Champions of Ostgarten
Part 2: Guarding the Guardians
A day and a half after leaving the village, just after the noon break, Otto spotted three of the guards muttering together furtively behind a wagon. In fact, one of them was trying to jmmy open the lock of the rearmost wagon, presumably to get at the guns stored inside.
Otto confronted the men, who tried to placate him and said they’d cut him in on the deal—they were planning to steal the whole shipment and the rest of the guards, hand-picked friends of theirs, were in on it, too.
Otto called for help, and that was all it took to set off
the guards’ ambush—they tried to subdue him while
their cohorts around the other wagons turned spears on the
others, warning them to stand down. Of course, the brave adventurers
did no such thing.
Sithbane knocked out, wounded or killed six of the renegade
guards in the ensuing brawl, taking a painful and bloody but
superficial stab-wound in the arm. The others took minor cuts
and scrapes despite being knocked around and battered.
Two bandits had overpowered Otto and knocked him down when Odinson came to his rescue, stunning one with a knuckleduster to the privates. Otto came up swinging, and between them they wounded and chased off five thugs.
After Odinson felled one and Albrecht killed two with his pistol—despite a shallow cut to his stomach—the other two tried to flee. Odinson killed one with an incredible knife-throw, skewering his throat from 10 yards away through the woods. Otto killed the other with a deadly spell.
A bandit wrestled Farnoth to the ground and was trying to strangle him when Sithbane knocked him off. The thug tried to surrender, but the enraged Farnoth tried to knife him. The bandit ran for it, and he and the elf outran Sithbane, but finally Farnoth overtook the bandit and killed him in the woods.
One bandit escaped into the trees. The heroes took four captive, one of them badly wounded—Sithbane went out of his way to keep the wounded one alive, and tried to save two others. The other seven died in the battle or afterward.