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Maissen: Shades of Grey [UPDATE 12/12, post 199]
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<blockquote data-quote="Beale Knight" data-source="post: 2601719" data-attributes="member: 7033"><p><strong>Session 11: Wayden the Gobber, Mawgs, and Balloong the Trollkin</strong></p><p></p><p>We left the city of wizards elated at our new acquisitions, but still with a slightly bad taste in our mouths. At least they had confirmed what Angri had told us about the trail of stone, so that way we went. We managed to make it back into forest before nightfall, set up our camp and hoped to not be attacked by any giants that night.</p><p></p><p>It was the dead middle of the night when we were awakened by Barbrack’s screams. We scrambled to our feet and saw sails falling on us from below the tree canopy. Great sheet of white moving with a will of their own. Our natural reaction was to shoot at these things that were swooping down on us. The arrows and bolts we sent into these things had little effect. Scores of them continued to float violently down at us.</p><p></p><p>By then we had cleared the sleep fog from our heads and realized what these were. Moths. Huge moths, but still moths. The first one, whose wings had been pierced by bolt and arrow, ignored us and flew straight into our campfire. It caught fire, flopped out onto the ground, spreading dangerous sparks with its death throes. </p><p></p><p>Another moth then did exactly the same thing. </p><p></p><p>Barback worked at kicking the fire out and the rest of us either put the burnt and dying giant moths out of their misery (Dumb Bear excelled at this), or kept watch at the perimeter in case all this attracted the attention of something that WOULD be inclined to attack us. </p><p></p><p>No such attack came though. With the fire out the remaining giant moths moved on. We scooted about half a dozen charred corpses off into the woods and went back to sleep. </p><p></p><p>Day Thirty Seven greeted us with a spectacular sight. When we reached a clearing we saw the fog over the westernmost mountain peak taking the form of wings. It was a grand sight made all the more wondrous by the fact we had seen it before – from the other side. </p><p></p><p>The first half of the day was simple and peaceful travel south to the mountains. Just about noon the trail opened up to an almost perfectly round clearing. It was about 60’ across and in the exact center was a tall pole. From the top of the pole, about 30’ up, dangled a cord. Our trail led out the far side of this clearing so we took a few minutes to investigate. </p><p></p><p>Large, nearly giant-sized boot prints were all around the area. The pole and ground around it were riddled with deep scratch marks. The cord itself had been neatly cut. The picture this painted wasn’t pretty, but there was no one or thing around any longer. We carried on. </p><p></p><p>A few hours further south Dumb Bear heard some whimpering off in the woods, some distance from the trail. We followed the sounds and soon came to edge of another clearing. It was just like we had seen before, except this one had a living creature tied to the end of the pole’s cord. </p><p></p><p>It was a fascinatingly ugly creature, though to its own kind it might have been the epitome of beauty. It was short as a halfling with skin that looked like blotched, sickly green leather. His fingers were as oddly long as his feet were oddly wide. With narrow, pointed ears that extended far out from his head, a jutted haw, and oversized eyes he looked like a nightmare version of a halfling.</p><p></p><p>We watched for a few moments as the creature nervously twitched and whimpered and chewed at its fingers. Ren rode around the clearing just to be sure this wasn’t some elaborate trap for unwary travelers – as unlikely as that was. When Sandy crashed loudly through some bushes, the bound creature almost leapt out of its ruddy skin. </p><p></p><p>Satisfied there was no ambush waiting, we entered the clearing. The creature shouted in fear. When Bessie said hello (thanks to her amulet, we were easily able to talk to the creature) it screamed again. We finally got him to calm down and then slowly learned what he was and why he was here – in between his nervous stammers, fearful glances, lip tremblings, and overall fright.</p><p></p><p>He was bait for the mawgs, which we eventually learned to be a sort of land piranha. A few of the therrick had tied him here to attract the creatures. They were attracted by fear, which this creature had plenty of. When the mawgs arrived, he was to blow a whistle and try to get out of their way by climbing the pole. The therrick would arrive to slaughter the mawgs. They harvested a gland from these little monsters that made them stronger and tougher. Although to hear him tell it, the therrick were already plenty big and strong, and when enraged they got even bigger and stronger.</p><p></p><p>For himself, he was a gobber named Wayden, and like all gobbers he was a slave. The last clearing we had seen had been where his brother Reloy had been staked up as bait – but he hadn’t been rescued.