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teinedreugan and I went to keshwyn and jikharra's house for our irregular game of D&D, and thus did we play D&D, and it was good.
And thus we have. . .
When I stopped writing before, we'd gotten to Lord Kynnan's house, and he was having a party. He seemed to have a lot of party. And there were people wandering around the edges of the party doing business. Which was much better than the last barony, where people wandered around the edges of the business pretending to enjoy themselves.
There was an old man standing along the wall one side, and I went over to talk to him. He had tattoos, like the two men in the last barony, and he was old enough to have had a dream of us if there were dreams of us here. And if dreams come to old men who are advisors to people. As opposed to coming some other way.
He talked to me a little. He talked to Adosar too. I think he thinks the chief here is a little silly, but he seemed to respect him anyway. He was surprised we'd come from over the mountains, since he hadn't heard of anyone but halflings who did, but at least he didn't think that we were bogeymen or something like the last people. He and Adosar got to talking a lot about magic, about this man's life, how the powers came to him and people were scared until they stopped being scared because they got used to it, I guess. He didn't know much about all the meaning of magic, and such, he said he's not a scholar. But Adosar is a scholar. (Session quote: He's a scholar. I just like to know things.) He didn't seem to want to talk much, so after asking him about the weather a bit I thanked him for his time and went to talk to halflings.
Halflings talked a lot more. They told me that the travelling was getting rougher. Renn and Karas heard that there were animals attacking people and caravans and such. Renn said the chief said we could stay in his house, which was nice of him. After a while, there was dinner. The chief was sitting with a halfling and joking like old, old friends. He had us sitting up at the chief-table, instead of the everyone-else table.
We were having dinner, and someone came in the door. He looked tired. Karas got someone to get him water for tea, the sort of tea that makes you feel better when you're really, really tired. He said an animal had attacked a village, and he ran all the way here to get the chief's help. (This whole spreading all your people around on a big piece of land means chiefing takes a lot more running around, I think.) He said that the thing that attacked was taller than some of the houses, and had fur and a beak and feathers, but he didn't remember how many legs it had or anything. Even with that, Renn and Karas both knew what it was. Karas was telling us bits of stories where people had run across things like that, and Renn said it was called an owlbear, and that they were solitary mostly except some had mates, and that they ate anything that wouldn't run away fast enough. When they talked about them, I remembered them a little.
I don't like them. They're just . . . they're the sorts of things that are wrong things. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
We told the chief we'd be willing to help deal with it, and so he got us up really early in the morning. Renn went off to meditate with Hethian while everyone was getting ready to go, and we all got ready to go. The chief had spare horses so we could get there faster, but even then we got there after dark. I didn't see anything obvious to start with. Aside from the buildings that got knocked down, that is. They told us there were two people dead -- one got carried off -- and a bunch of hurt people. I helped people patch them up, and looked at the wounds. Whatever it was, it was strong and had claws. Really strong. So I knew that much.
We spent the night there, and then we went out looking for tracks. I found them. The guards agreed that I'd found them. So we went following them. They were going more or less straight, though we started out going northeast and wound up going east instead, eventually, as we got to a hilly bit -- these are very flat lands here. Good ork country, but there aren't any orks here. I sort of miss orks. I only met them occasionally back at home, and like half of those I got into a fight with, but it's so strange to see all this huge country and realise that the people here in the middle of perfect ork country think they're legends. Like elves. More on that later.
Anyway, we wandered into the hills, and I saw a cave, so I went back and pointed it out to people. When we got close enough, we left one of the men with the horses and started going forward.
Karas had gotten a chunk of meat from the kitchens before we left, and he and I and Adosar had put poisons and stuff in it, in the hopes that the owlbear would eat it and fall over and make everything much easier. It was in a bag. Renn took the bag with her on Hethian, and he slipped around the side near the cave, because he's really, really quiet. And then she chucked the bag down in front of the cave, and we hid behind trees, and nothing happened. I saw that the ground in front of the cave was marked up, but I didn't know if it was going-out marked up or coming-in marked up.
After a little bit, Karas said he knew how to see if there was anyone home.
