DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Hall of Fame - Latest Top 10 completed games HHE: The Haunted Helm HHE10: Bearkiller

GM

The length of stout rope was tied off either end. Armoured and carrying treasure packs, the adventurers jangled across one by one in a monkey crawl, except for Jex who sauntered across like a veteran tightrope walker. Others stood ready to fight, but the dragon didn't return and soon enough they were plunging through the night forest once more, following the halfling.

Muted trees, bushes. Branches whipping at you from the darkness as you ran. Somewhere far above, the dragon spoke, its voice making the night tremble.

"Skulk back into the shadows, like the knifemen you are!" It sneered, wheezing to draw breath, "Maybe it wasn't Old Goldie who sent you. Maybe it was the Three?

"Yes, you have that waft of treachery about you. But at least your friend might aid me with his healing magic.

"If not, I can watch him try it on himself, after I pluck his limbs off one by one.

"Sleep well then, slopers in the night. Tomorrow we will have our reckoning!"

Down and down the halfing led you; to one side the ground rose into a bare rock face. You could smell water even above the pine fragrance and felt sure you were approaching the river again. Then the halfling ducked left into a shadowy crease at the foot of the cliff, reappearing moments later when he lit a torch.

The red flames made his outlandish features seem even more wild. The flames also revealed a low ceilinged cave, disappearing into pitch black.

"Higher inside and dry. Shaped like horseshoe, two way in and out. Safe place." He said gruffly, then ducked back under, trailing the flickering light.

For anyone who followed him, it was a short crawl on four legs until the rocky, uneven floor dropped into a dry, sandy-bottomed gour that you could stand in. The walls were lined with dripstone and in places had formed into natural, floor to ceiling columns, a long long long time ago.

The halfling held up the torch to the ceiling, revealing countless paintings, crude colours artfully used to depict stories from the mists of time. By the torchlight, they almost seemed animated.

"Many picture. Make no sense." The tribesman dismissed them, walking over to a fire ring he'd built. He lit the wood stacked within and smothered the torch with sand. He had a pack and water stashed close to the fire, but the firewood was fresh, his bedding still packed. The cave didn't smell like it was lived in. It gave the impression that the halfling hadn't been encamped any longer than you.

With a mohawk and buckskins, you might have expected him to provisioned with 'nature's bounty' but he promptly drew and uncorked a labelled bottle of Green Star whiskey. Not cheap!

Few could decipher the meaning of the paintings on that low ceiling. There was no text, no pictograms. They were illustrations, dark, pointy-eared figures and wild animals living in trees that reached the clouds.

Some of the party had spent time exploring caves in remote areas of the world and could have seen such paintings before. But it was most likely Jex and Tindarien who recognised them for what they were.

They were not ancient. They were beyond ancient, beyond time. Tens of thousands of years before the Wizard King was born. They depicted the Sundering of the Elves from the Fey, when the elvish races were barely more than animal spirits themselves. Dragons were still elemental creatures, that lived only in the currents of magic, the ley lines flowing across the land. Before the Time of Legends and the First Age, these were stories that pre-dated civilisation or what most scholars would consider language.

<Weston>

He heard the dragon speak again. Clearly it was trying to 'provoke' them with a bit of name calling. He had to smile at the 'pedantic' nature of that tactic. But he was not a child so it was easy enough to ignore the provocation. It was =not= so easy to ignore the plight of their friend and the threats against him. But he knew well enough that he had to let go of that because they were in no shape to take it on tonight.

Unseen limbs swiping at his face, shrubs snatching at his ankles made the trip through the dark uncomfortable. So he quite welcomed the light from their guides torch. He followed the halfling as he traveled into the cave. The sandy floor of the gour seemed a comfortable place to rest and recover. He looked around at the pictures on the walls around them. When their guide mentioned the pictures making no sense, his scrutiny intensified. They seemed old, perhaps there was something important ... but failing that, they might prove interesting.

He looked around the place a bit. Perhaps the distraction would help his mind make sense of the pictures while he was 'focused' on something else. The look of the place seemed to suggest to him that it was less a 'living space' and more an emergency or temporary shelter. Perhaps for a 'border patrol' by the halfling's 'tribe'.

He decided that 'tribe' was probably an inappropriate label considering the libations he was offering. "A splendid offering", he said, clearly impressed. "Thank you. I cannot offer anything similar in response ... at this time. But I hope that at some future date I can repay the kindness."

Seyja


She felt nearly useless as she followed the Halfling and the others through the underbrush and into the shelter, glancing occasionally back over her shoulder... just in case.

It felt like she was abandoning Nestaron and Seyja was not one to abandon a companion but, for the nonce, she couldn't think of anything else they could that had any chance of saving the cleric.

"If the occasion presents itself, little man," she said to the Halfling, "I, too, would gladly buy you a drink."

