Jade Gate Quest Session One: Journeys to the West!

Another caravan is coming towards your own, a short distance away. Your guide looks to you for orders. Traders are common on the road, but the same is to be said for bandits. Perhaps you may procure supplies or information. Or perhaps you'll be faced by the great bows of the Turgesh.

>What are your orders?
>Set a fast pace, and attempt to ride straight past the other caravan. If it is Turgesh, it will hardly have time to turn and chase you down.
>Stay still, prepare your weaponry, and be ready for a fight or a trade, as circumstances dictate.
>Stay still on the road and wait with open arms. You have no doubt that the caravan is a trade caravan.

>>1715322
>Stay still on the road and wait with open arms. You have no doubt that the caravan is a trade caravan.

Adventure or management quest?

>>1715322
>Set a fast pace, and attempt to ride straight past the other caravan. If it is Turgesh, it will hardly have time to turn and chase you down.

reaching the gate is our main priority

>>1715324
Both. You'll personally be doing some adventuring, and you'll be managing the town and fortification of the Jade Gate.

>>1715333
Flip a coin OP? more players will come if there are progress in the thread

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>1715347
1 - Stay Still
2 - Fast Pace

>>1715322
Fast pace

>>1715352
Fast pace

faster op, faster!

File: ravine.jpg (556KB, 1600x1200px) Image search: [Google]

556KB, 1600x1200px

It is not worth the risk. You call for the guide to drive the horses on and within moments the caravan's wheels are thundering along the crag-stone of the path. Iron shod hooves clatter like thunder as the cart rumbles, increasing the pace to far faster than before. Your guide is a wizened old man, experienced with his horses. If he were anything else you'd fear for your life at such a speed, and your attendants are shaken as the wagon rolls on at a gallop. The other caravan fades into the distance behind you in a few moments. You see them turning and watch an arrow sail through the air, proving your suspicions correct. You call out for the guide to drive on yet faster, having to steady yourself to fight off nausea as the cart shakes wildly with every stone and crack in the unpaved road.

The Turgesh are famed for their horsemanship, and though you cannot see far behind you from the kicked up dust, you feel the creeping paranoia rise in your throat as you imagine trains of Turgesh horsemen riding along your trail, seeking to enslave you and all those within the caravan. You shudder at the thought but push on nonetheless. After two or three hours, as the queasy sun sags in the sky, you dole out meals to your attendants and your guide from the supply case at the back of the wagon. Rooting through the rough sack-cloth, you draw out a pound of biscuit, cracking it into six pieces, each one placed in a metal bowl and given to one of the men. They pour their canteen water onto the dry husks of biscuit and chew on resulting chewy gruel. It is harsh fare, but each man is all the more glad to receive their chunk of cured sausage from the small provisions box in the depths of your supply cache.

Your guide tells you, in a heavily accented attempt at your tongue, that the horses will need to rest the night. Seeing no other choice, you call a halt. After a day at full pace, the Turgesh are likely to have just given up the chase, seeking more valuable and less agile quarry. Once your attendants have secured the wagon and set the horses free to graze on a small patch of scrubland, your guide again calls you over, bowing his head lightly and asking you to decide which route to the Gate you should take on the next day.

>The southern route around the deadly Katar Desert, leading you through a long ravine. This route will take three days, making it the fastest route, and likely the easiest for travel along the smoothed stone of the ravine, however, it is preyed upon by bandits and there are tales of human sacrifices along the road, and of altars to strange gods hidden in the nearby caves.

>The northern route around the Katar. Six days in all, stressing your food supply and possibly making you arrive at the gate a day later than ordered. This route is not often used, and much rougher in terms of terrain, but passes through a friendly country, through the lands of the roving Hulegan tribe of horsemen.

>>1715381
>The southern route around the deadly Katar Desert, leading you through a long ravine. This route will take three days, making it the fastest route, and likely the easiest for travel along the smoothed stone of the ravine, however, it is preyed upon by bandits and there are tales of human sacrifices along the road, and of altars to strange gods hidden in the nearby caves.

>>1715381
>>The southern route around the deadly Katar Desert, leading you through a long ravine. This route will take three days, making it the fastest route, and likely the easiest for travel along the smoothed stone of the ravine, however, it is preyed upon by bandits and there are tales of human sacrifices along the road, and of altars to strange gods hidden in the nearby caves.

In addition let us slow the pace so it would be a 4 day trek, so our mounts are fresh so run if we encounter bandits

>>1715381
South

>>1715381
>north
Make friends with the horsemen. Good relations with neighboring forces is helpful.

"We'll travel the southern route. Mad pagans are nothing to be concerned with for a grown man, and hidden altars are nothing more than the fantasies of scared travellers. Nonetheless, we will travel at a slower pace, to keep the horses fresh for a flight. It may be foolish to fear pagans, but it is not folly to fear a bandit"

Your guide looks solemn, clutching a small pagan holy icon in his hands, a cross, before nodding and returning to the cart to sleep. Within a day, you have passed within sight of the Katar gates, the entrance to the ravine. The shade cools you and yet sends a chill down your spine as the party moves forward. The ravine seems to close like a toothed maw above you, points of stone seeming to grow ever closer as the darkness encroaches. The stone is smoothed, and the cold echo of the long, half buried chamber reverberates around the caravan. Noises seem to warp as the cart moves forward, with only the rhythmic clang of horseshoes on cool stone staying constant.

You find yourself clutching your blade's hilt through your robes, and you see your fellows, the attendants bearing spears or hand axes, doing the same. Their plain robes do not stand out nearly so much as the shifting sea of red-yellow silk and linen comprising your robes, marking you out as an imperial administrator. You notice with horror that you are a prime target. Any bandit could guess at the contents of the cache in the wagon, and could easily figure out where the small hoard of silver coins you bear with you are hidden.

No-one speaks as the shadow encroaches, and all is silent for a long while. Late in the second day of your journey through the great cleft gash of the earth, the silence is harshly interrupted. A huge chunk of rock falls from the sliver of light above you, slamming with a shearing clang into the ground, a few feet in front of the horses, blocking the way. You look up, and for a moment you swear you see a figure, outlined in the light, standing over the crack from whence the rock had fallen. The caravan cannot move past the rock unless you take the time to haul the great boulder away. You cannot be sure, but your gut churns with the fear of an ambush. Your attendants are divided. Two stand ready to defend the caravan, along with the guide, while another two hurry with a set of saddles and saddlebags, begging you to allow them to release the horses, load as many supplies into saddle bags as possible, and to bolt.

They look to you for a decision

>Naught but a hallucination. Haul the boulder away. This will take an hour, at least, and if you are wrong, you will be caught unprepared.
>Flee while yet we can! Load the horses and bolt before the guide can stop you, along with your most loyal attendants. You will have no-one left to guide you, but you will likely escape before any attack can come.
>Settle for the night. Prepare for any combat that should come, and be ready to haul the boulder away when morning comes. This will cause delay

>>1715395
>Settle for the night. Prepare for any combat that should come, and be ready to haul the boulder away when morning comes. This will cause delay

>>1715398
this. Fight

>>1715395
>Settle for the night. Prepare for any combat that should come, and be ready to haul the boulder away when morning comes. This will cause delay

>>1715398
>>1715419
this

At work but will be getting in on this when i get off

Is time to call Mortician already?

:'(