The Doomed Bastards: Reckoning (story complete)

[Lazybones]

Chapter 43

A DIFFICULT DECISION


“We have to go after Shay,” Talen said. “She may still be alive.”

“I do not say this to hurt you,” Varo said, “but that is very unlikely. I do not know how carefully you looked at the dead troll’s hands and feet, but they were webbed. These creatures were scrags.”

“What are they?” Allera asked, shivering slightly as she pressed her arms close against her body for warmth. The fire that had burned the troll had used up all of their consumables, and it hadn’t lasted long enough for them to dry out their waterlogged clothes. The air in the cavern wasn’t quite cold enough for them to see their breath, but it wasn’t much warmer than that, either.

“Scrags are marine varieties of trolls,” Varo explained. “They can breathe underwater, and swim with great alacrity.”

“We don’t leave anyone behind,” Talen said.

Allera put her hand on the captain’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Talen,” she said. “But we need to focus on the living, right now.”

“She’s right,” Varo said. “We need to find a place to rest, and dry ourselves, or we won’t have to worry about trolls, or anything else.”

“Once we rest, I can implore the Shining Father for guidance,” Aelos said. With his damp clothes clinging to his body, he looked thinner and frailer than he had before. “He can give us an indication if we should follow after Shaylara, or seek another escape from this dungeon.”

Dar came back across the submerged bridge, carrying Argus’s bow and a pack that was obviously heavily laden. Despite the added weight, he leapt easily across the hidden stones to join them on the near bank.

“Damn, if I don’t feel as strong as two men, with this belt,” he said, indicating the troll’s belt, which was wrapped twice around his waist. “No wonder the damned thing hit so hard.”

“What’s in the pack?” Varo asked.

“The bastards had a fortune in gold ore stashed over there,” Dar said. “Hundreds of pounds of it. It’s too much to carry, but if each of us takes as much as they can manage...”

“We’re not here for gold,” Talen said sharply. “Our goal is to get out of here.”

Dar shrugged. “Might as well get rich in the process. But suit yourself.”

“What about the key?” Varo asked.

“I didn’t see anything, but there was a chain that was wrapped around one of the stone columns. End was broken off... could be the trolls took whatever was attached to it when they fled.”

Talen still hadn’t moved, staring out across the underground river, toward the narrow opening where it vanished back underground on the far side of the cavern. “Talen... we have to go,” Allera said.

The captain didn’t say anything for a long minute, while the others gathered. Then, finally, he turned and joined them.

The area where the trolls had laired had turned out to be an island, with the main branch of the stream wrapping around it to the south. There was more dry land on the far side, but their probings with Aelos’s light hadn’t revealed any exits in that direction. So they turned their attention to the only other apparent way out, a narrow passage deep within a cleft to the northeast. Without anything to build another pyre, they wrapped Argus in his cloak and left him under a shallow cairn of loose stones. Dar had suggested dumping his body in the river, but Talen had vetoed that idea, insisting that he would not have his loyal friend serve as food for the river trolls.

“They’ll probably just come back and eat him when we’re gone,” Dar had muttered, but he didn’t stop Talen from building the cairn, or Aelos from saying a blessing over the grave.

The companions moved single-file into the narrow corridor. Talen was in the lead, holding the dead troll’s shield. For him it was a tower shield, and while it offered excellent protection, it was cumbersome and difficult to handle. Dar had taken Argus’s chain shirt to replace his ruined armor, but it made sense to have the best-protected member of the group in the lead. Aelos came behind Dar, his staff held up to provide light, while Allera and Varo brought up the rear. Allera had lost her shortspear in the river, leaving her without a weapon, but Dar handed her the magical light mace he’d taken before from the dead orc cleric in the dungeons above.

“In this place, none of us can afford to be unarmed,” he told her.

“Remember, we’re looking for a quiet place to rest,” Varo said softly. “Nothing too fancy, just a defensible place where we can recover spells.”

The passage turned and quickly opened onto another large cavern, this one possibly even larger than the first. Huge rock formations occupied much of the floor space, leaving only narrow paths to navigate around the perimeter of the room. Wisps of white hung in the air, like strands of lace.

