I never was very silvered when it came to making snap judgements but whatever.
I ran across a seemingly starving guy in the woods, and he paid me to go hunting for him all day. Ok I thought – some good coin for some food. I do well I could leave him with almost two weeks worth of meat if he knows how to smoke or dry it right. And you know – I had a great day of it. Rabbits, a deer… could have gone fishing if I really wanted to. Easy easy coin.
What happens? I get tracked down by him and his “friends” who all look like death except for the machine who barks orders. I’m still on “retainer” or whatever so I tag along cause I know the area, and now they have a guide.
Later the man I got hired buy got into a fight with the woman-mage of the group. Something about her being half a wizard – and she looked ready to blow his ass up and then was beaten into unconsciousness by the machine-man and the “cleric” they had. I pretty much decided to stay out of it. The people were all doomed from Ghoul Fever anyway – and that’s before I got there or they tried to kill themselves.
We hit up the farmhouse… And the first thing the machine does is walk right into the building – and asks me if I can fight. So he decides we’re going in first to kill off the beast inside. Not more than in the last week I had helped try to defend this creature and bam – I’m second in line to kill it.
Atleast it was merciful, mostly. The machine all but killed it in one strike and I delivered the pacifying blow. Behind it was one of the remaining children of the creature. Score one for Garret – Killer of Mothers – Natures Avenger…
Finally after trying multiple times to point out to the machine his people will die – then try to kill us all, he decides that after skinning and harvesting the Owl Bear for parts….I am to run for help.
I run – I get into an encounter with someone I am going to enjoy embarrassing in the future, talk to the head of the grove – run back fully believing that these people I am now with are completely fucked. I get there – I tell people they are fucked they look ready to kill me, and THEN the leader shows up – forces us all to do something they were going to do anyway, they agree – he keeps talking (one thing I am not going to miss) they agree, and he still keeps talking then he takes the owlbear cub and leaves.
I sleep – some of them leave, come back a few days later – then they have me go into town with the guy who hired me and we sell a bunch of their shit off – nice stuff too. We get a marker for some money – some weapons, some rations, and now here we sit.
The town guard is the assholes I tried to stop from slaughtering the rest of the owlbears, the group of people I am with are wanted for killing the last set of guards from the town, I am tossed out of my grove – to the point of death upon my return (if I ever do it again, again), and we are charged with doing exactly what they were planning by my grove who can’t have a hand in it, and since I am with and exiled – I have to do this to prove myself to them AND AND if we fail I get to get wrote off as another failure…