Morning, Kelehess 1st
The North Wing
Exiting the Torture Chamber, Takeshi went ahead and did a little scouting, finding signs of mass dark races having used and still using the rooms down this large hall, but he took a little too long and curiosity and concern prompted some of the group to follow after. That's when they caught a strange sound...
Takeshi returned and urged they all leave, but was unheeded.
The Storeroom
Having followed the muted commotion to a door, Isabella grew the balls to open it, revealing a narrow storage space stacked with crates. The noises of slobbering, chomping and scarfing were louder than ever, discarded torches illuminating a large, hunched back behind the crates off and ahead. Some of the group dared enter, but as Takeshi tried to pull them back, he knocked into a crate tower and toppled it with a great crash.
Ogre Face Off
Two massive ogres with sausage links dangling from their bulging cheeks blinked, caught eating the supplies, though their eyes widened wider to find not their dark race comrades but a strange mix-race group.
At that point some negotiation was attempted by Giers and Hulda, but even as the paladin tried and pull Kaylan and Isabella back out of the room, the wizard bested him (and even tripped him). The spunk was like seasoning shaken over the girl and one of the ogres got that look in his eye, the look of insatiable hunger. Giers offered money, but the brutes responded rather flatly, "We'll take it off your corpses."
Hungry, Hungry Ogres
One ogre took a position behind a door jamb to throw javelins with lethal accuracy, while another tipped a crate tower over Hulda and Isabella and rushed in for some devastating blows with his great club. With each ogre even larger than Hulda, and wider still, it would prove to be a good fight.
Death by Pumpkin
Near the end, the brute wielding his club in the forefront was taken out. Portia, having climbed some crates for a superior vantage took a pumpkin from a shattered box and threw it with her boggart finesse. It struck the ogre in such a way that it broke his neck. Death by fruit.
Trapped
At that point the ranger had vanished, and there wasn't much time to look for him. Banging from the storage room's side door and yelling in goblin signaled more enemies were coming. The javelin ogre's heavy corpse blocked the door from opening, but soon the banging stopped.
Quick as a half-giant could, Hulda dragged the corpse over to the hall door, which Giers had slammed shut. Not a moment too soon, as enemies tried to break through, again stopped by the incredible bulk of ogre dead weight. Effectively trapped, Hulda led the way through the side door hoping for a way out.
The Barracks
The scions emptied into a large room filled with beds and small campfires. A massive bugbear slept hugging a great morningstar, while an ogre sat off the corner slowly roasting a twice-basted peasant boy on a spit. For the moment the group was unnoticed, until a hobgoblin warcaster charged back into the barracks from the hall beyond, one of the enemies that banged on the door.
Portia's Ruse
In this do or die moment, the boggart stepped forward, working a quick lie into a life-saving ruse. She claimed the group was mercenaries hired to kick them into shape, and if they knew what was good for them they'd relax or end up like those two pigs in the storage room. The hob, after a moment's consideration, looked the half-goblin over and nodded.
Another hob rushed in about ready to fight, but the warcaster assured him the scions were mercenaries hired by Lhekrina. Then three orcs rushed in, now bringing the barrack's enemy total to nerve-wracking numbers.
Sausage Knockout
Portia gave her same explanation to the veteran orc, looking like one big scar, who got in Portia's grill and called her out. In a truly legendary twist of sausage links, she strangle-wrapped the orc and took him down. The monster hit his head off the stone floor so hard he blacked out. The other orcs looked at Portia with small amazement and left her be from then on, the scions quite impressed themselves.
The Guard Room
The rogue led the scions out and into the North Wing once more, knowing her ruse was like a sinking life raft, and together they made for the main line and the stairs, hoping Erig, Grenwigne and Takeshi had made it out already. But they found new enemies waiting for them, four drow women in cloth-of-midnight shawls each toting a leather leash attatched to a hulking orc berserker.
Surprise Attack
They attempted to sneak passed the five enemies, but Kaylan was hardly used to such constant stealth and was detected. However before the drow could attack, the rest of the group leaped from the shadows and dug in with arcane and martial punishment the likes of which quickly crippled the guard room to bloody messes.
Ladies of Shadows
The drow women were masters of shadows and stabbing, though, and did manage to put up vicious fights as they cartwheeled through darkness and planted blades in all sorts of painful, vital places like Giers' brainstem and Hulda's gut. Yet the group looked about ready to prevail, only two drow left before the great stone door at the main line's terminus ground open.
