Graywolf-ELM
Explorer
How's your game going? Everyone still alive and kicking?
GW
GW
The Scourge of the Ratmen [Scarred Lands] - Updated 1/26
- Thread starter Amaroq
- Start date
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
Since Fulcan bumped this thread back from the grave, here's my kick. How are things going now?
Does this mean you no longer "hate the swamp."
Does this mean you no longer "hate the swamp."
Fulcan
First Post
Elder-Basilisk said:
The game is still alive and kicking. We even made it out of the swamp for a while. But the swamp has come back, just to show us that it can kick even mid level characters in the can. Our esteemed writer seems to have gotten distracted by other things. He's getting married soon, so I doubt we'll see anything posted till after that, if I can get him to post at all. I'll try wielding my new found powers as a best man to see if I can squeeze another update out of him.
And Telryn has found many new reasons to hate the swamp.
joshwitz
First Post
Hey all. I was just checking this thread to see if Amaroq ever got around to continuing his dramatization of our adventures. Looks like it's a pretty solid no. 
If you are interested in knowing how it all turns out, we do have a running description of our adventures on my website (http://www.ave6.net/dnd/logs/). It's pretty rough, though. One of the players takes notes and I post 'em up the website without doing any editing.
It's useful for us to keep track of everything, but is definitely not as fun as reading Amaroq's narrative.
And yes, the game is still going strong after 2.5 years of monthly sessions!
If you are interested in knowing how it all turns out, we do have a running description of our adventures on my website (http://www.ave6.net/dnd/logs/). It's pretty rough, though. One of the players takes notes and I post 'em up the website without doing any editing.
It's useful for us to keep track of everything, but is definitely not as fun as reading Amaroq's narrative.
And yes, the game is still going strong after 2.5 years of monthly sessions!
All right, back in the saddle.
Okay, its been a hectic several months. Seven months? Wow, I hadn't realized it had been THAT long! So much for a weekly format...
I apologize to all of our loyal readers for letting it wait so very long - it had gotten to a point where posting for y'all didn't rate at the top of my priority list.
BUT, the good news is - A number of things have been cleared off of my plate: My game has launched, I'm out of 'work hell', my wedding has happened, we're back from honeymoon.... and there is an episode ready to post.
So, without further ado...
Okay, its been a hectic several months. Seven months? Wow, I hadn't realized it had been THAT long! So much for a weekly format...
I apologize to all of our loyal readers for letting it wait so very long - it had gotten to a point where posting for y'all didn't rate at the top of my priority list.
BUT, the good news is - A number of things have been cleared off of my plate: My game has launched, I'm out of 'work hell', my wedding has happened, we're back from honeymoon.... and there is an episode ready to post.
So, without further ado...
Issue #15: Out of the Swamp - Episode 1 of 5
Over a week ago, a tribe of Disease ratmen attacked Kratys Freehold. We arrived at the Freehold just in time to assist the defenders and break the siege. We then set out in pursuit of the survivors. We killed many, and tracked them back through the swamp to their warren.
After twenty-four hours of hard underground fighting, we’ve cleared out the warren. With the help of our lizard-man allies, we defeated their leaders: a shaman, a priest, and a huge albino warrior. We explored the remainder of the warren, meeting only scattered resistance. Some of the ratmen have escaped into the surrounding swamp, but many are dead.
We’ve freed a number of slaves, and the lizard-man Red Scale led us to the hiding place the lizard men had arranged for them. Now the hapless refugees are huddled together, and we have to guide them back to the safety of dry land. There are twenty-one slaves - twenty humans, and one dwarf.
Dawn breaks over the Mourning Marshes. It is just after dawn on the first Hedraday of Madrer, the fourth day of the month, and we are deep in the swamp, hidden in a small dell. The slaves are huddled and afraid, though one or two still seem to have some spirit left. Red Scale goes out to scout around for signs of any further rat man resistance.
While he is out, Miriel checks over everyone, slaves and rescuers alike, examining injuries and checking for signs of disease. For the third time, Chuck has contracted Corpse Blisters from fighting the dead-eaters. Two of the lizard-men, Hands of Fire and Swims With Fishes, have caught Filth Fever, probably from walking around the refuse-filled ratman warren. Drinks With Orcs has contracted the Slimy Doom. All of the diseases are still in their early stages, and with Goldpetal, Paks, and Novalia assisting, Miriel cures them all, removing all of the diseases. This takes most of her power, and she treats everyone else’s wounds as well as she can, cleaning and bandaging the wounds. While the healers work, Chuck hands his rations out to all of the slaves, who eat hungrily.
Telryn is completely exhausted, more than the rest of us are. Miriel is very concerned, but Telryn tell her, “Don’t worry. It’s a side-effect of all the arcane spell-casting. Some of those scrolls contained spells beyond my power. I’ll be okay.”
Miriel tells him, “You should rest as much as possible,” a suggestion his heavy eyelids indicate he is likely to follow.
By the time she finishes, the sun has risen well into the sky, and Red Scale has returned. He confers briefly with Hands of Fire, the lizard-man warrior, who translates for us. “No rats, gone. They left.” It is the middle of the morning, and with the way clear, our thoughts turn to departure.
Paks asks Hands of Fire, “Will you help us escort these,” gesturing to the former slaves, “to the edge of the swamp?”
The seven-foot tall lizard man nods, with a steely eye. “Not leave them,” he says.
Goldpetal asks, “How far is it to the edge of the swamp?”
The lizard man says, “Two days, maybe three.”
Miriel says, “We should rest midday.”
“We should make a forced march,” Chuck disagrees, with a commanding tone. “There will be time enough for resting when we’re free of the swamp.”
Hands of Fire nods. “Storm coming,” he says ominously.
While Goldpetal and Miriel rouse the sleeping slaves, and Stone and Novalia break camp, Paks and Chuck discuss their choice of weapons. They had swapped weapons in the warren. “What did you think?” asks Paks.
Chuck shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’m used to the heft of my own weapon. This…” He jiggles her long sword in his hand. “…is a fine weapon, very well made, but I like my own.”
“Same here,” Paks says. “I’m more comfortable with a shield and that sword. I forget to block with this magical ring. How am I supposed to block if I can’t see my shield?”
Chuck nods sympathetically. “Shall we switch back?” she asks him.
He agrees, and begins unbuckling the scabbard from his belt. Paks takes her masterwork longsword back from Chuck. He takes his, and Paks returns the Shield ring back to Miriel.
The dwarf comes over to Paks and introduces himself. “I am Dorin, of the Silvershield clan. I owe you thanks for the rescue. From your speech, I gather we expect some danger yet. May I ask for a weapon? I will repay the loan in the blood of our enemies, if given the chance.”
Paks sizes him up, and says, “We have no armor for you, but... would this do?” She hands over the masterwork bastard sword which she had been using underground.
He chuckles gleefully. “This'll split some rat man skulls!" he chortles. It is nearly too large for him, but he can wield it as a human would a two-handed great sword, and as he takes some practice swings, Paks can tell that he is no stranger to a weapon.
After testing its heft, he examines the workmanship. “I might prefer an axe,” Dorin says, “But the smiths of Mithril have great skill. ’Tis a fine weapon, indeed!”
“Don’t grow too fond of it,” she says. “I’ll want it back, when we’re safe!”
We form up, with the lizard-men in the lead, and the adventurers interspersed with the slaves to protect them, and begin the treacherous journey back to dry ground.
1st of March, 2003
Issue #15
Out of the Swamp
Out of the Swamp
Over a week ago, a tribe of Disease ratmen attacked Kratys Freehold. We arrived at the Freehold just in time to assist the defenders and break the siege. We then set out in pursuit of the survivors. We killed many, and tracked them back through the swamp to their warren.
After twenty-four hours of hard underground fighting, we’ve cleared out the warren. With the help of our lizard-man allies, we defeated their leaders: a shaman, a priest, and a huge albino warrior. We explored the remainder of the warren, meeting only scattered resistance. Some of the ratmen have escaped into the surrounding swamp, but many are dead.
We’ve freed a number of slaves, and the lizard-man Red Scale led us to the hiding place the lizard men had arranged for them. Now the hapless refugees are huddled together, and we have to guide them back to the safety of dry land. There are twenty-one slaves - twenty humans, and one dwarf.
Dawn breaks over the Mourning Marshes. It is just after dawn on the first Hedraday of Madrer, the fourth day of the month, and we are deep in the swamp, hidden in a small dell. The slaves are huddled and afraid, though one or two still seem to have some spirit left. Red Scale goes out to scout around for signs of any further rat man resistance.
While he is out, Miriel checks over everyone, slaves and rescuers alike, examining injuries and checking for signs of disease. For the third time, Chuck has contracted Corpse Blisters from fighting the dead-eaters. Two of the lizard-men, Hands of Fire and Swims With Fishes, have caught Filth Fever, probably from walking around the refuse-filled ratman warren. Drinks With Orcs has contracted the Slimy Doom. All of the diseases are still in their early stages, and with Goldpetal, Paks, and Novalia assisting, Miriel cures them all, removing all of the diseases. This takes most of her power, and she treats everyone else’s wounds as well as she can, cleaning and bandaging the wounds. While the healers work, Chuck hands his rations out to all of the slaves, who eat hungrily.
Telryn is completely exhausted, more than the rest of us are. Miriel is very concerned, but Telryn tell her, “Don’t worry. It’s a side-effect of all the arcane spell-casting. Some of those scrolls contained spells beyond my power. I’ll be okay.”
Miriel tells him, “You should rest as much as possible,” a suggestion his heavy eyelids indicate he is likely to follow.
By the time she finishes, the sun has risen well into the sky, and Red Scale has returned. He confers briefly with Hands of Fire, the lizard-man warrior, who translates for us. “No rats, gone. They left.” It is the middle of the morning, and with the way clear, our thoughts turn to departure.
Paks asks Hands of Fire, “Will you help us escort these,” gesturing to the former slaves, “to the edge of the swamp?”
The seven-foot tall lizard man nods, with a steely eye. “Not leave them,” he says.
Goldpetal asks, “How far is it to the edge of the swamp?”
The lizard man says, “Two days, maybe three.”
Miriel says, “We should rest midday.”
“We should make a forced march,” Chuck disagrees, with a commanding tone. “There will be time enough for resting when we’re free of the swamp.”
Hands of Fire nods. “Storm coming,” he says ominously.
While Goldpetal and Miriel rouse the sleeping slaves, and Stone and Novalia break camp, Paks and Chuck discuss their choice of weapons. They had swapped weapons in the warren. “What did you think?” asks Paks.
Chuck shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’m used to the heft of my own weapon. This…” He jiggles her long sword in his hand. “…is a fine weapon, very well made, but I like my own.”
“Same here,” Paks says. “I’m more comfortable with a shield and that sword. I forget to block with this magical ring. How am I supposed to block if I can’t see my shield?”
Chuck nods sympathetically. “Shall we switch back?” she asks him.
He agrees, and begins unbuckling the scabbard from his belt. Paks takes her masterwork longsword back from Chuck. He takes his, and Paks returns the Shield ring back to Miriel.
The dwarf comes over to Paks and introduces himself. “I am Dorin, of the Silvershield clan. I owe you thanks for the rescue. From your speech, I gather we expect some danger yet. May I ask for a weapon? I will repay the loan in the blood of our enemies, if given the chance.”
Paks sizes him up, and says, “We have no armor for you, but... would this do?” She hands over the masterwork bastard sword which she had been using underground.
He chuckles gleefully. “This'll split some rat man skulls!" he chortles. It is nearly too large for him, but he can wield it as a human would a two-handed great sword, and as he takes some practice swings, Paks can tell that he is no stranger to a weapon.
After testing its heft, he examines the workmanship. “I might prefer an axe,” Dorin says, “But the smiths of Mithril have great skill. ’Tis a fine weapon, indeed!”
“Don’t grow too fond of it,” she says. “I’ll want it back, when we’re safe!”
We form up, with the lizard-men in the lead, and the adventurers interspersed with the slaves to protect them, and begin the treacherous journey back to dry ground.
Last edited:
Issue #15: Out of the Swamp - Episode 2 of 5
We travel for about two hours. It is hard work and slow going, slogging through the swamp, even with the lizard-men to guide us through the easiest parts. At least this day is cooler, although it remains very humid. As we travel, Chuck and Goldpetal keep an eye out for healing herbs or useful food. By the end of the two hours, the slaves are straggling and spread out, despite our best efforts to keep them together.
Hands of Fire calls a halt at a clearing. “Dry land,” he says. “Rest here?”
Chuck says, “We should push on.”
“I agree,” Paks concurs. We gather the last of the slaves, reforming our line. Miriel checks them over, and says, “I think they can push on.” We are agreed.
Before we resume, Goldpetal says, “I found some ninequine.” He passes leaves of the herb out to everyone. “This will help prevent Swamp Fever,” he says.
We push onward for another twenty minutes or so. It’s started to drizzle, and the sun is completely obscured now. We aren’t getting soaked, but everyone’s outer garments are wet.
Telryn mutters, “Gods, I hate this swamp.”
