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Story Hour
Steel Dragon's "Tales of Orea"
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<blockquote data-quote="steeldragons" data-source="post: 5918828" data-attributes="member: 92511"><p><strong>In the Lizard's Den...</strong></p><p></p><p>It was no difficult thing for Festus to find where the company had been taken. The bodies of their companions...the large knees of Braddok and more delciate knees of Erevan pressing into the grasses...Duor's large heavy feet...and...Festus really couldn't tell how many lizardfolk tracks all over the area. The lizardmen and the dragging and their fellows was even easier.</p><p></p><p>At the satyr's silent indication, the druid and ranger crouched low behind some wildly growing mulberry bushes. Before them was a large wide opening in the inner slope of the crater.</p><p></p><p>Two lizardmen with spears and short bone daggers on their belts stood before the opening and periodically took a "sniff" at the air with their tongues.</p><p></p><p>Fen worried for a moment at the reptilians' senses but hoped that the vegetation and the mud and sludge they were each half-covered in would mask their scents.</p><p></p><p>Festus plopped down on his rump. He drew his short bow from the quiver and looked at Fen.</p><p></p><p>The half-elf shook his head in a negative.</p><p></p><p>"How do you presume we get in there then?" the satyr ranger whispered.</p><p></p><p>"We wait." said the druid, simply. "Night will come and they will retire from the chill."</p><p></p><p>"What about when the rest of their hunting party doesn't come back?" Festus asked with a shiver at the recent memory of the lizardmen hunters, gone grey, being lifted into the vampire-vine canopy.</p><p></p><p>The druid had to give this some thought. What about that, indeed. </p><p></p><p>"Ok." the druid finally conceded. "Be ready to move...follow me...in a moment. Stay close. Be prepared to fight. I do not know how much more magic I can conduct without some rest. Perhaps we should move off and have a rest?" the half-elf questioned the satyr.</p><p></p><p>"Don't the lizard folk eat just about anything with meat on its bones?" was Festus' simple reply. He put his bow back in the quiver and loosened the falchion and magical short sword he was fond of using, up close, in tandem.</p><p></p><p>"Point taken." Fen nodded.</p><p></p><p>The druid, who had resigned himself that these lizardmen, for whatever reason, where not as superstitious of his "green cloak" as those the party had initially encountered, began whispering his next enchantment. He waited a bit...the fading light of the cloud-strewn sky told him that evening was approaching.</p><p></p><p>When Fen gaged the time of day to be right, he began to whisper his secret language. At the finish of his chant-like murmuring, he placed his hand upon the ground, reaching just beyond the bushes behind which he and Festus hid.</p><p></p><p>As the dull grey of the day was turning to the dull-but-darker grey of evening, wisps of mist and fog began to appear from Fen's outstretched fingers.</p><p></p><p>In short order, a thick fog was forming between the two companions and the lizard guards. <<em>druid spell: Obscurement</em>></p><p></p><p>"Let's go. Be close....and be <em>silent</em>!" Fen emphasized through a hissing whisper.</p><p></p><p>The satyr followed the druid as close as he could, practically upon his back. They moved with singular silence and caution. Their steps leaving not the slightest trace of sound upon the ground.</p><p></p><p>They entered the large cave opening and quickly moved away from it. They both had a modicum of vision in the near darkness and wove their way through a long corridor that wound down and to the right.</p><p></p><p>They halted at a corner from which flickering golden light emanated. Fen pressed himself up against the wall, just at the corner, and, to Festus' sight disappeared. The druid cautiously bent his neck to look around the corner, secure in the knowledge that his druid's cloak was protecting him from any obvious observation.</p><p></p><p>A moment later, Fen reappeared to Festus' vision. </p><p></p><p>"Just torches." Fen said plainly. "No lizardmen in sight. But, as I've said, they abhor the cold...as normal reptiles do. Come....cautiously."