The Hand of Doom
A contingent of dark races and drow, each led by a commander that looked tougher, more-seasoned and better equipped surrounded the scions. At their head was a drow woman of unparallel beauty, in tight, skimpy bondage that looked painful. On one hip she wore a scourge, and on the other a glass dildo.
Takeshi stepped out from behind her and began explaining a deal he'd made involving safe passage for promises of aid...
The Accord
And so Takeshi had made an uncertain treaty with The Hand of Doom, for better or for ill. The group passed through the great stone door and into the command hub. Most the group was scared, or at the very least rattled, and rightly so...
Tonight's MVP: Portia
Experience: 404xp each (1818xp thus far)
Loot: 1 large scale armor suit (Hulda), carpenter's tools (Portia), crowbar (Portia), 10 javelins, 3 daggers, greataxe
Money: 30gp (330gp, 120sp total): 55gp, 20sp each
NPCs:
Robed Hobgoblin [name unknown]
Orc Veteran [name unknown]
Lhekrina, Drow Commander
Haxlound, Hobgoblin Commander
Ogre Commander, [name unknown]
Bugbear Commander, [name unknown]
Orc Commander, [name unknown]
Monsters: Ogre Skirmishers, Hobgoblin Warcaster, Hobgoblin Subcommander, Orc Witchdoctor, Orc Militant, Orc Berserker, Bugbear Warrior, Ogre Savage, Ladies of Shadows
Places: North Wing, Store Room, Barracks, Main Line, Command Post
Ogres: Ogres are the Dark Race of Gluttony, tremendous creatures like mounds of flesh ten feet tall, bulging with fat and supported by iron muscle beneath. Hirsute, with pinched faces and almond eyes floating in fat, two or three-chinned heads, ogres often stylize long waxed strand mustaches and beards. They favor pelts and furs of things they've killed and not eaten whole, hauberks and lamellar armor, iron spiked helms and an array of heavy melee and short ranged weapons.
They live to eat, fight and fuck. They've no shame and if left to their own devices lay waste to whatever lands they claim, moving on like a herd of rampant beasts when the resources dry up. As such, ogres are nomadic, feared, and driven out or exterminated if their chosen realm can muster such opposition. Material gain and earthly satisfaction are their code of conduct, also known as Yagsa and which includes a surprisingly intricate philosophy of getting the most out of life. Ogres claim everything that catches their fancy and exercise all the brute savagery necessary to secure it. They aren't the most intelligent race, certainly not the most eloquent, but they are brutally clever when it comes to killing and taking.
Ogre males are the dominant gender, the women relegated to birthing and guarding the young until they're old enough to kill or mate. Ogres move in clans throughout Atha, Myaton and isolated mountain chains like the Sarsark. If ogres manage to collect in large enough numbers, hordes can be formed consisting of multiple clans and kinged by a Khan. That is often every ogre's dream.
Clans and hordes are known to, on occasion, tame beasts capable of bearing them, rhinoceros, pachyderms and the like. Such juggernauts are some of the most feared troops an army employing Dark Races can manufacture.
Hobgoblins: The Dark Race of Pride, hobgoblins are cruel, arrogant and militaristic to the point of tyrannical. Hatemongers all, they're built like men, with warty, rust-colored skin and goblins' pointed ears and scrunched faces. They're known to favor a wide array of weapons and armor, often adopting the materials of nearby humans for the ease of acquiring weapons, armor and supplies. It is also relatively easy for a hobgoblin to appear as a man from a distance, especially under a cloak or in full armor, and they use this tactic to its full effect.
Intelligent and strategic, capable of magic but excelling at martial endeavors, their wicked race falls into strict castes that form fearsome legions. If possible, these legions will collect into one great host, ever out to gain land and slaves. Several times throughout history it seemed these great armies were on the verge of carving an empire, only to crumble under the weight of their own egos, for Pride is the most destructive sin of all.
Male and female are treated as equals, for ultimately treachery and cunning determine hobgoblin advancement. To hobgoblins, they are already an empire-in-waiting, this intangible philosophy-place sometimes referred to as Skeshera the Stoneless Kingdom. Each is a soldier of this territory-to-be, and as such every tribe or clan of them is organized and labeled as a military unit. Children are called grunts, young adults recruits, and so on up the military ladder. Depending on the clan size, a captain might rule, or a lieutenant or a sergeant, or even a general if the numbers deserve his or her title.
