Plane Sailing
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They came in search of Paradise (A Story of Erth) - Updated 23rd April
robberbaron
First Post
Heh, me too.
I've been a bit slack for a few weeks (playing KotOR2, YoHoHo Puzzle Pirates and sundry other diversions) but I have nearly completed the next update - hopefully get it on the SH this week.
I've been a bit slack for a few weeks (playing KotOR2, YoHoHo Puzzle Pirates and sundry other diversions) but I have nearly completed the next update - hopefully get it on the SH this week.
robberbaron
First Post
And the fun continues....
GM's note: In an effort to get the story posted, I have not been able to prrof-read this post as thoroughly as normal. Sorry for any errors.
16th October 1699
The party moved further down the passage, lit by the light-stone kicked ahead of them.
Suddenly, Keldor feels something click beneath his boot but, before he can shout a warning, the floor below Helga and Cord opened up and they disappeared. As the rest looked down the hole, they could hear Helga’s screams and Cord’s curses for quite some time, though getting fainter. They had obviously gone quite some distance. The shute below the trap was only gently angled but well greased, allowing Cord and Helga to accelerate swiftly into the darkness.
Deciding not to dive down themselves, the rest of the party (hereafter to be known as “the party”) called down that they would come for them, then continued down the passage, looking a bit more carefully for traps.
A hundred feet further on the passage was blocked by a heavily iron-bound door with a small grille at head height. As they stepped nearer, a panel behind the grille was slid aside and a voice called out in Turkesh “Stand! Let us talk!”
“OK, we talk” answered Li Kung.
“I have no desire to lose any more of my men. Therefore, I am willing to give you a gift of treasure to make you go away and leave us alone”
“We’re reasonable men” said Li Kung.
“And women” added Gaelle”
“Good. In five minutes this door will open. In this room there is a door to your right. Behind this is some treasure. Please, take, leave.”
“You know, as well as I, treachery would not be a good idea” warned the monk.
“Treachery is only a good idea if you win” replied the bandit. “On this occasion, it is too close to call”
“Agreed. Do you have any annoyances we could deal with for you?” offered Li Kung in a spirit of helpfulness.
“At the moment, only you. Until you came, we were large enough to deal will the local annoyances”
“Any other bandit groups about?” asked Gaelle, Li Kung interpreting for her.
“To the east, yes. There are no groups of ‘free spirited’ individuals like us towards the north as it is too close to the mountains and there are many monsters. Not that monsters are necessarily a bad thing but they do not taste good and have little treasure. Except for the dragons, but we do not bother them.
So, five minutes, this door will open then help yourselves. Then we will watch you leave.”
Five minutes later there was an audible click and the door creaked open.
“Any precautions we want to take?” asked Li Kung in whispered Graecae.
“Anything that moves, I shoot” said Gaelle.
In the room revealed there were three heavily iron-bound doors; two ahead were locked, the one to the right was not.
Keldor pushed the door open revealing a small room containing a chest, a couple of sacks and a small wooden crate.
Keldor perused the containers for magical emanations, perceiving that there were several points of magic inside the crate, chest and the larger of the sacks, as well as on the chest itself, which had two separate portions of magic on it.
“Great. Just when our rogue has gone down a hole” he complained, unable to see anything untoward with the floor. Li Kung wandered up for a look and thought that the smaller sack might contain a pair of boots.
He also couldn’t see any traps, though.
“Righto, then” said Keldor as he stepped into the room. He stepped over to the smaller sack and tossed it back to Li Kung, watching from the just outside the door.
Keldor then stepped across to the chest, hearing a click as the floor fell away from him. He reeled back from the pit straight underneath the enormous stone block as it fell from the ceiling. Luckily, the blow sent him into the wall where he sat, badly bruised, waiting for the spray of acid which never came.
Li Kung, seeing Keldor as the dust cleared over the 3-foot high block of stone, asked if he was OK.
“Oh, the pain,” the ranger moaned as he shakily got to his feet and crawled on top of the block. Assured that there wasn’t a second block waiting to squash him he leant over the side and examined the small crate for “pointy, jabby things”, finding none. Using his shortsword he managed to lever the top off, seeing three smaller, nicely-made wooden boxes and a glass bottle containing some colourless liquid.
Reaching out, he removed the boxes and bottle from the crate and passed them back to Li Kung.
Gaelle and Li Kung, meanwhile, were listening at the closed doors, not able to hear any bandit activity.
“Do you want to come back out here so we can take a look at your wounds?” offered Li Kung.
Upon investigation, Keldor had a series of nasty scratches all the way down his chest which Li Kung was unable to repair. “Good job you’re not Helga,” he noted.
Still in a lot of pain and feeling a little faint, Keldor climbed back over the block to get the chest. Just able to reach the handles from the block he was about to pull it toward him when Li Kung suggested tying a rope around his waist, in case he collapsed and had to be dragged out.
“Wouldn’t want all your goods, I mean you, falling down a hole, would we?”
A few minutes later, the chest was on top of the block and being passed out the door. Keldor was being very careful as he didn’t know what the magics on it were and was worried that, if dropped, the lid might spring open and a nasty trap activate. The chest safely on the ground, he returned with a grapple into the room to fish for the large sack.
Finally, with all available booty back outside the door, they had a look in the sacks. Li Kung tipped a pair of boots out of the smaller sack, to make sure there weren’t any scorpions lurking inside them. Nothing appeared, so he put them back and the party picked up all their new kit and retraced their steps outside.
As he picked it up, Li Kung felt the large sack and thought it might contain a set of leather armour.
“But it’s not magical!” exclaimed Gaelle. “What’s the point of keeping non-magical leather armour?”
“Could be masterwork,” replied Li Kung, swinging the sacks onto his shoulder and moving off back down the passage.
Being careful to avoid the traps, they discussed their next moves.
“Firstly, they’re bastards who tried to kill us” said Li Kung, getting to the nub of the matter. “So, we should have no compunction against coming back, when we’re fit and well, and wiping them out.”
“Uh huh” replied Gaelle, thoughtfully.
“And they’re worth money” the monk continued. That seemed to settle that.
Coming to the exit, Gaelle sneaked ahead to scope out the area outside the passage, unable to see anyone by the light of the full Luna.
Feeling the intense cold, from a biting wind under a clear sky, they decided to hurry back to one of the hides so they could get warm and recover. Unfortunately, Gaelle was unable to light a fire in the wind until she stuffed her sword deep into the tinder and commanded it to flame.
Leaving Rover on watch, they slept until well after dawn.
17th October 1699
While breakfast was being prepared, Li Kung took the boots out of the sack and put them on, spending the next few minutes running and jumping about to see if they made him faster or bouncier. If they did, the benefit was negligible and he wondered if he needed a command word to activate them. He asked Keldor (the closest thing they had to an expert on magic) to suggest likely words, presumably in Sorcére, the language of magic.
