Wolves Reloaded session 4
4th SESSION
Warriors in Attendance
Dochartach, and
Cadwall, the two newest Druids.
Maester Hacksson, the latest to discover the infamous Eyebiter...
...and his late companion, Kay...
Rolfr, with his bow,
and Oyvind, a brave looking for trouble!
In the Circle of the Druids,
deeply troubling news had been brought to their attention. The Albann sect had become corrupt, and served a new master called Onthloug. Decisive action had to be taken. Cadwall and Dochartach had proven themselves in going abroad, so the circle bade them to take on a mark of holy soil and join as the newest members of the druid circle. Their education would take years to come in full, but it would begin with the most important lessons for war: the power hidden in elements, secret words not spoken nor written but made naturally in half, and made whole by arcane artifice... such secrets Cadwall and Dochartach did not share with their comrades.
The state of hostility that had existed since St. Olham's was raided and its saint's bones sold to the Druids was an excellent pretext, and the fanatics of the druid cult were mobilized near the circle. War would be made on the Christians, but first the wild cards needed to be in hand. Dorbog was at its most vulnerable, devastated by plague, and the Druids would be its salvation. Donnagh after all had always promised his hand to fall on the scales should the Ruislish powers come to blows, and that hand needed to fall on the Druids' side.
The band hired on a few Belcarran fanatics for their attempt to scour the springs feeding Dorbog, and as they approached came by a rather peculiar sight... A grotesque Ogre was spying on the springs from afar. He had coveted the walking bones that he saw defiling the springs with animal corpses, but was afraid for their numbers. Dochartach and Cadwall recognized him from the old Druid's cave, where he was seen picking bone charms off of the rocks and walls, and Maester brokered a quick deal. All the bones would go to the Ogre, if he would charge in and help smash them once the undead were lured out by a small vanguard.
The plan was set. The band waded out into the bog where they expected the ambush would be, and sure enough readied themselves to fight in all directions as the dead rose to meet them. Covered in rotting old bronze armor and swords, their attackers were ferocious but the band fought back just as hard.
The most wicked among the dead was a bog-mummy, equipped with a gleaming silver spear that skewered the brains of the Belcarran warrior in the vanguard! First the spear flew out and split the boards of his shield, and then it leapt through the breach to pop the axeman's eye! Maester's heart leapt into his throat to be face to face with the mummy that had ignored the axe-kisses laid into it, but the roar of their bone-taking Ogre friend charging in kept morale in check.
The melee was chaos. Arrows, bolts and javelins flew into the crowd, men and bones both went down into the bog. Maester swore that he would defile the mummy's corpse with his own spear such that he would feel it in the afterlife, before himself being laid out by a skeleton's blade. Pricked with arrows and bleeding from spear and sword bites, it was Bonetaker who took the mummy's head. He grabbed the mushed up bolt-stuck crown and with an ugly leathery snap pulled it apart from its chopped up neck.
In the wake of the battle, Oyvind's hot blood demanded vengeance for a stray javelin that had killed his dog. He issued a challenge to the Belcarran warrior Dolag who accepted a full-moonlight duel at the Druids' Circle when the time came.
The remaining Belcarrans hollered and cheered as the fallen and wounded were recovered. A drink of the Goldsong Elixir was all that it took to pan the bog for all the grave-goods the dead had, a small fortune in jewelry and sundries.
In Dorbog,
where Donnagh ruled. His gratitude was curt, hospitality a cold formality. Maester's banishment was lifted, but he would forever be barred from bearing arms in the town. The ruler's advisor Mish was himself a Druid, and made a point of the allegiance Donnagh owed the Druids for this salvation. All had gone as well as it could, save that a grievous wound Maester had taken from the Mummy was not healing...
He left his bejeweled blade to his companion Kay, and said that he would seek magic to cure the cursed wound. Kay, never to miss an opportunity to lighten his purse, took the others on a new quest to drink up as much as they could from the hospitality that Dorbog offered!
The next day, three of the band were out a good handful of silver from the stab wounds they had received (some kind of bizarre accident involving a tailor's tools and three drunkards stumbling onto a spilled pile of them), while Kay discovered he had taken something back with him from his brothel-crawl.
The band made for the Druid circle, where Kay chose to fight his crotch-rot off in place with the aid of herbal medicines and supplemental aid. As his vitality slipped away, he finally acquiesced to a desperate measure to cut the root of the problem off. As the surgery complicated, he gave his last words: commission a runestone in his name...
"Kay had this stone placed in his memory; his sword was long and heavy as he let the women of Dorbog know."
Rolfr took custody of Maester's rich blade and in the tense atmosphere of the war-camp, made a boast aloud that before this blade's owner comes back for it, he would claim seven Christian necks with its edge!
Though none knew where Maester had gone... and the night of the duel between Dolag and Oyvind was soon to come.