Searching every wagon for hidden valuables would attract almost as much attention as setting things on fire.

Also, you're a gnoll and not accustomed to having much in the way of valuables, or operating in areas with high population density. Sure, posting visible guards means you might get robbed by smart, powerful people... but then again, the guards might fight them off, and the odds of randomly encountering smart, powerful people are low. Leaving your valuables entirely unguarded means they might be stolen by random idiots, which is a far more frequent sort of risk and more embarrassing when it does happen.

Think of it like weather. Building a hut might lead to a higher chance of getting struck by lightning, but no shelter means definitely being stuck out in the rain, enough of which can still kill somebody by hypothermia.

...and while we're on the subject of paranoia,Just let that image of our camp geting butt-fucked while you're gone,Then when you get back all is left is Clamp passed out on a mountain of dead gnoll's with leaving Shabin to clean up all the blood and body part's.

1/3 Leaf 2018/09/25(Tue)20:41 No. 903217 ID: bfb318
File 153793329298.png - (349.17KB , 1000x800 , 227.png )

I'm not gonna tell them any of that though since I might be wrong and also I don't want to actually help these guys.

"Hey can I get in the bubble yet?"
>"Why?"
"'cause this is a team building thing right and why would you have me come and help if you're not going to trust me to share bubbles?"
>"You're still an assassin and we don't trust you that much."
"How'm I supposed to help with that attitude?"
>"We'll show you."

We walk on for awhile, then the lady starts pawing at the ground. She lifts a hatch.

2/3 Leaf 2018/09/25(Tue)20:41 No. 903218 ID: bfb318
File 153793330170.png - (261.08KB , 1200x800 , 228.png )

"Oh uh who're these gnolls cause it looks like they don't have that plainswalker's appetite."
>"Slaves. They dig our tunnels. Don't talk to them. If they talk to you, kill them."
"No humans?"
>"We'd like to sometime. But right now they'd descend on us hard if we did more than ransack the occasional caravan."

Oh it's one of these zero-chill slave driver clans. Slaves haven't been a thing in decades.

"So uh, whole camp's like an underground town?"
>"Like we'd set up camp above ground where we could be seen!"
"I kind of thought you guys were so strong that it didn't matter."
>"We don't have to be strong and dumb."

This isn't even a hole with a camp in it, there's a whole underground set of tunnels going on. The dirt does seem pretty soft around here.

... I am a little envious about how this place looks defensible. Unlike our place. I wonder if I could hear Clamp if he yelled as loud as he could.

3/3 Leaf 2018/09/25(Tue)20:42 No. 903220 ID: bfb318
File 153793334857.png - (252.14KB , 800x800 , 229.png )

They push me into a stone room with a few big guys. One of them sits like he's their chief.

>"You're Leaf?"
"I am a leaf, yes. I mean yes I'm Leaf."
>"Well I'm the chief of the plains. Your debt to Goldhunter will be this. You can read, right?"
"Yeh."

He tosses me a piece of paper that looks like a human's report, then starts pointing at his map.

Three gnolls from the plains have been captured. We are sending them to you for interrogation on their whereabouts. We hope to have their location by tomorrow morning so that we may finally stamp them out.
Signed, Captain Marsh

>"We caught a runner with that letter." says the chief. "Those gnolls know every damn tunnel down here! We can afford to have some human find a random tunnel now and then, but knowing the whole layout's no good. The letter was supposed to be delivered to Twin's Keep, so that's where those gnolls should be tonight."
"And you want me to rescue them?"
>"No, I want you to kill them. No gnoll of ours gets captured. Those are now enemy gnolls who have secrets they shouldn't."

>>903220
Yeah okay. Wait, weren't you supposed to stay here for a couple months? It wasn't supposed to be a one-job deal.

Tempting to try to get one of them out and back to Clamp...

>>903220
Okay. Easy enough. You already know a lot about this place's layout just by being here.

Also, they are definitely planning to murder you and enslave your friends. Dang zero-chill murdering assholes.

Three assassinations and that's the debt? Just want to double check that. So, ok, what do they look like, what are their skills and personalities, where do you think they are and what do you know about the people who have them, and what proof do you want that they've been killed? Ears? Tails?

>>903218
>"Oh uh who're these gnolls cause it looks like they don't have that plainswalker's appetite."
Ha! Leaf just collectively called all of them fat! XD

>>903220
>"No, I want you to kill them. No gnoll of ours gets captured. Those are now enemy gnolls who have secrets they shouldn't."
Sucks for them.

This may be a bad time to mention that you’re technically an enemy gnoll and you now know secrets that you shouldn’t know about them and-oh, duh, they’re planning on killing you when you’ve paid off your debt at the end of the week.

>>903221
>Wait, weren't you supposed to stay here for a couple months?
It’s supposed to be for one week.

