Author note: I am unspeakably slow, but like the mighty tortoise(with the attention span of a chipmunk), I eventually get there. I'm going to start padding deadlines.
You ultimately decide on keeping the mercenaries together, they have many strange customs that might not go over well with the common soldiery, are a tightly knit group that work well together, and you suspect that if you scattered them they would find a way to avoid taking any of the coming casualties, a state of affairs that would be mildly irritating to you given their relatively blatant profiteering off of you misfortune.
They remain under their commander Samad Mihammad, who is an old man to still be alive in his sort of business. Hopefully that means he is especially dangerous or clever rather than especially evasive or cowardly.
Your military advisor Hossam Mahmud advises you not to rely overmuch on the man, and helps you plan out the campaign, you need to try to get Riphorn's blood up, and convince him to strike somewhere predictable, and there are only a handful of levera you can use to push for that kind of resolution.
You need to challenge Riphorn, make it clear that he is facing a great force and should not just ignore you, and you need to control what he knows.
To achieve this end you try to track the enemy back to their camps, one of the few things you feel willing to do in advance of the next body of your force arriving. The mercenaries are sent out, to see if they are as good if their bragging claims they are.
So they go out into the villages and herds. They learn from the shepherds and adventurers and locals among the militia, using their stories to isolate the position and bearing of the Beastpaths through the mountains. And they speak to their local counterparts, recently crushed in battle against the enemy and eager for revenge.
SCOUTING [98+15 Skill +12 Heaven and Earth= 125: Super Critical success]
And as they do so a picture gradually forms, by the end of the month and a half it takes for the rest of your planned force to arrive they swear they have a completed accounting of the location, numbers and transit routes of their enemy. If they are correct, the Combined warherds in the area number some 14,000 Beastmen after their battles and a spate of bad luck in acquiring replacements. They are split into one camp of 4000, one camp of 3000, and seven camps of 1000, with several of the largest camps positioned nearby each other and the others scattered in good positions for raiding and replenishing their losses from the local Beastmen populations. They will likely begin coalescing into one force as soon as they learn that you have arrived so you intend to strike their outlying camps shortly before your forces are due to assemble.
STOPPING THEM FROM NOTICING YOU[2 + 20from the super critical +15skill = 37]
THEIR RESPONSE[65] most run, some raid
DETECTION OF RIADERS[72+12+15 =99]
YOUR TROOPS AMBUSH THE RAIDERS[58 +10crit +12 +15 =95]
Unfortunately it seems that something about your army moving in tipped them off. With what appears to be a fair amount of confusion the outlying warherds begin contracting back towards the largest groups of beastmen. But some are left behind, as with their blood up they cannot bring themselves to flee, one group of about a thousand charges towards where they believe your army is billeted. They fail to realize that you have just recently gained an extremely comprehensive map of their preferred mode of travel, and can thus track their every move within the lands men patrol. Where they intended to infiltrate into your territory through the hidden paths and lie in wait to raid you during the night, instead they find themselves caught stretched out along the mean hidden trails that are central to the lifestyle of these mutants, and surrounded.
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It is just after noon that the leader of this warherd seems to detect something amiss as they march, strung out along the beast path.
RESPONSE[94+15+12 =111 a success, I am surprised, this scale of success skips a challenge roll]
But the largest of the beasts, a disgusting narrow triangular snouted, bat eared, catfish whiskered, two horned monster, or a beast, standing head and shoulders above any man on the battlefield commands them. He drives them on unheeding of and disturbance, perhaps believing that the odd scent on the air and unsettling feelings that this trail has been traversed are indicative of another denizen of the forest, long gone, or little threat to a warherd one thousand strong.
Right then is when your soldiers emerge from the screens of foliage and quick dugouts that have concealed them along both sides of the path causing a panic among the beastmen. They realize they are surrounded, and throw themselves at your lines with the fury of cornered animals.
BREAKOUT ATTEMPT[7 +12 +10numbers ??? = ??]
Unfortunately your men are disrupted and out of position, they can't quite seem to prevent this warherd from making a quick charge towards the thinly defended front and rear of the encirclements. While the men caught in the gap make a solid fight of it they are too disorganized to close ranks and prevent the enemy from encircling and bypassing the clumps of humans that those sections of the encirclement disintegrate into. You call for a rally, and move men to support those threatened by these breakout attempts, but hundreds of the warherd have escaped in the few moments of confusion.
Though those to escape so far are mostly the more fleet-footed of the abominations, the brays mostly, the others will soon follow if you do not reform the line.
REFORM AND REINFORCE[44 +12 +21 =77 ???, rear encirclement gradually regained, you deal with the more dangerous front]
So you surge for the front of the line yourself, calling to your men to do the same to the rear.
