The High Cost of Living - 11/04/2023 - A Kavel Perspective

Thicc Bois Compound for Raiding Health and Safety

It’s a cool idea, and Varga’s really into business it seems. Varga already has CHOAS her Chinchilla Cafe. Now Varga has a business for teaching the local people what to do in case of; raiding, invasions, and all of that stuff. There’s only three big communities in the Dawnlands, so you might think business would be limited, but at least one of those communities gets raided once or twice a year. Last time - all of the communities were invaded, including Fort Ettin! So, repeat business for Varga should be good.

The Thicc-Boi Compound is located outside of Daring Heights’s walls, down a beaten path. Us thicc-bois all have our own departments on the Compound where we can teach our specialities. Case in point, Varga has helped me open a second Strength Corner in Kantas! The Iron Strong Company is growing! The new Strength Corner has all the usual, amazing strength training equipment like; heavy clubs, kettlebells, power racks and shit loads of other good things. But, most importantly, it is a plain, flat area with stone and metal and other heavy things to lift in sets of reps. It is an amazing place for athletic performance. What more could a person want? There is nothing more amazing to me than a magnificent place to train.

To be fair, although not as impressive as the new Strength Corner, there are some other good spots on the compound, such as; the giant maze run by chinchillas, the multi-level obstacle course and the big lake with a couple of cannon mounted long boats. But, again nothing beats a sweat drenched floor, large stones, and iron equipment.


Visitors From New Hillborrow and Fort Ettin (Jenna!)

There was a retinue of Halflings from New Hillborrow at the compound. They were signed up to do boat raiding defence. New Hillborrow is landlocked. Boats are fun though. I would know, I own the fastest ship in the world, The Legacy, which is berthed at Port Ffirst and on permanent loan to the defence force there. But, the Legacy is still mine.

Jenna came down to visit the compound. Jenna runs Fort Ettin where the first Iron Strong Strength Corner of Kantas is located. I guess she came to see the new Strength Corner.

The senior Thicc Bois; (Varga, Ivan, Toothy and I) were all at the compound, including top honorary thicc-boi Kelne, and also Celina. Ivan and Varga were running the boat raiding course. Kelne was there for on-sight healing. Celina was there as Varga’s marketing advisor.

Varga had to get the compound’s chief operator to take over the boat raiding course on account of the threatening Sending message she suddenly received. Varga told us about the Sending. There was a fiend released in the jungles of Harnash by the old tower of Silvinium. The people of Harnash were in danger.

Jenna thankfully provided teleportation assistance. In preparation for what we expected was an imminent fight, Toothy took off his shirt... I remember Ivan used to do this - a lot. He doesn’t seem to do it anymore. I guess someone has to, maybe?
Speaking of Ivan, he has now taken to staring at me with defiance as he drinks strength enhancing potions. It took me a while to realise he used to hide potion drinking from me. Well, now Ivan unashamedly drinks his Potions of Frost Giant Strength whilst looking at me. This new ‘tact’ happened to follow Varga’s own downing of a potion of Fire Giant Strength. I don’t approve of either of them cheating on their gains, but if they insist on it, I insist on Stone Giant Strength potions! I am Goliath. It is said that we are descended from Stone Giants, and as such, Stone Giants are the best. If only my comrades saw it that way.


Harnash - The Tower of Silvinium

It had been ages since I had returned to the beautiful jungle scape and towering trees of Harnash. Now, we found ourselves on an elevated platform of an old tower, in the middle of a jungle.

There we were, Varga; Half-Orc Zealot warrior, Ivan; Human Berserker, Toothy; Drow Totem-cool mercenary, Kelne; Halfling Tricky Cleric, Celina; Tiefling Sneaky Stabmaster, and I; Kavel; Goliath Strongman. Together, we were a fearsome team of mighty adventurers, one of whom was vibing with his shirt off, and two others were buzzing from the supplementary potions they had drunk.

In front of us, over fifty feet away, stood a very large figure. He had Orc and Fiend features. His general body was much like Varga, except twice as large, and he had patches of red skin on his green body, and wings too, and also he held an extremely large glaive.

“I’m Kemency! So glad you’ve arrived. Been waiting to annihilate you, for hours!” is what he said, before darting across the stone floor to cut Celina down into pieces.


One of Us is Not a Thicc-Boi!

Kemency seemed to be a bit like us, he went straight for it with a seemingly reckless abandon and rage, and Celina felt it. Celina did well to dodge a good portion of the first glaive swing with uncanny speed. But Celina was cut deeply by the other two strikes and bled out like an excessively butchered animal at slaughter. Kemency’s arms bulged as his strikes landed, and his skin turned to scales after Ivan slashed him up with his greataxe, Barbara.

