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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JollyDoc" data-source="post: 5317099" data-attributes="member: 9546">TROLLS“Do you hear that?”  Stevhan asked.“How could y’not?”  Tungdill groused.  The ranger had brought the group to a halt along the game trail they had been following.  In the distance, all of the companions could hear a loud crashing interspersed with what sounded like deep-throated muttering and off-key singing.  Carefully, Stevhan led them forward, picking his way quietly through the undergrowth.  He stopped again and crouched as he parted two branches and peered into a small clearing.  What he saw made his mouth momentarily go dry.  A grossly fat giant, easily ten-feet tall, wandered about the clearing.  In one hand he clutched a club that looked to be made from several saplings lashed together with rope, and in the other he held a large jug which he periodically held to his lips, licking at the few last drops contained within.  “Stoopid trolls!” the giant growled as he swung his makeshift club at a tree.  “Munguk hate stoopid trolls!!”“Sounds like we may have found a new ally!”  Velox grinned as he stepped out of the trees.“No, wait!”  Stevhan tried to stop him, but was too late.“Hail!” the oracle called.The giant gave a start as he spun around.  He reached into a sack that hung from his shoulder, dropping his jug as he did so.  His hand came out of the sack gripping a rock the size of Velox’s head, and he raised it threateningly above his head.“Wait!  Wait!”  Velox called, raising his empty hands.  “We heard you speak of trolls.  We are also looking for trolls…to kill them!”Munguk cocked his head, confused, but he didn’t lower his rock.“What’choo talkin’ ‘bout?” he asked.  “What’choo know ‘bout stoopid trolls?”“They’ve been terrorizing our lands and our people,” Velox said calmly.  “We need to find them and stop them.  What did they do to you?”Munguk furrowed his brow, obviously thinking.  “They no let Munguk join stoopid tribe.  No let Munguk kill things!”“I see,” Velox said, his voice carefully neutral.  “Sounds like you might be looking for some payback then.  Can you tell us where to find them?”Munguk seemed to consider this for several moments, and then shrugged.  “Sure.  Munguk not feel like killin’ yoo now.  Yoo got wolfberry shine?”It took Velox a moment to realize the giant was asking if he had any alcohol.“Ah, sadly no,” he replied.  “You’re welcome to share any provisions we have, though.”Munguk sat cross-legged in the ground and began to rummage through his bag as the companions gathered around him.  He pulled a startling array of rubbish from it, everything from mismatched boots, to a large jar containing what appeared to be a pickled sheep’s head.  At one point he plucked several strips of dry jerky from the sack and shook it in front of Tungdill.“Dwarf jerky,” he chuckled.  “Yoo want some?”Tungdill simply glared at him.  Finally,  Munguk pulled out a rolled sheet of animal hide and spread it out on the ground before him.  On it was a crudely drawn map, with one particular area labeled with the legend, ‘mean ugly troll-men.’“That them,” Munguk nodded in satisfaction.Stevhan studied the map carefully.  “That’s about two day’s ride west of here,” he said.  “I’m pretty sure I can find it.”“Thank you for your help, Munguk,” Velox said politely.  “Will you give us a moment to talk among ourselves?”Munguk shrugged and waved them away.“We can’t just let him walk away free,” Velox announced once they were out of earshot of the giant.“Agreed,” Davrim nodded.“Not this again!”  Tungdill threw up his hands.  “What is it with you people?  Yer more bloodthirsty than any pack o’wolves I ever seen!  We just made a deal with him, and now y’wanna kill’im?”“He’s a murdering giant!”  Davrim snapped.  “If we let him go, he’s going to cause just as much destruction as the trolls!  Can’t you see that?”Mox nodded her agreement as well.“He’s a threat,” she said.  “He dies.”Tungdill looked angrily from Selena to Stevhan.“I have no opinion on this,” the witch said.  “Dead giant, living giant…it makes little difference to me.”Stevhan hesitated.  “I…I have to agree,” he said finally.  “I’ve seen the devastation that giants can cause.  It would be like letting a rabid animal roam free, Tungdill.  Can’t you see?”“All I see is how conveniently y’all make and break yer own laws,” the dwarf snarled.  “Count me out!”He turned and stormed off into the woods.  Velox looked at the others and nodded again.Davrim and Velox walked casually back towards Munguk.  The giant watched them curiously.  It was only when he saw their swords appear as if by magic in their hands that awareness finally reached him.  By that time, it was far too late.  Davrim struck like a snake, opening the giant’s belly with a vicious slash.  Velox quickly flanked Munguk and hamstrung him from behind.  As the giant collapsed to his knees, Davrim struck twice more, once at his chest and finally, his throat.  