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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emperor Valerian" data-source="post: 2110950" data-attributes="member: 15043">The End of the Wang LiangFor a split second, there was shocked silence within the hut, the warriors looking skeptically at Nayu, even as the shaman stuttered in disbelief at the bold words of the young “little person.”“You do not understand still, I see,” Nayu said calmly.  Patience... let ice run through your veins.  That will move them just as much as your words.  The time for mere words has past...  It will be their choice.  They can choose peace... or force...  “There are forty thousand armed ‘little people,’” Nayu raised his arms and quoted the last two words, “on their way here, and they’ll have no qualms about destroying all of you.”  He then gave an icy smile, “Or, as I should say, those of you left alive after I am done.”“Ha!” the shaman forced a laugh, and pointed at Nayu.  “You annoy me!  You little bug!  You words no scare us!”  “Why do you kill the villagers?” Nayu heard Felonca ask hurriedly.  Her eyes flashed between him and the shaman, and he could read a mix of confusion, even fear in their depths.  Gently, he touched her shoulder.  Trust me, Felonca...  they’ll cave if we talk mean.  And if they don’t cave... well... ...I don’t make idle threats.“Little woman has questions!  Me like, like more than angry little man,” the shaman laughed.  “As you no live long, I speak.  Little people,” the shaman began, his voice growing more and more in grandeur and expression, “before my grandfather’s grandfather’s time, drove us from mountain home.  We run,” he stood, theatrical fire in his eyes, his passion now spreading to the surrounding warriors, “We hide!  We flee little people!  No more!  This our home!  We get vengeance!”Ah... he feels he needs to restore his position, Nayu thought coldly, reading through the thunderous shouts that ended the shaman’s cry.   He feels threatened already......good.  He leans towards force... perhaps it can be changed to force only against him...“If you agree to leave the little people alone, we can make sure you get to go back to your ancestral homes,” Nayu spoke.  It can be arranged, after Quan-Shi deposes the governor of Dai...  “You have a simple choice, shaman.  Your people can leave the village of humans alone, and have a chance to return to your ancestral homes, or death.”  Keep strong...“I ask again, why we listen you?” the shaman snapped, growing plainly annoyed.  “Life Goddess hungry.  You sacrifices, even if you weaklings!”“If little people are such weaklings, how did they drive such ‘mighty’ creatures from their homes, great shaman?” Nayu snorted, crossing his arms.  Come on...“WANG LIANG HAVE LEARNED!” the shaman was on his feet again, roaring as his warriors echoed the cry of fury.  “WE SHALL CRUSH THE LITTLE PEOPLE!” The shaman’s voice dropped to a furious whisper as he lumbered forward, till his face was inches from Nayu’s.  “Long we watch, long we wait, and now we start getting revenge!  More little people feed Life Goddess, more power she give!”  He stopped, then poked an enormous finger lightly into Nayu’s skull.  “You weaklings help us grow strong.  We sacrifice you now.”  The great giant warriors began to lumber forward, hands outstretched as the shaman confidently turned back towards his dais.And Nayu smiled.  I’ve got you now!“Wait, great shaman!” he called.  “Surely, if we little people are such a miniscule threat, a great Wang Liang like yourself would be willing to fight me, to decide the fate of your village!  Or,” the sorcerer added another snort, “are you too chicken, too afraid a little person would beat you?”The shaman slowly turned back around, his face filled with fury at the little human who would not cease antagonizing him.  For several seconds, the shaman sputtered as Nayu smiled. If he orders me to die, he’ll lose face... he’ll imply that he was afraid of me.  And I can beat him, in a contest of power...You want to decide this by force, shaman.  Then it will be force against you.“I fight you!” the shaman finally snapped.  “But your friends get near Goddesss now!  Won’t walk so far after you die!”“No, no no,” Nayu grinned, waving a finger.  “They wait beside your warriors, as we fight one on one, no interference.  I win, you and your village will leave the little people alone, until we can arrange for you to return home.  You win, my friends die, and you may continue as you wish.”“What keep me from having warriors dispatch you like dog?” the shaman tried his own poor attempt at goading.  Nayu smiled, knowing his verbal superiority.“Because if you try to backstab me, I will kill this entire village,” the sorcerer replied simply.  Even while the shaman laughed at the bravery of the ‘little person,’ Nayu saw a few of the warriors winced at the sorcerer’s deadly monotone.Nayu must be crazy! Felonca thought to herself as the sorcerer and the shaman silently prepared themselves a few minutes later.  She’d said as much to him after he issued his open challenge to the creature easily twice his height and four times his weight.  She’d even pointed out that as a shaman, he’d likely be able to use magic almost as well as Nayu.  He grinned.“I know,” he had said, “and I don’t care.  I have him.  