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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 908223" data-attributes="member: 7737">Brogun’s head hurt.He had been discussing tactics with Dellarocca for going on six hours, and the wizard showed no signs of letting up. As a follower of Kirabá, Brogun could appreciate planning as much as the next dwarf. But he also knew that in the chaos of battle, many plans would be cast aside for expediency’s sake.“Aaach! Enough!” the dwarf finally said. “I seek my rest now.”Dellarocca looked up from his crude map of the lair. “Yes, I suppose it does grow late. We shall continue tomorrow.”And where will that get us? wondered Brogun. He itched for the certainty of combat rather than the vagueness of planning.Everyone wanted something. Dellarocca wanted revenge upon the ciquali who had imprisoned him. Baron da Silva wanted information on the lair so that his soldiers could invade it. The crocaryx wanted their home back. Sara… well, who knew what she wanted; she was so quiet.Brogun just wanted to fight.= = =Brilliant yellow electricity lanced down the corridor, illuminating the perfectly tiled walls and leaving darkness in its wake. The ciquali guard column lacked the time even to scream before they incinerated where they stood. And then Dellarocca was upon them, kneeling before those still twitching, his dagger slashing across their throats.Brogun turned his head aside. So far, this second incursion into the lair had been nothing more than slaughter. The combined magical power of two clerics and a wizard had overwhelmed all those ciquali they had seen. Dellarocca held nothing back. “Overwhelming force is the best application of magic,” he had declared, and then proceeded to demonstrate the truth of that axiom.The wizard looked up from his grisly work. “Sara! How close are we to Fulmine?”Sara closed her eyes, concentrating. “Two hundred forty-seven feet, just east of south,” she intoned, like one in a trance. Dellarocca nodded, stood, and hurried down the passageway. “Is your brother always this… focused?” Brogun asked. Sara nodded solemnly. “Always,” she said hoarsely.The group neared a bend in the passage, where it turned west, towards the large room in which Dellarocca and the other slaves had been imprisoned. The sounds of metal on stone once again echoed through the passageway. Had the ciquali taken more slaves to continue their work?Brogun crept closer to get a better look. This time, it was the ciquali themselves chiseling away the rough stone of the room, smoothing out the balustrade around the stairway that led down into the flooded lower level. Brogun noted with alarm that the work was almost finished. He thought – no, somehow he knew – that when the ciquali finished their construction on the fortress, they would strike.“Let us attack these sea-devils, taking them unawares” Brogun whispered to the others.“Not yet!” hissed Dellarocca. “Fulmine first.”Sara closed her eyes again. “Forty-three feet, almost due east.”Brogun pulled out the map given to him by the crocaryx. According to the map, there was a storage room just east of their position.A quick search through the stores turned up no sign of Fulmine. “Still six feet away,” Sara announced, before her brother could pester her.“Six feet away? That’s outside the room,” Brogun remarked. “There must be a hidden door… right… about… here!”The burst of flames blew Brogun off his feet and deposited him in the opposite corner of the room, where he lay moaning in pain. Sara rushed to his side while Dellarocca leapt to the door and hurriedly scanned for magic.After some patching up, Brogun clambered to his feet and approached the secret door again, this time more warily. He reached out to touch it, then jerked his hand back.Dellarocca chuckled. “There are no additional magical energies. It’s safe, now.”Muttering under his breath, Brogun ran his hands over the stonework of the door. Crudely made, even by surface-dweller standards. Although the ciquali didn’t really live on the surface, did they? He wasn’t used to thinking about creatures that lived under the ocean. Then again, Dellarocca had said the ciquali weren’t native to the ocean, either, but to the swamps around the Danarg.Either way, their stonework was shoddy. Brogun had the door open inside of a minute.“What the –“ he spluttered as Dellarocca shouldered his way into the small room beyond.Only a little light filtered into the hidden room, but it was enough to show a variety of items. Heaped in one corner were two suits of armor, one chain, the other ornately worked plate. An enormous sword was propped against the wall, towering over a finely wrought warhammer. Next to these sat a plain wooden chest, sealed with an outsized iron lock. Finally, in the corner nearest the door, a perfectly round, shiny shield lay flat on the ground with a scabbarded blade just behind it.Dellarocca was already reaching for this last item when Brogun found his wits long enough to issue a warning. “Careful! There could be more traps.”The wizard’s hand closed around the pommel of the sword.</blockquote>

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