Adjo's Journals (9 of N)
Oct. 15th, 2008 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
The Ahura school prides itself on producing well-rounded scholars and makes you take a lot of extra-disciplinary courses to give you a basic grounding in the liberal arts. In my callow youth, I sort of slacked my way through these and took the easiest ones I could find. In particular, I took a class called “Interdimensional Literature: An Overview”, but which was generally referred to as “PAWGE” or “Poets are Whiny Gits Everywhere”.
I mention this because there was a brief review of some otherworldly scribbler who likened death to “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns”.
Well at the rate I’ve been going to and returning from that undiscovered country, I might as well apply for dual citizenship.
We spent two merry days in close quarters riding out the boreal. Eventually things died down to a simple blizzard and we struggled down out of the mountains and onto the plains, where a sledge on the way to Icewatch picked us up. Icewatch was a hive of activity. In the four hundred years since the Shieldwall went up, Icewatch has been a bit lax in maintaining defenses. Things are kept in good repair, but expansions and development went undone. Proper maintenance and improvement of infrastructure is a terribly boring and unglamorous part of governance, but it’s also quite critical and you ignore it at your peril. Now, perhaps, the peril of civilized beings everywhere.
We went through the town and about a mile up until we reached the new (and very hastily improvised) defensive line. Hendel’s grim estimates proved, unfortunately, to be a bit on the low side. The Shieldwall (including the two anchor fortresses) is completely gone, Northmen overran the camps behind them and total losses approached 50%. The only thing that prevented a total rout was the boreal which hampered the Northmen as badly as it did us. This is either a tactical blunder on the part of the Northmen, the machinations some sort of heretofore unknown Northman faction, or the irregular favor of the gods. Whatever it was, it probably saved our bacon.
On top of that, the Seawatch fortress sank beneath the waves as the tremors opened up the bay it overlooked and now the sea is much closer. In fact, the new seawall now forms one of the flanks for the new defensive line. It’s been an unmitigated disaster and one that could’ve been completely prevented with even a bit of foresight on the part of the command staff. Our initial forays into the Dwarven complex proved that this was something big and required a heavier force than just a few scout teams sent in. Had they sent in a maniple or two we could’ve secured the nodes for ourselves and everything would’ve been fine.
Still, there was no point in “I told you so’s” at this late date so I let Hendel do the explaining to Dunhouse and then to the Captain. We then gave our depositions to his chief scribe who told us that the entire incident was now classified and not to talk to anyone about it. Frankly, I’m not about to tell anyone that we chose the city over the wall. We had perfectly valid reasons for doing so, but a lot of soldiers lost friends on the wall and they might not take too kindly to our utilitarian decision-making process. At any rate, we all took a hot bath, got a meal and sacked out. Much better than another night holed up in a cave.
In the morning we went back to Dunhouse for out new mission. The basic rundown is that before the tremors hit, a scouting team (Team Omega), was spotted racing across the open plains and into the Frostedge Forest (the one that’s protected by some goddess). It’s not clear why they didn’t retreat back to the mountains, but it’s going to be our job to go after them, find them and bring them back.
Before we left, I put in a requisition and got an upgrade to my magic orb. The enchantments simply focus my powers. I was hoping for something with a bit more oomph, but given the circumstances, I suppose magic items are in high demand right now, so I’ll just make do.
To get to the forest, we took a navy skiff across the bay to the foothills of the mountain range that helps provide a barrier to the Northmen. There is a narrow pass that allows small teams to slip through the mountains and penetrate into the Northlands. It’s not suited for marching an army through, but it’s more than enough for us. The Commonwealth maintains a series of outposts on the trail to watch for trouble and help scout teams through.
For the most part, our trek through the mountains was uneventful. Early on the last day, as we’re headed for the final outpost, we’re walking along when I stumbled and went flying into a snowbank. This, of course, is high comedy to most of my companions and while they chortled like hyenas, I made a cursory investigation of what had lead to my fall.
