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<blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 4844602" data-attributes="member: 1210"><p>Vann-La descends like a boulder, crashing down on the worg with tremendous force. It lets out a loud yelp, and the Kree warrior hears the exclamations of voices around the corner, speaking in Goblin. </p><p></p><p>“They’re goblins down here, all right!” she shouts back up the ladder at her companions.</p><p></p><p>Torinn is already almost at the bottom, scrambling down as quickly as he can. Vann-La presses the worg back with expert technique, rushing at it in a <em>tide of iron.</em> The worg lunges forward, snapping its jaws shut on her left forearm. She pummels it with the hilt of her sword and it dances back. </p><p></p><p>A hobgoblin, backed up by a pair of goblins, races into view. </p><p></p><p>Vann-La suddenly has her hands full as the hobgoblin charges her with a roar, its spear turning from her armor as it attempts to <em>lead from the front.</em> The two goblins are on its heels, and they move to flank the hapless Vann-La.</p><p></p><p>Then Torinn drops into view, and suddenly his spiked chain seems to be everywhere. The two of them slash at the hobgoblin, who finds himself quite overmatched. He tries to turn the blows of the two adventurers- and fails utterly. As Torinn slaps his chain across the hobgoblin’s arm, one of the goblins cries out in Goblin, “Fall back!” The two goblins backpedal away.</p><p></p><p>Just then, Vann-La cuts the worg’s head off, neatly ending its threat. She and the Dragon continue to press the hobgoblin, who can’t tries, but cannot disengage from the two of them. “Come back before they kill me!” he cries desperately to the goblins, still in their tongue (which several of our heroes can speak).</p><p></p><p>“We’re gonna kill you anyway!” shouts Iggy from the top of the shaft, and he shoots the hobgoblin with a <em>magic missile.</em></p><p></p><p>“We’re getting reinforcements!” cries one of the goblins. He rushes out of the room via one of the two exits leading out and skids to a halt in front of a door. Throwing it open, he shouts for help.</p><p></p><p><em>Crap,</em> thinks Vann-La. She moves off in pursuit of the goblin, ramming her sword into him from behind and reaching across him to slam the door shut. Behind her, the others are finally getting to the bottom of the ladder. </p><p></p><p>But not before she glimpses a pair of minotaurs moving forward in the room beyond, one of them gleaming and shimmering as if made of gold.</p><p></p><p>The door flies back open even as Vann-La cuts the hobgoblin down and turns to focus more fully on the goblin, and suddenly the battle turns ugly. The golden minotaur creates an <em>electric field</em> that envelopes nearly the entire party, shocking them with terrific jolts of lightning!</p><p></p><p>Ligir replies as a wizard should: with a <em>fireball.</em> It explodes around the goblins and the golden minotaur, and then another minotaur bullies its way forward, gritting its teeth and ignoring the flames. Iggy grits his teeth right back at the minotaurs and hurls a missile from his <em>necklace of fireballs</em> at it. </p><p></p><p><strong><em>BOOM!!</em></strong></p><p></p><p>It’s not enough, though, especially when more minotaurs push towards the fight. The golden one keeps firing <em>lightning bolts,</em> now that its <em>electric field</em> has worn off, and the party responds as fiercely as they can. </p><p></p><p>But they are driven back, bloodied and faltering, until they are forced to turn and re-climb the ladder- or die. Vann-La covers the retreat, and as she scrambles up the ladder herself, the minotaur spellcaster that <em>isn’t</em> golden buffets her with <em>horns of force.</em> She is blasted upwards, but loses her hold on the ladder, and starts to fall- </p><p></p><p>Iggy invokes his magic, and she manages to grab onto the ladder again as her fall slows to a slow, feathery descent. She scrambles up, desperate to avoid another magical assault from the minotaur cabalist.</p><p></p><p>Behind her, she hears them roar. She is at the top of the ladder; with a mighty heave, she pulls herself out, sprawling on the muck of pulverized flesh and dirt, and cries, “Shut the door! Quick, block it!” </p><p></p><p>The others are ready. They hurl the trap door down, then a couple of them stand on it while the others gather some heavy furnishing from above. </p><p></p><p>Gasping, Vann-La rises. “Are you all right?” Torinn asks. </p><p></p><p>She nods. “I need to rest and recover,” she groans. “Those guys worked me, especially that golden minotaur.”</p><p></p><p>“We’ll come back and show them,” Cook promises. “In the morning, after we rest. Oi, I am very sore from this day’s activities.”