(TFT) The inspection, the new Decathon leader.

[Pasha and or Rick Smith <pnrsmith@istar.ca>]

	Decathon Leader Doror' walks slowly up the hill
to the fort.  He has the peasants help the wounded on ahead 
while the more healthy are formed up as a rear gaurd. Pak
starts limping back, but halfway up the long slope his energy
gives out, and Rarrempt simply picks him up and carries him
back.

	A pair of peasants have been carrying Lances'
body back.  He will be buried outside the fort tomorrow
likely.  Pak using his last reserve of strength, comes over
and give a 'non-denominational' last rites to give Lances'
spirt the 'energy' to pass on. When he is done, Pak, slumps
down and falls asleep beside the body of his friend.  With
surprising gentleness, a couple peasants carry Pak back 
into the Fort.

	The Decathon' has all the peasants searched as
soon as everyone gets back.  Every knife is taken, even
the dull 4 cm eating knives that they have dispensations for.
Im' Sions is likewise stripped of items, weapons and armor 
and is left with the slaves.

	Doror tells the Padrone to post watches and get
things organized.  Ben spends a few minutes doing so,
posting the 4 new fighters on the south side of the Pallisade.
The little goblin wizard is not back yet.

	Doror, is seeing about having a large tent assembled
in the 'courtyard' of the pallisade.  It is soaked with water and
mud, and peasants are set to work fetching water to wash it
off.  It looks like it will be an hour's or so work to get it 
clean and set up.  If it is put up promptly, it will dry out in
the morning and won't rot.  Tho he is keeping busy, the
Decathon occationally looks over to see how his Padrone is
handling things.  He seems satisfied after the first couple
minutes but offers the Padrone one bit of advice.  "Your hurt
and limping on that, ah..., rear leg off yours.  Sit down and
have the buggers come to you."  Satisfied, he starts paying
more attention to his tent.

	Ben has a talk with each of the new people.  
(Meanwhile the other fighters are exchanging stories with
the new comers.)


	Icolee 't Semp is a heavy fighter specializing in
Picks.  He has a heavy chainmail armor but has spent a 
pretty penny in having it customized so that it does not 
slow him down.  He seems to resent bowman because he 
has the following items: a blow away one, Missile Wall 
(self powering) and a 1 fST per turn Reverse Missiles!  
He also has a handful of other items, including a 3 point
weapon armor enchantment on his chain.  You estimate 
he is a 45 attribute fighter or so.
	Icolee will be able to take almost anything that
the goblins can dish out, which is likely how he has 
lasted so long.
	He has high praise for Decathon Doror saying
"There aren't no tougher leaders I've ever fought with."
He calls the Decathon' Doror, "Hundred Leader".

	
	Jochob 'min is a heavy fighter with a huge
scar running across his face.  The bones were obviously
crushed and his face is permanantly twised into a horrible
parody of a grin.  One eye seems to be perminatly pointing
to the left.  Jochob is Doror's right hand man and has been
acting Logent (lower sergeant) for the duration.  He is 
armed with a Halberd, a Hesgluet (taken from a dead goblin
heavy fighter) and has a magical hammer that he can throw
that will return to him.  He has an item that makes him 
immune to most spells including Dazzles.
	He is wearing his light armor: heavy leather, that 
he can move in with out being slowed down.  He has the 
absolute physical confidence of someone who knows he
can handle himself in a fight. Jochob is no mental giant,
he has a very simple view of the world.  You have a hard
time estimating his experience:  he is quite old.  Perhaps
he is 45 to 50 attributes?
	He seems self conscious about his disfigurement
but speaks up strongly when questioned.  He does not 
think anyone could have handled having a whole army 
attacking his 'thon better than Doror and speaks highly of
him during the time they spent being hunted by goblins.
Jochob is literate and has done paperwork for the Decathon'
before they were overrun.