Keldor came up with several likely words, though none seemed to work and could have been anything.
Li Kung, as a last attempt to get some sign from the boots, clicked his heels together and said “khan-zas”, apparently an ancient Xing word of some supposed power, vaguely concerned with rainbows.
“Home is a place like no other!” he intoned, to no avail.
Not willing to let it go until he was certain he would not blunder on to the command word, the monk wandered about shouting words in Turkesh, thinking that the mage who made the boots might have been a local man and hence set a local word as the command.
“$£%* it!” he cursed in Turkesh, briefly looking worried in case that triggered some mishap.
By the time his breakfast was nice and cold he had grudgingly admitted defeat and put the boots back in the sack.
The party (less the two members down a deep hole inside the hill) decided to investigate the other magic items they had recovered, rather than rush to their companions’ rescue.
They first turned to the chest, locked with two discernable enchantments on it. Keldor didn’t think it had rattled during their return from the hillside so it was either empty or well-packed.
“We don’t have any way of picking the lock, do we?” Li Kung asked, rhetorically. “We could break it open and risk damaging whatever is in it. Or we could go back and kick those bastards in, get the key, and anything else they have.”
Keldor wasn’t sure. He thought they ought to find out what else they had before going back in.
“Perhaps there is someone nearer than Byzantium who could tell us what they all do?” the ranger suggested.
“There’s someone a lot closer who knows what it all does” said Li Kung.
“We’ve still got to get Helga and Cord out” Gaelle reminded them.
“Oh yes,” said Li Kung, as if he had forgotten all about them, “we must get them back.”
“Cord’s going to be pissed” noted Keldor.
Deciding to put their booty investigation on hold, they went down to the village outside the fort, to see if the peasants could be of any help.
Gaelle knocked on the first door they came to.
“Yeeees,” answered an obviously very old woman. At least she sounded very old.
“Open the door” Li Kung said in his most menacing tone.
“Coming,” said the voice and sure enough, a half minute or so later, an old woman nervously opened the door.
“What do you want me to say to her?” Li Kung asked Gaelle, as the old woman shuffled across her hovel toward the door.
“Give her some money and send her off to get one of the bandits” she replied.
“But what do we want her to say to the bandits?” Li Kung continued.
“That we want our friends back. Or we’ll raze the place to the ground ‘cos we ain’t pleased about the traps. And we want information.”
Li Kung passed this message and a silver piece to the woman, who hobbled off to the fort gates under their watchful gaze and that of several guards on the palisade.
She had a conversation with one of the guards and entered as one of the gates was opened. Some ten minutes later, the gate opened and she returned.
“They said your companions are free to go. They were not harmed, just got a bit slimy. What information did you want?” she said when she had got her breath back from all the unusual exercise she was getting.
“We want words to get into the chest. We want words to make the boots work.” Li Kung told her, still being as menacing as he could.
The old woman got halfway to the palisade, seemed to think of something and turned around, coming back to the party.
“Erm. When you said ‘raze to the ground’ did you mean our village or them?” she said, pointing toward the fort.
“Everything” Li Kung was enjoying this.
“Oh, OK. You sure?” mumbled the old woman disconsolately.
“Yes, we are sure. We are complete bastards” Li Kung was definitely enjoying this.
She turned and again trudged up to and through the gateway, after a slightly more protracted discussion with one of the guards.
Some minutes later she returned, looking worried.
“Erm, he says alright. He’ll send them out the back door with your friends. At the back entrance”
“Pray to your gods that they do not deal falsely with us” Li Kung continued to intimidate the old woman, who was already on the edge of emptying her bowels on the ground.
“Yes, I will. Thank you” she whined as she went into her house and closed the door. The party of complete bastards could hear something being scraped across the floor and banged into the door, probably a chair.
“’ere, Achmed. Achmed, wake up. <slap> You’ll never guess what they wanted,” they could hear the old woman talking, presumably to her husband.
The party made their way round the hill to where they could observe the back entrance.
At the appointed time, Cord and Helga (only slightly mode slimy than normal – the shute had been very well greased) emerged, blinking at the sunlight, from the passage.
They had been deposited in a heap far below the passage through the hill and were unable to climb out before they were released. As suspected, Cord was not in the best of moods. He wasn’t overly keen on Helga anyway and being cooped up with her for 12 hours had done nothing to sweeten their relationship.
“She’s been making eyes at you since Seigfried died,” Li Kung reassured Cord.
“If we’d been down there longer I might have broken, but, my will was resolute” Cord replied. “So,” he added. ”We going to kill those bastards or what?”
Li Kung was more immediately interested in the information Cord carried and eagerly accepted a folded piece of paper.
He opened it and remembered that he couldn’t actually read any language except Xing.
“Do you want me to have a look?” offered Keldor. After a few moments study, he thought he understood what was written.
The note read, “The chest is magically and mechanically locked. There is no word to open it. There is no point in subterfuge on the point of the boots as you would find out that no word would work. They are not magical; it was a ruse.”
“Ah,” said Li Kung, sagely, presumably contemplating bloody murder.
“Right then,” said Keldor. “We stand well away from the chest and I open it magically”
It was agreed so he cast his spell and the chest opened. Li Kung accompanied Keldor as he tentatively moved up to the chest to peer inside, hoping that the trap wasn’t proximity-based, rather than merely upon opening the chest.
“So, you don’t trust me to look on my own,” he said to Li Kung.
“I could look on my own, if you like” suggested the monk. “I can sometimes dodge things”
“No, we’ll go together. You might not be able to identify what is in there, anyway”
The chest was nicely padded, with fair quality material, and lying on the padding was what looked like a burnt twig.
“So, we’ve crapped out again, then” moaned Gaelle.
“Could be a wand” Li Kung looked on the bright side.
Keldor had a good look at it and said that its appearance was consistent with wands of some sort of fire power.
Just in case, Li Kung removed all the padding material from the chest, but didn’t find any hidden goodies.
“So, we’ve got boots that are useless” noted Gaelle.
“And a nice chest” added Li Kung, still shooting for the half-full glass.
“And a wand” said Gaelle, not buying into the monks positive-thinking.
“There’s some boxes we haven’t looked in yet, and the bottle” Li Kung continued brightly.
Upon opening the boxes they found two gold rings and a gold medallion on a chain. Bling!
Keldor cast another detecting spell, confirming that the wand, bottle and gold items were all magical. Concentrating on their emanations, he concluded that they were all enchanted with illusion magic.
His heart sank.
“That sounds like they’ve been enchanted to appear like treasure” said Li Kung, the bright side beginning to fade.
“So, we kill them all, then” declared Keldor.
