Games We Play

(The following journal is from the viewpoint of Foley, a halfling thief, some years later.)

Not much more gods talk, at least. There was something comforting about sleeping in the guard shed with all the holy symbols around it, not because of any mystical aura of peace or comfort but because we knew it was safe. I was finally getting the idea of the shape of things and the more we wandered the more it became apparent; this wasn’t for keeping people out of the keep but from keeping the inhabitants of this part of the keep from getting into the rest of it. This might explain why they hadn’t sent any guards to replace the three that were here when we first arrived. Why throw more orcs after dead? Lucky us, in any case.

After resting, we finally decided to head upwards to check out the second floor, though it looked mostly ruined from the outside. In fact, because it looked ruined from the outside it had to have been a better choice than descending into a nest, for instance, of giant ants, but all we found was a route over some of the rubble. The first second-floor room we came upon was missing its floor and the floor beneath it, opening well into the basement. Someone had set a plank across the gap. Normally, you avoid such obvious traps but Dane said it was stable. I don’t know why a wood-elf would know, though he said his master kept a gnome prisoner. I certainly don’t want to imagine what kinds of “favors” were done for this exchange of knowledge.

At the other end of this plank were stairs back down, and this was the end of our exploring the second floor. However, it did bring us to a door that was not trapped and not locked. In fact, it was barely even a door, charred so thin that it fell over instead of opening. The room inside was similar, blackened, charred and stinking like an orc’s dead grandmother. There are some problems with living in a land of you giants, and one is that smells tend to linger lower, so I was busy adding a little color to the room as the others spread out.

At least I was near the door when Sully found the box. It was a nice box in this wrecked room, which was quite odd. Dane was saying something about motion from above when it became motion from right on top of Sully.

There were, at first, five dirty and wild-eyed humans jumping from the ledge above us, but they became four as one landed on a sharp rubble. Why do people keep demanding on being heroic and leaping dramatically? Is it the stories that bards tell about the deeds of heros? Let me tell you all that it never works out the way you think it will. If you have to get quickly down from above, use a ladder or a rope or even someone else. Oh, and jumping onto a horse is about the same, except you bounce painfully off a horse on your way to the ground. Just don’t do it, right? Right.

The humans looked like they hadn’t eaten in weeks, living in this little room, hiding from the pirates. The one that landed right on Sully started trying to bite into his shoulder. Maybe even a meal of half-orc was better than nothing. But after a moment, even as Sully tried to scrape her off with his sword Susan, he stopped moving. That’s when she started tearing into his arm.

The rest of us were now quite avidly trying not to be scratched. Whatever poison was under their nails, we didn’t want find out. Colwyn, then, tried to make these people go away by declaring he was a Priest of Hoar and that the vengeance should be respected. Well, yeah, apparently this is one of the ways that priests try to make the undead respect their presence and flee or, sometimes, to do what they’re told. Gods can be pretty clever sometimes.

So these were some of the undead. One who kept trying to tear off my head with his long-nailed hands, but I could stay out of reach even with a hand over my mouth to keep the smell, his smell, from completely knocking me on my ass. It is almost impossible to do this and swing any kind of blade effectively, however. Everyone else was competent in taking out the undead creepy-crawlies. Eventually, Sully started moving again.

We did mess with him a little, first.

Kumar had to pull the chains off the box, stretching the links and marring the box quite a bit, but we just used it for kindling later. There was, inside, a smaller box, a bottle, some money and a fine change of clothes that Nosmo claimed. The boy, we were finding out, was a greedy little cuss. I don’t mind greedy little cusses, but he was greedy and clever and good with magic which meant he was dangerous. No less dangerous than the rest of us, perhaps. Hells, I think I was the least dangerous of the whole group. Nothing I didn’t fix, later.

The small box was trapped with whatever poison these undead had under their claws, and I got the experience of not moving for a while. They did mess with me for a little, first. Oh yeah, it had an extremely expensive necklace in it.

Kumar made sure the other door out of this room was not trapped, which he did by falling through it. I don’t know if that was an intentional effect of the door or not, but none of the dead undead around us looked capable of doing much more than chewing on the occasional orc.

The corridor on the other side eventually lead us to a trap. We knew it was a trap because it was on our side, at halfling-height, leading right to the door handle. If someone was unfortunate enough to tug the door open, a rope would pull a pin which would release a board, bent back and covered in spikes, making whomever opened the door feel very unfortunate. It was no challenge to cut the rope, but we all felt better about it. I did not want a face full of spike.

