Tormeron's events: the Stories

[Gergel]

"I thought after so many missions to help save the world we should take it easy in nature..." Adrenus told the people who gathered near the northern entrance to Stranglethorn. "A nice hike sounds nice about now, doesn't it?"

So naïve.

"There will be ogres," the others nodded. "Possibly undead. Trolls. Crocolisks. The Venture Company. An ancient voodoo curse. Panthers. Raptors."

Adrenus went "Aaargh!" Why couldn't anyone just accept that there was going to be a simple enjoyable hike which would end with everyone being happy and perhaps having a picnic...

Aroona confidently bet: "Ten gold we run into trouble inside of ten minutes." A new companion, a rogue named Mantella, promptly raised that bet to "I say five minutes."

Determined to prove the doomsayers wrong, Adrenus led the group down the path into the waiting jungle.

"The bridge will break!" Chepi suggested when they reached the first rope bridge. It did not.

"We'll be eaten alive by hungry tigers..." was Lilandris' optimistic prediction. They saw no tigers. "Or raptors. Or cannibals. Or gorillas. Or pirates."

Or maggots. There was the corpse of a large maggot near the road. Seeing a corpse was not unusual in itself, so they paid little attention to it and proceeded deeper. But shortly there was another maggot corpse, then three more, then lots and lots. That there was becoming curious.

Curiosity turned into annoyance and then worry when they came across a pile of very-much-alive maggots after the next bend. These were busy consuming a tiger corpse, but promptly decided that a human would taste better and began to try and crawl all over Claraa. One of the poor rogue's boots got eaten, for a moment it seemed that Claraa would be running around half-barefoot for the rest of the journey, but fortunately Equanimity was able to provide her with a spare shoe.

Spare shoe or not, there were quite a lot more maggots by that time. What had been an amusing annoyance became a danger. The maggots were relentless: no matter how many were stomped, stabbed or scorched to death, there were always more coming up from the ground. They also upgraded their arsenal by starting to spit acid.

Still, it was not yet too horrible. Horrible was about to emerge. It did, in the shape of a bloody huge giant acid-throwing ground-melting colossus of a maggot. A close-range attack was problematic because of the acid. Long-range attacks it shrugged off fairly easily. Deciding to ignore the splatters, Thelarwen went in for a kill anyway, but did negligible damage. Things got even worse when another huge grub burrowed out behind her. She was caught between these two. Both took aim, horked up an impressive amount of acid, and let fly towards the death knight.

She ducked, rolled and jumped out of the way. Gobs of acid passed each other in mid-air. The volley of the first maggot hit the second, and the second one's shot splattered on the first. And that was that: neither grub appeared to be externally resistant to the acid and both melted with horrible blurbling sounds.

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, the hikers hurried down the next bridge. The end behind them was quickly covered in maggots who began to melt the rope bridge. The group barely made it across... only to encounter another giant maggot, bigger than anything they'd seen that day. It hissed, blurbled, threw acid around from its mouth, skin and just about everywhere else, and began to turn the ground into muddy, acidic splotch of doooooooom.

As it was impossible to get close to it (because of the acidic ground that surely would have eaten their feet), it was time for spells, Tessliana's arrows and Lilandris' shotgun slugs. These did little damage: the maggot's skin was quite resilient and its acid melted most physical attacks before they could even do damage. But when Chepi dropped a rain of fire all over the muddy area of the road, things heated up. Literally. The acid was quite flammable, suddenly there was an enormous "whoooomph!" and a "boooom!" and for a moment everything was on fire. Including the giant maggot. The situation improved marginally, although instead of giant acid-spraying maggot they now had a giant acid-spraying maggot that was also on fire.

At that point most of the group decided to cut their losses and run away. Thelarwen, Aroona and Claraa, however, refused to accept defeat. There was a lot of stabbing and pecking, the dying maggot lost its eyes to Claraa's daggers and Thelarwen's sword. The death knight finally managed to get a proper blow in and buried her sword in the maggot's face up to its hilt. The dying creature sprayed her with all the acid it had left. Thelarwen's runesword was unharmed thanks to its magical nature, but her armour got a massive splash. She escaped mostly unhurt (the acid failed to penetrate her armour), however her gauntlets and hands inside them got burned quite badly. The maggot on the other hand got a taste of its own acid through the stab wound that Thelarwen had given it, and slowly melted from the inside.

Aroona in her druidic flight form picked up the distressed and injured death knight and flew her to a nearby river. Being dropped into deep water while wearing heavy plate armour would have been dangerous to most, but as the death knight did not really need to breathe all that much, it was a minor inconvenience. And on the other hand it cleaned her from acid quite thoroughly and quickly. Aroona's nature spells also managed to heal the worst of her chemical burn wounds, while Lilandris watched concernedly from the side and refrained from using her holy magic for obvious reasons.

The rest of the group had wandered off by that time towards the coast. I must admit I am somewhat hazy as to what happened at that point. Several cows ran out of the forest, almost trampled the group, and then charged into the sea. On the other hand, several fish in the sea turned into cows and charged out of the ocean. What the hell. Did the group just... wander into a cloud of hallucinogenic swamp gas or something?

Well, things normalized shortly. As much as "normalized" could be used for the situation. Just as Aroona, Lilandris and Thelarwen caught up with the group, several naga emerged from the ocean. "You've invaded our shoresss. Begone sss. You've ssss.... destroyed peaccccce... You plan to kill usssss, peacccceful sea naga... yousssss.... sssshall paysssssss." and the naga began to advance.

Not wanting to engage yet another battle, everyone just gave up at that point. Any attempts to talk to the naga and point out that they had not done anything hostile were utterly futile. The group retreated into the forest, still trailed by the naga. "Your kind seekss nothingssss but warsssss.... we naga never had a desire to fightssssss...." and at that point they really really looked like they were going to attack.

Thelarwen sighed, raised her sword in her hurting hands, and pointed out the obvious: "Very well. Attack us, if you dare. But know this, you will be making the first move. You, who claim to be peaceful, you will be the aggressor. The hypocrite."

Perhaps the naga finally came to their senses. Perhaps they were just slightly afraid of the wet, grimy, pissed-off looking death knight. But they gave up the chase and retreated back into their ocean.

At that point everyone had literally had it. Maggots. Acid. Cows. Naga. Enough was enough. "Screw this," they essentially said, and just flew off to Booty Bay where many many drinks were had that night. Except for Thelarwen, who doesn't drink.