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"Retake the Island" - Concluded!
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<blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 2925299" data-attributes="member: 8530"><p>Chapter Thirty-four, “The Balrogs are Coming! The Balrogs are Coming! Run and Hide!“, August 8th, 1018, 5:30 P.M. </p><p></p><p>Serita flies towards the cabin, as everyone else is dumped out of the two bags of holding. The others head towards the cabin as well, finding it empty. Both Guice and Aradyn check the area for tracks, discovering tracks less than twenty minutes old of the elephant-footed giants, both approaching and then leaving the area. Serita flies around the perimeter to confirm that none of the monsters are still nearby. She sees something in the sky, slightly above the trees, about three miles to the east, however due to the weather cannot make out what it might be. </p><p></p><p>Blake investigates the Jeep, finding it to be in good condition. Aradyn and Guice confirm that there does not appear to any indication of a struggle. Shortly thereafter, they also find the tracks of the several people including children and a few horses traveling west. They conclude that the party appeared to have left here before the monsters arrived.</p><p></p><p>Serita does reconnaissance again, to check on the location of the flying creature, which she assumes was the black dragon flying away. Instead, she sees that the object is orange in color and is getting closer, but still over two miles away. She lands and tells the party this. Hendry says “I think I may know what it is.” Guice yells out “We want to know”. Hendry says “The cleric Roger has a Balrog for a bodyguard.” Guice answers “I think I liked not knowing better.” </p><p></p><p>Around two miles up the road to the east, the approaching army of monsters sees the stagecoach and horses ahead of them, having stopped as a result of a fallen tree across the road. The fighter Kenneth, who had previously been the stagecoach driver, starts to move forward but is stopped by the lead mage who sends a thief to investigate instead. </p><p></p><p>The booby traps are found and removed, and then the entire enemy party checks it out, finding it full of decapitated bodies. "I think they left this here as a warning to us," the enemy mage leader comments. Kenneth is particularly upset to find that the Gold team's hidden cache of magic has been found and removed. They debate taking the horses, but since these are draft horses rather than riding horses they decide to leave them where they are. The army continues west, more cautious now than before.</p><p></p><p>At the cabin two miles west, the group debates their next move. Mojo adds “I vote that we fight whatever is not a Balrog. I just want to say that now.” “What’s a Balrog?” asks Jaime. “A powerful fire-demon from hell,” is Narg’s answer. “Sounds rather invigorating,” comments Kruk, prompting Lannon to hit him up the side of the head. They suggest that Serita start up her “call lightning spell.</p><p></p><p>The members of the Hendry family confer among themselves. Elaine demands that the Silver Moon comply with their part of the agreement, and find them a place of safety for the duration of the storm. Narg angrily replies “This was a place of safety up until the Balrog decided to show up.” Fiona points out that the Hendrys still haven’t sent up their white flare to surrender yet, so for the party to be careful. Narg suggests the flare wand be used now, to which Elaine answers “Not until you complete your side of the agreement". Mojo blurts out “We could just kill them, and pry the wand from their cold dead fingers to use it.” To say that this suggestion does not go over well with the Hendry family is an understatement. Fiona tries to pass off Mojo’s comment as a fighter mouthing off, telling them to just ignore it.</p><p></p><p>The group resumes their discussion of what to do next, narrowing the choices down to stand and fight or run away. Elaine again asks about being brought to a point of safety, to which the Bag of Holding is suggested. Elaine says that her family refuses to be imprisoned inside of there. Narg angrily states “Look Honey, I’m loosing my patience. I suggest you get in the damned bag.” She is about to slug him in response, but is restrained by her fighter brother Rainville, who whispers something in her ear that calms her down.