The War Of 5 Kings

In this series of essays, Stefan recalls and reviews the central conflict that dominates the first four books: the War of the Five Kings. Stefan pays particular attention to the major game of thrones players and the power moves that led to their rise and others' (and sometimes their own) falls. The War of the Five Kings is the principal military conflict depicted in the first three novels of the Song of Ice and Fire series, and its aftermath and successor conflicts continue in the latest two novels.

The Battle of the Vale of Siddim, also often called the War of Nine Kings or the Slaughter of Chedorlaomer, was an event in the Hebrew Bible book of Genesis 14:1-17 that occurred in the days of Abram and Lot. The Vale of Siddim was the battleground for the cities of the Jordan River plain revolting against Mesopotamian rule.

Whether this event occurred in history has been disputed by scholars.^[1] According to Ronald Hendel, 'The current consensus is that there is little or no historical memory of pre-Israelite events in Genesis.'^[2]

Background[edit]

The Book of Genesis explains that during the days of Lot, the vale of Siddim was a river valley where the Battle of Siddim occurred between four Mesopotamian armies and five cities of the Jordan plain. According to the biblical account, before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Elamite King Chedorlaomer had subdued the tribes and cities surrounding the Jordan River plain. After 13 years, four kings of the cities of the Jordan plain revolted against Chedorlaomer's rule. In response, Chedorlaomer and three other kings started a campaign against King Bera of Sodom and four other allied kings.^[3]

Location[edit]

The Vale of Siddim or Valley of Siddim, Hebrew: עֵ֖מֶק שִׂדִּים‎ ‘emeq haś-Śiddim, equated with the 'Salt Sea' in Genesis 14:3, itself equated with the 'sea of the Arabah' in Deuteronomy 3:17, the same as the 'Dead Sea'^[4] is a biblical place name mentioned in the Book of Genesis Chapter 14: 'And the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits' (Genesis 14:3, 8, 10).

Siddim is thought to be located on the southern end of the Dead Sea where modern bitumen deposits have been found, evocative of the tar pits (asphalt, slime pits) mentioned in Genesis 14:10. This scripture indicates that the valley was filled with many of these pits that the armies of Sodom and Gomorrah fell into during their retreat from Mesopotamian forces. It has been suggested by theologians that the destruction of the cities of the Jordan Plain by divine fire and brimstone may have caused Siddim to become a salt sea, what is now the Dead Sea.^[4]

The Dead Sea is also called the 'east sea' in Ezekiel 47:18 (CompareJoel 2:20), Bahr Lut (the Sea of Lut) in Arabic, and 'Lake Asphaltitus' in the works of Josephus.

Aftermath[edit]

The Northern forces overwhelmed the Southern kings of the Jordan plain, driving some them into the asphalt or tar pits that littered the valley. Those who escaped fled to the mountains, including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were then spoiled of their goods and provisions and some of their citizens were captured. Among the captives was Abraham's nephew, Lot.^[5]

When word reached Abraham, he immediately mounted a rescue operation, arming 318 of his trained servants, who went in pursuit of the enemy armies that were returning to their homelands. They caught up with them in the city of Dan, flanking the enemy on multiple sides during a night raid. The attack ran its course as far as Hobah, north of Damascus, where he defeated Chedorlaomer and his forces. Abram recovered all the goods, even the captives (including Lot).^[6]

After the battle, Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine and blessed Abraham, who gave him a tenth of the plunder. Then Bera, king of Sodom, came to Abraham and thanked him, requesting that Abraham keep the plunder but return his people. Abraham declined, saying, 'I swore I would never take anything from you, so you can never say 'I have made Abraham rich.' What Abraham accepted from Bera instead was food for his 318 men and his Amorite neighbours.^[7]

Scholarly analysis[edit]

Identifying the kings[edit]

Amraphel has been thought by some scholars such as the writers of the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) and the Jewish Encyclopaedia (1906)^[8] to be an alternate name of the famed Hammurabi. The name is also associated with Ibal-pi-el II of Esnunna.^[9][10]

Arioch has been thought to have been a king of Larsa (Ellasar being an alternate version of this). It has also been suggested that it is URU KI, meaning 'this place here'.

