I had a very Runequest moment recently.
My PCs are from or employed by the Varmandi. They have a certain reputation to keep up, and the Orlanthi is a noble, the chief’s son, and his star was on the rise. He was selected to lead the big raid in Fire Season of 1599 and he decided to raid Redbird. He’d lead a punitive raid that would punish them for their banditry and predations along Byne’s Squeeze, while coincidentally restoring the wealth of the Varmandi, which had suffered in recent years.
Among the many problems they had was a big one; they needed to get through the walls. The local Ernaldans were having no truck with this idea and refused them Earth Elemental help. Things were looking bad when a triceratops appeared in one of their fields.
At PC suggestion they looked after it and even let it eat, rather than trying to kill or drive away a dinosaur the size of an angry, armoured bus. This was a very good thing as it turned out – a small group of Maran Gor triceratops riders turned up a couple of days later, and they made an agreement to help break the city walls as thanks.
So the PCs have now learned than when you pay in advance to have someone with earthquake and fissure ability to bring down city walls, you also want to pay them IN ADVANCE to stop once they’ve done that.
Still, lessons were learned. Including how not to advance into a city, and what to do when you have lost control of your troops.
The Humakti ended up defending the Earth Temple against the people he had led in and lost control of, the Orlanthi was captured by a well-used Flight spell, and the White Lady had to promise the Maran Gor temple really quite a lot of money to make them go away without utterly destroying Redbird in the name of the Varmandi. I laughed. A lot.
