LogThe Watch-Jason-3

Game log for the 2020-05-31 session of The Watch, as taken by Jason

Tovy arrives at the healers' tent, which is currently populated by soldiers recovering from serious industries. A veiled Dothas healer examines her. The healer poultices the wound, and does some stitching. Tovy admits that she's mostly faking her positive attitude, and she's worried about her mortality.

Yeli goes looking for some steam to blow off. She gets into a card game, which restores her sense of purpose.

Rezi still has that feeling of being watched, so she Looks Beyond to see if there's someone out there. One soldier's trying to tail her innocuously. She calls her stalker out and sends her packing. This other trooper, with Warden's insignia, says "sure thing" with questionable sincerity, and walks off. About ten minutes later, another corporal from clan Roysha comes over to complain about how Rezi treated her trooper. This corporal is very clear that Rezi should talk to her if she has a problem with one of her people. Rezi agrees to everything she wants just to make her go away.

Lomo's feeling a little jaded, a little out of sorts, and goes looking for a quiet place to ponder the Thin Boy. She lets the Shadow in and hears an inhuman wailing coming across the hills. She looks in that direction, and sees a pair of glowing eyes staring at her from outside the walls, and then a long-fingered hand slithering from outside the camp all the way to the squad tent. As the wail reaches a sort of crescendo, the vision ends.

Lomo then goes to talk to Rezi and asks if anyone took anything from that mine, something belonging to Thin Boy. We stole some prisoners. Hopefully that doesn't count. They go to the healers' tent and meet Tovy there, and a couple of the prisoners are also patients, including Vina. One of the prisoners is staring off into the distance, but that's more evidence of combat trauma than Shadow infuence. The remaining prisoners were quickly collected under orders from Lt Cdr Roena.

Lomo and Rezi then go to check on Lorru's condition. She's pale, unconscious, and under close attention from the healers, but she's alive. Lomo sits with her. Her condition is touch-and-go due to the blood she lost.

Rezi, Lomo, and Tovy go over to the meal tent. Lomo describes the vision she had, which Rezi has already heard about.

In the morning, Rezi reports to Sgt Reti in her tent. The sergeant emphasizes the importance of recovering the Lt Cdr, and asks Rezi what she needs. Replacements would be nice- the squad is down to the PCs and Loisa. There's a wagon train to the Aerie to pick up supplies, some of which will be redistributed from the northern legion. Reti wants us to escort that train and pick up recruits while we're at it. There's also some political stuff happening amongst the senior officers.

As we form up, Lomo looks beyond and sees that some of the people escorting the wagon train are officers, usually staff types. There's clearly some political action influencing the composition of the "escort." She shares this with her squad. This also implies that we'll be coming back a lot leaner.

Rezi succeeds her in Watch Their Backs roll. Lomo needs help from Rezi to turn his failure into a partial. Yeli succeeds. Tovy success with help from Lomo. Complications: we screwed up big time, and someone gets wounded during the fighting.

So, the group moves out, with our squad and two others as escorts. One of those squads is a really an ad-hoc formation of officers being sent to the Aerie as diplomats. The map given us for the route is neither current nor real accurate. For example, there's something marked as a forest that's actually a swamp. One of the officer-diplomats from Charsa complains about screw-ups from Clan Molthas leading the way, and another one takes offense, and now it's an inter-clan fistfight. Lomo and Tovy can't believe Rezi's going to allow this, and she isn't. She orders the squad to break it up. The corporal yells a lot while her troops pull people apart. Lomo's treating the Charsas a little rougher, Tovy's by the book. It dies down but it makes the rest of the trip a lot less pleasant, since people don't trust their fellows as much. Rezi sets up a guard rotation to try to make sure people can sleep, even though we're behind the lines. There's a little opposition but nobody pushes back too hard.

By the end of the second day, we arrive at the mountain fortress of the Aerie. It's a formidable place that guards the pass leading deeper into the mountains. The diplomat squad meets functionaries, who tell them that some clan heads are already there. The Aerie cadre sees Reti's orders about reinforcing our squad and says they can get us people, but while we wait, they want us to pull extra security during this big meeting.

Rezi orders Yeli and Loisa to get our squad camp set up. Yeli does so, while complaining about how much it sucks to be the new girl in the squad. The rest of the squad stands guard. During the day, a soldier of the Watch recognizes Tovy and asks her name. Apparently she sees the resemblance to Tovy's brother, Isaac. Tovy confesses her fear that she might one day have to kill Isaac with the skills he taught her.

Lomo meets an old friend, who talks about how the Aerie has become VIP central and a hotbed of clan tension. As they talk, Lomo offers to see if she can get her friend transferred to Rezi's squad.

