| Captured by Grugach
(I'm going to try very hard to remember to use the past tense in this story hour, since it's not 'current' at all- not even close! This update was almost exactly ten years ago, real time- we played it out on November 1st, 1993. Quite a while back. In game terms, this was the year 97 O.L.G., and game 'present' is 368 O.L.G. Past tense. Right, then.)
"Bleak! Bleak!
On earth and on sea
You are my favorite deity!"
With a cheer, the party finished singing along with Chanti's sea chanty. Most of the Sea Hag's crew had sung along, but a few abstained. Galiger took mental notes on who these were; he was planning some sacrifices. The knarr glided through the water almost silently, then abruptly fell victim to a barrage of wild gnome darts. A fierce battle broke out, ended by our heroes' flight down the river, shaken and bleeding from the gnomish assault. "We should maybe try something a little less obvious," remarked Urick, the wizard the group had picked up during the Coral Caves adventure. Flipper nods in agreement.
So the group decided to try their luck at finding a hiding spot by marching through the jungles along the river searching for a good hideout from which to conduct piracy. They left their crew and the ship in Doraps, the town they'd sailed upriver from, paying the crew a couple of months wages in advance and promising more if they served faithfully.
So it was that our heroes, five days out, fell into a grugach trap and were caged by the wild elves. Unfortunate, really, but that damn entangle and a bit of overwhelming wild elf numbers, and there you have it. Disarmed, bound, thrown in tough bamboo cages and thence ignored, our heroes pondered a dismal fate- after all, the grugach were cannibals at that time. Or at least, that was the rumor. (Still is, really.)
"It's fortunate that I'm here," Malford grinned, searching out a few long splinters of wood to use as probes. Then he waited until dark. When at last all the grugach in the area were asleep he set to work on the lock.
Chanti cracked her knuckles. "I'd like to kill all of them," she whispered.
"I just want to get out of here," Urick said.
"Gotcha!" Malford smirked as the lock disengaged. Very quietly they swung the cage open and crept out, then started moving away from the grugach village. They made it less than a mile before pursuit began. Horns sounded behind them, answered by more somewhere to the left of them...
The party rushed as quickly as they could back towards Doraps, wild elves wild in pursuite behind them. They ran through most of the night, sometimes having to stop to hack their way through thickets and find ways around bogs.
Then, as if things couldn't get worse, with the grugach hot on their heels, the party ran into gnomes. Who knows- could even be the same gnomes that attacked their boat, wild-looking with dark hair usually in dreadlocks. But instead of things getting worse, they got better- the gnomes too were adversaries of the grugach! (Man, do those elves like anyone?)
There was no battle; the grugach remained at bay while the more charismatic members of the group (especially Malford) talked the gnomes into allowing the party to seek refuge with them until the grugach let them be. "The grugach do not like anyone who isn't grugach," says one of the wild gnomes, nodding sagely. "They eat you." He extends his hand. "I am Gepp." They talk late into the night, and when they leave in the morning Gepp joins them...
Next Time: Death comes knocking! | 
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