“Front or back?” asked Li Kung, the bright side now eclipsed by the need to spill blood. “I suspect they will have taken extra precautions at the back entrance now”
“We could always wait until tomorrow, pretend that we’re happy with what we’ve got, then go through the front door” Keldor suggested.
“Bastards!” Gaelle’s anger finally broke. ”I really hate people jerking my chain”
“We could do with blocking the back entrance, so they can’t escape that way” said Li Kung, before they realised that they just didn’t have that sort of magic to hand.
“Cord and Helga could guard it” Li Kung continued.
“While we go for the suicidal frontal attack” added Keldor, not able to see the monk’s bright side.
“Your opening spell was useful. Can you cast any other useful spells?” Li Kung asked Keldor.
“Tomorrow, he can cast his opening spell again, to get through the gates” Gaelle noted.
After some discussion, they decided to use their bows, from the top of the hill behind the fort, to pick guards off the palisade. If they could coax the bandits out, then so much the better. Otherwise, they could at least lessen the odds a little.
Looking over the crest at the palisade, they could clearly make out four targets and began raining arrows down on the bandits.
Gaelle’s first arrow went clean through a bandit’s head, just missing the one behind him, and killing another with 2 arrows to the chest. Keldor fired a magical acid arrow at a bandit on the far side of the palisade, causing him to scream in pain and run for cover, fizzing.
Swapping pain with the one remaining bandit on the palisade, Gaelle swiftly finished him off.
The bandit hit by Keldor’s spell managed to make it to the fort before collapsing in pain, his back laid open by the acid.
Picking up a spare shortbow, Keldor added his skill to the others’ as they shot at the bandits moving towards their side of the palisade.
The bandits moved into position behind the palisade, losing two more to Gaelle’s arrows, and managed to give some pain back to the party – Gaelle was winged by a pair of arrows. They swapped arrows for a while before Li Kung came up with a cunning plan. He would jump over the palisade, surprising the bandits and attacking them from the rear. His first idea was to run over the top of the hill and jump across the gap to the palisade. Hitting the top of the palisade with his belly, he fell back and landed in a tidy heap on the grass. Before impact, Li Kung could see the bandits’ wide eyes. After, he could hear their chuckling, though that ceased as soon as Gaelle began shooting again.
Considering the difficulty of hitting Gaelle and Keldor, the bandits decided to shoot at Li Kung, winging him before an arrow sliced through his earlobe into his shoulder.
Spurred by the pain, the monk decided to have another go. He couldn’t make it back to the top of the hill and jump, so he ran 20’ up the hill, turned, sprinted back to the base of the palisade and jumped up.
His fingers failed to reach the top by several feet.
Gaelle was so taken aback by this that she overdrew, slipped and fell on her bum.
After a brief flurry of arrows that hit no-one, Li Kung had another go, this time managing to get a grip on the top of the palisade. Unfortunately, due to a game mechanic, he was left dangling by his fingertips as the archery battle raged on around him.
Finally, Li Kung swung himself over the top and chucked a shuriken at the last bandit, who already had two arrows in him.
That got his attention, just in time for Gaelle to stick another two arrows in the now dead bandit.
Li Kung tied off and dropped a rope over the palisade for the others to climb up, being unable to see any more bandits. Gaelle was concerned about getting Rover inside and wasn’t impressed when Keldor suggested tying him to the end of the rope and pulling him up, so she walked around to the gate so the others could open it for them.
Li Kung edged around the palisade, carefully eyeing the buildings, before hopping down to let one ranger and her dog in.
Deciding that they had some time, Gaelle went around collecting all the shortbow arrows she could find, while Keldor and Li Kung set about burning the out-buildings.
Sporadic arrow fire came from the main building, injuring Gaelle as she darted between buildings. Li Kung, thinking quickly, removed the door off a soon-to-be-burning building to use as a mantlet, protecting them from the hidden archers.
“So, waiting until tomorrow morning is off, then?” asked Keldor, who was wondering about the sudden change in plans.
“No, we can still do that”, replied Li Kung, as he pointed Keldor towards the gates so he could remove them and add them to the fires.
After picking up all the arrows, Gaelle turned her attention to filling her sack with bandit heads. Lucky it was so cold, or the heads would have smelt much worse than they were.
Annoyed that no-one was coming out to deal with them, Gaelle took several bits of burning barrack building and set fire to the palisade, while Li Kung shielded her with his mantlet. Arrows still came at them from the main building, though none got past the monk’s door.
“Why don’t you shoot back?” he asked Gaelle, thinking that she was probably capable of getting an arrow through an arrow-slit the wrong way. As she only had nine longbow arrows left, she was reluctant to attempt it and advocated retiring to a warm location to rest up before pressing their attack.
As they moved through the village, it was obvious that all the people had gone. Where they had gone to was not an important enough question for Gaelle to cast about for tracks.
During the rest of the day, they discussed attacking that day, but after finding that Keldor’s spell capability was so depleted that he could get them into the bandits’ building, they decided to wait the night and hit them early the next day.
Later that evening, Gaelle set a magical alarm spell and they took turns on watch, except Keldor, who needed a full night’s sleep in order to prepare more spells.
18th October 1699
It was the early hours of the morning and Luna was just setting.
Li Kung lay on his stomach watching the hillside from his well-prepared hide, certain that he was as well hidden as he could be. And he was right. His enemies could not see him, but they could see the camp and the monk’s position slightly compromised his field of vision.
The bandit leader and his mage had sneaked up the hill without Li Kung seeing (they were invisible) or hearing them. When they were 60’ away from the camp the leader plucked a bead off his necklace and tossed it into the camp as his mage cast a spell of his own.
Unannounced, the peace and quiet was broken by a pair of whumphs as fireballs detonated among the party.
Li Kung was fortunate in that he was completely sheltered from the mage’s blast, but was singed by the other. Gaelle, Keldor and Rover were less fortunate as they were asleep and only survived by being partially shielded by the hide’s defences. Keldor was unconscious, Rover barely alive.
The night was further illuminated by a streak of electricity that crackled past Li Kung, who managed to roll out of the way at the last moment, straight into a couple of arrows from the bandit archers who he had also not spotted or heard approaching.
Gaelle leapt to her feet and went to string her bow, only to find that the string snapped having been burnt by the magical fire. Bugger!
Li Kung popped his head out of cover so he could see the bandits.
“Are we attacking them?” he asked Gaelle.
“Up to you” she replied, not really listening but looking at the skinless mass that was Rover.
“Retreat and regroup” the monk said, running across the camp, over the hide and down the hill, away from the bandits.
As he ran, he could hear the bandit leader laughing.
The mage cast another spell, with no obvious result, and the bowbandits showered Gaelle with arrows.