Following the discovery of documents written in the Elamite language and Babylonian language, it was thought that Chedorlaomer is a transliteration of the Elamite compound Kudur-Lagamar, meaning servant of Lagamaru - a reference to Lagamaru, an Elamite deity whose existence was mentioned by Ashurbanipal. However, no mention of an individual named Kudur Lagamar has yet been found; inscriptions that were thought to contain this name are now known to have different names (the confusion arose due to similar lettering).^[11][12]David Rohl identifies Chedorlaomer with an Elamite king named Kutir-Lagamar.

Tidal^[13][14][15] has been considered to be a transliteration of Tudhaliya - either referring to the first king of the HittiteNew Kingdom (Tudhaliya I) or the proto-Hittite king named Tudhaliya. With the former, the title king of Nations would refer to the allies of the Hittite kingdom such as the Ammurru and Mittani; with the latter the term 'goyiim' has the sense of 'them, those people'. al ('their power') gives the sense of a people or tribe rather than a kingdom. Hence td goyim ('those people have created a state and stretched their power').^[16]

Geopolitical context[edit]

Alliances[edit]

It was common practise for vassals/allies to accompany a powerful king during their conquests. For example, in a letter from about 1770 BCE^[10] reporting a speech aimed at persuading the nomadic tribes to acknowledge the authority of Zimri-Lim of Mari:

There is no king who can be mighty alone. Ten or fifteen kings follow Hammurabi the man of Babylon; as many follow Rim-Sin the man of Larsa, Ibal-pi-El the man of Eshnunna, and Amut-pi-El the man of Qatna and twenty kings follow Yarim-Lim the man of Yamhad.

The alliance of four states would have ruled over cities/countries that were spread over a wide area: from Elam at the extreme eastern end of the Fertile Crescent to Anatolia at the western edge of this region. Because of this, there is a limited range of time periods that match the Geopolitical context of Genesis 14. In this account, Chedorlaomer is described as the king to whom the cities of the plain pay tribute. Thus, Elam must be a dominant force in the region and the other three kings would therefore be vassals of Elam and/or trading partners.^[10]

Trade[edit]

There were periods when Elam was allied with Mari through trade.^[17] Mari also had connections to Syria and Anatolia, who, in turn, had political, cultural, linguistic and military connections to Canaan.^[18] The earliest recorded empire was that of Sargon, which lasted until his grandson, Naram Sin.^[10]

According to Kenneth Kitchen,^[19] a better agreement with the conditions in the time of Chedorlaomer is provided by Ur Nammu. Mari had had links to the rest of Mesopotamia by Gulf trade as early as the Jemdet Nasr period but an expansion of political connections to Assyria did not occur until the time of Isbi-Erra.^[10] The Amorites or MARTU were also linked to the Hittites of Anatolia by trade.^[10]

Trade between the Harappan culture of India and the Jemdet Nasr flourished between c. 2000-1700 BCE. As Isin declined, the fortunes of Larsa - located between Eshnunna and Elam - rose until Larsa was defeated by Hammurabi. Between 1880 and 1820 BCE there was Assyrian trade with Anatolia, in particular in the metal 'annakum', probably tin.^[17][20][21]

The main trade route between Ashur and Kanesh running between the Tigris and Euphrates passed through Haran. The empire of Shamshi-Adad I and Rim-Sin I included most of northern Mesopotamia. Thus, Kitchen concludes that this is the period in which the narrative of Genesis 14 falls into a close match with the events of the time of Shamsi Adad and Chedorlaomer^[10]

Rulers in the region in c. 1800 BCE[edit]

The relevant rulers in the region at this time were:

• The last king of Isin, Damiq-ilishu, ruled 1816-1794^[10]
• Rim Sin I of Larsa ruled 1822-1763^[10]
• The last king of Uruk, Nabiilishu, ruled 1802^[10]
• In Babylon, Hammurabi ruled 1792-1750^[10]
• In Eshnunna Ibal Pi-El II ruled c 1762^[10]
• In Elam there was a king Kuduzulush^[10]
• In Ashur, Shamsi Adad I ruled c 1813-1781^[10]
• In Mari, Yasmah-Adad ruled 1796-1780 followed by Zimri-Lin 1779-1757.^[10]

Dating of events[edit]

When cuneiform was first deciphered in the 19th century Theophilus Pinches translated some Babylonian tablets which were part of the Spartoli collection in the British Museum and believed he had found in the 'Chedorlaomer Tablets' the names of three of the 'Kings of the East' named in Genesis 14. As this is the only part of Genesis which seems to set Abraham in wider political history, it seemed to many 19th and early 20th century exegetes and Assyriologists to offer an opening to date Abraham, if the kings in question could only be identified.