The laughs stopped when I pointed out that I’d tripped on a frozen hand. A hand still attached to a frozen body. Ander was quick to stab it. Then they decided to dig it up. I, of course, carefully retired lest they unwittingly thaw out some kind of ice zombie or something.
The corpse turned out to be just a corpse. It was a Legion messenger. I picked up his bag and riffled through the missives he carried (probably in direct violation of Legion regulations, but if the runner was carrying a warning about the horror that attacked the outpost we were approaching, I wanted to know about it). The letters were all extremely boring, extremely standard letters reporting that there was nothing going on at the outpost. The last letter did happen to mention that the only thing of note was that signs of ice trolls were becoming more prevalent.
Well I could’ve told them that. After all, I was suddenly being rent in twain by the massive talons of the ice troll that popped up out of the snow and attacked me. Kestrel drove it back a step under a barrage of shiruken, but the troll recovered and promptly delivered another mighty blow that slammed me to the ground and gave me a large shove towards that undiscovered country mentioned earlier.
Alanna and Thrace provided me with the healing I needed to regain my feet. The others had formed up in front of me to provide me with cover and avenge this foul ambush upon my person, but of course, the troll’s legendary powers of regeneration were making it slow going. Luckily I happened to know that fire is a most efficacious remedy for regeneration and I was in the mood to provide a great deal of it to the blue-skinned oaf. A couple of raging blasts of scorching flame and the horror was a charred lump in the snow.
Which gave us time to turn and deal with the squad of Gibbers who emerged from hiding to assail us. Magic missiles flew from my fingertips, boring holes in the rank and file while the heavies stepped up to deal with their leader. The Captain had no small skill and dealt Taras a vicious blow, sending him reeling off in another direction. Ander made disparaging comments about Taras’s heritage and this somehow seemed to make him feel better and he returned to the fight. But it was Blaze who finally dropped the captain just as the last of his soldiers fell beneath our might.
During the cleanup (I salvaged a Troll fang as a memento), we found a magical knife and a Dwarven skeleton with some magical armor on it. People wanted the enchantment, but not the cumbersome weight of chainmail so while we walked on to the last outpost, I munched on it and then hocked up the magical essence for Thrace’s scale armor. Oof…I’m going to be feeling that meal for days. Luckily, up here in the wintertime, I’ll be burning off the calories at a prodigious rate.
We reached the final outpost to discover it’s still manned and still manned by our side. The outpost suffered no attacks and knew the runner we’d found. Apparently, it was just a random assault by the ice troll. We turned in for the night (cramped quarters again!) and in the morning came down out of the mountains.
As we reached the badlands, we encountered a Kobold named Reth (I didn’t ask, he just thrust it on us like some vile bazaar merchant). He was a scout with a great deal of experience in the forest and he’d act as our guide while we were there.
We moved out into the badlands and Reth lead us to a rock-strewn landscape where we could refresh out canteens. The oasis was swarming with rock hounds who took one look at us and set up a fearful howl. Poor Taras suddenly found himself surrounded on all sides by vicious hounds who tore him to bloody chunks – a fate I sympathize with. Luckily, the hounds weren’t very tough, but they were numerous. Just as the first group was being cleared away, another pack of the cursed things swarmed in and was suddenly among us.
I wound up near Alanna and Hendel and in the swirling press decided to make good use of the fire shroud I’d recently comprehended. The arcane energies swirled out and lit up all the hounds around us, burning them to a crisp. All but one, that is, who promptly rushed up and tore my throat out. Once more, Alanna was on hand to return me to the land of the living.
And not a moment too soon. The hounds had apparently attracted the attention of a group of men. Not Northmen, but certainly not friendly as the rattle of repeating crossbows informed us. Again, it was a rather mangy bunch. I froze a number of them in their tracks, but this only encouraged another member of their party to run over and shove his cutlass through me.