</p><p></p><p>The two made their way down the next corridor, which also sloped to the right. Even without Duor, they noticed how they were moving downward and, as best they could determine, were moving somewhere down beneath the barren stretch of the crater bowl. </p><p></p><p>They easily slipped passed a lone sentry who seemed to be asleep at his post and continued on.</p><p></p><p>Festus noted that both Braddok and Duor and Erevan seemed to be leaving tracks. This was noteworthy, at least to Fen, since Erevan generally did not leave any tracks whatsoever. If the elf's footprints were discernible to the ranger, Fen reasoned, 1) he was leaving them on purpose and, more importantly to the druid, 2) he was still alive.</p><p></p><p>The two continued down long winding corridors, sporaticly lit with flaming torches set in sconces on the walls or in poles struck in the ground, fueled by skins that, they presumed held some kind of oil. <<em>Author/DM's note: Like "tiki-torches", but "tiki-torches" have no reference point in Orea for the players.</em>> </p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Alaria slowly came to consciousness. Her shoulders were...cold? Her legs hurt...or...no...she was on her knees. Her arms were behind her...wait!...her hands were bound?! Where was she?! Alaria's eyes opened, weakly, to take in the scene. </p><p></p><p>She saw, with more than a little confusion, that she was on her knees, bound, with a pole at her back. Her cloak (which normally protected her shoulders when wearing her sleeveless gold traveling robe), she realized, was...missing? There was a single torch on a wall, to one side of her flickering intermittent light about the rest of the chamber.</p><p></p><p>Haelan was across the way, bound to another pole with Duor on the other side/behind the daelvar. Both were, seemingly, unconscious. Why was Haelan naked from the waist up?</p><p></p><p>They seemed to be in an earthen carved chamber. At one end there was a gate, of sorts, looking like a jail cell door at one end of the chamber.</p><p></p><p>"Where? What?" Alaria said weakly. "Haelan? Duor?" she dared to whisper as loudly as she could...and still whisper. </p><p></p><p><<em>translated from elvish</em>>"<em>Ah, you are awake. The moon-mother be praised. I had feared we might have lost you, magess.</em>" came Erevan's voice softly speaking the lyrical elvin tongue, behind her.</p><p></p><p>Alaria was thoroughly confused until she felt the fingers of, presumably the elf, reaching to her own, bound around this pole.</p><p></p><p>"Erevan?" Alaria said in surprise, turning to see the elf's silver grey locks and profile behind her, also on his knees.</p><p></p><p>"<em>Speak the elder tongue.</em>" Erevan whispered harshly. "<em>The lizardmen do not understand it. And you can speak very low and I will hear." </em>he added in elvish.</p><p></p><p><em>"Where are we? What has happened? I don't...I don't recall.</em>" the magess said, desperately trying to remember her elf-tongue lessons through her groggy mind.</p><p></p><p>"<em>We've been taken by the lizardmen. We escaped the vines only to be captured. You and Haelan were unconscious. We had to give you and the daelvar the potion for neutralizing poison, at Fen's direction. They took us unawares. The satyr and Fen are still free...I think. At the least, they were not taken with us. They took Braddok away some time ago and have not returned with him...as yet</em>." Erevan explained as softly as he could.</p><p></p><p>"<em>Why are we still here? You and I, both, can break these bonds easily with the simplest magic.</em>" Alaria wondered. Though, in earnest, her mind was filling with concern for Braddok...something about Fen telling them how lizardmen eat anyone with meat on their bones.</p><p></p><p>Then, Alaria remembered with horror, her staff had fallen into the mire! She didn't have her cloak. She looked down. Her pouches and satchel were gone! Where were her components? Her books?!</p><p></p><p>"Erevan, do you have your grimoire?!" she asked in all but panic, forgettign to use the elvish tongue.</p><p></p><p>"SSSSSilensssssse. No talksssss." came a growling reptilian humanoid form into the "outside" of the gateway. It...or he?...clacked its spear loudly on the bars of their prison door.</p><p></p><p>A moment passed before the lizardman guard disappeared from view, but undoubtedly was just outside the door. Alaria now understood the need for quiet.