“At least the ground is drier,” Paks points out. We’re moving through a wooded section of the swamp, so the ground is firm, unlike the deep mire we’ve waded through on previous days.
From the east, four wolf-rats, giant rats fully the size of wolves burst from the trees. We’ve fought their ilk before, but they are a vicious lot.
The wolf rats rush forward and attack. One bites at Fists of Fury, but misses. The other three attack slaves. One slave ducks, and the wolf-rat lands awkwardly, falling on its side. The second one misses, but the third hits, bearing a hapless slave to the ground beneath it. The other slaves begin to scream in panic and terror.
Goldpetal and Chuck step out of the column and fire at the wolf rat which stumbled. Each hit it once as it climbs back to its feet. Chuck’s second shot goes high, into the trees.
Paks, who had been walking in the middle, with the slaves, runs forward to attack the one towards the front of the column, the one pinning a slave down. She wounds it with her longsword, driving it off of its victim. Stone drops his bag, and from the front of the column, charges towards the wolf-rats. He leaps over the first one, which gets a good bite on him as he flies over its head. The half-orc lands beside the second one, bringing both his fists, clasped together, down in an overhand blow. We can hear the crunch of ribs breaking beneath his blow, and the monk is surprised to find the wolf-rat still on its feet and snarling at them.
The screaming slaves flee in the opposite direction. Telryn tries to halt them, but they are panicked, and ignore the teenage wizard. Before they can get far, however, the leaders get caught up in several giant spider-webs which are strung between the trees.
The rest of us are too busy fighting the danger we can see to help them. Drinks with Orcs and Hands of Fire join Paks, attacking the wolf-rat at the front. Drinks misses, but Hands of Fire connects his club with its skull, and smashes the wolf-rat flat, dead.
The wolf-rat which Goldpetal and Chuck had shot scrambles to its feet. It prepares to leap at Miriel, but before it can, Fists of Fury delivers a crushing club to its head, and it too is killed. Red Scale charges the one in back and hits it. Novalia shoots twice at the two remaining wolves, hitting each but not killing either.
Miriel takes a few steps towards the slaves, and shouts to them, “Pull the stuck ones loose!” Some of them are still free, and they begin trying to help extricate their compatriots.
Swims With Fishes attacks the wolf-rat near the back of the column, and with a single blow he kills it. Dorin Silvershield runs up to the last one, swinging the bastard sword in front of him, but it dodges his blow, then darts in to bite him. The dwarf expertly uses the sword to keep it at bay.
Miriel runs around the combatants to reach the fallen slave. He’s bleeding, but alive, and she expertly bandages his wounds.
Behind us, the slaves start shouting, “Spiders!” Even more ominous, we can hear fear in Telryn’s voice as he says, “Uh, guys…”
Goldpetal turns, and sees five giant spiders, easily large enough to make a meal of the slaves, crawling down out of the trees and along the ground towards the slaves trapped in their web. He tries to shoot one, but his arrow glances off of its thick carapace. “Come back where we can protect you!” Paks yells. Chuck also turns. He takes two quick shots, at two different arachnids, and hits both times. Paks charges the spider closest to the slaves, the right-most one. It is up in the tree, and she misses, but she does position herself between it and its victim.
Stone steps around the wolf and tries to land his trademark flurry of blows. He and Dorin don’t have the practice of weeks of fighting together, however, and the half-orc gets elbowed in the head by the dwarf. The wolf-rat is about to leap on him when Drinks with Orcs distracts it with a sharp rap of the club, which must be incredibly painful against its broken ribs.
The slaves who are not in the web start running back towards the rest of the group, whether because they’ve listened to Paks or whether in terror of the spiders, we’re not sure. The eight slaves in the web try to break free, but after their lengthy captivity, they are too weak to manage it.
Hands of Fire charges up behind Paks and attacks the same spider, but his momentum carries him into the web, and he is quickly trapped. The spider shoots a web at Paks, and entangles her as well! Two more of the spiders attack the trapped slaves, biting them. The slaves so bitten fall unconscious, either from the pain or from poison. The two wounded spiders scuttle off into the woods to escape Chuck’s accurate arrows.
Meanwhile, Fists of Fury bashes the nearly forgotten wolf-rat with his great club, killing it. Drinks with Orcs tries to help Stone to his feet, but the half-orc looks quite woozy from the blow. He is unable to get all the way to his feet, and stops, kneeling on one knee with his head down.
Red Scale and Swims With Fishes rush over to the entangled slaves at the far left of the webs, and start trying to pull them free. Novalia covers them with bowshot, which is unable to injure the spiders, but keeps them away from the two lizard-men.
Dorin charges straight into the center web, slicing through it, and attacks a surprised spider. The well-forged weapon bites deep, and a black ichor begins oozing from the belly of the spider. It steps back from its victim, and Miriel hurries to heal the unconscious slave it has just left.
Goldpetal shoots at the spider still in the tree, the one above Paks, and hits it, right through one of its many eyes, and it begins to back away from Paks. She is too entangled to reach it with her sword, but she manages to draw her bow. Her shot is weak, and just grazes it.
As the fleeing slaves reach the path, Telryn and Novalia rein them in, helping to prevent further panic, and gathering them together in one space.
Chuck moves around to the other side and shoots at the uninjured spider. He puts an arrow through a multifaceted eye as well, and it tries to drag its victim back into the forest with it. Drinks With Orcs steps up and throws a javelin at it, while Hands of Fire breaks free of the web by laying about with his great club. As he steps towards it, the spider drops its victim, and all three spiders run away, either along the ground or through the trees. Chuck and Goldpetal loose a few more arrows after the arachnids, to encourage them to continue fleeing, but neither hit.
With the help of the strong lizard men, we break the slaves free. Miriel stabilizes the two wounded ones, but turns to Novalia. “I’m exhausted,” she says, “And I cannot heal them. Can you give them just enough healing to wake them up?”
“Yes,” the archer replies.
“Just get them in shape to keep walking,” Chuck tells her.
As Novalia works, Paks explains to the slaves, “You need to stick with us. The swamp itself is more dangerous than anything which may attack us. If we’re attacked, step back, let us do the fighting, but don’t run – quicksand, alligators, and spiders are not the worst dangers you might run into.”
We start traveling again. Around noon, some of the slaves start asking for a break. Hands of Fire finds a clearing in the wooded area. Never before has a muddy area of small, stunted trees looked so inviting.
“Let’s rest for an hour,” Miriel recommends.
Stone drops his bag, puts his head on it, and promptly falls asleep. Telryn follows suit. It’s still drizzling. Goldpetal sets out a bowl to collect rainwater for us to drink. Copying him, Paks puts out her helmet, and one of the lizard-men places out a gourd of some sort. Chuck, Dorin, and the four lizard men stand watch while the remainder of us rest.
We travel for about two hours. It is hard work and slow going, slogging through the swamp, even with the lizard-men to guide us through the easiest parts. At least this day is cooler, although it remains very humid. As we travel, Chuck and Goldpetal keep an eye out for healing herbs or useful food. By the end of the two hours, the slaves are straggling and spread out, despite our best efforts to keep them together.
Hands of Fire calls a halt at a clearing. “Dry land,” he says. “Rest here?”
Chuck says, “We should push on.”
“I agree,” Paks concurs. We gather the last of the slaves, reforming our line. Miriel checks them over, and says, “I think they can push on.” We are agreed.
Before we resume, Goldpetal says, “I found some ninequine.” He passes leaves of the herb out to everyone. “This will help prevent Swamp Fever,” he says.
We push onward for another twenty minutes or so. It’s started to drizzle, and the sun is completely obscured now. We aren’t getting soaked, but everyone’s outer garments are wet.
Telryn mutters, “Gods, I hate this swamp.”
“At least the ground is drier,” Paks points out. We’re moving through a wooded section of the swamp, so the ground is firm, unlike the deep mire we’ve waded through on previous days.
From the east, four wolf-rats, giant rats fully the size of wolves burst from the trees. We’ve fought their ilk before, but they are a vicious lot.
The wolf rats rush forward and attack. One bites at Fists of Fury, but misses. The other three attack slaves. One slave ducks, and the wolf-rat lands awkwardly, falling on its side. The second one misses, but the third hits, bearing a hapless slave to the ground beneath it. The other slaves begin to scream in panic and terror.
Goldpetal and Chuck step out of the column and fire at the wolf rat which stumbled. Each hit it once as it climbs back to its feet. Chuck’s second shot goes high, into the trees.
Paks, who had been walking in the middle, with the slaves, runs forward to attack the one towards the front of the column, the one pinning a slave down. She wounds it with her longsword, driving it off of its victim. Stone drops his bag, and from the front of the column, charges towards the wolf-rats. He leaps over the first one, which gets a good bite on him as he flies over its head. The half-orc lands beside the second one, bringing both his fists, clasped together, down in an overhand blow. We can hear the crunch of ribs breaking beneath his blow, and the monk is surprised to find the wolf-rat still on its feet and snarling at them.
The screaming slaves flee in the opposite direction. Telryn tries to halt them, but they are panicked, and ignore the teenage wizard. Before they can get far, however, the leaders get caught up in several giant spider-webs which are strung between the trees.
The rest of us are too busy fighting the danger we can see to help them. Drinks with Orcs and Hands of Fire join Paks, attacking the wolf-rat at the front. Drinks misses, but Hands of Fire connects his club with its skull, and smashes the wolf-rat flat, dead.
The wolf-rat which Goldpetal and Chuck had shot scrambles to its feet. It prepares to leap at Miriel, but before it can, Fists of Fury delivers a crushing club to its head, and it too is killed. Red Scale charges the one in back and hits it. Novalia shoots twice at the two remaining wolves, hitting each but not killing either.
Miriel takes a few steps towards the slaves, and shouts to them, “Pull the stuck ones loose!” Some of them are still free, and they begin trying to help extricate their compatriots.
Swims With Fishes attacks the wolf-rat near the back of the column, and with a single blow he kills it. Dorin Silvershield runs up to the last one, swinging the bastard sword in front of him, but it dodges his blow, then darts in to bite him. The dwarf expertly uses the sword to keep it at bay.
Miriel runs around the combatants to reach the fallen slave. He’s bleeding, but alive, and she expertly bandages his wounds.
Behind us, the slaves start shouting, “Spiders!” Even more ominous, we can hear fear in Telryn’s voice as he says, “Uh, guys…”
Goldpetal turns, and sees five giant spiders, easily large enough to make a meal of the slaves, crawling down out of the trees and along the ground towards the slaves trapped in their web. He tries to shoot one, but his arrow glances off of its thick carapace. “Come back where we can protect you!” Paks yells. Chuck also turns. He takes two quick shots, at two different arachnids, and hits both times. Paks charges the spider closest to the slaves, the right-most one. It is up in the tree, and she misses, but she does position herself between it and its victim.
Stone steps around the wolf and tries to land his trademark flurry of blows. He and Dorin don’t have the practice of weeks of fighting together, however, and the half-orc gets elbowed in the head by the dwarf. The wolf-rat is about to leap on him when Drinks with Orcs distracts it with a sharp rap of the club, which must be incredibly painful against its broken ribs.
The slaves who are not in the web start running back towards the rest of the group, whether because they’ve listened to Paks or whether in terror of the spiders, we’re not sure. The eight slaves in the web try to break free, but after their lengthy captivity, they are too weak to manage it.
Hands of Fire charges up behind Paks and attacks the same spider, but his momentum carries him into the web, and he is quickly trapped. The spider shoots a web at Paks, and entangles her as well! Two more of the spiders attack the trapped slaves, biting them. The slaves so bitten fall unconscious, either from the pain or from poison. The two wounded spiders scuttle off into the woods to escape Chuck’s accurate arrows.
Meanwhile, Fists of Fury bashes the nearly forgotten wolf-rat with his great club, killing it. Drinks with Orcs tries to help Stone to his feet, but the half-orc looks quite woozy from the blow. He is unable to get all the way to his feet, and stops, kneeling on one knee with his head down.
Red Scale and Swims With Fishes rush over to the entangled slaves at the far left of the webs, and start trying to pull them free. Novalia covers them with bowshot, which is unable to injure the spiders, but keeps them away from the two lizard-men.
Dorin charges straight into the center web, slicing through it, and attacks a surprised spider. The well-forged weapon bites deep, and a black ichor begins oozing from the belly of the spider. It steps back from its victim, and Miriel hurries to heal the unconscious slave it has just left.
Goldpetal shoots at the spider still in the tree, the one above Paks, and hits it, right through one of its many eyes, and it begins to back away from Paks. She is too entangled to reach it with her sword, but she manages to draw her bow. Her shot is weak, and just grazes it.
As the fleeing slaves reach the path, Telryn and Novalia rein them in, helping to prevent further panic, and gathering them together in one space.
Chuck moves around to the other side and shoots at the uninjured spider. He puts an arrow through a multifaceted eye as well, and it tries to drag its victim back into the forest with it. Drinks With Orcs steps up and throws a javelin at it, while Hands of Fire breaks free of the web by laying about with his great club. As he steps towards it, the spider drops its victim, and all three spiders run away, either along the ground or through the trees. Chuck and Goldpetal loose a few more arrows after the arachnids, to encourage them to continue fleeing, but neither hit.