Office suite for apple. Included with your Mac is the iWork Suite: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. These are Apple’s own alternatives to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Pages, for instance, is the best Word alternative for Mac. As these are Mac-centric apps, the UI is quite different. Instead of being top-heavy, the options show up in a contextual menu on.

In 1887, Schrader was the first to propose that Amraphel could be an alternate spelling for Hammurabi.^[22] The terminal -bi on the end of Hammurabi's name was seen to parallel Amraphel since the cuneiform symbol for -bi can also be pronounced -pi. Tablets were known in which the initial symbol for Hammurabi, pronounced as kh to yield Khammurabi, had been dropped, so that Ammurapi was a viable pronunciation. If Hammurabi were deified in his lifetime or soon after (adding -il to his name to signify his divinity), this would produce something close to the Bible's Amraphel. A little later Jean-Vincent Scheil found a tablet in the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Istanbul from Hammurabi to a king named Kuder-Lagomer of Elam, which he identified with the same name in Pinches' tablet. Thus by the early 1900s many scholars had become convinced that the kings of Gen. 14:1 had been identified,^[23][24] resulting in the following correspondences:^[25]

Today these dating attempts are little more than a historical curiosity. On the one hand, as the scholarly consensus on Near Eastern ancient history moved towards placing Hammurabi in the late 18th century (or even later), and not the 19th, confessional and evangelical theologians found they had to choose between accepting these identifications or accepting the biblical chronology; most were disinclined to state that the Bible might be in error and so began synchronizing Abram with the empire of Sargon I, and the work of Schrader, Pinches and Scheil fell out of favour. Meanwhile, further research into Mesopotamia and Syria in the second millennium BCE undercut attempts to tie Abraham in with a definite century and to treat him as a strictly historical figure, and while linguistically not implausible, the identification of Hammurabi with Amraphel is now regarded as untenable.^[26]

One modern interpretation of Genesis 14 is summed up by Michael Astour in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (s.v. 'Amraphel', 'Arioch' and 'Chedorlaomer'), who explains the story as a product of anti-Babylonian propaganda during the 6th century Babylonian captivity of the Jews:

After Böhl's widely accepted, but wrong, identification of ^mTu-ud-hul-a with one of the Hittite kings named Tudhaliyas, Tadmor found the correct solution by equating him with the Assyrian king Sennacherib (see Tidal). Astour (1966) identified the remaining two kings of the Chedorlaomer texts with Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria (see Arioch) and with the Chaldean Merodach-baladan (see Amraphel). The common denominator between these four rulers is that each of them, independently, occupied Babylon, oppressed it to a greater or lesser degree, and took away its sacred divine images, including the statue of its chief god Marduk; furthermore, all of them came to a tragic end .. All attempts to reconstruct the link between the Chedorlaomer texts and Genesis 14 remain speculative. However, the available evidence seems consistent with the following hypothesis: A Jew in Babylon, versed in Akkadian language and cuneiform script, found in an early version of the Chedorlaomer texts certain things consistent with his anti-Babylonian feelings.^[27]

The 'Chedorlaomer tablets' are now thought to be from the 7th or 6th century BCE, a millennium after the time of Hammurabi, but at roughly the time when the main elements of Genesis are thought to have been set down. Another prominent scholar considers a relationship between the tablet and Genesis speculative, but identifies Tudhula as a veiled reference to Sennacherib of Assyria, and Chedorlaomer, i.e. Kudur-Nahhunte, as 'a recollection of a 12th century BCE king of Elam who briefly ruled Babylon.'^[28]

The last serious attempt to place a historical Abraham in the second millennium resulted from discovery of the name Abi-ramu on Babylonian contracts of about 2000 BCE, but this line of argument lost its force when it was shown that the name was also common in the first millennium,^[29] leaving the patriarchal narratives in a relative biblical chronology but without an anchor in the known history of the Near East.