Yeah, this is a total suicide mission. I bet you that even if we got into Twin's peak, killed those three guys and then got out, we'd be considered an "enemy gnoll" the literal second we came back and delivered a report to these no-chill slaving fucks.

Which is why we should do it anyway. It'll get us out of these fucking caves and gives us a better opportunity for some far craftier betrayal that'll put the hurt on these dicks.

(I, for one, am thinking slave revolt. We could tip off the humans as well, but that's too obvious)

Ok.

I don't like these assholes, they keep slaves rather then giving them an opportunity to join or doing the work themselves the lazy cunts, they don't seem to really care about each other hell they're punishing these three for a screw up with death, and you know damn well that if they had killed one of ours they wouldn't be giving us any kind of payment or recompense.

If we could talk to the humans we could maybe strengthen Stormholds relations with them by helping them deal with Plainswhatevers, maybe tell the three captured gnolls that their own clan wants them dead and if they help you and the humans they can be a part of your clan.
A slave revolt at the same time as a human raid would help immensely.

Say whatever you need to say to get out of here alive, then go become Captain Marsh's new best friend.

Oh. So they want to kill or permanently recruit you since once you know their tunnels you can't leave.

You could start a slave revolt, or bring one of these assholes back to clamp.
They are probably expecting that last one, but can they keep up with you?

I think the most feasible plot we could try is to try and fake at least one of the captured gnolls' deaths - preferably the one most open to the idea that they can't go back to the Plainswalkers - and send them back to our camp. We'll have to get to them while they're still in Twin's Keep, since that's outside of the Plainswalkers' area of control, and a lone escapee is less likely to be noticed by anyone we care about. Ask how you're supposed to let them know you were successful.

plan on faking the gnolls deaths if at all possible and bringing them back to clamp and your own clan. make sure the location of this place doesn't get out - chances are innocent people and the slaves (who could really stand to be freed, keep an eye out for chances to do that) would be the ones who get hurt while the leaders escape.

Tell him if he wants you to bring back their heads that's really impractical, dragging each one along with you to the other will mess up your chances of getting them all much less escaping to bring them all back. It'll need to be something smaller.

Hopefully if you make sure he understands that you're taking his statement that these killings wipe the whole debt as fact, then all you need to do when you come back is drop the proof down an entrance with a note, give a call for them to pick it up then leave, which should preclude any chance of them easily stabbing you in the back afterwards.

Steal these secret gnoll's for your tribe instead of killing them.

Then get some horrible trophies from other dead gnoll's you kill on the way there.

These idiots will want them as proof of the kill.

1/3 Leaf 2018/10/02(Tue)16:07 No. 904572 ID: bfb318
File 153852166153.png - (136.37KB , 800x800 , 230.png )

>Length of stay?
Just a week.

>Thoughts of betrayal
They sure did show me all their secret tunnels, but, wellll... they're a little cocky and I don't think they think Clamp's clan - uh, I guess it's Clan Stormhold? - can beat them out here.

And I mean they probably aren't wrong. There's like 8 of us that are as good or better than most plainsgnolls.

I wonder if they're trusting me not to tell the humans where they're at. It's real taboo to get other races to fight other gnolls instead of doing it yourself. Maybe that's why these guys are allying up to get at Clamp I guess, since he sure did exactly that because he didn't know about that taboo and I just didn't care.

But maybe they don't know there were humans involved in taking out Wind? I don't think even the wanderers that hang out at our clan would've heard about it because, uh, since it was taboo, we just kind of... didn't talk about it. Like it never happened.

Still though this kind of stinks bad.

>"You there?"
"Yeah I'm just thinkin' to myself. This one thing will clear off the whole debt?"
>"That's right. But if you want to stay for the full week, you can have full looting benefits. We'll talk about that if you succeed here."
"Are the ears fine?"
>"Huh? Oh, yeah, if you take a whole ear from each, we'll figure you were close enough to them to kill them."

2/3 Leaf 2018/10/02(Tue)16:07 No. 904574 ID: bfb318
File 153852167328.png - (160.80KB , 800x800 , 231.png )

>This is a suicide mission
>They want to kill you
>Say what you need to say to get out there

"Uh."

"Ok I'll do it."

.......

3/3 Leaf 2018/10/02(Tue)16:08 No. 904576 ID: bfb318
File 153852168721.png - (161.66KB , 800x800 , 232.png )

Yep that worked.

They gave me some time to study the maps and what they know and stuff, before guiding me out of another exit.

I can make it to the fort this late afternoon, and the Plainsgnolls say the target gnolls will probably get there around sundown, in a probably well guarded caravan.

So first up I could just do the mission. Human garrisons usually aren't much better than gnoll... uh, whatever we call our garrisons. If I leave now I'll have time to scout out the fort.

Or secondly I could sprint back to Stormhold and ask Clamp how he feels about fucking up the plainsgnolls, then sprint back and either do the mission or not. I can run basically forever.

