Post by Dead Greyhawk on Jan 21, 2007 21:48:17 GMT -5
Naboth and Gitmo had always been an odd set of brothers. Half elf and human, explaining how they were related to one another was both a challenge, and somewhat embarrassing all around. Naboth had coped with this by learning to blend into a crowd, so that people never noticed him enough to ask difficult questions. Gitmo, on the other hand, had grown belligerent, preferring to knock on their behind those who questioned him. They had just begun to truly get into trouble when the troubles started in Sterich.
It all started as news of orcs out of the mountains to the west. Gitmo and Naboth, never having seen an orc in their collective lives, assumed that these were just tall tales told to scare the uninitiated and foolish. But, more and more people traveled through the lands around the family farm, fleeing eastward, and stopping in the village only to tell of foul beasts burning the land. When the armored men rode in from the east, claiming to save them all from the humanoids, they were seen as protectors.
The Kraken, the mercenaries claiming to “protect” this part of Sterich, turned out to be debauched cowards. Quick to retreat to the center of the village, paw at the local women, and drink themselves insensate every other day, the Kraken were no protection when the orcs actually did arrive, backed by boulder throwing giants. Naboth and Gitmo were separated from their brethren in the chaos and flight. Losing the family farm, kept in their family for generations, and their family, it seemed like this would be the worst night of their lives, but they were wrong.
The trek east to some succor was hard and brutal. Lacking food and having fled the boulders and torches with only the clothes on their backs, they suffered horrible privation. Even within the capitol of Sterich, Istivin, little was done to ease their suffering. The Earl’s leadership was missing and while they tarried in the city, rumors of a great black orb smothering the Earl in his bed ran rife. News that food and shelter might be had in Keoland, where no raiders were found, spurred them on to the east. Turned out of the capitol city with no food, friends, and family, it seemed like it would be the worst night of their lives, but they were wrong.
The walk to the east along the King’s Road connecting Istivin and Niole Dra was an agony. The sick and lame dotted the sides of the road, unable to continue their trip. As Gitmo and Naboth struggled to the border, their hopes were dashed. A vast sea of humanity had washed up on the shores of the Javan River. The river crossing was intact, but heavily armed and armored men blocked egress from Sterich and entry to Keoland. Seeing safety and salvation a mere river’s width away, it seemed like it would be the worst night of their lives, but they were wrong.
The days and weeks in the refugee camps were mind-numbing, but better than the days of starvation leading up to them. The Keoish sent dry goods over the river to ameliorate the suffering of the refugees, and news sometimes came to Gitmo and Naboth about victories over the giants and orcs to the west. Gitmo suggested once to Naboth that perhaps Sterich would soon be free and they’d be able to go home. Naboth’s skewered him with an eye, asking if things were going so well, why were there more refugees every day?
Indeed the number of refugees with them in the camps swelled and swelled. Acts of unspeakable cruelty were perpetrated on each other. The strong preyed on the weak. The weak starved. The honest were mocked. Hope slowly died. To survive, Naboth learned how to acquire food for himself and his brother, and even went so far as to teach his brother how to scavenge quietly and secretly, to assure them of full bellies at night. Gitmo tried to teach Naboth how to fight, but even though Naboth’s human frame was bigger, stronger, and faster than Gitmo’s, he seemed to lack a certain ruthlessness. Naboth would always be a lover, not a fighter.
Finally, men wearing the red and black lion of the Earl and the black lion of King rode through the camp, collecting those fit enough to wield weapons, drilling them as a militia, and arming them. The time to take back Sterich had come, and Gitmo and Naboth were to be part of the solution, not the problem. The refugees drilled and drilled and drilled, broken into companies, squads, and units. After almost a month of drilling, they marched west under the command of Keoish regulars.
The Keoish regulars were professional warriors, leading their men well, choosing the best terrain for battle. Slowly, the Keoish forces and the Sterich militia rolled back the advances of the orcs and humanoids. The land was ravaged though, with armies of humanoids burning and plundering across the countryside, few redoubts manned by the forces of the Earl remaining. The countryside was blanketed by corpses, demi-human, human, and humanoid, as the armies clashed, retreated, and advanced.
Gitmo and Naboth survived the battles, slowly gaining confidence and strength as the army pushed westward. In the vanguard of the assault, almost in sight of their old farmland, they saw the Crystalmists rising up ahead of them. Things seemed to be looking up, hope, a difficult flame to quench, kindled anew. It would seem like their lives had turned a corner, but they would be wrong.
That night, the dead rose from the ground. Surrounded on all sides by those who had fallen in the days before, the militia was beset by their own dead. The militia fought as well as they could, but it was a rout. How can one fight against the living dead? The bludgeoning fists of the zombies and the cackles of the skeletons were offset by the more fearsome sounds of the ghouls and wights, slobbering over their screaming, downed prey. As their squad was pulled down around them and the nerve of their sergeant broke, it seemed like it would be the worst night of their lives, but they were wrong.
