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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tilmamir" data-source="post: 3328979" data-attributes="member: 31628">Randall tells stories of his adventures of late.The "Battle of Bastion" seemed to be of interest to the party, so he started there:"I had been with the Human troops for four years. There were four of us in my tent: two men - Callithian and Rogan, a dwarf - Trailan, and myself. We had been guiding the last of the people who wanted to move through the pass through the fortress, but there had been no one left for almost a year. We had been scouting the northern lands for signs of the enemy.A month before the battle, a large number of human troops made organized attacks on the lizard men. It was intended to provoke them to all attack at once. It worked. We saw them massing on the plain. Their attack was emminant.Bastion was a fortified pass. Large granite stones made a gated barrier wall to the north and south in the pass. In the middle, a terraced mount, with a ramp to each next level up. On the top, a great tree - ageless and pure. The fortress was massive, and large enough between the great walls to hold thousands of people... or lizard men.For that was the idea. The fortress was empty of men. Only a few of us held the gates and offered resistance at the gates up the mound. The fortress walls had been packed with alchemists fire. One could smell the sulphur reeking out of every room and hole in the wall.Three nights before the lizard men attacked, Rogan sprained his knee, and left the fortress. The next day, another elven guide - Deter, and a fighter named Fenix joined Trailan, Cal and I in attacking the enemy's great battering ram. We burned it with enough alchemists fire to make it unextinguishable, and made it back to the fortress safely.When night was falling on the great day, we heard the lizard men give a great hiss and begin moving southward toward us. The next morning, they were at the gates, pounding and battering with trees and axes. The humans gave a great pretense of a large force raining arrows on them (quite uneffectively I might add) and dumping boiling oil down the gate ramp.As the gates were breaking, the remaining forces left the keep and barred the souther Gates from the outside. Bastion was a large cage, set to burn. A mage at the top of the mound, protected by my partners and I, waited until the Fortress was full of lizard-men. The sound was deafening, the smell coming from their pine torches and their lizard bodies was rank, and the ground and lower terraces crawled with their scaly bodies. Finally, the last gate at the top of the mound broke. The mage set up a barrier around himself, and began chanting some spell. The air itself became hot. He yelled for us to leave NOW, so we headded for our escape tunnel. We made it, our retreat covered with a magical mist, but not unharmed. Fenix was wounded. We carried her as far as we could, when the Fortress exploded. That was the last time, in four hundred years, that I saw sunlight. From what I hear, that was the blow to the lizard-men that turned the tide of battle, and how Lord Bastion came to be the first king of the Human lands.As for us, we were not out of the tunnels, as we were supposed to be. In fact, the tunnels themselves collapsed. Blessed Eli, we were perhaps a hundred feet lower than before, in a passage no one knew existed, but alive. In the process of searching for a way back to the surface, we came across one of the beasts from the depths of the world. I saw two companions turn to stone before I saw those large red eyes and turned to stone myself."Randall continues the story of how he came for be restored in the goblin stronghold, made it out to the human lands, and eventually through Antioch, Malta, Tarsus, The Island, and Alderweg. He is careful to make the stories flow from one to the other, glossing over the times spent in Alderweg as landlord - and using his landlord 'duties' as cover for some of the times he does not want to cover in public.[OOC Missing are any reference to his time travels. Keth Anar and the High Temple episodes are likewise missing from his stories. ]Randall is, however hard he tries not to be, distracted by Delianir. Aware that she is probably there to extract these stories and get a feel for his character, he is open and honest about his exploits that he shares. If he feels she is actually interested in him, not just a probe to get the queen's answers, he gets a little bit toung-tied when he looks in her direction. [It has been fifty of his years since he been 'at home' with elves, and not busy with 'war'] He makes a point of showing respect for all peoples, save the lizard men. But even with them, though, his story about their valley is sympathetic to their having probably been misled into war. Causing the blight is some other evil force - perhaps from Eire itself if 'Randall's hunch is correct'."D-Delianir, ummm, may I presume that you have some influence with the queen? Could you tell me what we should expect tomorrow at our state visit? Uuuhh, actually, perhaps we could take a walk tonight, while my fellow delegation members sleep, and discuss ... well anything? I have been away soo long."[did Randall detect a snikker from the other elves at the table at this poor attempt of getting a date?]</blockquote>

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