Ishar, Sir and Amroth walk into the arena, and to their suprise, in front of them it's not the two minotaurs they were scheduled to fight, but the elves and the direwolves. The announcer takes the stage:
-Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special evenet for you today! The two most accomplished gladiator teams stand before you, and now, instead of horrible monsters, they will be fighting... each other! The reward for the winning team will be a full set of dragonleather armor. Commence!
The three armored direwolves sprint towards the gladiators, but Amroth stops one of them with a lightning to the face. Specter is alive, but barely. Still, a barely alive trained direwolf is still a bloody dangerous direwolf. Wraith and Ghost charge onwards, and they don't stop until they reach Ishar and Sir. They try to catch Ice mid-run, but he evades them easily, and he goes for the other team's gladiators.
Thranduil fires an arrow, but Ice manages to avoid that one as well, and jumps at Celeborn. The attack is wildly successful, Celeborn drops his claws, and falls to the ground. He is only saved by Radaghast's ice ball, the one which smacks Ice off the elf.
Ishar avoids Wraith easily, and counters with his sword. The adamantine armor is the only thing that saves the pack leader's life, as the sword would have beheaded him otherwise. It's still a powerful blow, and the direwolf seems to be at a disadvantage. Sir is not so lucky, Ghost managed to grab his weapon-hand, so he fails to use his own sword, and has to fight the direwolf with his bare hands. Somehow, he pries off the jaws of the beast from his wrist, but he is still pretty seriously hurt.
Amroth tries to even the odds, and aids Ice with another lightning, hitting Radaghast this time. The mage is completely unprepared for this, and he gets a huge hole in his chest, and falls down dead. In retaliation, Radaghast freezes Ice (pun not intended), and Thranduil shoots Amroth with a lightning arrow. Amroth is armored however, and while the arrow is certainly powerful, it isn't lethal. What IS lethal however, is the oncoming Specter, who recovered from the lightning bolt form before, and bites Amroth's throat. Celeborn gets his claws back, and slices at the frozen direwolf. He doesn't manage to shatter him, but the damage is substantial.
Ishar finishes his work with Wraith, killing the direwolf with a decapitation, and turns his attention to Specter. That promises to be a one-sided fight, but not so with Sir: he still struggles with Ghost. The dwarf definintely has the advantage of his weapon and armor, but Ghost has superior speed, and deflects most of the former commander's blows. Neither of them manage to land any serious hits, but they are both slowly wearing down.
Thranduil shoots Ice again, and this time, it's a killing shot. Celeborn leaves that scene immediately, and rushes to the melee fighters, but he is far too late. Ishar unexpectedly struggles a while for Specter, he simply fails to hit him, and even gets bitten a few times. It's not serious, but still, enough to stall him. Sir finally turns the tide, and stabs Ghost in the heart, killing him. He gets confronted by Celeborn, who claws at his chest. The attack connects, but Sir only tumbles back a bit, his armor protects him well.
Thranduil tries to help Specter, but Ishar avoids his arrow easily, and kills Specter as well. Celeborn and Sir seem to be evenly matched, and they exchange quite a lot of blows without any decisive results. Ishar leaves them to their fate, and attacks Thranduil. He dodges another arrow, and simply cuts Thranduil's bow in half. The elf sticks a lightning arrow into Ishar's chest in panic, and the bolt strikes them both, and they both fall down. Ishar stands up a bit sooner, and that is bad news for Thranduil: he gets to be on the wrong end of an adamantine sword.
Sir is also successful, cutting off Celeborn's left hand. That, coupled with the previous injuries, leads to a swift bleeding out. Ishar's team wins the fight, but it as close as the audience likes it. The priests of Armok revive every fallen fighter, and they all go back to their quarters.
Sorry, I had to try it. For compensation, I will only keep the boots and the cloak (completing Ishar's set), you get the armor and the leggings, do as you please with them.
Thranduil shoots one of the trolls with a lightning arrow. It's a mild success, the troll is stunned a bit, but no real damage is done. Radaghast, however, is wildly successful with freezing another. Which Wraith promptly shatters. Ghost and Specter fail to do any harm with his initial charge, but they don't get hurt either.
Thranduil fires at the stunned troll again, but this time, he misses completely, and the troll pulls himself together. Celeborn is right there however, and slashes at him twice, doing light damage. The ogre chieftain is right behind Celeborn, but Radaghast saves him again with another deep-freeze. Wraith shatters that one as well. The other direwolves finished one of the trolls at this point, so there are only two trolls left at this point.