With the help of the strong lizard men, we break the slaves free. Miriel stabilizes the two wounded ones, but turns to Novalia. “I’m exhausted,” she says, “And I cannot heal them. Can you give them just enough healing to wake them up?”
“Yes,” the archer replies.
“Just get them in shape to keep walking,” Chuck tells her.
As Novalia works, Paks explains to the slaves, “You need to stick with us. The swamp itself is more dangerous than anything which may attack us. If we’re attacked, step back, let us do the fighting, but don’t run – quicksand, alligators, and spiders are not the worst dangers you might run into.”
We start traveling again. Around noon, some of the slaves start asking for a break. Hands of Fire finds a clearing in the wooded area. Never before has a muddy area of small, stunted trees looked so inviting.
“Let’s rest for an hour,” Miriel recommends.
Stone drops his bag, puts his head on it, and promptly falls asleep. Telryn follows suit. It’s still drizzling. Goldpetal sets out a bowl to collect rainwater for us to drink. Copying him, Paks puts out her helmet, and one of the lizard-men places out a gourd of some sort. Chuck, Dorin, and the four lizard men stand watch while the remainder of us rest.
Issue #15: Out of the Swamp - Episode 3 of 5
After an hour’s respite, Goldpetal, Chuck, and Novalia go searching for food. Miriel checks everyone else over for injuries. The three wounded slaves look like they are in need of a week of bed rest, but there’s little she can do for them. Stone and Hands of Fire are carrying injuries, Stone’s fresh from the wolf-rats, while Hands of Fire is still not fully healed from the excursion in the warren. Miriel heals Hands of Fire, while Paks heals Stone.
Chuck helps the search party find some ducks, which they shoot and bring back. Miriel cooks the ducks into a very tasty stew. Chuck takes some duck feathers. While the ducks are cooking, Chuck looks for ninequine, but doesn't find any. When the stew is ready, Miriel passes out bowls. We don’t have enough bowls, so she offers food to the slaves first.
Just as they’re starting to eat, three black and white monkey-like creatures with beaver tails leap down from the trees overhead. One leaps towards Miriel and the pot of stew, but it clips the edge of the pot, and falls on its head, stunned at her feet. The other two attack slaves. Whipping their beaver tails like clubs, they kill the two slaves, grab their food, and start eating it, hissing at the rest of us in a clear signal to back off.
“Swamp-gobblers!” Miriel yells.
Novalia takes a hurried shot at the stunned one, but her shot misses, high, and hits a slave, injuring her badly.
Goldpetal steps lithely through the panicking slaves, and with a sharp blow cuts one of the eating creatures badly. Stone grabs the other one in a great bear hug, pinning it in his arms. Miriel picks up the dagger she was cooking with and stabs at the one that attacked her, but it knocks the blade out of her hand. Chuck steps over a slave and shoots at the same one, hitting it. It hardly seems to notice the arrow sticking from its fur.
Four of the lizard men all leap to Goldpetal’s aid. Swims With Fishes, Fists of Fury, and Hands of Fire all hit it, but amazingly the thing is still on its feet. “They’re tough,” Goldpetal calls to the rest of us.
Paks calls out to the slaves, “Move back! But don’t run.” She steps into the melee, attacking the one battling Miriel, but misses. Novalia shoots it, wounding it, and Chuck’s second arrow hits it as well. Drinks With Orcs runs up and pulls one of the injured slaves out of the way.
The gobbler surrounded by lizard men grabs a drumstick, leaps over Goldpetal, and begins running away. The slaves drop everything and scatter in all directions. Dorin hangs back nervously, neither fleeing with the others nor coming to our aid.
The one Stone is holding struggles, trying to escape, but it can’t escape the half-orc’s iron grip. He head-butts it twice. The first fails, but the second makes a resounding crack, and opens a cut over the swamp gobbler’s eye.
Novalia shoots the gobbler at the stew pot again. Four arrows are bristling from its chest, but it still struggles mightily. Chuck draws both his swords, longsword and shortsword, and attacks. He cuts it deeply with the longsword. Most of the lizard men come over to help, but Swims with Fishes and Red Scale miss it. Swims With Fishes’ wild blow knocks Paks sword out of her hand, and she steps back out of the fray. Fists of Fury clubs it over the back, but somehow it is still on its feet.
“Dorin!” calls Telryn. “Help me calm these people down!” The dwarf turns and helps the young mage as he tries to calm the fleeing slaves.
Goldpetal, Hands of Fire, and Drinks with Orcs run down the fleeing swamp gobbler. The short elf misses it, but the two lizard men run it down. Hands of Fire smashes it with his club, while Drinks With Orcs misses it. It doubles back to flee the other direction, and runs right into Goldpetal’s scimitar, which lops off its head with a scything blow.
The gobbler near the stew pot is surrounded by enemies. It leaps desperately toward Miriel. Her dagger is pitiful defense, and turns aside on its thick skin. It bites her, ripping flesh from her left shoulder. Novalia has to pick her way around the camp to find a shot through all the lizard-men, but she shoots it again. This arrow misses, ricocheting off the stew pot with a loud ringing noise.
The slaves begin to calm down. Telryn and Dorin are doing a fine job, and Paks, disarmed, steps back to help them. Goldpetal moves over to look at the injured slave, and finds that she isn’t bleeding much. It looks like she will be fine.
Stone’s swamp gobbler continues to struggle in his grasp, but now he has his left arm firmly wrapped around it, and both of its arms pinioned. He punches it twice with his right hand, solid blows to the head which leave it dazed and barely holding on to consciousness.
The gobbler attacking Miriel has lost track of Chuck, and he attacks it from behind, bringing both swords together in a chopping motion. The twin swords bite deep into its ribs, and it pitches forward, dead.
“Thanks,” she says. The other lizard men mill around a bit. Red Scale goes to help Telryn round up the slaves, while Fists of Fury picks up a bowl of stew and resumes eating. Swims With Fishes and Drinks With Orcs alertly patrol the perimeter of the camp, to see if anything worse has been attracted to the noise of the fight.
Hands of Fire circles around to where Stone is still grappling with the last gobbler. He doesn’t want to chance clubbing the half-orc, so he wades in with his claws, and rips out the gobbler’s throat.
As it goes limp in Stone’s arm, he looks at the lizard man angrily. “I had him!” the half-orc says, sharply.
Miriel turns to the former slaves. “Its safe, now! Come back and get your food,” she calls. A light rain continues to fall on us.
Novalia examines the unconscious slave, which she heals back to readiness.
Paks steps over to Miriel’s side. “Let me look at that,” she says. With her help, Miriel pulls the mangled cloak away from it. “It looks like a vicious wound,” she says.
“I’ll take care of it,” Miriel says grimly. She lays a hand on it, and invokes Madriel, and the worst of the wound closes, although the injury is still troubling her.
Stone sets about skinning and cleaning the dead gobblers. Chuck says “They taste like chicken,” and sets to helping him.
We don’t have time to bury the dead slaves, so we cover them with leaves and branches, eat quickly, and set out again.
We march throughout the afternoon. At first, the slaves are feeling much better for the food and rest, but the longer we walk, the darker it gets, and the harder it starts to rain. By mid-afternoon, it feels like twilight, and what earth there is has become a muddy quagmire, further slowing our progress. By late afternoon, it is almost as dark as night, and the rain is hard and cold. Everyone is soaked through, and miserable. Nobody has spoken a word in over an hour, concentrating what willpower they have remaining on the monotony of trudging one foot after the other.
Finally, Miriel has had enough. “Its getting too dark to be safe. We should stop and rest.”
This is met with silent, weary nods.
“Hands of Fire,” she asks, “Is there any shelter nearby?”
The lizard-man points ahead and says, “Trees.”
A few minutes later, we come to a slight rise, with some small trees overhanging the crest of the little hill. At the top is a small ruin, mostly a foundation, with some crumbling remnant of what once might have been a wall and a fireplace. The ground here is merely muddy, not underwater, and the small trees overhang the ruin, reducing the rain from a hard steady rain to an irregular drip of large droplets.
Stone dumps the treasure out of his tarp, which he and Chuck use to make a small canopy. The shelter provided isn’t large enough for everyone to sleep under, but some of us will stay dry and it makes a covered area to cook in.
Miriel looks at her shoulder again, and calls Madriel for more healing. The goddess hears her priestess, and the wound is reduced to a pink area of new skin.
It takes a long time to light a fire. The wood we can find is damp, and away from the hill everything is covered in water. When Chuck and Goldpetal finally do get a fire going, it is weak and smoky. Miriel cooks the swamp gobblers, which is fairly difficult over the weak flame. However, they turn out quite tasty.
This time we eat without interruption.
After we finish cooking, we lay out to go to sleep. Stone has a winter blanket, which he loans to some of the slaves, and Paks offers one her bedroll. We set watches of three people each, and curl up for what promises to be a cold, wet night.
The wind begins to pick up. The rain comes down harder. Nonetheless, most of the party is asleep, a couple hours before midnight. Chuck is standing watch with two of the lizard-men, Swims With Fishes and Fists of Fury.
One of the slaves sits up. He looks around him, with somewhat wild eyes. He gets up and comes over to Chuck. “Do you hear that noise?” he asks.
Chuck looks around, but nothing seems out of the ordinary. “I don’t hear anything,” he says.
“It’s a kind of tapping noise,” the slave says.
Chuck looks at the two lizard men, and puts his hand to his ear, as though listening, and gives them a questioning look. They both shrug and shake their heads. Apparently neither can hear it either.
Chuck pulls out his glowing dagger, which provides a better light than the low burning campfire. He points at Fists of Fury, and makes a stern look with his arms crossed, then draws a circle in the air. Then he points at Swims With Fishes, and crooks his finger in a “come here” gesture. Fists of Fury stands guard, as Chuck and Swims With Fishes go to investigate.
As they approach the trees, Chuck can hear a tapping noise, as though there were someone knocking on one of the trees. The noise is intermittent, and he can’t tell which tree it is. He looks up at the treetops, but can’t see anything, and neither can Swims With Fishes.
Without warning, a great dark shape falls from the tree, towards Chuck. It is a large, leathery black triangle, with tentacles, and it lands on Chuck’s head. One of the tentacles stings him, as though it has poison or sharp edges.
Fists of Fury shouts an alarm, trying to wake the rest of us, while Swims With Fishes attacks the creature with claws and teeth. He can’t put his full force into it for fear of injuring Chuck, beneath the thing, and he pulls his blow, which is too weak to penetrate the thick leathery skin.
It is trying to suffocate Chuck, but he brings up the glowing dagger into its softer, grey underbelly. The magical blade cuts deeply into it, and seems to have cut a muscle – the thing can’t grip with as much strength, and Chuck manages to struggle and draw a breath of air.
Swims With Fishes claws at it again, and this time he rips a great chunk out of it with one claw. The monster goes limp, and the lizard man peels it off of Chuck.
The rest of us are just getting to our feet, and Chuck tells them, “Its okay, go back to sleep.” Most of us are happy to comply, curling back up in whatever dry spot we’ve managed to find.
Goldpetal comes over to examine it. Chuck says, “I think it’s a darkmantle. I’ve heard of them.”
“Yes,” Goldpetal says. “They lurk in the trees and wait for the unwary.” He glances at the Vigilant with an unreadable expression on his face, which Chuck completely misses.
“The tough leather might make good armor,” Chuck says, picking up the corpse.
“I should stand watch with you,” Goldpetal says, and Swims With Fishes, who was wounded in an earlier battle, goes to rest.
Chuck searches around a little bit, and finds a skeleton under the darkmantle’s tree. He pokes at it with his long sword, but the skeleton is inanimate, clearly a previous victim. He searches it, but the hapless human had only a good quality mace, and some rotting leather armor. Chuck takes the mace.
As we sleep, Goldpetal searches for more ninequine, which he is able to find.
When Miriel and Paks wake up for their watch, in the middle of the night, Miriel takes a look at the angry wound Chuck has from the Darkmantle. “Why didn’t you say something?” she chides him, and works Madriel’s healing. The wound responds well, and Chuck is returned to health. She also heals Swims With Fishes. Finally, most of the group is healthy after our many fights.
After an hour’s respite, Goldpetal, Chuck, and Novalia go searching for food. Miriel checks everyone else over for injuries. The three wounded slaves look like they are in need of a week of bed rest, but there’s little she can do for them. Stone and Hands of Fire are carrying injuries, Stone’s fresh from the wolf-rats, while Hands of Fire is still not fully healed from the excursion in the warren. Miriel heals Hands of Fire, while Paks heals Stone.
Chuck helps the search party find some ducks, which they shoot and bring back. Miriel cooks the ducks into a very tasty stew. Chuck takes some duck feathers. While the ducks are cooking, Chuck looks for ninequine, but doesn't find any. When the stew is ready, Miriel passes out bowls. We don’t have enough bowls, so she offers food to the slaves first.