She dropped to her knees bedside Rover and carefully poured a healing potion down his throat.
Rover whimpered in agony, as some of his wound dried up and regrew skin.
Li Kung, not running away any further, circled round the hill and moved into the edge of the village to give himself a good view of the gate. There he waited.
The bandit leader, pleased with himself for pulling off the attack turned and walked casually away from the camp, back to his fort, his mage in tow. Chuckling.
Gaelle, not looking over the defences, cast a spell on himself and Rover to allow them to run faster should the bandits press the attack.
Li Kung stayed in cover and observed the bandits’ return.
Now that Rover was no longer in imminent danger of suppurating to death, Gaelle turned her attention to the faintly alive Keldor, but was unable to locate a wound with which she could deal. He was a single wound, leaking plasma.
---
Looking up from the small badly cooked rodent he was eating, Fragh saw two flashes of orange light on the distant hilltop. Nudging Boldo awake, they moved carefully out of their shelter and down into the deserted village. Boldo could see Li Kung sprint across the open ground between hill and village and dive for cover behind one of the buildings.
Intrigued, they wandered through the village until they were standing behind Li Kung, wondering what he was hiding from.
---
Finally, the monk heard the sound of breathing behind him and spun around, managing to stop his fist from impacting with the Uruk’s chest.
“I’m glad to see you guys” he whispered, recovering his fist.
---
Unable to do anything to help Keldor, though he had stopped leaking profusely and was merely oozing gently, Gaelle took it upon herself to rifle through his belongings, in the hope of finding another healing potion, only to feel the fangs of Keldor’s snake familiar in her hand.
Not willing to risk another bite, she tipped the backpack up, emptying everything onto the ground.
The tiny viper slithered onto his spellbook, while Gaelle picked through his belongings, finding nothing to help.
Realising that it was very cold, the snake moved over to Keldor who, though leaking, was at least warm.
A few moments later, Li Kung, Boldo and Fragh strolled up the hill, having watched the bandits re-enter the fort.
“They must have hit us with their biggest weapons” reasoned the monk, “which means at the moment they haven’t got them, but by tomorrow they might. Downside is that we’re weakened. How’s Keldor?”
“Alive. Barely. I think” replied Gaelle.
Fragh poked Keldor’s body and pronounced him alive, though not much use except as food, and he was a bit overdone.
“If we’re going to attack them we should do it tomorrow. I mean today” advised Gaelle.
“I could sneak in invisible, if that would help” added Boldo.
“We could rest up during the day and hit them tonight. They wouldn’t have the chance to get their spells back and we would feel a bit healthier” considered Li Kung.
Agreeing, they picked up Keldor and moved down the hill and away into the nearby woods, to spend the day and to rejoin with Cord and Helga, who had been moved away from the camp to recover from their ordeal in the bandit fort.
The sun began to rise as they approached the woods.
Boldo offered to stay and observe the bandits, but Gaelle didn’t think he’d see anything.
“We know where they are and we know the ways in and out” explained Li Kung, “though actually getting in would be difficult”.
They sat in quiet contemplation for a while before discussing what to do about attacking the bandits.
Helga managed to heal some of Keldor’s wound, though still leaving him very weak.
Later in the day, Boldo sneaked round the hill, through the village and into the bandits’ compound and secreted himself in a burnt building, close to the fort, to watch.
About an hour later, Gaelle, Li Kung and Fragh followed and set themselves behind the burnt remains of the palisade to observe the arrow slits. The unconscious Keldor was left hidden in the woods, covered to keep him warm.
They waited for something telling to occur. It didn’t.
The sun set and a full Luna rose as the temperature dropped.
As lights were lit in the fort, Gaelle was just able to make out figures moving beyond the arrow slits and decided to have a go at them with her remaining arrows.
Stepping out of cover she fired three arrows; the first hit the fort, the second went wild when her bow creaked alarmingly during the release and the third went clean through the arrow slit and into a bandit.
Now that they could see her, the bandits peppered Gaelle’s immediate area but failed to hit her.
Waiting ten minutes, Gaelle poked her head round the side of the palisade, spotted a single lookout behind the arrow slits and shot him with one the bandits’ own acid arrows. A phenomenal shot!
The light in the fort suddenly went out, and Gaelle could no longer make out any figures inside, though she was happy with herself for making two incredible shots.
As Luna rose and the temperature plummeted, Boldo was feeling the cold. Coming from the savannah of Ethiope he was completely unprepared for this sort of weather and hunkered into an even tighter ball of pygmy to conserve what heat he had.
An hour later, Gaelle moved forward, inside one of the burnt buildings, Rover padding along beside her.
Li Kung and Fragh joined her a short while later.
As the night went on, the party were suffering the effects of the intense cold and Boldo decided to bug out and call it even. He made it back to the building where Gaelle had set a small smokeless fire, fell over next to the fire and began to thaw himself out.
Two hours later, Boldo felt much better and returned to his advance position, though he quickly felt the cold seeping back into his bones.
Faced with the decision between freezing to death, leaving and coming back the next day or attacking now, they decided to throw caution to the wind and go for it.
Boldo sneaked forward, to check for traps laid in front of the door, finding none. Fragh then charged up to the door and had at it with his greataxe, Gaelle covering with her bow. A single arrow hit Fragh but failed to stop him.
Under cover of the Uruk chopping away at the door, Li Kung moved forward by a circuitous route and was just coming round the corner when a pea was lobbed out of one of the arrow slits and blossomed into a fireball in front of the door. Luckily, the only result of the fireball was to warm Boldo and Fragh.
A few seconds later Fragh had chopped a hole through the door and another pea was dropped from the next slit along, this time scorching Boldo unconscious. This was the last missile from the bandit leader’s necklace.
Gaelle finally managed to get an arrow through the arrow slit but she could clearly hear it spang off some metal armour.
Looking through the door into the foyer of the fort, Li Kung could clearly make out several murder holes in the ceiling. After having them pointed out to him, Fragh stepped carefully between them, so as not to be hit by any missiles from above. And he wasn’t, though a bottle of acid was dropped which splashed him when it shattered on the floor.
Moving to a door to the side, Fragh kicked it open without hesitation, revealing a smaller room, as Li Kung carried Boldo’s body inside. Seeing them move, Gaelle and Rover sprinted across the open space and inside.
Moving through, Fragh kicked the next door through into a large room with a set of steps leading up to the next floor, the one with the arrow slits.
As Fragh and Li Kung moved to the bottom of the stairs they sighted the bandit mage standing at the top completing a spell. Before they could react, they were enveloped in the web that filled the room.
Dun, dun, dun………
Edit: This is where the transcription dried up. Basically, I was running the game most Sundays for 6 hours a time and got overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to get the action down in words. Sorry.
