Seeing the creature collapses in front of him, Bryce continues to press on with their attack. He immediately moves towards the one holding a bow and fighting unseen demons.
A distinctly different sound escapes Olo's lips as the battle continues. It sounds like the giggling of a little girl. More unnerving, however, is that his face is is contorted in rage. And in the midst of this horrible combination of sound and visage he is talking, "Leave....one...alive...to...question."
The half-elf sees his companions converge on the distant gnoll and so he turns his attention to the one still standing near him. Unseen to all but Olo, tentacles seems to tear through Olo's flesh and write forward wrapping around the gnolls head.
Reginald plants his feet in the ground and leans back for another heavy swing of the flail. Even if he didn't always connect, he was nothing if not relentless in his pursuit of the gnoll's demise.
From across the battlefield, Ninivic sees Bryce knock the gnoll to the ground. "Off to see your demon-b~%%% you fecking hyena. I'm sure she'll show her love for you by gnawing on your bones in the afterlife. Your turn?" he growls as he reloads his gun and steps forward to fire it right into the chest of the gnoll in front of him. "I'm sure we can keep that one that's still seeing stars alive for you Olo if we can finish these others."
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There's a great and sickening cracking noise as Bryce slams his club into the back of the gnoll's skull, dislocating its neck. The dazed gnoll lets out a faint gurgling noise and rather unceremoniously slumps to the ground, dead. At least it was dazed when the deed happened--it wouldn't have felt a thing. At the same time, Reginald slams his flail into the other gnoll still standing, completely smashing its shield into fragments and continuing through into its chest. The gnoll is knocked to the ground with a whine of pain as its rib cracks and the spiked balls tear a terrible gash through its flesh. Varnos rushes across towards the archer, slicing through the gnoll's belly and messily spilling its innards onto the grass. It collapses with a gurgle.
All that remains now is the sound of the stream slowly bubbling away and the faintly wheezing breathing coming from the still-unconscious gnoll.
The gnolls each wore scrappy leather armor and wielded a heavy wooden shield and a battleaxe. The archer had a shortbow with 16 arrows instead.
Each gnoll also had a small leather pouch filled with coinage. The total found is 16 gold, 62 silver.
"Bunch of bloody, flea-infested demon worshipers. Whatcha thinking Olo? Want to see what they know of the Mouth? Or just the area overall?" Ninivic joins the rest of the group by the last living gnoll. He keeps his pistol trained on it, ready to coup de grace the creature if necessary.
Olo glances around and to no one in particular (and everyone it would seem) as he says, "Well done." It seems more a statement of fact than a congratulations or a surprise. Olo kneels next to the gnoll on the ground trying to show more confidence than fear. Be still. This creature could tear you to shreds this close but you are not alone here.
"Excellent work, Corporal. I appreciate the back up. I think both questions are in order. Hopefully between Molasbar and myself we should be able to communicate with it." Olo pulls out a thick, high quality rope and begins to tie up the creature. "How much longer until the magic wears off?" he glances up towards Molasbar while asking the question. He pauses and then realizes he should have asked this first "Are you okay?"
Reginald breathes a heavy sigh of relief and satisfaction as the gnolls fall. He walks over to briefly supervise the binding of the unconscious gnoll. When Olo asks Molasbar when the magic will wear off, Reginald abruptly delivers a sharp kick to the gnoll's head.
"I'd say right about now."
As the others deal with the gnoll, Molasbar offers advice. "Perhaps there are more? A campsite somewhere? Maybe it can tell us."
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The unconscious gnoll lets out a high-pitched whimper as Reginald sinks his boot into the side of its head. Its eyes flutter open, but for another minute or so it seems quite dazed, not really responding to anything, simply dumbly staring at the group. When it finally comes to its senses, its ears immediately fall flat against its skull, deep amber eyes looking rather nervously at the group of angry-looking adventurers surrounding it.
It growls something in its native language, before speaking in broken Taldane with an extremely thick accent. "No kill arrgryyfk? Have no, no, orrlekrr garraru grrowoo, no have."
It seems the Gnoll language's grammar doesn't mesh well with Taldane. Probably a very different root language, maybe Terran or Abyssal.
Linguistics
"I think it's asking why we having killed it yet."
"I'll do my best to communicate, but the bits of gnollish language I've learned just aren't coming together here."
