The Mechanicus Cult made no deliberate attempt to conceal the Holy Crusade Army's departure. Whether it was the Retalia Empire or the Minicia Kingdom, one of the parties involved, anyone with spies in Tavitsky could see the army setting out.
This time, Bagnia's Holy Crusade Army followed the coastline wherever conditions allowed. They first headed east to Omdur, then turned north, taking roads where there were roads and blazing their own trail where there were none.
Omdur lay about a hundred and fifty kilometers from Suvano in a straight line, which was not particularly far.
The refugees encountered by the Holy Crusade Army's vanguard were merely a minor incident, nothing significant.
The players encountered no further obstacles on the rest of the journey. The Minician villages and towns along their route were almost entirely deserted.
Players scouting ahead occasionally encountered a few survivors. By offering them food, they learned that the civilians around Suvano had either fled into cities protected by walls, headed north, or gone south to seek refuge in the Kingdom of Bagnia.
The refugees the Holy Crusade Army's vanguard had encountered were only some of them.
As the Holy Crusade Army, a force that was not particularly large, advanced toward the Snake-Men's lair along the rugged coastline between Omdur and Suvano, news blew back as swiftly as the sea breeze to the Minicia Kingdom's capital... Treasure Island.
This thriving port city stood only a hundred and fifty kilometers from Suvano, but between them lay the towering, treacherous, densely forested Naxi Mountains. Like a natural barrier, they separated the Snake-Man-ravaged Suvano region from Minisia's heartland.
Yet the mountains were not an absolute barrier.
Scattered Snake-Man infiltration squads, along with terrifying rumors of their grisly sacrifices, had long since slipped through the mountain passes. Those rumors spread through