Some scholars have disagreed: Kitchen asserts that the only known historical period in which a king of Elam, whilst allied with Larsa, was able to enlist a Hittite king and a King of Eshunna as partners and allies in a war against Canaanite cities is in the time of Old Babylon c 1822-1764 BCE. This is when Babylon is under Hammurabi and Rim Sin I controls Mari, which is linked through trade to the Hittites and other allies along the length of the Euphrates. This trade is mentioned in the Mari letters, a source which documents a geo-political relationship back to when the ships of Dilmun, Makkan and Meluhha docked at the quays of Agade in the time of Sargon. In the period of Old Babylon, c 1822-1764 BCE, Rim Sin I brought together kings of Syro-Anatolia whose kingdoms were located on the Euphrates in a coalition focused on Mari whose king was Shamsi Adad. Kitchen uses the geo-political context, the price of slaves and the nature of the covenants entered into by Abraham to date the events he encounters. He sees the covenants, between Abraham and the other characters encountered at various points in Abraham's journeys, as datable textual artifacts having the form of legal documents which can be compared to the form of legal documents from different periods.^[19] Of particular interest is the relationship between Abraham and his wife, Sarah. When Sarah proves to be barren, she offers her handmaiden, Hagar, to Abraham to provide an heir. This arrangement, along with other aspects of the covenants of Abraham, lead Kitchen to a relatively narrow date range which he believes aligns with the time of Hammurabi.^[19]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Notes

1. ^Susan Brayford (2007). Genesis. Septuagint Commentary Series. BRILL. p. 293. ISBN90-04-15552-X.
2. ^Ronald Hendel (2012). 'Historical Context'. In Craig A. Evans; Joel N. Lohr; David L. Petersen (eds.). The Book of Genesis: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation. BRILL. p. 64. ISBN90-04-22653-2. The current consensus is that there is little or no historical memory of pre-Israelite events in Genesis
3. ^Genesis 14:1–7
4. ^ ^abFreedman, Myers, and Beck. Eerdmans dictionary of the Bible, 2000, (ISBN0802824005, ISBN978-0-8028-2400-4), p. 1218, Siddim, Valley of
5. ^Genesis 14:10–12
6. ^Genesis 14:13–17
7. ^Genesis 14:18-20
8. ^Jewish Encyclopedia
9. ^Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), 'Amraphel'
10. ^ ^{abcdefghijklmno}Micael Roaf 'Cambridge Atlas of Archaeology - king lists p 111 and pp 108-123
11. ^'Chedorlaomer' at JewishEncyclopedia.com
12. ^Kudur-Lagamar from History of Egypt by G. Maspero
13. ^Akkadian tD ('have stretched themselves')
14. ^(Akkadian verbal stem intensive, reflexive expressing the bringing about of a state)
15. ^tD
16. ^Freedman, Meyers & Beck. Eerdmans dictionary of the Bible (ISBN0802824005, ISBN978-0-8028-2400-4), 2000, p.232
17. ^ ^abKhalifa, Shaika Haya Ali Al; Rice, Michael (1986). Bahrain through the Ages. KPI. ISBN0-7103-0112-X.
18. ^The Mari letters
19. ^ ^abcKitchen, Kenneth A. 'The Patriarchal Age: Myth or History?'Archived July 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine in Shanks, Hershel (ed.) Biblical Archaeology Review 21:02 (March/April 1995)
20. ^Nayeem, Dr. Muhammed Abdul (1990). Prehistory and Protohistory of the Arabian Peninsula. Hyderabad.
21. ^Roaf, Michael (1990). Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East. Equinox. ISBN0-8160-2218-6.
22. ^Orr, James, ed. (1915). 'Hammurabi'. International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.
23. ^'Amraphel'. The Catholic Encyclopedia. 1917.
24. ^Pinches, Theophilus (1908). The Old Testament In the Light of The Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia (third ed.). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
25. ^MacKenzie, Donald (1915). 'The Golden Age of Babylonia'. Myths of Babylonia and Assyria. p. 247. The identification of Hammurabi with Amraphel is now generally accepted
26. ^Browning, W.R.F. (2010). 'Amraphel'. A Dictionary of the Bible (second ed.). Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN0-19-954399-2. The identification, once popular, that this Amraphel was the famous Hammurabi of Babylon (1728–1686 BCE) is not tenable .. Most scholars doubt whether Gen. 14 describes historical events.^{[permanent dead link]}
27. ^The Anchor Bible Dictionary, s.v. 'Chedorlaomer'
28. ^Hindel, Ronald (1994). 'Finding Historical Memories in the Patriarchal Narratives'. Biblical Archaeology Review. 21 (4): 52–59, 70–72.
29. ^Thompson, Thomas (2002). The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. Valley Forge, Pa: Trinity Press International. ISBN1-56338-389-6.

