Get Orf Our Land and other stories
by Tolstoy, xxx
5867
On Friars eve a group of adventurers were in a tavern and were
told by a member of the militia to quickly rush to a nearby tavern which was
under attack. Arriving there apparently too late they found the tavern deserted
and were then attacked by strange flaming demonic creatures. After a number of
attacks the party were overcome and 'slain' by the demons. After appearing on
what appeared to be the plain of these demons they ended up in where we now
know to be the Riftworld and there they spoke to the Ice Queen who was with
some of her Lords. It later seems that the Ice Queen is the daughter of Lord
Doomdark who is apparently an embodiment of the Enemy on the Riftworld and
fighting against Prince Luxor, the Moonprince - their equivalent of Dagravane.
The party, it is reported, didn't know this at the time though. They were asked
to help the Queen in return for her help to return home and the party agreed
after a nights stay to think it over. The Queen then asked to be left alone
with one of the members of the party - a demonist - and the rest of the group
returned to their rooms. They rushed out when they heard a scream from their
compatriate to see if she was alright. She was unconscious but unharmed and the
Queen said she could now open a route for the party to return to Tal Anum and
opened a portal through which the group returned.
That night they returned to the tavern and as I hear it not much
happened. Something invisible slept some people and they couldn't be woken up
but I saw one of them at high table 3 days later so I guess they were fine.
Then I was hanging around in tavern the next morning with a
couple of chaps - Jaques de Bois and Lumpy, the rather wonderful half-troll
when a couple of strange people appeared in quick succession. It just turned
out to be Damien DeNielson, demonic weaponsmaster and a Humaktai chap whose
name escapes me at the moment. Then Enuttahl Pahal turned up to and I thought
that was wonderful - enough for a game of six man throw-the-demon - when he
spoilt it all and mentioned that there was some 'weird shit going down' in the
South West of Tal Anum and he's really appreciate it if we could go and check
it out. So we did.
First we met some Gil troops, and after a brief slanging match
they foolishly attacked and were killed. Then we found the (spotted what they
were from a mile off) bandits cunningly attempting that age old trick of
pretending to own a toll gate. Talk talk, King's milita let us past, no we
don't recognise your authority, talk talk, grrrr, hack, slash, scream,
grrrrrrrrrrrrrr, scream, run. The last part being where Lumpy was hit with some
fire and changed into a very large Troll and ate the fire sorcerer. We did the
running part too since Lumpy had passed on some wise advice earlier (with the
help of some creative charades and much grunting and pointing.) If he turned
into a very large thing, we should leave the area faster than fast. So we did.
Eventually Damien realised it could be a good idea to leave Lumpy's plank where
he could find it so he didn't chase us to the other side of Tal Anum and we
could do what we'd been told to.
So, minor inter-party distractions aside we kept on going and
ran into a bunch of flaming demon-like things. Demon-like because they couldn't
quite be handled like normal demons, I could only control one at a time even
though I'm certain I should have been able to handle at least two of their
size. Later one of my Comm demons told me they come from the Demonic paraplane
of fire, or something like that. Anyhow, they threw lots of rather stingy
flaming stuff at us but we were OK in the end. Then we found this chap sitting
on a bridge, in a highly - insanely - spiritual area and he was...he was...no
longer at the full command of his cognitive abilities. He muttered some stuff
about what we think to be the Necropolis - something about this chap collecting
all seven and he'll go for the ladies last so we should give him them all at
once to screw up his counting. Evidently basic maths isn't a prerequisite for
constructing a necropolis - once you get over 2 undead it's just one skeleton,
two skeleton, oh sod it loads of the damned things (and probably a number of
other damned things in the necropolis if you think about it.) At this point
Lumpy was quite concerned - burny things and then talk of undead things do not
a happy half-troll make - he suddenly started chatting away to me, he's a very
friendly and lucid chap when you get to know him, and said that if we met more
burny things he was outta there. Oh, this mad chap said that if we don't stop
the necropolis we're all damned forever, Herne and his wolf will be
slaughtered, terror will cross the land, etc.
Then we met four very annoying knights, from this Rift world it
seems and fighting on the side of this Doomdark fellow, they had trouble
talking to us because we weren't Lords or nobility - they had a big chunk of
snobbishness stuck up their arses - and kept asking who our Lords were. Which
doesn't go well when you're talking to adventurers...or even Evermorians - it's
not like we use much of a Lord system, more like Knights and stuff. Still,
eventually one of them challenged met to a dual for some reason which escapes
me so I calmly pointed out that I don't actually use weapons so I was going to
have to decline. They asked why I didn't use weapons and I told them I had a
pact with my Lord and they actually accepted that and finally went away. Big
bunch of stuck-up bullies that they were. Then we unfortunately met some more
of the fire demons and Lumpy left our company post-haste as he'd said he would.
Eventually we came to the area where the strange happening had been reported
and we saw a large portal through which one of these fire demons came through
about every 10 seconds and every half a minute there was an even bigger one
arriving too which seemed something like a Balrog. There were also some
heraldic banners in the area. Well, this was obviously what we'd been sent to
check out so I grabbed a comms demon and got him to work with a transport demon
to get the information about what we'd seen back to Erythian and Alix and other
heads of the Alliance. Just incase we didn't return home. (I have all the
really pleasant not at all morbid thoughs, I do.)
In the end it wasn't that bad getting home again, we ran into
another bunch of them while heading towards the coastline to work out way
around their encampment and return to the centre of Tal Anum but that was about
it. Another successful foray into the wilds completed with special thanks to
Jaques and Damien and the Humaktai fellow (terribly sorry for forgetting your
name) for keeping me alive. I certainly appreciated the effort.
