Chronicles of Highcliff Journey to Orc Island Part 4

Chronicles of Highcliff
Journey to Orc Island Part 4
Encounter at the Forest Edge

Saturday 8th day of the Harvest Moon, Year of the Horse
After healin up a bit we decided our best bet was to press right on through the forest and perhaps try to camp on the very edge before trying to find the mine our “guide” told us was where the Rockfist tribe was havin the youngins work. We got to the edge without any incident then decided to rest up as best we could since we were not fully healed from the previous nights ordeal. It was still before noon so we pitched out tents and set up our standard watches.
I guess it was sometime well after dark when a large patrol of Rockfist orcs came around scountin the edges of the forest. Helsa and Mary was on watch and they heard the orcs makin their way along the tree line. Aleena was up readin a book of some kind. Like I said before that elf never sleeps.

The worst thing about monastic orders or fightin schools and the like is that while you can learn some good fightin in places like that you still don’t get more field experience. This was the case with Helsa. She told Mary, who is quite sneaky and light on her feet, to hide back in camp while she scouted the orc patrol. Now to say Helsa couldn’t sneak through a hall of passed out dwarves after a week long beerfest is being kind. She would also have a hard time hiding out in a school for the blind and deaf. She might as well have walked right into the Orcs path because the orcs spotted her straight away and shortly after that they spotted out camp.

The orc boss and a few of his goons attacked Helsa and the rest of the orcs moved into the are of our camp.

Helsa was havin a hard time with the orcs that attacked her. Seems their boss was a pretty tough character.

Mary however was well hidden so she let a group of orcs move passed her position.

Then she sprung out of her hiding place to attack them.

Meanwhile Aleena managed to zap one of the orcs with a spell just as I was gettin into the fight.

Unfortunately the orcs didn’t take kindly to this display of arcane type power. One of the orcs stepped up and knocked Aleena out with one powerful hit.

Fortunately Finnias came out of the tent at that very moment. Helsa was also doin better. She managed to cut down one orc goon and without missing a beat cleave into the other. It was just her and the orc boss in that fight now.

After killin the rest of the orcs in the camp Finnias and I moved up to help Mary with the orc archers. Unfortunately we didn’t get to her in time and she went down before we could help her. Joe had also managed to get himself up and join the fighting.

The sight of our ogre hireling caused the rest of the orc archers to take to their heels but Joe soon ran them down and killed them all.

We then helped the injured to their feet with a little healing. We had captured two more orcs in the fightin which was a good thing since they had more recent information and it would be easier for us to play them against each other to get it.

Unfortunately the battle left us in just as bad a shape as we had been before we rested and even though we were only a few hours from our destination we decided we would need to find and even safer place to rest before we staged our rescue. We moved camp a bit deeper into the woods and hid our position as best we could.