Post by Beets The Beetle (Feenix) on Apr 24, 2023 21:29:22 GMT
It was during dropping off some supplies at Fort Daring the other morning that I caught the news from a roughed up looking messenger, that almost a entirebattalion of Daring First troops had been just completely annihilated by some unseen forces when they went to deal with some Xvart bandits…I had no idea what a Xvart was but if they had the power to take out down a herd of fully trained soldiers, the Dawnlands were in trouble. So as soon as the Council made a public plea for help from the adventuring society, I was already half flittin’way to Fort Ettin at top speed.
I’ll be honest, the force of adventurers that assembled themselves in the Great Hall to help deal with this ‘army-obliterating’ threat was not what I was expecting.The small blue twitching kobold Digs, a fair skinned..or should/could that be barked wood elf Levuka, and a extremely nervous looking girl in a roughly stitched bright blue dress named Lucia.Not exactly Kavel, Varga or Marto fighting-level material.
Still, I know better than to judge by appearances, and after a quick low down on the rock-based assault that took out the lost troops by the strapping Commander Ignatius Trymyng, Jenna warped us on our way.
A balloon. The Xvart had a big, no, giant-giant buggin’balloon! with a little whicker basket hanging under it from which they were dropping rocks out of into the valley below. Oh but wait, it gets flittin’weirder! Some of the little blue buggers were strapped into some sort of wing like rigs made outta cloth and sticks which ‘somehow’-if you can buggin’believe it-enabled them glide through the air-I’m gonna call them wingers-boulders precariously clutched between their legs. If they hadn’t horribly utilised these 'excuses for flying' to kill a lot of innocent people I think I’d of doubled over laughing at how ridiculous they looked.
Flit to say though, a couple of things surprised me even more today.
Firstly, the nervous girl Lucia transforming into a flittin’terrifyingly’awesome giant wolf and launching herself into the balloon basket to tear the squad of xvart a’flittin’sunder. Secondly Levuka, who somehow magically transformed into an air elemental and tore the wingers clean out of the sky. Thirdly, Digs, who whilst unsurprisingly did manage to fall out of the balloon basket after asking me to launch him in there, actually some flittin'how managed to survive his impact with the ground. Seems Kobolds are made or stronger stuff than they appear.
But finally, flittin’finally! Was the big old buggin’fiend that was commanding all those flittering little blue guys.
Personally I’d not faced a fiend since that sea-voyage with Cap'n Otto a year back, but after hearing about Marto’s long-course dealings with’em-and ones apparently a lot flittin’better looking than this gremlin-I let the others know what we had to do.
We couldn’t let it talk sexy to us!
And so, despite it’s desperate pleas to share the 'oh delicious details' of it’s devilish deeds with us, we blittin’obliterated it! "See us in hell", you say? Not flittin’likely! I'd heard enough about that boiling badlands to scribble it off my bug-bucket list. Amongst the smouldering remains was some letter addressed to the deceased demon-Gerbolt-telling him to "..cause-chaos.."
Welp they certainly they were gonna cause enough of that alright with a few members of party’s desires to drag some of these ‘sorry excuse for flying’ doohickies all they way back to Daring Heights with us…
I’ll stick to flying the ‘Proper-Way’, thank you very buggin’much!
The final surprise of a day of many though, was flittin’into The Duchess as we left Fort Daring just after delievering our battle report. I hadn’t seen her since dealing with those Berdock vampiers last year, yet she didn’t seem to of forgotten me, bug she even offered to help me with keeping an ear and eye to the sky for any flit or buzz of The Swarm. Gosh, she’s just as buggin’awesome as ever!
Actually, now I’m thinking back on it now in bed, The Duchess really does seem to know a lot of the happenings in the Dawnlands, as well as actually giving a flit about the folk in’em too!
Maybe..I should offer to give her a hand…