Playing in the Sandbox

Tordek looked over the maul.

"It might fetch a decent price," said Tordek. "But I prefer my axe. I, for one, think we're better off selling this."

"If you aren't going spare the lives of those two by bringing them along," Alma points out the two unconscious bandits, clearly displeased at leaving them to die, "then at least do them the courtesy of killing them, now, while they cannot feel it. They will not survive long out here anyway, but their last moments will be torturous, and no one deserves that kind of fate." Again, the law of the desert reigns supreme, and a mercy killing is preferable if survival is not.

"So... How are you holding up, Sonala-dono?" The Pixie asked the Tri-Kreen royality...

Tethe blinked looking the bit of shoulder armor over as she took it in her hands before trying it on. She looked up though at the discussion going on over the crossbowmen as she looked over the bit of armor to see if it fit well. "I say we try to find out what they know before we kill or leave them. See if they're part of some larger den of thieves or perhaps were hired thugs after Mr. Smithe specifically."

"I agree with our Dragonborn friend," said Tordek. "Know your enemy and all that."

The bandits fail to weigh in still being quite unconscious.

Meanwhile....

"I... um. Um." Mykaila replies to Cyrta.

"Cyrta-san, perhaps it would not be wise to refer to her as "-dono", given that we're trying to keep her identity secret," Skaimos telepathically "said". He then looked to the others. "If we wish to question one of them, it would be best to restrain them before reviving them. I can use my abilities to get three honest answers out of him, but no more. Which one do you wish to interrogate?"

"OH sorry, I was rased in the noble Ack'cha Family... I'm a bit used to refering to all Thri-Kreen as -dono..." The Pixie quickly explains, which was 100% true, it was just her natual reflex to call nearly any Thri-Kreen in such a way. "It's a habit that I've yet to fully kick it seems... I'll try not to do so again if it distresses you so, Sonala-do...-san..."

"What?" Mykaila replies, completely confused and then she figures out what just happened, "I mean, yes. Thank you. It was um. Just a bit. Strange to be treated above my proper station unduly." she says in probably the worst bluffing you've ever heard. Fortunately, Cyrta thinks there's nobody actually listening.

Cyrta makes a minor sigh of relef to herself at realizing nobody heard that.

"I can freeze their arms and legs together so they don't try anything if you want?" Tethe offered trying to be helpful.

"That'll be good. Let's try the halfling." Skaimos grabbed some smelling salts from the first aid kit, then Skaimos and Tethe went over to where the halfling lay unconscious. He waited until Tethe had properly restrained him, then tried to wake him up by using the smelling salts.

"Hello, halfling-san. My friend and I have a few questions, and you're going to help us answer them. Resistance is futile and quite painful, so please respond as honestly and completely as possible." Skaimos then focused his mind onto the mind of the halfling.

"Truth-inducement", as his tutors referred to it, had its own pros and cons. The most common analogy for psychic information gathering was viewing the mind as a library, and the person's consciousness as the librarian. Detecting surface thoughts was like reading a book that the librarian was currently reading without his knowledge. Mind-ripping, the forceful extraction of information, was like randomly pulling books off the shelf in wild abandon: you may find what you're looking for eventually, but the effort to reward ratio is rather low, leaving it more as a tool for trashing the library rather than finding information. Truth-inducement was more like holding the librarian at knifepoint and making him pick out the books: you get your information very quickly, since he knows where everything is.

There were, of course, drawbacks. The procedure is rather unpleasant to the subject (particularly if they try to resist), so it is important to restrain them beforehand. Also, the procedure can only be maintained for so long by a psion, so it was important to choose his questions carefully.

Spoiler:

"Question 1: Did you attack our caravan simply as bandits, or were you hired to attack this caravan specifically?"

The halfling struggles, in vain to his growing dismay, both physically and mentally. His mouth opens but he grits his teeth. As it seems he's about to speak despite his mental protests, he smirks and says, "Yes."

Tethe growled menacingly, baring her fangs as she spoke. "More details halfling. If you persist in being clever I'll bleed you and tie you and the remains of your allies to the tails of phantom chargers, to drag you into the desert to attract the attention of any beast with a taste for flesh and a sense of smell away from us." It was not a question, but a threat.

persuasion:

"Oy! Fine! We're just bandits. You stumbled along and we thought 'hey, we're in luck, a small one!'." and then he trails off into grumbling.