“Spiderwebs,” Talen said. “Watch out for...”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his warning, as a fine mesh of webbing settled over his upper body, quickly tightening and jerking him up off his feet.

 

[Brogarn]

Now I get it. LB didn't think what would have originally been a TPK had enough casualties, so he brought in some extras to quench his murderous thirst.

 

[jfaller]

From the frying pan to the fire... from the fire to the shredder... from the shredder to the chipper...

You get the idea. From bad to worse, to worser. ;-)

Hey Richard R., I completely agree. If you warn your PCs ahead of time and they all seem to be in the masochistic mood then something like RA is a real treat. Taken in small doses of course. Otherwise, Caveat Emptor!

I'm all for a slightly more "upbeat" type of campaign these days. Something like....oh I dunno, Temple of Elemental Evil. Heh!

 

[Lazybones]

There will be 4 updates this week and the next. I'm going to be cooking and hosting on Thursday, so I will post a long one on Wed. and a nasty cliffhanger on Friday. As for next week, I have plenty of posts, but post #51 ends with maybe the biggest cliffhanger in the story thus far, and it seemed just perfect for a Friday. So maybe M-T-Th-F next week.

* * * * *

Chapter 44

A STICKY SITUATION


Dar looked up and saw a quartet of giant spiders, each with a body roughly the size of a man’s, clinging to the wall over the entrance in a great spread of white spiderwebs. Two of the spiders had attached webs to Talen, and were struggling with the fighter’s weight as they slowly lifted him of his feet into the air.

“Oh, crap.”

Even as he spotted the threat, one of the spiders hurled a mass of webbing at him. He dodged aside, and the web caught on the rocks behind him—incidentally, partially blocking the passage entrance.

He moved forward into the room, and whipped his throwing axe out of his belt, hurling it into one of the spiders holding onto Talen. The weapon hit the creature on the head with a solid thunk, and it let out a high-pitched noise.

Talen, struggling to break free, managed to lift his shield up above his head, tangling the web lines on the edge of the steel. The spiders jerked him up another few feet, but as he slipped his arm out of the shield’s straps he sliced the strands wrapped around his shoulders with his dagger, cutting himself free. He fell away, dropping to land in a crouch five feet below, while the shield, divested of his weight, shot up into the air, narrowly missing one of the spiders before it got tangled up in the dense spiderwebs.

Dar was taking out his bow, while Aelos was moving gingerly into the cavern, trying to avoid the webs that were strung across the entrance. The spiders apparently decided to go for a more direct approach, as three of them launched themselves on strands of webbing, falling down toward the morsels below.

Seeing them coming down to him, Dar dropped the bow and whipped out his club. “Bug smashing time,” he said. Talen nodded, drawing his own sword.

The last spider hurled webs at Aelos, snaring the hapless cleric. He struggled, but only managed to entangle himself further, before the spider started drawing him up in short but steady jerks.

Dar wound up and waited for the first spider to get close. The creature spread its fangs, which dripped with venom, as it dropped fast toward its waiting prey. But it got much more than it bargained for a Dar smashed it with a blow that knocked it flying. It struck the far wall of the cavern, and stuck there for a moment before its weight caused it to drop back down. Still tethered on its web line, the creature began to swing back and forth like a pendulum.

Talen likewise scored a direct hit, but his spider remained intact enough to fight back. It landed on his shoulder, stabbing its fangs toward his neck. Fortunately the spider’s attack hit the edge of his breastplate, narrowly failing to penetrate.

The third spider landed on the ground between the two fighters. With Talen obstructed by its comrade, the spider turned toward Dar, lunging at his lower legs.

Allera and Varo squeezed into the room, and leapt for Aelos’s legs. Their combined weight dragged the cleric back down, drawing taut the line connecting him to the spider. The spider started to move down along the webs, all eight of its legs anchoring it.

