Cog discovered the homelands of the Mythical Pines. There were many of them, their capital was vast in size, but every single one of them was an increasingly depressing and empty ruin of an independent past. Even the capital of Fogreigned was devoid of all Elves, with its massive market full of empty barrels, bins and presumably, Elven dreams. No Elves were to be found, nor even any humans, even in the Home Tree. There was no one to sell coconuts to.
It was gargantuan, massive, yet this only made the sheer scale of its abandonment more striking. If all the Shaping Trees weren't planted in ordered rows, you wouldn't even be able to tell it apart from a regular forest. Besides the names on the trees and the settlement itself, the legacy of the Mythical Pines was buried in time.
This did however mean there was tons of loot up for salvaging. Cog grabbed everything he could find, filling his rat pack with gems :]
The river-marked forests of the Mythical Pines were full of various settlements which never grew larger than one or two tree homes before the humans invaded. It seems that with the invasions the art of growing more tree homes was apparently lost to the Elves of these lands, and most of the Elves moved out to join the armies, criminals, bandits or human towns. Cog and Yare visited one just to see if their suspicions were true - that the entire Elven civilisation had indeed been annexed by the Ageless Nations.
A human soldier living in a tree full of Elves confirmed all of Cog's queries, all of the Elven lands had been annexed by humans. The rule of the humans was absolute, with no challenge to their rule at all - the Elves who lived under the rule of the humans or even took up positions of nobility within the Ageless Nations all wore human clothes, believed human things and forgot their former Elven ways. Yare surprisingly responded well to the humanised-Elves, moving more towards their line of thinking in the various arguments Cog overheard them having with the locals. Whatever war had occurred between the Humans and Elves, the Humans had won it a long, long time ago.
The existence of an Elven Furnace Operator who burned trees to refine metal seemed to disturb the Dwarf Cog on a deeply philosophical level. It made him question every assumption that he knew of the world: It was no longer a fact that what was so was always so, nor what is so always being as so. Perhaps in another world, an Elf could be a mighty Dwarven King. Madness!
Leaving the Elf remnants to their idle business, Cog and Yare returned to the ancient road only to be attacked by Wolves. Holy Avuz, that was a lot of Wolves.
GOOD AVUZ THAT'S A LOT OF WOLVESThere was no logic or strategy to this fight. Cog and Yare split up and ran for their lives chased by a lot of Wolves. This was unfortunate for Cog, because Yare was faster.
Cog dropped his backpacks full of gems and coconuts and drew out his warhammer & shield. Unfortunately, he forgot that his brand new warhammer was in his backpack, and he was still using the old one.
He was already having trouble hitting the Wolves, it didn't help when a lot of the successful hits were just glancing blows. Perhaps it was the speed of the Wolves, the quality of the warhammer, the great size of the wolves, or the fact that there were so many of them chewing on him, but Cog struggled to land any meaningful hits.
Biting the paw of one Wolf, breaking the spine of another with his warhammer, if Yare hadn't come back to finish off the Wolves Cog would have been a goner. Cog snuck back to retrieve his backpack full of fruit and treasure, escaping north up the road. Badly beaten, nearly eaten, Cog was still very much alive.
'I think my toe is broken, Cog. You?'
'I'm fine. I think my nose is gone. How's it look?' Cog asked. Yare grimaced, Cog's nose was mangled beyond recognition. 'I see. The wolves were hungry.' Cog started eating a pear. Cog checked his damaged finger, it smelt of infection, his nose... It felt bad. The pain in his toes was gone, which made him more worried. 'Yare, you have family right?'
'I have a father, mother, wife, six daughters, innumerable cousins, the usual.'
'That's good. Family is important. How are you finding the adventure?'
'This is the life for me, even if I hate being in the cold and rain!'
They walked through the cold and rain down the road and away from the Wolves until they met an unexpected fork in the road. One path led off into the North, a continuation of the ancient road. Another went West, and seemed much younger.
'Well what now?' Yare asked. Cog shrugged and started setting up a campfire, it might be some time before they came to a decision.
'Thanks for saving me back there with the wolves,' Cog said earnestly.
'You dealt with our cyclops problem. I wasn't going to leave you to the wolves.' Yare practiced with his sword, proud to have the cyclops-slayer indebted to him.
'But you did leave me to the wolves.' Yare frowned.
'I wasn't going to leave you to the wolves for too long.' They laughed.
I saw Keep using the old Warhammer until it's extremely worn out then keep it as a memento
I've since decided that keeping the old warhammer is not a good idea if a higher quality one is available. Cog really needs the odds stacked in his favour, and for that matter if he survives the road then I'm going to spend some days just training Cog to raise his stats/skills. We can't keep nearly getting killed by wildlife, while I think recruiting some metal-armoured humans would go a long way towards nature-proofing our adventure ;P
The terrible news is all those broken bones aren't healing nor is the flesh because there's no adventure mode medicine in game yet. Cog is probably going to die of the infection he's contracted because his disease resistance is so low. If we can find a doctor of some sorts I can probably justify modding in some healing, but I don't know if I want to go down that path. I wonder if Cog retires for a while, would his wounds be treated, and could he then resume his adventure without starting all over again at the mountain home? This is probably the only alternative to dying that isn't editing raws, lucky amputations or supernatural means.
Anyways while you guys decide whether healing mod is acceptable / which road to take I'll keep things idle. Any updates will be legends mode stuff to find any details that Cog might have missed in his travels. I don't know what's at the end of either road but I do know the road north will bring us closer to the civilisation in the mountains, which must be Dwarven. The mountains are far away however, while the young road might take us to human soldiers & doctors.
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Topic: Cog the Blind Drunk (Read 49368 times)