Turn One – Mirefield Farms and the Roadside fight
The Blightburners rode into Mirefield Farms under a low, sickly sky, the green river sluggish and stinking beside the road. Sod-roofed longhouses squatted between muddy fields, and every stalk of barley looked like it had been chewing on something rotten. The locals were desperate. The spring planting was late, the soil was fighting back, and an ogre had taken up residence somewhere in the southern wilds, trampling crops and scaring off the game.
The town council — three weathered farmers and the old reeve — approached them before they even unsaddled. “We’ll pay,” the reeve said, voice flat. “Kill the beast. Bring back proof. And… our best hunter, Mara Reed, went looking for its den three days ago. She hasn’t come back. Find her if you can. Alive.”
Two contracts. Two fat pouches of coin promised. The Blightburners didn’t even pretend to haggle.
They spent the rest of the day earning the farmers’ goodwill the hard way. Sigrid swung a scythe like it owed her money. Rose worked the rows with a look that dared the dirt to talk back. Dust slipped between the stalks like he was born there, pointing out the worst patches. Grimwald muttered over the worst of the green-veined roots and coaxed a little life back into them with his alchemy. Garric and Finn hauled water and mended fences until their hands bled.
By dusk the fields looked almost hopeful again.
The next morning the warband rode south, following the faint trail the council had given them. The land grew wilder fast. Blackthorn thickets clawed at their legs. The green river ran thicker here, almost oily. Late in the afternoon Dust spotted fresh, heavy tracks cutting through the mud — huge, splayed, and wrong. They led toward a misty hollow the map didn’t name. An unexplored location. The ogre’s lair, almost certainly.
But the tracks ended at a half-collapsed roadside ruin, the kind the old border wars left behind like broken teeth. Moss choked the fallen stones, strange pink-capped mushrooms pushed up between the cracks, and a battered wagon cart sat in the middle of the courtyard like it belonged there.
Dust slipped forward like smoke.
A camp of roadside robbers — six hard-eyed bastards in ragged leathers — had the missing hunter, Mara Reed, on her knees between them. Rope around her wrists, a gag in her mouth, fresh blood on her temple. She was still breathing. Barely.
Robber camp in the ruinsHe then spotted the carts contents, loaded sacks, and the glint of something wrapped in linen. Three robbers guarded the stash in the back. The rest of the bastards were lounging around a lean-to tent, laughing too loud.
The Fight at the Old Ruin
Dust’s small bow came up.The Halfling’s arrow hissed out and punched through the throat of one stash guard before the man even knew he was dead. The second archer — still crouched by the wagon — snapped his head up and saw Sigrid standing bold in the middle of the road, bastard sword already drawn, shield high. The bandit grinned, drew, and loosed.
The arrow slammed into Sigrid’s side, punching through the chain links. She staggered, blood blooming hot across her ribs, stunned and pissed beyond words.
The rest of the robbers melted into cover, unsure where the first shot had come from. The Blightburners answered in kind, slipping from stone to stone while Sigrid snarled through clenched teeth.
Grimwald’s voice rolled low and ugly. He marked the bandit captain with a faint, sickly glow and whispered Confuse. The man’s eyes went glassy.
Sigrid moves on the captain
Sigrid charged straight at him anyway, pain fueling every step. Their blades rang like hammers on an anvil — back and forth, sparks flying — until her bastard sword finally carved through his guard and opened his throat. The leader dropped into a spreading pool of his own blood.
Another robber rushed Rose. Steel sang. The man staggered back wounded and stunned, but still on his feet.
Then the remaining archer saw Garric lumbering forward to help Rose. The arrow took the big soldier square in the chest. Garric’s light armor crumpled like paper. He went down hard.
A third bandit howled and charged Sigrid to avenge his dead leader. She spent a point of pure Will, eyes blazing, and met him head-on. Two savage blows later the man was dead on top of his captain.
Finn saw Garric fall and screamed “Nooooo!!” — raw and broken. His arrow flew true and buried itself to the fletching in the archer’s eye. The man dropped like a sack of grain.
Rose grinned at the wounded robber “my turn bitch” and ran him through.
The last two robbers rushed Sigrid and Rose together. One died screaming on Rose’s rapier. The other threw down his blade and begged Sigrid for his life.
While Finn sprinted to Garric’s side, the rest of the Blightburners swept the camp.
They found Mara Reed hogtied behind the wagon, clothes half torn, the robbers clearly about to do something very ugly. She was alive — shaken, bloody, but spitting mad.
Mara thanks the Blightburners
They also found one more stash: a beautiful bow wrapped in oilskin. Swift Eagle. Dust picked it up, ran his thumb along the limbs, and smiled like a wolf that just learned to fly.
As Sigrid knelt to strip the dead robber captain for anything of value, her fingers brushed a crumpled, blood-spattered parchment tucked inside his tunic. Unfolding it revealed a short, ugly note written in a rough hand and sealed with a crude green wax sigil: “Deliver the strong ones and the hunter alive to the shrine in the Hollow before the new moon. The Womb hungers. More meat means more coin.” At the bottom was a twisted mark that looked like a gaping mouth ringed in thorns. Grimwald leaned in, eyes narrowing. This was no ordinary bandit work. A far darker plot was already stirring.
The wagon itself gave up its secrets — a heavy sack of good grain, a repait kit, a full suit of knight’s plate that made Sigrid’s eyes light up like fresh steel, and a set of bright, well-forged maille that Rose claimed with a single sharp look that dared anyone to argue.
Grimwald’s old bones felt a little lighter — his casting had grown sharper. Sigrid, still bleeding but grinning through it, felt the weight of the fight settle into her sword arm. She was better now. Meaner.
Garric was battered but alive; his armor, however, was fucked beyond repair.
Not a bad afternoon’s work.
The Blightburners stood among the corpses and the pink-capped mushrooms, breathing hard, already richer and meaner than when they woke up. Mara Reed looked at them with new respect, but the note they’d pulled from the captain’s tunic still burned in Sigrid’s fist.
Somewhere deeper in the wilds, the ogre still waited… and whatever hungry thing in the Hollow had paid these bastards to deliver “strong ones and the hunter alive” was already waiting too.
.JPEG)