Jex

"These are old, like really, really old!" the bard exclaimed as he started to decipher the etchings. "From before history almost. This is about how the elves and dragons came to be..."

And he started to explain everything that he knew about this. He did it by talking to each person, one after another, in rhymes delivered with a constant beat.

After telling all what he knew, the bard focused his attention on the drawings, studying them. He valued tidbits of knowledge like some valued diamonds.

Tindarien

Leaving the rope he followed the others down the slope, his thoughts though are with Nestaron.

"Stay well my friend.." he whispers into the night.

On entering the cave, the paintings provide at least a momentary distraction. Silently he studies them, nodding as Jex describes them as ancient.

D

He slipped silently through the night. Their guide had unerring steps and lead then to safety. Ensconced in the cave he noted the drawings out of curiosity. The past was a mystery to him and he was always interested in learning about it.

GM

Once upon a time, the elves were Fey creatures like any pixie, dryad, spirite or brownie. Over time they developed the tools of civilisation and were sundered from the Fey, a fate that befell other races such as gnomes.

The paintings were beautiful, and for Tindarien at least (and Nestaron if he was there), the cave had a sacred quality. It spoke of the Time Before Time. The world was more alive, wild and untamed, but it couldn't last.

To advance, people had to think beyond their own lives, pass on their wealth, both material and knowledge, to those who survived them. How could a town endure in a world where the mountains could stand up and walk away? Slowly but surely, these early cultures mastered magic and the roots of civilisation took hold.

The pictures of elemental dragons reminded the party of dragonkind's affinity to the elements. White dragons were atuned to the cold, having an aversion to fire and heat. That was a vulnerability they could exploit.

The first exploit was that they could venture out under the summer sun, whereas a white dragon wouldn't choose. The Beast was a white, a 'blizzard dragon' Jex would call it. Old and decrepit, maimed as it was, if it left its cave by day it might only have the vigour to crawl on its belly like a worm.

Weston had a flask of flammable Eight-Score rum, given to him by the carpenter of The Issitia. Could it be made into a fire bomb?

No, it was unlikely to slay the Beast outright, but smashed across its muzzle, with it only having one eye... the rum would burn clean and fast and might blind the creature.

Alcohol. The bottle of Green Star was passed around. It was too weak to ignite, but strong enough to put a fire in your belly.

The halfling watched you all. It was a curious one. Most of you knew halflings, and this one looked like he hailed from the agrarian peoples north of Amity Bay.

Those halflings grew their hair long and wore plain-weave cloth, beads, and flowers in their hair. They lived in tribes, in small idyllic settlements of turf-rooved cottages like Burrow, or tents made from skins in Twisp. They weren't generally well-travelled, indeed, they were best known for doing very little on an afternoon except lounging around, smoking a pipefull of weed.

The tribal halfling sat at the fire was high-strung, alert. His head was shaved into a mohawk, and he wore buckskins over his cloth shirt.

He reached into this shirt and pulled out a leather necklace, threaded with bear claws.

"I am Bearkiller," he said, then gestured to the empty air beside him, "and this is my dire wolf, He Who Sicks Balls."

Jex

The bard had studied the paintings for a while and then, when he was done, walked over to the halfling, knelt and bowed his head.

"We are indebted to you Bearkiller. You rescued us. Both you and your wolf will be remembered in songs I shall pen to honor your bravery. These songs will be sung for generations to come and recalled by our progeny like these painting tell the story of things that happened before time itself."

"The world is being poisoned and we are on a mission to remedy that. The great blizzard dragon may or may not be a direct part of the problem, but he has stolen from us a companion that we must rescue. As ancient as it is, the dragon knows that we have no choice but to try and rescue our friend. That is a core of who we are. We will not leave anyone behind. True, that is a weakness but it is one we must compensate for with our strengths because it is a bond we cannot break. A vow that is solemn. We would offer our lives to save each other. That is the way that things are with us."

"So we can do nothing now but turn our attention to that rescue and while I cannot speak for others, I nominate you now to become one of us. This would not separate you from others that you owe allegiance to. It simply adds you to our group. If the others agree that you are invited to become one of us there will be no ceremony but there will be an understanding that we will risk our lives to save yours as we will do next to save Nestaron. You have already demonstrated that bravery to save us, so you have already lived up to a vow you have not taken. All that we ask of you in return for this fealty is for you to continue to aid us. Do you agree?"

He stands up now and turns to the others, "And do all of you also agree that both Bearkiller and He-Who-Sicks-Balls is one of us?"

D

He listened to the bard's eloquent words and nodded. "I for one offer simply. I will kill that thing as it no longer should exist. Actions speak that is enough for me."

Zoltan

He had been aware of Nestaron being taken by the dragon, and while it was not something he liked, it was what it was. He'd never been one for groups, and believed very much in fate. Still, if the opportunity to rescue Nestaron presented itself he would not hesitate.

