Continuing the story from Part 1 and Part 2 in the words of Gore the Kobold (reposted with permission from Alan Knightly)
Let Gore tell you, Gore is the greatest kobold hero of all time, and yet, even Gore is not immortal.
As Storm recorded previously, Gore went to the Isles of Thorns with a human girl, a very tall man, and a halfling, to save the humans from their undead problem on the island. Gore was quite surprised when the girl found the necklace that made all the skeletons be nice to us. Since they were not bothering us, we went to check out the buildings in the old keep.
The girl, Storm, lead the way to an old smithy. The tall man, Tom, seemed pretty excited by a big hammer that he saw as we walked up. It was big, and surprisingly shiny for a thing that was supposed to be several generations old. Anyways, Gore was more excited by the deep croaking noises that we heard as we got closer. As Tom got close enough to reach the hammer, there was a really bright flash. Gore was completely blinded, but the others told him that four frogs, almost as big as Gore, leaped out from the rubble, their skin shining to bright that their bones could be seen underneath. Gore heard lots of wet, smacking noises, and, by the time he could see again, the frogs looked more like an icky, oozing mess than frogs.
Storm had got bit by one of the frogs, not to badly though. Tom put a bandage on her arm and we went off to look for more shiny things. Gore hoped they were shiny like the frogs, and not shiny like the hammer. We were supposed to be being heroes after all, and real heroes have no need for shiny things.
Most of the little, old, wooden buildings around the keep were not that interesting. Kitchens, granaries, stables, storehouses. Slimes and mold everywhere. The skeletons kept following us unless Storm told them not to…then they’d follow us again until she told them again…and so forth. Gore did find some tasty mushrooms in one of the granaries that made him feel very brave, not that Gore didn’t feel brave already. Gore is very brave.
Then we came to an old barracks. Lots of beds in there, and lots of ghosts. Human and dwarf ghosts mostly. Transparent and whispy. Nothing you could hit, and nothing to hit us with either. The halfling, Kade, got scared and ran outside, but Storm held up her bronze necklace and said “Shestnik” to them. All at once they burst into a chorus of howls, moans, complaints, wails, and other lamentations over their fate and the fate of their families.
The ghosts were really loud, and didn’t make much sense, but eventually Tom understood enough of what they said to find a loose floorboard with a big emerald and a tattered, old book underneath it. The book told about the fall of the keep, armies of orcs and goblins assaulting the walls, and an evil spell that a guy named Ferran Martinez, a priest of the human’s Hammer-god, used to turn all the guards into ghosts and skeletons so they could keep guarding the keep even after they lost the fight. Gore had to read it out loud to everyone. Gore was surprised that the others were so dumb that they could not read a simple book. That’s why Gore is the hero and they are not I guess.
As we were walking out of the barracks, the ghosts still yelling in our ears, Nat, the dwarf who was driving out boat, came running inside the keep. The skeletons ignored him, since Storm had told them to let dwarves in. He was yelling something about orcs.
Sure enough, right on his heels came orcs. LOTS of orcs. Gore counted fourty before he stopped counting and started thinking about fighting instead.
The skeletons moved to intercept the orcs as they came through the gate. They killed a bunch of orcs, but were outnumbered and got smashed.
Tom threw the smith’s hammer at the orcs, smashing one’s head, then, surprisingly, it reappeared in his hand. Nifty. Storm threw a bunch of knives, hurting a few orcs.
Then some hobgoblins came in behind the orcs. They had bows. Storm yelled at Tom to bang his other hammer on the ground. We all thought she was daft, but Tom did it…
Tom banged the hammer three times. A bolt of lightning shot down from the clouds, hit the hammer, then went shooting into the orcs, burning a bunch of them to cinders. Not enough of them, there were still close to twenty orcs left, plus the hobgoblins, with arrows.
Arrows are not good, let me tell you. Tom kept throwing the smith hammer, but we didn’t have any other things to throw. So everyone ran back into the barracks. Not Gore though. Gore is a hero.
Once everyone else was inside the barracks with the screaming ghosts, Gore slammed the door, stuck a big stick through the handle, and turned to face the orcs. Alone. Because Gore is awesome like that.
Did I mention that Gore is really good at killing orcs. And that Gore is the son of Kurtulmak the Survivor, God of the Kobolds. And that kobolds are so much more awesome than humans.
Anyways. Gore put his back to the door, grabbed his trusty club, prayed to his father for luck, and waited for the orcs to come.
They came. And they died.
Gore smashed the orcs one after the other. Dodging their blows. Crushing their ugly orc heads with his trusty club. One. After. Another.
Gore fought and fought, and orcs died and died. Ten minutes later, all the orcs were dead. All of them. At Gore’s hands.
Gore forgot about the hobgoblins though. And their bows.
Bows suck.
