The Greenleaf Massacre - 14/04/2022 - A Kavel Perspective
Apr 16, 2022 20:03:02 GMT
Jaezred Vandree, Tayz Dale, and 5 more like this
Post by Andy D on Apr 16, 2022 20:03:02 GMT
Warning! A wee bit of gore described within and a very sweary man.
‘Family’ Catch Up
Not with my Iron Strong bros - I see them practically every day. No, this was a catch up with sister Sorrel. I’ve had to make a special effort just to meet her. You see, most adventuring jobs start from Daring Heights. Kavel’s Corner and my bros are in Fort Ettin. I wanted to learn carpentry - wood carving built a desire for more woodworking. But, since my bros are now in Fort Ettin, it made sense to learn carpentry in Fort Ettin to be with them, rather than in Daring Heights. But this back and forth between the city and the fort is very time consuming, and doesn’t leave me much time in the week to practice carpentry. I may need to consider moving to Daring Heights again. I had to set off from carpentry practice early just to get to Daring Heights with enough time to visit Sorrel.
Sorrel has been stuck in the Temple of Selune for a while. She has been training hard with her heavy clubs though. Smart girl!
Thicc Bois and Derthaad
Various important people in the city have tasked us adventurers to discover what has happened in the town of Greenleaf, the town halfway between Stoneleaf and Daring Heights.
A merchant from Greenleaf was discovered on a horse riding into town. The merchant was dead and had a note carved into her back:
So, the task fell to comrades; Derthaad, Ivan, Varga and I to see what has gone on, before any humanitarian aid can be provided.
I had not seen my blue-scaled dragonborn friend in a while, not since jumping from plane to plane with Gerhard several weeks ago. The City Watch investigator will be invaluable for finding out what’s gone on.
Technically I last saw Ivan at Kavel’s Corner, but as far as adventures go, it was only a couple of weeks ago when I last saw the strongest human I’ve ever seen swing a greataxe like no other. You can always rely on Ivan in a fight, even when he’s been drinking before battle, which is always. However, he was complaining about some curse or illness. This did not sound good. Ivan mentioned he’ll need special attendance on his back with some special dirt mixture. Hmmmm.
I saw my other fellow thicc-boi, comrade Varga back when we did Ivan I favour. She was wearing a sample of the ‘thicc-boi’ jackets she was making for us! It had a similar look to my own vest, I liked it!
Like Ivan, Varga is the best I’ve ever seen with her weapon(s) of choice. Again, another thicc-boi asset you can rely on in the front ranks. But, then I learnt she was feeling a bit weak on her left side. Troubled by the news, I asked if she wasn’t stretching properly, but she said the pain is from where she pissed off a demon and now has broken ribs. She said she was counting the missed stretch days and will make up for them when back in good health. Good for her! However, that’s another thicc-boi at suboptimal thiccness! Comrade Derthaad is going to have to make some very rapid gains.
Derthaad did not make some very rapid gains, but he did try to speed up my thicc comades’ recoveries. He successfully took care of Varga’s ribs with a spell, but for Ivan, unfortunately Derthaad could but relieve some pain.
Road to Greenleaf
We walked on for a few hours. Eventually, on the horizon, we could see black smoke about half a mile away where the town of Greenleaf was located, and an orangey grey sky.
The closer we got, we couldn’t see any buildings burning, but we could see embers. Ivan extracted his Cube of Myriad Forms and a metal eagle transformed from the cube and took to the sky. I leant over Ivan’s shoulder to look at the eagle’s bird’s eye viewing tablet.
It was not a pleasant view looking through the tablet, and it was only going to be worse when we eventually caught up to where the metal eagle was. From the tablet, we could see the entire thirtyish buildings that make up Greenleaf, and not a single one of them was untouched. All of the buildings, from stores to houses and public spaces were scorched, broken, or rendered into rubble. Bodies were in various states of mutilation.
As we walked closer to what was once no doubt a nice village, the road became marked with spikes on either side of the road and heads impaled on top of them.
Ivan gave voice to our thoughts, “this is someone nasty, right?”
Varga gave voice to a thought that I’m not sure if anyone else was having, “but stupid. No one seemingly alive and everything razed or torched. You can’t come back here. This is not sustainable raiding.”
Comrade Derthaad prepared his Detect Magic spell. I offered to get Mr. Bear’s help.
Mr. Bear and His Clever Insight
As Ivan had his eagle go round and round, I thought about how it would be nice to know if there were survivors hiding somewhere, so we could go straight to them. It would also be nice to know if we were dealing with a fiend or some other magical being. Between us comrades, we have so much experience to pool from, if we knew what we were facing then we might gain an advantage.
I was looking at the trees and then Mr. Bear appeared from behind a tree along the road.
“Hello Mr. Bear. Good to see you again.” It is enjoyable to see the clever spirit bear, as well as very helpful, so I told him so.
Unfortunately Mr. Bear had bad news for us. No one was alive within a three mile radius, and there was definitely something magical amiss here, but Mr. Bear had no further insight than that. I thanked Mr. Bear for the information he gave us, and waved him goodbye until our next encounter.
