>>25974200
Well there's really not much we can do about getting rid of Goralin's giant prints so lets just try and avoid the fortress down south and make it to the mountains. Once we actually make it there tracking us will be vestly more difficult.

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>>25974317

Wounded and without roads, you begin making your way towards the mountains far to the south. Tulivinen is a tangled, untamed mess of sub-tropical rain forest, and it's both slow-going and obvious hacking your way through the foliage. It'll probably be less than a week before Razag knows about the battle, and from that time only a matter of days before he catches up. It takes you five days to reach the road and it's not even going the direction you want it to, running mostly east/west between the port city of Orncar and the city of Godspass, the gateway to Arkas.

Unless word is spreading slower, or Razag is moving slower, than would be expected, you'll never make the mountains in time at this rate. You'll be able to travel faster on the road, but it's not really going anywhere you want to reach.

>wat do?

>>25974743
Would we be able to reach the mountains in time if we ditched Goralin?

>>25975112

No, but you'd be a lot harder to track. Without Goralin you could probably evade Razag long enough to make it to the mountains.

>>25974743
What of the other place on this road, Arkas? How fast can we get there? Can we hide there?

>>25975237
We should split away from Goralin and have him try and reach the mountains with a slightly different route. There's somewhere in Margell we can tell him to meet us right? Also we need to keep a firm eye on if we're being tailed.

>>25975370

You could possibly hide in Arkas, yes, although it's literally the opposite direction of where you want to be going (others of your daemon allies already plan on poking around there for more allies to release). Plus it's tightly controlled by Golgoth, so it won't be as easy to hide there as it would be in Margell.

That said, it is doable.

>>25975419

Yes, you can tell Goralin to meet up with you in Margell. You've only been out for a couple of centuries so the vast majority of natural landmarks are still intact, and you both know the country pretty well.

>>25975468
Then we may have to split up after all. Our allies can tag along with us while Goralin flies solo. To Margell we head. While also watching for pursuers.

>>25975468
And the other place, a port city? Could we steal a ship and use that to escape?

>>25975698

Orncar is a Golgothan port city and their only major foothold in Tulivinen (although they've built a few decent-sized outposts that they're seeking to build up in order to expand their influence). There should be plenty of ships there, but Razag can follow you on sea as easily as on land. That said, tracking you across sea will be harder. Ships don't leave tracks. On the other hand, ships also can't really hide so once he's in visual range you are basically dead.

>>25975771
Are they unrivaled on the sea? That would make it a really bad route to take. But it sounds like we have a large chance to get caught by land as well. Perhaps one of our allies could arrange a distraction? Something noticable that will absolutely draw our pursuers attention? Like... A fire? That would seem an obvious lead.

>>25975955

In the Tulivinen bay, yes, Golgoth rules the waters. You might have more luck once you get to Margell, which still has a fleet, but it'd be difficult to make it that far.

Your friend Tethis, a knight with fire-blackened armor and legs that taper off to stilt-like feet, covered in a cloud of ash, a plume of fire emitting from his helmet...Well, from his appearance you can probably guess that he's handy with fire. Tethys can light up a distraction for you if you need him to.

>>25976324
Well he sounds like just the Daemon for the occasion. Lets have him set a distraction fire.

>>25976324
A fire for no good reason would be an obvious decoy, though. But if it could be arranged in such a way that our pursuer would find signs of battle as well, perhaps they would assume the fire was started by accident during the battle. If we could find something to act as the other party of that battle, and make it happen somewhere that's in a direction other than where we're actually headed, it might just throw him off for a while.

>>25976427
True, we might be able to antagonize some local tribesmen or something.

>>25976476
If Tethis could make that happen, I think it might work as more than just "lol look my opponent is trying to distract me, now I know he didn't go that way." Killing people for seemingly no reason isn't really the peak of morality, but hey, gotta do what needs to be done to survive, right?

>>25976535
Sun doesn't really care one way or another what happens to mortals anyway.