</p><p></p><p>It was altogether horrible, but then we learned more. It seems that Wayden, and his brother, had not been forced to do this. They had been hired. Though slaves, they took on this job as bait in order to get extra luxuries and privileges. If they died, their families received the benefits. </p><p></p><p>So it wasn’t quite as horrible as we initially thought. This left us with a dilemma. Though he asked us to consider freeing him (“I’m good at cleaning, and digging holes,” he said) Wayden said that if we did that the therrick would probably be very angry and follow us. If we stayed to see the mawgs first hand, our mounts would be in terrible danger – the only way to avoid them is to climb something. If we just left, the little gobber would probably be killed. </p><p></p><p>We dithered for almost twenty minutes until finally Bessie took action. She rode up, cut Wayden free, put him on the back of her horse, and rode off. That settled it, and so the rest of us followed. </p><p></p><p>There was no immediate hoard of therrick following us. We made it back to the trail and continued south without hearing so much as a foot fall behind us. The day wore on and we still seemed unpursued. Wayden seemed grateful for the rescue, and not worried about what would happen to his kin. Perhaps he believed the therrick would just assume he’d been ambushed and eaten before there was a chance to blow the whistle. </p><p></p><p>As the shadows of afternoon began to lengthen, we heard a wail from up on the trail. Listening closer we could discern the wail was made up of several, perhaps scores, of creatures. Wayden knew what it was; he shivered and whimpered as he whispered, “Mawgs.” Amid the mog wails were cries of pain and anger. This we expected to be therrick, so we approached with the greatest of caution. </p><p></p><p>We rounded a bend and saw a small hoard of what had to be mawgs, catlike creatures with extended claws and mouths that were virtually half of their body. The mawgs were converging on a huge man. He wasn’t human but for his general shape, being as large as an ogre but standing upright and with skin like granite. The weapon he swung at the mawgs was a strange combination of glaive and axe, and he used it with a brilliant precision – far from the clumsy swings of the ogre we’d killed. We initially thought he must be a therrick, but Wayden said otherwise. The gobber gazed at the huge man and whispered, “Trollkin.” And now he wasn’t shivering in fear.</p><p></p><p>We had no more idea what a trollkin was, or if they compared well or ill to therrick, but one thing was clear. This trollkin was being mawled by the mawgs, and there were more coming. So we did what had grown to come naturally.</p><p></p><p>We attacked.</p><p></p><p>Aneirin charged into the closet clot of mawgs. Dumb Bear went into his rage and joined him on foot. Ren and Barback began shooting, Barback targeting those furthest away from anyone (the better to not accidentally hit a comrade), and Bessie cast an entangle spell as the trollkin killed two of the mawgs.</p><p></p><p>The entangle captured most of the mawgs, but a few near the trollkin and near Aneirin escaped the vines. Unfortunately, both Aneirin, already dismounted, and Dumb Bear were caught as well. The next few minutes were a chaotic series of bow and crossbow shots, escapes, attacks, recaptures of those in the spell range, and mawgs nipping away at anyone they could with even more of them popping up from underground. </p><p></p><p>Aneirin would break free of entangling vines only to be grabbed again almost at once. Dumb Bear smashed several of the trapped mawgs, Bessie, Barbrack, and Rens’ missile fire took out some that were entangled and some that were not. We mostly concentrated on those closest to our entangled comrades, which prompted the trollkin to shout, “thank you SO much for hitting the ones that are trapped!” Even though he was killing as many as we, he was also getting bitten far more. When Ren moved about and put an arrow in one that was at his feet, the trollkin’s attitude changed a bit (“Give THAT man a Cyggarian gold piece”), but by then the tide had turned. When the trollkin worked his way out of Bessie’s entangle spell he called out, “Fire or Meat!?” </p><p></p><p>At our question he answered that those were the two way to beat them. He did not, however, wait for us to choose. Instead, he knelt to the edge of the entangling vines and launched fire from his hands. The vines caught, the mawgs burnt, and in an another moment there was nothing to do but make sure those mawgs still on the surface were all the way dead. </p><p></p><p>With the fight over, we introduced ourselves. The trollkin was named Baloong and these were, as he put it, “his woods”. We stood alongside the forest path talking for several minutes and noticed Baloong's speech and mannerisms belied his bestial giant appearance. He articulately explained that the mawgs were “burrow-mawgs”, prized by the therrick hunters for that gland at the back of the neck. He also warned us to not anger the therrick, as they swell to twice their size when enraged. </p><p></p><p>Baloong gave us some simple instructions regarding the trail ahead. We’d eventually come to a rock wall and the path would fork. Going west would take us straight to the giants’ City on the Lake. Going east would lead us to the Path of Stone, where we could safely resume our westward travel. We were just about to part ways when he remembered something. Baloong dug through a pouch and flipped Ren a piece of gold almost the size of his palm. </p><p></p><p>So we offered to share our camp with him. We hadn’t made it yet, but as we had come across a powerful and honorable warrior mage, it seemed advantageous to keep him with us through the night. Polite also. </p><p></p><p>Baloong took us up on our offer and did it one better by inviting us to stay with him. With the grace and ease of a deer, he led us off the trail and through his woods to a field of stone spires. One of these, thirty feet at its base, he walked up to and put his hands on. With a wink he pushed his way though the rock. Ren jumped off Sandy and followed suit, followed by the rest of the party.