I informed the others, and we pressed on.
Familiar Chat
Ivan suggested we approach Greenleaf as stealthily as possible from this point on, but I had a question I needed to ask:
“Hey Ivan, where did you get that Cube? I’ve seen you use it several times now. It’s pretty cool.”
The cube was from D’Avalon. I’ve been there myself, but I never got given a cube. I’m a little jealous. Even the non-magical seem to have familiars now, but not me.
…
“Hello everyone,” said a talking chow chow…
… Now Varga has a familiar. Manny, like Ivan’s familiar, comes from an object. Manny is a figurine, until Varga wants a familiar, and then the chow chow appears. Varga complained that Manny isn’t very aggressive, or even a good guard dog. None of that bothers Ivan who was cuddling Manny.
Arriving at What Used to be Greenleaf
Ivan’s eagle spotted a road out of town on the other side to our approach that was a bit hazy. Almost like it was very warm there.
Manny was given instruction to see if he could smell any survivors, or anyone, but it was hard to smell anything over the smell of burnt wood and flesh. Manny kept an ear out.
Derthaad sent Steve, a gecko, to look for basements and hidden survivors…
… Now Derthaad has a familiar, too. But wait - he has a Cube of Myriad forms as well! I remember now, I wasn’t that surprised the first time I saw Ivan use his Cube, because I’d already seen one before! Some people have two familiars now - others have none!
Unfortunately, despite the squadron of familiars we had working between us, only further dead bodies were found like Mr. Bear said.
There were lots of burnt victims, cut victims, torn victims. Some of the villagers were theatrically posed, like the spiked heads. We saw arms torn off and pinned at the person’s back. Some surviving building walls had hands pinned to them. Varga described the scene we witnessed as a devil’s art project.
A frightened horse was kicking at something attached to its underside - it was a now dead human that had been mutilated and tied to the horse. Derthaad ran up to the horse and untied the corpse from it. The horse bolted. So too did my chance at talking to the horse with my animal language talent and discovering what caused all this…
Nothing appeared to be stolen. In what was left of the market, stalls still had untouched produce on them. People’s houses, though burnt, did not look raided.
There was a heavy chest in one home we found, that Varga smashed open to reveal three bottles of moonshine. Ivan sampled one of the three bottles, by which I mean he drank the entire content. I don’t think it did anything to cure his condition, but he was fairly happy with it.
“D’you reckon this was all caused by some kind of evil?” Ivan asked.
Derthaad rather sarcastically responded in the affirmative. Ivan voiced his displeasure at the smarter people being sarcastic to the frontline fighters, and suggested Derthaad let the thicc bois do their thing. But, I was not going to drink a dead person’s stash of moonshine.
It did occur to me that we had spent some time looking for clues now, and discovered nothing. Usually comrade Derthaad is well on the way to solving the case.
“Have you solved everything yet, comrade?” I asked Derthaad. He did not have an answer for me. Comrade Ivan found this very amusing. I think I was being applauded for throwing shade.
There were some books with the bottles in the chest. One was a diary. Derthaad had a look at the dairy, but no clues in the previous day’s date as to what had happened.
In total, we had found nothing to explain what had happened here. We did at least have the hazy area of town left to explore.
Portal to Hell?
It seemed like a portal. Derthaard detected teleportation magic and the presence of another place.
Ivan’s eagle went through. The viewing device’s image was hazy and unclear. It looked like there were a couple of tents at the end of two cliff edges and a spiked wall.
Initially we wanted to wait for aggressors to come to us. We wondered if we could trick them into coming over here. Varga even wanted some of them alive for some ritual she had revolving around a ‘soul coin’.
“Still some of us left, you know?!” Ivan said, as he ran up to the portal and shouted in. Varga joined in too.
We were met with an arrow thudding onto the ground on our side of the portal. Attached to the arrow was a sheet of torn skin. We decided to wait.
Fifteen minutes later a decapitated head rolled through the portal. Ivan inspected the head. It was human and fresh. At this point, I suggested we had to go through, even though we would lose the field advantage, and even if it’s a trap; there could be survivors, and as adventurers of the Dawnlands, we had to prioritise its citizens.
Ivan used his magic greataxe to cast the Enlarge spell and doubled in size. He somewhat sheepishly downed a potion of Hill Giant Strength in front of me - I gave this shortcut a pass. Tactically it was a sound decision.
I suggested we enter a battlerage before going through the portal, to be ready for anything. Ivan agreed, because, “all of us raging will look badass.” He was, to be fair, not wrong.
A chorus of powerful barbarian roars, and we entered the portal - during this rage, I was not paying attention to see if comrade Derthaad was also joining us with the rage roars.
A Swing at the Person Who Caused the Massacre
We seemed to be in an orange desert. What we saw through the eagle’s eyes was clearer now. There were cliffs about twenty feet high on our left and right, leading to a few war tents about a hundred feet away from us, behind a palisade. There were a pair of archers flanking us on high, on the cliff walls. A few other combatants could be seen on the right wall, and a few behind the palisade. A fighter in plate circled overhead on top of a large, flying humanoid bat mount. The mount and rider descended sharply and landed between us and the palisade.
