Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Path: netcom.com!netcomsv!decwrl!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!xlink.net!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!stepsun.uni-kl.de!sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de!physik.uni-kl.de!kring From: kring@physik.uni-kl.de (Thomas Kettenring) Subject: [Welcome] BT: A Few Fights Message-ID: <1993Aug30.015207.2626@rhrk.uni-kl.de> Sender: news@rhrk.uni-kl.de Organization: FB Physik, Universitaet Kaiserslautern, Germany Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1993 01:52:07 GMT Lines: 181 ADMIN: This follows "Miscellaneous New Aspects" where Bakr and his companions leave the city of Mythros to go dragon hunting. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bakr's Tales: A Few Fights ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Myrkdag is the last day of the month, and it is said to be an evil day. Superstitious people don't leave their houses much, especially not during the night. This was Myrkdag, but we weren't superstitious. At least not much. The road went straight north. Compass explained the wood was mostly pines, black pines and snakeskin pines and stone pines, but also cypresses and chestnuts. I would say it was a dark forest, for atmosphere, but it wasn't. The trees were not close enough. They were partly separated by rocks. The weather wasn't bad either, so the atmosphere didn't fit what we had heard. Anyway the forest didn't look homely. And it shouldn't, for we had been told it was a dangerous forest. We watched each rock coming in sight with suspicion, expecting strange monsters jumping at us any moment. We didn't know what gnolls were, but that was what should be there. Gnolls and goblins. After an hour of nothing I relaxed a bit. Maybe the forest only *looked* dangerous. Maybe the gnolls were products of fertile imagination of the peasants. And indeed a little while later we weren't attacked by a gnoll but by a falcon. That is, I was. It clawed my face. I was so surprised I almost lost contact to my horse. Ormgwen hit the bird when it came for the next attack. It didn't want to fight anymore after that and preferred sitting in the grass and bleeding. Ormgwen was really pissed at it. "Let me kill it!" Compass didn't let him. He said that falcons normally don't attack people. It must have had a reason. For example, we had come too close to its nest. Falcons were breeding now. "I hope it will recover," he said. "And you should hope that too. Think of Henwen." Mentioning his fertility goddess calmed the burglar down. Tarik looked after my wounds, and we rode on. We were keeping an eye in the air from then on. But next we were attacked by a wild boar not coming from above. It ran towards us with high speed and a loud war grunt. The horses didn't like it, and Compass was thrown off. The dog didn't like it either and disappeared with even higher speed than the boar had used to come. Well, the pig didn't have much of a chance. I don't remember any details of the fight, it was over very quickly, but nobody was wounded. As soon as the animal was dead, Caramon returned and barked at the body. "Great fighting-dog you have there," said Tarik with a grin. We cut the beast up and made a fire, watching out for more danger. It tasted better than I had expected from such a dirty beast, and after we had finished we distributed bits of it in our backpacks for later. ----- Soon after that we reached a bifurcation. To the left a path was leading uphill to a village visible from the road (the trees had got more sparse, and the landscape got rockier). The right way was the right way, according to Compass; it stayed in the valley. In the distance one could see parts of a creek meandering along our way. It was outright idyllic until something soft and stinky landed on my face. Five creatures, half-bird, half-woman, were flying an attack on us, the most humiliating one I ever experienced. Tarik, Ormgwen, and me were hit instantly by their droppings. They whizzed around above our heads and added insult to pollution in shrill voices. One of them shouted that we were ridiculous lemurs groping blindly through the landscape, and she had a point because we hadn't seen them coming. After the boar incident, we had again concentrated on land-based enemies. Another one compared our smell with that of fitchews, which wasn't that wrong either, considering the disgusting slime they had covered us with. They had much more to say - one called me Wobble and asked why I didn't roll back into the sea, another compared Ormgwen to a tree, but not regarding size but intelligence. (Ormgwen was vainly trying to hit the beasts with everything he had. He was furious.) One suggested that Tarik had become homeless when someone turned over a big stone. They suspected Compass of being related to an orang-utan and me - emphasizing the size of my nose - of having been cursed by a mummy. Other words they used were "Orc Sputum", "Beet Nose", and "Troll Butt". Ormgwen was still trying frantically to inflict damage on the creatures. "YOU... YOU... YOU STUPID BIRDS!" he shouted, swinging his sword in circles. The rest of us saw that fighting was rather pointless, as they were too quick and we had enough to do keeping the horses