Either way I want to go into the fort later, because there's going to be a storm.

There's also all the gold I have for trading. I didn't ask but I guess I could spend my time trading for stuff, but that'd kill some time.

>>904576
Trade for a few supplies that would help in general for infiltrating the fort. Get a healing potion if you can.
I think we should treat this like an opportunity to steal shit from the human fort. Either valuables or information.

>>904576

Yeah, nah, don't run for days if you don't have to. Use your noggin and think about what Clamp would do, then do what he'd actually want instead, like a good right-hand (or is that ambidextrous?) gnoll.

... Clamp would probably have wanted you to recruit the prisoners, pending them being actually competent and shit. You'll have to see if any of 'em are good prospects for Storm hold and whether you can keep their recruitment from becoming an issue with the Plainskeepers.

On the other hand, those three gnolls did get captured like morons - are they worth possibly pissing off one of the more powerful clans around? Maybe when you find them you can interrogate 'em a bit on how they got captured and what their skillsets are, under pretense of helpin' 'em get free. Might even be able to see whether the Plainswalkers are entertaining the notion of allying with Chainlink. If they aren't, we might just want to do their job so we can keep 'em from accepting an invite into the 'Shit on Storm Hold' club Chainlink's got going.

Granted, Clamp didn't know the Plainskeepers were slave-owning asstards. Last I recall, he wasn't a huge fan of that.

The real question here is whether we want to actually seriously try to make the Plainskeepers friends - or just neutrals - or whether we want to mess them up and take their stuff, despite being one of the stronger clans around. For now, we should just do our thing, figure out some more intel, and then decide.

As an option, you could also possibly do the taboo thing and bring in the humans.

Nah. Unless it starts to look real, real ugly we probably don't have to go that far. Would bring a hell of a lot of flak Clamp's way if you got outed, too, thanks to taboo.

According to that letter, humans were already planning to "stamp out" the plains gnolls. Clamp sent you here to clear a debt; if your creditors have been destroyed, the debt's effectively been cleared. The people you might plausibly piss off by violating that taboo are pretty much already your enemies, whereas Storm Hold has been making some progress toward diplomacy with humans.

And if you come back a week later saying "Oh, the plains guys, with the magic? Yeah, they're all dead now. They were horrible slavers and sorta tried to kill me, do I simply did what was necessary," that's going to add to your legend.

You don't need to kill them to take their ears, you know. You can make it look like you've done your job, step out and let the plains gnolls get absolutely blindsided.

Alright, first off. Don't run back to stormhold. No offense, you are insanely good but all it's gonna take is one of these chucklefucks to realize you didn't leave to the human garrison to ruin things, so let's not do that.

secondly... If we're going to wait for the storm, we might as well do some shopping. I doubt that these guys have anything tremendously useful to you, barring a healing potion but I could be wrong.

You don't need to actually talk to humans to have them stomp the plainsgnolls: Just go there, cut an ear off the prisoners, and inform them you were told to kill them and bring back their ears as proof. If that doesn't make them eager to reveal what they know to humans, nothing will.

>>904576
Yeah, head to the human fort. Try approaching peacefully. Do the sneaking thing and go up to their commander to ask him questions.

>>904661
I think >>904654's suggestion has a much better chance of us not getting outed.

>>904572
Here's another way to look at this: their guys got caught, so as far as they're concerned, the humans already know where their tunnels are. If you backstab them by letting those gnolls live you don't make anything worse, you just let it stay the same bad. But if you kill them before they talk, you make things better!

Assuming they don't have any good sneaky assassin types of their own, this is a reasonably good loyalty test. They're not risking anything they weren't risking anyways. It's a gamble to see if you help them in a way they couldn't help themselves.

>>904576
>what do
Trade first, in case you don't come back.

Don't go to bother Clamp, you'll just annoy him.

Then let's go sneak into the human place. Maybe we'll kill these gnolls, maybe they'll make a better offer or something, either way you got an excuse to scout this human place.

Trade with the humans; knowledge about the plains gnolls tunnels in return for freeing the gnolls the captured.

Then go back to Clamps Camp with your new friends and let the humans go to war with the plains gnolls.

>>905103
That's assuming we can sneak them back across Plains Walker territory. Sneaking a "dead" gnoll back to Stormhold will be way easier if we do it from the more tangential Twin's Keep. Also, directly engaging in a pincer attack with the humans would be a dead giveaway of our dealings with them after the fact, and is just asking for friendly fire in the meantime.

>>905112
No I mean let the humans deal with them entirely. Best case; the plains gnolls assume their base/tunnels were given away by the gnolls Leaf was sent to kill before he got there.

I'm with >>904595

I feel like planning for contingencies is fine, but you should probably go ahead and do the job that you agreed to, in good faith. We're here in the first place because we were trying not to make more enemies, don't be the first to betray.

