[Still not fully sober, myself (your humble narrator, Rollo the Druid), Reinward the Chosen One and Fangornio the Barbarian find ourselves on a quest to save the village of Hartsvale from a very naughty dragon. We have just made our way though some kobold caverns.]
DAY 622 (15th Uktar) (November) cont ...
As we stepped out into the cold mountain air, we saw before us a rope bridge over a 50 foot drop. This was the only way forward. Around us were several trees, a large clump of bushes, and the stairs back down to the kobold tunnels. In the distance across the ravine, we heard deep, frenzied bellows echoing off the mountain walls.
On the other side of the gorge, across the 30 foot gap, two goblins had just finished cutting the ropes to the rope bridge as they laughed like maniacs.
They then turned and fled, giggling the whole time.
Reinward and Fang started having a quick-fire argument about whether they could jump over the chasm ("Jump the Chasm!") or not. It took me a while to get a word in and let them know I could turn into a Giant Owl and carry them across one at a time.
So anyway, on the other side of the gorge was a deep gully, which we walked along. In a wider area of the canyon we came across some hungry giants, chained to the ground.
The canyon ended at a cave entrance.
A goblin further back called out and the giants broke loose. Reinward started Blinking and I began summoning critters. The two hill giants came in at the canter and Fang received a good biff with a club, which he repaid with some axe blows. Reinward then finished it off with some of his deadly daggers.
The second giant came at the wily rogue, but its swings missed. Meanwhile I summoned some delicious looking (I hoped!) dire boars. I instructed them to try and look appetising rather than attacking.
It all got a bit tangled up after that with Reinward tumbling about, Fang trying to subdue the second giant rather than kill it and my boars running around all over the place.
It couldn't hold out long against us, although Fang was injured and required healing.
Just as we were wondering what to do next, there was a thump and three even bigger giants appeared at the other end of the canyon.
Reinward attack the nearest one and killed it with his deadly throwing daggers. Meanwhile I had remembered that we'd been told the dragon liked to use illusions and be invisible so I pulled on my Goggles of See Invisibility and took a look around. I was expecting to see a dragon but instead I saw a wee goblin wizard behind the giants.
The goblin hit us with a fireball and one of the giants attacked one of my boars. The boar was injured so the giants were not illusions after all - possibly!
I shot back at the goblin using a Hypothermia spell. Fire was met with Ice. The goblin then cast Cone of Cold and ran away. These bigger giants had bigger clubs and one managed to get me on the shoulder, which was very painful.
Reinward was still throwing daggers everywhere and my boars were still in the fray so I took a moment to heal myself. One of the giants picked up a boar and bit it! And seemed to be nourished by it somehow even though the boar was a summoned ally.
The boars were doing their job as a distraction very well and so Fang was able to kill one of the giants and Reinward was able to stab the last one to death.
All three of them had crashed to the ground like felled oaks. Their bodies did not vanish, so they were not summoned. They were as real as the first to giants apparently.
I looked over the bodies. The first two were what I would have considered regular hill giants.
The other three were larger and more brutal. I chopped off the thumbs of the dead ones for later study.
Reinward was amazed at my actions and declared, 'Well, I'm chopping off their balls!'
I gestured for him to proceed. Who was I to stand in the way of science? Only one of them was lying the right way up so Reinward got between its legs and with a dagger in his teeth lifted up its loincloth.
Whatever he saw (or smelled) in there made him suddenly reconsider his actions. He gagged and then lowered the cloth and retreated.
After that, he saw that Fang was injured and offered him a potion. He came forward but then cheekily wiped his hill-giant-ball-sweat-fingers on Fang's armour.
Fang leapt back and shouted, 'Stick your stinky potions up your arse!'
Reinward wiped his hands on the grass. 'Look, clean!'
As they continued to argue I looked over the giant we had kept alive. Having had enough fun annoying Fang, Reinward came over to annoy me.
'Why are you dicking around with these giants?' he inquired. 'Let's cut the thumbs off this one as well! Then really knock it out and get it later.' He advanced on it with a knife.
'Step away from my giant, you interfering imbecile!' I cried.
Anyway, so firstly I healed Fang, then I created a feast of food and drink from the Provision Box and healed the giant. I offered it the food and spoke to it soothingly in the Giant language.
It was willing to answer questions, but it didn't know much. The goblin wizard was the one known as "Boyag-boyag-boyag" and it lived in the cave at the end of the gully.
Reinward was impatient, tapping his foot, making a show of it. I knew he wasn't in a hurry, he just wanted to annoy me. So I in turn took my time talking to the giant. I actually enjoyed speaking Giant again, after learning it so many years ago at school it was nice to dust it down and remember all that unusual syntax.
He told me he had been captured by the goblins and had been chained up 'for ages'. He certainly was thin for a giant. He also told me he had lived in these mountains before the dragon had turned up.
We moved on, leaving the giant to its feast. We entered the goblin tunnels and soon came to a large cavern. There were vents in its floor from which green gas was coming. There were scorch marks around the vents. Reinward threw an alchemist fire at some of the gas and it ignited in a flash and was burnt off. I was interested in the decor, wondering if this was perhaps an old dwarven hall, but my eyes were suddenly drawn to the shadowy corners - there were all sorts of nasties lurking back there!
I pointed them out, then when they knew their cover was blown they attacked. Goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears, a mixed assortment of about a dozen villainous creatures. They attacked bravely but were no match for us. Reinward stabbed them, Fang chopped them and I froze them. Soon they were all dead and we were looting their corpses.
We found a scroll of Dimension door and a carved ivory symbol inlaid with silver - a holy icon of the Hobgoblin God Nomog-Geaya, featuring a longsword crossed with a handaxe.
No comments:
Post a Comment