The Enigma Province

Stage 3: The Caravan Raid

I do a little bit more setting up on my carriage and get ready to go, to begin the 3 days of travel to kate ingrain.

Day One

Day one is uneventful, all i have seen throughout the day is caravans, travelers, and other sorts of people. And i have seen the occasional coyote and wolf. which, to my knowledge, have not messed with anyone on the main roads. but the further i go, the roads become increasingly rougher to travel on, i assume due to the lack of people traveling on some of them.

Day Two

Yet another uneventful day, but something interesting has happened today. 

i was on the road on the way to the location of the bounty, and i saw a pack of creatures in the sky today. they had wings and they all looked scaly. but it wasn't a pack of dragons. they were way to small to be dragons. they looked to be around 4 feet tall. I'm hoping i dont have to see those thing again.

Day Three

Today has been the most interesting day of my journey to the women in the woods. assuming that battling a gang of flying kobolds is interesting.

apparently the creatures i saw yesterday were winged kobolds as i said before, these impish creatures that are part dragon. but these ones had wings on them, so could all fly which defiantly made them a pain to fight.  

i was on the main path and about 3 or 4 miles away i started to see smoke rise in the distance on the road. so i decided i would hurry up my carriage and check out what was going on.

when i got closer, i could see another carriage that was in flames and i could smell burning flesh. And surrounding the burning carriage were 5 winged kobolds, all of which had daggers. 

they hadn't noticed me yet so i pulled out my crossbow and aimed at the head of the kobold closest to me. I steadied my aim, looked directly at the head and pulled the trigger.

*Fwoosh*

"Raghhh!"

I heard the screams of the kobold i hit and saw him fall down to the ground, bleeding. one down, four to go.

as soon as he fell on the ground the kobolds looked behind themselves and directly at me. they pulled at there dagger and tensed up. 

The fight has just started

Wings grew from the kobolds backs and one of them got ready to fly towards me and probably attack me with his dagger.

by then i already had my crossbow loaded and aimed at the one ready to attack me, so i aimed and fired at him.

*Fwoosh*

It had hit and punctured his wing, but not killed him yet. but i managed to keep him at bay.

since crossbows take a long time to load, one of the kobolds flew at me as soon as i hit his friends, and i wasnt able to fight back, only dodge.

I saw the kobold come directly at me, dagger in hand, and he lunged at me. i dodged, but i was to slow so i got a little scraped in the arm.

another couple seconds later i loaded my crossbow and aimed for the one that just hit me since he was closest to me at the time.

*Fwoosh*

I hit him directly in the head and killed him! better then last time when i only hit his friends wing, but as soon as that happened, the other kobolds started to look more and more startled and started to act more cautiously. 

i looked over to my lieft and right and saw only three left, and one of them held his dagger in the sky and threw the dagger at me, thankfully since they are weak, i was relatively easy to dodge his attack.

"RAGGHHH! ATTAAACCKK!"

I look down and notice a shadow in the sky and all the sudden i look up and i see two kobolds above ready ready to drop on me and stab me with there daggers. i couldnt dodge both of them in time, so i was stabbed in the back by one of them, the other stabbed the ground. i pull my dagger out of my boot and stab the one that just hit me in the head, killing him.

and the kobolds look scared now, they look like they dont wanna be here any more.

i see the one that stabbed the ground pull out his dagger and fly over to his friend who threw  the dagger at me, and who also had a damaged wing, picked him up and started to fly away.

i took a few seconds to reload my crossbow but by the time that happens, they are to far away for me to shoot them. 

after i make sure  im clear, i go to investigate the burning wagon. 

from what i see there were to people riding the wagon, and im assuming that they were jumped by the kobolds because they wanted whatever the wagon had. Im not able to salvage anything from the wagon yet due to the fire, i doubt i would be able to anyway since the fire could burn it all up.

so i go over to investigate the kobolds i killed, the first two i killed didnt have anything of value, only some gold pieces on them, along with the daggers they had. but the third one had some things of value, he had a note on him, which read..

"Im hiring your gang to get the artifact for me, remember, you can be as aggresive as you want, just make sure the artifact is safe and make sure no one see's you with it at all costs. when you return the artifact to the listed location, you will be promptly paid."

on the back of the paper it said "main guild hall in skeld", which i assume is the meeting place they speak of.

clearly, they failed there mission miserably here today, but i don't care about that. i looked over at the wagon, it didn't look as if the fire would die out anytime soon, so i had to try and find a way to put it out, thankfully i could see a pond near me, and the kobolds had a bucket on them, i assume because they had planned on doing this since the beggining.

so i went back and forth, throwing water at the fire, and returing to the pond to fill the bucket, repeat. after about 20 minutes, i managed to get the fire out.

i searched the wagon further, i could see it was a normal traders caravan, nothing special about it, yet.

but i saw what looked like a compartment sticking up a little bit on the floor of the wagon, so i pulled it up and i saw a box with runes and such etched into it. it didnt look like it had been affected by the fire at all. so i picked it up and opened it, revealing a scarab beetle. a beautifully crafted artifact shaped like a beetle, with a ruby on the inside of it and gold outlining the ruby as well.

And when i found this, i realized this must be the "Artifact" the letter had spoke about, and it must be important if they slaughtered a man and a women for it. and now i know where the meeting place is for this, so all i have to do now is find out what they want with the scarab beetle.

After another 5 minutes passed of me searching and finding nothing else of value, i decided it was best to leave, in case anybody else decided to pass by. so i hopped in my carriage, and started to leave, and head towards the entire reason for doing this trip, the bounty.