Varga felt she wasn’t buzzing enough, so she downed a Potion of Speed, and then in a flash of an eye she was beside Celina. ”Don’t die. Bad for our rep,” Varga said whilst forcing a Potion of Superior Healing down our apple-seller friend’s mouth. Yes - dead allies would be bad marketing. Varga then moved beside Ivan and pointed up to the sky.

Toothy went glaive to glaive with Kemency, slashing him up twice, adding more wounds to Kemency’s body alongside Ivan’s greataxe slashes. But then, Kemency focused and smiled, and his wounds resealed.

I took a shot at Kemency’s lead leg. Good contact! picked up Kemency’s leg, he weighed a ton, he towered over me by three feet. His size meant nothing to me though. I swung the leg I held and kicked his standing leg, and down he fell from my trip. I followed him to the ground to hold him down.

With the expert healing of Kelne, Celina’s wounds sealed up, allowing her to dart in and out with her rapier and Stabra Kadabra - her other rapier, the sentient one - poking holes in Kemency, who responded with a bunch of aggressive banter.


Huge Trouble!

Kemency was bigger than me, but I had him pinned, at least, I did for a while.

“Excellent effort! How about you try this on for size?!” Kemency said, as he doubled in size, freeing himself from my hold, as my grip loosened with his gain in mass. The Orc-Fiend slashed up Toothy, Ivan and I, three parts of the Thicc-Boi frontline, with his massive glaive, cutting us up quite a bit. Kemency’s blade was imbued with dirty acid magic, which caused a burning, skin-melting pain in addition to the cuts. I took this pain better than my comrades. So did Toothy to be fair - we are strangely similar. I felt an unnatural drain on my body’s vitality as the acid covered my skin. There was more than acid at play, as I felt my body weaken. This same weakening was affecting Ivan, he managed a massive slash with his greataxe, Barbara, but was unable to land his next two attacks. But he would make up for those misses very soon…

Varga, acting with bottled Haste, grabbed Ivan, and using the teleporting power of her cape vanished and reappeared two hundred feet above Kemency. Whilst up in the air, Varga blew her Orc Berserker summoning horn. But the orc reinforcements did not appear in the sky with Varga for her ‘Raining Men’ attack. Instead the Orc berserkers appeared in the tree line surrounding our stage of combat, cheering Varga and Ivan on. It was the full retinue as well, all fifteen. There was an additional person watching too. Who this was, was not clear at the time. But there was no time to concentrate on the spectators, for Varga and Ivan were both imitating the Mountain High Elbow Drop; the move originated by comrade Derthaad and I, when Derthaad teleported me up into the air one time, so that I could deliver an enormous elbow drop to a dragon.

Varga and Ivan did beautifully! Ivan added a lovely fire flourish to his crash landing on Kemency with his fire gauntlets. It was a nice touch - fucked his arms up a little, but it was spectacular.

Varga, upon landing went berserk. Sword and flail landed repeatedly on the huge Orc-Fiend. Kemency should have been dead after all that. But the red patches of his skin glowed multiple colours before settling on a blazing white light that covered his entire body. Varga’s flail that had smashed him repeatedly then bounced right off! Kemency not only had scales for skin now and had grown huge, he was now impervious to blunt force impact! This was shit news for me and my fists…

Toothy’s next strikes with his glaive made Kemency drop his increased size and Kemency shrunk back down to ten feet tall, which was good for me, as I rushed in with another shot at his legs. But, this time, Kemency was prepared and had some decent grappling defences. As I reached for his lead leg, he posted an arm on my shoulder to create distance. I switched my attack upwards to his waist to hold him in a waistlock. Got him! With the bodylock, I lifted his near one thousand pound body off his feet. But as I tried to bring him down on his back, he managed to undo my grip and put both feet back on the ground. “You’re quick and strong. Know what trumps that?” He asked with a grin on his face, “ARMS!” As he said that, a third arm appeared from under his left armpit - wielding a sword!

Despite Kemency’s new attacking arm, Kelne attacked with their radiant smashing Spirit Guardians spell, as Celina took advantage of the distraction to stab Kemency some more.

Whilst Kemency took his damage, he actually boasted to us about what he was, and how injuries given and dealt just make him stronger.


One Glaive - Two Swords!

Kelne’s Spirit Guardians were bonking Kemency with great consistency. This, however, did not stop the Orc-Fiend from trying to make steaks out of Celina. Celina went down from all the vicious slashing of Kemency’s blades. Ivan interposed himself between Celina and Kemency. Whilst Ivan and Varga retaliated, Kemency came up with a plan how best to deal with the double assault - he grew another arm wielding another sword!

