During your five days on the road you'd have learned the following about the Bandits, and Akiros and Auchs.
Ayles Megesen: Ayles is a soft-spoken man
whose calm demeanor should not be taken
for passivity—Ayles enjoys the act of torture
the most among the bandits, and often
spends hours after a fight “exploringâ€
surviving victims.
Cragger Kench: A former cutpurse,
Cragger was beaten senseless by the Stag Lord
for drinking a bottle of his liquor, and his
injuries have left him a little dim-witted—
although not so dim-witted as Auchs.
Dirty Jeb Megesen: Ayles's younger
brother, Dirty Jeb likes to think he
got his nickname for his penchant
for fighting dirty, when in fact the
moniker stems from his aversion to
hygiene.
Falgrim Sneeg: Falgrim Sneeg is an
older Varisian with graying hair and an unruly beard. A
former mercenary, he possesses an unnerving calm in the
face of violence.
Fat Norry: Behind only Auchs in size, Fat Norry
somehow never seems to lose weight despite the hard lives
the bandits live. This rotund bandit is rarely seen without
some sort of food clutched in a greasy hand.
Jex the Snitch: The least popular with the men but
perhaps the Stag Lord's favorite minion is this aptlynicknamed
man. His penchant for reporting the other
bandits' mistakes to the Stag Lord is likely to earn him a
shallow grave before much longer.
Topper Red: Topper Red was a struggling street poet
from the city of Pitax. He fled that city when an affair turned
sour, and eventually joined the Stag Lord's ranks while
romanticizing the thrilling life of a lawless brigand.
Akiros Ismort: Of the three lieutenants, Akiros is the
least satisfied with his lot in life—but that's nothing new
for him. Simple farmers in a proud rural area in Taldor,
Akiros's parents wanted nothing more for him than life
as a protector of the town—as a paladin of Erastil, no less.
Every moment of Akiros's life was spent in preparation
for his acceptance into the order, yet not one month after
he achieved his parents' dream and became a paladin,
Akiros fell in love with the married daughter of one of his
hometown's wealthier merchants, a woman named Rosilla.
The affair ended all too soon when Rosilla's husband found
out what she'd been up to and threatened to divorce her.
The thought of losing the life of luxury was too much, and
she told her husband that Akiros had raped her. Furious,
he took Rosilla to the temple of Erastil to confront her
attacker. The young paladin was flabbergasted, but when
Rosilla took things too far by spitting on him and publicly
denouncing him as a rapist, a heretofore unknown rage
woke in Akiros's heart. All of his repressed frustrations
and anger poured out in one powerful blow, and with that
blow he snuffed out Rosilla's life. As she crumpled to the
floor, Akiros knew his life had been snuffed out as well.
He turned on Rosilla's dumbfounded husband and killed
him as well, and with the temple guards still in shock, he
fled the city. He barely made it out of Taldor, stowing away
on a merchant ship bound for Mendev. Akiros switched
ships dozens of times as he fled north, losing himself in
the River Kingdoms, living as a bandit, a vagabond, and a
criminal, and growing to enjoy his newfound rages.
Eventually, his wanderings took him into the Stolen
Lands—he'd heard of the Stag Lord, and still unsure of
where he needed to be in life, he sought this new liege
out. Akiros has been with the Stag Lord's bandits for only
a few months, but already his commanding presence has
earned the Stag Lord's favor—Akiros is now considered to
be the second-in-command of the fort, much to Dovan's
displeasure. Ironically, Akiros has come to the realization
that life as a bandit is even more hollow than life as a
paladin of Erastil, and when the PCs make their attack
on the fort, he sees in them an opportunity for a new life
and, perhaps, redemption.
Auchs: Auchs is as simple as Akiros is complex. A
lumbering lummox of a man, Auchs is simpleminded in
everything but cruelty. He loves the sound of sobbing and
screaming when the sounds aren't coming from him, and
gleefully crushes and pummels bandits and prisoners alike
according to the commands of his fellow lieutenants or the
Stag Lord. Illiterate, the only word Auchs can spell is his
name—and not even then, since Dovan took perverse glee
in telling him that “ox†was spelled “Auchs.†He's traveled
with Dovan for the past 6 months, after the smaller man
saved him from being killed for starting a deadly brawl
in a marketplace in Daggermark, and is rarely found far
from Dovan's side—although he is taking an increasing
liking to Akiros, much to Akiros's annoyance.
Dovan from Nisroch: Until Akiros usurped the role,
Dovan was comfortably the second-in-command of the fort.
Secretly pleased with the Stag Lord's alcoholism, Dovan has
been actively encouraging the man to drink, for as long as
the Stag Lord is in his cups, more power over the bandits
rests in Dovan's hands. Dovan himself is a mystery to the
bandits—a dark, tattooed figure with an obvious taste for
pain and cruelty. All they know of him is that he claims
to hail from Nisroch. In fact, Dovan hails from Ustalav,
where he grew up amid the horrors of the Widow's Boudoir
in Caliphas, a brothel that specialized in mixing sexual
fantasies with murder. When he discovered that he was on
the menu for a particularly violent evening, Dovan gathered
his things and quietly fled town, spending the next several
months enjoying all the decadences and freedoms the River
Kingdoms had to offer. After a close call with a press gang,
Dovan “recruited†Auchs by saving the huge man from a
brawl Dovan engineered. Dovan often grows tired of Auchs's
simpleminded sounds, but is just as pleased with how well
the oaf takes to torture—and the security his friendship
brings can't be denied.