THE HOOK MOUNTAIN MASSACRE
A thunderbolt shook the stone and earth underfoot, and its low growl echoed through the valley. Talons of lightning clawed at the sky and cast pale light on the mountainside below. The lightning storm revealed a grim fortress of dark gray stone that stood sentinel over the valley, huddled desperately at the base of two sheer cliff sides. Crumbling, fifteen-foot high walls rang the citadel, the stone pitted and cratered from hurled boulders and ogre hooks. Like the face of a veteran with decades of winters under his belt, the fort’s craters, cracks, and scars were testament to its battle-weary history. A stone keep, a stubborn shadow against the mountainside, rose from behind the worn walls, a single tower jutting up from its ramparts like an ugly broken tooth. Nearby, a rushing curtain of white water cascaded down the mountainside into a large pool of water just outside the fort’s walls.
“That’s it,” Jakardros said, solemnly. “Fort Rannick, or what’s left of it.”
It was early evening, and already pitch dark. The journey from Turtleback Ferry had taken the better part of the day, but the two Black Arrow rangers had led them unerringly through the wilderness.
“The waterfall there is the one I told you about,” the older man continued. “Behind it’s a cave and a series of hidden tunnels where we keep emergency supplies. I’m pretty sure the ogres haven’t found the tunnels. They're too small for those brutes to negotiate. The tunnels lead into some natural caves underneath the bedrock, but there you’ll have to be careful. Those holes are full of shocker lizards. Normally they’re pretty docile, but they can be deadly when they’re defending egg clutches. Once you’re past’em, there’s a secret door leading into the brig. From there, you can sneak up into the main keep.”
“Sounds simple,” Max said dryly, “except for the keep full of ogres that wiped out your whole order waiting for us on the other side.”
Jakardros glared at the young noble. “If luck is with you, you’ll make it inside undetected, and will have the element of surprise on your side…the same thing that led to the slaughter of my friends.”
“We’ll await you here,” Shalelu said, interrupting diplomatically. “Should you find yourselves in over your heads, signal from the battlements. We’ll take such a sign as an indication that we should go and try to procure further help…to avenge you as well as the Black Arrows.”
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What once might have been a crystal-clear mountain lake had become an abattoir. Partially butchered and mutilated bodies, some human, some horse, some giant eagle, lay sprawled along the shore. The waterfall plummeted from the cliffs to the west into the pool, which kept much of the water clean save for near the shores where the dead lay thick. Carefully, under the cover of the moonless night, the Magnimarian investigators climbed the slick rock wall behind the fall. The floor of the cave hidden beneath the water was dotted with puddles. Patches of pale moss and fungus grew in sheets on the wall, while to the north, a narrow passageway angled up into the darkness. A walkway of soggy planks led from that opening down to the waterfall itself. The tunnel gave onto another damp cave the walls, the floor and ceiling of which were coated from top to bottom in soft, dark gray fungus. Several crates were stacked in a nook to one side.
As Dexter led the group into the second cave, sudden movement caught his eye. From behind the crates emerged four blue-skinned lizards, electric sparks sizzling across their glossy hides.
“Hey!” the rogue shouted as he drew his dagger from its sheath and flicked it deftly at one the reptiles, impaling it between the eyes. “It’s those little critters the ranger told us about! I got one!”
“No! Wait!” Adso said, but Skud was already in the room, hacking through another of the lizards with one swing of his scythe. The monk was about to remind his friends of Jakardros’s other warning. A moment later, it became self-evident as the two remaining reptiles emitted a blinding burst of electricity that completely engulfed Skud and Dexter. The rogue managed to leap clear just in time, but when the ozone-smelling smoke cleared, steam rose from Skud’s skin. The shocker lizards quickly turned and scuttled away down a far tunnel.
“Come on!” Adso cried in exasperation. “Let’s try and catch them before they stir up the whole colony!”
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The narrow passage gave onto a series of dark caves of dirt and stone that wound and bent dizzyingly, narrowing to as small as three-feet wide at points. In places, claws of exposed tree roots hung from the ceiling. Dexter skidded to a sudden halt as he reached a wider area. Around the perimeter of the cave were several clutches of small, light blue leathery eggs. Clustered throughout were perhaps two-dozen shocker lizards, all standing upright on their back legs, their neck-fins flared. Electricity popped and sizzled in the air, causing the hair of the companions to stand on end.
