02/06/745 A.E. (12:30 pm or so) continued...
Liska looks up and around the dusty hallway, her eyes falling on the Swiss cheese-like holes in the east wall, the source of the fierce wind whenever the doors to this complex were open. She didn't know much about mages or their magic, but she knew something magical was happening here, for she could hardly believe that wind was natural. It had been nearly half an hour since they closed the doors, and only now were the finest of motes finally settling out of her lamplight's reach. The dust settled and with the party being quite recovered from their recent dance with the whirlwind, it was time to move. "Let's be on our way," she said as she stood up, holding her lantern high enough so all could see what they needed to do to get ready to move out.
Liska could soon see where the blood had dried on the floor, the site of Maarik's messy work while skinning the Giant Weasel where it had fallen in battle. She heard a slight humming sound and froze, but then realized it was only Garren Rayne, humming a happy tune. She enjoyed the music, but thought there was a better time and place for it, though she did not say so. Gillmesh moved his way to the front line, preparing to fight off anything unexpected. "Hmm, tha weasel be gone." Liska looked and it occurred to her for the first time that there should have been the rotting carcass of a dead, skinned weasel here, and not just a patch of dried blood. They had left the carcass, after all, having taken only the valuable pelt. Someone or something had been here in the intervening two weeks they had been away. She redoubled her guard and tried to peer past her lamp's illumination. Fen looked around, searching the floor. "There are no discernible tracks here. Stone floor, very hard to tell, but I see nothing of value that may indicate any recent passage." Liska looked down when she heard Fen's report, but if a ranger couldn't see anything, she doubted she'd be able to. She simply pressed northward, into the darkness, beating it back now and again by holding her lantern higher than normal. Gill went ahead of Liska saying, "Liska, Ye should stay behind me; we kin nea afford ta get ye hurt." Her reply was for Drael, however, and not Gill. "Drael, could you check up ahead for anything suspicious?" Drael simply nodded and went up ahead, looking around, bringing the party to a slow crawl as she carefully made sure there were no trips, no traps, or anything of the like in front of them.
The smell of smoke came to Drael first, but they pretty much all could all smell it now. There was a wood fire nearby; the smoke from it permeated this small room that was, come to think of it, a bit warmer than the previous ones. Liska held her lamp higher, revealing a crude wooden table with four cups on it. The embers of a dying fire also showed themselves, where the southwest corner of this room had an area cordoned off. There were large stones that ringed a fire there that was now nearly dead. Liska inspected the crude clay cups; a sloppy residue of some sort of stew remained in them. Garren spoke, "This fire has been unattended for a few hours now. Someone is probably nearby." Gillmesh, not liking this, went to the now revealed door in the north wall, standing guard over it until the party had thoroughly searched the room. Gillmesh glanced in one of the cups, "Ah bet ets weasel stew . . . " But that was unlikely, considering how long they had been away.
Drael walked over to Gill and moved him aside by guiding him out of her way so she could check the door. Gill then stepped aside and watched her closely as she played with the door's seams for nearly ten minutes. "I don't see anything amiss here, though the door is swollen with moisture. It may be hard to open," she said as she stepped back, her work being done and herself happy to leave the more muscular task to another.
Gill yanked on the door, fully expecting it to give way to brute strength, but it just rattled and made a noise. The thing was stuck. In fact, he even said, "&*!@ stuck," though many did not understand his accented words when he swore softly to himself. He looked at the door and saw it hanging badly on its hinges. Perhaps if he lifted the handle up a bit, supporting the weight of the door, and then pulled it . . . ? He did this, giving it another yank after lifting it a bit, but it threw him partially off balance, and the sling-rock hitting him in his face, which was a bit of a surprise, didn't help matters.
COMBAT BEGINS:
S1: A rock from a sling bounced off Gill's head, cutting him over his left eye. He could feel the blood running down his face before he even knew he was hit. Four nasty kobolds confronted him, two of them jabbing at him with spears (though they missed), and two in the back slinging rocks through the door. Gillmesh wailed, "Ow! Sonofa bitchin dogs!" and drew his bastardsword. The rest of the group took the time to close their mouths, which were opened in surprise.
