Copperheads: Betrayal and Strange Runes and Burning Dead, oh my (short update 02/12)
- Thread starter arwink
- Start date
Lela
First Post
Wow, super evil Troll of doom. Scary thing, that.
I was thinking a moment before I read the whole "No Fire" thing that it would be an RBDM thing to do if, once they got to this new land and tried to buy Alchamist's Fire (or whatever your campaign terms it) only to find it to be a foriegn comcept to these people. The snow covered land and all, I would have gone looking for Fire stuff.
I was thinking a moment before I read the whole "No Fire" thing that it would be an RBDM thing to do if, once they got to this new land and tried to buy Alchamist's Fire (or whatever your campaign terms it) only to find it to be a foriegn comcept to these people. The snow covered land and all, I would have gone looking for Fire stuff.
arwink
Clockwork Golem
As far as Borr goes, alchemists fire isn't a terribly common commoditiy anyway. Essentially anything that's not a fish, animal fur, subsistance level foodstuff or fighter type military tool (eg, chainmail, helmets, battleaxes and swords, longbows, shortbows and crossbows) is something that's imported from the empire two months travel to the south*.
Borr, as a nation, knows of such things, but it's primarily settled by a group of tall pseudo-vikings whose prefered method of dealing with things is hitting it with big axes rather than setting it on fire. Coupled with the fact that the trolls haven't been anywhere near as big a problem as the goblins and gnolls have been, the city alchemist is one really bored guy.
That being said, Halgo has (had?) alchemy, so they could easily have made it themselves if they'd wanted to. And these days, despite their homebase in Borr, shopping for exotic goods isn't the problem it once was.
No update for the next day or two. I've got to head north to game (woohoo!) and meet with some students, so I wont be in a position to put up the next part of the story until friday sometime (possibly not even until Sunday if Brisbane is amusing enough).
*Which does remind me - one of the things I forget to put into the storyhour was the groups mass purchase of as much wine and other luxury goods as they could find before they left Petrev. They made a not-bad profit out of the trip.
Borr, as a nation, knows of such things, but it's primarily settled by a group of tall pseudo-vikings whose prefered method of dealing with things is hitting it with big axes rather than setting it on fire. Coupled with the fact that the trolls haven't been anywhere near as big a problem as the goblins and gnolls have been, the city alchemist is one really bored guy.
That being said, Halgo has (had?) alchemy, so they could easily have made it themselves if they'd wanted to. And these days, despite their homebase in Borr, shopping for exotic goods isn't the problem it once was.
No update for the next day or two. I've got to head north to game (woohoo!) and meet with some students, so I wont be in a position to put up the next part of the story until friday sometime (possibly not even until Sunday if Brisbane is amusing enough).
*Which does remind me - one of the things I forget to put into the storyhour was the groups mass purchase of as much wine and other luxury goods as they could find before they left Petrev. They made a not-bad profit out of the trip.
arwink
Clockwork Golem
I have them typed, but they aren't readable yet 
My drafts tend to go through a fairly substantial last minute edit just before they get posted, and if I try to rush it I get sarcastic e-mails from Capellan about my lack of spelling, grammar and general mistaken sequences of events that make Halgo look bad
The wine was basically packed into their cabin on the Fist of Justice. There wasn't a great deal of it, but the rarity of wine in Borr pretty much made up for that.
My drafts tend to go through a fairly substantial last minute edit just before they get posted, and if I try to rush it I get sarcastic e-mails from Capellan about my lack of spelling, grammar and general mistaken sequences of events that make Halgo look bad
The wine was basically packed into their cabin on the Fist of Justice. There wasn't a great deal of it, but the rarity of wine in Borr pretty much made up for that.
arwink
Clockwork Golem
The third day of the mission is the worst yet, the black smoke of the volcano starting to loom large in the sky. To the relief of everyone, the narrow ledges slowly widen and the sheer drop to the water slowly becomes a long, steep slope – possibly fatal, but with far more chance of catching a lower ledge or grabbing onto something before you hit the bottom. Gunnar pushes the team hard, the tangible proof of the previous mission’s failure forcing him to focus more intently on reaching the dwarven kingdom.
It is about midday that Yip suddenly pauses in the middle of a short climb, his ears standing on end.
“What?” Blarth asks, standing beside the tense kobold. Yip waves for him to be quiet, quickly hisses at everyone else to stop and lay low. A few silent seconds are spent carefully listening to the empty silence of the mountains, the dull roar of the river several hundred feet below.
