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Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)
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Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 185
While Krag and Korrin tell the next shift about their recent adventure, the Company flies on ahead, high above the giantish city. Dranko stays a bit lower to get a lay of the land. He notes right away that the buildings closest to the courtyard and statue are abandoned. Maybe Eigomic has ordered the area cleared? Or maybe it’s just giantish superstition?
Once into the town proper Dranko passes shops, homes, smithies, and a large yard where two dozen giantish children are playing a soccer-like game. After a few (long) blocks he sees Eigomic’s house – somewhat larger than a typical giantish dwelling, as big as a large human mansion. It is constructed of wood and stone, with a garden of colorful flowers in bloom despite the cold and snow. A giantish gardener tends to the lawn, pulling up weeds.
While most of the party settles on a rooftop across from Eigomic’s house, Dranko flies invisibly in through an open second floor window. The telepathic bonds have recently expired, so the rest of the Company can only pray that Dranko doesn’t get into too much trouble on his own.
Dranko finds himself in an enormous bedroom. The bed itself is twenty feet long and almost ten feet wide, covered with furs and cushions. Stout wooden furniture stands along the walls. A dire warg-skin rug covers the center of the stone floor, and several odd-looking masks adorn the walls.
He takes a few quick minutes to scour the room for keys but finds none. He does discover a hidden pile of silver pieces atop a towering wardrobe. Each piece is the size of a dinner plate, but with work Dranko manages to squeeze one into his Heward’s wide-mouth pouch.. Then he moves to the door and listens.
Satisfied that no one is directly on the other side, he strains against the door and opens it enough to slip through. He’s in a wide corridor (a narrow hallway for a giant) that extends for fifty more feet, past two more closed doors, before ending at the top of a stairwell. From the floor below him he hears someone knock outside on the front door. Quickly and quietly he flies to the stairway and goes down, emerging into a spacious living room. Eigomic is greeting two flustered giants at the door.
It must be Eigomic. The “Keeper” is much older than the other giants Dranko has seen, slightly taller and broader at the shoulders. He is dressed in loose leather covered with furs, one of which (Dranko notes with a mixture of fear and respect) is a blood fox pelt. His face is adorned with paint and he wears a feathered headpiece, looking every bit the part of the giantish shaman. Dranko has comprehend languages cast and listens in on the meeting from behind a large shelf.
“Eigomic!” cries one of the two giants. “You won’t believe what just happened! Krag and I were…”
The other giant elbows him.
“Oh, right. Keeper, may I call you Eigomic?”
“Of course!” booms the deep voice of the Keeper. “Why don’t you two come inside and sit down, and then tell me what this is all about. Come in. Sit!”
Eigomic ushers the two young giants into the living room and sits them down on a couch large enough to accommodate the entire Company. He himself rests is a huge armchair.
“Now,” says Eigomic, smiling. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
“Sure, sure,” says Krag. “Korrin and me were on duty guardin’ that statue in the courtyard. We were making our rounds like you always say, going in opposite directions and keeping our eyes out for stuff down below. Well you know nothin’ ever happens, but this time it did! All of a sudden there was a big bright flash down by the bottom of the statue, right when me and Korrin were meeting up on our rounds. We looked down for a few seconds, tryin’ to see what was up, but there wasn’t anything there.”
“Then there was a sound like someone talkin’ and all of a sudden there were stone walls all around me!” says Korrin. “It must have been magic, it appeared so all-of-a-sudden like. And it was so small, I couldn’t get any leverage to get out!”
“It didn’t get me though,” says Krag. “And that’s when I saw this really little guy standin’ down near the statue. I mean, this guy was tiny. Smaller than a kid, even. So I jumped down off the balcony to get ‘im, ‘cause I knew he wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“Yes,” agrees Eigomic. “And then what happened?”
“I was gonna get that little guy,” continues Krag. “I could see he had a big beard on his chin. But before I could get ‘im, another giant came flying over from across the courtyard and tackled me. We started wrestling.”