Just as they’re starting to eat, three black and white monkey-like creatures with beaver tails leap down from the trees overhead. One leaps towards Miriel and the pot of stew, but it clips the edge of the pot, and falls on its head, stunned at her feet. The other two attack slaves. Whipping their beaver tails like clubs, they kill the two slaves, grab their food, and start eating it, hissing at the rest of us in a clear signal to back off.
“Swamp-gobblers!” Miriel yells.
Novalia takes a hurried shot at the stunned one, but her shot misses, high, and hits a slave, injuring her badly.
Goldpetal steps lithely through the panicking slaves, and with a sharp blow cuts one of the eating creatures badly. Stone grabs the other one in a great bear hug, pinning it in his arms. Miriel picks up the dagger she was cooking with and stabs at the one that attacked her, but it knocks the blade out of her hand. Chuck steps over a slave and shoots at the same one, hitting it. It hardly seems to notice the arrow sticking from its fur.
Four of the lizard men all leap to Goldpetal’s aid. Swims With Fishes, Fists of Fury, and Hands of Fire all hit it, but amazingly the thing is still on its feet. “They’re tough,” Goldpetal calls to the rest of us.
Paks calls out to the slaves, “Move back! But don’t run.” She steps into the melee, attacking the one battling Miriel, but misses. Novalia shoots it, wounding it, and Chuck’s second arrow hits it as well. Drinks With Orcs runs up and pulls one of the injured slaves out of the way.
The gobbler surrounded by lizard men grabs a drumstick, leaps over Goldpetal, and begins running away. The slaves drop everything and scatter in all directions. Dorin hangs back nervously, neither fleeing with the others nor coming to our aid.
The one Stone is holding struggles, trying to escape, but it can’t escape the half-orc’s iron grip. He head-butts it twice. The first fails, but the second makes a resounding crack, and opens a cut over the swamp gobbler’s eye.
Novalia shoots the gobbler at the stew pot again. Four arrows are bristling from its chest, but it still struggles mightily. Chuck draws both his swords, longsword and shortsword, and attacks. He cuts it deeply with the longsword. Most of the lizard men come over to help, but Swims with Fishes and Red Scale miss it. Swims With Fishes’ wild blow knocks Paks sword out of her hand, and she steps back out of the fray. Fists of Fury clubs it over the back, but somehow it is still on its feet.
“Dorin!” calls Telryn. “Help me calm these people down!” The dwarf turns and helps the young mage as he tries to calm the fleeing slaves.
Goldpetal, Hands of Fire, and Drinks with Orcs run down the fleeing swamp gobbler. The short elf misses it, but the two lizard men run it down. Hands of Fire smashes it with his club, while Drinks With Orcs misses it. It doubles back to flee the other direction, and runs right into Goldpetal’s scimitar, which lops off its head with a scything blow.
The gobbler near the stew pot is surrounded by enemies. It leaps desperately toward Miriel. Her dagger is pitiful defense, and turns aside on its thick skin. It bites her, ripping flesh from her left shoulder. Novalia has to pick her way around the camp to find a shot through all the lizard-men, but she shoots it again. This arrow misses, ricocheting off the stew pot with a loud ringing noise.
The slaves begin to calm down. Telryn and Dorin are doing a fine job, and Paks, disarmed, steps back to help them. Goldpetal moves over to look at the injured slave, and finds that she isn’t bleeding much. It looks like she will be fine.
Stone’s swamp gobbler continues to struggle in his grasp, but now he has his left arm firmly wrapped around it, and both of its arms pinioned. He punches it twice with his right hand, solid blows to the head which leave it dazed and barely holding on to consciousness.
The gobbler attacking Miriel has lost track of Chuck, and he attacks it from behind, bringing both swords together in a chopping motion. The twin swords bite deep into its ribs, and it pitches forward, dead.
“Thanks,” she says. The other lizard men mill around a bit. Red Scale goes to help Telryn round up the slaves, while Fists of Fury picks up a bowl of stew and resumes eating. Swims With Fishes and Drinks With Orcs alertly patrol the perimeter of the camp, to see if anything worse has been attracted to the noise of the fight.
Hands of Fire circles around to where Stone is still grappling with the last gobbler. He doesn’t want to chance clubbing the half-orc, so he wades in with his claws, and rips out the gobbler’s throat.
As it goes limp in Stone’s arm, he looks at the lizard man angrily. “I had him!” the half-orc says, sharply.
Miriel turns to the former slaves. “Its safe, now! Come back and get your food,” she calls. A light rain continues to fall on us.
Novalia examines the unconscious slave, which she heals back to readiness.
Paks steps over to Miriel’s side. “Let me look at that,” she says. With her help, Miriel pulls the mangled cloak away from it. “It looks like a vicious wound,” she says.
“I’ll take care of it,” Miriel says grimly. She lays a hand on it, and invokes Madriel, and the worst of the wound closes, although the injury is still troubling her.
Stone sets about skinning and cleaning the dead gobblers. Chuck says “They taste like chicken,” and sets to helping him.
We don’t have time to bury the dead slaves, so we cover them with leaves and branches, eat quickly, and set out again.
We march throughout the afternoon. At first, the slaves are feeling much better for the food and rest, but the longer we walk, the darker it gets, and the harder it starts to rain. By mid-afternoon, it feels like twilight, and what earth there is has become a muddy quagmire, further slowing our progress. By late afternoon, it is almost as dark as night, and the rain is hard and cold. Everyone is soaked through, and miserable. Nobody has spoken a word in over an hour, concentrating what willpower they have remaining on the monotony of trudging one foot after the other.
Finally, Miriel has had enough. “Its getting too dark to be safe. We should stop and rest.”
This is met with silent, weary nods.
“Hands of Fire,” she asks, “Is there any shelter nearby?”
The lizard-man points ahead and says, “Trees.”
A few minutes later, we come to a slight rise, with some small trees overhanging the crest of the little hill. At the top is a small ruin, mostly a foundation, with some crumbling remnant of what once might have been a wall and a fireplace. The ground here is merely muddy, not underwater, and the small trees overhang the ruin, reducing the rain from a hard steady rain to an irregular drip of large droplets.
Stone dumps the treasure out of his tarp, which he and Chuck use to make a small canopy. The shelter provided isn’t large enough for everyone to sleep under, but some of us will stay dry and it makes a covered area to cook in.
Miriel looks at her shoulder again, and calls Madriel for more healing. The goddess hears her priestess, and the wound is reduced to a pink area of new skin.
It takes a long time to light a fire. The wood we can find is damp, and away from the hill everything is covered in water. When Chuck and Goldpetal finally do get a fire going, it is weak and smoky. Miriel cooks the swamp gobblers, which is fairly difficult over the weak flame. However, they turn out quite tasty.
This time we eat without interruption.
After we finish cooking, we lay out to go to sleep. Stone has a winter blanket, which he loans to some of the slaves, and Paks offers one her bedroll. We set watches of three people each, and curl up for what promises to be a cold, wet night.
The wind begins to pick up. The rain comes down harder. Nonetheless, most of the party is asleep, a couple hours before midnight. Chuck is standing watch with two of the lizard-men, Swims With Fishes and Fists of Fury.
One of the slaves sits up. He looks around him, with somewhat wild eyes. He gets up and comes over to Chuck. “Do you hear that noise?” he asks.
Chuck looks around, but nothing seems out of the ordinary. “I don’t hear anything,” he says.
“It’s a kind of tapping noise,” the slave says.
Chuck looks at the two lizard men, and puts his hand to his ear, as though listening, and gives them a questioning look. They both shrug and shake their heads. Apparently neither can hear it either.
Chuck pulls out his glowing dagger, which provides a better light than the low burning campfire. He points at Fists of Fury, and makes a stern look with his arms crossed, then draws a circle in the air. Then he points at Swims With Fishes, and crooks his finger in a “come here” gesture. Fists of Fury stands guard, as Chuck and Swims With Fishes go to investigate.
As they approach the trees, Chuck can hear a tapping noise, as though there were someone knocking on one of the trees. The noise is intermittent, and he can’t tell which tree it is. He looks up at the treetops, but can’t see anything, and neither can Swims With Fishes.
Without warning, a great dark shape falls from the tree, towards Chuck. It is a large, leathery black triangle, with tentacles, and it lands on Chuck’s head. One of the tentacles stings him, as though it has poison or sharp edges.
Fists of Fury shouts an alarm, trying to wake the rest of us, while Swims With Fishes attacks the creature with claws and teeth. He can’t put his full force into it for fear of injuring Chuck, beneath the thing, and he pulls his blow, which is too weak to penetrate the thick leathery skin.
It is trying to suffocate Chuck, but he brings up the glowing dagger into its softer, grey underbelly. The magical blade cuts deeply into it, and seems to have cut a muscle – the thing can’t grip with as much strength, and Chuck manages to struggle and draw a breath of air.
Swims With Fishes claws at it again, and this time he rips a great chunk out of it with one claw. The monster goes limp, and the lizard man peels it off of Chuck.
The rest of us are just getting to our feet, and Chuck tells them, “Its okay, go back to sleep.” Most of us are happy to comply, curling back up in whatever dry spot we’ve managed to find.
Goldpetal comes over to examine it. Chuck says, “I think it’s a darkmantle. I’ve heard of them.”
“Yes,” Goldpetal says. “They lurk in the trees and wait for the unwary.” He glances at the Vigilant with an unreadable expression on his face, which Chuck completely misses.
“The tough leather might make good armor,” Chuck says, picking up the corpse.
“I should stand watch with you,” Goldpetal says, and Swims With Fishes, who was wounded in an earlier battle, goes to rest.
Chuck searches around a little bit, and finds a skeleton under the darkmantle’s tree. He pokes at it with his long sword, but the skeleton is inanimate, clearly a previous victim. He searches it, but the hapless human had only a good quality mace, and some rotting leather armor. Chuck takes the mace.
As we sleep, Goldpetal searches for more ninequine, which he is able to find.
When Miriel and Paks wake up for their watch, in the middle of the night, Miriel takes a look at the angry wound Chuck has from the Darkmantle. “Why didn’t you say something?” she chides him, and works Madriel’s healing. The wound responds well, and Chuck is returned to health. She also heals Swims With Fishes. Finally, most of the group is healthy after our many fights.
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Issue #15: Out of the Swamp - Episode 4 of 5
The rain continues to fall harder and harder, and the wind is blowing heavily. A few hours before dawn, perhaps the darkest part of the night, Novalia, Stone, and Drinks With Orcs are standing the last watch.
Two arrows come shooting out of the dark. The first one hits Novalia, cutting deep into her right shoulder, but the second flies wildly overhead. She’s badly hurt, and lets out a cry of pain. Looking back in the direction that they came from, she sees a ratman fall from a tree, and points with her uninjured left arm.
Stone screams and charges the rat man that fell from the tree. He gets there just as it reaches its feet and Stone slams his elbow into its face, rocking it backwards. The rat man draws a scimitar and a short sword, and he and Stone face off. “Foolish one,” it hisses at Stone.
Novalia looks for another rat man in the tree, but can’t see anything. Drinks With Orcs circles through the rest of the group, waking anybody who hadn’t leapt to their feet at Stone’s yell.
The rat man attacks Stone with the scimitar, hitting him. Stone punches at it with a flurry of blows, but the ratman is nimble and quick, and dodges each of his punches.
As they fight, Fists of Fury and Swims With Fishes circle around, cutting off any retreat for the ratman. Paks, unarmored, nonetheless grabs her sword and shield, and helps them cut off the retreat. Red Scale charges directly at it, but his club misses.
“There may be others,” Novalia warns, “Archers.” Dorin and Telryn circle around to guard the backside of the camp, while Hands of Fire and Novalia peer through the darkness into the trees to see if they can spot any other archers. None of them see anything.
Goldpetal moves to the center of the camp, yells at the slaves, “Stay still!” and casts obscuring mist. A great fog begins to billow around him, quickly hiding the entire campsite from any of the other archers. Miriel steps in amidst the slaves and quietly reassures them. “Keep together, and keep calm.”
Novalia pulls out an arrow, and tries to draw her bow, but gasps in pain. The wound to her shoulder is too much, and she can’t draw. Chuck steps over beside her with his bow, and shoots at the rat man. His arrow just grazes it.
Drinks With Orcs advances and clubs the rat man, hitting it hard.
The rat man gestures with his hands, and vanishes. Stone punches the spot where the rat man was, but there is nothing there. Hands of Fire leaps where he last saw the ratman and tries to grapple it, but he lands, flustered, in the mud.
The others all peer around for it. Dorin, Telryn, and Novalia move to the edge of the mist, where they can see outward, but they see nothing. Red Scale and Fists of Fury listen for the noise of a running ratman, but they hear nothing.
Paks stands still, trying to sense evil around herself, the way she has before. When she doesn't sense anything, she says, “They’re gone.”
Chuck tries to see if the rat man left tracks, but we were all milling about there, and Hands of Fire fell to the ground. Chuck can’t find anything there, and when he steps outside of the muddled tracks, the ground seems undisturbed, as though the ratman left no tracks.