Travel: River Blades’ Camp

This quest should begin some time after dealing with the events at the 'Pitax River Bend' area as part of the quest The River’s Justice. One of the three areas you’ll have to travel to in order to deal with Irovetti’s varied threats - in this case the beasts Irovetti is loosing on your kingdom - is the 'River Blades’ Camp'. Its location, starting at the Rushlight Fields, is as follows:

• Southwest
• East
• North
• Northwest
• West
• North
• Northwest
• Southwest
• Northwest

Battle: Western Bandit Camp

When you arrive, you may just spot a trap to the west. This should set the tone for this area. The trap covers a slope leading to a bandit camp, of which there are three in this area, with another lying to the northeast (also with a trap guarding the sole approach) and a third along the far nothern end of the map. Since it’s unlikely you’ll be able to get past the eastern bandits to reach the northern ones, you might as well take this sequentially, working your way up the area, slaughtering as you go. Fortunately, unless you go out of your way to provoke them, the camps shouldn’t come to assist one another.

The western camp is the largest of the three, with the most bodies lurking therein. Going to disarm the trap outright is probably the least sophisticated thing you can do… aside from simply trampling over it outright. If you do provoke the bandits there, you’ll find yourself in a fight with a variety of mundane Bandits (armed with bows and melee weapons) a Bandit Bard and a Bandit Alchemist. None of these archetypes should be new to you, and although their stats may be a bit higher than you’re used to seeing from bandits, they’re still not as high as many creatures you’ve faced thus far.

Much like the 'pirates' you fought earlier, the Bard will start out with Haste and Slow while the Alchemist will cast Reduce Person on himself then pelt you with bombs. Winning this fight can be easily achieved with a bit of bombing of you own - spell-bombing. Start out the fight with area-of-effect debuffs like Phantasmal Web, Tarpool, Confusion and the like. Their Will Saves are abyssmal, and there’s a good chance the lot of them will be neutralized outright by such an attack. Whether they’re completely disabled by the attack, or merely severely crippled by it, you should abe able to leisurely disarm the trap, then smite your opposition.

Battle: Ilora Nuski

Don’t get too carried away with the slaughter, however, as a larger, stronger group lurks to the northwest. They’re placed less advantageously, with several bandit archers making up the southern-most bunch. This isn’t the group you want to target, as the better, higher-value targets await further north. These include a Bandit Bard, a Bandit Transmuter and the bandit leader, Ilora Nuski.

Don’t despair at the thought of having to devise some new strategem, the spellbomb will works wonders, you’ll just have to divide and conquer to hit the choicest targets. Leave your warriors in the elevated bandit camp, just in sight of the archers. While they hold the line there (don’t provoke anybody yet) move any casters with area-of-effect debuffs off the hill, then around it to the northwest. Near the northern edge of the elevated camp you should find a tent, south of which Ilora Nuski and her minions have gathered. From the eastern side of the camp you should be able to target a Bandit Bard, while to the west you’ll find a Bandit Transmuter.

Again, spells like Phantasmal Web shine, as you can target any one of these foes and expect to hit most - if not all - of the bandits around Ilora Nuski. Failing that, hitting the group with Confusion, Tarpool, Obsidian Flow or any similar spells may produce good results. At the very least, targetting the Bandit Transmuter with Disintegrate can remove one of the more troublesome foes before the fight ever begins. Unleash you magical onslaught, then retreat with your casters to avoid taking too many shots from any enemies which may have been unaffected by your spells.

After the spell salvo, engage the unaffected bandits with your warriors, none of whom should be particularly challenging on their own… save for Ilora Nuski. Most of the bandits have moderate Attack Bonuses and Armor Class values in the low twenties, but Ilora’s got a high enough Attack Bonus to hit your tanks regularly and is best neutralized with magic (neither her Reflex nor Will Saves are particularly high). After you defeat the southern bandits (joined by whatever bandits resisted your spell onslaught) make your way north, pick off value targets (the Bandit Bard, Bandit Transmuter and Ilora Nuski) then mop up the rest.

