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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 890520" data-attributes="member: 143">Thus begins the Week of Travail...* * * * * Book VIII, Part 31  The warrior ran down the narrow corridor.  For a moment he found himself disoriented—where was this place?  Why was he here?  Then the sound of the alarms, the thrumming that permeated the living stone all around, reminded him, and he rushed onward. The corridor split, and he hurried to the left before he could remember to be confused.  The passage widened, and opened onto a chamber where lamps cast a ruddy illumination upon a stone table around which a number of dwarves were crowded.  They were old creatures, these dwarves, their skin as crannoged as the wrinkled stone of the chamber walls, and they wore their weight clear on their tired faces.  They looked up as he entered.  “What word, young Dura?”Dura.  Yes, that was his name.  Only another name brushed against the edges of his consciousness.  Lok...  No.  He shook his head, and that distracting voice faded.  “They have bypassed the Shield Wall, elders.  They come up from below, through the Harvest Halls.”“Blast!” one of the elders cursed, slamming his fist down upon the table.  “We must draw back, adjust our forces,” another said.  “The warriors are already moving to block the enemy,” Dura said.  “The stones have spoken to us... they will not catch us unawares.”“You have done well, young Dura,” one said.  “Our strength is depleted... but we shall stand bravely, and defend our people as best we can.”Dura stepped forward, drawing himself up.  “I request the honor of leading our people against their enemies,” he said.  The elders regarded him.  “Your courage honors you, Dura.  But you are young...”“My father is dead six turnings of the world stone past, slain by the duergar in captivity.  I am the eldest of my House, and I stood by the Hero in the rush of the gibberlings.  I am blooded, honored ones.”  And there is no other, he added inwardly, in his thoughts.They knew, heard the unspoken words.  “Aye,” spoke the Eldest.  “Would that our arms still bore the strength that yours do, Warrior.  You shall lead us, serve as the Stone against which our enemies shall falter.”Dura nodded, but remained a moment longer.  “I ask one more boon.  I claim the armor and weapon of the Hero, left behind by him, that their use may fortify the People.”One of the elders shook his head.  “Nay, Warrior... those items are not for you... they were left by the Hero, against the day of his return.”The pounding of the alarm drove Dura to recklessness in his speech.  “Elders...  I mean no disrespect, but Lok cannot help us now.  The Hero has abandoned us...”  He saw the anger his words provoked in the elders, but he pressed on.  “I apologize... I am as grateful for our deliverance from bondage as any, and respect the legacy that Lok left us, but the fact remains that our very existence is once more under threat... we must defend ourselves with all of the resources that remain to us!”The elders hesitated, then finally, the Eldest nodded.  * * * * * The faint thrumming of the alarm persisted a short while later, as Dura entered the largest of the Harvest Halls.  The chamber rose up to a height of upwards of fifty feet, the ceiling a maze of stalactites.  The floor was more even, deliberately leveled to better accommodate the neatly ordered patches where the harvests grew.  A harvest had recently been completed just a few days ago, so the growing patches were largely empty, although the rich smell of the cultures was still evident in the air, and throughout the chamber the tiny bulbs of the next harvest’s mushrooms were already evident.   The clank of mail accompanied the movements of the young dwarf.  Clad in the magical plate left by Lok, and carrying his axe, Dura was followed by a phalanx of two dozen fellow urdunnir.  Only a handful wore armor as heavy as his; most were clad in heavy coats of working leather sewn with metal studs, here and there supplemented by a breastplate or set of greaves.  Their weapons looked imposing enough, but in truth most were craftsmen, not warriors.  The People had not had time to fully recover from their ordeal at the hands of the duergar.  There would be no more time, Dura mused, glancing back over his “army.”  The stones had spoken.  The enemy was here. As if called by his thoughts, movement became evident in one of the corridors that exited from the far side of the chamber.  The dwarves came forward even as those shadows grew distinct, hulking forms that moved swiftly forward.  The only light in the chamber was a weird, pale glow that came from some of the lichens that clung to the walls of the place and flourished in the musty air, but the dwarves needed no torch to mark their foes.  Bugbears.  At least two score, well armored and armed.  The humanoids saw the dwarves, and immediately formed a disorganized line, moving steadily across the expanse of the chamber, hefting spears and axes and clubs high above their heads, treading carelessly upon the budding heads of the next harvest.  “Defensive wedge!” Dura growled, moving into position at the lead point.  His head was filled with memory, and his blood sang with the bravery of that day when he, the Hero, had stood in this same place, and held the line against the gibberling rush.  Now it was he, Dura, who would enter the annals of his people...Behind Dura, the dwarves formed into a tight formation, a spearhead bristling with steel forged in many cases by the Hero himself.  He was not there to help them this time, not there to defend the People from their foes, but at least they held his weapons, and the example that he had set for them in their hearts.  “Fire!” he shouted, when the bugbears reached the center of the cavern.  Thick bolts shrieked out from within the wedge, hurled by the heavy crossbows of the urdunnir defenders.  Several missed their targets, but those that hit punched through metal plate and thick leather alike, driving deeply into the bodies of the onrushing humanoids.  The bolts were followed by oblong stones shaped by the potent hands of the stone-dwarves, simple rocks that had been fashioned through the urdunnir’s special lore into dense, heavy missiles.  Fired by simple slings, these missiles as well struck hard and deadly, crushing bones.  Six of the initial forty were down, and others staggered by violent hits.  But the bugbears continued their approach, picking up speed as they came on.  There was no time to reload the heavy crossbows, but the slingers managed a few more hits, and another foe went down, his skull cracked by a direct hit.  The bugbears in the vanguard hurled a few spears as they came, but they glanced off of the armor of the dwarves.  The pause cost one attacker, as a hurled hammer caught him solidly in the shoulder, crushing his arm.  The bugbear shifted his axe to his good arm, and came on.  The bugbears hurtled themselves into the defenders with a ferocity born of hard years spent in the fierce realm of the Underdark.  “For the People!” cried Dura, smashing his axe into the chest of the first attacker.  The magical axe clove through its breastplate, and it crumpled backward, replaced an instant later by another pair that smashed at the dwarf warrior with heavy maces.  Lok’s plate armor absorbed the force of the impacts, although Dura could feel their force shudder through his body.  “Never again slaves!” he cried, bringing the heavy axe around in a blow that dug deeply into the first bugbear’s hip.  “Never again slaves!” echoed the other dwarves, as they fought and killed and died in the violent melee.  The line held, however, and the bugbears, for all their size and strength, could not break through.  Each time a dwarf fell the others closed to fill the gap, dealing out death.  Dura hacked and blocked and hacked again.  He felt as though his hands were guided by an outside force, for he’d never felt so alive with his strength and skill.  He somehow managed to defend against attackers he’d barely seen, and even as his arms grew tired he drove through the bugbears’ defenses to land telling blows.  Already he’d slain four, their corpses scattered around his position at the point, and the others that continued to attack were clearly wary, surprised by the ferocity of this lone dwarf’s defense.  He’d taken a wound, a spear thrust that had crunched through the armor at his right hip, but the young dwarf barely felt it. And then the bugbears were falling back, retreating across the chamber from whence they had come.  Nearly half their number had been slain in the brief battle, and many of those that retreated bore serious wounds.  Dura’s blood was singing, and his head pounded with the excitement of the fray.  He lifted his bloody axe in triumph, and behind him the other dwarves roared.  No, do not, it’s a trap...“After the dogs!” he cried, and rushed forward, the others close on his heels.  They would teach these invaders a lesson, send a message throughout the Underdark that the urdunnir could and would defend themselves, that they were no longer victims...The bugbears had retreated all the way to the far side of the chamber, near the corridor mouth where they had appeared.  Their leaders had drawn them around, ready for a final stand, apparently, but Dura and his dwarves, flush with victory, seemed unstoppable.And then, suddenly, everything went dark.  A forest of dense, sticky strands sprang up around the dwarves, snaring them in the mess of a magical web.  The twang of crossbows could be heard, from the corridor, from the cracks along the walls, from above, amidst the stalactites.  A few dwarves staggered from the darkness, webs clinging to them, only to crumple as several of the tiny crossbow bolts worked their grim purpose.  Dura, calling upon a last reserve of strength, tore free of the webs, and lurched out of the darkness.  Realization came belatedly, along with a crushing despair that threatened to clamp down on his heart as he watched his companions fall beside him, or struggle uselessly against the clinging webs, or thrash about blind in the sphere of darkness.  The bugbears waited at the edge of the webs, making no move to attack.  Dura lifted his axe and charged toward them, but the strands snared his legs, and he nearly fell.  Thrashing violently he chopped at the webbing, but his progress was too slow.  The bugbears pointed at him, and a few even laughed.  And then he sensed a dark presence above him.  He looked up to see a lean, tall form descending slowly from the shadowed forest amidst the stalactites.  His heart sank as he recognized the figure, clad in chain links as black as her skin.  “Come down here and face me, bitch!” The drow priestess regarded him with an almost amused expression.  With a wave of her hand, Dura felt his muscles stiffening, and he fell, as helpless as a babe.  As helpless as they had all been, taken as slaves by the urdunnir.  Unable to even turn his head to look, the sticky webs clinging to his face and making it difficult even to breathe, he could still hear the laughter of the drow, and the bugbears.  “Never again slaves...” he mumbled...“Kill the warriors, and take the rest.  But leave this one, he might provide some... amusement, before we offer his soul to the Spider Queen.”Dura tried to scream, but it only came out as a gurgled hiss.  Why did you abandon us, Hero...Blackness.</blockquote>

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