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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ladybird" data-source="post: 2953292" data-attributes="member: 10689">The party moved slowly through the forest, weighed down by caution and the heavy stone bodies of Alessandre and Jet slung across the horses.  For as long as Kit’s Mindlink lasted, Jet kept up a running mental commentary on cooking, the scenery, the prospect of a fight, how much he wanted to get un-petrified – anything to keep the lines of communication going between him and the outside world.The quiet, if tense, ride was suddenly broken by the guttural declaration of  “Stand. Deliver.” Five orcs and an uruk stood before the group, weapons drawn.Gyles had spent years fighting orcs, and at the sight of the orcish bandits, a twitch started up near his eye, and his face started to flush with anger. But it was Toby who acted first. With a surprisingly melodic burst of sound, his musket went off, sending a stream of sugarplums coursing towards one of the orcs. The sugarplums smacked the orc squarely in the head, knocking him out, and continued to dance around his head as he slumped to the ground. Kit, almost as stunned as the orc, just stared. “I was about to say, ‘Toby, you’re not helping.’ And then you did.”And then Gyles sprang into motion, charging towards the uruk, roaring a battle cry and leveling his lance at the huge creature. Varya, with almost as much fury, flapped towards the orcs, lashing out with her claws.Kit targeted the uruk too, but nobody could see the effects of what she was doing. Carefully, she sent a psionic feeler out into the uruk’s mind, searching around among the memories of his many battles, until she found a suitably painful memory of being wounded. Then, just as carefully, she drew it forth, and a gash opened up in the uruk’s shoulder, even though no blade had come close to him. The elves had taught Kit how to Recall Agony, but she’d never done it before. It was…disconcerting. But effective, she had to admit.The uruk, slashed by Gyles’s lance, Kit’s psionic power, and Varya’s claws, lashed out with his axe, swinging wildly at Varya’s fragile wings. The other orcs rushed towards Honore. Twang, cowering in the back of the group, shot Magic Missiles at the orcs, moving as far back as he could while remaining in range. Shoot – retreat – shoot – retreat – retreat – retreat – retreat. The terrified little kobold might have been pleased to know that he had taken down one of the orcs, but he had fled into the forest before he could even see the results of his spellcasting.Meanwhile, Gyles had left his lance sticking in the uruk, and had drawn his sword to batter the other orcs with ever-rising fury. Sir Toby shot his musket again, sending an arrow into one of the other orcs; and Kashan matched Twang’s choice of spell, with similar success, although not with a similar flight afterwards.Finally, under Kit’s repeated mental assault, the uruk’s mind entirely gave out – he let out one last shriek of pain and collapsed, wounds opening up all over his body. Gyles finished off the last of the orcs, then straightened up, pulling his lance out of the uruk’s corpse with a brutally forceful tug.”My lady!” Gyles growled. Kit just nodded – she wasn’t going to risk correcting Gyles when he was standing there with a sword in one hand and a lance in the other, both dripping with orcish blood. “Request permission to follow the rest of the filthy orcish bandits!”“All right…” Kit replied, a little uncertainly.From above, Varya interjected softly, “Would you like me to go keep an eye on him? I’ll make sure he stays focused on fighting the slavers. I’ve worked with him before, and he’s got a bit of a blind spot when it comes to orcs.”Both Varya and Kashan split off to go with Gyles on his quest to hunt bandits, orcs, and whoever else came across his path. And Twang, as the others soon discovered, was nowhere to be found. That left Kit, Honore, Toby, and the petrified Jet and Alessandre. And several Hanalian warhorses, who continued on their plodding way west towards the mage’s tower.[At this point, unfortunately, Real Life broke in, and the players of Gyles, Kashan, Twang, and Varya all had to leave. And yes, Gyles is a ranger, with the favored enemy ‘orcs’ <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />]</blockquote>

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