Suffice to say, the game is still going, though with none of the original characters, and I only run it once a month on average (so, I could keep up with the transcription now. Ironic, huh?). The characters are up to 12th/13th and continually make nuisances of themselves.
Should I run another game, on a 1 session per month basis, I will endeavour to document it for a longer period than I did with this one.
GM's note: In an effort to get the story posted, I have not been able to prrof-read this post as thoroughly as normal. Sorry for any errors.
16th October 1699
The party moved further down the passage, lit by the light-stone kicked ahead of them.
Suddenly, Keldor feels something click beneath his boot but, before he can shout a warning, the floor below Helga and Cord opened up and they disappeared. As the rest looked down the hole, they could hear Helga’s screams and Cord’s curses for quite some time, though getting fainter. They had obviously gone quite some distance. The shute below the trap was only gently angled but well greased, allowing Cord and Helga to accelerate swiftly into the darkness.
Deciding not to dive down themselves, the rest of the party (hereafter to be known as “the party”) called down that they would come for them, then continued down the passage, looking a bit more carefully for traps.
A hundred feet further on the passage was blocked by a heavily iron-bound door with a small grille at head height. As they stepped nearer, a panel behind the grille was slid aside and a voice called out in Turkesh “Stand! Let us talk!”
“OK, we talk” answered Li Kung.
“I have no desire to lose any more of my men. Therefore, I am willing to give you a gift of treasure to make you go away and leave us alone”
“We’re reasonable men” said Li Kung.
“And women” added Gaelle”
“Good. In five minutes this door will open. In this room there is a door to your right. Behind this is some treasure. Please, take, leave.”
“You know, as well as I, treachery would not be a good idea” warned the monk.
“Treachery is only a good idea if you win” replied the bandit. “On this occasion, it is too close to call”
“Agreed. Do you have any annoyances we could deal with for you?” offered Li Kung in a spirit of helpfulness.
“At the moment, only you. Until you came, we were large enough to deal will the local annoyances”
“Any other bandit groups about?” asked Gaelle, Li Kung interpreting for her.
“To the east, yes. There are no groups of ‘free spirited’ individuals like us towards the north as it is too close to the mountains and there are many monsters. Not that monsters are necessarily a bad thing but they do not taste good and have little treasure. Except for the dragons, but we do not bother them.
So, five minutes, this door will open then help yourselves. Then we will watch you leave.”
Five minutes later there was an audible click and the door creaked open.
“Any precautions we want to take?” asked Li Kung in whispered Graecae.
“Anything that moves, I shoot” said Gaelle.
In the room revealed there were three heavily iron-bound doors; two ahead were locked, the one to the right was not.
Keldor pushed the door open revealing a small room containing a chest, a couple of sacks and a small wooden crate.
Keldor perused the containers for magical emanations, perceiving that there were several points of magic inside the crate, chest and the larger of the sacks, as well as on the chest itself, which had two separate portions of magic on it.
“Great. Just when our rogue has gone down a hole” he complained, unable to see anything untoward with the floor. Li Kung wandered up for a look and thought that the smaller sack might contain a pair of boots.
He also couldn’t see any traps, though.
“Righto, then” said Keldor as he stepped into the room. He stepped over to the smaller sack and tossed it back to Li Kung, watching from the just outside the door.
Keldor then stepped across to the chest, hearing a click as the floor fell away from him. He reeled back from the pit straight underneath the enormous stone block as it fell from the ceiling. Luckily, the blow sent him into the wall where he sat, badly bruised, waiting for the spray of acid which never came.
Li Kung, seeing Keldor as the dust cleared over the 3-foot high block of stone, asked if he was OK.
“Oh, the pain,” the ranger moaned as he shakily got to his feet and crawled on top of the block. Assured that there wasn’t a second block waiting to squash him he leant over the side and examined the small crate for “pointy, jabby things”, finding none. Using his shortsword he managed to lever the top off, seeing three smaller, nicely-made wooden boxes and a glass bottle containing some colourless liquid.
Reaching out, he removed the boxes and bottle from the crate and passed them back to Li Kung.
Gaelle and Li Kung, meanwhile, were listening at the closed doors, not able to hear any bandit activity.
“Do you want to come back out here so we can take a look at your wounds?” offered Li Kung.
Upon investigation, Keldor had a series of nasty scratches all the way down his chest which Li Kung was unable to repair. “Good job you’re not Helga,” he noted.
Still in a lot of pain and feeling a little faint, Keldor climbed back over the block to get the chest. Just able to reach the handles from the block he was about to pull it toward him when Li Kung suggested tying a rope around his waist, in case he collapsed and had to be dragged out.
“Wouldn’t want all your goods, I mean you, falling down a hole, would we?”
A few minutes later, the chest was on top of the block and being passed out the door. Keldor was being very careful as he didn’t know what the magics on it were and was worried that, if dropped, the lid might spring open and a nasty trap activate. The chest safely on the ground, he returned with a grapple into the room to fish for the large sack.
Finally, with all available booty back outside the door, they had a look in the sacks. Li Kung tipped a pair of boots out of the smaller sack, to make sure there weren’t any scorpions lurking inside them. Nothing appeared, so he put them back and the party picked up all their new kit and retraced their steps outside.
As he picked it up, Li Kung felt the large sack and thought it might contain a set of leather armour.
“But it’s not magical!” exclaimed Gaelle. “What’s the point of keeping non-magical leather armour?”
“Could be masterwork,” replied Li Kung, swinging the sacks onto his shoulder and moving off back down the passage.
Being careful to avoid the traps, they discussed their next moves.
“Firstly, they’re bastards who tried to kill us” said Li Kung, getting to the nub of the matter. “So, we should have no compunction against coming back, when we’re fit and well, and wiping them out.”
“Uh huh” replied Gaelle, thoughtfully.
“And they’re worth money” the monk continued. That seemed to settle that.
Coming to the exit, Gaelle sneaked ahead to scope out the area outside the passage, unable to see anyone by the light of the full Luna.
Feeling the intense cold, from a biting wind under a clear sky, they decided to hurry back to one of the hides so they could get warm and recover. Unfortunately, Gaelle was unable to light a fire in the wind until she stuffed her sword deep into the tinder and commanded it to flame.
Leaving Rover on watch, they slept until well after dawn.
17th October 1699
While breakfast was being prepared, Li Kung took the boots out of the sack and put them on, spending the next few minutes running and jumping about to see if they made him faster or bouncier. If they did, the benefit was negligible and he wondered if he needed a command word to activate them. He asked Keldor (the closest thing they had to an expert on magic) to suggest likely words, presumably in Sorcére, the language of magic.
Keldor came up with several likely words, though none seemed to work and could have been anything.
