My recent adventure as a female human axeman has gone swimmingly. Kinda... My first bandit encounter I got shot in the lung by the bowman leader and had to back off before I passed out from pain. I came back after a quick fast-travel break to heal and whipped her ass and nabbed some stuff from the camp, but wasn't prepared to risk my neck with the other banditos nearby and went home. I gathered 4 peasants and headed for the next objective, which was easy considering there were only 3 and one was a wrestler. The third bandit camp, however, it all went wrong. They ambushed us a few travel tiles back from the camp. I tried to engage but was shot in the hand, losing my nice silver halberd. The leader took out two of my companions at the other end of the map and since I was in extreme pain I made a beeline for somewhere else, went into stealth mode, and travelled away as fast as possible. The other two peasants survived; one with pretty serious injuries.
We went back to town, and luckily were greeted with a slew of 6 miners which I used runesmith to convince to follow me. I also convinced two more peasants to awkwardly waddle to their death by my side.
Then, we made off for those bandits again. This time, we didn't even make it half way ebfore a group I'd never encountered before ambushed us. On the open desert with nowhere for me to hide, even! Battle commenced, and I realized I wasn't skilled enough in unarmed combat to take on their leader, who was a lasher. Luckily one of the miners got my back while I broke a macewoman's wrist, punched her in the head to kill her, and promptly turned around and smashed the bandit leader's skull in. I and that miner took down the two bowmen immediately south of us and the rest of the troop finished up the remaining bandits. As far as I know, we only took one casualty: one of the peasants. I'm about to use dfusion to divy up the weaponry between the group; make sure everyone is well-armed and armored and has the chance to become skilled warriors. The miners obviously will be using their picks, but they need shields (still need more shields...) and the peasants may be given bows.
As a side note, the bandit leader, a female lasher, ambushed us whilst standing over a prone male wrestler. BDSM, anyone?