While the injured are being healed, Sacha stands nearby in case anyone needs help. She is no medic and has no healing abilities, but will offer physical and moral support when needed. 

“They deserved it,” Sacha says to Morgan, “They lived off of the pain of others. The gods know how many innocents they’ve robbed and slaughtered. You may pity their fate, but I do not regret our actions. They had it coming.”

While speaking, Sacha takes out her rope and ties up the unconscious bandit. She cuts the rope in two to properly tie both his legs and arms. Sacha drags him to the closest hole and slumps him upright against the side of the hole. 

“Ylis, would you do me a favor and fill this hole up, neck-high? 

Ylis dump dee dumps in the fine military tradition of digging a hole and filling it up.

"Yeah, I don't mind giving people a chance, but they were gonna hurt us and steal our stuff. They deserved to be a lot killed."

"Ah..." she sighs, "let Morgan talk to the next band of bandits from like 100 feet away. It'll make him happy. THEN we kill them."

”Thank you very much,” Sacha nods. 

Sacha straightens up the unconscious bandit as the earth fills the pit, making sure they’re “standing” upright and that the dirt doesn’t cover their nose. She then stomps on the loose dirt, packing it down. Once she’s satisfied that the bandit won’t be able move his head, much less escape, she takes out a handaxe and gently cuts twice into their scalp, creating an X-shaped incision on the top of his head. He’ll bleed a bit, but it shouldn’t be lethal.

She then grabs a couple handfuls of dirt and presses it into the wound, forming a small pile of bloody dirt on his head. 

“Do you have any extra seeds, Ylis?” She asks. 

Quote from The_Leviathan_of_Levistus >>

”… she takes out a handaxe and gently cuts twice into their scalp, creating an X-shaped incision on the top of his head. He’ll bleed a bit, but it shouldn’t be lethal.

 

 The bandit, a human male, maybe in his 20s, though a hard life has aged him prematurely, wakes from the carving happening on his head. “Aaaaaaaaayaaaaaaagh!!!” He screams. He struggles against his earth prison in a panic, the shifting of his shattered femur making him scream all the more. 

“STOP! What do ya want!?” He hollers. 

“What are you called, planted one?” Sacha asks, “A few of your companions escaped. Where were they running to. Do you have a camp? Where is it? Are there more of you?”

She raises her handaxe, threateningly, “And how many innocents has your group killed?”

Jacaranda watches, her face neutral, is this ritual intrinsic to her northern cousins or something within Sacha that needs to be satiated.....

Quote from Wysperra >>

Ylis smiles at Morgan and nods in thanks for the help. 

PER check 26

 Ylis can see that the wagon was once functional and the boxes, barrels, and bags once contained something, but they have long since been emptied. They are meant to capture the attention of bleeding hearts with deep pockets. Or even just moderately filled pockets. Among the corpses though, Ylis manages to find mostly melted weapons and junk. She does manage, with Morgan's help, to find *rolls dice*

Coin: 58 gp, 1035 sp, 850 cp

Items: 1 Cloth-of-gold vestments, 1 Small gold bracelet, 1 Small silver mirror, 1 Gold locket with a painted portrait inside

Trinkets: An iron holy symbol devoted to an unknown god, A small packet filled with pink dust (don't snort it)

The young man's eye dart side to side, looking for any escape as Sacha lists a series of questions. They wildly scan the battlefield and finding none of his allies alive to help him, desperately searches the faces of his enemies for mercy. 

He pants hard, scattering the dirt near his chin. The animal instinct to fight or flee is ramping up. "M-my leg. It's busted, I think. Ugh... Name? My name." He takes a moment to try to force his breath to slow. "Dallur."

Ylis hands over a pinch of marigold seeds.

Then she makes a bleh expression. Torture is not her thing even if the guy earned it. The bunny girl piles the empty boxes and such on the busted wagon and burns it with a conjured bonfire. No sense leaving that kind of bait lying around. 

