The air is brisk, fog curling through the cobbled streets.
Mayor Halden has gathered what few guards and militia the town can muster — maybe thirty in total. He’s asked for your guidance:
“The Legion’ll be on us in days, maybe less. Do we fight here? Warn Hollowpoint? Or strike first, before they march?”
The table grows quiet. Kael’s eyes narrow as he traces the Crimson Legion’s path on the map.
“They’ll strike by the old road,” he mutters. “Three days, maybe less. Whatever we do — we do it fast.”
The air in the tavern’s backroom hums with tension. Maps of the surrounding hills are weighed down with tankards, daggers, and stray dice. Flickering lanternlight plays across the company’s faces — the shadows of your pasts dancing beside the uncertain dawn ahead.
Elaris — calm, silver-haired, his voice a low current in the din — speaks first.
“Before we move, I would hear from those who’ve seen the field. Kael. Sereth. What course do you judge wisest?”
The company falls quiet.
Kael Varran leans forward, his gauntlet tracing a scarred finger across the map.
“If we strike Rook’s Crag now, we’ll catch them unprepared. Their supply train will be there — hit it, and we cripple their march before it starts. But… it’s risky. If they catch us, we’re dead before we can blink.”
He looks to Elaris with the familiar weight of shared pragmatism.
“You wanted the Crimson Legion weakened. This would do it.”
Sereth Calenor, arms crossed, interjects softly, her Elven eyes sharp.
“And leave Thornmere undefended? If we fail, the Legion sweeps through this town like autumn fire. These people are farmers, not soldiers.”
Arden Vale sets her goblet down, voice calm but resolute.
“If we fight here, we can at least save lives — hold them off long enough to evacuate. But a direct strike could end this before it begins.”
Borin, already halfway through a mug of ale:
“Aye, I vote we take the fight to ‘em. Better to swing an axe in their camp than wait for one in ours.”
Garruk laughs, slapping the table.
“And I’ll drink to that!”
The twins exchange glances, Vexi idly shuffling a deck of cards.
“Sabotage sounds fun,” she murmurs.
Lazlo grins. “Especially if we don’t tell Kael what we’re really doing until we’re already there.”
Kael just sighs.
Kael (serious again):
“Your call, Pale Shepherd. We can’t do all three — not in time.
Do we strike first and risk all?
Or stay and turn Thornmere into a fortress?”
The following hours consisted of alot of planning drinking and careful outlining of positioning and trap setting
By nightfall, the Company had taken a small militia into the forest toward the forward camp Sereth and the Twins Vex and Laz head forward ahead of everyone else towards the camp
Moonlight, muffled steps, and careful breath: Vexi slides like shadow between tent ropes, a knife at the ready. Lazlo ghosts along the supply line and slips a hand into a pouch when an opening appears. Sereth perches on a low ridge, bow taut and eyes like a hawk. The first sentry falls before his throat can tighten; the second is made quiet by a well-placed blade and a ragged breath. The mounted scout never reaches the alarm bell — Sereth’s arrow silences him.
Inside the officer’s tent, Vexi’s fingers are uncanny — maps tucked into her belt, sealed orders crumpled into her palm. Lazlo’s lockpicks sing against a supply chest and a small phial of useful oil clinks into his pack.
When they melt back into the darkness, the camp is none the wiser — only a few distant shouts, misheard as drunken argument. Kael’s militia remain in place; he tightens lines, ready should any sound betray you.
Using careful fingers and quick timing, Lazlo and Vexi slipped back through the tent lines and filched a few things of practical use:
A small coin purse 7 Gold pieces, a folded directive slip (reinforces morning march timea), and a ring signet belonging to a quartermaster
Vex finds a small iron keyring with two keys (likely to the tents or a couple of supply chests) and one additional phial of dark oil (smaller than the one Lazlo found earlier — useful for sabotage or slipping into mechanisms). she moved with extra care and nearly got spotted by a sleepy sentry who shifted position — she froze still and the sentry turned away at the last second.
