4th of Moon’s Sleep, Year of the Horde
After a hike through the mountains north of Rolus Keep, we at last reached the Monastery of the Sundered Chain at dusk. Scouting it from a distance, we could see and smell the smoke of small cooking fires burning within, but no other outward indications of inhabitation. The mighty gates were closed.
“Either is dwarves cooking, or is dwarves cooked.” said Viggo. He was right. We had no way of knowing who was inside, and it seemed foolish to stride up to the door and knock without confirming first that the temple was still in friendly hands.
Accordingly, my ranger friend and I elected to climb the walls quietly, and see what we could see within. To our very great dismay, it was orcs—eight or nine of them, grouped around several small campfires in the temple courtyard, and an unknown number likely deeper within the complex. We quickly returned to tell the others.
Thoradrin, as might be expected, was all in favour of storming the front gate. “Orcs, in a temple! By th’ gods, thes cannae stain.. let’s at them, an’ lit them die tastin’ th’ axe ay a Dwarven defender!” Dirock, however, steadied the angry fighter with a hand on his shoulder. “Despite their misguided worship of Moradin the Lesser, I too am concerned about the clerics within. Indeed, rescuing them may well open their eyes to the greater power of Kord. In this case, however, I think perhaps that some of the devious halfling’s stealthy ways might serve us better than a frontal assault.” I smiled at the apparent compliment, and resolved to pickpocket something nice for our priest at the next opportunity.
“Well, as Longdroop Flannelbottoms always used to say, if you can’t go through a gate you had best go over it! Why don’t Viggo and I try to attach some ropes up to them there battlements, and then you can all climb up as quiet as bats in butter?” To be honest, I had only low expectations that my companions would successfully scale the walls without alerting the orcs inside, but I could think of no other alternative.
Much to my surprise, we did all make it atop the wall without being noticed. Loud squabbling among the orcs below drowned out the occasional clank and scratch as Thor, Dirock, and Skalrag clambered up the ropes after Viggo and I. All four of us then lay quietly on the top of the wall, while I pointed out a plan of attack. “Viggo, you and I will drop them there two orcs with ranged shots, and if that goes without raising the alarm, we’ll try the next two, and so on just like dropping pansies in the pantry. Thor, you cover the stairs. Skalrag, Dirock—you be prepared to cast into the battle once an alert is sounded.”
It didn’t quite work like that: no sooner had Viggo and I let loose our first shots than Skalrag made one of the campfires explode with a few muttered words and a wave of his hand. Several orcs fell in quick succession, from arrow, stone, and flame. As our foes scrambled to grab their weapons, Thor rushed down the stairs and into the courtyard, growling menacingly. Skalrag’s earlier note still fluttered from his back, giving it all a rather comical air despite the dwarf’s angry tone.
It was imperative that none of the orcs escape to warn others deeper within the temple complex, so after my initial shots I leapt from the ramparts to land lightly behind one. Petunia’s cold steel flashed, and the fellow fell to the ground with a groan. Even before he was still, I dashed across to another lurking behind a pillar, and finished him off too. Yet another raced for the door of the temple, and I sheathed the blade and readied my sling. There was no need, for he was quickly felled by a bolt of mystical energy from one of my friends on the wall above. In less than a minute, it was all over.
* * *
The main building of the Monastery of the Sundered Chain was, like so many dwarven temples, built into the very side of the mountain. It had no visible windows, and but a single set of huge stone doors. Having little desire to barge in the front and find ourselves amidst a horde of hostile orcs, I suggested something else instead.
“Thor… why don’t we dress you in some of these here orcish armour and rag things?” I said, pointing at the detritus of the dead orcs that now littered the courtyard. “That way we’s maybe not be a-setting off alarms among any of them there creatures when we enter. As Aunt Petunia always used to say, better clad in rags than impaled on a spear and ate for dinner!”
I should have known better than to have suggest a proud dwarf warrior dress himself as an orc. “I’ll dannae skulk about like one o’them foul beasties!” spat Thoradrin angrily. “Great gods man, I’m a defender, an’ I’ll defend mah fowk wi’ th’ prood glint ay dwarven steel in mah hans an’ oan mah shoolders!”
It didn’t seem a good idea to remind him that he was wearing looted armour from Phirul, and carrying a Orcish battleaxe that we had taken from a minion of Orcus. I therefore tried another tack.
“But surely in Moradin’s parable of the Clever, Wise, Brave and Rather Handsome Dwarf and the Ninety-Three Gloriously Slain Foes, Thor Sensiblesteel uses precisely such a stealthy approach?…”
Kiira’s barely-suppressed laugh and Dirock’s eye-rolling didn’t help my bluff. Muttering to himself about defenders and honour and harebrained halfling schemes, Thor angrily pulled open the doors to the temple. If the loud grating noise that it made wasn’t enough to warn any enemies within, the sight of an angry dwarf silhouetted against the setting sun surely would.