The last thing Gore remembered of his great heroic last stand was how much it hurts to get an arrow in your eye. Gore thinks he heard Storm crying before he died. But it was hard to hear her over the screaming ghosts. Then Gore didn’t remember anything else. Ever. Because Gore was dead.
But Gore was a hero!
Monday, June 9, 2014
Thursday, June 5, 2014
The Bitter Blades: The Liberation of Thorn Island Part 2 (Storm's Musings)
Being a continuation of This Story with a focus on the character Storm (with assistance from Stephanie Donnel)
Storm clung to the side of the boat, heaving, as they crossed the bay. This was only the second time in her life that she had been at sea (the first was coming to Phlan to begin with a couple months ago), though Nat and Kade kept reminding her that the bay was protected by the island and “didn’t really count” as the sea. Whatever, she thought as she spit a bit of vomit from her mouth, it was close enough. Besides, Tom Builder didn’t look much better off.
The crossing to Thorn Island took less than an hour in Nat’s swift little boat. Across the bay, she could see the big, slow ferry still tied up at the docks. It looked like no one else was going to try the old Keep today. Not surprising given that two groups had failed to return the day before—though maybe that meant that they were just camping out on the island somewhere.
The kobold “hero” was the first to leap ashore. He sure was eager. Nat threw him a rope and he helped pull the boat up onto the pebbly beach, and tied it off to a knotty-looking tree. Up a low hill Storm could see the old stone walls of the keep. The walls were in serious disrepair and heavily covered with slimes, molds, and crusted dried salt. Aside from a few hardy reeds and salt-grasses able to withstand the corrosive salt-spray from the sea, and a couple of withered old trees, she could not see plant-life anywhere on the island. Rising behind the walls, she could just make out the crumbling remains of an old lighthouse and a pair of watchtowers. The state of the island came as something of a shock to one who had grown up traveling between the many lush orchards of the Dales.
Storm climbed out of the boat and practically kissed the shore. Kade asked if everyone was ready to go, so she stood up, straitened her clothes, and checked the many knives she had stashed on her body. She stooped on the shore and cupped some of the seawater in her hand, rubbing it over the front of the leather breastplate she wore under her cloak, anointing the sigil that would guard her against the undead—not good for the leather, but it was better than spitting on her clothes. A faint telltale glow told her it was ready.
She voiced her assent, then looked up at the sky before moving. It was cloudy and threatening storms everywhere this morning, but the clouds that hung over the island were particularly dark. “Well…I wanted some adventure…” she said.
They hiked up the hill towards the gates of the old keep—which were wide open. There were numerous tracks leading up there as well, too numerous to be just from the adventuring bands who had assaulted the keep the past few days. They encountered a brisk wind blowing from the south off the sea as they crested the hill. As they reached the gates, three people, a man, a woman, and an elf, came walking stiffly towards them. Storm waved, thinking they were one of the groups from yesterday looking for a ride back to town, then she noticed their wounds—large, gaping wounds, the kind of wounds which should have been mortal.
Storm was so startled that she almost opened her cloak. Luckily they were slow, really slow. Kade, Tom, and the kobold ran in swinging their clubs and hammers. Given how bruised and hard-looking their skin was, Storm wouldn’t have thought that blunt weapons would have hurt them much, but there were bones underneath and they broke just like any living man’s. After a few seconds of crunching and snapping, the three things fell to the ground, too beaten up to move any more.
Perhaps most disturbing about the dead adventurers is that whatever killed them did not bother to loot them. Actually, on second thought, the fact that all three were decked out as warrior-priests of Tyr was perhaps most disturbing, given the number of undead they encountered later. The three bodies were surprisingly well equipped, and Storm and Kade were quick to take advantage of that. Tom, who had already pointed out repeatedly that the only time he had ever killed anything was a man who stole a pig from him, seemed rather disturbed by their behavior, and the kobold just kept saying “Heroes don’t need money,” and other such nonsense.
Storm also found the body of another elf—not so fresh—just outside the gate after the fight. Just a crumbling skeleton (the non-animate kind) really, its weapons and equipment were badly rusted and corroded by salt, its leathers worm-eaten and crusted in dirt. BUT, it did have a bronze medallion around its neck, heavily patinaed of course, depicting two entwined cherubs, which Storm grabbed.
As they walked into the courtyard, Storm rubbed at the thing with the hem of her cloak, trying to shine it up (wary for genies of course). The wind blew mournfully and Storm could hear the banging of some shutter, sign, or door.
“Um Storm…” someone said.
She saw writing on the amulet. “Storm…” She rubbed harder, she could just make out the word.
“STORM!” She looked up to see a small horde of skeletons charging on them. “What does Shestnik mean?” she asked, reading the medallion. The skeletons stopped, lowered their arms and just stood there.
“What did you say?”