The rider dismounted. The large flying creature sprinted towards a giant Ivan and slashed at him with claws, missing the first slash, but landing the second and freeing him up to bite Ivan in the shoulder. I worried my comrade would be poisoned, as he shook his head a little, as if wobbly, although I knew the pain he just received was nothing for him. But, as if to confirm my suspicion that he was poisoned, Ivan swung his now great-greataxe twice and missed the large bat person.
I came up to the large bat creature’s right hand side and swung the poleaxe’s hammer twice and then thrust the spike at the bat’s side. All strong hits, but this bat creature was tough, and was in no immediate harm.
Given the team dynamics, it was not difficult to determine who casted the gigantic storm spell that rendered the centre of the field where the rider dismounted, a broken, uneven, and scorched terrain. A lighting bolt emitted from the centre and shocked the archer above us and to our left on the cliff.
“Come on, Ivan! Shake it off!” Shouted comrade Varga, as she ran up to the bat creature’s other side whilst delivering her war-cry and swinging her mighty flail powerfully at our foe and causing immense damage.
The plated rider was not happy. He dashed towards us frontline fighters, managing to stay afoot as he traversed the broken ground Derthaad’s lightning sphere created, and engaged me with a greataxe. Both of his hits landed on my upper body. I absorbed the slashing force well enough, but for some reason my injuries bled like my body wasn’t the well conditioned stone flesh that it was.
Derthaad dodged and deflected arrows with his magic, and fortunately for us, no one else engaged. It seemed the other hostiles were just spectating.
Ivan, Varga and I, the Thicc-Bois that we were, continued our assault on the large bat creature and now rider. Ivan shredded the creature's wings, and appeared to have shrugged off the effects of its poisonous bite. I attempted to slay the now bloodied beast, but as I swung my poleaxe round three times, I bled out with each movement. I wasn’t sure what was happening. It was as if my body had been switched with someone devoid of thiccness.
Derthaad provided some needed rearguard support and twinned one of his psychic spells at the giant man-bat and rider, killing the bat creature, but only wounding the rider. With lightning to spare, I saw him fell the left hand archer, and make the right hand archer step away.
With the bat creature felled, Varga circled the rider and delivered fearsome strikes from her flail and mighty battleaxe. Solid dents were appearing in the rider’s plate. However, this did not stop him from retaliating as he struck at both me and Varga with his greataxe and landed both blows. This time round, I could see his greataxe had strange teeth by the eye of the axe that was attacking us as the blade sliced our skin.
Ivan joined in, standing on the corpse of the bat creature, but unsteady on the bat, missed his attempted swings, and the rider took advantage of Ivan’s lost footing and knocked him prone with his plate-covered elbow. Taking advantage of this shift in the rider’s focus, I smashed the poleaxe into his back twice, causing more dents in the plate. Varga followed up with her flail to his chest piece, and then:
“I submit! You have won!” The rider, as he lost his footing a knelt, threw his greataxe across the floor. He carried on, “If you have any honour you won’t kill me.”
Post Fight Actions
Derthaad was most perturbed at the suggestion that honour was to be considered by someone who clearly has none, who massacred a village of innocent people. This was when the spectator’s finally joined in, in a way:
“Kill him! No one concedes! Kill the coward!” These were suggestions from the right hand cliff of spectators.
Our surrendering foe’s explanation for why he wasn’t a hypocrite when it came to honour was that the villagers weren’t warriors, they were fair game.
Varga saw an opportunity to use her soul coin, since if we took the plated man back to the city, he would only be executed for his vile crime. So, Ivan softened the plated man up with his giant form’s fists, and Varga was able to, I believe, extract the plated man’s soul. Not something I thought I’d see from a fellow thicc-boi, but I guess she has her reasons. The plated man’s body collapsed dead on the ground.
Ivan, still in giant form, ripped the plated man’s helmet off from its bolted connection to the cuirass. He took advantage of his height in this form to run up to the right hand cliff and grab a spectator from the top with a sweeping motion with his giant hand.
“So how many of you were involved in the massacre?!” Ivan yelled as he threw his victim off the top of the cliff onto the ground, dead.
There was no answer from our spectators though, only further cheering at the sight of more violence. This was truly bizarre behaviour to witness. At the very least, the spectators valued their lives as they stepped back away from the ledge, so comrade Ivan couldn’t reach them in giant form. And then a rustling could be heard from the largest tent behind the palisade.
Correction - Now a Swing at the Person Who Caused the Massacre
“No need for this!” The large, giant of a man said, who exited the main tent.
This giant was larger than Ivan, and wore full plate with what were not ornate looking spikes all over the upper torso.
Ivan addressed the man, wishing to know if he was in charge.
“Seems like there is some fight left in the Dawnlands!” It seemed as if this must, in fact, be the man in charge.