Gitmo and Naboth fled, not back across the length of Sterich towards Keoland, but further into the arms of the Crystalmists. If the living dead, giants, and humanoid raiders all came out of the mountains, it seemed unlikely that they would expect the tattered remnants of the Sterich militia to actually flee towards them. Their crazed notion seemed reasonable enough, as nothing and no one bothered them for the first days of their hike. Each time they turned north or south to begin to wend their way out of the mountains, they saw laid out in the valleys below them a never-ending stream of skeletons and shambling zombies. It was as if every dead creature in the mountains had taken foot, all to slay the living in the plains below.
As food became scarce, their hunger overcame their fear. They trekked on into the foothills, trying to find a root cellar or an abandoned farmstead still stocked with preserves. Instead, they found a roving band of undead, led by a foul wight. Only by running and climbing up routes not easily traversed by the mindless undead did they gain any distance on them. Unfortunately, the wight forced the undead on, in an undying chase after the two of them. For six days and nights, the two of them kept ahead of the undead, running during the day, only to see the undead close the gap during the night. Increasingly tired and gnawed at by hunger, they saw, deep in the mountains before them, a great plume of smoke.
A morning’s worth of hiking led them to a long canyon, one wall covered in scree, with a large cave mouth protruding out of the opposite wall. A large bonfire burns before the cave mouth, and a dwarf and a human drag out corpses and pitch them into the bonfire. Naboth turns to Gitmo, discreetly avoiding notice of the drool flowing out of the corned of his mouth, and shrugs. “Do we have any better options?” he asks. Seeing none, they descend into the canyon, hands kept away from their weapons.
“Far enough,” says a voice behind them and to the right. Out of nowhere, or perhaps a small hollow in the rock, comes a fearsome looking man, scarred of face and wearing battered green platemail. “Welcome to the Company of the Blue Sun. What brings you to this part of the mountains?” he casually asks, pointing a long bastard sword at them.
Naboth nudges Gitmo. “You’ve got the honest face, you talk first,” he whispers. Gitmo stumbles forward, hitching at his belt and takes a deep breath.
“I’m Gitmo. This is my brother, Naboth. We’re thieves!” blurts out Gitmo, as Naboth strikes the palm of his hand against his forehead. “We’re the last of our squadron, and they are following behind us, ready to eat us!”
The confused speech does little to assuage the Company’s fears, as these two strangers plod in among them. If anything, the declaration of their avowed profession certainly raises eyebrows and causes piercing glares and a certain amount of stroking of weapons. The horrors of the past weeks are eventually communicated to the Company, complete with the near presence of some sort of undead horde, led by a wight or some such. Under Oaklock and Diego’s watchful eyes, the two militiamen are given food and drink to sustain themselves. They don’t look like much, clad in ringmail and carrying standard-issue shortswords, but each has a shortbow and might be able to haul things. Since one is a half-elf and the other a human, asking them about their family might be a little tricky.
Cedrus quickly sketches out a map, lining up the surrounding area with the sun and drawing as much detail as possible. Then, as he did in the Hool Marshes, he begins praying to his goddess, searching out the greatest concentration of undead, the greatest threat to the Company. By praying and drawing on the map, he is able to, with some effort, identify the approach of some undead force of power, though it likely will not arrive immediately, as it travels slowly.
The clerics take up position near the front of the canyon, preferring to await the arrival of the undead from a comfortable position. The rest of the Company continues to clean camp, stripping the bodies of coin, throwing useful items into a pile, and then pitching the orc and human corpses onto the bonfires. “They don’t come back from that,” Raven reassures Gitmo and Naboth, as the corpses sizzle and hiss.
After several hours of work, as the sun sets, the clerics rise to their feet. A band of undead, mostly skeletons and zombies clad in the ringmail of the Sterich militia, bracketed by a pack of ghouls, has crested the mouth of the canyon. The clerics spread apart slightly and watch the undead approach, the warriors of the Company forming a skirmish line. Trailing behind the undead is a wavering figure, floating in the air, darkening as the light dims. It seems to suck light into it as it floats behind the other undead. Winthrop takes to the air in preparation for the unholy wraith.
The undead slogs forward, the ghouls mixing among the skeletons and zombies, and the wraith leading from the rear. Its efforts at coordinating the attack are for naught as the combined might of the three priests is brought to bear against the approaching forces. First the skeletons and then the zombies, crumble to dust as the priests bid them to return to their eternal rest. The ghouls make it in through the skirmish line, paralyzing Al, Raven, and Adrienne, but Hugh’s prayer to Trithereon frees them all from the unholy paralytic touch.
“Shoot one of the ghouls,” Naboth urges Gitmo. “You need to show that we can haul our weight.” Naboth himself runs over to the canyon wall and tries to get an angle on the ghouls himself. Oaklock yells at the two of them to get out of the way as they pass in front of him. The ghouls are no match for the focused might of the Company, and they are quickly slain.
Only the wraith, who perhaps at this late moment realizes that the Company is much more powerful than a band of scattered militiamen, has the mind to turn to flee. It is cut down by Winthrop, who sends an arc of lightning through its form. In turn, a shadowy figure gestures at Winthrop, and he falls from the air, landing heavily on the ground.