“A giant? Flying?” Eigomic asks.
“Yeah, flying! They had magic, like I said. There turned about to be a bunch of the little guys, and magic zappy stuff came out of ‘em, like they were tundra eyes.”
“Say, maybe they were tundra eyes?” suggests Korrin. “But shaped like little giants. Like a new spish…a new sheep-sees...”
“Species?” says Eigomic.
“Yeah! Like that!”
“What happened then?” Eigomic prompts.
“I finally started getting’ out of that stone trap,” says Korrin, “but when I got my fingers over the lip something stung ‘em real hard and I had to let go. A few seconds later I got my head up over the top, and another one of those little guys was standin’ there. He had funny tusky teeth like a boar, and he was holdin’ a… a… I don’t know, like a long strip of leather. I think it was the weapon he hit my fingers with. He shook the weapon at me, lettin’ me know that if I tried climbing out, he’d sting me good. So I dropped back down inside and started thinking about a clever escape plan.”
“And while he was in there,” Krag jumps in, “I was getting the upper hand with that flying giant,” says Krag. “I’m a better wrestler than him, and I would’ve beat him in a fair fight. But while we were fightin’, other little people showed up. There was this girl who kept hitting me with a spiky thing that really hurt! And I still might a’ won, except that then all of a sudden there was a really, really huge red lizard! It had wings, and smoke and fire was comin’ out of its mouth, and it had these… these TEETH that were HUGE! It glared at me like it was gonna eat me, so I thought quick and said ‘I surrender’ to buy myself some more time.”
Eigomic raises his eyebrows and leans back in his chair. Dranko suppresses a snicker. It’s clear to him that Eigomic thinks his two underlings are making at least some of this up.
“No, really!” says Korrin. “The big lizard poked its head over my stone box, like it was warning me not to try getting out again.”
“So then they asked me some questions, but I didn’t let on about anything important,” says Krag. “Another little guy – and I mean, this one was even littler than the other little one with the beard – he started pokin’ around at the bottom of the statue. Then he backed off and the bearded guy did some magicky thing, and the base of the statue and the ground around it got covered with glittery stuff. The teeny little guy went back and started poking the statue again. Then all of a sudden there was a big blast sound, and a bright light, and the teeny guy went flying backward and blood went all over. I figured he was a goner, but some of the other little people rushed over and did some more magicky stuff and healed all his wounds. It was amazing!”
“Ah, good,” says Eigomic with a smile. “I’m not at all surprised. Continue.”
Krag opens his mouth again, turns red, and mumbles something under his breath.
“Come on,” says Eigomic. “I need to hear what else these small folk did to the… statue.”
“Er. Well. After that they said that I’d better help them, or… well, there was that big red lizard, and I knew that if it ate me I couldn’t come back and tell you everything. So I did what they wanted.”
“And what was that?”
“I…er…well, I helped that other giant to, uh, well, you see, I didn’t really want to, but… I helped him turn one of those big rocks with glowing blue things inside. We turned it so the blue part was facing into the wall.”
Eigomic’s smile drops from his face like a heap of bricks. He leans forward and glowers at Krag, who shrinks back in his chair.
“You moved the rock,” Eigomic says through clenched teeth.
“Yeah. I uh… um… yeah. So, after that the teeny little guy went back and poked at the tower some more. Everyone was crowded around watchin’ him, except the big lizard, which was watchin’ me. The guy with the tusks was helpin’ him, I think. Then all of a sudden there was another big flash of light, and the teeny guy got knocked back again. There was more blood, and the rest of ‘em healed him up again.”
Eigomic’s face unclenches when he hears about Flicker’s second failure.
“I asked ‘em why they cared so much about the statue that they’d keep letting the littlest guy get hurt so much. The one with the beard said they didn’t want to cause any trouble for us giants. The just wanted to save the…uh… the… well, they used some fancy word that meant ‘the whole world.’”