“Shestnik. The amulet says Shestnik.” The skeletons saluted and stood at attention.
“Will they take orders?” someone asked.
Storm shruged, turned and said “Hey Shestnik, form ranks by the gates and don’t let anyone else in unless they are a dwarf…” and the skeletons quickly formed up. “Guess so.”
There were a number of buildings inside the walls of the keep—old rotten stables, a round grain silo, smashed storehouses. Storm put on the Amulet and walked boldly across the courtyard towards a partly collapsed, open-air stall which she figured must have once been a smithy, judging by the open hearth, the large anvil in the yard, and the rusting, crumbling tools lying about. Kade and the others followed, still casting wary looks at the skeletons.
Storm clung to the side of the boat, heaving, as they crossed the bay. This was only the second time in her life that she had been at sea (the first was coming to Phlan to begin with a couple months ago), though Nat and Kade kept reminding her that the bay was protected by the island and “didn’t really count” as the sea. Whatever, she thought as she spit a bit of vomit from her mouth, it was close enough. Besides, Tom Builder didn’t look much better off.
The crossing to Thorn Island took less than an hour in Nat’s swift little boat. Across the bay, she could see the big, slow ferry still tied up at the docks. It looked like no one else was going to try the old Keep today. Not surprising given that two groups had failed to return the day before—though maybe that meant that they were just camping out on the island somewhere.
The kobold “hero” was the first to leap ashore. He sure was eager. Nat threw him a rope and he helped pull the boat up onto the pebbly beach, and tied it off to a knotty-looking tree. Up a low hill Storm could see the old stone walls of the keep. The walls were in serious disrepair and heavily covered with slimes, molds, and crusted dried salt. Aside from a few hardy reeds and salt-grasses able to withstand the corrosive salt-spray from the sea, and a couple of withered old trees, she could not see plant-life anywhere on the island. Rising behind the walls, she could just make out the crumbling remains of an old lighthouse and a pair of watchtowers. The state of the island came as something of a shock to one who had grown up traveling between the many lush orchards of the Dales.
Storm climbed out of the boat and practically kissed the shore. Kade asked if everyone was ready to go, so she stood up, straitened her clothes, and checked the many knives she had stashed on her body. She stooped on the shore and cupped some of the seawater in her hand, rubbing it over the front of the leather breastplate she wore under her cloak, anointing the sigil that would guard her against the undead—not good for the leather, but it was better than spitting on her clothes. A faint telltale glow told her it was ready.
She voiced her assent, then looked up at the sky before moving. It was cloudy and threatening storms everywhere this morning, but the clouds that hung over the island were particularly dark. “Well…I wanted some adventure…” she said.
They hiked up the hill towards the gates of the old keep—which were wide open. There were numerous tracks leading up there as well, too numerous to be just from the adventuring bands who had assaulted the keep the past few days. They encountered a brisk wind blowing from the south off the sea as they crested the hill. As they reached the gates, three people, a man, a woman, and an elf, came walking stiffly towards them. Storm waved, thinking they were one of the groups from yesterday looking for a ride back to town, then she noticed their wounds—large, gaping wounds, the kind of wounds which should have been mortal.
Storm was so startled that she almost opened her cloak. Luckily they were slow, really slow. Kade, Tom, and the kobold ran in swinging their clubs and hammers. Given how bruised and hard-looking their skin was, Storm wouldn’t have thought that blunt weapons would have hurt them much, but there were bones underneath and they broke just like any living man’s. After a few seconds of crunching and snapping, the three things fell to the ground, too beaten up to move any more.
Perhaps most disturbing about the dead adventurers is that whatever killed them did not bother to loot them. Actually, on second thought, the fact that all three were decked out as warrior-priests of Tyr was perhaps most disturbing, given the number of undead they encountered later. The three bodies were surprisingly well equipped, and Storm and Kade were quick to take advantage of that. Tom, who had already pointed out repeatedly that the only time he had ever killed anything was a man who stole a pig from him, seemed rather disturbed by their behavior, and the kobold just kept saying “Heroes don’t need money,” and other such nonsense.
Storm also found the body of another elf—not so fresh—just outside the gate after the fight. Just a crumbling skeleton (the non-animate kind) really, its weapons and equipment were badly rusted and corroded by salt, its leathers worm-eaten and crusted in dirt. BUT, it did have a bronze medallion around its neck, heavily patinaed of course, depicting two entwined cherubs, which Storm grabbed.
As they walked into the courtyard, Storm rubbed at the thing with the hem of her cloak, trying to shine it up (wary for genies of course). The wind blew mournfully and Storm could hear the banging of some shutter, sign, or door.
“Um Storm…” someone said.
She saw writing on the amulet. “Storm…” She rubbed harder, she could just make out the word.