So he took out one of his little magic rocks that make a thunderclap when they hit, and sneaked up towards the cave, and threw it in. And it rattled down the throat of the cave, and then it went BANG (only sort of weird and echoey, because it was down there), and something roared and came charging out. At which point everyone else shot it full of arrows.
It kept coming, though, and it hit one of the guards and he just fell down. And I kept shooting it and Renn kept shooting it, and Adosar shouted that there was another one, so we got a one with a mate I guess, and then Renn shot it right in the back of the head and it just tipped over and I pulled that shiny sword and went to help Karas deal with the other one so it wouldn't knock him over like the ogre did. And we hit that one a lot, and I guess Renn healed the other one because he was sort of woozy but up by the time we were done, and the chief killed the other one, which was a proper chiefy thing to do.
And we went into the cave to make sure that was everything, and there were three eggs, and I asked Adosar if there was anything we could do with eggs, and he said, well, we could raise them when they hatch, except they're still crazy and eat anything except maybe the one person that teaches them, and that's just too much trouble. And we let the chief make a decision, and then we smashed them when he said he didn't want crazy animals guarding his house.
We took what was left of the body we found in the cave back to the village that had been attacked, and the chief presided over the funeral.
Then we went back to the chief's house, taking our time about it more, and got there the next day since we'd only started after food. And the chief wanted to talk with us now that we were all friends because we helped kill the owlbears and kept his warrior from dying and all, so we went into his private rooms to talk.
And it got suddenly very cold. Renn and Karas were all right, and Renn flipped up and over in a rolling jump to hit one of them, and Karas stuck it too and started a war chant, and it was like I couldn't move, I could just watch as one of them kept hitting Adosar and hitting him, and he was all frozen up too, and so was the chief. And then one of the times it hit Adosar he sort of shook out of it, and he turned and made a gesture like he does when he's shooting flames from his fingertips, except that he shot light. And they didn't like that. I don't think Karas liked it either, it went through him. (Session quote: It's somewhat disturbing to have a beam of light come out of your chest!)
But Karas's chant helped me stop being scared of these things, and I went and hit one with the shiny sword, and it was like lightning ran along it, chasing lights, something, and I hit the shadow-thing, and it went bam and it was just gone. As I said at the time, I don't think the sword likes those things.
I told Adosar the sword had done something funny. Well, he'd asked me to tell him when it did strange things. He had!
The chief wanted to know what those things were. Someone came in to see if he was all right, and he got shooed off, and I told him that they were the things from under the table. He said they didn't have a table in this room, and Adosar said that that wasn't very helpful. But that was what they were. Only these weren't starvy ones like the wolves, these were all healthy. And the chief wanted to know what else we hadn't told him, so we told him a lot more, and he sent a man to go fetch a bard to tell him stories, and then he chased the bard out again.
Adosar thinks the shadows are coming for us. Or following the sword or something. But he remembered the bits of the dream where there was the shadowy hand grabbing at us and missing and grabbing and missing. I didn't.
When the chief chased us out too so he could sit and brood, we went and found the steward and asked him if he could give us one big room. Because if more shadow-things come for us, we want to be together. When we got the bigger room, I checked under the bed. We kept watches, too.
We spent time there, even afterwards. Adosar worked in the forges and stuff, and I went and gathered herbs and things to trade for pieces of metal. Adosar also made me a new shortsword out of steel, and two new daggers. I also traded two of my old daggers for pieces of metal, but I didn't trade the shortsword. That's clan property, and I'll bring it home so someone else can use it if I can. Daggers are . . . hard to do sometimes, but not anywhere near as hard. So it's okay that I traded those.
We went to Wave's Rest with a caravan. It took a while, but they seemed happy to have us, and it was a pleasant trip. Wave's Rest is busy. There were lots of caravans there because of the wintering-over, and shops and places full of people. We got directed to an inn, and had some very good food and Renn talked to the bard about things and we went upstairs. She said the bard said that there was an elf fortress in the forest across the river, but that nobody knew anything about elves, and he went on about the bogeyman stories and stuff.