“Careful…,” Adso whispered. “No one do anything sudden. Move slowly and deliberately. Stay away from the eggs at all costs.”
Cautiously, the seven companions began threading their way through the lizards, watching each step as if they were walking over trip-wires. The lizards watched them with unblinking eyes, but none of them made any threatening moves. After what seemed like hours, but was only a few minutes, the group made it to the far side of the room and into the tunnel beyond. The short passage reached a dead-end, but the clear outline of a door could be seen there.
The simple room beyond the door was something of a surprise. It might once have been a jailer’s den, or perhaps even a torture chamber, but someone had gone through great pains to repurpose it. The air smelled of sweet, exotic incense, and veils of multi-colored silk draped from floor to ceiling throughout. Between the rustlings of the veils, glimpses of giant cushions were revealed. The floor was strewn with luxuriant soft red throw rugs and sheets. An aristocratic-looking woman with fire-red hair and alabaster skin stood in the center of the room. Her face was pure elegance…high cheekbones, demure, lust-stirring green eyes, and perfectly shaped eyebrows to accent them. She turned towards Dexter as the door opened with a slight look of surprise on her face.
“Oh…,” she said, placing her fingers to her lips. “Oh my! Now this is unexpected. I mean, I did expect you, or rather I expected someone, just not at this precise moment, or from that direction. I really should have searched this room more thoroughly. Anyway, my sister Xanesha told me you’d be coming, or that someone would be coming, and now here you are! But where are my manners? I am Lucrecia, and I am truly glad that you have come. I would like to offer you the chance to join me. My master, Mokmurian, would be ever so pleased to meet you.”
“Lady,” Dexter said, still taken aback by the odd room and its strange occupant, “I think I speak for all of us when I say that if you are in any way associated with that snake-bitch, then you’ve said all you need to say.”
“Hmm,” Lucrecia mused. “Pity. Xanesha said you’d be unreasonable, but I’d so hoped you might be pragmatic. So be it then!”
Before Dexter’s shocked eyes, Lucrecia’s form began to shift, the lower half of her body transforming into that of a large serpent, while her upper half remained as beautiful as before. From beneath her gown she drew a slim rapier. Before Dex could react, before any of the others could push past him out of the narrow hall, the lamia raised her other hand and unleashed a glaring bolt of lightning down the tunnel. The seven companions were momentarily backlit against the darkness as the electricity surged through their bodies, leaving them shaking and jittering in its aftermath. Dexter was the first to recover, and he didn’t hesitate as he rushed headlong towards Lucrecia. As he went, his dagger flashed into his hand, gleaming a brilliant emerald. The rogue had spent his time in Magnimar not among the elite, but instead in the back alleys and ghettoes of Underbridge. There he had begun learning of a secret order that dabbled in the art of Shadow. Dex had picked up a trick or two from a few more desperate practitioners who valued gold over trade secrets. His little dagger trick was one of the more dramatic ones. The blade momentarily became translucent as it slipped past Lucrecia’s flesh as if it didn’t even exist. The lamia screamed in agony as the dagger blade rematerialized inside her body.
A moment later Adso was by Dexter’s side. The young monk had not been idle in his downtime either. After seeing what Xanesha and her magic had done to him and his companions, the half-orc had vowed never to be caught off-guard in such a way again. Among his order, there were those who specialized in combating the magical with the physical. They were called mage slayers. Adso had taken the first steps down that path, and as he closed with Lucrecia, the lamia quickly learned to respect his chosen discipline. As the monk feinted and darted around her, she found herself unable to concentrate on her spellcasting, unable to bring her magic to bear. In desperation, she lashed out at him, and when her hand touched his bare flesh, pain seized Adso’s mind like a metal spike. Despite the agony, the monk continued his maneuvers, knowing that they were the only things that might keep his companions alive.
By that time Max and Skud had cleared the hall, and the two warriors struck viciously at the lamia, their blades tearing into her flesh again and again. Still Lucrecia ignored them, focusing all of her efforts on Adso, knowing that her only hope was to slay the monk by draining his mind until he was a shriveled husk. Skud and Max did not relent, and Wesh and Rico added their own fire power, hurling ice and force at the lamia. In the end, however, it was the Reaper who, with a casual wave of his hand, struck Lucrecia blind, leaving her vulnerable to the tender mercies of his allies.