“STORM!” She looked up to see a small horde of skeletons charging on them. “What does Shestnik mean?” she asked, reading the medallion. The skeletons stopped, lowered their arms and just stood there.
“What did you say?”
“Shestnik. The amulet says Shestnik.” The skeletons saluted and stood at attention.
“Will they take orders?” someone asked.
Storm shruged, turned and said “Hey Shestnik, form ranks by the gates and don’t let anyone else in unless they are a dwarf…” and the skeletons quickly formed up. “Guess so.”
There were a number of buildings inside the walls of the keep—old rotten stables, a round grain silo, smashed storehouses. Storm put on the Amulet and walked boldly across the courtyard towards a partly collapsed, open-air stall which she figured must have once been a smithy, judging by the open hearth, the large anvil in the yard, and the rusting, crumbling tools lying about. Kade and the others followed, still casting wary looks at the skeletons.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
The Bitter Blades: The Liberation of Thorn Island Part 1
Based on the GM's memory of a late-night one-off session on 05/31/2014 and notes/character intros submitted by the PCs.
The PCs:
________________________________________________________________________________
Tom sat at a low table, or rather the wooden pallet on the floor of the hovel that served as a table, with his ten-year-old daughter Martha. They passed a loaf of horsebread and a jog of weak beer and talked about her day at work. Martha was newly apprenticed as a shop-girl, working for Ian Cockburn, the grocer inside the walls--quite the good position, and it only cost Tom fifty silvers a week. In just a few years she would be a journeyman shop-keep and be able to actually accept payment for her work, and would be of marriageable age. For now though, Tom had to care for them both, a tough thing for a single father. He took the jug from her and downed the last of it in one long swallow. "Alright Martha," he said, hugging the girl, "off to bed." He stood up and gathered up his hammer and tools from the corner. "I have to go talk to a dwarf about a job. Remember to bar the door and not open it for anything but my voice." He gave a hard look at the walls. Building the hovel had been hasty work, and the wood was all salvage from the ruins, but he was good at his job, and the walls were solid. He lifted the bar, a heavy thing set on a pivot (his own design), that Martha could just barely lift to let him in when he came back. He gave her one last hug, and said a blessing over her, asking Gond for the insight to know if she was in danger. "Good night, I should be back before morning." He turned and walked out the door, rushing to get inside the city-gates before they closed for the night.
He just missed seeing the small, dark figure climbing over the wall, only five feet from his house.
----
Gore stood inside the walls of New Phlan, looking up at the rough wooden palisade. He almost laughed at how easy it had been to bypass them. He looked twenty yards to his left at the gate. The guards had refused him entry and even made disparaging remarks about his musk, beloved by kobold women everywhere. He was tempted to go break all their kneecaps, but he reminded himself that that was not his mission here. Shrugging, he turned into an alley and began searching for a bar. Bar's were always the right place to find _hero-work_ , or so he had been told by that old goblin in the Slums. He thought again of the guards, poor saps--the humans of Phlan must be quite desperate, or so he had told them, waving the flyer that he had found tacked to a tree outside the city. How sad, he had said, that they had to put up posters seeking heros, but how great for them that Goremeyan, Son of Kurtulmak, the great hero of all kobold-kind, had come to save them. Still, they had turned him away at the door. No matter. He had got in by himself and now he just had to show these humans how great of a hero they truly had at their disposal, and for that, he needed to find a bar.
----
Storm placed two more beers on the table for the dwarf and the halfling, then swept off to take orders from another table. She couldn't help but hear them talking about the port being closed, but then, everyone was...albeit, usually in less-hushed tones. It had been three days since the last ship of settlers had come in and the Council had declared that the port would be closed, completely, until the _things_ on Thorn Island were dealt with.
She danced around the room, taking and delivering orders, putting a little extra sway in her hips to ensure good tips. Working at the Bitter Blade wasn't what she had in mind when she came to Phlan, but was a huge step up from picking apples for pennies a day, which she'd been doing since she was a small child, and the rooms over the inn were infinitely better than the migrant camps where she had been raised. She sauntered over to the bar, and handed Gene, the barkeep the next order. Then she heard a loud bang on a table, _the dwarf again_, she thought.
The dwarf who had been drinking with the halfling was a sailor, judging by his mouth and his garb--rude, but a good tipper. She grabbed her tray and made her way over. The two of them were now sitting with a tall, very very tall, man--a mason probably, judging by the gray dust clouding his beard and the wheezy way he breathed. She walked towards the table, adjusting her dress to show a little more cleavage, not that she had much, and making sure she had her best smile on.
