Legends tell of the forgotten beast Ino Abeewom, "Ino Paddlesunk". It was an enormous eyeless crocodile with two long curly tails who undulated rhythmically. It had black scales that were round and set far apart, and spewed poisonous gas. The dwarves of Reliccurl knew the legend of Ino, how it was associated with water, death, and caverns. After all, the first cavern level they hit was completely flooded. They didn't know for sure, but they had looked pretty far and it was almost definitely completely flooded.
Then, someone unknown put a strange message on the town's message board. Ino Abeewom, Forgotten Beast, is no longer enraged. The dwarves of Reliccurl frowned, took it down, shook their heads, and went on with their lives. But it kept appearing, again and again. The dwarves tried to figure out who kept posting the message, but to no avail. The messages appeared for over a year before they stopped. No one knew where they had come from, or where they had gone to. But they were glad that Ino, wherever the hell it was, was no longer enraged. Enraged forgotten beasts were never a good idea.
Five years later, Urist McMiner was digging around above the water caverns. The overseers had decided that they wanted to know once and for all just how far they extended. With a swing of his pick the long tunnel he was digging breached the upper levels several dozen yards further than the last one. He enlarged the hole and stuck his head through, taking a good hard look around. To his immense surprise, he saw land! But closer than that, in the water below him...
"What the HFS is that?"
On the land, tangled up in forgotten beast web, he saw the skeletons of two serpent men blowgunners and one serpent swordsman as well as the trashed remains of their camp. But below in the water, surrounded by the scattered teeth of Ino, were the skeletons of two serpent swordsmasters and their blowguns. And Urist knew, just by looking, that one of them was the skeleton of Nemenleti, "Righteouscoils", the one who had dealt a mortal wound to Ino.
Then he promptly ran to the dining hall, where Urist McMarksdwarf was telling the story, yet again, of how when she went to get water from the well she was interrupted by Smanges Ngutebra Sumbax, "Smanges Hobblemurk the Ungodly Nightmare". As the story went, the gigantic humanoid composed of lignite with a fat bulging trunk and a bloated body that shot webs had been swimming around when she saw him through the fortifications. She shot him many times, breaking every bone and tearing every limb. No one had doubted her because Urist McClothier had been with Urist McMarksdwarf and fled when she shouted about Smanges, and the agonized trumpeting of Smanges had been echoing up the staircase for a year as it floated about unable to die.
Urist McMiner ran in and shouted, "You are wrong!" He grabbed Urist McMarksdwarf by the shoulders and shook her roughly. "That was Nemenleti and his clan!" He leaned in so close that he could smell the surface booze on Urist McMarksdwarf's breath and hissed, "He was a hero."
And then they got into a drinking contest, because that's what dwarves do.
(What happened: I kept getting mysterious messages that Ino was no longer enraged. He had come to my map but was only hanging out where I hadn't explored, so I never got a message about him coming. He found a serpent men camp of five and attacked. Two of them remained blowgunners, but the other three ran out of darts and started bludgeoning him with their blowguns until they became swordsmen. It took them over a year to kill him, by which point Nemenleti and one other had actually become master swordsmen, Nemenleti striking the final blow with a fungiwood blowgun. Sadly four years later Smanges came along and slaughtered them all. Urist McMarksdwarf did do a number on Smanges, there are seven bolts sticking out of it and three more in the water, but I like to think that Nemenleti left his mark on the creature, even though lignite beats fungiwood.)
Author
Topic: Ino Abeewom, Forgotten Beast, is no longer enraged (Read 685 times)