Dar spat out a curse as the spider stabbed its fangs into his thigh. With a growl he smashed the club down into its head, crushing it. He immediately swept the club up in a follow-through that clipped the one on Talen in the abdomen, knocking it off the fighter. The spider fell to the ground, its legs twitching in uncontrolled spasms, which died abruptly as Talen thrust his sword deep into the center of its body.

The last spider was just too stubborn to release its victim, even as Allera and Varo continued to assist Aelos. The spider reached the edge of its web and held its ground, at least until Dar and Talen each fired an arrow into its bloated body. The spider, already wounded with Dar’s throwing axe embedded in its body, collapsed and fell to the ground in a heap, narrowly missing the cleric.

“Watch yourself,” Dar said, as he cut the cleric free.

“How are we going to get Talen’s shield back?” Allera asked. They could see the heavy iron rectangle, stuck in the webs a good fifteen feet above them.

“Leave it,” Talen said. “It’s too damned unwieldy for these tight spaces.”

“Varo said it was magical,” Dar said. “It’s probably worth a pretty heap of coin.”

“If you want it, you can carry it,” Talen said. “It’s not going anywhere where it is. If we need it back, we’ll know where to find it.”

Dar looked up at the dense webs, and tested the weight of his pack and assorted burdens. “Fine,” he said.

With that matter settled, they continued with their search. They found a few crevices in the back of the cavern that held spaces large enough to hold them all, but Varo reported feeling a vague uneasiness about the place. When pressed, he couldn’t elaborate on it, but Dar told the others that he’d learned to trust the cleric’s intuition, so they continued with their search.

Eventually they found another exit, a narrow passage, little more than a crawlspace, that exited the cavern to the north. Each of them regarded the tight tunnel dubiously, but when Varo commented that the trolls would have even more difficulty managing the passage, that gave them a good enough reason to proceed. Dar went first this time. He reported another cavern at the end of the passage, so they made their way through and gathered together at the far end to debate how to proceed.

“We keep getting deeper and deeper into this place,” Talen said. “We don’t know where we’re going, or what we’ll be up against ahead.”

“Well, it’s not like we have much of a choice,” Dar said. “We can’t retrace our steps; the stream we took here didn’t have enough room above it to walk on the water, and even if Varo enspells us to breathe it again, we can’t swim against the current.”

“We can go with the stream, try to find Shay,” Talen reminded them.

“Yeah, with those water trolls in the river waiting for us. You thought they were tough to kill on dry land? Real smart idea there, captain.”

“Gentlemen, this bickering accomplishes nothing but to bring wandering monsters down upon us,” Varo said. “Let’s see if we can find a quiet side cavern here, and find a place to rest.”

They spread out to search the new cavern. There were more spiderwebs in nooks and crannies along the walls and ceiling, but they spotted no more of the giant spiders. This cavern had a lot more open space in its middle, and they were able to expedite their search.

The webs were denser on the western half of the cavern. They found two passages there, another of the low crawlspaces, and a taller but even narrower passage a short distance away. Allera found footprints near the former, huge indentations in the hard ground that led toward the tunnel.

“Giants, looks like,” Dar said, examining the faint markings that the healer indicated. He laid his own boot up against the print; it was more than twice the size of his foot.

“Okay, let’s check out the rest of the cavern,” Varo suggested.

To the south, they found something odd, a small pyramid of dark gray stone. They cautiously examined it, but found nothing that would indicate its purpose. There was space here to camp, but the area was wide-open to the rest of the cavern, and the mysterious presence of the pyramid made even Aelos uneasy.

They found two more tunnels leading out of the place. One, to the north, was large enough to manage single-file, but there were a lot of webs there, and in one of them, they found the desiccated hulk of what looked like the largest rat any of them had ever seen. The thing was easily seven feet long from its snout to the end of its tail, and none of them could identify precisely what species it had been when alive. The second tunnel was another low crawlspace, situated in the eastern wall over the cavern not far from the one that they had used to enter here.

“I’ll take a quick look,” Dar offered, borrowing Aelos’s staff to light his way.

“Your friend, he has a... strong... personality,” Allera said to Varo, as Dar crawled into the tunnel. Talen knelt by the tunnel mouth to watch his progress, and Aelos kept his distance from Varo as a matter of course, so the two were nearly alone.

