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A night raid should provide enough time to abscond into the Argolid with the stolen cattle and integrate them into your uncle’s herds, if all goes well. At any rate, your honorguard are currently equipped finely in linothorax, ox-hide bucklers, and with spears of excellent manufacture. They are instantly recognizable as a fighting unit to any nobleman, but if you were to dress them in hides, and arm them with clubs, blows and sharpened stakes, they would better resemble untrained bandits. A difficult question – to weigh combat performance against appearances.
Second – you weigh these same benefits of anonymity against those of security for yourself and Pronax. Wearing your father’s famous bronze is out of the question – half of Argos can recognize you at once when you wear it. Wearing your unmarked panoplia would be the reasonable option, providing significant protection, and a much smaller number of men would be able to recognize you on sight. However, if you and Pronax bring your bronze, this would require that you bring your chariot – taken together, you and Pronax would be marked instantly as a noblemen of significant wealth. By forgoing bronze entirely, dressing in hides and arming yourselves with clubs, as if you are uncultured mountain-men, you could ride on horseback, and better pass as a bandits or simple raider. For a special occasion like this, you could borrow your uncle's divine horse, Arion - there is no swifter horse in the Argolid. Your uncle Pronax would have to make do with a horse of inferior ancestry - one large enough to support his bulk would likely be quite slow.
>wat do, /qst/? This is more or less a simple trade-off – do you want to fight with maximum performance and risk discovery as a prince of Argos, or would you forgo your equipment and maximize your chances of preserving your anonymity? Please note - Hippomedon and his uncles expect that the murder of shepherd witnesses and patrols amongst the Tegeans will probably be necessary. Please select an option from each category below:
>Hippomedon and Pronax wear unmarked bronze, and Hippomedon brings his chariot to maximize combat performance. This means that H&P are also bringing plenty of high-quality gear, including bows and javelins.
>Hippomedon and Pronax wear hides, riding on horseback, and wielding clubs to maximize their anonymity.
>The IH wear their typical gear and equipment to fight at maximum combat performance; they could be recognized as a trained combat unit as a result.
>The IH wear hides and substandard gear to better provide the illusion that they are raiders and bandits, instead of a trained combat unit.
>WRITE-IN - some other option that I haven’t listed? There’s at least one clever write-in option that Hippomedon hasn’t considered.
