5 Leagues Turn Three - Cruel Deserters at the Crumbling Inn

Turn Three – Preparation at Mirefield Farms

If you missed Turn Two and the ogre in the hollow, you can find it here: Turn Two The Ogre 

The Blightburners rode back into Mirefield Farms under a bruised sky, still carrying the stink of ogre blood and sour smoke from the last fight.. Three gold marks left the purse before the saddles came off—Sigrid’s order. “Good steel deserves good ale,” she said. No one argued. But they could only watch the villagers bartering with the trader caravan that had rolled in while they were gone. They were lean on coin

They drank with the locals that evening. Garric’s mace rested against the table like an old comrade. Finn’s easy smile loosened tongues. Rose watched everything with narrow eyes. Dust nursed one mug and kept an ear on the wind. Rough laughter rose and fell—the kind men share when they know the dark is listening. Another Adventure Point slipped into their tally.

By the time the lanterns burned low they had what Mara was looking for: whispers of Curse of War deserters moving north. Men who’d drunk from the green water and now craved more than coin. They meant to hit Mirefield before the week turned—burn the stores, collar the strong, feed the rest to whatever waited downstream.

They laid it out for her. Mara pressed two gold into Sigrid’s hand. “For pulling me out of that mess back when you first rode in. And for this.” A Story Point joined their ledger with the coin.

Come morning, Sigrid was in the muddy yard behind the longhouse, bastard sword rising and falling against a straw-stuffed post in brutal, precise arcs. Each strike landed cleaner. Harder. One more scar of experience carved into her. (+1 XP)

Later that evening Mara found them again. The hearth fire spat and hissed.

“They’re coming,” she said, voice low. “A sergeant and his pack of deserters. Curse of War filth. They’ve drunk from the green water and now they crave more than coin. They mean to hit Mirefield before the week turns.”

She slid another small pouch across the table. “For pulling me out of that mess back when you first rode in,” she said quietly. “And for what’s coming.”

Sigrid took the pouch, drained her mug, and set it down with a heavy thud that cut through the noise. Rose’s fingers brushed her fencing sword. Grimwald’s hand stilled over his mug. Dust’s ears twitched. Garric and Finn traded a single look—old soldier and old rogue, both smelling the fight.

Sigrid’s voice was flat. “Then we meet them head on. Before they reach these fields. Before they make any more widows.”

The warband rose as one—hard-bitten, blooded, and already leaning toward the next fire. The Marches were watching.

 The Table Set up

Turn Three Battle – The Crumbling Inn

The cruel deserters had holed up in an old wayside inn a short ride from Mirefield Farms. The place was rotting from the inside—timbers sagging, roof half-collapsed, the kind of ruin only desperate men would claim. Finn and Dust slipped back from the treeline, the air crisp on an unusually chilly spring morning.  I light late snow had dusted the area during the night.

“They’ve got a captive,” Dust said. “Man. Looks like the one the woman in the ale-house was asking about last night—her husband, snatched from his fields.”

Sigrid’s jaw tightened. The Blightburners gathered at the edge of the woods, weapons loose, eyes hard.

 Cruel Deserters at the Crumbling Inn

Blightburners make ready 

Round One Grimwald muttered and marked one of the archers perched in the rafters with a sickly glow. Finn took cover behind a tree and put an arrow into the bastard’s shoulder. The man staggered, stunned. 

Dust stood tall, out of range, and loosed with Swift Eagle. The arrow took the second archer clean through the eye. He toppled from the rafters with a wet crash that woke the whole nest.

The deserters roared and charged into the courtyard like mad dogs.

 

Deserters charge howling 

Round Two Dust shot again and missed, cursing under his breath. The wounded archer answered, his shaft punching through Finn’s cover and hitting the rogue, wounded and stunned. Finn shot Dust a filthy look.

The deserters came on hard, baiting a fight. Sigrid answered. She met their sergeant head-on, blades ringing. Her bastard sword found the gap and opened his throat. He died choking on his own blood at her feet.

 

Garric crashed into a swordsman. They traded brutal blows that ended in a draw, both winded. Rose stepped up beside him, smirking. “My turn.” Her rapier slid between ribs. The man dropped. She glanced at Garric. “You’re welcome.”

Grimwald moved to cover behind a tree. He never saw the deserter slipping through the brush behind him.

Round Three Finn and Dust went fast. Finn missed the last archer. Dust did not. The scrawny woman fell from the rafters with a final crash. Sigrid stepped over the sergeant’s corpse and cut down another swordsman in two savage strokes.

From the treeline a deserter sprang on Grimwald, hacking wildly. The old mystic met her with his staff. A wet crunch later the woman lay dead, skull caved in.

A foul dark-skinned dwarf charged Sigrid. She ran him through before he finished his roar. 

 

The last deserter rushed Garric, landing a ugly blow that left the big man stunned and bleeding. Rose snarled, “Fuck this and fuck you,” and put two quick thrusts through the man’s chest. He bled out at her feet. Garric could only nod thanks.

The field fell quiet. 