Leaf 2018/10/07(Sun)13:01 No. 905563 ID: bfb318
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I was given 500 gold for trading. I go back in the tunnels.

>"That was fast." says the lady.
"Yeah uh I forgot I wanted to trade for stuff. I have gold."
>"Yeah? What do you need?"
"What do you have?"
>"Nuh-uh. You're an enemy clan. We aren't showing you everything we got. But we got a lot. So you tell us what you want, and how much you're willing to pay.

I can probably guess how much a thing is worth I guess, but I have to think up what I need. Healing potions are cool, but they might have all kinds of spell scrolls and equipment and stuff, since Clamp's been unhappy with the swords we have.

get ALL of the swords

Ask for some oiled leather armor, or some padded armor with a plated but un-chained brigandine.

How much it's worth to you depends on it's quality, fit, and amount of noise it makes.
You're looking for something silent.

Also, a few health potions would be nice.

Remember what the merchant and Hilt taught you and don't get robbed. Metaphorically.

Healing pots. Inquire about prices. Buy 4 if they cost less than 50 gold. If they cost less than 100 gold, buy 2. For 200 or less, buy 1, if it's a quality one. If there are multiple qualities, get a rough mix, but at least one high-quality one, as that's probably the backup life-saver we want to have.

Magic trap scrolls - multiple, if they're cheap enough. Alarm scrolls, the same. Your scouts need all the help they can get.

Are spyglasses still ridiculously expensive? Get one if it's cheap (they can't have much use for it if it's underground), if not, nope out of it.

Don't buy swords. We've got a blacksmith that can make swords. What we can buy is a MAGIC sword. In case of werewolves or ghosts.

... actually, buy a silver ingot or silverware, they should've plundered plenty from the humans. Could be used as gifts to make that werewolf-killing clan an ally, or turn 'em friendlier, after our initial foray.

Snake clan likes silver, right?

If you can't afford it all, prioritize buying magic shit, as we're somewhat lacking in that department.

>>905563
Either ask for something that’ll be useful for the mission they’ve sent you on or ask for something that you can give to Clamp later.

>>905619
Aren’t Leaf’s knives considered magic? After all, he can get an infinite amount of them from his magic sash.

Some proper equipment would be nice. Weapons mainly. You don't use armor and shils right? We can exclude those.

>>905563
Ask if they have scrolls to summon fireballs.

1/2 Leaf 2018/12/21(Fri)12:49 No. 914687 ID: 7a524b
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I guess there's a few things I want from these guys.

"Do you have a fireball scroll?"
>"No."
"Padded armor with unchained brigandine?"
>"No."
"Spyglasses?"
>"No."
"Magic trap - "
>"No."
"... healing potions?"
>"100g a glass."
"Yeah two of those then. How about oiled leather armor?"
>"Sure, we have something that'll fit."
"What about plain weapons?"
>"Got some junk iron weapons we want to pawn off, yeah. Have a look."

They're not bad. Plain and all but they're straight and solid and sword. It's weird and concerning to buy armor and weapons from probable enemies but here we are in life. Maybe that's why they don't want to sell me good magic stuff, I'm sure they at least have a magic trap scroll.

Technically we have a blacksmith but it's going to take a long time for him to catch up on our sword needs, especially since half of our gnolls use swords like clubs.

I'll buy them later when I can actually carry them.

2/2 Leaf 2018/12/21(Fri)12:50 No. 914688 ID: 7a524b
File 154542540726.png - (406.59KB , 1000x1000 , 235.png )

So I have 2 healing potions and armor for myself, with 100 gold left over for later.

I make sure all my stuff isn't rattling around and head to the fort. I put on the armor because it has pockets, and the cloak because I think I look cool in it.

It's about to rain any second, and it's close to dusk, too. If I wait 30 minutes I'll have good cover. This ditch gives me good cover until then.

The walls look a little tall, but rough and easy to climb. There's about 5 rooms on the wall that they can use torches in, but the gaps will be dark. It doesn't look like the kind of place that's supposed to last in a siege, just a stopping post or something like that.

Get your cloak up and find a good spot to get rained on.

Then wait for good light and climb that wall in the spot that looks best. If its raining the guards will be huddled under cover and not paying much attention.

>>914689

Remember not to track mud and water indoors, except where the locals are already doing it.

>>914688
Try to not let your bright white eyes hive away your position!

>>914710
>give away your position!
Fixed that for you.

And I agree with what you said.

I think Leaf is well acquainted with the basics (and advanceds) of stealth, we're supposed to choose how he enters the fort.

He should definitely wait 30 minutes though. Getting spotted before entering the fort is even worse than being spotted inside it.

>>914732
Good plan, let’s do that.

>>914688
Wait half an hour then slink in via the murderholes.