Gitmo and Naboth sit amazed, in shock at the ease with which the Company destroyed the foes that have haunted them for days. Their amazement is quickly broken as Dell pokes them. “Haul the undead into the fires. Don’t want them coming back,” he says. Oaklock and Dell search the wraith as the two militiamen drag the undead corpses to the fires.
All of the undead seem relatively fresh, the ghouls apparently a new pack, and the zombies recent animations. Gitmo, noticing a sergeant he particularly disliked, gets in a couple of good kicks to his zombified head. The mages discover a thin silver chain wrapped around the middle of the wraith, where a waist would be, on which a small charm hangs. The charm, an upside-down ziggurat made of silver, slowly swings as if to an unseen wind. Adrienne, turning her second sight onto the charm, agrees that it is somewhat enchanted, but certainly evil in nature. Great care should be taken with it.
Once Winthrop is able to move again, he again takes flight. Hugh tosses a small onyx figurine that swells to a large dog onto the ground. “Yes, master?” the dog says in a fairly understandable tongue. Gitmo and Naboth goggle.
“Fido, a man escaped from here. He led the undead. Find his scent and lead us after him,” commands Hugh. The dog snuffles about on the ground for a few minutes and then runs out of camp. Hugh, Jasper, and Winthrop follow the dog as closely as they can. Hugh, clad in Al’s old chainmail vest, slowly falls behind, but Winthrop changes form into a small bat, able to soar ahead in the dark.
The dog tracks the man up into a box canyon, pointing towards the end of the canyon. “His scent goes down there, to the rocks,” says Fido. Winthrop flits down to the rocks and finds the man’s armor creatively wedged between two rocks, as if he was hiding. From a distance, in the near dark, it would have likely fooled the unwary. Instead, Winthrop flits up the canyon walls, finding the man, clad only in clothing, laboriously climbing the rear wall of the box canyon.
Changing his form into that of a gargoyle, Winthrop lifts up behind the man. With a short gesture and a few grated words, magical bolts leap from Winthrop to the climbing man, striking him full on. The man screams, loses his grip, and plummets to the canyon floor below, bouncing once, and is broken. By the time the others arrive, the man is quite dead. The man’s armor seems unimpressive, but does contain a engraved inverted ziggurat on its breastplate. Lopping off the dead man’s head, they carry that and his material goods back to the Company.
Seeing no further threat from the slain undead, the Company begins to make camp in the orc caves once again. Gitmo and Naboth are given leave to roam the place, and Dell escorts them over to the pile of mundane equipment held by the humans and the orcs before they met the Company. “We’ll pitch these in the fire in the morning, to make sure they aren’t used against us again. Feel free to restock what you need from this pile. I’d recommend finding some better armor at least,” Dell sniffs. “Since you are ‘thieves’ by trade, a few words of wisdom. If you touch anything the warriors own, you’ll die horribly. If you touch anything one of the mages owns, you’ll die horribly and slowly. If you touch anything the priests own, you’ll die horribly, slowly, and eternally. If you need to take something because of some preternatural urge that you can only barely control, do it before the Company decides to keep it, or we’ll be forced to kill you. Do I need to say this again more slowly, or did you get it the first time around?” Naboth winces at the lecture, stepping on his brother’s foot and making obsequious sounds.
When Dell wanders off, Naboth glares at his brother. “We’re thieves!” he apes, “Couldn’t you have said anything better than that?” Gitmo blushes, somewhat ashamed at his momentary lapse. “You able to nick anything yet? I’ve got a handful of coppers. They toss them on the ground, so I don’t think they mind.”
Gitmo frowns at Naboth. “Are you trying to get us killed? Didn’t you just hear what that man said?” Naboth rolls his eyes and drags Gitmo off into the caves, looking for more to scavenge.
In the morning, Otto, Hugh, and Dell have a quiet conversation over by the mouth of the cave, where Winthrop is rolling up the banners and storing them in his magical chest. After a few minutes, Hugh hand Otto a small object, and Otto runs off. “Otto’s going to find Pfiffwin. I said he should just let him go, but Otto claims that the gnome’s his charge or some fool thing like that,” claims Dell. “He’ll catch up with us if we have to move on.”
One of the archers, Raven, comes up to the two of them, carrying a mass of furs, straps, and metal. “We’re going further into the mountains, up onto a glacier, where we’re going to kill a lot of things. Painfully, brutally. If you want to come, we’ll feed you, and you’ll get some things of value when we make it back to civilization. You’ll have to haul things and do what we stay. Steal from us, and we’ll kill you, at least horribly. If you want to travel your own way, no hard feelings.”
Naboth and Gitmo look at each other. The decision isn’t even hard. “You’ll feed us, right?” asks Gitmo. Raven nods. “We’re in. What heavy objects do you want us to carry.”
“Heavy objects, my job,” grunts a tall thin man with a pair of axes slung across his back, the monk Jasper. “You haul lighter things.”