Moonlight like a throat of silver. The camp breathes slow and warm; torches gutter low. Elaris sends his spectral hand out over the wagons — it slips under a loose tarp and topples a quiet pile of harnesses. Two gruff supply guards grunt and lurch to investigate, boots thumping in the wrong direction.
Vexi and Lazlo melt through canvas shadows. Vexi’s blade flashes like a moth in the dark; a burly sentry crumples soundlessly to the dirt. Lazlo slips between tent ropes and applies the old art of quiet hands; leather snaps softly as a strap is bound over a mouth. Sereth watches from scrub, arrow across her knee, eyes on every path toward Thornmere.
By candle-light in the captain’s outer ring, Lazlo’s thieves’ tools click and sing. The box sighs open. Inside: folded orders and a tiny brass seal stamped with the Legion crest. Vexi tucks them away like secrets she’s always meant to keep. No one wakes. No one yells.
You retreat to shadow with the map and a fresh crimson in new knowledge — the Legion will move soon, and you now hold the key to choosing where to first strike.
Elaris regroups the band of misfits
Elaris: Ok so here`s the plan Kael will approach the outer guard-pair with forged orders and the captured signet/ledger. Lazlo will shadow and present as the “quartermaster” with the seal and the forged slip
Both Kaer and Laz nod
Moon-sour air. Kael steps from shadow like a man whose blade has carved him into respect; Lazlo pads at his shoulder with a small leather packet and the stolen seal clutched under his cloak. Lazlo’s voice is honey-slick as he presents the folded order: the seal catches the torchlight and looks real enough—too real.
Two outer guards blink and straighten. Kael doesn’t smile; he never does. He asks the guard to perform a routine sweep north of camp “to check a flurry in the path.” The guard defers after inspecting the seal. A nod, a grunt, and boots tread away on the north mule-path. Sereth perches high and watches them go, arrow idle, eyes narrowing as one figure glances back but keeps going.
Moonlight pooled in the hollows between wagons. Lazlo’s lips moved like someone reading a prayer; his hand flicked a small forged order under a cup in the captain’s aide’s tent. Vexi ghosted between ropes, a whisper of steel and patience. Sereth’s arrow lay across her leg, eye tracing a half-mile of sleeping boots.
Kael approached in the way men obey: no smile, no question — the signet glinted in torchlight and a lie became law for two weary guards. They left on the lily-mute mule-path, their silhouettes sliding into brush. Elaris frowned once, then melted from sight with a gesture of practiced power. Invisibility wrapped him like smoke.
Inside the captain’s tent, a faint clatter was heard — harnesses on the far side — and then silence as cords were pinched and a bell’s tongue was stilled. Shadowed hands worked with slow precision. Vexi’s blade flashed; Lazlo’s rope looped; the captain’s shout collapsed into muffled breath. Borin and Garruk heaved, laughter swallowed in restraint, and the captain was bound like a prize on a pallet.
Moonlight slides across toppled harnesses and the slow breath of the horses. Lazlo’s hand moves like ink across paper; the forged order is folded and slipped beneath the aide’s ledger as if delivered by a loyal officer. The wagons creak as axles are nudged and pins eased — the caravan can move, but only painfully and slowly.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Kael’s stern voice and Lazlo’s confident presentation sent two more guards on a northbound sweep. Borin and Garruk, laughing like gravediggers, applied a firm mercy blow and hauled Captain Rell away — a man who once barked orders now silent on a makeshift stretcher, a line of militia watching like wolves.
Sereth’s arrow never left its quiver; instead she walked the black skirts of the camp and finished the wounded with a hand too steady for sentiment. Elaris moved like a cautious scholar through the reek and blood — muttered words, the old rite of binding, and four dead men found new, patient life beneath his command. They lay where no one would think to look, waiting like a sleeping problem.