</p><p></p><p>"<em>I do not, magess. We must rely on what we already know. We were brought before their...I don't know the word</em><em>...'arabreostae' <the elvish term for a magic-worker> I suppose. They stripped us of all of our weapons, our magical items, even took Braddok's and Haelan's armor. Duor's and my leathers seemed to hold no interest for them."</em> the elf again answered in the whispered elvin tongue.</p><p></p><p>"'T<em>he term is '</em>shaman<em>' for these beasts, I imagine</em>....<em>or </em>'witch-doctor.'" Alaria answered. This was bad, she thought. Very bad. And they'd taken Braddok? But the druid and the ranger were free still. That could bode well.</p><p></p><p><em>"Where are we?"</em> Alaria asked, her need for details seemed all the more important now.</p><p></p><p>"<em>In a prison...or holding cell of sorts. Far down into the lizardmen's lair. We were marched for some time." </em>the elf paused, unsure if he should pass on the information he had to the woman.</p><p><em></em></p><p><em>"They took Haelan and Duor first. I do not know what they did, but they look the worse for it." he finally said quietly.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em></em>Alaria looked across at the dwarf and half-naked daelvar. Only now, in the flickering torchlight, she noticed the bruises and obvious scratches and cuts upon them.</p><p></p><p>She also noted the third pole in the chamber, like the others, floor to ceiling, that held no one. A scrap of light blue fabric laid at its base.<em></em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>"Braddok has been gone, as best I can tell, an hour or so.</em>" Erevan replied, lamentably. "<em>Do you think, magess, that we can escape this place with our own magics? Once Haelan comes back to consciousness, I'm sure he might help.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>"I suspect, we are all to be eaten. I would rather not have that be our fate.</em>" the elf concluded with a distinct and somewhat offputting, to Alaria, note of defeat in his tone.</p><p></p><p><em>"I did not come, Erevan Ryvsorai Aiiniri, to the base of Nor Gorthok to be eaten!</em>" Alaria hissed in reply. "<em>Once Braddok is returned, we will be leaving this place.</em>" Alaria seethed with indignation.</p><p></p><p>Taken like some slave by this bunch of animals! No R'Hathi would stand such an affront. And, Alaria resolved, she would not be the first. Her mind was fully stocked of incantations she would not forget, other than to release them upon her captors.</p><p></p><p><em><strong>Next time: Escape from the Lizard's Den...?</strong></em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="steeldragons, post: 5918828, member: 92511"] [b]In the Lizard's Den...[/b] It was no difficult thing for Festus to find where the company had been taken. The bodies of their companions...the large knees of Braddok and more delciate knees of Erevan pressing into the grasses...Duor's large heavy feet...and...Festus really couldn't tell how many lizardfolk tracks all over the area. The lizardmen and the dragging and their fellows was even easier. At the satyr's silent indication, the druid and ranger crouched low behind some wildly growing mulberry bushes. Before them was a large wide opening in the inner slope of the crater. Two lizardmen with spears and short bone daggers on their belts stood before the opening and periodically took a "sniff" at the air with their tongues. Fen worried for a moment at the reptilians' senses but hoped that the vegetation and the mud and sludge they were each half-covered in would mask their scents. Festus plopped down on his rump. He drew his short bow from the quiver and looked at Fen. The half-elf shook his head in a negative. "How do you presume we get in there then?" the satyr ranger whispered. "We wait." said the druid, simply. "Night will come and they will retire from the chill." "What about when the rest of their hunting party doesn't come back?" Festus asked with a shiver at the recent memory of the lizardmen hunters, gone grey, being lifted into the vampire-vine canopy. The druid had to give this some thought. What about that, indeed. "Ok." the druid finally conceded. "Be ready to move...follow me...in a moment. Stay close. Be prepared to