“This is strange,” he says. “He left no tracks.”
“Illusion?” asks Telryn.
“No, the wounds were real enough,” Chuck opines, nodding towards Novalia, who is sitting on the ground as Miriel heals her.
“Teleportation,” Goldpetal says, in a voice half statement and half wondering question.
After five minutes, the mist dissipates. Most of us are returning to our bed rolls and trying to catch a last hour of sleep before dawn.
Goldpetal says, “Chuck, lets forage for breakfast, while the rest of them sleep.”
Beneath our feet, the grass and vines come to life, growing with incredible speed. They start grabbing at us and entangling us. “Its an entangle,” shouts Goldpetal, recognizing his favorite spell used against us. For some reason, the vines do not touch Goldpetal, as though they recognize his power.
The vines quickly entangle most of the slaves. Chuck, Telryn, and Swims With Fishes are completely entangled as well. Paks stands still, and tries to detect evil. Though she does not sense evil, the vines also leave her alone. Red Scale has been entangled, but with a titanic effort, he breaks the largest vine entangling him, and frees himself.
Stone rolls alertly out of the entangling grasses. As he comes to his feet, two arrows fly out of the darkness. The first hits him, and he yells, “He’s over here! Ouch!” That last as the second arrow also hits him. Both arrows are in his chest, and though neither have hit a vital organ, he is hurting.
Goldpetal casts the obscuring mist again, over the camp, and quickly those who are entangled are obscured from the view of the sniper.
Dorin cuts his way free of the entangled area. Its pitch black, and raining, and even with his dwarven vision, he can’t see the archer. Hands of Fire works his way through the vines. Miriel is deep in the entangled area, but the vines don’t have her. She can’t see the ratman, either. She casts detect magic, but the brilliant flare of the enchanted vines prevents her from detecting anything else. She continues to concentrate.
Fists of Fury and Novalia are entangled, right next to each other. By each helping the other, they both break free. Drinks With Orcs has luckily avoided the grasses, and runs over next to Stone. Paks steps carefully out of the vines and begins circling around the entangle field to join the half-orc.
Goldpetal starts to move towards the edge of the mist, and the vines part out of his way. Red Scale follows him, taking advantage of the respite. Chuck and Swims With Fishes continue to struggle, but they are securely bound and fail to break free.
Stone starts running towards the source of the shots, but he still can't see anything. Suddenly, the rat man, the same one we’ve seen before, drops out of a tree about sixty feet in front of Stone. His bow is out, and as Stone tries to close the gap, the ratman shoots him twice. Stone shouts out, but when the second one hits, he pitches face-down in the mud, unconscious.
Dorin runs away from the ratman, as fast as his short dwarven legs will take him. Hands of Fire and Drinks With Orcs escape the entangled area and begin charging towards the ratman. Drinks With Orcs throws a javelin at the rat man, but misses. Seeing the two lizard men coming, the rat man dashes off into the woods. Hands of Fire and Drinks With Orcs chase after it.
Miriel starts working her way towards the edge of the entangled area. Fists of Fury and Novalia become entangled again, but Chuck breaks free. As Goldpetal steps through the entanglement, the vines part like a sea before him. The entangling grasses firmly grab Red Scale, who was following him, although Goldpetal remains untouched.
Dorin Silvershield stops fleeing. He begins watching alertly into the woods, retreating slowly back towards the camp and the obscuring mist.
Paks reaches Stone. Quickly, almost perfunctorily, she brings Madriel’s healing upon him, healing the worst of his injuries, but as soon as she sees that he is out of danger, she stops, rises, and continues to run after the rat man. Miriel escapes the entangled area, and starts heading for Stone. Stone is awake, but as he sits up it is clear that he is still very weak.
Chuck leaps for the edge of the entangle field, but a vine wraps around his leg, and he falls heavily. He is quickly entangled again, this time so thoroughly that he has no hope of freeing himself before the spell expires. Swims With Fishes and Red Scale can’t break free, either. Dorin moves around the circle to help Red Scale.
Goldpetal steps out of the entangled area, and begins circling the perimeter, looking for trouble. He has a grim look on his face, which frightens even the trapped slaves.
The rat man keeps running, but the two lizard men behind it fall into quicksand, although they were trying to follow his footsteps. Hands of Fire sinks deeply into the quicksand, while Drinks With Orcs is luckier, and is able to swim to the edge of the quicksand, although he can’t pull himself free.
Novalia breaks free of the vines, and begins picking her way out of the entangled area. Telryn, Chuck, Swims With Fishes, and Fists of Fury are all completely entangled. Dorin is trying to help Red Scale get free, but the lizard man is firmly stuck, and as quickly as Dorin can cut one vine, another grabs Red Scale.
Paks stops at the edge of the quicksand and yells, “Help! Help!” She tries to pull Drinks With Orcs out, but the seven-foot lizard man weighs over a hundred pounds more than she does, and she can’t pull him out by herself. Finally, though, with her help he manages to get one leg up on solid ground, and is able to pull himself out.
Miriel runs over to Stone, just as the half-orc climbs shakily to his feet. Miriel heals Stone, while Paks throws a rope to Hands of Fire. “Thanks, Miriel,” Stone says, and runs to help Paks. With his strength and hers combined, they are able to pull Hands of Fire out of the quicksand, but the ratman has disappeared again.
Telryn’s owl comes back and lands on his outstretched hand. “Chester says he lost him. Whatever he is, he disappeared under the cover of the trees.”
We wait warily lest our tormentor reappear, and within a few minutes, the entanglement has subsided and the mist has disappeared.
“He must be a Twilight Warden,” Chuck says, when he is free of the entanglement. He looks grim and determined.
“I think so,” Miriel agrees.
“Time to head out,” Stone says, taking down the tarp and starting to wrap his treasures in it again.
“We need to look for food, and more ninequine,” Goldpetal objects.
“I’ll help you,” Chuck says. “The rest of you pack.” They search in the immediate vicinity, with bows out, keeping a wary eye out for the ratman. The rest of us pick up our bed rolls and Miriel’s cooking gear.
We start to move out, into the teeth of the gale.
We walk for about two hours, into ever-increasing wind and rain. It never does get light, it just lifts from dark to a dark grey. Towering storm clouds reveal the majesty of the storm which is headed our way, and despair seeps through all but the stoutest hearts. Our steps are weary, and our nerves are on edge from constant vigilance for the return of the Twilight Warden.
Hands of Fire halts abruptly, and holds up one hand, trying to stop us all. Stone sees it, too, and stops, but Drinks With Orcs isn’t quick enough, and stumbles over a tripwire. It looses a branch which was held by the wire, and the trap whips out and strikes him in the head. He collapses, as though pole-axed.
Stone picks him up, but the lizard-man is unconscious and bleeding from the head. Paks bandages him, and Miriel heals him until Madriel has brought him back to consciousness. Goldpetal and Novalia look around for ambushers.
The other lizard men look for more traps. Hands of Fire notices another trap that didn't go off, a similar construction on the opposite side of our route. Chuck begins to move up to the front, but Paks stops him. Hands of Fire takes a twig and fires off the other trap.
Chuck studies the ground, trying to track the trapper, but he can’t see any tracks, between the dim light and the heavy groundwater.
We move on. After another half an hour we reach a wooded area. The trees are dripping with hanging vines. They are green and luscious, more beautiful than anything we’ve seen in the swamp thus far, but Hands of Fire brings us to a halt. “These razor vines,” he explains. “Not touch.” He confers with Telryn in Draconic.
Telryn says, “He tells me it will take an hour to make our way around them, or we can just plow through. From his description of the razor vines, I don’t think the slaves would make it through them - I’ve said we’d rather go around.” Miriel and Paks nod agreement, and we skirt around to the left side, around the edge of the vines.
There’s a small path close to the vines, where the ground is mud rather than water, and Hands of Fire keeps us along that path, walking side by side with Drinks With Orcs. The two leaders trigger another branch tripwire, and branches swing out and hit them, wounding both. Drinks is knocked into the razor vines. At the same moment, a large snake falls from a tree hanging out over the path. It drops on Chuck, biting him, and it begins to coil around his neck!
Chuck struggles against the snake, but he can’t break free. “Boa… constrictor…” he chokes out. Paks is the quickest to react, and she draws her long sword and charges towards Chuck. She takes a hard swing at the constrictor, coming dangerously close to Chuck’s face, but with her expert sword work she catches the snake solidly, cutting a deep gash in its thick mid-part.
Telryn and Dorin concentrate on keeping the slaves from panicking, while Red Scale helps Drinks With Orcs crawl his way out of the razor vines. The lizard man emerges bleeding from numerous slashes, but he grimly draws his javelin and looks around for a target.
Stone drops his sack and draws his crossbow. As he loads it, he peers through the driving rain. He sees the ratman in a tree, just on the edge of his visibility. “There it is,” he calls, and shoots at it. His bolt is blown wildly off by the wind, but does serve to point out the ratman to the rest of us. Hands of Fire and Drinks With Orcs both have javelins at the ready, which they launch at it. Both throws fall short.
In the center of the group, Chuck continues to struggle with the boa constrictor. It works its way ever tighter. Chuck manages to stab it with his dagger. His viper bites at it, but misses. Novalia shoots an arrow towards them, but she misses and the arrow goes off into the razor vines. Goldpetal draws his dagger and cuts at the constrictor, but he also misses it.
Miriel casts a spell towards the ratman, and even at this long range, her spell works. He freezes motionless, unable to move. Stone and Dorin begin running towards the tree.
Goldpetal’s hawk claws at the constrictor, buffeting Chuck’s face with its wings. Fists of Fury runs over and tries to bite the snake, his fangs coming perilously close to Chuck, but he misses the constrictor. Red Scale grabs it with one big paw, and rips open its belly with the claws of his other hand. It’s dead. Chuck and the two lizard men pry the motionless serpent off of his neck, and he takes a deep gasping breath.
Paks, Swims With Fishes, Drinks With Orcs, and Hands of Fire run towards the frozen ratman, which Stone has already reached. The half-orc begins to climb up it, towards the helpless Twilight Warden.
“Wow, what was that spell?” asks Telryn.
“Hold person,” the priestess says with a smile as she starts walking towards the tree.
Novalia fires her bow at the Twilight Warden, but she misses in the high wind. Chuck draws his bow and joins her, but he also misses. Goldpetal motions for the slaves to gather around him, while Telryn and Red Scale keep watch behind us.
Dorin grabs the trunk of the tree and shakes it, but all he does is dislodge Stone, who falls to the ground. Drinks With Orcs helps him up. Swims With Fishes throws a javelin up into the tree, but it hits a branch, and falls back to earth. Paks sheathes her sword and draws a bow, but her first shot gets blown wild by the wind.
The ratman remains motionless, held in place by Miriel’s spell, but an amused contempt is visible in its eyes. Hands of Fire and Fists of Fury try to climb up towards it, but Fists of Fury slips back down on the slippery bark. Dorin yells, “Get that ratman out of the tree, where I can kill him!”
Paks shoots again, this time sticking her arrow into one of the branches. Drinks With Orcs and Stone try to climb the tree, but they are getting in each other’s way and make little progress. Hands of Fire almost reaches the ratman, who is far out on one of the limbs, but had a secure platform to shoot from, and has a rat-like tail wrapped around a nearby branch for balance. Just as he gets close, however, Hands of Fire falls, landing heavily on the ground at our feet.
Back at the refugees, Goldpetal casts another obscuring mist. Telryn shakes his head. “I think he’s alone,” he tells the elf.
“I can’t take that chance,” Goldpetal tells him, drawing his bow.
At the tree, Paks says, “Everyone stand back. Let Stone climb.” Stone climbs the tree. Everyone waits for Stone, except Chuck, who also tries to climb up. He fails, but his viper climbs the tree easily, slithering past Stone and biting the ratman in the head.
Goldpetal steps to the edge of the mist and shoots at the ratman. His arrow, like so many others, is blown awry. Fists of Fury throws a javelin up at the ratman, but he, too, misses.
As Stone reaches the Twilight Warden, the ratman comes to life. He draws his scimitar and in one smooth motion chops at Stone’s arm. “Ow!” Stone yells, as the sword bites deep into the forearm. He falls out of the tree.
Everyone tries to act at once. Miriel tries to cast hold person again, but this time the spell fails. Swims With Fishes and Drinks With Orcs throw javelins, but they miss. Paks fires another arrow, and this one hits, catching the ratman in the leg.
Chuck tries to climb up the tree, and succeeds, reaching the ratman. He tries to grapple his enemy out of the tree, but the ratman makes a slashing blow with the scimitar, biting deep through Chuck’s leather armor and into his chest. The viper bites the ratman again, but he hardly pays attention to the little snake. Hands of Fire tries to climb to aid him, but again falls from the tree. The rat man hisses, “You'll never leave the swamp alive.”
Miriel rushes over to Stone, who is holding his right arm cradled to his stomach. “I think it’s broken,” he says, his face white.
