Sent After Centaurs
Our new found captivity was thanks to the thoughtfully deployed law enforcement services of one Horatio Lane, of whom I had never heard, but who apparently is renowned for his skills of crime detection and powers of deduction, which he proceeded to demonstrate by accusing us of being responsible for the massacre.*
*In fact the more time we spent with him, the more I understood the considerable crime rate in these parts
We had a discussion where we proclaimed our innocence and eventually and with some reluctance he accepted our story, provisionally and at a price: Our aid in establishing the true facts, tracking and catching the perpetrators.
Our assessment of the crime scene quickly located centaur tracks, leading south. We also found something else: Plainsweaver could sense banshee magic and shortly thereafter it appeared and entered our minds, blinding and deafening us all. Those of us sensitive to these things received images of the attack on the tavern confirming centaurs as the culprits.
We were all seized by a strong compulsion to seek out the centaurs who had used their death magic to slay and create the banshee from a hapless bar maid. Plainsweaver was able to dispel the spirit and we headed south escorted by Horatio’s detachment. He seemed particularly motivated by certain images we had seen during the banshee’s possession, specifically those featuring scenes of tremendous riches and wealth.
The Night elf had vanished from anyone’s sight but little clues and signs indicated to us that he remained with us*; Horatio took our claim of its existence as a sign that we were slightly mad, or at least not to be trusted. Talia meanwhile had been extremely traumatised and would take considerable time to recover; when she did it seems likely that The Light Keeper played a significant role. Seems he will take pity even on heartless, evil, undead, cycle pathic killers.**
*Such as the sight of Kasbo’s gnome companion floating along nine feet high when she sat on his shoulders, and the time he stood on my foot.
**Cycle paths are of course extremely demented killers driven by a mental condition that affects their powers of pronunciation. Fortunately they are rare though many are campaigning for additional provision
The landscape gave way to desert as we headed further south and the temperature began to give Plainsweaver in particular problems. One night we encountered a centaur, apparently from the clan we were pursuing and it fell in combat to our forsaken who enjoyed tearing it to pieces with inhuman relish.
We ran into a problem after a few days though: A huge monstrous creature emerged from the sands, gigantic spikes soaring high in the air betraying the presence of a vast hive like creature below. Swarms of giant wasp like creatures filled the air above threatening aerial assault if they located us. We had the option of going around or through, and knowing our direct approach we went for the latter.
I used my handy ring of mega destruction to drop a passing heavenly body on the creature and in a superb display that would totally max out the special effects budget for this episode of our story, the meteorite struck dead centre of the mass, sending a plume of sand into the skies. A pause for a beat and a tremendous explosion followed, the shockwave throwing us to the ground. Only problem was, the ground was in the process of a major readjustment.
Cataclysmic Cracks and chasms spread out from the epicentre and our choking cries mingled with the noise of tumbling rocks and the hideous death rattle of the beast. We plummeted down as the ground below us caved in and as the dust settled, we presented a grimy battered bunch. We picked ourselves up cautiously as the quaking earth stilled, finding ourselves amidst swarms of scuttling and chattering insectoids, perhaps confused and stunned by the loss of their directing hive mind.
We were in a tunnel, possibly even formed by the body of the creature. In one direction fires still burned, in the other, only darkness lay ahead. We moved off in the footsteps of our trusty scout who had followed his instincts. We came to a chamber containing a huge beast* that, maddened by the detonation was thrashing around the cavern.
*At this point the GM deployed possibly the lamest visual aid in history. Rolf Harris he ain’t
We could tell just by looking that this creature was extremely dangerous, as its size dwarfed the stick man in the accompanying illustration, and several horns adorning its head looked like they would enjoy nothing more than finding a warm, wet, bloody home in someone’s stomach. Kasbo borrowed my pistol and attempted to tranquilise it unsuccessfully, though it did seem to calm down.* So we made off in the opposite direction after some discussion in which it appeared that few if any of us had any desire for horrific impalation.
*He laced the bullet with Essence de Michael Winner
The other direction proved to circle back to our old friend and noted triceratops look-alike and we resumed our discussion. The troll Fuq’ Witt shot it in the eye, but this only seemed to enrage the beast again. Our plucky gnome grabbed a bomb from his pack and after I rejected an airborne bombing run involving poor Puderillo he contented himself with throwing the grenade himself.
Unfortunately the grenade turned out to be a smoke bomb, leaving us with a smoke filled cavern to cross filled with extremely irritated four tonne horned and hoofed death. I was reluctantly forced to expend a valuable spell to cause a distraction. My brilliant recreation of four tenors singing the 3rd movement of Puccharino’s Rafellosso* did the trick, and the beast charged the wall from whence the sound emanated and got its horns stuck for long enough for us to pile past.
*Did anyone appreciate my infusion of culture? Did they heck.
For some reason the rest of the party seemed to blame me, who had just solved their problem, for not coming up with it earlier. I ask you, such ingratitude makes King Lear’s evil daughters look like saints.*
*How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful party
The beast was only distracted briefly though and set off in pursuit, but we managed to get clear and emerged into blessed daylight again after a hair raising pursuit. Daylight meant safety and we resumed our journey, however we did not catch up with the centaur raiders as we had planned.
Even as we believed we were getting within striking distance of our quarry a few days later, we were ambushed by around ten centaurs, probably from the very party we sought. They seriously miscalculated in using their death magic against our forsaken friend Talia and she received several bouts of inadvertent healing during the engagement.
The centaurs proved poor shots and we proved surprisingly resistant to their magic. They all fell eventually, several to Fuq’Witt and one to an arcane missile of my very own, though I missed with my moonglaive. Kasbo meanwhile tried out his extreme soul sucking dagger which proved both as extreme and soul sucky as advertised. It also seemed to have a beneficial effect on the little fellow. For the moment at least.
Picking over the bodies, Plainsweaver recovered a couple of dark death scrolls from the fallen, and ever the team player, I patiently explained several of the thirty seven good reasons why the scrolls were highly dangerous, unstable and evil abominations that would bring us nothing but pain suffering and death.
Plainsweaver seemed unable to comprehend this and I took a more direct approach when the opportunity presented itself, succeeding in relieving him of one of the scrolls which I prudently destroyed. This is a worrying streak in the big Tauren, who had already shown a slightly nasty streak when he ‘accidentally’ snapped the injured Lane’s spine to put him out of his misery.*
*Although to be fair although he was clearly in pain, he didn’t seem unduly miserable, at least not until he realised what was about to happen to him.
Another disturbing side effect of the great detective’s inglorious demise is the even more disturbing sight of Kasbo in sunglasses.* Still, one more group of centaurs to go and we’ll be freed of this pesky geas and can get back to one of our many deadly tasks for which our promised payment is the princely sum of… not being horribly killed.
*He’s already walked into three walls
1.9.12
Home 