>>25976535

There's Caradcoa and Thyskadi tribals in the area. Both of them are easy pickings with basically zero supernatural resistance and fairly limited army sizes (in that they can't muster anything larger than a hundred or so at one time, usually). The Thyskadi answer to Olberek now, however, so he'd probably be more than a little bit irritated if you roasted half his able-bodied men as a distraction.

The Caradcoa, on the other hand, hate the fuck out of you. So picking targets should be easy enough.

---

"Tethys," you say, taking a brief rest. Razag's probably getting word of the battle right now. You've only got a few days before he arrives.

"What do you need, Tallorn?" Tethys asks, his voice muffled by ash and blackened steel.

"We need a distraction. Something to send Razag in the wrong direction so he won't find Goralin's trail," you say. "I need you to start a fight. Something big, spectacular, with lots of fire and collateral damage. Find some tribals and wipe them out. Razag will think we were attacked on our way out and go off running in the wrong direction."

"As you wish," Tethys answers, "which direction was that, specifically?"

>which direction was that, specifically

>>25977021
Uhh, well that sort of depends. Our last known direction was that battle, right? So what direction have we been moving since then, which direction do we have to go now to get where we want? And where are we even on the map? The direction of the distraction needs to be plausible, so I need to know which direction it would make sense for us to move in if we were headed somewhere else. Like for example Arkas.

>>25977102
> Our last known direction was that battle, right?
Rather, our last known position. That's what I meant to say.

>>25977102

If you see the little hump north of the road between Orncar (22) and Godspass (29), that's the Mire. The battle with Koril's minions was in there. You're in the middle of that road now.

>>25977426
So somewhere between due west and west northwest would seem plausible if we were headed towards Arkas, yes? That seems our best alternate destination, so that should also be where we're trying to make the enemy believe we're headed. This whole thing is pointless if the deception isn't believable.

>>25977611

"Head out along the route to Arkas," you say, "trick Razag into thinking we are heading north, then double back and meet up with us again. Make sure you don't leave a trail."

"I should come with him," Wayart says, who looks almost mortal despite his feral, shamanistic appearance. "If Razag is going to be tracking him he'll need someone who's good at moving through the wilds without leaving a trail." It's true that what little efforts you have been able to make to cover your tracks have been mostly due to Wayart. He has no relevant Talents, but he's honed the mundane arts of stealth and tracking in the wilderness to perfection.

"If you go with me, you won't be able to cover their tracks," Tethys says, "what good is the distraction if Razag tracks them anyway?"

"There's no covering Goralin's tracks," Wayart says, "if Razag heads in this direction at all, he will find the trail, no matter what I do. But yours is a different story."

>send wayart with tethys or keep him with you

>>25977907
Send him with Tethys, he makes a good argument for that case and I'd rather the experienced woodsman have the definitive say on the matter if he deems it so.

>>25977907
Send him. We're trying the distraction because we CAN'T cover our tracks, no point in trying at all, better to try to make so much noise they never even come anywhere near our tracks. The only real downside seems to be that it's another man (daemon, I guess) less if we do get attacked, but from the sound of it we can't win that fight anyway.

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>>25978012
>>25978057

"Go with Tethys," you say to Wayart, "if Razag finds our trail it won't matter who is or isn't with us. Meet up with us at the Twin Peaks. We can make our way to Margell from there."

"As you wish," Tethys says, bowing slightly and turning to leave. Wayart follows behind him.

You waste no further time, crossing the road and heading south towards the mountains again. The resulting fire from Tethys' distraction the next day is so massive you can see it from here. Being the daemon of forest fires in Tulivinen, it was to be expected that he'd take the opportunity to strengthen his concept a little.

It's two days since you split up when a familiar, if not entirely welcome, face comes heading through the foliage. "Isrameth," Goralin says, "I was wondering when you would show up again."

"Getting impatient?" the abomination says, dark blood pulsing through his half-translucent skin, "Sun is rubbing off on you too much."

"There's no time to waste in war, whether I like it or not," Goralin says.

"You have delivered your message?" you ask.

"I have," Isrameth says, "Razag will not find any of us in the Mire. Talsvrahan has raised hiding there to an art form."

"Joy," you say, "can't wait for this war to end so we can start rooting you out of that hellhole."

