Rabelais said:
Welcome to the Boards Rath... LB should be along in the next day or so to roll out the next episode
Sooner, even!
Wow, lots of feedback today. Thanks to everyone who posted! And I'll echo Rabelais's greeting to rathlighthands, welcome aboard.
wolff96 said:
And LB... I'd like to second the call for a non-gimped caster.
I don't know what it is about me and mages. Must be a corollary to my "rule" about clerics.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
Rabelais said:
I wonder where the elf got off to?
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about him.
Ciaran said:
You guys make it sound like this gang will get the opportunity to replace their losses. What you don't understand is that this isn't high fantasy, this is horror. The Doomed Bastards really are doomed.
Rats, somebody saw through my plan... it's all just a buildup to a TPK!
* * * * *
Chapter 16
AFTERMATH
Varo, having stabilized Tiros with a charge from his
wand of cure light wounds, rushed over to Navev. But one look was enough to tell that it was too late.
Metal clattered on stone as Dar’s breastplate, already half-dissolved from the green slime, fell to the ground. The fighter tore off his leather vest and the shirt beneath, throwing them to the ground a few feet away. He checked himself quickly for any more signs of the deadly substance, then turned to Navev and Varo. Tiros groaned, but did not stir; Varo’s healing magic had saved his life, but it hadn’t been enough to restore him to consciousness.
Varo lifted the dead warlock from the spike, and laid him out on a bare patch of ground. He looked up at Dar. The fighter looked grim; his entire left cheek was a bloody ruin, and blood continued to drip down his face to streak his bare torso. Varo lifted his healing wand.
“Help the marshal first,” Dar growled. “If anything heard that battle, and comes to investigate, we’ll need his sword.”
The fighter came forward to stand over the dead warlock. “I swear, Sobol, you’re going to pay,” he snarled.
He turned to see Varo helping a still-groggy Tiros to a sitting position. “What happened?” the marshal asked. He saw Navev and the barbarian, and his expression darkened.
“You got sucker punched, and we’re down to three, now,” Dar said, as he walked over to where he’d dropped his sword, earlier, in his frantic efforts to get out of his armor. He got his pack and shield, checking both for any signs of the green slime. His tunic and leather vest had not appeared tainted at first, but when he prodded them, he saw that a spreading green patch had appeared and was rapidly growing through both garments.
“Wonderful,” the fighter said. “It just gets better and better, in this place.” His jaw throbbed, and he felt a bit lightheaded—probably from the blood he’d lost.
“We need to find a place to rest, now,” Varo said, coming over to Dar. He touched his wand to the fighter’s cheek, stopping the bleeding as a new layer of pink flesh formed over the self-inflicted injury. “Tiros can barely walk, and the gods know how many diseases and poisons are waltzing around in your bloodstream. And I would strongly recommend that we not rely too much upon this,” he added, indicating the wand. “Once it is depleted, then all we have for healing is my limited complement of spells. We need to find a place to hole up, rest, and recover our strength.”
“All right, but not here,” Dar said. “Too exposed, no way to secure the place from outside.”
The three surviving Doomed Bastards made a quick but thorough search of the chamber. The barbarian’s hides offered at least some level of armor to replace Dar’s ruined breastplate, but they were infused with an utterly foul stench, and the fighter refused to wear them. Instead, Dar took Navev’s chain shirt, which even with the gaping holes in the front and back, offered much better protection than bare flesh.
They did find a key on the madman’s person, although no locks in the room to match it. Varo pronounced the barbarian’s metal-shod club as magical. Dar initially took no interest in the weapon, but Tiros couldn’t even lift it, and Varo said that it was too large and awkward for him to use. So the fighter tore a few strips of cloth from Navev’s tunic, and created a harness to bear the magical club slung across his back.
A search of the barbarian’s bedding turned up a smattering of copper coins, a gold bar, a tattered old leather-bound book, and two more ceramic jars that were likewise filled with green slime.
“Those could make useful weapons,” Tiros observed.
“No way I’m going to carry jars full of green slime,” Dar said.
“I will take them,” Varo said. He also took the book, which he identified as an arcane spellbook.
“Too bad, the wizard could have used that,” Dar said.
“He wasn’t a—“ Tiros began, but he shook his head and gave up.
Dar picked up the gold bar. “Finally, some decent treasure. This has to be worth a few hundred coins, I’d guess.”
“I could put that to more immediate use,” Varo said.
“What?”
“As I have said, I need a divine focus to fully utilize most of my powers,” the cleric said. “I believe I can use that bar to fashion something usable.”
“With what? I haven’t been paying full attention, maybe, but I think I would have noticed if we’d passed a forge.”
“Leave that to me.”
The fighter looked uncertain for a moment. “We’ll have a much better chance of survival with a fully-prepared cleric,” Tiros pointed out.
“Damn it, all right, all right,” Dar said, slapping the bar into Varo’s palm. “But the next time we find something juicy, I get first dibs.”
“Of course,” Varo said. He was tempted to point out that the spellbook he carried was likely worth several times the value of the gold bar, let alone the magical club that the fighter bore, but he elected to keep that information to himself, for the moment.
The companions divided the supplies from Navev’s pack as best they could. “What about him?” Varo asked.
“We don’t have the wherewithal for a proper burial,” Tiros said. “He was a comrade in arms, and will be missed, but we cannot afford to delay.”
“Moving words, marshal. You’re going to make me cry,” Dar said.
Varo bent over the body and did something. When he was finished, they gathered and set out once more. This time their goal was simple, to find a place where they could hide and rest.
They retraced their steps to the door and continued down the passageway. They quickly came to another door, and this one was set with an iron lock with a hole that roughly matched the shape of their key.
“Well, let’s see what mister Tall, Dark, and Crazy was hiding, shall we?” Dar said, inserting the key in the lock. They could hear tumblers clicking in the lock mechanism, and then the door opened easily to the fighter’s pull.
A horde of giant rats exploded out of the darkness beyond.