Li Kung, as a last attempt to get some sign from the boots, clicked his heels together and said “khan-zas”, apparently an ancient Xing word of some supposed power, vaguely concerned with rainbows.
“Home is a place like no other!” he intoned, to no avail.
Not willing to let it go until he was certain he would not blunder on to the command word, the monk wandered about shouting words in Turkesh, thinking that the mage who made the boots might have been a local man and hence set a local word as the command.
“$£%* it!” he cursed in Turkesh, briefly looking worried in case that triggered some mishap.
By the time his breakfast was nice and cold he had grudgingly admitted defeat and put the boots back in the sack.
The party (less the two members down a deep hole inside the hill) decided to investigate the other magic items they had recovered, rather than rush to their companions’ rescue.
They first turned to the chest, locked with two discernable enchantments on it. Keldor didn’t think it had rattled during their return from the hillside so it was either empty or well-packed.
“We don’t have any way of picking the lock, do we?” Li Kung asked, rhetorically. “We could break it open and risk damaging whatever is in it. Or we could go back and kick those bastards in, get the key, and anything else they have.”
Keldor wasn’t sure. He thought they ought to find out what else they had before going back in.
“Perhaps there is someone nearer than Byzantium who could tell us what they all do?” the ranger suggested.
“There’s someone a lot closer who knows what it all does” said Li Kung.
“We’ve still got to get Helga and Cord out” Gaelle reminded them.
“Oh yes,” said Li Kung, as if he had forgotten all about them, “we must get them back.”
“Cord’s going to be pissed” noted Keldor.
Deciding to put their booty investigation on hold, they went down to the village outside the fort, to see if the peasants could be of any help.
Gaelle knocked on the first door they came to.
“Yeeees,” answered an obviously very old woman. At least she sounded very old.
“Open the door” Li Kung said in his most menacing tone.
“Coming,” said the voice and sure enough, a half minute or so later, an old woman nervously opened the door.
“What do you want me to say to her?” Li Kung asked Gaelle, as the old woman shuffled across her hovel toward the door.
“Give her some money and send her off to get one of the bandits” she replied.
“But what do we want her to say to the bandits?” Li Kung continued.
“That we want our friends back. Or we’ll raze the place to the ground ‘cos we ain’t pleased about the traps. And we want information.”
Li Kung passed this message and a silver piece to the woman, who hobbled off to the fort gates under their watchful gaze and that of several guards on the palisade.
She had a conversation with one of the guards and entered as one of the gates was opened. Some ten minutes later, the gate opened and she returned.
“They said your companions are free to go. They were not harmed, just got a bit slimy. What information did you want?” she said when she had got her breath back from all the unusual exercise she was getting.
“We want words to get into the chest. We want words to make the boots work.” Li Kung told her, still being as menacing as he could.
The old woman got halfway to the palisade, seemed to think of something and turned around, coming back to the party.
“Erm. When you said ‘raze to the ground’ did you mean our village or them?” she said, pointing toward the fort.
“Everything” Li Kung was enjoying this.
“Oh, OK. You sure?” mumbled the old woman disconsolately.
“Yes, we are sure. We are complete bastards” Li Kung was definitely enjoying this.
She turned and again trudged up to and through the gateway, after a slightly more protracted discussion with one of the guards.
Some minutes later she returned, looking worried.
“Erm, he says alright. He’ll send them out the back door with your friends. At the back entrance”
“Pray to your gods that they do not deal falsely with us” Li Kung continued to intimidate the old woman, who was already on the edge of emptying her bowels on the ground.
“Yes, I will. Thank you” she whined as she went into her house and closed the door. The party of complete bastards could hear something being scraped across the floor and banged into the door, probably a chair.
“’ere, Achmed. Achmed, wake up. <slap> You’ll never guess what they wanted,” they could hear the old woman talking, presumably to her husband.
The party made their way round the hill to where they could observe the back entrance.
At the appointed time, Cord and Helga (only slightly mode slimy than normal – the shute had been very well greased) emerged, blinking at the sunlight, from the passage.
They had been deposited in a heap far below the passage through the hill and were unable to climb out before they were released. As suspected, Cord was not in the best of moods. He wasn’t overly keen on Helga anyway and being cooped up with her for 12 hours had done nothing to sweeten their relationship.
“She’s been making eyes at you since Seigfried died,” Li Kung reassured Cord.
“If we’d been down there longer I might have broken, but, my will was resolute” Cord replied. “So,” he added. ”We going to kill those bastards or what?”
Li Kung was more immediately interested in the information Cord carried and eagerly accepted a folded piece of paper.
He opened it and remembered that he couldn’t actually read any language except Xing.
“Do you want me to have a look?” offered Keldor. After a few moments study, he thought he understood what was written.
The note read, “The chest is magically and mechanically locked. There is no word to open it. There is no point in subterfuge on the point of the boots as you would find out that no word would work. They are not magical; it was a ruse.”
“Ah,” said Li Kung, sagely, presumably contemplating bloody murder.
“Right then,” said Keldor. “We stand well away from the chest and I open it magically”
It was agreed so he cast his spell and the chest opened. Li Kung accompanied Keldor as he tentatively moved up to the chest to peer inside, hoping that the trap wasn’t proximity-based, rather than merely upon opening the chest.
“So, you don’t trust me to look on my own,” he said to Li Kung.
“I could look on my own, if you like” suggested the monk. “I can sometimes dodge things”
“No, we’ll go together. You might not be able to identify what is in there, anyway”
The chest was nicely padded, with fair quality material, and lying on the padding was what looked like a burnt twig.
“So, we’ve crapped out again, then” moaned Gaelle.
“Could be a wand” Li Kung looked on the bright side.
Keldor had a good look at it and said that its appearance was consistent with wands of some sort of fire power.
Just in case, Li Kung removed all the padding material from the chest, but didn’t find any hidden goodies.
“So, we’ve got boots that are useless” noted Gaelle.
“And a nice chest” added Li Kung, still shooting for the half-full glass.
“And a wand” said Gaelle, not buying into the monks positive-thinking.
“There’s some boxes we haven’t looked in yet, and the bottle” Li Kung continued brightly.
Upon opening the boxes they found two gold rings and a gold medallion on a chain. Bling!
Keldor cast another detecting spell, confirming that the wand, bottle and gold items were all magical. Concentrating on their emanations, he concluded that they were all enchanted with illusion magic.
His heart sank.
“That sounds like they’ve been enchanted to appear like treasure” said Li Kung, the bright side beginning to fade.
“So, we kill them all, then” declared Keldor.
“Front or back?” asked Li Kung, the bright side now eclipsed by the need to spill blood. “I suspect they will have taken extra precautions at the back entrance now”
“We could always wait until tomorrow, pretend that we’re happy with what we’ve got, then go through the front door” Keldor suggested.
