Is there something that could be looted from Elven settlements in forests? And no I'm not talking wood elves, lets say common or even high elves, who happen to live in forests. These guys should have zero gold and silver, their "craft" is well ... I guess you might sell some in human metropolises ... if you really feel like dragging that shit over half the world.
Also, how the fuck will you raid settlements with natives that have like +10 to Hide with advantage! And no, it is not possible to burn down an entire forest. Not to mention they have epic archers + old as fuck casters with level 9 spells.
So: I have a module where dragon+some mooks of his raid forest, full of elves. First off, I have no clue what could raiders loot, second of all, I have really hard time imagining raiders would even FIND their targets.
Help me out with this one, please Veeky Forums. Is there a way to:
- come up with some loot that might elves actually have and is worth taking - come up with a tactic that would enable attackers to detect, capture and kill mentioned wood dwellers.
You know that river systems with tress can collect gold and iron deposits, right? And that certain kinds of woods are extremely valuable even in these modern times, right? And you know that it is not very difficult to craft artistic objects using magic when you have huge supplies of the two most important things to do so: time and material?
A better question is why haven't you looted them before?
Jeremiah Russell
OP here.
I guess I got schooled. Roots with gold in them and top-tier handcrafted stuff. Nice.
Blake Russell
Finding them depends on several factors >Are the elves nomadic or static? >Have they experienced major war or regular conflict in the past..5 thousand years?
If the answers are "nomads and yes" then you will need to rely heavily on high-level tracking and dragon bullshit. Can the dragon smell elf-flesh or blood? then prepare for a savage fight that will rely on forcing the elves to stand and fight, plus dragon.
If they are static and peaceful then it's a simple matter of finding their easily-located holds and falling on them with speed and savagery before they have any chance to organise.
Any combination of the two is going to require magic and your dragon. Either to find the bastards or to completely shatter their defence
Josiah Cruz
OP here.
Scrying magic. Nice approach. Also, these elves are not supposed to be nomadic, but these DID encounter war in last, um, decade? There are often goblins and orcs trying to invade the forest "because reasons".
David Brooks
Then yeah they're going to be wary enough to spot some murder goons. Elves are fast, but you're also assumed human? So provided you've kept your dragon master under wraps and Not gone through the forest like a chainsaw then there exists a chance you could get close.
Then it's either a matter of butchering the first guards and chewing through the settlement. Or talking your way inside, unfurling your master and going from there.
The trick will be to abuse any notions they have and then act fast. They'll be well-versed in the cruelty of orcs and remorseless in putting down threats. But its a hell of a lot harder to rally a defence if a fucking green dragon has popped up in the middle of down and murder goons are cutting down any elf stupid enough to gawk
Juan Gutierrez
Good ideas. Perhaps a specialist scouting group is in order that goes ahead of raiding army and gets the intel on settlements and elven soldiers. Question is just how to: - mark the spot in the forest for dragon to charge in - get your army in the settlement rapidly. I guess dozen or so troops could just ride the dragon.
Isaac Myers
The elves themselves might be a pretty fine loot
David Ortiz
Hmmm slaves. Not bad.
Robert Perry
OP, go and read a book called the "Silmarillion". Pay special attention to Nargothrond and Menegroth.
Justin Collins
every day. We have this fucking thread in some form, every day.
Austin Gutierrez
>Ride the dragon
Bad idea user. Forests are poor places for a dragon. Unless you're a black or some other non-fire based type you'll at worse end up mangled in the trees or choke everyone with smoke. Better to disguise as a biped and erupt in the middle of them. Now you're too close to form a cohesive defence against and all of your weapons are in range. If you're a black, then yeah just carry your best mages and archers to combination shield and poke while you melt cover.
As for the marking. This depends on resources and rules. Can you employ one or more psionics? does the dragon have mongrel half-breed offspring with some kind of link to dad?
Army movement is always a pain. Dragon drop might take a few minutes and is limited by size. I'd recommend paying an artificer to fashion two iron rings linked by a single-use teleport from one to the other. Your forces are on one side, your infiltration team has the other. Once in position you lay your ring down, send a mage manually porting back to your forces to give the word and activate the rings.
Brayden Gomez
>As for the marking. This depends on resources and rules. Can you employ one or more psionics? does the dragon have mongrel half-breed offspring with some kind of link to dad?
Even a psion could only send info "we are next to a real shrubby tree". Not much help. But could one cast something like signal flare with DND 5e spell arsenal?
Also, perhaps one should get some sort of filers and go full Apocalypse now on elves? Plus not-red dragon as main firepower.
Brayden Long
Steal their trees. Build furniture with them.