I came to when Ander shouted at me with that weird little voice of his. I was trapped between two of the men, but that changed after I blasted one away with my thunderwave and the other fell from a well-thrown bit of metal by Kestrel.
The carnage was impressive. We counted some 30 rock hounds and another 15 men. The men all bore the symbol of the Kraken somewhere on their bodies. This suggested that they were members of the Kraken Pirates, a group that normally operates somewhere far to the south. It’s not impossible that they should be here (we’re still fairly close to the sea), but it was hardly the foes we were expecting to meet.
We decide not to hang around and quickly push on to the edge of the badlands and a 300-yard sprint into the forest. [NOTE: On a double-move that’s 15 combat rounds of movement. If you run on those double moves it’s 12 rounds. I don’t think we’ve ever had a fight go on that long] I was completely winded by the end of that. Running about is hardly the best use of my time.
Safely within the forest we started moving north in order to reach the spot where the Omega team was last seen. We’d only been walking for a short while when we came upon a grisly scene. A scout, a member of the Omega team, had been slowly flayed alive, his wounds salted and he’d been nailed to one of the trees – the symbol of the Kraken branded into his skull.
Aside from being gruesome, the real fear was that this action had somehow pissed off the goddess of the forest who might be ill disposed towards us. Further investigation suggested that this wasn’t being done to deliberately piss off the forest. The tree was unharmed by the nails driven into it and there was nothing to suggest that any other harmful action was being taken against the woods.
We brought the poor man down and buried him with most of his skin (the pirates had apparently taken a section of his back with them). It boggles the mind why these savages would even be in this part of the world and what possible foul purpose they could be working here, but I’ve got a sinking feeling we’ll find out far more than we want to know about it very soon.
NOTES: Nothing makes you feel like a big man more than mowing down hordes of minions. Adjo could just wipe clumps of them off the map. But in numbers they can be a serious problem as Taras found out. Having magical implements and holy symbols that give you bonuses to hit and damage just like a magical sword helps a fighter is a really slick innovation that I’m looking forward to playing around with.
later
Tom
The Ahura school prides itself on producing well-rounded scholars and makes you take a lot of extra-disciplinary courses to give you a basic grounding in the liberal arts. In my callow youth, I sort of slacked my way through these and took the easiest ones I could find. In particular, I took a class called “Interdimensional Literature: An Overview”, but which was generally referred to as “PAWGE” or “Poets are Whiny Gits Everywhere”.
I mention this because there was a brief review of some otherworldly scribbler who likened death to “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns”.
Well at the rate I’ve been going to and returning from that undiscovered country, I might as well apply for dual citizenship.
We spent two merry days in close quarters riding out the boreal. Eventually things died down to a simple blizzard and we struggled down out of the mountains and onto the plains, where a sledge on the way to Icewatch picked us up. Icewatch was a hive of activity. In the four hundred years since the Shieldwall went up, Icewatch has been a bit lax in maintaining defenses. Things are kept in good repair, but expansions and development went undone. Proper maintenance and improvement of infrastructure is a terribly boring and unglamorous part of governance, but it’s also quite critical and you ignore it at your peril. Now, perhaps, the peril of civilized beings everywhere.
We went through the town and about a mile up until we reached the new (and very hastily improvised) defensive line. Hendel’s grim estimates proved, unfortunately, to be a bit on the low side. The Shieldwall (including the two anchor fortresses) is completely gone, Northmen overran the camps behind them and total losses approached 50%. The only thing that prevented a total rout was the boreal which hampered the Northmen as badly as it did us. This is either a tactical blunder on the part of the Northmen, the machinations some sort of heretofore unknown Northman faction, or the irregular favor of the gods. Whatever it was, it probably saved our bacon.
On top of that, the Seawatch fortress sank beneath the waves as the tremors opened up the bay it overlooked and now the sea is much closer. In fact, the new seawall now forms one of the flanks for the new defensive line. It’s been an unmitigated disaster and one that could’ve been completely prevented with even a bit of foresight on the part of the command staff. Our initial forays into the Dwarven complex proved that this was something big and required a heavier force than just a few scout teams sent in. Had they sent in a maniple or two we could’ve secured the nodes for ourselves and everything would’ve been fine.
