the marksman boulder-by-boulder. All he had was a dagger and I offered him surrender but he charged me nonetheless and I made short work of him.
The first bandit had a pair of chitin pauldrons that I took from his body. They fit onto my bonemold currias a little awkwardly, but provide better protection after a little work lashing them onto the shoulders with some twine.
Following the ridge back was a mistake. My progress was made incredibly slow due to constantly having to hide from or fend off the cliff racers, whose nesting area I was intruding. A particularly
determined pair of them drove me down the ridge, but about halfway down I had to start traversing laterally across the slope, as a horrible four-legged insect the size of a pony or a very large wolf with a three-part mouth started chasing me, following my progress at a diagonal up the slope.
I headed for a mineshaft entrance two draws ahead. Luckily, the draws were much smaller for me than for the wolf-insect, and I gained some ground on it. Running in the armor is difficult for me, but I am incredibly grateful for it: one of the cliff racers hit me hard in the back and I fell and rolled a ways before I got back to my feet. Save