It had been a good gaming night. We’d walked along the coast until we’d come to a tiny harbour that would have been all but invisible from the sea, and you practically had to walk into it from land before you saw it as well. It was clearly the slavers’ main landing port. Luckily they hadn’t heard the news of our escape. That wasn’t entirely luck, of course, as we’d left no-one at the camp in any position to report the breakout. If anyone had been sent there from the port to find out, they hadn’t returned yet.

There were three sailing boats in the harbour. I made my first sailing roll of the campaign and was able to declare one of them to be the best, and the one we were going to steal. But first, we had to set fire to the others. We didn’t want any pursuers, and besides, these were the bad guys. You’ve got to put the bad guys out of action; that’s what it’s about.

It would be an exaggeration to say everything went off without a hitch. We waited until twilight, then I boarded the boat we wanted and dispatched the two guys already there quietly enough, and I was quietly making the boat ready to go when whoosh, up went one of the other boats, right on time, and out came the slavers from their hut, but instead of them all going to the boat that was on fire, they divided and went to all three boats. The second boat went up in flames, but the rest of the party was cut off from us. Suddenly it all got very busy. I had to let go the last mooring and set the sail all at once and get the boat moving away from the jetty before we were boarded. (Thankfully I’d said the magic words before starting: “Is there enough wind in here to sail the ship out?” so Ken couldn’t ambush me at this point by saying there was none at all.) (Actually, had that happened I’d have had to argue that my successful Sailing role meant my character wouldn’t have been too stupid to think of that in advance even if I had been. I might have won that argument, but it would have sucked for role-play.)

The others, seeing what was happening, made a break for the harbour mouth. I made a good sailing roll and got the boat close enough to the wall for them to jump aboard, and we were away, into the open sea.

Barak hadn’t made it, but along the way Lotan, Samila and Kerilas seemed to have picked up an NPC. She’d been chained up belowdecks on the second boat. Kudos to Dave for being anal enough to go below and check. After all, we were supposed to be the good guys. Incinerating your rescuees wasn’t considered good form. Time had been gettingi short. The slavers were coming and James and Simon had wanted to just set light to the boat and go. The delay was probably what did for Barak, but Simon didn’t seem too displeased to be left with a new character to roll up. In role-playing terms it was a good way to go: Lots of good role-playing, lots of interplay, and pacy action, and tactics on our part that *almost* worked, and the little runt (Barak, that is) went down with a good fight.

We got lots of good XP for it anyway, so my tea couldn’t have been that awful. I advanced a class on my Priest side, although the only priestly thing I’d done was a Healing on Kerilas, who’d taken some damage, once we were out to sea. Oh, and I said prayers for Barak. I made sure to mention that.