The talk of seeking the dragon out during daylight, and the heat of the day, seemed sound, so he simply nodded when asked if he agreed.

The cave paintings were interesting, but art and history were never his strong suit so he examined them for a bit and then left them to Jex, who seemed much more fascinated by them.

At the suggestion of adding the Halfling to the group, he paused. The Halfling certainly knew this area well, and as a guide could be invaluable. But he was not completely certain about having him about if it came to a fight. With Nestaron gone, other than the few potions they had accumulated, Zoltan suspected that he might be the only one who could offer healing to the others. Adding the Halfling would strain their limited healing if he was unable to hold his own in a fight.

But he pauses and waits to see what the others reply to Jex's question before commenting.

Sergeant Almador

He would have commented. It wasn't that the burly, greying man-at-arms didn't feel a part of the quest. He did now.

These adventurers had accepted him into their midst early on, but only after fighting the dragon had Almador felt worthy of that trust.

Nope. Simply put, this was the longest day of his life. He'd been awake most of the night talking with his wife and packing. He'd left at sunrise with the party and they'd hiked all day along the river valley. Up down, up down, up down. Climbed a waterfall, crossed a log bridge over chasm in the dark.

They'd run into Fey, orcs, goblins, a huge blizzard dragon....

Sergeant Almador took one swig of the whiskey and was almost insensible. Green Star wasn't stronger than any other whiskey, it was the drinker who was to blame.

Almador had already sat down on the soft sand and was slowly sliding lower and lower. The bard was parleying with the mohawked halfling and his, what, invisible dire wolf.

Almador chortled weakly, wrestling his eyelids, head nodding, but it was a losing battle and he soon fell asleep where he lay.

<Weston>

He thought about the idea of the 'elemental' dragon tied to cold being hurt by heat ... the heat of day, the heat of fire. He considered the possibilities. He had used fire arrows ... and Zoltan had shown he knew of them as well. But it seemed like such a small amount of flame for such a large foe. Then he remembered 'fire bombs' that he had seen some bandits use. That seemed like the right sort of thing. But they didn't have any oil and he wasn't sure that oil was the right answer.

He sighed as he thought of a possible answer.

But his thoughts were diverted when the discussion of inviting the halfling to join their group. It was not so much that he didn't want the fellow to join them. "It seems like there is a big difference between helping a stranger out of a tight spot and asking him to join what is most likely a suicide mission", he said seriously. Then turned to their guide. "Not that I wouldn't welcome you to our group", he added just as seriously.

Seyja


The Green Star whiskey burned going down and ignited a pleasant fire in her belly. She took a second swallow and passed the bottle to the next in line.

"Little man seems to know the area and I have nothing against wolves," Seyja said with a shrug of her muscular shoulders. She gave the Halfling a long, appraising look.

"What do you know about the poisoning of the area and what do you know about that white dragon who is holding our cleric friend?"

Bearkiller

He squatted on his haunches next to where he'd introduced his 'dire wolf'. There was only empty air, not even paw prints in the soft sand.

"I come from North. My tribe live on Harthorn, the Mountain That Stands Alone. Maybe one, two day journey from Concord." He explained to Seyja.

Corcord was one of the Seven Cities, fabled for the height of its spires and other wondrous architecture, an amicable fusion of elven and dwarven engineering.

It was farther away than Shadow Port, beyond Throne Point. The mountain Bearkiller described was distinctive, Harthorn could be seen from leagues away across the plains, a solitary sharp peak.

So the mohawked halfling had travelled a long way to reach Sword Point. But why?

"I search for my brother, the Red Knight, like you." He said, nodding to Weston and Zoltan.

"Last night I reach these foothills and by day, find sign of the white wyrm... further up, leaves are black, dead from frost... in middle of summer.

"Then I find you, follow, watch you pick over bones of dead dragon and make camp. Hear you speak."

Bearkiller appeared greatly impressed by Jex's speech, his eyes shone.

"I know your name, Jexric. You are one of the Bodejackers, bandits who preyed on the Quod Sheriffs." He said gravely, then grinned revealing a few missing teeth, "You did well!"

The halfling spoke soothingly to the air next to him, in a tribal dialect that even Jex couldn't quite fathom. Bearkiller listened, then nodded.

"We are honoured to accept your invite. You are noble and brave, and we share same goal, near enough." He said.

Casually he unsheathed his antler-handled knife. The grimy steel blade was etched with pictograms, but the edge gleamed. He drew in the sand with it.

"I have not heard of dying river, but maybe know how it happen.

"White wyrm fly from top of mountain, where hole in ground open into huge cavern. The dragon's lair. We need rope to climb down... straight into its jaws!

"But river flow under and through mountain. Where it flow through half-moon arch, I find another cave, secret way, up up, into dragon's lair.

