"Aahhhhh, not really," the sheriff said, his voice frustrated. "We're trying to figure out how to deal with the bandits who hit us yesterday, but... Well, there are only three of us, maybe six more if I try to deputize a few townsfolk, and even with nine I wouldn't bet on us going after them and coming back alive. We know where they are, but they're well defended and they'd know we were coming from miles away." Malcolm flopped into a chair, scowling and putting his head in his hands, allowing Lani to see the cat-ears sticking out of his black hair clearly for the first time since she'd met him since he was without his hat.
A wave of guilt washed over Lani at the mention of the bandits and a flood of colour rushed into her cheeks. "I, uh... I can help you with that." Lani spoke up after Malcolm collapsed into the chair and she picked up Rex, determination in her eyes. "It's my fault, and, and my mother always told me to make up for my mistakes. And... and I owe someone for shooting me out of the sky yesterday. It wouldn't just be me either, I can bring help as well My friends from yesterday could help, and I know more people that could help." Though she knew it would delay her more unless she found enough people in the bandit group to satisfy the demons she would have to summon Lani knew it would be the only way they would have a chance at taking down the bandits.
Malcolm frowned at Lani's offer to help, the sheriff once more scratching his head uncomfortably. "I don't know if I can accept that in good conscience," he replied honestly, "you're a might young for this sorta work if you don't mind me saying, and... Well, I don't terribly want to see ANYONE get killed, but I'd feel worse if it was one as young as you. Are you really sure about this? You don't live here, other than a grudge there's nothin' stoppin' you from just taking the trail to wherever it is you're supposed to be going."
Lani's brow furrowed and her cheeks puffed out as the young demoness pouted, feeling indignant at the accusation of being 'too young'. "I'm not 'a might young'," She huffed, standing rigidly still. "I managed to sort out the spiders, didn't I? And besides, it's not just a grudge. You gave me a contract to do, and my mother always taught me to keep my promises."
"Mmm, that's true," Malcolm replied when Lani reminded him that she'd dealt with the spiders. "Well... I guess there won't be any convincing you, eh? Fine then. You're on the team too."
Lani's face looked as if it were about to split in two as she beamed a wide toothy smile, happy that she'd be able to fix the mistakes she made in Chander. Lani would've followed Malcolm to the bandits or tracked them down herself regardless, but she was happy that the sheriff had accepted her offer to join them in taking the bandit group down.
"What's the plan? When are we leaving?" The young demoness asked excitedly, bouncing on the heels of her feet.
Malcolm sighed frustratedly and sat down, scowling heavily but not at Lani. "I... Honestly don't even know," he said sourly before flopping into a chair behind his desk. "Even knowing where they are, their hideout is so well defended... Attacking during the day or at night, both seem like suicide."
"Hmmm, well... Maybe a night attack would work best?" Lani suggested, trying to offer help to the frustrated sheriff. "Tonight? I know I may seem like just a kid, but I learnt a lot from the stories my mother told me. By attacking at night we should be pretty well hidden, and they might not expect an attack so soon after they raided the town. And... sure, they might have more people than us, and they might be better defended than us, but we'll have the element of surprise. And it won't be just us! I'm sure Vanilla will help us as well. She's a really good fighter and has got some pretty powerful magic, if it weren't for her I don't think I'd have left that mine alive, or survived my injuries from yesterday. And I have a few tricks up my sleeve too! I should be able to sneak inside without them noticing, and then set up an attack while the rest of you attack them from the outside."
"If we could find it reliably," Malcolm said bitterly, "and if they didn't hear us stumbling around in the dark." Shaking his head again, the sheriff sighed heavily and said; "It's as good an idea as any, I suppose. I can't think of anything better." He looked at Lani again, "we could use all the help that we can get. If Miss Vanilla's willing to come with on this one... I wouldn't say no."
"Um, well... if you have something one of the bandits owned we might be able to track them down more easily using Fido to sniff them out," Lani suggested, though she was unsure he'd be able to track them at such a distance. She was even more unsure if using him was even a good idea, if anything happened to Fido she wouldn't be able to live with herself, and that's even before Eleanor finds out.
