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Total Members Voted: 10

[Beneviento]

After a council with your officers on what to do next, you decide that it would be best to find work hunting bandits. You've never liked bandits, as they plagued the lands you grew up in, and you lost your favorite uncle to a raid. The thought of reward is another nice consideration. You head to the ducal keep in the center of town, and are quickly ushered to an audience. The duke is clearly in great need of men, if a minor mercenary commander is treated with so much importance. The duke is a tired looking thin man and is clean-shaven with close-cropped brown hair. He nods politely when you enter his hall, and begins to speak.

"I need the bandits cleared out, because they're ruining trade and are getting close to bankrupting me." He tells you, "I can give you a writ that establishes your group as mercenaries in my service for the period of one month. You'll get an initial payment of 50 crowns, and 30 at the conclusion of the contract. You can take care of food and other supplies for your men." He seems very focused on money, and you imagine he is the type that can rub two coins together to birth a third. You gladly accept, and take the writ and the 50 crowns. Your next objective is to find information about the bandits and find more men if you can.

You head to the largest tavern in town to see what you can find out. A string of questions lead you to a short man with a pronounced limp. He is reticent at first, but a bag of coin (-10 crowns) and a drink gets him talking. "Most of them bandits work out of camps that they move around from time to time. They move too quick for the duke's lads to get 'em. They set up ambushes on the road for caravans 'n carriages and the like. They're not too well armed or nothin', though." You also find out that he was a caravan guard until a group of bandits led by "a little scrawny bastard, didn't think he looked like much till he sent an arrow through my leg from fifty yards away, while I was gallopin' away on horseback an all." Most bands tend to have somewhere between ten and thirty members, though the group this man encountered seemed the largest, of a size with your own force. Finally, you learn that they plague the area west of town.

You have little luck finding men until you meet a group of 15 young spearmen in a smaller tavern, drinking away the loss of their previous commander, who had recruited them only a week ago. You have an easy time convincing them to join for an initial payment of a crown each. With them, you return to your camp, where you find that almost no progress has been made on the palisade you ordered built that morning. Feeling rather good about your accomplishments, you head to your tent to sleep.

What will you do next?

Spoiler: Cedric Stoneye (click to show/hide)

Name: Cedric Stoneye
Age: 32, born Spring, Year 1213 (Currently Summer, Year 1245)
Possessions: Average Crossbow, Forester's hat, Average Clothes, Above Average Observer, Mail hauberk, 201 Crowns(currency)
Health: Excellent
Skills: Good Crossbowman, Good Leader, Above Average Tactician, Fair Siege Engineer, Fair Conversationalist.

Spoiler: The Aldornian Foresters (click to show/hide)

5 officers (1 leader, 2 crossbow vinteners, 2 spear vinteners)

45 Crossbowmen (crossbows, hauberks/coats of plate, maces, forester hats, boots)
Good Crossbowmen
Good Scouts
Above Average Ambushers
Poor Laborers
Pay:45 crowns per month

20 green spearmen (jerkins, spears, maces, boots)
Fair Spearmen
Fair Laborers
Pay: 100 shillings/10 crowns per month

Tired
Supplies: Good
Morale: Very Good

[Aseaheru]

Scout patrols along the main roads?

Also, figure out where they like to ambush, so we can counterambush.

[TalonisWolf]

 Get some wagons, fill them barrels of beer or something else equally explosive. Go up and down the trade route until ambushed, light thing up with fire arrows!

 It would make them cautious, but that's the point- have them second guess every caravan they see!

   It will buy us time to figure out a more permanent solution, and the explosion might knock out or stun some bandits that we can take in for questioning... hopefully we'll get the location of a base, if not the base.

  We only need this boat to spring one leak to sink it- without a base to gather and prepare at, Guerrilla Fighters will steadily be worn down as they lose equipment, supplies, morale and manpower.

