Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
I like it, even though Cord does get all the best lines! Going to have to raise my game a little there I think 
They came in search of Paradise (A Story of Erth) - Updated 23rd April
robberbaron
First Post
Summer in the City
Part way through a summer spent in often tedious pursuits, the party reassembled to discuss their continuing journey to glory (and money).
“Just in time for the rainy season then,” commented Cord, examining the bow he had “inherited” from Gaelle. “How about hunting pirates? They are known for having booty and ships are worth good money.
And Byzantium being a port…”
“I have been honing my swimming skills over the summer” added Li Kung.
“But I can’t swim,” whined Helga, not too happy with the idea.
Li Kung was happy to show off his shiny new masterwork glaive, while Seigfried was swishing his equally shiny fullblade. Cord was getting used to his new suit of plate armour, but was feeling a trifle uncomfortable – the sweat kept pooling in his boots.
“Now I can return this sword (indicating the somewhat use-worn weapon with which he arrived in Byzantium) to my father,” said the Paladin, gravely. “It is a debt I must repay”
“But that’s in Germania!” protested Gaelle, not particularly wanting to go out of her way for this troublesome warrior. Her outburst startled her Germanian Shepherd companion, who was not quite used to being around Gaelle’s “friends”.
“Can’t you post it?” asked Li Kung.
“Imagine the postage on a huge blade,” exclaimed Seigfried.
Li Kung went out to investigate any anti-pirate activity.
He found that, while Thrace didn’t have much of a navy, or a pirate problem, some of the major merchant enterprises performed their own patrols out into the Terraine Sea.
The most likely opportunity for them would be to hire out as “Marines” – specialised Marines, capable of bringing their own magical support.
The only fly in the ointment was that there could be no guarantee of action. Their sojourn as Marines could be as dull as the summer had been.
Also, the Imperial Granbretanian Navy had quite a presence in the Terraine Sea, and took it upon themselves to chase and destroy pirates. Their triremes, quadriremes and quinqueremes have been a common sight in Byzantium’s harbour for the last forty years.
Rumour has it, however, that the Granbretanians actually cause much of the piracy, in order to maintain a larger fleet than would be acceptable without a significant pirate threat. These rumours, of course, are strenuously denied by the Emperor’s representatives.
It was common knowledge that the Imperial warships often Stopped and Searched foreign ships, especially those from the North African countries. Sometimes these actions became Stop, Search and Sink.
Feeling that ship-life was not to be for them, Li Kung and Helga further investigated rumours of vast treasures yet to be found (which normally turned out to be merely rumours), adventuring parties that have mysteriously disappeared (the ones going after anything special didn’t make their destinations common knowledge).
“The alternative to anti-piracy, of course,” mused Cord, “is piracy.”
“Just need to find some pirates,” said Seigfried.
“Nah. Just need a boat. Any boat,” said Cord, sounding like he knew what he was talking about.
“We could start with a rowing boat and work up,” suggested Li Kung.
In order to big themselves up and get the kind of reputation they would need to secure the more lucrative commissions, they spread rumours of their own prowess (Spread Information), with little success. They would have to do something noticeable.
“We could take over the Thieves’ Guild,” suggested Li Kung, to a stunned silence. “It would get us noticed.”
“It would certainly send out waves,” commented Seigfried.
Gracientus spoke against the idea, not realising that the Xing monk had been at least partly joking, as his temple had strong links with the Guild. Also, the Guild was effectively “sanctioned” by the Government – they kept crime to an acceptable level, the rich knew that if they were robbed by a non-Guild thief they would likely get much of their goods back, along with the hands of the robber, and the poor had a career to which they could aspire.
The other alternative the party considered was heading north, toward less civilised lands.
“Perhaps, we could do some undoubtedly Evil deeds,” Li Kung thought out loud. “Then, the Bounty Hunters that are sent after us will be worth killing. The worse our reputation, the better the class of hunter we will attract and the better the kit we can recover from their bodies.”
“How about finding a town on, say, the Thracian border, and running it?” Gaelle suggested.
“A bit boring,” commented Cord.
“I like the idea of having a population to oppress,” added Li Kung, “it would be just like home, only without a hundred other monks trying to beat me up every day. Bastards!”
The general consensus was that they would rather kill people for a living than rule people, so they put their heads together and decided to do some research on the other adventuring groups in the city. Take out the other groups, their competitors, and they would gain everything they wanted – fame (actually, infamy), booty, experience and booty (booty was that important to them).
Helga decided that she could further her own goals by “getting in” with some of the societies in Byzantium, with mixed results.
The Guild of Physicians didn’t want to know her as she was little more than a First Aider and beneath their notice.
The Society of Mages, Sages, Alchemists and Other Professional Thinking Persons were interested in her as a customer but, she would have to wait until she was capable of casting spells of the 3rd order before she could apply for membership. It would cost an initial 500GP per year which would give her discounted rates for components, etc., as well as free use of their libraries and laboratories, though they are normally fully booked well in advance.
The Temple of Set, with the help of Gracientus, was a different matter. They deemed her acceptable as a lay member – she is rather more selfish than they would normally like, but a member is a member – and she had made quite an impression on the lower echelons of the clergy.
Thus she was made privy to information on things that were causing the temple trouble.
The temple often sends clerics out with guards to get items of interest and some of their teams have gone missing:
One of their caravans, carrying artworks for Maxis’ personal collection, was crossing the plains of Turkistan when it was attacked and destroyed by what they think were Dire Lions.
The temple was willing to pay 750GP extra for return of the artworks.
“We don’t have to bring back ALL the artworks, do we?” suggested Gaelle when Helga explained the job.
A lone cleric had gone to investigate a known lair in the hills to the southwest and they are pretty sure he was eaten by a small red dragon. They want his holy symbol back, as a token to show that the dragon has met its end.
The reward for dealing with the dragon was to be 1500GP. The cleric was stupid to enter the lair of a dragon having dismissed his fighter escort back at the temple but they couldn’t let his death go unavenged.
One of their teams had been sent out to deal with a group of brigands that had attacked a couple of Set-sponsored caravans. The Set team had died to a man but the brigands had been mostly killed as well – the leader, a few men and his pet wizard were all that was left. They were quite a tough group and the thought was that the party weren’t good enough to take them on but, they would be considered at a later date.
Part way through a summer spent in often tedious pursuits, the party reassembled to discuss their continuing journey to glory (and money).
“Just in time for the rainy season then,” commented Cord, examining the bow he had “inherited” from Gaelle. “How about hunting pirates? They are known for having booty and ships are worth good money.
And Byzantium being a port…”
“I have been honing my swimming skills over the summer” added Li Kung.
“But I can’t swim,” whined Helga, not too happy with the idea.
Li Kung was happy to show off his shiny new masterwork glaive, while Seigfried was swishing his equally shiny fullblade. Cord was getting used to his new suit of plate armour, but was feeling a trifle uncomfortable – the sweat kept pooling in his boots.
“Now I can return this sword (indicating the somewhat use-worn weapon with which he arrived in Byzantium) to my father,” said the Paladin, gravely. “It is a debt I must repay”
“But that’s in Germania!” protested Gaelle, not particularly wanting to go out of her way for this troublesome warrior. Her outburst startled her Germanian Shepherd companion, who was not quite used to being around Gaelle’s “friends”.
“Can’t you post it?” asked Li Kung.
“Imagine the postage on a huge blade,” exclaimed Seigfried.
Li Kung went out to investigate any anti-pirate activity.
He found that, while Thrace didn’t have much of a navy, or a pirate problem, some of the major merchant enterprises performed their own patrols out into the Terraine Sea.
The most likely opportunity for them would be to hire out as “Marines” – specialised Marines, capable of bringing their own magical support.
The only fly in the ointment was that there could be no guarantee of action. Their sojourn as Marines could be as dull as the summer had been.
Also, the Imperial Granbretanian Navy had quite a presence in the Terraine Sea, and took it upon themselves to chase and destroy pirates. Their triremes, quadriremes and quinqueremes have been a common sight in Byzantium’s harbour for the last forty years.
Rumour has it, however, that the Granbretanians actually cause much of the piracy, in order to maintain a larger fleet than would be acceptable without a significant pirate threat. These rumours, of course, are strenuously denied by the Emperor’s representatives.
It was common knowledge that the Imperial warships often Stopped and Searched foreign ships, especially those from the North African countries. Sometimes these actions became Stop, Search and Sink.
Feeling that ship-life was not to be for them, Li Kung and Helga further investigated rumours of vast treasures yet to be found (which normally turned out to be merely rumours), adventuring parties that have mysteriously disappeared (the ones going after anything special didn’t make their destinations common knowledge).
“The alternative to anti-piracy, of course,” mused Cord, “is piracy.”
“Just need to find some pirates,” said Seigfried.
“Nah. Just need a boat. Any boat,” said Cord, sounding like he knew what he was talking about.
“We could start with a rowing boat and work up,” suggested Li Kung.
In order to big themselves up and get the kind of reputation they would need to secure the more lucrative commissions, they spread rumours of their own prowess (Spread Information), with little success. They would have to do something noticeable.
“We could take over the Thieves’ Guild,” suggested Li Kung, to a stunned silence. “It would get us noticed.”
“It would certainly send out waves,” commented Seigfried.
Gracientus spoke against the idea, not realising that the Xing monk had been at least partly joking, as his temple had strong links with the Guild. Also, the Guild was effectively “sanctioned” by the Government – they kept crime to an acceptable level, the rich knew that if they were robbed by a non-Guild thief they would likely get much of their goods back, along with the hands of the robber, and the poor had a career to which they could aspire.
The other alternative the party considered was heading north, toward less civilised lands.
“Perhaps, we could do some undoubtedly Evil deeds,” Li Kung thought out loud. “Then, the Bounty Hunters that are sent after us will be worth killing. The worse our reputation, the better the class of hunter we will attract and the better the kit we can recover from their bodies.”
“How about finding a town on, say, the Thracian border, and running it?” Gaelle suggested.
“A bit boring,” commented Cord.
“I like the idea of having a population to oppress,” added Li Kung, “it would be just like home, only without a hundred other monks trying to beat me up every day. Bastards!”
The general consensus was that they would rather kill people for a living than rule people, so they put their heads together and decided to do some research on the other adventuring groups in the city. Take out the other groups, their competitors, and they would gain everything they wanted – fame (actually, infamy), booty, experience and booty (booty was that important to them).
Helga decided that she could further her own goals by “getting in” with some of the societies in Byzantium, with mixed results.
The Guild of Physicians didn’t want to know her as she was little more than a First Aider and beneath their notice.
The Society of Mages, Sages, Alchemists and Other Professional Thinking Persons were interested in her as a customer but, she would have to wait until she was capable of casting spells of the 3rd order before she could apply for membership. It would cost an initial 500GP per year which would give her discounted rates for components, etc., as well as free use of their libraries and laboratories, though they are normally fully booked well in advance.
The Temple of Set, with the help of Gracientus, was a different matter. They deemed her acceptable as a lay member – she is rather more selfish than they would normally like, but a member is a member – and she had made quite an impression on the lower echelons of the clergy.
Thus she was made privy to information on things that were causing the temple trouble.
The temple often sends clerics out with guards to get items of interest and some of their teams have gone missing:
One of their caravans, carrying artworks for Maxis’ personal collection, was crossing the plains of Turkistan when it was attacked and destroyed by what they think were Dire Lions.
The temple was willing to pay 750GP extra for return of the artworks.
“We don’t have to bring back ALL the artworks, do we?” suggested Gaelle when Helga explained the job.
A lone cleric had gone to investigate a known lair in the hills to the southwest and they are pretty sure he was eaten by a small red dragon. They want his holy symbol back, as a token to show that the dragon has met its end.
The reward for dealing with the dragon was to be 1500GP. The cleric was stupid to enter the lair of a dragon having dismissed his fighter escort back at the temple but they couldn’t let his death go unavenged.
One of their teams had been sent out to deal with a group of brigands that had attacked a couple of Set-sponsored caravans. The Set team had died to a man but the brigands had been mostly killed as well – the leader, a few men and his pet wizard were all that was left. They were quite a tough group and the thought was that the party weren’t good enough to take them on but, they would be considered at a later date.
robberbaron
First Post
Seigfried Reaches a Bit of an Epiphany
20th September 1699, Night
Seigfried’s nightmares took a turn.
For several nights in a row, his dreams had become less frenetic and less bloody, though more disturbing.
And his screaming less intense.
---
He was walking through a forest and into a clearing with a large cottage in the centre. His father looked up from the pile of logs he was turning into firewood, saw Seigfried and leant on his axe, calling for his wife.
She appeared in the doorway, just as Seigfried approached.
Seigfried could not quite hear the words – they were a buzzing, like flies in a jar – but his father was angry and his mother concerned.
[Otto Schtauffen had been an officer in the Army of the Thousand Year Reich that had subjugated all of northern Europa thirty years earlier, and hated how his countrymen had been treated since the Fuhrer had ascended (according to the Priests) and Peace had broken out. Peace! He spat the word as a curse. He hated his life. Grubbing a living out of the earth when he had been striding across the continent at the head of a victorious army.
Otto tended to see himself as a general, rather than the Lieutenant he had actually been.
Seigfried, brought up on the teachings of the Fuhrer and the litanies of the Priests, had rebelled. Unable to stomach the stupidity of his father’s beliefs he had gone off to discover his own path. He had found it on the border of Slavia.
He had discovered a temple to Morana, the Slav Goddess of Death and Winter and taken her teachings to heart. How he loved his Goddess! She became everything to him and, one day, his prayers were answered.
Morana herself appeared to him and granted him power in return for his service.
Without hesitation, Seigfried pledged himself to her and took his first step on the path of the Paladin.]
Seigfried knew that his father’s anger came not only from his abandoning of the Germanic “faith” but, more importantly, that Seigfried had entered the service of a god of what should have been a slave race. The Slavs were to have been the Germanian army’s next conquest.
No matter what he said, however he tried to explain himself, Seigfried only made his father angrier, until Otto grabbed his axe and threatened Seigfried. Backing away, toward the house and the disapproving stare of his mother, Seigfried kept himself outside the swing of his father’s weapon, then ducked past his mother and into the house.
He ran through the house, hearing his father’s footsteps behind him, until he was cornered in the living room. With his father coming at him swinging his axe, Seigfried looked around in growing fear. He spotted his father’s giant sword, hanging over the fireplace, and grabbed it just in time to deflect an axe blow.
They traded blows for a minute or more – Seigfried was inexperienced, but Otto was old – until Otto overextended himself and Seigfried cut deeply into his shoulder.
Now it was Seigfried’s turn to be angry. He was angry at how his father had ruled his life, how he had been brought up by a bullying, ignorant soldier who thought he was a great hero of the Empire.
He was angry at his mother for letting his father dominate him so completely.
He was angry at both of them for not understanding him.
He was angry at them for not accepting his choice.
He was just angry.
---
Seigfried’s vision cleared and the only sound he could hear was the steady drip, drip, drip of blood from the point of his sword. Everything in sight was red. The hearth rug was red. The fireplace was splashed with red.
His clothes were red.
The arm on the sideboard was red.
The arm on the sideboard?
Looking around the room he could see pieces of body all around him.
He recognised his father’s face, lying on the window sill, and his stomach lurched.
He saw a head, still attached to a shoulder, under the table. His mother’s.
His stomach lurched again, more urgently.
He managed to get out of the door before his stomach emptied.
---
He awoke in the forest, leaves coating his body, stuck to the dried blood on his clothes.
What the hell had happened? Whose blood was this?
After a hasty examination, he concluded that it wasn’t his.
Where was he?
---
He tramped through the woods for hours before coming across a temple, seemingly deserted.
Entering the gates he was met by an old priest who looked at his blood-soaked clothes and took him in hand.
Seigfried spent several days at the temple, dedicated to Forseti, the Norse God of Justice, and learned as much as the priest could teach.
At the end of his stay, Seigfried took the oaths and swore his service to Forseti.
He felt that his destiny was to be a Holy Warrior for Justice and determined to seek out iniquity in the name of his God.
So, to Byzantium, one of the greatest cities of the age. And where there was greatness, you would find baseness, either in control or in the gutter.
---
Waking in his bed, covered with sweat and bruises from his extremely unquiet night, Seigfried could remember everything.
He had murdered his parents and left their bodies for the animals’ feast.
He had sworn himself into service with a God.
“Yes, you did. But you are back now and I suppose I can forgive my favourite servant.”
Seigfried’s head whipped around as he jerked upright. There was a woman in his room. An achingly beautiful woman dressed in crisp white robes. His mistress! How could he have forgotten her?
Leaping out of bed, Seigfried threw himself to his knees in front of the beauty, pressing his forehead to the rough boards.
“I am unworthy of your forgiveness, great Morana,” he breathed.
“Yes you are, I suppose,” Morana replied, gently, “but you acted properly, so I am willing to be kind. You punished those who mocked your faith. Who mocked ME!” this last word screamed at him.
“They deserved death and you dispensed it accordingly. Now, pledging service to a God other than me, that is different.” Morana stepped around Seigfried, still with his face pressed to the floor.
“You must have been out of your mind.”
Seigfried whimpered faintly, expecting at least excruciating pain from his jilted Goddess.
“Yes, that was it. You were not yourself. I can accept that and I am sure I can persuade Forseti to agree.”
Seigfried stopped moving. It seemed that his Lady was trying to help him. Then he found that he couldn’t actually move, and that the room was getting rather chilly.