Oaklock, now wearing the assassin’s splint mail, tosses his chainmail at the two militiamen. “Choose who wears this. It is enchanted in the weakest of ways, but is still better than that orcish dreck you wear. When you leave me, you can give it back, should I need it then.” Gitmo and Naboth look at each other in surprise. Enchanted armor! Never did they imagine that they would find enchanted armor, never mind someone simply giving it to them to wear while hauling slops! Gitmo and Naboth quickly play rock, paper, scissors, and Gitmo dons the light armor.
The Company, now augmented, hikes up past the hippogriff pen and out the far side of the canyon. A long track, not much wider than the two wagon wheel ruts, leads up into the mountains. The Company, bearing mountaineering gear, either purchased from the dwarves or scavenged and cleaned from the camp, hikes up the track for days.
The weather, as the Company ascends, becomes more brutal. First, it becomes wetter, with mists and rains common. Then, it gets cold. The rain turns to snow. The wetness on their equipment becomes ice and frost. No one is comfortable hiking up towards the glacier. No alpine valley is this.
Jasper, scouting ahead, hurries back to the others on the fourth day. The Company has made good time, and Jasper can see the looming whiteness of the glacier ahead. Rather than just walk up to the glacier, the Company slowly creeps forward, using Dell and Winthrop’s spyglasses to scope out the situation on the edge of the glacier.
A large ramp of snow rises up from the floor of the canyon they walk on. Curving and reasonably sloped, it appears to provide the necessary access to the glacier surface. The ramp is vast, hundreds of feet across, and the front of the glacier looms over the canyon below. Atop the glacier stir figures, strange and ephemeral in the distance, glare, and snow. Eight giant deer with long shining antlers paw at the edge of the glacier while thin, elfin humanoids, taller than normal, unhitch large sleds from them. The sleds are impressive in their scale and proportion, easily able to load tens of hundreds of pounds upon them and distribute their weight across the icy surface.
The elfin humanoids leave the sleds at the edge of the glacier, almost at the edge of the ramp itself, and then mount the great deer. With little delay, the great deer begin to run to the north east, quickly leaving the Company’s limited view.
Winthrop gathers everyone close, hands out a thin rope for everyone to grasp, and then enchants the Company to invisibility. “Don’t hit anyone,” he warns Gitmo and Naboth. The Company, guided by the thin rope, hikes up the ramp, large footprints and depressions appearing as they wade through its softer parts. The top of the glacier provides much better footing, even though the ice is covered by a good foot of windblown snow.
Visibility on the glacier is odd. The giant deer, running quickly away from the ramp, are still easily visible across the flat surface of the glacier, but as the wind blows and snow is stirred up, visibility drops to almost nothing, creating a claustrophobic whiteness surrounding the Company. It is best that they came up to the glacier invisibly, as if they can see the giant deer, the giant deer’s riders would likely be able to see them.
The sleds have left great creases in the packed snow on top of the glacier. The giant deer have dragged the sleds from the west-northwest, traveling in almost a straight line, coming out and along one face of the glacier. Seeing nothing else of note at the moment, the Company descends to discuss their options.
They argue about how to interpret what they’ve seen and deduced from other material. In the end, the consensus seems to be that the humans in the hippogriff camp dragged armor and materials to the glacier here. They were either left or loaded onto the sleds. The elfin humanoids, likely the snow fairies, take the sleds somewhere to the west-northwest, but that area is not their home. Pushing on after the snow fairies or following the sled tracks into the glacier seem to be the options facing them. Deciding the snow fairies are not their primary concern, but creatures that can wear ogre-sized armor are, they opt to follow the sled tracks in the morning.
During the night, Otto finally returns in the company of a gnome, trussed and hanging upside down from a long pole. Pfiffwin, when untied and restored to consciousness, is introduced to Gitmo and Naboth, laughing bleakly when he hears of their profession. Gitmo and Naboth catch Pfiffwin glaring daggers at them while the Company packs up camp. Perhaps they have unknowingly made an enemy with their declaration.
The arrival of Otto reassures the others. An immortal, giant-killing warrior certainly tips the scale in favor of tackling the wearers of the ogre armor. Otto looks at the tracks up on the glacier and points out some things to the others. First, the tracks will easily be removed by wind and snowfall. Second, and more important, the sled tracks will leave an impression in the glacier itself, from the wearing of the ice, and so the Company should be able to follow the sleds’ path regardless of the current tracks.
The Company bundles up and prepares to go up on the glacier when Naboth pipes up. “How are we going to stay warm up there?” The others look at him quizzically. “I mean, we have these clothes and all, but how are we going to stay warm. Nothing to burn on the glacier, right?” The warriors glare at the spellcasters as they huddle together. The priests have the ability to endure the cold of the glacier, but not for days on end.
“Be right back,” says Winthrop. He hauls himself up on the glacier and casts a major summoning, causing a small house to appear on the glacier. Winthrop goes inside and then quickly returns. The house disappears, and he slides back down to the Company. “Go collect some wood,” growls Winthrop. “The house doesn’t burn easily.”
