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Gaming!
When we ended last game session, we were entering the territory of another clan, and, due to the fact of having Ren (a druid) with us managed to get in without generating excessive amounts of argument. We talked to their loremaster -- who was the fellow we'd been sent to see -- at length about the dreams that our loremaster had. "What do you think of this?" he asked each of us. Eventually he managed to pry out of Thiara that what she thought of the situation was that we were in big trouble.
Mind, a druid wandered in in the middle of this conversation and made off with Ren. One doesn't argue with druids when they requisition party members. She also invited us to come to a major druidic site, the sort of place that normal people just don't go, and certainly not for tea. Whoee.
So the rest of us wandered around a bit, talked to people, came to the conclusion that the chieftain's oldest son was a bit interested in more than the polite cattle raids in this time of stress and turmoil, and rested. Thiara asked him about the magic sword that she's somewhat worriedly carrying around. He suggested that such things are likely to be gifts from the spirits, and not using them at appropriate points could be taken as rejecting the gifts of the spirits. And while he understood the reluctance to use the thing, the spirits are not to be particularly trifled with.
My character has come to the conclusion that the dwarf spends a lot of time drawing maps. She's not sure what they're maps for, mind, but they're definitely maps. (Hey, she's a ranger. He's a wizard. She's seen books. He's literate.) He spends a lot of time drawing them on and off, on pieces of paper or on the ground with his finger. Sometimes she copies them, but usually upside down. Well, that is how she sees him drawing them.
So we hiked out to see the druids. The holy site is the sort of thing that people know about, but, y'know, it was really weird to hear someone mention it as a place for people to turn up. In any case, it's a half-circle of standing stones, and we got there, and Ren was there. Which was something making some sense.
The druids wanted a favor. Had a quest for us before we went on our quest. Apparently, they had an idea for a magical ritual that would shield the clans from some of the Darkness Spreading Across The Land (tm), and they worried that our quest might take so long that the clans would not survive, and the omens suggested that we had to do it. More trouble. They also said that time was a serious issue. The ritual required a chalice that was guarded by a spirit of cold that lived at the top of a mountain to the north, and we needed to go bargain with it to get it. (Thiara asked what sorts of things spirits wanted in trades, and got told, in essence, "That depends. Lives, strands of hair, firstborn cattle. . ." All quite reassuring.)
We took a day to prepare. They gave us supplies . . . and horses. The dwarf spent the day drawing maps of nothing on the paper; the bard spent the day discussing potion-mixing with druids; Thiara spent the day learning terrain, learning plants, discussing the politics between here and there (that's the easy part: there are orcs up on the top of a big cliff; there are halfling trader caravans that appear at random; there may be stray humans; there's a whole lotta nothin'.)
And then we headed out, periodically pausing to teach the dwarf horsemanship. Taking the loremaster's words to heart, Thiara would spend the evenings when people did their camping rituals (drawing maps or mumbling to themselves or spending time in prayer and meditation) standing off to one side practicing with the magical sword. It's larger than anything she's ever used before, it's magical, and it's still not comfortable believing that this is what's happening, but one doesn't offend the spirits. After practice, the shiny thing gets wrapped up in a blanket and put away. You paying attention, spirits? I'm not ignoring your gift!
Four days out we heard noises as we were out riding. Cresting a ridge, we saw a halfling caravan being beset by orcs. Now, Thiara knows a little about politics and the like, and figured she could probably recognize the clan markers of the orcs so's to tell whether or not they were friendly ones. She's thinking something along these lines when the dwarf kicks his horse, on the principle that this might make it go faster.
Four of the orcs peeled off from their raiding of the caravan to come at us. They shot arrows at us, with minimal success (none); we shot arrows at them, with minimal success (none). The bard, who had been talking enchanting with various druids before we left, chucked a sling-stone at the four of them. It hit and made a tremendous noise. Two of the horses spooked; one of them managed to dump his rider and run off.
The three remaining orcs charged. After a little discussion of the difficulty of managing horses in combat, Thiara and the bard dismounted and prepared for melee. (Session line: Andul hammeling?) Charge. . . charge . . . charge. The first orc charged the bard, who fights with a shortspear. His horse was very unhappy as a result. Second orc charges Thiara, who sidesteps, swings her shortsword (nice, ordinary, sane bronze shortsword that doesn't do anything unexpected), and takes him off his mount with one blow. Well. Um. Combat ensues for another round. Final score: them, three down, us, down three hit points. (Session quote: This is a first level orc. It has four hit points.)
