THIRD SESSION

Warriors in attendance:

The late... Erik the Skald, "Barnacle-Beard"

Vic the Swordswoman, "the Twenty-Man Slayer"

Albert the Swordsman, "the Butcher of the Sea"

A brief recap: The entreated the king of Hwicce for his best troops and spent two months ferrying them to Rhus. After the first month, they took them on a coup de main against the merfolk beachhead on the west coast of the island. That bought them time enough to bring more forces, which proved a decisive advantage in the battle of Trecht which won Albert a wife, and saw the merfolk cast down.

PYORRA,

the temperate continent to the south of Rhus would be the next target of the band's ambition. After all, Erik still had some heads to deliver to the berserkers. The band's first sighting was a fortress well equipped with sea walls as well, so along the coast they went looking for easier pickings! They stumbled upon old Roman ruins, and set about looking for an entrance.

In those ruins, they discovered Gnomes afoot, with giant weasels as animals of war! The party had alerted the enemy to their presence when they stirred up a great load of dust and choked on it, coughing loudly, but in the ensuing chaos managed to slaughter their foes wholesale. The enemy managed to incapacitate Albert however, and they sent their companion Bathdweller back to the ship with him.

They went on further to discover a room whose wall held a secret door, beyond which they found a study and an attached room full of stone statues and chests, behind a simple unlocked cage. Catching a glint of shinies, Erik convinced Albert's wife Louise and his fellow Vic to go after it. He started proceedings off by prodding it with a ten foot pole...

...whereupon the statues began to animate before them! With stiff, pained movements they reached out, low hoarse mutterings of "trespasser!" and "cease, immediately!" Erik had no time for parley, and wasn't the one who could understand their Latin tongue anyhow. That would be Vic, who looked on as Erik drew his greataxe and proceeded to shred the preserving layer of hardened, dry clay off one's head.

The exposed torn flesh hitting damp air sent the once-woman screaming in pain as she collapsed and died, and the battle was on. Surrounded by foes, Louise soon screamed her last as well, dragged down and beaten into a misshapen lump by foes as Vic and Albert went back to back and began to fight on. They Boasted, each of them, that they would "Be the first to kill over half of the 18 enemies surrounding them!" This newfound bravado lasted a short while before Vic was taken down by the sheer numbers. She was beaten and succumbed to the heavy blows, falling to the ground bleeding.

Erik, seeing his fate closing to an end, drank a tincture of Berserker Wine gifted to him by his mentor at Knartu! He proceeded to lay into his foes as they beat on him, no armor at all. He swung left, he swung right, he killed another, then another, then another...

Erik, Skald.

He boasted he at his most average was the equal of a raging berserker, and then proceeded to take to him with a shovel and his bare clothing, standing triumphant over the beaten battlerager. He was said to be one of the most wicked pagans, even more than the average; Christians saw him as a demon, but heathens called him "Erik of the twenty tonsures".

Then, in Trecht, he went on to stand against Vesuvius in single combat and see him off with his life on the line. "Barnacle-Beard" indeed he was called, and who knows what he would have gone on to be had his fate not been found?

Perhaps they would call him something pithy, like "Stonecutter". Something grandiose, like "Dungeonbreaker". Now, they call him nothing. Erik has found his fate, in a dark hole forgotten by man. But he is not forgotten by his fellow warriors. His death will be the muse of bards, and they shall sing:

His father was a knave,

His mother was a whore,

We called him a barber,

For his tonsures one score,

He choked that Vesuvius,

On his own long fat spear,

He had no need of armor,

An axe was all his gear,

HE FOUND NO EQUAL,

IN ALL THE LANDS OF LIGHT,

SO IN THE DARK HE WENT,

LEFT WANTING A FAIR FIGHT!

He fought eighteen dark monsters,

Who crawled out of the cracks,

He said "Come here you taxmen,

no gold, but have my Axe!"

He drank deep of good wine,

And had himself a blast,

With four dead beside him,

This Skald had swung his last!

Vic and Albert came to on the boat, with no sign of Erik. Bathdweller was overjoyed to see he had paid his lift-debt back, as he had boasted he would. He explained to them that the stone-skinned monsters they had fallen to were in fact taxmen-servants of the old Romans, still bound by their law... he knew enough Latin to concoct a shoddy legal argument for Vic's release, as she had killed none of them, nor did she begin the fight, and they had failed to identify their authority to the barbarian before attacking. Erik was beyond help, and rather than press his luck the now proven Warrior, Argon "the Bathdweller" decided he'd just return to the boat happy to have saved one of them.

As the party briefly mourned the loss of their comrade, they were shaken by the approach of a stranger just as they were setting off to Faroe, to seek fortunes in Borg now that this venture had failed.

They met with "Fyke", a swarthy man with a rudimentary grasp of Norse, who offered his services as a quartermaster if they needed an educated man in their crew. The party quickly agreed, and left with him for Borg...

...where they discovered he was not "Fyke", but Al-Faiq, and charmed the clerk at the docks with their mutual knowledge of the Arabic tongue.

Coming in late, they elected to stay at a good inn and make their offer of services to King Vagn tomorrow.

Strong drink and warriors is never a weak combination however, and before they knew it Vic was standing outside down to her clothes with a loaned sword and shield (her opponent having nothing the size of her sword-of-war,) challenging a pissant noble scion over the matter of her fame and honor.

The duel went slow at first; combatants exchanged blows that didn't strike true, and when it seemed that the upper hand was Vic's her opponent cleverly disarmed of the sword when it became stuck in his shield, As she stared him down with empty hands, he held his sword point first to his neck and asked her surrender. He was not able to get the sentence out before she audaciously brushed his blade aside and slammed a calloused fist into his temple. As he reeled from the blow she got her sword back out of the wrecked shield. With a final clever combination of blows she set him up for an overconfident counterattack that she repaid with a jab through his tunic to his chest.

Showing a magnanimous attitude and no small amount of prudence in avoiding paying a wergild for the scion's death, she tossed him bandages to stop his profuse bleeding and helped herself to his richly bejeweled sword. The blade was itself nothing special... but the decorations were worth several hundred pieces of silver, and she was looking to prove herself a woman of means.

Next time, they aim to beseech King Vagn for quests, riches, and glory... We shall see just how that goes for them.