----
Kade sat listening quietly to all Nat had to say. He knew his work well, and the biggest part of it was making sure to listen attentively when someone who might pay you was talking, and to always laugh at their jokes--even when it was a painful mix of dry, dwarven humor and fish stories. Seeing Tom walk in, he waved him over to the table. Kade and Tom had just met the previous day. Tom was the biggest human he'd ever seen. He was also lot smarter than his tall, muscle-bound frame would let on--Kade had been able to see that from the way Tom dealt with the foreman on the worksite where he had seen him. It was clear that Tom knew more about stone, and measurements, and construction than his employer, and it was a shame to let that go to waste--especially when that knowledge came attached to such long reach and powerful-looking arms. So, Kade had invited Tom on the spot to come with him to meet Nat.
Tom sat down and Nat banged on the table, his way of signalling for more beer. The barmaid who came was a young slip of a thing, probably not more than fifteen or sixteen, slender, and narrow-faced. She clearly tried too hard to make her money, Kade thought, waggling her hips, pulling down her shirt, and smiling too much (always with her teeth closed). Then there were her fingernails, more brightly painted than any he'd ever seen, and the strange sibilant quality to her voice. Kade always prided himself on his observation skills.
As the girl laid another round of drinks on the table, Nat began explaining his plan to Kade and Tom. He wanted to take Thorn Island, he told them. His ship was stuck here as long as the port was closed, and with it his livelihood, so he was prepared to take them across the bay to the island, and even wait for them to return, without expecting any cut of the two-thousand gold the city had put up as a bounty on the monsters inhabiting the old keep there. He, and his captain, had even promised Kade a stake in their next voyage as an added bonus if he was able to put a team together and free up the port again. Kade, of course, had not mentioned this last bit to Tom.
The plan seemed simple--for Nat's part at least. The port was closed, but he knew a fisherman who had an old sail-boat he would lend Nat to take them across the bay. Just a small thing, unlikely to be noticed by the port authority, and much faster than the ferry which the port authority was using to carry the competition. Most groups going to the island had to go through the council commissioning process, have to deal with piles of paperwork, roster checks, chartering the official ferry from the port authority, and, of course, waiting for the ferry to return to get them off the island. The last part, was what Kade was most concerned about, since, so far as he had heard, none of the groups that went to the island survived long enough for the ferry to pick them up. Nat's promise to wait, with the boat, for them at the shore of the island meant that they at least had an escape plan if things went south.
Tom seemed interested. He made a point of mentioning that he had never done the adventuring thing before, several times in fact, but yesterday he had told Kade about smashing in the head of a man in the Slums who had stolen a few silvers from his daughter. He was big, smart, and desperate for a better living--and having kin would make him cautious, of himself at least--so Kade was confident that he was the man for the job. Kade just needed a few more sword arms, and maybe a mage if he could swing one.
----
Storm stayed close to the dwarf's table, partly because he kept calling for more drinks and laying down extra silver every time the beer appeared quickly, and partly because the talk of the island intrigued her. A lot of adventurers had tried the island in the last few days, none of them returning, but this dwarf seemed to know a lot more than even the Council was admitting to. The halfling asked all the right questions too--coming off as a cool professional as far as killing-monsters was concerned. The dwarf went into detail about the layout of the island's coastline and the walls of the keep, told stories about the old temple and the fall of the keep, and regaled them with tales about orcs, undead, giant frogs, and scorpions...but mostly undead.
A patron tugged on her skirt and she realized she had not been moving for a few minutes. "Right, what'd'you want?" she asked. Just then Gene shouted and she looked up to see a man running for the door. While she didn't quite register his words, one look at the barkeep's eyes told her that the man was rushing to leave without having paid. She pivoted away from the inquiring patron, hiked up her skirt all the way, and produced three knives which went sailing towards the running deadbeat in rapid succession. All three blades sunk into the door, one pinning the man's sleeve to the door, the other two landing right at head level in front of him. Gene smiled and went to collect the tab.
----
Kade's calm professionalism was broken by the barmaid's display of weapon prowess. He immediately hopped up and grabbed the girl's hand. "Excellent marksmanship!" he said, "How 'bout you go get us another round of drinks, and then come have a seat, and make sure to bring one for yourself. I see better things in your future than trying to show off your hips for a few extra coppers..."
As Gene led the deadbeat patron away from the door to suffer a drubbing at the hands of the entire staff, the door swung open. Standing in the door, backlit by the dim flicker of a street light, was a small figure, not even as tall as Kade, dark, or at least it seemed so in the dim light, and striking the most ridiculous pose--arms on hips, chest thrust out, chin thrust up in profile--like some kind of penny-novella action hero. Judging by the canine jaw the creature displayed, it was a _kobold_. "Humans!" the kobold called out, "Have no fear! I, Goremayan son of Kurtulmak, Hero EXTRAORDINAIRE has come! "
Roars of laughter echoed around the tavern. A few patrons shouted disparaging remarks about the kobold's parentage, some pounded on tables, other threw lewd gestures in the kobold's direction, one employeee went so far as to yell "Get out of here, we don't serve your kind, we don't want you here." Tom, surprisingly, though, stood up and walked over to the little creature. "You can sit with us," he said softly. Kade gave the big man a quizzical look, he simply replied, "He claims to be a hero, maybe he could help."