The dwarf continues charging, having contributed a minor spell and several crossbow bolts. ('Weird mechanical contraption arrows.') The fourth orc, having caught his horse in time to see the last of his fellows go down, charges back towards the chieftain of this little band -- clanless, tribeless, just brigands, which means there are very few political repercussions to getting into a rumble with them -- expressing his concern over the situation. The orcs decide that discretion is the better part of valor and depart.
By the time everyone else gets to the caravan, the dwarf has successfully (and in the halfling language) argued his way into the center and is rapidly engaging in pleasantries with the caravan leader. This eventually devolves into dinner/a party/a massive trading session; despite Thiara's mild expectations otherwise, nobody has to trade or argue for any of the spoils from the orcs we took down -- they get presented to us, presumably as a part of the effusive largesse that also got us all tokens of the family's indebtedness (which can be traded in at any halfling franchise for a moderate-level favor). These spoils included two composite shortbows . . . which are built in such a way as to provide strength bonuses. Not only does Thiara use shortbow, but she has a strength bonus.
It's terrifically surreal to spend a lot of time in the company of garrulous extroverts whose language one only half-comprehends. (More or less literally; rather than spending my language slots on knowing single languages well, I spent them on knowing smatterings of everything I come across. Four languages, two dots.) Trade happened, storytelling happened (including a tale of the halfling legend of the World Peak, which is sort of like the Hub, apparently, being at the center of the world and all, which Edosar (the dwarf) was curious about because there's this magic book we picked up. . .).
They headed off to visit with our clans, assuring us that they'd visit Sky Thunder since it was Sky Thunder folk who helped them out, and we headed off to that mountain we were looking for. About a week and a half later, we got there, climbed it, and wandered in to look around for this spirit we were supposed to talk to.
Karas (the bard) did most of the talking when the spirit showed, muttering amusedly about "Morrrrtals." (Or, more accurately, "Debased/impure/confused entities," I think.) There was flattery and cajoling involved, and the spirit finally, after expressing amusement that we were bargaining rather than trying to steal the thing, said we could have the chalice if we'd go around to the east to see a friend of his who he hadn't talked to in some time. He was. . . concerned. We were also to not antagonise the other "morrrtals" who would lead us to this friend, for they were deemed "Less . . . sophisticated."
(I forget who it was that said, "Orcs!")
So we followed the path around to the east. In places there were handholds cut into the mountain in places too low even for the dwarf to have comfortable use of them. (There goes that 'orc' theory.) And then a swoosh of movement, and small pygmy . . . creatures of some sort . . . surrounded us with stone-tipped spears. And gibbered and chattered at us. The bard tried greeting them in about five different languages, which didn't get him far; about his third time through, when he hit dwarvish, the dwarf muttered, "They're not dwarves!" Thiara spent a lot of time pointing up in the direction of the ice elemental's cave and then down.
Eventually a leader-type turned up, and we all trooped down, surrounded by tiny pointy objects. Eventually we wound up in a semicircular valley; the flattish side had a number of cave entrances that were apparently lairs or a village or some sort, and the round side had a single triangular cave opening.
We waited. A troop of buff leader-types with bone adornments tromped out of one of the hive caves, and peeled off to reveal a really tiny little creature, completely coated in bone adornments, and also completely hysterical, as if he was attempting to make up in volume and histrionics what he lacked in height. Eventually, after poking all the party including the horses and glowering at the magical fag-end of glow-stick and chucking it back into the crowd of spectators (which scattered from the area of impact) he declared that the lot of us should go into the triangular cave.
This was somewhat stalled when he realized that the horses' eyes were at approximately the level of the top of the opening. The various creatures tried to herd the horses around by poking at them with sharp sticks; this didn't go over well with the horses. The shaman indicated that we should put the horses over there, so we did, at which point they were promptly surrounded by a horde of small humanoids with sharp sticks, arranged in a ring. Never know what those things might do.
The passageway opened up into a cave lit with a bonfire, with a sluggish, cool lava trail running in its background. The shaman fellow advanced on the bonfire -- his entourage and guard cowered back up against the wall, pointy sticks clutched in their hands -- and petitioned it most mightily.