Camden Bell
Flying and elves in general is an issue. Now you could overcome that by going full evil and arranging the service of winged fiends or demons. Flyers with less to fear from elven arrows. Or yes, a number of black/green or maybe blue dragons
I'm sure there's something you could cast there. However I imagine most big, flashy "I'm over here" spells are also going to alert your prey and you want to give them as little time to prepare as possible. What are you working with exactly? Do you have the magical manpower to render several dragons invisible? or is your infiltration team also a suicide squad. Primed to alert the main force then die delaying reprisal?
Landon White
The tree themselves.
Ever wondered why it's called "ironwood"? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioleaching >Bioleaching is the extraction of metals from their ores through the use of living organisms.
Besides iron, they extract gold as well. Do you really think the golden elven trees are just crude magic? bldgblog.com/2010/11/gold-is-the-metal/ >It was reported earlier this month that “gold nanoparticles can induce luminescence in leaves.” That’s right: glowing trees. The scientists who discovered it call it bio-LED.
Let's not forget the mundane wood. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedars_of_God >Over the centuries, cedar wood was exploited by the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, Israelites and Turks. The Phoenicians used the Cedars for their merchant fleets. They needed timbers for their ships and the Cedar woods made them the “first sea trading nation in the world”
Oh, the elven comunication network is also valuable: bldgblog.com/2015/11/electronic-plantlife/ >process by which they were able to “manufacture” what they call “analog and digital organic electronic circuits and devices” inside living plants.
Have at disposal adult dragon (chromatic, can be any pick, probably green or black), owner of hoard of gold plus an army of about 500 minions. While most minions will stay behind to protect the hoard, dragon will take a few with him. Devils are great idea. Fliers and don't care if they die since they just return to Hell. Idea is for a dragon to hire a competent scouting party, get an ability of communication with party, enable rapid insertion and sufficient firepower to handle elven village of about 200-250 elves (a third max are combatants).
Lucas Howard
Ok so a small militia of elves seasoned against orcs and goblins. No thousand year old high mages who live every day like Satan is going to attack them, probably no wizards at all and little to no reason to see scarred veteran archers packing blessed silver arrowheads. At most a retired adventurer or a harper.
I'd recommend striking a bargain with Devils. NOT demons, Devils, lawful evil denizens of the nine hells. Trade a number of the dragons followers, or some elves for a few dozen sturdy monsters and a few that can cast invisibility.
Dragon goes in first. Drops the remaining humans outside elf detection range along with a few devils then heads over to the elf settlement. Still cloaked and drops the devils. These are sturdy, resilient or immune to common weapons and will fuck everything up while the dragon rains death from above. Meanwhile your humans surround every exit they can to catch runners and mop up if the devils are killed.
I'd say a black dragon if you've promised your followers and so the elves are worthless. Or green if you want to mostly incapacitate them
Tyler Watson
Veeky Forums is so retarded about elves that I often want to kill myselves
Christian Baker
OP here.
>Ok so a small militia of elves seasoned against orcs and goblins. No thousand year old high mages who live every day like Satan is going to attack them, probably no wizards at all and little to no reason to see scarred veteran archers packing blessed silver arrowheads. At most a retired adventurer or a harper.
This should be it, yeah. Splendid advice, Veeky Forumsbro.
Oliver Myers
because I like planning how to fell fortresses and such, what is your dragons goal? there is the tried and true sacrifice route in which case the elves them selves are the target. or possibly a master blacksmith/shaper and any other desired individual
Jason Morales
>cast gentle repose on female elfs corpse >profit
Kevin Jones
OP here.
Dragon just needs to loot as much capital, basically, as possible. Means slaves and everything that has a value.
Adrian Reed
right so lets get this right. 1dragon 500 followers
vs
250-ish elves not all combatants
objective slaves and as much loot as possible.
hmm right I'm gonna go iron warriors on this. as much description as possible or even an outline of the village would be helpful but I don't need the outline
Henry Cruz
A cluster of about a dozen redwood-like trees with small structures in the upper parts of the trees. All Elves can rapidly descend or remain in the trees as much as they like. They have active (nonmagical) scouts and hunters active day and night. About a third are competent longbow archers with perhaps two dozen marksmen.
Such settlements are scattered about 100 miles apart in huge ass forest.
Luke Nguyen
underrated
Ian Lopez
by 100 miles then the knife ears can not commune with each other provided you stop the scouts. and the dragon wont be heard by any but the scouts.
okay if you look at this anons ideathen that's good, but if you can do it without the demons and these mooks are decent at stealth then decend on cloaked dragon, drop cloaked units at night, sneak into the houses and paralyse or knock out any conscious and drag them to the dragon, kill any scouts you find and lug as many resources as you can. then once they are clear come back and ransack the place break the shacks and drag them to the prisoners to work with. rinse and repate. bonus idea is plant some super fast growing trees that are native here so that it looks like it was never there.
Aaron Baker
Are there any forest creatures dragon could get on his side that are as comfortable in forest as Elves?
