Ambushed by the Riders

As we continued toward the northwest, the ground become more hilly. We reached a point where the land was broken. In the middle was a path cut into the earth. On either side were rock walls and ascending hills.

Along the path, there were tracks. We examined the tracks and realized that they were made by giant lizards, like the one we found back at the building (the corpse that had been gnawed apart by vulture drakes).

As we paused, a figure emerged from the hill on our left side. It was an elf with a broad leather hat. He held an iron wand of sorts in his hand and pointed it at us.

Suddenly, there was the sound of thunder and smoke rose out of the wand. Another elf appeared next two him, and two humans emerged from the same area and raced down the hill to attack us.

The humans and elves were all quicker than we were. They struck at us twice for each blow we could strike at them. One of the humans reached us at the path and began to attack Garg, our Half-Elven Warlord. Together, Garg, Firinne, our Half-Elven Paladin, Bran, our Halfling Rogue, and Tiny, our Dwarven Cleric, were able to surround him and fight back. The human was badly damaged from our blows and ran back up the hillside.

Bran raced up the hillside toward one of the elves and began his attack. Both elves began to strike quickly back at him, pointing their iron wands and making thunderous explosions. Bran took the brunt of their attacks.

Kale, our Human Wizard, cautioned us to seek cover along the wall beside the path. He advised us to make our way further down the path, where we could climb up the wall and attack the human and elves from a distance.

As we did so, the humans and elves quickly retreated up the hill, freeing up Bran from the attacks.

We followed them up the hill and saw them on the other side, mounting giant lizards and riding away.

I was able to finally dispatch the badly wounded human with a strike powerful enough to trap a bear. His riding lizard followed the rest of the pack, and the human's body fell off his steed. The body dragged around after the lizard for a while before finally getting untangled from the reins and coming to a rest.

We caught up with the body and found that he had a leather rucksack. In the sack was a bag of gold powder and a book. The book seemed to be a journal. Tiny noted that the words seemed to be encoded in some sort of personal code.

The human's body also held a net and a dagger. Bran claimed these and the hat.

As Tiny tended to Bran's wounds, we noticed that there were metal balls embedded in his wounds. Kale surmised that perhaps these were projectiles from those iron wands. This Siege World is truly a place of strange devices and bizarre magics.