The man was intimidating. I am not shy of admitting that this man’s presence alone felt immensely strong - stronger than me. Ivan, my headstrong comrade, appeared to be oblivious to recognising this fact. To be fair to my fellow thicc-boi, the horrible person we faced was very annoying and provocative as well. The giant would not stop talking, seemingly addressing us, but never really responding to our questions. Despite announcing his age was in excess of eight hundred years, his vocabulary was limited to mostly expletives. Perhaps this is why Ivan leapt at the giant with no caution - then there was his own augmented physique from the Enlarge spell and the potion he took earlier, perhaps those had a part to play…
Derthaad tried an outside-the-box solution to avoiding conflict with the powerful giant, and attempted a spell to banish Ivan from the field, but missed. Ivan engaged the giant, who was very eager for a fist fight, and intercepted Ivan’s attack and grappled him to the ground, pinning him down in a mounted position. From the top mount, Ivan received punishing giant strikes to the face. Ivan fought back, but couldn’t shift the giant from top mount, leaving himself at a considerable disadvantage, while he continued to take a pummeling from a true giant. And then comrade Ivan’s giant form diminished.
The giant man adjusted his position to remain pinned on top of the now regular sized Ivan. I sprinted over, threw my arms around the giant's waist and gut wrenched with all my strength to lift the giant off of Ivan. I managed to lift the giant back up, and off of Ivan. I could handle the weight, but I didn’t feel like there was actually any real resistance. The giant even seemed amused.
“You reckon he’s had enough then?! Ha!” It was almost like the giant thought he was talking to a mate. I was in disbelief at his response to me, and powerless in this situation. I could stop the giant momentarily from attacking Ivan, but I wasn’t confident I could do more than that - especially as I still seemed to be bleeding from the giant’s underling’s axe blows. I wasn’t sure how much fight Varga and Derthaad had left, but I did not fancy our chances - even if we could rely on the spectators not participating.
Having just manhandled the giant, he goes and boots a prone Ivan, and I just watch it happen, and listen to the giant continue his tirade of how worthless us Dawnlanders were. This was a very demoralising and emasculting situation, and for the sake of our own survival; we just had to accept it.
Swing Attempted and Failed - Getting Verbally Beaten
Ivan stepped away a little - good.
“Fucking coward!” More insults from the giant for us to just eat.
Fortunately Ivan was not rising to another challenge. He even voiced he was content having killed a few of the guy’s mates.
Oddly, we noticed the giant always scoffed at the suggestion that any of the people spectating were his mates. The insults were forthcoming to them as well as us.
Derthaad insisted that Ivan should, “give it a rest now,” to which Ivan gave suggestions that Derthaad should help out a bit. In response, Derthaad performed a teleportation spell and carried Ivan away from the giant.
Varga attempted to get some answers out of the giant now that he wasn’t engaged in a fight. Again, we were met with some acknowledgement, but lots of dismissal. It was very much the case that the guy gave answers because he wanted to, not because we asked. He walked over to the plated man we defeated. He picked up the body and tossed it aside, and actually apologised to us for the lack of fight in that man.
“This is my camp. My warband. My throne. My realm built around me! How long’s it been? Eight hundred fucking years?! I’m no devil, I’m no god. I am fucking nature! I am violence, I am carnage. I. Am. Slaughter! I am Slaughter, and I am all your fucking violence embodied.”
I attempted a lie, hoping I had identified Slaughter’s motivation and that I could dissuade him from entering the Dawnlands: “there is no one left to fight you in the Dawnlands.”
… Varga however suggested a few names of veteran adventurers. And then Ivan’s spirits were lifted anew.
“I’ll be back!” A rather bruised face said to Slaughter, and then accused Derthaad of being moody, when Derthaad tried to dress him down for further provoking Slaughter.
Varga picked up the fallen man’s greataxe, and with whatever pride we had left, we walked back through the portal. The haze started to recede, and fortunately, for now, there was no portal back to where we had just exited. But there was a destroyed and massacred village before us, and no justice in sight for the fallen townsfolk. We found the cause of the crime - and could do nothing. We faced the criminal responsible - and had our spirits broken.
Late Night Walk Back to Daring Heights
Ivan disinfected his wounds with one of the two bottles of moonshine he had left, and then had the other one as a ‘road bottle’ for the long, evening walk back to Daring Heights. This was not a good time to be walking, but there wasn’t anywhere any of us wanted to stay in the ruined, horrific remains of Greenleaf, and it is best we deliver news of this Slaughter person back to the big, important people of the city who hired us. So, when Ivan was ready, we began our trek back to the city.
I felt we were fortunate to be paid the 250gp each we received, and the greater healing potions we all received too - Ivan downed his potion as soon as it was passed to him. Improvements were seen in his bruises, but nothing for his condition that was affecting him before we journeyed to Greenleaf.
I suggested to Ivan that we would need to make several large gains in strength before we faced Slaughter again. I suggested he move to Fort Ettin to get regular, daily access to Kavel’s Corner, but he mentioned he had to remain in the city until he was cured and would rejoin his shipmates in Port Ffirst afterwards.
“He definitely needs to get cured,” I thought to myself. Comrade Ivan did not fight in the same frenzied manner as I’m used to seeing. He’s going to need his frenzied rage if we are to prevent another horrible massacre from reaching the Dawnlands.