Dawn is not yet near. A strange stillness hangs over Rook’s Crag as if the land itself is catching its breath. The Thornmere Company has taken the field with cunning, and the Legion will wake to a world that is not as it expected.
Meanwhile the Company Head Back to the Militia Dragging Captain Rell with them
Night is thick, and the choke point is dim and quiet. Borin and Garruk have the captain held on a rough blanket-rail, two militia men posted as guards. Captain Rell lies swaddled in rope and a gag removed only momentarily for speech. Lantern light throws hard lines across his jaw; he’s groggy, seasick from blows and bindings but alive.
Lazlo and Vexi move like bad shadows — they’ve left extra forged orders in the captain’s aide tent and slipped notes among the ledger pages suggesting an urgent recall and the arrival of a higher officer in two watches. The plan is to make the camp stumble over its own orders when they find the fake papers.
Kael stands over Rell like a judge. He doesn’t shout; he doesn’t need to. He removes the gag and speaks in a low, steady voice:
Kael (cold): “You’ll answer three questions. One word lies and you die. You understand?”
Rell’s eyes flick from Kael to Elaris, to the little skeletal suggestion of movement Elaris keeps hidden at the edge of the firelight — a subtle reminder of what the Pale Shepherd can do. Arden stands with her hands folded, her Channel Divinity glinting like a promise; Sereth’s bow is across her lap, arrow nocked in reach. The twins linger, faces unreadable, but their fingers flex on the edges of the ledger and on the forged seal.
Kael begins the interrogation.
“How many troops are marching on Hollowpoint?”
Captain Rell : “We field roughly thirty to thirty-five effective legionnaires right now — another ten in wagons due to link up at the ridge before dawn if nothing slows them. We planned for ~40–45 total on the road.”
“What is the goal of this raid?”
Captain Rell: “We’re not just burning villages. The Legion’s job is control and conscription — take resources, seize able men, break resistance. Hollowpoint stands in the way of the Legion’s lines of supply. We also have orders to seize certain artefacts and whatever clerical/healing relics we find — keeps the peasants docile.”
“Who leads the Legion now and where is it due to attack next?”
“My orders come from Commander Severin Havel — or that’s the name the new command goes by. He’s not the same as the old colonels; rumors say he’s backed by an officer who calls himself Maelros — someone with old-empire connections. The next push after Hollowpoint… if Hollowpoint falls, Blackwater is the natural choke they want. But the immediate plan is Hollowpoint. If Hollowpoint resists, they might break off to strike the smaller hamlets along the east road instead.”
After the Questioning was over Garruk and Borin hit him over the head sending him unconcious then the company retire to campfire
- Garruk (grinning, wiping hands): “He was heavier’n he looked — good meat all the same, eh Borin?”
- Borin (snorts): “Don’t you dare call him meat, you lump. We keep him alive for the hangman’s due — or the mayor’s. And the mayor likes a tidy job.”
- Lazlo (fanning the forged papers): “A little paperwork goes a long way. Tell me: do I get paid for artistry or is coin only given when people run in neat little lines?”
- Vexi (smirking): “They’ll be arguing about which order is real until dawn. My kind of music.”
- Arden (quiet, reproving): “We do not delight in cruelty. But we do what must be done to save lives. Keep him safe — and answer cleanly when he speaks.”
- Sereth (hard, to Rell as he lies comatose): “Tell me who signed Grayhollow’s death in full; I want a name I can slit.” (Her tone is hot but she doesn’t act.)
- Elaris (soft, to Sereth): “Names are flames. Use them wisely.”
- Kael (checking bindings): “He’ll talk in Thornmere — or he’ll spend years imagining he did.
The mood is fierce but cohesive — everyone knows the stakes and the cost.
Two militia riders take the padded crate/wagon-litter, one leading and one bringing the captive’s mount in tow as a misdirection. They ride hard, keeping to side tracks and avoiding likely patrol routes. the appointed militia men know the terrain well and make it to Thornmere by dawn. They’re ordered not to parley and to deliver him immediately to the mayor’s secure room.