“‘Universe,’” says Korrin. “I heard him say ‘universe.’”
“So,” continues Krag, “I told ‘em, ‘see, they must have the wrong statue. This one doesn’t have anything to do with the ‘universe.’” They agreed! The one with the beard said they must have picked the wrong town, and that they ought to leave. And they did. They all just kind of flew straight up and vanished into the sky. I went and helped Korrin get out of that stone box, and then when the next shift came, we told ‘em what happened and then ran straight here. And…er…uh, here we are.”
Eigomic sits back in his chair and closes his eyes, while Dranko watches from his hiding place. Krag and Korrin look nervously at each other, at Eigomic, at their feet.
“I will go observe the statue myself,” says Eigomic, coming suddenly to his feet. “I will write down a… no, I’m sure you cannot read. Listen carefully. I will list you a dozen names. You will collect those dozen giants, and instruct them to go to the statue straight away for emergency guard duty.”
He rattles off a dozen giantish names, after which Krag and Korrin can’t get out of there fast enough. Eigomic follows them out and then walks briskly down the street toward the courtyard, locking the door behind him with a large iron key. Dranko slips out the upstairs window and rejoins the others on the nearby roof to report.
“A dozen giants?” groans Grey Wolf. “That’s just great.”
“Hopefully it won’t matter,” says Aravis. “We don’t want to fight any guards. Once we get the key, there’s no point in us dallying to fight.”
“I still have some detect thoughts prepared,” says Morningstar. “I want to try to get Eigomic while he’s checking things out. Come on.”
The Company, still all either invisible or misty, flies high over the city again and alights on the roof of the courtyard buildings. As they expect, the first thing Eigomic does is command the two giants on guard to help him push the swiveled Divination Sink back into alignment. This allows Morningstar, directly above his head on the wooden rooftop, to fire off a detect thoughts.
Eigomic resists.
Morningstar tries twice more. Eigomic resists again, both times.
“Dammit!” thinks Morningstar. She motions to the others that her spells didn’t work. (Actually they worked fine on the younger giant. ‘Boy is this rock heavy,’ he’s thinking.)
Once the Divination Sink is back in place, Eigomic walks down to ground level and stands before the tower. Five giants come jogging up a few seconds later and the Keeper instructs them to stand close guard around the statue. Then he fishes out a large glassy lens from his furs, holds it up to his right eye and takes a good long look at the tower. The Company, hiding up on a nearby rooftop, ducks down low in case Eigomic suddenly turns to look in their direction. For a couple of minutes the Keeper looks only at the tower, up and down, peering through the lens. Evidently he is satisfied. He puts the lens back in his pocket and turns to the fourteen giants now assembled in the courtyard.
“You are all officially placed on statue guard duty. I want you down here, ground level. This shift will last eight hours, after which you will be relieved by a new group.”
The giants start grumbling but are quickly cowed to silence by a venomous look from the Keeper.
Leaving the new tower guard, Eigomic strides purposefully out of the courtyard and down the streets toward his home. The Mostly Invisible Flying Wind Brigade follows at height. Step, peering intently down, whispers to the others: “He’s evil.”
To the Company’s surprise Eigomic walks past his house and continues into the center of town, where he eventually stops at the door a large stone building guarded by military-looking giants. They open the door for him, and close it behind him.
Dranko looks for a chimney on the building; while human chimneys are too small for a half-orc to traverse, giantish ones make for easy “secret entrances.” The problem is, the chimney on this new building has smoke coming out of it. Undeterred, Dranko casts protection from elements: fire on himself, tells the others “I’ll be back soon” and flies over to the roof of the building. The rest of the party takes up a waiting position on a different nearby roof.
“What should we do while he’s in there?” asks Flicker.
“Listen for screams,” says Aravis with a sigh, “and count the ways things could go wrong.”