‘Family’ Catch Up
Not with my Iron Strong bros - I see them practically every day. No, this was a catch up with sister Sorrel. I’ve had to make a special effort just to meet her. You see, most adventuring jobs start from Daring Heights. Kavel’s Corner and my bros are in Fort Ettin. I wanted to learn carpentry - wood carving built a desire for more woodworking. But, since my bros are now in Fort Ettin, it made sense to learn carpentry in Fort Ettin to be with them, rather than in Daring Heights. But this back and forth between the city and the fort is very time consuming, and doesn’t leave me much time in the week to practice carpentry. I may need to consider moving to Daring Heights again. I had to set off from carpentry practice early just to get to Daring Heights with enough time to visit Sorrel.
Sorrel has been stuck in the Temple of Selune for a while. She has been training hard with her heavy clubs though. Smart girl!
Thicc Bois and Derthaad
Various important people in the city have tasked us adventurers to discover what has happened in the town of Greenleaf, the town halfway between Stoneleaf and Daring Heights.
A merchant from Greenleaf was discovered on a horse riding into town. The merchant was dead and had a note carved into her back:
"Let us see what the adventurers of the Dawnlands have for me, how much of a fight you can put up? My soldiers are waiting."
So, the task fell to comrades; Derthaad, Ivan, Varga and I to see what has gone on, before any humanitarian aid can be provided.
I had not seen my blue-scaled dragonborn friend in a while, not since jumping from plane to plane with Gerhard several weeks ago. The City Watch investigator will be invaluable for finding out what’s gone on.
Technically I last saw Ivan at Kavel’s Corner, but as far as adventures go, it was only a couple of weeks ago when I last saw the strongest human I’ve ever seen swing a greataxe like no other. You can always rely on Ivan in a fight, even when he’s been drinking before battle, which is always. However, he was complaining about some curse or illness. This did not sound good. Ivan mentioned he’ll need special attendance on his back with some special dirt mixture. Hmmmm.
I saw my other fellow thicc-boi, comrade Varga back when we did Ivan I favour. She was wearing a sample of the ‘thicc-boi’ jackets she was making for us! It had a similar look to my own vest, I liked it!
Like Ivan, Varga is the best I’ve ever seen with her weapon(s) of choice. Again, another thicc-boi asset you can rely on in the front ranks. But, then I learnt she was feeling a bit weak on her left side. Troubled by the news, I asked if she wasn’t stretching properly, but she said the pain is from where she pissed off a demon and now has broken ribs. She said she was counting the missed stretch days and will make up for them when back in good health. Good for her! However, that’s another thicc-boi at suboptimal thiccness! Comrade Derthaad is going to have to make some very rapid gains.
Derthaad did not make some very rapid gains, but he did try to speed up my thicc comades’ recoveries. He successfully took care of Varga’s ribs with a spell, but for Ivan, unfortunately Derthaad could but relieve some pain.
Road to Greenleaf
We walked on for a few hours. Eventually, on the horizon, we could see black smoke about half a mile away where the town of Greenleaf was located, and an orangey grey sky.
The closer we got, we couldn’t see any buildings burning, but we could see embers. Ivan extracted his Cube of Myriad Forms and a metal eagle transformed from the cube and took to the sky. I leant over Ivan’s shoulder to look at the eagle’s bird’s eye viewing tablet.
It was not a pleasant view looking through the tablet, and it was only going to be worse when we eventually caught up to where the metal eagle was. From the tablet, we could see the entire thirtyish buildings that make up Greenleaf, and not a single one of them was untouched. All of the buildings, from stores to houses and public spaces were scorched, broken, or rendered into rubble. Bodies were in various states of mutilation.
As we walked closer to what was once no doubt a nice village, the road became marked with spikes on either side of the road and heads impaled on top of them.
Ivan gave voice to our thoughts, “this is someone nasty, right?”
Varga gave voice to a thought that I’m not sure if anyone else was having, “but stupid. No one seemingly alive and everything razed or torched. You can’t come back here. This is not sustainable raiding.”
Comrade Derthaad prepared his Detect Magic spell. I offered to get Mr. Bear’s help.
Mr. Bear and His Clever Insight
As Ivan had his eagle go round and round, I thought about how it would be nice to know if there were survivors hiding somewhere, so we could go straight to them. It would also be nice to know if we were dealing with a fiend or some other magical being. Between us comrades, we have so much experience to pool from, if we knew what we were facing then we might gain an advantage.
I was looking at the trees and then Mr. Bear appeared from behind a tree along the road.
“Hello Mr. Bear. Good to see you again.” It is enjoyable to see the clever spirit bear, as well as very helpful, so I told him so.
Unfortunately Mr. Bear had bad news for us. No one was alive within a three mile radius, and there was definitely something magical amiss here, but Mr. Bear had no further insight than that. I thanked Mr. Bear for the information he gave us, and waved him goodbye until our next encounter.
I informed the others, and we pressed on.
