*Virgil was about to open his mouth as Drax spoke. Abdul considered the question only briefly.*
"Everything that comes out of the Forbidden Lands is terrible, some worse than others. Many are horrible in appearance, some only in actions, but always their true nature is shown. For those that have honorable actions, we honor them. For those that have only twisted tongues and two hearts, we show them only our blades," he says carefully.
*Virgil nods at Abdul after he is done talking and begins the tail.*
"Pottofer and I were hired by Lord Dushen, who lives east of Gajin, to investigate a infestation of flesh-stripping rat-creatures in his lands. We were willing to go to rid the land of such horrors, and pressed into the forest with great haste. As we tracked them across the forest, we found a sunken temple from whence they seem to have sprung. But as we arrived there, so did these worthies, also on a quest to destroy the creatures. As our goals were one, we joined our strengths.
"We descended into the temple and fought the rat creatures in a battle of flames, steel, magic, music, and creatures summoned from the celestial planes. We thought ourselves victorious, but alas we saw the rats retreating into a hole behind the altar of the temple. We gave chase and found their mother, a sewer rat of hideous aspect and gargantuan size. She was as large as a man, covered with terrible plague-like pustules and spikes of bone. We battled her fiercely, and Drax nearly died from her fangs. She unleashed a swarm of spiders upon Brigitte, but she prevailed and struck the killing blow to the monstrosity.
"We made certain of her death and then left to heal our wounds and tell the local people that the creatures were gone. We returned the next day to investigate the place further. We found a strange spiral design upon the floor. Pottofer, acting on some inner prompting from his goddess, dripped blood upon the design and opened a portal to the cliff above the Forbidden Lands. And that is how we found ourselves in your land," Virgil says, and bows a bit at the end of his tale.
*The Bedine look horrified at the decription of the mother rat, and look at Pottofer as if had just grown two heads when Virgil describes what he did to open the portal.*
"The rat-creatures... they are things from the Forbidden Lands. The things become more bold, and spread to the east by their human agents, people who have forsaken humanity for whatever corruption lies in the Forbidden Lands. Man of Eldath, you may have been trying to determine the nature of the device you saw, but you may have marked yourself as one willing to treat with the Corrupted Ones. You are in grave danger, and endanger all around you!" Abdul says with some alarm.
