“O bandit, to these warriors glorious surrender!”
From the road aside a mountain, they look down to see a great snake winding its way through the valley alongside a wide road. Clouds of white breath rise from its black nostrils as it huffs and puffs toward whatever destination a creature like that can have. A mournful melody permeates the valley, rises, and then falls. There is a man atop the snake’s head, jerkily playing a musical instrument (violin). Suddenly there’s a monstrous screech and the creature halts, still huffing and puffing.
Seven men are hiding behind rocks and sage. A door opens in the creature’s head. A man steps out. One of the concealed men stands up and points something at him; the man stepping out trips and falls downwards gashing his head.
The one with the wand waves the rest of his team up; two of them stand with crossbows pointed at the fallen.
Four move to the back end of this thing, which appears to be composed of pieces on wheels. Not a creature but some great machine, it must have twenty or more sections.
They slide open a wide door in one of the compartments; they pass jugs to one another down to the ground.
If they choose not to deal with the ambush, the ambushers will steal supplies from the train, including food for the railroad towns.
The ambushes have set rocks and dirt across the railroad tracks to force the train to stop.
The leader of the ambushers, Cally Cornelius, has a wand of sleepfall with eight charges. It is at the fifth level of effect: 15-yard range, affects one target, causes penalty of 3 to all actions that round (including both attack and defense), and requires a Willpower roll to avoid dropping any held objects such as weapons. The trigger is the Latin word “tripudio” (meaning “jump”). The wand is brushed aluminum, thin, tapering, and is 18 inches long.
They each carry two daggers. Two of them have a crossbow, with twelve crossbow bolts each.
There are seven ambushers. They are hiding in the rocks and sage at the base of the foothills, ready to run out to the train when it stops at the dirt and rocks they’ve placed on the tracks. They are about twenty-five feet from the tracks where the train will most likely stop.
Cally Cornelius: (Thief: 5; Moral Code: Evil; Survival: 22; Move: 14; Attack: dagger; Damage: 1d4; Defense: 5; Special attack: sleepfall)
Titus, Marny: (Thief: 3; Survival: 11, 12; Move: 14; Attack: crossbow or dagger; Damage: 1d6 or 1d4+1; Defense: 3)
Julie, Sergio, Claud, Vester: (Warrior: 2; Survival: 9, 10, 12, 13; Move: 13; Attack: dagger; Damage: 1d4+1; Defense: 2)
Cally has the magic wand, and will stand back to use it on anyone carrying a weapon (or fiddling with magic ingredients).
Titus and Marny have crossbows, and will flank Cally and try to get the drop on anyone likely to give trouble.
Julie, Sergio, Claud, and Vester are for a show of force and in case there’s a brawl. Often there is a brawl, because Julie, Sergio, Claud, and Vester enjoy brawls.
They will load their booty onto a donkey cart. The donkey and cart are hidden about five hundred feet away so that they aren’t visible from the train. The donkey’s name is Homer. The cart has some old blankets, some clothes, a couple of dead rabbits, and some parsnips. (Homer likes parsnips.)
The bandits have 11 denarii and 38 dupondii among them.
Peco and Jon
Their response is one of disappointment. The roads, including the rail, are supposed to be safe.
“The train is sacred (taboo). The rails must roll. Now people are getting the idea that they can steal from the train. I guess that means we’ll have to start hiring guards on.”
“If we give them something from the train without getting something in return, what will the miners eat?”
The bandits
They’re from Greenfield, or a town near Greenfield. But they live in the mountains “helping” sidewinders. (That is, ambushing them and stealing their stuff.)
Calley “borrowed” the Sleepfall wand from a man who came out of the mountains just a few weeks ago. The man had left it near his campfire when he walked away from his camp to piss or something. They don’t know what he looked like; he wore a brown hooded robe. (Joe Lakono let them take the wand, knowing it would make them more effective against sidewinders.) There was a piece of paper next to it; this had “tripudio” written on it.