"Okay! I'll make sure to ask her right away!" Eleanor exclaimed happily. "I'll be back soon!" Bidding the sheriff and his deputies goodbye for now Lani rushed off back to Malcolm's home, cradling Rex to her chest.
"Just what's left of the one we caught and the ones that got killed. We might be able to track them down regardless, but I don't know if a scent tracker will help all that much. It's mostly just... Being able to see the landmarks and the signs in the dark that's troubling," Malcolm replied when Lani brought up using Fido to help them. When she turned to go and talk to Vanilla, Malcolm and the deputees would wave Lani goodbye and return to their planning while she once more crossed the town, Chander's streets more or less unchanged since the last time she'd walked them. Soon enough she was back at the sheriff's house, where Vanilla awaited her with Fido and the rest of the puppies she had birthed.
"Vanillaaaaa~!" Lani called out breathlessly, alerting her arrival, as she rushed into the sheriff's house to where she had left her friend. "Vanilla, the sheriff is planning on going after the bandits from yesterday, and I'm going to help him. I was contracted to take them out after all, so I'm kinda responsible for what happened, and I want to make amends. You'll come along as well, right? And Fido... I don't really wanna put you in the way of danger, but if you can help us sniff them out I'd really appreciate it! And I have a... friend there that I'd like you to meet, I owe her one for shooting me out of the sky yesterday. Maybe you and her can get to know each other better."
“Of course I'll come. You're not the only one with a score to settle with those bandits,” Vanilla said in response to Lani, a sense of purpose present in her own voice. “But don't be ridiculous thinking that you bare any responsibility at all for what happened. You may have accepted the contract for them, but there was no way of knowing that this was about to happen. Besides, you were with me yesterday clearing out the mine of those demonic spiders, so there was nothing you could have done to prevent it,” she added reassuringly.
“So then, what is the sheriff's plan to go take them on?” the catgirl asked, listening to whatever information Lani had to give before eventually getting ready to head out whenever the time came.
"B-but... if I had done that contract first... maybe the town wouldn't have been attacked," Lani stammered, her eyes looking to the floor. "The spiders would've probably still been there a day later. I should've realised they were the more immediate problem. It's what my mother would've done."
Though Lani's face lit up with joy when Vanilla agreed to join the counter attack on the bandits. "Well, the sheriff plans on attacking tonight, they shouldn't expect an attack so soon after their attack on the town, so we should have the advantage," Lani began to explain, her words tumbling out rapidly in excitement. "It's only going to be a small number of us; the sheriff, his deputies, maybe some townsfolk, and us, but with our abilities it should be pretty easy for us to take them down. Sure, they have their own powers, but I can always call in some demons if needed, and with your magical powers we should be good, even once our surprise attack ends and they start fighting back."
"Okay," Vanilla replied with a nod. "Well then, I guess the only thing left to do is prepare. Whenever the sheriff is ready to go, we'll be ready, too," she added, with Parvani briefly chiming in in agreement before she began setting about doing just that, taking note of various supplies that they may need and gathering what could be spared from both the sheriff's house and around town from the inn or shops.
With their plans sorted and Vanilla doing her own thing for the day Lani set out to begin Rex's training. She assumed the young pup may not be that powerful right now, but with Fido here she could get a jump start on Rex's training and improve him faster together than she would be able to on her own. So for most of the day Lani got to work, only stopping when it comes close to the time that they were to set out to strike back against the bandits.