And lo! A fire elemental appears, with a mighty shout of, "Oh, now what?!" (It's not easy being god.)
And the shaman cowered and gibbered a good bit. Finally, Karas took matters into his own hands and explained that the great spirit up on the mountain (known to this, also great, spirit) had asked us to come down and perform a service for his good friend, the great spirit in the valley, because it amused him.
Session quote: Ah! Intelligent mortals!
After much impatient rattling back and forth (Session quote: It's a flaming spirit!) it just so happened to turn out that there was a service that the fire elemental might have in mind, because it was something he couldn't handle himself; there was apparently a creature in his back caves sucking the heat out of his lava flow and otherwise blocking his plumbing, and it wanted killed. (We got a flash-image of sheets of fire being directed at a shadowy thing that just absorbed them.)
So we climbed down the tunnel into the dark, and lit a torch, and looked at what seemed to be a . . . imagine a slug without body structure. It was apparently sucking the heat out of the lava and, indeed, out of the room.
A few people fired arrows into it. In response, it oozed a little. It was pointed out to Thiara that she had a magic sword. (Terrrrrrriffffic!) She was about to advance, when the dwarf wandered over, pulled out one of his rolled-up paper maps, and made gestures at her. The map disappeared. A bit of discussion ensued as to where the map went, which eventually garnered a nod and smile, and Thiara went and hacked at the slug.
Eventually it was determined that no, the thing wasn't going to react, and its blood itched some. It also healed, but very slowly; however, hacking at it with a magical longsword did rather a lot of damage, and hacking at it with other pointy objects was also not so bad, so we cut holes in it until it fell into the lava and stank. Then we went upstairs, and the fire elemental demanded to know what had happened; we said we thought it was burning. The elemental went to check, found the deed satisfactory, and allowed as how he might have time to go visit his friend in the unpleasant cold place on top of the mountain now.
He bellowed out of the cave, and in comes the shaman scurrying. God says, "Set them free, they have done me a service. And the other things too." Shaman says, "Eep." Shaman leads everyone out, and nobody's quite sure where to aim the pointy sticks anymore . . . .
I seem to start writing these out of character and get more into character as time goes by. . .
When we ended last game session, we were entering the territory of another clan, and, due to the fact of having Ren (a druid) with us managed to get in without generating excessive amounts of argument. We talked to their loremaster -- who was the fellow we'd been sent to see -- at length about the dreams that our loremaster had. "What do you think of this?" he asked each of us. Eventually he managed to pry out of Thiara that what she thought of the situation was that we were in big trouble.
Mind, a druid wandered in in the middle of this conversation and made off with Ren. One doesn't argue with druids when they requisition party members. She also invited us to come to a major druidic site, the sort of place that normal people just don't go, and certainly not for tea. Whoee.
So the rest of us wandered around a bit, talked to people, came to the conclusion that the chieftain's oldest son was a bit interested in more than the polite cattle raids in this time of stress and turmoil, and rested. Thiara asked him about the magic sword that she's somewhat worriedly carrying around. He suggested that such things are likely to be gifts from the spirits, and not using them at appropriate points could be taken as rejecting the gifts of the spirits. And while he understood the reluctance to use the thing, the spirits are not to be particularly trifled with.
My character has come to the conclusion that the dwarf spends a lot of time drawing maps. She's not sure what they're maps for, mind, but they're definitely maps. (Hey, she's a ranger. He's a wizard. She's seen books. He's literate.) He spends a lot of time drawing them on and off, on pieces of paper or on the ground with his finger. Sometimes she copies them, but usually upside down. Well, that is how she sees him drawing them.
So we hiked out to see the druids. The holy site is the sort of thing that people know about, but, y'know, it was really weird to hear someone mention it as a place for people to turn up. In any case, it's a half-circle of standing stones, and we got there, and Ren was there. Which was something making some sense.
The druids wanted a favor. Had a quest for us before we went on our quest. Apparently, they had an idea for a magical ritual that would shield the clans from some of the Darkness Spreading Across The Land (tm), and they worried that our quest might take so long that the clans would not survive, and the omens suggested that we had to do it. More trouble. They also said that time was a serious issue. The ritual required a chalice that was guarded by a spirit of cold that lived at the top of a mountain to the north, and we needed to go bargain with it to get it. (Thiara asked what sorts of things spirits wanted in trades, and got told, in essence, "That depends. Lives, strands of hair, firstborn cattle. . ." All quite reassuring.)
