Iron Gauntlets
Sanctuary Ruin
Introduction
I ran across the two-and-a-half Felewin and Ninefingers adventures that I had played/written long long ago. I have no idea what I was intending with the third, so I’m going to toss it out, and I’ve re-read the Iron Gauntlets rules, and it turns out I did lots of stuff wrong. So we begin with rewritten characters and use the adventure “Sanctuary Ruin” (written for OSRIC). I happen to have a copy of OSRIC sitting around, so I can refer to it if I need to (and I did, for rot grubs and cockatrices and a few other things). I might be modifying the adventure as we go, because we’re trying to bash it into something similar to the Amherst setting of the first two adventures.
The adventure “The Sanctuary Ruin” is published by Ludibrium Games and is by Eric Jones. It is apparently the first of a set.
Edit to add: It is, and I have run the second of the three for myself. The second adventure, “Ironwood,” comes to about 50,000 words of actual play, and I’m not quite sure what I want to do with it. Partway through it, I changed to the newer Precis Intermedia game Iron & Gold and it isn’t polished enough to put it on some fan-fiction site. Probably I will break it into chunks and post them here. (Don’t worry: I will cleary label it as solo AP so you can avoid it or find it if desired.)
House rules and changes:
- House rule: Humanoids with the Undersized gimmick are also slow-stepped if I’m rolling dice for distances, or 2/3 the distances on the chart -1D for running distances, or if I’m using Automatic movement, 2/3 the distances on the chart 37. In the same way, characters who are Oversized are also +1D for distances, or 5/4 the distances on the chart. I doubt it will com up because I tend to use Autmatic Movement.
- Languages: I handle languages differently. Everyone learns a few words of the common tongue (though they might forget it, like many of the goblins here), but by default they speak their own tongue, and those tongues have dialects. With the "Multilingual" gimmick, a character can be fluent in multiple tongues to start, but it affects only how well and fast you learn languages. Someone without Multilingual will still learn some orc while being held as prisoner; someone with multilingual will learn it fast and well. And, in fact, language differences are a thread through this adventure.
- Because I kept getting confused, the character “Fengis” in the adventure is re-named “Vengis.”
- Where Dire Wolves are mentined, we're using Fury Dogs instead. They're written up in Iron Gauntlets
- Last time I started at CF 7. I’m going to go for the middle, and CF 6. A scene will be guided by my high school English classes: Change of characters or place or time. Unity of action might not be preserved; we’ve got two main PCs.
- We’ll keep both Character and Thread Lists. How useful will they be? I dunno.
- I’m going to roll scene setups from Mythic but they’ll deal with the non-monster part of the scenario. For instance, a scene in an inn at the beginning has one monster thing that must happen, a bit of information that has to be there, but the rest is blank. The scene setups will deal with that which is unspecified. If I can’t figure out a way to make the scene setup apply, I’ll roll a new one.
- The module has some problems with distance, or distances that are unworkable for me. (I know, fantasy and I’m kvetching about distances.) The assumption of the module is that the PCs will use the inn as home base and make several ventures into the sanctuary ruin. However, the wayshrine is said to be “a day’s march.” Historically that would be between 10 and 20 miles; the sanctuary ruin is 15 miles beyond that. That’s two days of marching, even for characters on foot who aren’t worried about the logistics of an army. Because the road is not a fine Roman road, I have changed things so the wayshrine is about 10 miles and the ruin another 5. In other words, people walking quickly might make it to the ruins in a day, but an armed force couldn’t.
- I've invented the following gimmicks: Ferrovore (ability to sense iron and need for it) and Burrowing (digging ability).
- As usual for me, the PCs start with a goal in mind but that might or might not have anything to do with the actual adventure. They’ll start with full luck, because I never noted when I was using luck or not.
Sanctuary Ruin (Actual Play)
The Trail
Oppress Hope (NPC Action CF 6)
The world was poised between spring and summer on this wet day, where the temperature was just low enough that the humidity wasn’t terrible. Felewin was trudging but Ninefingers had to take two steps for every one of Felewin’s.
“At this rate, we’ll never get to the Bleak Tower,” Ninefingers interrupted. “Which is okay by me. They kill goblins there.”
“Goblins, sure, but,” and Felewin held up a finger, “primus, beyond the Black Marches are orcs.”
“And? I was told they kill orcs here.”
“Secundus, your brother was taken by slavers. Tertius, who enslaves goblins? Orcs.”
“So you think he is with orcs? Felewin, you know who else enslaves goblins? Hobgoblins. And other goblins. All those interbred animals are awful.”
Felewin looked at him curiously. “But you’re a goblin.”
“No, I’m an Aprak,” replied Ninefingers. “We don’t breed with non-Apraks.”
“But orcs do?”
“They do. With goblins and hobgoblins and with humans if the stories about orclins are true. It makes me sick. They all do it to each other. By now, the only difference between them is size.”
“I hadn’t realized they were so...” He didn’t have the right word for it. “Catholic in their tastes.”
“They’re animals,” said Ninefingers. “As far as I’m concerned, you could kill’em all. Except. Except that here in the north you don’t check to see if it’s an Aprak you’re killing.” He stopped. “Thought you said it was still hours to the Bleak Tower.”[1]
Felewin looked at the position of the sun. “Less now. Why?”
Ninefingers pointed. “Smoke.”
There was a plume of smoke curling into the sky, much less than an hour away. “Can’t be human settlers. This area is too dangerous,” said Felewin. “Here’s a dagger. Put on your cuirass and we’ll see what it is.”
“We have to go back if it’s a forest fire. Don’t we?”
Felewin didn’t answer. Ninefingers sighed.
They moved cautiously ahead until they came to a bend in the road. Ninefingers said, “Wait here,” and disappeared into the forest on one side of the road[2]. He came back in minutes. “Inbred animals,” he said. “Non-Aprak goblins, maybe as many as I have fingers. They ambushed somebody in a cart. Some of them are trying to roast the mule.”
“And the traveler?”
“Dead dwarf on the side of the road. Didn’t see anyone else.”
“Or not.” Felewin looked at his quiver. He had twenty arrows but there was no way he could fell all of the goblins; this was a hunting bow. You shot something and then ran it to death. Maybe with a war bow like his father’s... “I can’t shoot all of them and you’re no archer.”
“You don’t have to kill them,” said Ninefingers. “At least not yet. Let me talk to them.”
There was a chance that Ninefingers was going to betray him, but he owed Felewin his life, and he hadn’t sounded approving of regular goblins. “But you said they’re like animals,” Felewin said.
“Figure of speech.”
“Then try.”
Ninefingers took off his owl-feather earrings. “They’re an Aprak thing,” he explained. “Listen for the usual signals.” After Felewin nodded, Ninefingers disappeared around the bend.[3]
Felewin waited, arrow in hand, for a long time: time enough to be tired from the waiting and the tension. No signals. Finally, a mourning nuthatch — a southern bird — called twice. Felewin relaxed somewhat and waited some more. Finally, Ninefingers appeared at the side of the road.
“Took a while to lose them. Showed up all running and out of breath, and I convinced them that there was a squad of human militia coming up the road. Enough that you’d use all your fingers and toes counting them and there’d still be people uncounted.”
“And that worked?”
“They took the booty they could carry easily and took off. Invited me to go with them, and it took me a bit to lose them.”
“Let’s go put out that fire.”
In fact, the rain had already done that. The cart was useless for carrying things. One wheel had been burned first, so the cart leaned to one side.
Felewin checked the body of the dwarf driver; the poor dwarf had so many arrows in him that he looked like a bush. Dead. In the middle of the road was an abandoned chest..
“Do we bury the driver or carry his corpse to the Bleak Tower? What are dwarven burial rites?”
“Depends on the clan,” said Ninefingers. “Usually crypts deep in a mountain. Decoration depends on status. City dwarves I dunno.”
“We’ll try taking him to the tower. Maybe they have a dwarf who’ll know what to do.”
Ninefingers said thoughtfully, “Dwarf will be heavy. You’re strong but I don’t know if you’re that strong.”
“We’ll use a travois,” said Felewin.
“I’ve never even heard of a travois.” Felewin briefly explained one. Ninefingers asked, “What about the chest?”
Felewin looked at the chest dubiously. “Depends on what’s in there. If it’s heavy, we leave it. If it’s light, we take it.”
“The goblins got it off the cart.”
“There were nine of them, you said. I’m one person.” Felewin touched the chest with his foot, tried to push it. It didn’t budge. “Heavy.”
“Give me a moment,” Ninefingers said. “Let’s see what’s in it.”
“It’s not ours,” said Felewin.
“We’re trying to figure out if we can move it,” Ninefingers said. He tested the lid.
It opened easily.
Inside was a halfling. “Don’t hurt me!” The halfling pushed himself to one side of the chest in a futile attempt to get away from Ninefingers.
“He’s with me,” said Felewin. “You’re safe, now.” Felewin offered him a hand in getting out of the chest.
Ninefingers could smell the distaste, so he stayed silent and moved behind Felewin.
“What’s your name?”
The halfling got several lead shots from inside the chest. He was as lean as halflings got, but his clothes were of good quality, though mended.
“Dopkin. I’m heading up to the Bleak Tower to the inn. They want an agent for purchasing.”
“That...sounds exciting.”
“It is!” the halfling insisted. “You get to see lots of stuff you could never afford! And you can afford breakfast and second breakfast and lunch and tea and supper!”
“Well, as it happens, we’re headed for the Bleak Tower as well. We’ll walk with you. Sorry you lost your stuff.”
“Me too,” said Dopkin. “They’ll want that grain. That’s what was in the chest. The goblins pulled it out.”
There was a sudden squawking, and Dopkin started. Ravens had discovered the dead mule.
“Bolt of cloth, too. Looked like fine quality,” said Ninefingers.
“Silk. For the Margrave.”
“There was nothing else?” asked Ninefingers.
“We were coming two weeks before Theadun’s regular trip, he was the driver, on account of me. There wasn’t much. Barley for the inn, and the cloth.”
“Huh,” said Ninefingers.
“Barley’s good,” said Dopkin. “You can make bread and beer with barley.” He made a face. “This wasn’t the best sifted barley, though. People are short-changing Vengis. I can see why he wants an agent.”
“There’s an inn?” asked Felewin. He nearly had the bindings on the travois, using leather straps from the cart’s mule harness.
“Yes,” said Dopkin. “Only one inn. The Margrave doesn’t let people in the tower unless they work there, so the inn is outside.”
“That doesn’t sound self-sufficient to me,” said Ninefingers. “But if Theadun made the trip only once a month... No, can’t make it work. This place would be tough to get to in winter.”
They got Theadun on the travois, and then Felewin pushed the remains of the cart to the edge of the road. Dopkin and Ninefingers moved the empty chest.
In checking to see if they had got everything, they found another half-dozen silver pieces with Empire markings. “Not mine,” said Dopkin sadly. “I had Tyrrean coppers.”
“Probably left behind when the goblins hastily scarpered,” said Ninefingers.
Felewin carefully packed away his hauberk and gambeson. Then he took a deep breath and lifted the travois handles. “Let’s go.”
A Villain’s Luck
Haggle Ambush (NPC action CF 7)
Felewin was sweating after an hour of this. He had never dragged a travois before except as a child, and that had been a child’s travois. It was more difficult than he remembered. Ninefingers occasionally shooed away a bird from the corpse, but there wasn’t much to be done about the flies: though there hadn’t been many before, now it seemed to be fly season.
Dopkin seemed squeamish about them. Of course, he seemed squeamish about everything. “Not much of a traveler,” Dopkin admitted. “Glad to be in Westport and stay there. You wouldn’t happen to have food, would you?”
Felewin said, “Nothing, I’m afraid. We were hoping to get some simple work at the Tower to pay our keep, before we move on.”
This disappointed Dopkin.
They saw the tower first and then the cluster of buildings at the base. “I hope one of them is an inn,” Felewin grunted. “I could use a drink.” Dopkin started running ahead.
Felewin heard a click and saw that Ninefingers had fastened the tether between them. They hadn’t used the tether since Ninefingers had declared the life-debt, and Felewin looked curiously at the Aprak.
“For security,” said Ninefingers. “This is a goblin-hostile environment, and I’d rather that they know I’m with you.”
“What if you need to be free?”
“Pfft,” said Ninefingers. “That’s a three-ward lock. Doesn’t even use pins.”
“You can pick it?”
“Don’t need to; I have a skeleton key. But it’s very pickable. A bit of wire and some time.”
Felewin nodded and straightened up. Dopkin had not heard.
The innkeeper came out, a stout red-faced man as round as a melon. He was wiping his hands on his apron. “Need help with that?” he called.
“Wouldn’t say no,” grunted Felewin.
The innkeeper called, and a dwarf in blacksmith gear trotted out to Felewin. “Poor Theadun,” he said in a lightly accented common. “I’ll get the other end.”
Felewin paused for a moment to let the dwarf grab the other end. “Tricky balancing. You might want to separate the point.”
“I do at that,” said the dwarf. “Daerdun’s the name.”
“Felewin.”
The two of them got Theadun’s body to the front door. “I’ll take him out back,” said Daerdun. “Ubert! I have to take him through the common room.”
“Really?” said a sullen sharp-faced woman. If Ubert was a melon, she was a stalk of celery.
“’S not like there’s many customers,” said Daerdun. He lifted Theadun tenderly and carried him through the building.
“That’s Egren, my wife. You’d be adventurers,” said the man, Ubert.
“Close enough,” said Felewin. Ninefingers chose not to speak. Felewin noticed that no one addressed Ninefingers.
“You get a seat at the great table. Shame about Theadun. You an adventurer too?” he asked Dopkin.
“Hello, my good sir, and my lady. No, I have come to see one Vengis, your provisioner.”
“The tower’s provisioner,” said Egren. “He’s inside.”
Dopkin bowed ridiculously low and went inside. Felewin went to follow but she said, “You can’t bring that animal in here.” She gestured to Ninefingers.
“He goes where I go. He’s my companion.” Felewin lifted the rope of the tether.
“He’s an animal,” she repeated.
“You can go in,” Ubert said. “Just be careful of him. Or her. They all look alike to me.”
Ninefingers refrained from rolling his eyes.
“I’ll need an ale cup and so will he.”
The woman shook her head. “We won’t serve him. You’re welcome to go in, but nothing for him.”
“How is he supposed to eat and drink, then?” asked Felewin reasonably.
“Don’t care,” she said.
Daerdun suddenly appeared. “He helped bring Theadun’s body. He can eat with me out back.”
“Will that be all right?” Felewin asked Ninefingers, who nodded because he clearly wanted to be anywhere else. Then Felewin said, “Well, if we’re going to be separated, I guess I’ll have to let you free.”
“No!” said the woman.
“You let him be freed or you let him be fed. It’s that simple.” Ninefingers was staring at him with a mixture of embarrassment and horror.
“Fine. We’ll let him eat inside but he has to be leashed.”
“Ninefingers is not a dog,” Felewin said.
“No. Dogs can be trained.” She whistled and their dog, a big hound, showed up. The dog growled at Ninefingers. “No attack. Yet. Watch him.” She gave the dog a treat from her apron.
The dog sat down and watched Ninefingers.
“Felewin, you’ve got as much as you’re going to get,” Ninefingers muttered.
The woman looked at Ninefingers, sniffed, and then went inside.
“Come on in,” Felewin said, and he entered.
Ninefingers followed, with the air of someone being dragged into a monster-infested crypt. The dog followed him in.
There were seven people sitting in the common room, counting Dopkin and Daerdun. Ubert was standing there; his wife was nowhere to be seen. “Most of these fine folk are regulars. There’s no drink in the tower, just water,” he explained. “Eargrave, he’s a cart maker and wheelwright. Young Caranta, she’s his apprentice.” They nodded, while pointedly not looking at Ninefingers. “Losdur and Burl, they are guards. They were survivors of the last Ironwood expedition to root out the goblins.” The two of them nodded at Felewin, who was a head taller than either of them, and they were taller than everyone else in the room. Then they stared at Ninefingers and said nothing. “Dopkin and Daerdun you know.” Dopkin smiled nervously. Daerdun ignored all of them. “Last is Vengis, who is the provisioner for the Bleak Tower.”
Vengis was a weedy little man, with a rat-like face and a hairline that started at the top of his skull. “So you saved young Dopkin.”
“We did,” said Felewin. “I hope you won’t judge him by the loss of your silk and barley.”
Vengis grunted. “Last month we lost three barrels of beer. Now this.”
“Hard to make beer in the winter,” explained Ubert.
“I’ve already apologized about the barley,” said Dopkin.
“’Twasn’t your fault,” said Felewin.
“Nor yours. Twenty of them, one of you, says Dopkin,” said Vengis.
“Twenty?” started Felewin.
“You can’t be as good as the hero Erdwain,” said Ubert. “Hero came to the area, and he stays. We need Erdwain, y’see. He’d have dealt with them.”
Burl said, “The goblins are probably holed up at the ruins of the sanctuary, up in the Ironwood.”
Losdur said, “Oh, you know so much. But there’s cockatrices in that forest, and orcs.”
“There’s no orcs, not since the Margrave drove them out. Before my time.” Losdur shrugged. “But we haven’t the men go make a sortie.”
“That so?”
“Did you happen to find any money there?” Vengis asked Felewin. “At the scene, I mean.”
“A couple of silver. Is it yours?”
“No, no,” said Vengis hastily. “Keep it.”