The company slips into the lee of a low copse a half-mile from Rook’s Crag. Lanterns are smothered; boots are soft. For twenty minutes the world is only breath and the small noises of things being tended: rope knotting, a wound washed, cold iron warmed by hands.
Elaris takes the moment to slip away from the small circle of firelight. He sits on an overturned crate, the spellbook open to a page his fingers know by memory
He tucks the spellbook close and wipes the grime from his fingers. The world of necromantic rituals hums faintly under his skin; the wards he set at the trapline pulse once and then still.
Sereth finds him as he rises, cloak half-open to moonlight. She perches on a barrel, knees drawn, looking at the pale horizon where dawn will come. Elaris approaches with the rare, careful warmth he’s learned to keep.
Sereth (soft, guarded): “You shouldn’t do all of it alone, Shepherd. You wear too many dead things like armor. It doesn’t suit you.”
Elaris (gentle, dry half-smile): “Someone must look after the rules of life and death, or else the rules forget why they were ever written. I prefer not to die trying to be righteous.”
Sereth (a small, unguarded smile): “That’s not the answer I expected.”
Elaris (reaches out, briefly touches the back of her hand): “You watch too many horizons for me. Let me watch your back while you watch mine.”
Sereth (a whisper): “It’s… good to have you beside me.” She finds a humor that isn’t loud — a quiet warmth. You can sense it: her feelings are deeper than she lets on, a small ember she tends with ribald jokes and barbs. Tonight she simply lets the ember glow.
She slides closer, for a heartbeat they share a normal human silence — not the gnawing of old grief, but a breathing together before the coming storm. The party notices a softer exchange but treats it as the quiet before war. Kael grunts approval; Garruk hoots softly and then coughs to cover a joke. It’s comfort, brief and real.
Dawn is a bruise of purple turning to steel. Mist clings to the ground. Traps and forged orders are in place. The Legion stirs slowly; wagons shudder when the sabotaged axles bind. The forged “executive recall” will soon be discovered, but for now the camp breathes on.
The Camp awakens and the chaos is immediate the soldiers call for captain Rell whos nowhere to be seen.
Then the ambush happens
Elaris recalls his undead thralls and sends them into camp causing fear and distraction Kaer orders his militia forces to advance on the camp cutting there way through panicked soldiers
Sereth rains down arrows on the camp and before they knew it the remaining forces were nothing but tatters
With their officer down, surprise volley cutting men, wagons stalled and a commanding decoy planted earlier, the Legion collapses with impressive speed
The pit of dawn opens orange. Smoke from a few torched tents (set by opportunistic militia or as controlled sabotage) curls. The Legion’s standards lie in mud; splintered wagons creak. The captured men are bundled; several prisoners beg; others are dragged away.
Kael (breathing hard, wiping blade): “They fought like they were tired. Good. Tired men make quick corpses.”
Sereth (quiet, checking arrows): “We did what had to be done. Hollowpoint has time now.” She touches a notched arrow as if counting a small prayer.
Borin (laughing loud): “The road’s ours! Someone buy me a horn and a roast!”
Garruk (whooping): “We smashed them! Who’s up for breakfast?”
Lazlo (tucking papers away): “Paperwork and spoils — I made off with a nice little pouch.”
Vexi (dry): “No one lets me keep the shiny things anymore. Shame.”
Arden (kneeling beside a wounded militiaman): “Tend the living first. Then we sort their sins.”
The battlefield lies quiet except for the soft creak of cooling metal and the murmur of distant crows. The air smells of smoke and wet grass. What remains of the Crimson Legion camp has become a makeshift command post — wagons turned into tables, banners pulled down and used as bandages.
A handful of captured legionnaires kneel beside a wagon wheel, their armor stripped and wrists bound. Vexi and Lazlo circle them with the kind of easy, mischievous confidence that makes even seasoned soldiers uneasy.