The Company heads up and down the canyon behind them, collecting brush, wood, and bundles of what grasses are there. The wood is not perfect for burning, but is certainly better than nothing. After several hours of foraging, they have enough combustibles to feel confident that they won’t freeze on the glacier. Naboth leans over to Gitmo and whispers, “See, they’ll think we’re worth something now.” For some strange reason, Dell, who sits on the far side of the camp, issues a snorting cough.
It all started as news of orcs out of the mountains to the west. Gitmo and Naboth, never having seen an orc in their collective lives, assumed that these were just tall tales told to scare the uninitiated and foolish. But, more and more people traveled through the lands around the family farm, fleeing eastward, and stopping in the village only to tell of foul beasts burning the land. When the armored men rode in from the east, claiming to save them all from the humanoids, they were seen as protectors.
The Kraken, the mercenaries claiming to “protect” this part of Sterich, turned out to be debauched cowards. Quick to retreat to the center of the village, paw at the local women, and drink themselves insensate every other day, the Kraken were no protection when the orcs actually did arrive, backed by boulder throwing giants. Naboth and Gitmo were separated from their brethren in the chaos and flight. Losing the family farm, kept in their family for generations, and their family, it seemed like this would be the worst night of their lives, but they were wrong.
The trek east to some succor was hard and brutal. Lacking food and having fled the boulders and torches with only the clothes on their backs, they suffered horrible privation. Even within the capitol of Sterich, Istivin, little was done to ease their suffering. The Earl’s leadership was missing and while they tarried in the city, rumors of a great black orb smothering the Earl in his bed ran rife. News that food and shelter might be had in Keoland, where no raiders were found, spurred them on to the east. Turned out of the capitol city with no food, friends, and family, it seemed like it would be the worst night of their lives, but they were wrong.
The walk to the east along the King’s Road connecting Istivin and Niole Dra was an agony. The sick and lame dotted the sides of the road, unable to continue their trip. As Gitmo and Naboth struggled to the border, their hopes were dashed. A vast sea of humanity had washed up on the shores of the Javan River. The river crossing was intact, but heavily armed and armored men blocked egress from Sterich and entry to Keoland. Seeing safety and salvation a mere river’s width away, it seemed like it would be the worst night of their lives, but they were wrong.
The days and weeks in the refugee camps were mind-numbing, but better than the days of starvation leading up to them. The Keoish sent dry goods over the river to ameliorate the suffering of the refugees, and news sometimes came to Gitmo and Naboth about victories over the giants and orcs to the west. Gitmo suggested once to Naboth that perhaps Sterich would soon be free and they’d be able to go home. Naboth’s skewered him with an eye, asking if things were going so well, why were there more refugees every day?
Indeed the number of refugees with them in the camps swelled and swelled. Acts of unspeakable cruelty were perpetrated on each other. The strong preyed on the weak. The weak starved. The honest were mocked. Hope slowly died. To survive, Naboth learned how to acquire food for himself and his brother, and even went so far as to teach his brother how to scavenge quietly and secretly, to assure them of full bellies at night. Gitmo tried to teach Naboth how to fight, but even though Naboth’s human frame was bigger, stronger, and faster than Gitmo’s, he seemed to lack a certain ruthlessness. Naboth would always be a lover, not a fighter.
Finally, men wearing the red and black lion of the Earl and the black lion of King rode through the camp, collecting those fit enough to wield weapons, drilling them as a militia, and arming them. The time to take back Sterich had come, and Gitmo and Naboth were to be part of the solution, not the problem. The refugees drilled and drilled and drilled, broken into companies, squads, and units. After almost a month of drilling, they marched west under the command of Keoish regulars.
The Keoish regulars were professional warriors, leading their men well, choosing the best terrain for battle. Slowly, the Keoish forces and the Sterich militia rolled back the advances of the orcs and humanoids. The land was ravaged though, with armies of humanoids burning and plundering across the countryside, few redoubts manned by the forces of the Earl remaining. The countryside was blanketed by corpses, demi-human, human, and humanoid, as the armies clashed, retreated, and advanced.
Gitmo and Naboth survived the battles, slowly gaining confidence and strength as the army pushed westward. In the vanguard of the assault, almost in sight of their old farmland, they saw the Crystalmists rising up ahead of them. Things seemed to be looking up, hope, a difficult flame to quench, kindled anew. It would seem like their lives had turned a corner, but they would be wrong.
That night, the dead rose from the ground. Surrounded on all sides by those who had fallen in the days before, the militia was beset by their own dead. The militia fought as well as they could, but it was a rout. How can one fight against the living dead? The bludgeoning fists of the zombies and the cackles of the skeletons were offset by the more fearsome sounds of the ghouls and wights, slobbering over their screaming, downed prey. As their squad was pulled down around them and the nerve of their sergeant broke, it seemed like it would be the worst night of their lives, but they were wrong.
Gitmo and Naboth fled, not back across the length of Sterich towards Keoland, but further into the arms of the Crystalmists. If the living dead, giants, and humanoid raiders all came out of the mountains, it seemed unlikely that they would expect the tattered remnants of the Sterich militia to actually flee towards them. Their crazed notion seemed reasonable enough, as nothing and no one bothered them for the first days of their hike. Each time they turned north or south to begin to wend their way out of the mountains, they saw laid out in the valleys below them a never-ending stream of skeletons and shambling zombies. It was as if every dead creature in the mountains had taken foot, all to slay the living in the plains below.