The barmaid tossed her towel on the bar to indicate she was off duty and returned to the table carrying a tray with five foaming mugs. "So what did you have in mind short-stuff?" she asked, pulling a chair up beside Kade.
"We're going to go clean out Thorn Island," Kade replied. "The Council has put up a bounty of 2000 gold for any group that clears it out. Nat here has got a boat and promises to give us transport in exchange for getting the port open again, and actually says he'll provide rapid evacuation, unlike the Council. The island is known to be used as a staging area for some of the orc groups in the ruins, and the keep is home to a fair number of undead, or so they say. I've got plenty of experience with traps, locks, weapons, tactics, and infiltration, so I'll be leading the operation. Tom here knows a lot about buildings and fortifications. You look like you know your way with a knife, if you'd like to be cut in." He looks at the dog-faced creature on the other side of the table. "What about you kobold? What sort of _Hero_ are you? The deal is one share each, that's five hundred gold plus one-fourth of any treasure we find. Which is more than you'll make in a year of tips working in a dive like this or from slinging stone on the old houses around here."
The kobold piped up, "I'm Goremayan son of Kurtulmak, great hero of koboldkind! I wield mighty magic and have killed many, many orcs! If the orcs from this island trouble you, look no further than I to vanquish them!"
Storm sipped the glass of beer, listening to the four of them, then set it down and offered the halfling her hand to shake. "Alright, I'm in. When do we sail? I'll need a few hours to get ready if undead are involved..."
"Meet at the west-end of the docks in the morning," Nat said. "I'm not going to that island at night." He adjourned quickly, as they all appeared to be getting light-headed from the kobold's stench.
Kade nodded and shook hands with each of them, then excused himself and headed for the door. Nat also left. "I have to get back to work," the barmaid said. Tom rose to leave as well, but the barmaid stopped him, "Hey, can I see that hammer? I'll give it back in the morning. I might be able to make it work a little better." Tom shrugged and handed the hammer over, then left.
The kobold sat alone at the table for a long time, slowly sipping his beer (and finishing the dregs of the others' mugs), before Storm finally had to come by and ask him to leave--the smell was disturbing the other patrons.
----
Thick stormclouds were massing in the sky as the group reassembled by the docks. Nat was waiting for them by a small, single-masted, cat-rigged lobstering boat, just large enough for the five of them, with a broad beam, and shallow draft. As they were boarding, Storm handed Tom his big hammer back, now etched with a complicated, lightning-like rune in triplicate. "Just bang it on the ground three times if things get hairy," she told him.
The PCs:
- Mike as "Kade Kaliwart" (Halfling Mercenary)
- Stephanie as "Storm Reynes" (Tiefling Gypsy Runecaster)
- Andre as "Tom Builder" (Human Cleric)
- Alan as "Gore" (Kobold Fighter)
- and "Nat" (Dwarven Sailor NPC)
________________________________________________________________________________
Tom sat at a low table, or rather the wooden pallet on the floor of the hovel that served as a table, with his ten-year-old daughter Martha. They passed a loaf of horsebread and a jog of weak beer and talked about her day at work. Martha was newly apprenticed as a shop-girl, working for Ian Cockburn, the grocer inside the walls--quite the good position, and it only cost Tom fifty silvers a week. In just a few years she would be a journeyman shop-keep and be able to actually accept payment for her work, and would be of marriageable age. For now though, Tom had to care for them both, a tough thing for a single father. He took the jug from her and downed the last of it in one long swallow. "Alright Martha," he said, hugging the girl, "off to bed." He stood up and gathered up his hammer and tools from the corner. "I have to go talk to a dwarf about a job. Remember to bar the door and not open it for anything but my voice." He gave a hard look at the walls. Building the hovel had been hasty work, and the wood was all salvage from the ruins, but he was good at his job, and the walls were solid. He lifted the bar, a heavy thing set on a pivot (his own design), that Martha could just barely lift to let him in when he came back. He gave her one last hug, and said a blessing over her, asking Gond for the insight to know if she was in danger. "Good night, I should be back before morning." He turned and walked out the door, rushing to get inside the city-gates before they closed for the night.
He just missed seeing the small, dark figure climbing over the wall, only five feet from his house.