Emerge victorious and Ilora Nuski will surrender, allowing you to question her about herself, her role in this operation, Irovetti’s lecherous ways (and some strange wooden sword he carries around), and her affiliation with the thieves’ guild… or lack thereof. Get what information you can, then make a choice regarding Ilora’s fate. Only the [Neutral Good] option spares her, both the [Lawful Good] and [Chaotic Evil] options opt to put her down. Talk about horse shoe theory.

Should you opt to slay Ilora, you can loot her for two Agile Shortswords +1, a Chainshirt +2 and a Belt of Incredible Dexterity +2. The rest of the bandits have less interesting gear, but be sure to search them for the odd magical item worth selling. Can never have too much gold. Speaking of which, be sure to loot the western edge of the area to find [Perception 25] a pile of rocks near a tree, which hides a Token of the Dryad.

Sack the Eastern Camp

You’ve cleared one camp, but more persist, so make your way back south and east to where you entered there area, then follow a stream to the north. Keep an eye on the hill to the east as you advance, as you should see bandits waiting for you above. You won’t be able to approach the trapped slope leading up to the camp without provoking them… unless, perhaps, you have a character with a high Stealth score (perhaps aided by Invisibility spells).

A more evergreen tactic is to simply lob an area-of-effect debuff or two at the nearest bandit (who may be obscured by a tree), then retreat to the west. This time around there are two groups of bandits who will leap to each other’s aid, and the geography and enemy placement both conspire to make targeting the northern group with spells a difficult proposition. If you attack the southern group with spells (including several Bandits and a Bandit Bard) the northern group (two Bandits and a Bandit Cleric) will chase after you. Lure them away from their debilitated fellows, kill the bandits and the critters the Bandit Cleric will summon, and when the Bandit Cleric shows himself, charge and cut him down. At this point you have killed around half the bandits in the eastern camp and neutralized at least a few more, so you should be in a good position to approach the camp, disarm the trap, and vanquish the few remaning bandits.

Battle: Urtenea

Two down, one to go. Return to the stream that cuts through this area and follow it north until it forks at which continue north and uphill before turning northwest. When you see some tents, stop, as enemies lurk nearby… although they may not be apparent.

If you continue advancing you’ll by hailed by a Bandit Alchemist named Urtennea, who pulls the 'I just work here' line. Question him if you want, but if you pass a [Perception 36] check you’ll spot his companions encircling you as the alchemist distracts you. If not, he’ll spring his ambush when you attack [Chaotic Evil] or when you grant him leave to live in peace [Neutral Good]. If you end up ambushed, you’ll probably find three Bandits in your midst who are fond of sneak attacking, and three Bandit Alchemists to the west who aren’t shy about pelting you with bombs. Suffice to say, it’s not a good position to be in.

There’s no reason to put yourself in that position, either, as you can prepare the field ahead of time. Since these bandits technically don’t start out as hostile (and since most of them are hidden) it complicates targeting them with spells. Phantasmal Web and other spells that need specific targets of hostile foes won’t operate as intended, if at all, but Confusion doesn’t discriminate. Not that confusing these bandits will turn them hostile, but it’s one way to soften them up before picking a fight. Phantasmal Web will, as usual, work wonders once the fighting actuall begins, and may just hinder the alchemists from throwing bombs once in a while.

Whatever the case, make sure you protect a tank as much as possible and send them forward to provoke the bandits; they’ll want that extra defense to ward off sneak attacks. Also, given the surprisingly high Armor Class scores the alchemists have, you should instead worry about mitigating the damage they deal, as it could take quite a bit of chopping to bring them down. Resist Energy and Protection from Energy (fire resistance) paired together should protect you admirably enough.

When this last camp of bandits has been cleared, loot their leader (Urtenea) to score a suit of Leather Armor +2, a Headband of Vast Intellect +2, an Amulet of Natural Armor +1 and a Ring of Protection +1.

Now that Urtenea and Ilora are both defeated, Irovetti’s bandit depredations in your realm should have been halted. You can now make your way back to the Rushlight Fields area and from there follow the directions to another of Irovetti’s staging grounds (War of the River Kings - The Menagerie or War of the River Kings - Littletown). On the other hand, if this was the last of the three threats you needed to neutralize, skip ahead to the page The Path of the Dreams.