As food became scarce, their hunger overcame their fear. They trekked on into the foothills, trying to find a root cellar or an abandoned farmstead still stocked with preserves. Instead, they found a roving band of undead, led by a foul wight. Only by running and climbing up routes not easily traversed by the mindless undead did they gain any distance on them. Unfortunately, the wight forced the undead on, in an undying chase after the two of them. For six days and nights, the two of them kept ahead of the undead, running during the day, only to see the undead close the gap during the night. Increasingly tired and gnawed at by hunger, they saw, deep in the mountains before them, a great plume of smoke.
A morning’s worth of hiking led them to a long canyon, one wall covered in scree, with a large cave mouth protruding out of the opposite wall. A large bonfire burns before the cave mouth, and a dwarf and a human drag out corpses and pitch them into the bonfire. Naboth turns to Gitmo, discreetly avoiding notice of the drool flowing out of the corned of his mouth, and shrugs. “Do we have any better options?” he asks. Seeing none, they descend into the canyon, hands kept away from their weapons.
“Far enough,” says a voice behind them and to the right. Out of nowhere, or perhaps a small hollow in the rock, comes a fearsome looking man, scarred of face and wearing battered green platemail. “Welcome to the Company of the Blue Sun. What brings you to this part of the mountains?” he casually asks, pointing a long bastard sword at them.
Naboth nudges Gitmo. “You’ve got the honest face, you talk first,” he whispers. Gitmo stumbles forward, hitching at his belt and takes a deep breath.
“I’m Gitmo. This is my brother, Naboth. We’re thieves!” blurts out Gitmo, as Naboth strikes the palm of his hand against his forehead. “We’re the last of our squadron, and they are following behind us, ready to eat us!”
The confused speech does little to assuage the Company’s fears, as these two strangers plod in among them. If anything, the declaration of their avowed profession certainly raises eyebrows and causes piercing glares and a certain amount of stroking of weapons. The horrors of the past weeks are eventually communicated to the Company, complete with the near presence of some sort of undead horde, led by a wight or some such. Under Oaklock and Diego’s watchful eyes, the two militiamen are given food and drink to sustain themselves. They don’t look like much, clad in ringmail and carrying standard-issue shortswords, but each has a shortbow and might be able to haul things. Since one is a half-elf and the other a human, asking them about their family might be a little tricky.
Cedrus quickly sketches out a map, lining up the surrounding area with the sun and drawing as much detail as possible. Then, as he did in the Hool Marshes, he begins praying to his goddess, searching out the greatest concentration of undead, the greatest threat to the Company. By praying and drawing on the map, he is able to, with some effort, identify the approach of some undead force of power, though it likely will not arrive immediately, as it travels slowly.
The clerics take up position near the front of the canyon, preferring to await the arrival of the undead from a comfortable position. The rest of the Company continues to clean camp, stripping the bodies of coin, throwing useful items into a pile, and then pitching the orc and human corpses onto the bonfires. “They don’t come back from that,” Raven reassures Gitmo and Naboth, as the corpses sizzle and hiss.
After several hours of work, as the sun sets, the clerics rise to their feet. A band of undead, mostly skeletons and zombies clad in the ringmail of the Sterich militia, bracketed by a pack of ghouls, has crested the mouth of the canyon. The clerics spread apart slightly and watch the undead approach, the warriors of the Company forming a skirmish line. Trailing behind the undead is a wavering figure, floating in the air, darkening as the light dims. It seems to suck light into it as it floats behind the other undead. Winthrop takes to the air in preparation for the unholy wraith.
The undead slogs forward, the ghouls mixing among the skeletons and zombies, and the wraith leading from the rear. Its efforts at coordinating the attack are for naught as the combined might of the three priests is brought to bear against the approaching forces. First the skeletons and then the zombies, crumble to dust as the priests bid them to return to their eternal rest. The ghouls make it in through the skirmish line, paralyzing Al, Raven, and Adrienne, but Hugh’s prayer to Trithereon frees them all from the unholy paralytic touch.
“Shoot one of the ghouls,” Naboth urges Gitmo. “You need to show that we can haul our weight.” Naboth himself runs over to the canyon wall and tries to get an angle on the ghouls himself. Oaklock yells at the two of them to get out of the way as they pass in front of him. The ghouls are no match for the focused might of the Company, and they are quickly slain.
Only the wraith, who perhaps at this late moment realizes that the Company is much more powerful than a band of scattered militiamen, has the mind to turn to flee. It is cut down by Winthrop, who sends an arc of lightning through its form. In turn, a shadowy figure gestures at Winthrop, and he falls from the air, landing heavily on the ground.
Gitmo and Naboth sit amazed, in shock at the ease with which the Company destroyed the foes that have haunted them for days. Their amazement is quickly broken as Dell pokes them. “Haul the undead into the fires. Don’t want them coming back,” he says. Oaklock and Dell search the wraith as the two militiamen drag the undead corpses to the fires.