“Bastards!” Gaelle’s anger finally broke. ”I really hate people jerking my chain”
“We could do with blocking the back entrance, so they can’t escape that way” said Li Kung, before they realised that they just didn’t have that sort of magic to hand.
“Cord and Helga could guard it” Li Kung continued.
“While we go for the suicidal frontal attack” added Keldor, not able to see the monk’s bright side.
“Your opening spell was useful. Can you cast any other useful spells?” Li Kung asked Keldor.
“Tomorrow, he can cast his opening spell again, to get through the gates” Gaelle noted.
After some discussion, they decided to use their bows, from the top of the hill behind the fort, to pick guards off the palisade. If they could coax the bandits out, then so much the better. Otherwise, they could at least lessen the odds a little.
Looking over the crest at the palisade, they could clearly make out four targets and began raining arrows down on the bandits.
Gaelle’s first arrow went clean through a bandit’s head, just missing the one behind him, and killing another with 2 arrows to the chest. Keldor fired a magical acid arrow at a bandit on the far side of the palisade, causing him to scream in pain and run for cover, fizzing.
Swapping pain with the one remaining bandit on the palisade, Gaelle swiftly finished him off.
The bandit hit by Keldor’s spell managed to make it to the fort before collapsing in pain, his back laid open by the acid.
Picking up a spare shortbow, Keldor added his skill to the others’ as they shot at the bandits moving towards their side of the palisade.
The bandits moved into position behind the palisade, losing two more to Gaelle’s arrows, and managed to give some pain back to the party – Gaelle was winged by a pair of arrows. They swapped arrows for a while before Li Kung came up with a cunning plan. He would jump over the palisade, surprising the bandits and attacking them from the rear. His first idea was to run over the top of the hill and jump across the gap to the palisade. Hitting the top of the palisade with his belly, he fell back and landed in a tidy heap on the grass. Before impact, Li Kung could see the bandits’ wide eyes. After, he could hear their chuckling, though that ceased as soon as Gaelle began shooting again.
Considering the difficulty of hitting Gaelle and Keldor, the bandits decided to shoot at Li Kung, winging him before an arrow sliced through his earlobe into his shoulder.
Spurred by the pain, the monk decided to have another go. He couldn’t make it back to the top of the hill and jump, so he ran 20’ up the hill, turned, sprinted back to the base of the palisade and jumped up.
His fingers failed to reach the top by several feet.
Gaelle was so taken aback by this that she overdrew, slipped and fell on her bum.
After a brief flurry of arrows that hit no-one, Li Kung had another go, this time managing to get a grip on the top of the palisade. Unfortunately, due to a game mechanic, he was left dangling by his fingertips as the archery battle raged on around him.
Finally, Li Kung swung himself over the top and chucked a shuriken at the last bandit, who already had two arrows in him.
That got his attention, just in time for Gaelle to stick another two arrows in the now dead bandit.
Li Kung tied off and dropped a rope over the palisade for the others to climb up, being unable to see any more bandits. Gaelle was concerned about getting Rover inside and wasn’t impressed when Keldor suggested tying him to the end of the rope and pulling him up, so she walked around to the gate so the others could open it for them.
Li Kung edged around the palisade, carefully eyeing the buildings, before hopping down to let one ranger and her dog in.
Deciding that they had some time, Gaelle went around collecting all the shortbow arrows she could find, while Keldor and Li Kung set about burning the out-buildings.
Sporadic arrow fire came from the main building, injuring Gaelle as she darted between buildings. Li Kung, thinking quickly, removed the door off a soon-to-be-burning building to use as a mantlet, protecting them from the hidden archers.
“So, waiting until tomorrow morning is off, then?” asked Keldor, who was wondering about the sudden change in plans.
“No, we can still do that”, replied Li Kung, as he pointed Keldor towards the gates so he could remove them and add them to the fires.
After picking up all the arrows, Gaelle turned her attention to filling her sack with bandit heads. Lucky it was so cold, or the heads would have smelt much worse than they were.
Annoyed that no-one was coming out to deal with them, Gaelle took several bits of burning barrack building and set fire to the palisade, while Li Kung shielded her with his mantlet. Arrows still came at them from the main building, though none got past the monk’s door.
“Why don’t you shoot back?” he asked Gaelle, thinking that she was probably capable of getting an arrow through an arrow-slit the wrong way. As she only had nine longbow arrows left, she was reluctant to attempt it and advocated retiring to a warm location to rest up before pressing their attack.
As they moved through the village, it was obvious that all the people had gone. Where they had gone to was not an important enough question for Gaelle to cast about for tracks.
During the rest of the day, they discussed attacking that day, but after finding that Keldor’s spell capability was so depleted that he could get them into the bandits’ building, they decided to wait the night and hit them early the next day.
Later that evening, Gaelle set a magical alarm spell and they took turns on watch, except Keldor, who needed a full night’s sleep in order to prepare more spells.
18th October 1699
It was the early hours of the morning and Luna was just setting.
Li Kung lay on his stomach watching the hillside from his well-prepared hide, certain that he was as well hidden as he could be. And he was right. His enemies could not see him, but they could see the camp and the monk’s position slightly compromised his field of vision.
The bandit leader and his mage had sneaked up the hill without Li Kung seeing (they were invisible) or hearing them. When they were 60’ away from the camp the leader plucked a bead off his necklace and tossed it into the camp as his mage cast a spell of his own.
Unannounced, the peace and quiet was broken by a pair of whumphs as fireballs detonated among the party.
Li Kung was fortunate in that he was completely sheltered from the mage’s blast, but was singed by the other. Gaelle, Keldor and Rover were less fortunate as they were asleep and only survived by being partially shielded by the hide’s defences. Keldor was unconscious, Rover barely alive.
The night was further illuminated by a streak of electricity that crackled past Li Kung, who managed to roll out of the way at the last moment, straight into a couple of arrows from the bandit archers who he had also not spotted or heard approaching.
Gaelle leapt to her feet and went to string her bow, only to find that the string snapped having been burnt by the magical fire. Bugger!
Li Kung popped his head out of cover so he could see the bandits.
“Are we attacking them?” he asked Gaelle.
“Up to you” she replied, not really listening but looking at the skinless mass that was Rover.
“Retreat and regroup” the monk said, running across the camp, over the hide and down the hill, away from the bandits.
As he ran, he could hear the bandit leader laughing.
The mage cast another spell, with no obvious result, and the bowbandits showered Gaelle with arrows.
She dropped to her knees bedside Rover and carefully poured a healing potion down his throat.
Rover whimpered in agony, as some of his wound dried up and regrew skin.
Li Kung, not running away any further, circled round the hill and moved into the edge of the village to give himself a good view of the gate. There he waited.
