A Warmer Waylay
Darrowmar
In which the party falls for false bait and a local clan throws down everything for an ambush. Orosh takes down "little" Grapak. Paetro snipes some snipers. Koros and Ramach cheat death. Ramach refines his recipe. Akissi once again sighs at all the bloodshed.
The day after arriving on Darrowmar, the party makes their way towards the Anaxar's holding. The landscape is a physical patchwork of giant vertical rock pillars, often hundreds of feet high and as wide as a medium city, punctuating flat verdant grass valleys with only a few scattered treed areas. Walled farmsteads are set off from the road, and the people who are visible are visibly suspicious and keep well way from obvious strangers.
The road at one point leads between two of these pillars, forming a small canyon. An alcove in this canyon is littered with recent corpses.
The party approaches with caution, and Ramach recognizes the uniforms on the corpses as belonging to some unit from Empyrean. Along the wall of the alcove are two crow's cages. One holds another corpse, the other an unconscious form. The party wakes him up, and the man first looks to his dead companions with shock and sadness. When asked who he is and why he's there, the man looks over the party and says, "I'm the bait."
The party then hears howls and the sounds of barking, and scrambles to get ready. Orosh fits himself behind a large rock. Two groups of snarling dogs come running around each corner of the alcove, and simultaneously crossbow bolts and fire bolts rain down from the surrounding walls, seeingly focused on Ramach. The dogs quickly drag a few of the party to the ground and keep them in the open. Ramach puts one group to sleep, and the other group is quickly put down and the party takes cover behind some large rocks.
Paetro begins to fire back at the attackers he can see, picking them off one and two at a time. Orosh and Koros poke their heads out of the alcove, and see two large groups sauntering forward from each edge of the canyon. One of them is led by the man Orosh fought in the Traverton. The party makes a quick plan to try and escape, but can't quite chose a direction.
Ramach breaks out a fireball on the group with the large man, incinerating everyone but the big fella. This enrages him, and he shouts for everyone to kill the fire mage. Orosh and Akissi rush the other group, seeking to cut a way through, and down many of them before the rest run forward to obey their leader and go after Ramach. The sleeping dogs wake up and come after Koros. Paetro keeps sniping the snipers right off the walls.
The big man and his remaining ground minions run forward and get to Ramach, who uses Misty Step to escape. The minions then focus on Paetro, who fends them off at sword point. The big man focuses his ire on Koros, who is tripped up by the dogs, and with two punches beats him unconscious. The big guy then runs to find Ramach.
Out in the canyon, Orosh and Akissi attempt to engage the big man, who keeps ignoring them to go after Ramach. Ramach levitates in the air to escape, but he is still being targeted by snipers on the surrounding canyon walls and loses his spell. He feather falls to the ground, into the arms of the waiting big man, who proceeds to pummel Ramach in the face until he his dying on the ground. The man turns his attentions to Orosh and Akissi, and does them some damage before disengaging his own bloodied and bruised body to flee. He points at Orosh and says, "Next time!", before running away.
Orosh, raging, runs after the big man and hacks him from behind, bringing him bleeding to the ground. The remaining minions flee, and Orosh begins climbing the canyon walls to go after the snipers before coming out of his rage. The snipers begin making their way up the walls, away from the party.
The ambush defeated, Koros and Ramach receive healing and the bedraggled party drags the bodies into the alcove in a pile. They end up dragging the big man atop the pile, and Paetro puts crossbow bolts into each of his eyes. They free the man in the cage, and ask him to spill his story.
He says his name is Doran, and he claims to be a minor functionary of the Empyrean Court of the Mage-King. He and his bodyguards are here searching for someone who disappeared on Darrowmar after its last cycle through the Core Islands. They were functionally trapped in the Traverton and asking questions, getting nowhere. Last night the big man, who was the leader of the Viprathi clan and called Little Grapak, came to him and said he had urgent information. He led them out of the Traverton and here to this canyon, where he and his clan fell upon the Empyreans, slaughtering all but Doran. Doran did ask why as he was being put into a cage, and Little Grapak seemed to think that Doran and the party were related somehow, and thought to put Doran here as bait. As his bodyguards are dead, and Darrowmar is clearly a dangerous and violent pace, Doran asks to tag along with the party at least as far as the Anaxar's holding, where he will attempt to continue his mission to locate his lost fellow Islander.
The party agrees, and Doran spends a few moments muttering some words over his fallen comrades before being ready to continue the journey. They travel an hour or so and then find an off-road camp to rest and recover before approaching the hold of the Anaxar.