Sereth stands a few feet away — arms crossed, bow slung. She’s the chaperone and conscience of this particular play.
Vexi (grinning): “See, there’s two ways this goes. Either you tell us where your mates are runnin’, or I let Lazlo tell one of his poems. They go on for hours.”
Lazlo (deadpan): “It’s a sonnet about a goat, actually. Beautiful meter.”
The prisoners blanch.
Sereth raises an eyebrow.
“Vexi, Lazlo — no goats.”
Vexi: “Spoilsport.”
Lazlo: “Fine. No goats. Maybe a riddle?”
The exchange disarms the captives more effectively than pain ever could. Nervous laughter slips through cracked lips, and one of the prisoners finally breaks:
“Fine! Fine — the others’ll regroup by the east ridge, at Stonebar Hollow! Only a dozen of us, maybe less. Havel won’t know we’re gone ‘til next muster!”
Sereth gives a nod of satisfaction and gestures for the twins to step back.
Sereth (coolly): “See? No goats needed.”
Vexi (pouting): “Still would’ve been fun, though.”
Away from the laughter, Elaris and Arden sit near a burned wagon. The priestess’s silver symbol of Pelor catches the dawn light, glinting faintly gold against the ashes. Elaris idly cleans the edge of his dagger with a strip of linen, eyes lost somewhere in the horizon haze.
Arden (musing): “Do you ever tire of it? The killing, the raising, the endless balance sheet of souls?”
Elaris (dryly): “Only when the arithmetic gets complicated.”
A faint smile ghosts across her lips.
Arden: “I mean it. You play in the dark so others can see. But you can’t live there forever, Elaris. Not without losing what light you have left.”
Elaris: “You mistake me for a man who had light to begin with.”
She gives a small, exasperated sigh — the sound of someone who’s heard this too often.
Arden: “You do. You just hide it under sarcasm and corpses.”
Elaris: “Efficient insulation.”
There’s silence for a while — the quiet kind that sits comfortably between people who respect each other’s solitude. Finally, she gestures toward the captured men.
Arden: “You think any of them can be redeemed?”
Elaris (after a pause): “Redemption is a currency the living use to make death feel less final. But… perhaps.”
Arden: “Pragmatic as always.”
Elaris: “And you, eternally hopeful. That’s what keeps us in orbit, I suppose.”
Arden (smiling faintly): “Until gravity wins.”
They both chuckle softly — a dry, knowing laughter shared between two philosophers who’ve spent too long on opposite ends of the same coin.
Kael approaches, wiping grime from his gauntlet.
“We’ve got what we came for — maps, supply lists, and confusion in their ranks. We should ride before Havel’s scouts sniff the smoke.”
Borin, halfway through packing up a shattered shield, grumbles.
“Aye, before these crows start thinking we’re breakfast.”
Garruk: “Already thought of that, friend — and I bite back.”
Vexi: “Are we taking any of these fine gentlemen with us?”
Kael: “A few. The rest march to Thornmere in irons — the mayor can decide if he prefers the gallows or repentance.”
Sereth slings her bow and glances at Elaris.
“Ready, Shepherd?”
Elaris: “Always. The dead rest easy. For now.”
The company rides as the sun breaks the mist. Thornmere’s rooftops glimmer like small embers in the distance. Farmers pause their work to watch as the Thornmere Company returns — scarred, tired, but victorious.
Mayor Halden meets you at the gates, flanked by guards and clerks scribbling feverishly. Behind him, the townsfolk whisper the words already spreading like wildfire:
“They broke the Crimson Legion at Rook’s Crag.”
Halden (beaming, voice booming): “Welcome home, heroes of Thornmere!”
Kael (muttering under his breath): “Heroes. Never thought I’d hear that again.”
Elaris (dryly): “Don’t get used to it. It never lasts.”
Vexi (to Lazlo, sotto voce): “Think they’ll pay us this time?”
Lazlo: “Doubtful. But the applause is free.”
Laughter ripples through the weary band as the gates swing open.