fight. I do not know how much more magic I can conduct without some rest. Perhaps we should move off and have a rest?" the half-elf questioned the satyr. "Don't the lizard folk eat just about anything with meat on its bones?" was Festus' simple reply. He put his bow back in the quiver and loosened the falchion and magical short sword he was fond of using, up close, in tandem. "Point taken." Fen nodded. The druid, who had resigned himself that these lizardmen, for whatever reason, where not as superstitious of his "green cloak" as those the party had initially encountered, began whispering his next enchantment. He waited a bit...the fading light of the cloud-strewn sky told him that evening was approaching. When Fen gaged the time of day to be right, he began to whisper his secret language. At the finish of his chant-like murmuring, he placed his hand upon the ground, reaching just beyond the bushes behind which he and Festus hid. As the dull grey of the day was turning to the dull-but-darker grey of evening, wisps of mist and fog began to appear from Fen's outstretched fingers. In short order, a thick fog was forming between the two companions and the lizard guards. <[I]druid spell: Obscurement[/I]> "Let's go. Be close....and be [I]silent[/I]!" Fen emphasized through a hissing whisper. The satyr followed the druid as close as he could, practically upon his back. They moved with singular silence and caution. Their steps leaving not the slightest trace of sound upon the ground. They entered the large cave opening and quickly moved away from it. They both had a modicum of vision in the near darkness and wove their way through a long corridor that wound down and to the right. They halted at a corner from which flickering golden light emanated. Fen pressed himself up against the wall, just at the corner, and, to Festus' sight disappeared. The druid cautiously bent his neck to look around the corner, secure in the knowledge that his druid's cloak was protecting him from any obvious observation. A moment later, Fen reappeared to Festus' vision. "Just torches." Fen said plainly. "No lizardmen in sight. But, as I've said, they abhor the cold...as normal reptiles do. Come....cautiously." The two made their way down the next corridor, which also sloped to the right. Even without Duor, they noticed how they were moving downward and, as best they could determine, were moving somewhere down beneath the barren stretch of the crater bowl. They easily slipped passed a lone sentry who seemed to be asleep at his post and continued on. Festus noted that both Braddok and Duor and Erevan seemed to be leaving tracks. This was noteworthy, at least to Fen, since Erevan generally did not leave any tracks whatsoever. If the elf's footprints were discernible to the ranger, Fen reasoned, 1) he was leaving them on purpose and, more importantly to the druid, 2) he was still alive. The two continued down long winding corridors, sporaticly lit with flaming torches set in sconces on the walls or in poles struck in the ground, fueled by skins that, they presumed held some kind of oil. <[I]Author/DM's note: Like "tiki-torches", but "tiki-torches" have no reference point in Orea for the players.[/I]> *** Alaria slowly came to consciousness. Her shoulders were...cold? Her legs hurt...or...no...she was on her knees. Her arms were behind her...wait!...her hands were bound?! Where was she?! Alaria's eyes opened, weakly, to take in the scene. She saw, with more than a little confusion, that she was on her knees, bound, with a pole at her back. Her cloak (which normally protected her shoulders when wearing her sleeveless gold traveling robe), she realized, was...missing? There was a single torch on a wall, to one side of her flickering intermittent light about the rest of the chamber. Haelan was across the way, bound to another pole with Duor on the other side/behind the daelvar. Both were, seemingly, unconscious. Why was Haelan naked from the waist up? They seemed to be in an earthen carved chamber. At one end there was a gate, of sorts, looking like a jail cell door at one end of the chamber. "Where? What?" Alaria said weakly. "Haelan? Duor?" she dared to whisper as loudly as she could...and still whisper. <[I]translated from elvish[/I]>"[I]Ah, you are awake. The moon-mother be praised. I had feared we might have lost you, magess.