I should mention that this is something I find tends to happen when I’m running any campaign in which PCs are movers and shakers, so it’s probably partly me. But I do think higher-level ACKS encourages PCs who operate independently in ways that serve their own ends and are mostly (but only mostly) aligned with each other.
It makes for a GMing challenge I’m enjoying but definitely not finding easy to plan for.
I’m reminded of the AAR of the Shieldlands campaign, wherein the PC’s, having reached mid-level and beginning to carve out niches, domains, and guilds for themselves, found their goals largely incompatible; clearing hexes for the baron did nothing to further e.g. the wizard’s aims.
It occurs to me that, at level 1, the external world is dangerous enough that characters are forced to cooperate to survive. As they become more powerful, unless other (equally powerful) forces take note of their rise and oppose them or unite them, there’s progressively less motivation to work together (from a raw game-mechanics standpoint, anyway; camaraderie, fealty, or other player-supplied motivations may exist).
There's no doubt that as the "terror" of low-level play recedes, and characters grow more powerful, they can tend to drift apart.
Over at The Escapist, I wrote an essay on three different "styles" of group play - collective, competitive-collective, and individualist. I think that ACKS can work for all three styles, but it's important that the group knows the style you are going for and also that the campaign world supports the style.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/checkfortraps/8041-Managing-Problems-and-Players
At low-level play, the danger of the dungeon and wilderness will keep the party together. At mid-level play, you generally need some sort of dangerous threat ("the lich lord has awakened!") to keep the party cooperating. At the highest levels, one of the three things will happen.
1. The camraderie and friendship of 9 levels of adventuring together will keep them allied. "All for one and one for all".
2. The PCs will turn on each other with knives drawn. Think Octavius versus Marc Antony.
3. A new threat will arise, often a rival power that is threatened by the upstarts, that rallies the PCs together again.
Feb 14, 751: Theodoric and Wulf were summoned by Guyver to attend him at Toulouse, so the pair headed off to the city on Theodoric’s boat. They arrived that evening and had an audience with Guyver. Wulf went first and warned Guyver of Theodoric’s ambitions. Guyver thanked her for her efforts and granted her a boon by promising to hold a festival in her lands. When he met with Theodoric, he named him Count of Andorra. Theodoric then requested that Guyver send him as many cavalrymen as possible in order to stage a raid against the forces besieging the castle at Lourdes in hopes of breaking the siege. Guyver told him that he would send what he could within a week’s time. Theodoric then hit up a few seedy bars in Toulouse and hired a couple more unscrupulous characters as henchmen. These included a 0-level cleric named Ingomer, a 4th level thief named Sigfried, and a 2nd level Basque assassin named Edunxe. He then set out to return to his castle at Montrejeau. Wulf continued on from Toulouse back to her castle in which is to the east. She gathered her forces, handled some business, and set out to meet back with Theodoric at Montrejeau.
Feb 15th & 16th - The day was spent making wedding preparations for Theodoric’s wedding to Marcatrude, the daughter of Baron Ansovald (one of Theodoric’s neighbors, brother to Baron Magnusind, Theodoric’s vassal lord of Andorra).
Feb 17th - Theodoric’s wedding occurred in the evening and was attended by several Aquitanian nobles. At the wedding, Theodoric negotiated some arragements with Wulf’s neighbors (namely his cousin Aymon and his wife’s uncle Adzo) concerning the lands of Baron Otker, another of her neighbors who recently was killed on campaign in Lombardy. Theodoric made comments regarding his neighbor Theudomer’s conspicuous absence.
Tariq spent the evening investigating the assasinations carried out in Theudomer’s land (which was somewhat easy since it was his guild that was hired to carry them out) and discovered that it was Duke Guyver’s aunt who had ordered them. Tariq arranged a meeting with her outside of the castle and snuck out during the festivities. (I was doing other things during this part of the session, so it would be best if I can convince Teucer or cmarteta to write that part up. Likewise, Corbus has been doing a whole bunch of stuff back in Huesca, so I’ll leave that to Reynard.)