Resolution They cut the captive free. His name was Brenn Carver, a farmer snatched the day before while working his plot. Shaken but alive, he swore he’d repay the debt however he could. The Blightburners had a new friend in Mirefield.

They stripped the dead and found a fat pile of stolen furs worth five gold marks. Six Adventure Points joined their tally for a hard-fought victory and holding the field.

Garric stood a little taller that night. The fire of the fight had forged him into a full hero. Sigrid moved easier in the captured knight’s plate—her stride now carried her further each step. Rose felt the weight of battle settle into her bones and grew tougher for it. Dust and Finn both sharpened their aim, each gaining a surer hand in combat.

The warband rode back to Mirefield under a bruised sky. No fresh rumors reached them. For once, no news felt like good news.

The wound in the land still bled green, but the Blightburners had drawn first blood against the Curse of War. More would come. They would be ready.

 

5 Leagues - Blightburners Turn Two – The Ogre

 Turn Two – The Ogre

 

The foul beast

 

 

This is Turn 2. After dragging Mara Reed out of the ruin, the Blightburners pushed deeper into the wilds — and something in the tainted hollow had already caught their scent. If you missed Turn 1, start here - Roadside Fight

Prep: Roots, Resolve & Rising Stars

The Blightburners made camp in the lee of the old ruin, the stink of blood and crushed mushrooms still hanging in the air. While Finn and Grimwald tended Garric’s wounds (the big man was already growling that he was “fine, just pissed”), Dust and Rose slipped into the wild growth at the edge of the clearing. They came back with armfuls of bitter roots and dark, sweet berries — enough to stretch the warband’s supplies. Hard Times only cost them a single Gold Mark this turn. Small mercies in a rotting land.

That night, around a low fire, something shifted.

Mara Reed sat with them, still pale but steady. She had watched Finn put an arrow through the archer’s eye without hesitation, watched Sigrid carve through the captain like he was nothing. When the last bandit begged for his life, she had looked at the Blightburners — these violent, competent strangers who had pulled her out of hell — and made a quiet decision.

“You saved my life,” she said simply. “And you didn’t have to. If you’re heading deeper into the wilds… I can help. I know these woods better than most. You ever need a guide, a safe route, or someone to watch your back from the trees — you come find me in Mirefield. Consider me in your debt.”

Mara Reed became a Hunter Friend. She can provide scouting information, safe travel routes, or minor aid when the warband operates near Mirefield Farms or the southern wilds. The rescue had weight. She would not forget it.

Later, while the others slept, Dust and Rose trained in the flickering light. Dust pushed himself harder than usual — something about watching Garric go down had lit a fire under the little Halfling. He came away with +1 Will. Rose, for her part, drilled with her rapier until her arm burned, turning the near-miss with the charging robber into fuel. She gained +1 Combat Skill.

And then there was Finn.

The moment Garric had crumpled under that arrow, something in Finn Vey had broken open. He had screamed — raw, furious, personal — and put an arrow through the archer’s eye like the man had personally wronged him. In the aftermath, while the others looted and tended wounds, Finn had stayed close to Garric’s side longer than necessary. The big former soldier had noticed. He hadn’t said anything. Just clapped a heavy, bloodied hand on Finn’s shoulder and left it there a moment too long.

Whatever had passed between them in that ruin — whether it was battlefield brotherhood, something older and quieter, or the kind of bond two mercenaries forge when the world tries to take one of them — it had changed Finn. At the end of the previous turn’s resolution, when the dice were cast for advancement… he rolled a 96.

Finn Vey is no longer a Follower.

He is a full Hero, and the fire of that fight has gifted him the Scouting skill. The others noticed the change in him — the new steadiness in his eyes, the way he moved like he finally knew exactly where he belonged in the warband. Sigrid caught Rose’s knowing smirk and didn’t comment. Some things didn’t need saying out loud.

Before they broke camp, Mara pulled Sigrid aside.

“When you return to Mirefield… ask around for me. Quietly. I want to know if anyone else has gone missing, or if anyone’s been asking too many questions about hunters heading south. Something about that note you found on the captain… it doesn’t sit right. If there’s a larger game being played, I’d rather know before we walk into it.”

Research action triggered: Mara Reed (Friend) requests the Blightburners gather information in Mirefield Farms upon their return.

The journey back north was uneventful — just long days of travel under a bruised sky and the constant, low hum of the green river. No ambushes. No omens. Just the road and the weight of what they carried.

But Finn Vey, newly minted Hero and suddenly very motivated, ranged ahead with eyes sharper than ever. Two days out from the ruin, he returned at a run, breathing hard but grinning like a man who had just won something important.

“I found it,” he said. “The ogre’s lair. Fresh tracks, heavy, leading into a sinkhole at the edge of that misty hollow. It’s real. And it’s close.”

The Blightburners had their target.

Somewhere in the wilds ahead, the ogre waited.

And somewhere deeper still, whatever had paid those robbers to deliver “strong ones and the hunter alive” was still hungry.

