Kia wanders up to stand by Arianwyn. She regards the orc, her nose wrinkling slightly, probably from the odours emanating from that beast, but it's not easy to tell.
"Succinctly put, friend eladrin. I wonder if it'll have the good sense to tell us."
I hope Selmer is still OK, she thinks.
"She's got power. All that matters to us. Gruumsh will take her as his bride she says." Something in the way the eladrin are looking at him makes the orc slightly more amenable.
"And you, a warrior, taking orders from a witch? She must have charms indeed..." Arianwyn says with a leer.
"All hail Kyleth, Queen of the Forge. That's all you need to know" yells the orc. Suddenly looking terrified, he falls completely silent.
"Oh yes, all hail," Arianwyn says with mock-seriousness.
He turns to Kia and says off-hand, "Do you think he's told us enough or should I use the eladrin death-pinch?"
Reason smiles widely, showing a lot of teeth. A lot of teeth. His tail lashes back and forth.
"So tell us more about this Kyreth"
Intimidate (1d20+4=13)
The orc shrinks back a bit. Reason seems to scare him more than the eladrin.
"She's opened the Maw with blood. You should know about that. Demon trafficker. All hail Kyleth, Queen of the Forge."
Reason returns to his usual sanguine self, in a sudden, jarring fashion.
"I believe that we have no further use for him, unless one of our 3 warriors wishes to attempt to get something from him. As a newcomer to your group, I am happy to accede to your wishes as to his dispensation."
Arianwyn purses his lips at the tiefling interrupting his fun, and at the the orc's defiance.
"The Maw with blood... sacrifices, demons, (or devils, there is a differance)" he muses, with the last taking on a slightly school-masterish tone with the orc.
Another gob of bloody spittle and an orcish incisor lands on Arianwyn's boot and the orc sneers showing its few remaining teeth.
Arianwyn looks down at his boot impassively.
He then kicks the orc in the face.
He turns away, "Let us depart." he says coldly.
The eladrin does not look back at the now unconscious orc.
"Now what did we learn about warriors taking orders from charming witches . . ." Vel muses in Arianwyn's hearing, not particularly expecting a response.
Whiteclaw shakes her head. "Kill him or untie him. Don't leave him bound to a tree to slowly starve to death. Even an orc doesn't deserve that." She slips into the woods, then, to go back to where we left our horses and lead them back here.
Whiteclaw finds all the horses safely where you left them with the exception of Arianwyn's mount. Pumpkin lowers his huge head and pushes her hard with his nose when she unties him, as always demanding food.
Arianwyn turns to look at Vel and smiles in an eerie way, "All women are witches in their way, milady Vel. Some are more obvious than others."
He sighes at Whiteclaw, "I had not thought you to be so thoughtful, Si- Milady Gnoll." " he says to the others "Do as you will."
"Let us then see this Witch Queen."
"Well then, let us follow these wagon tracks, after we have decided the orc's fate. Two of us will have to double up on one of the horses, unless someone cares to walk."
When Whiteclaw returns with the horses, she gets each horse to it's rider. If no one has slain the orc by then, she cuts it free - though she takes the evil weapons and stores them in Pumpkin's saddlebags until she can find a place to safely get rid of them. She's not about to leave the orc with one of them!
As Whiteclaw disarms the orc she notices the quality of the evil weapons. Although fragile they are capable of making grievous wounds and to her experienced eye are almost intended to leave flakes of blade behind them. These are the product of someone with a very nasty imagination. She stows them thoughtfully (and very, very carefully) in her saddlebags.
The orc remains slumped against the tree, but is unbound.
In meditative mood, you prepare to move on, following Reason's suggestion of taking the wagon trail.
Arianwyn sighs, "I should have known better than to trust a mortal steed against such a beast. It is my lot, it seems, to suffer the vicissitudes of this humdrum plane."
"Milady Kia, may I trouble you for a place on yon horse?"
Kia turns to Arianwyn.
"Yes, it would certainly trouble me, and it would trouble Selmer too to have to carry twice the weight he is used to. Have you spared even a small thought for the plight of your mount? I hope he has the sense to find his way home, otherwise you have doomed him to a cold and lonely death. I hope you feel proud."
Kia considers for some time.
"I did wonder, when we first met, how you could have gotten yourself into such a dire and, to be frank, humiliatingly stupid situation as the one in which we found you. After today, I have ceased wondering."
Kia shakes her head resignedly.
"Very well, please ask Selmer if he doesn't mind, then, if there is no objection, you can ride with me. I will be happy to use the opportunity to teach you proper behaviour and proper respect for others, friend and foe alike."
Arianwyn looks at Kia steadily throughout her dressing-down.
Finally he replies, locking eyes with her, "You know nothing of me, child." he says in a cold tone of voice. "There is nothing you can teach me that I do not already know. I who have tasted the waters of Karvalen, and tasted the fruits of Annwn."
He looks into the middle distance, seemingly at nothing, "I am an exile. I can never have what I want most... Do you know what it is to wish for death? No? Then there is nothing to say. Your beast shall be spared the extra weight, daughter of the Rubarka."
With that he walks away down the trail.
In an atmosphere that rather resembles the arctic landscape, you prepare to leave the area.
Kia mutters quietly to herself...
"Just our luck to be lumbered with an idiot with a death wish!"
She urges Selmer on to follow Arianwyn and the rest of the party.