under control. It's a miracle how Ormgwen managed to stay in the saddle without holding the bridle. The monsters told him he wouldn't hit a barn from the inside, and he should try to target himself to increase his hit probability. One hypothesized that we had taken the weapons when our parents didn't look, and warned us of dangerous wild squirrels farther down the road. Finally they had enough - maybe they didn't have to go anymore - and retired into the higher branches of a tree, from where they laughed at us. Then Caramon came out of the bushes (the things had commented on him too, mentioning rabbits that were more courageous). Ormgwen gathered together what he could find of his throwing stars. He had bought a magic one in Mythros that was supposed to hit more accurately, and that one was missing now. He, Tarik and me were thoroughly frustrated, depressed, and disgusted. Compass, who hadn't been hit though the bird things had aimed at him many times, was only disgusted and kept at a distance. His equally untainted dog joined him. ----- It was only logical to go straight to the creek and clean ourselves. So we dismounted and led our horses away from the road to the water. But we weren't the only ones who thought that way - we were expected by a gang of eight whitish, pug-faced humanoids with clubs and throwing-axes, wearing primitive fur clothing. They were the size of halflings and had long, black, and sharp fingernails, tiny, sharp fangs, and big eyes. What they didn't have was necks and shoulders. They looked a bit like short sausages with arms and legs. They surrounded us and demanded all our possessions. Ormgwen immediately went berserk and almost blindly attacked everything that moved as well as some things that didn't, all the time shouting "FUCK!!" He didn't hit much. The rest of us didn't either. In any other situation we would have fought better, but as I said, we were utterly demoralized. And then the humanoids were hard to hit, being so small. We caught more bruises than they did, and it almost looked as if we were losing. Caramon did the best job in fighting them, I don't know if he was encouraged by their sausage forms or their dog faces. When he had finished off two of the small guys and Tarik and Compass one each, the humanoids gave up and ran away. Tarik caught one of them and questioned him, and he admitted being a rock kobold and making a living on taking advantage of the bad morals of travellers who had encountered the harpys, as the bird-things were called. We robbed him of the few copper pieces he had on him and let him go. Not that we needed it, but he deserved being robbed. Those rock kobolds who hadn't survived hadn't much cash or otherwise valuable things on them. So this fight gained us effusions of blood on the legs from the clubs and a bit of copper. We couldn't remove all of the smell of harpy-do. I had bought a dark purple cloak in Mythros that had covered my clothes, and it still stank when we reached Ikonium, so I didn't wear it any more. I carefully cleaned the falcon wounds in my face. I didn't set great store by an inflammation. "Unfair falcons, charging swine, stinking harpys, and mean kobolds with sticks! I hadn't expected that when Preg called this forest dangerous," I said when we returned to the road. "It's also humiliating and repulsive." Compass nodded. "We should soon reach the smithy. We can ask Baros about what else there is. He should know." ----- The sun was setting. In the distance we could make out a few dark figures running around on the road, then a bit later we saw the smithy, standing to the right in front of rocky slope. The dark figures were circling the house. "Hey, that's orcs or the like!" whispered Tarik. He was right, they had crooked statures, and they were darker than normal. Compass guarded the horses, and we sneaked up on the figures. We could watch them from behind a rock in safe distance. They were four, and one of them was definitely on orc. The others were pig-faced too, but not as dark- skinned. One was much bigger than the others and had horns and tusks, and it was not as deformed as the others. It was obvious that they tried to find a way into the house. The big one was fumbling around with a window in the back wall when a big rock lying on the roof fell on him. Obviously Baros had trapped his house against burglars. The big humanoid collapsed, and the other three gathered between house and slope and shouted at him. "Now!" said Tarik, and we rushed forward. Ormgwen surrounded the house, and Tarik and me took the direct route. We had the guys cornered between us. They were surprised and unsure what to do, but when they saw Compass coming with our horses, they surrendered and dropped their short swords and daggers. The big one was still holding his head and didn't look like somebody who is in the mood for fighting. They looked shabby, and they stank. One after the other we searched and pushed away. They weren't much richer than the kobolds. For some reason nobody spoke. I guess everybody assumed we wouldn't understand each other. Then they stood on the road north of the smithy and looked reluctant to go, until Ormgwen ran at them swinging his sword, so they went away. -- Bakr ibn Ja'far ibn Musa al Mekneshi, apprentice mage aka Thomas Kettenring