Then they hear the snort of something exerting itself, the subtle slosh of something forcing itself through the snow. Yip and Gunnar both drop to their stomachs, crawling through the snow to look over the lip of the ledge. Nearly three dozen feet below, on a twisting part of the trail the group passed by a few hours earlier, are a small horde of gnolls marching at full speed. Yip quickly takes a head-count, putting the number at nearly thirty, and counts at least three archers among their ranks.
“Not good,” Yip mutters. “Furrymen coming. Bowman. Swordsman. Many.”
Everyone proceeds to swear in a variety of tongues. Gunnar slumps onto the snow, his features bleak.
“Can we ambush them?” Geoffrey asks, surveying the path dubiously. It’s wider than the site of the Troll’s ambush, but there is still a dangerously long fall should they be outnumbered and thrown off.
“We can send Yip as a runner,” Halgo suggests. “He might make it, if the rest of us hold the gnolls off.”
“There’s nearly thirty,” Gunnar points out. “Even with your friends whistle, that’s to many for us. Even if he can use it without setting off an avalanche that tears down half the mountain, they’re going to know better than to charge like the last lot.”
“Then we need someplace we can fight,” Geoffrey says sternly. “Someplace where we can even out the advantage of numbers. You know the area – are there any caves? Anything that’s more defensible than a damn slash of pathway between the mountain and a three hundred foot fall?”
“Yeah,” Blarth says. “Gnolls puny.”
Gunnar looks incredulous, but when he sees the calm resolve on his comrades faces a faint glimmer of hope starts to form in his eyes.
“There’s a fort,” Gunnar says eventually. “It’s old, almost ruined, but we think the dwarves made it. It might keep them from swarming over us.”
“It’ll have to do,” Geoffrey says. “How long have we got before they catch up?”
“Two hours,” Gunnar shrugs. “Maybe three?”
“How long until the fort?”
“An hour. Less if you’re willing to run it.”
“We can run it, then,” Geoffrey says. “Halgo, you’ll be slowest. Set the pace as fast as you can manage, the rest of us will follow. Gunnar, show him where he’s going.”
Everyone nods silently, their faces grim with resolve.
“Lets get moving, people. Those gnolls are only getting closer.”
It is about midday that Yip suddenly pauses in the middle of a short climb, his ears standing on end.
“What?” Blarth asks, standing beside the tense kobold. Yip waves for him to be quiet, quickly hisses at everyone else to stop and lay low. A few silent seconds are spent carefully listening to the empty silence of the mountains, the dull roar of the river several hundred feet below.
Then they hear the snort of something exerting itself, the subtle slosh of something forcing itself through the snow. Yip and Gunnar both drop to their stomachs, crawling through the snow to look over the lip of the ledge. Nearly three dozen feet below, on a twisting part of the trail the group passed by a few hours earlier, are a small horde of gnolls marching at full speed. Yip quickly takes a head-count, putting the number at nearly thirty, and counts at least three archers among their ranks.
“Not good,” Yip mutters. “Furrymen coming. Bowman. Swordsman. Many.”
Everyone proceeds to swear in a variety of tongues. Gunnar slumps onto the snow, his features bleak.
“Can we ambush them?” Geoffrey asks, surveying the path dubiously. It’s wider than the site of the Troll’s ambush, but there is still a dangerously long fall should they be outnumbered and thrown off.
“We can send Yip as a runner,” Halgo suggests. “He might make it, if the rest of us hold the gnolls off.”
“There’s nearly thirty,” Gunnar points out. “Even with your friends whistle, that’s to many for us. Even if he can use it without setting off an avalanche that tears down half the mountain, they’re going to know better than to charge like the last lot.”
“Then we need someplace we can fight,” Geoffrey says sternly. “Someplace where we can even out the advantage of numbers. You know the area – are there any caves? Anything that’s more defensible than a damn slash of pathway between the mountain and a three hundred foot fall?”
“Yeah,” Blarth says. “Gnolls puny.”
Gunnar looks incredulous, but when he sees the calm resolve on his comrades faces a faint glimmer of hope starts to form in his eyes.
“There’s a fort,” Gunnar says eventually. “It’s old, almost ruined, but we think the dwarves made it. It might keep them from swarming over us.”
“It’ll have to do,” Geoffrey says. “How long have we got before they catch up?”
