The Death of Coalbrow

Cute and Quiet. Makes a lot of hand gestures, a bit like Yoda, but less green.

Topic/Postby Gergel » 10 Dec 2012, 16:30

Part 2

The group was exploring the north-western parts of Storm Peaks in Northrend. After the evils in both Ulduar and Icecrown had been vanquished a few years back, the area was quite safe, and also full of hidden treasure. The few angry bears or a stray zombie were no match for the adventurers whose skills had been tempered by the fires of Deathwing and waters of Pandaria.

After a few days of easy adventuring they came across a solitary dwarf. He and his nether dragon were flitting back and forth between Storm Peaks' rocks and cliffs, and they heard him long before they saw him as his cheerful yells of "HERB!!!" were echoing in the mountains. Garrshammer Coalbrow, as he introduced himself, quickly hooked up with the group. His healing spells came in handy occasionally, and his shadow spells complemented the melee-heavy band nicely.

A few days passed. They mined ore, gathered skins, picked herbs ("HERB!!!"), traversed deep caves and looted treasure which was being guarded by iron dwarves, ice elementals, giant bunny-rabbits and walking undead skeletons. One chest even had the undead skeleton of a giant bunny-rabbit as its guardian. This was a little bit awkward, especially when it summoned an additional swarm of undead skeletons of ordinary-size bunny-rabbits.

Everything went wrong on the day when they caught an iron dwarf that was fleeing in terror. It completely ignored the adventurers and attempted to simply rush through the group even as they wrestled it down. The only few comprehensible bits of information that could be gained from the rambling creature were "beer" and "elemental".

Intrigued, the party moved on, tracking the iron dwarf's escape trail. After an hour they heard sounds of battle. A half-hour later the source of these sounds became apparent. A massive elemental creature was laying waste to a rapidly dwindling group of iron dwarves. The dwarves had apparently summoned the elemental into the world, but were uttely unable to control it. History repeating itself, very obviously.

There was an overbearing stench of alcohol in the air. As an iron dwarf corpse landed next to them, it became obvious to the adventuring party where the smell came from. The dwarf was drenched from head to foot in various kinds of alcoholic beverages. Coalbrow's sensitive nose immediately picked out a combination of wine, stout and hard spirits. The being before them was an alcohol elemental!

("An alemental? Oh, I've seen those in Pandaria!" someone among the bar crowd said dismissively. No. This was not one of these cute fizzy squeaky-voiced native spirits. Imagine an elemental lord -- Ragnaros, Al'Akir, Neptulon. The alcohol elemental was only slightly smaller, made entirely of whirring multicolored fluids, liquid arms as big as tree trunks, two brightly shining brownish-yellow orbs for eyes. It killed iron dwarves with mere touch.)

Unwilling to engage the creature without a solid reason ("But-but-but it be LIVING BOOZE!" coming from Coalbrow was not considered a particularily solid reason by the rest of the group) they hid at the edge of the battlefield and watched the iron dwarf army getting obliterated. A mere quarter of an hour later the booze elemental was the only living thing left.

Then it turned. And bore down on the adventurers. It had been aware of them for some time, apparently, but only now deemed them worthy of its attention. Escape was not an option, so the group engaged.

The fight went fairly well in the beginning. Compared to the iron dwarves, these adventurers were of much sturdier stock and held their own. Coalbrow even took the time to take a drink out of the being every now and then. Unfortunately their blades, hammers and spells seemed to have negligible effect on the elemental, so one of them came up with a great idea -- it's booze, therefore it should be flammable. So he lit a torch and tossed it at the elemental.

That did not turn out very well. Whatever mystical force was replenishing the creature's alcoholic form as it was being hacked and blasted off by the fighters was apparently also strong enough to counter the loss from burning. And instead of taking blows from massive arms made from alcohol, they now had to take blows from massive arms made from alcohol that were ON FIRE!

Under the relentless barrage of slicing streams of near-solid alcohol, massive waves of dark ale and blows from flaming fists the adventurers were forced to start falling back. Step by step the creature herded them closer to a massive cliff face which rose straight up from the ground. On their side was a sheer drop into deep abyss with the ocean somewhere far at the bottom.

"It be booze, mon!" yelled Coalbrow then. "Ah will not be beaten by booze! Ah will NOT BE BEATEN BY MERE BOOZE!"

"Ah know its weak spot!" The dwarf pushed aside his well-armoured companions and with what sounded like a string of curses in Dark Iron Dwarvish and also Trollish, ran up to the alcohol elemental.

The others tried to grab him but the little booze-slick dwarf evaded their grasp easily. "Run away!" Coalbrow yelled back at them. "Dis not gonna end well if ya stay too close!"

Then at the elemental: "Ya big overgrown puddle o' moonberry juice! C'mon! Show me wot ya got! Ah gonna drink ya up, ya hear me, mon! Eat me! Eat me, eatme, EATME!"

And, to the horror of his companions, it did. A flaming fist came down right on top of Coalbrow, immersed him entirely and lifted the tiny body up to the booze elemental's piercing eyes. Coalbrow made a rude gesture and made gulping motions -- apparently drinking the arm which was restraining him.

The glowing eyes flashed bright. There was nothing the others could do to stop the elemental pulling the dwarf into the bulk of its body, to drown in alcohol.

("Wot a way to go!" said a dwarf among the listeners. "This is the way every dorf's life should end! Drowned in a vortex of living booze!")

Except there was a sudden flash of yellow light in the middle of the swirling booze. Coalbrow's body was surrounded by a bubble of air as alcohol was pushed aside by a Power Word: Shield. He cast another spell. A cloud gathered around his feet from his levitation magic, it solidified in a fraction of a second and then pushed him upwards with great force.

The dwarf's surge through living liquid stopped only when he had reached the very top, right between the two glowing eyes. Grinning victoriously, he reached out his hands and grabbed these orbs.

And he drank them both.

The alcohol elemental thrashed back and forth. Its fabric de-stabilized. Big chunks of various kinds of booze splattered everywhere. Coalbrow gestured frantically, still surrounded by heaving alcohol. "RUN! RUN AWAY!" he mouthed. And the surviving adventurers could do nothing but turn and flee.

A massive rumble made them turn around and watch the death throes of a mighty alcohol elemental. It shrank briefly into a blob of liquid, then expanded violently, and exploded in a final huge blast of booze. Rock underneath it cracked and the elemental, Coalbrow and most of the stony platform were lost into the depths of the precipice near which they had been fighting.

* * *


"And that was it. The booze explosion tossed us all over the place and it took us a while to recover enough to make it back to civilization. We looked for Coalbrow's body but... well, with that kind of a cataclysmic blast... there was no trace of him after the rocks stopped falling."

* * *


There was a lovely quiet funeral ceremony in the Stormwind cemetery for Coalbrow. There was no body to bury, but Rhyme and Punishment guild erected a memorial stone in the shape of an ale mug. Father Stoneage said a prayer to the Light. Tormeron rambled something about Pygmy Orcs and ordered Toot to go jump in the nearby lake to see if there were any of those in it, but people just tuned him out. Gathered around the gravestone, they took a commemorative drink and poured a flaming Sulfuron Slammer in front of it. Then the group, which included the barkeep of the Blue Recluse, moved to the bar and spent the rest of the evening drinking. Also, Tormeron offered soup to everyone. At this, people kept looking around, hoping for Coalbrow's ghost to pop out of nowhere with a "Don'. Eat. De. Soup!" wail. But there was no ghost. They did not eat the soup, anyway.
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Gergel
Gergel Cosmic Smash!
 
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