Camden King
Not OP but the demon idea guy. This is a solid improvement, I'd been assuming average mooks- the kind it's not raciest to say "totally wouldn't get the drop on elves"
You' want to scope the place out and establish when the bulk of the population enters their rest state. As elves don't sleep you loose a good chunk of stealth, but they should still be just unaware enough. My plans assumed the goal wasn't prisoners, just assorted loot and/or total destruction.
Matthew Ramirez
Depends on the forest, something old with spider-infested ruins or the more evil and monster-y breeds of autism wolves/wargs might work. You need evil and some basic intelligence to be cowed by a dragon
Joshua Powell
not bad, damned knife ears making it difficult. WHY DONT THEY SLEEP. okay dragons can cast magics right? any sleep spells. and you don't want to scope the place out because that would be seen and then callsed as strange. hmm what about the mooks possing as a caravan, they pass through the forrest for a short cut, find them and they want to trade blah blah blah, from there they can observe quite a bit. and if we do it smart we can do this to multiple settlements
Adrian Gomez
This works. Or with some smart casting you could cry the dates of any celebrations. Festivals or holy events. If you can't take a sleeping enemy then a festive and distracted one is almost as good.
I'm not sure if sleep spells work on elves. But they can be knocked out, or if they'e packed together you could possibly spam low level spells. Grease, cobwebs and shit to hinder and lock them down while your goons roll through and blackjack everything
Mason Thompson
are there anyother factions you could use? like some rasist Bretons to take out orcs? wait... we could use the goblins and orcs as fodder for the scouts a few days before we plan to attack
Cowardice is common among the pigkin so this is possible. You'd need to strike a deal with a chieftain or something. This shouldn't be a huge issue- but be prepared to pay him on the off-change something fucks with your treachery. Also if you plan to hit several settlements then dealing with the orcs demands time to gather them in numbers and the whole plan changes
Jackson Rogers
what did the elves do to deserve our hatered?
anywho yes bring them together in numbers big enough to be a threat but just small enough to be defeated without the elves fleeing.
so a few clans per settlement?
or better some mooks may even take the wounded away seeing as the scouts are going to fight in the forests and away from others of their kind.
and as down payment we are "a wizard who has transcended mortality in the form of a dragon, and can do the same to any who die"
Logan Hall
>riding into town after the enemy broke and ran >fucking tree houses >whatever, tell your men to loot everything and bring it to the town center >remind them that loot means art, crafted goods, and flesh >tell your bloodied second to take 5 men he trusts and guard the pile >take the rest of your guard to the knife ears "temple" with saws >its a bunch of wooden stools next to a giant tree with a picture >WTF >old elf stubbles out of grass hut and begins lecturing about how his ancestors sang this forest in to being on order from their god >How the ancestors painted this scene upon the tree to remind them of balance of nature >how without balance the world would turn to chaos >on your order a bow sings a wooden shaft into his chest and paint the ground with blood >cut picture off tree and take logs to frame it when you get back >as you return to check up on your second while the pack horses are being loaded he asks a favor >he found a set of armor he wishes to keep >fine mail that shines like silver >whatever race traitor >all the other loot is finely made art, texts, and crafts tools >tell men to whore the prisoner to other armies and keep the coin they make >gain valuable elven texts to barter to wizards for favors of divining and warcraft >gain masterwork tools that smiths use to build better weapons >gain art pieces to use on diplomatic missions and to win favor with other lords >get bitching ass tree picture to put up in shitter so you dont get bored
Connor Perez
no, don't defile the women. don't kill the elders and don't fucking torture the prisoners
we want Stockholm syndrome not seeking to escape
Tyler Smith
That seems pointlessly elaborate user-kun. Orcs have simple needs. Offer the chief and his elite few steel arms and good mail and they'll rally their clan to you. Then spread your men out and do this to other clans. Obviously you want more orcs to compensate elsewhere for the lack of dragon. So if there are any trolls, giants or other hostiles in the area then you gather those as well.
Also its better for an orc to die in place of a man. So sink some magic into Letting your men see in the dark and scatter them around to catch runaways.
As for why we're doing this? The Lord Dragon takes what it wants and pays us well. Who cares why the elves must die?
James Morris
no the point was we want the scouts dead, but ultimately we want the attacking orcs dead as well and I was lying about resurrecting them after death. I think we are the dragon, and It was rhetorical to show the absolute shit the elves will be put through even the planners are going "shit...that's a b bit brutal" [well I am at least] and don't call me kun, I'm not sure what it means but stop it
Brayden Thomas
kek, well in that case we can always murder the orcs ourselves. Poison celebration or knives to the back
Christopher Reed
or rather, our mooks appear with the caster who will cast invisibility and will end the waekend orcs by saving the last few scouts and then we will be the heros. and then celibration and KNOCKOUT BEER