“Two hours,” Gunnar shrugs. “Maybe three?”
“How long until the fort?”
“An hour. Less if you’re willing to run it.”
“We can run it, then,” Geoffrey says. “Halgo, you’ll be slowest. Set the pace as fast as you can manage, the rest of us will follow. Gunnar, show him where he’s going.”
Everyone nods silently, their faces grim with resolve.
“Lets get moving, people. Those gnolls are only getting closer.”
arwink
Clockwork Golem
With the pace set by Halgo the journey takes a little over half an hour, Gunnar cutting a path up steep slopes and through a series of rough stone ridges to get them there as quickly as possible. The fort isn’t the most inspiring sight, with two gaping holes in its walls and only a single tower set into the rear fortifications. Worse, its interiors are sized for creatures whose height normally averages at 4 feet, so everyone but Halgo and Yip are forced to stoop as they do a precautionary sweep through the remnants of storerooms and barracks.
“How long have we got?” Geoffrey asks Gunnar.
“An hour. Maybe two if we’re lucky. I don’t know if they’ll take the same path we did, and they may know something about the area I don’t.”
“Then we stand here,” Geoffrey says. “We’ve got an hour to come up with some defenses and a plan. Everyone dump missile weapons here, Gunnar and Yip can work out where they’re going. Halgo – take a look at the stone and see what’s going to hold together. I’d prefer to fight this from the top of that tower, but I don’t want to fall through a patch of floor by accident. Blarth – clear as much of this rubble away as possible. All going well, we’ll be firing from the top of the tower, and we want the furry bastards to have as little to hide behind as possible. Go people.”
People go.
The missile weapons are among the bad news. Blarth carries his magic longbow and Gunnar has a shortbow, but Gunnar has used nearly a quarter of his ammunition in the fight with the troll. Geoffrey’s ranged weapons are limited to javelins, and Yip has but a small hand-full of throwing blades. Only Halgo, armed with a crossbow and a nearly full quiver, has a weapon suited to the cramped quarters required of sniping from the arrow slit on the second story of the dwarven tower.
The tower is slightly better news – the stone as sturdy as the day it was laid. The bottom story is a simple storage cellar, with no access to the stories above, while the second is still blocked by a thick wooden door that can only be accessed along a single narrow walkway by the battlements. Halgo contemplates the door for a few seconds before using a spell to walk up the side of the tower.
“I’m going over to look for a key,” he reports. “We’ll probably want the door in one piece.”
The roof is similarly sturdy, untouched by the destruction wrought on some of the other buildings in the fort, although the trapdoor here has been eaten away by time and mould. Halgo disappears inside, eventually emerging from the locked door with a silver key in his hand.
“I think we have a strong point,” he announces, pleased with himself. Everyone nods in agreement, slowly moving their tasks inside.
“Anything we can use here?” Geoffrey asks, his voice hopeful. Halgo shrugs half-heartedly.
“There’s an old bath in the store-room beneath the tower,” he says. “Cast iron, very heavy. I can’t move it, but if you and Blarth can get it onto the roof of this thing, we’d be able to dump it on anything standing in front of the door. There’s a small barrel of oil in the bottom story which we should move – the towers made of stone, but some of the supports are wood. There’s also this…”
He leads the cleric to the top of the roof, and points to an ornate bone horn that’s lying amidst the scraps of a wooden frame. The horn is easily six feet long, and there are a small series of dwarven runes carved inside its mouth.
“How does that help us?” Geoffrey asks. “We’re going to play Thiltian opera and get Yip to take them down while they’re confused?”
“The writing,” Halgo says. “There’s some differences between these and the runes we use in the Empire, but I think this reads For fear of stranger, in iron am I cast, to warn of danger, with thrice formed blast.”
“Warning device?”
“Warning device,” Halgo says. “This place hasn’t been used in a few years, probably not in a few decades from the looks of it, but they might still come out to investigate.”
“Works for me,” Geoffrey says. “Go ahead and call on anything you can find to help us. We’re going to need it.”
Halgo blows the horn, his dwarven lungs working like a bellows. The clear, crystalline note of the horn echoes across the mountains, and there is a distant rumble as some ice cracks off the side of a mountain and tumbles to a valley far below. Halgo blows again, then thrice, before setting the horn down.
“You know,” he muses, “That’s probably just going to bring the gnolls coming sooner.”
“Then we’d better get planning. Blarth, come with me. We’re moving some furniture.”