Familiar Chat
Ivan suggested we approach Greenleaf as stealthily as possible from this point on, but I had a question I needed to ask:
“Hey Ivan, where did you get that Cube? I’ve seen you use it several times now. It’s pretty cool.”
The cube was from D’Avalon. I’ve been there myself, but I never got given a cube. I’m a little jealous. Even the non-magical seem to have familiars now, but not me.
…
“Hello everyone,” said a talking chow chow…
… Now Varga has a familiar. Manny, like Ivan’s familiar, comes from an object. Manny is a figurine, until Varga wants a familiar, and then the chow chow appears. Varga complained that Manny isn’t very aggressive, or even a good guard dog. None of that bothers Ivan who was cuddling Manny.
Arriving at What Used to be Greenleaf
Ivan’s eagle spotted a road out of town on the other side to our approach that was a bit hazy. Almost like it was very warm there.
Manny was given instruction to see if he could smell any survivors, or anyone, but it was hard to smell anything over the smell of burnt wood and flesh. Manny kept an ear out.
Derthaad sent Steve, a gecko, to look for basements and hidden survivors…
… Now Derthaad has a familiar, too. But wait - he has a Cube of Myriad forms as well! I remember now, I wasn’t that surprised the first time I saw Ivan use his Cube, because I’d already seen one before! Some people have two familiars now - others have none!
Unfortunately, despite the squadron of familiars we had working between us, only further dead bodies were found like Mr. Bear said.
There were lots of burnt victims, cut victims, torn victims. Some of the villagers were theatrically posed, like the spiked heads. We saw arms torn off and pinned at the person’s back. Some surviving building walls had hands pinned to them. Varga described the scene we witnessed as a devil’s art project.
A frightened horse was kicking at something attached to its underside - it was a now dead human that had been mutilated and tied to the horse. Derthaad ran up to the horse and untied the corpse from it. The horse bolted. So too did my chance at talking to the horse with my animal language talent and discovering what caused all this…
Nothing appeared to be stolen. In what was left of the market, stalls still had untouched produce on them. People’s houses, though burnt, did not look raided.
There was a heavy chest in one home we found, that Varga smashed open to reveal three bottles of moonshine. Ivan sampled one of the three bottles, by which I mean he drank the entire content. I don’t think it did anything to cure his condition, but he was fairly happy with it.
“D’you reckon this was all caused by some kind of evil?” Ivan asked.
Derthaad rather sarcastically responded in the affirmative. Ivan voiced his displeasure at the smarter people being sarcastic to the frontline fighters, and suggested Derthaad let the thicc bois do their thing. But, I was not going to drink a dead person’s stash of moonshine.
It did occur to me that we had spent some time looking for clues now, and discovered nothing. Usually comrade Derthaad is well on the way to solving the case.
“Have you solved everything yet, comrade?” I asked Derthaad. He did not have an answer for me. Comrade Ivan found this very amusing. I think I was being applauded for throwing shade.
There were some books with the bottles in the chest. One was a diary. Derthaad had a look at the dairy, but no clues in the previous day’s date as to what had happened.
In total, we had found nothing to explain what had happened here. We did at least have the hazy area of town left to explore.
Portal to Hell?
It seemed like a portal. Derthaard detected teleportation magic and the presence of another place.
Ivan’s eagle went through. The viewing device’s image was hazy and unclear. It looked like there were a couple of tents at the end of two cliff edges and a spiked wall.
Initially we wanted to wait for aggressors to come to us. We wondered if we could trick them into coming over here. Varga even wanted some of them alive for some ritual she had revolving around a ‘soul coin’.
“Still some of us left, you know?!” Ivan said, as he ran up to the portal and shouted in. Varga joined in too.
We were met with an arrow thudding onto the ground on our side of the portal. Attached to the arrow was a sheet of torn skin. We decided to wait.
Fifteen minutes later a decapitated head rolled through the portal. Ivan inspected the head. It was human and fresh. At this point, I suggested we had to go through, even though we would lose the field advantage, and even if it’s a trap; there could be survivors, and as adventurers of the Dawnlands, we had to prioritise its citizens.
Ivan used his magic greataxe to cast the Enlarge spell and doubled in size. He somewhat sheepishly downed a potion of Hill Giant Strength in front of me - I gave this shortcut a pass. Tactically it was a sound decision.
I suggested we enter a battlerage before going through the portal, to be ready for anything. Ivan agreed, because, “all of us raging will look badass.” He was, to be fair, not wrong.
A chorus of powerful barbarian roars, and we entered the portal - during this rage, I was not paying attention to see if comrade Derthaad was also joining us with the rage roars.
A Swing at the Person Who Caused the Massacre
We seemed to be in an orange desert. What we saw through the eagle’s eyes was clearer now. There were cliffs about twenty feet high on our left and right, leading to a few war tents about a hundred feet away from us, behind a palisade. There were a pair of archers flanking us on high, on the cliff walls. A few other combatants could be seen on the right wall, and a few behind the palisade. A fighter in plate circled overhead on top of a large, flying humanoid bat mount. The mount and rider descended sharply and landed between us and the palisade.