Munguk fell to the ground, his hand clutching uselessly towards his discarded jug.___________________________________________________________Two days later, Stevhan knelt beside the narrow trail they’d been following into the foothills.  He pointed out to his companions the tell-tale footprints in the mud.  Trolls.  The path continued to wind its way up the hill, a steep cliff face on one side and a sheer drop-off on the other.  At the top, the path followed a wide ledge, where the corner of a weathered stone building jutted from the side of the hill.“That’s dwarf work, or I’m no dwarf,” Tungdill muttered.“The outpost Narthropple told us he was looking for,” Velox said.  “Good thing he never found it.”Three arrow slits pierced the wall, and the oracle stopped his companions before they reached them, while he crept cautiously ahead to the corner.  He peered around and could see a single, stone door, but it was broken in, darkness beyond.  He motioned Davrim up behind him, and the two of them approached the door slowly.  Velox gripped his blade tightly as he stepped around the door frame and peered into the gloom.  Three sets of glowing, green eyes stared back at him.  Trolls.“They’re here!”  Velox cried as he crouched into his battle stance, his eyes clouding over.  Behind him, Davrim leaped to an arrow slit that flanked the door, while Stevhan took up position at another.  Around the side of the bunker, Selena and Mox rushed to flatten themselves against the wall as Tungdill transformed into a large eagle.  He spread his wings to gain altitude, but before he could take flight, a warty green arm reached through the arrow slit in front of him and raked filthy claws into his feathered chest.  Mox and Selena reacted instinctively, and with uncanny coordination.  Each spun to an arrow slit, spells upon their lips.  Twin beads of fire streaked into the room beyond, and a moment later, two explosions detonated, engulfing all three of the monsters.  At the door, Velox held his ground like a bulwark, creating a bottleneck where the panicked, burning trolls could only come at him one at a time.  Time after time, he fended off their attacks, holding them at bay.  Davrim and Stevhan, their bows in hand, began firing shaft after shaft through the arrow slits.  Most of their shots were true, but no sooner had the arrows struck than the flesh of the trolls, where it wasn’t burned, began to knit itself back together.  “Keep burning them!”  Davrim shouted.  Tungdill fought through the pain, letting anger fuel him.  In his avian form, he could still bring his magic to bear, and he hurled a rolling sphere of flame through the arrow slit and into the room.  It began rolling around the chamber, sending the trolls into a wilder frenzy.  Mox stood her ground at her own slit as she lobbed mystic bolts laced with acid at any glimpse of green skin that she could see.  Under the steady barrage of arrows and magic, Stevhan saw the first troll fall.  “One down!” he crowed.He quickly moved to Velox’s side, but just as he got there, the troll surged to its feet again and reached for him.  Velox tried to shield him, but was just a moment too slow.   Both of the troll’s hands seized the ranger, its talons sinking into his flesh.  Then, the monster pulled its hands violently apart, rending Stevhan’s flesh into ribbons.  Its head then snapped forward, and it sank its teeth into his shoulder.  He staggered back, blood pouring from his horrible wounds.  Davrim snarled, and redoubled his fire, dropping the troll a second time.  This time, Tungdill rolled his fire sphere atop the unconscious troll, making sure it wouldn’t be rising again.  The remaining two trolls were already seriously injured, and under Mox’s continuing barrage of acidic missiles, they both succumbed quickly.  Tungdill’s fire finished the job.  As the battle fury left him, Velox rushed to Stevhan’s  side and quickly began to pray over him as his hands tried to staunch the flow of blood.  Gradually, the ranger’s labored breathing began to slow, as did the hemorrhaging.  He opened his eyes and nodded his gratitude to his friend as the oracle helped him to his feet.  ___________________________________________________________The barbican itself was empty of all save the roasted troll carcasses.  Two sets of stairs exited from it.  The first gave onto the bottom of a watchtower.  It was filled with a foul stench, which emanated from the layers of filth that caked the floor.  The trolls had obviously been using it as a midden.  With Velox once more leading the way, the companions started up the second set of stairs.    They led to a large chamber, whose walls had been defaced and vandalized with crude graffiti in several languages.  A large, stone table took up the center of the room.  A headless humanoid corpse lay atop its bloodstained surface.  A lone troll stood behind the table, a dripping cleaver in its hand.  