	
	Aka (No det or last name)  is a light fighter and
scout.  Very fast, he is able to out run goblins then stop
and pepper them with arrow shots.  His Horse bow is 
nothing much, but against goblins it can get the job done.
	Aka, you soon learn, is perarenially broke with 
gambling debts and has almost no magic items.  He does 
have an amlet that gives him immunity to Sleep, Freeze 
and Word of Command: Stop. 
	Aka seems to hate the Decathon Leader.  
After a long chase, Aka lead them to this fort.  However
the Trail Twister spell got them and they ended up in the
next valley.  The Decathon' blew up and insulted him.
After trying again (and getting lost again) Doror busted
Aka back to the ranks (he used to be a Sergeant) and took
charge of getting them here himself.  Then the Decathon'
lead the party around in circles for two days followed by 
finding the swamp...  No apology of course, the bastard.
	You estimate that Aka is a 48 attribute fighter
with 3 points of armor. He has a 14 MA (13 adjusted).

	
	Oriat bem' Tohellempt is a extreamly religious
young man who is doing his best to become a heavy 
fighter but is not there yet.  He has acolyte and is studying
priest.  He has plenty of armor and several magic items
won off Aka (Aka seems to resent Oriat).  His weapons
are fairly light with a short sword and Lg. Shield. However
against goblins they don't do to bad.  (On the other hand
fighting hundreds of goblins you want a big enough weapon
to do sweeping blows.)  Oriat is such a fast runner, that
even in his armor he can out pace most goblins.  What is
more, he can keep running for hours.
	Oriat seems to be of mixed feelings about the
Decathon Leader.  On one hand he is in awe of his fighting
ability, on the other hand, he feels things could have been
handled better (altho he is uncomfortable critisizing a 
leader.)  He is diffident and lacks confidence.
	You suspect him to be about 38 to 40 attributes.


	Their story:
	The Decathon leader had some bad luck a few
months ago.  He was a Hundred Leader then and his troops 
were ambushed in the brush and nearly wiped out.  Rather
than retreating he attacked the superior enemy and tho the
enemy eventually left, his century was broken.  Some say
that 1/2 of the enemy casulties were inflicted by Doror 
himself.  
	The Thorsz was not pleased and saying that since
all that remained of his troops was a Decathon, HE was 
now a Decathon Leader!  The Thorsz also made some cutting 
remarks about his complete lack of understanding in tactics,
strategy or logistics would soon result in him becoming a 
Sergeant if this kept up.
	Only 20 or so men remained in good health and
this formed an oversized 'thon for Doror.  The rest of the
survivors were spread out to other commanders.

	Jochob said that rather than becoming sullen,
Doror has worked hard at learning more of this tactics and
strategy and logictics stuff.  He desperately wants to become
a Hundred Leader again, and knows that his demotion was
deserved.  He is illiterate, but has had a few people that can
read, speak aloud some war manuals he bought.  Also he
has been know to ask superior officers their advice on 
military problems (which he never did before).

	When the big dam was built he was suppost
to oversee some slaves building a corderoy road over a
swampy section.  This was done.  Then he was to build
a small fort and bridge.  However no one was an expert
builder, and the work progressed slowly.  

	Then Chroe n' Laeth showed up from your 
group, explaining how you guys had a master builder 
overseeing your peasants,  and telling about how you 
were plagued by a ghost. Chroe had got seperated from a 
scouting party and had somehow gotten completely lost.  
He stumbled into a camp of goblins, and when they 
attacked, he killed one and fled.  They summoned up
reenforcements and chased him here.

	The Hundred Leader, Decathon Leader rather,
absorbed Chroe into his 'thon until they could get him
back to you.  He wanted to link up with you so that he
could borrow your master builder for a day or two to 
get things going a little more smoothly.  However the
goblins were out in numbers, and he was afraid to split his
force.  Some agressive scouting showed the woods were
crawling with goblins, so he sent messengers to a couple
of other thons to the west.  Their forts were no more 
completed than his, so they moved East to him to join
their forces together.  