</p><p></p><p>Aradyn has gone on ahead to scout out the road. He returns fifteen minutes later, declaring that it is not just the Balrog coming, but with him is an army of over a hundred enemies, including ten of the giants, an armored centaur, hobgoblins, bugbears and many enemy adventurers, and that they are less than fifteen minutes away. Mojo says “Let’s run away up the main road.” It is pointed out to Mojo that that is where the enemy is coming from. “Then can I hide in the Bag of Holding?” is his response. “I think he’s got a point,” says Lannon, “Mark is our chief giant slayer and he is unconscious, Cassie is without spells, and several of the rest of us are in tough shape.” </p><p></p><p>The group decides that retreating is the best option. Since Serita has already begun her Call Lightning spell, they decide to leave her behind to cover their escape. “Let’s see,” says Narg, “We all get to safety while leaving Serita to the Balrog.” “A plan with no down side,” blurts Mojo. The others all head west as Serita takes up a position on the building’s roof. The Hendry family very reluctantly gets into the Bag of Holding, and only after Cassie agrees to go in there with them.</p><p></p><p>A little over a mile to the south, the first group who had escaped from the cabin reaches the main trail south. On it, they see two sets of giant tracks one heading to the school and the other heading away from the school. Jaime & Vincenzo's adopted son Oblong had been receiving some ranger training from Mark and Aradyn, and he successfully identifies the tracks heading south to the school to be the freshest and less than five minutes old. The group concludes that heading in that direction may not be the best idea after all. They decide that the closest place other than the school is Fiona’s house, which is about four miles away. The group unanimously agrees to head there, especially since they have Fiona’s pegasus to help lead the way.</p><p></p><p>As the enemy comes into sight of the cabin, Serita brings down the first bolt of lightning into the Balrog, which does not appear to effect him much. Since she is still in Faerie Dragon form she is rather small, so is able to fly over to a place of safety in the trees while continuing the spell. The enemy approach cautiously, with Serita bringing down a second lightning bolt ten minutes later, again into the Balrog. He acts slightly annoyed by it, but not really hurt. She decided to pick another target for her next bolt. </p><p></p><p>Ten minutes later, she sends the next lightning bolt into the Centaur, which appears to hurt it significantly. Unfortunately, this time the Balrog is able to locate where the spell originated from, and heads directly towards her. She tries to fly away, but is not successful as he uses his Power Word Stun ability to incapacitate her. The Balrog picks up the stunned Faerie Dragon Serita, and brings her over to one of the high-level mages as a present. As the mage starts to take her, the stun wears off, and she flies out of his hand. She then uses her Ring of Teleportation to get the heck out of there.</p><p></p><p>Back at Serita’s home in the city atop the mountain, Narg’s butler Hobbson and his two assistants, Marcroft and Hardy are continuing with the cleaning and tidying of the house under the watchful guidance of Serita’s gorilla valet. The white Faerie Dragon, wearing Serita’s ring, suddenly appears in the center of the room. Not the slightest bit startled, Hobbson asks “Madame, shall I fetch your slippers.” “Don’t bother,” she answers, “I’m off to bed. Don’t wake me unless it’s an emergency,” as she flies off to her bedroom. </p><p></p><p>Marcroft asks “What would she constitute as an emergency?” Hobbson answers “Let’s see, something that is significant enough to justify waking up Serita when she wishes to sleep? I can’t think of anything off hand.” “What if this house gets attacked by the enemy?” asks Hardy. Hobbson answers “Then we let the enemy wake her, so she’ll take it out on them rather than us.”</p><p></p><p>An hour later, the first group has traveled to the eastern edge of the lake, and is approaching the main road. They reach the point where the trail crosses the stream. The small bridge has long since washed way, and the normally five-foot wide stream has now been replaced by a thirty-foot wide raging river. </p><p></p><p>Hydrophobic Freyland blurts out (in the Dustin Hoffman ‘Rainman‘ voice) “Not in the stream, definitely not in the stream. Not in the stream. Definitely not.” The group notices some trees that have been knocked down by the storm, and find one wide enough to traverse the river. Freyland chops the branches off the tree, then Adrianna, Kale, Jaime and Janet haul the log over. With help from the horse and pegasus, they manage to get the log across and to get the group over one at a time, although this takes a while.</p><p></p><p>Once on the other side, the winds pick up to steady gusts of up to forty miles an hour, causing the group to get off of the road and more into the woods to shield them from the driving sheets of cold rain. Traveling the final mile to Fiona’s house takes almost an hour. They arrive just as the group with the “big guns” reach the river, which has widened even further but has not yet washed away the log bridge. They cross, and continue onward, Fiona telling her allies “The others are heading for my house.”