Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 229375" data-attributes="member: 94">LORD OF THE IRON FORTRESS-- Part I (cont.)Wulf turned to face the Moradin-thing for his last question. He shrugged. As long as he had access to Moradin and a hall full of onlookers, he might as well get his opinion on one last nagging question.“Is Karak a big nancy-boy or what?”There was a long pause. No, surely not a long pause as gods must measure time, but long enough for Wulf to notice it. He’d stumped Moradin.Well, maybe not stumped, exactly, but he certainly got his attention. Wulf certainly wasn’t the type to sit around debating theological points, but somewhere in midst of that interminable pause it occurred to him that stumping or even merely surprising the gods sort of put a kink in their whole “omniscience” schtick.”HE’S TYR’S PROBLEM. ASK TYR.”Another pause, and then:”SEEK YOUR PATH IN RIGUS, IN THE OUTLANDS.”**Ahh, plane-hopping. The party scrambled to dig up some details on their impending journey. Shorty did most of the leg- and brain-work; he was enjoying it more than Wulf was comfortable with.The Outlands, they discovered, were a huge, flat, featureless, grey, and absolutely neutral plane. On the edges of the Outlands, where they bordered the outer planes, the area started to pick up characteristics of the nearby outer planes.Rigus was a small city on the border with Acheron. “So all we have to do,” explained Shorty, “is plane shift into the Outlands and head to Rigus.”“Aren’t the Outlands essentially infinite, though? There’s no telling where we will end up.”“Well, once we get to the Outlands, we can teleport to Rigus-- or damn near, anyway.” Shorty shrugged. “If we get it wrong we just teleport again.”“Nothin’ to worry about in the Outlands?”“Oh, I don’t think so. Closer to Rigus, closer to Acheron, might be bad. We’d want to stay sharp there.”“What’s Acheron like?”“All my references describe it simply as ‘oppressive structure.’”“I’m not good with structure,” Wulf growled.**Rigus, so near to Acheron, was itself a place of oppressive structure. The town was surrounded by a huge iron wall, and inside Wulf could see rows upon rows of featureless buildings, each perfectly square. The gate was guarded by four humans and a near-human that Wulf guessed to be an aasimar. He dug an elbow into Karak’s side. “Assmar. Just like yer… ooh, sorry.”The aasimar wasted no time showering the group with his disdain and laying down the ground rules, the first of which was that ignorance of the law was no defense. Second, “troublemakers” would be dealt with harshly. At this point Wulf only compounded his problem by tuning out the rest of the aasimar’s speech entirely.Pointless drivel, he thought. If they’re gonna get me, they’re gonna get me. No sense walkin’ around on eggshells in the meantime.Eventually the group was waved through, and they arrived at their inn, The Twin Stars, at precisely 4:00 in the afternoon. Shorty seemed oddly comfortable, arranging their rooms without hesitation. “Rooms are 10 gold pieces a night…” said the innkeep.“TEN GOLD!?” Wulf bellowed. His eyes bulged in genuine shock. “Yer get a hand job with that?”Wulf reeled away to the common room to spend his coin on something that was actually worth the price: the local fare. He’d left most of his money behind at the forge, keeping only a small travelling sum of about 500 gold with him. Clearly, it wasn’t going to go far. What with the assmar at the gate and the crazy rip-off pricing he was starting to hate the outer planes.Of course, he’d suspected he might.</blockquote>

Verification