Getting closer and closer!
How do you kill a mage with a gun? Well, as the saying goes: very, very carefully.
Three of the RSA had mage-poppers: single-use firearms with reinforced barrels that would not turn into shrapnel when the bullet inside of it suddenly exploded. They were accurate enough, but too expensive for even a successful Adventurers’ group like RSA to afford as anything except an emergency weapon. Which Jimmy figured this was, so he made sure that the three best shots had come along on this ambush.
They didn’t kill all three mages in the first and only volley. They did kill two, and put the third on the ground, writhing from the gut wound. Jimmy felt some small, detached sympathy about that, but not enough to put a crossbow bolt through the mage’s head just yet. There were still two more mages to fight, and the easy part of the ambush had just happened.Well, almost. Dominion mages in the field had long since unlearned the reflexive habit of tossing off area effects gunpowder-explosion spells, but this lot were stay-behinds. They had probably never encountered the War until it had finally rolled over them, so they instinctively cast, instead of looking for snipers. Or even not bothered, because if there had been enough mage-poppers for the ambushers then the mages would all be dead anyway. Which meant that all that those spells did was thoroughly explode the satchels of gunpowder and steel balls that had been planted on the barracks that was now hosting the mages’ half-tame monsters. The screams from inside were distressingly aware, but Jimmy also pushed that thought down deep in his head as he shot a vulnerable slave-soldier with his crossbow.
Because now the easy part of the ambush was over.