“So that was Xanesha’s sister?” Reaper mused as he stood over the lamia’s corpse. “I’d expected more. Hmm…perhaps there is still more that she can give…”
The necromancer leaned over the corpse and placed his palm upon it, murmuring dark words as his hand glowed with black energy. Suddenly, the body of the lamia lurched upright, and then shook itself like a wet dog, divesting itself of all its flesh until only its skeleton remained. The leering, undead thing bowed low to its new master.
“Ah, I think I like her better this way,” Reaper smiled.
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Lucrecia’s skeleton pushed open the door to the storeroom where the steps from her lair led up to. A wide, empty hall lay beyond… the main level of Fort Rannick’s bailey. In the distance, oafish laughter and beefy smacks could be heard. Cautiously, the others moved past Reaper’s automaton and down the hall to the nearest door. When he pressed his ear to the door, Dexter thought he could make out a low muttering coming from the other side. He signaled his companions and then shoved the door open. Once apparently used to house the wounded and sick, the chamber was currently a slice of some blood-drenched nightmare. Hacked pieces of bodies littered the sick beds. The floor was slick with gore, strewn with mangled organs and heaps of entrails. A dead fat man sat at one of the operating tables, arranged as if he were merrily spooning chunks of his own disembodied organs out of a brown bowl. His guts spilled out of a large gaping slash in his midsection. A burly ogre, easily ten-feet tall, with the entire right side of his face missing and revealing a pulped ruin with skull showing through, cocked his head at the tableau, then bent to make a minor adjustment to the corpse as a sculptor might his clay.
As the door opened, the ogre began to turn, but Dexter was faster. He darted behind the giant and quickly slashed his dagger across its Achilles tendon. The ogre roared and sank to one knee, but as he did so he swung his wicked hook in a wide arc, catching Adso across the ribs as the monk moved to join Dexter. Adso rolled with the blow, throwing two snap punches at the ogre’s face, rocking him back. Dexter pounced, and drove his blade through the brutes exposed throat. With a gurgle, the would-be artist collapsed among his masterpieces.
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Most of the rooms the deputies checked were empty, having been thoroughly ransacked and looted. Outside the door of one chamber, however, they heard the sounds of loud arguing. At Reaper’s instruction, Lucrecia threw open the door and slithered inside. The once-well-appointed barracks that lay beyond was currently filled with nothing but splintered bunks and tables. The west wall was completely demolished with bits of its masonry scattered about. Four ogres sat hunkered in a circle in the middle of the room. Strangely, one of them wore a hollowed-out horse head over his own, and it was this odd hat that seemed to be the bone of contention. One of the other ogres made a grab for it.
“It Mug’s turn to wear horsey now!” the brute shouted.
“No!” the current wearer snapped, batting Mug’s hand away. “Mig horse-chieftain!”
At that moment, the group noticed Lucrecia’s entrance, and all four stood, momentarily taken aback by the apparition. The serpentine skeleton had no such hesitations, and it slashed at the horse-head wearing ogre with its talon-like claws. This jolted the giants from their stupor, and two of them hefted their war clubs and began hammering at the undead skeleton, while the other two bolted for a door at the far end of the room which opened onto another corridor.
“Damn it!” Dexter cursed as he ran down the near corridor and rounded the corner. “They’re going for help!”
Sure enough, as he turned the corner, he saw the two escapees at the far end of a connecting hall. One of them paused at a door there and pounded on it, bellowing loudly.
“Eat this!” the rogue hissed as he flipped his dagger through the air. It whistled with deadly accuracy and pierced the leading ogre through the shoulder.
“Nice shot,” Max said as he appeared at Dexter’s shoulder. “Looks like these two are ours…along with whatever comes out of that door!”
Meanwhile, Skud charged into the ruined barracks as Lucrecia continued to spar with her two would-be suitors. The half-orc swung his scythe like a thresher, and tore into the nearest giant. Standing in the door, Reaper sent his spectral hand floating into the melee, and where it touched ogre skin, ogre skin burned.
Max rushed down the corridor and met a charging ogre head-on. The giant’s club smashed into the young warrior’s arm, hurling him across the hall and into the wall. At that moment, the door at the far end of the hallway opened, and another ogre emerged, only to be engulfed a moment later in a great gout of flame that flowed out into the hallway to reduce Max’s opponent to ash. Wesh chuckled to himself from his vantage at the corner.
“Bet you didn’t see that coming!”