Beside it crouched a creature vaguely canine in appearance.  The squat, powerful beast sniffed the air hungrily.  Foul-smelling fluids oozed from weeping sores across its scaly skin, and long streamers of drool hung from its curving teeth and oversized jaws.  It looked like some sort of grotesque cross between a troll and a bulldog.  Despite their disgust at the scene, Stevhan and Davrim didn’t falter.  Both knocked arrows and opened fire on the troll as it leaped across the table.  The troll hound charged, snarling and slavering as it came.  Stevhan dropped his bow and rushed to meet it, drawing his sword as he went.  The hound leaped for him, but the ranger was faster, and he brought his blade down heavily upon its thick skull.  The beast fell in a heap, its tongue lolling, yet even then Stevhan could see its wound beginning to heal.  He looked up suddenly as a shadow fell across him, and he saw the troll looming over him, its cleaver raised.  Suddenly, Velox was there, hacking at the giant and beating it back.  A flurry of Mox’s magic missiles hastened its retreat.  The sorceress followed this with a scorching ray of fire, and the troll stumbled.  A moment later, its eyes drooped and if fell to the floor, snoring.  Mox turned and winked appreciatively at Selena.At that moment, loud baying and the rattling of chains came from a hallway on the eastern side of the chamber.  An instant later, the distinct sound of a chain snapping followed.  A second troll hound bounded into the room and immediately seized Davrim by the leg.  The oracle cursed as he beat at the monster with his sword.  Stevhan joined him, and between the two of them, they quickly managed to pummel the creature into unconsciousness.  When they peered down the hallway, however, they saw two more of the brutes still chained to the wall of a small chamber at its end.  Mox pushed between the two warriors.“I’ve got this, boys,” she smiled.Casting, she hurled a billowing ball of flame into the room, setting the dogs ablaze.  Howling and yelping, they both burst their chains and rushed forward, a pair of fiery nightmares.  One of them locked its jaws on Davrim’s arm at the same moment that the oracle impaled it.  The second one joined its troll master in slumber at Selena’s hands. “Fire, acid, now!”  Mox cried.She, Tungdill and Selena immediately went about setting the regenerating monsters on fire, and then finished the process with generous applications of conjured acid.  __________________________________________________________On the opposite side of the main hall from the kennel, stacked boxes, barrels, crates and bags filled a small storeroom from floor to ceiling, and lined crude wooden shelves along the walls.  A rough hole gaped in the room’s far wall, apparently leading deeper into the hillside.  Beyond was a rough-worked tunnel of much newer construction than that of the garrison.  After a dozen yards or so, it forked.  The right hand passage was short and narrow, and gave onto a wide cavern, the floor of which was littered with half a dozen pallets made of branches, leaves and smelly, uncured hides.  A pair of trolls stood in the center of the room, their talons clenching and unclenching in anticipation.  Stevhan knelt and opened up with his bow while Velox and Davrim charged ahead.  Mox supported the ranger with her own arcane barrage.  Velox and Davrim flanked the first of the trolls and, within a matter of seconds, brought the monster down under a deluge of steel.  When the second one charged them, they both spun to meet it head-on, and in short order, it joined its kinsman on the ground.  Knowing their role well by that point, Selena and Tungdill busied themselves with making sure the trolls wouldn’t be rising again.  The others spread out around the room, concentrating on a large passage on the far side, in case the noise of their battle attracted unwanted attention.  So it was that they didn’t hear the threat from behind until it was upon them.“What’s all the racket, ya idjits??”  came a booming voice from the barracks entry.“Yeah!  Ya done waked us from our nap!!”  a second voice growled.The voices belonged not to two creatures, but to a single, monstrously large, two-headed troll!  Its two pairs of beady eyes narrowed shrewdly when it understood what had transpired, and its twin tongues licked their lips hungrily as they anticipated fresh prey.Mox acted first, hurling acid bolts at the giant.  The brute shrugged them off and lumbered forward.  Davrim leaped in front of him and swung with all his might.  The blow was devastating, and would have felled a lesser creature.  The two-headed behemoth back-handed the oracle with a bone-crushing blow.  Davrim hit the floor, his skull striking the stones with a crack.  The giant troll stalked towards him, but Velox barred his way.  The troll raised its hands to crush the oracle, but two blasts of fire and acid from Mox and Selena drove it back several crucial steps.  