</p><p></p><p>As night approaches, the first group reaches Fiona’s cabin, with the other group arriving a half-hour later. Cassie and the Hendry family are let out of the bag of holding, along with the still unconscious Mark. The building itself is rather small, too small for a group of seventy, so the ship's crew and tavern employees settle into the stable and barn as the others set up in the house. A few of the crew object to sharing the stable with the two mounts, until Fiona points out, referring to the pegasus, “It’s her home. If you have a problem with sharing you can sleep in the woods.”</p><p></p><p>Given that they have now stopped, after several hours of hiking through thick forests during a major storm, they decide that “sleep" will be the main agenda item. They can see lights on at the School, three miles away on the other end of the Lake, and conclude that this must be where the enemies are, so not to use any light sources at Fiona’s which could be seen by the enemy. They decide that it is safe enough to get the wood stoves going in the house and stable, as the storm and the darkness will keep the smoke from being seen that far away. Jerry and Blake volunteer to go do a quick reconnaissance of the school, borrowing the Rings of Invisibility from Kharole and Mojo. </p><p></p><p>Jaime and Jentile cook up food for everybody inside the house and food is brought out to the barn for the tavern employees to cook up. The party decides that there are enough non-spellcasters to take the night watches to allow all of the spellcasters to get a full night’s sleep. When deciding on watches, Freyland blurts out "Definitely no watch's for me... too wet yeah too wet, gotta sleep and stay dry definitely stay dry and sleep." They decide to allow him an “exemption for the mentally ill”. The crew set up a watch rotation in the stable. Not bothered as much by the in climate weather, the lizardmen are assigned paired watches outside along the perimeter.</p><p> </p><p>Before going to bed the clerics exhaust their healing spells onto the various spellcasters as needed, and the Ring of Regeneration and Fiona’s Ioun Stone of Healing are given to those on watch duty, with instruction to pass them on with the watch changes. The healer D.C. decides to join Lannon and Narg on the first watch, to get a “healing tea” cooked up on the stove for those who need it. “Fine, just so you also keep the coffee flowing,” is Narg’s answer. After a very tiring day, with them now in a warm dry building with a hot meal in their bellies, the children all fall right asleep. The adults follow soon after, with the whole cabin quiet by 9:00 P.M.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Silver Moon, post: 2925299, member: 8530"] Chapter Thirty-four, “The Balrogs are Coming! The Balrogs are Coming! Run and Hide!“, August 8th, 1018, 5:30 P.M. Serita flies towards the cabin, as everyone else is dumped out of the two bags of holding. The others head towards the cabin as well, finding it empty. Both Guice and Aradyn check the area for tracks, discovering tracks less than twenty minutes old of the elephant-footed giants, both approaching and then leaving the area. Serita flies around the perimeter to confirm that none of the monsters are still nearby. She sees something in the sky, slightly above the trees, about three miles to the east, however due to the weather cannot make out what it might be. Blake investigates the Jeep, finding it to be in good condition. Aradyn and Guice confirm that there does not appear to any indication of a struggle. Shortly thereafter, they also find the tracks of the several people including children and a few horses traveling west. They conclude that the party appeared to have left here before the monsters arrived. Serita does reconnaissance again, to check on the location of the flying creature, which she assumes was the black dragon flying away. Instead, she sees that the object is orange in color and is getting closer, but still over two miles away. She lands and tells the party this. Hendry says “I think I may know what it is.” Guice yells out “We want to know”. Hendry says “The cleric Roger has a Balrog for a bodyguard.” Guice answers “I think I liked not knowing better.” Around two miles up the road to the east, the approaching army of monsters sees the stagecoach and horses ahead of them, having stopped as a result of a fallen tree across the road. The fighter Kenneth, who had previously been the stagecoach driver, starts to move forward but is stopped by the lead mage who sends a thief to investigate instead. The booby traps are found and removed, and then the entire enemy party checks it out, finding it full of decapitated bodies. "I think they left this here as a warning to us," the enemy mage leader comments. Kenneth is particularly upset to find that the Gold team's hidden cache of magic has been found and removed. They debate taking