Hi Pop,
We were raiding a mine captured by orcs last time I wrote. Things went well overall, for us.
The guys searched the room we just killed some orcs in, while Goraj and I waited out in the hall. Good thing we did, we saw a troop of orcs coming toward us in patrol. It would’ve been bad if we’d been surprised, but Goraj and I just tore into ’em.
You said orcs were pretty tough, but apart from a few bigger ones these mostly weren’t so hard… maybe this sword is better than I thought. Within seconds we killed four and the other two surrendered. The other guys came out of the room they were searching, drawn by the noise, and found us standing over the two survivors. Vesper went to question them, and wanted to intimidate them a little first.
“We only need one of you who talks, so…”
TWANG!
Nobody remembered to take the crossbow away from the goblin. Nailed one of the orcs square in the face. “Reload please?”
I know you don’t trust goblins, Pop. I’m starting to like this one, and I think he realizes that even if he survives shooting one of us, nobody will reload his favorite toy. It’s not that I trust him, exactly, so much as I think he doesn’t want to ruin a good thing for himself.
“… okay, now we need this one a little more than we did.”
They trussed him up and dragged him into the room we were just in, then questioned him. Then gagged him and threw him into a handy mine cart in case we needed him later, and Curio decided to give him something to think about and poured some really harsh moonshine that we’d found on him. This is important later.
Remember that magic catseye gem we found? Vesper rolled it down the hallway and learned that the rooms off the hall had about a dozen orcs of various sizes, and the room on the end had some more that were watching two humans fighting for their entertainment.
The guys started talking about how to go room to room trying to be sneaky and stealthy and hoping we could isolate them, when I pointed out that the orcs were pretty easy to kill, and if we got themall out at once we could just get this over with. Curio and Vesper still had some spells left, so if it went worse than I expected they could use spells to help out without wasting so much magic.
I got ready to start shouting insults down the hallway to call the orcs out. I remember you saying their word for themselves means ‘hard skin’ or something, so I was going to start with something about soft-skinned cowards who didn’t have mothers because they each had two fathers who took turns being ‘mommy’… when someone mentioned that if we set the other orc on fire he could probably make even more noise, so they wheeled him out in the cart, told him what was coming and cut his gag off.
That’s when I realized — orc in a cart, orc going to be on fire…and the cart was on rails that went all down the hallway. I got Goraj to give me a hand, and after they set the orc on fire we pushed the cart and ran it down the hallway.
I think we got everyone’s attention. We fought our way back and in the end all the orcs were dead. And the two pit fighters, it seems one was standing on the tracks when the burning cart full of screaming flaming orc ran him over, the other died fighting for his freedom against the other orcs in the room.
Pretty effective for a plan we made up as we went. You always did say a good warrior is always ready to take advantage of his surroundings and use what’s available to be more effective.
After that we went down a ladder into the mine proper. Killed some orcs who were training, killed some overseers who were making miners work and helped the miners escaped, killed some more orcs working in a kitchen of some kind… though I don’t want to think about what they were cooking.
It turns out the orcs were all led by an ogre. We got to where the ogre was and he was surrounded by orcs. Vesper cast a spell on them and they all fell asleep, then we killed the ogre. He hit me a little, I hit him a lot, that sort of thing, until he was dead. The goblin went kind of nuts for a little while, I don’t speak goblin but he sounded really excited and angry while he killed the sleeping orcs.
Rescued some more miners, then looted the place to the stone. Hangrist wants the sword the ogre was using, I think I might be spending some time with him on sword work.
We went in to rescue some miners, but the other rewards were pretty good. A fair amount of coin, some gems, a magic greatsword, and some pieces of… some kind of magic rock stuff.
Anyway, we’re off to the castle. Say hi to the rest of the family for me.
James