I'm back again. Hopefully somebody's still interested.
You set out in the morning to meet the Duke again, to see what kind of equipment, particularly tracking hounds, you can get out of him. He tells you that while he much prefers falconry to the noisy dirty sport of hunting with hounds, he does keep a kennel, and will let you use some of the hounds to track the bandits. However, he says that his own men have tried this method several times and while they have sometimes found hastily abandoned camps, they never managed to catch the bandits. You shrug at this and take the dogs away.
You decide that the best way to fight the bandits is to pull each group out by the roots, by fighting them in their encampments. You realize as well that as the Duke told you just to "deal with" the bandits, you could recruit the better fighters from among them to fight for you. Your men leave town to find the bandit camps just before midday, and head west to the bandits' known hunting grounds. As you walk along, you see that many of your men are still tired from their frequent marches in the past few days, and their morale drops slightly as you move along.
You send patrols out throughout the day, and about three hours after you leave town, one of them returns, saying they smelled woodsmoke off the road about another mile along. The Duke gave you a map of the settlements in the area, and there's no village anywhere near, so something must be up. It's probably a bandit group, but it isn't likely to be one of the larger ones. How will you respond to this? Will you fight these bandits, and if so, what is your plan?
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.
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
Quite Tired
Supplies: Good
Morale: Good