He tried to rise from the floor, but his hands and forehead were stuck and the floor was icy cold. And getting colder.
“You seriously thought I wasn’t going to punish you?” asked Morana, as the temperature in the room passed freezing point and continued dropping.
---
The burns on his face and hands took but an hour to heal, and Seigfried was ecstatic that his Goddess had accepted his offering of pain and heartfelt apologies and taken him back into her service.
He would not let her down again.
20th September 1699, Night
Seigfried’s nightmares took a turn.
For several nights in a row, his dreams had become less frenetic and less bloody, though more disturbing.
And his screaming less intense.
---
He was walking through a forest and into a clearing with a large cottage in the centre. His father looked up from the pile of logs he was turning into firewood, saw Seigfried and leant on his axe, calling for his wife.
She appeared in the doorway, just as Seigfried approached.
Seigfried could not quite hear the words – they were a buzzing, like flies in a jar – but his father was angry and his mother concerned.
[Otto Schtauffen had been an officer in the Army of the Thousand Year Reich that had subjugated all of northern Europa thirty years earlier, and hated how his countrymen had been treated since the Fuhrer had ascended (according to the Priests) and Peace had broken out. Peace! He spat the word as a curse. He hated his life. Grubbing a living out of the earth when he had been striding across the continent at the head of a victorious army.
Otto tended to see himself as a general, rather than the Lieutenant he had actually been.
Seigfried, brought up on the teachings of the Fuhrer and the litanies of the Priests, had rebelled. Unable to stomach the stupidity of his father’s beliefs he had gone off to discover his own path. He had found it on the border of Slavia.
He had discovered a temple to Morana, the Slav Goddess of Death and Winter and taken her teachings to heart. How he loved his Goddess! She became everything to him and, one day, his prayers were answered.
Morana herself appeared to him and granted him power in return for his service.
Without hesitation, Seigfried pledged himself to her and took his first step on the path of the Paladin.]
Seigfried knew that his father’s anger came not only from his abandoning of the Germanic “faith” but, more importantly, that Seigfried had entered the service of a god of what should have been a slave race. The Slavs were to have been the Germanian army’s next conquest.
No matter what he said, however he tried to explain himself, Seigfried only made his father angrier, until Otto grabbed his axe and threatened Seigfried. Backing away, toward the house and the disapproving stare of his mother, Seigfried kept himself outside the swing of his father’s weapon, then ducked past his mother and into the house.
He ran through the house, hearing his father’s footsteps behind him, until he was cornered in the living room. With his father coming at him swinging his axe, Seigfried looked around in growing fear. He spotted his father’s giant sword, hanging over the fireplace, and grabbed it just in time to deflect an axe blow.
They traded blows for a minute or more – Seigfried was inexperienced, but Otto was old – until Otto overextended himself and Seigfried cut deeply into his shoulder.
Now it was Seigfried’s turn to be angry. He was angry at how his father had ruled his life, how he had been brought up by a bullying, ignorant soldier who thought he was a great hero of the Empire.
He was angry at his mother for letting his father dominate him so completely.
He was angry at both of them for not understanding him.
He was angry at them for not accepting his choice.
He was just angry.
---
Seigfried’s vision cleared and the only sound he could hear was the steady drip, drip, drip of blood from the point of his sword. Everything in sight was red. The hearth rug was red. The fireplace was splashed with red.
His clothes were red.
The arm on the sideboard was red.
The arm on the sideboard?
Looking around the room he could see pieces of body all around him.
He recognised his father’s face, lying on the window sill, and his stomach lurched.
He saw a head, still attached to a shoulder, under the table. His mother’s.
His stomach lurched again, more urgently.
He managed to get out of the door before his stomach emptied.
---
He awoke in the forest, leaves coating his body, stuck to the dried blood on his clothes.
What the hell had happened? Whose blood was this?
After a hasty examination, he concluded that it wasn’t his.
Where was he?
---
He tramped through the woods for hours before coming across a temple, seemingly deserted.
Entering the gates he was met by an old priest who looked at his blood-soaked clothes and took him in hand.
Seigfried spent several days at the temple, dedicated to Forseti, the Norse God of Justice, and learned as much as the priest could teach.
At the end of his stay, Seigfried took the oaths and swore his service to Forseti.
He felt that his destiny was to be a Holy Warrior for Justice and determined to seek out iniquity in the name of his God.
So, to Byzantium, one of the greatest cities of the age. And where there was greatness, you would find baseness, either in control or in the gutter.
---
Waking in his bed, covered with sweat and bruises from his extremely unquiet night, Seigfried could remember everything.
He had murdered his parents and left their bodies for the animals’ feast.
He had sworn himself into service with a God.
“Yes, you did. But you are back now and I suppose I can forgive my favourite servant.”
Seigfried’s head whipped around as he jerked upright. There was a woman in his room. An achingly beautiful woman dressed in crisp white robes. His mistress! How could he have forgotten her?
Leaping out of bed, Seigfried threw himself to his knees in front of the beauty, pressing his forehead to the rough boards.
“I am unworthy of your forgiveness, great Morana,” he breathed.
“Yes you are, I suppose,” Morana replied, gently, “but you acted properly, so I am willing to be kind. You punished those who mocked your faith. Who mocked ME!” this last word screamed at him.
“They deserved death and you dispensed it accordingly. Now, pledging service to a God other than me, that is different.” Morana stepped around Seigfried, still with his face pressed to the floor.
“You must have been out of your mind.”
Seigfried whimpered faintly, expecting at least excruciating pain from his jilted Goddess.
“Yes, that was it. You were not yourself. I can accept that and I am sure I can persuade Forseti to agree.”
Seigfried stopped moving. It seemed that his Lady was trying to help him. Then he found that he couldn’t actually move, and that the room was getting rather chilly.
He tried to rise from the floor, but his hands and forehead were stuck and the floor was icy cold. And getting colder.
“You seriously thought I wasn’t going to punish you?” asked Morana, as the temperature in the room passed freezing point and continued dropping.
---
The burns on his face and hands took but an hour to heal, and Seigfried was ecstatic that his Goddess had accepted his offering of pain and heartfelt apologies and taken him back into her service.
He would not let her down again.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
robberbaron said:
Did I *really* say that? I guess since you taped it, there it was. I must be in some deep immersive role-playing with Li Kung.
Yes, that must be it
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
robberbaron said:
Li Kung, poster child for Lawful Evil. Maybe not super-intelligent Lawful Evil, but his heart is in the right place.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
We're playing again this Sunday (Huzzah!) - so I hope Robberbaron is going to have the time to get us properly up to date by then. I can't remember what we'd got up to
(well, I remember the dragon and the dire lions, I remember the bushwacking, I remember zombies and, er, discussions about Helga...)
(well, I remember the dragon and the dire lions, I remember the bushwacking, I remember zombies and, er, discussions about Helga...)
robberbaron
First Post
I've not got to zombies yet, but I'm on to the last minidisc.
Unfortunately, the battery was a bit low so I only got about 3 hours of recording from the 6 hour session. I am pretty sure the snippets were spread through th e session, but the detail might be a bit sketchier than normal.
I will post what I've done to date tonight, and am confident of completing the rest by Saturday.
Oh, and PS seems to be Method-Role-Playing Li Kung. Nice.
Unfortunately, the battery was a bit low so I only got about 3 hours of recording from the 6 hour session. I am pretty sure the snippets were spread through th e session, but the detail might be a bit sketchier than normal.
I will post what I've done to date tonight, and am confident of completing the rest by Saturday.
Oh, and PS seems to be Method-Role-Playing Li Kung. Nice.
robberbaron
First Post
A Changed Man, Some Big Cats and a Dragon
21st September 1699
The party were having a leisurely breakfast when Seigfried appeared, only it was a different Seigfried from the sometimes nauseatingly nice Paladin who had gone to bed slightly worse for wear after a night on the shandy.
He still had his aura of superiority (he couldn’t completely shake the effects of his Germanic heritage) but, previously he had been quite obviously “Good” and now they reckoned he wasn’t.
“Whose idea was it to use this bloody great sword?” Seigfried could be heard moaning as he came down the stairs. Without pause, he marched straight to the armourer and traded his shiny new Fullblade in for a silvered longsword and a dirty great axe.
“That’s better,” he said as he re-entered the inn, swinging his new chopper around, grinning.
The rest of the party looked at each other.
“Doppelganger?” suggested Gaelle.
“A pretty crap one,” added Li Kung, sarcastically. “He’s REALLY different!”
“Still can’t speak Graecae, though. Pillock!” agreed Gaelle.
They examined Seigfried closely.
He was definitely the same person but there was an icy edge to his demeanour.
“There’s definitely something different about you,” said Cord, thoughtfully. “Certainly for the better, but I can’t put my finger on it”
“I don’t see it’s any of your business, actually,” said Seigfried, already tired of the scrutiny.
“He’s got a point,” Cord admitted, “but I don’t have to like him. We’ll carry on but, if he irritates me at all, I’ll kill him. If he irritates US, I should say” he added quickly.
“Anyway,” said Gaelle, in an effort to bring the conversation round to something more profitable, “I reckon we go for the caravan and the lions”
“I fancy taking on the dragon,” added Li Kung.
“Trouble with dragons,” said Cord, thoughtfully, “is that they can fly. Makes them a bit harder to take on.”
“But Dire Lions in the open would be just as tough,” thought Li Kung.
“Gaah,” dismissed Gaelle.
“Well, they pounce, don’t they?” protested the monk.
Gracientus added that the temple would be willing to stock them up with potions.
“If we can get some fire protection I say definitely go for the dragon.” Li Kung continued to push for his choice. “The dragon may have killed others and have, amongst its treasure, items of magical power”
“But the caravan is still going to be where the Dire Lions left it. We can get the goods off it,” argued Gaelle.
“Yes, but not Items of Magical Power!” Li Kung was starting to get a bit heated. “And, there may be locals who would pay for the removal of the dragon. And think of the hoard it might have!”
“What are a bunch of peasants going to have that remotely interest us?” Gaelle was getting tired of the discussion.
“Daughters?” suggested Seigfried, who very much wanted to go and kill the dragon. Morana would approve. One less fire user to warm the winter.
“Alright,” Gaelle gave in, “where is this bloody dragon, then?”
Later that day, Helga went to the Mages to find out if there were any bits of dragons that they would find useful.
“All parts are useful for research” was the reply.
“So, a whole dragon, then? Any choice parts if we can’t get the whole thing back?”
“We’ll prepare a list. Teeth and skin would be good. Heart. Whatever glands it has for its breath weapon. Head and neck in one piece would be nice.” They were pushing for the whole carcass, nit didn’t want to ask straight out.
23rd September 1699
Two days riding through the well tilled fields of Thrace brought them to the Ionian border where the land turned rocky and wild. They soon found their way to a village near the dragon’s lair – a conurbation of some fifteen ramshackle huts beside a small stream.
“Go on then,” Gaelle waved Li Kung towards the village, “do your stuff. You wanted to come here.”
“Helga,” asked Li Kung, “go and ask them if they would pay us to slay the dragon”
Helga looked, saw a pair of scrawny youths scraping fat off a goatskin and didn’t appear confident.
“We’re here to extort, I mean extract, some money out of them, so off you go.” Gaelle waved Helga toward the youths, who were now looking up warily.
“Maybe after we’ve killed the dragon we can come back and see what they’ve got,” Helga said, not really believing herself.
Looking at the hillsides around them and seeing the many skinny goats, Gaelle said “Go on, negotiate us a goat each.”
“They must be out of range of the dragon,” reasoned Li Kung, “they probably wouldn’t think they needed our services”
“Alright, I’ll enquire” sighed a heavy hearted Helga.
As Helga approached, the women ushered their children inside and an old woman came out to meet her, looking apprehensive at the armoured figures that had followed Helga into the village, like hangers-on behind a bully.
“You the village elder, or our welcoming committee?” asked Gaelle, taking the initiative herself.
“I am the old woman of this village”
“Where are the men?” continued Gaelle, brusquely.
“The men are at work. They will return soon”
“We’re looking for dragons,” Helga finally chimed in, “and we believe you’ve got one nearby”
“You come to kill dragon?”
“No, we’ve come to shake its hand” Gaelle’s patience, always short, had now run out.
Looking a little confused, the old woman turned to Helga. “Dragon three valleys that way,” she said, pointing west. “Comes not this far. Seen it flying in distance. Never close”
“Where did she say the pub was?” Seigfried asked, not quite interpreting correctly.
The party looked at each other and decided to move on.
Li Kung turned back to the old woman and asked the best route to get to the dragon, and then they moved on, with Helga peering at the sky for sign of a large winged creature.
After two hours of walking their horses around sharp mountains over badly broken ground, they crested a slight rise and saw the third valley west, complete with its very own village. Only this one had been burnt to the ground. All that could be seen were the rings of charred stones delineating the huts.
After spotting no movement or smoke, they moved down into the village. The burning was not recent, so they felt fairly safe at that moment.
Gaelle hunted around, but could find no tracks. She found no bodies either, until she came to what had been a larger hut in the centre if the village, within which she could see a charred skeleton, crumpled in a heap.
Gaelle had another look round the hut and found human tracks, probably peasants, from several weeks before. She reckoned around a half a dozen people had run west. She also found tracks of a large lizard from about a week later, along with marks of people falling over and being dragged away before their trail disappeared.
Several patches of long-dried blood could also be made out.
Several times in the last few weeks, large felines had padded through the village remains.
Pretty good roll, that.
Helga decided it would be worthwhile searching through the hut remains for anything that might have survived the burning – chests, etc. She was pushing her luck, as always.
“Why are you spending time looking through peasants’ belongings?” asked Seigfried.
After a couple of hours’ searching, Helga found an area of ground behind one of the huts where something had been buried and camouflaged. She dug down and discovered a small cloth bag, containing a set of small bones.
“Children’s bones?” wondered Gaelle.
“Perhaps a Witch-Doctor’s Augury kit,” suggested Li Kung.
“Not human,” Helga pronounced after a cursory examination.
Considering the human tracks they had found, Li Kung mused that it might indicate that the dragon attacked from the east.
“Right, then,” Li Kung declared “let’s get on and investigate caves. Maybe Gaelle can find more tracks.”
“If you think I’m riding up into the mountains at this time in the afternoon…” the ranger replied, noticing that the sun was already dropping below the ridge, casting deep shadows across the valley.
“Gracientus” asked Helga, pointing at the scorched skeleton “would you be able to speak to this body tomorrow? Might save us an awful lot of time if we can talk to it and say, ‘this dragon that attacked you, where did it come from?’” reasoned Helga.
“Sounds like a good idea,” agreed Li Kung.
“I could do it tonight, after I have performed my supplications to Set” the priest confirmed.
With a couple of hours to wait until sunset, Helga cast Detect Magic and took a turn around the village, looking for anything that might show itself, specifically items that could act as scrying foci. She thought that the dragon might be a powerful magic user and wanted to be sure.
Cord and Li Kung quickly reminded her that it was quite a young dragon they were hunting and probably didn’t need a focus to scry them if it had the capability.
She carried on, regardless, finding nothing magical that they didn’t bring with themselves.
Meanwhile, Gaelle searched around for a suitable campsite; somewhere they couldn’t be seen from the air.
She found a shallow cave a little away from the edge of the village, just large enough to hold them and their horses. Li Kung suggested setting a dummy camp fire across the other side of the village, but no-one else thought it worth the bother.
As they weren’t likely to be riding anywhere else today, Seigfried dismissed his mount, a whiter-than-white stallion he had bound into his service.
As they were setting up camp, Cord appeared with a goat. There had been a child watching over it, but he had taken one look at Cord and decided to blame the loss on mountain lions.
Still feeling paranoid, Helga spent some time scrutinising the valley for signs of smoke or glow of fire from a cave, without success.
“Anybody got a horse they don’t particularly like?” asked Li Kung.
“What for?”
“To use as bait, what else?”
“I paid good money for this thing,” argued Gaelle, “and I’m not about to give it to a bloody dragon for its dinner!”
As the darkness began to deepen, Gracientus knelt before the blackened corpse and prayed to Set for the power of communication.
“Where does the dragon live?”
The skeleton shook and stood up, its jaw moving and its teeth clacking together.
“Hmm,” said Gracientus. “I suspect that the subject requires a working mouth to speak. Hadn’t thought of that.”
The skeleton was obviously trying to say something but the party couldn’t figure out what it was.
“What a useless dead thing” said Helga.
“In which direction does the dragon live?” persevered Gracientus.
The skeleton pointed eastwards.
“I understood that,” said Gaelle.
Helga, not happy with the way the day’s investigations had gone, re-examined the bag of bones.
She still didn’t know exactly what it had been but it was definitely the remains of an animal of some type.
Feeling a little depressed, she then put her head down for a night’s rest.
Around 3 in the morning, with Gaelle and Seigfried on watch, a rattle of small stones could be clearly heard outside the cave.
Gaelle had cast an Alarm spell at the entrance of the cave and was wondering why it hadn’t gone off.
The two guards moved to the edge of the cave and peered out into the night. Gaelle’s alarm screeched in warning, she span round to see three large dark shapes hurtling out of the darkness and just had enough time to put two arrows in the lead beast before the mountain lions pounced on their breakfast.
The wounded cat leaped on Gaelle, placed its forepaws on her shoulders, licked her face then ripped her back claws down the ranger’s legs.
Seigfried was merely slapped by his cat as it landed from a premature pounce and enraged it by slashing it with his axe.
Gaelle stepped back and sent two more arrows thudding into her cat, keeping an eye on the third lion, prowling round beyond, unable to enter the fray.
