A Rose In The Wind: A Saga of the Halmae -- Updated June 19, 2014

And sorry - that last post was from WisdomLikeSilence. I'm borrowing Fajita's computer while we travel.

I was like, "What?!? Fajitas is playing, not running?!?"

4x01

"I have an idea," Kormick announced.

Mena finished buckling on her new greaves and turned to listen. "We build a small raft," Kormick continued. "We paddle out to the middle of the lake. We tie a rope around the midsection of young Master Octavian. We lower him into the water to see if he spots the ruins of an ancient Alirrian shrine down in the murky depths."

"No," said Mena.

"Why not? He's a strong youth, good lungs, his armor would weigh him down beautifully –"

"No."

"How about we lower you?" Tavi asked Kormick.

"Swimming is not a popular hobby in Dar Und. Drowning, yes. And certainly our waterways are useful for the concealment of corpses that one would rather not see rotting in the streets and provoking uncomfortable investigations. But I do not swim."

"You'll have a rope tied around you," Tavi pointed out.

Kormick hesitated, then allowed: "Perhaps there is another way to determine if this is the site of Alirria's spring."

Savina stepped forward. "I – I prayed to Alirria this morning about it, but I didn't feel anything special. This place just – just doesn't feel very holy to me." Hearing Savina's usual shyness in her voice, Mena thought, I must reassure the child that her ideas are always welcome.

"I would rather rely on empirical testing than prayer," said Kormick.

"I – I could be wrong," said Savina. "What did Kettenek tell you?"

Kormick stared at Savina. "Um, yes," he said. "Kettenek's proclamations are – vague on this point."

"Since when does Kettenek issue vague proclamations?" demanded Tavi.

Rose spoke up. "Regardless of Kettenek, my mother is rarely vague. She told me once that the spring was in a small vale. The water had no inlet or outlet. This place –" Rose pointed to the thundering waterfall that spilled out of the lake to the west " – has an outlet."

Tavi had been staring at the lake speculatively. "Isn't it possible that the rockslide dammed the spring and created this lake? Maybe I should take a look –"

"You aren't going diving," Mena declared in exasperation. "A tree attacked us. No telling what the fish would do."

"This place just – just doesn't feel right," insisted Savina.

Twiggy, who had been studying the shoreline, spoke up. "If this place had flooded in the last twenty years, we'd see the stumps of trees in the water. It looks to me like this lake has been here a lot longer than our lifetimes."

"Daughter Savina," said Mena, "did your prayers this morning give you any inspiration about where we should go?"

Savina hesitated. Mena looked at her kindly and steadily, not pushing her but not letting her off the hook, either. The others, mercifully, stayed silent.

"Well," the girl said finally, "we – we were following the buds on the trees, because they're a sign of Alirria. Water belongs to her, too. So following the water should keep us on Alirria's path."

"I like that idea," said Mena. Tavi nodded, and with that, the decision was made.

They set out the next morning, clambering down the rocky slope beside the rushing waterfall and then following the fast-flowing stream west through the thick forest. Kormick, in the lead, winced as a branch whacked him in the face. "If this is Alirria's path," he grumbled, "then, if we all die horribly, I suppose that's Alirria's will?"

"That wouldn't be very Alirrian!" burst out Savina.

Kormick chuckled.

Hours later, near midday, they heard a distinct cooing sound to the north. It stood out against the normal background of the forest's noises, resonant and jubilant.

"Mating calls," declared Kormick, after listening carefully.

"Well," said Savina, "if we followed the budding trees, and we followed the water, now we should follow the sex."

Tavi burst into laughter as Phoebe darted off in the direction of the bird calls.

"It's – it's simply Alirria's way," Savina explained, stricken.

"No, I'm laughing at Phoebe.,” Tavi replied. “She said, 'At least someone's having fun around here.'"

They turned north.

###

The next day, when they arose, a column of smoke lay lazily against the morning sky, rising from a spot several dales farther north, near their planned route.

The young people were intrigued and eager to hit the trail. Mena, Kormick, and Arden exchanged wary glances, sure that this meant trouble.

"Slave," said Kormick, "hike over there and scream if anything kills you." Arden surprised Mena by raising her eyebrows in the barest hint of amused defiance, but Mena knew that Arden couldn’t refuse an order, even one apparently made in jest. There was more to that girl than she let on, and the Defier was curious. She was also a little tired of Kormick's jokes at Arden's expense.

"Rose, the safest choice is for you to send Whisper."

Rose nodded in agreement, and raised the pseudo-dragon on her arm. After a quiet moment of communication, Whisper coasted off toward the smoke. The others broke camp as they waited.

Whisper returned about half an hour later, making a steep dive down to Rose's shoulder and staring at her intensely.

