How I won a war without fighting


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I apologize for my bad grammar, but I truly want to share this story with you. Hope you enjoy it.

So we're a party of six people in a pathfinder campaign. I play an unchained rogue goblin focused on the non-lethal damage build, with a decent score in CHA and INT to be a skill monkey useful to everything. So, basically, the party is the personal guard of the king, his own mercenaries. It means that everytime he needs us for something we must go to the castle and do what he says, but in the spare time we are able to do what we want. More or less. 

In this spare time I used to have some fun stealing things around, because I needed a lot of gold to buy something that I don't remember right now. Anyway, all the problems start here. I decide to sneak into a noble's house and take some of his valuable stuff. Everything proceeds in the perfect way, due to my luck with the dices and the well spent skill points. For some strange reason, I decide do leave a paint onto the floor of the noble's bedroom before I leave the house. It's a dumb thing, I know, but we need dumb things too to have fun. Anyway, the morning later we all receive a message from the castle saying that the king requires the entire personal guard at court. We rush there, without having a clue about the reason of such hurry. The king tells us that a noble has been robbed the night before and that the thief left a paint that looked like a smiley face. I was honestly surprised. I couldn't imagine that he could've summon us at court for just a robbery, but I was calm 'cause I knew he could never suspect of us. I was wrong. The king, for some reason, pointed his finger at us

"I must find out who did this to one of my nobles. I will interrogate every citzen, starting from you."

I don't know why the king should suspect his personal guards that saved, many times, the kingdom from certain death…But ok, I can't question the DM choices. The first to be interrogated was me. Funny, right? 

Some other guard of the castle, a cleric I guess, proceeded to cast zone of truth to be sure nobody was lying. I roll the will save. Low dice, low bonus. I fail the save and I curse everything in my mind. Now, the king does the questions:

"Where have you been last night?"

"In the kingdom"

and other question like this, when he could just ask "Did you sneak into the noble's house?" and put an end to everything. Anyway he loses the chance to find it out but still have doubts on my poor goblin, so he decides to search things from my backpack. Sadly for him, I had various hidden dimensiknal pouches so he couldn't find what he wanted. He had no proofs, but still had doubts. He tells the cleric to bring me to the house and find out if I stole something. We go there, the cleric does zone of truth again but this time I roll a nat 20. The caster seems to be smarter than the king and goes right to the point:

"Did you make this paint?"

"Nope."

He tells the king that everything went fine and none of us is guilty. For no reason the king doesn't believe me nor the cleric, but he seems to be calm for the moment. 

A few weeks later the entire kingdom goes to war and each member of the party is leader of an army. We start this long travel, stopping just to rest and assault the enemies castles. Rule were simple: surrend and take our side or fight and die.

We managed to reach the rival kingdom doing so, but at that time our king decided to remove me from the commanders because he didn't trust me. After all I had done, he still didn't trust my goblin. It truly was war.

The castle assault begins and, while everyonen leads an army, I sneak into the castle with a simple strategy to win the war without risking my party to die. I cast invisibilty and proceed to enter in the enemy king's castle. First of all I loot the treasure room. Always the first thought. Then I start searching for the queen or her children. I find them in the throne room with a couple of guards and maids. I manage to slay the guards and I can see the fear in the queen's eyes. She hugs her childs, trying to protect them. She begs for their lives, offering me money and other stuff. I tell her that I already have the kingdom's treasurd and I just need the little prince. She refuses, so I roll for initiative and do what I'm good at: killing others. I kidnap the prince and escape from the castle, searching for the enemy king in the middle of battle. Since I'm flying, I can see the two kings fighting themselves quite easy. I reach them, holding the prince in my left arm while my dagger is close to his neck.

"Stop this war. You already lost your treasure and your queen, I don't think you would like to lose your child too. Surrender now and I'll spare his life."

The kings stopped the fight. Each side has lost lots of soldiers and the remaining can't believe what's going on. The enemy king surrends and I drop the prince into his arms, keeping my word. Soon after that I slice our king's throat. Our kingdom won the war. I won the war. Victory plus moral victory, couldn't desire more.


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