Glorm stood shirt less facing the Barbarian Fuji; both of the figures were sweating profusely in the midsummer heat. They had been going at it in the small clearing twice a day for the last week, while waiting for Sid to return. Glorm stared at the long sword he held, not Blackheart (or what there was of it) that seemed to be tempting fate. Just a plane long sword borrowed from Krinn, and more frequently the wooden training swords.

Fuji approached making a cut at Glorm's head. Glorm moved to parry, but suddenly Fuji switched the direction of his cut towards Glorm's unexposed abdomen. Damn, it was to late to bring his sword down for an appropriate parry. Without a thought, Glorm jumped backwards barely avoiding Fuji's blade. This scene had been repeated endlessly over the last few days. Glorm's skill with a sword was negligible. Female Dwarves and the occasional weakling would use the sword, but a real dwarf hefted a massive hammer or axe to take advantage of their compact build and massive strength. Fortunately for Glorm he was quicker than most dwarves, in fact no dwarf that Glorm had met could match his quickness. So the sword was not an absurd weapon for him, just unnatural. So once again Glorm was forced to avoid Fuji's cut, by dodging, ducking or leaping. Glorm was confident he could take the Barbarian even with this awkward weapon, but he obviously had a lot to learn, as the many bruises on his body would attest. The two fighters would practice until the weak human would call it quits after a mere three hours of work each morning and evening. Glorm would continue with the Katanas for another hour usually using Blackheart, but there was nothing like live practice. As he circled Fuji one more time he thought longingly of Blackheart lying with his pile of clothing not 15 feet away. Ah the feal of the sword; so perfectly balanced lovely to hold and behold... Oh shit! here came Fuji's attack this time a feint and then a cut at Glorm's feet. Glorm missed the parry again, and was forced to leap over the blade landing nimbly awaiting Fuji's next move.

DELRIN

Delrin was out scouting the area with Chronoss, a local wolf he had summoned to the area. Chronos was a beautiful wolf with gray fur and gray blue eyes. Delrin was glad to leave the crowded camp and stretch his legs. The constant clanking of Fuji and Glorm's sparring was getting to be quite a nuisance. Hopefully Sid would return soon with news of the Don. The party would wait another month, and then head up river to meet Sid at their alter ante site; hopefully that wouldn't be necessary. As it was everyone was getting tired of Delrin's Druid rations, spam and cheese just didn't cut it with the boys, particularly after one of Glorm's sparring sessions. The dwarf could eat like nothing Delrin had ever seen.

As Delrin circled the camp upwind, Chronus let out two short howls--this was their sign for trouble. Delrin found some cover in a thicket and awaited the wolf's return. After a nervous ten minutes the bitch returned. Although they had an empathic bond, Delrin could not grean the nature of the trouble. He had feared an errant band of Urakai or more assassins, but that did not seem to be the case. He slipped into the darkness after the wolf using all his woodsmen skill to blend in. After a few minutes he started to smell an awful stench. After another hundred yards Delrin was startled by a horrific sound like someone stepping on a bag of ducks, after a pause the sound was repeated, once twice and then rhythmically. Curious Delrin foolishly stepped forward towards the sound. It seemed to be coming from a narrow defile just ahead. As he peered over the edge, he saw one of the most hideous sights in his life.

The source of the sound was the bulbous nose of a troll. At least he thought it was a troll, he had never actually seen one, only heard of them from the troops who came back from the Kom campaign. Looking more closely he noticed an iron collar on the giants neck. He was peering to get a better look when a meaty hand snaked forward and grabbed him by the neck. He shortly found himself staring into the yellow eyes of the monster. He was shocked to hear the beast croak out in halting common "Who be you, puny human" At first Delrin was too shocked to reply, but he soon figured this was a good sign--talk first eat later.

"Just a common cleric your rotundness" replied Delrin.

"Roto what?" the troll snarled.

"A simplecompliment oh great one, nothing more."