Though they're known to work with other Dark Races, hobgoblins consider themselves without equals. Though they might tolerate the harassment of physical superiors like orcs or mental superiors like drow, there is always a hushed understanding hobgoblins are simply waiting out the inevitable rise of their people. And if they could but achieve half their ambitions, perhaps they really would prove masters of their own empire.
Orcs: The Dark Race of Wrath, Sons of Ire, orcs are blackish-green monsters standing level with men, rippled with muscle and flaked with dry, crocodilian skin. Their features are primal, almost reptilian, including overdeveloped jaws capable of crushing bones, claw-like appendages and threatening red eyes.
Orcs yearn for destruction above all other things. This racial bloodlust was once tempered by dark faith and devil worship, but every generation is wilder, more terrible, and if such an evil race could be labeled lost, then orcs have truly lost their way. They once held mighty cities, the last of which was Mongrel not twenty years passed, a time when orcs collected in great military hosts reflective of hobgoblins today, but orcish savagery has slipped into blind madness, their wrath turned to uncontrolled and unfocused rage. They've de-evolved, to the point some of the latest orc generations can no longer speak at all beyond primal grunts and growls. Yet for all this shrinking of civilization, their animosity has grown, and their tenacious strength with it.
They're cruel creatures, cold and passionless despite their unprovoked anger, just as liable to use one of their infants as a grapeshot for ammunition in their war slings. And with their last city and tribal fracture, their ability to craft has deterioriated into only the most primitive weapons and armor. The average orc scavenges what he cannot make, which is almost everything. Blood is always spilled in the effort.
Orcs no longer have any great ambitions. Their wrath once was precise and purposeful, channeled toward the destruction of men and the reclaiming of their ancestral lands taken from them in The Purge. Now they act entirely on the promise of war, blood, death and glory. Orcs once commanded scores of goblinoid fodder for their great hordes, but now their revenge has been lost to brute carnage and they cannot even command themselves. This leaves them in a dangerous position, powerful but weak-willed, capable of being used for any number of ends.
Bugbears: The Dark Race of Lust, bugbears are despicable creatures, born with a bottomless obsession for carnal pleasure. Nothing and no one is safe from their sexual appetites, this fixation on sensation warping their animal instincts. While drow, sensory-depraved for thousands of years and driven mad in soundless dark to become the dominatrix and sadist torturer-murderers they are, bugbears were bad from the start. They resembled hobgoblins once, though perhaps a larger variety, but unnatural relations with bears, dogs, sea lions, walruses and pandas across the greater stretch of the old world (Pangeal) for a great stretch of years permanently tainted them as caniformia. They stand seven feet tall, sometimes taller, immensely broad and strong as bears. Their faces are animalistic, with muzzles and snouts instead of lips and noses, and their ears are at the top of their head, rounded like their beastly lineage. Their coats ranges from tawny to black and they can, on occasion, even more-greatly resemble their abominable beast ancestors and possess particular panda coloring, walrus tusks, sea lion whiskers, or a variety of telling features.
Bugbears are semi-nomadic, keeping summer and winter dens. In summer they usually keep near coasts or water, in winter further inland and underground, often not as eager to go on raids. However the more sinister underlie is that moving around alot widens the pool of available victims, everything from livestock to kidnapped travellers, peasants to priests, who are dragged down into the dens and made toys and pleasure objects for grizzly orgies. Because of the awesome strength of bugbears, their toys quickly wear out and break.
Sex is the means to power in bugbear society, determining den leaders and clan chiefs. However sex appeal is not based on physical traits like it would be for any other animal. Bugbears are terribly ugly, even to each other, a backwards racial element that should have led to extinction but for the fact every bugbear is a complusive nymphomaniac. They often mate with trees and holes, so of course they would mate with each other. The bugbear best at coitus earns him or herself the true power of the den, for society revolves around sex and sex revolves around them, the best fucker. Their whim is followed and their persons pampered, that is until someone proves better than them. Then society degenerates into a bloody deathmatch, though usually other bugbears will rush to the defense of the best for obvious reasons.
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