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Message: <blockquote data-quote="haiiro" data-source="post: 1735480" data-attributes="member: 1891">Woo-hoo! I'm now once again lapping at the sweet, sweet nectar of the internet -- and I've been itching to post this update. Sorry for the delay, and thanks to TDR for the explanation. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> The dockside battle continues...At this point, it seemed as though everything was happening at once. The wounded giant was laughing and roaring in pain all at the same time, and stood rooted to the cobbles. Near death, Artemis tumbled away from the knot of giants, avoiding one last swipe that was aimed at him as he retreated. Tuggle had slipped down an empty alleyway, entered a small storehouse, and found a window from which to rain magic missiles on the giants. Vicktor, who had been crouched behind one of the horse-carts (now creaking wildly as the horses struggled to escape) from the start, had begun trying to pinpoint the source of the high-pitched whistle. Jaehn had stayed put, and continued to try and keep two of the giants occupied on the shoreline. Cupric bellowed out a joke about the closest giant's mother at the top of his lungs -- and it glared at him with its fist-sized eyes and roared back, "I ate my mother!" De'lea bobbed and weaved to avoid obstacles as she kept loosing arrows from her bow. Tal moved to intercept Artemis, loading his crossbow as his heavy boots clattered across the cobbles.Hoping that the frenzied horses might do some damage the giants, Tuggle called up a mage hand and began worrying free one of the tethering pins on the nearest cart. As he got the pin loose, that horse bolted straight for De'lea -- and as if on cue, all three of the other horses also broke free of their burdens.One trampled a cowering halfling under its hooves, mashing him to a pulp and splashing blood on his companion -- also a halfling who hand't fled fast enough. The other two horses bolted off at top speed: one headed straight for the river, and the other straight for the Cup. De'lea avoided being run down only by blind luck, as she hit the ground and the horse's hooves struck the cobbles all around her. Seconds later, two of the horses had tumbled headfirst into the river (after maddened attempts to halt their forward movement), and the others had bolted off into the city.Both whistles had been heard again amidst the chaos, and Vicktor was finally able to determine the direction of the high-pitched one. Crouching low, he scooted away from the mayhem, heading further up the shoreline. At the same time, Tal suffused Artemis with Torm's blessing, mending bones and stanching blood with curative magic.Throughout the past several seconds, Tuggle had launched missiles at the giants as often as he could cast the spell. Even though they didn't seem to have had any effect, he knew that they must be doing damage, a little bit at a time. Noting that the low whistle made the two pursuing giants look around, Cupric used ghost sound and his knack for vocal performance to mimic it perfectly, and caused it to emanate from a point right in the midst of the giants.The nearest one didn't appear to notice, but the giant that had been attacking Artemis perked up and turned towards the sound. As he began moving towards the source of the phantom whistle, however, all three of the misshapen creatures were distracted by the appearance of a squad of humans and half-orcs wearing the grey of Gurrom's Wheels, who burst onto the scene from the South. Although as yet unnoticed by the Follies, a squad of Baric's Pikemen had also arrived, and was making its way down the alley behind Tuggle's hidey-hole.Several of the Follies were visibly relieved when the Wheels showed up, clad in chainmail and armed with shortswords, and led by a whipcord-thin bald man with the bearing of a veteran. The Wheels all came to an abrupt halt, clearly trying to take in the chaos before them: three hideous giants, two of them wounded (and one of those laughing hysterically); a sinking ship moored to the dock; the trampled halfling; smashed barrel-staves and planking scattered everywhere; and the armed and armored Follies in the middle of it all.Their leader shouted, "Gurrom will kill us if we try!" -- although his words were all but lost in the noise of the battle. At the same time, three of the half-orcs in his squad charged the nearest giant. One of them set his sword just right and rammed it into the giant's chest up to the hilt -- and in response, the giant reared to its full height and swatted the guard's head off with a single blow.Following through, the giant staved in the next guard's sternum in a shower of bright blood -- and in the same movement, threw one leg out in a powerful mule kick that tore one of the third half-orc's arms clean off. The momentum carried the guard spinning to the ground, and he was dead from shock before his blood had finished spattering to the cobbles.In the same moment, the Follies at last felled the first giant, who continued laughing uproariously even as blood clogged his throat and gurgled messily from his wounds. As he crashed to the ground like an avalanche, Tal, Cupric and De'lea headed into the thick of things -- traipsing through his innards in the process -- and wound up among the remaining Wheels. This group had still not acted, and they were caught completely off-guard when the Wheel-slaying giant plowed into one of them, breaking bones and driving him back with one massive shoulder.</blockquote>

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