"Ah well, if that's the case why don't you join me for a bite then, I was just getting ready for a snack, if you catch my meaning" Delrin wasn't sure he did, but he figured it best to nod in agreement. The troll carefully set the Druid down beside him and began digging in the smoldering fire pit before him with a stick; he carefully removed some leaf wrapped parcels. Delrin's stomach was getting queesy, imagining the kinds of things a troll might eat, but he smiled nonetheless. He took the packet and began to slowly unwrap it. Much to his relief a wonderful aroma came forth. Before he knew it the Druid was finishing his third helping. He couldn't quite place the meet, but it tasted vaguely like chicken. As he sat there to full to move, he tossed the bones to Chronos who was still hiding in the shadows. "Nice Doggy" said the troll. Chronos seemed to appreciate the gesture and relaxed noticeably. Rembering his manners, Delrin offered the troll the flask he had quietly lifted from the Dwarf's stash. Belated Delrin realized it was Trollish brandy he had given the giant. As he looked up he saw a nostalgic tear in the corner of the giants eye.

Suddenly Delrin realized he was supposed to be on patrol. "Oh dear, I think my friends are going to be worried" he said. "Friend?" asked the trolls "We should have invited them for our little snack. I always say, there is no point cooking for one or two, when you can just as easily cook for a dozen." "You know" Delrin said,"my friends are getting mighty tired of spam sandwiches, why don't you join our little group. With the motley crew we have, no one would even look twice at a troll." And so the two marched back to camp chatting amiably. The troll had unearthed a rather large cast iron pot and steel ladle, which he easily hoisted on his shoulder. As he entered the light of the camp fire, he noticed Glorm about to take a swing at the trolls kneecaps with his ax. Delrin quickly stepped between them, hoping the Troll did not notice the aborted swing.

"Ah Glorm, just the man err dwarf I was looking for. This is my new friend... what did you say your name was?"

"Me Cookie" said the imposing and somewhat odiforous troll.

The dwarf eyed the imposing troll cautiously as Delrin continued on.

"As I was saying Cookie was thinking of joining our merry little band. Before you make up you mind, you simply have to try some of this poultry like stuff that Cookie whipped up." As Delrin spoke, Cookie was unwrapping more of the leaf covered packets.

"A troll in our group what an absur... Oh my those do smell tasty, perhaps a small bite wouldn't hurt."

An hour later Glorm continued on as if he had not just eaten a good 3 pounds of game. "As I was saying, I should be able to remove that iron collar in a jiffy, and I am sure the Sid can whip up some bogus ownership papers for our man here once he gets back. Wonderful to have you on board Cookie."

August 29th, Heraloon, Pranan

The two drunken swordsmen from Kanday boarded the Bandy Sniffer arguing loudly aout then benefits of redheaded versus brown haired bar maids. They somehow avoided coming to blows, and as they stepped off of the small skiff and onto the small merchant ship the bearded one farted loudly. This display sent the smaller man into fits of laughter. The absurd scene attracted about as much attention as the 18 inch rat that was scurrying below deck, which was to say none at all. Ronin from Pranan, were known to be loud, obnoxious and generally ugly; however they did have a good sense of honor, and a smattering of common sense. As they stepped up to the first mate, he grunted and pointed towards the aft hold. As they wandered towards it belching loudly and telling raunchy jokes, the first mate yelled after them. "By the way, you two jokers drew the short straw. You will be pumping the bilge out from midnight until dawn." The two swordsmen looked indignant, and started to complain, but the first mate cut them short. "That is of course unless you were lucky with the dice last night and happened to come up with second class passage money? The two men trudged wearily towards the aft of the battered merchant vessel. Heraloon was such a backwater that no self respecting skipper would call hear. Of course Barnacle Bill had little self respect and the Bandy Sniffer wasn't much of a boat. The two men disappeared below decks and were soon forgotten.

