Ghân: Deor, I have little money. But I will happily give you some of it to buy new spells if you continue to cast as wisely. 
Ghân: This is good advice. Moose and I will be two of the guards. Neither of us like to interrogate orcs.
Although, provided there is enough safety, I would like to forage for herbs nearby. This will surely benefit the party!
I suspect that a good foraging would be the better use of your talents friend Ghan. We have pleanty of others who can guard the Orcs, but who would not be able to forage effectivly on your behalf.
I, for one, am happy to guard the orcs.
“And Mooses!”
meece? 
So what questions will be put to the orcs?
At the very least Gwaelur will ask:
Where are you from
How many others do you travel with
where are the others
what was the purpose of this raid
&
where were you headed
Gil seems to want to ask: who ordered this raid, and where he is to be found? (forgive me if I am speaking out of turn Mal)
I think it would be a good idea if some of the others in our party added some questions to the pile either to ask themselves or to have one of the interigators ask.
It would probably be good if more then just Gil and Gwaelur were doing the interogating…a dwarf and an elf interogating an orc alone together…I see that ending badly. Maybe Merry could join us, or perhaps Thoroncir would like to join the inquisition? Who has high charisma?
and with that I am off for what will be most of the rest of the night.
Deor is busy searching bodies and doesn’t feel experienced enough in these matters to venture an opinion on interrogation.
Ghân thought about including Moose in the ‘free peoples’, but there’s only one Moose. 
Ghân can and will cast Faerie Fire on up to 3 interrogators (he thinks that any more aren’t very efficient anyway).
Ghân has a high charisma, but would rather forage for herbs*. He’ll ask Moose and Anthor to keep an eye on him
What Exit?, what sort of forest are we in?
I’ll get the first Orc started then:
Gil-Gandel wakes the first orc.
Merry informs him, “As a knight of Rohan and a friend to King Elessar I expect you to answer the questions put to you. His Majesty’s mercy is well known and thus far you are not known to be responsible for any deaths. The older human survived. We cannot release you, but the King will likely be more lenient with those who chose to make a full confession of their crimes and intentions.”
Gil asks, “Where are you from?”
The Orc: “Mordor”
Gwaelur, brandishing his axe, “Is that where you’ve been working from recently?”
The Orc with hesitation: “Yeah”
Gil: “How many others do you travel with?”
The Orc: “no others.”
Gwaelur, scowling, “He is a lying goblin, lets be done with this, we know he travel with more. You elves are too soft.”
The Orc: “I meant 5 others.”
Gil: “Where are the others?”
The Orc: “They went off to make the camp ready”
Gil: “What was the purpose of this raid?”
The Orc: “What?”
Gil: “Why did you attack these farmers?”
The Orc: “Heh, slaves, food, hopefully treasure and women. Why else?”
Gwaelur, “What was your intention towards the women?”
The Orc: “What do you think?” Seeing him look angry, “Breeding stock I mean, just breeding stock.”
Gwaelur, “Can’t I kill him now?”
Gil: “No that is not for us.” Turning back to the Orc,” Where were you headed?”
The Orc: “Back to the camp.”
Gwaelur, “Grrrrr.” Slams axe into a dead orc.”
The Orc says quickly: “The camp is in the mountains.”
Gil: “Who ordered this raid?”
The Orc with some anger: “No one ordered it, we saw an opportunity and we take it, but the stupid half human got greedy, I thought we should flee when the rider got away, but he was unwilling to abandon this haul.”
Gil: “Where he is to be found?”
The Orc: “Laying dead up front unless you let him get away.”
Ghân notes that the woods are deciduous and old growth. They are part of your home woods, but the far south-eastern edge. You will probably find many edible mushrooms. The undergrowth is sparse however.
Thoroncir says to the others of the party, outside of the hearing of the orcs, “I like the questions asked thus far, and the method pursued. Perhaps we might press them more, each in turn as they emerge from slumber, as to who commands them, lo these many years since the accursed Dark Lord’s fall. Does a new evil arise in Mordor? Would that it were it not so, but the King should have knowledge of it without delay, if so.”
Seeing that the orcs are already all well-guarded, he then turns to accompany Ghan as he forages in the woods, and keeps a sharp eye out for further foes lurking there.
Okay. We’ll talk to each of the others the same way, one at a time, and try to narrow down where this camp is. They may be too low down the food chain to know who is in command of the whole show (assuming there is a “whole show” and this isn’t just a random nuisance) and the answers, if there are any, lie the next step up the chain.
