240725 Kill or be killed...
General Summary
Paper! Paper! Read all about it! An action packed and exclusive episode of The Tomb Robbing Assassins is included with today’s copy of the Bugle. Expect supreme sword skills, clever casting, dastardly dagger-work and, of course, fearsome foes all vying for their part on these humble pages.
“Bugger!” said Drogon when he heard Sentinel’s elven squeals through the telepathic link, as she was grabbed by the beast on the caverns below him. Everyone listened in to the fight, as they had little choice. Sentinel had elected to make sure everyone could hear everything. If she was going to be smacked about then, damn it, she wanted them to suffer too. Kurog and Griff were seen exchanging gold coins, surely they weren’t betting on the outcome?
The stalagmite-like beast used Sentinel’s surprise to its benefit, slapping her with its leathery and slimy tentacles, getting some of the slime in her open, screaming mouth. That elicited a lot of “eww” noises from those listening in. Once she’d spat out the offending effluence, Sentinel was able
to cast a quick Dimension Door spell and she appeared in a safe place in the cave she’d previously explored. A few welts and a bit of sticky slime the worse for wear. Team Audience all nodded at the performance but wondered if there was going to be a ballad composed about this episode.
There was a bard from Ranke
Who thought herself a tank
She solo explored a level,
was caught by a tentacled devil
And it gave her a bit of a spank
Sentinel returned to the group and after a bit of healing, they started looking for their next encounter. Down the southern corridor, they could see yet another ballista/barricade combo. This one had three Ettins in front of the barricade with two fire giants and a cloud giant behind.
Thorg and Kurog broke off from their pectoral muscle flexing competition so that Kurog could poke his head around the corner to assess the enemy. He gathered meticulous information about the cloud giant adversary, to give the band an advantage in the coming fight. His assessment was
delivered with a pride in his abilities. “It’s a she, she’s bigger than me and she’s tough,” he said. Thorg nodded sagely, as he tucked this useful information away for the inevitable, upcoming fight. Griff stared at Kurog and opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it and just carried on going through the contents of his portable hole.
The Ettins had, however, spotted the retreating head of Kurog and were about to charge down the corridor to give chase until their Giant masters called them to heel. They were to be lured towards the waiting meat grinder of our trusty heroes. Griff put his mighty brain to the problem and thought of a way to separate the giants from the ballista and cause a rift between the two groups. He cast his spell of stinky sickness cloud. And it forced the waiting giants to retreat back from the barricade and, more importantly, the trigger of the ballista. Battle was joined as Team Heavy Metal charged into the Ettins, making a mockery of their two headed humanoids by taking turns to moon them between sword swings. Sentinel fired off the classic Enemies Abound spell forcing the two fire giants beyond the barricade to start hitting each other.
The group let rip with whatever they had left. They had the sense that this was a final stand by the giants on this level. It was all or nothing, tension was mounting. Beads of sweat were rolling down Jude’s face as she blasted a giant, summoning her trusty hammer to engage in combat. She was a
little disheartened to hear her team mates all welcoming the hammer with smiles and kind words, ones she never received from them. Her sharp ears picked up Sentinel comment to Drogon “If only the hammer could heal...” and she watched Thorg high-five the hammer’s head. She shook her
head, nope all imagined paranoia!
Drogon used his sharp-shooting skills to target one of the fire giants, then further target its left testicle. With unerring accuracy, the arrow hit its intended target causing the fire giant to swallow his own tongue and cross his eyes. Further bolts, spells and arrows rained down on the charmed
giants. Eventually killing them along with the Ettins, the jubilant team rushed towards the barricade to finish them off once and for all. Thorg and Kurog reached the barricade, with Jude and Drogon not far behind. Team Caster was still back at the top of the corridor, which turned out to be a great piece of luck.
The remaining giants activated a pit trap right in front of the barricade, pitching both Kurog and Thorg into a fifteen-foot-deep pit. They both knew this was going to hurt as they fell, but weren’t expecting the spikes at the bottom, which really, really hurt. Our hapless band were stunned by this
piece of excellent Giant strategy, but that was not all the gigantic fire-dwellers had set up. The wall collapsed right next to where Jude and Drogon were standing, revealing two further fire giants. One was a juggernaut, the band’s old favourite. The juggernaut rushed forward sweeping Jude up in
front of its massive fire shields, crushing her against the wall. Sentinel shouted down the corridor “Hurts doesn’t it!”. Jude couldn’t do more than just wince and whimper.