 

 Table setup

The Encounter with the Ogre -

The mud sucked at Finn Vey’s boots like it wanted to keep him. He moved low through the twisted trees edging the lair, the reek of old meat and sour earth thick enough to taste. The first marker yielded nothing but churned dirt and black thorns. He slid toward the nook where the ground dipped, and there it was.

The ogre squatted in the hollow, back half-turned, massive shoulders rising and falling with wet, rattling breaths. It hadn’t seen him. Finn froze, then eased back one careful step at a time. Something glinted at the base of a gnarled tree off to his left — a bottle, half-buried in the muck. He ghosted over, crouched, and ran a finger along the glass. Good wine. Expensive. The kind no farmer in Mirefield Farms could afford. The tip of a hoard, maybe.

He lifted two fingers. The signal.

 In position

Sigrid came up the center like she always did, bastard sword loose in her grip, shield high. Rose slid in on her right, fencing blade already half-drawn, mouth set in that familiar hard line. Garric hulked to the left, mace resting on one thick shoulder, scarred face unreadable. Grimwald stayed twenty paces back, staff planted, lips already moving over the first syllables of something ugly. Dust — Swift Eagle now slung across his back — had dropped even farther, finding his angle through the trees. He knew the range. He always did.

The dice betrayed them from the first breath.

Sigrid spent the Will to take the fight to it. Dust’s arrow was the only clean thing that landed — a dark shaft buried deep in the ogre’s flank. The creature roared, a sound that shook rot from the branches, and swung its club in a lazy arc that hit nothing but air. Sigrid was already moving, boots hammering mud. Steel met meat in a furious exchange, her blade biting deep across its thigh. Hot blood spattered her greaves. The ogre staggered back, wounded now, eyes rolling white with pain and rage. She pressed, sword rising for the next cut.

The club came down like a falling tree.

It smashed into her shield with a sound like a door breaking. Sigrid’s knees buckled. The impact folded her, armor and all, into the mud at the ogre’s feet. She didn’t get up. The monster threw its head back and roared again, spittle and blood flying.

Garric charged with a wordless snarl, mace already swinging. He crashed into the thing shoulder-first, trading blows in a desperate, hammering exchange. Nothing landed clean. The ogre’s hide was too thick, its fury too fresh. Garric’s mace rebounded off bone and fat. He was driven back a step, boots slipping in the gore Sigrid had already spilled.

Rose Blackthorn watched for half a heartbeat.

“Fuck this shit.”

 For Sigrid!

She went in low and fast, fencing blade a silver blur. No wasted motion. No heroic shout. Just spinning cuts, precise stabs, the rapier sliding between ribs and under the arm where the earlier wound had already weakened the hide. The ogre tried to turn, club rising again. Rose’s blade found the soft place under the jaw and drove upward in one straight, final thrust. The killing blow. Blood fountained hot across her face and chest. The monster’s roar choked into a wet gurgle. It toppled, a mountain of meat and shit and matted hair, and lay still.

Rose Blackthorn the Ogre Slayer 

The lair gave up its secrets grudgingly.

They found the rest buried in the mud at the same tree where the wine bottle had waited. A cloak of strange, iridescent weave — the Wasp of Denial, Grimwald muttered, something that turned aside small things with venom. A heavy sack holding a map-maker’s kit, brass instruments and rolled vellum already stained at the edges. And a fine self bow with a quiver of arrows fletched in dark feathers, the wood still smelling of oil and careful hands.

Sigrid came to with a groan and a mouthful of copper. She sat up slow, shield arm hanging wrong, but alive. Sigrid’s luck had saved her from what had surely been a killing blow. The shield took the weight that should have caved her skull, but the echo of it would sit in her bones for days. The mire doesn’t forget when it almost wins.

 Skull still ringing

Rose cleaned her blade on the ogre’s hide without looking at anyone. Garric spat blood and flexed his fingers around the mace haft. Dust slipped in from the trees, Swift Eagle still warm in his hands, and said nothing. Grimwald’s spells hadn’t been needed in the end. Sometimes the land took its due in silence.

On the trail back they moved slower. Garric worked leather and wood with his knife whenever they stopped, muttering about grips and balance, honing the craft the way old soldiers do when the fight is done. The others marked what the day had taught them in the quiet way men and women do when they’ve seen one of their own go down and get back up.

Mirefield Farms smelled of turned earth and woodsmoke when they rode in. Mara Reed was already home, the contract coin waiting in a pouch that didn’t feel quite heavy enough for what it had cost. A trader caravan had rolled in behind them, canvas wagons creaking, the merchants already setting up under the twisted oaks at the edge of the fields. New goods. New eyes on the green river. New chances to trade for what the warband needed before the next stretch of road called.

The Blightwomb kept breathing under it all. But for one night, the mire had given more than it took.

 

5 Leagues: Blightburners Turn One – Mirefield Farms and the Roadside fight

 

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 ruins

He 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.

Map setup

 

Dust scouts ahead

 

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.

 

The biggest robber, the captain grinned when he saw the Blightburners moving forward .“Well now,” he drawled. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves some heroes.”

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.