The track is well used. Clearly many slave wagons have passed this way recently. In silence you observe the dead and dying trees. Winding between them is a stream that should surely be frozen but flows unnaturally. Faint wisps of mist rise from it, which occasionally burgeon outwards obscuring the track before you. As night falls, the mist thickens and becomes fog and you arrive at the edge of the fetid stream with a choice of directions to take.
Directly in front of you, the track continues over a rough, but serviceable bridge, but to the right and left you can just make out scarcely used pathways. It is now nearly full dark and you will need some kind of light source.
"This road seems to be too well used for my liking, and I think we should be wary of the stream too. My thought is that if we travel much further on the road we are sure to meet with adversity, possibly in great numbers. What do you think about taking one of the lesser used paths? Perhaps we can find a safe place to camp for the night that is away from the water there."
"A safe place to camp. Well, some will be worse than others," Vel mutters. She trusts Kia's lead in these matters.
"Do we have anyone who can guide us through the woods should the lesser used trails vanish? While I do agree the main road will likely lead us to danger, we don't know if the side trails will take us to our goal, and even if they do, they could take longer, and this threat is one we should deal with as fast as possible."
Whiteclaw
Since you are in the land of your ancestors, I'm giving you +5 bonuses on History and Perception as they relate gnolls.
"One thing that you may wish to keep in mind is that I can perform a ritual which will alert us to enemies approaching. However, I agree that we should perhaps camp away from the main trail."
"Do we have anyone who can guide us through the woods should the lesser used trails vanish? While I do agree the main road will likely lead us to danger, we don't know if the side trails will take us to our goal, and even if they do, they could take longer, and this threat is one we should deal with as fast as possible."
"We're leaving enough of a trail -- five horses and an eladrin -- that there should be no trouble backtracking ourselves."
"Do we have anyone who can guide us through the woods should the lesser used trails vanish? While I do agree the main road will likely lead us to danger, we don't know if the side trails will take us to our goal, and even if they do, they could take longer, and this threat is one we should deal with as fast as possible.""We're leaving enough of a trail -- five horses and an eladrin -- that there should be no trouble backtracking ourselves."
Whiteclaw simply nods an assent, indicating wordlessly that she feels that Vel's assurances are good enough for her.
Reason checks the side trails, looking for the least-used one.
"We can choose any of these trails, I suppose."
Even to Reason's untrained eye, the path to the left looks like the least used.
*Frowning*
"For some reason, I prefer the path to the right, perhaps because it is more used than the other, so might lead to safer places to camp. But, if anyone wants to base the choice of direction on actual logical deduction, I will bow to their greater wisdom. However I feel we should make our decision soon in case someone comes this way."
In the absence of any dissenting voices, Reason agrees with Kia.
Leaving the main track, it soon becomes clear that this path is not used by riders. It snakes this way and that, sometimes stopping altogether, then picking up again a little further on, winding between cliffs. The blighted landscape looks not unlike the hide of the white dragon. Where there is any vegetation at all it is twisted and deformed and the purity of the snow on the rocks is marred by protesting gouts of melting, fetid snow. The fog comes and goes like the breath of some enormous beast.
The silence is only broken by the occasional hissing thud as lumps of melting snow fall to the ground around you. Your horses twitch, uneasy in this place, as they trudge gamely onwards. At length however, an hour's hard journeying brings you to a makeshift hut constructed of ice, ancient bones and poorly tanned hides. Where it not for the unnatural melting of the snow, you would very likely never have seen it. The blight smell that has lain beneath your nostrils all day is vanquished by the stink of the strange dwelling. A thin trail of smoke rises from the roof.
"Shall I knock?"
Arianwyn arches an eyebrow at the tiefling's question.
"It is considered polite." he says with a smirk.
"It is an unusual hut." Whiteclaw says as she dismounts and finds a tree branch to secure Pumpkin's reins to. "If it is inhabited we should use caution since people living in a hut like that might not be all that normal."
Arianwyn looks around at the group (particularly Whiteclaw and Reason) and laughs after Whiteclaw's 'normal' comment.
Reason also dismounts and secures his horse, then starts towards the front door of the hut.
For all his chuckling, Arianwyn would have to concede that this is far from a normal hut. As Reason steps towards the door, a theme emerges in the decorative scheme. Skulls surround the doorframe and each one is carefully placed within a small niche. Before each skull are small pebbles, tiny bunches of dried flowers and fragments of bone arranged as though they were offerings of some kind. The door itself is a makeshift affair, sturdy enough, but padded around each edge with badly tanned hides to keep out the cold.
Very faintly, a voice can be heard from within.
Vel, recognizing that the group will be investigating, dismounts and secures her horse. She is no hurry to investigate the hut more closely.
Arianwyn sighs and approaches the hut, "Ho in there! Be ye friend or foe, we seek shelter!"
The door opens cautiously to reveal the oldest, most bedraggled eladrin any of you have ever seen (including Kia and Arianwyn). So ancient is the being that skin falls in loose, greying flaps making the gender impossible to determine. Your host wears more badly tanned skins and has coated their body with a think layer of oil to keep out the cold.
"You are welcome. You are long sought." Beneath long, matted hair, the eyes sparkle with enthusiasm. The voice identifies this person as female, but nothing else about her would indicate this.
Reason can just see a large cauldron within the single room and gets a general impression of overwhelming clutter. The stink is extremely unpleasant. As the door opens and the smell gets stronger, your horses stir with unease.