Spending 180 denarii to train Rex up and gain three talents;
Shadowmancer - Dark Armour, Patch of Darkness, Shadowstalker
Resilient
Skill with [Unarmed]
With her home destroyed, Vanilla sadly had very little in the way of supplies to gather. The sheriff's home was relatively spartan, even his foodstuffs on hand were fairly spare, and that left little in the way for the pair to pack and carry besides what they already had on them. Lani would be able to train her hellhound pup, the runt of the litter given how little he had grown compared to his kin, and the reason for that became slowly apparent as he developed. His siblings began to bully Rex as they began to dwarf him, and even Fido looked on the small, weak hellhound in disgust that was impossible for Lani to miss. Expensive, hard to acquire medicine was necessary to supplement the weaker beast, and only the mysterious pale cloaked man who seemed to appear whenever one needed him had it in Chander, allowing Lani to buy it in order to let him grow a bit more before Fido simply killed him for being weak. Vanilla would be able to get what supplies she needed from him, should she want to prepare for the raid on the bandit's hideout.
Eventually, however, dusk would settle, and the sheriff would come to collect them with an extra pair of horses. The hellhound puppies were all almost as large as adult dogs by that point, and Fido rose to go with Lani while growling at all of them to stay, Rex included. Whether Lani accepted that decision or not was up to her, however, and the two of them would be given horses to ride in order to keep up with Malcolm and his five other companions, all also on horseback. There was Trevor, who was already shivering nervously, and the girl they'd seen in the sheriff's office. With them also was a portly man in a long brown jacket with a bushy mustache and a big hat, a thin man with shifty eyes and no hair on his head to speak of clad in dark clothes, a woman in leather trousers and a buckskin jacket with a serious look about her and dark hair, and another su-ku-ta man with a fluffy white tail and hair and legs with reversed direction.
They set out in short order, a hellhound possibly leading the way and making the horses extremely nervous. Lani's would suffer the same issue, while Vanilla's would seem more contented than the rest by its rider despite the presence of a demon nearby. They would ride off into the desert in search of the bandit's hideout, following directions taken from the only one of their number to have been left in town alive, and after a couple hours of traveling under the cover of night they came upon a long, dry gulch that sloped down toward a rocky outcrop that stretched a long ways. "This is the place," Malcolm muttered quietly so that his voice wouldn't carry far as he dismounted, tying the rains of his horse to a sturdy chunk of rock so that the beast would be out of sight. "They're 'sposed to be holed up in this here canyon," he continued, "anyone care to go first?" His words were spoken sardonically, and he checked his pistol once before starting off himself, but if Lani or Vanilla wanted to prepare further or scout in some other way first they would be free to stop him and suggest a different plan.
With the behaviour from Rex's siblings and Fido's obvious looks of disgust thrown at the smallest of his offspring Lani was glad she had chosen the peculiar looking hellhound pup as her pet because she guessed that, if left alone, he wouldn't have survived for long if she hadn't. With little choice but to train him herself Lani spent the rest of the day with Rex training him up from what little knowledge she picked up from watching her mother at work. It wasn't as effective as Eleanor, no doubt she would have been able to train the small hellhound to a much higher degree, but even so, what little Lani had managed to teach Rex was far more than what he would've picked up on his own in such a small amount of time and her efforts were quite noticeable. Still though, even with his training it was clear that Rex, along with his siblings, would be unsuitable for the coming battle, and so once sheriff Malcolm and his deputies arrived to pick her and Vanilla up she ordered the pups to wait at the house.
With the group mounted and ready to go Lani instructed Fido to take the lead, to sniff out the trail to make sure the path given to them by the bandit wasn't false. She rode in silence amongst the ranks of the sheriff's men, following closely behind Malcolm himself, a look of fierce determination her young face. She wasn't sure if even this was enough to take down the bandits, but Lani knew they had to try.
"Fido, can you sense out where exactly the bandits are located?" Lani asked the hellhound quietly once she too had hidden her horse out of sight.
"We're going to have to sneak into their camp, or some of us at least, to surprise them before the rest of us attack them from outside," This was the best course of action Lani believed, but how to do that effectively she was unsure. The young demon was well aware of the abilities that Fido had and was certain that so long as they could make it near the camp without being detected he could sneak them in with the use of his shadow techniques. But who to sneak in? Lani knew she would have to go in for sure, she held herself responsible so it was her duty to jump head first into the danger. Fido would have to join her as well that was a given, but who else? Vanilla would make sense, but Lani didn't want to put her new friend into anymore danger than she already had, and besides, her magical abilities may be put to better use protecting the less capable of their party. Lani had no doubt in her mind that Malcolm and the two deputies she saw with him earlier were accomplished gunmen, but she doubted that the other four had their kind of experience and nerve.