Still, there was no point in “I told you so’s” at this late date so I let Hendel do the explaining to Dunhouse and then to the Captain. We then gave our depositions to his chief scribe who told us that the entire incident was now classified and not to talk to anyone about it. Frankly, I’m not about to tell anyone that we chose the city over the wall. We had perfectly valid reasons for doing so, but a lot of soldiers lost friends on the wall and they might not take too kindly to our utilitarian decision-making process. At any rate, we all took a hot bath, got a meal and sacked out. Much better than another night holed up in a cave.
In the morning we went back to Dunhouse for out new mission. The basic rundown is that before the tremors hit, a scouting team (Team Omega), was spotted racing across the open plains and into the Frostedge Forest (the one that’s protected by some goddess). It’s not clear why they didn’t retreat back to the mountains, but it’s going to be our job to go after them, find them and bring them back.
Before we left, I put in a requisition and got an upgrade to my magic orb. The enchantments simply focus my powers. I was hoping for something with a bit more oomph, but given the circumstances, I suppose magic items are in high demand right now, so I’ll just make do.
To get to the forest, we took a navy skiff across the bay to the foothills of the mountain range that helps provide a barrier to the Northmen. There is a narrow pass that allows small teams to slip through the mountains and penetrate into the Northlands. It’s not suited for marching an army through, but it’s more than enough for us. The Commonwealth maintains a series of outposts on the trail to watch for trouble and help scout teams through.
For the most part, our trek through the mountains was uneventful. Early on the last day, as we’re headed for the final outpost, we’re walking along when I stumbled and went flying into a snowbank. This, of course, is high comedy to most of my companions and while they chortled like hyenas, I made a cursory investigation of what had lead to my fall.
The laughs stopped when I pointed out that I’d tripped on a frozen hand. A hand still attached to a frozen body. Ander was quick to stab it. Then they decided to dig it up. I, of course, carefully retired lest they unwittingly thaw out some kind of ice zombie or something.
The corpse turned out to be just a corpse. It was a Legion messenger. I picked up his bag and riffled through the missives he carried (probably in direct violation of Legion regulations, but if the runner was carrying a warning about the horror that attacked the outpost we were approaching, I wanted to know about it). The letters were all extremely boring, extremely standard letters reporting that there was nothing going on at the outpost. The last letter did happen to mention that the only thing of note was that signs of ice trolls were becoming more prevalent.
Well I could’ve told them that. After all, I was suddenly being rent in twain by the massive talons of the ice troll that popped up out of the snow and attacked me. Kestrel drove it back a step under a barrage of shiruken, but the troll recovered and promptly delivered another mighty blow that slammed me to the ground and gave me a large shove towards that undiscovered country mentioned earlier.
Alanna and Thrace provided me with the healing I needed to regain my feet. The others had formed up in front of me to provide me with cover and avenge this foul ambush upon my person, but of course, the troll’s legendary powers of regeneration were making it slow going. Luckily I happened to know that fire is a most efficacious remedy for regeneration and I was in the mood to provide a great deal of it to the blue-skinned oaf. A couple of raging blasts of scorching flame and the horror was a charred lump in the snow.
Which gave us time to turn and deal with the squad of Gibbers who emerged from hiding to assail us. Magic missiles flew from my fingertips, boring holes in the rank and file while the heavies stepped up to deal with their leader. The Captain had no small skill and dealt Taras a vicious blow, sending him reeling off in another direction. Ander made disparaging comments about Taras’s heritage and this somehow seemed to make him feel better and he returned to the fight. But it was Blaze who finally dropped the captain just as the last of his soldiers fell beneath our might.
