Look Pa, No Hands

 
Hiya Dad,

Thanks for the message dad, its always cheering to hear from you, especially since you are in the Western Empire now (I’ll see if I can arrange a special Crisis visit, that certainly should increase ticket sales). I hope you manage to make it into the Silver Tongued Bard’s retinue, that certainly would be a feather in your cap and would certainly make the Eastern circuiteers jealous as hehe.

Oh and to the Kankoran setting his girlfriend on fire, I’m pretty sure my furry friend is very innocent in the ways of women and wanted to do something to impress her, and impress her he did. In fact he impressed her so much she took his money and moved to the other side of the world. That’s some impression. I thought he would have picked up some of what Grignak was sharing, now there’s a master seducer at work, I’m not totally sure but I think he seduced a table and took it back to his suite for a foursome.

Dinner with Lord Lictalon was a scary affair, I ate carefully and slowly as to not offend Lord Lictalon, but thankfully he seemed preoccupied with our current difficulties. In fact he tried sending us off with gifts, the party mostly accepted them but I’m not to sure about this new fangled crystal magic, give me a shadow cloak anyday, but in saying that I know you like these sorts of things so I will try to get you a piece but you have to promise to be very careful with it. You never know if a horny troll is going to pop out of it and give you a thorough seeing to.

Duke Vas Passeon is much harder to remember and a lot less fun to say, he seems a lot more of a noble now then he did before, but we will see.

We are in Caer Itom now ourselves, and have been to see the Emperor, and he mostly ignored me thankfully, but methinks Grignak wasn’t as he kept staring at me with intent whenever I came within 5ft of the Emperor’s silverware.

I’ll give you a better rundown just in case you want to use it for play material.

We started just outside a Crystal Gate, with Lord Lictalon giving out those aforementioned gifts of crazy inducing crystal, and even as everyone else took one I declined, as if it turns against us I might get away unscathed. During this exercise Torrun surprised me by asking about the villains of the Valley, but Lord Lictalon was way ahead of us and had already organised rescue and relief for them, as without the magic crystal castle, the valley was going to return to its former look of bleakness and frozen rock.

Silent then spent the time to examine them with his gifts and pretty much gave them all the thumbs up, except for an evil dagger that we returned to Lord Lictalons safe keeping. Grignak also reminded us that we were to choose 1 item and not get greedy. Then came the disguising of Ursus and Grignak, which was done by mostly magical means as they were reduced to normal height, and then Ursus went through his pack and pulled out the underclothes of the Priest who was in the party. Ursus got a light traveling robe, but No Name got dressed up in an excellent formal suit, also apparently the priests. About now I was starting to get suspicious, if the Priest left willingly why did he leave clothes behind, did he aggravate the party until they assassinated him, took all his stuff and then dumped the body in a ditch out in the middle of nowhere. I know what the book story says, but the group wrote the story, maybe they are hiding a dark, dark secret.

I nervously looked over at Silent, the only one who was likely to pick the thoughts out my brain without using an axe and noticed he was busy, I then decided on poking Walking Death, just to see what happened. Yes I know it seems like I have a death wish, but the Gods put me here so I was hoping they would provide a little protection (Lord Lictalon too).

So I thought I would try a subtle method, unlike me I know but I had to know. The not knowing would be worse than being sacrificed.

“So Mr Noname, as we are all buffing ourselves for a big fight, why don’t you get a heap of those animal zombies working for us. A group of them going in first could set off the magical defences and seriously save us some pain” I thought this was the best way to approach it because it made logical sense to me, send in the cannon fodder first.

mrrrphmnnmphllama

was his response, it was very quiet and I could barely make it out, and even more surprising his cheeks started going red and there was a little embarrassment in eyes.

This was very interesting so I prodded again and he replied a little bit clearer.

“I can’t do that anymore”

I was a bit disappointed now as it looked like the cannon fodder idea wasn’t going to work, but curious as to why. No Name explained that he may not quite been himself and that the Golden Horned One had healed him after No Name had talked the party into believing necromancy was fine, forcing the Priest to choose between fighting him for doing evil and leaving.