----
Gore stood inside the walls of New Phlan, looking up at the rough wooden palisade. He almost laughed at how easy it had been to bypass them. He looked twenty yards to his left at the gate. The guards had refused him entry and even made disparaging remarks about his musk, beloved by kobold women everywhere. He was tempted to go break all their kneecaps, but he reminded himself that that was not his mission here. Shrugging, he turned into an alley and began searching for a bar. Bar's were always the right place to find _hero-work_ , or so he had been told by that old goblin in the Slums. He thought again of the guards, poor saps--the humans of Phlan must be quite desperate, or so he had told them, waving the flyer that he had found tacked to a tree outside the city. How sad, he had said, that they had to put up posters seeking heros, but how great for them that Goremeyan, Son of Kurtulmak, the great hero of all kobold-kind, had come to save them. Still, they had turned him away at the door. No matter. He had got in by himself and now he just had to show these humans how great of a hero they truly had at their disposal, and for that, he needed to find a bar.
----
Storm placed two more beers on the table for the dwarf and the halfling, then swept off to take orders from another table. She couldn't help but hear them talking about the port being closed, but then, everyone was...albeit, usually in less-hushed tones. It had been three days since the last ship of settlers had come in and the Council had declared that the port would be closed, completely, until the _things_ on Thorn Island were dealt with.
She danced around the room, taking and delivering orders, putting a little extra sway in her hips to ensure good tips. Working at the Bitter Blade wasn't what she had in mind when she came to Phlan, but was a huge step up from picking apples for pennies a day, which she'd been doing since she was a small child, and the rooms over the inn were infinitely better than the migrant camps where she had been raised. She sauntered over to the bar, and handed Gene, the barkeep the next order. Then she heard a loud bang on a table, _the dwarf again_, she thought.
The dwarf who had been drinking with the halfling was a sailor, judging by his mouth and his garb--rude, but a good tipper. She grabbed her tray and made her way over. The two of them were now sitting with a tall, very very tall, man--a mason probably, judging by the gray dust clouding his beard and the wheezy way he breathed. She walked towards the table, adjusting her dress to show a little more cleavage, not that she had much, and making sure she had her best smile on.
----
Kade sat listening quietly to all Nat had to say. He knew his work well, and the biggest part of it was making sure to listen attentively when someone who might pay you was talking, and to always laugh at their jokes--even when it was a painful mix of dry, dwarven humor and fish stories. Seeing Tom walk in, he waved him over to the table. Kade and Tom had just met the previous day. Tom was the biggest human he'd ever seen. He was also lot smarter than his tall, muscle-bound frame would let on--Kade had been able to see that from the way Tom dealt with the foreman on the worksite where he had seen him. It was clear that Tom knew more about stone, and measurements, and construction than his employer, and it was a shame to let that go to waste--especially when that knowledge came attached to such long reach and powerful-looking arms. So, Kade had invited Tom on the spot to come with him to meet Nat.
Tom sat down and Nat banged on the table, his way of signalling for more beer. The barmaid who came was a young slip of a thing, probably not more than fifteen or sixteen, slender, and narrow-faced. She clearly tried too hard to make her money, Kade thought, waggling her hips, pulling down her shirt, and smiling too much (always with her teeth closed). Then there were her fingernails, more brightly painted than any he'd ever seen, and the strange sibilant quality to her voice. Kade always prided himself on his observation skills.
As the girl laid another round of drinks on the table, Nat began explaining his plan to Kade and Tom. He wanted to take Thorn Island, he told them. His ship was stuck here as long as the port was closed, and with it his livelihood, so he was prepared to take them across the bay to the island, and even wait for them to return, without expecting any cut of the two-thousand gold the city had put up as a bounty on the monsters inhabiting the old keep there. He, and his captain, had even promised Kade a stake in their next voyage as an added bonus if he was able to put a team together and free up the port again. Kade, of course, had not mentioned this last bit to Tom.
The plan seemed simple--for Nat's part at least. The port was closed, but he knew a fisherman who had an old sail-boat he would lend Nat to take them across the bay. Just a small thing, unlikely to be noticed by the port authority, and much faster than the ferry which the port authority was using to carry the competition. Most groups going to the island had to go through the council commissioning process, have to deal with piles of paperwork, roster checks, chartering the official ferry from the port authority, and, of course, waiting for the ferry to return to get them off the island. The last part, was what Kade was most concerned about, since, so far as he had heard, none of the groups that went to the island survived long enough for the ferry to pick them up. Nat's promise to wait, with the boat, for them at the shore of the island meant that they at least had an escape plan if things went south.
Tom seemed interested. He made a point of mentioning that he had never done the adventuring thing before, several times in fact, but yesterday he had told Kade about smashing in the head of a man in the Slums who had stolen a few silvers from his daughter. He was big, smart, and desperate for a better living--and having kin would make him cautious, of himself at least--so Kade was confident that he was the man for the job. Kade just needed a few more sword arms, and maybe a mage if he could swing one.