Ninefingers cleared his throat. Felewin ignored him.
“I insist,” said Felewin. “If it was yours or the Margravate’s, you should have the money.”
“He won’t miss it,” said Vengis. “A couple of silver... It’s too small.”
“No, it’s the right thing to do,” said Felewin. “The knightly thing.” He grabbed Vengis’ hand and slapped the silver onto the man’s palm[4].
Vengis screamed. A wisp of smoke rose from Vengis’ hand and he yanked his hand free, spilling silver pieces onto the floor of the common room.
“Your hand...” said Felewin.
Ninefingers spoke up. “He’s a shifter.”
Vengis sprang to his feet. Ninefingers stood but when he tried to block Vengis’ way, the dog blocked him: the animal got in front of Ninefingers and stood there, growling. Vengis ran out the front of the inn.
Felewin picked the dog up by its scruff and set it aside. “Come on!”
Ninefingers ran after Felewin rather than be dragged.
“Even Erdwain didn’t spot it,” said Ubert as they ran out.
Toad In The Hole
Increase Travel (PC negative CF 8)
Felewin looked at the ground, damp from the rain[5]. “That’s the way he went.” He led them deeper into the trees.
“And if we catch him? Shifters are only hurt by silver or magic,” said Ninefingers. “Our silver is inside the inn, on the floor. Not to mention that we could use the money.”
“Yes, but...” said Felewin. “If we go back, Ubert will just tell me that Erdwain would have caught them.”
Ninefingers laughed.
“Why don’t we follow long enough to see if his den is local, huh?” asked Felewin. “If it is, then we know where it is. If not then we go back and I listen to how Erdwain would have managed it.”
“The inn is no better for me,” said Ninefingers. “I hear that shifters can call their animal form, so rats and giant rats. Do you want to face them alone?”
“You make a compelling case. You’re willing to track him for a bit longer?”
Ninefingers lifted the tether. “Do I have a choice?”
“You have a choice. And I have decided—”
“So it’s not my choice?”
Felewin continued. “—that I will not react violently if you make a choice I don’t agree with.”
“That’s actually decent of you.”
“I try.”
“And that annoys me, by the way. We could use that silver.”
“It’s still there for us.”
Ninefingers snorted. Some time passed.
“These dead trees look odd,” Ninefingers said.
“Petrified. We must have traveled into the Ironwood.”
They had to pick their way carefully here. There were plants and flowers among the petrified trees, but there were also large rocks, as tall as Felewin’s waist, and bare patches.
“He switches here to full rat,” said Felewin. “Before the tracks were rat-man but now just a rat.” Felewin looked up at the gray sky. “I can track farther, but we have to leave now if we’re going to get back to the inn by night fall.”
“Well, that was a wasted day.”
“We’ve seen this lovely place and you didn’t have to deal with people’s attitudes for several hours,” Felewin said.
Ninefingers leaned against a brown rock, mottled with lichen, as he watched Felewin blaze two trees. He felt the rock move and only the fact that he was falling made the rock — no, toad — miss swallowing him.[6] The Aprak scrambled to his feet and ran behind Felewin, then got out his dagger.[7]
The toad tried to swallow Ninefingers, leaping to the other side of Felewin and trying to bite.[8] It missed, but narrowly. Felewin spun to face the beast and stabbed with his knife.[9] He drew blood but couldn’t tell how serious a wound it was.[10]
Felewin had practiced switching to his sword, so he did, and then slashed with his sword, then slashed, letting the longer blade be a sharp level. The sword bit deeper into the toad.
Ninefingers grabbed a branch and prepared to block the toad’s mouth[11]. The toad surged forward to hit Felewin this time again and missed.[12]
The toad tried again to catch Felewin in its mouth and instead impaled itself on Felewin’s sword, killing itself.[13]
Felewin grunted and then used his foot to help pry the beast off his sword. He found leaves and cleaned the blade. “Icky beasts,” he said.
“I wonder if you get warts from a giant toad,” said Ninefingers.
“I wonder if you can eat those legs,” said Felewin.
Fireside Tales
Ambush Travel (NPC Negative)
You could, in fact, eat those legs, and Erden grumbled as she took them, but the grumbling seemed to be a habit: she seemed happy to have something else to cook.
Burl and Losdur were also happy with the meal. Losdur allowed as how things weren’t great inside the tower, and Burl pointed to a scar on his leg. “Still pains me. I can’t walk a long distance any more.”
“From the goblins?” asked Felewin.
Burl nodded. “We were headed to the sanctuary ruins, which are about a day’s and a half’s journey from the tower. There’s a shrine by a brook about a day away so we decided to camp there, but once everyone but the watch was asleep, we were attacked by goblins. There’s an old hermit in the woods — Odend — he comes in every fall to buy provisions, and he showed up. He created light for us so we could see. It was a pitched battle for hours, it seemed, and at dawn the goblins melted into the forest. We were a strong garrison before that, but we lost dozens of good men. Fourteen of us managed to get back. Now there’s barely enough to man the tower. They took in much of the village that was around here, but not the inn.”
It was quiet after Burl spoke. Then finally, Ubert said, “Erdwain’s sworn to exterminate the goblins. And we’ve got Felewin, here. I’m sure he’s interested in the reward.”
Ninefingers sat up straighter, and poked Felewin.
“Reward?” Felewin said.
“I thought that’s why you came,” Ubert said. “There’s a bounty on goblins up here, and a reward if you can truly rid the area of goblins.”
“We’ll ask tomorrow,” Felewin said.
“Your room is down here,” said Erden. “We’ve got one room with a window to the courtyard. I figured you’d want to be able to see your pet.”
“He’s not—” and then he stopped as if Ninefingers had poked him again. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ll also try to look at Vengis’ room in the tower, in case there are clues.”
“Vengis didn’t live in the tower. He had a room here,” said Ubert. “Do you want to see it?”
“If we could.”
Judge The Mundane
Judge the Mundane (NPC Negative CF 7)
The room was not particularly large. The bed was a straw tick with a low table beside it; the table held a shallow bowl and stood over a small crate. On the floor were five chests, one large and four of smaller sizes. “Out of deference to your wife, would you please shut the door?”
Ubert did. Felewin brought out the key and untethered Ninefingers. “What do you see?[14]” he asked the goblin — no, he preferred to be called an Aprak, Felewin reminded himself.
Ninefingers sniffed. “Vengis kept some kind of food product in one of these chests. But not just there.” The goblin hit the tick several times and scowled at the sour smell that was released. “He did not always visit the jakes, or—” Ninefingers scampered over to the table and moved the crate. “Ah. Rathole.” He pointed at the hole at the base of the exterior wall.
Felewin said, “I don’t think he could become a small rat — those footprints we followed were too big — but if he could summon smaller rats they might have run errands. And once the smaller rats had free access to the room, they were willing to use the straw as a toilet.”
Ubert made a face of disgust. “I’ll have to fix that.<”
Ninefingers said, “Felewin? Could you see if any of those chests are unlocked?”
Felewin knew that Ninefingers could unlock the chests, but he also knew that Ubert would be uncomfortable with the knowledge.[15] All were locked.
Ninefingers looked at Felewin. “It would be good to know what is in those chests.[16]”
Ubert spoke up. “He was a wererat; his gains were ill-got. I will get Daerdun in to open them.”
Once he was out of the door, Ninefingers flipped the crate over and blocked the rathole. “I don’t know if they can pass messages, but I’d rather they didn’t.”
“Now what?” asked Felewin.
“We wait. There isn’t enough time to pick the locks, and chests are valuable of themselves. I wouldn’t break them unless we had need.”
Ubert and Daerdun arrived. Daerdun looked at the chests and said, “None of these are by dwarven hands.”
“Does that mean you can’t open them?” Ubert asked.
“No, it means that I don’t care about preserving the metalwork of the hasp,” Daerdun said, and stuck a pry bar between the lid and chest of the nearest one. Daerdun twisted and it popped open. It took him only a moment to do the other chests.
The smallest chest held a variety of gold coins. Ninefingers picked one up and looked at it. “Tyrrean. And I see clipped Empire coins too.” He tossed it back in and saw Ubert relax microscopically.
The rest held small sacks of spices, a moderate sack of mixed rye and oat (already starting to sprout), a pair of leather helms (bloodstained and patched), a jug of lantern oil, three knives (one of very fine Setftish make), a pair of manacles, a key, and two coils of rope.
Daerdun grunted. “I’ve got the warden’s mule for shoes outside.” He left.
“Nothing here worth killing for,” said Felewin.
“When did killing come up?” asked Ninefingers. “Vengis ran away, he wasn’t killed.”
“Just a thought. It was an unusual time for Theadun to make the trip. Does that make it more likely that he’d be ambushed or less likely?”
Ninefingers said nothing. He moved away from the chests. “Can we go?”
“There’s nothing more to be learned here,” agreed Felewin.
Ubert fastened the door after they left. “Those four will take word to the tower. I don’t know what they’ll do about the halfling. In the meantime, you get any room for the same cost as a piece of the hearth.”
#
The courtyard held an iron hoop; Daerdun hitched horses to while he shod them. Felewin ostentatiously fastened Ninefingers to it. The well was within reach of the tether, so Felewin brought out a jug. “In case you need water.” In a low voice, he asked, “You going to be okay?”
“I hope so. I don’t want anyone claiming the bounty with my body parts.”
“Me neither. Why do you think the goblins are so lethal here?” asked Felewin.
Ninefingers snorted. “Because some bigoted humans started killing them, and the goblins are just responding in kind. It would be nice to think there was an evil in the Ironwood that’s provoking them, but...” He spread his hands. “Prejudice and vengeance are common to all talking species.”
“True enough,” said Felewin.
A Gift Of No Consequence
Bestow Opulence (PC Positive CF 7)
In the morning, they stopped at the tower but the seneschal (not even the Margrave) didn’t even grant an entrance.
Instead, they started walking north on the road.
“What are we looking for? Vengis?” asked Ninefingers.
“Not particularly,” said Felewin. “I still think we ought to find the orcs.”
“Because they enslave goblins, and you want to find my brother who was taken by slavers.”
Felewin laughed. “You were listening!”
“This is mad as a March hare.”
“I am looking for deeds that will make Baron Coodna knight me. I would like to free you of suspicion at the same time. I have goals, Ninefingers. And I need your help. I need someone to talk to the goblins and find out what they know of the orcs.”
“They speak the common tongue,” reminded Ninefingers.
“But the goblins don’t trust humans around here. We’re headed to where Burl and Losdur were ambushed. There have to be goblins near there.”
Still an hour away from the wayshrine, they came to a spot on the road blocked by a fallen petrified tree. Felewin stopped as soon as they saw it. He asked, “Is that a trap or was the tree knocked over by a storm after Burl and Losdur came this way?”
“That is a sensible question,” said Ninefingers. “There is hope for you.[17] Look at the plants around the base. They grew that way. But the ground’s not dented, so it fell before spring because the ground was hard then. It’s been like that since at least the start of spring.”
“Not a trap, then.”
“Probably not. But I can sneak around through the woods and check the other side.”
“If it probably isn’t a trap, we’ll approach it together. Which end looks easier to walk around?”
Ninefingers pointed with his short fingers. “That one.[18]”
It was while wading through the undergrowth that Ninefingers heard the sound. He turned and saw the spider, as big as a collie dog, squeezing out from under the tree. “Spiders,” he said, and tried to jerk away but his foot was stuck to webbing. “Big ones.” He pulled hard and thought maybe it was starting to give. Felewin drew his sword as he stepped closer. His intent was to bottle the spider or spiders up until Ninefingers got free. He[19] stabbed his sword deep into the spider and it stopped, dead.
Lucky shot or are they fragile? thought Felewin. Either way, he was was not going to question their good fortune.
It took both of them a moment to pull free, and smaller spiders started to make their way around the larger spider as they did so. Felewin and Ninefingers quickly moved beyond them, along the road.
“Here,” said Felewin. “I meant to give this to you before.” He handed over the Seftish dagger that had been Vengis’.
“Thank you,” Ninefingers said. “How did you get it?”
“Asked for it. Didn’t tell him it was for you, though. Wouldn’t quite be a short sword for you but almost. It’s a long dagger. Had Daerdun sharpen it, along the one edge.”
Ninefingers lifted it experimentally, tried a few passes. “Thank you. You couldn’t have given this to me before?”
“Had to wait until they couldn’t see.”
“Which reminds me,” Ninefingers said while he unfastened his owl-feather earrings. He put them in his purse, along with the small cheese and his pouch of lockpicks. “Remind me how far along this shrine is?”
“Burl said it was a day’s march. We make slightly better time than foot soldiers. We should be there by late afternoon.”
Possibly A Prisoner, Certainly Not A Guest
Fight Portals (NPC Action CF 8)
By late afternoon[20] they could hear water, and mixed in with the water were the sounds of creaking leather and footsteps. They had agreed on a story — Felewin was to be Ninefingers’ captive — and the man handed his sword to Ninefingers, and bound his hands. Ninefingers in turn fastened the tether.
“Hoy!” shouted Ninefingers. “Is anyone there?” in goblin, then repeated it in the common tongue.
Ninefingers heard, “Is it a trap?” and then muttering, which he figured was the patrol leader sending someone to see if there were forces lurking further back.
He stood there. “We’re going to wait,” he muttered to Felewin. “They have to know we’re not bait for an ambush.”
“Sometimes waiting is all you can do,” murmured Felewin back.
After a while, six goblins came out. All were lean, even scrawny. They spoke in goblin; Felewin couldn’t follow.
“I’m Ninefingers,” Ninefingers said, and he held up his left hand to show why he had that name: his pinkie finger was a knuckle short. He kept the short sword pointed at Felewin’s back. “This is my prisoner.”
“Now he’s our prisoner.”
“Don’t kill him. I can get money for him alive,” said Ninefingers.
“We don’t need money,” said the goblin in the lead.
Ninefingers looked him with pity. “Everyone needs money.”
“We’re going to set up our own nation!”
Ninefingers nodded. “And we’ll need money to trade with the other nations.”
One of the other goblins whispered to the speaker. He whispered back, clearly unhappy. Ninefingers could imagine the exchange just by watching his face.
“We will take you to our headquarters. It will be the basis of our land, Droll Nation!”
Ninefingers kept a straight face. They might not even know that “droll” had another meaning in the common tongue.
A third one, a female, came up to him. “You must be tired. We’ll take turns guarding him. Rest a bit. We’ve got hours of walking yet. We’ll start walking once it gets tolerable out; we have a lantern because we also have a human with us.”
“You do?” asked Ninefingers.
The goblin nodded. “You’ll see once we get past the orc.”
“You have an orc?”
The goblin laughed. “You’ll see. I’m Kagandis.”
“Ninefingers.”
“I heard. You got some meat on you. I like that.” She took out her own spear and held it up so that Felewin could see it. “I look after you now,” she said in heavily-accented Common. “He rests.”
They marched for a short time until they went over a small wooden bridge to the wayshrine. “You can sit on the stairs there,” Kagandis told Ninefingers. She added, “You are tough.”
“Thank you,” said Ninefingers.
She replied in the goblin manner: “It is an earned thing.”
Felewin followed because of the leash and went to sit down, too. Kagandis poked him with the sword and said in the common tongue, “No sit!”
“I’m bigger than he is,” Felewin said reasonably. “We can both sit together.”
“No sit,” she repeated. Then she pointed at the tether. “Key.”
Felewin pulled the key from a thong around his neck, and unlocked himself from Ninefingers. She held her hand out for the key. She seemed eager to have an excuse to stab him.
Once she had the key, she poked him to move him up the steps.
“You won’t get anywhere with her,” came a reedy voice with a strong Eastern accent.
Felewin looked up. At the top of the steps was a man in rat-skin clothing, common on the frontiers. His hat had once been fine, and the book in a sling was typical of personal grimoires, suggesting that he was a wizard or had looted a wizard.
Kagandis forced Felewin up and locked Felewin to the wizard.
The wizard complained in goblin speak. She replied, then put the key around her own neck and headed down the stairs to Ninefingers.
Felewin was not fond of wizards. Still, he was pretending to be a prisoner (and actually might be one).
“She’s tough?”
The wizard nodded. “Tough enough. And she’s a deadly shot with that bow, probably best in this squad.” He paused to drink from his flask. “You don’t want any of this; it’s mushroom wine. It’s terrible stuff but it’s all the goblins make.” He took another swig.
“Felewin. You are?”
“Hastwine. Why would someone want to ransom you?” He smiled and waved a finger. “I speak goblin, and I heard your goblin say he could get a ransom for you. Now, you’re a big guy but all I see is a fighter, and fighters are cheap and common. So why?” He hiccupped. “Well, that spoils the mood. Dammit, am I going to have hiccups through this whole interrogation? Anyway, don’t lie to me; I’m a wizard.”
Felewin said helpfully, “My mother made us hold our breaths when we had hiccups. Said it was demons trying to yank out our souls.”
“’S not, but did—” hic “—it work?”
“I don’t have them now,” said Felewin. He watched Kagandis give a drink to Ninefingers.
“I get—” hic “—an hour of hiccups at a time. Very—” hic “—frustrating.” He inhaled and held it.
“I’m a third son,” said Felewin, and named his father. “My oldest brother Anader inherits, but if he dies, my next oldest brother Ealin inherits. I wasn’t really in the line.”
“And not worth a ransom.” Hic. “Good goddamn,” Hastwine said, annoyed at the hiccups.