The next day, everyone went and did different things. I'm not really sure what anyone else did, but I think that Adosar went to the forge where there was a dwarf smith, and maybe to the dwarf bar across town. And Karas probably went looking for a girl. I went to talk to the caravans around the town, and ask them about the land, and travelling, and elves, and orks, and maybe even World Peak.
They told me about the land to the east, plains and hills and rivers, which is all ork country but full of hobgoblins. Hobgoblins are apparently sort of like orks only less friendly. I don't know if they ride, though. (Ork horses are still better than the ones on this side of the mountains. Not better than Hethian, but Hethian isn't a horse anyway.) They told me where there was another halfling town, which was way and away to the southeast on the border of something they called "ocean", which is like a lake only a lot more. They mentioned the ruined city that Renn was asking people about, and they told me about the way to World Peak.
The mountain is a long way away. And all the space between here and there is full of hobgoblins. The hobgoblins used to stay further north, but they've been coming south lately, so the caravans have been going southeast rather than east, even.
They trade with elves sometimes, but the ones in the mountains to the west, not so much the ones here. The ones in the forest right here are pretty reclusive. (Session quote: Are there elves in them thar hills?) They said that it was a city, not a fortress, but they agreed with the bard that these elves were guarding something. But not friendly. They used to come to the town to trade, but that was hundreds of years ago, which doesn't help much now. (Session quote: "The elf is . . . out . . . . Back at . . . *big hand-little hand illustrative gesture*") And there have been funny and dangerous animals in the forest here, but only the last few years. Beasts. The world is bleeding out here too. On our side, the air shows it; here it's the earth. I wonder if it shows that way because the Breveddi pay attention to the cycles of the earth, and the people here and their agriculture pay attention to the cycles of the air. So the bleeding wound shows where people aren't looking. Nobody says anything about there being sickness in the water anywhere. . . .
So there's the forest right to the northeast of here. And I want to look at the edges, to see what sort of beasts are coming out of it. Adosar and Karas were wondering if what they were guarding got loose or went missing or something, and Renn was wondering if they were under siege. We'd sort of decided not to go in, but I do want to see what's in there. So we'll go upriver a little and cross so as not to be stuck between them, but we'll look. The mountain is northeast of here, and this ruined Alar city is a little norther than our straightest way, but I guess we can go there if we want to. Or look at it. Karas doesn't want to go there, because it's Alar, and Adosar thought that was really funny since we're going to the place of the final Alar battle where nobody's lived (except maybe hobgoblins) since the whole place got trampled at the end of the God War. Karas said sure, but he wants to minimize his exposure to Alar-ness. (Session quote: What, you think it's going to give you a rash?")
But that's what we decided, and we went up to sleep, and then we heard yelling, and looked outside, and there was fire. And Karas and Renn and I started getting on our armour, and Adosar ran downstairs to see what it was, and he shouted, "Hobgoblins!" up just as Karas (who was looking out the window) said "Raiders!" and I went downstairs with just the shiny sword and my armour mostly on and Adosar waved his hands at me and made a sparkly around me and ran outside. After a moment he waved at me to not do something and walked forward, so I came out and hit the one who might have stabbed him in the back when he made a really big fan of fire over a whole bunch of the hobgoblins, bigger than I saw before ever.
Renn was shooting at them out the window, and I guess Karas was the one who made a couple of them fall asleep. They were throwing torches into the buildings and everything, and we were fighting. We had a few of them up near the inn we were staying in, and Karas jumped out the window. The hobgoblin he was trying to jump on took a step to the side, so he fell on his face instead of landing on the hobgoblin. (Session quote: Supunk!) A moment after that, Renn jumped out the window, but she landed and hit one instead. Karas got up -- I told him to stab one in the ankle, but he decided to stand up first. The last one tried to run away, but she hit it with a dagger she threw. We had one of the sleeping ones -- Adosar baked the other one with his really big fire -- and we'll ask it questions later. The authorities had a bucket brigade going and everything, and thanked us for our help, and said we could deal with the hobgoblin however we wanted.
Adosar said, "They say the hobgoblins are coming south."
Uh-huh.
teinedreugan and I went to keshwyn and jikharra's house for our irregular game of D&D, and thus did we play D&D, and it was good.And thus we have. . .