“Here,” she takes his arm. “Madriel, heal this bone,” she intones. Stone grimaces as the bone slides back into place, but the goddess’ healing is swift and sure. Within seconds, the arm is fit again and color is returning to his face.
“Thanks,” he tells her.
Fists of Fury begins climbing the tree. He gets halfway up, but then finds himself stuck, unable to get further without dislodging Chuck. Goldpetal starts walking over from the obscuring mist, and takes a calm, unhurried shot. Finally, an arrow flies true despite the wind, and wounds the rat man.
In the tree, the ratman attacks Chuck with his scimitar and short sword. He gets a solid blow in with the short sword, but Chuck keeps his balance and stays in the tree. “I'm the Warden for this sector,” the ratman hisses, “And no one gets through.”
On the ground, Stone says, “Everyone, help me up the tree.” With the sure lift of a dwarf, Paks, and two lizard men, he makes it easily. He lithely swings past Fists of Fury, on a lighter branch, and reaches the ratman. He tries to grapple with it, but can’t get close enough without risking the swords, or a fall. Paks starts climbing up beneath him.
Chuck chops at the ratman’s tail, cutting it. The ratman hits him as well, a deep gash with the scimitar. Goldpetal tries to throw a rope around the branch the rat man is on, but fails. Miriel asks Madriel to bless us all. As she does, Fists of Fury climbs the rest of the way up the tree, clawing at the ratman, but like Stone, the swords keep him at bay.
The ratman, with so many of us around it in the tree, tries to leap across to another tree, past Fists of Fury and Stone. Fists of Fury claws it once, as it leaps. While the ratman is in mid-air, Stone clotheslines it, and it falls hard to the ground. Stone leaps down onto the rat man, landing on top of it, and flattens it. “Ooof!” he says. The ratman looks stunned.
Swims With Fishes and Dorin quickly surround the ratman. Swims With Fishes clubs it with his great club, and Dorin hacks it with the bastard sword. Drinks With Orcs jumps down from the tree, but as he lands, we can hear the cracking noise of a leg breaking, and he collapses.
Paks leaps from the tree, and brings her longsword down over her head in a two-handed blow, smiting the ratman and splitting its skull.
Miriel rushes over to Drinks With Orcs, and finds that he has a nasty compound fracture. One of his shinbones is sticking out through his skin, and he’s bleeding heavily. She makes a quick tourniquet, and then calls for Stone’s help. They give Drinks a piece of leather to bite down on, and Miriel and Stone set the bone. He lets out a great roar of pain and then falls unconscious. Finally, Miriel calls upon her goddess to knit the bone and ease the lizard man’s pain. By the time she is done, he is awake, alert, and can even put weight on the leg, although he still has a slight limp.
Paks, Goldpetal, and Chuck search the body. In addition to the scimitar and short sword, he’s wearing a studded leather armor made of extraordinarily supple leather. He also has a short sword, a long bow with plenty of arrows, and a bunch of tiny little flick knives.
Chuck takes a silver and jet amulet from around the ratman’s neck. “Hey, this is sort of a mockery of the Vigilants' medallions,” he says.
Goldpetal looks at the flick knives, and says, “These are all poisoned.”
Paks has been looking at the scimitar. “Wow,” she says, “This is a fine weapon, a real masterwork.”
Dorin steps over to look at it. “Yes, ’tis indeed. I know not the maker’s mark, but ’tis well made.”
Paks turns to the elf. “Goldpetal, the scimitar is your weapon. Do you want it?” she asks. “Wait, let me see if I can detect any evil taint on any of this, first.”
Paks concentrates on the body and his equipment. “The rat man has a stink of corruption about him,” she says, “But I think he is the only thing that is evil.”
“Of course,” says Goldpetal, as she hands him the scimitar. “Evil does not reside in a tool, only in how it is used.”
Chuck picks up the studded leather armor and the flick knives.
Stone offers the longbow to Novalia, but when she refuses, Goldpetal takes it.
“I’ll take the amulet,” Miriel asserts.
“I’ll cast detect magic on it later,” Telryn says, “When we’re free of the swamp.”
Paks gives the short sword to Dorin. “Here is a blade to call your own,” she says, “Earned by force of arms.”
He bows at her. “Thank you, milady,” he says. “ ’Tis not as fine a blade, but perhaps more to my size.”
Chuck takes off his old armor, and tries the new armor on. It fits terribly, at first, but once he figures out how to adjust the straps, he finds that it becomes very comfortable indeed. It is supple, almost buttery and conforms easily and silently with his movements. He tosses his old armor away, leaving it there by the corpse.
We move on into the gathering storm.
The rain continues to fall harder and harder, and the wind is blowing heavily. A few hours before dawn, perhaps the darkest part of the night, Novalia, Stone, and Drinks With Orcs are standing the last watch.
Two arrows come shooting out of the dark. The first one hits Novalia, cutting deep into her right shoulder, but the second flies wildly overhead. She’s badly hurt, and lets out a cry of pain. Looking back in the direction that they came from, she sees a ratman fall from a tree, and points with her uninjured left arm.
Stone screams and charges the rat man that fell from the tree. He gets there just as it reaches its feet and Stone slams his elbow into its face, rocking it backwards. The rat man draws a scimitar and a short sword, and he and Stone face off. “Foolish one,” it hisses at Stone.
Novalia looks for another rat man in the tree, but can’t see anything. Drinks With Orcs circles through the rest of the group, waking anybody who hadn’t leapt to their feet at Stone’s yell.
The rat man attacks Stone with the scimitar, hitting him. Stone punches at it with a flurry of blows, but the ratman is nimble and quick, and dodges each of his punches.
As they fight, Fists of Fury and Swims With Fishes circle around, cutting off any retreat for the ratman. Paks, unarmored, nonetheless grabs her sword and shield, and helps them cut off the retreat. Red Scale charges directly at it, but his club misses.
“There may be others,” Novalia warns, “Archers.” Dorin and Telryn circle around to guard the backside of the camp, while Hands of Fire and Novalia peer through the darkness into the trees to see if they can spot any other archers. None of them see anything.
Goldpetal moves to the center of the camp, yells at the slaves, “Stay still!” and casts obscuring mist. A great fog begins to billow around him, quickly hiding the entire campsite from any of the other archers. Miriel steps in amidst the slaves and quietly reassures them. “Keep together, and keep calm.”
Novalia pulls out an arrow, and tries to draw her bow, but gasps in pain. The wound to her shoulder is too much, and she can’t draw. Chuck steps over beside her with his bow, and shoots at the rat man. His arrow just grazes it.
Drinks With Orcs advances and clubs the rat man, hitting it hard.
The rat man gestures with his hands, and vanishes. Stone punches the spot where the rat man was, but there is nothing there. Hands of Fire leaps where he last saw the ratman and tries to grapple it, but he lands, flustered, in the mud.
The others all peer around for it. Dorin, Telryn, and Novalia move to the edge of the mist, where they can see outward, but they see nothing. Red Scale and Fists of Fury listen for the noise of a running ratman, but they hear nothing.
Paks stands still, trying to sense evil around herself, the way she has before. When she doesn't sense anything, she says, “They’re gone.”
Chuck tries to see if the rat man left tracks, but we were all milling about there, and Hands of Fire fell to the ground. Chuck can’t find anything there, and when he steps outside of the muddled tracks, the ground seems undisturbed, as though the ratman left no tracks.
“This is strange,” he says. “He left no tracks.”
“Illusion?” asks Telryn.
“No, the wounds were real enough,” Chuck opines, nodding towards Novalia, who is sitting on the ground as Miriel heals her.
“Teleportation,” Goldpetal says, in a voice half statement and half wondering question.
After five minutes, the mist dissipates. Most of us are returning to our bed rolls and trying to catch a last hour of sleep before dawn.
Goldpetal says, “Chuck, lets forage for breakfast, while the rest of them sleep.”
Beneath our feet, the grass and vines come to life, growing with incredible speed. They start grabbing at us and entangling us. “Its an entangle,” shouts Goldpetal, recognizing his favorite spell used against us. For some reason, the vines do not touch Goldpetal, as though they recognize his power.
The vines quickly entangle most of the slaves. Chuck, Telryn, and Swims With Fishes are completely entangled as well. Paks stands still, and tries to detect evil. Though she does not sense evil, the vines also leave her alone. Red Scale has been entangled, but with a titanic effort, he breaks the largest vine entangling him, and frees himself.
Stone rolls alertly out of the entangling grasses. As he comes to his feet, two arrows fly out of the darkness. The first hits him, and he yells, “He’s over here! Ouch!” That last as the second arrow also hits him. Both arrows are in his chest, and though neither have hit a vital organ, he is hurting.
Goldpetal casts the obscuring mist again, over the camp, and quickly those who are entangled are obscured from the view of the sniper.
Dorin cuts his way free of the entangled area. Its pitch black, and raining, and even with his dwarven vision, he can’t see the archer. Hands of Fire works his way through the vines. Miriel is deep in the entangled area, but the vines don’t have her. She can’t see the ratman, either. She casts detect magic, but the brilliant flare of the enchanted vines prevents her from detecting anything else. She continues to concentrate.
Fists of Fury and Novalia are entangled, right next to each other. By each helping the other, they both break free. Drinks With Orcs has luckily avoided the grasses, and runs over next to Stone. Paks steps carefully out of the vines and begins circling around the entangle field to join the half-orc.
Goldpetal starts to move towards the edge of the mist, and the vines part out of his way. Red Scale follows him, taking advantage of the respite. Chuck and Swims With Fishes continue to struggle, but they are securely bound and fail to break free.
Stone starts running towards the source of the shots, but he still can't see anything. Suddenly, the rat man, the same one we’ve seen before, drops out of a tree about sixty feet in front of Stone. His bow is out, and as Stone tries to close the gap, the ratman shoots him twice. Stone shouts out, but when the second one hits, he pitches face-down in the mud, unconscious.
Dorin runs away from the ratman, as fast as his short dwarven legs will take him. Hands of Fire and Drinks With Orcs escape the entangled area and begin charging towards the ratman. Drinks With Orcs throws a javelin at the rat man, but misses. Seeing the two lizard men coming, the rat man dashes off into the woods. Hands of Fire and Drinks With Orcs chase after it.
Miriel starts working her way towards the edge of the entangled area. Fists of Fury and Novalia become entangled again, but Chuck breaks free. As Goldpetal steps through the entanglement, the vines part like a sea before him. The entangling grasses firmly grab Red Scale, who was following him, although Goldpetal remains untouched.
Dorin Silvershield stops fleeing. He begins watching alertly into the woods, retreating slowly back towards the camp and the obscuring mist.
Paks reaches Stone. Quickly, almost perfunctorily, she brings Madriel’s healing upon him, healing the worst of his injuries, but as soon as she sees that he is out of danger, she stops, rises, and continues to run after the rat man. Miriel escapes the entangled area, and starts heading for Stone. Stone is awake, but as he sits up it is clear that he is still very weak.
Chuck leaps for the edge of the entangle field, but a vine wraps around his leg, and he falls heavily. He is quickly entangled again, this time so thoroughly that he has no hope of freeing himself before the spell expires. Swims With Fishes and Red Scale can’t break free, either. Dorin moves around the circle to help Red Scale.
Goldpetal steps out of the entangled area, and begins circling the perimeter, looking for trouble. He has a grim look on his face, which frightens even the trapped slaves.
The rat man keeps running, but the two lizard men behind it fall into quicksand, although they were trying to follow his footsteps. Hands of Fire sinks deeply into the quicksand, while Drinks With Orcs is luckier, and is able to swim to the edge of the quicksand, although he can’t pull himself free.
Novalia breaks free of the vines, and begins picking her way out of the entangled area. Telryn, Chuck, Swims With Fishes, and Fists of Fury are all completely entangled. Dorin is trying to help Red Scale get free, but the lizard man is firmly stuck, and as quickly as Dorin can cut one vine, another grabs Red Scale.
Paks stops at the edge of the quicksand and yells, “Help! Help!” She tries to pull Drinks With Orcs out, but the seven-foot lizard man weighs over a hundred pounds more than she does, and she can’t pull him out by herself. Finally, though, with her help he manages to get one leg up on solid ground, and is able to pull himself out.
Miriel runs over to Stone, just as the half-orc climbs shakily to his feet. Miriel heals Stone, while Paks throws a rope to Hands of Fire. “Thanks, Miriel,” Stone says, and runs to help Paks. With his strength and hers combined, they are able to pull Hands of Fire out of the quicksand, but the ratman has disappeared again.
Telryn’s owl comes back and lands on his outstretched hand. “Chester says he lost him. Whatever he is, he disappeared under the cover of the trees.”
We wait warily lest our tormentor reappear, and within a few minutes, the entanglement has subsided and the mist has disappeared.
“He must be a Twilight Warden,” Chuck says, when he is free of the entanglement. He looks grim and determined.
“I think so,” Miriel agrees.
“Time to head out,” Stone says, taking down the tarp and starting to wrap his treasures in it again.
“We need to look for food, and more ninequine,” Goldpetal objects.