“I left to make my fortune. Anader gets engaged so since there are likely to be heirs, Ealin starts studying in the church. He’s going to renounce his position in line. Maybe Skjolds can be priests and nobles, but not in my family.”
“Huh.” Hic.
“Then Toivil fell ill. My brother’s fiancée. Bubble fever. You know anything about bubble fever?” Hastwine shook his head. “Half the survivors, both men and women, they can’t have children any more. They won’t know until she tries, but it’s a noble house so she can’t have children without getting married, and no noble will marry her without being assured of an heir.” Felewin shrugged. “Anader can get engaged anew. That’s true.” Hastwine nodded. The light was fading. “But Ealin’s now out of the picture — he did his second vows, so one more and he’s dedicated. Suddenly I’m second in line.” Felewin shrugged. “I’m sure mother has hopes of finding a new fiancée and it’s not like Anader’s hobbies include griffin-fighting, but yes, our family will pay a ransom.”
A goblin said something to Hastwine, who nodded and held up a hand. After about a minute he let out his breath, waited a moment to see, and no hiccup came. He smiled and said, “Listen to your mother, boy,” and made a sound (an owl hooting twice) to each of the four corners of the compass. The sound did not come from Hastwine but from beyond him, out in the wilderness.
Goblins started gathering on the trail. Hastwine waved Felewin up. “You’ll walk with me, since we can’t see in the dark. I have a lamp.”
“Fine.”
The goblin behind Felewin poked him in the back, and Felewin started up the stairs.
“Mind the orc at the top,” said Hastwine.
Felewin tensed for trouble but then got over the top into the wayshrine proper. Ahead was a statue of four figures holding a wide, shallow bowl — Felewin recognized one figure, so he could guess who the other three were. There was a hulking figure beyond, and Felewin recognized the outline of an orc. He was ready to throw off his wrist bonds and grab his sword, but no one else (even Hastwine) seemed concerned.
The orc was petrified. Something had turned it into stone while it was approaching the bowl.
Hastwine saw him start and laughed. “There’s cockatrices in these woods, boy. Our people will keep them away, but it’s not a safe place to be escaping to. If you had a mind to do it, I’m telling you.”
Hic.
Hastwine swore.
A Secure Nest
Disturb Status Quo (PC Negative CF 8)
It was the middle of the night when they arrived, and Felewin had no idea where the path had taken them. Presumably this was the ruin where Burl and Losdur had said the goblins were, and it started with two flights of steps cut down into the ground.
At the bottom, Hastwine said, “Over to one side. Disguised pitfall.”
Felewin grunted and staggered over. (He was exaggerating his fatigue, but not by as much as he would hope.) In Hastwine’s lamp, he had a brief impression of a dirty entrance, recessed alcoves, and two big wooden doors with knockers.
Two goblins worked one of the knockers, and they shouted something in goblin. Someone inside shouted something back, and they responded.
“Passcode,” said Hastwine. “Get that wrong and you get torn apart by fury dogs. I added that bit.”
“The fury dogs?”
“The passcode.”
“You are indeed a most clever wizard,” said Felewin, who had figured out that Hastwine loved flattery.
The big double doors opened and the goblins flooded into a long great hall with a high vaulted ceiling shrouded in darkness. The walls were spattered with moss and the tattered corners of tapestries. There was an arched passage to the south and the remnants of one to the north, and straight ahead, down more stairs, was an altar. The goblins stayed in ranks until they got to the room with the altar, and then they started chattering as they turned left, in happy chaos.
Ninefingers appeared; Kagandis was nearby. Ninefingers glanced at Hastwine and said to Felewin, “They’re going to take you to his room. I’m going to untie you and take everything but your bedroll. I’ve told them you’re not to be hurt because we’re going to ransom you.”
Felewin felt he had to do something to sell the idea that it was a betrayal. “And I trusted you.”
Ninefingers got between him and Hastwine so Hastwine couldn’t see him just unwrapping the rope. “To you, goblins are just animals. To me, you’re the money you can bring.”
Hastwine was looking at both of them. He smirked and said, in goblin, “You have fun with Kagandis. She is very much fun.”
Felewin didn’t know what they were saying to each other, but the suspicion coming off Hastwine was almost palpable. Felewin shrugged off his backpack and knelt to unfasten the bedroll. After the incident with the ghost, they had had to buy new, and he hadn’t had the pack and bedroll for long. He straightened the canvas, sighed, and handed it to Ninefingers.
“Hauberk, bow and arrows, too. You can keep the gambeson. It will make sleeping a little easier.”
Hastwine commented in goblin, “That’s very kind of you.”
Ninefingers replied, “To show him kindness when he shows none to you is to approach godhood. A saying of the Vult-son.[21]” Then in the common tongue, he said,“I’m off, human scum.” He kept his gaze on Hastwine as he left the room.
The other goblins kept them moving. They passed through several other rooms that were part of the original temple; Felewin could hear water nearby. Corridors ran to the left and right, and Felewin could hear water nearby—a waterfall; it sounded like a man singing. Both corridors looked disused.[22]
“Kagandis seems to like him a lot,” mentioned Hastwine. “I must remember to introduce Akullul to them.”
“Who?”
“One of the goblin captains. He also had patrols today but should be back soon.” Hastwine smiled. “He meant to make her his bride.”
“Good,” lied Felewin. “The more they fight, the better for me.[23]”
They passed through a room that functioned as a guard room; there were bundles of arrows and swords racked on the wall. Felewin considered whether he could grab them, but didn’t try: two goblin guards watched them go by. On one wall was a closed door; the other had boards set to the side so people could pass through into the passage beyond. The boards had probably come from wooden crates; there was one face of a crate sitting in the corner.
Maybe a dozen of Felewin’s steps took them along the passage into a wide opening with a bridge over an underground stream. There was a waterfall in one direction and he could see the where the stream dove back under rock in the other.
“Don’t even think it,” said Hastwine. “It’s deeper than you are tall, and it goes through a few caves and then goes underground for longer than you can hold your breath. It’s cold and at this time of year it’s fast.”
There was another call and response from one side of the bridge to the other. “Guards,” said Hastwine. “That side of the bridge has a dozen guards and the sleeping quarters.”
“Where we’ll sleep?”
“Yup. Tomorrow we’ll work out how someone will get word to your family to ransom you. Unless, of course, they decide you’re not worth it.”
Felewin figured he could get across the stream to the far side of the bridge, but without weapons or armor, getting the rest of the way would be difficult.
Once they got across the bridge, Hastwine led him left while the goblins went right. “If you need the privy, we’re going to wait. Always crowded right after a patrol. Akullul forbids them to relieve themselves in the forest, because he’s paranoid about orc slavers.”
“Orc slavers? Do you get a lot of them?”
“Nah. But that orc at the wayshrine has him spooked.”
“What happened to him?”
“Him? Probably a cockatrice. You don’t get better if one of those gets you. And they nest in these woods.”
“I mean, why was he here?”
“Scout, maybe. Maybe Akullul is right. My guess is they don’t go looking for slaves but will grab them if they can.”
This did not match with Felewin’s experience with slavers, but he said nothing.
Hastwine reached a wooden door clumsily pegged to the stone wall. “Home sweet home,” he said as he opened the door.
The room was not stuffy, though like everywhere else in the caverns it was cool. Hastwine had scavenged a broken crate that acted as his table. A bag of straw was his bed, and several skins sat on it. He fussed with the lamp on the crate. The fuel reservoir was “closed” in that it was covered by a square of wood; he lifted that up to check the fuel level, deemed it sufficient, then trimmed the wick and adjusted it. He lit it and it stayed lit. Smoke wandred up and disappeared; a crevice in the ceiling acted like a natural chimney.
“It’ll dry out and warm up soon,” he said. “I generally run it for an hour while I study my spells. Then I go to the privy and grab something from whatever is roasting. Then if no goblin girl wants me, I go to sleep.”
“What?” Felewin wasn’t sure he had heard right.
“They don’t want to get with child, and I don’t mind at all.” He leered. “We’re not near civilization, so we’re not near civilized rules.”
“Sorry to tether you,” said Felewin.
“I’m tired of them all right now. It’s okay.”
Felewin wondered if he was tired of them, or they were tired of him. He suspected it was the latter.
Felewin put out his bedroll. Hastwine started hiccuping again.
A Disturbing Realization
Increase Disruption (PC Negative CF 9)
Kagandis led Ninefingers into the common room, a large musky-smelling chamber. There was an enormous column in the center. The top was closer to the surface, with dead tree roots visible in the ceiling, wrapped in spiderwebs. There were tables and benches scattered throughout, and more than a dozen goblins were taken passing the time. Over there, three were having an intense discussion; beside them was a dice game with a half dozen goblins. Four were practicing with spears in another corner, and another four were playing Rangeth’s Distraction.
To the west was another chamber, dimly lit by fires. “Food’s over in the living chambers,” she said. “The food can attract giant rats and other things that live down here. We’ve closed off some of the entrances, but not all.”
“I thought the wizard would help.”
“Him? Mostly a nuisance. He keeps saying he’ll do great magics but all we ever see is that damned ventriloquism spell. I’m starting to think he’s a con man who got run out of town. That the ventriloquism was a talisman he had.” She frowned. “I couldn’t find a talisman in his room.”
“He might carry it with him,” said Ninefingers.
“He was in his room, asleep. He drinks most nights and once he’s asleep not much wakes him.” Kagandis greeted another goblin maid. “Hastwine — heavy sleeper, right Gotthid?”
The other woman laughed. “If he’s been drinking, which is only seven days of the week.”
Kagandis introduced them. “Ninefingers, Gotthid; Gotthid, Ninefingers. What’s roasting tonight?”
“Some of the patrols caught rabbits, so we’ve got five on the spit. Spring greens. Beer — there’s still a bit left of the human beer from last month. Some of the fellows don’t need rabbit because they had mule day before yesterday.”
Ninefingers thought, The goblins who attacked the cart are part of this group? That made sense, but the cart had been on the other side of the Bleak Tower, two days’ march away.
The bigger problem was that those goblins had seen him in a very different role. Could he possibly reconcile the two?
Maybe.
And maybe no goblin would notice the resemblance.
And maybe pigs would fly.
A Bar Fight Without The Bar
Fight Death (Introduce A New NPC CF 9)
Hastwine fell asleep after he had finished his mushroom wine but before he made his trip to the privy. The lamp went out because it had a very shallow reservoir.
While Hastwine snored, Felewin groped through the contents of his pouch to see what Ninefingers had left him. First, the compass. That was good, he hoped: a compass was worth its weight in gold.
Second, the oilcloth he had wrapped around a bit of food.
He unwrapped the oilcloth to get the food: some hard cheese, some dried meat, some dried fruit. A few bites would help; he saw how thin the goblins were, and chose not to take any of their food this time. Ninefingers was well-muscled for a goblin, but he looked massive next to some of them.
The oilcloth also held a key.
Not the key to the tether; the female goblin still had that. But Ninefingers had said he had a skeleton key.
Where to store it, though? The pouch might be taken at any time, but he didn’t have a lot. Eventually he took his boot and wedged it deep inside by where one little toe would be. He slipped his foot in to check and rearranged it several times, striving to be quiet while Hastwine snored beside him.
Once it was in place, it was time to wake up Hastwine for a trip to the privy. The man did not wake easily, and then it was as though he were waking from a nightmare. “Don’t hurt me!” Hastwine cried as he sat up.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” said Felewin. “I need the privy.”
“Go, then.”
“I can’t. We’re shackled together.”
“Right. Right.” Felewin could sense him in the dark. “And I should go, too.”
Felewin helped him get up. Hastwine had fallen asleep fully dressed, so he didn’t need to dress. Felewin slipped on his boots.
There was still noise from the common room. The goblins didn’t seem to be nocturnal or diurnal. Some goblins were awake and active at all times.
He stood outside the privy while Hastwine was using it; he held the lantern. A spear landed near his feet. He was careful not to move toward it.
There was hooting from the common room. Another spear clattered to the ground farther away from him, and the hooting got louder. He suspected that there would be more, and two more showed up.[24] Both missed.
Someone had to come get the spears, so Felewin waited there. Finally two goblins came out, laughing and talking. They scooped up the spears, and one stabbed at Felewin, laughing as he did so.[25] Felewin sidestepped the spear thrust, which seemed to make the goblin mad.
Felewin snatched one of the spears from the goblin’s hands[26] and reversed the spear so that the blunt end pointed to the goblin. As a prisoner, he had no intention of fighting his way free until he had the information he wanted. (Without his armour, he stood little chance of fighting his way free, even if he had acquired a spear.) The goblin seemed stupefied by it, and the other goblin stabbed at him.
Felewin parried easily.
Gods, Hastwine is taking his time, thought Felewin.[27] They passed two shots at him, and Felewin parried with the haft of the spear.
Other goblins were starting to come out of the common room and watch.
Felewin looked at the other two. “I just want to use the privy,” he said. “I am to be ransomed.”
“You are big and stupid and your kind kills us,” said one of the goblins facing him.[28] He stabbed and Felewin managed to push the spear point aside.
The other one, clearly worse for drink, totally missed. Felewin said again, “I mean no harm.”
What if he knocked them unconscious? Maybe he could rap one sharply on the head? He might as well try.[29] He reached out and missed.
That made the surrounding goblins cheer. Money changed hands.[30]
The first goblin came close, but Felewin managed to parry at the last moment; that put him in a great place to parry the second strike, which would have hit if he hadn’t parried it.
Groans came from the crowd. Sure, it’s entertainment for you, thought Felewin.[31]
The first goblin came close but Felewin managed to direct the spear to his gambeson. The second goblin was easily deflected.
Felewin had managed so far, but this was a losing battle for him. They were too small and quick, and he couldn’t do anything to end this. Sooner or later he was going to miss.[32]
Enraged, the first goblin charged him and totally missed. Felewin knocked him smartly on the head and he sat down, dropping the spear. “Please let your friend rest,” he said.
The other goblin also jabbed but missed. Felewin tried to hit him but failed.
There was a sudden quiet from the crowd as a goblin, obviously of higher status, elbowed his way through the crowd. As soon as the attacking goblins dropped their spears, Felewin did, too.
The...captain, maybe?..was big for a goblin. He looked at the two goblins and Felewin and said something in goblin. A pair of goblins hauled away the one that Felewin had hit; three other goblins frog-marched the other goblin away.
He looked at Felewin. “No fighting.”
“I was defending myself. I did not try to hurt them.”
The goblin captain touched his head. “This is ‘not hurting’?”
“It is not stabbing.”
“True.” The goblin captain nodded, thinking to himself. “Go to bed.”
Felewin jerked a thumb to the privy door. “Hastwine.”
The goblin captain rolled his eyes. “When done.”
He barked something in goblin to the crowd, who made their way back to the common room.
Felewin had thought he might see Ninefingers, but he didn’t.
The privy door opened, and Hastwine stood there. “Did I miss something?”
An Uncovering
Recruit Suffering (NPC Positive CF 9)
Kagandis introduced Ninefingers to a bunch of goblins, mostly women, mostly archers. The women looked him up and down before saying hello. The men wanted to talk about Felewin’s fight by the privy. They got to the cook, who had a number of giant centipede shells holding roasted rabbit, roasted root vegetables, and roasted mushrooms. While the cook was lecturing Ninefingers about the order for getting food, one friend pulled Kagandis aside. Ninefingers[33] heard her friend say to her in a low voice, “What about Akallul?”
“What about him?” said Kagandis.
“He thinks you’re his.”
“He’s wrong and this will prove it to him.”
“Akallul is a great catch; he’s good nest material.”
Kagandis nodded. “For someone else. Not for me.”
“That’s not what he wants to hear.”
“That’s exactly why he’s not right for me.” Kagandis left her friend and came back over to Ninefingers. “He’s a guest,” she told the goblin who had been lecturing Ninefingers. “That puts him higher on the list.”
“Guests? Look, we got 11 different ranks of outpost members woven in with seven different levels of guests, three kinds of prisoners and then we get to the non-drollil. I gotta go through the seven guests too?”
“It’s a favour. He can have some of my food.” Kagandis handed Ninefingers a greasy strip of rabbit.
Ninefingers knew the significance of this and he murmured, “You sure you want to do this?”
“Shut up and eat,” she muttered back, and laughed brightly for the others.
Ninefingers smiled for those watching and took a bit. It was not bad: the cook had a better sense of spices than Felewin did, and the taste reminded Ninefingers of childhood. He savoured it, to show appreciation to the cook, like he would have done in an Aprak nest, and he complimented the cook.
The cook seemed mollified.“At least he knows good cooking. Unlike some of you.”
“He doesn’t know you like we do, Kamikkik!” shouted someone in the back and there was general laughter.
“We gotta talk,” she said loudly, putting emphasis on talk to make it sound sexual, and she led Ninefingers away; she grabbed a tanned sleeping skin and her spear. “Got a knife?” she asked Ninefingers. “In case.” He nodded.
From the common room, they went down another corridor to a damp cavern festooned with mushrooms. The walls were slick with algae and water, and the room was noticeable cooler than rest of the cave. From the ceiling hung three baskets. “We won’t be bothered here unless Kamikkik needs some roots. Don’t touch the mushrooms; they’re poisonous.”
Ninefingers looked around.
“It’s as private as we’re going to get without getting rid of metal or courting death.” Kagandis put the skin down and sat with her back against a stalagmite. She waved Ninefingers to the ground. “So,” she said.