"Oh!" said Rose, startled. She quickly contained herself, but caught the group's eyes. "Um, Whisper says – there isn't much to see – " Rose glanced sharply to the side of the clearing, a warning look.

Tavi stiffened. Mena slid her eyes in the direction of Rose's gaze. Although she saw nothing, she recognized the warning in Rose’s eyes and casually dropped her hand to her flail.

"Slave," said Kormick, a bit louder than necessary, "we need firewood."

Arden bowed her head without hesitation. "Yes, Justicar," she said, sliding her hand to the dagger on her belt and walking to the opposite side of the clearing, away from Rose's glance. The one time he sincerely sends her into danger, Mena thought, she knowingly goes in. Arden was stealthy and careful, of course, and it was a wise choice for the Justicar to send her. But how curious that the girl seemed to have no trouble facing danger for her companions when it was necessary. Mena had known warriors who lacked that kind of courage. Admirable, and an interesting puzzle.

Arden vanished among the trees.

Silence fell.

"That troublesome slave," said Kormick, heartily.

Silence.

"Um, so, Savina," said Tavi, "how's that new armor working out?"

Suddenly, from the trees that Rose had marked with her gaze, Arden cried out, unmistakably in pain. Then came the crashing sound of someone running.

Mena was off in a heartbeat – sparing a glance to confirm that Tavi wouldn’t budge from his spot shielding Rose. Kormick ran close behind Mena. They plunged into the trees and saw Arden crumpled on the ground, a vicious-looking arrow protruding from her upper arm. "That way," Arden gasped, pointing unnecessarily, since whoever had shot her was making a loud retreat through the underbrush.

Mena followed. She leaped over logs and shoved past thick branches as if they weren't there, ignoring the strikes on her face. Kormick fell behind, but Mena only ran faster; she was gaining on her quarry. She glimpsed him ahead: someone with short legs, stocky. Someone, in other words, not as fast as she was.

Then the little archer tripped. Mena raced forward as he stood up, saw her, and raised his crossbow to make a stand. He was the size of a dwarf, but although he had a long mustache, he lacked a beard. Mena closed with him in three strides and shoved past his bow, grabbing the topknot on the dome of his head and yanking. Hard.

He staggered and growled.

Kormick caught up, staring at Mena, his mouth dropping open less in exhaustion than in sheer appreciation. "You are an incredibly attractive woman," he gasped.

Mena grinned grimly, and yanked the topknot again, not so much to cause pain as to remind the little man that he had her attention, and that that was not the most enviable position. Her armor roiled and hissed. Her captive growled again and snapped at her.

"Careful," said Kormick to him. "This insane yet undeniably mesmerizing harridan will gut you where you stand. And if she leaves you your tongue, perhaps next you and I will have a little chat."

The prisoner growled once more: words this time. It's Dwarven, Mena realized. Horribly corrupt Dwarven. Which makes you, my friend, a derro.

"He doesn't understand you," she told Kormick. "But he'll understand me."

She let go of the derro's topknot, reached down, and grabbed the creature in a decidedly different location. She twisted. He shrieked.

"You hurt one of my friends," explained Mena in calm Dwarven, as if speaking to a child.

"Unhand! Unhand!" the derro wailed. "Find you all, death come under!"

"Something below the ground is apparently going to kill us all," Mena translated for Kormick. "It is strange to see a derro this far south. The maps we saw suggested that they live much farther north."

"Let's take him back to camp and have a civilized conversation about that." Kormick readied one of his warhammers. "I've missed creatures with kneecaps."

Mena shook her head. "I have no wish to expose Rose to this creature. You—” she turned back to the derro “--what are you doing here?"

"Our rock. What doing you?"

"I don't believe you've earned the right to ask questions. I want to know why you have traveled to this place."

"Death come under. Lurx. All kill, all kill." He grinned, showing teeth.

"How many of you are there?"

"Enough to all kill when find from below."

"Yes darling, all kill, I got that." This really is like trying to get philosophy out of a toddler, she thought. A murderous, cannibalistic toddler, but still. "How many? Numbers."

The derro stared at Mena. Maybe they don't use numbers, she realized. Then he grunted: "Better than yesterday."

"You mean your forces are growing? Where are they coming from?"

"Our rock."

"Why did you shoot at my friend?"

"Our rock."

Mena sighed in exasperation and changed tactics. "What is the fire over the dale?"

The derro looked surprised. Then he snarled, "Our good fortune."

"Why? What are you doing here?"

"Lurx here."

Mena cast her mind back over the Dwarven grammar texts she'd studied and determined that, syntactically – insofar as this creature was capable of syntax – Lurx was a proper name. "Lurx is a person? A tribe? What?"