When I stopped writing before, we'd gotten to Lord Kynnan's house, and he was having a party. He seemed to have a lot of party. And there were people wandering around the edges of the party doing business. Which was much better than the last barony, where people wandered around the edges of the business pretending to enjoy themselves.
There was an old man standing along the wall one side, and I went over to talk to him. He had tattoos, like the two men in the last barony, and he was old enough to have had a dream of us if there were dreams of us here. And if dreams come to old men who are advisors to people. As opposed to coming some other way.
He talked to me a little. He talked to Adosar too. I think he thinks the chief here is a little silly, but he seemed to respect him anyway. He was surprised we'd come from over the mountains, since he hadn't heard of anyone but halflings who did, but at least he didn't think that we were bogeymen or something like the last people. He and Adosar got to talking a lot about magic, about this man's life, how the powers came to him and people were scared until they stopped being scared because they got used to it, I guess. He didn't know much about all the meaning of magic, and such, he said he's not a scholar. But Adosar is a scholar. (Session quote: He's a scholar. I just like to know things.) He didn't seem to want to talk much, so after asking him about the weather a bit I thanked him for his time and went to talk to halflings.
Halflings talked a lot more. They told me that the travelling was getting rougher. Renn and Karas heard that there were animals attacking people and caravans and such. Renn said the chief said we could stay in his house, which was nice of him. After a while, there was dinner. The chief was sitting with a halfling and joking like old, old friends. He had us sitting up at the chief-table, instead of the everyone-else table.
We were having dinner, and someone came in the door. He looked tired. Karas got someone to get him water for tea, the sort of tea that makes you feel better when you're really, really tired. He said an animal had attacked a village, and he ran all the way here to get the chief's help. (This whole spreading all your people around on a big piece of land means chiefing takes a lot more running around, I think.) He said that the thing that attacked was taller than some of the houses, and had fur and a beak and feathers, but he didn't remember how many legs it had or anything. Even with that, Renn and Karas both knew what it was. Karas was telling us bits of stories where people had run across things like that, and Renn said it was called an owlbear, and that they were solitary mostly except some had mates, and that they ate anything that wouldn't run away fast enough. When they talked about them, I remembered them a little.
I don't like them. They're just . . . they're the sorts of things that are wrong things. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
We told the chief we'd be willing to help deal with it, and so he got us up really early in the morning. Renn went off to meditate with Hethian while everyone was getting ready to go, and we all got ready to go. The chief had spare horses so we could get there faster, but even then we got there after dark. I didn't see anything obvious to start with. Aside from the buildings that got knocked down, that is. They told us there were two people dead -- one got carried off -- and a bunch of hurt people. I helped people patch them up, and looked at the wounds. Whatever it was, it was strong and had claws. Really strong. So I knew that much.
We spent the night there, and then we went out looking for tracks. I found them. The guards agreed that I'd found them. So we went following them. They were going more or less straight, though we started out going northeast and wound up going east instead, eventually, as we got to a hilly bit -- these are very flat lands here. Good ork country, but there aren't any orks here. I sort of miss orks. I only met them occasionally back at home, and like half of those I got into a fight with, but it's so strange to see all this huge country and realise that the people here in the middle of perfect ork country think they're legends. Like elves. More on that later.
Anyway, we wandered into the hills, and I saw a cave, so I went back and pointed it out to people. When we got close enough, we left one of the men with the horses and started going forward.
Karas had gotten a chunk of meat from the kitchens before we left, and he and I and Adosar had put poisons and stuff in it, in the hopes that the owlbear would eat it and fall over and make everything much easier. It was in a bag. Renn took the bag with her on Hethian, and he slipped around the side near the cave, because he's really, really quiet. And then she chucked the bag down in front of the cave, and we hid behind trees, and nothing happened. I saw that the ground in front of the cave was marked up, but I didn't know if it was going-out marked up or coming-in marked up.
After a little bit, Karas said he knew how to see if there was anyone home.
"I know a way to see if it's in there, in a moment."
"What, throw in an exploding rock, go boom?"
"Why yes."