Gil-Gandel leads the first prisoner away - we’ll hold the unquestioned prisoners in one place, those we have questioned in another, and the one we’re questioning at the time out of earshot of the other two groups; we have guards enough. Mulligan Took, if you’re not busy, how about you hide yourself nice and close to the “already questioned” group and see if they mutter anything to each other? In our dreams, they might just about say something like:
Gorbag: I hope you didn’t say anything about X.
Shagrat: Hah! You think I’m stupid, don’t you?
Good idea - once I have finished ensuring the dead bodies have been thoroughly searched for items I will hide close to the questioned orcs.
I may not be able to speak Orcish, but I can try and pick out any words given emphasis and see if any orcs is paid more deference than the others, see if we knocked out someone higher up the chain of command than your average grunt. I have pretty good hearing so should be able to hear them whispering, so I’ll see if I can memorise the majority of any conversation and relay it back.
What Exit?: Did I find anything nice?
Camp in the mountains, huh?
Could we ask for details (where is it, who’s in charge and how many more orcs in it?)
Is the ‘advanced’ orc (Presumably the half-human leader) different in any way?
Ghân thanks those who cover him and sets off to forage for herbs.
Particularly welcome would be:
Mur
Slota
Rewk
Harwite
‘Stone Cut’ Lichen
I believe all 1st edition halflings speak orc (plus dwarf, elf, gnome and goblin).
They may not in this campaign setting, though. I’m not sure what I speak, either. We’ll have to hope that, like many orcs in LotR, they speak man-talk to each other a lot of the time - more often than jabbering incomprehensibly to each other in some bastardised version of Orcish, of which there seem to be a number of mutually unintelligible dialects.
[metagaming]If we need to understand them, we will. [/metagaming]
Yes, first and foremost this is Middle Earth. The Orcs did not have their own tongue, just bastardized guttural dialects of the local lingua. See control thread post 286 for more detail.
I work up an update to the rests of the posts when I can.
I complete forgot to mention, the date is May 05, 63. The weather is a nice 61° and it is 9 pm at this point.
**Mulligan ** completes searching as the interrogations continue and occasionally get noisy. The led orc (half-orc) had the most. His pouch was stuffed with 30 gold pieces and 30 silver. Each of the other orcs had 2-3 gold and 8-20 silvers. All together, they had 65 Gold & 218 Silver. They also had 288 coppers. The family was missing 35 Gold and 103 Silver.
The orcs were all lightly armors. They were wearing either crappy leather or no armor at all. There are six short bows and six score quivers. There are 102 arrows between them. There are six good strong wooden spears of a 5’ length. There is one Long sword and short sword of good quality. There are five broad swords of low quality and three scimitars of probable Umbarian origin. There is nothing else of value.
**Folca ** returns as the interrogations continue minus the message.
**Ghân’s ** foraging yields Baranie which brewed is excellent for Reducing nausea, Mir-Melellen flowers that when rubbed provide a Fragrant scent for 1-4 hours. Sweet Sorrel berries that when ingested cause death by poison within 10 minutes. He also comes across some Yew; this might be of interest to the Elf.
The interrogations gain some conflicting stories and details but a picture emerges. The Dwarf only injures one orc that spat at the elf. Sadly, the dwarf little knows his own strength upon occasion and this orc need not worry about King’s justice. Strangely, the next orc was far more cooperative. Perhaps he has already awake and was pretending to be sleeping?
Overall, it appears the orcs are lead by some half-orcs and one human sorcerer. They reside in a series of caves in the nearby mountains. They were fearful of the rider that got away, but did not want to surrender this rich haul and decided to take the wagons through the woods to the points where they could briefly cut across the road and up into the hills with minimum exposure. They are expecting a large group to meet them soon as the other half-orc went to retrieve help. This was indeed a crime of opportunity. The thought about what they would have done with the woman and girls is what you would expect.
The Sorcerer goes by the name Gash, a good orc name and descriptive of the large scar on his right cheek. He must be around 50 years old. They think he ‘farspeaks’ to someone else occasionally. They mostly are orcs of Mordor and Isengard both. They believe Gash is from the south.
There are a few Uruk Hai among their numbers. You gather there are either four or six. These are in reserve as Gash’s personnel guard and they carry great strong bows that would devastate even an armored knight.
The last two orcs did inquire if they cooperated enough to merit mercy.
Well unless anyone minds, I will return the family’s Gold and Silver to them, along with half the Coppers as well. Also, unless anyone wants an Orc weapon or supplies, I would give them to the family for defense and they can sell them for extra coin if they need to.
That leaves us 30 Gold, 115 Silver and 144 Copper to split up.
What kind of mercy would they like? :dubious: