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They came in search of Paradise (A Story of Erth) - Updated 23rd April
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<blockquote data-quote="robberbaron" data-source="post: 1985103" data-attributes="member: 14771"><p><strong>An Ambush and Some Dead Things</strong></p><p></p><p>1st October 1699</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Gaelle motioned to Li Kung, getting across the message that she would shoot the nearest target.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>Gaelle followed up with a pair of arrows, both passing through the bush into the thief.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p>Cord ran down the slope and added his enormous weapon to the warrior’s woes.</p><p>Seigfried charged in and flanked the warrior, who was wishing their thief wasn’t useless.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Gaelle, also, not being able to follow the thief, sent two arrows into the now nearly unconscious druid.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>One of the remaining figures on the ground got up, drew a greatsword and moved in to join the fight.</p><p>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.</p><p>The druid’s badger companion, his master having rolled away from him, took his anger out on Cord’s calves.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Unseen in the darkness, the thief healed himself as best he could, hoping that the battle went well for his group. </p><p></p><p>Helga shot off more magic missiles and Gaelle shot at the fighter, wounding him once.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Helga’s magic missiles further injured the fighter as Gaelle’s arrows bounced off his armour.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Helga, worried, ran to Seigfried and confirmed her worst suspicions – the handsome Germanian was dead.</p><p>“There’s loads of useful bits here,” she muttered to herself, lost momentarily in her sick bio-arcane schemes.</p><p></p><p>Gaelle’s next arrow pierced the fighter’s throat, fountaining blood over Cord.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>“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.”</p><p>“Yeah, but you can run faster,” replied Gaelle.</p><p>“Not fast enough to track at the same time”</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Noticing Seigfried’s corpse gave them pause.</p><p>“He had actually become slightly useful,” admitted Gaelle.</p><p>“Yeah, but that proves his god was useless,” replied Li Kung, his teeth chattering.</p><p>“Probably let him die for turning his back on her,” added Cord.</p><p>“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.</p><p></p><p>The party spent until dawn stripping the dead and making a neat pile of interesting gear for Helga to look over for magic emanations.</p><p>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!</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Li Kung encouraged Gracientus to ask Set for a clue as to whether it would be safe to rest here for the day.</p><p>“Hmm. The auguries are favourable”, announced the priest after a prayer and a short period in a trance.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Over supper, Li Kung broached their next direction.</p><p>“Anybody know anything about this area? What can we bushwhack next, or rather where shall we adventure next?”</p><p>Helga knew quite a lot about Thrace, but little about what was going on in the countryside.</p><p>“We’ve got some spare weapons now. Maybe we should find a decent sized town and sell them?” suggested Li Kung.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Gaelle, springing up, used her special rapid shooting skill to plug three arrows through what was left of the creature’s hide.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Li Kung hurled a shuriken at one of the minotaurs, barely missing Helga’s inert form on the floor at its feet.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Stepping back, Gaelle again let off a volley of arrows, only one passing through the zombie’s hide.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>The zombies swung their arms around with abandon, succeeding in missing everyone.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>Li Kung stepped in and directed a flurry of kicks at the minotaur, knocking a small chunk off it.</p><p></p><p>Again, Gaelle’s zombie was ineffectual, while the other left four gashes in Li Kung’s chest.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>The minotaur, now surrounded by food, chose to go for Cord, the largest of them.</p><p>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.</p><p>Li Kung threw another two shuriken into the long grass while the zombie clubbed Cord into unconsciousness. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p>“I would recommend using a healing potion on her,” he told Gaelle and the now hobbling Cord.</p><p>“If I bandaged her a bit roughly it might kill her”.</p><p></p><p>“Actually, I’m tempted to let her die,” replied Gaelle.</p><p>“She is a bit weird. A bit of an aberration,” agreed Li Kung.</p><p>“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.”</p><p>“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.</p><p>“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?”</p><p>“But,” replied Gaelle “we will get associated with her and whatever sick stuff she gets up to.”</p><p>“I don’t have a problem with that,” conceded Cord.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>“Ok, we let her live”, said Gaelle, a little grudgingly.</p><p>“There is certainly no compelling evidence that would force us to kill her,” agreed Li Kung.