</p><p></p><p>A surfeit of heavy objects weighting the lid of the trap, the party retreats, leaving the worg, the hobgoblin and one goblin dead behind them. They themselves are badly battered, however, and even Torinn’s most diligent attentions can’t do much more for Vann-La until she has rested and recovered her strength. </p><p></p><p>Still- “We came out ahead,” opines Hkatha. “Killed a few of them, and we all came out in one piece.”</p><p></p><p>“Not bad,” agrees Torinn.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>After a good night’s sleep, the party returns to the trap door. Incongruously, Vann-La thinks of the chocolate that Lar-Gonn gave her, carefully wrapped in wax paper and stashed away in the depths of her backpack. Quietly, Hkatha eases the trap door open a crack and peers down. Then he eases the trap door shut again and whispers, “The goblin is down there again.”</p><p></p><p>Iggy shrugs. “Let’s get him.”</p><p></p><p>Hkatha throws the hatch of the trap door open again, with a bang this time.</p><p></p><p>“Surrender!” he shouts, and casts a <em>cloud of daggers</em> on the hapless goblin at the bottom. Iggy follows up with a i]magic missile.[/i] </p><p></p><p>The goblin opens its mouth, perhaps to shout an alarm.</p><p></p><p>“Don’t make me come down this ladder!” Vann-La growls, descending rapidly. </p><p></p><p>The goblin draws its sword and gulps, taking a half-hearted stab at the Kree as she arrives. “Help!” he squawks in Goblin.</p><p></p><p>Another one-two punch from a <em>cloud of daggers</em> and a <em>magic missile</em> is all it takes. The goblin collapses, overwhelmed by the party’s offensive firepower. </p><p></p><p>Quickly, everyone descends. No other enemies have shown themselves yet; the party takes a few moments to search the area, finding a chamber holding a well out and around one corner. In there, the corpses of the dead have been stored. The newly-slain goblin wears a fur cloak that the party recognizes as having previously been on Morl.</p><p></p><p>“I wonder if they slew him,” speculates Heimall. “He failed them, after all.”</p><p></p><p>“And he’s a cowardly bitch,” Torinn adds. </p><p></p><p>“We could ask the next batch of Hand soldiers we encounter, or maybe at least one of them, if we took him captive,” Hkatha suggests. </p><p></p><p>“I guess it’s possible,” nods Iggy. “But it’s also possible that he is held prisoner, or paid them off or something. He might not even be here anymore.”</p><p></p><p>“We didn’t see any sign of where he could have gone,” points out Hkatha.</p><p></p><p>“Further down,” replies the other wizard. </p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>The next door leads to the golden minotaur and a number of other, less golden-looking, minotaurs. An immediate melee breaks out, with Vann-La trying to engage the golden minotaur at short range. Unfortunately for her, it is quite capable of goring her with its sharp horns.</p><p></p><p>This time our heroes are present in full force. Vann-la rushes into the thick of things, her sword sweeping in a red arc all around her. Heimall moves up behind her, <em>Throat-Ripper</em> jabbing with deadly precision. The others fire spells from the back.</p><p></p><p>The minotaurs are forceful, but our heroes are overwhelming, now that they are present in full strength. Vann-La, Torinn and Ligir all focus on the golden minotaur and destroy it before it has time to electrocute the party too much, while Heimall and Hkatha keep the others contained. </p><p></p><p>Despite their best efforts, however, one of the minotaurs manages to charge Vann-La, knocking her into a large pile of debris, which promptly collapses and leaves her half-buried. </p><p></p><p>From a room on the other side of an open door, some kind of grinding noise has been emanating since the start of the fight. Now another minotaur’s voice calls out. “I tire of this! Bring them in here, I wish to grind them on the grinder!”</p><p></p><p>“I don’t think we want to oblige them,” says Hkatha.</p><p></p><p>Indeed not. While the minotaur cabalist tries to push several of our heroes towards said open door with <em>horns of force,</em> they manage to keep from falling into whatever trap the minotaur around the corner has set, chopping down the enemy one by one. Finally the angry minotaur around the corner tires of waiting for victims and charges out and into the fray, horns lowered, and knocks Vann-La from her feet! Bellowing and pawing the ground with one hoof, the minotaur suddenly staggers back as Torinn’s spiked chain whips into him from behind. He whirls in time to take a shot from Iggy’s gun. Then Vann-La rises up behind him and he is completely surrounded. </p><p></p><p>“Dragonborn, <strong>git!