Then some events happened during that afternoon concerning Gil
and Manticore Talon forces. Lucky for me I wasn't around but the old comms
demons and word of mouth gives me plenty to talk about. Phillip Silveren,
Amoriath Knight fought a duel with the Legate of Wolfsfang to see if he could
take over the position. He won and became the Legate and then received the
dagger of his Duke and also the casket of...Flitch...I think it is and was
greeted by his fellow legates - Sir Peter Villa and Sir Anton de Kumar. Soon
after this when they had just left the area the tavern was attacked by a Chaos
rune priest and two Manicore Talon elite. They killed a large number of the
people in the tavern before being killed in return by the Knights Amoriath,
although not without a highly powered battle. I understand most if not all of
those who were killed in the tavern were resurrected by the Knights. The
Knights were then attacked by some more Gil troops including a Dos Gia and also
reported the location of another Gia and some Gil forces to Sir Alix Winters.
Sir Alix and a small squad including Fergal and Rasputin D'Silva gated in
against the Gil forces and were taxed to the fullest by the Gia but as it's
warp fields dropped Sir Anton de Kumar gated in and decapitated the Gia before
the remaining Ullratha quickly gated out to avoid the warp explosion.
There was then an Alliance War Council meeting chaired by Sir
Alix and attended by a number of representatives of the races and groups of the
Alliance where the topic mostly discussed was the situation me and my fellows
had just investigated - the rapidly increasing force of demons and people from
the Rift world. It was we should find out what was going on there and try to
close the portal to stop more coming through if they weren't peaceful.
So, that had to be done and a group of Sir Robert Smith, Warlord
of VIIth Commando; Jacinth, also of VIIth Commando; James Miles O'Bannon,
Warrior of the King's Militia; Jacques de Bois, Marnish by the Grace of God;
Sir Peter Ravenclaw, Knight of Sevenna, Holy Warrior of the Cult of Humak and
Darkstar, Warrior of Dark Elven things were assembled and given their mission.
To go to the Southwest of Tal Anum, check out the situation and try to close
the portal if need be. Now, I'm not quite sure what happened in all this. They
were gone three days although the portal did close that very evening but it
turns out they had to be on the wrong side of the portal to shut it. So they
had to fight their way through Doomdark's forces on Tal Anum and into the
portal and then met a group called the Council of the Wise who aided them in
closing the portal. The Wise are advisors to some of the Lords of the Rift
world, although I guess none of them were advisors to Doomdark and his group
since otherwise they probably wouldn't have closed his portal. The group then
reported (to High Table, I'm not that clairvoyant - even with demons to assist)
that they ended up meeting with the Moonprince Luxor who offered them rest and
recuperation in his city and they trained there. Also, of great interest, is
that they consider our standard weapons - bronze - to be inferior and unworthy
of a warrior. They seem to have iron and steel weapons in great abundance on
the Rift world and even iron weapons are considered practically worthless. Our
bold group of adventurers, having completed their mission and now trying to
return home were told that they should seek out Lord Gloom and speak to her
Wise, Lorgrim, who may be able to help them return. They eventually reached her
and managed to get Lorgrim to send them home, with requests for information
about our world and the help of some Inner Flames and other healers ringing in
their ears. Robert Smith reported that he didn't trust Lord Gloom and that he
didn't recommend sending aid directly to her but that it should be sent right
to the top - the Moonprice Luxor.
In the course of their travels they unfortunately lost two
people - James Miles O'Bannon died fighting a knight from Doomdark's ranks and
Darkstar was apparently executed for a breach of conduct in the halls of Lord
Gloom. Darkstar's essence was found to have disappeared once they returned to
our world (they had attempted to collect him) but James's body was retrieved
and resurrected with the help of a scroll he had on his person which was read
with the assistance of Cadrik the Bounty Hunter and head of the Order of
Nature.
For the rest of the High Table (which was precicely where the
party had returned to, after their three days in the Rift world) it was mostly
quiet, with reports of the last five days events and pleasant announcements
such as Ken Hom's announcement that his seventh concubine had just had a new
son who he would be calling Robert (which pleased Sir Robert Smith greatly.)
Also Ken had been doing some cooking for Doomdark's camped force to find out
information and there were later reports that a number of the troops were
feeling queasy. This is, of course, pure coincidence. There were two attacks on
the table, one was a visit from a very large one of Doomdark's demons who
firestormed the room and managed to kill Sir Iago, Ullratha Demonist of VIIth
Commando who arose again in his ghost form. The second visit to the table was
from the son of Mikhael Errolfini who had a heated argument with Zanzibar
Lazerquack before placing a blade on the ground and stamping on it. Which
unfortunately released a large warp explosion hurting everyone in the room
quite dramatically. The evening closed with some entertainment from kind
Minstrel Jackson and a tale from Tomakin about a group who met the Sandman and
the elves answering correctly this time. (I'm lost here, answering what
correctly?)
The next morning the three Knights Amoriath - Sir Silveren, Sir
De Kumar and Sir Villa went into action once again and ventured into New
Midigan to rescue some captured souls from the Soulrenders. It's a little hard
to watch what's going on with a comm demon when there are only Amoriath
involved, they're not that easy to pinpoint, but from what I can tell they met
some Soulrenders and also some Inquisition forces and eventually managed to
rescue a number of souls. More than that, I cannot find out.
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