Looking in, we could see a huge stone chamber, dominated in the centre by a raised stone plinth and a statue of Moradin himself. Two sets of stairs were set either side of the entrance-way, leading up to a low balcony which ran the full circumference around the wall. In the centre of the room an ugly orc-hag stood on the platform, apparently intent on destroying the alter-piece. She noticed us, pointed her long green bony finger, and cackled loudly. A group of orcs rushed towards us.
Skalrag was the first to act, stepping inside the door and racing up the stairs to the right. Moments later he exclaimed “uh oh” in a loud voice as he found himself confronted by an ugly brutish orc with a huge crossbow. Despite being injured by the mage’s spell, it fired, hitting him square in the shoulder. He staggered back, falling off the balcony and hitting the hard stone floor of the temple below with a loud thump.
As my companions rushed forward, I slipped up the stairs to the left, surprising another orc. A well-placed throw of my enchanted spinneyblade severed part of its neck, and as it leaned against the wall in shock, the blade severed what remained on its return trip. I hopped over the now detached head as it rolled aimlessly on the stone floor, caught my blade in hand, and ducked behind the wall ready to strike again.
Suddenly, a loud thunderclap filled the room, reverberating off the stone walls in a powerful series of echoes. I peeked over the edge at the sight below—Dirock had unleashed his javelin, severely injuring the orc-witch but likely warning anyone for a mile around of our approach. Sure enough, a few moments later a hidden passage opened up on the far side of the statue, and a group of orcish reinforcements poured into the fray. Kiira blasted several as they approached.
To my right, I caught sight of Skalrag dashing up the stairs once more to confront his attacker. Moments later, I heard a large twang and caught sight of him stumbling backwards, struck by a second huge crossbow bolt. He tripped and fell down the stairs, landing in a tangled heap. I cringed—it looked very much as if his left elbow was now trapped under him, bent at a right angle that no left elbow should ever be bent. Perhaps it was just a cunning ruse? It was far too much of a coincidence to be believable: clearly the mage was seeking to disorient our foes by feigning a combination of clumsiness and an almost surreal vulnerability to missile fire. Clever indeed!
In the centre of the room, Thor and Viggo were slowly mopping up the orcs one by one, aided by a rapid stream of Kiira’s magic missiles. I threw my spinnyblade several times, injuring one or two. To the right, Skalrag and Dirock finished off the fellow that had caused Skalrag such apparent grief. The battle won, we assembled by the dais as Viggo searched it for the concealed door. He soon found it. A stone staircase spiraled deep down into the darkness.
“Viggo think one day we must learn to see in dark, like mole,” my ranger friend commented as he peered downwards. “He no see why dwarves live in dark hole, when they have fine sunny mountain with many trees to build on huts.” Fortunately Thor was too busy wiping orc blod from his axe to have heard the comment.
I turned to Kiira, and asked her to cast a light spell on one of my sling stones. I then threw it down the stairs, where it clattered and bounced before finally coming to rest well out of sight. “I’ll go first,” I volunteered. “When you hear my signal, join me.” Thus far our approach had been as quiet as a flaming barge of Froloppo’s Fierce Firecrackers, and I had no doubt that any orcs below were prewarned of our approach. Still, I might scout any ambush before we blundered into it.
The staircase descended a good sixty feet or more deeper into the mountain before it opened up into a huge chamber. To each side of this there were many small sets of stairs leading up to a identical plain wooden doors—the monks’ individual rooms, I suspected. In the centre was a large statue of a dwarf fighting some sort of many-headed lizard. Despite the light from the stone and from flaming braziers set in the walls, much of the chamber was still obscured in shadow and darkness.
I voiced the signal—a lesser odd-footed green spotted heron call, as Viggo so often employed—and shortly thereafter my companions joined me. As Dirock and Thor slowly walked up the centre of the room, Viggo and I began an investigation of the cells to our right, while Kiira and Skalrag scouted out those to the left.
Our caution proved well-founded. No sooner had I opened the first door, when a huge stone club came swinging at me from within, narrowly missing my head. I stabbed at the huge orc within, killing him, and then leapt down from the small staircase to the floor below. Across the chamber, I could dimly see a similar melee on the other side. In the centre a half dozen attackers rushed our fighter and cleric.
“Whoosh!” Once more a club narrowly missed my head, as another orc stepped out of the shadows to attack me. Rather than trade blows with this one, however, I dodged under his arm, took a handful of spinnyblades in hand, and dashed forward to throw them at the mass of fearsome orcs now surrounding Thoradrin. Two of the smaller ones fell to the floor, while two others were struck in the face, their blood obscuring their vision.
