Part 101: Outlaw Women 2
Penguingo posted:
Stop skirmishing against the Horse Spawn you spastic, we've got no hunters and no ranged-combat-improving blessings and you want to trade long-range fire with horse archer people on blood-bonded horses with flame lances who are probably the best possible long range combatants in this game. Use maneuver instead, put our renowned combat leader
(for what it's worth I usually just maneuver in my own games, but our clan is so perpetually bad at raids that I don't want us losing all our wealth on top of losing the battles. There were also a few people earlier who suggested skirmishing for this very reason. It's you guys' decision if I go back to my standard "maneuver at everything on our home turf" protocol, though.)
Anyway, we're going to kill some outlaw possibly-rapist women.
Or we can wander around for a while and not find them. That works too.
Garstal and Markalor, the two young men who were carried off by outlaws, come back to the tula at dawn. When asked what happened, at first Markalor said, "Nothing." Then Garstal chimes in with an elaborate story of their escape from the outlaw women, who meant to sacrifice them on a bloody altar to Gargarth, god of outlaws. The women of the clan suspect that Garstal and Markalor are both lying, and that they committed adultery with the outlaw women. Adultery is a serious crime among the Orlanthi.
-Convince the women that nothing untoward happened.
-Do nothing.
-Question Garstal until he admits adultery.
-Question Markalor until he admits adultery.
-Send a war party to drive off the outlaws.
-Send a war party to slay the outlaws.
Only the women want to press this issue. I can convince them to let the matter rest.
They are obviously lying, but it will be hard to prove. Garstal is the cleverer of the two, but is likely to trip himself up with his runaway tongue.
We can bluff the outlaws into fleeing, but should avoid a battle to the death.
Errarth tolerated adultery, because he was tempted towards it himself. Thus began the chain of events that made him the tragic king.
We can't afford to show mercy to outlaws. Whether they are men or women matters not.
Those outlaw women can be pretty fierce. Maybe we should leave them alone.
I have heard that these outlaw women wield powerful magics.