"Thanks for that Alton! That beetle packed quite a bite! Well, we going through this door now?" says Helios as he moves to open the southern door.
Search Posts
"A beetle? I'll squash this little fellow no problem!" yells Helios as he rushes forward and strikes at the hissing insect with all of his might.
"Hmmm, well how about this door?" Not waiting for a response, Helios moves to open Door #2.
Helios shrugs his broad shoulders, turning to face his companions, "Either way works for me. What do the rest of you guys think?
Staring down the door in front of him, Helios moves forward, his sword at the ready. "Well, we can't wait all day. Let's see what's going on behind here." he says as he reaches out and opens the wailing door.
Setting his jaw, Helios mumbles to himself, "We should stick together..." Leaning against the wall waiting for Alton to rejoin the rest of the group, Helios eyes the scattered bones on the floor warily, ready to strike out at them at the first sign of reanimation. 'This place is really strange,' he thinks to himself, 'Back on the farm we never had to worry about this kind of thing. What is dead should stay dead...'
"I suppose this door looks as good as any!" Helios calls out to the party behind him. Looking around confusedly, he exclaims, "Hey, where'd Alton go?"
"Phew, I hope this whole Crypt isn't as strange as that last room..." sighs Helios as he peeks his head around the corner to his left.
Helios lowers his sword at Talis' request, but continues to eye the door-monster warily as the others go about their business in the room.
Helios carefully follows the safe path up to the door and examines it for some time. When the door begins to move, he steps back and pulls out his sword, "Everyone behind me! The door is alive!" Heroically, Helios swings his great blade down at the evil door-monster.
Catching the vial, Helios pops the cork and downs it in one gulp.
"Delicious!" Helios calls up. "Now how about that rope?"
Standing up and rubbing his rear end, Helios looks around at the pillows on the floor quizically. As Talis' head pops into view at the top of the hole, Helios calls out "I'm a little sore, but should be fine. It's actually kind of cozy down here... If we need rest while still in the crypt, this would be a nice place for it!"
Looking back to Alton as he begins leading the party through the large room, Helios says, "This place is pretty wild. We'd best watch out for more of those boney fellows."
"To the east it is!" says Helios. "Wait... which way is east again?"
After wiping the sweat and blood from his brow, Helios pats Alton heavily on the back. "Well done Alton! We smashed them up good!" he says with a smile.
"Eat cold steel, numb-skull!" Helios shouts as he brings his sword back down at the final skeletal warrior.
Helios laughs despite the wounds across his face, "Take this, bone-brain!" and takes a swing at another skeleton.
Helios swings an upward strike at the skeleton in front of him.
Having somewhat learned his lesson about charging forward with the ghost orcs, Helios takes a step back and readies himself for the skeletons' attacks.
Keeping his sword ready, Helios advances on the bodies in the center of the room to examine them.
"This must be the crypt. You guys ready to head inside? I'll lead the way if someone wants to follow closely with a torch. I'm going to keep my blade drawn in case we run into any trouble."
"There's something very wrong here," says Helios as he surveys the scene. He nods greeting to Alton and waits for Talis to arrive. As he's waiting, he notices Risl looking quite disturbed and a fair shade greener than usual. He drops to one knee and puts a massive hand on her tiny shoulder, "It'll be alright Little Lady. We'll avenge these horsies, I promise."
Seeing that Risl is safe (and his rear end aching from the impact of the rocks), Helios takes his time navigating the rest of the way down the slope.
Helios begins shuffling through his pack to pull out some rope, but his attention is taken away by the spectacle of the Little Lady flying through the air before him. He notices that her owl appears to be helping her fly, but is no less impressed by the feat. He looks on with mixed wonder and terror lest the little girl should be blown astray by the winds and fall down the slope.
Helios actually kind of likes the idea of growing fins, but doesn't know how. To keep his ignorance of fin-growing a secret from his party members, he begins looking for a way down.
Helios takes the rain in stride and leads the party on into the valley. His thoughts as he walks focus largely on the wolves of the previous night. He thinks the big wolf would make a neat pet.
Helios does the same, splitting up three days worth of rations and making a gift pile for the wolves.
Helios watches Risl speak with the wolf with awe. "Is there anything this child can't do?" he ponders to himself. After she relays the wolf's words to the rest of the party, Helios speaks up, "I don't want to kill these wolves if we don't have to. I've pledged myself to protect the forest animals and I'm pretty sure this wolf counts. What if we give them some of our rations? We have quite a few and we could always try doing some hunting of our own on the way to the crypt."
