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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 1189267" data-attributes="member: 8530">Chapter 10, “A Gnoll’s Perspective”, September 13th, 1019, 11:00 A.MIt was three days ago that Yeenoghu, the Greater Demon Lord and sacred deity of the gnoll race, transported the Kadtanach (kad-TA-nak) to this world.   Rizah, like all of the other gnoll around him, was honored to have been chosen to serve on Yeenoghu’s personal transport.   This world appeared to be full of life, with forests as far as the eyes can see.   But forests presented their own potential dangers, and so Rizah kept his bow at the ready, alert for any possible trouble.  The past two days had been productive ones, with three human settlements having been sought out and pillaged.   The Kadtanach, which translates as “too massive to see all at once” in the gnoll language, continued to have its usual affect upon the human populace.  The people of the towns all fled as the giant behemoth approached.   Rizah was allowed to participate in the pillaging of the second community, and was with the group of golden and red-skinned Giths when the humans and their hidden hoard of treasure were discovered.    Rizah took the initiative of preventing the red-skins from immediately killing the humans, stating that they should be saved for a proper sacrifice to Yeenoghu with the full sacred rituals.   The skinny yellow-skinned Gith leader reluctantly agreed, and the humans were then imprisoned.  The Gith leader was annoyed by Rizah’s “speaking out of turn” and complained to the gnoll Chief about it.   Chief Ujjain was actually pleased to hear about the gnoll’s assertiveness, harboring a distain for his arrogant rival leader.  Ujjain had always been impressed by Rizah’s uniquely high wisdom and intelligence, and decided to reward him with a promotion to the position of Kegyai (Watch Commander).  The promotion meant that Rizah could now be left in charge of the Central Howdad.  This allowed his immediate supervisor, Lieutenant Gogol, to now stay in the Officer’s Howdad rather than the assigned work station.   Rizah found Gogol to be lazy, and looked forward to a time when the Lieutenant might suffer an ‘unfortunate accident’, as could easily occur while riding atop a moving creature that was a hundred feet up in the air.  As the new Kegyai, Rizah commanded five troops comprised of the three archers beside him in the Central Howdad archers’ deck and the two above in the crow’s nest above.   This was great responsibility, as the Central Howdad was the only structure from which the entire fortress could be surveyed.  Their duties included both the surveillance of the surrounding lands and assistance to other troops anywhere on or below the Kadtanach.   They also had the secondary responsibility was guarding the supplies and prison area located beneath the archers’ deck.    Rizah made sure that his troops were on full alert as they entered through the mountain pass.  The ground troops and flying stone-skins checked ahead for possible danger, but it was not anticipated that any of this world’s armies would be mobilized and able to mount any type of resistance for at least another week.   Still, to be caught unaware was punishable by death, and he was determined to be successful with his first command.  They were passing through a narrow area, where the Kadtanack’s yoke came within a stone’s throw of scraping the cliffs on both sides, when the gnoll Dahnn thought that he heard something.   He gave Rizah a silent signal, and they both listened more intently, deciding that it was probably just shifting stones from the piles of projectiles stacked on the floor.    Dahnn continued to feel uneasy, and Rizah considered that his comrade’s instincts might be correct.  A very loud “Thud” thud reverberated through the room, coming from the prison and storage level below.   Rizah turned to his strongest fighter, Udbal, and ordered him to go investigate.  Udbal charged over to the opening by the ladder in the center of the room, yelling back “An elf is down there!”   Rizah turned to Dahnn and the other fighter Harga, but when he yelled out order no audible sounds could be heard.   He then pulled the padding away from the striker on the alarm bell, but no sound came from that source either.  Rizah signaled for Udbal to descend to the chamber below and then pointed to the other two archers to go support him.   Udbal climbed below as both Dahnn and Harga charged to the opening and started to fire their arrows downward.  