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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1385925" data-attributes="member: 15470">Issue #10: "I hate the swamp!" Episode 1 of 510th of November, 2002Issue #10 “I hate the Swamp”After the siege of Kratys Freehold, we decided to pursue the remnants of the ratman army as they retreated into the swamp. We caught them sleeping on a grassy mound, deep in the swamp. In a pitched battle, we’ve just finished off the survivors. Their shaman escaped, but all of the other ratmen are dead. It’s mid-afternoon on the 3rd Wildday of Charder, 150AV. It’s sweltering, and horribly humid and sticky.  Goldpetal had cast entangle on the grasses at the top of the knoll, and we wait for the spell to expire to free Stone, the hawk, and Chuck’s bow.  The wall of hornets which the shaman had summoned also dissipates.Once he’s free, Stone walks around to make sure all the bodies are dead. The mauler is unconscious, but still breathing, so he slits its throat. Chuck, after recovering his bow, searches the bodies, with Telryn’s assistance. Paks searches the mauler. Miriel and Goldpetal check out the ruins to see if they can tell who built them, but they are weathered and moss-covered, so they can’t tell much.On the bodies, we find 400 silver pieces. They seem to be coins from all over, including some which not even Goldpetal can recognize, which we think is quite odd. The mauler had a big silver arm band, carved in the rat man style, which Paks leaves, but points out to Chuck. He slides it off the mauler’s arm. We divide the coins, giving 66 to each member of the company. While Miriel and Goldpetal are checking the ruins, the priestess notices that the elf is sweating copiously and seems disoriented. “Goldpetal, you don’t look so good,” she says. “Why don’t you sit down, so I can minister to you.” He complies, sitting in the sun against one leg of the L-shaped ruined wall. When she touches her hand to his forehead, she shakes her head. “You have some sort of fever,” she says. “You’re sweating.” “I think I have Swamp Fever.”Miriel recognizes his symptoms and agrees. “Yes, I think you’re right. Let’s move you into the shade.” She moves him to the shade of the other side of the wall, but says there’s not much more she can do for him here.Stone, Chuck, and Paks walk back up the path to recover our packs. They set them near Goldpetal.  Stone sits down in the shade, also. He doesn’t look entirely well, either. He’s noticeably swollen from the hornet stings. We gather around Stone and Goldpetal, finding what shade we can, and Miriel asks, “So, what should we do next?”“Should try to follow the shaman,” Chuck asks, “Or continue following the path of the attacking force?”Telryn asks, “Are we planning an all-out assault on the ratman town?”Miriel nods, once. “That’s the plan.”“I’m really worn out,” Telryn says, wiping sweat from his brow. “And I couldn’t face an attack on the town right now.”Paks gestures to Stone and Goldpetal. “Neither could they,” she says. “Perhaps we should rest here, and recover.” “I agree,” Miriel says, “The town is still understaffed, since we’ve killed all the ratmen from the army.”“The shaman got away,” Paks points out. “If we wait too long, he’ll be able to warn them.”“Waiting shouldn’t be that much of a problem,” Miriel says, “Since he’ll get there way before us anyway. He’s a ratman. He knows the swamp.”Seeing everyone nodding in agreement that we should rest, Miriel says, “Okay, let’s make camp. Who is still wounded from the fight?” She looks around, and notices that Paks is still visibly injured. The priestess offers, “Paks, let me heal you.” “No,” Paks tries to protest, “Stone and Goldpetal need it more.”“Take off your mail and let me look at it.”Paks can’t even take her chain-mail shirt off without assistance, and her shoulder is badly bitten. Miriel cleans the wound, and then invokes Madriel’s healing on her. Even that magical healing is not sufficient, and it takes healing Paks a second time to close the last of her wounds.When she is finished, Chuck asks Miriel to detect magic on the mauler’s armband. She casts the spell, but says that she doesn’t detect anything. Chuck was uninjured during the most recent battle, but still hadn’t fully recovered from his brutal wounds at the hands of Xyler Blackfoot during the siege of Kratys Freehold. Miriel summons the healing of Madriel for him, and for the first time in several days, he is completely healthy. Chuck and Paks don’t want the bodies, which are already beginning to smell bad, to attract vermin. While the others recuperate, they drag the corpses about fifty yards away, up the path, and roll them into the swamp. The mauler is extremely heavy, and takes both of them, together, putting their whole strength into it.In the late afternoon, Miriel and Telryn wake up. Goldpetal is still sleeping soundly, and has been asleep an uncommonly long time for an elf. He is slumping over and looking very ill, leaned up against the rock wall. Though Stone is awake, but he has not fully recovered from the hornet stings. Paks looks around at our exhausted party, and says, “I think we should stay here and rest, until everyone’s back up to full strength.”Miriel looks at the sun, already heading towards the horizon, and disagrees. “I have a bad feeling about staying here.”