The other side of the door was a small room that something seemed to like to live in, something leaving large piles of quite smelly dung. Something called “Bad Boy”, or that’s what was painted on the door. “Bad Boy! Stay!” So the trap was for whatever was using this room. It didn’t take a wizard to realize this smaller room opened into what Nosmo was calling the Dog Pen.

We quickly left and reset the trap. We were not fools. Yes, Umak, we were afraid. If you were there and you were us, you would be too. Yes, we know how large and bold you are, now it’s your turn to go get me the next drink, but don’t use the corner cantina; we’ve hit them once already today. When faced with the idea of being turned to stone, you all would take the smart way out too.

Nosmo was proving to be more insistent than even Umak, though. While we know Umak would have volunteered to go in and skulk around, Nosmo wanted Kumar to do all the difficult work. Kumar, see, was almost as big as Umak and the points in his ears often unnerved people. Half-elves shouldn’t be allowed to be that brutish, but he was. A true intimidator-class troublemaker, Kumar, so his size was what Nosmo was hoping to use against whatever creature was down in the pit.

We did return to the charred room and Kumar did crawl up to the roof from there, just to check things out. What he saw was almost more disturbing than a stone-cold killer in the courtyard. On the battlements around the walls of the keep were orcish guards, keeping an eye out to sea. We had the fates on our side, even if our way was difficult. It was easier to pick off some little things here and there than to be rushed by the entire population of the rest of the keep. Our portion of the keep was otherwise unpopulated, except for the holy garden shed and now-charred stables, and that meant we had a tactical advantage. You look for these advantages wherever you can.

Down in the Dog Pen was a multi-legged lizard, larger than several of us standing together. Kumar, wisely, would not jump down and try to give it a good stab between its shoulder blades or through the head. I could not get the image out of my head of Kumar trying and landing poorly, his kneecap flying off and into the shadows.

Nosmo was still sulking as we returned to our portion of the keep and through the only door we haven’t looked through, the only door we hoped would not lead out into the face of a giant six-legged iguana. What we found was a small burial room, a well-preserved, elder man on a table, somewhat recent flowers surrounding his head. Maybe this was the old founder of this keep, the man without whom pirates could not have gained a foothold in this far-away portion of the sea. A man who Sully stabbed Susan right into.

Sully was clearly picking up some of Nosmo’s insanity, or so it seemed. When the corpse sat up, surprised and in pain, we swung whatever we could at it. This place was just lousy with the undead. Later, Sully said, “Susan didn’t like him.” Yes, it was time to start making my way to the rear of the group.

There was a small sub-room hanging off this one, but with nothing more exciting than a spare robe and a door into the Dog Pen. This left us with one way to go: Down. Like Umak’s standing, now that he’s just returning. What, did you go all the way to the fourth quarter to get this?

Down was a system of rough tunnels. They weren’t flooded, and I wondered if there wasn’t some magic involved. There were also some smaller tunnels, rounder than the rest, about the right size for a young halfling or a large ant. We didn’t go this way. The way we did go was a small cavern with several small pits around a central ladder leading up to a trap door. Kumar volunteered to go up first and take a quiet look around, even in spite of the cut rung near the top that nearly toppled him back to the floor and on his ass.

He said that the door was covered by a rug, which was a smart way to hide a door in the floor. He went up, though, with Sully close behind, waiting when the half-elf said there were a pair of guards in a long room of prisoners. He said this quietly, and tried to quietly sneak up on them, but even I, waiting nearly at the bottom of the ladder, heard him trip and scrape the tip of his sword against the stone floor abve.

Sully just sat there until prodded into action. For all his speed and deadliness, he isn’t always bright. By the time we all were off the ladder and into this prison room, one of the half-orc guards was dead and the other looked quite worried. The ten orc prisoners weren’t cheering or even looking worried. They looked patient, expecting, and that should have warned us that something was wrong. Though they were chained to the wall, once the other guard was dead they easily pulled out of their manacles and drew the small swords that were hidden in their bedding.

This may have been one of the stranger barracks. Fortunately, after a few days of fighting orcs you pick up their weakest points and even even the smallest man can cut them down.

We grabbed their more expensive supplies and made our way quickly back to the holy tool-shed. I didn’t really want to do this, but when a spell-caster shoots his wad, you’ll find, they’ll go around whining like they’re naked in a field of fire-ants. Still, we went back so they could get some rest and we could hopefully maintain our tactical advantage. At least mages are good for that.