Rizah dropped his bow and then grabbed up some large rocks from the pile, throwing them out the windows at the gnolls in the lower crow’s nests to get them to sound out an alarm.   One rock struck a gnoll sentry, and other sentries saw the falling rocks, but they just assumed that the Kadtanach’s movement had dislodged these rocks from the adjacent cliffs.  A now frustrated Rizah then threw a rock up through the opening in the ceiling to catch the attention of his troops in the crow’s nest, so that they could sound the alarm.   Back in the center of the archers’ deck, a rope whipped up from below, entwining itself around Udbal’s bow and pulling the bow from the gnoll archer’s hands.   Rizah moved towards his troops just as the cord came back up again and wrap around Harga’s left arm.  Harga was then pulled down into the hole.  Rizah arrived above the opening in time to see the falling Harga’s head strike against the metal bars of the cage top, breaking his neck.   An enraged Udbal, now soaked with some type of liquid, was standing atop the cage roof and firing his final two arrows down at an elf and a cloaked gnoll wearing chainmail.   A hammer then flew upward from the center of the room, striking Udbal in his chest, and sending him sprawling back along the cage roof.   Another elf, who had apparently thrown the hammer, suddenly materialized into the room.   Rizah yelled out, although none of his troops could hear him, “Inconceivable!  The gnolls of this world ally themselves with elves and even dress like them!   So this is why Yeenoghu has targeted this land for conquest.   The lesser races have subjugated the gnolls of this realm, and we are here to restore them to their proper glory.”  By this time Dahnn had retrieved another bow from the wall and continued to fire down at the invaders.   Both Degrai and Jakit had now descended from the crow’s nest, and Rizah used hand signals to confirm with them that they had sounded the alarm.   They nodded that they had not.   Angered by their incompetence, Rizah signed for them to assist Dahnn as he began to climb up the ladder himself.  As he climbed upward a hammer flew up from below to the archers’ deck, knocking Jakit to the ground.   Just as Rizah reached the opening to the crow’s nest he saw that the oddly dressed enemy gnoll had now climbed up to the archers’ deck.  This gnoll then stabbed Degrai to death with a magical sword.   Rizah climbed onto the crow’s nest and took one last glance below to see the elf with the hammer suddenly appear behind Dahnn and strike him, as the enemy gnoll moved towards the wounded Jakit.  Rizah shut and locked the trapdoor behind him.  As Rizah stood up he was finally able to be able to hear sounds again.   He unmuffled the striker on the alarm bell and sounded out a full alarm.   The alarm had the desired affect, with other alarms now being sounded from the other structures.   Lieutenants Gogol and Kajann charged out from the Officer’s Howdad towards the Central Howdad, and four other gnoll archers moved in that direction from the large aft deck.    It took a few minutes for the reinforcements to arrive at the Central Howdad crow’s nest, using a platform moved via cables and pulleys.  This gave Rizah time to figure out exactly what he would tell his Lieutenant.  He had clearly failed in his first command, but there might still be a way to shift this blame to somebody else.  The objective of this attack must have been to free the gnoll prisoner Nahmi.   Nahmi was the apprentice of the gnoll nature shaman Gnu-Dalcom and had been imprisoned as a means of coercing the elder priest into cooperating, his job being to cast Pass Without Trace spells behind the route that the Kadtanach took.  Rizah never trusted either of them, feeling that Yeenoghu shouldn’t have allowed these two heretics to participate in this sacred mission.  This suspicion was clearly warranted, with these shamen now working against them.    When the gnoll reinforcements arrived Rizah’s first words to the two lieutenants were “Gnu-Dalcom has committed treason.  He and his apprentice have conspired with our enemies and helped them to invade our great fortress.  Elves and elf-loving gnolls of this world are now below.”    Lieutenant Kajann immediately ordered and led a charge below, just in time to see the enemy gnoll still on the archers’ deck vanish before their eyes.    Kajann and his four men then searched both the archers’ deck and the prison level below, not finding any prisoners or foes.   Kajann was left in charge while Gogol and Rizah both headed directly to the Barracks Howdad to inform Chief Ujjain of what had transpired.</blockquote>

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