As they set up, Yeli talks to Loisa about their chances of getting good troops at this rear-echelon fortress. They both agree they'll be getting the dregs, one way or another. Also, it bothers both of them that they get recruits and just feed them into battle, which kills them. Why even get to know the rookies? Loisa feels a little uncomfortable with this and shuts down.

Later, a sergeant comes to the squad tent, and starts asking Rezi how things are going in the southern legion. The sergeant orders Reti to keep bringing VIPs travelling to the Aerie in and see to their safety. Reti reminds her that her squad needs reinforcements. She'll look into that, but regardless, they need to put the squad in the field. Good news - within an hour and a half, two more troopers, Erda and Rayli, join up. That gives us seven, which is only two short of our rated strength!

We're assigned to travel to a nearby village, where a delegation from clan Thason needs to be brought back to the Aerie. The delegation will be headed by a man (!) named Thasser. As the squad approaches the village of Lower Nest, we observe that there are fewer lights than we'd expect a village to display this far behind the lines. Lomo notifies the corporal and asks Rayli why it's like this. Rayli doesn't know, even though she's been stationed in the area. Rezi and Lomo go ahead to check it out. The corporal orders Tovy to oversee the camp while she's out.

A village sentry asks Rezi to state her business. She says she's there to pick up Thasser and the Thason delegation, but no such people have been seen in the village. The sentry takes Rezi and Lomo to the village's great hall (the greatest of the five buildings in this podunk town) to meet an elder to discuss the problem. The elder, Truli, seems more familiar with the situation. Truli doesn't think it's OK for the Aerie to allow men in, and she won't allow men in to her village. The delegation went ahead to the Aerie this morning. Rezi thinks it's too late now to pursue and the squad should go after the VIPs early in the morning, but also says she can't believe Truli would just refuse shelter to people. Lomo takes it the next step further and curses Truli out for her behavior. Truli tells them that it's her duty to look out for the welfare of the village, and that means no men. Rezi and Lomo return to their camp. At the camp, they tell the other troops to sleep but plan on waking up very early. Loisa suggests w should go now, and Tovy backs her up. Rezi rejects that advice and tells the squad to stay put.

Later on, Yeli asks Tovy to help her search the woods for the missing diplomats. Tovy strongly declines and immediately wakes the corporal to report imminent mutiny. Rezi puts her foot down, and when it becomes clear that their argument is going in circles, Tovy tells Yeli that she has too much energy and they're going to spar a while. They barely get started before one of the town guards from the gate, near the road, cries out, "What is that!?" She's pointing to something past the wall, and that's when something dark crawls up and over the wall, grabs the guard, and begins to scuffle. It moves on all fours and has a whiplike tongue.

Roles for the mission to defend the village: Lomo watching backs, Rezi strategizing, Yeli on recon, Tovy on point. Lomo needs Tovy's help to get a partial. Rezi needs Lomo's hold to get a partial. Yeli gets a strong hit. Tovy gets a partial but spends a cameraderie with Rezi to make it a strong. Complications: Something follows us home, this mission was particularly hard on Rezi, someone got separated from us and is now lost. Also, Rezi surrenders to weariness, and loses all cameraderie with Loisa and Yeli.

Yeli notices that there are two more shadow monsters. Tovy runs to get the corporal, bursting in to her tent and yelling that the village is under attack, asking for permission to engage. Lomo was already on guard duty and rushes directly into action, shouting Molthas battle cries and acting almost like this is a sporting event. Tovy gets into the fight a little later, trying to keep the shadow animals from getting into town. She fights back-to-back with Rayli, but the leaping and shifting shadow creatures keep making them turn and shuffle, and Tovy doesn't even notice when Rayli vanishes. Rezi's exhausted trying to fight and also get her squad and the guard coordinated, but eventually two monsters are dead and the third has fled.

Truli comes out wondering what those things were. She feels a certain vindication reporting that the Shadow is indeed active in these parts, and reports that three monsters came over the wall and two are dead. Tovy begins calling for Rayli, then tells the corporal that they need to go after her right away. Rezi agrees! The squad sets out after her but there's no trace. We're out in the dark for a couple hours before Rezi says it's time to call it because the search is going nowhere. The sun rises on us back in Lower Nest. Trili says she'll keep Rayli in her prayers.

Lomo sucks up his grief. Yeli's muttering under her breath about how senseless this is. Loisa whispers to her that she's right and there's no point caring about new members of the squad. The squad gets maybe 90 minutes of sleep before Rezi gets them up to start searching for the diplomats.