As I glanced across to Skalrag, I saw he had that he had decided to reprise his cunning stratagem from our earlier battle: he first lured an orc into pushing him down the thirty foot drop from the cell door to the hard stone floor below—then, once he landed with a sickening crunch, he feigned painful sobs and pitiful whimpers until the foolish creature jumped down into the mage’s midriff with his hobnailed boots. Only then did our cunning wizard unleash the ace up his sleeve: a spell that pushed the creature from his battered body and across the floor. Clearly he was a mage to be reckoned with!
The battle continued on a little while longer, but the outcome was no longer in doubt: with blows of both steel and arcane energy we finished off the three remaining orcs before us. Skalrag, the cunning tactician until the end, even faked a desperate need for curative magicks with such convincing earnestness that he almost had me fooled.
Our search of the rest of the cells revealed no more orcs, nor much of interest beside. We did note, however, that several of the dwarves seemed to have been slain in their beds, or before they could grab armour and weapons. Clearly the orcish attack had struck with little warning—further evidence that it might well have come through infiltration from below rather than assault from the surface. Viggo made a particularly close examination of the statue in the centre of the room, which (according to the inscription at its base) commemorated a memorable confrontation between dwarven hero Dergen Fellfist and a particularly ravenous hydra. While he and I hoped that the statue might mark a tomb containing the late dwarves most prized possessions, he could find no way to access any chamber within or below it.
At the far end of the hall two huge stylized statues of dwarven warriors marked passage into a length of cavern, which terminated in a steep cliff that dropped more than two hundred feet to the rocky floor below. A narrow staircase descended downwards, punctuated by three stone platforms. In the distance we could see a number of bobbing lights—the torches of a dozen or so orcs marching up towards us.
Viggo grinned. The setting clearly reminded him of his younger days bow-hunting flightless boobies from atop the river cliffs of the Kuz Valley. “Viggo think we can rush down and fight orcs on narrow stairs from which Skalrag can fall and break things, or we can stand here on top and shoot orcs.” The magician winced at the possibility, and raised his hand even before the ranger had finished his sentence. “I vote to fight them from up here where its safe.. umm, where we have a superior tactical position.” I agreed. So too did everyone else.
As the orcs uttered foul war-cries and hastened their pace up the stairs towards us, we all took position overlooking the drop-off . Thor positioned himself at the top of the stairs, axe in hand, to block any that might make it that far.
Viggo fired first, loosening an arrow into the lead orc as he approached to within twenty or so paces below us. I joined with my enchanted spinnyblade, and Skalrag with magic missiles. It was then that I saw Kiira laughing, and jumping up and down with excitement. “Ooohhh, let me try something!” She uttered a few mystic words, pointed her finger, and a huge flaming sphere appeared on the stairs, and slowly began to bounce downwards, burning orcs at it did so. The orcs seemed confused, with their leader at the back shouting angry commands to advance while those in the front found their way blocked by the ball of flame before them. We continued to fire down at them, with even Thor joining in with the crossbow I had relocated for him from Andy’s Armoury in Phirul.
Finally the orcish leader had enough. He cuffed the orc in front of him with a mailed claw, pointed at the sphere, and grunted loudly.
“Orghur kharak larg gurduk!”
“Larg gurdak? Laakin kathi zurg-zurg…”
“Larg gurdak, walla zur grorg thurstangl!”
The lesser orc finally nodded with apparent reluctance, rushed forward, and grasped the flaming sphere in his arms—carrying it off the stairs with him as he fell to the cave floor below. The orc captain (by now the sole survivor of his troop) shouted in triumph, and hastened up the stairs to slaughter us.
He didn’t get far. About five paces short of Thoradrin he was struck near-simultaneously by arrows, magic missiles, and the radiant wrath of Kord. He stumbled and fell, quite dead.
With the exception of Skalrag, who had cleverly lulled the orcs into false confidence by throwing himself in front of a crossbolt fired from below, none of us had been injured. We proceeded down the stairs, ever alert for the sort of ambush that we had just inflicted on our foes. Thankfully there was none.
Ahead of us we could see a narrow passage through the rock, and the faint flickering glint of reflected light. We advanced cautiously in single file along the narrow passage, Thor in front. Soon we came upon a large cavern, lit with a large fire and the red glow of hot forges. A group of orcs stood with their backs towards us, cheering on a particularly large and evil-looking member of their kind as he kicked and beat an older dwarf sprawled on the cavern floor.
We had almost perfect surprise. I had just begun to signal to Viggo a stealthy and devastating plan of attack when I heard Thor shout. “By th’ stoatin grey beard ay blessed Moradin himself, prepaur tae taste sharp steel ay a dwarven defender!” He stepped forward, axe in hands, as the orcs turned as one and rushed towards us. I heard Skalrag mutter something about “damn noisy dwarves” but the din of desperate battle soon drowned out his unfinished observation.