Feb 18: While most of the party-goers were still sleeping, Theodoric left Montrejeau with a small band in order to “ransom” his neighbor Theudomer (Recall that Theodoric ordered his kidnapping by the band of thieves and assassin that he keeps on retainer). The “meeting” took place a few miles from the castle. Theudomer was brought forth. He had been kept bound, gagged, blindfolded, and drunk throughout the ordeal, but he was lucid enough to have a conversation with Theodoric. Theodoric excoriated him over his inability to effectively rule his lands. Theudomer admitted that he was not the one who had ordered the assasinations of the peasant ring-leaders. Theodoric then offered Theudomer a choice. He could 1) Take his chances with his kidnappers 2) Cede his lands to Theodoric and take up residency in a monastery or 3) Cede his lands to Theodoric, swear himself to Theodoric as a henchman, and foster his son and nephew to Theodoric. Theudomer admitted that he had become impoverished to the point that he couldn’t afford to eat regularly and seemed hopeful that he would fare better in Theodoric’s service, saying, “I hear your men eat well.” (On the occasion of Theodoric and Theudomer’s several interactions it has been clear that Theudomer idolizes Theodoric to some degree based on the tales and legends of his adventures)
Theudoric and Theudomer returned to Montrejeau where Theudomer announced his abdication to the various nobles who were still assembled for the wedding. The pair then headed off to Lannemezzan(Theudomer’s former barony) where Theudomer surrendered the fortress to Theodoric and the news was spread.
Theodoric spent the rest of the day dispatching scouts to the Lourdes/Bigorra region in order to assess the besieging Saracen force. Wulf arrived that afternoon along with a sizable cavalry force from Guyver under the command of Bertulf (one of Guyver’s henchmen).
Feb 19 - 20, 751: The next few days were spent preparing their forces to attack the besieging force at Lourdes. They planned to march through a pass in the Pyrenees in order to attack Lourdes from the south (which would be an unexpected direction form which there approach would be obscured by mountains). Wulf had a conversation with Marcatrude, Theodoric’s new wife in which she warned him of his ambitions. Marcatrude did not seem surprised.
On the 20th, Ansovald arrived with his men, bringing their numbers to about 300 cavalry and a 100 man unit of infantry. Humbert also returned with a scouting report. The castle at Lourdes (Count Michael’s home) had already fallen and Count Michael was presumed dead. The rest of the army had begun to assault the walls of the city of Bigorra (a heavily fortified class IV city, Count Michael’s seat - formerly a Roman urbs). The defenders seemed to be holding out for now. Theodoric instructed Humbert to return and use the bandit band (same ones that kidnapped Theudomer) in order to eliminate all of the Saracen’s lookouts.
Theodoric and Wulf immediately departed Montrejeau with their force. They still used the southern route in order to take the besieging force by surprise. Along the way they stopped at a small baronial fortress held by Baron Ragnachar in the Pyrenees before stopping at Lourdes to investigate the site of the battlefield. They found Count Michael’s decapitated corpse which they sent back to Ragnachar for safe keeping. The army set up camp near the ruined castle while Theodoric, Wulf, Bertulf, and their henchmen rode ahead to a hill that overlooked the city of Bigorra. Night was falling when they arrived and so Theodoric ordered some of his men to erect a wooden cross on a hill to the east (the Frankish force was to the south and planned to attack from the west). He then ordered the cross to be set alight in order to serve as a signal to the defenders of the city. The Frankish commanders planned their assault that would come the next morning.
During this time, Tariq had slipped away and mounted his flying carpet in order to get a better view of the besieging force. When he saw the burning cross, he got a brilliant idea, so he slipped into Bigorra itself. First he left a note on the cathedral door to let the defenders know that a Frankish force was preparing to attack. Then he stole some cloth and some oil and a torch. He tore the fabric and crumpled it into balls which he dipped into the oil. He then took off again on his flying carpet and proceeded to light these balls on fire and drop them onto the Saracen siege camp (Recall that these are the wrong kind of Saracens. Tariq is loyal to the Abassid Caliphate while the Iberian is currently in open rebellion against that regime).
The fire ripped through the Saracen camps, burning tents, siege weapons, pitch soaked ammunition, and spooking horses.
I should point out that from the perspective of everybody who wasn’t Tariq, fire was literally falling out of the sky onto the Saracen camp. While Theodoric knew that the burning cross was his signal, neither the defenders of the city nor the besieging force were aware of that fact. Theodoric ordered his men up to the top of the hill to watch and had Ingomer (his new cleric) hold mass.
Hoping that their fire-fighting efforts would lead the Saracen force to sleep in, Theodoric, Wulf, and Bertulf gathered their forces to the west before dawn. They masked their movements using a chain of hills and prepared to use their cavalry to charge through a gap in the hills and across a 3 mile field to sow even more discord in the siege camp. Another baron, Baron Chlodomer had arrived in the night with 50 infantry. The plan was to position the infantry in the gap in order to cover their retreat. While the Frankish force was outnumbered 4:1 by the western siege camp, Theodoric hoped that they would pursue his cavalry back towards the gap in poor order where his infantry could ambush them.
As the Frankish commanders lined their units up for battle, they noticed a great deal of movement within the siege camps.