ENTERING COMBAT[70+21 = 91, front of encirclement regained, no more rolls needed]
The five hundred of your Guards that insisted on coming along on what was fundamentally to be a stealth mission, a role on the battlefield that the colorful men are rather unsuited to, surge along with you screaming their war cries.
For just a moment you see fear in the eyes of those you charge, and instant of hesitance in their motions tangling them up with those pushing from behind to escape the trap. Then you are upon them, striking a spear clean through the lung of one and into the eye of the one behind him, before discarding it as unsalvageable against the sucking flesh of the wounds it has opened. Your men arrive and reform, locking shields with you to form a front the savages cannot break without the weight of numbers on their side or momentum they cannot build, surrounded on all sides as they are. And you settle in for a long fight, gradually wearing away at creatures whose ferocity only seems to grow as their situation becomes grimmer.
CONTINUED COMBAT[53+12+21=86]
It takes you the better part of a half hour of fighting in the shield wall to fell them all, your men might outnumber them and take down as many as four for each casualty they take in the shifting of shields and spears, with the enemy situation becoming drastically worse as their long thin line is split in the middle, but the enemy is tireless in their tainted resolve and hardy in their unholy constitution and they nearly fight to the last. -And yet, their leader does not seem to share the same resolve to risk himself for escape, oh he fights, but he doesn't throw himself at you with abandon in hatred and the hopes of escape.
-200 spearmen
CAPTIVES[54 +21 ??? = ??]
Luckily nearly is not quite completely, and you capture both their leader and many of the lowest ranking members of their group that are likely to have been born human and changed later in life, using ropes, beatings and policing the wounded to collect these prisoners.
Before the alerting of the Warherd to your presence you had planned to raid their camps, not so much to cause damage, but to secure temporary captives. This was ostensibly to be for information.
But the real plan was, and still is, for torturing them, both for information and out of general principle, to be a cover to allow them to 'overhear' your men discussing plans to strip the mountains of everything of value and leave for the flatlands. This kind of narrative would be deeply tempting for a powerful Beastlord to believe, considering that they still consider the mountains their rightful home, and humans interlopers to be driven out even thousands of years after humans gained nominal control of the geological formations, and a target of such scale, wealth, and disorganization would be difficult to resist striking for any with beastlord with the ambition to see themselves rise still higher.
But, and it's a big but, there are some problems with this plan.
Your original plan to gather captives from multiple warherds would be too risky now, requiring that you practically challenge the main body of the enemy, or those forces encamped nearby and moving closer with every moment, to a fight. Unexpectedly, you could actually do that now, as you have an unusually precise reading of the numbers and disposition of the enemy, however you would essentially be risking starting the battle early and at a disadvantage, with the enemy main body flanking or outflanking you and attacking while you are dealing with subordinates.
While those you have already captured might be enough, assuming you can stage a convincing escape, you are suspicious of the catfish whiskered leader of this Warherd. He was captured too easily, and on reflection, didn't take as strong of an advantage of the breakthrough as you would have done in his place.
Moreover if you want the Beastlord Riphorn to actually take the risk of coming out and attacking a major movement of me and material you need to actually perform a major movement. Which could have many unpleasant side effects.
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PLAN(choose one)
[]Attack: Screw the plan, you know where the enemy is and how many of them there are, you outnumber them essentially two to one, march out along their own paths and beard this goat in his den. The scouting super critical means you know where the enemy troops are right now, and where they are concentrating, you could go out and make this a battle right this instant.(battle begins, lose the +25 for prepared ground on the heaven and earth roll, but it otherwise remains the same)
[]Raid: You are suspicious of this captured leader, so capture some more before you try to seed any false information.(risk of starting the battle at a disadvantage, gains more captives for the plan)
[] Restrain: You are suspicious of this captured beast, so proceed with the plan, but only allow his subordinates to escape, genuinely torture the leader for information instead of that being an incidental benefit. (Less chance of the enemy falling for the trap, Chance of ???)
[] Try something completely different(write in)
BAIT (choose as many as you want, note that on crit fail any of these can cause really ugly side effects)
[] Order the removal of nearly all physical wealth from the mountains, on the pretext that the beasts should not be allowed to steal it.(Crops, gold, silver, silk, jewlery, and trinkets are moved to the river to be shipped south on a royal guarantee of return or repayment, probably pisses off the peasants, ???)
[] Order the (Faux) removal of the vulnerable and dependents from the combat zone, ostensibly to ensure their safely(women and children gather at the river as if to be shipped south, really pisses off the peasants, especially if they hear that they were to be used as bait)
[] Order the (Faux) evacuation of the entire area, bringing what weapons, fighting men, and their families west as you can.( the militia, their families, and any war material you can grab gathers at the river as if to be shipped south, definitely causes rebellion on crit fail)
[]None of these
[] Write in