She goes back to give Rumble a rubdown and re-braid his mane. 

Randas eyes move carefully over those around her judging their expressions for their take on the current activities......

Insight- 16

“Well, Dallur, you’re Dwendalian, aren’t you?” Sacha says, “You’re very lucky we are not in my homeland. My people have a long history of being attacked by Dwendalian bandits, many of them paid by the Empire to harass us.”

She drops a few seeds on his head and pats them down into the blood and dirt. 

“Back home, we would have tied you up and buried you with your head sticking out of the dirt, a situation you’re now familiar, but we would done so near an army ant nest. And then we would cover your head in honey and leave you for the ants.” 

She casts druidcraft and makes the flowers start to grow.

“Now, would you like to answer my questions, or would you like to be left here to die alone in the middle of nowhere? Thirsty and starving, unable to move as the roots of these flowers work their way into your open wound, growing into your scalp, and turning you from an ugly, pitiful excuse for a man into a small patch of beauty in these gods-forsaken lands. Because that is what will happen if you do not tell me what I want to know.”

Intimidation: 7

DM: Anyone who wishes to keep their feelings to themselves, roll a Deception Check, DC 16 against Randa. On a fail or if you want to skip rolling, describe what Randa sees and what it means.

Randa can see that Ayo is conflicted. On one hand, Dermot was gravely injured, but on the other hand, she spent her entire life imagining herself becoming a hero and those fantasies did not include this. She wrestles with her own morality quite visibly and is leaning away from this action.

Dermot also seems to disapprove, but is also too terrified to speak up.

Maggie watches with her arms crossed but a flat expression. She is a seasoned mercenary. This is almost certainly not even cracking the top 10 worst things she’s done for money. Randa’s conversations she has had with Maggie over the past few days tells her that Maggie is far too worldly to be bothered by a little bit of light torture and threats. She is about surviving first, counting wins second, and at a distant third, worrying about right and wrong. However, Randa also knows that Maggie has a deep, almost maternal love for Ayo and will follow her lead.

Galsariad appears to find this practice unsavory, but clearly sees the ends as justifying the means. He’s on board, he just doesn’t like it. He takes Dermot back to the wagon and drives it up the road a bit.

Irvan is too hard to read. He has an excellent poker face, but he makes no effort to leave.

Entropy disapproves, but not the torture part. “Make him repent and send him to his god of choice,” she says finally.

Dallur is entirely unmanned. He weeps and moans, his rancid breath reaching Sacha as she squats down to pat him on the head. “We got a camp, yeah. Three hour trek over the open Wastes, hmph! Ah… That way.” He tries his best to gesture in the direction that seems to indicate where his allies ran, though it’s hard to tell since he can’t turn his head to face that direction. “A buh-big rock lets you know you arrived. We got a cave under a split in the far side.” he says, huffing from the panic.

He squints up at Sacha with one eye, sweat running down his forehead stings the other eye closed. “My leg… it’s starting to hurt real bad now. You won’t leave me here, will ya? I’ll die.”

“Did you leave anyone behind in your cave?” Sacha asks, “If so, how many?”

"Hey Sacha, I know where you're going with this but I'm pretty tapped out. I won't be able to heal anybody if we get hurt." Ylis looks on with understanding but trying to sound reasonable. "Let this guy live even if he doesn't deserve it so he can tell his buddies to leave people alone. Or leave him dead as a warning." 

"Morgan came so close to dying her turned into a plant! He almost got knocked back to nature! Even you took some bad hits. I won't be able to fix it if you take an arrow to the knee." She looks on almost pleading. "I totally understand and Randa does too. I will follow you if you go chasing after these guys. But BUT Ayo and her gang will go ahead without us which puts them in danger as well as us when we get back on the road."

"Come on..." she gives Sacha's pants leg a tug. 