Suddenly, a second door opened, directly across from the wizard, and a burly ogre carrying an ogre hook in one hand and a severed human head in the other emerged with a roar. He hurled the head at Wesh, laughing uproariously as he did so. When Wesh ducked, the giant caught him with a vicious uppercut from his hook.
“Oh crap!” Dexter cried, and then darted forward to interpose himself between the raging ogre and his friend. The rogue rolled beneath a backswing from the cruel hook, and then came to his feet and drove his rapier straight through the protruding tongue of the still-laughing giant.
“Hit the deck!” Rico’s voice called from behind Dex, and instinctively, the rogue dropped to the floor just as a lance of pure ice flashed over his head and impaled the big ogre, knocking him several paces back into room from which he’d emerged.
Skud whipped his scythe around in a large circle, lifting two heads from the ogre’s body…his own, and the horse one he wore atop it.
“Skud horse chief now!” the half-orc snarled.
A half-second later, the second ogre fell as Adso snapped his neck with two well-placed kicks.
Max regained his footing and continued down the hall, where he met the second ogre as the giant dodged around the smoldering remains of its kinsman. The young noble’s twin blades flashed wickedly in the torch light, quickly disemboweling the brute. To his dismay, however, two more ogres exited the side room, one of them badly burned from Wesh’s fireball. His dismay turned to bemusement a moment later as the slithering skeleton of Lucrecia came around the corner behind the pair. One of them shrieked as it saw the ghoulish creature, and it immediately began swinging its club violently, trying to ward her away. It was little use. The dead lamia’s claws tore the frightened ogre’s throat out before he knew what hit him. Max quickly dispatched the scorched second ogre as it tried to comprehend what had just happened to its friend.
As the burly ogre picked himself up from the floor, brushing ice from his clothes as he did so, Reaper hurled an emerald bolt of arcane energy at him. As it struck, the ogre felt his strength ebb, but not so much that he couldn’t still swing his hook at the scrawny little human who thought to humiliate him. The metal spike drove the wind from the Reaper as it struck, and then the giant quickly reversed it, and sank it deep into the necromancer’s thigh. Reaper wheezed, trying to gather himself and bring his magic to his defense before he was killed outright. He needn’t have worried. As the ogre raised his hook one last time, Dexter hit him low, stabbing his rapier into the space between knee cap and shin bone, while Skud went high, slicing his scythe across the ogre’s throat. The muscle-bound brute was already toppling when a gout of flame from Rico’s hand set his face on fire.
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The remainder of the main level proved to be uninhabited, and when the company found a stairwell leading to the bailey tower, they ascended. They found themselves in a long corridor with double doors on one side and also at the far end, and a single door on the opposite side. They chose the first set of double doors, Lucrecia once again leading the way. The walls within the enormous chamber on the other side were mounted with dozens of trophy antlers, some taken from stags that must have stood as tall as dire bears. Most of the antlers were draped with bits of rotten flesh, strips of skin, or coils of viscera. On the far side, a marble altar had been heaped with the mangled remains of at least a half-dozen dead men and women. A crude image of what might have been a three-eyed jackal had been painted in blood on the wall above the altar’s alcove. Sitting in the middle of the room was a truly massive ogre, fifteen-feet tall if he was a foot. His arms rippled with muscles, and a pair of black horns sprouted from his forehead. He was busy sewing the head of a giant eagle onto the decapitated body of a man. This, then was Jaagrath Kreeg, pappy to the Kreeg clan of ogres.
Skud stepped to the front of the group, his scythe gripped in both hands. Pappy Kreeg rose casually to his feet, chuckling. He pointed at Skud and then pointed at a blank space on the wall, between the body of a man with antlers sewn onto his head and the corpse of a horse with a woman’s face stretched screaming over its own.
“Is that so?” Skud snarled. “We see who stuffs who!”
Skud charged, Max, Adso and Dex trailing in his wake. The half-orc struck a massive blow, but Jaagrath laughed, shaking his head to clear it, and then he raised his iron hook high. But instead of striking at Skud, he instead swung it sidearm, opening Dex from shoulder to hip. Dexter staggered back, once more calling upon the new talents he learned and stepping into the shadows, only to reappear back in the hallway. Max and Adso both leaped at Jaagrath, their combined weight and force carrying him back a step or two. The huge ogre continued to laugh, blood frothing from his lips by that point, and kept on laughing right up until the moment that Skud’s scythe tip pierced his heart, sending him crashing spread-eagle onto the altar beneath the image of his hateful goddess.