No, it had to be Lani and Fido on their own, that much she was sure. Or of their own number at least, it wouldn't be wise to enter the bandit hideout without some kind of force. But what could she summon from what she knew? Goblins, sorceress', and succubi would all come in handy in a fight, but they weren't exactly known for their quietness. But what else could she do? So, keeping out of view of the edge of the canyon and the horses so not to spook them Lani worked her demonic powers, sending out a call for any demons that could help her with the task at hand. She'd do this three times for a total of three demons before turning back to their group.
"I have a plan. It's probably not the best but it's all I have. All of us will sneak towards the camp with us five quietly slipping in should we get near it undetected. Fido should be able to do that for us. Once inside we'll do what we can to disable the group before the fighting begins, but once it does start you lot will attack from the outside after surrounding the camp if you can, one half of the group firing at a time so we've always got shots raining down on the bandits." Lani recalled that tactic used by her mother and the other women when bandits occasionally attacked their farm and how effective it was fighting back against them, so she surmised it would work just as well here. "Get to higher ground and split in pairs to surround the camp if possible, one person from each pair firing at a time. If not, just make sure to find some cover around or in the camp. Sheriff Malcolm, Vanilla, you two should probably stick together while the others distract the bandits with their fire. You've got powerful magicks, and I'm guessing you're a pretty good shot, so together you should be able to deal a lot of damage together. And if you can use your magicks to create summons that'll be even better." Again, Lani recalled a tactic used by her mother; the use of her lightning elementals to manipulate their enemies into following a path she wanted them to take, and thought that if Vanilla had the same ability it would most certainly help in aiding to take the bandits down.
"We don't need many of these people alive so shoot to kill for the most part, but I will need some of the women left at least, so if they throw down their weapons just disable them to make sure they don't change their mind, and I'm sure your people will want some of the bandits to take responsibility for their crimes. There is also one woman in particular that I want to deal with myself though, which I may need to take out before you can fire into the camp. She can create barriers and powerful blasts, she's the reason why I was knocked out of the sky yesterday so I want to make sure I repay her back for that. I don't know what their leader is like though, so I'll need you to tell me what he is like on the way, sheriff. Anyway, any questions before we go?" Throughout her speech Lani's voice had a quaver of uncertainty to it, though the fiery light of determination burnt brightly in her eyes.
Use "Summon Demon" three times to summon three stalkers for 3 EP each, for a total cost of 9 EP.
Vanilla nodded in reply to her friend's plan of attack against the bandit camp, having listened attentively to the girl's words throughout. The young mage was no tactician herself, but it sounded like an effective enough plan to her, and unless the sheriff made an attempt to try and overrule any portion of it in some way she would take her roll to heart and begin thinking of what spells and summons would be best to use to help protect Sheriff Malcolm and the others that had joined them on their bandit camp raid.
She had acquired healing potions for everyone in the group from that shady 'merchant' person, but those would only be useful after-the-fact if someone got hurt, and even then only if the person's injuries weren't too severe. She wanted to use protective or preventative spells again on the townsfolk who had joined them like she had with Malcolm when he'd confronted the bandit's leader, but there were too many with them this time for her to be able to use such magicks on them all – she could only maintain up to about three persistent spells at any one time before she simply couldn't hold her focus on upkeeping them. Summoning a few Earth Elementals again was a given; For one, the young mage didn't have to focus to maintain their existence once they were summoned like with other spells; And secondly, they would likely be very capable of taking down some of the bandits by themselves based on how effective the one she had summoned during the attack had been, as well as possibly acting as a draw for some of the bandit's gunfire, keeping it from being focused too much on the rest of the group.