</p><p>“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”</p><p>Li Kung administered a potion of healing to Helga, now her fate had been decided.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p>2nd October 1699</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>He walked up to the minotaur corpses, then looked around, noticing the party.</p><p></p><p>“Hail, who are you?” asked Li Kung, unfolding from behind a small shrub, the nearest bit of cover he could find.</p><p></p><p>Keldor the Ranger introduced himself, thinking that the group who took on the minotaurs could easily deal with him.</p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>Gaelle, was going to have a bit of fun at Keldor’s expense.</p><p>“So, how long were you going to follow the minotaurs?” she sneered.</p><p>“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.</p><p>“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.”</p><p>“Was the merchant’s wagon destroyed? Was here anything of interest?” asked Li Kung, sensing more booty.</p><p>“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.</p><p></p><p>“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?”</p><p>“Well, I survived this lot attacking so I think so, yes.”</p><p>“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.”</p><p>“Sounds like one of us,” added Gaelle.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>“So, we go to the caravan and hunt back along the minotaurs’ trail,” suggested Gaelle.</p><p></p><p>They are still sitting talking with Keldor at midday when it starts raining heavily. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p>3rd October 1699</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>“We didn’t think you were going to pull round,” Li Kung told her, as they settled back to allow Helga to finish healing.</p><p>“What happened to Gracientus?” Helga asked.</p><p>“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.</p><p></p><p>After lunch, they made good time riding to where the wagon was attacked.</p><p>They found the wagon overturned and several bodies that had been feasted upon by local wildlife.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>“Whoever produced the zombies didn’t send them against this,” reasoned Li Kung, “there’s nothing worth taking.”</p><p>The party decided to follow the zombies’ tracks, heading roughly south, until sunset when they stopped and set camp.</p><p></p><p>They were a little worried about putting Keldor on watch with Helga and they took several minutes of discussion to set watches.</p><p></p><p>4th October 1699</p><p></p><p>They pressed on through the day, heading towards Ionia, but didn’t find the source of the zombies.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p>5th October 1699</p><p></p><p>The day dawned bright and clear. And freezing cold.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>“Shall we go round the copse and see if the tracks come out the other side?” Li Kung suggested.</p><p>“Bear in mind that if this is where they came from,” said Cord, “how many were left behind?”</p><p></p><p>They circumnavigated the hill and found no tracks on the other side.</p><p>“We ready to investigate the copse now?” asked Gaelle.</p><p>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.</p><p>“We could try to burn it,” suggested Li Kung.</p><p>“It’s a bit wet for that to work,” replied Cord.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>Gaelle scouted around and found human tracks coming out then going back in, about the same age as the minotaur tracks.</p><p></p><p>While Helga went to check the entrance for traps, Gaelle lit a lantern and placed it in her dog’s mouth.</p><p>Helga cast a spell that would enable her to talk to the others and went carefully ahead into the cave.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>Helga fired off a pair of magic missiles at Keldor’s zombie, freeing him to attack the large skelington.</p><p>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.</p><p>Li Kung tumbled to contact with the ettin and stuck her psionically empowered foot right up its nether regions.</p><p>Cord also dropped his bow, drew a weapon and prepared his shield, moving to the ettin.</p><p>Keldor stepped a little closer and cast a spell.</p><p></p><p>The ettin smacked Li Kung and swished its left Morningstar over Cord’s head.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>It then moved in and smashed its rotting fist into Gaelle's face.</p><p></p><p>Gaelle chipped away at the ettin skeleton, which then thumped Keldor and Gaelle back. Fairs fair after all.</p><p>Helga sent a pair of magic missiles at the mummy, not slowing it.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Li Kung stepped over the dust and smacked the mummy, as did Cord.</p><p>Keldor stepped in and whirled his swords around in the mummy’s face, not actually hitting it.</p><p>Helga changed position and again sent two magic missiles into the horrific dead thing.</p><p></p><p>After the mummy had waved its arms in their general direction, Gaelle slashed her greatsword across its chest.</p><p>Li Kung dropped his glaive, grabbed his quarterstaff and cracked the mummy on the forehead, knocking off a big chunk.</p><p>Cord stepped in to a flanking position, wound up mightily and carved through the mummy, spraying dusty fragments everywhere.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="robberbaron, post: 1985103, member: 14771"] [b]An Ambush and Some Dead Things[/b] 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. [/QUOTE]
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They came in search of Paradise (A Story of Erth) - Updated 23rd April
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