Gracientus, ears ringing from the Alarm, called upon Set to Bless them all, just as the third lion spotted Helga pretending to be asleep and sniffed at her. Luckily for the strange sorcerer, it didn’t like the smell of her – just too weird for its taste – so it snapped at Gaelle instead.
Li Kung stood up and grabbed his glaive, ready to enter the combat.
Seigfried again slashed his opponent, causing it to yelp with pain.
Helga rolled quietly away from the fight and sent a Magic Missile at the wounded lion, knocking it unconscious.
Gaelle again stepped back and sent two arrows into the lion in front of her.
Gracientus crawled a little further back into the cave, as Gaelle was scratched and Seigfried mauled by their lions.
Li Kung took his chance to step in and wound a lion, before Seigfried also wounded it slightly.
Helga moved in to the combat, after her attempt at casting another Magic Missile failed because of her restrictive armour, to give a flank to Seigfried, getting bitten and thrown to the floor by the quick-reacting lion and badly raked across her stomach.
Cord, who had not rushed to get up, now chose to step in and cut the head of Helga’s lion in twain.
Gaelle, stepping back again, plugged arrows through both of her lion’s eyes.
Gracientus moved quickly over to the stricken Helga to assess the damage.
“Ooh, look, sausages,” moaned the Norsewoman as Gracientus poked her entrails back where they belonged and sealed the wound with some help from Set. (Holy Superglue)
“Typical,” said Cord, “on my watch it’s lovely and quiet. I get a couple of hours kip and get woken up to find that you two can’t even keep a couple of mangy moggies off us!” He then stalked back to bed.
“I took two of them out!” exclaimed an aggrieved Gaelle toward the receding Cord’s back.
Gaelle spent half an hour dragging the lion carcasses away from the cave and kicking plenty of dust over the blood trail leading from their camp, before continuing her watch.
24th September 1699
The day dawned brightly and promised to be very warm, much to the chagrin of Seigfried. Praying to the Goddess of Winter with the warmth of the rising sun in your face just didn’t feel right. The Goddess of Death bit cheered him up, though.
The party packed up camp and walked the horses eastwards until they thought they were in the right area for finding a dragon. They waited in some cover and studied the many holes in the mountainside trying to decide which to investigate further.
Li Kung pointed out two that looked large enough for their quarry to use as a lair.
“Helga. When we get inside, are you going to be ready to flank for us?” smiled Li Kung.
The rest of the party chuckled as an abashed Helga mumbled something about tumbling.
“She’d have been better off lying on the floor”, commented Gaelle.
“She was lyin’ on the floor. She was grabbed by a lyin’ on the floor!” smirked Gracientus.
“You wouldn’t be so smug if you’d been deep in the sh*t at the time,” cautioned Cord. “It’s all very funny to take the piss, but…”
Picking the most likely cave, the party scrambled up a scree-slope toward it.
Gaelle spotted around but could only find fairly recent lion tracks. Three of them a few hours ago.
“This ain’t it then,” stated the ranger.
Climbing around to the other potential dragon home, they had to climb 80’ up a difficult face.
Gracientus decided to wait below until someone got to the top and dropped a rope down.
“Good idea,” thought Cord, settling in to wait for the rope.
Set, through Gracientus, made Li Kung stronger and the monk scampered up the rock face, carrying a rope tied together with a rather large knot. Just to be sure, Cord and Seigfried had had a brief tug of war with the spliced rope to prove its strength.
At the top, Li Kung realised that the cave was somewhat larger than it had appeared from below.
Holding the rope, he kept an eye over his shoulder for a dragon, while waiting for the others.
Gaelle found a large number of deep scratches in the ledge which could have been the result of a dragon taking off and landing, so the party assumed they had found the right cave. Li Kung suggested that Gaelle listen at the cave for sounds of a large creature. Gaelle could only hear the whistling of the wind as it blew across the cave-mouth. Unless, that was what dragon breath sounded like?
Grasping their potions of fire protection, the party motioned Gaelle forward, after she had cast a spell of fire protection on herself. Slipping silently into the cave, ducking between patches of deep shadow, Gaelle disappeared into the darkness.
Unfortunately for the brave ranger, the occupier of the cave heard her creeping down the corridor and could just make her out, silhouetted against the faint light coming down the passage.
Gaelle felt a rush of air past her face, an instant before the rush of flames removed her eyebrows.
The flames lit up the cavern, petering out just short of the entrance.
“I think I’ll drink my potion now,” announced Cord.
Gaelle, now devoid of facial hair, decided to return outside.
“It’s in there,” she told her companions, who were busy knocking back their magical brews.
“We want to fight it in there,” suggested Li Kung.
“Damn right,” agreed Cord.
Gracientus, standing carefully behind the others, called upon Set to Bless the party, before turning her attention to Gaelle’s face.
“Sorry, I don’t have a bandage that big. And, if I did, you wouldn’t be able to see anything” the young priest apologised. “Got rid of your moustache, though”
“Coming, Seigfried?” asked Cord.
“After you,” replied the Paladin.
“Tosser”
“What are we going to do for light?” asked a worried Li Kung.
“I’ve got a lantern, but I don’t think I want to open it until I get in there” replied Cord.
Cord ran in to the darkness and rounded a vague shape he thought to be a corner and put his lantern down, but couldn’t see anything in the lantern‘s beam.
Seigfried followed closely behind but also could not see a dragon.
Helga moved in, picked up Cord’s lantern and waved it around, trying, unsuccessfully, to either see or hear the dragon.
Li Kung ran in, tumbling away from the illumination, and spotted the glint of large eyes some 20’ above the cavern floor. “It’s up there!” he hissed, faintly, and spanged a shuriken off the wall near the dragon.
Gaelle, looking to where Li Kung threw his shuriken, saw a glint of something and loosed an arrow, which kicked sparks off the wall.
Feeling a bit threatened, the dragon breathed into the cavern, its flame falling just short of Li Kung, but enveloping everyone else. Helga fell to the floor but, through force of will alone, managed to stay conscious, though in immense pain from the 100% burns.
During the momentarily increased illumination, Cord spotted a ramp further back in the cave, which led up to the dragon’s ledge. He ran to it and halfway up, to distance himself from the others.
Seigfried followed him, hoping that the dragon wouldn’t breathe on them again.
Helga shuffled back down the passage with a magical hand holding the lantern and pointing it towards the dragon.
Gracientus stepped a bit further into the passage, very glad he stayed outside, and called upon Set to heal Helga’s worst suppurations.
Li Kung, not feeling brave enough to follow the two fighters up the ramp, ran across the cavern and lobbed a handful of shuriken vaguely towards the dragon.
Gaelle sent two arrows into the darkness, one of them hitting something hard and bouncing off to skitter across the cavern floor.
The dragon, concerned that his flame hadn’t killed anything but aware that his escape route was guarded, decided to lessen the threat from the warriors on the ramp. The target of the dragon’s fear spell, Cord felt significantly less brave than he had and decided to let Seigfried take point.
The Paladin stepped in to face the beast, taking a claw across the chest for his troubles, before finding a small chink in its scales where he could park his axe.
Buoyed by Seigfried’s successful attack, Cord moved in but was unable to pierce the dragon’s hide.
A bolt from Gracientus’ crossbow whistled just over Seigfried’s head and knocked a chunk out of the wall.
Li Kung, now feeling braver, charged up the ramp and stuffed his glaive into the dragon’s less well protected neck.
Gaelle finally managed to get an arrow into her target, enraging the beast into lashing out with every limb. Li Kung took a bite, Seigfried two claws and Cord a wing buffet and a tail slap.
Facing what appeared to be a pretty healthy dragon, Seigfried prayed to Morana and took a chunk out of the creature.
Helga, feeling happier after downing a pint or two of healing potion, moved back into the cavern, though about as far away from the dragon as she could get and still see it.
Cord swung his huge sword, slicing a couple of scales off the dragon’s neck and leaving a splash of reptile blood across the wall. Gracientus called a morning star composed wholly of faith into being with which he bashed the beast across the nose.
Li Kung’s glaive carved through one of its eyes and two arrows from Gaelle also found their mark.
The dragon, now getting very concerned for its health, put everything it had into what could be its last attacks.
Its huge teeth took a chunk out of the wall by Li Kung’s head, both claws turned Seigfried into a bloody mess on the floor and its tail whacked across Cord’s midriff.
Helga’s magical accomplice brought the lantern to her but, again, her armour interfered with her spellcasting and the magical energy dissipated harmlessly in front of her.
Cord, now covered in a mixture of Seigfried’s, dragon’s and his own blood swung ineffectually at the annoyed and increasingly desperate dragon.
Gracientus’ holy weapon bloodied its nose again, while Li Kung punched the wall before poking the dragon in its good eye.
Two arrows disappeared into the depths of the cavern and the dragon went postal.
Its bite mangled Li Kung’s arm, a claw and a buffet from its wing caused the monk to stagger back in agony.
Its other claw opened a rent in Cord’s chest and the other wing slapped him halfway down the ramp, across the pool of Seigfried’s blood.
By the light of the lantern, Helga could see plenty of blood spraying around, very little of it the dragon’s.
This, and her encumbering armour, caused her third spell in a row to fail, the air in front of her glowing faintly from all the magical energy lost into it.
Gracientus’ spiritual weapon whisked past its face as the flying Li Kung’s feet thudded almost effectually into the dragon’s throat. The strain of so much fury finally took its toll on the young monk and he fainted at the dragon’s feet. It was suddenly feeling a lot better about its chances of survival.
Unfortunately, the feeling didn’t last as Gaelle’s arrow pierced its good eye and it collapsed, its head hanging over the edge of the ledge.
Helga and Gracientus race up the ramp to their stricken companions, quickly casting healing spells and applying potions. Gaelle, not particularly interested in (or capable of) healing the others, began a search of the area behind the dragon, wanting to be first to whatever booty was to be had.
Helga didn’t think that dragons could recover from such damage but, taking no chances, she attempted to sever its neck with her surgical tools. Deciding that it might take a bit too long to delicately slice through its 2’ thick neck with a scalpel, she borrowed the unconscious Seigfried’s axe and simply lopped it off.
Gaelle found a potion, a bone scroll case, a small ebony box with a fine lock, a pile of gold coins (along with the charred remains of a few sacks and pouches) and a badly acid-etched (probably from passing through the dragon) holy symbol of Set. Hoorah!
“Shall we rest here for a bit?” asked Helga, hoping that with a little sit down she could recover her ability to use magic.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to bother us. Not after dealing with the lions AND the dragon” replied a conscious but very sore Cord. “The extra protection from my new armour really helped there” he added, wryly, surveying his seriously dented breastplate.
Seigfried, finally brought round by Gracientus’ ministrations, had a feeling of a “job well done” from his beloved mistress, Morana.
Li Kung, meanwhile, felt his mind expanding in strange and unusual ways as he succeeded in unlocking the psionic potential that his teachers at the temple had tried to bash into him. “At last!” he thought with satisfaction.
When they decided they had rested enough, around lunchtime, they were greeted by a hot wind, blowing down the valley. “Horrible,” thought Seigfried, who had got used to the cool dampness in the cavern.
The rest of the party climbed back down the rope, while Li Kung waited to untie it and climb down himself
Going down the rock face as fast as he could, to show off, the mental monk caught his sandal on a small outcrop and tumbled the last 50’, landing head first onto a big rock. Shaken, he had to have a bit of sit down, waiting for his vision to clear. The others decided to have a spot of lunch until the stars stopped circling his head.
Helga took the opportunity to investigate the ebony box. Thinking that it wasn’t trapped, but with all the others moving at least 15’ away from her, she plied her trade on the lock, successfully.
The box contained a long-dead-looking hand on a chain, like a really weird medallion.
“I bet she tries to stick it somewhere,” said Gaelle, who was genuinely freaked out by some of Helga’s bizarre ideas. The strange Norsewoman seemed to think that she had a number of “things” inside her and wanted to experiment, putting things in other people. Most disturbing.
“Maybe it’s a back scratcher,“ suggested Gaelle.
“It’s one of those mummified hand thingys,” professed Helga, not really knowing what it was but not wanting to appear ignorant until she had figured out what it actually was.
“Doesn’t it allow you to have an extra ring?” asked Li Kung.
“Something else to stick things up,” mumbled Gracientus, also a bit dubious about some of Helga’s ideas.
Helga, bravely, removed the scroll from the bone case and cast Read Magic to find out what it contained.
Ready to move on, Seigfried called for Frost, his mount, who trotted round the corner and came up to nuzzle his shoulder.
The party quickly mounted up, strapping the dragon’s head on to one of the horses and headed back toward Byzantium.
Having disposed of the major predators in that area of mountains, they were not molested for some time.
Helga, busy playing with her new hand, was startled when Cord said, “There’s a winged thing coming!”
Gaelle leaped off her horse and strung her bow in one easy movement, looking to see what it was.
Gracientus was looking around when Cord suggested he look up instead. He still couldn’t see anything, though.
Helga got off her horse, thinking that if it was a big flying thing it might go for the larger animal instead of her.
“Bet it’s a white dragon,” said Li Kung.
“Oh good,” replied Seigfried, “I like white dragons.”
Suddenly, from out of the sun, a huge winged shape swooped over their heads and grabbed at Cord.
All the others watched its shadow pass over them, except Li Kung, who slashed the wyvern across the belly as it came within reach of his glaive.
The wyvern, after losing a couple of pints of blood over Li Kung’s head, failed to get a grip on Cord’s armour and flew on.
As it began to climb away from them, trailing blood, Gaelle stuck two arrows in its tender rear quarters, eliciting a piercing shriek. Gracientus moved a little further away, into some light cover and Helga, refreshed after her earlier exertions managed to hit it with a pair of magic missiles.
Seigfried, rueing his lack of decent missile weapons, charged Frost at the wyvern, his lance tip narrowly missing extending the gash in its belly. He did, however, manage to get in the way of its dangling stinger. Seigfried, filled with the grace of Morana, felt no ill effects from the pints of poison injected into his shoulder and watched as the wyvern banked up and around.
Li Kung brandished his glaive in defence of Helga, who he viewed as by far the weakest member of the party and Cord prepared a spear in case the wyvern came at him again. Gaelle loosed another brace of arrows at the beast, now some distance away, piercing it twice in the side.
Helga fired a crossbow bolt off in its general direction, ducking out from behind Li Kung.
Seigfried, still feeling heroic, charged his mount halfway toward the wyvern and hurled his dagger (his sole missile weapon) at it, glancing a blow off its left thigh.
The wyvern, streaming blood from several orifices that it hadn’t had that morning, kept flying, heading home for a sleep and a bit of a cry. Gaelle licked the fletching of her next arrow, nocked it and loosed, missing the rapidly retreating wyvern by a couple of feet. Helga had reloaded her crossbow before she realised that the wyvern was now well outside her effective range.
“Helga, lightning bolt it!” urged Li Kung.
Helga spared the monk a single glance before calling to Seigfried to return for her tender ministrations. And some healing.
Seigfried, on the other hand, was determined to find his dagger before going back, despite the throbbing fist-sized lump of venom in his shoulder.
“Come back now. You can do that later” shouted Helga before jumping on her horse and galloping after the driven Germanian. Finally catching up with him as he gave his dagger up as lost, she slit his skin and drew the poison out.
“She’s probably trying to stick something in him” said Cord.
“He’ll end up with another head” Gaelle added.
Thinking that tracking the wyvern across the mountain would be a bit too difficult to bother, Gaelle unstrung her bow and they all remounted and carried on toward the sunset.
Finding a deep cleft to shelter from the harsh, hot wind, they settled down for a happily unbroken night’s rest.
25th September 1699
By mid-morning they had arrived back at the goatherds’ village, which all bar Helga were happy to pass by.
“We should stop to reap their gratitude” she said grandly.
“They’re peasants! Why would we want their gratitude?” argued Gaelle.
“Maybe they’ll say ‘Have some more goats’?” suggested Cord. “And I’m not hungry at the moment”
“OK, let’s not bother then” agreed Helga after determining that the villagers would make pretty poor slaves and so were not worth stopping for.
As Helga rode forward, past the village, Gracientus wondered if life up in the icy northlands had frozen her brain. He couldn’t think of any other reason for her strange behaviour. Unless, that is, she really had got “things” stuck inside her. Maybe he would get the opportunity to dissect her when she died of stupidity.
27th September 1699
Following an uneventful ride back to civilisation the party arrived in Byzantium during what had to be the hottest day of the year. The wind-chill was bringing the temperature down to 30°C.
They decided that the Set temple would be the best destination, both to get their reward and to take advantage of the well known fact that temples built almost exclusively out of marble tended to be much cooler than the outside world.
Gracientus announced their return while the party basked in the cool shade. They all steamed and Cord’s armour plinked gently as it cooled. To reinforce the feeling of calm and civility, acolytes served them iced drinks as they waited for someone in authority to see to them.
“These people give evil a good name,” commented Li Kung, unused to such politeness in a supposedly nasty temple.
“We look after our flock,” explained Gracientus.
“I suppose it helps being a cult that actively supports theft as a lifestyle,” added Cord.
Some minutes later, a junior priest brought them a bag of gold, carefully took possession of the recovered holy symbol and praised them on a job well done, before padding back to whatever he had been doing before.
As they shared out the gold, borrowing a table in the temple’s foyer for the job, Cord had an idea.