----
Storm stayed close to the dwarf's table, partly because he kept calling for more drinks and laying down extra silver every time the beer appeared quickly, and partly because the talk of the island intrigued her. A lot of adventurers had tried the island in the last few days, none of them returning, but this dwarf seemed to know a lot more than even the Council was admitting to. The halfling asked all the right questions too--coming off as a cool professional as far as killing-monsters was concerned. The dwarf went into detail about the layout of the island's coastline and the walls of the keep, told stories about the old temple and the fall of the keep, and regaled them with tales about orcs, undead, giant frogs, and scorpions...but mostly undead.
A patron tugged on her skirt and she realized she had not been moving for a few minutes. "Right, what'd'you want?" she asked. Just then Gene shouted and she looked up to see a man running for the door. While she didn't quite register his words, one look at the barkeep's eyes told her that the man was rushing to leave without having paid. She pivoted away from the inquiring patron, hiked up her skirt all the way, and produced three knives which went sailing towards the running deadbeat in rapid succession. All three blades sunk into the door, one pinning the man's sleeve to the door, the other two landing right at head level in front of him. Gene smiled and went to collect the tab.
----
Kade's calm professionalism was broken by the barmaid's display of weapon prowess. He immediately hopped up and grabbed the girl's hand. "Excellent marksmanship!" he said, "How 'bout you go get us another round of drinks, and then come have a seat, and make sure to bring one for yourself. I see better things in your future than trying to show off your hips for a few extra coppers..."
As Gene led the deadbeat patron away from the door to suffer a drubbing at the hands of the entire staff, the door swung open. Standing in the door, backlit by the dim flicker of a street light, was a small figure, not even as tall as Kade, dark, or at least it seemed so in the dim light, and striking the most ridiculous pose--arms on hips, chest thrust out, chin thrust up in profile--like some kind of penny-novella action hero. Judging by the canine jaw the creature displayed, it was a _kobold_. "Humans!" the kobold called out, "Have no fear! I, Goremayan son of Kurtulmak, Hero EXTRAORDINAIRE has come! "
Roars of laughter echoed around the tavern. A few patrons shouted disparaging remarks about the kobold's parentage, some pounded on tables, other threw lewd gestures in the kobold's direction, one employeee went so far as to yell "Get out of here, we don't serve your kind, we don't want you here." Tom, surprisingly, though, stood up and walked over to the little creature. "You can sit with us," he said softly. Kade gave the big man a quizzical look, he simply replied, "He claims to be a hero, maybe he could help."
The barmaid tossed her towel on the bar to indicate she was off duty and returned to the table carrying a tray with five foaming mugs. "So what did you have in mind short-stuff?" she asked, pulling a chair up beside Kade.
"We're going to go clean out Thorn Island," Kade replied. "The Council has put up a bounty of 2000 gold for any group that clears it out. Nat here has got a boat and promises to give us transport in exchange for getting the port open again, and actually says he'll provide rapid evacuation, unlike the Council. The island is known to be used as a staging area for some of the orc groups in the ruins, and the keep is home to a fair number of undead, or so they say. I've got plenty of experience with traps, locks, weapons, tactics, and infiltration, so I'll be leading the operation. Tom here knows a lot about buildings and fortifications. You look like you know your way with a knife, if you'd like to be cut in." He looks at the dog-faced creature on the other side of the table. "What about you kobold? What sort of _Hero_ are you? The deal is one share each, that's five hundred gold plus one-fourth of any treasure we find. Which is more than you'll make in a year of tips working in a dive like this or from slinging stone on the old houses around here."
The kobold piped up, "I'm Goremayan son of Kurtulmak, great hero of koboldkind! I wield mighty magic and have killed many, many orcs! If the orcs from this island trouble you, look no further than I to vanquish them!"
Storm sipped the glass of beer, listening to the four of them, then set it down and offered the halfling her hand to shake. "Alright, I'm in. When do we sail? I'll need a few hours to get ready if undead are involved..."
"Meet at the west-end of the docks in the morning," Nat said. "I'm not going to that island at night." He adjourned quickly, as they all appeared to be getting light-headed from the kobold's stench.
Kade nodded and shook hands with each of them, then excused himself and headed for the door. Nat also left. "I have to get back to work," the barmaid said. Tom rose to leave as well, but the barmaid stopped him, "Hey, can I see that hammer? I'll give it back in the morning. I might be able to make it work a little better." Tom shrugged and handed the hammer over, then left.
The kobold sat alone at the table for a long time, slowly sipping his beer (and finishing the dregs of the others' mugs), before Storm finally had to come by and ask him to leave--the smell was disturbing the other patrons.
----
Thick stormclouds were massing in the sky as the group reassembled by the docks. Nat was waiting for them by a small, single-masted, cat-rigged lobstering boat, just large enough for the five of them, with a broad beam, and shallow draft. As they were boarding, Storm handed Tom his big hammer back, now etched with a complicated, lightning-like rune in triplicate. "Just bang it on the ground three times if things get hairy," she told him.
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