...to be continued...
While Krag and Korrin tell the next shift about their recent adventure, the Company flies on ahead, high above the giantish city. Dranko stays a bit lower to get a lay of the land. He notes right away that the buildings closest to the courtyard and statue are abandoned. Maybe Eigomic has ordered the area cleared? Or maybe it’s just giantish superstition?
Once into the town proper Dranko passes shops, homes, smithies, and a large yard where two dozen giantish children are playing a soccer-like game. After a few (long) blocks he sees Eigomic’s house – somewhat larger than a typical giantish dwelling, as big as a large human mansion. It is constructed of wood and stone, with a garden of colorful flowers in bloom despite the cold and snow. A giantish gardener tends to the lawn, pulling up weeds.
While most of the party settles on a rooftop across from Eigomic’s house, Dranko flies invisibly in through an open second floor window. The telepathic bonds have recently expired, so the rest of the Company can only pray that Dranko doesn’t get into too much trouble on his own.
Dranko finds himself in an enormous bedroom. The bed itself is twenty feet long and almost ten feet wide, covered with furs and cushions. Stout wooden furniture stands along the walls. A dire warg-skin rug covers the center of the stone floor, and several odd-looking masks adorn the walls.
He takes a few quick minutes to scour the room for keys but finds none. He does discover a hidden pile of silver pieces atop a towering wardrobe. Each piece is the size of a dinner plate, but with work Dranko manages to squeeze one into his Heward’s wide-mouth pouch.. Then he moves to the door and listens.
Satisfied that no one is directly on the other side, he strains against the door and opens it enough to slip through. He’s in a wide corridor (a narrow hallway for a giant) that extends for fifty more feet, past two more closed doors, before ending at the top of a stairwell. From the floor below him he hears someone knock outside on the front door. Quickly and quietly he flies to the stairway and goes down, emerging into a spacious living room. Eigomic is greeting two flustered giants at the door.
It must be Eigomic. The “Keeper” is much older than the other giants Dranko has seen, slightly taller and broader at the shoulders. He is dressed in loose leather covered with furs, one of which (Dranko notes with a mixture of fear and respect) is a blood fox pelt. His face is adorned with paint and he wears a feathered headpiece, looking every bit the part of the giantish shaman. Dranko has comprehend languages cast and listens in on the meeting from behind a large shelf.
“Eigomic!” cries one of the two giants. “You won’t believe what just happened! Krag and I were…”
The other giant elbows him.
“Oh, right. Keeper, may I call you Eigomic?”
“Of course!” booms the deep voice of the Keeper. “Why don’t you two come inside and sit down, and then tell me what this is all about. Come in. Sit!”
Eigomic ushers the two young giants into the living room and sits them down on a couch large enough to accommodate the entire Company. He himself rests is a huge armchair.
“Now,” says Eigomic, smiling. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
“Sure, sure,” says Krag. “Korrin and me were on duty guardin’ that statue in the courtyard. We were making our rounds like you always say, going in opposite directions and keeping our eyes out for stuff down below. Well you know nothin’ ever happens, but this time it did! All of a sudden there was a big bright flash down by the bottom of the statue, right when me and Korrin were meeting up on our rounds. We looked down for a few seconds, tryin’ to see what was up, but there wasn’t anything there.”
“Then there was a sound like someone talkin’ and all of a sudden there were stone walls all around me!” says Korrin. “It must have been magic, it appeared so all-of-a-sudden like. And it was so small, I couldn’t get any leverage to get out!”
“It didn’t get me though,” says Krag. “And that’s when I saw this really little guy standin’ down near the statue. I mean, this guy was tiny. Smaller than a kid, even. So I jumped down off the balcony to get ‘im, ‘cause I knew he wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“Yes,” agrees Eigomic. “And then what happened?”
“I was gonna get that little guy,” continues Krag. “I could see he had a big beard on his chin. But before I could get ‘im, another giant came flying over from across the courtyard and tackled me. We started wrestling.”