“Dar is a more complicated individual than he appears to be,” Varo said.

“And you, priest?” the healer asked, after a pause. “I heard about the charges against you. Human sacrifice. Blood rituals.”

“I follow a proscribed religion,” the cleric said. “Regarding the cult of Dagos, the public hears what the church of the Father wishes them to hear.”

“So the charge against you is false?”

Varo looked at her directly, and she shrank a bit under his gaze. “I make no such claim,” he told her. “I only suggest that like our mercenary friend, things are often more complex than they first appear to be.”

The priestess opened her mouth, but could not think of a reply. A loud scuttling noise, followed by squeaks and a familiar battle cry, became audible from the tunnel entrance, drawing their attention that way. The sounds continued for several seconds, before they were replaced by a renewed quiet.

“Are you all right?” Talen shouted down the tunnel.

“Just some more of those giant freaking rats,” came Dar’s voice back to them. “There’s a room here that looks good. Come on in.”

They made their way through the tunnel, and found themselves in a large room that was obviously fashioned of worked stone. Debris cluttered the corners, and a pair of doors were visible in the far wall. A few rat tunnels were visible around the perimeter of the place. The bodies of three dire rats lay hacked on the floor.

“We’d better check those doors first,” Talen said. The fighter took up a ready position by the nearest door, and nodded to Dar.

“Oh, just open it,” Dar said, walking over to the door and yanking it open. The door was stuck in its threshold, and it took a bit of work to get it free.

The room beyond stank terribly. Both of the doors turned out to access the same space, an L-shaped corridor that led onto a small room maybe eight feet by fifteen in size. The source of the smell turned out to be a dead beetle, maybe five feet long, covered in a carpet of smaller bugs that were happily feasting on its remains.

Allera held her nose. “Gods, this place is foul.”

Dar looked at Varo, and smiled grimly, nodding. “Perfect,” the cleric said.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 45

A MESSAGE FROM THE GODS


They cleaned out the small dead-end room as best they could, and hunkered down to rest. Dar and Talen took turns keeping watch while the spellcasters slept. The fighters could hear squeaks through the thin wooden doors, suggesting that the rats had returned to devour their slain fellows, but nothing came forward to threaten them. The “night” passed slowly for those on watch, swiftly for those asleep, and soon they were all awake, save for Dar who continued to snore in a back corner.

“Ugh,” Allera said, combing bugs out of her hair. “This entire place is a sty.”

“Our faith keeps us clean where it matters, child,” Aelos said.

“Are you ready to conduct your divination?” Talen asked.

The cleric nodded. “I will need a little time alone,” he said, with a pointed look at Varo.

“Fine,” Talen said. “But don’t leave the room; I heard those rats out there again earlier.” As the priest moved off a short distance, the captain ran a dirty hand over his face, rubbing at the dark circles under his eyes.

“You look like crap, captain,” Varo said.

The officer looked at the cleric in surprise, then finally laughed. “Yeah, I guess I can’t dispute that,” he said, settling back against the wall.

“We’ll get out of here,” Allera said.

They ate some trail rations, which thankfully had been wrapped tightly in oilskin wraps, and had thus survived their misadventure in the underground river. Even so, there were only a few scraps left when they’d finished, barely enough for a single additional meal.

“Save them for the mercenary,” Talen said.

“When we next rest, I—or your most sacred representative of the Shining Father over there—can pray for divine foodstuffs,” Varo said. “I would create them now, but I suspect that an additional cure serious wounds might come in exceptionally handy in the next twelve hours.”

Talen waved a hand idly, too tired to argue.

“I too can create food and water,” Allera said.

“Good for you, priestess,” Dar said, coming over and joining them. The fighter poked at the remaining food. “This all there is?”

“Eat up,” Talen said, looking over at Aelos. Dar did as he was bidden, quickly devouring what was left of their supplies.

“Gods, I wish I had some more of that brandy,” he said.

“This is not a time to get intoxicated,” Talen said.