Molasbar will try communicating in some of the languages he is more schooled in, in this order, stopping if he reaches one the gnoll seems to understand to a decent degree: Common, Orc, Abyssal, Draconic, Goblin, Giant, Elven.
The half-elf furrows his brow given the little amount they are getting from it. Ssssss . He hears it in the back of his mind. "Wait, if you can goad it to continue talking I will be able to understand it. I won't be able to speak with it, but I will be able to understand everything it says." He turns to the huge man who seems to be intimidating it most "Reginald, can you keep it talking?
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The gnoll simply stares blankly at Molasbar. It doesn't appear to understand a single word in any of the languages, bar perhaps a handful in the common tongue. It shakes its head and mutters to itself.
"Grraiyykwu arhonm maroowrryoo orloo...? Kryykaroo wurru..."
"Any idea what its going on about Olo? Sounds like a bunch of demonic gibberish to me."
Reginald shrugs and delivers another harsh kick to the gnoll's head.
"Tell us what we want to know!" he barks, even though the message is clearly lost on the gnoll who cannot understand him.
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The gnoll yelps in pain as Reginald serves him another boot to the head, curling up and covering its cranium with its forearms. It displays its belly to the group in what much resembles a canine's display of submission, whimpering softly.
"Want... eryrr...? Ggrooil..."
The gnoll sneaks a glance up at the group, peering out from behind its forearms. "Give? Want? Eryrr? No have, no have!" It seems desperate now.
"Umm, that doesn't seem to be working very well. I think we're just confusing him. I'm probably not the best actor, but let's see if I can get the idea across." Ninivic begins stomping around and growling, doing his best impression of a big camp of gnolls. Then shifts into a stealthy hunting party of gnolls who are slain by a group of bloodthirsty adventurers who kick the only survivor in the head. He has particular fun imitating the largely ineffective actions and sounds of his own pistol. Nearly finished, he gestures back to where we was imitating the big camp and points to Reginald's map trying to get across the idea that we want to know if they have a larger campsite.
"The creature states it doesn't know why we didn't kill it. It is beginning to recognize we want something from it, but doesn't know what." Olo turns to it and begins to ask a series of simple questions in common: "You? How many? More?" "Where live?" "Rappan Athuk? Where?" He nods when the creature responds to indicate he understands what it says.
Molasbar sighs in frustration as he thinks back to his lessons on languages. Learning the words of the gnolls doesn't help much from an elf when it sounds so different coming from them.
Closing his eyes for a moment, the half-orc considers the influence their abyssal demon lord has had on their savage history and tries to piece together something intelligible.
Linguistics, . Trying to bastardize Abyssal (which Molasbar is fluent in) enough to get across some ideas. What comes from the half-orc is a series of words that are hissing barks and stilted. "Want to fast join brothers? Want other? Tell: your den. Tell: near danger."
"Let's just leave him here and continue on. We're not getting anywhere. If he's strong enough or clever enough, he'll find a way to get out of those ropes eventually. If not, it's not our problem. If you're going to kill him, you'll have to get your own hands dirty."
With that, Reginald adjusts his armor and readies himself for the remainder of the journey.
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The gnoll stares wide-eyed at the Corporal's game of charades, surprisingly enthralled by the performance, although he does wince here and there—especially when Ninivic imitates gnolls being lined up and shot. It also seems to be slowly coming to a vague understanding of what the group wants, between Olofire's simple questions in Common and Molasbar's pseudo-Abyssal. The mention of Rappan Athuk causes its ears to perk up in particular.
"Takmurr," the gnoll says as it pushes itself back up to a sitting position, tapping itself on the chest and repeating the word a couple more times. It's most likely its name. "Rappan Athuk rurrhukaag ootik." It gestures towards the south-west. "Den Rappan Athuk. Den many. Gryyskchi ryi prourikkr abekt." It gestures towards the north-east. "One lermahh gnoll, one no," it holds up both its index fingers. "Igreyk."
"Den Rappan Athuk. Den many. But we have a lookout-camp nearby."
"One gnoll guard, one no. Slave."