Ninefingers sat on the skin.
“So,” he replied.
“You’re a spy.”
He laughed. He hadn’t expected the conversation to go in this direction. “I am not a spy. But if you’re looking for ulterior motives, I am using you, all of you”—he waved to indicate everything around them—“for information.”
“So you don’t intend to stay?”
“Didn’t say that.”
“I thought your story had holes. That you got the drop on that big guy? Even in the moment. I didn’t think you could take him. Earlier, he held off two warriors. Granted, they were drunk, but two to one is impressive.”
“You can’t keep that kind of thing up,” Ninefingers pointed out. “A prisoner just has to escape once.”
“Yeah, yeah. You didn’t escape. This is some kind of plan.”
“I’m looking for my brother.”
“Go on.”
“Slavers. He got captured by slavers. Felewin—”
“The big guy.”
“Yes. He had this crazy idea that you would know more about slavers than we do.”
“Well, he’s not wrong.” They sat silently for a while.[34] Something was dripping in the cave, masking other noises.
Just before she spoke up, Ninefingers said, “Who’s the other guy? Akullul?”
“One of the leaders. Son of one of the chieftains.”
“Nice guy?”
“I suppose. Wants women to be strong and capable and accomplished but doesn’t want to let them do anything to become that. The women become...trophies, I guess. And he has a temper. I don’t envy the drollilik who nests with him.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
She laughed sadly. “You don’t even know him.”
“I wouldn’t say it because I think he’s the one listening in on us.”
She stood up and saw the lower leg and back of the person leaving. “No.[35] He’d barge in.” She tugged on the blanked. “I’ll bet that was Dedaris listening. And I’ll bet she’s off to tell him.” Ninefingers stood. “Escape. Tonight. Now. With your friend.”
“But the information we wanted...”
“I’ll tell you. Take me with you.”
Ninefingers looked at her. “Really?”
“There will only be trouble if I stay. Dedaris has wanted Akallul for years, and this gives her an excuse to cause trouble. With you two I have some protection.”
Sometimes in a trapped tomb, it all went to the privy and only thing you could do was ride it out and try to escape. This looked like one of those times.
“I don’t have his sword and armor any more. Someone took them.”
“They’ll be in the hall of death.”
“Excuse me? ‘Hall of death’?”
“One hallway, something kills people who stay there. So we store things there. A group of five goes in to deposit or retrieve stuff. We don’t put a lot there, just things that seem dangerous.”
“It kills people and steals stuff, so you put dangerous things there?”
“It’s there or the cave of death.”
“That fills me with confidence,” said Ninefingers. “Let’s get Felewin.”
Escape
Neglect Expectations (NPC Action CF 9)
Ninefingers stole into the room[36] and covered Felewin’s mouth before waking him. Ninefingers whispered into his ear, “We have to go.”
Felewin nodded and started to get the skeleton key; Ninefingers shook his head and used the wire to pick the lock on Felewin’s side.[37] He then passed the waistband through a hole in the crate, so that Hastwine was locked to the crate. (He wouldn’t stay that way, but it would delay him). Felewin grabbed his lantern.
Once out of the room, Ninefingers started for the bridge, but Kagandis said, “This way,” and led them in a new direction.
“Mushroom cave?” Ninefingers asked.
Kagandis shook her head.
“Death cave?” Ninefingers asked.
Kagandis nodded. “They’re all the death cave if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“And we don’t.” In common he said to Felewin, “Don’t light the lantern yet.”
“Haven’t had time.”
“Good.” He grabbed Felewin’s arm to keep moving him along.
“Do humans and goblins actually get along in the south?” whispered Kagandis.
“Sort of,” replied Ninefingers. “We don’t kill each other on sight.”
“Huh,” she said. They came to a T-junction. She asked, “Does he have any metal on him?”
“Probably not. Yes, a key.”
“Does he need it?”
“No,” said Ninefingers.
“He can go in there and light the lantern. The animals eat iron or steel if they find it. Give the key to the animals; they’ll want it. Don’t let him get their slobber on him; it’s corrosive. There’s metal in his tinderbox; he shouldn’t have to give that up, because the key should buy him time.”
“Eisenessers?”
“Yes. Didn’t know if you’d know. Once he’s done, he comes out. I’ll lure the eisenessers out with my knife. Then we’ll run fast. That’s why he needs the light.”
“The eisenessers will trample anyone following us.”
“I hope.”
Ninefingers explained it to Felewin, who listened and took off one boot to remove the key.
Felewin went in with the key in his hand. He threw it as far as he could in the dark; he hoped that was good enough.
He got the lantern lit but he could tell it didn’t have much fuel.[38] In the new light he spotted a wood-and-bronze buckler; he grabbed it just as a wolf-sized eisenesser ambled up to him, or rather his tinder box with its flint and steel.
The eisenesser made a coughing sound as it gobbled up the steel in the tinder box, and Felewin took the opportunity to run back to Ninefingers and Kagandis, without his tinder box.
Off to one side, there was more noise: goblins looking for them.
“Run!” said Kagandis.
Behind them was the snuffling of the eisenesser; to their left side, the goblins, who were running in a gaggle rather than as a military force. The eisenessers moaned and ran towards the goblins and their spears.
Kagandis led, and Felewin would have outpaced them but the lantern didn’t provide enough light for him to move faster. Kagandis led them through a maze of tunnels. They came to a section of tunnel that was flooded.
“Time of year,” she said to Ninefingers, “don’t worry, there’s no current.” Ninefingers repeated that to Felewin.
The two goblins began wading. The water was swiftly up to their necks, with Kagandis holding her quiver up out of the water. Felewin, close behind, bunched up the gambeson up to his chest. He could handle if his trousers got wet; if the gambeson got wet, it would weigh him down. If he could avoid it, he would.
Felewin hissed as the water soaked through his boots. It was frigid. He pressed on. There was a narrow part of the passage where he had to turn sideways, although the goblins didn’t have to.
Finally they climbed up out of the water.
Kagandis said something to Ninefingers, who responded curtly.
“What?” asked Felewin.
“We’re in the cave of death,” said Ninefingers.
“Oh.”
“And we’re heading for the hall of death.”
“Well, at least it’s a little more civilized,” Felewin replied.
“You would say that.”
“Give me your tunic. I’ll wring it out. Hers too; I won’t look.”
They paused for a moment. They didn’t want to be dripping and noisy when they encountered goblins again.
Kagandis tutted over the state of her cuirass. Fortunately her bowstrings were protected. There was the sound of wrung water streaming down. “What do we have to watch out for here?” asked Ninefingers.
She thought for a moment. “Spiders, crawlers, big centipedes. They have lived through the winter or just hatched.”
“No rats?”
She shook her head. “They can’t get in here while the water is high, and our dogs kill them if they leave the hall of death from the other side.”
Ninefingers passed this on to Felewin. “She doesn’t realize that rats can swim. We’ll watch for them. Because you’re so tall, spiders might be a concern.”
Felewin stood up. “Got it. Here are your tunics. Not dry, but better.” He spent a moment wringing out his own clothes.
Kagandis watched. “Huh. There’s more difference between humans than I thought.”
“The only human you’ve ever seen is Hastwine?”
“Close up. I’ve shot others.”
Ninefingers said, “I only knew Hastwine on the march, but he is not a shining example of what humans can be.”
“Is this human here your friend?”
“I owe him a life debt. He is better than most others, but still flawed.”
“I guess we all have flaws.” She put her cuirass back on. “He’s too big and bulgy for my taste.” In common, she said, “Go now?”
Felewin finished putting on on his boots. He took an experimental step.
His boots made squishy noises.
“I hope we don’t have to hide.” He shrugged, picked up the buckler and lantern, and gestured.[39] He held the buckler like a hat so that at least something dropping on his head was unlikely to get him immediately. Kagandis led; Ninefingers was last; and Felewin was in the middle.
Of course, Felewin couldn’t keep holding the buckler: the terrain was rough and sharp, and in places he had to use both hands to ease through tight spaces that the goblins traversed easily. He tried, though finally Ninefingers said, “It’s distracting watching you put that up and down.”
Felewin said, “Sorry,” and lowered the buckler.[40]
Of course, that was when the centipede attacked. Its long flat head darted at Felewin from a nearby stalagmite.[41] Several legs touched his arm and he saw the shiny brown head in the light of the lantern.[42] It made a chittering sound as it moved, like unoiled links on a chain and sprocket.
Kagandis spun around and stabbed with her knife. She stabbed between two plates on the lithe long figure. Felewin grabbed with one hand but missed; Ninefingers also missed, but in trying to return the attack, they stayed where they were.
The centipede hovered there, its head high and mandibles clicking.[43] Kagandis struck again, but her dagger hit a plate squarely an did nothing. The centipede darted in again, only to hit the buckler, which Felewin had brought to bear. Ninefingers hit, but his Seftish dagger did as little as her dagger had. “I think we should move,” Felewin said. “We need space.”
Kagandis caught only the words for move and need, but she agreed, and moved as quickly as she could.[44] The others followed, and the centipede’s next attack hit only empty air.
Will it follow us? thought Ninefingers, and then, And if it doesn’t, is it because we have moved into the territory of something worse?
He shut down that part of his brain. The centipede was right behind them.
“Keep it busy,” said Felewin. “All I can think of it to drop a big rock on it.” There were loose rocks here, the size of a man’s chest. Felewin set the lantern down so he could see the rock and the centipede.
Ninefingers said, “Keep it busy? Easy to say.”[45] He repeated the command to Kagandis, who said, “Of course. We can’t run away like sensible people with your big oaf of a friend here.” She used her spear to attract the beast’s attention. With a grunt, Felewin lifted the rock.
The centipede wavered between Kagandis’ spearhead and Ninefingers. It finally attacked Kagandis’ spearhead but missed.
Felewin dropped the rock on its back half. Then he staggered back to the lantern. The sudden exertion left him hot and sweaty; the cavern didn’t feel cold for the moment.
Once it was trapped, it was much easier to hit. Kagandis[46] hit it and possibly killed it. To make sure, Felewin found another, smaller rock and dropped it on the centipede, and finally the centipede it was dead.
“We could have just run away,” pointed out Ninefingers.
“Lots of good eating on a centipede,” said Kagandis.
“We’re leaving,” said Ninefingers gently. “We don’t care.”
“Oh. Right,” she said.
“It’s a useful distraction; other things will eat it instead of us.”
“Where next?” asked Felewin.
She nodded. “I’m turned around. We came from...that way? I recognize that pillar. So we go this way to the hall. I think.”
“You think?”
Instead of reassuring him, she said, “From here, the sounds might carry, so be quiet.”
“Death cave, no, but exhaustion and fear cave, sure,” whispered Ninefingers. She snorted laughter but quietly.
Scaring Monsters
Befriend Adversities (NPC action CF 8)
“Would you stop flashing that light around?” Ninefingers said to Felewin.
“Just checking for something that would get it named the hall of death,” whispered Felewin.
“It connects to the death cave; isn’t that good enough?”
“So does the main area, and they don’t call that the, the sanctuary of death.”
“Long name,” said Ninefingers.
“Quiet,” said Kagandis in common.
Kagandis put her hand on the wall and felt along the cracks. “One connects,” she said. “I’ve never come this way, though.”
She began searching. At one point, she disappeared into one crack but stepped back. Felewin put his back to the nearest wall so that he scanned the cave, concentrating on the ceiling. Ninefingers kept his eyes open, too; he thought he spotted movement ahead.[47] He touched Felewin’s arm and whispered, “Don’t look but I see a giant rat. Can you shoot her bow if she lets you?”
Felewin kept his gaze on the ceiling. “Her bow is small, but yeah. We just need to scare it, right?”
“Sure.”
“I can do that. You ask her.”
Ninefingers said to her, “Need your bow.”
“That’s my bow. No.”
“You’re the only one who can find the exit; we have a rat to deal with.”
“You shoot?”
“Him.”
“He’ll break it, big oaf.”
“Please.”
“Fine. I know that opening is here somewhere,” she said.
Felewin took the bow and quiver of arrows. He pulled out a bowstring and swiftly strung the bow. “It still there?”
“Yeah. It’s not exploring like a regular rat,” said Ninefingers. “More like it’s....watching or something.”
“Huh. Maybe it’s Vengis?”
“Maybe.”
Felewin drew and loosed the arrow.[48] “Nice draw weight,” commented Felewin as the arrow sank into the rat’s shoulder.
“If he’s a rat, he’ll leave,” said Ninefingers. The rat scurried away.
“If he’s a wererat, he’s faking,” said Felewin. “He’ll circle around and keep an eye on us.”
“Shame we don’t have silver arrows,” said Ninefingers.
Beside them, Kagandis said, “Got it!” in goblin.
“Good,” said Felewin.
“The rat is[49] still around. Over there,”said Ninefingers. “Do you see? By the tallest stalagmite.”
Felewin looked[50] and spotted the brown fur. He shot once more[51]. It looked like the arrow went true.
“I found it. Did you hear me?” asked Kagandis.
“Rat,” murmured Ninefingers. “We think it’s a shifter.”
“We’ll be better to handle it when Felewin has his equipment,” she said.
“True, that.” Ninefingers mentioned this to Felewin.
He nodded. “I’ll feel better with my stuff, too. Nice bow she has.”
Ninefingers translated but Kagandis said, “I caught that.” In common, she said, “Thank you.”
In bad goblin, he said, “It is an earned thing.”
“You speak goblin?” she asked.
In the same bad goblin, Felewin said, “I don’t speak goblin.” He looked at the crevice she had found. It would require him to climb up to get to a wide enough place, while the goblins could thread it easily..
Ninefingers said, “I taught him to say, ‘please,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘it is an earned thing,’ and ‘I don’t speak goblin.”
“His accent is awful.”
“Yes,” Ninefingers acknowledged. “You go through first, then Felewin, last me.”
She paused. “The hall of death makes me the most nervous,” she admitted. “The cave is formidable but understandable. The hall...”
Ninefingers patted her shoulder. “My uncle used to say, ‘Sooner we get in, sooner we get out.’”
“Warrior?”
“Grave robber. Go.”
The Hallway of Death, the Cave of Death
Transform Fears (Move Toward A Thread CF 8)
Kanagis paced in the hallway, waiting for Felewin to squeeze through the space; he was taking what seemed like an impossible amount of time to get through. Far off in the ruin, she could hear the fury dogs barking and the sounds of battle. In one quiet moment, she could hear the signal for “invasion” sound, but she wasn’t sure that it was us.
And she was in the hall of death, alone.
Ninefingers couldn’t come to her aid, because he couldn’t get past the big human.
This section of the walls looked wet, which struck her has unusual but not terribly so; usually the human-constructed parts were dry, but this connected to the caves. She stood looking back at the hole in the wall. Felewin filled the upper part of the space; he seemed to have gotten himself wedged.[52]
“Need help?” she said in common.
“Sorry, slow,” said the human.[53]
To her left were the stairs up. Normally the soldiers put things on the landing where the stairs turned to the upper level; she could see a glint of metal there, so something of Felewin’s was probably still there. It was dry on the landing.
To her right was a long hallway. She had no idea what was down there; presumably someone had explored there, before they found out that people died in this hall. Dry there, too. So it was just this section that connected to the caves.
Felewin was still trying[54] to get through. Kagandis sighed and looked up and down the corridor, trying to spot a threat.
She could see litter. There were small round somethings on the floor and she wasn’t inclined to go check. If rabbits pooped steel, that’s what they looked like.
What they should do, she thought, is they should lead the eisennessers down this corridor. Either the mysterious goblin-killer dies or the eisenessers, and either way the goblins get extra space.
From upstairs came the sounds of actual battle. Humans come looking for their fellow? No, the whole “someone wants Felewin” story was made up. So what?
She barely heard Felewin’s sigh[55] of relief as he finally got himself un-wedged.
She leaned against the far wall. And then jumped back.
The wall was squishy. She looked at her hand, which was smoking. She stripped the glove off and threw it down. The wall and ceiling were covered by some kind of film, and only through luck had her gloves been burned instead of her skin.[56]
Now that she had provoked it, the film started to flow and gather where she had touched it, leaving dry wall behind it. The film thickened there until it extended a pseudopod to her. She dodged this one, but more were already forming.
The temptation was to run. Something made of slime couldn’t be that fast, right?
But Felewin wasn’t even through yet, and Ninefingers was still stuck in the cave.
She jabbed the pseudopod with the point of her spear,[57] and dragged the point to get its attention.
It swung around, trying to get her.[58] It managed to hit her spear and the blade sizzled. She smelled acid.
She ran away from the landing to let Felewin could get to his equipment.[59] “Go not me!” she shouted in common.
#
Felewin finally unfolded himself in the hallway, and heard Kagandis yell. What does that mean? he thought. She was the one who had told them to be quiet, and here she was, yelling. In the other direction, he could hear fighting.
Factions of the goblins fighting? Maybe?
There was his gear! “I’m in the hall,” he told Ninefingers in a low voice, and headed up to the landing. He had to get his gear on as quickly as possible.
#
Ninefingers was trying to spot the wererat. Maybe it went away, he thought. Sure: Pigs, wings, like before.[60]
At least it was injured. That makes it less effective but more dangerous.
The wererat m[61]issed Ninefingers. It staggered and its claws did not penetrate Ninefinger’s cuirass. Ninefingers, surprised, missed as well. The wererat tried again, weakly, and Ninefingers managed to drive his blade along the thing’s armpit and open it up. Blood spurted; Ninefingers had hit an artery.