Skaimos smiled and nodded in appreciation to Tethe. His "encouragement" had saved Skaimos the effort of thinking up a "lawyered-up" question to get the information. Still, while the procedure was still in place, he might as well get a little more information out of it.

"Question 2: What other bandit groups or other threats do you know of that are between here and Hanko?"

"None. What do you think? We have a bandit network? With bandit newsletters and bandit non-interference programs? I'm sure there are plenty though. I hear banditry is a growing problem in these times of peace." the halfling replies, truthfully... yet sarcastically.

"Question...bah, I don't need this to ask." Skaimos released the halfling from his psychic hold. There was no more information to be had from the halfling, and while it might be amusing to ask what his most embarrassing moment was, it would just be excessive cruelty, particularly given the last question.

"Alright, final question. You and that shifter are the only ones still breathing here. We've taken your money, your food rations, and your weapons. The final question is do you want Tethe-san here to give you and the shifter a clean death, or would you rather take your chances out in the desert?"

"We're what? A day's journey or so from the nearest city? I think we'd make it. Not that I know why you took our shitty food. We'll take living, thanks." the halfling replies. As soon as he thinks you're not paying attention any longer her grumbles under his breath, "Typical Greater arrogance. Think Lessers can't manage to put one foot in front of the other when they can't even lace up their own damn boots."

"My apologies for underestimating you. I just thought that with your little legs you might give up in despair of ever reaching it." Skaimos looked over at Tethe. "Let's get moving. His ice will melt eventually, and we've got a lot of ground to cover before we reach our destination." Skaimos turns to start moving back to the wagons, then stops. "Oh, one more thing." He moves back to the halfling and kicks him in the side. "That's for shooting my friend." He then starts walking back to the caravan.

---

Yyyyyyeah, I forgot we were only a half-day out of town.

Oh, yeah, me too. Damn, now my little speech sounds really dumb.

---

"Well then, I trust that's settled. We should continue, this delay most likely means an extra day of travel. We should get as far as we can before night settles."

The group packs up and sets off again, Thag and Uhiya looking out behind to make sure the two bandits don't make any move to follow. The rest of the day passes by uneventfully. You make camp at night and assign people to watch shifts and the night passes by almost eerily silent. The next few days pass by remarkably peacefully as well aside from your various conversations about the nature of the planes and such (which does help Mykaila come back out of her shell, so to speak). The few things of note that happened were that Cyrta spotted something burning on the river (which you could only see because you were up high on large sand dune at the time), another caravan (three wagons and slightly less than twice as many guards as your group) passed by (though they weren't carrying anything that John thought was interesting enough to mention), Tordek pointed out when a pterosaur of some type flew by overheard, and Tethe found a red silk scarf in the sand.

Four days since the encounter with the bandits, Alma comes across two boulders about 10 yards apart that both look more or less the same and look rather out of place. The wagons aren't too far behind at the moment and Alma isn't really all the far away from the rest of you.

Times like these I wish I had utilities that did something.

---

Alma eyes the two boulders warily, but doesn't react immediately. She continues walking a few steps, not too near, and then stops and goes back to the caravan. She hoped it looked like she simply had to go back for something. Drawing near, she speaks to Skaimos. "We may have a problem. " She ever so slightly gestures to the boulders. "I don't like the looks of them. We should be on guard as we pass."

"Hmm, could be another ambush. I'm going to try something, tell Smithe-san to wait until I get back or something overtly bad happens." Skaimos then focused his mental energy onto a technique he had been practicing during their journey. It was a progression of his "memory hole" trick that he had used on the hill, although now instead of only rendering him invisible to one target that he focused on, he now cast a sort of field around him that made him invisible to anyone who would lay eyes on him.

Spoiler:

Skaimos then went forward to the two rocks, trying to see if any obvious dangers could be detected.

Rolling:

When Skaimos approaches the rocks he notices that on both there seems to be a gecko of some sort sitting on them. As he gets closer both of them turn to face him and open their single eye and just watch him. Otherwise Skaimos doesn't really detect anything.