[Aseaheru]

Get some wagons, fill them barrels of beer or something else equally explosive.

Beer isent really flammable, let alone explosive.
Now, if you said some form of harder alcohol then I probably would have agreed.

[TalonisWolf]

Get some wagons, fill them barrels of beer or something else equally explosive.

Beer isent really flammable, let alone explosive.
Now, if you said some form of harder alcohol then I probably would have agreed.

Replace 'Beer' with 'Highly Explosive Alchol'.

[PewdsRocks]

Guys no offense but that plan is never going to work.

You expect groups of bandits of which almost all are 30 men or less to ambush a group of 65 well armed men? They're bandits they bully the weak if they see us they're just going to fade away and wait for easier prey.
The largest group might targets us but even that's unlikely when we have a 20 man advantage in men.

Besides we're skilled trackers and hunters so why are we acting as the prey? We could choose the routes they hit the most then discreetly check the forests either side of the roads for tracks then back track them and set up an ambush of our own without walking into one ourselves.

It'd give us time to train the spearmen as well they need training in ambushing if they're going to stay with us.

[3man75]

Guys no offense but that plan is never going to work.

You expect groups of bandits of which almost all are 30 men or less to ambush a group of 65 well armed men? They're bandits they bully the weak if they see us they're just going to fade away and wait for easier prey.
The largest group might targets us but even that's unlikely when we have a 20 man advantage in men.

Besides we're skilled trackers and hunters so why are we acting as the prey? We could choose the routes they hit the most then discreetly check the forests either side of the roads for tracks then back track them and set up an ambush of our own without walking into one ourselves.

It'd give us time to train the spearmen as well they need training in ambushing if they're going to stay with us.

+1 our companies original bread and butter relied on scouting/forestry right? It's in our name and all we have to do is stalk in the forest and attack at night when their asleep.

[Aseaheru]

Thats why I said the patrols.

[Parsely]

So, wait for the next caravan to be attacked, shadow/track bandits back to camp, then ambush them? Sounds good.

[Patrick Hunt]

We could be weeks behind by then, they don't let people escape it was dumb luck the old guy did so we can't count on hearing of an attack soon enough for it to do any good and splitting our forces up all over the forest would make us easy pickings if they spot us.

Also we have no way to regroup quickly if 1 group finds anything, we don't have radios or anything so we can't coordinate if we split up which we would have to if we're sending scout patrols or they'd cover so little ground it'd take a minor miracle to find anything.

If we're not going to make ourselves sitting ducks we have to stay close together. Like pick an area we know they travel frequently then the aldermen form a core and bows range out half a mile around it to look for signs of enemies passing through that we can track.

[Parsely]

They're likely just as good at scouting and ambushing as we are. Our advantages cancel one another out, and they know the forest better than we do. I don't think following them or finding their camp will work.

We ought to just join a caravan and hide in the wagons, if they're covered then all the better. Perhaps we can rig the canopies to collapse and just pop out and shoot these guys when they attack.

[Patrick Hunt]

Hiding 65 men in wagons as well as our weapons, armor, ammo and supplies  would require a minimum of 20 wagons or more not including all the wagons from the caravan itself.

I doubt we'd find a group with that many wagons to spare who are willing to foot the exspenses and be the bait.

[3man75]

So, wait for the next caravan to be attacked, shadow/track bandits back to camp, then ambush them? Sounds good.

It could work but how do we follow a caravan without having it's guards be all "OMGOSH WHO GOES THERE!?!"

[Worldmaster27]

So, wait for the next caravan to be attacked, shadow/track bandits back to camp, then ambush them? Sounds good.

It could work but how do we follow a caravan without having it's guards be all "OMGOSH WHO GOES THERE!?!"

We let them know we'll be following them, and that we are after the bandits.

[PewdsRocks]

If we're shadowing close enough to keep tabs on the caravan it's to close for the bandits not to spot us. Besides the caravan people would give us away anyway.