The wererat turned into a dirty man,naked but for a belt and a pouch, who lay there on the cavern floor. Ninefingers carefully cut his throat, mindful of scratches that could spread the shifter plague.
The man was not Vengis. Ninefingers had never seen him before.
Vengis had to get it from somewhere, he thought. Here?
He grabbed the contents of the pouch: a piece of paper and two gold pieces.
He left the body quickly. A centipede was already approaching, and Ninefingers ran for the wall.
A Stupid Plan
Bestow Liberty (Ambiguous Event CF 8)
Once he had his gear on, Felewin felt safer. Maybe it was a false confidence, but it was confidence nonetheless. He blew out Hastwine’s lamp and opened his; it provided brighter light and was magicked so it wouldn’t run out of fuel. (All right, it was a glowing rock in a box. But it wouldn’t run out of fuel.) He ran down the hall toward Kagandis, hoping that she was still okay.
There were sounds of a fight coming from the cave, but he couldn’t shoot through the crevice, and Kagandis was in danger. He chose to help Kagandis but he knew he might be choosing wrong.
She was using a stick to fend off some kind of goo. An ooze, thought Felewin. He had heard of such things, and he knew that they were difficult to defeat. Until Ninefingers came through they could not run away. He wished he had not left Hastwine’s lamp at the landing; fire might help against this thing. She was using a stick to hold it off.[62] When she poked it, it had no effect.
The decorations on the stick showed Felewin that the stick had been her spear.
The thing dissolved metal.
Great. He had nothing but metal, now.[63]
He had no tinderbox, no flame, so he grabbed a shiny rock from the ground and threw it at the pseudopod.[64]
It hit. The thing spread away from the shiny pebble.[65]
“Doesn’t like the shiny stones,” he said, and hoped she understood more common than she spoke.
“I think... slime droppings,” she grunted as she poked. She used a different word for “droppings.”
Felewin grimaced and rubbed his fingers. “It doesn’t like them,” he repeated, and threw another one.[66] This one also hit and spoiled the aim of the pseudopod that was rising behind Kandagis. Presumably the thing stayed on the walls and ceiling to avoid slime droppings.
“We busy it while Ninefingers come,” she said. She wished she knew common better.
“Here, though! You stand here so you’re safer!”
She poked another pseudopod with her stick. “Good.” She dashed to Felewin’s side. “Not face to me,” she said and made a twirling motion with her hand.
Felewin understood her and they stood back to back. The slime made a pseudopod to hit Felewin[67] but he got the buckler up in time.
As bad as a hydra, thought Felewin.[68] He knew how you were supposed to fight the hyrdra, but they didn’t have fire. He bashed at it with the buckler[69]. Kagandis swung but no pseudopod came near her.
“Ninefingers!” said Felewin. “Hurry up![70]” The ooze came at him from the side and he parried with his sword, but heard the sizzling sound.
“Bad,” opined Kagandis. She stabbed it with her spear haft.
Ninefingers finally came through and saw what they were fighting. “Son of Vult!” he exclaimed. “Run away!”
“Now that you’re here...[71] Go, Kagandis!”
At the word “go” she broke and ran for the landing. Felewin grabbed his lamp (losing the buckler), and ran. Ninefingers joined them.
From the landing, they could hear the battle ahead of them, clear and loud.
“What is going on?” asked Kagandis.
Felewin paused for a moment and strung his bow. “Someone invaded. Vengis couldn’t have that many people, could he?”
Ninefingers looked behind them. “We’ve got to keep moving, people. That thing is slow but we can’t ignore it.”
There was nothing ahead, but the spill of light from the corridor indicated that something was coming. An orc walked out[72] wearing the robes of a mage. He looked down both halls and saw them.
Kagandis knew that her arrows couldn’t harm the orc unless she went for a soft spot. She aimed for the eyes, and her arrow sank true.
Felewin knew his bow wasn’t as strong as Kagandis, so he went for the eyes as well...and hit.
The orc sank to its feet, arrows sticking out of its head. Ninefingers dashed forward and stuck his dagger in its mouth, slashing.
Felewin slowly advanced. “Are there more?[73]”
Ninefingers looked up. “No.”
“Slavers?” asked Kagandis.
“I guess,” said Ninefingers in goblin.
“Then I have to help!”
“I thought you were escaping.”
She said sadly, “I can’t leave them like this. You escape.”
Felewin assumed they were talking about the orc. “I’d interrogate him but with his tongue mangled he can’t talk,” said Felewin. “Opinions?”
“Kill him,” Ninefingers said to Felewin. To Kagaindis, he said, “We need you, Kagandis.”
“I have to help them. When the threat’s over, maybe I can find you.”
“We know that’s not going to happen. Okay. I’ll help you. I can join up with him later.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Felewin. “But what are we doing?” He handed Kagandis her arrow, already wiped clean.
“Slavers,” said Ninefingers simply. “I’m going to help her and then escape. You can escape now.”
Felewin yawned. “Not without you.” Ninefingers stared at him. “What? Escaping sounds sensible, so you know I’m not going to do it.”
Ninefingers blinked. “...that’s stupid enough for a knight.”
Felewin grinned. “Got to have goals.” He looked down at his sword. The edge was pitted from touching the slime thing. “I need a better weapon.”
“I’ll bet the rest of the orcs have armour, unlike this one,” said Ninefingers.
“Ninefingers, sneak around and see if there’s anyone in the main hall or altar room,” said Kagandis. “We’ll head this way.”
Ninefingers repeated it for Felewin and disappeared[74].
The main hall held bodies: mostly goblins, a few fury dogs and some orcs. There were some barrels that hadn’t been there before, and a stack of unused torches; Ninefingers presumed the orc had brought them. Ninefingers grabbed a sword for himself and a longer one for Felewin. He came out of the altar room farther along the same hallway. “No one,” he said to them. “Try this sword. Looks like they took it from a commander.”
From the style, Felewin could see it was a Tannen captain’s sword, probably from cavalry. Felewin tried a few passes. “They stole nice stuff.”
There was more noise ahead, hooting and hollering.
“Uh-oh,” said Kagandis. “Taunting chants. I’ll bet the bridge is down. Part of it can be dropped out to protect the far side.”
“Listen, how hungry do you think the slime is?” asked Ninefingers.
“You think that would work?”
“We hide Felewin, get their attention, lure them to it, and we go through the crack into the caves while they fight the slime.”
“Would it kill them?”
“I hope so. Either way, there’s one less enemy.”
“Hey,” said Felewin in common. “What if we lure it to the slime? That’s the only thing I can think of. We’re on the wrong side of the bridge to lure the metal-eating critters.”
“We’re just talking about that. I don’t think you can come. You’re too big to squeeze through that crack quickly.”
“Right, so put me in a room. I’ll come up behind them to trap them with the slime, sniper-like. I remember a guard room with a door.”
Ninefingers passed it on; Kanagis nodded and led them back. Felewin managed to keep his boots from making squishing[75] noises.
They came to the guard room. Felewin grabbed a rack of arrows while Ninefingers was unlocking the door.[76] They let Felewin enter and shut the door.
A Fraught Preparation
Assist Liberty (PC Negative CF 8)
“You ever done this before?” whispered Kagandis before they crept along the hall.
“Lots of times,” said Ninefingers.
“Liar,” said Kagandis.
“First, we bait the trap,” said Ninefingers and headed back the way they had come.
“What?” She followed him.
“Help me move the corpse,” Ninefingers said. He took one arm of the dead orc and began dragging it.
She saw what he was doing and took the other arm. The two of them quickly dragged the orc down to the landing. “It looks like wet stone,” she whispered. “That’s what you look for.”
They dragged the orc farther until it was past the entrance to the cave. Then they were ready to leave it, when Ninefingers sat it up against a stalagmite. “Encourage them to come closer, to help him.”
Kanagis found the dead orc’s water gourd and put it in his hand.
Ninefingers picked up a slime dropping and threw it against one wall farther back, hoping to chivy the slime toward them. There was no time to do more; they headed back upstairs. They entered the main hall, and Ninefingers tried to lock the door[77]. “Block them if they try to escape,” he said.
Then they avoided the guard room and crept around to the entrance to the bridge cavern. There were maybe ten orcs there. Kagandis pointed one out with better armour. Ninefingers readied a rock. They both aimed.[78]
Kagandis’ arrow broke against the orc leader’s armor; Ninefingers’ stone hit him in the head.
Ninefingers said loudly, “Whoops. Noticed me.” He suggested that their mothers did improper things with farm animals, and ran with an obvious limp and clutching his leg as if there were something wrong with it.
Kagandis was already running[79] ahead of him.
He went through the guard room so that Felewin could hear and she did not,[80] so the following orcs split for a moment. Kagandis rounded the landing and headed straight for the crevice. Ninefingers rounded the landing and dropped the pretense of lameness.[81] He scrambled in to the crack, hoping that the presence of the dead orc would distract them enough.
Both huddled down beside the crevice to wait.
(They were not going to go forward; better to use the crevice as a natural bottleneck in case any orcs came after them.)
A Library Fine
Trick Magic (Ambiguous Event CF 8)
Felewin hoped the signal to come out would be clear, like the sound of a dozen stampeding orcs. He would wait a while, and then a while longer, and then if there were no signal, he would look for Ninefingers.
He waited.
Felewin looked around the small room. It had clearly been a library: The walls were lined with shelves and the shelves filled with books and scrolls. From the cobwebs, nothing had been touched for some time. The books looked old and fragile.
One might be a gift for his brother Ealin; what he said to Hastwine about being the third son was true: his brother was clergy and would appreciate a book, wouldn’t he? He could read, and this place had once been a sanctuary. Perhaps a book would be of interest.
Felewin aimed the lamplight to find the one in the best shape, the one that might survive the rigors of life on the road. He peered carefully at them.
One was large but it also looked to be in the best shape. Mayhap he could put it where his bedroll would be, if he still had a bedroll?
Ugh. And that was a new bedroll.
He carefully pulled the book off the shelf, half-expecting things to crumble and collapse.
The book was surprisingly heavy. He weighed it in his hands[82] and looked carefully at it. It was a wooden box crafted to look like a book, and it was holding something.
Mindful of the dangerous things that could live in boxes, he carefully opened it.
In the lamplight he saw gold pieces.
Huh. Well, that’ll buy another new bedroll.
Felewin put the gold in his pouch, and carefully set the book back. Get another one?[83]
He decided not to risk it; at any time, the door might get opened or the signal might come. His brother would have to go without; Felewin had tried.
He heard the jangling sounds of people running.
Sounds like a signal to me.
If he were in charge of enslaving orcs in enemy territory, he’d only send a small force after the “escaped goblins.” But still, things should be relatively safe for now. He moved relatively slowly and took a spot by the hallway that led to the Main Hall. The glow on the landing reminded him that unlike goblins, orcs couldn’t see in the dark. He drew his bow and fitted an arrow.
Pity Ninefingers didn’t find me a combat bow, but I didn’t ask, either.
There was a cry from below. Presumably they had discovered it was a trap. When they saw the slime, they would probably run.
It took longer than he thought, but they did find the slime, and then they ran. He watched the lights of their torches as they rounded the landing and he fired.[84]
The arrow sank into a lead orc’s throat. Suddenly the orcs stopped running.[85]
The four or five orcs huddled together, afraid to stay down and afraid to come up.[86]
Felewin hit one in the armor, then missed entirely. The orcs scanned for him, but Felewin was too well hidden.
He fired twice and got lucky: two more orcs took arrow to their faces.
He had about a dozen more regular-size arrows and about two dozen of the smaller goblin-made arrows. Good thing he wasn’t firing a longbow; that would never use these smaller arrows.
Torches are good for about fifteen minutes. Let’s see how long your nerves hold out.
Once their torches went out, he wouldn’t be able to fire at them. But this corridor went to the Main Hall, he remembered from Ninefingers’ scouting trip. From there he would be able to either escape outside or head through the altar room and harry them again from up ahead.
He fired[87] and hit one but the arrow bounced off the orc’s armor.
There was a scream from below the stairs. Presumably someone did not manage to avoid the slime.
The orcs broke ranks and sprinted up the stairs. There were ten, maybe more of them, and they seemed to be operating on the theory that the sniper couldn’t kill all of them.
Which was true.
Felewin withdrew down the hallway to the door.[88] Time to slip away, squishy boots and all...
The door was locked.
He was trapped there.
Very bad, he thought.
A Stupider Plan
Vengeance Animals (CF 8)
In the cave of death, two centipedes had found the dead wererat, which they were sharing, but then a third centipede showed up and the other two weren’t inclined to share any more. There were a few abortive gestures, but finally the third, smallest centipede started circling around, looking for other things.
It was very close to Kagandis.
Both of them heard the scream from the hallway, and it seemed like the centipede did, too, because it stopped.
There was the noise of the orcs running.
Then, satisfied that those events were not going to interfere with its centipede life, the centipede tried to taste Kagandis.
She rolled away.[89] Ninefingers sprang to his feet, dagger at the ready.
The two eating centipedes didn’t pay attention to them; the third centipede did.[90]
It tried once more to attack Kagandis. and hit her, but in the thin part of her arm: the mandibles went right through and the poison squirted on the cave wall. Ninefingers slashed at the joining of two plates and his blade went into the centipede’s flesh; Kagandis pulled free and rolled to her feet.
Then[91] Ninefingers got another good slash in, and the centipede’s next attack went wide. Kagandis stabbed it, and the centipede fell dead.
Ninefingers tried several times to lift it[92] and finally he heaved it towards the other centipedes.
He went to look through the crevice, only to see it was full of someone. There was huffing and then Felewin said, badly, “I don’t speak goblin.”
Ninefingers laughed and helped the man out.
“They know we’re here,” he said. “Someone locked the door to the main hall, so I couldn’t get away from them. Managed to hide in the hallway and came down. The slime got two of them, huh?”
“Um. I locked it. Thought they might try to escape that way.”
Felewin stared at him for a moment and then relaxed and said, “I’ve done worse. At least I lived through this without injury. I don’t mind telling you that I would rather go through that crack again than through these caves, especially now that those centipedes are right there, feeding.”
“We’ve got a moment,” said Ninefingers in common, then repeated himself in goblin. “There are less than two dozen orcs on this side, but we’re only three people. The surviving goblins are on the other side of the bridge. I presume they succeeded against the orcs who made it over, but the orcs aren’t going to leave...the sun is up soon and they hate sunlight. Sooner or later they find this access to the caves, and then defeat the goblins. Kagandis, what do the goblins have for resources?”
“Probably four fury dogs. Good archers, but a limited supply of arrows. Without getting out, we can’t make more. A wizard who’s no good. For animals, there are centipedes, rats, and spiders. The eisenessers. And that cave we were in, Ninefingers, those mushrooms are poisonous. The stream.”
“We’ve seen thesee dead: two across the bridge, two in the main hall, the wizard we killed; ignore the one that got eaten by the slime. Half of the survivors before slime went after you, and that was four. So there were eight or nine total, and one got eaten by slime. That leaves maybe eight. I think we have to deal with eight.”
“He’s making this up,” said Kagandis, after Ninefingers translated.
“He’s not given to that kind of flight of fancy,” said Ninefingers. “He might be wrong, but he didn’t make it up.”
“The orcs know they’re in foreign territory, so they want to wrap this up as quickly as possible, before the goblins try something that uses the land better. But the sun will be up, so they’ll pick something defensible and stay there. The guard room is too small. Where does the cross corridor go? One arm goes to the hall of death; what’s the other arm?”
“Well,” she said, once the question was put to her.
“Good, small, defensible, but nowhere to go if it goes bad,” Felewin mused. “No; they’ll pick the main hall. It’s not as defensible, but there’s an exit. That makes it better than the well. The well is the kind of place that we should hide, but there’s nowhere to go.”
“Where does the well go?”
“There’s a pool that connects to the main stream.”
“Which means they can shoot at you. Not as good. The bridge is better, because then the other goblins can shoot at them. Kanagis, does the bridge area connect to the well?”
“You have to swim, but yes.”
“Never heard of orcs swimming, but I suppose they must. Still, best of a bad lot is the guard room. One of us will check the well on a regular basis.”
“Excuse me?”
Felewin explained for Ninefingers. “In terms of access, there are two possibilities: The main hall is best; it’s got controlled access and an exit point. We don’t want them to get there.”
“We don’t.”
“No, then they’ll have control. We want them to stay near the bridge, where goblin archers can see them.”
“But the goblins don’t have enough arrows.”
“The orcs don’t know that. If we bottle them up by the bridge, they can only exit two ways: the guard room or the well. We’re going to be blocking the guard room, and we might be able to do something about the well.”
“There are only three of us.”
“We’ll have to get started, then.”
A Lucky Break
Heal Intrigues (PC Positive)
The slime was busy with the two orc bodies, so they were able to escape into the hall. Felewin found a bow on the landing and scooped it up as they passed.[93]
Upstairs, the orcs were still unsettled. There were eight of them, as Felewin had deduced. They had set three lookouts, one looking over the bridge, one by the entry to the pool, and the third by the guard room.[94]
The orc fell down before he had a chance to speak. Ninefingers took the opportunity to finish him.[95]
There was a shout from one of the orcs, and the two goblins melted away.[96]
Down to seven, thought Felewin. He was ready to shoot once more; he wasn’t stealthy at all, so he stayed where he was. He trusted to the goblins to keep him safe.