Olo nods to the gnoll to indicate his understanding. He points to the creature "Takmurr," then point to himself "Olo." He repeats the gesture several times to get the point across. Still facing the gnoll he nods towards Molasbar and Ninivic as he states, "Whatever you're doing is working, let's keep at it until the spell fades. He tells me Rappan Athuk is an hour south-west from here. He seems to indicate there are many creatures of some type nearby 'Den many' and the gnolls have a lookout camp nearby with one gnoll and one slave." Olo furrows his brow and seems lost in thought as he sighs. Then he speaks again, "It seems prudent that we...dispatch the remaining gnoll and at least try to save the slave. Then what do we do with this one?"
He lets his allies think of this as continues to enlist Molasbar's linguistic skills and Ninivic's acting to communicate with the creature.
"Den many? Bloody hells, are you sure he's not just trying to tell us that there are a helluva lot more gnolls there?"
"I would suspect that their camp isn't far from here; gnolls tend to be quite a lazy lot and wouldn't want to have to range far to get here. Is anyone an experienced enough woodsman to follow their tracks back to their camp? I agree we may want to see to liberating that slave, and if we are going to be going back and forth from the town to Rappan Athuk, we don't want to get waylaid again by more of these."
Reginald sighs and slings the flail's ball and chain over his armored shoulder where it rests with a clank.
"I can try to follow their trail, but I won't make any guarantees. I've only done this a handful of times."
He paces the general area, mainly concerned with the perimeter of the battle and the places where the gnolls originally laid in wait. Periodically, he stoops down to closely examine an imprint or a broken twig, nodding to himself as though having an internal conversation about his ongoing investigation of the tracks.
All right. Let's see what we can find. I may be able to help you a little Reginald though I'm a lot more comfortable below the earth. We're going to have to execute our captive. If the rest of you are squeamish, I'll do it. The gods know I've seen what happens when you leave an enemy around to return. I can assure you that our fate would have been much worse had they won."
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"Olo." Takmurr nods slowly, gradually coming to an understanding. With some more teamwork between Ninivic and Molasbar, Olofire manages to eke out a couple more fragments of Gnoll speech from their captive.
"Rappan Athuk is dangerous all over. We avoid rooms we haven't already cleared, lost too many of the pack on nasty traps. We gnolls have our den on the 2nd level."
Reginald, impatient with the diplomacy, begins poking around in the leaf litter and dirt looking for signs of the gnolls' passage. Ninivic points out some paw prints in a stretch of dirt, and from there on Reginald feels confident that he can follow it back to the camp that Takmurr described.
Whatever decision is made with what to do with Takmurr's life, the two (and possibly the others in the group) follow the gnoll tracks through the light woods and up the rather sharp incline of the nearby hills. As their captive had said, about ten minutes of walking later they come across a small, bare-bones camp on top of the highest point of the hill. From up here you can oversee the brook you've been following, with an especially good vantage point of the shallow river crossing in particular.
The camp is sparse, with little more than an extinguished campfire, a couple of logs, and the signs of gnoll refuse here and there. Sitting in front of the stone-cold coals is a tall, silver-haired woman midway through donning a chain shirt. A gnoll corpse lies nearby, its chest sliced right in two by a still-bloody greatsword that lies beside it.
It appears that this "slave" required more than a single guard to keep her captured...
Olo quickly glances around the campsite to see if there are other gnolls or attackers nearby
"Are you alright? We too were attacked by gnolls and came to free their slave...?"
When Ninivic moves to finish the gnoll, Molasbar nods in agreement that it is the right thing to do.
"Slave?"
The tall woman looks incredulously at Olofire. Icy blue eyes fix on the strange group then looks at the surrounding camp as something dawns on her.
"Oh, I guess you mean me. I'm fine, he's dead," her head jerks to indicate the dead gnoll, "and the 'slave' is trying to finish getting her armor donned."
She resumes putting on the chain shirt she had bunched up around her shoulders.
"I meant no offense. Clearly you don't need saving. We were recently attacked by the same group of gnolls on our way..." Fool! Olo realizes he knows nothing of this stranger but it is too late for him not to finish speaking "... to Rappan Athuk. I am Olofire Stargazer."
"Oh no, it's fine."
Raseri finishes slipping the chain over her head and adjusts it to make it more comfortable before grabbing the belt at her side and cinching it around her waist.
"Raseri Whitescale," she holds out a hand towards Olofire, "I was on my way when these mutts ambushed me."