Thanks to Varga’s potion cocktail, she was able to rush over to Celina and administer another healing potion to get Celina back on her feet. Celina was on her feet, but she was still really, really rough.

In the meantime, Kemency focused on the source of all the little Spirit Guardians that kept bonking him on the head. Kelne took a brutal Glaive strike to the chest, but managed to maintain concentration on their spell.

Toothy struck Kemency with the point of his glaive, then lowered the glaive in front of Kemency’s feet, and as Kemency moved forward to engage Toothy, Kemency tripped over Toothy’s glaive and fell prone. I leapt. At the same time, I reached down into my belt pouch to retrieve a potion. Kemency scrambled and scrambled to avoid being held down. The Orc-Fiend was immensely strong and had an annoying amount of extra leverage with his two extra hands. Try as I might, I couldn’t force the Potion of Diminution down his throat as I tried to out wrestle someone with two pairs of arms. I’ve also been trying to get rid of this shit reverse growth potion for a while. It would have been perfect this way. Disappointing.

However, with all the wrestling, Kelne managed to pin Kemency themself, by casting Stone Shape! As I wrestled the Orc-Fiend, Kelne had the surrounding stone floor clamp down on a couple of Kemency’s four arms, pinning him in place.

Celina, who was bleeding out from all her cuts (she looked really rough) stumbled over towards us. Kemency struggled against the mound of stone clamping his limbs, but there was no getting out. Celina commanded Stabra Kadabra, and aimed her own rapier. Double thrust! Kemency’s heart was pierced twice.

“Mission accomplished,” surprising words from Kemency as he died, “now I get to rest before battle begins again,” he looked over at Varga, “see you soon,” and then his eyes rolled up into his skull. Kemency died, and then he vanished.

“Neat. I think I have a date,” Varga said, optimistic about her next encounter with Kemency.

Kelne used their healing magic to bring us all back up to top condition.

Varga’s berserker contingent were applauding, and so too were these three angelic orc figures who suddenly appeared.


Orc Gods Represent

This is becoming quite common now.

Only a few months ago I met Selune in her avatar form. Now I’ve met three angelic female Orcs who were the Emissaries for three different Orc gods. They were all impressed with Varga and were each offering Varga a very honourable Orc position on behalf of the Orc gods. One position was to be part of a big vanguard with Kemency, who it turns out was one of the four top warriors of one of the gods - Kemency was a test for the position. Another position being offered was for Varga to be linked to a summoning horn, much like Varga’s berserkers are. And the last offered position for Varga was to be the leader of a clan. But, the figure who was in the trees with the berserkers was also an Orc god representative, and he felt Varga might prefer to stay where she was. After all, Varga kind of already was a leader of a clan.

Think about it: Varga made the Thicc-Boi compound, so she already is a clan leader of sorts.

Varga is also already one of the most powerful fighters in a team; she was a thicc-boi. So she already is a fighter in a top team.

The horn? Screw the horn. Much better to have a horn to summon people than to be summoned by a horn. Also, I’ve seen summoning relationships break down. Yeah, whichever god offered the horn, no matter how much it was dressed up in historical significance, it was a weak offering.

Varga responded to the emissaries. Varga started talking about rocks and how rocs were Orcs, and how fate and the gods were like the blowing wind moving the rocks. But now, Varga says she is a mountain, and she said some other stuff, and I didn’t entirely follow it. Whatever she said, it was a very elaborate way of saying ‘I want to stay and run the Thicc-Boi Compound,’ which I knew is what she wanted.

I’m not the most intelligent person in the room. But, you don’t have to be intelligent to observe that you wouldn’t spend all your gold on a business if you didn’t have any intention of staying. I guess all the rock and wind metaphors were just a way to speak politely to the god messengers. Fair enough. I put a hand on Varga’s shoulder as she let all the Angel Orc’s down. Well, not all of them. The shadowy one from the treeline was pretty content with Varga’s decision to stay, he even gave her a boon.

The Emissaries left wishing Varga well in the future. As they left, three of them dropped some gifts. One of the gifts was an Immovable Rod. This was neat! I took it. It now meant I had a really reliable place to do pull-ups wherever I went. I believe Mithi, the Emissary of Gruumsh dropped the Immovable Rod. I think Mithi is my favourite Orc god emissary.

We got back to Daring Heights with the use of a Sending Scroll to Jenna, and celebrated Varga’s new favoured recognition amongst the Orc gods by getting shit faced. It seems Varga is now top Zealot with the Orc gods. But, she has always been my favourite zealot.