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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 2359230" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Realms #313] Southward Ho!, part 6[/PLAIN]OOC- I'll be stealing a page from nemmerle's <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=127751" target="_blank">Out of the Frying Pan</a> campaign and including a few footnotes on this post since it refers to events that predate the story hour as it appears on these boards. I hope readers find the addition to be helpful.----------------------------While the others interrogated their captive, Karak examined the building behind which they were conducting the questioning. The door was locked, but it yielded easily to a judiciously applied bit of boot leather, releasing the foul stench of rotting things from the interior. Predictably, zombies lurched awkwardly out of the dark corners of the building, their faces and fists smeared with gore.Karak spat on the floorboards and waited for them to close. The first fell quickly to his axe; split open from collarbone to crotch, its feet became tangled in its own trailing organs and it fell twitching to the ground. The other two clambered over their fallen comrade and pawed ineffectually at the dwarf's thick plate armor. Karak sneered in disgust and drove his waraxe through the belly of the one on the right, essentially splitting the putrescent corpse in half. His follow-though cleaved into the second zombie's left shoulder, severing the arm and head from the rest of the body."Now that be how a dwarf cleans 'ouse," Karak mumbled as he cleaned the fluids off his axe using the curtains of a nearby window. Looking out into the town's square he saw more horsemen - or rather he saw more horses. Of the riders there was no sign. He harrumphed and moved to the open doorway for a better look.He saw movement between several of the buildings opposite and spotted an archer taking up a position near the horses. Three arrows sinking into the door frame beside his head suggested that he too had been spotted. Harrumphing again, he turned and ran toward the side window which looked out on the mill they had already cleared of undead. With a grunt, he threw himself through the window, landing heavily in the side yard amidst a shower of broken glass. A concerned Morier and Ledare peered warily around the corner."We've got more company!" Karak grumbled as he got to his feet. "Archers! And I do nae think they be friendly." Another pair of arrows thunked down into the ground at his feet for emphasis.Karak looked beyond Morier and Ledare to spot Huzair holding a bloodied dagger. Their captive lay in shackles, his nose split and his face covered with a sheet of blood."Oi!" the dwarf roared. "What be this? Torture?""I really was not going to do it," the wizard admitted as he wiped the dagger on the grass. "But the bastard spit in my face. He needed to be taught some manners."Karak saw Lela send a stabilizing trickle of healing into the shackled man at the same time another arrow slammed into the wall beside him. "We'll talk more o' this later, wizard!" he growled before turning back toward the town square and bellowing a battle cry.Their enemy wasn't immediately visible although the placement of the numerous errant missiles indicated that they were spread-out widely amidst the buildings on the opposite side of the town square. Karak moved boldly forward and surveyed the scene for some sign of the concealed archers while Morier darted into the mill that they had already cleared. The empty building provided some much-needed cover as the Eldritch Warrior moved toward the mill's back door and hopefully onto their enemy's flank."Wolf! Stay! I'll go check it out," Lela volunteered and moved skyward before anyone could argue. She quickly disappeared, her tiny form swallowed up by the darkening shadows of late afternoon.Ledare peered around the far side of the building and saw movement far up the street. An archer was stationed there, taking ineffectual shots at Karak. The dwarf's armor had easily turned aside the missiles thus far, but it was only a matter of time before one of the snipers got lucky. "I'm going in," she told Feln and Huzair before activating her Ring of Invisibility and vanishing from view. It was only the second or third time she'd made use of the Ring since liberating it from Andamacles back in the moonsdance of Planting. [1]Huzair paused long enough to cloak the half-ogre with a Protection from Arrows spell before he did anything else. Even as the mage's scroll crumbled to dust, Feln moved in the direction that the Janissary had been headed, falling back on years of training to hide his bulk in the building's lengthening shadow.Ledare had crept invisibly forward, doing her best to soften the chinking of her armor as she went. She made it to the far corner of the building across the lane when a bellowed cry caused her to freeze in her tracks. "Ho, zere! Dogs!" the voice cried out in thickly-accented guttertongue. "Show yourselves and lay down your veapons or die!"Ledare recognized the speaker even before he stepped out from the side of a building that faced the square opposite the mill, parallel to the Janissary some 100 feet away. He was dressed in full plate and carried a large steel shield in one hand and a gleaming longsword in the other. A cloak and tabard of yellow were worn over the armor, and the latter swept out behind him as he stalked forward into the square. His helm obscured the warrior's features, and it had been six moonsdances since she'd laid eyes on him last, but Ledare knew Sir Brin [2] when she saw him.She was about to change direction and come at  her old enemy when Lela dropped an Entangle spell on top of the blackguard, filling most of the square with clutching roots and grasses and effectively cutting the battlefield in half.Lela had wasted no time being cautious, counting on her size and unexpected approach to protect her from view. She angled steeply upwards until she was twenty feet above the rooftops and then zoomed cross the square to get the lay of the land. The majority of the bad guys were amassed behind the main building there; seven men in heavy armor were arrayed there. Another five with composite longbows were either moving into or already established in sniping positions amongst the cluster of nearby buildings.They were in a lovely position for her to try one of her favorite spells. As soon as she heard one of the men calling down the dark blessings of Aphyx the faen knew that it was time for her to act. The mean guy shouting out for them to surrender provided the obvious target.Morier had made it to the far side of the mill, across the alley separating it from the adjacent cobbler's shop, and around the far side of that building when chaos erupted in the square. He could hear cries of alarm and shouted curses rising from the VQS' enemies and a thin smile found his lips. He spared a glance in that direction - enough to spot the leader (who Ledare would have identified as Sir Brin if she'd been present at his side) as he tried moving from his position near the front corner of the building directly opposite the mill. Lela's animated plants frustrated his efforts entirely.Still smiling, Morier darted across the street, searching for one of the enemy archers. ------------------------[1] Ledare recovered the faulty Ring of Invisibility during one of her earliest adventures, but Finian and later Vade had a habit of "borrowing" it for extended periods of time. You can read about her recovery of the ring <a href="http://home.att.net/~Tales_of_Enlightenment/tale23.html" target="_blank"> here</a>.[2] Sir Brin was the first campaign villain to really get under my players' skins (he's also the only one with a really bad accent). He and his friend, Heurist, posioned the party and kidnapped one of them for use as a trap-springer in a tomb they deeded to breach. You can read about their first meeting <a href="http://home.att.net/~Tales_of_Enlightenment/tale18.html" target="_blank"> here</a>. Sadly, by the time I brought him back for a rematch with the party, only Ledare remained of the group that met him initially. Still, there were some satisfyingly surprised faces around the table and a gasp or two of recognition when I trotted out my really bad accent.</blockquote>

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