Three orcs came to the doorway to look at their dead friend. They dragged him out to the center again.
Felewin had realized that they couldn’t block off the area without being noticed, and they had nothing to block it off with. But they might make it difficult for the orcs to leave.
Nice bow, thought Felewin. He hoped to keep this one.
Two orcs came up to the doorway and checked it out. They sniffed several times and saw that all the bundles of arrows were missing. They called two more orcs over.
One of them had a bandaged throat; Felewin had already shot him once. The bandage made a nice target, so Felewin aimed and took one more shot.[97] The arrow went into the bandage and the orc was already in danger of bleeding out. He fell over. One orc spotted where he must be, and pointed. Felewin waved and moved back to a defensible position.
Goblins had been able to walk through this corridor in pairs, but they were not the size that Felewin was. With luck, Ninefingers and Kagandis had taken their positions.
Felewin filled the space. The two orcs looked at Felewin, who waved and stepped back into the hallway.
The orcs called over two more of their compatriots. That made four, half of the remaining orcs. That was smore than Felewin had wanted to face, but he was committed now.
Cramped quarters. Good. The axes and flails won’t work nearly as well. Position myself so some of them are in the hallway.
He stood prepared. The orc attacked once, and he parried, then swung.[98]
The next attack was faster.[99] Felewin just managed to parry and slashed once, which caught this orc over the eye.
The orc countered[100] but Felewin managed to block; his next thrust found a chink in the orc’s armour and cut him again. The orc tried to move back, but could not.[101] He missed Felewin by a wide margin, and Felewin took the opportunity to thrust twice, hitting both times. The orc’s scale armour kept him from the final blow.
The orc’s swing went wild, and Felewin killed it. He stepped back to let the orc fall.[102] Way in the back, he saw the fourth orc fall down, with two arrows in his head.[103]
The next orc had an awkward time trying to get to him, but straddled the corpse.[104] He swung his axe and Felewin managed to guide it away, but he couldn’t manage to hit hard.
He shook his head slightly to stay fresh and alert.[105] He managed to drive a good shot and got the orc along its matted hair, and then managed to move the axe aside.
The orc[106] tossed its head, trying to get blood out of its eye. Felewin blocked it and struck, being careful because all it took was one mistake.
He[107] managed to kill this one, too, with two more blows. The one behind him — what was now the last one — noticed that the one behind him had been killed, and he whirled around. That gave Felewin the chance to finish him off.[108]
Felewin stopped for a moment. “I have to rest, if we can. There are three more. They should be panicked and will run.”
“No,” said Kagandis sadly. “Must kill.” To Ninefingers she said, “If any of them get away, they’ll go back to their base and fetch more, a bigger force. We have to kill them all, if we can.”
Ninefingers translated for her.
“I don’t know if we can,” said Felewin. “The remaining few are the most desperate.”
“Felewin, go into the main hall. The orcs brought barrels of stuff; see what it is.”
Felewin shrugged and walked wearily to the main hall.
“We have to kill them,” Kandagis said.
“I believe you,” said Ninefingers. “And you’re not going to go with us, are you?”
“I’d like to,” said Kandagis. “But probably not.”
“Shame. I’m starting to like you.”
“You? An Aprak?”
Ninefingers said, “You knew?”
“Holes for earrings in your ears. Warriors don’t wear dangly earrings: too easy to grab and distract you. They were studs sometimes. But Aprak...Aprak wear earrings.”
“I like you anyway,” said Ninefingers.
She looked down at the corpses of the orcs. “Shame our great-grandmothers’ experiment didn’t work.”
“What is that?”
“They thought maybe if they bred with the orcs, the orcs would get more peaceful.” She shook her head. “Didn’t happen.”
“No, it did not.” He looked up.[109] “Orc investigating the guard room.”
In a flash she had drawn and released an arrow.[110] The arrow hit him in the thigh, where his leg was exposed, and sank in. He howled and hobbled back.
“Get closer, and I’ll stay halfway so Felewin can find us.”[111]
“I Challenge You”
Attract Balance (PC Positive)
Felewin was rolling the barrel. “I’m gonna have to move those dead orcs!” he said as he approached the steps. He stopped[112] the barrel at the top of the two steps that led out of the altar room into the hallway. He set aside the unused torch he had tucked into his waist.
Felewin looked at the orcs and grabbed the smallest one. He shrugged and started peeling the scale vest off the corpse. “What’s in the barrel?”
“Tar and oil. I presume they were going to scare the goblins and catch them as they fled, but the goblin guards caught them first. What are you doing?”
“Better armor than what I have. What are you going to do with the barrel?”
“Make the part of the cave they’re in uninhabitable. I want to spread the tar and set it on fire. Ask Kagandis if that can be done. I don’t want to do it if it kills most of the goblins, too.”[113]
Ninefeathers finished fastening the vest and then edged up to Kanagis’ hiding spot in the guard room, but apparently not well enough: an arrow flew by him. It went wide, though, so he made a note to collect it on his way back.[114]
She told him that they had places to retreat to in case of fire. “Mushroom cave, for instance.”
“Can we do set it on fire?”
“Seems kind of extreme for three orcs.”
“Otherwise it’s a standoff.”
“Tar gets into the water, the area is useless for days, but we still have an area...”
She thought for a moment.[115] While thinking she spotted more orc movement and fired another shot. It hit the chief and splintered off his armour. While she was firing, an orc fired an arrow at her, and hit. The shot was sloppy and hit her in the hip, but it did hit.
He dragged her to the hallway and called Felewin up, ignoring the need for stealth. He punctuated it with a single bird call.
The orcs stayed silent.
Felewin arrived and looked at Kagandis’s wound. “All of their arrows have barbed heads. We’ll have to push it through the flesh. That’s going to hurt.”
“Shaman...can help,” she said.
Felewin said, “Then we have to risk it. I’ll challenge the orc chief to single combat.”
“No,” said Ninefingers. “I challenge the orc chief.”
“Why you?”
“Primus,” said Ninefingers, pitching his voice deep to imitate Felewin. “You’re tired.” Felewin started to object, when Ninefingers said, “Secundus, the other orcs won’t abide if you win. They might if I win. Tertius, Kagandis is hurt. She can’t navigate the caves in this state. We have to finish it now. If I don’t win—”
“You’ll be dead. I don’t want you dead.”
Ninefingers shrugged. “If I don’t win, you can still crush them as they come through the doorway. You’re big.”
Kagandis said, “I should do it. I’m a warrior. You’re not a fighter!” Kagandis said, and tried to stand. Felewin held her down.
“I can fight,” said Ninefingers.“I just prefer not to fight.”
To Kagandis, Felewin said, “Can you shoot your bow seated? Because if I’m at the doorway supervising this duel, I want someone checking the hallway.”
She nodded. “I’m injured, I’m not dead.”
Ninefingers yelled so the orcs could hear him, “I challenge you!”
Duel To The Death
Dispute Leadership (ambiguous event)
Ninefingers shrugged again, trying to get used to the feel of the armour. He’d rather have it than not, but he was aware of it. He was also using Felewin’s commander’s sword, which he had to admit was a better balance than the one he had taken from a dead orc.
The orc chieftain strolled to him. Behind him, Ninefingers could see the injured orc with a bow, ready to intervene if needed. He couldn’t see the other orc.
Ninefingers knew that behind him was Felewin, with his bow and the biggest sword he could find.
The area was saddle-shaped, with the sides dipping down to the water and the centre rising to the bridge. The orc had the higher ground for now.[116]
The orc’s first shot was[117] exploratory; so were Ninefingers’.
The next pair[118] of swings connected but both were foiled by armour.
The[119] third attempts were a bit more confident but missed.
Then[120] Ninefingers managed a clear strike and drew blood. “Care to surrender?”
The orc grinned. “When I win, the pretty little archer is mine, too.”
Ninefingers[121] said, “If you win, I’ll be dead. I won’t care.”[122] He moved again and got himself uphill from the orc.
The[123]y exchanged harmless blows. The orc managed to move uphill.[124]
Ninefingers[125] dodged the orc’s blow, stabbed him solidly in the leg, and avoided the wild second blow.
“Tell me again what you’ll do to the pretty little archer,” Ninefingers said with a grin.[126]
The orc was breathing heavier now.[127] Ninefingers managed to cut him on his forehead and blood started seeping out. The orc missed, and then shouted, “Now!”
An arrow hit Ninefingers[128] but glanced off the mail.
In the hall, Kagandis saw one healthy orc appear, dripping wet, from the stairs leading down to the pool. She fired and hit[129] but that arrow didn’t penetrate.
Ninefingers shouted, “Felewin—the archer, there!” Felewin fired[130]
Now[131] they were all in battle: Ninefingers’ next blow was thrown off by the arrow, and he missed, as did the orc chieftain, who started swearing. Finally Ninefingers[132] struck down the orc chieftain.
Felewin’s next shot hit the seated archer and sank into his chest The orc started to move, but an[133] arrow from Felewin killed the orc archer while the orc was trying to shift to a better position for shooting.
Kagandis[134] fired two arrows and hit the dripping orc twice, but he was on her; she moved her arm out of the way just in time. Kagandis hit him but did no damage. The orc moved forward and closed the gap between them.
Felewin heard[135] the sound and moved, grabbing the short sword. He swung at the orc and killed him.
“You okay?” he asked Kagandis.
“Yes,” she replied in goblin, and then remembered he didn’t speak goblin, so she repeated it in common.
“That word I know,” Felewin said. He looked at the arrow in her hip and tutted fretfully. “I wish I knew how to help, but I’m worried I’d make things worse.”
They heard Ninefingers shouting to the goblins on the other side of the bridge. Felewin picked her up (“I not child!” she managed in common but she stopped resisting). He carried her out by the bridge.
When she appeared, there was a roar of approval from the goblins. They might have been grateful to Felewin and Ninefingers, but she was one of them.
Not Really Done
Praise Benefits (NPC Positive)
With Felewin hauling, they got the trapdoor in the bridge back up, and the goblins rushed across. They took Kagandis from Felewin’s arms and marched her around the bridge saddle, then across the bridge and into the common room. Ninefingers was telling any goblin who would listen how well Kagandis and Felewin had done. Goblins pushed Felewin across the bridge, and he went, tired and happy. He was anxious but the crowd seemed in a good mood, and no goblin had tried to take away the sword he was carrying. He let himself be pushed along.
Ninefingers tried to sit near him to translate, but other goblins moved him up to sit beside Kagandis.
Hastwine appeared. He was swaying. He had been drinking all through the attack but had been too scared for it to affect him. Now, however, all that alcohol was taking effect. “I’m supposed to translate for you. Think you’re so special.”
“I’m just a fighter,” said Felewin, though he did feel a bit of pleasure that fighters had done this, not wizards.
One of them, the shaman, had finally extracted the arrow and was wiping away blood.[136] Kagandis hadn’t made a sound. The shaman smeared some salve on from an open gourd and then fastened a bandage on it. Kagandis carefully stood and then grinned.
The crowd roared approval again.
“She’s not that good,” Hastwine muttered.
Felewin said, “She was that good. And she’s one of theirs.” In goblin, he said, “It is an earned thing.”
“I didn’t know you spoke goblin,” said Hastwine to him.
Felewin said what he always said when someone replied to him in goblin: “I don’t speak goblin.”
Hastwine said, “Don’t make fun of me,” in goblin, and stalked off.
“I don’t — I only know a couple of things in goblin,” said Felewin in common, but it was too late. Hastwine had lurched to his feet and left the chamber. Felewin didn’t want to shout after him and distract the goblins from their celebration. He sat quietly and watched.
One of the goblin chieftains made a short speech in which Kagandis’ name got used a lot. He used another term and indicated Ninefingers. Finally he waved to indicate Felewin at the back of the room.
Kagandis got a prize — one of the bows that the orcs had used.[137] From gestures, the chieftain was speaking about Ninefingers.
The goblins started a chant.
The chieftain let them chant for a while, and then he said something that made them all cheer again. Everyone was handed out the rations looted from the orc’s bodies: Ninefingers and Kagandis got to choose, while Felewin got whatever was left by the time it got to him. He thought it would be rude not to take something, so he found something small and not particularly objectionable, and took that. (The goblins near him watched him carefully.)
It was dried fruit of some kind. He are it and smiled. The goblins nearest to him were excited and cheered.
The goblins were happy, and two or three of them got him to join in their dancing. (Even after some months with Ninefingers, he wasn’t sure whether it was male or female goblins who pulled him to his feet.) He tried to imitate their moves as best he could, which the goblins found hilarious.
After what seemed like hours of this, he was allowed to sit down, at which point he realized that he was very tired. Ninefingers made his way over.
“Hey,” Ninefingers said in common. “How are you doing?”
“Gods, I’m tired. How long do we have to participate?”
“You can probably get away; I have to stay longer because I’ve been adopted.”
“That’s nice.”
Ninefingers kept smiling but it left his eyes. “It is a great honour that I didn’t particularly want. I’m glad they’re not going to kill us. Let’s get you to Hastwine’s room; you’re still staying there. I hope you can sleep; it’s like noon outside.”
“Oh, I’ll be able to sleep,” Felewin assured him. “And I get my bedroll back. If Hastwine isn’t lying on it.”
They slowly made their way out, with goblins stopping Ninefingers every few steps, but finally they were outside the common room, and from there it was quick to Hastwine’s chamber. They could hear him snoring from outside. Unfortunately the door was stuck, and Felewin had to use more strength to open it without breaking it.
The room was almost empty. Now it held the tick, the partial crate, and the tether that Felewine had left.
“Hold on a moment,” asked Felewin. “He might be in the privy,” though he knew that wasn’t true.
“No, they expect me back. Stay here, I’ll check the privy.”
“Certainly.”
Ninefingers was back almost instantly. “He’s gone. Wait here; I’ll talk to the chieftain.”
Felewin thought, Hastwine took my new bedroll. Can’t trust wizards.
Then he thought about Ninefingers’ presuppositions about goblins and thought, Okay, can’t trust Hastwine. Other wizards might be okay.
His father had not kept a wizard, but hired one as needed. The last one had been the source of their troubles.
23 - On The Trail
Work Hard Friendship (NPC Action CF 7)
Felewin stared at the sky.[138] “Storm coming, so we have to go now if we want to track him.”
Kagandis spoke to Ninefingers, who nodded. “He stole something from the chieftains. He must be punished.”
“Money?” asked Felewin while he was casting about. There were just too many footprints near the entry to the ruin to determine. Even the footprints of kobolds were hard to make out because there were so many. He led them farther away, still looking.
“Kagandis says gems but something else, too. A rare mixture called stillskin, in a sack.”
“Never heard of it.”[139]
“Keeps...what’s the word for shifting into any animal, not just a wolf?”
“I just call’em ‘weres’ because I can never remember the word.”
“Keeps weres from changing shape until it’s washed off.”
Kagandis spoke again.
“Oh, that’s good,” said Ninefingers told her. To Felewin he said,. “Because it contains powdered silver, the area it sticks to is not as tough against weapons.”
“Valuable stuff,” said Felewin.
“They were going to attack Vengis because he’s been blackmailing them.”
“Huh. Was Vengis behind the attack on the cart?”
Ninefingers asked Kagandis.
“Yes. He’s already got the cloth from that...well, they call it a raid.”
“We didn’t find it among his stuff.”
“Probably in the den of the were-rats,” translated Ninefingers.
“Then was Hastwine allied with them?” asked Felewin. “I think Hastwine was trying to hide. I wonder if he knew any bushcraft?”
“The goblins didn’t think so but now they aren’t sure. I’ll ask about Hastwine.”
Felewin ignored their subsequent discussion as noise until he found the bootprints. They were too small for him, too big for any goblin, and nowhere near the orcs. “I think I’ve found his trail.”
“He knew a little bushcraft. Not a lot, but a bit.”
“He tried to cover his movements, which changes how I’ll look for him.”[140]
It was slow going. Once Kagandis and Ninefingers had been shown the signs, they were able to help look.
“Those clouds look bad,” Kagandis said to Ninefingers.
“Keep watch for cover we can use,” he told her. “I hate the rain.”
“You’ve never been caught in the rain?” she teased.
“Very often. That’s why I hate the rain.”
“Hey, what you said before about grave-robbing? Is that true?”
“Family business. Everyone in the nest had some part in it. But I lost that joint”—he held up the hand with the short joint—“when I was just at an age to wonder if I wanted to do keep poking at trapped tombs, so my father encouraged me to try something else for a while. I went to the city where my brother was; he was involved in selling what we found. He happened to know a group of people who did grave-robbing without the grave. That led to me meeting this guy.”
“So you’re not that pure after all. And he was a robber?”
“No, he was trying to get back a stolen item, which he thought I had taken. So I was his prisoner for a while, and then he saved my life when he didn’t have to, and now I owe him a life debt. Simple story.” He touched his stump finger to her shoulder. “And hey, grave-robbing is an honourable profession, according to my nest.”
“Of course it is,” she said.
“Found it again. Can we get by those rocks before the rain? I want to have an idea of where he went after those stones,” said Felewin. He started walking quickly.
Ninefingers said, “Come on,” and started jogging to keep up with Felewin. Kagandis joined him.