“A giant? Flying?” Eigomic asks.
“Yeah, flying! They had magic, like I said. There turned about to be a bunch of the little guys, and magic zappy stuff came out of ‘em, like they were tundra eyes.”
“Say, maybe they were tundra eyes?” suggests Korrin. “But shaped like little giants. Like a new spish…a new sheep-sees...”
“Species?” says Eigomic.
“Yeah! Like that!”
“What happened then?” Eigomic prompts.
“I finally started getting’ out of that stone trap,” says Korrin, “but when I got my fingers over the lip something stung ‘em real hard and I had to let go. A few seconds later I got my head up over the top, and another one of those little guys was standin’ there. He had funny tusky teeth like a boar, and he was holdin’ a… a… I don’t know, like a long strip of leather. I think it was the weapon he hit my fingers with. He shook the weapon at me, lettin’ me know that if I tried climbing out, he’d sting me good. So I dropped back down inside and started thinking about a clever escape plan.”
“And while he was in there,” Krag jumps in, “I was getting the upper hand with that flying giant,” says Krag. “I’m a better wrestler than him, and I would’ve beat him in a fair fight. But while we were fightin’, other little people showed up. There was this girl who kept hitting me with a spiky thing that really hurt! And I still might a’ won, except that then all of a sudden there was a really, really huge red lizard! It had wings, and smoke and fire was comin’ out of its mouth, and it had these… these TEETH that were HUGE! It glared at me like it was gonna eat me, so I thought quick and said ‘I surrender’ to buy myself some more time.”
Eigomic raises his eyebrows and leans back in his chair. Dranko suppresses a snicker. It’s clear to him that Eigomic thinks his two underlings are making at least some of this up.
“No, really!” says Korrin. “The big lizard poked its head over my stone box, like it was warning me not to try getting out again.”
“So then they asked me some questions, but I didn’t let on about anything important,” says Krag. “Another little guy – and I mean, this one was even littler than the other little one with the beard – he started pokin’ around at the bottom of the statue. Then he backed off and the bearded guy did some magicky thing, and the base of the statue and the ground around it got covered with glittery stuff. The teeny little guy went back and started poking the statue again. Then all of a sudden there was a big blast sound, and a bright light, and the teeny guy went flying backward and blood went all over. I figured he was a goner, but some of the other little people rushed over and did some more magicky stuff and healed all his wounds. It was amazing!”
“Ah, good,” says Eigomic with a smile. “I’m not at all surprised. Continue.”
Krag opens his mouth again, turns red, and mumbles something under his breath.
“Come on,” says Eigomic. “I need to hear what else these small folk did to the… statue.”
“Er. Well. After that they said that I’d better help them, or… well, there was that big red lizard, and I knew that if it ate me I couldn’t come back and tell you everything. So I did what they wanted.”
“And what was that?”
“I…er…well, I helped that other giant to, uh, well, you see, I didn’t really want to, but… I helped him turn one of those big rocks with glowing blue things inside. We turned it so the blue part was facing into the wall.”
Eigomic’s smile drops from his face like a heap of bricks. He leans forward and glowers at Krag, who shrinks back in his chair.
“You moved the rock,” Eigomic says through clenched teeth.
“Yeah. I uh… um… yeah. So, after that the teeny little guy went back and poked at the tower some more. Everyone was crowded around watchin’ him, except the big lizard, which was watchin’ me. The guy with the tusks was helpin’ him, I think. Then all of a sudden there was another big flash of light, and the teeny guy got knocked back again. There was more blood, and the rest of ‘em healed him up again.”
Eigomic’s face unclenches when he hears about Flicker’s second failure.
“I asked ‘em why they cared so much about the statue that they’d keep letting the littlest guy get hurt so much. The one with the beard said they didn’t want to cause any trouble for us giants. The just wanted to save the…uh… the… well, they used some fancy word that meant ‘the whole world.’”