A rough battle plan is formulated. Gunnar is given Blarth’s weapon, the lithe hunter looking awed as he nock’s an arrow to the glowing weapon’s string. Yip takes up Gunnar's bow and his ammunition, and he joins Halgo on the second story of the tower. They share a small arrow slit, a single space wide enough for them to snipe on people in the courtyard below while retaining some cover from return fire. Gunnar, Blarth and Geoffrey are set on the roof. Blarth keeps his whistle in hand, a small pile of rubble at his feet so he can throw stones if nothing else. His main task is to decimate the force as best he can, then ensure they don’t break through the door below. Geoffrey has his javelins lined up and ready to use by one of the battlements, readying few other missile weapons beyond those three strikes. The people on the battlements of the tower are more exposed to arrow-fire, the crenulations only coming up to their waists, and the Justicar’s main task will be healing his companions should they take heavy fire. When he’s sure the weapons are laid out as he’d prefer, he takes up a position on the ladder.
“When you hear them coming, shout,” he orders. “I’ll be calling down St Cuthbert’s blessing to aid us, but I need to be able to see everyone.”
Everyone nods, nerves tense and waiting.
“How long have we got?” Geoffrey asks Gunnar.
“An hour. Maybe two if we’re lucky. I don’t know if they’ll take the same path we did, and they may know something about the area I don’t.”
“Then we stand here,” Geoffrey says. “We’ve got an hour to come up with some defenses and a plan. Everyone dump missile weapons here, Gunnar and Yip can work out where they’re going. Halgo – take a look at the stone and see what’s going to hold together. I’d prefer to fight this from the top of that tower, but I don’t want to fall through a patch of floor by accident. Blarth – clear as much of this rubble away as possible. All going well, we’ll be firing from the top of the tower, and we want the furry bastards to have as little to hide behind as possible. Go people.”
People go.
The missile weapons are among the bad news. Blarth carries his magic longbow and Gunnar has a shortbow, but Gunnar has used nearly a quarter of his ammunition in the fight with the troll. Geoffrey’s ranged weapons are limited to javelins, and Yip has but a small hand-full of throwing blades. Only Halgo, armed with a crossbow and a nearly full quiver, has a weapon suited to the cramped quarters required of sniping from the arrow slit on the second story of the dwarven tower.
The tower is slightly better news – the stone as sturdy as the day it was laid. The bottom story is a simple storage cellar, with no access to the stories above, while the second is still blocked by a thick wooden door that can only be accessed along a single narrow walkway by the battlements. Halgo contemplates the door for a few seconds before using a spell to walk up the side of the tower.
“I’m going over to look for a key,” he reports. “We’ll probably want the door in one piece.”
The roof is similarly sturdy, untouched by the destruction wrought on some of the other buildings in the fort, although the trapdoor here has been eaten away by time and mould. Halgo disappears inside, eventually emerging from the locked door with a silver key in his hand.
“I think we have a strong point,” he announces, pleased with himself. Everyone nods in agreement, slowly moving their tasks inside.
“Anything we can use here?” Geoffrey asks, his voice hopeful. Halgo shrugs half-heartedly.
“There’s an old bath in the store-room beneath the tower,” he says. “Cast iron, very heavy. I can’t move it, but if you and Blarth can get it onto the roof of this thing, we’d be able to dump it on anything standing in front of the door. There’s a small barrel of oil in the bottom story which we should move – the towers made of stone, but some of the supports are wood. There’s also this…”
He leads the cleric to the top of the roof, and points to an ornate bone horn that’s lying amidst the scraps of a wooden frame. The horn is easily six feet long, and there are a small series of dwarven runes carved inside its mouth.
“How does that help us?” Geoffrey asks. “We’re going to play Thiltian opera and get Yip to take them down while they’re confused?”
“The writing,” Halgo says. “There’s some differences between these and the runes we use in the Empire, but I think this reads For fear of stranger, in iron am I cast, to warn of danger, with thrice formed blast.”
“Warning device?”
“Warning device,” Halgo says. “This place hasn’t been used in a few years, probably not in a few decades from the looks of it, but they might still come out to investigate.”
“Works for me,” Geoffrey says. “Go ahead and call on anything you can find to help us. We’re going to need it.”
Halgo blows the horn, his dwarven lungs working like a bellows. The clear, crystalline note of the horn echoes across the mountains, and there is a distant rumble as some ice cracks off the side of a mountain and tumbles to a valley far below. Halgo blows again, then thrice, before setting the horn down.