	With the extra troops and workers, some building
progress was made.  Decathon Leader Doror and another
Decathon Leader Grenmpt, got into a bit of pissing 
contest.  Doror said he was in charge since he used to
be a Hundred Leader.  Grenmpt said that what he WAS
made no difference, it was what they were now. Since 
Doror made Decathon Leader a couple months ago, but he 
(Grenmpt) had made Decathon' 7 months ago, therefore he 
was senior.  Doror cursed a blue streak and said he had
been an officer for 4 years (before the new rank system 
was put into place)  Grenmpt said that a leader on his
way down was not superior to another leader on his way
up.    They nearly came to blows over that.  Doror said
he had been put in charge of this fort, and if Grenmpt
didn't like the way it was run he could take his troops and
leave.  And if he didn't, Doror would kill him now for
insubordination, stick his bloody head on a spike and to
hell with the Damned consiquences, if any!  Grenmpt 
grumbled but backed down, saying he would report this.

	All this happened about the time of the attack
of the goblins and trolls on you.

	Then an army of 400 goblins with orks and 
trolls swarmed up and crushed us.  Grenmpt and most
everyone was killed.  Doror killed dozens of goblins
and seeing that things were hopeless organized a retreat
with him acting as rear gaurd.  Chroe was one of the
survivors and herded a bunch of peasants to safty.  The
orks and trolls stopped to loot the bodies, which gave us
some breathing room.

	Doror was not happy with the peasants since
they would slow us down and said that any that didn't 
keep up would be left behind.  Even so they DID slow us
up of course.

	The goblins kept after us, mostly ambushing 
us at night and fading away.  Doror kept catching up and
killing a few, but he wanted to keep his 'thon alive so he
couldn't just run off and kill goblins.  We ran into a few
areas with bad traps, so he made the slaves walk in 
front to set them off, 'cause we didn't have and expert
trap finder (and they used magic to hide them better).

	We ran into a goblin wizard who claimed he
was not part of this group.  We needed all the help we 
could get and he SAID he was not with him so we let
him join up.

	Chroe talked us into heading to you guys. We
circled around, and headed this way.  We got into a 
battle and lost most of our peasants on the road.  Chroe
was wounded bad there.  We were close but we couldn't 
use the road and kept getting lost.  Finally Doror took
charge, and after couple days of wandering about in the
woods (were we were always getting attacked by more
and more goblins) we lost a bunch of people (including
Chroe) and did everything we could to dodge the 
goblins.

	We knew we were close, a few times we saw
your fort and your flag pole.  It had to be magic that was
mixing up our directions.  We kept crossing and re-
crossing that damn rune line and Kommet (dead now)
lost a real nice item.  Anyway we were being chased
again when Doror said he saw your fort.  We were
running from maybe 50 or 70 goblins and could see
your fires when we splashed thru this puddle at the
run and it turned out is was quick sand!  Doror was
leading us, and he was in deepest, so he couldn't act
as rear gaurd like he usually did.  The goblins just forced
us back into the pool, and then used poles to shove us
underwater.  Icolee managed to grab one of their poles
from them as was trying to keep them back when you
guys attacked.  Sorry your friend got killed tho.

	Anyway you know the rest of the story.

	Listening to the stories, you suspect that
Doror has at least a Stone Flesh item.


	The goblin has still not returned.  Has he
returned to his friends?  Has he been killed?

	Doror is satisfied with his tent eventually and
starts an inspection of the fort.  He approves of most of
the defenses, but orders more steps to be built along the
walls of the fort.  "Damned if I can see how we could
stop an attack if they all swoop in on one wall.  They 
will bloody well climb over the wall, and jump down
on our damn defenders who can't get up to fight them!"
He also wants stakes stuck into the ground on inside and
outside the walls so that any enemy that falls off will be
impailed.  (On the inside they should only be placed 
where there are no steps.  "The bloody east bank near the 
river should get a damn lot of them.")

	He begins to inspect the out side of the fort.
Ben prompts him to stay near the walls of the fort, and
he seems willing to follow Ben's lead.  He seems 
completely underwhelmed by the half meter deep ditch 
and thinks it should be dug deeper before the stakes and
hedge of thorns is put in. 

	He is very conserned about the scouting.  As 
far as he can tell, you have not done any scouting at all 
on the East side of the river.  

	You are walking along the north wall of the 
fort approaching the traps.  It looks like he will need a
good push to put him in them, but you might be able to
get both legs in traps.

	Does Ben shove him in,  hope that he steps on 
the edge of a pit and fails his saving throw, or do you do 
something else?

	Rick

	
	




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