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That same evening that our hero returned another caravan arrived at the Fort, this time from the eastern end. The merchant and guards of the caravan reported that they spotted several orcs at Watcher Butte the day before as their caravan passed. Concerned that this meant that the canyon orcs were plotting an attack, Captain Mossak asked our heroes to find out if the orcs were indeed gathering north of the river.
While Kargen and Rokas worked with Dareni on a means to immobilise the rock guardian, Arwin and Mala, accompanied by Enree (see PC profiles here), a guard with the caravan, Gad, and Lennard the porter returned to Watcher Butte to investigate.
A day's travel brought our heroes to Stoneglow Draw campsite just as the sun was setting. While the rest made camp, Enree went to the nearby stream to collect water. There, he saw the prostrate body of an orc across the stream. The orc was wounded and unconscious; he carried no weapon, but had a bag that held some berries, and a bone flute. Enree packed the orc's wound with his hat, splashed water on him to wake him, and gave him water to drink. When the orc had regained some of his strength, Enree helped him back to the camp.
The orc's arrival was met with disapproval by Lennard. To our heroes' relief the newcomer was a farmer orc like Gad, and introduced himself as Tokala. Tokala told the party that he and two other villagers was foraging for berries to take back to their village at the nearby Rak-Rosar plateau when they were attacked by canyon orcs. He was struck by an arrow but managed to flee, but grew weak from the loss of blood and fell unconscious just as he was about to reach the stream.
As they were having their meal around the camp fire, Enree asked to see Tokala's bone flute, which the orc happily obliged. Tokala then offered to play a tune for the party. As the party listened to the tune, they grew sleepy, and one by one, except for Enree, they fell asleep. Through his groggy eyes Enree now saw Tokala transform into a bestial form: his skin inverted and fur covered his body; a snout emerged from his mouth, baring sharp teeth. The transformed Tokala moved towards Lennard...
Enree called upon his magic to cause fear in the mind of Tokala, causing him to pause, and at the same time roused Arwin. The two then battled the monster, and were soon joined by Mala, who conjured up fire to set it aflame and kill it.
Afterwards Gad, who was frozen with fear throughout the event, told our heroes that the monster was known as a Skinwalker among his people: an evil shaman who had the ability to assume the form of orcs and beasts.
The party spent a fitful night at camp. The next morning, as they were eating breakfast, they saw a small party of orcs approaching their camp. The party hid among rocks as the orcs approached, and when they were close enough for Gad to identify them as farmer orcs, they revealed themselves.
The farmer orcs were apprehensive at first, but when they noticed the burnt body of the skinwalker nearby and learned from Gad what had happened, they became friendlier. Our heroes asked about the presence of canyon orcs, but the orc party had not seen any of them so far. The orcs in turn asked about sightings of Bighorn sheep, which they hoped to hunt. Eager to earn an ally, our heroes offered to lead the orcs to where they saw some sheep the day before. There, they saw a herd of sheep drinking from the river in the valley below.
The orcs invited our heroes to join them in their hunt, which they agreed. Setting two parties in ambush on either side of the valley, a third party made their way near to the herd to cause an alarm. The herd split into two, each fleeing one way. One ram led the herd up the side of the canyon, right into the site chosen by Arwin for the ambush, who brought it down with a bolt from his crossbow.
The kill was met with much rejoicing by the orcs, who butchered the ram and presented the tongue and the head of the ram to Arwin. The party was invited back to the camp of the orcs, where a feast was held. There they met with the matriarch of the tribe, when our heroes presented gifts to her and received gifts in return. From the matriarch they learned about the history of conflict between the farmer orcs and the canyon orcs, and also about the legend regarding the manticore - which the canyon orcs called the Piasu. The Piasu was a creature from the legend of the canyon orcs - a monster that arose from the underworld and terrorised the people, until at last it was slain by a hero. Unfortunately, the means by which they did this was not known to the matriarch.
Prepping and Running the Game
A couple of the regular players could not make this session, and we had one new player, and so I decided to not progress the story to a final encounter with the manticore, but play a sort of a filler session. This session consisted of two parts: the encounter with the skinwalker, and the Bighorn sheep hunt.
I decided on the second part after a player wondered aloud in an earlier session how the Bighorn sheep (which I had said they encountered in previous sessions) tasted. I did a bit of googling, and it turned out that native Americans did hunt bighorn sheep, and still take people on hunts today.
I knew that a hunt would only take up part of a session, and so I looked for a combat encounter to fill the time. I came upon the legends of the skinwalker, and decided to build an encounter around them. The skinwalker as it appeared in our session is not representative of the skinwalker as the Navajo people know it; in fact it seems that the Navajo people are reluctant to share their tales of skinwalkers with outsiders. Now even though I included the skinwalker as an encounter which was not linked to the rest of the campaign, my players were very curious about it and asked many questions on its nature, which I was able to give second-hand answer through the farmer orc matriarch.
The campaign should come to a close in another session or two, after which I hope to move on to another sandbox campaign by the same author.
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