“If we’re going to be staying around here, wouldn’t it make sense to buy a place to stay rather than spending all our gold renting rooms in inns? I have a lot of money that I can’t carry round, so I want to do something with it. And I want you lot to chip in as well.”
Given something to think about, they went to the Mages’ Society to see about the stuff they picked up, and to sell the dragon head. Gaelle wanted a magical quiver to hold the vast quantity of arrows she seemed to tote round. Quoted 1800GP, Li Kung exploded.
“How much? That is ridiculously cheap for such a powerful item! It contains a magic dimensional space!”
Still muttering, the scandalised monk wandered back outside as the Society’s representative looked calm and superior in the face of what he considered crass ignorance.
Having made it back into the scorching heat, they realised that they had forgotten all about the hand on the chain. Going back inside, doing nothing to change the clerk’s opinion, they asked for it to be identified.
Some minutes later they were advised that it allowed the wearer to utilise a Mage Hand at will.
“Can anyone use it?” asked Helga.
“Any reasonably adept practitioner of the magical arts may use it almost immediately” the clerk replied, a little stuffily. “Normals might be trained, but that could take weeks and would not necessarily prove successful. Someone of your,” the clerk paused for effect, watching at Helga over his pince-nez, “obvious talent, might manage on your own.”
“I think we’re done here,” announced Helga, turning to leave, not at all pleased with the frosty response. All because she couldn’t cast 3rd level spells. She’d show them. A few more “adventures” like the last one and she’d show them alright.
“What about this potion?” asked Gaelle, eliciting an even frostier stare from the clerk who felt he was being deliberately messed about. He took the flask and returned to the laboratory, coming back a few minutes later looking pleased with himself.
“It is an interesting one. An Elixir of Swimming – makes your ability to swim significantly better for some time.”
At this point, Cord chimed in with his own belated request. He wondered if there was an item that could make him more comfortable in his armour under adverse conditions?
“There is a “standard” ring we make that keeps you warm in cold weather. I had noticed you were perspiring more than should be normal, so I assume you’d want one to keep you cool in warm weather as well” said the clerk.
“Perhaps, a permanent version of Endure Elements?” chipped in Gaelle, doing nothing for the temper of the clerk, which was getting cooler by the sentence.
“I dare say we could make something of that order. A ring, most likely. 2000GP, 3 days.”
Coming back into the conversation, causing the clerk to wish he had been on the cauldron cleaning detail today, Helga enquired about prices for several more items in which she had just become interested.
The clerk, desperately wanting to get rid of these ruffians, dealt with her request perfunctorily.
“Are we done?” he asked, as the party looked around, seeming to dare each other to ask for something else. “Good, good day, then” he said with a little bow, and scuttled swiftly out of sight.
Emerging from the cool of the Mages’ Society into the searing heat (so hot that Li Kung wondered if there was anything magically strange about the weather) they quickly decided to follow Cord’s lead toward the Public Baths, for a lengthy soak in the cool waters and to remove the grime from their travels.
They were surprised to find there were actually people in the hot baths!
Seigfried sank gratefully into the cold water, though it was not really cold enough for him. Since his reacquaintance with his god he thought that he would only be truly comfortable in temperatures close to, and below, freezing. Still, the water was so much better than being outside.
Gaelle paid the attendants to provide cool water for her dog and the party spent the rest of the afternoon in civilised comfort.
28th September 1699
Agreeing that the plan was to base themselves in the Byzantium area they discussed options.
Cord favoured pooling their money and either buying a house or getting a long lease on one.
They gave their requirements to the Agent of Estates to whom they were recommended by Gracientus.
Gaelle wanted somewhere on the edge of town, furthest away from all the people and closest to the wilds.
Cord suggested somewhere in the more “scummy” areas where they could “lean on” the Thieves’ Guild.
After all, they were rougher than most thieves they had ever met.
Gaelle thought they might be able to do a deal with the Guild: protection in exchange for doing “the odd job” for them.
After some thought, even Cord came round to the idea of a large house with stabling for all their horses.
“Do you want to make a statement? Do you want to appear rich, powerful, affluent?” asked the Agent.
“I don’t really feel any of those so, no, thanks” answered Cord.
A suitable villa, to the south of the city near the South Road, was found, three months deposit paid and the Agent pointed them towards another Agency for housekeeping staff. After some haggling, a suitable husband and wife team were found and they set aside several months’ wages and a housekeeping fund for them.
“We’d better go out and adventure, so we can afford all this” suggested Cord, feeling in his nearly empty pockets as they surveyed their new abode. It was distinctly palatial compared to anywhere he had stayed before. Anywhere any of them had stayed before.
Li Kung returned to the Mages’ Society, having forgotten to ask for some boots to make him run faster. The clerk, luckily a different one than yesterday, was not surprised. After all, it was the first thing monks asked for. Unfortunately for him, Li Kung could not afford either option - boots that would make him go very much faster for a bit or ones to make him go a bit faster for a very long time – so he thanked the clerk and returned to the house.
Seigfried was thinking about money. He was scribbling sums on a piece of paper, working out that he could stay in an inn, eating average food, cheaper than the house was going to cost him.
“But that’s average food,” argued Helga, “here, you would get superior food. And stabling for your horse, ah.” She had remembered that he called Frost when he needed him. She would need a better argument.
The paladin seemed adamant. “It doesn’t really fit in with my needs,” he stated.
The others took it quite well, despite the individual cost going up. “It means we have a spare room, now,” Helga looked on the bright side.
Now, they turned their attention to finding a job - they went to the Hunters’ Guild to find out what was available.
They were told that untaken bounties were on the board, and that as soon as one was taken it was removed, to be replaced if the hunters failed to return within a month.
Gaelle asked “What about bounties that have only just gone? Couldn’t we have the information as well?”
The Hunter on duty looked scandalised and told her that was the rule. One Hunter per bounty. Wouldn’t be fair otherwise.
Looking over the board the bounty for the Uruk, Kron, had gone up.
The reward for the manticores was still up. Most Hunters didn’t like going for beasts – not really proper sport.
Helga tried to convince the Hunter to let her know details on big bounties that recently gone out.
He looked less scandalised and more annoyed with her, but she thought he was holding out for a gratuity.
Slipping him 20GP, he looked around before accepting and agreed to give her information about upcoming bounties before he put them up on the board.
Cord came up with the idea of visiting “adventurer taverns” and using their keen wits to discover who was about, doing what. And what adventuring parties, of about the same level of competence, were potential bushwhacking victims.
The Grinning Gryphon, known for its huge common-room, and the Dolphin, more known for entertaining sailors were the most likely taverns. Choosing the Gryphon they arrived near lunchtime, thankful for the heat being several degrees lower than yesterday.
Cord figured that in his armour anyone he talked to would think he was deranged, so purchased some leathers for when in town. Li Kung spent his time mentally undressing Helga, who had taken to wearing flimsy robes to combat the heat. He managed to mentally put aside all the things Helga had mentioned about the strange stuff her father had supposedly put inside her and enjoyed the morning immensely.
Monks, eh?
Entering the common-room of the Grinning Gryphon, passing under the sign with a rather anthropomorphic beast, laughing its head off clutching a dying cow in its talon, they found it fairly busy.
Gaelle thought she’d sit herself in a corner and look enigmatic while trying to eavesdrop on nearby conversations, as she had the charisma of a slug.
Helga moved about, trying to listen to any Bards, who could be relied upon to be unable to shut up for more than a minute at a time.
Seigfried, ever practical, went to order food. Unable to articulate his needs, he was overcharged and the rest of the party reckoned his meal would be liberally spiked with spit. Tasty, though.
There was a group of young lads, chests puffed out, talking bollocks, who had managed to convince the members of the militia in the pub that they were great adventurers, but they were not fooling anyone else.
The other “adventuring groups” were keeping to themselves, talking quietly and not drawing attention to themselves.
One was three fighter-types and another, much older, man with no armour. Judging by the family resemblance they seemed to be an aging spellslinger and his three less magically inclined (thicker) sons.
They all looked a bit handy, but they were quite obviously just back from their travels. Their wounds looked too recent for them to be seriously considering heading out soon.
The other group was more like what could be called a “typical” adventuring group. There were two older fighters, a fairly obvious thiefy-type (couldn’t look more shifty if he was a ferret) and a couple of young unarmoured men.
They were about to head up north, towards the borders of the Germanian Protectorate. Lots of bandits up there, mostly disgruntled soldiers with nothing to do since much the army had been demobilised, and plenty of monsters in the mountains.
Putting their heads together in the corner, the party decided to follow the group going north and bounce them just beyond Byzantine jurisdiction, at least 20 miles distant. Seigfried was especially happy to go towards home, though he didn’t really know why he had come south in the first place.
As the target group were staying in the Grinning Gryphon that night, and leaving in the morning, Seigfried decided to stay there as well, so he could follow them in the morning to ascertain which route they were going to take. The party thought to leave the city in the afternoon, with Helga changing her appearance to that of a local commoner and asking the gate guards if the group had left. Li Kung was impressed with her ideas of subterfuge. Perhaps there was more to her than a fine set of curves and some dodgy wiggly bits in her guts.
30th September 1699
The temperature beginning to lessen towards proper autumnal levels, Helga approached the gate guards and enquired after the group of adventurers.
“What you want them for? They didn’t, do, anything did they?” asked the older, more fatherly guard.
“Oh no, no,” replied a winsome Helga, managing to avoid arousing their suspicions, and learning that they had left on horseback an hour after dawn, heading roughly west along the main road.
After Gaelle had picked up her new quiver and they had discussed their plans around the map of the area they decided to follow the adventurers for a day and a half then attack them on the second night.
Not expecting anything of the sort, there would only be a third of them on guard.
Before leaving, they remembered Gracientus.
“We’re off on a harvest,” explained Cord. “You want to come?”
“Why not, sounds like a giggle”
Helga suddenly had a nasty thought. Had any of the adventurers been wearing holy symbols of Set?
Wouldn’t do their standing much good if they duffed up a temple group.
None of them could remember, but thought that if they were a Set group, they’d just have to make sure none of them survived, which was the plan anyway.
With Gaelle tracking them, at least after they had gone out of sight of the city walls, the party managed to follow their quarry, ensuring they kept a steady distance.
As they travelled, they discussed their tactics for the attack. Central was the need to neutralise the thief, and they were concerned that he might be concealed outside the camp.
Li Kung was also concerned that they might have effective arcane casters, which apparently some parties did have.
They’d have to leave their horses and creep to the camp. They had several archers to suppress the other group, and Cord had a question for Gracientus. Did he have a spell to cover their noise?
Cord could stomp silently into the camp and it might affect the enemy spellcasters.
The Set priest could have two, so they seemed likely to be able to get a serious amount of surprise.
There was not much moon showing through the cloud that night and, as they were only about three hours behind they considered travelling into the darkness to hit the other group, though that risked missing them.
Cord, however, pointed out that they would still be inside Byzantine lands and, as they planned to make the city their base it would be unwise to risk this sort of action this close.
So, they all got a good night’s sleep and continued to follow the adventurers the next day.
21st September 1699
The party were having a leisurely breakfast when Seigfried appeared, only it was a different Seigfried from the sometimes nauseatingly nice Paladin who had gone to bed slightly worse for wear after a night on the shandy.
He still had his aura of superiority (he couldn’t completely shake the effects of his Germanic heritage) but, previously he had been quite obviously “Good” and now they reckoned he wasn’t.
“Whose idea was it to use this bloody great sword?” Seigfried could be heard moaning as he came down the stairs. Without pause, he marched straight to the armourer and traded his shiny new Fullblade in for a silvered longsword and a dirty great axe.
“That’s better,” he said as he re-entered the inn, swinging his new chopper around, grinning.
The rest of the party looked at each other.
“Doppelganger?” suggested Gaelle.
“A pretty crap one,” added Li Kung, sarcastically. “He’s REALLY different!”
“Still can’t speak Graecae, though. Pillock!” agreed Gaelle.
They examined Seigfried closely.
He was definitely the same person but there was an icy edge to his demeanour.
“There’s definitely something different about you,” said Cord, thoughtfully. “Certainly for the better, but I can’t put my finger on it”
“I don’t see it’s any of your business, actually,” said Seigfried, already tired of the scrutiny.
“He’s got a point,” Cord admitted, “but I don’t have to like him. We’ll carry on but, if he irritates me at all, I’ll kill him. If he irritates US, I should say” he added quickly.
“Anyway,” said Gaelle, in an effort to bring the conversation round to something more profitable, “I reckon we go for the caravan and the lions”
“I fancy taking on the dragon,” added Li Kung.
“Trouble with dragons,” said Cord, thoughtfully, “is that they can fly. Makes them a bit harder to take on.”
“But Dire Lions in the open would be just as tough,” thought Li Kung.
“Gaah,” dismissed Gaelle.
“Well, they pounce, don’t they?” protested the monk.
Gracientus added that the temple would be willing to stock them up with potions.
“If we can get some fire protection I say definitely go for the dragon.” Li Kung continued to push for his choice. “The dragon may have killed others and have, amongst its treasure, items of magical power”
“But the caravan is still going to be where the Dire Lions left it. We can get the goods off it,” argued Gaelle.
“Yes, but not Items of Magical Power!” Li Kung was starting to get a bit heated. “And, there may be locals who would pay for the removal of the dragon. And think of the hoard it might have!”
“What are a bunch of peasants going to have that remotely interest us?” Gaelle was getting tired of the discussion.
“Daughters?” suggested Seigfried, who very much wanted to go and kill the dragon. Morana would approve. One less fire user to warm the winter.
“Alright,” Gaelle gave in, “where is this bloody dragon, then?”
Later that day, Helga went to the Mages to find out if there were any bits of dragons that they would find useful.
“All parts are useful for research” was the reply.
“So, a whole dragon, then? Any choice parts if we can’t get the whole thing back?”
“We’ll prepare a list. Teeth and skin would be good. Heart. Whatever glands it has for its breath weapon. Head and neck in one piece would be nice.” They were pushing for the whole carcass, nit didn’t want to ask straight out.
23rd September 1699
Two days riding through the well tilled fields of Thrace brought them to the Ionian border where the land turned rocky and wild. They soon found their way to a village near the dragon’s lair – a conurbation of some fifteen ramshackle huts beside a small stream.
“Go on then,” Gaelle waved Li Kung towards the village, “do your stuff. You wanted to come here.”
“Helga,” asked Li Kung, “go and ask them if they would pay us to slay the dragon”
Helga looked, saw a pair of scrawny youths scraping fat off a goatskin and didn’t appear confident.
“We’re here to extort, I mean extract, some money out of them, so off you go.” Gaelle waved Helga toward the youths, who were now looking up warily.
“Maybe after we’ve killed the dragon we can come back and see what they’ve got,” Helga said, not really believing herself.
Looking at the hillsides around them and seeing the many skinny goats, Gaelle said “Go on, negotiate us a goat each.”
“They must be out of range of the dragon,” reasoned Li Kung, “they probably wouldn’t think they needed our services”
“Alright, I’ll enquire” sighed a heavy hearted Helga.
As Helga approached, the women ushered their children inside and an old woman came out to meet her, looking apprehensive at the armoured figures that had followed Helga into the village, like hangers-on behind a bully.
“You the village elder, or our welcoming committee?” asked Gaelle, taking the initiative herself.
“I am the old woman of this village”
“Where are the men?” continued Gaelle, brusquely.
“The men are at work. They will return soon”
“We’re looking for dragons,” Helga finally chimed in, “and we believe you’ve got one nearby”
“You come to kill dragon?”
“No, we’ve come to shake its hand” Gaelle’s patience, always short, had now run out.
Looking a little confused, the old woman turned to Helga. “Dragon three valleys that way,” she said, pointing west. “Comes not this far. Seen it flying in distance. Never close”
“Where did she say the pub was?” Seigfried asked, not quite interpreting correctly.
The party looked at each other and decided to move on.
Li Kung turned back to the old woman and asked the best route to get to the dragon, and then they moved on, with Helga peering at the sky for sign of a large winged creature.
After two hours of walking their horses around sharp mountains over badly broken ground, they crested a slight rise and saw the third valley west, complete with its very own village. Only this one had been burnt to the ground. All that could be seen were the rings of charred stones delineating the huts.
After spotting no movement or smoke, they moved down into the village. The burning was not recent, so they felt fairly safe at that moment.
Gaelle hunted around, but could find no tracks. She found no bodies either, until she came to what had been a larger hut in the centre if the village, within which she could see a charred skeleton, crumpled in a heap.
Gaelle had another look round the hut and found human tracks, probably peasants, from several weeks before. She reckoned around a half a dozen people had run west. She also found tracks of a large lizard from about a week later, along with marks of people falling over and being dragged away before their trail disappeared.
Several patches of long-dried blood could also be made out.
Several times in the last few weeks, large felines had padded through the village remains.
Pretty good roll, that.
Helga decided it would be worthwhile searching through the hut remains for anything that might have survived the burning – chests, etc. She was pushing her luck, as always.
“Why are you spending time looking through peasants’ belongings?” asked Seigfried.
After a couple of hours’ searching, Helga found an area of ground behind one of the huts where something had been buried and camouflaged. She dug down and discovered a small cloth bag, containing a set of small bones.
“Children’s bones?” wondered Gaelle.
“Perhaps a Witch-Doctor’s Augury kit,” suggested Li Kung.
“Not human,” Helga pronounced after a cursory examination.
Considering the human tracks they had found, Li Kung mused that it might indicate that the dragon attacked from the east.
“Right, then,” Li Kung declared “let’s get on and investigate caves. Maybe Gaelle can find more tracks.”
