Osric: Truth, Reconciliation & The league of justice (6)

Unfortunately the league isn't our PC's.......

Dan (F), Jenks (D), Scabs (gnome T), Chester (Gnome T), Renault (F) leave the dungeon and hiek back towards the village of Compliments. Towards dark on the first night they encounter a Halfling at a fire, along with his mount/wardog. The halfling, Rolo (a PC), assures our group that there are another 10 invisible dogs with him in case we wish to do him harm. We decide to stay with this plucky halfling and caution him about the bandits along the road (without snickering much). Rolo reveals that he is heading to Shadowdeep to recover a clan heirloom, a ring, that was seen there and offered up for auction. Some other members of the clan have preceded him but there has been no word from them.

Over night there is disturbance in the wee hours of the morning and a human head is thrown into the fire. The head belongs to Donna (Jenks & Renault recongize it but decide to spare Dan the details). Calling out that we are heading away and don't plan to come back we hope we won't have any more trouble. We hear crashing and felling to trees back the way we came. Investigating later we find Ogre/Troll sized foot prints that shrink to man/dwarf sized prints around a road block of trees. We suspect it's the Deuragar as Scabs hadn't seen anything in the dark. We proceed South in the morning for a few more days to compliments.

Back in the village we find out that some mercenaries have taken up habitation of the tavern. Ignoring them for the moment our group has a meal and retires for the evening. The next day in the temple Jenks and Dan encounter Gelf, a war priest of Titan (the god who created this world). He rocks a ZZ top beard as a distinctive feature. Gelf reveals that the powers that be in Shadowdeep (the city to the south) have find this nest of bandits to be onersome enough that they have raised a bounty to cleanse it. Gelf's group (who I dubbed the league of Justice because they are so obviously lawful) wish to spare the villagers depredations of waves of mercenaries looking for scalps to 'prove' they have slayed the bandits.

The league has been speaking with the villagers and is basically abreast of the fact that the PCs are now defacto rulers of the village. Jenks reveals the brief history of the successive leadership changes and improvements in removing the bloodthirsty bandits, however Gelf indicates that the villagers still see bandits in town, unpunished, and Scabs/Jenks/etc as leaders. We are essentially facing a crusading adventuring party who has identified us as a problem. Thankfully they aren't totally unreasonable...they indicate that if they can report the bandit problem is 'solved' and return some of the loot the bandits. Gelf is pretty cagey about where the League is staying and declines an invite to a meal....it's almost like they don't trust us to try and take them out.

Heading to the manor Jenks updates the group. One of the PC's notes this sounds a bit like an extortion scheme. Earlier in the morning Scabs woke to a window being wide open and a drawer in his room previously locked and unsearched being open and emptied (belonging to the original bandit leader Galen)....obviously the league has a thief who is prowling about as well. We hatch a scheme inspired by reality....a truth and reconciliation ceremony. We will bring together the bandits and the villagers in a big ceremony and have them talk about the bad things that happened and what the effects have been and why they occurred and how we can prevent them from occurring.We don't want this to be a punishment meeting, it's about moving forward.

We find the league in the tavern and brief them on the plan. Rolo makes sure to note that he just arrived in town. It also comes to light that the mercenary Jenks and Scabs rescued (Terren from part 2) was a comrade of the league. They went hunting for him because he did not return. Jenks is actually distraught about this as he went out of his way to help this guy get home. I think we scored some points here from the League.

Gelf et al want some punishment and are fairly unimpressed that there was bodies stashed in the tavern that were unburied. We agree that individuals collectively identified by the villagers as true problems will be exiled. The league smirks and offers to escort them out of town. Our plan now includes a group internment and prayer of the victims of the cannibal (a were hyena) and the burning of his shack. Mrs. Garrison will make good food to start. We plan on turning over all 6 of the horses we have as well as a gold statue and 20 gems, 1000 silver and 1000 copper. Considering we did a massive yuletide give away it probably represents everything we got from the bandits.

We give our loyal bandit guards the heads up about what's happening and they decide to get out of town. The ceremony goes quite well and it comes to light that the bandits speak of being ensorcelled by Galen and doing things they wouldn't normally do. After he was 'killed' by scabs they retained more of their willpower and Burrel (the ogre) was leading more by threat and bluster. Amazingly 10 of the bandits (the lions share of survivors) trickle into the event over the evening.

The league then suggest it's time for the villagers to elect a leader of the town. Bastards. Amazingly the villagers agree that there was been lots of improvements and Scabs did remove Galen and Burel and elect him.  Gelf then suggests it's time to offer up restitution to the villagers who have lost family members. BASTARDS. We helpfully point out that with the yuletide give away, all the funds have been given to the league. They dart some dirty looks to us and then offer up all the copper as a victim fund. Rolo kicks in 150gp from his ring recovery fund at this point. The villagers mutter perhaps they selected the wrong mayor.

Finally with the cloud of certain death and destruction dealt with the league prepares to leave....they helpfully note they will return in a month to see how things are going. Need I say it? Bastards.