The Daimyo's Gambit - Game Thread

The group moves as one through the limited cover ascending the mountain. Cassandra leads the way and Ai Shan leads the group behind her. As she leads, Cassandra spots a patrol of Hobgoblins and motions for everyone to stop. They pass and she waves the group forward again. Ai Shan pads forward silently and helps the group find paths that won't leave evidence of their passing. The ascent looms in front of you, full of nooks and crannies for you to scurry to but should you be seen or tracked, you will be forced into conflict.

The skill challenge has begun including the two stealth rolls. More in arbitration.

The party moves with preternatural stealth as they climb higher and higher up the mountain. You can see now that the forest is beginning to clear away and the climb is becoming more hardscrabble. The patrols near the midpoint up the mountain become less and less and it has been at least four hours since you left the mangonel when you can hear a clarion call from where you started. You can observe in the hobgoblin patrols you can see an alert course through them and their eyes narrow as patrols redouble below you investigating the scene you left behind.

Here without the cover of trees, darkness will be your only friend but the sun is only just starting its journey down to the horizon. Ai Shan and Feng however have been watching the patrols carefully and are able to instruct the party on when is best to move. The ascent begins to be steeply graded and most of you have to use your hands to help climb up the mountain as you dart from spot to spot to avoid the watchful eyes of the patrols. Above you, and a decent journey away, you can see the final landing before the straight vertical ascent to reach the palace. If infiltration is your goal, then that is your destination and the best place to rest before the final push.

Ai Shan and Feng can give advantage to stealth on this round.

The group begins to wind and wend it's way to the landing. Urki teaches the party with some success how to leave less tracks while also laying down some false trails of his own. Meanwhile, Ai Shan guides the party on routes with the most cover, what little of it there is, keeping them from the prying eyes of random patrols. Just as he is about to sprint out and make for the next point, Cassandra touches his shoulder and points off to the left where a group of hobgoblins a smoking a pipe in the dusk. If not for the cherry of their smoking, they would have been hard to spot. The party waits them out and then moves as one when ideal. They reach the base of the landing. From here, the ascent is near vertical. Once they reach the landing though, they will be beyond the notice of the guards below and directly underneath the shoin-zukuri mansion above. Kildrak moves to fasten some pitons and being climbing but falls back to the party when a handhold crumbles to his weight.

Kildrak rights himself and haughtily begins to climb again, slower and more cautiously, (I hope) but waits for Feng to provide the rope. He is embarrassed by his bad show of climbing given his past in the mines.


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Edit: The dice on this thread hate me!