Velox charged, cutting his blade across both of the giant’s necks.  It fell with a boom, and Tungdill set upon it, placing a flaming sphere atop it that quickly cooked its remains to a crisp.___________________________________________________________The troll chief, Hargulka, roused his bulk from his makeshift throne.  He’d been hearing the sounds of battle for some time, and his patience had finally run out.  Whatever invaders had trespassed in his domain were obviously giving his people a more difficult time than he would have thought possible.  If he had to clean up this mess himself, he was going to disembowel some of his men, then make them watch as they regenerated themselves only so he could do it again.“Kargadd!” he bellowed as he left his chamber.  “Get your lazy arse out here!”From inside the larder, the rock troll shuffled forward, its granite-like hide grinding as it walked.  The idiot was a dense as its skin, but Hargulka didn’t need it to think, just to kill what he told it to.  They stalked into the barracks, and came to a halt as they saw the carnage there…smoldering carcasses of what used to be their kin.  Hargulka began to growl deep in his chest, hatred and rage building to a boil.“Trouble,” Mox said as she saw the pair of trolls enter.  “Big trouble.”She quickly began a spell, hoping to catch the two in its effect, but when the larger troll, obviously the leader, saw what she was doing, it quickly put distance between itself and its rocky cousin.  Mox had to settle for engulfing the bigger one in her fireball.  Hargulka growled beneath the cowl of flames, but he showed no sign of pain, nor weakness.  Instead, he stood up to his full height and clutched at a necklace around his throat, plucking a small, glass sphere from it.  The troll chief had learned long ago of the humans’ proclivity for using fire against his kind.  A good thing for him that the weapon worked both ways.  He tossed the small sphere directly into the midst of his enemies.  An instant later it exploded in a ball of fire twice as large as the one the sorceress had hurled upon him.Unfortunately for the companions, they had all been relatively close together when the troll’s fireball struck, and the flames scorched and seared them for seconds that seemed like an eternity before they faded away.  “Scatter!”  Velox called hoarsely, his throat scorched and raw.His friends didn’t need to be told twice.  They moved quickly in two different directions, half closing with Hargulka, the others moving towards the rock troll…all save one.  As Stevhan began to run, he noted that the black and orange shadow that he was so accustomed to seeing at his side was absent.  When he looked back, he saw the blackened, smoking form of Chester still lying on the ground.  The ranger’s heart began to race, and he turned back towards the troll chief, murder in his eyes.Velox pulled a small blue stone from his belt pouch, and cast it on the ground at his feet.  In a flash, a large column of water erupted from the stone and quickly took on vaguely humanoid proportions.  The elemental surged towards Hargulka and hammered the troll with one watery fist.  Across the hall, Davrim reached the rock troll.  The brute batted aside the inquisitor’s blows as it would a child’s, but then a blast of stinging bolts from Mox caused it to flail at its head as if bees swarmed about it.  Davrim used the moment to shove his blade between two of the rocky plates at the troll’s elbow joint.  Kargadd roared, grabbed the sword, and punched Davrim squarely between the eyes.  The inquisitor staggered back and shook his head to clear it.  Kargadd charged towards him, but the half-orc stepped nimbly aside and sank his sword in behind the brute’s knee.  Kargadd dropped heavily to one knee, but as he struggled to regain his feet, three dog-sized ants suddenly appeared around him.  Davrim smiled as he recognized the markings on Adam’s carapace, and sent a mental thank you to Tungdill.  Adam and the ants swarmed over Kargadd, biting and stinging the troll repeatedly, their poison burning his blood as it weakened him.  Within moments, the massive rock troll collapsed.Before Stevhan could reach Hargulka, Mox lobbed a second fireball at the troll.  Again when the chieftain emerged, black and smoking from the flames, he clutched another crystal bead.  Ignoring the looming elemental, Hargulka flung the bead at the companions, and again they were engulfed by fire.  However, Hargulka quickly learned that he discounted the elemental at his own peril.  The creature brought both fists down upon the troll’s back, hammering him to his knees.  Selena stepped forward, smoke billowing from her robes, and fanned her fingers before her, fire spewing from them.  Hargulka screamed as his already charred skin began to boil and melt.  Again the elemental battered at him, and then Velox rushed in himself to deliver what would be the killing blow.</blockquote>

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