the horses, but since these are draft horses rather than riding horses they decide to leave them where they are. The army continues west, more cautious now than before. At the cabin two miles west, the group debates their next move. Mojo adds “I vote that we fight whatever is not a Balrog. I just want to say that now.” “What’s a Balrog?” asks Jaime. “A powerful fire-demon from hell,” is Narg’s answer. “Sounds rather invigorating,” comments Kruk, prompting Lannon to hit him up the side of the head. They suggest that Serita start up her “call lightning spell. The members of the Hendry family confer among themselves. Elaine demands that the Silver Moon comply with their part of the agreement, and find them a place of safety for the duration of the storm. Narg angrily replies “This was a place of safety up until the Balrog decided to show up.” Fiona points out that the Hendrys still haven’t sent up their white flare to surrender yet, so for the party to be careful. Narg suggests the flare wand be used now, to which Elaine answers “Not until you complete your side of the agreement". Mojo blurts out “We could just kill them, and pry the wand from their cold dead fingers to use it.” To say that this suggestion does not go over well with the Hendry family is an understatement. Fiona tries to pass off Mojo’s comment as a fighter mouthing off, telling them to just ignore it. The group resumes their discussion of what to do next, narrowing the choices down to stand and fight or run away. Elaine again asks about being brought to a point of safety, to which the Bag of Holding is suggested. Elaine says that her family refuses to be imprisoned inside of there. Narg angrily states “Look Honey, I’m loosing my patience. I suggest you get in the damned bag.” She is about to slug him in response, but is restrained by her fighter brother Rainville, who whispers something in her ear that calms her down. Aradyn has gone on ahead to scout out the road. He returns fifteen minutes later, declaring that it is not just the Balrog coming, but with him is an army of over a hundred enemies, including ten of the giants, an armored centaur, hobgoblins, bugbears and many enemy adventurers, and that they are less than fifteen minutes away. Mojo says “Let’s run away up the main road.” It is pointed out to Mojo that that is where the enemy is coming from. “Then can I hide in the Bag of Holding?” is his response. “I think he’s got a point,” says Lannon, “Mark is our chief giant slayer and he is unconscious, Cassie is without spells, and several of the rest of us are in tough shape.” The group decides that retreating is the best option. Since Serita has already begun her Call Lightning spell, they decide to leave her behind to cover their escape. “Let’s see,” says Narg, “We all get to safety while leaving Serita to the Balrog.” “A plan with no down side,” blurts Mojo. The others all head west as Serita takes up a position on the building’s roof. The Hendry family very reluctantly gets into the Bag of Holding, and only after Cassie agrees to go in there with them. A little over a mile to the south, the first group who had escaped from the cabin reaches the main trail south. On it, they see two sets of giant tracks one heading to the school and the other heading away from the school. Jaime & Vincenzo's adopted son Oblong had been receiving some ranger training from Mark and Aradyn, and he successfully identifies the tracks heading south to the school to be the freshest and less than five minutes old. The group concludes that heading in that direction may not be the best idea after all. They decide that the closest place other than the school is Fiona’s house, which is about four miles away. The group unanimously agrees to head there, especially since they have Fiona’s pegasus to help lead the way. As the enemy comes into sight of the cabin, Serita brings down the first bolt of lightning into the Balrog, which does not appear to effect him much. Since she is still in Faerie Dragon form she is rather small, so is able to fly over to a place of safety in the trees while continuing the spell. The enemy approach cautiously, with Serita bringing down a second lightning bolt ten minutes later, again into the Balrog. He acts slightly annoyed by it, but not really hurt. She decided to pick another target for her next bolt. Ten minutes later, she sends the next lightning bolt into the Centaur, which appears to hurt it significantly. Unfortunately, this time the Balrog is able to locate where the spell originated from, and heads directly towards her. She tries to fly away, but is not successful as he uses his Power Word Stun ability to incapacitate her. The Balrog picks up the stunned Faerie Dragon Serita, and brings her over to one of the high-level mages as a present. As the mage starts to take her, the stun wears off, and she flies out of his hand. She then uses her Ring of Teleportation