At first we seemed to be in a fairly secure position, with Thor standing at the head of the passage cleaving with his axe as the rest of ours did our best to launch missiles or magicks in support of him. That impression was dissipated, however, when one of the orcs revealed himself to be a shaman of sorts with deadly spells of his own. I had no desire to be flamed or transformed into a newt while trapped in such a narrow passage, so both Viggo slipped past Thor to do battle in the larger cavern.
The orcs fell one by one to our assault, until only two were left standing: the shaman, and the hulking orc commander whom we had seen battering the dwarven survivor when we first arrived. While our spellcasters focused on the former, Thor, Viggo, and I fought the latter. he was a formidable foe. I sought to draw him out into a position where Thor could better strike by taunting the huge green warrior mercilessly:
“Hey there, tuskface… try to hit me! Missed again! What’s the matter, was yer mother an elf?”
At first, he failed to take the bait. I did hear an annoyed shout from Kiira across the room, however: “Hey! Shorty! I heard that…”
Moments later, the orc swung his blade in a frenzy of powerful blows that left my left arm and side cut and bleeding. More than once, however, I managed to slip Petunia through a gap in his armour to inflict deep wounds. I do not remember whether it was Viggo or Thoradrin who struck the final blow, but I do remember my relief that I had survived the melee without even more serious injury.
Even as we slew the commander my friends finished off the shaman. Skalrag tended to the bloodied, beaten dwarf, offering him a potion of healing for his battered body.
The dwarf looked up at us suspiciously. “Who are ye? What are ye doin’ here?” It was scant gratitude for what we had just gone through to save him.
“Why, I’m Arnold Wurzel from the Dwarven Rescues Division of the Company of the Ivory Goat, and these be my companions. Who might you be?” Dirock added a gesture that looked suspiciously like “I have nothing to do with the halfling,” although it might equally have been yet another one of his unsuccessful attempts to make the Company of the Ivory Goat secret hand-sign.
“What are you blathering about?” the dwarf snapped at me. I assumed he meant “blathering” in the nice sense (“Could I have a blathering of Bilberry’s Best Bubbly Brown Ale, please?”). Nevertheless, it seemed advisable for Thor and Dirock to take over the rest of the conversation.
The dwarf’s name, it transpired, was Kalad. He was a paladin of Moradin, and when the orcs assaulted the monastery he had come to this cavern to throw a lever that blocked the passages beyond with a rockfall. The orcs, cut off from their reinforcements, had discovered what he had done and had been in the process of venting their extreme displeasure when we arrived. While Viggo and I were both a little suspicious of his tale at first, it did seem to check out: there was a lever, a caved-in passage beyond, and even a monastic cell that contained his personal belongings.
Kalad’s account confirmed my theory about the orcish infiltrations. They had indeed attacked the monastery from below, and had likely found their way into several other underground passages that bypassed the defences at Xiber Pass to exit in the hills around Rolus Keep. We needed to warn the city elders of this, and urge them to close these passages as Kalad had blocked the tunnel here. If need be, we might even need to close them ourselves.
As we all made to leave, I had a sudden and unexplained urge to check my Bag of Holding. There inside was a note that I had not previously found, from Chancellor Invictad. It read:
Friends,
I would like to thank you again for accepting this mission, and remind you that discretion is of the utmost importance. I would ask that you destroy this letter after reading and memorizing its contents.
As discussed, the team of miners were last heard from in an area known as the Janech Vale, approximately 65 kilometers north-west of Rolus Keep. I have included a map of the area, indicating the 5 sites that they had been sent to evaluate; Aleid, Borth, Chenth, Danend and Elmban.
Past divinations indicated that these areas were most likely to contain suitable deposits of nickel, copper and more importantly; platinum. The miners carry a small, green crystal cube that can be used to communicate with myself once per day. If the need should arise, the cube can be activated with the keyword introspect.
The team is comprised of 8 miners, selected from the Prospectors Guild. They are:
- Korryk Cartamon
- Gatineon Robbs
- Thulurth Grimfoot
- Cony Rhalasse
- Rac Founders
- Paelen Browning
- Cyrroth Darkshield
- Falan Dernath
As this mission lies beyond our territorial borders and carries a certain political risk, I must again remind you that discretion is paramount. Do not reveal the details of your task to anyone beyond your group. Avoid all contact with any military persons as you approach the border, as they will be under strict orders to intercept and interrogate anyone attempting to cross over.
Please find our people, and bring them back safely, and you shall have the eternal thanks of both myself and his majesty, King Ezgara Diskanal.
Chancellor Kalos Invictad
It was straightforward enough, but I still had misgivings about it all, rooted perhaps in my by now rather jaded view of the Tamarian leadership. Only time would tell what the full and true story behind it all was.