“If you think I’m riding up into the mountains at this time in the afternoon…” the ranger replied, noticing that the sun was already dropping below the ridge, casting deep shadows across the valley.
“Gracientus” asked Helga, pointing at the scorched skeleton “would you be able to speak to this body tomorrow? Might save us an awful lot of time if we can talk to it and say, ‘this dragon that attacked you, where did it come from?’” reasoned Helga.
“Sounds like a good idea,” agreed Li Kung.
“I could do it tonight, after I have performed my supplications to Set” the priest confirmed.
With a couple of hours to wait until sunset, Helga cast Detect Magic and took a turn around the village, looking for anything that might show itself, specifically items that could act as scrying foci. She thought that the dragon might be a powerful magic user and wanted to be sure.
Cord and Li Kung quickly reminded her that it was quite a young dragon they were hunting and probably didn’t need a focus to scry them if it had the capability.
She carried on, regardless, finding nothing magical that they didn’t bring with themselves.
Meanwhile, Gaelle searched around for a suitable campsite; somewhere they couldn’t be seen from the air.
She found a shallow cave a little away from the edge of the village, just large enough to hold them and their horses. Li Kung suggested setting a dummy camp fire across the other side of the village, but no-one else thought it worth the bother.
As they weren’t likely to be riding anywhere else today, Seigfried dismissed his mount, a whiter-than-white stallion he had bound into his service.
As they were setting up camp, Cord appeared with a goat. There had been a child watching over it, but he had taken one look at Cord and decided to blame the loss on mountain lions.
Still feeling paranoid, Helga spent some time scrutinising the valley for signs of smoke or glow of fire from a cave, without success.
“Anybody got a horse they don’t particularly like?” asked Li Kung.
“What for?”
“To use as bait, what else?”
“I paid good money for this thing,” argued Gaelle, “and I’m not about to give it to a bloody dragon for its dinner!”
As the darkness began to deepen, Gracientus knelt before the blackened corpse and prayed to Set for the power of communication.
“Where does the dragon live?”
The skeleton shook and stood up, its jaw moving and its teeth clacking together.
“Hmm,” said Gracientus. “I suspect that the subject requires a working mouth to speak. Hadn’t thought of that.”
The skeleton was obviously trying to say something but the party couldn’t figure out what it was.
“What a useless dead thing” said Helga.
“In which direction does the dragon live?” persevered Gracientus.
The skeleton pointed eastwards.
“I understood that,” said Gaelle.
Helga, not happy with the way the day’s investigations had gone, re-examined the bag of bones.
She still didn’t know exactly what it had been but it was definitely the remains of an animal of some type.
Feeling a little depressed, she then put her head down for a night’s rest.
Around 3 in the morning, with Gaelle and Seigfried on watch, a rattle of small stones could be clearly heard outside the cave.
Gaelle had cast an Alarm spell at the entrance of the cave and was wondering why it hadn’t gone off.
The two guards moved to the edge of the cave and peered out into the night. Gaelle’s alarm screeched in warning, she span round to see three large dark shapes hurtling out of the darkness and just had enough time to put two arrows in the lead beast before the mountain lions pounced on their breakfast.
The wounded cat leaped on Gaelle, placed its forepaws on her shoulders, licked her face then ripped her back claws down the ranger’s legs.
Seigfried was merely slapped by his cat as it landed from a premature pounce and enraged it by slashing it with his axe.
Gaelle stepped back and sent two more arrows thudding into her cat, keeping an eye on the third lion, prowling round beyond, unable to enter the fray.
Gracientus, ears ringing from the Alarm, called upon Set to Bless them all, just as the third lion spotted Helga pretending to be asleep and sniffed at her. Luckily for the strange sorcerer, it didn’t like the smell of her – just too weird for its taste – so it snapped at Gaelle instead.
Li Kung stood up and grabbed his glaive, ready to enter the combat.
Seigfried again slashed his opponent, causing it to yelp with pain.
Helga rolled quietly away from the fight and sent a Magic Missile at the wounded lion, knocking it unconscious.
Gaelle again stepped back and sent two arrows into the lion in front of her.
Gracientus crawled a little further back into the cave, as Gaelle was scratched and Seigfried mauled by their lions.
Li Kung took his chance to step in and wound a lion, before Seigfried also wounded it slightly.
Helga moved in to the combat, after her attempt at casting another Magic Missile failed because of her restrictive armour, to give a flank to Seigfried, getting bitten and thrown to the floor by the quick-reacting lion and badly raked across her stomach.
Cord, who had not rushed to get up, now chose to step in and cut the head of Helga’s lion in twain.
Gaelle, stepping back again, plugged arrows through both of her lion’s eyes.
Gracientus moved quickly over to the stricken Helga to assess the damage.
“Ooh, look, sausages,” moaned the Norsewoman as Gracientus poked her entrails back where they belonged and sealed the wound with some help from Set. (Holy Superglue)
“Typical,” said Cord, “on my watch it’s lovely and quiet. I get a couple of hours kip and get woken up to find that you two can’t even keep a couple of mangy moggies off us!” He then stalked back to bed.
“I took two of them out!” exclaimed an aggrieved Gaelle toward the receding Cord’s back.
Gaelle spent half an hour dragging the lion carcasses away from the cave and kicking plenty of dust over the blood trail leading from their camp, before continuing her watch.
24th September 1699
The day dawned brightly and promised to be very warm, much to the chagrin of Seigfried. Praying to the Goddess of Winter with the warmth of the rising sun in your face just didn’t feel right. The Goddess of Death bit cheered him up, though.
The party packed up camp and walked the horses eastwards until they thought they were in the right area for finding a dragon. They waited in some cover and studied the many holes in the mountainside trying to decide which to investigate further.
Li Kung pointed out two that looked large enough for their quarry to use as a lair.
“Helga. When we get inside, are you going to be ready to flank for us?” smiled Li Kung.
The rest of the party chuckled as an abashed Helga mumbled something about tumbling.
“She’d have been better off lying on the floor”, commented Gaelle.
“She was lyin’ on the floor. She was grabbed by a lyin’ on the floor!” smirked Gracientus.
“You wouldn’t be so smug if you’d been deep in the sh*t at the time,” cautioned Cord. “It’s all very funny to take the piss, but…”
Picking the most likely cave, the party scrambled up a scree-slope toward it.
Gaelle spotted around but could only find fairly recent lion tracks. Three of them a few hours ago.
“This ain’t it then,” stated the ranger.
Climbing around to the other potential dragon home, they had to climb 80’ up a difficult face.
Gracientus decided to wait below until someone got to the top and dropped a rope down.
“Good idea,” thought Cord, settling in to wait for the rope.
Set, through Gracientus, made Li Kung stronger and the monk scampered up the rock face, carrying a rope tied together with a rather large knot. Just to be sure, Cord and Seigfried had had a brief tug of war with the spliced rope to prove its strength.
At the top, Li Kung realised that the cave was somewhat larger than it had appeared from below.
Holding the rope, he kept an eye over his shoulder for a dragon, while waiting for the others.
Gaelle found a large number of deep scratches in the ledge which could have been the result of a dragon taking off and landing, so the party assumed they had found the right cave. Li Kung suggested that Gaelle listen at the cave for sounds of a large creature. Gaelle could only hear the whistling of the wind as it blew across the cave-mouth. Unless, that was what dragon breath sounded like?
Grasping their potions of fire protection, the party motioned Gaelle forward, after she had cast a spell of fire protection on herself. Slipping silently into the cave, ducking between patches of deep shadow, Gaelle disappeared into the darkness.
Unfortunately for the brave ranger, the occupier of the cave heard her creeping down the corridor and could just make her out, silhouetted against the faint light coming down the passage.
Gaelle felt a rush of air past her face, an instant before the rush of flames removed her eyebrows.
The flames lit up the cavern, petering out just short of the entrance.
“I think I’ll drink my potion now,” announced Cord.
Gaelle, now devoid of facial hair, decided to return outside.
“It’s in there,” she told her companions, who were busy knocking back their magical brews.
“We want to fight it in there,” suggested Li Kung.
“Damn right,” agreed Cord.
Gracientus, standing carefully behind the others, called upon Set to Bless the party, before turning her attention to Gaelle’s face.
“Sorry, I don’t have a bandage that big. And, if I did, you wouldn’t be able to see anything” the young priest apologised. “Got rid of your moustache, though”
“Coming, Seigfried?” asked Cord.
“After you,” replied the Paladin.
“Tosser”
“What are we going to do for light?” asked a worried Li Kung.
“I’ve got a lantern, but I don’t think I want to open it until I get in there” replied Cord.
Cord ran in to the darkness and rounded a vague shape he thought to be a corner and put his lantern down, but couldn’t see anything in the lantern‘s beam.
Seigfried followed closely behind but also could not see a dragon.
Helga moved in, picked up Cord’s lantern and waved it around, trying, unsuccessfully, to either see or hear the dragon.
Li Kung ran in, tumbling away from the illumination, and spotted the glint of large eyes some 20’ above the cavern floor. “It’s up there!” he hissed, faintly, and spanged a shuriken off the wall near the dragon.
Gaelle, looking to where Li Kung threw his shuriken, saw a glint of something and loosed an arrow, which kicked sparks off the wall.
Feeling a bit threatened, the dragon breathed into the cavern, its flame falling just short of Li Kung, but enveloping everyone else. Helga fell to the floor but, through force of will alone, managed to stay conscious, though in immense pain from the 100% burns.
During the momentarily increased illumination, Cord spotted a ramp further back in the cave, which led up to the dragon’s ledge. He ran to it and halfway up, to distance himself from the others.
Seigfried followed him, hoping that the dragon wouldn’t breathe on them again.
Helga shuffled back down the passage with a magical hand holding the lantern and pointing it towards the dragon.
Gracientus stepped a bit further into the passage, very glad he stayed outside, and called upon Set to heal Helga’s worst suppurations.
Li Kung, not feeling brave enough to follow the two fighters up the ramp, ran across the cavern and lobbed a handful of shuriken vaguely towards the dragon.
Gaelle sent two arrows into the darkness, one of them hitting something hard and bouncing off to skitter across the cavern floor.
The dragon, concerned that his flame hadn’t killed anything but aware that his escape route was guarded, decided to lessen the threat from the warriors on the ramp. The target of the dragon’s fear spell, Cord felt significantly less brave than he had and decided to let Seigfried take point.
The Paladin stepped in to face the beast, taking a claw across the chest for his troubles, before finding a small chink in its scales where he could park his axe.
Buoyed by Seigfried’s successful attack, Cord moved in but was unable to pierce the dragon’s hide.
A bolt from Gracientus’ crossbow whistled just over Seigfried’s head and knocked a chunk out of the wall.
Li Kung, now feeling braver, charged up the ramp and stuffed his glaive into the dragon’s less well protected neck.
Gaelle finally managed to get an arrow into her target, enraging the beast into lashing out with every limb. Li Kung took a bite, Seigfried two claws and Cord a wing buffet and a tail slap.
Facing what appeared to be a pretty healthy dragon, Seigfried prayed to Morana and took a chunk out of the creature.
Helga, feeling happier after downing a pint or two of healing potion, moved back into the cavern, though about as far away from the dragon as she could get and still see it.
Cord swung his huge sword, slicing a couple of scales off the dragon’s neck and leaving a splash of reptile blood across the wall. Gracientus called a morning star composed wholly of faith into being with which he bashed the beast across the nose.
Li Kung’s glaive carved through one of its eyes and two arrows from Gaelle also found their mark.
The dragon, now getting very concerned for its health, put everything it had into what could be its last attacks.
Its huge teeth took a chunk out of the wall by Li Kung’s head, both claws turned Seigfried into a bloody mess on the floor and its tail whacked across Cord’s midriff.
Helga’s magical accomplice brought the lantern to her but, again, her armour interfered with her spellcasting and the magical energy dissipated harmlessly in front of her.
Cord, now covered in a mixture of Seigfried’s, dragon’s and his own blood swung ineffectually at the annoyed and increasingly desperate dragon.
Gracientus’ holy weapon bloodied its nose again, while Li Kung punched the wall before poking the dragon in its good eye.
Two arrows disappeared into the depths of the cavern and the dragon went postal.
Its bite mangled Li Kung’s arm, a claw and a buffet from its wing caused the monk to stagger back in agony.
Its other claw opened a rent in Cord’s chest and the other wing slapped him halfway down the ramp, across the pool of Seigfried’s blood.
By the light of the lantern, Helga could see plenty of blood spraying around, very little of it the dragon’s.
This, and her encumbering armour, caused her third spell in a row to fail, the air in front of her glowing faintly from all the magical energy lost into it.
Gracientus’ spiritual weapon whisked past its face as the flying Li Kung’s feet thudded almost effectually into the dragon’s throat. The strain of so much fury finally took its toll on the young monk and he fainted at the dragon’s feet. It was suddenly feeling a lot better about its chances of survival.
Unfortunately, the feeling didn’t last as Gaelle’s arrow pierced its good eye and it collapsed, its head hanging over the edge of the ledge.
Helga and Gracientus race up the ramp to their stricken companions, quickly casting healing spells and applying potions. Gaelle, not particularly interested in (or capable of) healing the others, began a search of the area behind the dragon, wanting to be first to whatever booty was to be had.
Helga didn’t think that dragons could recover from such damage but, taking no chances, she attempted to sever its neck with her surgical tools. Deciding that it might take a bit too long to delicately slice through its 2’ thick neck with a scalpel, she borrowed the unconscious Seigfried’s axe and simply lopped it off.
Gaelle found a potion, a bone scroll case, a small ebony box with a fine lock, a pile of gold coins (along with the charred remains of a few sacks and pouches) and a badly acid-etched (probably from passing through the dragon) holy symbol of Set. Hoorah!
“Shall we rest here for a bit?” asked Helga, hoping that with a little sit down she could recover her ability to use magic.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to bother us. Not after dealing with the lions AND the dragon” replied a conscious but very sore Cord. “The extra protection from my new armour really helped there” he added, wryly, surveying his seriously dented breastplate.
Seigfried, finally brought round by Gracientus’ ministrations, had a feeling of a “job well done” from his beloved mistress, Morana.
Li Kung, meanwhile, felt his mind expanding in strange and unusual ways as he succeeded in unlocking the psionic potential that his teachers at the temple had tried to bash into him. “At last!” he thought with satisfaction.
When they decided they had rested enough, around lunchtime, they were greeted by a hot wind, blowing down the valley. “Horrible,” thought Seigfried, who had got used to the cool dampness in the cavern.
The rest of the party climbed back down the rope, while Li Kung waited to untie it and climb down himself
Going down the rock face as fast as he could, to show off, the mental monk caught his sandal on a small outcrop and tumbled the last 50’, landing head first onto a big rock. Shaken, he had to have a bit of sit down, waiting for his vision to clear. The others decided to have a spot of lunch until the stars stopped circling his head.
Helga took the opportunity to investigate the ebony box. Thinking that it wasn’t trapped, but with all the others moving at least 15’ away from her, she plied her trade on the lock, successfully.
The box contained a long-dead-looking hand on a chain, like a really weird medallion.
“I bet she tries to stick it somewhere,” said Gaelle, who was genuinely freaked out by some of Helga’s bizarre ideas. The strange Norsewoman seemed to think that she had a number of “things” inside her and wanted to experiment, putting things in other people. Most disturbing.
“Maybe it’s a back scratcher,“ suggested Gaelle.
“It’s one of those mummified hand thingys,” professed Helga, not really knowing what it was but not wanting to appear ignorant until she had figured out what it actually was.
“Doesn’t it allow you to have an extra ring?” asked Li Kung.
“Something else to stick things up,” mumbled Gracientus, also a bit dubious about some of Helga’s ideas.
Helga, bravely, removed the scroll from the bone case and cast Read Magic to find out what it contained.
Ready to move on, Seigfried called for Frost, his mount, who trotted round the corner and came up to nuzzle his shoulder.
The party quickly mounted up, strapping the dragon’s head on to one of the horses and headed back toward Byzantium.
Having disposed of the major predators in that area of mountains, they were not molested for some time.
Helga, busy playing with her new hand, was startled when Cord said, “There’s a winged thing coming!”
Gaelle leaped off her horse and strung her bow in one easy movement, looking to see what it was.
Gracientus was looking around when Cord suggested he look up instead. He still couldn’t see anything, though.
Helga got off her horse, thinking that if it was a big flying thing it might go for the larger animal instead of her.
“Bet it’s a white dragon,” said Li Kung.
“Oh good,” replied Seigfried, “I like white dragons.”
Suddenly, from out of the sun, a huge winged shape swooped over their heads and grabbed at Cord.
All the others watched its shadow pass over them, except Li Kung, who slashed the wyvern across the belly as it came within reach of his glaive.
The wyvern, after losing a couple of pints of blood over Li Kung’s head, failed to get a grip on Cord’s armour and flew on.
As it began to climb away from them, trailing blood, Gaelle stuck two arrows in its tender rear quarters, eliciting a piercing shriek. Gracientus moved a little further away, into some light cover and Helga, refreshed after her earlier exertions managed to hit it with a pair of magic missiles.
Seigfried, rueing his lack of decent missile weapons, charged Frost at the wyvern, his lance tip narrowly missing extending the gash in its belly. He did, however, manage to get in the way of its dangling stinger. Seigfried, filled with the grace of Morana, felt no ill effects from the pints of poison injected into his shoulder and watched as the wyvern banked up and around.
