Page 44You sneak around to the west and try to creep up behind the bowman. Unfortunately, a twig snaps beneath you and the kobold whips around, firing an arrow that would have hit you in the eye if it were not for your shield. Another arrow flies at you from the darkness beyond the bowman. You pounce on the bowman and hack off his right arm, causing him to fall and bleed heavily. You stand over the dying kobold, with two spearmen and a swordsman advancing towards you and a bowman undoubtedly targeting you from the shadows. You hack the struggling kobold again with your axe, this time lopping off his right leg. You bring his suffering to an end with a final slash of your axe, which severs his other arm. You and the swordsman duel ferociously, with rapid swings and parries occurring in the space between you as you both dance all about the camp. Meanwhile, the two spearman continue to advance towards you, and another swordsman enters the scene from the north. The mob begins to surround you, but you duck out of the crowd to the south and retreat in that direction for a few meters. There you find the elusive bowman, who fires an arrow into your shield. You dodge and block two more arrows as you rush towards the bowman, five bandits in your wake. You strike him in the chest with the pommel of your axe, before leaving him and running further south as the mob reaches you. He fires more shots at your back as you run, but they all miss. You swerve around the trunk of a tree, which is adjacent to another (providing sufficient cover from the bowman) and wait for the first kobold to come around the corner alone. A spearman turns the corner at an immense speed, but he is clotheslined by the blade of your axe, which stops him dead in his tracks and tears off his right arm. He tries to crawl away from you as you bash him in the lower back with your axe's pommel, but your onslaught is interrupted by a swordsman. You leave the injured spearman to bleed and step back to your position behind the tree. The swordsman follows you, with another sword-wielding kobold behind him and two more bandits flanking you from the north.
You hack the swordsman's arm off and abandon your position, with five angry kobolds either limping or running to keep up with you. As you run, you periodically swing at the legs of the nearest kobold to you in order to slow them down. Eventually you break at least one of each of your pursuers leg's, but sever none. The stubborn kobolds are not deterred, and continue to crawl towards you with their weapons outstretched.
At least now you can engage them one-on-one, and do so with great success. After tearing apart a crippled swordsman, you notice that the others have begun to crawl away from you, but they aren't too hard to catch up to. You systematically hack and pommel each of the fleeing disabled bandits, until the conniving bowman from earlier rears his ugly head and actually lands a shot on you. The arrow pierces your leg, shattering your bone and knocking you to the ground alongside a kobold swordsman (who is in a very similar predicament).
You don't attempt to stop the swordsman as he crawls away (he'll probably bleed to death anyway) and claw your way along the ground until you reach a safe position behind a palm and an acacia. The pain is tremendous, but you grit your teeth and will yourself not to fall unconscious. Arrows fly towards you from the dark, peppering the surrounding tree trunks and soil, and one strikes your shield. You crawl out into the night, searching for this cowardly sniper. Another arrow lands, this time in your left leg. The bone is chipped and blood pours out of your leg onto the ground and pants, leaving a red streak behind you as you crawl. You manage to roll back behind the trees before passing out briefly. When you awake, you are stunned and still in extreme pain, but the bleeding has stopped. As you try to escape this hellhole through the east, an arrow pierces your back, passing right through your flesh and striking your spine. A pain such as you have never imagined erupts through your whole body, and you feel everything begin to numb. You still seem to be able to work your arms, and despite barely being conscious, you persevere. You begin crawling on your right shoulder, with the rest of your body curled into as compact a ball you can manage, with your shield covering yourself. This technique is surprisingly effective, allowing you to block five arrows. You finally reach a ditch (the kind that usually contain murky pools), and roll down into it. You cover yourself and equipment in the still-wet mud and assume as stealthy a position as possible for someone with your injuries. Slowly and painfully you crawl out of the ditch, and continue crawling away to the southeast until you feel safe from the beasts. You travel for quite a while to the east, and your limbs remarkably seem to have recovered quite a bit. Your spine, however, is horribly mangled and broken. You lie on the ground, not far from a kobold camp in the pitch-black dark, with severely painful and debilitating injuries, but you are alive (for now).
If you...
Just lie there, waiting for daylight, turn to page 46.Attempt to travel south in your terrible condition, turn to page 47.
Muster up a truly dwarven
courage stupidity and crawl your way back to the camp to kill them all from below, turn to page 48.
Poll
9 (50%)
Author
Topic: Choose Your Own Adventure: Adventure Mode (Read 9899 times)