mosque they rid of the pugwampi where they discover Arn already waiting, Brum and Finn start trying to figure out their next step and how to rescue their comrades. Unaware that they are been observed by a hidden Aslam, Finn laments that they have no reinforcements from the Fa’iel; this leads Aslam into revealing himself and, after a few minutes of back-and-forth, they sort of confirm that he is who he appears to be.
• And together, the four begin making plans.

Player Notes:

• CommJunkee continued as GM for this adventure arc.
• Loki was out again this session due to school but the GM worked around this.
• For the PCs, this was an unmitigated disaster. The dice hated Zistral as he was on the receiving end of two critical hits that I actually remember, then failed his major injury roll hard. And with no Haruki, there’s zero chance any of us were going to carry him out! Which resulted in the rest of the PCs having to pull back.
• Since we’re livestreaming our games every Saturdays (6:00PM Eastern) at our Olympus Twitch channel and then later uploading the stream on the YouTube channel, we’ve decided to dial back on the extensiveness of the recap to just the overall outline. Evidently, I’ve been providing the wrong Twitch address on these although Ronnke’s page simulcast with ours so…
• We’ve also spun up a Twitter account to report our various statuses. Feel free to follow us @OlympusRPGGroup for news and updates.