Li Kung brandished his glaive in defence of Helga, who he viewed as by far the weakest member of the party and Cord prepared a spear in case the wyvern came at him again. Gaelle loosed another brace of arrows at the beast, now some distance away, piercing it twice in the side.
Helga fired a crossbow bolt off in its general direction, ducking out from behind Li Kung.
Seigfried, still feeling heroic, charged his mount halfway toward the wyvern and hurled his dagger (his sole missile weapon) at it, glancing a blow off its left thigh.
The wyvern, streaming blood from several orifices that it hadn’t had that morning, kept flying, heading home for a sleep and a bit of a cry. Gaelle licked the fletching of her next arrow, nocked it and loosed, missing the rapidly retreating wyvern by a couple of feet. Helga had reloaded her crossbow before she realised that the wyvern was now well outside her effective range.
“Helga, lightning bolt it!” urged Li Kung.
Helga spared the monk a single glance before calling to Seigfried to return for her tender ministrations. And some healing.
Seigfried, on the other hand, was determined to find his dagger before going back, despite the throbbing fist-sized lump of venom in his shoulder.
“Come back now. You can do that later” shouted Helga before jumping on her horse and galloping after the driven Germanian. Finally catching up with him as he gave his dagger up as lost, she slit his skin and drew the poison out.
“She’s probably trying to stick something in him” said Cord.
“He’ll end up with another head” Gaelle added.
Thinking that tracking the wyvern across the mountain would be a bit too difficult to bother, Gaelle unstrung her bow and they all remounted and carried on toward the sunset.
Finding a deep cleft to shelter from the harsh, hot wind, they settled down for a happily unbroken night’s rest.
25th September 1699
By mid-morning they had arrived back at the goatherds’ village, which all bar Helga were happy to pass by.
“We should stop to reap their gratitude” she said grandly.
“They’re peasants! Why would we want their gratitude?” argued Gaelle.
“Maybe they’ll say ‘Have some more goats’?” suggested Cord. “And I’m not hungry at the moment”
“OK, let’s not bother then” agreed Helga after determining that the villagers would make pretty poor slaves and so were not worth stopping for.
As Helga rode forward, past the village, Gracientus wondered if life up in the icy northlands had frozen her brain. He couldn’t think of any other reason for her strange behaviour. Unless, that is, she really had got “things” stuck inside her. Maybe he would get the opportunity to dissect her when she died of stupidity.
27th September 1699
Following an uneventful ride back to civilisation the party arrived in Byzantium during what had to be the hottest day of the year. The wind-chill was bringing the temperature down to 30°C.
They decided that the Set temple would be the best destination, both to get their reward and to take advantage of the well known fact that temples built almost exclusively out of marble tended to be much cooler than the outside world.
Gracientus announced their return while the party basked in the cool shade. They all steamed and Cord’s armour plinked gently as it cooled. To reinforce the feeling of calm and civility, acolytes served them iced drinks as they waited for someone in authority to see to them.
“These people give evil a good name,” commented Li Kung, unused to such politeness in a supposedly nasty temple.
“We look after our flock,” explained Gracientus.
“I suppose it helps being a cult that actively supports theft as a lifestyle,” added Cord.
Some minutes later, a junior priest brought them a bag of gold, carefully took possession of the recovered holy symbol and praised them on a job well done, before padding back to whatever he had been doing before.
As they shared out the gold, borrowing a table in the temple’s foyer for the job, Cord had an idea.
“If we’re going to be staying around here, wouldn’t it make sense to buy a place to stay rather than spending all our gold renting rooms in inns? I have a lot of money that I can’t carry round, so I want to do something with it. And I want you lot to chip in as well.”
Given something to think about, they went to the Mages’ Society to see about the stuff they picked up, and to sell the dragon head. Gaelle wanted a magical quiver to hold the vast quantity of arrows she seemed to tote round. Quoted 1800GP, Li Kung exploded.
“How much? That is ridiculously cheap for such a powerful item! It contains a magic dimensional space!”
Still muttering, the scandalised monk wandered back outside as the Society’s representative looked calm and superior in the face of what he considered crass ignorance.
Having made it back into the scorching heat, they realised that they had forgotten all about the hand on the chain. Going back inside, doing nothing to change the clerk’s opinion, they asked for it to be identified.
Some minutes later they were advised that it allowed the wearer to utilise a Mage Hand at will.
“Can anyone use it?” asked Helga.
“Any reasonably adept practitioner of the magical arts may use it almost immediately” the clerk replied, a little stuffily. “Normals might be trained, but that could take weeks and would not necessarily prove successful. Someone of your,” the clerk paused for effect, watching at Helga over his pince-nez, “obvious talent, might manage on your own.”
“I think we’re done here,” announced Helga, turning to leave, not at all pleased with the frosty response. All because she couldn’t cast 3rd level spells. She’d show them. A few more “adventures” like the last one and she’d show them alright.
“What about this potion?” asked Gaelle, eliciting an even frostier stare from the clerk who felt he was being deliberately messed about. He took the flask and returned to the laboratory, coming back a few minutes later looking pleased with himself.
“It is an interesting one. An Elixir of Swimming – makes your ability to swim significantly better for some time.”
At this point, Cord chimed in with his own belated request. He wondered if there was an item that could make him more comfortable in his armour under adverse conditions?
“There is a “standard” ring we make that keeps you warm in cold weather. I had noticed you were perspiring more than should be normal, so I assume you’d want one to keep you cool in warm weather as well” said the clerk.
“Perhaps, a permanent version of Endure Elements?” chipped in Gaelle, doing nothing for the temper of the clerk, which was getting cooler by the sentence.
“I dare say we could make something of that order. A ring, most likely. 2000GP, 3 days.”
Coming back into the conversation, causing the clerk to wish he had been on the cauldron cleaning detail today, Helga enquired about prices for several more items in which she had just become interested.
The clerk, desperately wanting to get rid of these ruffians, dealt with her request perfunctorily.
“Are we done?” he asked, as the party looked around, seeming to dare each other to ask for something else. “Good, good day, then” he said with a little bow, and scuttled swiftly out of sight.
Emerging from the cool of the Mages’ Society into the searing heat (so hot that Li Kung wondered if there was anything magically strange about the weather) they quickly decided to follow Cord’s lead toward the Public Baths, for a lengthy soak in the cool waters and to remove the grime from their travels.
They were surprised to find there were actually people in the hot baths!
Seigfried sank gratefully into the cold water, though it was not really cold enough for him. Since his reacquaintance with his god he thought that he would only be truly comfortable in temperatures close to, and below, freezing. Still, the water was so much better than being outside.
Gaelle paid the attendants to provide cool water for her dog and the party spent the rest of the afternoon in civilised comfort.
28th September 1699
Agreeing that the plan was to base themselves in the Byzantium area they discussed options.
Cord favoured pooling their money and either buying a house or getting a long lease on one.
They gave their requirements to the Agent of Estates to whom they were recommended by Gracientus.
Gaelle wanted somewhere on the edge of town, furthest away from all the people and closest to the wilds.
Cord suggested somewhere in the more “scummy” areas where they could “lean on” the Thieves’ Guild.
After all, they were rougher than most thieves they had ever met.
Gaelle thought they might be able to do a deal with the Guild: protection in exchange for doing “the odd job” for them.
After some thought, even Cord came round to the idea of a large house with stabling for all their horses.
“Do you want to make a statement? Do you want to appear rich, powerful, affluent?” asked the Agent.
“I don’t really feel any of those so, no, thanks” answered Cord.
A suitable villa, to the south of the city near the South Road, was found, three months deposit paid and the Agent pointed them towards another Agency for housekeeping staff. After some haggling, a suitable husband and wife team were found and they set aside several months’ wages and a housekeeping fund for them.
“We’d better go out and adventure, so we can afford all this” suggested Cord, feeling in his nearly empty pockets as they surveyed their new abode. It was distinctly palatial compared to anywhere he had stayed before. Anywhere any of them had stayed before.
Li Kung returned to the Mages’ Society, having forgotten to ask for some boots to make him run faster. The clerk, luckily a different one than yesterday, was not surprised. After all, it was the first thing monks asked for. Unfortunately for him, Li Kung could not afford either option - boots that would make him go very much faster for a bit or ones to make him go a bit faster for a very long time – so he thanked the clerk and returned to the house.
Seigfried was thinking about money. He was scribbling sums on a piece of paper, working out that he could stay in an inn, eating average food, cheaper than the house was going to cost him.
“But that’s average food,” argued Helga, “here, you would get superior food. And stabling for your horse, ah.” She had remembered that he called Frost when he needed him. She would need a better argument.
The paladin seemed adamant. “It doesn’t really fit in with my needs,” he stated.
The others took it quite well, despite the individual cost going up. “It means we have a spare room, now,” Helga looked on the bright side.
Now, they turned their attention to finding a job - they went to the Hunters’ Guild to find out what was available.
They were told that untaken bounties were on the board, and that as soon as one was taken it was removed, to be replaced if the hunters failed to return within a month.
Gaelle asked “What about bounties that have only just gone? Couldn’t we have the information as well?”
The Hunter on duty looked scandalised and told her that was the rule. One Hunter per bounty. Wouldn’t be fair otherwise.
Looking over the board the bounty for the Uruk, Kron, had gone up.
The reward for the manticores was still up. Most Hunters didn’t like going for beasts – not really proper sport.
Helga tried to convince the Hunter to let her know details on big bounties that recently gone out.
He looked less scandalised and more annoyed with her, but she thought he was holding out for a gratuity.
Slipping him 20GP, he looked around before accepting and agreed to give her information about upcoming bounties before he put them up on the board.
Cord came up with the idea of visiting “adventurer taverns” and using their keen wits to discover who was about, doing what. And what adventuring parties, of about the same level of competence, were potential bushwhacking victims.
The Grinning Gryphon, known for its huge common-room, and the Dolphin, more known for entertaining sailors were the most likely taverns. Choosing the Gryphon they arrived near lunchtime, thankful for the heat being several degrees lower than yesterday.
Cord figured that in his armour anyone he talked to would think he was deranged, so purchased some leathers for when in town. Li Kung spent his time mentally undressing Helga, who had taken to wearing flimsy robes to combat the heat. He managed to mentally put aside all the things Helga had mentioned about the strange stuff her father had supposedly put inside her and enjoyed the morning immensely.
Monks, eh?
Entering the common-room of the Grinning Gryphon, passing under the sign with a rather anthropomorphic beast, laughing its head off clutching a dying cow in its talon, they found it fairly busy.
Gaelle thought she’d sit herself in a corner and look enigmatic while trying to eavesdrop on nearby conversations, as she had the charisma of a slug.
Helga moved about, trying to listen to any Bards, who could be relied upon to be unable to shut up for more than a minute at a time.
Seigfried, ever practical, went to order food. Unable to articulate his needs, he was overcharged and the rest of the party reckoned his meal would be liberally spiked with spit. Tasty, though.
There was a group of young lads, chests puffed out, talking bollocks, who had managed to convince the members of the militia in the pub that they were great adventurers, but they were not fooling anyone else.
The other “adventuring groups” were keeping to themselves, talking quietly and not drawing attention to themselves.
One was three fighter-types and another, much older, man with no armour. Judging by the family resemblance they seemed to be an aging spellslinger and his three less magically inclined (thicker) sons.
They all looked a bit handy, but they were quite obviously just back from their travels. Their wounds looked too recent for them to be seriously considering heading out soon.
The other group was more like what could be called a “typical” adventuring group. There were two older fighters, a fairly obvious thiefy-type (couldn’t look more shifty if he was a ferret) and a couple of young unarmoured men.
They were about to head up north, towards the borders of the Germanian Protectorate. Lots of bandits up there, mostly disgruntled soldiers with nothing to do since much the army had been demobilised, and plenty of monsters in the mountains.
Putting their heads together in the corner, the party decided to follow the group going north and bounce them just beyond Byzantine jurisdiction, at least 20 miles distant. Seigfried was especially happy to go towards home, though he didn’t really know why he had come south in the first place.
As the target group were staying in the Grinning Gryphon that night, and leaving in the morning, Seigfried decided to stay there as well, so he could follow them in the morning to ascertain which route they were going to take. The party thought to leave the city in the afternoon, with Helga changing her appearance to that of a local commoner and asking the gate guards if the group had left. Li Kung was impressed with her ideas of subterfuge. Perhaps there was more to her than a fine set of curves and some dodgy wiggly bits in her guts.
30th September 1699
The temperature beginning to lessen towards proper autumnal levels, Helga approached the gate guards and enquired after the group of adventurers.
“What you want them for? They didn’t, do, anything did they?” asked the older, more fatherly guard.
“Oh no, no,” replied a winsome Helga, managing to avoid arousing their suspicions, and learning that they had left on horseback an hour after dawn, heading roughly west along the main road.
After Gaelle had picked up her new quiver and they had discussed their plans around the map of the area they decided to follow the adventurers for a day and a half then attack them on the second night.
Not expecting anything of the sort, there would only be a third of them on guard.
Before leaving, they remembered Gracientus.
“We’re off on a harvest,” explained Cord. “You want to come?”
“Why not, sounds like a giggle”
Helga suddenly had a nasty thought. Had any of the adventurers been wearing holy symbols of Set?
Wouldn’t do their standing much good if they duffed up a temple group.
None of them could remember, but thought that if they were a Set group, they’d just have to make sure none of them survived, which was the plan anyway.
With Gaelle tracking them, at least after they had gone out of sight of the city walls, the party managed to follow their quarry, ensuring they kept a steady distance.
As they travelled, they discussed their tactics for the attack. Central was the need to neutralise the thief, and they were concerned that he might be concealed outside the camp.
Li Kung was also concerned that they might have effective arcane casters, which apparently some parties did have.
They’d have to leave their horses and creep to the camp. They had several archers to suppress the other group, and Cord had a question for Gracientus. Did he have a spell to cover their noise?
Cord could stomp silently into the camp and it might affect the enemy spellcasters.
The Set priest could have two, so they seemed likely to be able to get a serious amount of surprise.
There was not much moon showing through the cloud that night and, as they were only about three hours behind they considered travelling into the darkness to hit the other group, though that risked missing them.
Cord, however, pointed out that they would still be inside Byzantine lands and, as they planned to make the city their base it would be unwise to risk this sort of action this close.
So, they all got a good night’s sleep and continued to follow the adventurers the next day.
robberbaron
First Post
An Ambush and Some Dead Things
1st October 1699
Gaelle’s tracking ability did not disappoint and, near midnight, they approached their targets’ camp, having trailed them successfully throughout the day. They decided to wait until an hour before dawn, as that seemed the best time to catch them unawares – they would be on last watch of an uneventful night and the arcane casters would still be asleep.
Li Kung thought it would be best if he was silenced, as he could move the fastest after everyone has crept close enough for them to attack, with Cord’s and Seigfried’s strengths enhanced. The mental monk also concentrated and manifested a field of psychic protection around himself.
The camp was set in a small dell some distance off the road and their fire could not be seen until the party crawled to the edge and looked down into it. There were only a few small bushes for cover and, in the weak light of a crescent Luna, they could make out several bundles of bedding as well as a figure on guard – covered in armour, alert with a prepared warhammer, making a circuit of the camp.
Gaelle motioned to Li Kung, getting across the message that she would shoot the nearest target.
Then the monk charged into the middle of the camp, mouth open in a silent battlecry startling the warrior on guard and put all his strength into a single glaive stroke on one of the sleeping forms. Not sufficient to kill him it did wake him up pretty quickly. The warrior’s cry of alarm, cut off as Li Kung’s aura of silence reached him, also managed to wake one of his companions.
The defenders’ thief, who had been hiding just outside the camp and observed the party’s approach, fired his shortbow at Li Kung, getting just close enough for the monk to notice him as he attempted to duck back behind a bush. Helga also saw the thief and fired off a couple of magic missiles at him.
Gaelle followed up with a pair of arrows, both passing through the bush into the thief.
The warrior charged Li Kung, taking the glaive across his chest for his trouble, before pounding the monk in the side. The wound felt a little strange – a bit more painful than perhaps it should have done – but Li Kung quickly forgot about it as the fight got going.
Cord ran down the slope and added his enormous weapon to the warrior’s woes.
Seigfried charged in and flanked the warrior, who was wishing their thief wasn’t useless.
Li Kung tumbled away from the warrior and slashed the figure on the ground again, killing him before he had a chance to get up.
The other bundle of bedding (the druid) at Li Kung’s feet rolled away, gaining a glaive wound in the back for his troubles, then got up looking very worried.
Helga, seeing the thief take a potion then move away from the bush and into the darkness, turned her attention on the unarmoured figure that had just evaded Li Kung.
Gaelle, also, not being able to follow the thief, sent two arrows into the now nearly unconscious druid.
The Paladin of Osiris, facing two fighters, both with bloody great weapons, chose at random and smashed Seigfried across the head and chest before stepping away from the flank.
One of the remaining figures on the ground got up, drew a greatsword and moved in to join the fight.
Cord slashed his Fullblade across the Paladin’s belly, and Seigfried took him down with an axe to the shoulder, cleaving on to the newly-joined fighter.
The druid’s badger companion, his master having rolled away from him, took his anger out on Cord’s calves.
Gracientus unsuccessfully Doomed the fighter, and Li Kung stepped over to the druid and cut both his legs off with a single glaive stroke before cleaving onto the badger.
Unseen in the darkness, the thief healed himself as best he could, hoping that the battle went well for his group.
Helga shot off more magic missiles and Gaelle shot at the fighter, wounding him once.