Well I had figured out why the group didn’t talk about it much, the Priest had been right, `but at least they hadn’t killed the guy and dumped him in a ditch. Well I’m pretty sure they didn’t, however that still meant no cannon fodder, apparently we have a Walrus for that ?

Finally after all the buffing and talking we were ready to go. Grignak finished his final blessing and then Ursus went through.

The room was a wine cellar, passage way through was blocked by barrels of wine, so after a bit of work the barrels were quietly moved and everyone snuck into the cellar. There was the standard smell of mustiness but it was massively overwhelmed by the reek of juicy, maggot ridden flesh putrefying in the darkness. Ursus eagerly scouted for us, noting that there were stairs up to where we had to go but they were guarded. We discussed several methods for disposing of them (including Grignak seducing them, seriously the man, er troll is a machine) but then Silent again showed his power. He didn’t make us invisible, he just made everyone who saw us not really care, so we basically just wandered up the stairs, down the hall and into the throne room. Logan caught up with us as he was hiding in the cellar as well, waiting for us to arrive, and he had brought a walrus, well not a walrus but The Walrus, a man who’s corded muscles showed strength in his every move.

We got closer to Shara and Lady Daera Kaze until Ursus steps forward and shouts at Lady Shara “JUSTICE WILL BE DONE” and light shone down from the windows, lighting Lady Shara, whose face turned dark and twisted. Im not actually sure what she said because I decided to use my throwing dagger ‘Jecetri‘ on her.
I called out, take that on the chin bitch, no not that chin, no not that one either, yep that’s the one, and then basically insulted her for what felt like hours, but in reality from the time Ursus called for vengeance and when her lifeless, soulless body slumped to the ground about 7 seconds had passed. Did I mention that No Name’s Scythe reaps souls, and Lady Shara was no more than a sheaf of wheat before him, I really think I like that scythe. Lady Daera probably would have screamed revenge except that Ursus was suddenly on her, casually pulling chunks of her viscera out, causing her to shudder and attempt to scream until a torrent of blood burst from her mouth, she slowly dropped to the ground trying to say something but only more blood came out as she coughed and spluttered, and then sightless eyes only stared at the ceiling, Lady Daera was now no more.

Apparently we were just in time, as Lady Shara had kidnapped Master Azariel’s daughter and wife, and was planning on turning them into cordon bleu.
We didn’t get much time to celebrate as the place darkened, as a presence approached. I looked around and the others seemed to be feeling it to, Maybe Lady Shara hadn’t totally failed, Apepi was on his way. Fighting a god was out of the question so No Name grabbed everyone and used his special magic to teleport us . . .

To a farm, this couldn’t get more random, except that after a few moments it seemed it wasn’t random at all, apparently his skills with the scythe came from using it on his farm. No Name was a farmer with a family.
I just sat down because really, I thought the special forces guy was supposed to be the cook or the slave, not the farmer.

To get Azariel’s family to safety we decided to let them use one of the Sekti-Abtu amulets, and flash they were gone. After a brief discussion we decided then to go on to Caer Itom, as we had business there with the Emperor (apparently).

After yet another disorientating jump through the extraverse we ended up in the capital of the western empire, and not just the capital, the actual freaking palace.

After being met by guards and our credentials taken (who else but us would do that) we were taken to see the emperor. The rest of the party had a lot to say to him and gave him a head and mentioned black sunder rock or something like that. I tried to stay out of the conversation, noting that the Emperor had good taste in the knick knacks he had on display, but Grignak, ever vigilant actually called out for me to not do anything.
spoilsport

Then your missive arrived and I had time to reply, so I did.
Sometimes I feel I’m on a chariot racing out of control and the reins are just out of reach.

 
Merkl

 
Picture of Terramore from our AZ_Rune Art
Celebrate feast – The Lost Tales from Kazuya-Takahashi
Death walkingLuis Royo

 

5 Responses to “Look Pa, No Hands

  • This was brilliant, wish the axe throw cutting the bow in half rendering the lightning arrows useless had been mentioned. But that’s me being selfish. Love the story teller in Merkl.

  • I was going to pull lines I really enjoyed from the log and quote them here, but I think I’d pull out and repeat about half the log if I did that. It was quite enjoyable and amusing!

  • Ursus is no longer the “Fool” of the party.

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