[/I]" came Erevan's voice softly speaking the lyrical elvin tongue, behind her. Alaria was thoroughly confused until she felt the fingers of, presumably the elf, reaching to her own, bound around this pole. "Erevan?" Alaria said in surprise, turning to see the elf's silver grey locks and profile behind her, also on his knees. "[I]Speak the elder tongue.[/I]" Erevan whispered harshly. "[I]The lizardmen do not understand it. And you can speak very low and I will hear." [/I]he added in elvish. [I]"Where are we? What has happened? I don't...I don't recall.[/I]" the magess said, desperately trying to remember her elf-tongue lessons through her groggy mind. "[I]We've been taken by the lizardmen. We escaped the vines only to be captured. You and Haelan were unconscious. We had to give you and the daelvar the potion for neutralizing poison, at Fen's direction. They took us unawares. The satyr and Fen are still free...I think. At the least, they were not taken with us. They took Braddok away some time ago and have not returned with him...as yet[/I]." Erevan explained as softly as he could. "[I]Why are we still here? You and I, both, can break these bonds easily with the simplest magic.[/I]" Alaria wondered. Though, in earnest, her mind was filling with concern for Braddok...something about Fen telling them how lizardmen eat anyone with meat on their bones. Then, Alaria remembered with horror, her staff had fallen into the mire! She didn't have her cloak. She looked down. Her pouches and satchel were gone! Where were her components? Her books?! "Erevan, do you have your grimoire?!" she asked in all but panic, forgettign to use the elvish tongue. "SSSSSilensssssse. No talksssss." came a growling reptilian humanoid form into the "outside" of the gateway. It...or he?...clacked its spear loudly on the bars of their prison door. A moment passed before the lizardman guard disappeared from view, but undoubtedly was just outside the door. Alaria now understood the need for quiet. "[I]I do not, magess. We must rely on what we already know. We were brought before their...I don't know the word[/I][I]...'arabreostae' <the elvish term for a magic-worker> I suppose. They stripped us of all of our weapons, our magical items, even took Braddok's and Haelan's armor. Duor's and my leathers seemed to hold no interest for them."[/I] the elf again answered in the whispered elvin tongue. "'T[I]he term is '[/I]shaman[I]' for these beasts, I imagine[/I]....[I]or [/I]'witch-doctor.'" Alaria answered. This was bad, she thought. Very bad. And they'd taken Braddok? But the druid and the ranger were free still. That could bode well. [I]"Where are we?"[/I] Alaria asked, her need for details seemed all the more important now. "[I]In a prison...or holding cell of sorts. Far down into the lizardmen's lair. We were marched for some time." [/I]the elf paused, unsure if he should pass on the information he had to the woman. [I] "They took Haelan and Duor first. I do not know what they did, but they look the worse for it." he finally said quietly. [/I]Alaria looked across at the dwarf and half-naked daelvar. Only now, in the flickering torchlight, she noticed the bruises and obvious scratches and cuts upon them. She also noted the third pole in the chamber, like the others, floor to ceiling, that held no one. A scrap of light blue fabric laid at its base.[I] "Braddok has been gone, as best I can tell, an hour or so.[/I]" Erevan replied, lamentably. "[I]Do you think, magess, that we can escape this place with our own magics? Once Haelan comes back to consciousness, I'm sure he might help. "I suspect, we are all to be eaten. I would rather not have that be our fate.[/I]" the elf concluded with a distinct and somewhat offputting, to Alaria, note of defeat in his tone. [I]"I did not come, Erevan Ryvsorai Aiiniri, to the base of Nor Gorthok to be eaten![/I]" Alaria hissed in reply. "[I]Once Braddok is returned, we will be leaving this place.[/I]" Alaria seethed with indignation. Taken like some slave by this bunch of animals! No R'Hathi would stand such an affront. And, Alaria resolved, she would not be the first. Her mind was fully stocked of incantations she would not forget, other than to release them upon her captors. [I][B]Next time: Escape from the Lizard's Den...?[/B][/I] [/QUOTE]
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