The fighter’s greatsword burst into flame and he carved a cauterised wound from Seigfried’s shoulder to his groin, dropping the Paladin to the ground.
Cord slashed the fighter, while Seigfried’s life oozed out of him on the ground. The badger nibbled at Li Kung, putting one tooth into his big toe. Li Kung shook the badger off and kicked it on the nose.
Helga’s magic missiles further injured the fighter as Gaelle’s arrows bounced off his armour.
The fighter, realising he wasn’t going to get out of this easily, took a chunk out of Cord, who was thrown off-balance enough to miss the return blow.
The badger tried to follow Li Kung and received a psionically enhanced kick to the chest. Its head flew off towards the other side of the camp and Li Kung’s foot was covered in blood.
Helga, worried, ran to Seigfried and confirmed her worst suspicions – the handsome Germanian was dead.
“There’s loads of useful bits here,” she muttered to herself, lost momentarily in her sick bio-arcane schemes.
Gaelle’s next arrow pierced the fighter’s throat, fountaining blood over Cord.
No more opponents in sight, Gaelle went over to the thief’s hiding place to search for a blood trail, while Cord made sure that all bodies were actually dead. The Paladin of Osiris wasn’t, but Cord’s method was to cut off their heads and he was quite efficient.
By the light of a lantern, Gaelle found a trail of blood which stopped suddenly, but she was able to pick up the thief’s trail. Helga realised that the thief would be moving faster than they were, so Gaelle surveyed what she could see of the land to discern if he was following an obvious trail.
“I don’t think we’ll catch him,” admitted Li Kung. “He can run as fast as he likes while we’ve got to hunt for a trail.”
“Yeah, but you can run faster,” replied Gaelle.
“Not fast enough to track at the same time”
The thief had a good minute’s lead over them, and was travelling quickly, but they followed for a couple of minutes before deciding to let him go. Perhaps, they would follow him in the morning.
As they returned to the camp they realised that it had got very cold. Li Kung was feeling particularly shivery and got as close to the fire as he could.
Noticing Seigfried’s corpse gave them pause.
“He had actually become slightly useful,” admitted Gaelle.
“Yeah, but that proves his god was useless,” replied Li Kung, his teeth chattering.
“Probably let him die for turning his back on her,” added Cord.
“If we get someone to take his place in our group, can we please get someone who can speak the lingo?” asked the monk, with the others nodding agreement.
The party spent until dawn stripping the dead and making a neat pile of interesting gear for Helga to look over for magic emanations.
Finding the paladin’s symbol of Osiris, Li Kung realised why his first injury had felt so strange – he had been on the receiving end of a Smite!
After breakfast and dispersal of the booty, they set the fire to burn the bodies, and left the site to spend a couple of days in the wilderness. They thought it would be too suspicious if they returned to Byzantium after such a short time.
After four hours’ travel, they could just see the plume of smoke they had left and, feeling very tired, chose to kick back for the rest of the day.
Li Kung encouraged Gracientus to ask Set for a clue as to whether it would be safe to rest here for the day.
“Hmm. The auguries are favourable”, announced the priest after a prayer and a short period in a trance.
Gaelle looked around and found a pleasant little dell with a small stream, where Helga spent most of the afternoon fishing and the rest of the party relaxed.
Over supper, Li Kung broached their next direction.
“Anybody know anything about this area? What can we bushwhack next, or rather where shall we adventure next?”
Helga knew quite a lot about Thrace, but little about what was going on in the countryside.
“We’ve got some spare weapons now. Maybe we should find a decent sized town and sell them?” suggested Li Kung.
During the night, two large shapes lumbered through the darkness, attracted by the scent of life around the party’s camp. Slow enough to make little noise and to not attract attention, the Minotaur Zombies entered the camp.
Gracientus and Helga were on guard and became the beasts’ unfortunate victims, both receiving wicked wounds before they were able to rouse the rest of the party. Gracientus slumped to the ground in a rapidly spreading pool of blood. Helga managed to scream an alarm.
Gaelle, springing up, used her special rapid shooting skill to plug three arrows through what was left of the creature’s hide.
Helga attempted to tumble away from her foe, but slipped on the priest’s entrails and fell straight into the minotaur’s claw, knocking herself unconscious. Her internal familiar began to coagulate blood in her wounds and rebuild her organs.
Li Kung hurled a shuriken at one of the minotaurs, barely missing Helga’s inert form on the floor at its feet.
The minotaurs shambled forward, one slashing Gaelle with its claw, the other scratching Cord across the chest as he stood up, unarmoured. Cord’s mighty Fullblade carved two furrows across the zombie’s hide.
Stepping back, Gaelle again let off a volley of arrows, only one passing through the zombie’s hide.
Li Kung stepped in to flank the minotaur fighting Cord, putting all his strength into the blow, but swung wildly. Cord also wound up a mighty blow and took a small chunk off the zombie’s body.
The zombies swung their arms around with abandon, succeeding in missing everyone.
Gaelle, Ignoring her own foe, fired three arrows, one whistling over Cord’s head into his zombie’s chest, the second catching it in the shoulder and the third ricocheting off Cord’s epaulette and heading off into the distance.
Li Kung stepped in and directed a flurry of kicks at the minotaur, knocking a small chunk off it.
Again, Gaelle’s zombie was ineffectual, while the other left four gashes in Li Kung’s chest.
Cord managed to take his foe’s head off with a mighty swing, leaving Li Kung to hurl a shuriken into the back of Gaelle’s minotaur’s head.
The minotaur, now surrounded by food, chose to go for Cord, the largest of them.
Cord, bleeding heavily from several wounds, sliced two large pieces off the minotaur, which was beginning to look very unsteady. Gaelle tried to take it out but only hit it with one arrow.
Li Kung threw another two shuriken into the long grass while the zombie clubbed Cord into unconsciousness.
Gaelle, with a free shot now that Cord was out of the way, plugged the ninth and tenth arrows into the zombie, reducing it to a pile of stinking bone and leathery hide.
Li Kung ran across to Gracientus and found the priest’s body lying on a large patch of red grass. Helga was hanging on to life, barely. The monk could not fully understand how she was still alive, given the spread of the blood pool around her and the extend of her injuries.
“I would recommend using a healing potion on her,” he told Gaelle and the now hobbling Cord.
“If I bandaged her a bit roughly it might kill her”.
“Actually, I’m tempted to let her die,” replied Gaelle.
“She is a bit weird. A bit of an aberration,” agreed Li Kung.
“She’s too strange and that worries me,” the ranger added. “She talked of changing shape and changing other people. And she says ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. And she’s sick.”
“I don’t like anyone,” Cord interjected, “so I don’t really give a toss either way. Heads we waste her, tails we don’t.” He tossed a coin, but his chaotic nature prevented him from sharing the result with the others.
“Then again,” Cord thought aloud, “if we start offing our companions because they are a bit odd, Ok, a lot odd, how can we trust each other?”
“But,” replied Gaelle “we will get associated with her and whatever sick stuff she gets up to.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” conceded Cord.
The difficult conversation lapsed into silence and Gaelle decided she wanted to examine Helga’s body for anything unusual. She and Li Kung removed her armour and clothes carefully, the monk taking the opportunity for a good feel in the process of giving her a thorough examination.
They couldn’t find anything out if the ordinary. She had plenty of scars, pointing to her having had many surgical procedures performed on her in the distant past, but no extra bits. Everything seemed to be in order.
“Ok, we let her live”, said Gaelle, a little grudgingly.
“There is certainly no compelling evidence that would force us to kill her,” agreed Li Kung.
“It’s just the stuff she comes out with,” Gaelle continued moaning about the strange sorcerer, “and I don’t mean the slime she exudes. Every time she opens her mouth she says something weird”
Li Kung administered a potion of healing to Helga, now her fate had been decided.
Returning to Gracientus’ body, they decided that the only thing they needed to return to the Set temple was his holy symbol, so they set about divvying up his equipment before setting a watch and going back to bed. They thought that the Set cult was a bit serious about people taking out their priests, so they thought they’d better do right by them.
2nd October 1699
Licking their wounds, they sat around until lunchtime when they all looked up and saw an unarmoured human striding towards their camp, obviously following tracks. They swiftly dived for cover.
He walked up to the minotaur corpses, then looked around, noticing the party.
“Hail, who are you?” asked Li Kung, unfolding from behind a small shrub, the nearest bit of cover he could find.
Keldor the Ranger introduced himself, thinking that the group who took on the minotaurs could easily deal with him.
He had been following the minotaurs since they had destroyed a merchant’s wagon a day ago, in the hope that he would find others to help him take them out (he didn’t feel strong enough to take them both on).
Gaelle, was going to have a bit of fun at Keldor’s expense.
“So, how long were you going to follow the minotaurs?” she sneered.
“What are you going to do now they’re dead?” asked Li Kung, interested, but not sharing Gaelle’s desire to humiliate the younger ranger.
“I hadn’t really thought about that. I was just following them until I got enough of an advantage to take them out.” Keldor replied. “I might track them back to their origin, find out who sent them out here in the first place.”
“Was the merchant’s wagon destroyed? Was here anything of interest?” asked Li Kung, sensing more booty.
“No, there was nothing left” Keldor admitted. He had searched around for tracks other than those of the minotaur but the zombies had tramped over any others.
“If you’re any good, we might give you a job,” offered Li Kung. “You look like you might be handy with those swords. Do you think you’d make a good addition to our group?”
“Well, I survived this lot attacking so I think so, yes.”
“That doesn’t mean much,” said Cord, “you could have been hiding. Or you could just be following the minotaurs, picking up whatever gear is left on their victims. In which case you are definitely the sort of bloke we want.”
“Sounds like one of us,” added Gaelle.
Li Kung was in favour of giving Keldor a half share of treasure until he proved himself worthy to join them on a full partner basis. Cord was in agreement and Gaelle didn’t seem to care so the young ranger was welcomed in to the group, not exactly with open arms but, what can you expect from a bunch of evil bastards.
“So, we go to the caravan and hunt back along the minotaurs’ trail,” suggested Gaelle.
They are still sitting talking with Keldor at midday when it starts raining heavily.
Helga would be unconscious until the morning, so they took the afternoon interrogating Keldor about his background, just in case he was another weirdo like Helga.
He was a Transylvanian who had got fed up with the interference of the Temple of Thor in the south of the country and decided to leave. It didn’t help matters that whenever he tried to range in the mountains he kept meeting Stone Giants who told him firmly to leave their lands. Finally, he had had enough and decided to head south.
3rd October 1699
In the morning light, Helga woke up. Her body was thrumming with the energy poured into healing by her familiar, a large worm-like creature living in her abdominal cavity which was symbiotically linked to her. She got a sense of its pleasure at bringing her back from the brink of death which put her in a very good mood. She was also buoyed by finally figuring out how to turn herself invisible.
“We didn’t think you were going to pull round,” Li Kung told her, as they settled back to allow Helga to finish healing.
“What happened to Gracientus?” Helga asked.
“You did such a good job of guarding that he was damn near cut in half,” replied Gaelle, trying unsuccessfully to make her feel bad for the priest’s death.
After lunch, they made good time riding to where the wagon was attacked.
They found the wagon overturned and several bodies that had been feasted upon by local wildlife.
The wagon had contained cloth which had been ruined by the elements and Gaelle reckoned that they would likely destroy it by getting it back on its wheels.
“Whoever produced the zombies didn’t send them against this,” reasoned Li Kung, “there’s nothing worth taking.”
The party decided to follow the zombies’ tracks, heading roughly south, until sunset when they stopped and set camp.
They were a little worried about putting Keldor on watch with Helga and they took several minutes of discussion to set watches.
4th October 1699
They pressed on through the day, heading towards Ionia, but didn’t find the source of the zombies.
While travelling, Gaelle used her meagre magic to converse with her dog. She wanted to teach it to hold the handle of a lantern in its mouth.
5th October 1699
The day dawned bright and clear. And freezing cold.
The decided to wrap up warm against the cold and continue on but Li Kung and Keldor were feeling the cold quite badly and couldn’t stop themselves shivering.
Shortly after lunchtime, when the temperature had risen to a balmy 10°C, they spied a copse on the top of a large low hill, to which the tracks led.
“Shall we go round the copse and see if the tracks come out the other side?” Li Kung suggested.
“Bear in mind that if this is where they came from,” said Cord, “how many were left behind?”
They circumnavigated the hill and found no tracks on the other side.
“We ready to investigate the copse now?” asked Gaelle.
Helga thought it could be a burial site of some sort, making the link to undead creatures, and Keldor reckoned it was too regular to be natural.
“We could try to burn it,” suggested Li Kung.
“It’s a bit wet for that to work,” replied Cord.
Not able to think of anything else, they gingerly made their way up the hill towards the copse. Tracking was very difficult in the dense undergrowth but Gaelle managed to follow the enormous footprints into the wood, up to an obviously constructed rocky outcrop with an opening facing them.
Gaelle scouted around and found human tracks coming out then going back in, about the same age as the minotaur tracks.
While Helga went to check the entrance for traps, Gaelle lit a lantern and placed it in her dog’s mouth.
Helga cast a spell that would enable her to talk to the others and went carefully ahead into the cave.
Moving slowly along the roughly worked, downward angled passage, Helga used her magic hand to hold a torch ahead of her. She was a little put out as, though she was creeping along almost silently, Cord was clanking along a few feet behind her.
After some distance, the passage opened out into a chamber. Nothing attacked the floating torch, and she paused to turn herself invisible before moving forward to the entrance.
In the torchlight, she could see two human zombies shuffling towards her. Stepping back, she informed the rest of the party and Gaelle and Cord prepared their bows to shoot them before they got too close.
Li Kung prepared to strike at anything to come within range, Cord stuck a couple of arrows in one zombie, taking it out and Keldor charged in to contact with the other. As he closed on the zombie, an ettin skeleton wielding two morningstars appeared out of the gloom and headed towards the rest of the party.
Helga fired off a pair of magic missiles at Keldor’s zombie, freeing him to attack the large skelington.
Realising that arrows would have little effect on the ettin, Gaelle dropped her bow, drew her new pre-owned greatsword and moved closer to the ettin.
Li Kung tumbled to contact with the ettin and stuck her psionically empowered foot right up its nether regions.
Cord also dropped his bow, drew a weapon and prepared his shield, moving to the ettin.
Keldor stepped a little closer and cast a spell.
The ettin smacked Li Kung and swished its left Morningstar over Cord’s head.
Helga, worried that despite being invisible the ettin would smack her in passing, crept further into the chamber to examine where it had come from. Finding only an alcove helped to settle her nerves.
Then, from out of the gloom, another figure approached that caused the party to doubt their effectiveness and think about legging it. Only briefly, however, as the mummy’s horrible aura failed to scare the party.
It then moved in and smashed its rotting fist into Gaelle's face.
Gaelle chipped away at the ettin skeleton, which then thumped Keldor and Gaelle back. Fairs fair after all.
Helga sent a pair of magic missiles at the mummy, not slowing it.
The mummy missed Gaelle by a hair’s breadth as she carved through the ettin’s ribcage and pelvis, becoming little more than a lumpy pile of dust.
Li Kung stepped over the dust and smacked the mummy, as did Cord.
Keldor stepped in and whirled his swords around in the mummy’s face, not actually hitting it.
Helga changed position and again sent two magic missiles into the horrific dead thing.
After the mummy had waved its arms in their general direction, Gaelle slashed her greatsword across its chest.
Li Kung dropped his glaive, grabbed his quarterstaff and cracked the mummy on the forehead, knocking off a big chunk.
Cord stepped in to a flanking position, wound up mightily and carved through the mummy, spraying dusty fragments everywhere.
1st October 1699
Gaelle’s tracking ability did not disappoint and, near midnight, they approached their targets’ camp, having trailed them successfully throughout the day. They decided to wait until an hour before dawn, as that seemed the best time to catch them unawares – they would be on last watch of an uneventful night and the arcane casters would still be asleep.
Li Kung thought it would be best if he was silenced, as he could move the fastest after everyone has crept close enough for them to attack, with Cord’s and Seigfried’s strengths enhanced. The mental monk also concentrated and manifested a field of psychic protection around himself.
The camp was set in a small dell some distance off the road and their fire could not be seen until the party crawled to the edge and looked down into it. There were only a few small bushes for cover and, in the weak light of a crescent Luna, they could make out several bundles of bedding as well as a figure on guard – covered in armour, alert with a prepared warhammer, making a circuit of the camp.
Gaelle motioned to Li Kung, getting across the message that she would shoot the nearest target.
Then the monk charged into the middle of the camp, mouth open in a silent battlecry startling the warrior on guard and put all his strength into a single glaive stroke on one of the sleeping forms. Not sufficient to kill him it did wake him up pretty quickly. The warrior’s cry of alarm, cut off as Li Kung’s aura of silence reached him, also managed to wake one of his companions.
The defenders’ thief, who had been hiding just outside the camp and observed the party’s approach, fired his shortbow at Li Kung, getting just close enough for the monk to notice him as he attempted to duck back behind a bush. Helga also saw the thief and fired off a couple of magic missiles at him.
Gaelle followed up with a pair of arrows, both passing through the bush into the thief.
The warrior charged Li Kung, taking the glaive across his chest for his trouble, before pounding the monk in the side. The wound felt a little strange – a bit more painful than perhaps it should have done – but Li Kung quickly forgot about it as the fight got going.
Cord ran down the slope and added his enormous weapon to the warrior’s woes.
Seigfried charged in and flanked the warrior, who was wishing their thief wasn’t useless.
