When last we left our heroes… Our adventures began late in the winter of late 456, on Ijanral (a Monday), the 21st of Setelnor, merely a week before the Feast of Orusen marked the New Year and the coming of spring. Our companions and would-be heroes, a rag-tag bunch with their own reasons for coming to the end of the civilized world, had just been inducted as new recruits into the March Wardens—a force dedicated to patrolling and maintaining the safety of the Royal Wood on the edges of Sothbori society. They were at the southernmost of all Sothbori outposts – Varsh-i-yalir (Varsheilir in the local dialect), beneath the southern edge of the Hurar river, on a narrow strip of forest between the Darak Mountains and the Amborian Sea.
As we began, the companions were being reamed by their new commanding officer, Sergeant Gerinas, a grizzled old veteran who was not happy with the band of mostly raw youths and women with which he’d been saddled. Looking around at them, it was no wonder. Most of them weren’t, from the looks of it, promising warriors. The obvious exceptions to this were Shadlaharl, the burly middle-aged veteran from the Weixranbo, and Karalin, the statuesque amazon from the Leopard Isles. For their first mission together, they were tasked with what Sgt. Gerinas called “a job simple enough that even a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears boys and girls can handle it.” Priestess Falaru, the Well Priestess at the nearby village of Mjathkor, had requested help locating a missing “package,” something she had expected to have arrived from Sencankarr by now. Sergeant Garinas couldn’t tell the companions more about it (there was apparently some secrecy surrounding the matter), but the companions decided they would head north to search along the road, first taking some time to stop by Mjathkor and see what else the Priestess might be able to tell them.
They began their journey through the dense forest of sand and pines, an ethereal hush falling around them. It was the evening of the second day of their journey (with another half-day or so left) when the silence of their surroundings was broken by the yips and howls of creatures which Vasiral, a bright-eyed youth from Carucankarr, managed to identify as Maned Wolves (one of the predominant apex predators in the region). It soon became clear that the pack was moving in, so the companions stopped and made the beginnings of a bonfire—just in time, as it happens, as ten maned wolves leaped through the trees, snarling and biting.
The subsequent combat was brief, though violent. Varjalis, a mysterious northwoman with the usual gift of her people for the bow, dropped several of the beasts with long shafts from her bow as the clearing was a blur of sparks, fur, blood, and teeth. Shadlaharl and Hasanya (a sword-maiden of the Red Isle) held the center of the battlefield with their great Red Fang Longswords while Vasiral leaped between the jaws of two of the great beasts, for the most part too agile for them to do him any harm. Karalin cut a few of them down, while Kanuvarja, a young woman also from the Leopard Isles, managed to hold her own beside Hasanya and Vasiral. In the end, Varjalis’ shafts dropped a wolf while Shadlaharl summarily executed another, and the remaining two broke and fled. Breathless, and with the sun now setting in the west, the companions find themselves master of the little battlefield beneath the trees. The ground around them is spattered in blood and torn fur, littered with the corpses of eight of the great wolves. Kanuvarja and Vasiral are in need of medical treatment, having been hobbled slightly by the jaws of the beasts.
Monsters killed:
- 8 Maned wolves
Monsters routed:
- 2 Maned Wolves
No comments:
Post a Comment