“‘Universe,’” says Korrin. “I heard him say ‘universe.’”
“So,” continues Krag, “I told ‘em, ‘see, they must have the wrong statue. This one doesn’t have anything to do with the ‘universe.’” They agreed! The one with the beard said they must have picked the wrong town, and that they ought to leave. And they did. They all just kind of flew straight up and vanished into the sky. I went and helped Korrin get out of that stone box, and then when the next shift came, we told ‘em what happened and then ran straight here. And…er…uh, here we are.”
Eigomic sits back in his chair and closes his eyes, while Dranko watches from his hiding place. Krag and Korrin look nervously at each other, at Eigomic, at their feet.
“I will go observe the statue myself,” says Eigomic, coming suddenly to his feet. “I will write down a… no, I’m sure you cannot read. Listen carefully. I will list you a dozen names. You will collect those dozen giants, and instruct them to go to the statue straight away for emergency guard duty.”
He rattles off a dozen giantish names, after which Krag and Korrin can’t get out of there fast enough. Eigomic follows them out and then walks briskly down the street toward the courtyard, locking the door behind him with a large iron key. Dranko slips out the upstairs window and rejoins the others on the nearby roof to report.
“A dozen giants?” groans Grey Wolf. “That’s just great.”
“Hopefully it won’t matter,” says Aravis. “We don’t want to fight any guards. Once we get the key, there’s no point in us dallying to fight.”
“I still have some detect thoughts prepared,” says Morningstar. “I want to try to get Eigomic while he’s checking things out. Come on.”
The Company, still all either invisible or misty, flies high over the city again and alights on the roof of the courtyard buildings. As they expect, the first thing Eigomic does is command the two giants on guard to help him push the swiveled Divination Sink back into alignment. This allows Morningstar, directly above his head on the wooden rooftop, to fire off a detect thoughts.
Eigomic resists.
Morningstar tries twice more. Eigomic resists again, both times.
“Dammit!” thinks Morningstar. She motions to the others that her spells didn’t work. (Actually they worked fine on the younger giant. ‘Boy is this rock heavy,’ he’s thinking.)
Once the Divination Sink is back in place, Eigomic walks down to ground level and stands before the tower. Five giants come jogging up a few seconds later and the Keeper instructs them to stand close guard around the statue. Then he fishes out a large glassy lens from his furs, holds it up to his right eye and takes a good long look at the tower. The Company, hiding up on a nearby rooftop, ducks down low in case Eigomic suddenly turns to look in their direction. For a couple of minutes the Keeper looks only at the tower, up and down, peering through the lens. Evidently he is satisfied. He puts the lens back in his pocket and turns to the fourteen giants now assembled in the courtyard.
“You are all officially placed on statue guard duty. I want you down here, ground level. This shift will last eight hours, after which you will be relieved by a new group.”
The giants start grumbling but are quickly cowed to silence by a venomous look from the Keeper.
Leaving the new tower guard, Eigomic strides purposefully out of the courtyard and down the streets toward his home. The Mostly Invisible Flying Wind Brigade follows at height. Step, peering intently down, whispers to the others: “He’s evil.”
To the Company’s surprise Eigomic walks past his house and continues into the center of town, where he eventually stops at the door a large stone building guarded by military-looking giants. They open the door for him, and close it behind him.
Dranko looks for a chimney on the building; while human chimneys are too small for a half-orc to traverse, giantish ones make for easy “secret entrances.” The problem is, the chimney on this new building has smoke coming out of it. Undeterred, Dranko casts protection from elements: fire on himself, tells the others “I’ll be back soon” and flies over to the roof of the building. The rest of the party takes up a waiting position on a different nearby roof.
“What should we do while he’s in there?” asks Flicker.
“Listen for screams,” says Aravis with a sigh, “and count the ways things could go wrong.”
...to be continued...
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