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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1388165" data-attributes="member: 15470">Issue #10: "I hate the swamp!" - Episode 2 of 5The sun is setting, three hours later. It’s been unbearably hot all day, and there is no cover against the swarms of flies buzzing around our heads. Goldpetal is still sick. Most of us are asleep, and even Chuck and Paks, on watch, are dozing slightly from the heat. Suddenly, the owl squawks a warning. We all start awake as six bat-like creatures fly over the wall. They are rusty-red, with a bulbous, furry body about a foot long. They have bat-like wings, with a two-foot span, and a huge proboscis and insectoid yellow eyes. They swarm onto Miriel and Telryn. As they attack, we see that they have four small, pincer-like legs which they use to clamp onto the necks of their victims. Four surround Miriel as she sits up, and two attach themselves to her and start sucking her blood. Two attack Telryn, and they both latch onto him. Telryn panics, screaming, “Get ’em off me! Get ’em off me!” He struggles to pull one off, but its yellow feet have a firm grip. Its yellow eyes glare malevolently, unblinking, at him, mere inches from his own, and he can see it swallowing.Stone appears horrified, and yells “Oh no! Stirgies!” He steps over to Telryn and tries to let loose a flurry of blows at the ones attached to the mage, but the half-orc appears ginger, as though afraid of them, and misses. None of us have ever seen Stone look scared before, and that worries us.Chuck pulls out his two swords, steps over to Miriel, and swings at the two stirges attached to her. His first blow wounds one of them, but his second swing almost hits Miriel! Paks rushes around the other side of the priestess, and, taking care not to threaten her friend, she thrusts at the same one Chuck hit. She runs it through, and drags it away from the priestess. Miriel pulls out her dagger and stabs at the other one, wounding it. The stirges suck on Telryn and Miriel, who are visibly weakening. The other two flying around Miriel both land on her back and latch onto her. The one impaled on Paks’ sword is dead, and the warrior steps on it with one muddy boot, pushing the body off of her sword. Goldpetal weakly casts a spell, and his skin becomes the thick bark of a tree as the barkskin takes effect. He backs away from the combatants.Chuck swings his longsword the injured stirge on Miriel and hits it. It bursts with blood, which spatters all over her beautiful peacock cloak. Paks stabs at another of the stirges attacking the priestess, delivering a fatal blow. That leaves only one left on the priestess, and Miriel stabs at the last one, wounding it with her dagger. Telryn makes a tremendous effort of will to calm himself and concentrate, and he casts a magic missile at one of the two on him. A brief flash of blue illuminates the battle, but the malicious creature continues to suck blood through its proboscis, regarding the mage with its unblinking stare. Stone grabs the other, and squeezes it with both hands. It pops like a balloon, spattering them both with gore. The wounded stirge on Telryn detaches itself and begins to try desperately to fly away. Heavy with its bloated belly, it lumbers through the air, beating its wings furiously to gain altitude. Before it can get far, the mage casts magic missile a second time. The bolt of blue energy kills it, but even as it falls from the sky, Telryn collapses to the ground. One stirge is still sucking on Miriel, and Chuck uses his short sword carefully, piercing its head. Its is clearly a lethal strike, and the dead stirge falls at her feet. Miriel goes to tend to Telryn, and, after binding his wounds as best as she can, she asks Madriel to heal Telryn. Though his wounds close, and his flesh is healed, he still looks weak and pale, almost on the verge of death, from the bites he has suffered. “What were those things?” Paks asks Stone, who seemed to have seen them before.The half-orc shudders. “Stirgies,” he utters, as though it were an oath, but will say no more.After a brief silence, it is Goldpetal who answers. “They’re called stirges,” he says, “Not ‘stirgies’.” Though his voice starts weak, it gains a bit in strength as he finds his lecture tone. “They’re like very large mosquitoes – they drink mammal blood. Two of them together can kill a man in less than a minute, completely draining his blood. Although their wings resemble a bats’ and they have a mammalian body structure, they have an insectoid appearance and eyes, and live in large colonies. They may be one of the Titan’s creations, or they may be a natural relative of the vampire bat. They can sense the heat of a warm-blooded creature, even in pure darkness.”He pauses, exhausted. This is the longest he has spoken since coming down with the fever, and it seems to be costing him a great effort to speak. “Chuck,” he continues, when he catches his breath, “If ever you find a dead animal, mysteriously drained of blood, that’s frequently a sign that a colony of stirges may be nearby. It is not uncommon for a colony to drain all of the mammals nearby of their blood, eliminating its food source, and forcing the colony to move.”