“You know,” he muses, “That’s probably just going to bring the gnolls coming sooner.”
“Then we’d better get planning. Blarth, come with me. We’re moving some furniture.”
A rough battle plan is formulated. Gunnar is given Blarth’s weapon, the lithe hunter looking awed as he nock’s an arrow to the glowing weapon’s string. Yip takes up Gunnar's bow and his ammunition, and he joins Halgo on the second story of the tower. They share a small arrow slit, a single space wide enough for them to snipe on people in the courtyard below while retaining some cover from return fire. Gunnar, Blarth and Geoffrey are set on the roof. Blarth keeps his whistle in hand, a small pile of rubble at his feet so he can throw stones if nothing else. His main task is to decimate the force as best he can, then ensure they don’t break through the door below. Geoffrey has his javelins lined up and ready to use by one of the battlements, readying few other missile weapons beyond those three strikes. The people on the battlements of the tower are more exposed to arrow-fire, the crenulations only coming up to their waists, and the Justicar’s main task will be healing his companions should they take heavy fire. When he’s sure the weapons are laid out as he’d prefer, he takes up a position on the ladder.
“When you hear them coming, shout,” he orders. “I’ll be calling down St Cuthbert’s blessing to aid us, but I need to be able to see everyone.”
Everyone nods, nerves tense and waiting.
arwink
Clockwork Golem
The gnolls swarm the fort in two groups, one charging each of the breaches in the wall leading into the courtyard. Even with the archers, there is little subtlety to their approach. The air fills with wolfish howls and the sound of armor jingling as they sprint, sunlight reflecting off the raised battle-axes, swords and spears that are distinctly of Reldenfolk make. Gunnar and Yip are both firing as the creatures come into range, their arrows striking one of the gnollish attackers in the ribs and dropping him to the ground. His companions swarm over the body and continue on, covering the space between the stone ridges that lead towards the fort and the courtyard faster than anyone could have thought.
Geoffrey’s blessing echoes out over the din of the charging gnolls, a pale blue light washing over everyone. Ragged nerves are instantly calmed as the clear, focused energy of St Cuthbert the Lawgiver fills everyone mind.
The first group comes through the eastern wall of the courtyard, lead by a giant of a gnoll that has two battleaxes in hand as he runs. They move without pause to the stairs leading onto the battlements, obviously intending to charge the door to the tower. The second group is larger, over a dozen gnolls in total, and they swarm towards the base of the tower and begin to ready ropes and grapples as three of their number ready bows to cover them.
Blarth leans over the edge of the tower, the sound of his whistle cutting through the air. There are only a small cluster of the gnolls is within range of the weapon, the best he's likely to get from his vantage point, and although they reel in pain as the sound burst hits but only a few of them fall. Further across the courtyard, a smaller number of gnolls suddenly slumps to the ground in a deep slumber, victims of Halgo’s sleep. Yip readies a second arrow, targeting one of the stunned gnolls trying to shake Blarth’s sonic blast from their ears, dropping him to the ground. Gunnar and Geoffrey do the same, but by then nearly half a dozen gnollish grapples have looped over the tower battlements and the armored forms have slowly started to climb.
Halgo loads his crossbow and looks for a suitable target, then hears the loud thump of something heavy and strong hitting the doorway. His attention is distracted for a moment, looking over his shoulder to ensure the door holds, before he fires at one of the gnollish creatures.
“Door!” He yells to the top, but it seems no-one hears him.
“Blarth, rope-cutting,” Geoffrey orders, and the half-orc immediately draws his blade and starts hacking at the thick ropes attached to the grapples. Two solid blows cuts one of the grapples free, but looking over the battlement he can see the frantic forms of gnolls struggling against the weight of their armor. It's a long climb for the gnolls, nearly thirty-five feet with the weight of the unfamiliar chainmail, but the beast-men have great strength to aid them. He knows he has little chance of cutting them all free before one of the reaches the top.
Then Blarth spots a heavily armored form wearing a helm, too short to be a gnoll, drinking from a potion vial. Blarth swats at a second rope as he watches the armored form, permitting only the briefest grin of joy when he notices a gnoll falling onto the small swarm of his comrades waiting below. The armored figure throws the vial aside, looks up and offers Blarth a very human smile, and begins to scale the walls of the tower as though he were a spider.