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Next: Of the region, around the bend POST 175</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Beale Knight, post: 2601719, member: 7033"] [b]Session 11: Wayden the Gobber, Mawgs, and Balloong the Trollkin[/b] We left the city of wizards elated at our new acquisitions, but still with a slightly bad taste in our mouths. At least they had confirmed what Angri had told us about the trail of stone, so that way we went. We managed to make it back into forest before nightfall, set up our camp and hoped to not be attacked by any giants that night. It was the dead middle of the night when we were awakened by Barbrack’s screams. We scrambled to our feet and saw sails falling on us from below the tree canopy. Great sheet of white moving with a will of their own. Our natural reaction was to shoot at these things that were swooping down on us. The arrows and bolts we sent into these things had little effect. Scores of them continued to float violently down at us. By then we had cleared the sleep fog from our heads and realized what these were. Moths. Huge moths, but still moths. The first one, whose wings had been pierced by bolt and arrow, ignored us and flew straight into our campfire. It caught fire, flopped out onto the ground, spreading dangerous sparks with its death throes. Another moth then did exactly the same thing. Barback worked at kicking the fire out and the rest of us either put the burnt and dying giant moths out of their misery (Dumb Bear excelled at this), or kept watch at the perimeter in case all this attracted the attention of something that WOULD be inclined to attack us. No such attack came though. With the fire out the remaining giant moths moved on. We scooted about half a dozen charred corpses off into the woods and went back to sleep. Day Thirty Seven greeted us with a spectacular sight. When we reached a clearing we saw the fog over the westernmost mountain peak taking the form of wings. It was a grand sight made all the more wondrous by the fact we had seen it before – from the other side. The first half of the day was simple and peaceful travel south to the mountains. Just about noon the trail opened up to an almost perfectly round clearing. It was about 60’ across and in the exact center was a tall pole. From the top of the pole, about 30’ up, dangled a cord. Our trail led out the far side of this clearing so we took a few minutes to investigate. Large, nearly giant-sized boot prints were all around the area. The pole and ground around it were riddled with deep scratch marks. The cord itself had been neatly cut. The picture this painted wasn’t pretty, but there was no one or thing around any longer. We carried on. A few hours further south Dumb Bear heard some whimpering off in the woods, some distance from the trail. We followed the sounds and soon came to edge of another clearing. It was just like we had seen before, except this one had a living creature tied to the end of the pole’s cord. It was a fascinatingly ugly creature, though to its own kind it might have been the epitome of beauty. It was short as a halfling with skin that looked like blotched, sickly green leather. His fingers were as oddly long as his feet were oddly wide. With narrow, pointed ears that extended far out from his head, a jutted haw, and oversized eyes he looked like a nightmare version of a halfling. We watched for a few moments as the creature nervously twitched and whimpered and chewed at its fingers. Ren rode around the clearing just to be sure this wasn’t some elaborate trap for unwary travelers – as unlikely as that was. When Sandy crashed loudly through some bushes, the bound creature almost leapt out of its ruddy skin. Satisfied there was no ambush waiting, we entered the clearing. The creature shouted in fear. When Bessie said hello (thanks to her amulet, we were easily able to talk to the creature) it screamed again. We finally got him to calm down and then slowly learned what he was and why he was here – in between his nervous stammers, fearful glances, lip tremblings, and overall fright. He was bait for the mawgs, which we eventually learned to be a sort of land piranha. A few of the therrick had tied him here to attract the creatures. They were attracted by fear, which this creature had plenty of. When the mawgs arrived, he was to blow a whistle and try to get out of their way by climbing the pole. The therrick would arrive to slaughter the mawgs. They harvested a gland from these little monsters that made them stronger and tougher. Although to hear him tell it, the therrick were already plenty big and strong, and when enraged they got even bigger and stronger. For himself, he was a gobber named Wayden, and like all gobbers he was a slave. The last clearing we had seen had been where his brother Reloy had been staked up as bait – but he hadn’t been rescued. It was altogether horrible, but then we learned more. It seems that Wayden, and his brother, had not been forced to do this. They had been hired. Though slaves, they took on this job as bait in order to get extra luxuries and privileges. If they died, their families received the benefits. So it wasn’t quite as horrible as we initially thought. This left us with a dilemma. Though he asked us to consider freeing him (“I’m good at cleaning, and digging holes,” he said) Wayden said that if we did that the