Aside from her summons, however, she was considering illusion magic of some kind as perhaps the best option to use, to start things off, at least. Either to somehow conceal the group's presence, or perhaps distract the bandits by overwhelming with more, fake targets for them to shoot at or be intimidated by...or both.
Now did not quite yet seem like the time to prepare these spells, however. She doubted that her Earth Elementals would be able to approach the bandit camp quietly without getting heard or seen, losing them the element of surprise, and her illusion spells would require magic and focus to maintain, making her believe it would be best to wait until they were about to begin their own phase of the assault before casting them, for which they would likely be waiting on Lani's signal.
With Lani's preparations made, Vanilla would brief Malcolm on the others on her own general plans for the use of her magic. Unless there were staunch objections or recommendations otherwise by the sheriff, it would presumably be time for Lani's preliminary phase of their assault to begin and for Vanilla and the others to begin moving into their own positions, with the catgirl following Sheriff Malcolm's lead.
RP:
Buy 7 Healing Potions from the Merchant and give 1 each to Lani, Malcolm, Trevor, and each of the 4 additional tag-alongs.
Once they were at the canyon near the bandit's lair, Fido would growl low in his chest, a sign that yes he could find them if he caught their scent. The air was still, keeping the wind from carrying it too far, but given enough time he would be able to suss them out. "Yeah," Malcolm agreed with Lani's suggestion that they sneak in, "you lot stay out here. We'll sneak in, stir the hornets nest. Stay in cover, be ready to open up when we draw 'em out!" It was instruction similar to Lani's plan but Malcolm including himself and his deputies while leaving Lani and Vanilla out of it, but when she seemed to suggest that she go in without him the man scowled, and so did everyone else.
"This is my town," he said calmly, "if anyone's going in there, it's gonna be me." Then, Trevor the deputy would add; "They only got the one woman left anyway. Most of their crew was male, and the other girl got killed in town."
"You wanna settle your score with Natalia," Malcolm continued without acknowledging the comment about needing women at all, "that's your business. Far as I'm concerned she can hang. Balthazar's the head of the show though, and if anyone needs to go down first it's him. He might not be a mage, but he's something much much worse. Not that, uhhhh, all mages are bad of course," he added, shooting a hasty apologetic look at Vanilla for a moment, "anyway.... You've not seen his tricks, but I figured Lady Vanilla would fill you in on what she saw. He can change his form into a swarm of.... Bats I think, and can somehow protect himself from bullets... If he sees them coming. I'm not about to give him that chance though!"
He seemed intent on taking the lead on this one, but if she insisted on coming with him with Fido he would relent. Assuming that she still called upon her three demons, the trio of silvery-skinned humanoid demons would fade into existence in front of Lani, each of them kneeling and showing off ricktus grins filled with shark-like teeth. They would rise on her command, their natural camouflage making them all but invisible in the growing darkness even when it was only half active, and would follow her commands without question... For now.
Vanilla, in the meantime, would be able to hand out the potions she'd acquired from the merchant, and though she wouldn't be with the sheriff she would just end up with Travis as an ambush buddy instead. Unless Lani objected strongly in turn, they would be ready to move out after the sorceress also gave whatever information she cared to about the workings of magic, and she would find herself heading off to the nearby cliffs with Travis, who climbed up and helped her along if necessary before hiding in a small nook with his rifle shouldered. From then on the man would fidget nervously, awaiting the violence that was no doubt soon to come while carefully peering out from their cover. The others took up positions from which they could crossfire down the canyon, none staying too close together, and from then on all they could do was wait for things to progress, though Vanilla certainly had other options she could work with if she chose to add spells to her preparation.
Lani, in the meantime, would find Malcolm creeping along ahead of her, his handgun raised carefully as he moved cautiously along the left hand side of the canyon. How she wanted to arrange her formation of demons was up to her, but unless ordered otherwise Fido would stay just ahead of her, already sporting his shadow armor as he crept along silently between her and Malcolm. The stalkers would become practically invisible in the fading light and fan out ahead of the trio, going and doing who knows what unless she gave them specific instructions.