The bandit leader, pleased with himself for pulling off the attack turned and walked casually away from the camp, back to his fort, his mage in tow. Chuckling.
Gaelle, not looking over the defences, cast a spell on himself and Rover to allow them to run faster should the bandits press the attack.
Li Kung stayed in cover and observed the bandits’ return.
Now that Rover was no longer in imminent danger of suppurating to death, Gaelle turned her attention to the faintly alive Keldor, but was unable to locate a wound with which she could deal. He was a single wound, leaking plasma.
---
Looking up from the small badly cooked rodent he was eating, Fragh saw two flashes of orange light on the distant hilltop. Nudging Boldo awake, they moved carefully out of their shelter and down into the deserted village. Boldo could see Li Kung sprint across the open ground between hill and village and dive for cover behind one of the buildings.
Intrigued, they wandered through the village until they were standing behind Li Kung, wondering what he was hiding from.
---
Finally, the monk heard the sound of breathing behind him and spun around, managing to stop his fist from impacting with the Uruk’s chest.
“I’m glad to see you guys” he whispered, recovering his fist.
---
Unable to do anything to help Keldor, though he had stopped leaking profusely and was merely oozing gently, Gaelle took it upon herself to rifle through his belongings, in the hope of finding another healing potion, only to feel the fangs of Keldor’s snake familiar in her hand.
Not willing to risk another bite, she tipped the backpack up, emptying everything onto the ground.
The tiny viper slithered onto his spellbook, while Gaelle picked through his belongings, finding nothing to help.
Realising that it was very cold, the snake moved over to Keldor who, though leaking, was at least warm.
A few moments later, Li Kung, Boldo and Fragh strolled up the hill, having watched the bandits re-enter the fort.
“They must have hit us with their biggest weapons” reasoned the monk, “which means at the moment they haven’t got them, but by tomorrow they might. Downside is that we’re weakened. How’s Keldor?”
“Alive. Barely. I think” replied Gaelle.
Fragh poked Keldor’s body and pronounced him alive, though not much use except as food, and he was a bit overdone.
“If we’re going to attack them we should do it tomorrow. I mean today” advised Gaelle.
“I could sneak in invisible, if that would help” added Boldo.
“We could rest up during the day and hit them tonight. They wouldn’t have the chance to get their spells back and we would feel a bit healthier” considered Li Kung.
Agreeing, they picked up Keldor and moved down the hill and away into the nearby woods, to spend the day and to rejoin with Cord and Helga, who had been moved away from the camp to recover from their ordeal in the bandit fort.
The sun began to rise as they approached the woods.
Boldo offered to stay and observe the bandits, but Gaelle didn’t think he’d see anything.
“We know where they are and we know the ways in and out” explained Li Kung, “though actually getting in would be difficult”.
They sat in quiet contemplation for a while before discussing what to do about attacking the bandits.
Helga managed to heal some of Keldor’s wound, though still leaving him very weak.
Later in the day, Boldo sneaked round the hill, through the village and into the bandits’ compound and secreted himself in a burnt building, close to the fort, to watch.
About an hour later, Gaelle, Li Kung and Fragh followed and set themselves behind the burnt remains of the palisade to observe the arrow slits. The unconscious Keldor was left hidden in the woods, covered to keep him warm.
They waited for something telling to occur. It didn’t.
The sun set and a full Luna rose as the temperature dropped.
As lights were lit in the fort, Gaelle was just able to make out figures moving beyond the arrow slits and decided to have a go at them with her remaining arrows.
Stepping out of cover she fired three arrows; the first hit the fort, the second went wild when her bow creaked alarmingly during the release and the third went clean through the arrow slit and into a bandit.
Now that they could see her, the bandits peppered Gaelle’s immediate area but failed to hit her.
Waiting ten minutes, Gaelle poked her head round the side of the palisade, spotted a single lookout behind the arrow slits and shot him with one the bandits’ own acid arrows. A phenomenal shot!
The light in the fort suddenly went out, and Gaelle could no longer make out any figures inside, though she was happy with herself for making two incredible shots.
As Luna rose and the temperature plummeted, Boldo was feeling the cold. Coming from the savannah of Ethiope he was completely unprepared for this sort of weather and hunkered into an even tighter ball of pygmy to conserve what heat he had.
An hour later, Gaelle moved forward, inside one of the burnt buildings, Rover padding along beside her.
Li Kung and Fragh joined her a short while later.
As the night went on, the party were suffering the effects of the intense cold and Boldo decided to bug out and call it even. He made it back to the building where Gaelle had set a small smokeless fire, fell over next to the fire and began to thaw himself out.
Two hours later, Boldo felt much better and returned to his advance position, though he quickly felt the cold seeping back into his bones.
Faced with the decision between freezing to death, leaving and coming back the next day or attacking now, they decided to throw caution to the wind and go for it.
Boldo sneaked forward, to check for traps laid in front of the door, finding none. Fragh then charged up to the door and had at it with his greataxe, Gaelle covering with her bow. A single arrow hit Fragh but failed to stop him.
Under cover of the Uruk chopping away at the door, Li Kung moved forward by a circuitous route and was just coming round the corner when a pea was lobbed out of one of the arrow slits and blossomed into a fireball in front of the door. Luckily, the only result of the fireball was to warm Boldo and Fragh.
A few seconds later Fragh had chopped a hole through the door and another pea was dropped from the next slit along, this time scorching Boldo unconscious. This was the last missile from the bandit leader’s necklace.
Gaelle finally managed to get an arrow through the arrow slit but she could clearly hear it spang off some metal armour.
Looking through the door into the foyer of the fort, Li Kung could clearly make out several murder holes in the ceiling. After having them pointed out to him, Fragh stepped carefully between them, so as not to be hit by any missiles from above. And he wasn’t, though a bottle of acid was dropped which splashed him when it shattered on the floor.
Moving to a door to the side, Fragh kicked it open without hesitation, revealing a smaller room, as Li Kung carried Boldo’s body inside. Seeing them move, Gaelle and Rover sprinted across the open space and inside.
Moving through, Fragh kicked the next door through into a large room with a set of steps leading up to the next floor, the one with the arrow slits.
As Fragh and Li Kung moved to the bottom of the stairs they sighted the bandit mage standing at the top completing a spell. Before they could react, they were enveloped in the web that filled the room.
Dun, dun, dun………
Edit: This is where the transcription dried up. Basically, I was running the game most Sundays for 6 hours a time and got overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to get the action down in words. Sorry.
Suffice to say, the game is still going, though with none of the original characters, and I only run it once a month on average (so, I could keep up with the transcription now. Ironic, huh?). The characters are up to 12th/13th and continually make nuisances of themselves.
Should I run another game, on a 1 session per month basis, I will endeavour to document it for a longer period than I did with this one.
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