“You sound a lot like the marshal,” Dar said, scraping some crumbs out of one of the food wrappers with a greasy finger, before stuffing it into his mouth. Allera looked at him in disgust, and turned away.

“I take that as high praise,” the captain said. “Marshal Tiros was willing to give his life to save the people of Camar. He was the heart and soul of our movement.”

“If your cause is truly just, another will rise up to take his place,” Varo said. Talen looked at the cleric in surprise.

“I don’t understand this revolution, anyway,” Dar said. “Sure, the Duke’s a bastard, but Camar’s had a good spell of peace, and most of the common people have food in their bellies.”

“The Duke’s reign is a corruption in the heart of a dying state,” Talen said. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, mercenary.”

“You’d be surprised, captain; I know a fair bit about being a malcontent.”

Their conversation was interrupted as Aelos came back over to them. The cleric looked a bit haggard, but there was a strange glow in his eyes, as though he’d looked through a door into a place where no mortals were meant to tread.

“What did the Big Boss Daddy have to say?” Dar asked.

Aelos accepted Allera’s help to sit down between her and Talen. “The Shining Father revealed his will to me,” the cleric said. “But as with many divinations, the message is cryptic.”

“Such is the nature of the beast,” Varo said, but his tone wasn’t scathing, and after a moment Aelos continued.

“I received insight in the form of several verses that crept into my head,” the priest said. “I asked for guidance on how we should proceed from here. This is what I was told:”

”Follow the path of the wayward giants,
Through the lair of benevolent squalor,
In the temple of the master of graves,
Shall you find the answers you seek.”

“Cryptic,” Varo said.

“Well, we have a clue, at least,” Allera said. “We already found the trail left by the giants, the footsteps out in the cavern.”

“Nothing about Shay?” Talen asked.

“You’ll find the answers you seek in the temple,” Dar said, as he stood and walked over to gather his gear. “The only answer I want, is how in the hells do I get out of this damned place.” He kicked his pack. “I’ve got more money than I’ve ever had in my life, and all I need is someplace I can spend it. Maybe take ship to Drusia... I have heard that the wine is as sweet as the women, there.”

“Don’t you care about anything besides yourself?” Allera asked.

Dar’s grin was response enough. The healer clenched her fists, but didn’t say anything more as she gathered up her pack.

“We should be careful,” Varo said. “The rats are not a serious threat, but there may be more spiders out in the main cavern. Check the ceilings and any niches in the walls carefully for signs of movement.”

“Sending him up ahead worked well last time,” Dar said, with a nod to where Talen was strapping his swordbelt around his waist. The captain glanced at him, but said nothing, having apparently learned that it was better not to rise to the bait.

“Let’s get moving,” he said, once they were ready.

They unsecured the doors and went back into the outer room. The bodies of the rats were gone, leaving only some blood and scraps of fur as markers of their existence.

“Well, let’s—” Talen began, starting toward the low tunnel in the opposite wall. He never got a chance to finish, as a segment of stone wall on the side of the room to their left creaked open, and a goblin stepped through.

The creature seemed as surprised as they did, and for a single heartbeat the goblin and the companions shared a startled stare. But it recovered swiftly, falling into a crouch, and hissing something in a strange language.

Behind it, a small horde of goblins poured out into the chamber.

 

[Rhun]

Wait, this is Rappan Athuk...don't you mean fiendish, pseudonatural goblins, or something like that?

 

[Fimmtiu]

Wait, this is Rappan Athuk...don't you mean fiendish, pseudonatural goblins, or something like that?

With a SR in scientific notation! And their umbral paragon vampire cohorts!

 

[javcs]

They've all probably got around six(teen) PC class levels ... each.

 

[Brogarn]

I think they'll all join together to form a giant amalgamation Goblin. Sorta like Voltron, only green and evil with claws and teeth like this *does the Tim fang motion*

What? It could happen.

 

[jfaller]

Goblins + Rappan Athuk = RUN! No way are these little guys your run of the mill goblins. If I were a betting man I'd say that we'll see blood here... And not all of it green.