24 - About Orcs and Slaves
Block Opulence (Close A Thread)
They sheltered under a rock overhang while the storm came. It was not quite a summer storm, so there was some lightning and not much wind. Felewin suggested shifts, and then used his gambeson as a pillow while he took a nap. Kagandis and Ninefingers played water-fire-mug and he won two times out of three,[141] so he closed his eyes. Kagandis stayed awake but realized that all of them had been up for more than a day. She could manage on catnaps, but she had to actually have the catnaps.
Shame about Ninefingers. Even having been adopted, the life-debt meant that he would be following Felewin.
And, Felewin having killed the bulk of the orcs, she couldn’t find it in her heart to kill him to free Ninefingers. (Being honest, she would probably let him die, but she couldn’t kill him.)
After the storm had paused and resumed three times, she woke Ninefingers, because he was the one she could talk to.
He made a face. “Why is it your mouth tastes worse after a short nap than after a long sleep?” He rummaged around in his bag and found two elf-mint stalks and offered her one.
“You chew those?”
“Freshens my mouth. Also, you never see elves with bad teeth.”
She accepted dubiously. They chewed thoughtfully, watching the rain. “Not bad,” she said. “I’m going to nap now.”
“You can lean on me for warmth. When you wake up, we’ll talk about slavers.”
She snorted. “Oooh, such pillow-talk,” and she snuggled against his back.
A short time later, she said, “What do you want to know?”
Ninefingers enjoyed the warmth of her there. “Who, what, where, when, how, probably not why.”
“Well, we weren’t sure which group. We’ve been dealing with the Death’s Head orcs. Akullul thinks that they found some way across the river and are exploring.”
“It’s the Warmongers normally, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, they’re the closest if you can’t cross the river, but still days afar. They’re still mad at the Margravate for chasing them out of this area.”
“But Akallul’s not sure which of them it is?”
“No. But I was thinking about it. Goblins are probably enslaved by other orcs. They live in caves, they need slaves that can see in the dark. Except we keep hearing that the orc slavers take all kinds of people...humans, dwarves, gnomes, halflings. Why?”
“Well, the biggest use for slaves is agriculture. You have a big number of people, you need ten times as many fishing and tilling and making things like paint to put their symbols on things.”
“True. But why humans or halflings? I figure — and Akullul agrees — they’re selling them.”
“Ah. And the slave state with the most money is the Emprire of Tanne.”
“Just guessing.”
“But my brother is probably with orcs. Because he’s a goblin.”
“Not an Aprak?”
Ninefingers sighed. “Maybe I was wrong about your people.”
“Maybe.” She kissed the back of his neck. “Now I can sleep.”
Ninefingers sat there, watching the rain. Her body and his blush kept him warm.
25 - The Anticlimactic Ambush
Make Ambush (PC Positive)
It took them an hour after the rain to find Hastwine’s trail again. “You said he wasn’t experienced at bushcraft. When would he break for the night?” asked Felewin.
After Ninefingers translated, she said, “I think I know where he is going. If I’m right, he won’t stop until he gets there.”
“Where do you think he was going?” said Ninefingers.
“Understand that Vengis and his shifter companions, they were blackmailing us. They kept us in line, threatening to send the armies after us.”
“Hold on a moment... He had more than one companion?” asked Ninefingers.
“Two were with Vengis when we first encountered them. It was a gatherering party, and they were not armed to defeat three shifters.”
“I don’t suppose they stole the weresbane to defeat the weres and prove his worth?”
She snorted.
Ninefingers quickly filled in Felewin, who said, “But you managed to kill one in the caves. So whatever their number, they’re down by one.”
“Shifters can pass it along,” said Ninefingers. “Who knows how many there are now?”
“True, that. Well, I’ll keep an eye out for giant rat spoor as well.”
They came to an animal run, and followed to approach a brook. There was a copse of birches on a hillside, near the brook, which sprang from somewhere up the hill.
There was a dead human hanging from one of the petrified trees, fastened by his ankle. The body of a finch was stuffed in his mouth, and the damage on his splint mail showed that he had received a terrific battering.
“The hero Erdwain, I presume,” murmured Felewin.
“I judge him a week dead,” said Ninefingers.
“Do you know him?” asked Kagandis.
“We know of him,” Ninefingers told her.
“Not a safe place to camp,” said Felewin.
“We have little time until sunset,” said Kagandis, who had recognized the word for “camp.”
Felewin grimaced and then checked the corpse for anything useful. The corpse’s food was spoiled, but Felewin found a half-dozen coins in the man’s purse. Most were silver; one was a small copper piece. There was also a good-luck charm carved of rowan-wood.
In moving the body, Felewin stepped on a dagger on the ground, with a silver inlay in the handle. The inlay was presumably why they hadn’t touched it; it was unharmed by its week on the ground. He stopped the spinning of the corpse.
“We’ll cut you down when it doesn’t give away our presence, or we’ll join you,” he whispered to it.
They retreated to outside the copse.
“While you were checking the corpse, I saw a spot that a lot of rats seem to go in and out of,” said Ninefingers. “It’s a rat den even if it’s not a were-rat den.”
“Do we make camp or attack? We’ve marched all day and we’re not fresh.”
“It’s their territory. I can’t think of a spot to go where we won’t be found. We could maybe go back to where we sheltered from the storm, but we won’t get there until after dark, and we’ll still need to sleep in shifts.”
“But if we attack now, we don’t have to worry about being attacked in our sleep.”
“How do we attack?” asked Felewin.“They’re resistant to our weapons. I could fasten this dagger to a stick and use it as a club; at least the silver will hurt them.”
Kagandis said, “Place burning wood at the entrance and smoke them out.”
“And if they attack while we’re placing the wood?” asked Ninefingers.
“They’re outside where we have room to maneuver.”
Ninefingers relayed this to Felewin, who said, “Good idea, but there’s just been a storm. Finding wood dry enough to burn might be a problem, and I can’t see in the dark. Pity we don’t have one of the barrels the orcs brought; that stuff burned well enough.” He thought for a moment. “We know where their den is. I vote we go back and get a barrel, smoke them out.” He looked apologetically at Kagandis. “We’ll probably lose the weresbane.”
“But we won’t have a were-rat problem,” Kagandis said, “Let’s do it. I should be the one to go back; I know the way back to our nest, and I can bring back a barrel and a torch.”
“Coming back will be slow,” said Ninefingers. “Unless you bring others carrying the barrel.”
“Leave it to me,” said Kagandis. “Let’s get Felewin to a defensible position so he can sleep.”[142]
Felewin had a bit of hard cheese left: that was dinner. He shared it with Ninefingers and Kagandis; Ninefingers shared the scrap of rabbit that he had gotten the day before; Kagandis shared mushroom wine. Then Felewin went to sleep, with instructions to Ninefingers to switch off in two hours. The watches were uneventful, and as Ninefingers was about to wake Felewin for the second time, he heard a noise.
It was goblins, shepherding along the barrel. Kagandis was leading, and it took seven of them to move the barrel of oil and tar across the ground. Ninefingers woke Felewin, and the big man took over rolling the barrel.
By the time they got it to the were-rat den, it was dawn. They saw[143] the log that rats were scurrying behind, and Ninefingers crept around: behind the log was a hole maybe two feet wide. Felewin could get in, but not easily. However, he could maneuver the barrel to the log, remove the bung, and lift the barrel into place to let the tarry oil drip into the were-rat den. And then hold the barrel in place so they couldn’t easily escape.
Ninefingers would set the oil on fire.
Kagandis would keep an eye on the entire space; she would loose an arrow at anything that threatened them.
All three put on armour; Felewin was going to try to keep them in their hole, but they had no way of knowing if there was another exit. If there was, they would be fighting the were-rats in person.
The oil gauged out slowly, thick from the night’s chill.
“Don’t light it yet,” whispered Felewin. “When we get a sign or when the barrel’s empty.”
A minute later, a half-human hand reached out.[144]
“That’s a signal,” said Ninefingers as he lit the oil. He heard frantic huffing inside, as though the were-rat were trying to blow out the flames, but that was impossible. The were-rat tried to get out, but Ninefingers hit it with the stick holding the silver-inlaid dagger. Soon there were screams from inside, and then more screams from a second one. There was the stink of burning hair and of burning flesh. Rats on fire fled, and there was no way to stop them all, but the copse around was still wet from the day before.[145]
Eventually it was silent, and the barrel was on fire. Felewin let go of it and staggered back.
“Bad!” cried Kagandis[146] in common. The arrow went true and sank into the belly of the rat-man.
Felewin spun around and saw a were-rat with an arrow sticking out of him. Vengis? Or another one?[147]
Kagandis sank another shaft into the rat-man, into his neck this time. Felewin took a moment to draw his sword and then stabbed at the rat-man, only to miss. I should have had the sword out. I should have.
Vengis[148] crept through the woods, stealing up on Kagandis. He sensed the presence of the giant rats and sent half over to Kagandis; Felewin and Ninefingers would be his to finish off.
The were-rat facing Felewin snarled and slashed at him.[149] The slash was feeble and poorly aimed.
Ninefingers bashed[150] at the were-rat and hit him, driving the arrow right through his neck, with the silver sizzling as it hit his flesh.
Vengis voice came from the woods opposite Kagandis[151]. “You might have defeated him, but you will never defeat me!”
Felewin charged toward the source of the sound, but[152] Ninefingers said, “Wait! That’s not Vengis’ words. That’s Hastwine.”
Then[153] Kagandis looked around and spotted three of the giant rats. She stumbled back, trying to get all of them, and managed to say, “Giant rats!” in the goblin tongue. Ninefingers repeated it to Felewin.
Hastwine switched voices and sounded like Ninefingers as he said, “Or is it Vengis pretending to be Hastwine?”
“Rats I can hit!” cried Felewin, ignoring the voice. He sprinted over to Kagandis[154] and stabbed the first rat he saw.
Vengis saw this and mentally directed four of them to switch to Felewin.
Ninefingers sighed and sprinted over[155] and bashed with the stick[156] at the rat Felewin had stabbed. He did not hear the sizzling sound, but it was a good hit.[157] The rat fell over, which only left—
Gods, I have no idea how many there are.
Giant rats were swarming on Felewin and biting the chain byrnie. Felewin gave a tremendous convulsive shake, which knocked two of them off, but the third was by his hips and climbing up. Fortunately it was too big to nose up inside the byrnie.
Other rats were trying to take chunks out of Kagandis, but she was a much smaller target. One actually managed to bite[158] through her sleeve.[159]
Kagandis backed up into the small clearing, saying, “Backs in a circle! I have at least three!” but of course Felewin didn’t understand the language. The one rat bit Felewin and then dropped off. They were too close for Kagandis to use her bow; she swung with her spear[160] and got one; Ninefingers was satisfied that these were normal (albeit giant) rats, so he used his new short sword.
Vengis set down his pouch and dagger, and took a moment to shift to full rat form, so he was indistinguishable from the giant rats.
Felewin picked a rat and stabbed successfully.[161] He thrust at it again, and saw it fall.[162] Now two of the rats were dead, but the others kept fighting.
Clearly under Vengis’ influence, he thought.
Hastwine cast[163] his voice again, this time making a growling sound as of a tremendous beast.[164]
Ninefingers did mental math: he could kill a rat with two strikes or bludgeon them so they couldn’t fight in two; he switched back to the club, holding his short sword in his off hand. His first swing caught another rat. Kagandis was trying to give him space, but as a result hit nothing.
Hastwine moved to where he thought Vengis was, but didn’t manage to be quiet about it at all. Ninefingers noticed, but had no bow to spare an attack for the wizard.
Felewin swung twice and reduced another rat to near-insensibility.
Prodded by Vengis’ commands, the rats did not leave, though to Vengis they were clearly resentful. Two attacked Felewin, and one injured one succeeded, but its bite did not penetrate the mail. One feebly snapped at Ninefingers, its guts trailing. The other two missed Kagandis entirely, though they were uninjured.[165]
One of the two rats attacking Felewin hit his chain mail again[166]. The dying rat attacking Ninefingers missed; and none of the rats attacking Kagandis hit.
They heard nothing from Hastwine except some muttered swearing about being stuck, and then hic.
Ninefingers[167] put his rat out of its misery.
Felewin was cautious of Kagandis’ blade, but hit one rat[168] and laid it flat.
As a giant rat, Vengis leapt out of the shrubbery and flew at Felewin. He hit but on the chain mail, dropping to the ground and then circling some more, favouring his paw that was still burned from the silver that Felewin had pressed into his hand days before.
Kagandis did not notice; she was dealing with the two rats before her. She swung the spear low and caught one.[169]
A dying giant rat caught hold of Felewin’s foot and bit him through the boot; but the other caught the chain mail. The two trying to hurt Kagandis failed to hit. Felewin got the dying one that had injured him, but it took two tries.
Ninefingers picked a rat[170] and swung at it with his club,[171] knocking it away.
Vengis, as a rat, leapt straight for Felewin’s bare neck but missed. The rat that had been attacking Felewin instead attacked Ninefingers...and missed. Both rats attacking Kagandis missed.
Kagandis swung and killed the wounded rat facing her, leaving her with one uninjured rat. Ninefingers knocked out or killed one of the rats facing Felewin.
They heard something, but couldn’t make it out for the hic.
Instead of attacking Kagandis, the last rat tried to attack Ninefingers, but missed.[172]
Ignoring the pain in his foot, Felewin decided to block this new rat[173] which seemed fixated on him, and he stabbed at it after the block, hitting it squarely.
Hastwine[174] hiccuped.
The giant rat before Kagandis hesitated and then dove at Ninefingers, but missed.
Kagandis thought, Die, you rodent. She swung the spear again, and hit her rat, finally. It wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t spry anymore, either.
Ninefingers didn’t even notice the rat; he had decided to attack this new rat with the club. He[175] hit solidly and heard the sizzle of silver hitting a shifter as the rat was knocked to the far side of the clearing. “This one’s a shifter!” he cried in common, then goblin.[176]
He had knocked the were-rat too far to hit it again, so instead he waited, ready to act. The were-rat ran straight at Ninefingers, who hit it solidly, knocking it out and burning lines into it from the silver in the makeshift club.
Felewin said, “Huh,” and killed the last giant rat. “Press the silver inlay against the shifter. That’ll kill it.”
There was a sound in the bushes: Hastwine running away. Ninefingers stood to go, but Felewin said, “You two can go if you want. I’ll wait here. Varmint got my foot.” He looked at the smoke billowing out of the hole. “Besides, someone’s got to stay and make sure the whole damn copse doesn’t catch on fire.”[177]
“We’d better go after him,” Kagandis said in goblin, “because he can be fast when he wants to be.” She led Ninefingers in the direction Hastwine had gone.[178]
Felewin waited for some other attack for a while, but none came, so he took off his boot. The rat bite looked clean[179] so he wiped off the blood, poured some mushroom wine on it, and bandaged it with a strip torn from his trousers.
Mythic: Lowering CF from 8 to 7.
26 - Assist Peace
Assist Peace (NPC Negative)
Hastwine’s path was obvious. Here, where the copse was thickest, he hadn’t made any attempt to be subtle. They plunged through the underbrush in his path.
The stain on Kagandis’ sleeve grew as they ran. “You’re hurt,” said Ninefingers.
“And?” said Kagandis.
“You can’t shoot,” said Ninefingers.
“Of course I can. It just hurts. Not impossible.”
“That’s not a good thing.”
“The chieftains tasked me with his fate. I have to go after him, bite or no bite.”
I always follow the unreasonable ones, thought Ninefingers. “We’ll try to get close so you don’t have to use the bow,” said out loud.
“But we have to move faster.”
Hastwine was easy to follow, but it seemed that he was outpacing them. His longer legs gave him the advantage on stride length, as well as letting him push through some obstacles that they had to go around. Ninefingers knew his own stomach was rumbling — how many days since the inn? The food he had taken last night at the feast was ceremonial rather than filling — and he couldn’t imagine that Kagandis was doing much better.
By late afternoon, they found Hastwine’s boot by a log[180] on a patch of sandy soil mostly covered with leaves. Ninefingers spotted it and held Kagandis back He said quietly, “I can’t imagine it fell off. So someone or something pulled it off.”
“Or he sat on that log because he had a pebble in his boot, and something scared him off.” She did not have much respect for Hastwine; she shook off Ninefingers’ hand and moved forward.
When Kagandis got close enough, a patch of leaves lifted from the ground and grabbed at her.[181] She grabbed at the ground as the giant trapdoor spider pulled her underground, but the good arm found no purchase and the bad arm couldn’t hold on.
Ninefingers dashed forward and grabbed the edge of the trapdoor, smooth silk and dirt against his hands.[182] He flipped the trapdoor open but it didn’t go all the way, and there was a taut thread trying to pull it shut.[183]
Kagandis had lost her bow and spear, and her arrows were spilling free. She had to get free. Being in the dark didn’t bother her — that was pleasant — but the large arachnid grabbing her leg was not pleasant. First she pulled to try and get free[184]; her foot slid away, and she tried to scramble up the side of the hole...but the silk was slippery.
Then there was sudden light as Ninefingers entered the hole...[185]by falling. He couldn’t keep his balance and slid in. The lid fell shut.