“That…wasn’t so…tough…” Dexter wheezed between coughing up plugs of blood-tinged phlegm. No sooner had the words left his mouth, however, than the double doors at the end of the corridor, and the single door across the hall both opened. From the double doors came a hulking ogre whose lower jaw was missing, replaced by the bottom half of a bear trap. Behind him was a female ogre, who was considered comely by ogre standards, despite the obvious indentation in one side of her head. This pair was Hookmaw and Dorella Kreeg, two of Jaagrath’s favorite offspring. From the smaller door across the hall came four more Kreeg ogres, each carrying a spiked war club.
“They done kilt Pappy!” Dorella shrieked when she saw her father’s body. She raised her hands above her head and began spouting a string of what at first sounded like curses. Only too late did Reaper and Wesh recognize them for what they were…arcane words. In an instant, a forest of rubbery, black tentacles sprouted from the floor of the corridor and the chapel, completely encompassing the Magnimar deputies. Immediately, the tentacles wrapped and twined themselves around the company and began to squeeze with horrible strength.
“You ought not’a done that ta Pappy!” Hookmaw shouted, his voice oddly metallic. He swung his hook into the tentacles, catching Max through his left bicep. Simultaneously, one of the other ogres hammered the young noble across the back with his club.
“Forget them!” Wesh cried, his face blood red from the strain of being constricted by the tentacles that held him. “Try and reach the female! She’ll kill us all!”
As he spoke, he managed to free one hand, and as he did so, he coughed the words to a spell and sent a flurry of blue bolts hurtling at Dorella. Reaper knew that what Wesh said was true. The males were just brute muscle. If the female was allowed to hurl spells at them unchecked, they stood no chance. The necromancer concentrated on the gold anklet he wore on his left leg, and he felt it grow warm. A moment later, he vanished, reappearing on the far side of the forest of tentacles.
Other members of the company began to free themselves as well. Dexter, having escaped the shackles of many guardsmen in his time, turned and twisted until he managed to wriggle free. Meanwhile, at Reaper’s command, Lucrecia’s skeleton just bulled her way through the mass of appendages until she emerged on the near side, right next to Hookmaw. The big ogre swung at her as she emerged, crushing several of her ribs. Max, for his part, was unable to completely free himself, but he got enough slack to bring his swords to bear, and as he spun and swung, the ogre who’d struck him from behind went down.
Dorella Kreeg wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but she’d survived years of abuse at the hands of her brothers and father, and self-preservation had become second nature to her. In fact, it was the near-fatal head wound inflicted on her by one of her brothers when she’d been younger that had unlocked her strange gift with magic. So it was that she understood immediately who her true enemies were…the clever human who’d spelled himself free of her trap, and the other one who’d burned her with his magic missiles. She was sure he’d try that trick again, and she had just the thing to keep him from it. As she began to cast, however, Reaper loosed his own barrage of mystic bolts, driving Dorella’s own spell from her lips. A heartbeat later, and Wesh repeated the favor. Quickly she ducked back into her room and began her spell again, cursing at the silly humans who thought they could undo everything her pappy had worked so hard for.
Dexter finally made his way to Reaper’s side.
“Some mess, huh?” he gasped.
“That’s an understatement,” the necromancer grimaced. “Anything you can do to even the odds?”
“We’ll see,” the rogue said as he unlimbered his bow. When he went to knock an arrow, however, one of the grasping tentacles suddenly batted at his arm, upending his quiver and sending all of his arrows scattering to the floor amidst the rubbery appendages.
“I guess not,” Reaper snorted.
Skud was seeing red. He wanted blood, and he was being prevented from spilling it by the black tentacles that held him. Howling in rage he surged against his bonds and broke free. As he did so, however, Hookmaw was ready for him, and slashed his hook hard into the half-orc, opening up the barbarian’s defenses for one of the other ogres to batter at him from behind. So deep in his fury was Skud, that he barely felt the blows. He came on, scythe held high, completely ignoring any idea of self-defense. He slammed into Hookmaw like a battering ram, and the big ogre gave ground. As he went, however, he chopped down with his hook again and again. Finally, with one mighty blow, he drove the hook into Skud’s spine, severing it with one blow. The half-orc went from enraged madness to utter stillness in the span of one breath. Limp and lifeless he slid to the ground at Max’s feet.