R1: Gill cuts at the spearman (spearkobald?), missing so badly he nearly fell, embarrassing himself a great deal. Garren raised his holy symbol, a small trident, and spoke loudly. "Holy Father, God of Seas, Bless us this day so we may crush our enemies." The effect was instantaneously felt, though the power of it grew and swelled up within Garren and his friends for another minute before it really had a noticeable effect. Liska and Drael maneuvered for better angles, but Gill was rather large and kept the kobolds at bay, though unfortunately this also blocked any clear shots from behind. The kobolds jabbed at Gillmesh and shot at him, but all missed or harmlessly bounced off his armor, and Gill dodged the blows one-by-one.
R2: A flurry of misses from the kobolds, but Gill makes his mighty arm felt here and cuts down one of the kobolds in the doorway. Drael jabs and misses, then some arrows, properly angled, shoot past Gill, but error on the side of caution and so miss everybody.
R3: Gill pulls back, giving others a clear shot and letting the kobolds advance, if they wish. They decline his generous offer and sling at him instead. In fact, the remaining spearman runs, and Gill lunges, taking advantage of the parting blow, cutting down the nasty little lizard-dog. An arrow from Liska's bow finds the breast of one of the slingers, sinking deeply into it, stopping the beating heart forever. The remaining kobold runs through an open door in the east wall, screaming and barking wildly. He seemed upset.
COMBAT OVER:
Drael quickly went over the bodies of the three dead kobolds, looking for useful stuff and coming up with a few coins. Fen finally comes up from the rear, having been indisposed way, way in the back, having taken time for some personal activity nature would often insist upon (it happens). Drael presents the group with the 12 CP she found. "Hmm, not much here," she muttered. "Two spears and one sling and a few rocks."
Gillmesh again takes up guard by the door where the kobold ran. Liska, now able to shine her light around a bit more, reveals a few interesting things, most notably a dirt tunnel leading upwards in the west wall. Obviously, the stonewall here was broken through. Whether they tunneled down and broke through or broke though and tunneled up, who can say? It was rather muddy, obviously the source of much of the moisture down here.
Fen started to inspect the tunnel when the footfalls of many, many somethings could be heard from the east where the one kobold had escaped. Drael looked a bit nervous saying "Umm . . . , maybe we should get out of here . . ." It seemed like a harmless suggestion, and so the party moved quickly up the muddy tunnel while Garren jammed a spear tip under the door, blocking the way of any advancing kobold army.
Bang! they heard the door being soundly hit from the other side, but Gill figured the door could take such abuse for a little while. One-by-one the party members climbed the muddy tunnel upwards. Ick, they were quite a mess when they reached the surface, some hundred feet above, coming out on top of the bluff and amongst the trees of the forest. Clearly, Gill heard someone shouting in Orcish. He thinks to himself, "Kobolds, speaking Orcish? What did they say?" Liska busies herself making a small oil fire in the tunnel's opening, just to discourage anyone who might be following.
The noise abates, the fire dies, the wind blows through the forest, but no one follows our friends up the tunnel. An hour passes without any sign of pursuit. They decide to venture down into the darkness yet again, braving the mud and poorly constructed tunnel. All go down except Fen, who is now inspecting the area for the first time, but she will soon follow.
Garren enters first, seeing the door bashed down but no waiting kobolds. Nothing. Silence. He peers through the broken door into a 30 X 30 foot room. Two other doors can be seen; one door leading east and one leading south. The rest of the group enters the room with Garren. Gill looks down a hallway he sees through the east door; it is perhaps 80 feet long, which can be seen as the light reflects well off the walls here. A solid, but very rusted and disused iron door is five feet in and on the north wall. It looks locked, too, and so he is not too worried about anything coming from that quarter anytime soon. Drael comes abreast of Gill but notices something odd about the five-foot space between the door to the hall and the rusted iron door. An odd seam, a trick of the light, or what? She investigates and eventually decides it may be a secret door. Several party members give her a hand and try to open it, but to no avail. The secret door, if that's what it is, is stuck solid. "Damn water," she thinks, "it swells up everything. But it probably helped me see this swollen seam too, so I guess it all evens out." Drael gives up for now and looks down the hall toward Gill, then turns back and kicks the secret door in frustration. It actually breaks one of her toes and she hops away in pain.