The rider dismounted. The large flying creature sprinted towards a giant Ivan and slashed at him with claws, missing the first slash, but landing the second and freeing him up to bite Ivan in the shoulder. I worried my comrade would be poisoned, as he shook his head a little, as if wobbly, although I knew the pain he just received was nothing for him. But, as if to confirm my suspicion that he was poisoned, Ivan swung his now great-greataxe twice and missed the large bat person.
I came up to the large bat creature’s right hand side and swung the poleaxe’s hammer twice and then thrust the spike at the bat’s side. All strong hits, but this bat creature was tough, and was in no immediate harm.
Given the team dynamics, it was not difficult to determine who casted the gigantic storm spell that rendered the centre of the field where the rider dismounted, a broken, uneven, and scorched terrain. A lighting bolt emitted from the centre and shocked the archer above us and to our left on the cliff.
“Come on, Ivan! Shake it off!” Shouted comrade Varga, as she ran up to the bat creature’s other side whilst delivering her war-cry and swinging her mighty flail powerfully at our foe and causing immense damage.
The plated rider was not happy. He dashed towards us frontline fighters, managing to stay afoot as he traversed the broken ground Derthaad’s lightning sphere created, and engaged me with a greataxe. Both of his hits landed on my upper body. I absorbed the slashing force well enough, but for some reason my injuries bled like my body wasn’t the well conditioned stone flesh that it was.
Derthaad dodged and deflected arrows with his magic, and fortunately for us, no one else engaged. It seemed the other hostiles were just spectating.
Ivan, Varga and I, the Thicc-Bois that we were, continued our assault on the large bat creature and now rider. Ivan shredded the creature's wings, and appeared to have shrugged off the effects of its poisonous bite. I attempted to slay the now bloodied beast, but as I swung my poleaxe round three times, I bled out with each movement. I wasn’t sure what was happening. It was as if my body had been switched with someone devoid of thiccness.
Derthaad provided some needed rearguard support and twinned one of his psychic spells at the giant man-bat and rider, killing the bat creature, but only wounding the rider. With lightning to spare, I saw him fell the left hand archer, and make the right hand archer step away.
With the bat creature felled, Varga circled the rider and delivered fearsome strikes from her flail and mighty battleaxe. Solid dents were appearing in the rider’s plate. However, this did not stop him from retaliating as he struck at both me and Varga with his greataxe and landed both blows. This time round, I could see his greataxe had strange teeth by the eye of the axe that was attacking us as the blade sliced our skin.
Ivan joined in, standing on the corpse of the bat creature, but unsteady on the bat, missed his attempted swings, and the rider took advantage of Ivan’s lost footing and knocked him prone with his plate-covered elbow. Taking advantage of this shift in the rider’s focus, I smashed the poleaxe into his back twice, causing more dents in the plate. Varga followed up with her flail to his chest piece, and then:
“I submit! You have won!” The rider, as he lost his footing a knelt, threw his greataxe across the floor. He carried on, “If you have any honour you won’t kill me.”
Post Fight Actions
Derthaad was most perturbed at the suggestion that honour was to be considered by someone who clearly has none, who massacred a village of innocent people. This was when the spectator’s finally joined in, in a way:
“Kill him! No one concedes! Kill the coward!” These were suggestions from the right hand cliff of spectators.
Our surrendering foe’s explanation for why he wasn’t a hypocrite when it came to honour was that the villagers weren’t warriors, they were fair game.
Varga saw an opportunity to use her soul coin, since if we took the plated man back to the city, he would only be executed for his vile crime. So, Ivan softened the plated man up with his giant form’s fists, and Varga was able to, I believe, extract the plated man’s soul. Not something I thought I’d see from a fellow thicc-boi, but I guess she has her reasons. The plated man’s body collapsed dead on the ground.
Ivan, still in giant form, ripped the plated man’s helmet off from its bolted connection to the cuirass. He took advantage of his height in this form to run up to the right hand cliff and grab a spectator from the top with a sweeping motion with his giant hand.
“So how many of you were involved in the massacre?!” Ivan yelled as he threw his victim off the top of the cliff onto the ground, dead.
There was no answer from our spectators though, only further cheering at the sight of more violence. This was truly bizarre behaviour to witness. At the very least, the spectators valued their lives as they stepped back away from the ledge, so comrade Ivan couldn’t reach them in giant form. And then a rustling could be heard from the largest tent behind the palisade.
Correction - Now a Swing at the Person Who Caused the Massacre
“No need for this!” The large, giant of a man said, who exited the main tent.
This giant was larger than Ivan, and wore full plate with what were not ornate looking spikes all over the upper torso.
Ivan addressed the man, wishing to know if he was in charge.
“Seems like there is some fight left in the Dawnlands!” It seemed as if this must, in fact, be the man in charge.