Things happened quickly after that. Both Reaper and Wesh saw Skud fall and both knew that things were souring fast. Reaper quickly sent his ghostly hand at Hookmaw’s throat, where it drew a shrill scream from the ogre as it drained his life-force. On the heels of that, Wesh tossed a pea-sized speck of flame into the room behind Hookmaw where it exploded into an expanding ball, searing both the ogre and his cowering sister. Max, still stunned by the death of a man he had though unkillable, seized the opportunity and tore free of the tentacles, burying both of his blades in Hookmaw’s chest, and bearing the ogre to the ground where he twisted and turned the swords until the giant no longer moved beneath him. As he stood however, another ogre stepped behind him and brought its club down heavily on the back of the nobleman’s skull. Max slumped over Hookmaw’s body, unconscious. Unfortunately, that proved only temporary as Dorella emerged from her hiding place and sent a searing bolt of lightning screaming down the hall. The electricity roasted Max from the inside out as it passed through his body. Likewise, Wesh and Rico, already weak and bleeding from the unrelenting pressure of the tentacles, were burned alive as the lightning coursed through them.
“No, godsdammit!” Reaper shrieked, and loosed his spectral hand from around Hookmaw’s lifeless throat to seize upon Dorella. The sorceress screeched at its touch, and sent a barrage of magic missiles hurtling back towards the necromancer. Her aim was off, however, distracted as she was, and the bolts instead struck Dexter as he knelt gathering his arrows. The rogue was blown backwards into a wall, where he lay, still as death.
In a matter of seconds, the Sandpoint Seven had been reduced to two…Reaper and Adso. With a vicious chop of her hand, Dorella Kreeg dismissed her summoned tentacles, and in rapid succession sent another bolt of lightning hurtling at the Reaper, followed by a second volley of missiles. The wizard dove for cover within the stairwell. Meanwhile, with the writhing tentacles no longer between them and Adso, the three remaining ogres charged. The foremost drew back his club as he came, and as he reached Lucrecia, he swung for the hills, obliterating the skeleton with one blow. His momentum carried him on towards Adso, and he struck the monk like a charging elephant. Adso had readied himself, however, and he rolled with the blow. As he came to his feet, he swept the legs from under his attacker by using his own mass and speed against him. When the ogre hit the ground, Adso crushed his windpipe with one chop of his hand.
“Kill’em!” Dorella shrieked at the other two, but as she did so, Reaper reappeared at the far end of the hall, and one last time he swept his phantom hand at the ogress. It clutched her face, and black fire raced across her head, causing the flesh to blacken and shrivel. Dorella’s high-pitched scream was abruptly cut short as her body rapidly crumbled to dust. The two ogres gaped open-mouthed as they watched their sister die. When they turned to look at her killer, however, their eyes grew even wider. Reaper seemed to grow, his features darkening. In their minds, he became the embodiment of all that they feared most. In abject terror, they turned and fled into Dorella’s room, where they cowered in a corner behind her bed.
“Get down here!” Reaper shouted at Adso and the monk wasted no time in obeying.
“Help me with him!” Reaper ordered as he knelt down next to Dex. “He’s not dead!”
Adso saw that this was true, and he quickly fished several healing draughts from the rogue’s pack and began forcing them down his friend’s throat. Within moments, Dexter opened his eyes.
“Don’t ask questions,” Reaper hissed, “just do as I say and get your bow, now!”
Dexter nodded and Adso helped him to his feet. At that moment, Reaper’s spell wore off and the two ogres emerged from Dorella’s room, enraged all the more by the wizard’s mind trick. They charged, but before they could even make it halfway down the hall, Dexter put an arrow through one’s eye. Adso met the other one, leaping high into the air and driving the heel of his foot into the giant’s nose, sending the small sliver of bone there into its brain. It dropped heavily to the floor.
The three stood gasping and heaving amid the carnage. The leaders of the Kreegs were dead, but so were four of their friends. To make matters worse, an unknown number of ogres still remained in the courtyard below. They were beaten, bloodied and alone…and very, very far from home and help…
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
Yet, I also know that my players neither want nor expect me to pull punches. That's the excitement of the game...you never know when the dice will suddenly turn against you with a vengeance! Several times last night, I would struggle with a tactic, and my players would say, "Just do it! Bring it on!" So don't feel too bad for the guys...these are the moments when the adrenaline flows and the gamers are separated from the boys!
: .-( 