“I hate the swamp,” Telryn says. “I’d rather not sleep here if we don’t have to.”“This is still the best place for us to stay.” Paks argues. “It’s solid ground, out of the water, and away from the wildlife, with a wall to our backs.” She thumps a hand on the solid stone wall to our backs. “We can defend ourselves here.”As she is convincing the rest of us, Goldpetal , who had been asleep, suddenly sits up and yells, “Thief! Stop!” He’s pointing away from the camp, into the swamp, where a goblin is running away. A glint of glass is visible in its right hand, but only Stone’s keen eyes recognize it as one of Goldpetal’s vials of antitoxin. The goblin runs off in the direction the shaman went, into the grass.The monk is the first to react, and throws a dagger after the thief, but his injuries weaken his throw, and it falls short. Paks isn't wearing her armor, so she draws her bow instead of her sword. She looses a single arrow after the goblin. This provokes an attack of opportunity, so Stone reflexively punches her in the arm. Chuck also draws and fires, but neither of their arrows finds its mark.Telryn launches his owl into the air, and within moments, the mage reports, “Chester says that he sees a small flock of goblins to the north.” Stone and Chuck rush into the swamp after the goblins, followed by Telryn. Paks looks dubiously at the ground, and begins slowly picking her way after them, trying to make sure of her footing. Miriel stays behind to protect Goldpetal, who doesn’t look well enough to get up. Stone and Chuck quickly see the goblins, who are standing behind some bushes, waving their arms and taunting them in the goblin tongue. Both of them know enough of the goblin language to get the gist: “Nyah nyah nyah! Stupid! Nyah nyah nyah!”  It’s hard to see through the bushes, but there appear to be four to six goblins. Though Stone is normally the fastest runner in the company, he is still suffering from the hornet stings, and Chuck splashes past him and into the lead. As the young Vigilant closes on the goblins, he gets an intuitive feeling that something is wrong – he puts out his hand and stops Stone.  He grabs the ten-foot pole, which Llewyn gave him, and tests the ground in front of him. Just in front of him, there is a sudden drop-off, and the water gets very deep.The goblins start slinging stones at Chuck and Stone. One hits Stone. “Ow!” he says.  Telryn catches up to the two fighters, who are stuck while Chuck searches for a path towards the goblins. The goblins throw more stones at them, and one hits each of them. Stone says “Ow!” again, louder. Telryn drops to one knee – he was hit in the head, and looks partly stunned.The goblins taunt the fighters again, “Ha Ha! You can’t get us! Stupid orc!” this last directed at Stone, the half-orc. Finally, Chuck finds solid ground. “That way!” he yells, pointing around to the west. “Follow that grass – the ground is firm beneath it!”  Stone begins to run, outpacing the other two, around the edge of the deep water. Chuck draws his bow where he stands, and shoots at the goblins, but his arrows get lost in the dense foliage. They taunt him again “Gobble gobble! Loser! Gobble gobble!” Paks works her way up beside Chuck with her bow drawn and fires at the goblins, but the arrow flies over their heads. Miriel abandons Goldpetal to rush over to Telryn. He looks dizzy from the rock hitting his head. She kneels down beside him, but before she can do anything, he shakes his head as though to clear it. With a quick gesture, he points at the goblins and casts magic missile. An iridescent blue bolt streaks from his outstretched finger, through the foliage, and strikes one of the goblins square in the chest. It drops like a rock, apparently dead in an instant. The goblins look at each other, and scream in terror. “Aaah, aaah!” They run away from us, moving with amazing speed through the swamp. Telryn yells out a rude comment about their mothers, speaking the goblin tongue, as they run away. Stone runs up to the unconscious goblin, and checks to see if it has the vial. “Got it!” he yells to us, picking up the vial and showing it to us. He picks up the goblin and carries it back, leaving its club. We all slog back through the swamp to the camp area. The goblin is still breathing, but without aid, it slowly bleeds to death. Stone is the first one to notice. “I think its dead,” he says. “Can I eat it?”“No!” Miriel says.“You don’t know where that’s been,” Chuck quips. Stone dumps the body in the swamp, near the others. Miriel heals Telryn. When he returns from his waste disposal venture, Stone places the vial back in Goldpetal’s bag; the elf has already fallen asleep again.We all move into the corner of the L, where we are protected on three sides, and set a watch. Paks, Stone, and Chuck rotate the watch while Miriel and Telryn rest. The owl is perched on the wall, watching our backs.</blockquote>

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