You three,” she remembered him pointing to herself, Meiji and Yari Ai, “watch the other warriors.  If they attempt to betray this bit of trust... take them out.”“I don’t trust them, Nayu,” she remembered herself saying.  “I think they might...”“If they do,” Meiji had said, “then we’ll do as Nayu said, and take out this entire damn village!”Tough talk, she thought.  Scare them into not doing something they probably would want to do if the battle turned bad.  Nayu wouldn’t do such a thing...So now the three stood in a small clump, only a part of the great ring of Wang Liang men, women, and children in the center of their village, surrounding the two combatants, forming a great circle over seventy feet wide.  In the middle, some sixty feet apart, stood Nayu and the shaman.The priest held in his massive grasp a huge lantang, its great blades curved, shining in the sun.  Rough hides covered his massive frame, and the silver trinkets and beads in his hair jingled as he shifted, his face twisted in a smile of mockery.  Despite his religious duty, the shaman refused to even pray to his Goddess of Life... little people were no such threat to require her intervention.On the opposite end, the far end from Felonca, Nayu merely stood.  The tall sorcerer’s robes flapped lightly in the small breeze, as his morningstar remained strapped to his hip.  His face bore no look of mockery... just a simple, unnerving look of calm on his face.“Look at little person!  He so scared, his knees no shake!” the shaman catcalled.  At Nayu’s lack of response, the shaman continued, shaking his meaty fist at his smaller opponent.  “I no need sweat in this fight!  I make him fly with pinkie finger!”She saw Nayu calmly reached into his pouch in reply, and began checking the two healing potions Felonca had given him.  The shaman saw the insult clearly, and with a growl, almost a giggle, the beast surged towards the smaller sorcerer.For a second Felonca’s heart stopped, as Nayu calmly, almost slowly, placed the last of the potions back into its place on his belt, and raised his hands.  From their fingers a crackling bluish-black energy seemed to form, before sweeping forward, enveloping the cleric.  The rogue’s mind expected the sharp clap of thunder to follow the bolt, but instead she saw the shaman seem to slump slightly in his walk, his skin slightly more wrinkled, as if energy had been sucked out of him.  (Enervation... shaman lost four levels)The shaman continued to thunder forward, raising his lantang momentarily above his head.  Felonca then suddenly felt the ground literally shake as six other Wang Liang... the two lesser shamans and four of the warriors, charge into the ring, directly for Nayu.“Flaming Ancestral Heads!” Felonca cursed, a snap echoing in her ears as she flicked her warfans open and launched herself towards the nearest of the intervening beasts... one of the warriors, his lantang raised high, his eyes focused on the sorcerer to his front, not the flying blur of black to his rear...The warfan strike to the spinal cord was one that Felonca had only practiced infrequently at the Academy... rarely was it expected one’s opponent would leave himself so vulnerable.  The rogue, however, knew an opportunity when she saw one, and with a sickening mix of cracking bones and slurps of destroyed flesh, the giant Wang Liang tumbled to the ground paralyzed.  When she spun her second warfan around, she cleanly ripped apart his throat...Just in time to hear the massive explosion she’d been expecting, as four miniature columns of fire erupted in the midst of the battlefield.  One exploded underneath the charging shaman, two each between a lesser shaman and a warrior, and the third underneath the final warrior.She spun around, just in time to see the shaman’s thundering charge finally reach the sorcerer.  The huge lantang whistled in the air through its arc, catching the sorcerer in the leg and sending him reeling.NAYU!  Without a conscious thought, entirely governed by training, Felonca’s hands found her longbow, and drew the weapon with deadly precision.  Her notched arrow was poised for the back of the shaman’s head, when she heard Nayu’s voice yelling.“Kill the warriors!”For a second she hesitated, until she saw the stumbling sorcerer regain his footing and dance away from the slower shaman, out of the reach of his massive weapon.  Quickly, she spun around, and loosed her shot on another of the charging warriors.  The arrow caught him just underneath his jaw, and he too, tumbled to the ground in death.Another flash of light erupted in the field, bluish white in power and followed by a monstrous thunderclap.  When Felonca’s sight recovered, she saw all the warriors and shaman’s were down on the ground.  Meiji and Yari Ai, bloody from battle, stood over one each, while all the others not touched by Felonca laid prone, smoke and burns covering their bodies.Then Felonca noticed one of the warriors was moving... more shuddering.  His meaty paws covered his head, as his hides smoldered from the fire and electricity that had coursed through his body.  “No hurt!  No hurt!” he whimpered in Common, as the other Wang Liang around began to scream and wail in terror at what they had just witnessed.  Their village’s four strongest warriors, as well as all their village shamans, cut down by a single, little man, and his three allies.