So he took out one of his little magic rocks that make a thunderclap when they hit, and sneaked up towards the cave, and threw it in. And it rattled down the throat of the cave, and then it went BANG (only sort of weird and echoey, because it was down there), and something roared and came charging out. At which point everyone else shot it full of arrows.
It kept coming, though, and it hit one of the guards and he just fell down. And I kept shooting it and Renn kept shooting it, and Adosar shouted that there was another one, so we got a one with a mate I guess, and then Renn shot it right in the back of the head and it just tipped over and I pulled that shiny sword and went to help Karas deal with the other one so it wouldn't knock him over like the ogre did. And we hit that one a lot, and I guess Renn healed the other one because he was sort of woozy but up by the time we were done, and the chief killed the other one, which was a proper chiefy thing to do.
And we went into the cave to make sure that was everything, and there were three eggs, and I asked Adosar if there was anything we could do with eggs, and he said, well, we could raise them when they hatch, except they're still crazy and eat anything except maybe the one person that teaches them, and that's just too much trouble. And we let the chief make a decision, and then we smashed them when he said he didn't want crazy animals guarding his house.
We took what was left of the body we found in the cave back to the village that had been attacked, and the chief presided over the funeral.
Then we went back to the chief's house, taking our time about it more, and got there the next day since we'd only started after food. And the chief wanted to talk with us now that we were all friends because we helped kill the owlbears and kept his warrior from dying and all, so we went into his private rooms to talk.
And it got suddenly very cold. Renn and Karas were all right, and Renn flipped up and over in a rolling jump to hit one of them, and Karas stuck it too and started a war chant, and it was like I couldn't move, I could just watch as one of them kept hitting Adosar and hitting him, and he was all frozen up too, and so was the chief. And then one of the times it hit Adosar he sort of shook out of it, and he turned and made a gesture like he does when he's shooting flames from his fingertips, except that he shot light. And they didn't like that. I don't think Karas liked it either, it went through him. (Session quote: It's somewhat disturbing to have a beam of light come out of your chest!)
But Karas's chant helped me stop being scared of these things, and I went and hit one with the shiny sword, and it was like lightning ran along it, chasing lights, something, and I hit the shadow-thing, and it went bam and it was just gone. As I said at the time, I don't think the sword likes those things.
I told Adosar the sword had done something funny. Well, he'd asked me to tell him when it did strange things. He had!
The chief wanted to know what those things were. Someone came in to see if he was all right, and he got shooed off, and I told him that they were the things from under the table. He said they didn't have a table in this room, and Adosar said that that wasn't very helpful. But that was what they were. Only these weren't starvy ones like the wolves, these were all healthy. And the chief wanted to know what else we hadn't told him, so we told him a lot more, and he sent a man to go fetch a bard to tell him stories, and then he chased the bard out again.
Adosar thinks the shadows are coming for us. Or following the sword or something. But he remembered the bits of the dream where there was the shadowy hand grabbing at us and missing and grabbing and missing. I didn't.
"Or are they following that sword? They're probably not following that sword. That would be--"
"Stupid."
"Like moths to a flame."
"Stupid."
When the chief chased us out too so he could sit and brood, we went and found the steward and asked him if he could give us one big room. Because if more shadow-things come for us, we want to be together. When we got the bigger room, I checked under the bed. We kept watches, too.
We spent time there, even afterwards. Adosar worked in the forges and stuff, and I went and gathered herbs and things to trade for pieces of metal. Adosar also made me a new shortsword out of steel, and two new daggers. I also traded two of my old daggers for pieces of metal, but I didn't trade the shortsword. That's clan property, and I'll bring it home so someone else can use it if I can. Daggers are . . . hard to do sometimes, but not anywhere near as hard. So it's okay that I traded those.
We went to Wave's Rest with a caravan. It took a while, but they seemed happy to have us, and it was a pleasant trip. Wave's Rest is busy. There were lots of caravans there because of the wintering-over, and shops and places full of people. We got directed to an inn, and had some very good food and Renn talked to the bard about things and we went upstairs. She said the bard said that there was an elf fortress in the forest across the river, but that nobody knew anything about elves, and he went on about the bogeyman stories and stuff.