Li Kung tumbled away from the warrior and slashed the figure on the ground again, killing him before he had a chance to get up.
The other bundle of bedding (the druid) at Li Kung’s feet rolled away, gaining a glaive wound in the back for his troubles, then got up looking very worried.
Helga, seeing the thief take a potion then move away from the bush and into the darkness, turned her attention on the unarmoured figure that had just evaded Li Kung.
Gaelle, also, not being able to follow the thief, sent two arrows into the now nearly unconscious druid.
The Paladin of Osiris, facing two fighters, both with bloody great weapons, chose at random and smashed Seigfried across the head and chest before stepping away from the flank.
One of the remaining figures on the ground got up, drew a greatsword and moved in to join the fight.
Cord slashed his Fullblade across the Paladin’s belly, and Seigfried took him down with an axe to the shoulder, cleaving on to the newly-joined fighter.
The druid’s badger companion, his master having rolled away from him, took his anger out on Cord’s calves.
Gracientus unsuccessfully Doomed the fighter, and Li Kung stepped over to the druid and cut both his legs off with a single glaive stroke before cleaving onto the badger.
Unseen in the darkness, the thief healed himself as best he could, hoping that the battle went well for his group.
Helga shot off more magic missiles and Gaelle shot at the fighter, wounding him once.
The fighter’s greatsword burst into flame and he carved a cauterised wound from Seigfried’s shoulder to his groin, dropping the Paladin to the ground.
Cord slashed the fighter, while Seigfried’s life oozed out of him on the ground. The badger nibbled at Li Kung, putting one tooth into his big toe. Li Kung shook the badger off and kicked it on the nose.
Helga’s magic missiles further injured the fighter as Gaelle’s arrows bounced off his armour.
The fighter, realising he wasn’t going to get out of this easily, took a chunk out of Cord, who was thrown off-balance enough to miss the return blow.
The badger tried to follow Li Kung and received a psionically enhanced kick to the chest. Its head flew off towards the other side of the camp and Li Kung’s foot was covered in blood.
Helga, worried, ran to Seigfried and confirmed her worst suspicions – the handsome Germanian was dead.
“There’s loads of useful bits here,” she muttered to herself, lost momentarily in her sick bio-arcane schemes.
Gaelle’s next arrow pierced the fighter’s throat, fountaining blood over Cord.
No more opponents in sight, Gaelle went over to the thief’s hiding place to search for a blood trail, while Cord made sure that all bodies were actually dead. The Paladin of Osiris wasn’t, but Cord’s method was to cut off their heads and he was quite efficient.
By the light of a lantern, Gaelle found a trail of blood which stopped suddenly, but she was able to pick up the thief’s trail. Helga realised that the thief would be moving faster than they were, so Gaelle surveyed what she could see of the land to discern if he was following an obvious trail.
“I don’t think we’ll catch him,” admitted Li Kung. “He can run as fast as he likes while we’ve got to hunt for a trail.”
“Yeah, but you can run faster,” replied Gaelle.
“Not fast enough to track at the same time”
The thief had a good minute’s lead over them, and was travelling quickly, but they followed for a couple of minutes before deciding to let him go. Perhaps, they would follow him in the morning.
As they returned to the camp they realised that it had got very cold. Li Kung was feeling particularly shivery and got as close to the fire as he could.
Noticing Seigfried’s corpse gave them pause.
“He had actually become slightly useful,” admitted Gaelle.
“Yeah, but that proves his god was useless,” replied Li Kung, his teeth chattering.
“Probably let him die for turning his back on her,” added Cord.
“If we get someone to take his place in our group, can we please get someone who can speak the lingo?” asked the monk, with the others nodding agreement.
The party spent until dawn stripping the dead and making a neat pile of interesting gear for Helga to look over for magic emanations.
Finding the paladin’s symbol of Osiris, Li Kung realised why his first injury had felt so strange – he had been on the receiving end of a Smite!
After breakfast and dispersal of the booty, they set the fire to burn the bodies, and left the site to spend a couple of days in the wilderness. They thought it would be too suspicious if they returned to Byzantium after such a short time.
After four hours’ travel, they could just see the plume of smoke they had left and, feeling very tired, chose to kick back for the rest of the day.
Li Kung encouraged Gracientus to ask Set for a clue as to whether it would be safe to rest here for the day.
“Hmm. The auguries are favourable”, announced the priest after a prayer and a short period in a trance.
Gaelle looked around and found a pleasant little dell with a small stream, where Helga spent most of the afternoon fishing and the rest of the party relaxed.
Over supper, Li Kung broached their next direction.
“Anybody know anything about this area? What can we bushwhack next, or rather where shall we adventure next?”
Helga knew quite a lot about Thrace, but little about what was going on in the countryside.
“We’ve got some spare weapons now. Maybe we should find a decent sized town and sell them?” suggested Li Kung.
During the night, two large shapes lumbered through the darkness, attracted by the scent of life around the party’s camp. Slow enough to make little noise and to not attract attention, the Minotaur Zombies entered the camp.
Gracientus and Helga were on guard and became the beasts’ unfortunate victims, both receiving wicked wounds before they were able to rouse the rest of the party. Gracientus slumped to the ground in a rapidly spreading pool of blood. Helga managed to scream an alarm.
Gaelle, springing up, used her special rapid shooting skill to plug three arrows through what was left of the creature’s hide.
Helga attempted to tumble away from her foe, but slipped on the priest’s entrails and fell straight into the minotaur’s claw, knocking herself unconscious. Her internal familiar began to coagulate blood in her wounds and rebuild her organs.
Li Kung hurled a shuriken at one of the minotaurs, barely missing Helga’s inert form on the floor at its feet.
The minotaurs shambled forward, one slashing Gaelle with its claw, the other scratching Cord across the chest as he stood up, unarmoured. Cord’s mighty Fullblade carved two furrows across the zombie’s hide.
Stepping back, Gaelle again let off a volley of arrows, only one passing through the zombie’s hide.
Li Kung stepped in to flank the minotaur fighting Cord, putting all his strength into the blow, but swung wildly. Cord also wound up a mighty blow and took a small chunk off the zombie’s body.
The zombies swung their arms around with abandon, succeeding in missing everyone.
Gaelle, Ignoring her own foe, fired three arrows, one whistling over Cord’s head into his zombie’s chest, the second catching it in the shoulder and the third ricocheting off Cord’s epaulette and heading off into the distance.
Li Kung stepped in and directed a flurry of kicks at the minotaur, knocking a small chunk off it.
Again, Gaelle’s zombie was ineffectual, while the other left four gashes in Li Kung’s chest.
Cord managed to take his foe’s head off with a mighty swing, leaving Li Kung to hurl a shuriken into the back of Gaelle’s minotaur’s head.
The minotaur, now surrounded by food, chose to go for Cord, the largest of them.
Cord, bleeding heavily from several wounds, sliced two large pieces off the minotaur, which was beginning to look very unsteady. Gaelle tried to take it out but only hit it with one arrow.
Li Kung threw another two shuriken into the long grass while the zombie clubbed Cord into unconsciousness.
Gaelle, with a free shot now that Cord was out of the way, plugged the ninth and tenth arrows into the zombie, reducing it to a pile of stinking bone and leathery hide.
Li Kung ran across to Gracientus and found the priest’s body lying on a large patch of red grass. Helga was hanging on to life, barely. The monk could not fully understand how she was still alive, given the spread of the blood pool around her and the extend of her injuries.
“I would recommend using a healing potion on her,” he told Gaelle and the now hobbling Cord.
“If I bandaged her a bit roughly it might kill her”.
“Actually, I’m tempted to let her die,” replied Gaelle.
“She is a bit weird. A bit of an aberration,” agreed Li Kung.
“She’s too strange and that worries me,” the ranger added. “She talked of changing shape and changing other people. And she says ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. And she’s sick.”
“I don’t like anyone,” Cord interjected, “so I don’t really give a toss either way. Heads we waste her, tails we don’t.” He tossed a coin, but his chaotic nature prevented him from sharing the result with the others.
“Then again,” Cord thought aloud, “if we start offing our companions because they are a bit odd, Ok, a lot odd, how can we trust each other?”
“But,” replied Gaelle “we will get associated with her and whatever sick stuff she gets up to.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” conceded Cord.
The difficult conversation lapsed into silence and Gaelle decided she wanted to examine Helga’s body for anything unusual. She and Li Kung removed her armour and clothes carefully, the monk taking the opportunity for a good feel in the process of giving her a thorough examination.
They couldn’t find anything out if the ordinary. She had plenty of scars, pointing to her having had many surgical procedures performed on her in the distant past, but no extra bits. Everything seemed to be in order.
“Ok, we let her live”, said Gaelle, a little grudgingly.
“There is certainly no compelling evidence that would force us to kill her,” agreed Li Kung.
“It’s just the stuff she comes out with,” Gaelle continued moaning about the strange sorcerer, “and I don’t mean the slime she exudes. Every time she opens her mouth she says something weird”
Li Kung administered a potion of healing to Helga, now her fate had been decided.
Returning to Gracientus’ body, they decided that the only thing they needed to return to the Set temple was his holy symbol, so they set about divvying up his equipment before setting a watch and going back to bed. They thought that the Set cult was a bit serious about people taking out their priests, so they thought they’d better do right by them.
2nd October 1699
Licking their wounds, they sat around until lunchtime when they all looked up and saw an unarmoured human striding towards their camp, obviously following tracks. They swiftly dived for cover.
He walked up to the minotaur corpses, then looked around, noticing the party.
“Hail, who are you?” asked Li Kung, unfolding from behind a small shrub, the nearest bit of cover he could find.
Keldor the Ranger introduced himself, thinking that the group who took on the minotaurs could easily deal with him.
He had been following the minotaurs since they had destroyed a merchant’s wagon a day ago, in the hope that he would find others to help him take them out (he didn’t feel strong enough to take them both on).
Gaelle, was going to have a bit of fun at Keldor’s expense.
“So, how long were you going to follow the minotaurs?” she sneered.
“What are you going to do now they’re dead?” asked Li Kung, interested, but not sharing Gaelle’s desire to humiliate the younger ranger.
“I hadn’t really thought about that. I was just following them until I got enough of an advantage to take them out.” Keldor replied. “I might track them back to their origin, find out who sent them out here in the first place.”
“Was the merchant’s wagon destroyed? Was here anything of interest?” asked Li Kung, sensing more booty.
“No, there was nothing left” Keldor admitted. He had searched around for tracks other than those of the minotaur but the zombies had tramped over any others.
“If you’re any good, we might give you a job,” offered Li Kung. “You look like you might be handy with those swords. Do you think you’d make a good addition to our group?”
“Well, I survived this lot attacking so I think so, yes.”
“That doesn’t mean much,” said Cord, “you could have been hiding. Or you could just be following the minotaurs, picking up whatever gear is left on their victims. In which case you are definitely the sort of bloke we want.”
“Sounds like one of us,” added Gaelle.
Li Kung was in favour of giving Keldor a half share of treasure until he proved himself worthy to join them on a full partner basis. Cord was in agreement and Gaelle didn’t seem to care so the young ranger was welcomed in to the group, not exactly with open arms but, what can you expect from a bunch of evil bastards.
“So, we go to the caravan and hunt back along the minotaurs’ trail,” suggested Gaelle.
They are still sitting talking with Keldor at midday when it starts raining heavily.
Helga would be unconscious until the morning, so they took the afternoon interrogating Keldor about his background, just in case he was another weirdo like Helga.
He was a Transylvanian who had got fed up with the interference of the Temple of Thor in the south of the country and decided to leave. It didn’t help matters that whenever he tried to range in the mountains he kept meeting Stone Giants who told him firmly to leave their lands. Finally, he had had enough and decided to head south.
3rd October 1699
In the morning light, Helga woke up. Her body was thrumming with the energy poured into healing by her familiar, a large worm-like creature living in her abdominal cavity which was symbiotically linked to her. She got a sense of its pleasure at bringing her back from the brink of death which put her in a very good mood. She was also buoyed by finally figuring out how to turn herself invisible.
“We didn’t think you were going to pull round,” Li Kung told her, as they settled back to allow Helga to finish healing.
“What happened to Gracientus?” Helga asked.
“You did such a good job of guarding that he was damn near cut in half,” replied Gaelle, trying unsuccessfully to make her feel bad for the priest’s death.
After lunch, they made good time riding to where the wagon was attacked.
They found the wagon overturned and several bodies that had been feasted upon by local wildlife.
The wagon had contained cloth which had been ruined by the elements and Gaelle reckoned that they would likely destroy it by getting it back on its wheels.
“Whoever produced the zombies didn’t send them against this,” reasoned Li Kung, “there’s nothing worth taking.”
The party decided to follow the zombies’ tracks, heading roughly south, until sunset when they stopped and set camp.
They were a little worried about putting Keldor on watch with Helga and they took several minutes of discussion to set watches.
4th October 1699
They pressed on through the day, heading towards Ionia, but didn’t find the source of the zombies.
While travelling, Gaelle used her meagre magic to converse with her dog. She wanted to teach it to hold the handle of a lantern in its mouth.
5th October 1699
The day dawned bright and clear. And freezing cold.
The decided to wrap up warm against the cold and continue on but Li Kung and Keldor were feeling the cold quite badly and couldn’t stop themselves shivering.
Shortly after lunchtime, when the temperature had risen to a balmy 10°C, they spied a copse on the top of a large low hill, to which the tracks led.
“Shall we go round the copse and see if the tracks come out the other side?” Li Kung suggested.
“Bear in mind that if this is where they came from,” said Cord, “how many were left behind?”
They circumnavigated the hill and found no tracks on the other side.
“We ready to investigate the copse now?” asked Gaelle.
Helga thought it could be a burial site of some sort, making the link to undead creatures, and Keldor reckoned it was too regular to be natural.
“We could try to burn it,” suggested Li Kung.
“It’s a bit wet for that to work,” replied Cord.
Not able to think of anything else, they gingerly made their way up the hill towards the copse. Tracking was very difficult in the dense undergrowth but Gaelle managed to follow the enormous footprints into the wood, up to an obviously constructed rocky outcrop with an opening facing them.
Gaelle scouted around and found human tracks coming out then going back in, about the same age as the minotaur tracks.
While Helga went to check the entrance for traps, Gaelle lit a lantern and placed it in her dog’s mouth.
Helga cast a spell that would enable her to talk to the others and went carefully ahead into the cave.
Moving slowly along the roughly worked, downward angled passage, Helga used her magic hand to hold a torch ahead of her. She was a little put out as, though she was creeping along almost silently, Cord was clanking along a few feet behind her.
After some distance, the passage opened out into a chamber. Nothing attacked the floating torch, and she paused to turn herself invisible before moving forward to the entrance.
In the torchlight, she could see two human zombies shuffling towards her. Stepping back, she informed the rest of the party and Gaelle and Cord prepared their bows to shoot them before they got too close.
Li Kung prepared to strike at anything to come within range, Cord stuck a couple of arrows in one zombie, taking it out and Keldor charged in to contact with the other. As he closed on the zombie, an ettin skeleton wielding two morningstars appeared out of the gloom and headed towards the rest of the party.
Helga fired off a pair of magic missiles at Keldor’s zombie, freeing him to attack the large skelington.
Realising that arrows would have little effect on the ettin, Gaelle dropped her bow, drew her new pre-owned greatsword and moved closer to the ettin.
Li Kung tumbled to contact with the ettin and stuck her psionically empowered foot right up its nether regions.
Cord also dropped his bow, drew a weapon and prepared his shield, moving to the ettin.
Keldor stepped a little closer and cast a spell.
The ettin smacked Li Kung and swished its left Morningstar over Cord’s head.
Helga, worried that despite being invisible the ettin would smack her in passing, crept further into the chamber to examine where it had come from. Finding only an alcove helped to settle her nerves.
Then, from out of the gloom, another figure approached that caused the party to doubt their effectiveness and think about legging it. Only briefly, however, as the mummy’s horrible aura failed to scare the party.
It then moved in and smashed its rotting fist into Gaelle's face.
Gaelle chipped away at the ettin skeleton, which then thumped Keldor and Gaelle back. Fairs fair after all.
Helga sent a pair of magic missiles at the mummy, not slowing it.
The mummy missed Gaelle by a hair’s breadth as she carved through the ettin’s ribcage and pelvis, becoming little more than a lumpy pile of dust.
Li Kung stepped over the dust and smacked the mummy, as did Cord.
Keldor stepped in and whirled his swords around in the mummy’s face, not actually hitting it.
Helga changed position and again sent two magic missiles into the horrific dead thing.
After the mummy had waved its arms in their general direction, Gaelle slashed her greatsword across its chest.
Li Kung dropped his glaive, grabbed his quarterstaff and cracked the mummy on the forehead, knocking off a big chunk.
Cord stepped in to a flanking position, wound up mightily and carved through the mummy, spraying dusty fragments everywhere.
Last edited:
robberbaron
First Post
Dramatis Personae Update
Cord Seration – Human Fighter 6
Helga – Human(moreorless) Rogue 2/Sorcerer 4
Gaelle – Human Ranger 5/Fighter 1
Li Kung – Human Monk 4/Psy Warrior 1
Keldor – Human Ranger 2/Wizard 2
Cord Seration – Human Fighter 6
Helga – Human(moreorless) Rogue 2/Sorcerer 4
Gaelle – Human Ranger 5/Fighter 1
Li Kung – Human Monk 4/Psy Warrior 1
Keldor – Human Ranger 2/Wizard 2
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