"Lurx hundred. Big. Better tomorrow."

"Where is Lurx?"

"Our rock beneath."

"I see. What does Lurx feed on?"

The derro frowned, as if the answer were obvious. "Fungus," he said. But then he grinned: "And trespassers."

In a moment that I can only describe as a personal triumph, at our last game, jonrog--let me say that again--JONROG, as Kormick, basically said "I don't feel good about killing these enemies of ours who are now our helpless prisoners. Perhaps we should let them go instead."

In fact, he not only said it, he fought for it. For real.

Like, without irony.

Or mind control.

It's a fun campaign, folks.

Move along, nothing to see here.
(which is to say, "edit" post is possible; "delete that thing you posted twice" doesn't seem to be )

A peek into the future there from Fajitas -- to give you a sense, Ilex's post above was the start of session 4 (which we played in mid-March), and the BRILLIANT character moment that Fajitas just described was from the session this past Sunday, which I believe was session 10. So there's a lot to look forward to! Stay tuned.

As for today's post, Ilex has had a catastrophic hard drive failure (Great woe! Send sympathy!) so the post will be a tad delayed. Soon! Promise.

When? When? Soon, Phoebe, soon.

Don't worry about it; with the way the boards have been, I'd have just chalked up any delay to "they probably can't even get to the boards, never mind actually post something".

PS: Good luck with the fried HD -- I hope everything got at least mostly backed up!

Excellent point, coyote6. Posting is taking roughly one million years right now. In fact, posting this little comment before the main update was a silly thing for me to do, because now this whole process is going to take roughly two million years.

And everyone, back up your files. In the blessed names of all the gods, do it NOW. Because somewhere, deep in your hard drives, Sedellus lurks…

4x02

Mena tried, but she couldn't learn any more useful information from the captive derro. Finally, in resignation, she turned to Kormick.

"We'll need to bring him with us, after all," she said. "I am reluctant to kill him until we know more about what we're facing here."

"Why kill when you can immobilize?" asked the Justicar cheerfully. Before Mena could blink, Kormick smashed the derro's foot with his warhammer. The derro screamed in agony. Dragging their prisoner with them, they returned to camp.

Mena checked automatically to make sure that Tavi was still guarding Rose. He was. Savina had helped Arden remove the arrow from her arm and bind up the wound. Arden stood up with an air of determination as her attacker entered camp, but she looked pained and pale. The journey has weakened her, thought Mena, making a mental note. She was perhaps also not strong to begin with. Slavery leaves few opportunities to build reserves, cursed institution.

Savina looked nearly as pained as Arden as she heard – and understood – an appalling series of corrupt Dwarven curses issuing from the prisoner's mouth.

"Should I – I suppose I could heal him – " she ventured.

Privately admiring the girl's sincere if misplaced compassion, Mena turned to the derro. "If you help us," she said, "we will heal you. Do you understand?"

"Lurx come. Many boots. Eat you all."

Mena rolled her eyes. The creature's refrain was growing tedious.

"Rose," she asked, "kindly tell us what Whisper learned about the fire over the hill."

"It's a burning wagon. Whisper says it looked like part of a caravan of some kind," said Rose, her face pale. "It looked like there'd been an attack. There were broken wagons, dead ponies, dead . . . dead people. He said there seemed to be one still alive."

The Twilight Bitch has been busy, Mena thought. What she said aloud was, "We ought to render what aid we can to the survivor – carefully."

"Not to be difficult," asked Twiggy, "but are we sure this is a good idea? What if it's a trap?"

"We need intel," said Kormick.

"We – we have to help a person in need," insisted Savina. "That's part of Alirria's path, too."

"We have to be systematic and rule out danger," explained Mena.

"And if you're that worried about it, we'll send the slave ahead to check things out," concluded Kormick.

"We can't send Arden," Twiggy objected. "She's hurt because you already made her sneak around once."

"I'm willing to go, Lady Chelesta," Arden volunteered unexpectedly.

"There you go," said Kormick.

Twiggy bit her lip, thinking. Mena watched her with distracted pride. She had seen Twiggy ponder problems in her classroom with just this kind of careful consideration, and she was always pleased to see it. Then Twiggy looked at Savina. "Helping someone does seem like Alirria's path," she agreed. "All right."

"Tavi," said Mena, sure that he knew what she was going to say yet unable to break the habit of saying it, "Rose is not to be out of your sight."

"Yeah," answered Tavi, "and the sun rose this morning, too."

###

Tavi watched as the Justicar and the slavewoman crept down the hill to get a closer look at the attack site. He was concealed nearby with Rose and the rest of the party out of an abundance of caution. Tavi had understood the phrase abundance of caution since he was a small boy. He accepted it. But he didn't have to enjoy it.