Twenty five to thirty feet in, there is another wooden door, this time in the south wall. Gill advances on it and listens only to hear low snorts and grunts of an almost pig-like variety. He simply guards the door until the rest of the party is behind him.
Garren tends to Drael's injured foot, bandaging the toe using the other toes as splints. "There, that should help it heal faster." He stood up and stood back as Drael tested her foot, but she still limped a bit. Gillmesh slowly opened the door leading south and was immediately rushed by two fierce Boars.
COMBAT BEGINS:
R1: Drael instantly responded by taking out her sling and firing a sling bullet, but it went wide of her mark. Liska shot one arrow and scored a hit, but the beast just seemed angrier, shaking its tusks back and forth and charging Gill. Gillmesh swung his sword at the approaching boar but missed as it ducked under the bastardsword and came up sharply, ripping a long line of skin off Gill, hurting him quite a bit. Garren thrust at it with his trident but misses.
R2: The party falls on the one attacking Gill. Practically everyone misses but Gill, and he manages to fell the wounded beast. The other creature advances toward Drael.
R3: Backing away, Drael comes up short when she reaches the wall, and with little room to maneuver, the boar easily hits her. She screams and then falls, though this seems a bit of a ploy. The boar instinctively turns to meet other more active attackers. Garren hits it and the boar lets out a squeal. It then turns toward the bard. Liska's arrows go wide again. Damn, cramped hallways.
R4: Liska rushed to bind Drael's wounds, but sees she is not as badly hurt as she thought. Gill lunges at the overly large pig, slashing it deeply with his sword, cutting an artery and spraying boar blood all over the place. A loud squeal rings off the walls of the stone hall, the clatter of open melee dies down, and the boar ceases to twitch, its blood pooling under it, running along one large crack in the floor and creating a separate pool but a few feet away form the now lifeless body.
COMBAT OVER:
Some spell casting (healing) immediately takes place, but soon the focus is upon a lone walking kobold figure approaching from the southern hall from whence the boars appeared. His arms were stretched high in the air, a traditional stance of surrender. "Yirrrip yoagrrrr growllel org barker?" but no one spoke Kobold. It tried again, but this time spoke it clear Orcish, something a few of them actually understood. "We surrender; you will negotiate terms?"
Garren looked at the leader demanding answers. "We? Are there more than just you?" And so the conference for terms of surrender began. It was discovered the kobolds thought their orcish enemies had hired the party as mercenaries, but when this was found not to be the case, the kobold leader asked if they could be hired to fight for them, helping the kobolds wipe out the orcish scourge that plagued them. In exchange for money and certain other considerations (like guides to help them answer questions) the party agreed to think about it and leave the kobolds in peace to this one section of the dungeon complex.
Yarr, the kobold master-at-arms (and one of the few kobolds to speak Common, for he was a slave to humans in his youth) will accompany them. The kobolds soon deliver 3,400 SP (all of their silver, 68 lbs. of it) in a fine wooden box. While they waited, the party roasts one of the boars, though the kobold leader insisted they should do that outside of his people's presence since it had been one of their pets that they were going to butcher and eat. They complied, mostly since they'd rather cook outdoors anyway, but they also searched a few more rooms, finding nothing more of value. What appeared to have been a bedchamber was empty, as well as the closet, and the adjoining bathroom with a sunken tub was filled with stagnant water and GREEN SLIME. Drael considered using the deadly stuff as a weapon, but thought better of it. One little mistake, get just a speck of green slime on you, and it will grow, and grow quickly. Within minutes, it might devour an entire human - at least far enough to kill them, even if it would take more time to consume the whole body. Such things might be used as a weapon, but to transport it around in a container that could easily break was just too dangerous to do, so Drael abandoned the idea, just as many others had before her. This stuff was no joke. Amazing, how the empire freely employed it safely as a means of waste disposal.
A few hours passed and the negotiations with the kobolds were over. The party would cast spells, heal, and rest and recuperate overnight. In the morning, Yarr would lead them wherever they wanted to go.
SESSION ENDS:
© September of 1999
by
James L.R. Beach
Waterville, MN 56096