The Adventures of Bora Ragedance, Volume II
Part one: Raising Cain
Out of the setting sun came a young woman, armed with a halberd and inappropriately clothed for the hot northern weather. She strode with purpose through the streets of dinnerwandered, stopping only to read the sign in front of each shop she passed, until finally, at the opposite end of town one caught her interest. She quickly sauntered up to the door and hammered on it profusely. Soon, it swung open and a merchant stepped out. The two spoke briefly, too quietly for anyone to overhear, and soon the girl was ushered inside.
Inside the shop sat an armed dwarven maiden and a pikeman, chatting over their meal of giant ostrich lung and local ale. They paid little attention to the merchant and the girl as they passed into the next room in the shop. The girl entered alone, while the merchant went back to his labor of closing the shop up for the night. Within the back room an imposing figure of muscle, metal and greedy eye stood before the girl, one that most sane folk would shy away from.
Unlike many other women who entered the room to speak to this one very famous man, Adre was not simply infatuated with him. Instead, she recited a single line: “We must raise Cain” and witnessed a miracle; an expression of surprise, shock, on the face of a man who had always seemed in complete control of the situation.
“Well, if it is the will of Ume, then it shall be done. But who sent you, girl?”
“Er did. She said we must raise Cain. She wants to do so on The Adorable Island. Our efforts in the south have yielded many servants, including myself, and Er has managed to fool the dwarves into building it for us. She also wishes that you would join us there.”
Bora stood up with a sigh, grabbed his sword off the table nearby, and followed her out into the other room. He said goodbye to his dear, although none-too-bright dwarven friend, Feb, and beckoned the pikeman to follow him. As they left, he turned back to Adre and gave her a simple order, “Return to Er, tell her that I will be returning within the year, but on my way I must finish a few errands.” He paused for a moment, and then turned to his pikeman; “Go with her. I’ll be able to find other escorts.” Without another word the two parted with their lord, heading westwards while he began the trek south through the town.
[OOC: I actually took them both with me, but lost them in a river because I thought it was going to freeze on me. It didn’t, but I offloaded the grid they were in and they subsequently vanished. I have no idea where they ended up, although I assume they are still alive. Somewhere, somehow, even if we can’t find them again...]
Bora trekked southwards, sating his thirst for blood with wild animals by day, passing the time in villages by night. While he was waiting for the sun to rise in Mindfulring, he learned from a local insomniac about the recent exploits of dwarves in the area. They had, in fact, built two fortresses which he had never heard of previously, all whilst he was playing his strings in Dinnerwandered. The Fortress of Deathtraps wasn’t far off his intended route.
The next morning he swam upstream, southwards, passing Bunchgrove and skirting The Larval Lake. All through his travels through the rivers he herded a vast and ever-increasing swarm of fish ahead of him. He took joy in their slaughter, and spilled their guts, raising the corpses to make “fishy streamers” as he called his new undead pets. He came upon a hippo who slew his fishy streamers, and he spilled her guts as well, chopped them off, and stuffed them in his sack for the sake of a trinket with which to taunt the squeamish.
The Fishy Streamers!
Beyond The Hell of Prophecies he abandoned the river to trek through the desert to Deathtraps, but he was soon detoured southwards by a band of goblin warriors who promised their allegiance to him if he would slay a bandit leader plaguing their nation. However, when the time came to fight the bandits his goblin comrades turned on him, and he was forced to slay them and the bandits. He neglected to kill the bandit’s leader, though. As he again turned towards Deathtraps he was ambushed no less than three times by more goblins, and each time he slew one, strangled and drank from the other.
Deathtraps itself failed to live up to its’ name. He found a mysterious entryway at the top of the mountain there, and entered the fortress through a long, winding mine cart track. From there, the fun did begin. There was first some trickery of levers meant to open a hatch and seal the path behind with obsidian, which failed to be cast. Below was a room with more levers, each initially appeared to be linked to a pillar holding up the floor the lever was built upon. Bora saw through the trick on his first attempt, choosing to pull the lever linked with the most mechanisms. Immediately the floodgate to the next chamber opened and he proceeded unscathed. There was, at the end of the next hallway, a room with a well.
Carefully he slunk into the room, looking every which way for traps or hidden doors, but he found none but a floodgate on a ledge above, too high up to reach. He then looked down into the well, and saw beneath its waters a pressure plate. He climbed in and walked across the plate many times to no effect, and finally gave up. Instead, he chose to fiddle with the well, and suddenly a floodgate cut off the hallway he entered through and a torrent of water gushed down from the ceiling, flooding the chamber. Now, this probably would have been enough to kill any mortal who wasn’t a proficient swimmer, but vampires don’t need to breath, and Bora was a very good swimmer by this point. He was now able to reach the floodgate above, and found a lever to pull, opening it. On the other side of the gate was a short hallway of floor grates to drain excess water, although there was little, and beyond that ever-stranger passages of not-so-impending doom.
At one point there was what appeared to be a trick to force an adventurer to run down a hall away from a tide of magma, but this failed to trigger properly because there was also water rushing in from a mechanism designed to cast an obsidian wall in the hallway behind the adventurer. This ended up casting an obsidian wall under the magma spout as well, which left the device entirely impotent. Bora simply walked down the halls, and soon he came upon another spiraling mine cart rampway designed to carry people upwards. Wary of another poorly-designed but possibly still harmful trap, Bora chose to walk instead, and after safely crossing a catwalk over the volcano caldera outside, from which he could see some dwarven magma forges, he came to a room. The room contained a lever and a pile of priceless adamantine gear! Hardly feeling as though he deserved a reward for running around in that crazy little place that almost seemed more like a child’s theme park, Bora nearly left without the adamantine. He did choose to take it all anyway, though, on account of it being unlikely anyone else would bother to go in after him.
Having run out of crazy dwarven shit to occupy his time, Bora wandered the slopes of the volcano and soon found a doorway leading into the forges he had spotted while crossing the catwalks. He entered, and found nothing else of interest within besides a single stairwell leading down. He followed it, and explored briefly the caverns below. In one, he found a single living dwarf; some farmer of little coin, whom he took with him on his journey. Overall, the dungeon was a 5/10. Would not run again. Not that it was possible to try it twice or anything since it was now mostly cut off, and Bora had taken all the loot.
Bora was soon forced to leave the fortress to continue his trek. He walked a short distance south to the village of Tiledshower, where he stopped briefly to chat with the locals. They told him about the fortresses of Silverywind and Plankstirred far to the south, which he soon set out to visit. Sometime that night the dwarf lost the adamantine battleaxe and he was summarily punished with a severe flogging. Bora took the dwarf south to the local humans’ capitol of Stilledfeast. He visited the keep, talked to a child, then some bandits hanging out in the city dungeon whom he killed after the conversation. The dwarf died in the ensuing brawl, and Bora collected the adamantine form the corpse before leaving. Other than the sixty-year-old “child”, everyone in the keep was dead. in fact, most of the city was dead. Bora simply left it to rot and continued southwards.
Soon, he stumbled upon a camp of rather friendly bandits in the desert, and rested there for the night.
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Topic: The Museum: Adventure mode succession world (DF 34.11) (Read 819706 times)