Taaaaaaaa-viiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

I know, Pheebs.

There is a mystery down there. There might be danger!

I think we're too late for the danger on this one. But you're right about the mystery.

Then why are we here? We could be there, we could be down there right now looking all around for clues and finding a trail the bad guys left and running after them really really really fast, you know how much I like running, Tavi, run run run! And then the fighting!

You know how Arden has to do what people tell her to do, Pheebs?

I know – she's so boring – back when the Justicar said she might stab us in our sleep, I got excited, but she hasn't even tried!

My point is that we all have duties, Pheebs. And right now, my duty is to wait here.

No one lets you have any fun.

Kormick and Arden reappeared from the underbrush. "It's safe," said Kormick. "But it's not pretty."

Tavi and the others followed Kormick down the hill. They paused again behind some shrubs on the edge of the attack site. From there, Tavi could see everything. Broken wagons tilted like shipwrecks on their remaining wheels. Dead ponies lay before them, still in their harnesses. Four dead dwarves lay in a neat line, not far from one burnt and smoldering wagon that gave off a thin column of smoke.

A dwarf was hitching herself along the ground, clearly injured, pulling a fifth dead body toward the others.

Seeing her, Savina began to step forward, but Mena grabbed her arm, stopping her. "She may not be...entirely trusting just now. And you are entirely too trusting." Tavi groaned inwardly. Gods, there has to be such a thing as a superabundance of caution, he thought.

Mena walked forward instead of Savina.

"Do you need assistance?" she asked, in Dwarven, as she strode into the massacre site.

The dwarven woman turned, one hand flying to the ax at her hip. She was young. Her face was streaked with dirt and smoke. And she was very pregnant. "Who are you?" she demanded.

"We're travelers," said Mena. "Do you need assistance?"

The woman's jaw clenched, and then she said one word: "Please."

Savina was already running.

That's the spirit!

Tavi hurried up with the others as Savina dropped to her knees beside the young woman and laid gentle hands upon the dwarf's leg. "It's broken," she told them, and then turned to the woman and asked in Dwarven, "What's your name?"

"Corani. Corani Rockminder."

Savina closed her eyes and concentrated. Corani sighed with relief as Savina's prayers took effect. "What happened here?" asked Savina.

Tavi listened carefully to Corani's answer, noticing with amusement that Savina was editing out the dwarf's embittered obsenities as she translated the story for those who didn't speak Dwarven: "She and her husband and her sister-wives travel here every eight years to mine stone. He's a master stoneworker. He knows this area really well, and they've never had any trouble. But this time, they were attacked by – by – in our Lady's name, that's an especially rude word – by a party of derro. Corani survived by playing dead after her leg was broken. The derro killed all these people – and then they took her husband, her sister-wives, all the children, and a few others away with them as prisoners."

Tavi –

Trust me, Pheebs, I know; I want to take down whoever did this as fast as I possibly can.

Mena was telling Corani about the derro who had shot Arden.

"A scout," said Corani. "Did he get away?"

"No," said Mena.

"Is he still alive?" Corani demanded.

"For like nine and a half more minutes," said Kormick, and pointed to the edge of the clearing, where the bound derro was awaiting his fate.

"Will it help you to kill it?" asked Mena.

Corani got a better grip on her ax and stood up. A grim silence fell.

Twiggy spoke up. "Why do we have to kill it?" she asked softly.

Mena turned to the derro. "If we spare your life," she asked it, "will you do the same for us?"

The derro grinned. "All kill," it hissed.

"That's why," said Mena, gently but firmly, to Twiggy. Twiggy nodded her understanding.

"Plus, it hurt Arden," added Tavi. He hadn't felt any need to question the execution of their prisoner, but now that they were on the brink of it, he wanted to make sure everyone knew how justified it was. Technically speaking, after all, he was in charge; it was his decision.

The slavewoman looked startled that a nobleman had acknowledged her. But then she startled Tavi in return. "Signor Octavian," she said, "may it please you, don't kill him in my name."

Gods, she's sooo boring.

"We kill it in the name Rockminder," said Corani, after Savina translated Arden's words.

"Okay," said Kormick. "How do you want to handle this? Should we – "

Corani strode past the Justicar. She strode past Tavi. And she split the derro's skull open with her ax.

Ilex said:

"We kill it in the name Rockminder," said Corani, after Savina translated Arden's words.

"Okay," said Kormick. "How do you want to handle this? Should we – "

Corani strode past the Justicar. She strode past Tavi. And she split the derro's skull open with her ax.

Click to expand...

And that's how dwarves roll.