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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lars Frehse" data-source="post: 714257" data-attributes="member: 1674">Southwards- part 2The farm itself was a small wooden house that needed a new coat of paint which was dwarved by a giant barn which was easily four stories high and as big as any mansion in Mithril. They arrived there on Septimo's cart, and he told them that the farmer who had been killed had lived there alone, since his father had only died last year and since he had been busy, he had had no time to find a wife and start a family himself."At least", Septimo said with his booming voice, his initial shyness gone, as they approached the buildings on a small road that cut through wheat fields left and right:" this means that he left no widow or orphans behind.""Could you stop, please?", Trepat asked, and after the farmer had pulled the reins, he jumped down. There, in the cracked mud of a dried out irrigation ditch, he saw several paw-prints. He thrust his hand into the mud, and seeing that it was still wet under the dried out surface, he concluded that the paw prints were most likely not older than a few hours.He told his friends, who all jumped down from the cart as well, and now Ben sniffed the air. He was wearing the wolf-skull that they had taken from the Cultists. It maginified his sense of smell manyfold, and now, he scented the smell of wolf-rats coming from the barn."They are in there", he said, and cautiously they walked up to the hill-sized structure. There was a huge set of double doors in it's front, big enough to allow a cart with stacks of hay to drive in and out, and in one of the huge gates, there was a smaller, mansized door. This door was standing ajar, and the friends had to strain their eyes to make out details in the dark interior while they were still being bathed by the gleaming afternoon sun in the open yard.When they were done casting their preparating spells, protecting Niklas with an armor of invisible energy and creating a shield of force in front of Torn, Ben said: " And remember: If there are horserat-welps, don't kill them. The villagers could possibly tame them."Torn walked in first. The only light in here was the one solid shaft that was falling through the doorway in his back. Particles of dust were dancing excitedly in it, freshly disturbed by the disturbance caused by the movement of the massive half orc and the air smelled of dry hay and rats.To his left and right, he was flanked by stacks of hay, and now he saw there were more stacks of hay ahead of him, towering as high as the roof of the barn towards the end of the structure. Seeing no imminent danger, he turned to wave in his friends, as suddenly, from the stacks at his sides, two large creatures dropped at him, catching him unaware.The horserats were at him, and for as they pounced on him, attempting to bury him beneath him, he almost fainted from the overpowering smell coming out of their mouths, which were far open, ready to bury the mighty rodent teeth into his flesh. But he managed to fend them off and move farther into the barn, giving his friends an opening to come in and help.A fierce battle ensued and from within the depths of the barn, the other three rats approached and joined the battle. Ultimately, however, their size and wild fierceness was no match for the well trained and coordinated heroes. By now, they were so used to fighting at each other’s side that they were able to intuitively know what the others would do and act accordingly.After a while, the barn was dead again, and the four humanoids and Ben in his giantspiderform stood infront of the dead corpses of the horserats. They were wounded where the giant rodents had hit them with tooth or claw, but it was nothing that couldn’t be healed by Jan and Ben.Once cured, they searched the barn, and sure enough, there was a tunnel leading into a huge stack of hay. There, in utter darkness, protected by the hay like a natural cave was protected by the motherrock, there was a hollow portion, just high enough for Ben to stand in, and there, about the size of wolf-puppiess, there were eight horserat babies, their eyes still closed. Ben made soothing noises and soon they were crawling towards him as good as they could, inhaling the strange, unknown smell.Ben picked one up, cradling it in his arm while making cooing noises, and then brought it outside. There, he handed it to Trepat who brought it out to the cart where he covered the puppie with straw, and soon they had loaded all of them onto the cart.Back in the village, after having gotten some goat milk to nurse the helpless horserat babies, he talked to the local teamster, who was also experienced at breeding rats. After talking about the intricacies of raising and taming horserats, the man was pretty certain that he could tame those orphaned horserats as well. After all, they could turn out to be very useful for the village: Not only were they powerful beasts of burden, who, like rats could feed on anything, they were even powerful enough to be used to defend the village.For three days, Ben instructed the teamster and the local villagers, and in this time, they were treated like royal guests- after all, the villagers were unaware that the horserat plague had been brought upon them by their very guests, and they only saw their selfless protectors in them.Then, when Ben was sure that the puppies would be fine and grow into domesticated horserats, they moved on to Denev’s Aquifer, where they got a boat from local vigilantes. The rangers promised to make sure that their mounts would be returned to lave, with the exception of the horserat, which just about fit into the boat with themand from which Ben wouldn’t part at no cost.The crossing of the lake itself merely took them a few days- although they weren’t used to handling a boat themselves, the weather was pleasant with a steady, slight breeze in their back, letting them get ahead easily, if a bit clumsily.The weather was still warm and sunny when they reached the village of Trela, and they were welcomed by a lot of the villagers. Some of the people of Trela still remembered how they had fought the Asaathi over a year ago, but most of them recognized them because of the now legendary elder rod duel, in which both Jan and Torn broke down at the same moment, resulting in the first time ever that there had been a tie in the final match of this contest.Amidst good cheer they met the new village priestess and the new village wizard (after all, the old ones had been killed by the party a year before) and after a night in which the villagers many stories of their adventures up north, they restocked their provisions and took their little boat to the Eni, sailing on south.Once on the river, the pleasant landscape was substituted by the hostile and depressing badlands of the bloodsteppes to their right and the majestic, and just as hostile, Kelders to their left. Their good cheer left them during the day, and around noon, Trepat noticed what appeared to be a small crows among the peaks of the kelders, which almost looked as if they were slowly moving south, paralell to the course of their own little boat.He pointed it out to his friends, and Ben told them, what the elf was already thinking: „I have never heard of flocks of crows flying betwen such high mountains- after all, there should hardly be enough food for them. And the way they slowly move southwards with us is highly unusual as well... This is definetly not natural“.</blockquote>

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