The other giant laughed at the crushed-cleric as he swung at the halfling rogue catching him twice with a huge sword. Drogon found himself clinging on to life by a thread as he fell to the ground unconscious. As if this wasn’t bad enough, beyond the barricade appeared a further fire giant, a
female wearing a crown on her head. The Queen! She was attended by the lady cloud giant and also her own personal three-headed hell hound, aptly named Cerberus.
Sentinel and Griff came to the rescue of the rogue, by first healing him enough to get up and then Griff was able to turn him into a dinosaur, yes, a real-life dinosaur. Beautiful reader, if you thought giants were, well...giant, then you should behold the scene where a Tyrannosaurus Rex was filling
the corridor. Drogon took to his new form with what can only be described as “With Relish”. He set to tearing at the giant. Jude managed to finally mumble a spell and the juggernaut was banished
from the plane, disappearing with a pop of air. Things looked mildly more manageable until the cloud giant lady flew over the barricade and landed next to Jude, who was furiously concentrating on her banishment spell. Cerberus also leapt over the barricade and decided to attack Thorg, who had
enlarged himself and allowed his body to be used as a ladder for Kurog to get out of the pit.
Cerberus took three huge chunks of Thorg flesh from his target. Thorg lost his battle with consciousness and fell to the ground, bleeding out. Kurog charged in to help save his friend and managed to beat the thrice-damned hell hound back over the barricade. Jude healed Thorg so that he could stand up and get back into the fight. The duo of Death, that was Kurog and Thorg, set to killing the giants left on their side of the pit, whilst Drogon in his T Rex form jumped the pit and landed on the barricade. This completely destroyed the barrier and allowed him to eat the hell- hound. Team Heavy Metal finished off the cloud giant, leaving just the queen on the other side, who turned and took one more swing at T Rex Drogon before running away. It was enough, Drogon was smashed to the ground and appeared as a tiny tableau of halfling anguish in the huge fire-lit corridor.
Griff turned to Jude and yelled “Heal him! Quickly, before he expires.” Jude calmly explained that any heal she could use right now would be very inefficient. Griff, less calmly expressed his opinion that to let the thief die would cost them three hundred gold pieces in spell components. It turned
out that neither had the poor halflings best interest at heart. Luckily Drogon knew nothing about this conversation so would be blessedly unaware of the heartless nature of his colleagues.
Jude stopped concentrating and allowed the fire giant to return to the place it left. It was quickly despatched by the heroes as they surrounded it, not really giving it much of a chance. Sentinel delivered the killing blow with a perfectly timed dissonant discordant strike on her lute, she
pirouetted as the giant fell at her feet and bowed to her imagined audience. The pressure was getting to them all.
The band soon were able to fix the problem of the deep pit, by filling it with the rather large number of dead enemies. Kurog was busy taking notes on the bodies, the number, how they died and the amount of anguish etched on their cold, dead faces. He would use these notes to later explain why he was, by far the baddest of the bad Half-Orcs to anyone that would listen.
With very little energy left, no spells to speak of and grievous wounds, the party got over the pit, the destroyed barricade to scrape Drogon from the floor. Jude used her last healing abilities to patch him up to fighting strength. They had to get this done. No rest, no recuperation. Our normally jovial, happy go lucky party, turned their grim stares further down the corridor to hunt down the Queen.
They soon found a series of doors that would need to be explored. Drogon took up his sneak and sniff duties and quickly isolated two doors with noises behind. One was undoubtedly the bedroom of the Queen, as he could see her through the cracks. The other appeared to be a nursery of sorts, with fire giant children and their nurse maids. The team quickly ascertained that the queen was trying to escape through what might be a magic mirror. She was trying to grab her valuables and constantly looking towards the mirror as if something was to happen.
All plans went to the wall and they dragged their bleeding and tired bodies to the door and burst in, praying that she was alone. She was not, but it was just one last solitary guard, who quickly charged into the doorway and laid about with his hammer. The Queen didn’t wait around and threw a huge chest at the waiting front line of heroes. Catching Kurog square in the head. He laughed off the pain as he straightened his nose.
Our heroes fought their way into the room. It had become a melee slog and also a race as to who would die first. No heals left on either side, huge amounts of damage were delivered in a short period of time. It was no certain thing, but our Band of Tomb Thieving Assassins prevailed, taking
the Queen down after the guard.
What did the heroes find in the chests in that majestic bedroom, what would they do with the nursery? Note my faithful readers, a fire giant child is still ten feet high! Please look for the next episode of this tale in a copy coming soon. In the meantime, carrying on reading the following interesting article of how a magician has discovered how to add legs to a chicken in his pursuit for more drumsticks.
Report Date
25 Jul 2024
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