"From this cave-mouth flow reeking foulness, black and orange. Flow straight into river. We must tread carefully, area around it treacherous."

<Weston>

He returned the acknowledging nod with one of his own.

He wondered about the wolf. Was it some sort of spirit companion or perhaps just a figment of the halfling's imagination. But it seemed pretty clear that there wasn't anything physical there.

It was great that he had accepted the invitation to join them. More importantly he knew a way into the dragon's lair that would allow them to sneak up on it ... hopefully.

And apparently taking out the dragon =was= their mission. But he suspected that killing it might be the easier part. They would also have to find a way to get rid of all that reeking blood and what ever else was mixed in with it.

Jex
He had made an impression, but it was easy. The halfling and his dire wolf were already impressed with the actions the party had taken. Still, they could have chosen to help now and part ways. There was strength in numbers and adding this pair could tip a battle in their favor. They had already lost the half-orc.

"That sounds much like a volcano - those are mountains that breath fire and ash. Inside volcanoes there is a great heat that melts rocks. But that makes no sense. Why would a blizzard dragon be inside a volcano?"

"Bearkiller, when you say black and orange, is it hot there?" The bard had heard that molten rock which is called lava might look like that.

Bearkiller

He nodded like he understood the bard, but shook his head at the question.

"I think, blood from dragon. When you wounded it, blood was orange, yes?" The halfling asked, "What black is? Hmm, maybe dragon filth?"

Seyja


She nodded, frowning, as she thought over what the others - and especially the Halfling - said.

Her normal, primary instinct was to attack directly, head on as it were, but it made sense to sneak up on the ailing, ancient dragon if possible.

"Is there any way we can use fire against the dragon?"

Zoltan

He listens, more impressed by the halfling than earlier. Perhaps the dragon blood is poisoning the river, but what is the 'blackness' the halfling speaks of?

D

As he was want to do, the pale elf sat on his haunches in the background and listened. He was learning and that was the immediate goal.

<Weston>

"Blood mixed with the dragon's excrement sounds like a plausible explanation for the source of the pollution", he said thoughtfully. "As to the fire question Seyja, I have some thoughts on that. Some of it depends on what we find when we get into the caves. I have", he said with a sigh, "a delightful dram that, unfortunately will do the job. The question is what sort of opportunities we will find in the cave. The best scenario would allow me to get into position where I could 'deliver' my incendiary gift from a position that would allow me to target it's head. That might conceivably blind it which would certainly help our cause."

GM

If the fire bomb were to be built, they would need the glass bottle of Green Star. The whiskey inside, alas, would have to be drunk or poured away -- a decision that might resolve itself -- as it wasn't flammable like the Eight-Score rum.

Hailing from Shadow Port, D would know that Eight-Score rum was often used as seagull poison and wasn't for drinking unless heavily watered down.

The fire bomb could be built, but who would build it?

Bearkiller's weather-worn features were stony-faced, creasing into a wide smile when something amused him. So he was hard to read. He didn't offer any help with the fire bomb, but that was likely because he didn't understand what a 'fire bomb' was.

For the pale-skinned dark elf, sitting across the fire from Bearkiller again reminded him of the vision he had during the Battle of Heilbutt's Hallow. D had been felled by an orc, his mind adrift until some god or spirit called by Nestaron brought him back from the brink. In that time he saw himself standing in a circle with three others, the Baronessa, a dwarf in a loincloth with a sleeve tattoo, and a mohawked halfling woman with her faced painted black and white.

If the mohawk was some tribal marking, was that facepainted woman from the same tribe as Bearkiller?

Jex

He nodded in understanding as the halfling made sense of the story. But he also understood that while Bearkiller had a good theory about the orange, he did not about the black. The black was something else. It wasn't just dragon filth, as Bearkiller wondered.

"Worse than filth to foul a river."

Seyja


Seyja sat back against the wall of the cave, hugging her knees against her chest and staring off into the distance, a far-off gaze, not focused on anything nearby. She spoke in soft, reminiscent tones.

"Weston, when my people held the winter solstice ritual of the Fire Dancers to celebrate the Great Earth Mother and the return of the sun to her lands, we used fire in a way that... well, it was almost like a bomb."

<Weston>

He nodded. "Yes. Apparently the key is in the choice of container. I witnessed some folks 'unhappy' enough with their lot that they decided to force a confrontation with the authorities on Axis. They used fragile bottles filled with fluids less volatile than this", he said as he pulled the bottle from his pack. "The key seems to be getting a vessel fragile enough to break on impact with the dragon's hide. There is a cloth that is inserted into the opening in the vessel, soaked in the flammable liquor and ignited before the throwing. In that state it is as safe as an oil lamp. When the vessel breaks, the flammables spread and the fire from the cloth will set it all ablaze."