The next day, everyone went and did different things. I'm not really sure what anyone else did, but I think that Adosar went to the forge where there was a dwarf smith, and maybe to the dwarf bar across town. And Karas probably went looking for a girl. I went to talk to the caravans around the town, and ask them about the land, and travelling, and elves, and orks, and maybe even World Peak.
They told me about the land to the east, plains and hills and rivers, which is all ork country but full of hobgoblins. Hobgoblins are apparently sort of like orks only less friendly. I don't know if they ride, though. (Ork horses are still better than the ones on this side of the mountains. Not better than Hethian, but Hethian isn't a horse anyway.) They told me where there was another halfling town, which was way and away to the southeast on the border of something they called "ocean", which is like a lake only a lot more. They mentioned the ruined city that Renn was asking people about, and they told me about the way to World Peak.
The mountain is a long way away. And all the space between here and there is full of hobgoblins. The hobgoblins used to stay further north, but they've been coming south lately, so the caravans have been going southeast rather than east, even.
They trade with elves sometimes, but the ones in the mountains to the west, not so much the ones here. The ones in the forest right here are pretty reclusive. (Session quote: Are there elves in them thar hills?) They said that it was a city, not a fortress, but they agreed with the bard that these elves were guarding something. But not friendly. They used to come to the town to trade, but that was hundreds of years ago, which doesn't help much now. (Session quote: "The elf is . . . out . . . . Back at . . . *big hand-little hand illustrative gesture*") And there have been funny and dangerous animals in the forest here, but only the last few years. Beasts. The world is bleeding out here too. On our side, the air shows it; here it's the earth. I wonder if it shows that way because the Breveddi pay attention to the cycles of the earth, and the people here and their agriculture pay attention to the cycles of the air. So the bleeding wound shows where people aren't looking. Nobody says anything about there being sickness in the water anywhere. . . .
So there's the forest right to the northeast of here. And I want to look at the edges, to see what sort of beasts are coming out of it. Adosar and Karas were wondering if what they were guarding got loose or went missing or something, and Renn was wondering if they were under siege. We'd sort of decided not to go in, but I do want to see what's in there. So we'll go upriver a little and cross so as not to be stuck between them, but we'll look. The mountain is northeast of here, and this ruined Alar city is a little norther than our straightest way, but I guess we can go there if we want to. Or look at it. Karas doesn't want to go there, because it's Alar, and Adosar thought that was really funny since we're going to the place of the final Alar battle where nobody's lived (except maybe hobgoblins) since the whole place got trampled at the end of the God War. Karas said sure, but he wants to minimize his exposure to Alar-ness. (Session quote: What, you think it's going to give you a rash?")
But that's what we decided, and we went up to sleep, and then we heard yelling, and looked outside, and there was fire. And Karas and Renn and I started getting on our armour, and Adosar ran downstairs to see what it was, and he shouted, "Hobgoblins!" up just as Karas (who was looking out the window) said "Raiders!" and I went downstairs with just the shiny sword and my armour mostly on and Adosar waved his hands at me and made a sparkly around me and ran outside. After a moment he waved at me to not do something and walked forward, so I came out and hit the one who might have stabbed him in the back when he made a really big fan of fire over a whole bunch of the hobgoblins, bigger than I saw before ever.
Renn was shooting at them out the window, and I guess Karas was the one who made a couple of them fall asleep. They were throwing torches into the buildings and everything, and we were fighting. We had a few of them up near the inn we were staying in, and Karas jumped out the window. The hobgoblin he was trying to jump on took a step to the side, so he fell on his face instead of landing on the hobgoblin. (Session quote: Supunk!) A moment after that, Renn jumped out the window, but she landed and hit one instead. Karas got up -- I told him to stab one in the ankle, but he decided to stand up first. The last one tried to run away, but she hit it with a dagger she threw. We had one of the sleeping ones -- Adosar baked the other one with his really big fire -- and we'll ask it questions later. The authorities had a bucket brigade going and everything, and thanked us for our help, and said we could deal with the hobgoblin however we wanted.
Adosar said, "They say the hobgoblins are coming south."
Uh-huh.
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I'm glad you're still having fun with it.
naiad
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Does he plot and scheme within your hearing, so you get the appreciation of seeing how things actually played?