Helios walks over to the logs, hefts one up under each arm and brings the load over towards Risl, setting them in a central location in the campsite. "Here you go Little Lady." He says with a smile as he sits down and cracks into his own rations for the day. After the fire is lit, he eats hungrily and reflects on their first day as adventurers... He thinks about the fearsome Ghost Orcs on the path. He clearly remembers the pain followed by darkness as the Greataxe had cut through his flesh and then the clear sense of relief he had felt when he opened his eyes again and saw his friends standing above him... He thinks of the dead man by the lake and wonders who he had been and what kind of life he had lived before traveling to this lake to die... And then there was the time that he carried those logs... What a day! Helios grinned.
"Let's settle down for the night. We'll have a full day ahead of us in the morning. I can take first watch duty," Helios suggests.
Helios hands the blade over to Talis to inspect. "No shovel here. We could always come back?"
Helios was a bit confused, but decided that this man's belongings would be best put to good use rather than rotting in the middle of a forest. He grabs up the coin pouch and the blade. "We can split up this coin along with any other we find when we get back into town. Does anyone have use of this blade? If not, I can hold onto it for the time being so as not to weigh the rest of you down.
"That sound like a good idea, Alton." says Helios as he draws his greatsword and advances towards the corpse. Assuming nothing eventful happens in the interim, Helios bends a knee and examines the body.
Helios opens his eyes and sees his Little Teacher above him. One of the Ghost Orcs must have knocked him out and she must have vanquished them. Once again he is impressed with her prowess in battle; regular Orcs are tough enough to fight, but knowing that she was able to so handily deal with these Ghost Orcs just goes to show how much of an unstoppable killing machine she really is. He makes a mental note not to get on her bad side. As he sits up he says, "Those Ghost Orcs sure packed a punch. Glad we're through with them. You guys ready to get back on the road?"
ZZZZzzzzzz
The map looks good. The only thing I would recommend to make tactical movement easier would be to have each row and column numbered or lettered instead of every other one so that we could be like "I want to move to square B7," I don't think Ye Olde Map Maker can do that, but you could probably edit it in MSpaint or something pretty easily. That's a pretty minor complaint though as it all looks really good and I think it will be plenty functional either way. Keep up the awesome GM job :)
Helios is no friend of orcs and upon seeing them burst out of the woods he knows that they must be dispatched quickly lest they hurt his newfound friends. He charges to the frontlines and attacks with an overhead slash!
Helios takes note of Talis's troubles and offers to help carry her pack.
Helios gathers up his gift from the townspeople, looks about in the crowd for Sir Dramott and if he spots him, gives a final wave before he turns south, waits for his companions to be ready, and departs.
Impressed by his Little Teacher's thrilling display of acrobatics, Helios dives out of the crowd and onto the ground next to Risl. "You can count on me to keep the community safe Mayor, I'm in!" he shouts as he props himself up from the dusty ground with a huge smile.
Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it as I'm having a lot of fun :)
Helios sits cross-legged on the floor next to Sir Dramott and replies, "They all seem like really nice people. There's Alton, he's a professional wanderer. He's really friendly and a great singer. He seems pretty quick on his feet too, so I think he'll be good to have around in a fight. And then there's Talis, she's a real nice lady and had some fancy looking playing cards that she used to help us decide what time we should set out tomorrow. She also said something about how we might run into some misfortune and have to clean some wheels, but I think that shouldn't be very difficult as I used to clean and fix the wheels on our old cart back home all the time. And finally there's a little girl named Risl. She's a really powerful warrior and has a pet owl. You'll be impressed with me because after I realized that she was super-powerful I got her to accept me as her Squire and personal protector. I think I'll be able to learn a lot from her..."
That does sound pretty good. I'm definitely looking forward to some combat action. I'm also taking special interest in the methods you'll be using for making battle maps and everything really as I'll probably attempt to GM a PBP game at some point in the future.
Helios says his final farewells to his companions and heads back to Sir Dramott's to pack up and head to bed. If Dramott is in when he arrives, he fills him in on the events of the evening.
No boring occured here as that was pretty radical. It also worked out well as it was all typed up and ready for me to read by the time my Pacific time self got up this morning. Also no worries on the attention gluttony; I've been finding that since I'm at my computer with lots of downtime at work during the day I've been posting quite a bit myself. This being my first PBP game, I'm excited to get into the adventure and see how combat and stuff work on here. :)
Helios is quite amused by Alton's song, but is anxious to get to bed and begin the next day. He listens intently to Risl's interpretation of the gift from her owl friend and once her reading is complete he stands up from the table and says, "So it's settled. Let's meet at the door to this tavern before first light and then head out. I'm going to go grab some trail rations from Mister Silvers before we head out. I'll see you all in the morning!"
|