Demigod human warrior on his quest to bring down demon ruler of enemy goblin civ. On his first attempt he lost all companions and went out barely alive and on a crutch. Later he got cursed by a mummy in a quite stupid way. He left his companions to go and slay a nearby dragon - and he left them on the tomb ground, on top of a pyramid. For kicks. Dragon got backstabbed in the head, Bugi returns for his companions, just to discover they're now inside of the pyramid. Tried to go in and rescue them, I thought if I won't trigger anything and not go near the sarcophagus, it'll be ok. It wasn't. Managed to escape barely alive and chased by remarkably quick zombies while leaning on a crutch again. At least the mummy got decapitated.
Bugi needed meatshields more than ever now, so he went to an old retired fort to hire some axe lords. On his way his old companion, ex scholar steel clad axedwarf and a founding father of said fort lost his arm and leg to giant dingoes. Another companion, a slave of Bugis civ and a law-giver of another, going to the retired fort to see his grandchild, lost both arms to a hydra, he managed to deal the killing blow though. Both cases were similar - the curse kicked in and for some time Bugi wasn't able to do anything. Both companions were saved from blood loss with 'rest-hospitalization' (seems bit less lame then 'travel-hosptalization), the slave law giver just barely.
When we were closing on the target fort after few days of travel, we encounteted a suspicious star mark on the map, heading the same direction as us. It was a huge animal army heading for the retired fort. Later in legends I saw it consisted of 400+ leopards, 100+ giant echidnas, 50+ giant bushtits, some donkeys and few giant parakeets. And absolutely noone else. The army was generated by an elven civ, so it didn't need much imagination stretching to picture it as a some kind of beastmastet raid from the magic woods, but it's third animal-only army I seen in this particular world, one of them generating from human civ. Anyway, Bugi and his crippled companions engaged this army three or four times, but every time it pushed forward, leaving us tangled in mass of crawling jaguars and my companions hacking at some unconcious giant echidna rolled into a ball (so upper body hits only until it bleeds out). the army was quicker in the jungle than us, so it reached its destination, did the battle and ambushed us on its way back.
The army was still huge, so it spawned somehow erratically. many leopards were airborn along with giant bushtits/parakeets. 20+ z levels aboveground for some of them. The result was hilarious. It was raining cats and dogs leopards and donkeys. They got away though, at least those that could after initial downpour.
It wasn't the end of anomalies. Attempt to tell the story of the battle that just hapened revealed a sad truth - almost all inhabitants of the retired fort were slain (by one giant bushtit), only one yak, children and one squad that was on a patrol at the moment survived. Bugi's companion became the forts hammerer when we warped out of fast travel to enter the fort.
We come in, expecting to see either nothing or a great heap of bodies (the fort was 300+ strong, counting the merchants that stayed there after retirement and children born during 14 years that passed since it was retired). And we saw... everyone was alright. Some npcs weren't responding to anything and you could walk or even jump through them, but others seemed cometely alright, apart from the fact that their death by the giant bushtit was already an established legend, I was even able to tell everyone the tale of their death (no outstanding reaction to that). Even weapons of some of them acknowledged their death in the weapon's kill list.
Nevertheless, Bugi recruited two axe lords, got some books from fort's library, retired the crippled hammerer and slave law giver in the fort and went onwards, with his face half chewed-off by curse-inflicted critical hits from jaguars.
He slew a nearby bronze collosus with the axe-ladies (both females), and recruited a group of 12 or so drunks from the dwarven civ's hillocks. That merry band got medieval on the elven asses, rampaging from forest retreat to forest retreat of the civ that sent the beast army. By the tome we reached the capital (the northernmost settlement of the civ while we were going from the south) all the drunks were either dead (3) or armed with some weapon and with skills allowing them to gain a military profession (apart from my favourite - knivesdwarf, who remained a drunk). All of them had titles by then too.
We rampaged through the capital, sadly neither druid nor any royalty spawned. The beast army spawned instead, allowing Bugi to gain 200+ leopard kills. Hos curse wasn't a big deal vs them - most of their criticals bounced off his armour, he just lost one ear and most of his teeth. But the witch king was nowhere to be seen.
I raided the capital several times, each evening retreating to nearby hills for the dinner and a good night sleep. One time we tell some stories before bedtime, when... a baby pops out.
One of the axe ladies gave birth to a daughter, in the middle of wilderness. Of course she DOESN'T carry her afterwards (though she acknowledges the birth with right emotions hitherto seen by me only in fort mode).
What remained to be done?
We built a camp at the place. The baby now crawls peacefully around the temple area.
She even has some clothes now.
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Topic: What's going on in your adventure? (Read 2139166 times)