Wilderlands S&W session: Boars and Gores

Last session saw the intrepid explorers continuing north along the shores of the Sea of Five Winds, traveling mostly by night to avoid the patrols of Baron Ixpli. Ixpli, being nearly as smart as he is tenacious, soon expanded his patrols to include night expeditions, and his trackers were soon back on the party's trail, despite Tesmir's best elven woodcraft.

Further complicating things was Galya(the Baron's errant wife, having "escaped" her "imprisonment" via her seduction of Zurka)'s slow realization that skulking around in the wilderness night after night was not exactly the fullest realization of her romanticized vision of the future. The complaining started only two days and some thirty miles north of her home, and soon turned towards exhorting Zurka to simply stand and fight, implying he was more than man enough to face and kill Baron Ixpli.

Of course Odis immediately began advocating the hasty abandonment of Galya, encouraging Zurka to seek a "harlot" with "stronger nerves and weaker tongue";)

Deciding that finding a ship of some sort was only way to truly elude Ixpli's mounted patrols, the party doubled their speed and stuck close to the shoreline in hopes of spotting a fishing boat or anything to aid their escape. As they emerged out onto the beach, a half dozen of Ixpli's black-and-gold attired lancers burst from the dunes behind them and attempted to run the party down.

Tesmir stopped and threw up his arms, conjuring up a blast of hurricane-force wind that spewed up sand and water at the riders, causing their horses to rear up, screaming, and dismounting all but one the lancers, which was felled by a well-placed crossbow bolt from Odis's fancy new crossbow. Overmatched for the time being, the remaining riders calmed their mounts, remounted, and rode back the way they came, presumably to alert Ixpli to the party's location. Knowing their time was short, the party hastily raced forward again.

At last, they located a small vessel, seemingly abandoned on the shore, barnacle-encrusted, and upside down. Unfortunately for them, the beached boat was currently being used as the residence of gigantic wild boar, which immediately took offense to the party's invasion of its territory, and set about teaching them a violent lesson. The fight was brutal, and saw both Tesmir and Zurka viciously gored before they finally put the raging beast down.

Despite his wounds, the Avalonian swordsman was able to quickly assess what repairs were needed for the small vessel, and the party went to it, putting things back together "A-Team-Style" (cue military disco music), replacing some weak spots in the hull with fresh timber from the surrounding woods, and patching the holes in the tattered old sail with their own cloaks. Odis provided new rope for the rigging.

Before long, they had set sail for the north, passing just beyond the surf-line as they spotted a large group of black-and-gold lancers, their shrouded sorcerous leader in the front, but too far out of range for his black arts to have any effect.