The man was intimidating. I am not shy of admitting that this man’s presence alone felt immensely strong - stronger than me. Ivan, my headstrong comrade, appeared to be oblivious to recognising this fact. To be fair to my fellow thicc-boi, the horrible person we faced was very annoying and provocative as well. The giant would not stop talking, seemingly addressing us, but never really responding to our questions. Despite announcing his age was in excess of eight hundred years, his vocabulary was limited to mostly expletives. Perhaps this is why Ivan leapt at the giant with no caution - then there was his own augmented physique from the Enlarge spell and the potion he took earlier, perhaps those had a part to play…
Derthaad tried an outside-the-box solution to avoiding conflict with the powerful giant, and attempted a spell to banish Ivan from the field, but missed. Ivan engaged the giant, who was very eager for a fist fight, and intercepted Ivan’s attack and grappled him to the ground, pinning him down in a mounted position. From the top mount, Ivan received punishing giant strikes to the face. Ivan fought back, but couldn’t shift the giant from top mount, leaving himself at a considerable disadvantage, while he continued to take a pummeling from a true giant. And then comrade Ivan’s giant form diminished.
The giant man adjusted his position to remain pinned on top of the now regular sized Ivan. I sprinted over, threw my arms around the giant's waist and gut wrenched with all my strength to lift the giant off of Ivan. I managed to lift the giant back up, and off of Ivan. I could handle the weight, but I didn’t feel like there was actually any real resistance. The giant even seemed amused.
“You reckon he’s had enough then?! Ha!” It was almost like the giant thought he was talking to a mate. I was in disbelief at his response to me, and powerless in this situation. I could stop the giant momentarily from attacking Ivan, but I wasn’t confident I could do more than that - especially as I still seemed to be bleeding from the giant’s underling’s axe blows. I wasn’t sure how much fight Varga and Derthaad had left, but I did not fancy our chances - even if we could rely on the spectators not participating.
Having just manhandled the giant, he goes and boots a prone Ivan, and I just watch it happen, and listen to the giant continue his tirade of how worthless us Dawnlanders were. This was a very demoralising and emasculting situation, and for the sake of our own survival; we just had to accept it.
Swing Attempted and Failed - Getting Verbally Beaten
Ivan stepped away a little - good.
“Fucking coward!” More insults from the giant for us to just eat.
Fortunately Ivan was not rising to another challenge. He even voiced he was content having killed a few of the guy’s mates.
Oddly, we noticed the giant always scoffed at the suggestion that any of the people spectating were his mates. The insults were forthcoming to them as well as us.
Derthaad insisted that Ivan should, “give it a rest now,” to which Ivan gave suggestions that Derthaad should help out a bit. In response, Derthaad performed a teleportation spell and carried Ivan away from the giant.
Varga attempted to get some answers out of the giant now that he wasn’t engaged in a fight. Again, we were met with some acknowledgement, but lots of dismissal. It was very much the case that the guy gave answers because he wanted to, not because we asked. He walked over to the plated man we defeated. He picked up the body and tossed it aside, and actually apologised to us for the lack of fight in that man.
“This is my camp. My warband. My throne. My realm built around me! How long’s it been? Eight hundred fucking years?! I’m no devil, I’m no god. I am fucking nature! I am violence, I am carnage. I. Am. Slaughter! I am Slaughter, and I am all your fucking violence embodied.”
I attempted a lie, hoping I had identified Slaughter’s motivation and that I could dissuade him from entering the Dawnlands: “there is no one left to fight you in the Dawnlands.”
… Varga however suggested a few names of veteran adventurers. And then Ivan’s spirits were lifted anew.
“I’ll be back!” A rather bruised face said to Slaughter, and then accused Derthaad of being moody, when Derthaad tried to dress him down for further provoking Slaughter.
Varga picked up the fallen man’s greataxe, and with whatever pride we had left, we walked back through the portal. The haze started to recede, and fortunately, for now, there was no portal back to where we had just exited. But there was a destroyed and massacred village before us, and no justice in sight for the fallen townsfolk. We found the cause of the crime - and could do nothing. We faced the criminal responsible - and had our spirits broken.
Late Night Walk Back to Daring Heights
Ivan disinfected his wounds with one of the two bottles of moonshine he had left, and then had the other one as a ‘road bottle’ for the long, evening walk back to Daring Heights. This was not a good time to be walking, but there wasn’t anywhere any of us wanted to stay in the ruined, horrific remains of Greenleaf, and it is best we deliver news of this Slaughter person back to the big, important people of the city who hired us. So, when Ivan was ready, we began our trek back to the city.
I felt we were fortunate to be paid the 250gp each we received, and the greater healing potions we all received too - Ivan downed his potion as soon as it was passed to him. Improvements were seen in his bruises, but nothing for his condition that was affecting him before we journeyed to Greenleaf.
I suggested to Ivan that we would need to make several large gains in strength before we faced Slaughter again. I suggested he move to Fort Ettin to get regular, daily access to Kavel’s Corner, but he mentioned he had to remain in the city until he was cured and would rejoin his shipmates in Port Ffirst afterwards.
“He definitely needs to get cured,” I thought to myself. Comrade Ivan did not fight in the same frenzied manner as I’m used to seeing. He’s going to need his frenzied rage if we are to prevent another horrible massacre from reaching the Dawnlands.