</strong>” cries Heimall. </p><p></p><p>Wilting under a quick succession of blows, the minotaur tries to fall back, but only succeeds in falling. Now only one remains- the cabalist, who seems uncannily adept at evading the spells and weapons of our heroes. Fighting desperately, she keeps moving, trying to reach reinforcements, but our heroes keep cutting her off. A blade slips through her defenses, then a spell. She bellows belligerently, but she is aware that her situation is desperate. Heimall hits her, hard, with <em>Throat-Ripper,</em> leaving a terrible bleeding wound, and she staggers away. But Hkatha quickly strides up close to her and invokes his <em>fire shroud,</em> burning her terrifically. </p><p></p><p>She staggers away, but the blood loss is weakening her. Gradually, the cabalist sinks to her knees. Her chin falls onto her chest, and she collapses. </p><p></p><p>Panting with exertion, our heroes pause for a few moments to catch their breath and do some healing and binding of wounds. Then they search the minotaurs, who are armed but without any real treasure. </p><p></p><p>“We could try to carry that golden minotaur out and sell it,” suggests Heimall.</p><p></p><p>“It’s not really gold,” replies Vann-La. “Look. It’s brass, with gold leaf on top. We could probably strip the leaf if we wanted to spend hours working on it, but I don’t think it’s worth the effort.”</p><p></p><p>Examining the area they were in and the adjoining rooms, finding them mostly devoid of interesting things. There are several sets of minotaur bedding, a raised platform and the rough grinding wheel that, apparently, the minotaur had wanted to shove an adventurer’s face into. Iggy says, “I bet they sharpen their horns with that.”</p><p></p><p>Having fully explored this area, the party heads back to the entry chamber. There is a second hallway that leads from it, which Ts immediately. A left turn leads the party to a long room with several piles of rotten straw and a few scraps of broken wood and rope at the end. Our heroes cannot discern anything about the room’s function, and it has no other exits, so they go back to the hallway and continue along. It Ts again; this time, to the right there are stairs going down. Again, the party turns left and continues along the hall, with jogs to the right briefly before continuing straight. Then there is another side passage, and down each path the party can see a turn almost immediately. </p><p></p><p>“It’s a maze,” realizes Hkatha. “It fits. Minotaurs, you know.”</p><p></p><p>Torinn says, “The question is, do we enter?” </p><p></p><p>“Let’s just be careful,” says Vann-La. </p><p></p><p>The party advances into the maze of passages. </p><p></p><p><em><strong>Next Time:</strong></em> The first maze!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="the Jester, post: 4844602, member: 1210"] Vann-La descends like a boulder, crashing down on the worg with tremendous force. It lets out a loud yelp, and the Kree warrior hears the exclamations of voices around the corner, speaking in Goblin. “They’re goblins down here, all right!” she shouts back up the ladder at her companions. Torinn is already almost at the bottom, scrambling down as quickly as he can. Vann-La presses the worg back with expert technique, rushing at it in a [i]tide of iron.[/i] The worg lunges forward, snapping its jaws shut on her left forearm. She pummels it with the hilt of her sword and it dances back. A hobgoblin, backed up by a pair of goblins, races into view. Vann-La suddenly has her hands full as the hobgoblin charges her with a roar, its spear turning from her armor as it attempts to [i]lead from the front.[/i] The two goblins are on its heels, and they move to flank the hapless Vann-La. Then Torinn drops into view, and suddenly his spiked chain seems to be everywhere. The two of them slash at the hobgoblin, who finds himself quite overmatched. He tries to turn the blows of the two adventurers- and fails utterly. As Torinn slaps his chain across the hobgoblin’s arm, one of the goblins cries out in Goblin, “Fall back!” The two goblins backpedal away. Just then, Vann-La cuts the worg’s head off, neatly ending its threat. She and the Dragon continue to press the hobgoblin, who can’t tries, but cannot disengage from the two of them. “Come back before they kill me!” he cries desperately to the goblins, still in their tongue (which several of our heroes can speak). “We’re gonna kill you anyway!” shouts Iggy from the top of the shaft, and he shoots the hobgoblin with a [i]magic missile.