The spider attacked Kagandis, its mandibles clicking, but it missed.[186]
Ninefingers managed to draw his short sword as he was sliding, and he encouraged his slide until he was under the beast. He didn’t manage because Kagandis was in the way.[187]
Kagandis drew her dagger and stabbed at the thing.[188] It distracted the spider enough that the beast missed.[189]
Ninefingers knew his armor was better able to withstand the thing’s mandibles than her leather, so he needed its attention. This was probably a stupid thing to do...but he shouted and thrashed around as he slashed at it with his short sword.[190] The spider shifted its attention.[191]
Kagandis tried to move, but couldn’t on the silk.[192] She grabbed one of her arrows and stabbed, but the arrow broke.[193] Ninefingers was emboldened by the damage he had done, but his next thrust did nothing, and then he noticed the little, baby spiders dropping off the parent’s back.
Are we supposed to be food for them? Ewww.
His attention had wandered, and it was nearly enough for the spider to bite him, but he managed to jerk his arm away in time.[194] He didn’t hit this time either, either, but the spider didn’t get him.[195] Kagandis finally noticed the other little spiders, and drew her dagger.[196]
The spider was moving slower now, and missed Ninefingers. Kagandis stabbed it in one of its eight eyes, and Ninefingers managed to stab it once more. The spider died and settled heavily, possibly crushing several baby spiders.[197]
“Don’t put your damned boot in my face. I’m stuck!” cried Kagandis.
“Let me get steady on something...[198] There.” He had found a pocket to rest one foot in, and from there it was easy. “I’ll pull. Give me your arm.”[199] He grabbed and pulled. She screamed in pain.
“That’s...not the good one.”[200]
“Can you give me the other?”
There was a pause. “Not really.”
“Sorry.”[201] He pulled and she panted as he did so, but he pulled her free. Her extra weight had made that pocket of webbing deeper, so there was a place for her to stand as well. They got out of the nest, and shut the lid before the baby spiders could get out.
Ninefingers started picking up arrows for her.
“Hey...thanks,” she said.
“We’re comrades. At least until you go back to your nest.”
She smiled ruefully. “Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.” She looked back.“Okay, the baby spiders are cute,” she said. “But I think they’d like to eat us.”
Overindulge Advice
Overindulge Advice (Close A Thread)
Felewin had first trimmed a dry branch to use as a cane, and then, bored, had gone on his hands and knees to drag all the corpses to one end of the small clearing, as far from his seat as possible.
Then he sat and cleaned his equipment.
Then he ate a small ration of food.
He was probably going to be here for the night, so he made simple traps and set them on the animal run.
By late afternoon, the fire inside the den was out, so he got near the entrance.
It had probably smelled bad before, but with burnt flesh, hair, and tar on it, it smelled bad[202] enough to make him vomit. He hadn’t eaten much, so it didn’t amount to much.
He poked inside the hole with his new cane.
Nothing.
He got his magical lantern and squeezed inside, trying very hard not to breathe. Two bodies and maybe a dozen dead normal rats. While he was running the cane through the ashes, he hit something. He pried it up with the stick and discovered it was a box. He backed out with the box, thinking about how he would get the bodies out to bury them.
Then he realized that they were already partly buried. He would put the other bodies in there and work out a way to collapse the den on them, so they would be buried. Maybe Ninefingers and Kagandis could help.
He limped back to the log; his foot had started to throb. Clearly he had done too much.
What was in the box? It was quite large: maybe a cubit square and a more than a hands-width deep. The wood was cedar, but its time buried had filled in the simple pattern that the maker had carved in.
The box wasn’t locked, but it had a complex latch system.[203] That took a few minutes to work out.
Coins (gold, yes, but an astonishing number of silver ones), a bronze cup, and a gold necklace.
Well, it was nice to find money, but there wasn’t much actually useful there.
He looked at the sun through the trees and then decided he had to check the traps. His foot still hurt but he was alone, and had to do it.[204]
Something skittered away as he approached, and he found a fawn caught by a deadfall he had set up. The mother was probably near, and might have been the sound he heard.
Felewin’s father would have rescued the fawn to sell; his oldest brother would have killed it without a thought. Neither of them were Felewin.
He spoke soothingly to the fawn as he slowly knelt beside it and loosened its leg from the deadfall. The fawn was too big. He didn’t have a rack to dry the meat, he couldn’t carry it. With luck, one of the other traps had caught something. He let the fawn go and re-set the deadfall.[205]
Felewin limped to the next trap. Nothing. But the next one had killed a possum. He cleaned it there, and re-set the next deadfall, using a bit of the possum as bait. He baited the other traps, too, as he went back.
Once the barrel was broken, bits of the wood made a good fire, but he missed the tinderbox in starting the fire. It was well after nightfall by the time he got it going. One of the sticks he had rejected for a cane held the meat after he had whittled a point on it.
After eating, he sat in the light of the embers. He wanted the fire to die completely before he bedded down.
As he sat in the dimness, there was a noise from the pile of bodies.[206]
It might have just been rats returning to their nest and discovering the bodies. Or it might not. He listened some more.
There was something in the pile. Again, possibly rats.
He kept the lantern near him, but didn’t open it.
The noises from the pile of corpses increased, along with some very human grunts.
Felewin was not wearing his armour; he had intended to go to sleep. He slipped on the gambeson and unsheathed his sword. He limped over and stood over the pile.
One of the charred bodies shifted and slid down the pile. Vengis lay underneath, sweating and panting. Felewin said, “If the rat hadn’t hurt me, I’d be gone and you’d be free. But it did bite me, so I’m here.”
“You’re going to kill me. But...I can bargain. I hid my purse and dagger. I can get them for you.”
Felewin shook his head. “I have no skill with bargaining.” He smiled. “But come sit on this log and rest. We will talk of things that are not bargains.”
Vengis crawled from the corpses. He tried to stand, failed, and crawled to the log, and rolled over to look at the sky.
“I have a few scraps of meat left,” said Felewin. “I was saving them for morning, but ...” He shrugged.
“They’re not....were-rat, are they?”
“No. Nor are they rat, human, or goblin.”
“Where is that goblin you’re so fond of? Off with the mate he found?”
“You are offensive for a person who relies on my goodwill.”
“Apologies. I frequently misunderstand those who treat goblins as people.” He looked at the scar on his hand. “We heal.”
“I know,” said Felewin. “I have already dealt with....with regenerators.”
“Then why feed me? Why let me live?”
“I need you to do something. I need you to come with me back to the inn and admit that you stirred up the hatred against goblins.” He paused. “And you might tell them what happened to Erdwain.”
“They’ll kill me!”
“Or I’ll kill you now, when you’re weak and defenseless.” He poured some mushroom wine into the goblet and handed it to Vengis. “My way, you might get better before they threaten to kill you. You might manage to escape, though I admit I’m going to cut off your hand once you’re well enough to survive it; I think it will take you some time to heal from that.”
“That’s monstrous.”
“You set human against goblin for what? As far as I can see, some profit but nothing else. You caused the deaths of many humans and more goblins. I think my offering presents some choices for you that are better than death.”
Vengis looked for escape, but the sword was at his throat in a blink. Finally Vengis said, “I choose life.”
“Excellent. I have little wine, but you are welcome to more of it.”
Epilogue
It was two days later at dawn that Ninefingers and Kagandis showed up.
Felewin and Vengis had put up a lean-to, and created a rack for drying meat. Vengis was lying on the ground, his arm impaled by a pole. Felewin waved at them. “What happened?”
Ninefingers frowned. “We lost him. Turns out it’s important that one of the pursuers is as big as the target, if he can climb rocks.”
Kagandis held out her bag. “But!”
Ninefingers said, “We did force him to abandon everything. We got the jewels, the money and the weresbane.”
There was a groan from the impaled prisoner.
Felewin accepted it gratefully. “Say hello to our guests, Vengis.”
They looked at Vengis. Vengis managed a weak wave with his other arm. “Hello.”
“He gets better,” Felewin explained. “I had to find some way to keep him restrained and keep from attacking me in my sleep. So I pinned him to the ground.”
“Ah,” said Kagandis.
Ninefingers said, “Nice shelter.”
“Well, I had his help. Then I pinned him. I think his arm is broken, though. Had to stab him through something that would be there even if he shifted form.”
Ninefingers nodded. “Very practical.”
“Too much so,” said Vengis.
“He’s got a fascinating history. We talked about the problems of provisioning the Bleak Tower.”
“He’s not healed?”
“Oh, if he isn’t injured regularly, he’ll be fine.”
“And you?”
“I was just waiting for you. Did you find my bedroll?”
Cast
These are the character writeups. I created more than these, but if the character did not come into combat, I didn't include them here.
If necessary, OSRIC HD are d8. By the end of this, that shouldn’t be necessary.
Beasts are assumed to have skill 4 unless otherwise listed.
Felewin
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Human Huntsman (Plainsfolk) |
| 5 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
– |
6 |
| Gimmicks |
Oversized, Vulnerability (Magic)
|
| Skills |
Archery 5, Athletics 2, Dueling 5, Animal Handling 4, Riding 4, Survival 4, Composure 5, Literacy 2, Geography 3
|
| Arms |
Shortsword (+1 Inj), Hunting Bow (2 Inj)
|
| Protection |
Gambeson (+1 Fat), Chain hauberk (6) |
| Equipment |
Fuelless lantern, knife, tinder box, blanket, rations
|
Ninefingers
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Goblin Bandit (Cavernfolk) |
| 4 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
– |
5 |
| Gimmicks |
Dark sight, Surefooted, Undersized, Frail, On the Run
|
| Skills |
Athletics 3, Commerce 4, Dueling 4, Legerdemain 5, Observation 5, Stealth 5, Streetwise 4, Subterfuge 3
|
|
Arms
|
Seftish Dagger (+1 Inj)
|
| Protection |
Leather cuirass (+3 Fat)
|
| Equipment |
Lockpicks, tinder box, blanket, owl feather earrings
|
Kagandis
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Goblin constable (Cavernfolk) |
| 3 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
– |
3 |
| Gimmicks |
Dark sight, Undersized, Frail, Surefooted; Flair +1D Archery, -1D Flexibility
|
| Skills |
Archery 5. Athletics 4, Composure 3, Brawling 2, Melee 4, Observation 4, Stealth 4, Survival 4
|
| Arms |
Dagger (+1 Inj), Bow (1 Inj), Spear (+1 to hit, +1 Inj)
|
| Protection |
Leather (3 Fat) |
| Equipment |
2 dozen arrow (less 1)
|
Centipede, Giant
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Monster |
| 3 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
– |
– |
| Gimmicks |
Toughness (2), Oversized, Venomous
|
| Skills |
Athletics 4, Brawling 4, Stealth 4
|
| Arms |
Teeth (2 Inj), Venomous (+2 Inj) |
| Protection |
Toughness 2
|
Eisenesser, Three-Toed
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Monster |
| 4 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
– |
– |
| Gimmicks |
Dark sight, Ferrovore, Burrowing
|
| Skills |
Atheltics 4, Brawling 4
|
| Arms |
Hooves (+2 Fat), Saliva (1 Inj corrosive), Toughness (2)
|
| Protection |
–
|
An Eisenesser looks like a cross between a hairless dog and a naked mole. Each foot bears three hoof-like toes made of a dense organic metal. The Eisenesser is a capable digger and can break stone with its metal forepaws; it’s a cave-dweller, generally docile. Its primary source of sustenance is cold iron, which it can smell at a range of 50 feet. The Eisenesser may harm a creature inadvertently in pursuit of a meal. It can defend itself by battering opponents with its heavy forepaws for 2 Fat points of damage each. It will doggedly pursue iron (and iron alloys such as steel) but is uninterested in other metals and materials. Its saliva is highly corrosive; it can liquefy up to 6 cubic inches of metal per round. In contact with cloth or bare flesh the saliva deals 1 Inj points of damage per round until it can be scraped off.
Monster and descriptive text created by Eric Jones and adapted by John McMullen. Copyright is acknowledged and there is no infringement intended.
Goblin Fighter
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Goblin fighter (Cavernfolk) |
| 3 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
– |
– |
| Gimmicks |
Dark sight, Surefooted, Undersized, Frail
|
| Skills |
Archery/Dueling/Melee: one at 4, two at 3, Athletics 4, Stealth 4, Survival 2
|
| Arms |
Dagger (+1 Inj), Spear (+2 Inj, +1 to hit)
|
| Protection |
Leather (3 Fat)
|
|
Equipment
|
Varies. Knife, spear, leather cuirass, maybe bow, maybe short sword.
|
Treat as Warriors from Iron Gauntlets.
Goblin Captain
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Goblin Captain (Cavernfolk)/td>
|
| 3 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
– |
– |
| Gimmicks |
Dark sight, Undersized, Frail, Surefooted
|
| Skills |
Athletics 4, Dueling 5, Leadership 3, Melee 5, Stealth 4, Survival 4
|
| Arms |
Dagger (2 Inj), War Axe (-2 to hit, +2 Inj)
|
|
Protection
|
Leather (3)
|
|
Equipment
|
Varies.
|
Goblin Chieftain
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Goblin Tribal Elder (Cavernfolk) |
| 3 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
– |
– |
| Gimmicks |
Dark sight, Undersized, Frail, Surefooted
|
| Skills |
Athletics 4, Dueling 4, Leadership 5, Melee 4, Stealth 5, Survival 5
|
| Arms |
Dagger (+1 Inj), Spear (+2 Inj, +1 to hit)
|
| Protection |
Leather (3 Fat)
|
| Equipment |
Varies.
|
Grey Ooze
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Monster |
| 2 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
– |
– |
| Gimmicks |
Regeneration, Oversized (this one or is that temporary because it’s spread out?)
|
| Skills |
Athletics 4, Brawling 4, Stealth 4
|
| Arms |
Digestive enzymes (2 Inj)
|
| Protection |
| Equipment |
–
|
Based on Oozing Death from Iron Gauntlets, but the Grey Ooze in OSRIC has no toughness. Given the weapons, the regeneration should be enough to make it a formidable foe.
Hastwine the Feckless
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Crafting |
Luck |
Human wizard (ward) |
| 2 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
3 |
1 |
3 |
| Gimmicks |
Hesitant, Multilingual, Poor Reputation, Quick-Stepped
|
| Skills |
Alchemy 3, Circumscription 4, Melee 3, Fabrica Sensus 5, Legends 4, Literacy 4, Stealth 2, Subterfuge 5, Survival 2
|
| Arms |
Dagger (+1 Inj), Staff |
| Protection |
– |
| Equipment |
– |
Recognized as having some kind of ability, Hastwine was left an orphan and grew up to be a not-very-successful wizard. Subterfuge in this case covers being a con man.
Orc
I’m using the orcs from the “Her Lady’s Honour” adventure because they’re specific to Amherth.
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Monster |
| 4 |
4 |
1 |
3 |
2 |
– |
– |
| Gimmicks |
Toughness 2, Vulnerability (sunlight)
|
| Skills |
Brawling 4, Dueling 4, Composure 4, Leadership 3, Subterfuge 5
|
| Arms |
Fangs (1 Inj); Spear (+1/+2 Inj), Axe (+1 Inj), Knife (+0 Inj)
|
| Protection |
Toughness (2) or leather cuirass (3)
|
| Equipment |
Varies
|
Rat, Giant
| FIT |
AWR |
CRE |
REA |
INF
| Magic |
Luck |
Monster |
| 3 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
– |
– |
| Gimmicks |
Disease, Musclebound
|
| Skills |
Brawling 4, Stealth 4
|
| Arms |
Bite (2 Inj)
|
Rot Grub
Better represented as a plot complication. From OSRIC: “Rot grubs are found in animal waste and other foul refuse, and they prefer to consume tissue that is still alive. Upon contact with a living being, rot grubs vigorously burrow deep into the body. Fire must be applied to the site of contact at once in order to prevent the rot grubs from burrowing further. This application of flame kills 1/2D of rot grubs. If not stopped immediately, within 1 to 3 turns the rot grubs find the heart and kill their victim.”
Spider, Giant
| F |
A |
C |
R |
I
| Luck |
Monster |
| 3 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
– |
| G |
Oversized, Venomous
|
| S |
Athletics 4, Brawling 4, Stealth 4
|
| Wpns |
Mandibles (2 Inj)
|
Toad, Giant
| F |
A |
C |
R |
I
| Magic |
Luck |
| 3 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
– |
– |
Monster |
| Gimmicks |
Musclebound, Toughness (1)
|
| Skills |
Athletics 4, Brawling 4, Stealth 4 |
| Arms |
Teeth (1 Inj), Claws (5 Inj) |
| Protection |
Toughness (1) |
Vengis
| F |
A |
C |
R |
I
| Luck |
Monster (wererat) |
| 3 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
– |
| Gimmicks |
Vulnerability (Silver), Toughness: 1, Dark Sight, Dark Aura, Regeneration (not vs magic or silver) |
| Skills |
Brawling 4, Commerce 4, Duelling 3, Stealth 4, Legerdemain 4, Subterfuge 4 |
|
Arms
|
Claws or Fangs (+1 Inj), Disease (Lycanthropy)
|
| Protection |
Toughness (1)
|
| Equipment |
Jeweled dagger (worth 800 gold pieces), coin purse (14 gold pieces and 83 copper pieces) |
Wererat
| F |
A |
C |
R |
I
| Magic |
Luck |
Monster |
| 3 |
3 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
– |
– |
| Gimmicks |
Vulnerability[Silver], Toughness[1], Dark Sight, Dark Aura
|
| Skills |
Brawling 4, Stealth 4, Legerdemain 4
|
| Arms |
Claws or Fangs (+1 Inj), Disease (Lycanthropy)
|
| Protection |
Toughness (1) |
| Equipment |
– |
Footnotes/Game Mechanics