She stands up and goes for her sword. She cleans the blood off the long sharp blade before sheathing it and strapping it over her shoulder.
"Way to spill the beans, Olo.", Reginald groans.
"Well, I suppose you'll want to come along, which means we'll have to give you a share. Typical."
Despite the fact that he doesn't offer his name or any other pleasantries to the woman, his overt body language suggests that he's more impatient than hostile.
"I guess we could camp here if the lads want to have themselves a flirt." He thumbs in the direction of the rest of the group and then moves into the camp to take a seat and check his equipment.
Bryce was used to "unpleasant dealings" and he understood the need not to leave an enemy behind. Especially an enemy who knew their exact number, order of the battle and similar things. At the same time he was trying to runaway from his "former life" and it's ways, and this was something very typical of what he might have done before. So when Ninivic "volunteers" to do the dirty job, Bryce simply nods in acknowledgement. He takes the ratfolk aside, for a quick arrangement before the deed is done.
"If they find his body, and they have some kind of shaman than they could get the information any way. There is a necromantic enchantment enabling you to do this. I know, since it was used quite a lot back in Westcrown. you could say almost a typical method of investigation for some..." - here Bryce pauses for a few moments before continuing.
"What I wanted to say is that it is better to cut off his head and toss it somewhere aside, far from his body. Since you'll be the one doing the kill, I can do the dirty part afterwards if you want"
When they meet Raseri, Bryce just nods slightly and murmurs a soft "Hello". He moves to the side, takes the severed head out from the sack and hurls from the side of the hill.
"Way to spill the beans, Olo.", Reginald groans.
"Well, I suppose you'll want to come along, which means we'll have to give you a share. Typical."
Despite the fact that he doesn't offer his name or any other pleasantries to the woman, his overt body language suggests that he's more impatient than hostile.
"I guess we could camp here if the lads want to have themselves a flirt." He thumbs in the direction of the rest of the group and then moves into the camp to take a seat and check his equipment.
"If they're here to do that I think you'd rather have me along. Much better places than out in the arse end of nowhere to pick up soft company and a warm bed."
She turns to Bryce and nods at him.
"Hello."
Olo accepts the tall woman's handshake and tries to return it as strongly as he can. A pained look comes across his face as Reginald is more than blunt - brash. Raseri's response, however, is quick witted and Olo's face flushes as fire-red as his name.
"Um, what sends you that way? Surely it would be mutually beneficial to have another competent sword-hand along the way."
For just a brief moment, Raseri's smile fell. Her shoulders slumped, and guilt crossed her face, but as quickly as it happened, it was gone.
"Wanderlust, I guess. I heard about the evil lurking out here. Didn't think to get some help."
"Well, might as well join up. Damn demons are trying to infiltrate the entire fecking countryside. Good to add another sword when we come up against them. Let's see what we can scavenge and move out, eh?"
"I think the only things worth scavenging is what I'm wearing, but we can see, I guess."
"Which way did you come from? We come north from Zelkor's Ferry..." Olo tries to inform Raseri of what they know so far as well as try to figure out what she knows. She seems capable, but that sword could just as easily kill me in one blow .
"Same as you. Really the only town around here as far as I know."
Ninivic initiates his own search of the camp as talk turns to town.
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The dead gnoll has 5 silver in a shabby, rat-eaten coin pouch. He is not, however, wearing armor, and the only weapon he has is a rusty dagger. He seems somewhat smaller than the gnolls you fought earlier--maybe the runt of the litter?
Apart from that, there's nothing here that is of much worth to you. Amidst the rubbish is a couple of torches, a flea-bitten sack with a rabbit corpse inside, and a rope fraying at both ends.
After finishing his "dirty task" Bryce turns around and sizes their new party member. Satisfied with what he sees, he just nods (more to himself really), before joining ratfolk in searching the camp.
Seeing that their pickings are very slim, he suggests: "Shall we move on? Raseri, are you OK to proceed or do you need some rest or healing? And where to - I'd proceed to that Mouth of Doom, as we originally planned, unless you have some other suggestions? "
Olo points towards the direction their once-captive gnoll gave them, "This way, not more than 1 hours walk." He adjusts his backpack and starts to walk down the hill - though he does so slowly hoping his companions will walk ahead of him.