All of the undead seem relatively fresh, the ghouls apparently a new pack, and the zombies recent animations. Gitmo, noticing a sergeant he particularly disliked, gets in a couple of good kicks to his zombified head. The mages discover a thin silver chain wrapped around the middle of the wraith, where a waist would be, on which a small charm hangs. The charm, an upside-down ziggurat made of silver, slowly swings as if to an unseen wind. Adrienne, turning her second sight onto the charm, agrees that it is somewhat enchanted, but certainly evil in nature. Great care should be taken with it.
Once Winthrop is able to move again, he again takes flight. Hugh tosses a small onyx figurine that swells to a large dog onto the ground. “Yes, master?” the dog says in a fairly understandable tongue. Gitmo and Naboth goggle.
“Fido, a man escaped from here. He led the undead. Find his scent and lead us after him,” commands Hugh. The dog snuffles about on the ground for a few minutes and then runs out of camp. Hugh, Jasper, and Winthrop follow the dog as closely as they can. Hugh, clad in Al’s old chainmail vest, slowly falls behind, but Winthrop changes form into a small bat, able to soar ahead in the dark.
The dog tracks the man up into a box canyon, pointing towards the end of the canyon. “His scent goes down there, to the rocks,” says Fido. Winthrop flits down to the rocks and finds the man’s armor creatively wedged between two rocks, as if he was hiding. From a distance, in the near dark, it would have likely fooled the unwary. Instead, Winthrop flits up the canyon walls, finding the man, clad only in clothing, laboriously climbing the rear wall of the box canyon.
Changing his form into that of a gargoyle, Winthrop lifts up behind the man. With a short gesture and a few grated words, magical bolts leap from Winthrop to the climbing man, striking him full on. The man screams, loses his grip, and plummets to the canyon floor below, bouncing once, and is broken. By the time the others arrive, the man is quite dead. The man’s armor seems unimpressive, but does contain a engraved inverted ziggurat on its breastplate. Lopping off the dead man’s head, they carry that and his material goods back to the Company.
Seeing no further threat from the slain undead, the Company begins to make camp in the orc caves once again. Gitmo and Naboth are given leave to roam the place, and Dell escorts them over to the pile of mundane equipment held by the humans and the orcs before they met the Company. “We’ll pitch these in the fire in the morning, to make sure they aren’t used against us again. Feel free to restock what you need from this pile. I’d recommend finding some better armor at least,” Dell sniffs. “Since you are ‘thieves’ by trade, a few words of wisdom. If you touch anything the warriors own, you’ll die horribly. If you touch anything one of the mages owns, you’ll die horribly and slowly. If you touch anything the priests own, you’ll die horribly, slowly, and eternally. If you need to take something because of some preternatural urge that you can only barely control, do it before the Company decides to keep it, or we’ll be forced to kill you. Do I need to say this again more slowly, or did you get it the first time around?” Naboth winces at the lecture, stepping on his brother’s foot and making obsequious sounds.
When Dell wanders off, Naboth glares at his brother. “We’re thieves!” he apes, “Couldn’t you have said anything better than that?” Gitmo blushes, somewhat ashamed at his momentary lapse. “You able to nick anything yet? I’ve got a handful of coppers. They toss them on the ground, so I don’t think they mind.”
Gitmo frowns at Naboth. “Are you trying to get us killed? Didn’t you just hear what that man said?” Naboth rolls his eyes and drags Gitmo off into the caves, looking for more to scavenge.
In the morning, Otto, Hugh, and Dell have a quiet conversation over by the mouth of the cave, where Winthrop is rolling up the banners and storing them in his magical chest. After a few minutes, Hugh hand Otto a small object, and Otto runs off. “Otto’s going to find Pfiffwin. I said he should just let him go, but Otto claims that the gnome’s his charge or some fool thing like that,” claims Dell. “He’ll catch up with us if we have to move on.”
One of the archers, Raven, comes up to the two of them, carrying a mass of furs, straps, and metal. “We’re going further into the mountains, up onto a glacier, where we’re going to kill a lot of things. Painfully, brutally. If you want to come, we’ll feed you, and you’ll get some things of value when we make it back to civilization. You’ll have to haul things and do what we stay. Steal from us, and we’ll kill you, at least horribly. If you want to travel your own way, no hard feelings.”
Naboth and Gitmo look at each other. The decision isn’t even hard. “You’ll feed us, right?” asks Gitmo. Raven nods. “We’re in. What heavy objects do you want us to carry.”
“Heavy objects, my job,” grunts a tall thin man with a pair of axes slung across his back, the monk Jasper. “You haul lighter things.”
Oaklock, now wearing the assassin’s splint mail, tosses his chainmail at the two militiamen. “Choose who wears this. It is enchanted in the weakest of ways, but is still better than that orcish dreck you wear. When you leave me, you can give it back, should I need it then.” Gitmo and Naboth look at each other in surprise. Enchanted armor! Never did they imagine that they would find enchanted armor, never mind someone simply giving it to them to wear while hauling slops! Gitmo and Naboth quickly play rock, paper, scissors, and Gitmo dons the light armor.
