Episode 1: The Salvaged Job

Using the hobgoblin's map as a guide, you plot a course parallel to the caravan route and attempt to avoid the marked locations. You reason that heading directly east for one week across the grasslands and hills, passing through that small gap in the larger ridgeline, and heading northeast will make good time.

Your travel for one week is uneventful. You see no activity beyond wild animals native to the grasslands, and certainly nothing with the perceived agency of your previous raven companion. You've reached the western edge of the ridgeline, and estimate it will take you three or four days to reach the gap. From this distance, you can see that the ridges are not quite mountainous, rising only 2500 feet at its highest and covered in green brush and a smattering of trees.

At the end of the seventh day, it is nearing time for your party to make camp for the night. The sun is setting and soon the light will fall.

Nothing happens this night as you make camp, and on the break of the next morn you continue on a path parallel to the road, picking your way along the hilly terrain as you make for the gap in the ridgeline.

Three uneventful days pass, and you've progressed into a dale with steep slopes to your north and south. There is still a wide expanse of grassland around you, so your travel is unimpeded. As you break northeast, you walk for another day to the gap, and here the ridgeline becomes more gradual.

It is close to mid-morning as you've entered the gap in the ridgeline. Daniel, Coda, and Kalis immediately hear the squeal of a horse in the distance. Coda, bringing up the rear, instinctively looks behind and sees three riders galloping down the slope one mile away, heading towards the party. The glint of metal in the sunlight reveals armor, but at this distance the riders are too far away to discern their identities.

The three riders continue a gallop down the gradual slope in your direction. As they close, you are able to pick out more detail, although you still cannot identify the riders themselves. You can see that two have long spears or javelins, while one seems to have a longbow. They do not appear to be slowing down.

As the riders draw closer to a quarter-mile from your location, you start to pick out more detail. They appear to be hobgoblins, blood-red skin showing through their metal armor. Sunlight glints off their shields and open-faced helmets as they continue a charge.