“We won’t hurt you!” Felonca called to the crowd, desperately trying to calm them.  If they panic, they might try to mob us... or run away, only to take vengeance on the human village later!  We need to calm them down!  Explain to them that we’ll get them to their...Felonca’s thoughts were interrupted by a horrible, sickening cry close by.  She spun around to see Nayu, one hand stretched out towards the Wang Liang already fleeing towards their homes.  The other hand clutched his now bloody morningstar, as he loomed over the crushed skull of the whimpering warrior.“Nayu! What are you-“ she screamed, before a telltale bead of power flashed from his hand, and into the farthest of the huts.  An explosion blew three of the small Wang Liang out of the building, their bodies mutilated by the blast.  Felonca stared in shock and horror at the burning house, then at Nayu.He... he...Another explosion, another hut gone, its occupants crawling on the ground, screaming.“Nayu!  Stop it!” Felonca grabbed his shoulder, spinning him around.  “They are innocents!  Those are the women and children!  They did nothing on the raids!  They didn’t hurt anyone!  You can’t kill them!”“So you want those little Wang Liang to grow up, filled with anger, only to come back here and start harassing the human village again!  They cannot be trusted, Felonca!  They will betray our trust again!” the sorcerer snarled, shaking his shoulder from her grasp.  “They will never hurt anyone ever again!”“But Nayu!  Meiji!  Meiji, talk some sense into...”Felonca turned to see her cousin raising his bow upwards, a flaming arrow already notched.  As she looked on in horror, he let loose, and the flames left an arc of red before hitting the roof of yet another hut, quickly setting it ablaze as the Wang Liang inside cried out in pain and terror.Felonca looked on numbly, even as Yari Ai tried desperately to get Nayu and Meiji to stop the destruction.  How... why?  How could he do this... do something so...dark...so...  For a moment, she started over to where Yari Ai and Nayu were yelling at each other, just after the sorcerer had torched the sixth hut.Then she heard the other noises... more shouts more yells.  She turned slowly, and her heart sank as she saw ten of the villagers from the human village running towards the fleeing Wang Liang, vengeance in their eyes, plows in their hands.  Why... the rogue thought numbly, her stomach roiling as the human villagers beat some of the littler Wang Liangs to a pulp as they tried to flee, while others were chased back into the firestorm that was once the giant village.  Some of the humans ran up to Nayu, yelling their thanks, before chasing down more Wang Liang.  Felonca leaned over, and found herself starting to retch.  Why?  Why kill the innocents?  A few moments later, the rogue felt a hand touch her shoulder.“Felonca.”The rogue turned slowly, and saw Yari Ai’s sad face looking into her eyes.  She feels the same, at least.  They were innocents.  They didn’t have to die!“Come... even if they...” the young woman started, before stopping, and staring at the flames.  Out of fiery explosions, Nayu was now blasting the Wang Liant running around in terror with whitish bolts of magic, Meiji by his side, shooting down whichever ones he could with arrows.  More people from the village had arrived, and were now running into the burnt houses, rampaging, running amok.“We can go cleanse the evil of their sacrificial area,” Yari Ai finally finished the thought.  “It... it will get us both away from this, and help clean this place.”One rather grim hour later, as Yari Ai was finishing the last of her prayers to cover the evil ice that marked where the Wang Liang performed their sacrifices, Felonca heard footsteps behind.  Turning slowly, she saw Nayu’s brown eyes looking back at her.  Unlike the human villagers, there was no cheer.  No joy.  Neither was their sadness, nor regret.“This place is now clean.  The villagers won’t have to worry about giants kidnapping their children anymore,” he said quietly.  “These beasts will never hurt the villagers again."At what cost? Felonca wanted to reply, frightened in her heart at what her friends had done that day...= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Yes... Nayu torched an entire village of giants, after they betrayed him.  And yes, his alignment did change after this, from CG to CN with possible evil tendencies... considering that out of a population of maybe 70 folks, only 8 or 9 were the warriors causing the raids and the sacrifices.  Though in a way, this works somewhat for the better.  CN is closer to how the player wants to play Nayu, and as I told him, “Nayu is your character.”  Felonca’s player was less than pleased, however.The giant shaman was a Wang Liang from the Oriental Adventures book with 5 levels of cleric, mostly concentrated on buffing spells.  When Nayu launched enervation, his buffing abilities mostly went kaput, as he found four of his class levels suddenly ripped away.  After that, it was a matter of party attacks from the rear, and Nayu spellscupting a few attacks before the six transgressors and their shaman leader were done for.One thing remains left for the party... to find Master Ling, before reporting back to the army...</blockquote>

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