A decent game today, though we were without Tow once again (car trouble).
The party made their trek back to the capital of the Empire of the Sun, using the best horses of the kingdom to speed up the trek. Soru informs Marshal that he's been doing well getting a dojo formed, and his presence would be appreciated (think drill sergeant) as well as using his perceptive ability as a test for their stealth. Tezcateotl, excited with his progress, shows the new neophytes he's recruited as well as his undead crafting results. They reacquaint with Chantico, who is sporting a missing arm due to a particularly dangerous attack from the Blackened Grove when a strike team hit the capital.
While the two go through town selling and upgrading their gear, Cast prepares for the coronation ceremony, which includes a solo fight against an elephant. A large part of the capital is there for the ceremony, and Cast ends up defeating the elephant with only 2 hit points left (it was an incredibly close fight, saved by his warhorse's extra attacks). This dismays Cast incredibly at the performance of his character, especially after looking at Marshal's numbers were he to fight the elephant instead. In fact, he decides to retire his character and make a new one, having Cast return to the kingdom to rule rather than adventure.
In order to keep him involved, we used that one-shot halfling barbarian and had Cast's player use the stats, saying that he had family where the party was going and he'd help a bit before reaching the place.
Their decision is to go forth and assist with the orcish horde under the banner of the Hungering Maw. Chantico, who is on break doing a couple minor items, have the day off long enough to be able to cast shrink item & two phantom steeds w/an Extend Rod. The halfling was small enough to be a passenger, and the shrink item was for a pair of heavy warhorse skeletons packaged in a chest and set for 'inactive' until reassembled (takes an hour and some negative energy); the latter a compliment of Tezcateotl.
The travel is cut down from two weeks to two days thanks to this, where they find a village retrofitted into a defensive outpost about 15 miles before the border to the wastelands; the fight having gotten serious. There are three wounded Coronal Guard, about 200 basic soldiers, and five Coronal Guard patrols currently keeping an eye on the borders (one Guard plus seven very well trained soldiers). Marshal gives out a bunch of group healing activities and the party is appraised of the situation. There are four minor camps and a major one, sending small groups to test the border defenses and are likely massing a large attack.
The party decides to attack one of the minor camps (after a patrol leaves, so their numbers are low), sending the halfing to the front to jump over the gate and open it. Inside, they fight 14 orcs, a dustblight (treated as children of the Maw, acting as leaders), and a dessicator with the swarm template (set for sand). Before the dessicator can do much, the rest of the camp is killed in fairly short order, the orcs in their dying breath tell the dessicator to run for the main camp. This keeps the party from a painful fight, as none of them have area attacks of note, but it does make them have to leave fairly quickly because the main camp will be alerted.
Resting back at the outpost, the party waits an extra couple days for Tezcateotl to bring everyone's followers (assumed that Tow's running back and forth forth for information); namely by him purchasing transport wagons, converting them to be pulled by bipeds (along with Tow bringing the horse skeletons back for reassembly), and having them pull tirelessly.
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