Though surprised, the moment your soldiers spot the trolls around the barge, they leap into action. Their weapons rip through the would-be thieves, and by the time you reach the battle lines, all the trolls around you are dead, and the rest are fleeing downriver. Your soldiers' blood is up now, and all you can do is chase after them, making sure they don't run into an ambush, as they sprint after the trolls.
More trolls guard a large but crude raft; they try to pole away, but Melaxu and Col get there first, driving the trolls into the river with vicious prods of their weapons. Then it's over, a total rout for the trolls. You take inventory: a few soldiers sport new bruises, but no one was killed, and the trolls' crude raft is laden with treasure from whichever human or satyr clan the trolls recently robbed. Sorting through what they took, you find everything from wool blankets and robes to leatherworking tools to painted pottery. Everything here is either immediately useful to a traveling band of warriors or can be traded. Vaspet gets to work inventorying everything.
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A troll at your feet twitches, hands clasping an iron knife. Col skewers it and then shakes his head.
"We can't just fight a war, DARK NUNS," he says. "We need to do something about this world—about a world that lets a man like Vankred turn these people into attack dogs."
"Thieving dogs," Melaxu says. But then her eyes narrow, and she orders one of the soldiers to bring her a torch. The nymph reaches down and pulls a copper bracelet off the dead troll's neck.
"Local work," she says. And indeed, you see a mix of Pine Tribe craftsmanship and Northern Forest troll designs. You recognize them because they're what Gronput, the troll peddler who taught you about the Impossible Empire, used to trade. Of course, that was before he was corrupted by the invisible radiance of the Dark Ax and tried to kill you. What happened next was inevitable