The three armored direwolves take one of them to the ground with a coordinated attack, and Thranduil doesn't give up either, and finally, he hits his opponent square in the chest. Celeborn goes in for the kill, but instead, he gets a fist into his stomach. Radaghast is there to save him again, as he snap the troll's neck with an ice ball. The gladiators want to help the direwolves, but they don't really need it: the last troll is dead, and their growls and bites are not for fighting anymore, only feeding.
2400 gold, splendid performance. You already got plenty of items, so you won't get bonus money for criticals today.
Cadmus somehow fails to hit with his initial charge, and the two enemy wolves close in fast. Mog calmly welcomes them with a flamethrower, incinerating both. Dog tackles the goblin warleader, and slams the creature to the ground. The goblin is bound to break free soon, but Dog holds it down for now.
Medea tries and fails to freeze one of the enemies, so Wendell face three men-at-arms at once, and his future doesn't look promising. He outclasses all of them by far, but they all have better equipment. Still, he slits a throat with his opening move, blocks a sword, but gets his nose bashed in with an iron shield. He falls to his knee, and even though Mog take some weight off him by pushing one of the soldiers away with a firebolt, the other knocks Wendell on the forehead with his shield again. The orc falls to his back, and doesn't have the energy to get up on his own.
The man-at-arms would have finished him, if not for Cadmus: the ranger shoots the man-at-arms in the head. Meanwhile, the goblin warleader kicks Dog off, and impales him with his spear. Medea heals Wendell, and Mog sets the last man-at-arms on fire: generally, everybody is doing his job perfectly. Wendell faces the goblin warleader, and it's clearly not a matched fight. The veteran orc dominates the fight, and despite having inferior equipment, he quickly kills the greenskin.
After all this is done, they leave the last remaining opponent to burn for a while, until finally Cadmus puts an arrow between his eyes.
530 gold for you, plus 70 for some nice critical hits.
Tyd and Ettad stand before a ridiculous amount of antmen. Even though Tyd quickly kills one iwth his first shot, there are still 24 of them left. Ettad leaps forward, wielding his axe like he usually does. Antmen limbs are flying everywhere, but the numbers are still overwhelming: Ettad's armor protects from most of the hits, but one or two eventually hits flesh. Ettad starts to feel his limits, and he is really close to cracking. Fortunately, Tyd is becoming an expert marksman, so all his shots start to draw some attention to him, and a couple of them go after him instead of Ettad.
Tyd can handle himself, he neatly avoids every attack, and this small change is enough for ettad to turn the tide. He beheads another antmen, breaks the spear of another, and generally kicks their chitin asses. It is not without a cost however: an antmen spear finally finds Tyd's foot, and the pinned down kobold is helpless against the antman swarm. He is quickly stabbed to death.
Tyd did his part however: Ettad is barely hurt, and their combined effort brought down twenty of the ants, leaving only a handful to ettad, and most of those are injured too. Ettad is not without some scars of his own, not that it slows him down much - the remaining antmen are hardly a challenge for him, as he cuts through them like butter.
After the long and bloody battle, he leaves the huge pile of corpses in the arena, and only takes Tyd's body with him.
600 gold for you, but Tyd is dead, and it costs 150 to revive him. However, for the effort of coing for a fight a bit above your level, you get to keep five copper helms from the antmen. Sell them or equip them, your choice.
Darnack blasts one of the bears in the face with a firebolt, and it has kind of wild results, as the bear's fur instantly catches fire. It was to be expected though: fire and wild animals rarely mix well. Wolf goes to tackle the other, but even though he is the smartest of the group, taking on a bear head on was not the brightest idea. Wolf DOES get to take a quick bite at the bear's throat, but these aren1t called apex predators for nothing: the incoming bear-slap brings Wolf to the ground. The bear then procedes to beat the living hell out of him, and it's only stopped by Udmog, who clubs it in the head. Udmog is almost as strong as he is stupid, so the blow really hurts, and the bear leaves Wolf for a moment. This is a mistake.
The direwolf gets up, and bites the bear on the hind leg with crippling strenght. The huge beast is so enraged by all this that it doesn't notice the incoming fireball: it also catches fire. Now both of the bears just roll on the ground, madly trying to put out the flames. Udmog jumps to them, and proceeds to club them to death. They are a bit bigger than the usual farm animals he's used to butcher, so it takes longer, but it doesn't matter: he gets the job done eventually.
400 gold for a decent job.
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Topic: Arena V: continuing where Arena IV left off (Read 9223 times)