Crazier than the Mage

Several empty rooms and corridor lengths later, they come upon a closed door where chanting could be heard. It is not a language familiar to anyone in the party. The group stops to confer, suddenly the mage, perhaps to test it if it was locked and before anyone could stop him, flings himself face first at the door. Unfortunately, it was. Casval gets up off the floor and turns to the group, smiling. “It’s locked.” he says, a line of blood oozing from his hairline. At this the fighter shoulders the door, splintering it with raw might. It is a bedroom where a gnoll in blood-smeared hide armor is kneeling before a bed. He seemed crazed somehow, much much more than our mage. Perhaps he didn’t tolerate such rudeness, or frowned at the interruption or the condition of the door. Whatever it was, his eyes were coals of hate.

The gnoll stops chanting and turns standing to face the interlopers. He says something in his strange unfamiliar tongue and charges, armed with a flail. He meets Yshven square at the doorway. Yshven, Kord bless him, beats the living excrement off of the dogface. The poor thing howls in pain and screams a call to arms. Suddenly, the two doors in the corridor explode with the onrush of reinforcement.

In the corridor, everyone save for the mage was lined up facing the doorway, anticipating entry. Casval moved to a far side expecting conflict coming from inside the room. In other words, the party needed to quickly re-group and re-form. Presently, something large crashes through a door north of the group, it’s an ape-like demon. It is huge, and it is mad! It swings its meaty arms against the archer. Reacting quickly, he let’s loose a disrupting shot hitting the approaching demon under an arm. The shot is successful and the demon misses. Quorbin pedals back and takes a position a few feet behind Yshven.

~ by Carlo on March 8, 2009.