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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 663491" data-attributes="member: 41">60:  Better than watching kobolds fight over a copper.60—Maybe they’ll all be dead in the morning.That night, Taran remains awake while his companions sleep.  He leaves the campsite, and takes up a position where he can observe the city as a whole, and Irae T’ssarion’s stronghold in particular.  He notices an unusual amount of giantish activity, and after a couple of hours of uneventful waiting, he watches a titanic struggle ensue.As the armies of Kurgoth Hellspawn slowly mass around the castle, a hideous corpulent demon pushes its way to the front ranks.  Once there, it performs a wicked incantation fueled by sacrificial blood.  The ritual seems to strip the majesty from the place, and even as the last strains of the demonic chanting fade away, the armies surge forward in a huge assault, as hundreds of giants, ogre magi, ogres, bugbears and goblins attack the defenses of Irae T’ssarion.But the defenses prove up to the challenge, as ghosts, revenants and other free-willed undead man the castle walls, wreaking havoc among the goblinoids.  Beholders emerge from within the castle and use their magic to disrupt and destroy huge swaths of the attacking army.Vrocks swoop down out of the smoke-filled heights of the cavern, and attack the key defense points, and within moments there are signs of fighting from within the castle.  But just as things look the worst for the defenders, a massive skeletal dragon emerges, and passes over the assembled hordes.  Goblins and bugbears break morale, and flee in all directions.The balor emerges from the haze far above the fighting, a terrible creature radiant in all its flaming majesty.  With an unholy scream it lays into the dragon; the two terrors tumble to the ground, ripping and rending one another, crushing their allies as they fight.  Irae T’ssarion’s spellcasters open up on the giants—cones of cold and lightning bolts tear through their ranks, but the giants give as good as they get, flinging rocks into and through the defenders.After a lengthy struggle, the balor destroys the dragon, and lets out an exultant yell, both hideous and glorious at the same time.  The balor leads his attackers in a surge forward, and they overrun the castle’s defense, but suddenly the balor is simply gone.  And in that moment, the battle is decided, and the invading army begins to slip away from the siege like evaporating water.  Or blood.Taran watches the castle for a few more minutes, until he is satisfied that the defenders do not intend to pursue the fleeing army.   Thus assured, he slips out into the city, and follows a group of bugbears as they run head-long away from the castle, all thoughts of looting banished from their minds by sheer terror.  One bugbear lags behind, and in an instant Taran is on him.“If you run, I’m going to kill you.  If you fail to answer any of my questions, I’m going to kill you.  Do you understand?”The bugbear looks around for his companions, then realizing he is alone, weighs his options for a moment.  Taran fancies that he can hear the bugbear’s mental gears turning.  Slowly and with an audible creak, but turning nonetheless.“I do,” the creature finally says.“What is your name?”“Hahtzhak, first lance for big reserve Company.  We last to go in, first to retreat!” he says with a flourish of pride.“Tell me what just happened here Hahtzhak,” Taran says.“Um, the drow assassinate Kurgoth.  Ixilt rally troops, and tell us . . .”“Ixilt is the balor?”“Um, yeah,” the bugbear says.  “Fire demon.  Him very great and powerful.  Him say tonight was the night, they no longer mock us with defiance.  Him words, me swear.  Me like drow okay.  And humans!  Me like humans good!”  When Taran does not skewer him, the bugbear continues.  “Then Ixilt call one of his kind from Hell . . .”“The Abyss,” Taran interrupts.“What?”“Demons come from the Abyss.”“. . . Okay.”“Please go on, Hahtzhak.”  “Ixilt call a devil that come take down spell keeping us from the castle.”“And then?”“We fight big fight, but me not fight.  But we win fight anyway, then albino ghost come out, she send Ixilt away.  Everybody running for home now.”“Kurgath died in the coliseum,” Taran says, fingering his chin.“Um, yeah.  Him not supposed to be in show.”“But where did he live?  Where is his treasure kept?”“Me no know.  Maybe Ixilt take.  Or vrocks take maybe.”“Gods curse them all.  You know, Hahtzhak, if you put a sword through somebody, you expect to get their treasure.  Am I right?”“Of course, that is the natural order of things.”“Yeah.  Yeah it is.  Do you have any treasure?”</blockquote>

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