Great post Durelin. I agree with much of what you've said. Now that we've had a chance to echange thoughts by pm, I'm going to put forward some of the ways we thought of that might be helpful to resolve this.
First, a personal note....and bear with me on the length of this post. As Durelin hints, this plot idea was "my baby"--a long held dream I've wanted to see spun out in an RPG or a fanfiction. The whole reason I was so careful about the numbers in the groups is that I wanted to make the plot believable. (I guess believable is the word I prefer rather than "realistic", since the latter is so often used to criticise Tolkien and negate the meaning of fantasy.) Both the Orcs and the ex-slaves have to feel that they can not make it to the north unless they rely on help from each other. Moreover, the two groups must be convinced that the physical power of each is roughly equivalent to the other, so that one band can not destroy the other. Since Orcs are better fighters both by nature and experience (though less capable of original thought), the band of ex-slaves must be considerably larger than that of the orcs.
Nogrod is certainly right to remind us that the victory of the slaves must come at a price. It can't be easy. There must be deaths. The problem comes with the specific numbers involved. I had never envisioned a death toll of 42% among the slaves (or the death of a member of the fellowship) as this would do serious damage to the careful equation we'd concocted at the beginning of the game. Regin, Tevildo, and Umdomie are also correct that such a drastic shift in numbers would necessitate a different plot than the one originally envisioned. In relation to this, here is the original agreement on the distances between the camps.
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If we assume the slavers took one hour to return to camp and galloping horses go 6.7 mph (Fonstad's figure), the distance between the two camps is 6-7 miles.
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Given the figure of seven miles, it is quite conceivable that the injured slaver could reach the orc camp on horseback in about an hour and spill the beans to Ishkur as to what has happened. Of course, the slaver could also go wandering off in the desert and never be heard from again.
I think we can reach a middle ground here: realistic numbers of dead but enough alive to preserve the original storyline. But to do that, minor changes will have to be made. I am therefore making the following requests.....
1. First,
Tevildo, you were right about the numbers. We started off with 65 slaves. More importantly, please don't kill your characters without trying to work this out. I understand why you felt you had to do that. If the situation was this dire in the grove, Azhar would have died and Dorran as well trying to help her. Let's assume for a moment that the number of deaths is a wee bit lower, the situation grave but not to the point of breaking. I see no problem with you continuing with your two posts for Azhar and Dorran, perhaps softening the first one just a tad with a word here and there (nothing drastic).
Would you consider having Lindir come in to help pull the chestnuts out of the fire? He is the actually the character with the most experience in war and would likely keep a cool ahead and come up with a trick or two to get you two free from that brute. He may pay a small price, but being an elf who heals quickly does have certain advantages. (He also has the advantage of height and several thousand years of battling against Morgoth and Sauron.) I am not the greatest writer of battle posts, but I'll do my best.
2.
Undomie - Whoa! I wish I could write with your energy and decisiveness when it comes to action. Could you soften it ever so slightly? Have some of the deaths be injuries? This wouldn't take much revision, just indicating they are stunned or whatever rather than dead. I will let you be the judge of the correct number of deaths to injuries. Just remember we have to rise again to fight a much worse enemy, and I don't mean orcs!
3.
Regin -- Could you just hold off filling that save? I know you and the other orcs have good reason to be restless but please wait till the rest of this falls more into place. I really would like to keep to the original plot we agreed on: some portion of the fellowship will travel to the slavers' old camp late tonight and catch the orcs there -- the men half drunk and the women playing the role suggested by Tolkien in pleading for mercy. (Pleading? Maybe that's the wrong word...I'm not sure how an orc would ask or demand a break. That could be interesting to see.) Then the good guys will face a gigantic moral dilemma.
The glue that will hold this all together is what Aiwendil is going to find when he's out there on the plain heading back to camp snorting and smelling the night air. The one thing that's guaranteed to bring two enemies together is when they discover they have an even larger headache to face in the near future, one tha could destroy them both.
Nogrod - I know this isn't 100% of what you wanted, but I think it does tread a middle line so we can all continue with our characters and storylines.
If you or anyone has more ideas on this, just share them on the discussion thread.
Oh, yes....the death of Aedhild. That's up to you,
Brinniel, and what you need to do with the character.....although at this point I'd love to see a certain number of warm, living bodies.