“Human,” he calls, grabbing Geoffrey’s attention as the justicar spears one of the gnolls swarming towards the tower door. Geoffrey looks and notices the human scaling the wall, a longspear on his back. There’s a howl of approval as he passes the gnolls on ropes, and the creatures seem to redouble their efforts to follow their comrade.
“Crap,” Geoffrey yells. “Gunnar, watch over the door. Blarth, with me.”
The armored human reaches the edge of the tower, longspear in hand. Blarth and Geoffrey are waiting for him, shields held at the ready to block the arrows of gnollish archers, sword and morning star held in a defensive stance.
The human just smiles, pale teeth visible behind the bristling red beard that juts out of his helm. Even as the two Copperheads swing at him, he circles around the side of the tower and reappears on the opposite edge. The tower is only fifteen feet wide, and as he appears on the horizontal surface he has the longspwear readied. Letting loose with a gutteral war cry, he surges forward. As if in response to his actions, the point of the longspear suddenly blazes with magical light...
Geoffrey’s blessing echoes out over the din of the charging gnolls, a pale blue light washing over everyone. Ragged nerves are instantly calmed as the clear, focused energy of St Cuthbert the Lawgiver fills everyone mind.
The first group comes through the eastern wall of the courtyard, lead by a giant of a gnoll that has two battleaxes in hand as he runs. They move without pause to the stairs leading onto the battlements, obviously intending to charge the door to the tower. The second group is larger, over a dozen gnolls in total, and they swarm towards the base of the tower and begin to ready ropes and grapples as three of their number ready bows to cover them.
Blarth leans over the edge of the tower, the sound of his whistle cutting through the air. There are only a small cluster of the gnolls is within range of the weapon, the best he's likely to get from his vantage point, and although they reel in pain as the sound burst hits but only a few of them fall. Further across the courtyard, a smaller number of gnolls suddenly slumps to the ground in a deep slumber, victims of Halgo’s sleep. Yip readies a second arrow, targeting one of the stunned gnolls trying to shake Blarth’s sonic blast from their ears, dropping him to the ground. Gunnar and Geoffrey do the same, but by then nearly half a dozen gnollish grapples have looped over the tower battlements and the armored forms have slowly started to climb.
Halgo loads his crossbow and looks for a suitable target, then hears the loud thump of something heavy and strong hitting the doorway. His attention is distracted for a moment, looking over his shoulder to ensure the door holds, before he fires at one of the gnollish creatures.
“Door!” He yells to the top, but it seems no-one hears him.
“Blarth, rope-cutting,” Geoffrey orders, and the half-orc immediately draws his blade and starts hacking at the thick ropes attached to the grapples. Two solid blows cuts one of the grapples free, but looking over the battlement he can see the frantic forms of gnolls struggling against the weight of their armor. It's a long climb for the gnolls, nearly thirty-five feet with the weight of the unfamiliar chainmail, but the beast-men have great strength to aid them. He knows he has little chance of cutting them all free before one of the reaches the top.
Then Blarth spots a heavily armored form wearing a helm, too short to be a gnoll, drinking from a potion vial. Blarth swats at a second rope as he watches the armored form, permitting only the briefest grin of joy when he notices a gnoll falling onto the small swarm of his comrades waiting below. The armored figure throws the vial aside, looks up and offers Blarth a very human smile, and begins to scale the walls of the tower as though he were a spider.
“Human,” he calls, grabbing Geoffrey’s attention as the justicar spears one of the gnolls swarming towards the tower door. Geoffrey looks and notices the human scaling the wall, a longspear on his back. There’s a howl of approval as he passes the gnolls on ropes, and the creatures seem to redouble their efforts to follow their comrade.
“Crap,” Geoffrey yells. “Gunnar, watch over the door. Blarth, with me.”
The armored human reaches the edge of the tower, longspear in hand. Blarth and Geoffrey are waiting for him, shields held at the ready to block the arrows of gnollish archers, sword and morning star held in a defensive stance.
The human just smiles, pale teeth visible behind the bristling red beard that juts out of his helm. Even as the two Copperheads swing at him, he circles around the side of the tower and reappears on the opposite edge. The tower is only fifteen feet wide, and as he appears on the horizontal surface he has the longspwear readied. Letting loose with a gutteral war cry, he surges forward. As if in response to his actions, the point of the longspear suddenly blazes with magical light...
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