therrick would probably be very angry and follow us. If we stayed to see the mawgs first hand, our mounts would be in terrible danger – the only way to avoid them is to climb something. If we just left, the little gobber would probably be killed. We dithered for almost twenty minutes until finally Bessie took action. She rode up, cut Wayden free, put him on the back of her horse, and rode off. That settled it, and so the rest of us followed. There was no immediate hoard of therrick following us. We made it back to the trail and continued south without hearing so much as a foot fall behind us. The day wore on and we still seemed unpursued. Wayden seemed grateful for the rescue, and not worried about what would happen to his kin. Perhaps he believed the therrick would just assume he’d been ambushed and eaten before there was a chance to blow the whistle. As the shadows of afternoon began to lengthen, we heard a wail from up on the trail. Listening closer we could discern the wail was made up of several, perhaps scores, of creatures. Wayden knew what it was; he shivered and whimpered as he whispered, “Mawgs.” Amid the mog wails were cries of pain and anger. This we expected to be therrick, so we approached with the greatest of caution. We rounded a bend and saw a small hoard of what had to be mawgs, catlike creatures with extended claws and mouths that were virtually half of their body. The mawgs were converging on a huge man. He wasn’t human but for his general shape, being as large as an ogre but standing upright and with skin like granite. The weapon he swung at the mawgs was a strange combination of glaive and axe, and he used it with a brilliant precision – far from the clumsy swings of the ogre we’d killed. We initially thought he must be a therrick, but Wayden said otherwise. The gobber gazed at the huge man and whispered, “Trollkin.” And now he wasn’t shivering in fear. We had no more idea what a trollkin was, or if they compared well or ill to therrick, but one thing was clear. This trollkin was being mawled by the mawgs, and there were more coming. So we did what had grown to come naturally. We attacked. Aneirin charged into the closet clot of mawgs. Dumb Bear went into his rage and joined him on foot. Ren and Barback began shooting, Barback targeting those furthest away from anyone (the better to not accidentally hit a comrade), and Bessie cast an entangle spell as the trollkin killed two of the mawgs. The entangle captured most of the mawgs, but a few near the trollkin and near Aneirin escaped the vines. Unfortunately, both Aneirin, already dismounted, and Dumb Bear were caught as well. The next few minutes were a chaotic series of bow and crossbow shots, escapes, attacks, recaptures of those in the spell range, and mawgs nipping away at anyone they could with even more of them popping up from underground. Aneirin would break free of entangling vines only to be grabbed again almost at once. Dumb Bear smashed several of the trapped mawgs, Bessie, Barbrack, and Rens’ missile fire took out some that were entangled and some that were not. We mostly concentrated on those closest to our entangled comrades, which prompted the trollkin to shout, “thank you SO much for hitting the ones that are trapped!” Even though he was killing as many as we, he was also getting bitten far more. When Ren moved about and put an arrow in one that was at his feet, the trollkin’s attitude changed a bit (“Give THAT man a Cyggarian gold piece”), but by then the tide had turned. When the trollkin worked his way out of Bessie’s entangle spell he called out, “Fire or Meat!?” At our question he answered that those were the two way to beat them. He did not, however, wait for us to choose. Instead, he knelt to the edge of the entangling vines and launched fire from his hands. The vines caught, the mawgs burnt, and in an another moment there was nothing to do but make sure those mawgs still on the surface were all the way dead. With the fight over, we introduced ourselves. The trollkin was named Baloong and these were, as he put it, “his woods”. We stood alongside the forest path talking for several minutes and noticed Baloong's speech and mannerisms belied his bestial giant appearance. He articulately explained that the mawgs were “burrow-mawgs”, prized by the therrick hunters for that gland at the back of the neck. He also warned us to not anger the therrick, as they swell to twice their size when enraged. Baloong gave us some simple instructions regarding the trail ahead. We’d eventually come to a rock wall and the path would fork. Going west would take us straight to the giants’ City on the Lake. Going east would lead us to the Path of Stone, where we could safely resume our westward travel. We were just about to part ways when he remembered something. Baloong dug through a pouch and flipped Ren a piece of gold almost the size of his palm. So we offered to share our camp with him. We hadn’t made it yet, but as we had come across a powerful and honorable warrior mage, it seemed advantageous to keep him with us through the night. Polite also. Baloong took us up on our offer and did it one better by inviting us to stay with him. With the grace and ease of a deer, he led us off the trail and through his woods to a field of stone spires. One of these, thirty feet at its base, he walked up to and put his hands on. With a wink he pushed his way though the rock. Ren jumped off Sandy and followed suit, followed by the rest of the party. Next: Of the region, around the bend POST 175 [/QUOTE]
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