[/i] “We’re getting reinforcements!” cries one of the goblins. He rushes out of the room via one of the two exits leading out and skids to a halt in front of a door. Throwing it open, he shouts for help. [i]Crap,[/i] thinks Vann-La. She moves off in pursuit of the goblin, ramming her sword into him from behind and reaching across him to slam the door shut. Behind her, the others are finally getting to the bottom of the ladder. But not before she glimpses a pair of minotaurs moving forward in the room beyond, one of them gleaming and shimmering as if made of gold. The door flies back open even as Vann-La cuts the hobgoblin down and turns to focus more fully on the goblin, and suddenly the battle turns ugly. The golden minotaur creates an [i]electric field[/i] that envelopes nearly the entire party, shocking them with terrific jolts of lightning! Ligir replies as a wizard should: with a [i]fireball.[/i] It explodes around the goblins and the golden minotaur, and then another minotaur bullies its way forward, gritting its teeth and ignoring the flames. Iggy grits his teeth right back at the minotaurs and hurls a missile from his [i]necklace of fireballs[/i] at it. [b][i]BOOM!![/I][/b] It’s not enough, though, especially when more minotaurs push towards the fight. The golden one keeps firing [i]lightning bolts,[/i] now that its [i]electric field[/i] has worn off, and the party responds as fiercely as they can. But they are driven back, bloodied and faltering, until they are forced to turn and re-climb the ladder- or die. Vann-La covers the retreat, and as she scrambles up the ladder herself, the minotaur spellcaster that [i]isn’t[/i] golden buffets her with [i]horns of force.[/i] She is blasted upwards, but loses her hold on the ladder, and starts to fall- Iggy invokes his magic, and she manages to grab onto the ladder again as her fall slows to a slow, feathery descent. She scrambles up, desperate to avoid another magical assault from the minotaur cabalist. Behind her, she hears them roar. She is at the top of the ladder; with a mighty heave, she pulls herself out, sprawling on the muck of pulverized flesh and dirt, and cries, “Shut the door! Quick, block it!” The others are ready. They hurl the trap door down, then a couple of them stand on it while the others gather some heavy furnishing from above. Gasping, Vann-La rises. “Are you all right?” Torinn asks. She nods. “I need to rest and recover,” she groans. “Those guys worked me, especially that golden minotaur.” “We’ll come back and show them,” Cook promises. “In the morning, after we rest. Oi, I am very sore from this day’s activities.” A surfeit of heavy objects weighting the lid of the trap, the party retreats, leaving the worg, the hobgoblin and one goblin dead behind them. They themselves are badly battered, however, and even Torinn’s most diligent attentions can’t do much more for Vann-La until she has rested and recovered her strength. Still- “We came out ahead,” opines Hkatha. “Killed a few of them, and we all came out in one piece.” “Not bad,” agrees Torinn. *** After a good night’s sleep, the party returns to the trap door. Incongruously, Vann-La thinks of the chocolate that Lar-Gonn gave her, carefully wrapped in wax paper and stashed away in the depths of her backpack. Quietly, Hkatha eases the trap door open a crack and peers down. Then he eases the trap door shut again and whispers, “The goblin is down there again.” Iggy shrugs. “Let’s get him.” Hkatha throws the hatch of the trap door open again, with a bang this time. “Surrender!” he shouts, and casts a [i]cloud of daggers[/i] on the hapless goblin at the bottom. Iggy follows up with a i]magic missile.[/i] The goblin opens its mouth, perhaps to shout an alarm. “Don’t make me come down this ladder!” Vann-La growls, descending rapidly. The goblin draws its sword and gulps, taking a half-hearted stab at the Kree as she arrives. “Help!” he squawks in Goblin. Another one-two punch from a [i]cloud of daggers[/i] and a [i]magic missile[/i] is all it takes. The goblin collapses, overwhelmed by the party’s offensive firepower. Quickly, everyone descends. No other enemies have shown themselves yet; the party takes a few moments to search the area, finding a chamber holding a well out and around one corner. In there, the corpses of the dead have been stored. The newly-slain goblin wears a fur cloak that the party recognizes as having previously been on Morl. “I wonder if they slew him,” speculates Heimall. “He failed them, after all.” “And he’s a cowardly bitch,” Torinn adds. “We could ask the next batch of Hand soldiers we encounter, or maybe at least one of them, if we took him captive,” Hkatha suggests. “I guess it’s possible,” nods Iggy. “But it’s also possible that he is held prisoner, or paid them off or something. He might not even be here anymore.” “We