Wandering Wolves: Pursuit of the All-Seeing Eye (2)

Sypheros 10 - Sypheros 11, YK 999

As the Wolves continued to plan and rest, and dusk fell, Brand appeared from the brush to join his fellows. The Wolves were somewhat suspicious at first, thinking he might be a changeling agent of even Vadis himself, but Brand demonstrated his dragonmark and offered up some choice bits of information to confirm his identity.

He told them that when his business in the Shadow Marches concluded, he used a scroll of Shadow Walk to walk back through Dolurrh and get back to a linked portal in the Eldeen Reaches in only a day. He took the portal back to Sharn, found a note from the Wolves at the Drunken Dragon telling him where they were going and why, took the teleport circle offered to Rhukaan Draal, followed stories of the Wolves going to a sleazy bar to find the goblin known as Canker, who pointed him to Pus One-Eye, who pointed him into the jungle. From there, he followed the trail of the Wolves, came upon some freshly dead giants and an ettin, then followed their trail to catch up to them. He didn't see the shifter children on his way, but they probably wouldn't have passed him, as he was keeping to the deeper woods to avoid any confrontation.

They brought Brand up to speed while eating some journeybread, and as the plans began to take firmer shape over the course of several hours, it began to rain. It was a light sprinkle at first, but began pouring harder, with lightning and thunder joining in, and William reasoned that they might want to use the rain, along with the darkness, as cover.

Pel shifted form into one of the Hobgoblin soldiers and moved toward the two guards at the front as the rest of the Wolves awaited the other three on patrol on the other side of the camp. As Pel moved in and killed one of the guards, taking his form, Luggoth and Brand rushed out and killed the patrol without a sound, save Luggoth's howl, which any hobgoblin would have mistaken for a wolf, if they even heard it above the sound of the rain.

Pel, now wearing the other hobgoblin's form, turned his dynamic rapier into the shape of the fallen guard's longsword and moved up to stab his friend. Unfortunately, the other guard turned at the last moment, causing Pel to miss. He offered up a quick "I was just testing you" bluff, which confused the hobgoblin long enough for Pel to slide the rapier through his throat.

The other Wolves moved up, and Lysander used his veil spell to make them all appear as hobgoblin guards. Luggoth and Lysander moved in together, while Brand and Pel moved in separately. William came in, misjudged where everyone was in the heavy rain, and made his way over to the smallest tent in the camp.

Pel moved into one of the tents to kill three sleeping hobgoblins, but as he was doing so, William startled the human inside the smaller tent, causing him to teleport out and begin using his dragonmark of passage, in full view of Brand. Luggoth, meanwhile, was spotted by the hobgoblin patrol inside the walls, and they charged, along with the Umber Hulk.

As Brand engaged the Hand of Orien that William had attacked, knocking him unconscious with the flat of his blade, William moved to engage the Umber Hulk, and Luggoth and Lysander engaged the hobgoblin patrol.

The Eel came out of his tent to aide the hobgoblins, revealing himself to be not a mind flayer but a neogi, a slave race that both Brand and Pel were somewhat familiar with.

Brand and Pel continued killing hobgoblins with abandon while Luggoth, Lysander and William fought with the Umber Hulk and the Neogi. About 30 seconds later, they had killed the Neogi and destroyed the Umber Hulk as it tried to flee into the rainforest.

After a quick rest, the Wolves freed the slaves from the pens, and Luggoth discovered that one of them was Borgath, the younger brother of his girlfriend Savannah, last seen in the clutches of werewolf Cavoletta. He revealed that she had sold them to the Eel several weeks ago, but that Savannah, along with several other shifters, was taken to the market in Wyvernskull to be sold, so he had heard, to the Emerald Claw.

Brand and Lysander interrogated the Hand of Orien, named Nilh, to find out that he was working for Aeromus and that he was liasing with several slaving operations in the area, making sure their wagons and such worked and providing transportation help. Brand destroyed the papers in the cook fire to make sure nothing could be linked back to Orien, then they left him to be interrogated by Luggoth. When Luggoth realized that Nilh had nothing useful to offer about Savannah, he snapped the Orien slaver's neck.

The slaves gathered in the cage wagons, while Pel put Nock on Nilh's cot in the back of the supply wagon. He surrounded her with five of the most capable looking slaves, giving them the hobgoblin weapons and armor, to protect her.

They traveled on into the night, but they were stopped by a pair of archers, a human warrior with an axe and a dragonborn who looked like he might have been a gladiator.

"Halt! I am Cera Tak, and my men and I will not let you slavers pass so easily! Let your slaves go or face us in battle!"

The Wolves explained what was going on, and Cera Tak and his companion moved to talk to the slaves to confirm this. As they did, however, Pel and William heard the sound of combat coming from the supply wagon. When they burst in, they found that three of the armed slaves were dead, and they were under attack by a pair of assassins. Cera and his allies proved to be in on the ambush, and the fight was on!

The foes were formidable, and one of the assassins, named Hellena, was a vampire, as William quickly discerned. However, the Wolves focused their attacks on the male assassin, and he yelled out "Hellena! Too much resistance! Flee!"

The assassins began to break for the forest, but Brand teleported over to intercept the male assassin and Pel launched a flame strike that nearly killed him, and he yelled out "Stop! Stand down, promise to let us go, and we'll tell you who hired us and why! We're the only ones who know!"

The Wolves, sensing that a victory over the assassins might mean one of their deaths, as only the male assassin was really wounded at all, took the easy win and information, and accepted this conditional surrender.