(Deception: 19)

Morgan watches the scene from a distance, his foot tapping a quick, uneven rhythm.
His face twists into a grimace. Hard to tell what it means.
He mutters under his breath. It almost sounds like he’s… counting.

Sacha takes a step backwards, away from Ylis. Raising her handaxe, she points it down at the bandit. 

"We don't know if there's just a few left! Their camp may well be half full! If any of the surviving bandits ever kills another person, their blood will be on our hands. No, on my hands, for letting them escape! They almost killed us, what hope do common folk have!?" Sacha, surprisingly, raises her voice at her party. She is avoiding looking Ylis in the eye.

"They're thieves! Murderers! Liars that lay in wait for good people to help someone in need before the rest erupt from the earth like maggots to kill and rob kind-hearted people! They're evil scum worse than that demonic toad we fought on the road! Because bandits have a choice to become what they are! And they chose to live murdering and enslaving innocent people! Killing a bandit is always self defense! They deserve anything we can do to them!"

She casts druidcraft again, making the seeds grow more and her hair blow wildly. Although her wounds are superficial, her face betrays inner pain and rage. 

"If I let him go, that's granting him forgiveness that I cannot give. The only people with the right to forgive them are their victims, and they are no longer on this plane. We should send them to the afterlife so they can ask for forgiveness from the only souls capable of giving it!"

Sacha's eyes and tattoo begin to glow green. Her voice booms like thunder and her tattoo writhes across her body. She used Rage. 

"We need to track down those escaped bandits and see if there are any more hiding in that cave! Find them, bind them, tie them all to poles. Break their fingers to spliters and drag them into holes where they'll wake up, naked, clawing at the ceiling of their graves! Take vengeance for the fallen! Kill the all wicked! Grind their bones into fertilizer! Turn Exandria into the 8th Heaven through righteous violence!"

She looks down at the crying young man. She doesn't know him. She doesn't know what caused him to take up banditry. Bandits, like adventurers, don't often come from happy, stable homes. Tears form in her eyes. 

Sacha remembers who she lost. Friends and family taken by bandits after a trading trip to a nearby Dwendalian village. Tears, screams, and blood. The deaths that motivated her to become a warrior, a protector that would prevent it from happening again to anyone else. 

Then she looks at the two parties and notices that she's upset them. Dermot looks scared of her, and he was almost killed by bandits. They're not afraid of the man that nearly killed them mere moments ago. They're afraid of her. And for good reason, she realizes, she's raving like she's possessed by a vengeful ghost. Her eyes fade and she falls to her knees, sobbing. 

"You're right. We should leave," Sacha chokes out, "I lost control. I'm sorry. I swear it won't happen it again."

Quote from The_Leviathan_of_Levistus >>

 "Find them, bind them, tie them all to poles. Break their fingers to spliters and drag them into holes where they'll wake up, naked, clawing at the ceiling of their graves!"

Mariner’s revenge song. 

Randa nodded to herself letting a grim half smile trace her lips for the barest of moments.

She knocked an arrow and aimed it at the young man, but paused before loosing her eyes shifting up to meet Ylis and Ayo.

Morgan exhales slowly, a crackle of electricity fading from his right hand.
He steps closer to Sacha and kneels beside her, resting that same hand on her shoulder.

He doesn’t say a word. Sacha has already said everything that needed saying.

He palms his tarot deck (arcana focus) and, without even looking, pulls a card.
With a faint smirk he flicks the prisoner’s nose using the card and sticks it to the prisoner’s forehead.
The card reads: I - The Magician.

Morgan caresses the shoot on the prisoner's head.
"I was a plant not so long ago. Beautiful experience. Highly recommended."

Morgan tilts his head, a grin in his eyes.
"Man, let me make you a little Suggestion." The word echoes with power. (Wisdom DC 14)
"For the next eight hours, you’ll do everything we tell you to do.. .and maybe you’ll live to see another day. What do you say? Deal?"