During the cleanup (I salvaged a Troll fang as a memento), we found a magical knife and a Dwarven skeleton with some magical armor on it. People wanted the enchantment, but not the cumbersome weight of chainmail so while we walked on to the last outpost, I munched on it and then hocked up the magical essence for Thrace’s scale armor. Oof…I’m going to be feeling that meal for days. Luckily, up here in the wintertime, I’ll be burning off the calories at a prodigious rate.
We reached the final outpost to discover it’s still manned and still manned by our side. The outpost suffered no attacks and knew the runner we’d found. Apparently, it was just a random assault by the ice troll. We turned in for the night (cramped quarters again!) and in the morning came down out of the mountains.
As we reached the badlands, we encountered a Kobold named Reth (I didn’t ask, he just thrust it on us like some vile bazaar merchant). He was a scout with a great deal of experience in the forest and he’d act as our guide while we were there.
We moved out into the badlands and Reth lead us to a rock-strewn landscape where we could refresh out canteens. The oasis was swarming with rock hounds who took one look at us and set up a fearful howl. Poor Taras suddenly found himself surrounded on all sides by vicious hounds who tore him to bloody chunks – a fate I sympathize with. Luckily, the hounds weren’t very tough, but they were numerous. Just as the first group was being cleared away, another pack of the cursed things swarmed in and was suddenly among us.
I wound up near Alanna and Hendel and in the swirling press decided to make good use of the fire shroud I’d recently comprehended. The arcane energies swirled out and lit up all the hounds around us, burning them to a crisp. All but one, that is, who promptly rushed up and tore my throat out. Once more, Alanna was on hand to return me to the land of the living.
And not a moment too soon. The hounds had apparently attracted the attention of a group of men. Not Northmen, but certainly not friendly as the rattle of repeating crossbows informed us. Again, it was a rather mangy bunch. I froze a number of them in their tracks, but this only encouraged another member of their party to run over and shove his cutlass through me.
I came to when Ander shouted at me with that weird little voice of his. I was trapped between two of the men, but that changed after I blasted one away with my thunderwave and the other fell from a well-thrown bit of metal by Kestrel.
The carnage was impressive. We counted some 30 rock hounds and another 15 men. The men all bore the symbol of the Kraken somewhere on their bodies. This suggested that they were members of the Kraken Pirates, a group that normally operates somewhere far to the south. It’s not impossible that they should be here (we’re still fairly close to the sea), but it was hardly the foes we were expecting to meet.
We decide not to hang around and quickly push on to the edge of the badlands and a 300-yard sprint into the forest. [NOTE: On a double-move that’s 15 combat rounds of movement. If you run on those double moves it’s 12 rounds. I don’t think we’ve ever had a fight go on that long] I was completely winded by the end of that. Running about is hardly the best use of my time.
Safely within the forest we started moving north in order to reach the spot where the Omega team was last seen. We’d only been walking for a short while when we came upon a grisly scene. A scout, a member of the Omega team, had been slowly flayed alive, his wounds salted and he’d been nailed to one of the trees – the symbol of the Kraken branded into his skull.
Aside from being gruesome, the real fear was that this action had somehow pissed off the goddess of the forest who might be ill disposed towards us. Further investigation suggested that this wasn’t being done to deliberately piss off the forest. The tree was unharmed by the nails driven into it and there was nothing to suggest that any other harmful action was being taken against the woods.
We brought the poor man down and buried him with most of his skin (the pirates had apparently taken a section of his back with them). It boggles the mind why these savages would even be in this part of the world and what possible foul purpose they could be working here, but I’ve got a sinking feeling we’ll find out far more than we want to know about it very soon.
NOTES: Nothing makes you feel like a big man more than mowing down hordes of minions. Adjo could just wipe clumps of them off the map. But in numbers they can be a serious problem as Taras found out. Having magical implements and holy symbols that give you bonuses to hit and damage just like a magical sword helps a fighter is a really slick innovation that I’m looking forward to playing around with.
later
Tom