to get the heck out of there. Back at Serita’s home in the city atop the mountain, Narg’s butler Hobbson and his two assistants, Marcroft and Hardy are continuing with the cleaning and tidying of the house under the watchful guidance of Serita’s gorilla valet. The white Faerie Dragon, wearing Serita’s ring, suddenly appears in the center of the room. Not the slightest bit startled, Hobbson asks “Madame, shall I fetch your slippers.” “Don’t bother,” she answers, “I’m off to bed. Don’t wake me unless it’s an emergency,” as she flies off to her bedroom. Marcroft asks “What would she constitute as an emergency?” Hobbson answers “Let’s see, something that is significant enough to justify waking up Serita when she wishes to sleep? I can’t think of anything off hand.” “What if this house gets attacked by the enemy?” asks Hardy. Hobbson answers “Then we let the enemy wake her, so she’ll take it out on them rather than us.” An hour later, the first group has traveled to the eastern edge of the lake, and is approaching the main road. They reach the point where the trail crosses the stream. The small bridge has long since washed way, and the normally five-foot wide stream has now been replaced by a thirty-foot wide raging river. Hydrophobic Freyland blurts out (in the Dustin Hoffman ‘Rainman‘ voice) “Not in the stream, definitely not in the stream. Not in the stream. Definitely not.” The group notices some trees that have been knocked down by the storm, and find one wide enough to traverse the river. Freyland chops the branches off the tree, then Adrianna, Kale, Jaime and Janet haul the log over. With help from the horse and pegasus, they manage to get the log across and to get the group over one at a time, although this takes a while. Once on the other side, the winds pick up to steady gusts of up to forty miles an hour, causing the group to get off of the road and more into the woods to shield them from the driving sheets of cold rain. Traveling the final mile to Fiona’s house takes almost an hour. They arrive just as the group with the “big guns” reach the river, which has widened even further but has not yet washed away the log bridge. They cross, and continue onward, Fiona telling her allies “The others are heading for my house.” As night approaches, the first group reaches Fiona’s cabin, with the other group arriving a half-hour later. Cassie and the Hendry family are let out of the bag of holding, along with the still unconscious Mark. The building itself is rather small, too small for a group of seventy, so the ship's crew and tavern employees settle into the stable and barn as the others set up in the house. A few of the crew object to sharing the stable with the two mounts, until Fiona points out, referring to the pegasus, “It’s her home. If you have a problem with sharing you can sleep in the woods.” Given that they have now stopped, after several hours of hiking through thick forests during a major storm, they decide that “sleep" will be the main agenda item. They can see lights on at the School, three miles away on the other end of the Lake, and conclude that this must be where the enemies are, so not to use any light sources at Fiona’s which could be seen by the enemy. They decide that it is safe enough to get the wood stoves going in the house and stable, as the storm and the darkness will keep the smoke from being seen that far away. Jerry and Blake volunteer to go do a quick reconnaissance of the school, borrowing the Rings of Invisibility from Kharole and Mojo. Jaime and Jentile cook up food for everybody inside the house and food is brought out to the barn for the tavern employees to cook up. The party decides that there are enough non-spellcasters to take the night watches to allow all of the spellcasters to get a full night’s sleep. When deciding on watches, Freyland blurts out "Definitely no watch's for me... too wet yeah too wet, gotta sleep and stay dry definitely stay dry and sleep." They decide to allow him an “exemption for the mentally ill”. The crew set up a watch rotation in the stable. Not bothered as much by the in climate weather, the lizardmen are assigned paired watches outside along the perimeter. Before going to bed the clerics exhaust their healing spells onto the various spellcasters as needed, and the Ring of Regeneration and Fiona’s Ioun Stone of Healing are given to those on watch duty, with instruction to pass them on with the watch changes. The healer D.C. decides to join Lannon and Narg on the first watch, to get a “healing tea” cooked up on the stove for those who need it. “Fine, just so you also keep the coffee flowing,” is Narg’s answer. After a very tiring day, with them now in a warm dry building with a hot meal in their bellies, the children all fall right asleep. The adults follow soon after, with the whole cabin quiet by 9:00 P.M. [/QUOTE]
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