“I’ll help you,” Chuck says. “The rest of you pack.” They search in the immediate vicinity, with bows out, keeping a wary eye out for the ratman. The rest of us pick up our bed rolls and Miriel’s cooking gear.
We start to move out, into the teeth of the gale.
We walk for about two hours, into ever-increasing wind and rain. It never does get light, it just lifts from dark to a dark grey. Towering storm clouds reveal the majesty of the storm which is headed our way, and despair seeps through all but the stoutest hearts. Our steps are weary, and our nerves are on edge from constant vigilance for the return of the Twilight Warden.
Hands of Fire halts abruptly, and holds up one hand, trying to stop us all. Stone sees it, too, and stops, but Drinks With Orcs isn’t quick enough, and stumbles over a tripwire. It looses a branch which was held by the wire, and the trap whips out and strikes him in the head. He collapses, as though pole-axed.
Stone picks him up, but the lizard-man is unconscious and bleeding from the head. Paks bandages him, and Miriel heals him until Madriel has brought him back to consciousness. Goldpetal and Novalia look around for ambushers.
The other lizard men look for more traps. Hands of Fire notices another trap that didn't go off, a similar construction on the opposite side of our route. Chuck begins to move up to the front, but Paks stops him. Hands of Fire takes a twig and fires off the other trap.
Chuck studies the ground, trying to track the trapper, but he can’t see any tracks, between the dim light and the heavy groundwater.
We move on. After another half an hour we reach a wooded area. The trees are dripping with hanging vines. They are green and luscious, more beautiful than anything we’ve seen in the swamp thus far, but Hands of Fire brings us to a halt. “These razor vines,” he explains. “Not touch.” He confers with Telryn in Draconic.
Telryn says, “He tells me it will take an hour to make our way around them, or we can just plow through. From his description of the razor vines, I don’t think the slaves would make it through them - I’ve said we’d rather go around.” Miriel and Paks nod agreement, and we skirt around to the left side, around the edge of the vines.
There’s a small path close to the vines, where the ground is mud rather than water, and Hands of Fire keeps us along that path, walking side by side with Drinks With Orcs. The two leaders trigger another branch tripwire, and branches swing out and hit them, wounding both. Drinks is knocked into the razor vines. At the same moment, a large snake falls from a tree hanging out over the path. It drops on Chuck, biting him, and it begins to coil around his neck!
Chuck struggles against the snake, but he can’t break free. “Boa… constrictor…” he chokes out. Paks is the quickest to react, and she draws her long sword and charges towards Chuck. She takes a hard swing at the constrictor, coming dangerously close to Chuck’s face, but with her expert sword work she catches the snake solidly, cutting a deep gash in its thick mid-part.
Telryn and Dorin concentrate on keeping the slaves from panicking, while Red Scale helps Drinks With Orcs crawl his way out of the razor vines. The lizard man emerges bleeding from numerous slashes, but he grimly draws his javelin and looks around for a target.
Stone drops his sack and draws his crossbow. As he loads it, he peers through the driving rain. He sees the ratman in a tree, just on the edge of his visibility. “There it is,” he calls, and shoots at it. His bolt is blown wildly off by the wind, but does serve to point out the ratman to the rest of us. Hands of Fire and Drinks With Orcs both have javelins at the ready, which they launch at it. Both throws fall short.
In the center of the group, Chuck continues to struggle with the boa constrictor. It works its way ever tighter. Chuck manages to stab it with his dagger. His viper bites at it, but misses. Novalia shoots an arrow towards them, but she misses and the arrow goes off into the razor vines. Goldpetal draws his dagger and cuts at the constrictor, but he also misses it.
Miriel casts a spell towards the ratman, and even at this long range, her spell works. He freezes motionless, unable to move. Stone and Dorin begin running towards the tree.
Goldpetal’s hawk claws at the constrictor, buffeting Chuck’s face with its wings. Fists of Fury runs over and tries to bite the snake, his fangs coming perilously close to Chuck, but he misses the constrictor. Red Scale grabs it with one big paw, and rips open its belly with the claws of his other hand. It’s dead. Chuck and the two lizard men pry the motionless serpent off of his neck, and he takes a deep gasping breath.
Paks, Swims With Fishes, Drinks With Orcs, and Hands of Fire run towards the frozen ratman, which Stone has already reached. The half-orc begins to climb up it, towards the helpless Twilight Warden.
“Wow, what was that spell?” asks Telryn.
“Hold person,” the priestess says with a smile as she starts walking towards the tree.
Novalia fires her bow at the Twilight Warden, but she misses in the high wind. Chuck draws his bow and joins her, but he also misses. Goldpetal motions for the slaves to gather around him, while Telryn and Red Scale keep watch behind us.
Dorin grabs the trunk of the tree and shakes it, but all he does is dislodge Stone, who falls to the ground. Drinks With Orcs helps him up. Swims With Fishes throws a javelin up into the tree, but it hits a branch, and falls back to earth. Paks sheathes her sword and draws a bow, but her first shot gets blown wild by the wind.
The ratman remains motionless, held in place by Miriel’s spell, but an amused contempt is visible in its eyes. Hands of Fire and Fists of Fury try to climb up towards it, but Fists of Fury slips back down on the slippery bark. Dorin yells, “Get that ratman out of the tree, where I can kill him!”
Paks shoots again, this time sticking her arrow into one of the branches. Drinks With Orcs and Stone try to climb the tree, but they are getting in each other’s way and make little progress. Hands of Fire almost reaches the ratman, who is far out on one of the limbs, but had a secure platform to shoot from, and has a rat-like tail wrapped around a nearby branch for balance. Just as he gets close, however, Hands of Fire falls, landing heavily on the ground at our feet.
Back at the refugees, Goldpetal casts another obscuring mist. Telryn shakes his head. “I think he’s alone,” he tells the elf.
“I can’t take that chance,” Goldpetal tells him, drawing his bow.
At the tree, Paks says, “Everyone stand back. Let Stone climb.” Stone climbs the tree. Everyone waits for Stone, except Chuck, who also tries to climb up. He fails, but his viper climbs the tree easily, slithering past Stone and biting the ratman in the head.
Goldpetal steps to the edge of the mist and shoots at the ratman. His arrow, like so many others, is blown awry. Fists of Fury throws a javelin up at the ratman, but he, too, misses.
As Stone reaches the Twilight Warden, the ratman comes to life. He draws his scimitar and in one smooth motion chops at Stone’s arm. “Ow!” Stone yells, as the sword bites deep into the forearm. He falls out of the tree.
Everyone tries to act at once. Miriel tries to cast hold person again, but this time the spell fails. Swims With Fishes and Drinks With Orcs throw javelins, but they miss. Paks fires another arrow, and this one hits, catching the ratman in the leg.
Chuck tries to climb up the tree, and succeeds, reaching the ratman. He tries to grapple his enemy out of the tree, but the ratman makes a slashing blow with the scimitar, biting deep through Chuck’s leather armor and into his chest. The viper bites the ratman again, but he hardly pays attention to the little snake. Hands of Fire tries to climb to aid him, but again falls from the tree. The rat man hisses, “You'll never leave the swamp alive.”
Miriel rushes over to Stone, who is holding his right arm cradled to his stomach. “I think it’s broken,” he says, his face white.
“Here,” she takes his arm. “Madriel, heal this bone,” she intones. Stone grimaces as the bone slides back into place, but the goddess’ healing is swift and sure. Within seconds, the arm is fit again and color is returning to his face.
“Thanks,” he tells her.
Fists of Fury begins climbing the tree. He gets halfway up, but then finds himself stuck, unable to get further without dislodging Chuck. Goldpetal starts walking over from the obscuring mist, and takes a calm, unhurried shot. Finally, an arrow flies true despite the wind, and wounds the rat man.
In the tree, the ratman attacks Chuck with his scimitar and short sword. He gets a solid blow in with the short sword, but Chuck keeps his balance and stays in the tree. “I'm the Warden for this sector,” the ratman hisses, “And no one gets through.”
On the ground, Stone says, “Everyone, help me up the tree.” With the sure lift of a dwarf, Paks, and two lizard men, he makes it easily. He lithely swings past Fists of Fury, on a lighter branch, and reaches the ratman. He tries to grapple with it, but can’t get close enough without risking the swords, or a fall. Paks starts climbing up beneath him.
Chuck chops at the ratman’s tail, cutting it. The ratman hits him as well, a deep gash with the scimitar. Goldpetal tries to throw a rope around the branch the rat man is on, but fails. Miriel asks Madriel to bless us all. As she does, Fists of Fury climbs the rest of the way up the tree, clawing at the ratman, but like Stone, the swords keep him at bay.
The ratman, with so many of us around it in the tree, tries to leap across to another tree, past Fists of Fury and Stone. Fists of Fury claws it once, as it leaps. While the ratman is in mid-air, Stone clotheslines it, and it falls hard to the ground. Stone leaps down onto the rat man, landing on top of it, and flattens it. “Ooof!” he says. The ratman looks stunned.
Swims With Fishes and Dorin quickly surround the ratman. Swims With Fishes clubs it with his great club, and Dorin hacks it with the bastard sword. Drinks With Orcs jumps down from the tree, but as he lands, we can hear the cracking noise of a leg breaking, and he collapses.
Paks leaps from the tree, and brings her longsword down over her head in a two-handed blow, smiting the ratman and splitting its skull.
Miriel rushes over to Drinks With Orcs, and finds that he has a nasty compound fracture. One of his shinbones is sticking out through his skin, and he’s bleeding heavily. She makes a quick tourniquet, and then calls for Stone’s help. They give Drinks a piece of leather to bite down on, and Miriel and Stone set the bone. He lets out a great roar of pain and then falls unconscious. Finally, Miriel calls upon her goddess to knit the bone and ease the lizard man’s pain. By the time she is done, he is awake, alert, and can even put weight on the leg, although he still has a slight limp.
Paks, Goldpetal, and Chuck search the body. In addition to the scimitar and short sword, he’s wearing a studded leather armor made of extraordinarily supple leather. He also has a short sword, a long bow with plenty of arrows, and a bunch of tiny little flick knives.
Chuck takes a silver and jet amulet from around the ratman’s neck. “Hey, this is sort of a mockery of the Vigilants' medallions,” he says.
Goldpetal looks at the flick knives, and says, “These are all poisoned.”
Paks has been looking at the scimitar. “Wow,” she says, “This is a fine weapon, a real masterwork.”
Dorin steps over to look at it. “Yes, ’tis indeed. I know not the maker’s mark, but ’tis well made.”
Paks turns to the elf. “Goldpetal, the scimitar is your weapon. Do you want it?” she asks. “Wait, let me see if I can detect any evil taint on any of this, first.”
Paks concentrates on the body and his equipment. “The rat man has a stink of corruption about him,” she says, “But I think he is the only thing that is evil.”
“Of course,” says Goldpetal, as she hands him the scimitar. “Evil does not reside in a tool, only in how it is used.”
Chuck picks up the studded leather armor and the flick knives.
Stone offers the longbow to Novalia, but when she refuses, Goldpetal takes it.
“I’ll take the amulet,” Miriel asserts.
“I’ll cast detect magic on it later,” Telryn says, “When we’re free of the swamp.”
Paks gives the short sword to Dorin. “Here is a blade to call your own,” she says, “Earned by force of arms.”
He bows at her. “Thank you, milady,” he says. “ ’Tis not as fine a blade, but perhaps more to my size.”
Chuck takes off his old armor, and tries the new armor on. It fits terribly, at first, but once he figures out how to adjust the straps, he finds that it becomes very comfortable indeed. It is supple, almost buttery and conforms easily and silently with his movements. He tosses his old armor away, leaving it there by the corpse.
We move on into the gathering storm.
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Issue #15: Out of the Swamp: Episode 5 of 5
The day never does lighten, and the wind and rain build to a tremendous fury, but it seems that the defeat of the Twilight Warden has put an end to our pursuers.
Finally, as a dark day descends into night, we reach the edge of the swamp. We’re thoroughly exhausted and soaked to the bone. We can dimly see the lights of Kratys Freehold, perhaps an hour’s walk further, through the rain.
Chuck shakes his head. “I expected more trouble,” he yells, and it is hard to hear him over the whistling of the wind.
“Even the monsters of the swamp have more sense than to be out in a storm like this!” Telryn declares.
Miriel turns to the five lizard men. “Here we are,” she yells. “Do any of you wish to come with us?”
Drinks With Orcs shakes his head, and Red Scale says, “No, human lands.” Swims With Fishes and Fists of Fury are equally unwilling. Swims With Fishes points to Stone’s bag, and the half-orc gives them some gems as their share of the treasure.
Hands of Fire steps forward, and says, “I will.” He says something rapid in Draconic to the other four, and Fists of Fury nods as though accepting a commission.
Through Telryn’s interpreting, Paks shouts to the other four, “Thank you for everything, your hospitality and your assistance. If your tribe ever needs my services, I am forever indebted for your help.” She points out the lights of Kratys Freehold, barely visible through the rain and dark. “Send word through them if you need my help.”
A crash of lightning illuminates the night scene, and we start hurrying towards the Freehold.