"Fun times all around," Isrameth says.

"We should be moving," Goralin says.

You nod, and continue heading into the forests.

You're beginning to near the two Golgothan outposts. The area is mostly overrun by various tribes, but Blood Guards and regular Golgothan patrols sweep the area regularly. Do you want to head straight through, and risk being spotted by Golgothan scouts, or take the long way around? The second option will give Razag more time to find your trail, and once he's got it, he'll catch up fast. You won't be safe until you reach the mountains (even then, it'll only be relative safety, but at least you won't be leaving a super obvious trail everywhere).

>wat do?

>>25978573
How much farther to the mountains? If it's short enough, being discovered won't matter. Word shouldn't reach Razag instantly, and even if he does follow our distraction, it can only last so long before he realized it was a deception anyway.

>>25978703

It's another five days or so before you reach the mountains. More than long enough for word to reach Razag. Whether or not he reaches you before you reach the mountains depends on where exactly he is when word reaches him. He'll probably only have a day to react, two at most, but he moves very fast. He can fly, so the rough terrain won't slow him down, plus he has a lot of Celerity. If he's still at the Mire, he might catch up to you before you reach the mountains. On the other hand, if he's headed in the direction of Arkas because he fell for the diversion, he probably won't be able to catch you.

>>25978813
Doesn't sound like a great option. If we managed to evade their troops, we'll likely run into tribals and our merely passing by them could stir up enough of a reaction to alert the enemy. How much would we lose going around?

>>25978879

It'd take you another three or four days to go around the region patrolled by the outposts.

>>25979034
So that's... 8-9 days total. Seems unlikely he's going to be following a false lead that long. Either the lack of tracks will throw him off within a day or two, or he'll follow Tethys and Wayarts tracks and capture and interrogate them. And once he looks elsewhere, it sounds like our tracks are so obvious he'll find it in no time. If that's the case, the only option with an actual chance to succeed is powering right through, killing any troops that see us to delay the report that extra bit.

>>25979189

You decide to head through the region. If you can just manage to go undetected for a two days, they won't have time to report back to Razag. The three of you are not exactly extremely stealthy, however you do not see any Golgothan patrols on your way through. What you do come across are the occasional small band of tribals. Whenever you do, you don't leave any survivors and quickly burn the corpses to destroy the evidence on the way out.

You aren't sure if Razag knows where you are. Maybe the Golgothans found the charred bones and figured out that it was you. Maybe they thought it was ritual funeral pyres from the natives (not uncommon in the area). Maybe there was a scout you didn't see. In any case, you're able to make it to the mountains without being ambushed from above by Razag, so if he did catch wind of things, he must not have heard in time.

You've made it into the mountainous spine that runs through Arkas, Tulivinen, and Margell.

>wat do?

>>25979684
Well.. For starters, consult Goralin on how we can get him more stealthily around in the mountains than in the jungles. If our pursuer can fly, mountains won't stop him at all. Can we use tunnels or something? We headed here for a reason, right?
Second, we were supposed to meet up with the others at Twin Peaks. It would be neat if we could observe that place from a hidden location instead of actually showing up, since it's possible that they were captured and Razag acquired the meeting location from them.

>>25979907

You came here because Goralin isn't going to leave tracks on hard stone, so the plan is to stick to mountaintops as much as possible where there's not a whole lot of dirt between you and the rock. He'll leave smaller tracks because there's not much to leave tracks in. Better yet, some of your allies up here are Stoneshapers. They can create tunnels and the like, and have done so in the past. You never know when you might stumble across a cavern network made to facilitate stealthy movement through the mountains. Unless you find the people who made the things, in which case you'll know in a hurry.

You head towards the Twin Peaks. Normally this is the point where I'd ask how you plan to observe without being spotted, but unfortunately I'm out of time. Quest will continue tomorrow at 14:00. Or maybe a little later than that. Or earlier. My schedule is not as stable as it used to be. However, follow me on twitter @MCJohnnyQuest and I will tweet when the new quest opens up. I basically never use it for non-quest related stuff so you don't need to worry about me flooding your feed with food updates.

>see you then