The Company, now augmented, hikes up past the hippogriff pen and out the far side of the canyon. A long track, not much wider than the two wagon wheel ruts, leads up into the mountains. The Company, bearing mountaineering gear, either purchased from the dwarves or scavenged and cleaned from the camp, hikes up the track for days.
The weather, as the Company ascends, becomes more brutal. First, it becomes wetter, with mists and rains common. Then, it gets cold. The rain turns to snow. The wetness on their equipment becomes ice and frost. No one is comfortable hiking up towards the glacier. No alpine valley is this.
Jasper, scouting ahead, hurries back to the others on the fourth day. The Company has made good time, and Jasper can see the looming whiteness of the glacier ahead. Rather than just walk up to the glacier, the Company slowly creeps forward, using Dell and Winthrop’s spyglasses to scope out the situation on the edge of the glacier.
A large ramp of snow rises up from the floor of the canyon they walk on. Curving and reasonably sloped, it appears to provide the necessary access to the glacier surface. The ramp is vast, hundreds of feet across, and the front of the glacier looms over the canyon below. Atop the glacier stir figures, strange and ephemeral in the distance, glare, and snow. Eight giant deer with long shining antlers paw at the edge of the glacier while thin, elfin humanoids, taller than normal, unhitch large sleds from them. The sleds are impressive in their scale and proportion, easily able to load tens of hundreds of pounds upon them and distribute their weight across the icy surface.
The elfin humanoids leave the sleds at the edge of the glacier, almost at the edge of the ramp itself, and then mount the great deer. With little delay, the great deer begin to run to the north east, quickly leaving the Company’s limited view.
Winthrop gathers everyone close, hands out a thin rope for everyone to grasp, and then enchants the Company to invisibility. “Don’t hit anyone,” he warns Gitmo and Naboth. The Company, guided by the thin rope, hikes up the ramp, large footprints and depressions appearing as they wade through its softer parts. The top of the glacier provides much better footing, even though the ice is covered by a good foot of windblown snow.
Visibility on the glacier is odd. The giant deer, running quickly away from the ramp, are still easily visible across the flat surface of the glacier, but as the wind blows and snow is stirred up, visibility drops to almost nothing, creating a claustrophobic whiteness surrounding the Company. It is best that they came up to the glacier invisibly, as if they can see the giant deer, the giant deer’s riders would likely be able to see them.
The sleds have left great creases in the packed snow on top of the glacier. The giant deer have dragged the sleds from the west-northwest, traveling in almost a straight line, coming out and along one face of the glacier. Seeing nothing else of note at the moment, the Company descends to discuss their options.
They argue about how to interpret what they’ve seen and deduced from other material. In the end, the consensus seems to be that the humans in the hippogriff camp dragged armor and materials to the glacier here. They were either left or loaded onto the sleds. The elfin humanoids, likely the snow fairies, take the sleds somewhere to the west-northwest, but that area is not their home. Pushing on after the snow fairies or following the sled tracks into the glacier seem to be the options facing them. Deciding the snow fairies are not their primary concern, but creatures that can wear ogre-sized armor are, they opt to follow the sled tracks in the morning.
During the night, Otto finally returns in the company of a gnome, trussed and hanging upside down from a long pole. Pfiffwin, when untied and restored to consciousness, is introduced to Gitmo and Naboth, laughing bleakly when he hears of their profession. Gitmo and Naboth catch Pfiffwin glaring daggers at them while the Company packs up camp. Perhaps they have unknowingly made an enemy with their declaration.
The arrival of Otto reassures the others. An immortal, giant-killing warrior certainly tips the scale in favor of tackling the wearers of the ogre armor. Otto looks at the tracks up on the glacier and points out some things to the others. First, the tracks will easily be removed by wind and snowfall. Second, and more important, the sled tracks will leave an impression in the glacier itself, from the wearing of the ice, and so the Company should be able to follow the sleds’ path regardless of the current tracks.
The Company bundles up and prepares to go up on the glacier when Naboth pipes up. “How are we going to stay warm up there?” The others look at him quizzically. “I mean, we have these clothes and all, but how are we going to stay warm. Nothing to burn on the glacier, right?” The warriors glare at the spellcasters as they huddle together. The priests have the ability to endure the cold of the glacier, but not for days on end.
“Be right back,” says Winthrop. He hauls himself up on the glacier and casts a major summoning, causing a small house to appear on the glacier. Winthrop goes inside and then quickly returns. The house disappears, and he slides back down to the Company. “Go collect some wood,” growls Winthrop. “The house doesn’t burn easily.”
The Company heads up and down the canyon behind them, collecting brush, wood, and bundles of what grasses are there. The wood is not perfect for burning, but is certainly better than nothing. After several hours of foraging, they have enough combustibles to feel confident that they won’t freeze on the glacier. Naboth leans over to Gitmo and whispers, “See, they’ll think we’re worth something now.” For some strange reason, Dell, who sits on the far side of the camp, issues a snorting cough.