By the time we reach the Freehold, the ground is flooding. The storm has grown to an incredible strength, and we walk bent into the wind. Lightning flashes several times a minute, and it feels as though the gods rage against the very earth.
It takes all of us calling and pounding on the gate of the freehold before the guard in the tower can hear us, our words whipped away by the wind. He alerts the townsfolk, and finally we are let in and led to the great hall.
Taryn Kratys greets Paks warmly at the door of the hall. “It’s you!” he exclaims. “We thought you were dead!” As she steps out of the way, and the refugees file into the hall, he exclaims, “And who are all those people with you?”
He’s even more surprised when Hands of Fire ducks into the hall. Some of the women and children scream, but Paks introduces him. “This is my ‘brother’, Hands of Fire. He and his tribe helped us against the ratmen, or we would all have perished.”
Llewyn comes down the stairs into the room, and rushes across to Chuck. “Chuck, you're alive!” she shouts, giving him a big hug. Then she straightens up and pulls away, saying demurely, “Oh, um... It’s nice to see you.”
Even Stone draws admiration and a warm greeting from his former drinking buddies – the golden crown he wears, taken from the ghoul-king, draws many questions.
As we dry off, Paks and Miriel tell a brief version of our story, with commentary by Telryn, Chuck, and Stone. Myrs makes us some food, and as the long tale comes out, everyone is amazed at our adventures. Even Taryn, as experienced a swordsman as anyone we know, is very complimentary.
Finally, at the close of the story, Paks tells Taryn, “And so we brought them here, hoping that they might find some work here as you rebuild after the attack.”
Telryn says, “The first thing we’ll need to do is find them some clothes, but…” He stands and up raises his voice. “You are all welcome,” he says, “To stay at the freehold as long as you need to, and as long as you’re willing to work.”
Myrs brings some clothes. Not all of them fit the refugees, but they are certainly better than the clothes they wore in, which Myrs takes to burn, in case of disease.
We also take the time to cast some healing. Stone and Chuck are the most badly hurt, and Miriel, Goldpetal, and Novalia all cast healing spells for both of them before they are back to fitness.
As the evening winds down, Paks asks Dorin about his story. Dorin says “I was a traveling smith,” he says, “And I was traveling in western Vesh about six months ago, many miles from the swamp. I was attacked by ratmen, which I never expected to see so far north. They knocked me out, and when I came to I was being dragged through the swamp. I thought I was going to die a slave, but we dwarves are a hardy lot, and I survived longer than most.”
“Where do you want to go now?” Paks asks him.
“Do ye know the Laughing Ogre Inn, in Southport?”
“Of course we do!” she exclaims.
“My cousin, Thorin Silvershield, used to travel with Fox Dunharrow, back in the old days. Does he still keep the inn?”
“He does,” she assures him, “And he’s been a good friend to us.”
When the meal is done, we plead exhaustion and retire for a room, where we count Stone's loot. There are 33 gems of various sorts, cheap and badly cut, 55 platinum pieces, 6575 gold pieces, and 321 silver pieces. The gold pieces are a great variety, from all over, and Paks shakes her head. “We won’t be able to sell these at face value,” she says. “We’ll have to exchange them.”
We all sleep through the night, perhaps twelve hours, even Goldpetal, who normally sleeps far less and prefers to sleep outdoors.
The next day, after arising late, we tell Taryn the whole story. When we get to the part about the red pearl, he says, “That’s a pearl of Khadum. Every once in a while they wash up from the sea that is tainted with the blood of the titan. They are sometimes called a Pearl of Agony. If you know the name of a person, the pearl can inflict grain pain on them. It is most frequently used to subdue people to the will of the holder, with the threat of further pain if they do not comply.”
Telryn takes the day to cast identify on more of the items we found.
The silver scimitar turns out to be a magical silver scimitar, and, as Paks had determined, very evil. He says it will strike true, and for more damage, than a normal scimitar, but he can't tell what else it does.
The two books Telryn brought out are Slytherin to Leadan translation. Leadan was the old empire language, and many current languages are descended from Leadan, though different from it and each other. Telryn knows Leadan and thinks that he could learn Slytherin by studying this book.
The silver ring has three arrows inscribed inside. Novalia tells us that this is the symbol of Tanil. Telyrn figures out that you can twist the ring, and it makes it easier for you to hide. This doesn’t work if somebody is looking right at you, or if you are garishly out of place, but it would work very well in woods or darkness.
The wooden ring is some sort of alarm system, which warns you if you’re near titan-sanctified areas.
The potions are Blur and Vision.
The amulet is a powerful talisman, which helps the wearer spot things out of the ordinary. “It may have other powers,” Telryn warns.
Chuck is very excited by the amulet, and Miriel hands it to him.
Paks gets annoyed. “Don’t start grabbing,” she says. “Let’s divide everything in an orderly manner.”
“I just want the amulet,” Chuck says.
“And the armor, and the flick knives, and the manacles,” Paks points out.
We spread the treasure out in front of us, and find that we have acquired:
• 33 assorted (cheap) gems
• 55 platinum pieces
• 6575 gold pieces
• 321 silver pieces
• 5 pieces of jade
• 7 sapphires
• 16 pieces of quartz
• A non-magical scroll containing a message in Slytherin
• The red “Pearl of Khadum,” or “Pearl of Agony”
• 6 obsidian stones
• An evil silver scimitar, probably with additional powers
• Sltherin to Lieden dictionary (2 volume set)
• A silver ring inscribed with 3 arrows which helps the user hide
• A wooden ring – Warns of Titan-sanctified areas
• A cloudy potion of Blur
• A clear potion of Vision
• 3 vials of glitter ink
• 2 vials of acid
• The parchment ledger scrolls
• The silver, jet, and bone amulet
• A masterwork scimitar
• A fine mace, perhaps a masterwork
• The supple studded leather armor which Chuck is wearing
• 15 poisoned flick knives
Safe and dry in Kratys Freehold, we can finally begin to relax.
The day never does lighten, and the wind and rain build to a tremendous fury, but it seems that the defeat of the Twilight Warden has put an end to our pursuers.
Finally, as a dark day descends into night, we reach the edge of the swamp. We’re thoroughly exhausted and soaked to the bone. We can dimly see the lights of Kratys Freehold, perhaps an hour’s walk further, through the rain.
Chuck shakes his head. “I expected more trouble,” he yells, and it is hard to hear him over the whistling of the wind.
“Even the monsters of the swamp have more sense than to be out in a storm like this!” Telryn declares.
Miriel turns to the five lizard men. “Here we are,” she yells. “Do any of you wish to come with us?”
Drinks With Orcs shakes his head, and Red Scale says, “No, human lands.” Swims With Fishes and Fists of Fury are equally unwilling. Swims With Fishes points to Stone’s bag, and the half-orc gives them some gems as their share of the treasure.
Hands of Fire steps forward, and says, “I will.” He says something rapid in Draconic to the other four, and Fists of Fury nods as though accepting a commission.
Through Telryn’s interpreting, Paks shouts to the other four, “Thank you for everything, your hospitality and your assistance. If your tribe ever needs my services, I am forever indebted for your help.” She points out the lights of Kratys Freehold, barely visible through the rain and dark. “Send word through them if you need my help.”
A crash of lightning illuminates the night scene, and we start hurrying towards the Freehold.
By the time we reach the Freehold, the ground is flooding. The storm has grown to an incredible strength, and we walk bent into the wind. Lightning flashes several times a minute, and it feels as though the gods rage against the very earth.
It takes all of us calling and pounding on the gate of the freehold before the guard in the tower can hear us, our words whipped away by the wind. He alerts the townsfolk, and finally we are let in and led to the great hall.
Taryn Kratys greets Paks warmly at the door of the hall. “It’s you!” he exclaims. “We thought you were dead!” As she steps out of the way, and the refugees file into the hall, he exclaims, “And who are all those people with you?”
He’s even more surprised when Hands of Fire ducks into the hall. Some of the women and children scream, but Paks introduces him. “This is my ‘brother’, Hands of Fire. He and his tribe helped us against the ratmen, or we would all have perished.”
Llewyn comes down the stairs into the room, and rushes across to Chuck. “Chuck, you're alive!” she shouts, giving him a big hug. Then she straightens up and pulls away, saying demurely, “Oh, um... It’s nice to see you.”
Even Stone draws admiration and a warm greeting from his former drinking buddies – the golden crown he wears, taken from the ghoul-king, draws many questions.
As we dry off, Paks and Miriel tell a brief version of our story, with commentary by Telryn, Chuck, and Stone. Myrs makes us some food, and as the long tale comes out, everyone is amazed at our adventures. Even Taryn, as experienced a swordsman as anyone we know, is very complimentary.
Finally, at the close of the story, Paks tells Taryn, “And so we brought them here, hoping that they might find some work here as you rebuild after the attack.”
Telryn says, “The first thing we’ll need to do is find them some clothes, but…” He stands and up raises his voice. “You are all welcome,” he says, “To stay at the freehold as long as you need to, and as long as you’re willing to work.”
Myrs brings some clothes. Not all of them fit the refugees, but they are certainly better than the clothes they wore in, which Myrs takes to burn, in case of disease.
We also take the time to cast some healing. Stone and Chuck are the most badly hurt, and Miriel, Goldpetal, and Novalia all cast healing spells for both of them before they are back to fitness.
As the evening winds down, Paks asks Dorin about his story. Dorin says “I was a traveling smith,” he says, “And I was traveling in western Vesh about six months ago, many miles from the swamp. I was attacked by ratmen, which I never expected to see so far north. They knocked me out, and when I came to I was being dragged through the swamp. I thought I was going to die a slave, but we dwarves are a hardy lot, and I survived longer than most.”
“Where do you want to go now?” Paks asks him.
“Do ye know the Laughing Ogre Inn, in Southport?”
“Of course we do!” she exclaims.
“My cousin, Thorin Silvershield, used to travel with Fox Dunharrow, back in the old days. Does he still keep the inn?”
“He does,” she assures him, “And he’s been a good friend to us.”
When the meal is done, we plead exhaustion and retire for a room, where we count Stone's loot. There are 33 gems of various sorts, cheap and badly cut, 55 platinum pieces, 6575 gold pieces, and 321 silver pieces. The gold pieces are a great variety, from all over, and Paks shakes her head. “We won’t be able to sell these at face value,” she says. “We’ll have to exchange them.”
We all sleep through the night, perhaps twelve hours, even Goldpetal, who normally sleeps far less and prefers to sleep outdoors.
The next day, after arising late, we tell Taryn the whole story. When we get to the part about the red pearl, he says, “That’s a pearl of Khadum. Every once in a while they wash up from the sea that is tainted with the blood of the titan. They are sometimes called a Pearl of Agony. If you know the name of a person, the pearl can inflict grain pain on them. It is most frequently used to subdue people to the will of the holder, with the threat of further pain if they do not comply.”
Telryn takes the day to cast identify on more of the items we found.
The silver scimitar turns out to be a magical silver scimitar, and, as Paks had determined, very evil. He says it will strike true, and for more damage, than a normal scimitar, but he can't tell what else it does.
The two books Telryn brought out are Slytherin to Leadan translation. Leadan was the old empire language, and many current languages are descended from Leadan, though different from it and each other. Telryn knows Leadan and thinks that he could learn Slytherin by studying this book.
The silver ring has three arrows inscribed inside. Novalia tells us that this is the symbol of Tanil. Telyrn figures out that you can twist the ring, and it makes it easier for you to hide. This doesn’t work if somebody is looking right at you, or if you are garishly out of place, but it would work very well in woods or darkness.
The wooden ring is some sort of alarm system, which warns you if you’re near titan-sanctified areas.
The potions are Blur and Vision.
The amulet is a powerful talisman, which helps the wearer spot things out of the ordinary. “It may have other powers,” Telryn warns.
Chuck is very excited by the amulet, and Miriel hands it to him.
Paks gets annoyed. “Don’t start grabbing,” she says. “Let’s divide everything in an orderly manner.”
“I just want the amulet,” Chuck says.
“And the armor, and the flick knives, and the manacles,” Paks points out.
We spread the treasure out in front of us, and find that we have acquired:
• 33 assorted (cheap) gems
• 55 platinum pieces
• 6575 gold pieces
• 321 silver pieces
• 5 pieces of jade
• 7 sapphires
• 16 pieces of quartz
• A non-magical scroll containing a message in Slytherin
• The red “Pearl of Khadum,” or “Pearl of Agony”
• 6 obsidian stones
• An evil silver scimitar, probably with additional powers
• Sltherin to Lieden dictionary (2 volume set)
• A silver ring inscribed with 3 arrows which helps the user hide
• A wooden ring – Warns of Titan-sanctified areas
• A cloudy potion of Blur
• A clear potion of Vision
• 3 vials of glitter ink
• 2 vials of acid
• The parchment ledger scrolls
• The silver, jet, and bone amulet
• A masterwork scimitar
• A fine mace, perhaps a masterwork
• The supple studded leather armor which Chuck is wearing
• 15 poisoned flick knives
Safe and dry in Kratys Freehold, we can finally begin to relax.