didn’t see any sign of where he could have gone,” points out Hkatha. “Further down,” replies the other wizard. *** The next door leads to the golden minotaur and a number of other, less golden-looking, minotaurs. An immediate melee breaks out, with Vann-La trying to engage the golden minotaur at short range. Unfortunately for her, it is quite capable of goring her with its sharp horns. This time our heroes are present in full force. Vann-la rushes into the thick of things, her sword sweeping in a red arc all around her. Heimall moves up behind her, [i]Throat-Ripper[/i] jabbing with deadly precision. The others fire spells from the back. The minotaurs are forceful, but our heroes are overwhelming, now that they are present in full strength. Vann-La, Torinn and Ligir all focus on the golden minotaur and destroy it before it has time to electrocute the party too much, while Heimall and Hkatha keep the others contained. Despite their best efforts, however, one of the minotaurs manages to charge Vann-La, knocking her into a large pile of debris, which promptly collapses and leaves her half-buried. From a room on the other side of an open door, some kind of grinding noise has been emanating since the start of the fight. Now another minotaur’s voice calls out. “I tire of this! Bring them in here, I wish to grind them on the grinder!” “I don’t think we want to oblige them,” says Hkatha. Indeed not. While the minotaur cabalist tries to push several of our heroes towards said open door with [i]horns of force,[/i] they manage to keep from falling into whatever trap the minotaur around the corner has set, chopping down the enemy one by one. Finally the angry minotaur around the corner tires of waiting for victims and charges out and into the fray, horns lowered, and knocks Vann-La from her feet! Bellowing and pawing the ground with one hoof, the minotaur suddenly staggers back as Torinn’s spiked chain whips into him from behind. He whirls in time to take a shot from Iggy’s gun. Then Vann-La rises up behind him and he is completely surrounded. “Dragonborn, [b]git![/b]” cries Heimall. Wilting under a quick succession of blows, the minotaur tries to fall back, but only succeeds in falling. Now only one remains- the cabalist, who seems uncannily adept at evading the spells and weapons of our heroes. Fighting desperately, she keeps moving, trying to reach reinforcements, but our heroes keep cutting her off. A blade slips through her defenses, then a spell. She bellows belligerently, but she is aware that her situation is desperate. Heimall hits her, hard, with [i]Throat-Ripper,[/i] leaving a terrible bleeding wound, and she staggers away. But Hkatha quickly strides up close to her and invokes his [i]fire shroud,[/i] burning her terrifically. She staggers away, but the blood loss is weakening her. Gradually, the cabalist sinks to her knees. Her chin falls onto her chest, and she collapses. Panting with exertion, our heroes pause for a few moments to catch their breath and do some healing and binding of wounds. Then they search the minotaurs, who are armed but without any real treasure. “We could try to carry that golden minotaur out and sell it,” suggests Heimall. “It’s not really gold,” replies Vann-La. “Look. It’s brass, with gold leaf on top. We could probably strip the leaf if we wanted to spend hours working on it, but I don’t think it’s worth the effort.” Examining the area they were in and the adjoining rooms, finding them mostly devoid of interesting things. There are several sets of minotaur bedding, a raised platform and the rough grinding wheel that, apparently, the minotaur had wanted to shove an adventurer’s face into. Iggy says, “I bet they sharpen their horns with that.” Having fully explored this area, the party heads back to the entry chamber. There is a second hallway that leads from it, which Ts immediately. A left turn leads the party to a long room with several piles of rotten straw and a few scraps of broken wood and rope at the end. Our heroes cannot discern anything about the room’s function, and it has no other exits, so they go back to the hallway and continue along. It Ts again; this time, to the right there are stairs going down. Again, the party turns left and continues along the hall, with jogs to the right briefly before continuing straight. Then there is another side passage, and down each path the party can see a turn almost immediately. “It’s a maze,” realizes Hkatha. “It fits. Minotaurs, you know.” Torinn says, “The question is, do we enter?” “Let’s just be careful,” says Vann-La. The party advances into the maze of passages. [i][b]Next Time:[/b][/i][b][/b] The first maze! [/QUOTE]
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