“I hate the swamp,” Telryn says when Goldpetal has finished. Miriel is examining him, and she looks perplexed.Goldpetal looks at her. “Miriel,” he says, “I don’t think your usual cure wounds spells will help Telryn, there, even with the blessing of your goddess.”Miriel looks very confused. “But, why not?” she asks.“His problem is the loss of blood,” explains the druid, “Not an injury of the flesh. I think there are other blessings you may be able to provide, such as a restoration, which can heal him.”“I have not yet been taught that rite,” she says, looking frustrated that she cannot help her companion.Paks says, “I think this means we’ll have to spend the night here, so everyone can recover.”Chuck looks at the sunset, and agrees. “We certainly can’t get anywhere safer before dark,” he says. “I just wish there were a way we could build some sort of shelter.”“We could make a tent,” Stone suggests. He had been carrying the stirges over to throw them into the swamp near the dead ratmen; that chore is now complete.“How?” asks the Vigilant. “I don’t think any of us are carrying one.”“I have four square yards of canvas,” Stone says, “In my pack, there.”He does, indeed; Chuck finds it folded neatly at the bottom of Stone’s pack, taking up about half the room. He also notices that there is no change of clothes, just an extra pair of boots. The tunic and kilt which are the monk’s normal attire are in fact his only attire. Chuck and the half-orc make a makeshift tent, using the canvas for a roof and the rock walls to put two sides of the tent up. The ten-foot pole, at a slight angle, props up the far corner, and everything is lashed in place with Chuck’s rope.After dark, Stone lights a fire to cook some food. Miriel has normally done the cooking on our travels, but she is sleeping to recover, and to everyone’s surprise Stone turns out to be a competent, if not spectacular, substitute.Paks takes the first watch, while everyone else sleeps. About halfway through her watch, she notices some flickering lights off to the southwest, through the swamp. She watches them closely for a little while, ready to wake the party if they appear threatening, but nothing happens.An hour before midnight, she wakes Miriel for her watch, and mentions the lights to her, but says that they’ve been visible for over an hour and have done nothing overtly hostile. Miriel finds that it takes an act of will not to look at the lights. They’re glowing in weird and interesting patterns, but she finds that they are less compelling if she does not look directly at them.A few hours later, Chuck joins Miriel on watch. He, too, manages to resist the lure of the dancing lights. In the darkest part of the night, a few hours before the dawn, they hear some splashing and squeaking nearby. It sounds as though it is coming from where the bodies of our victims were dumped. Miriel walks around the edge of the wall to look in that direction to see if she can see anything. She sees a small swarm of giant rats, each almost three feet long, feasting on the bodies. She wakes everyone up, quietly. “There’s a swarm of giant rats,” she warns everyone, “They’re feasting on our victims, for now, but we should stay alert.” Stone says, “I’ll get my curry powder,” and starts rummaging through his bag. Instead of coming back with cooking supplies, however, he pulls out his crossbow. Paks and Chuck draw their bows as well.The rats are making an awful noise now. “Those rats are feasting on blood,” Stone warns. “In a minute they’re going to frenzy.” He goes over to the fire and stokes it up. “No,” Chuck says, “Rats, even giant ones, don’t usually attack people who are aware of them and have fire. However, if we were sleeping they might come over and start eating us.” As the fire flares up, the rats pause and look over at us, but after a moment, they return to their feast. Goldpetal, still lying at the deepest part of the L, goes back to sleep, as do Telryn and Paks. Miriel, Chuck and Stone keep watch the rest of the night. The rats gradually quiet as their food is consumed, and before first light, they have finished eating and dispersed, giving us a wide berth, as Chuck predicted.</blockquote>

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