We took a day to prepare. They gave us supplies . . . and horses. The dwarf spent the day drawing maps of nothing on the paper; the bard spent the day discussing potion-mixing with druids; Thiara spent the day learning terrain, learning plants, discussing the politics between here and there (that's the easy part: there are orcs up on the top of a big cliff; there are halfling trader caravans that appear at random; there may be stray humans; there's a whole lotta nothin'.)
And then we headed out, periodically pausing to teach the dwarf horsemanship. Taking the loremaster's words to heart, Thiara would spend the evenings when people did their camping rituals (drawing maps or mumbling to themselves or spending time in prayer and meditation) standing off to one side practicing with the magical sword. It's larger than anything she's ever used before, it's magical, and it's still not comfortable believing that this is what's happening, but one doesn't offend the spirits. After practice, the shiny thing gets wrapped up in a blanket and put away. You paying attention, spirits? I'm not ignoring your gift!
Four days out we heard noises as we were out riding. Cresting a ridge, we saw a halfling caravan being beset by orcs. Now, Thiara knows a little about politics and the like, and figured she could probably recognize the clan markers of the orcs so's to tell whether or not they were friendly ones. She's thinking something along these lines when the dwarf kicks his horse, on the principle that this might make it go faster.
"How'd the mage get in front again?"
(unrehearsed unison) "You tell us!"
Four of the orcs peeled off from their raiding of the caravan to come at us. They shot arrows at us, with minimal success (none); we shot arrows at them, with minimal success (none). The bard, who had been talking enchanting with various druids before we left, chucked a sling-stone at the four of them. It hit and made a tremendous noise. Two of the horses spooked; one of them managed to dump his rider and run off.
The three remaining orcs charged. After a little discussion of the difficulty of managing horses in combat, Thiara and the bard dismounted and prepared for melee. (Session line: Andul hammeling?) Charge. . . charge . . . charge. The first orc charged the bard, who fights with a shortspear. His horse was very unhappy as a result. Second orc charges Thiara, who sidesteps, swings her shortsword (nice, ordinary, sane bronze shortsword that doesn't do anything unexpected), and takes him off his mount with one blow. Well. Um. Combat ensues for another round. Final score: them, three down, us, down three hit points. (Session quote: This is a first level orc. It has four hit points.)
The dwarf continues charging, having contributed a minor spell and several crossbow bolts. ('Weird mechanical contraption arrows.') The fourth orc, having caught his horse in time to see the last of his fellows go down, charges back towards the chieftain of this little band -- clanless, tribeless, just brigands, which means there are very few political repercussions to getting into a rumble with them -- expressing his concern over the situation. The orcs decide that discretion is the better part of valor and depart.
By the time everyone else gets to the caravan, the dwarf has successfully (and in the halfling language) argued his way into the center and is rapidly engaging in pleasantries with the caravan leader. This eventually devolves into dinner/a party/a massive trading session; despite Thiara's mild expectations otherwise, nobody has to trade or argue for any of the spoils from the orcs we took down -- they get presented to us, presumably as a part of the effusive largesse that also got us all tokens of the family's indebtedness (which can be traded in at any halfling franchise for a moderate-level favor). These spoils included two composite shortbows . . . which are built in such a way as to provide strength bonuses. Not only does Thiara use shortbow, but she has a strength bonus.
It's terrifically surreal to spend a lot of time in the company of garrulous extroverts whose language one only half-comprehends. (More or less literally; rather than spending my language slots on knowing single languages well, I spent them on knowing smatterings of everything I come across. Four languages, two dots.) Trade happened, storytelling happened (including a tale of the halfling legend of the World Peak, which is sort of like the Hub, apparently, being at the center of the world and all, which Edosar (the dwarf) was curious about because there's this magic book we picked up. . .).
They headed off to visit with our clans, assuring us that they'd visit Sky Thunder since it was Sky Thunder folk who helped them out, and we headed off to that mountain we were looking for. About a week and a half later, we got there, climbed it, and wandered in to look around for this spirit we were supposed to talk to.
