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TAKE OFF, TO THE GREAT ORC NORTH

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

THE TEST OF METTLE

Our mission: Revenge! It seems that the Ice Orcs in Orcland and their leader are responsible for a genocide and we are tasked with avenging it. Our task is two-fold: We find the leader of the orcs and steal from him an amulet. Also, we kill the Master-at-arms. Any other orcs we kill are just gravy.

The real problem seems to be that their leader is some kind of shaper: A guy who can actually warp reality. We are warned: If you think you are dead, actively disbelieve that you are dead. Don't be fooled!

With a minimum of thought we set out and start by going to our home kingdom and base of operations. Ship-building is still in progress, as is re-construction of the walls. We seek help in resisting the shaping. You see, if the guy can turn our weapons into things--as suggested by our taskmaster, they could turn your shirt into magma or your sword into a snake--then what we needed was a way of protecting those things. The Iron Nail of resistance against the Wyld is helpful, but if we put it on our weapons then we become more vulnerable. So we consult with the Arch-mage/druid/priest of the city and commission some helpful wards, in the form of 4 uses (one for each of us) of an oil that lasts one scene and will lend resistance to our weapons, should we choose to take them into combat with us. Otherwise, we are trying to travel in minimalist style.

Problem here is going into the cold north. So we are charged with taking on a "burrowing shape", and we likewise decide to also grab snow bird shapes for traveling.

We come across a village, which from its size is obviously tended by small people. Not surprising since we are approaching the boarder marches of the wyld that these guys would likewise be warped. They are fearful little gnomes who we must convince we mean no harm, which isn't too difficult really, once the subject of orc-killing comes up. They make themselves visible and even hospitable. We set out into the even colder north and go over the mountains.

Not far into the journey we spot some orcs. It's only 20. Kren seems worried, but we know Viox is a killing machine, so we drop in on them. Mid-fight, Karth shows up and helps. We mostly took them on for gathering information (such as "Where is your leader!"), because otherwise we're looking for a needle in an ugly, smelly haystack. Seems they were looking for us. Kren botched "sacred hut" type of roll and caused the black crows we stalked to flee and tell their orcish compatriots of our presence.

Well, that would not be the most harmful botch of the evening. No, that honor is reserved this day for Davion. A triple-botch while foraging/hunting caused him to be attacked by massive snow worms. They sniffed out my essence (the "stat" essence, you dirty minded bastages) and came a-huntin'. Problem is, once he was defeated by the mighty blows of fighters much greater than Davion himself, the ice through which the worm had bored decided to give way. Below was a sinkhole and another worm. The only one of us to total fail attempts to save himself as the hole opened was Kren, whose shell probably kept him from dying, but not taking so much damage that it wrapped around to become lethal.

And Davion's attempt to go down and check on him failed as the sure-footed climbing spider hit a snag in the form of chaos-ice and slide down, himself barely staying conscious. Well, he was ill-equipped to be down there anyway, as he did not have the strength to climb with Kren. So as the second worm approached, he stuffed Kren into the massive wound in the dead worm and himself climbed in. They remained undetected until Davion eventually reached out of the wound and the worm sensed him.

Viox came down fast as he could and brought grievous injury on the worm, and as we planned our escape and dragged Kren upward as a duo, two more worms showed up. Viox stowed the unconscious ally in a fissure in the ice and stood in front of it, ready for combat with the snow worm while high above, Karth tried to entice the worms to continue past and come up to fight him. That only worked on one of them. Viox took out the one through feats of acrobatics that involved using his weapon to create various handholds in his foe as he crawled all over it and stabbed it in various ways. Karth simply cut his up like worm sushi. Davion merely attacked ineffectively.

When all were up top, we made for safety and holed up for healing.

Well, the next major thing we found would be... oh, what was it now... hmm... could it be... 40 Million Orcs?

That sounds like an exaggeration, don't it? It aint! (He writ badly, lashing out at english teachers past!) Apparently, being close to the Wyld has allowed the Orc master to simply create insane numbers of orcs and keep them on standby. The world will not end by fire or ice, but by big, smelly orcness, flatulating our world to ruin.

Side note: In the Pooh Report: No poo was used this week. Nor were any cows sacrificed for our common good.

Using his finely honed bureaucratic skills (who knew those would be handy?), Davion figures out where this is all centered around--as in what the focus of this mass is, and most likley the most important area, and we shall set our compass for that direction.

So how do we get past this, the ultimate force for ugly/evil? We could try to go around, but there are constantly thousands of these guys going to and from the massive encampments. We could go over, but the sky is filled with enemies. We could burrow under, but even our fastest form (badger) would take quite a while. The only realistic and also mildly insane option was for Viox to disguise himself through his charms as an orc and walk among them, with his companions in various transformed forms (A spider hiding in his collar, a lynx and rabbit making little lynx-bunnies in his duffel bag).

We scouted the orcs, picked out a few choice curse words, gathered minor intelligence on the way they interract, then sent him into the fray. Viox made it all the way to a bridge and managed to tag onto a group of orcs and look like he fit right in. On the other side he slipped away from them and we continued parallel to the road. Ultimately he reached a bridge in the path, with a massive 2,000 ft chasm gaping below, the fuzzy cast of Snow-White in his backpack. After some waiting and surveying, the spider decides its time to go scout. He hops down, crosses over via the underside of the bridge, and discovers this is the narrowest area. A plan is hatched by the team... move up a ways and string a line across the chasm to let the animal crew cross. Thus it is done and we are in the dark orcish forest, on our way to Mordor--er, I mean, the Orcish Casle.

Following similar road-parallelling tactics, we reach a gate! said gate seems innocuous, which is always a clue. Davion the spider uses his extrasensory ability to see things that it's otherwise not possible to see, and finds that it's not just a gate, but a wall extends up and out from the gate, invisible. Likely an alarm is raised if you pass the gate by anything other than through the gateway, which undoubtedly requires a key.

As the team wait around and scheme, someone comes out of the gate, but it closes quickly, thus affording no "slip in through the doorway" action. However, spotting the necklace on the traveler, the team chases after him. SpiderMan yanks him off of the nasty wolf he's riding and Viox perforates them to let the evil drain out. We clear the path and cover our tracks, taking the necklace, and through the gate goes Viox, carrying the whole crew, including the full-sized spider-man.

And thus we creep closer to our doom. 

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