Karas (the bard) did most of the talking when the spirit showed, muttering amusedly about "Morrrrtals." (Or, more accurately, "Debased/impure/confused entities," I think.) There was flattery and cajoling involved, and the spirit finally, after expressing amusement that we were bargaining rather than trying to steal the thing, said we could have the chalice if we'd go around to the east to see a friend of his who he hadn't talked to in some time. He was. . . concerned. We were also to not antagonise the other "morrrtals" who would lead us to this friend, for they were deemed "Less . . . sophisticated."
(I forget who it was that said, "Orcs!")
So we followed the path around to the east. In places there were handholds cut into the mountain in places too low even for the dwarf to have comfortable use of them. (There goes that 'orc' theory.) And then a swoosh of movement, and small pygmy . . . creatures of some sort . . . surrounded us with stone-tipped spears. And gibbered and chattered at us. The bard tried greeting them in about five different languages, which didn't get him far; about his third time through, when he hit dwarvish, the dwarf muttered, "They're not dwarves!" Thiara spent a lot of time pointing up in the direction of the ice elemental's cave and then down.
Eventually a leader-type turned up, and we all trooped down, surrounded by tiny pointy objects. Eventually we wound up in a semicircular valley; the flattish side had a number of cave entrances that were apparently lairs or a village or some sort, and the round side had a single triangular cave opening.
We waited. A troop of buff leader-types with bone adornments tromped out of one of the hive caves, and peeled off to reveal a really tiny little creature, completely coated in bone adornments, and also completely hysterical, as if he was attempting to make up in volume and histrionics what he lacked in height. Eventually, after poking all the party including the horses and glowering at the magical fag-end of glow-stick and chucking it back into the crowd of spectators (which scattered from the area of impact) he declared that the lot of us should go into the triangular cave.
This was somewhat stalled when he realized that the horses' eyes were at approximately the level of the top of the opening. The various creatures tried to herd the horses around by poking at them with sharp sticks; this didn't go over well with the horses. The shaman indicated that we should put the horses over there, so we did, at which point they were promptly surrounded by a horde of small humanoids with sharp sticks, arranged in a ring. Never know what those things might do.
The passageway opened up into a cave lit with a bonfire, with a sluggish, cool lava trail running in its background. The shaman fellow advanced on the bonfire -- his entourage and guard cowered back up against the wall, pointy sticks clutched in their hands -- and petitioned it most mightily.
And lo! A fire elemental appears, with a mighty shout of, "Oh, now what?!" (It's not easy being god.)
And the shaman cowered and gibbered a good bit. Finally, Karas took matters into his own hands and explained that the great spirit up on the mountain (known to this, also great, spirit) had asked us to come down and perform a service for his good friend, the great spirit in the valley, because it amused him.
Session quote: Ah! Intelligent mortals!
After much impatient rattling back and forth (Session quote: It's a flaming spirit!) it just so happened to turn out that there was a service that the fire elemental might have in mind, because it was something he couldn't handle himself; there was apparently a creature in his back caves sucking the heat out of his lava flow and otherwise blocking his plumbing, and it wanted killed. (We got a flash-image of sheets of fire being directed at a shadowy thing that just absorbed them.)
So we climbed down the tunnel into the dark, and lit a torch, and looked at what seemed to be a . . . imagine a slug without body structure. It was apparently sucking the heat out of the lava and, indeed, out of the room.
A few people fired arrows into it. In response, it oozed a little. It was pointed out to Thiara that she had a magic sword. (Terrrrrrriffffic!) She was about to advance, when the dwarf wandered over, pulled out one of his rolled-up paper maps, and made gestures at her. The map disappeared. A bit of discussion ensued as to where the map went, which eventually garnered a nod and smile, and Thiara went and hacked at the slug.
Eventually it was determined that no, the thing wasn't going to react, and its blood itched some. It also healed, but very slowly; however, hacking at it with a magical longsword did rather a lot of damage, and hacking at it with other pointy objects was also not so bad, so we cut holes in it until it fell into the lava and stank. Then we went upstairs, and the fire elemental demanded to know what had happened; we said we thought it was burning. The elemental went to check, found the deed satisfactory, and allowed as how he might have time to go visit his friend in the unpleasant cold place on top of the mountain now.
He bellowed out of the cave, and in comes the shaman scurrying. God says, "Set them free, they have done me a service. And the other things too." Shaman says, "Eep." Shaman leads everyone out, and nobody's quite sure where to aim the pointy sticks anymore . . . .
I seem to start writing these out of character and get more into character as time goes by. . .
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