As they closed the hold lid, Sid blew his top. He had spent two days watching his closest associate suffer from various painful, if not debilitating injuries. Now Sid was reduced to sleeping in a hold full of stinking fish! Only to have to wake at midnight and pump stinking bilge water. Bradford hold would pay dearly for this he would spend days killing the man. No he thought, he owed that pleasure to Don, and Don would spend weeks killing the man. Oh well, they were a long way from wreaking any kind of revenge. He had been thinking of Glorm's most recent suggestion. The Datamu cult was outlawed and hunted in Kethem, but out here in the hinder lands they might be able to find the elusive cult. They would have to leave Krinn behind, of course, but none of the others dabbled at all in the arcane. Well, of course Glorm and his little toy couldn't really come either, but perhaps Fuji and Delrin could help him out. If he were to drop a few hints, he was sure they would filter back to Kethem quickly enough, and if anyonecould avoid detection by Bradford it would be the Datamu cult. The truly brilliant part of Glorm's plan was that of all the groups that could control the artifact, only the Datamu would sooner destroy it than even think of using it. Once the artifact was out of the way, Sid was sure he could bring Bradford down. It might take years, but Bradford's enemies were many...

The two day journey back to Cidan was uneventful. Assuming you counted rotten fish, foot long rodents and the smell of human vomit as meaningless. Sid's arms and back were sore as he could remember. He had to cover Don's turn at the Bilge pump, since his hip was in no shape for strenuous labor. The ship dropped anchor at late that day, and the two men left the vessel as they had come burping, farting and insulting one another. There was one subtle difference however, this time, had you questioned the dock workers, none would have recalled the faces of the two drunken barbarians... The two men made their way quickly to the southern gate. Slipping out of town with their disguise spells still in place. Don let out one final fart, and they were gone into the dusky evening. To anyone watching from the walls the two men simply disappeared into the growing evening shadows. It was late, but they both wanted to make it back to Delrin's secret hideaway, before they let down their gaurd and rested. They quickly doubled back to the north and moved off silently...

September 2nd

El Sid was furious. A troll. A TROLL? As if a dwarf and and elf... well, half elf... didn't already stick out like a sore thumb. As least they were SMALL.

Not that trolls were completely uncommon. Even after the Kom offensive had ended in Kethem's rather sound defeat on the troll's peninsula, troll slaves were still very much in vogue back home. But it wasn't that common, and in Pranan? El Sid hadn't seen a troll since leaving Kethem.

He sighed. Not much they could do about it at the moment, and Cookie could end up being useful. The troll was strong, very strong, and exhibited a dexterity unexpected in such a large humanoid. If he could only convince the beast to lose the ladle and cooking pot that seemed to be it's prize possessions long enough to teach it some combat skills, they would have a decent front line fighter. The troll would be as valuable for his shock value as for his actual strength; not many would face the ten foot tall, three or four hundred pound Cookie without a certain amount of trepidation.

Delrin wandered into the campground then with a frown. "Bad news?" asked the Sid. The Druid came over to the small fire and sat on a log. Cookie handed him a plate of stew. El Sid thought for a moment about asking for seconds, but then focused on the task at hand as Delrin replied.

"Habitation ahead. Chronous doesn't like the area; there are too many humans. I don't have much of a sense for how many, but I get the impression that they are homesteads, not troops or the like. Probably farms or woodcutters of some kind... Chronous tells me there is a reasonably large forest within a half day's run... about a half a day's march for us."

El Sid replied thoughtfully "there are not many options for us. We've been paralleling the road to avoid getting lost, while staying off of it to avoid detection. But we have the river to our left, which is deep enough that I don't think we can cross it loaded down.

Player comments, noticably un-storylike in the telling

Jeff writes: I vote we use Rosebud and the birdseye view spell to do recon on the homesteads, then we send a couple of the human characters (Sid, Fuji and Delrin) to get the gossip from the locals. Rosebud can stay with the party and alert us, if there is trouble... After that I vote we cross the road at night (Delrin can obscure our tracks) and we skirt this little forrest ahead of us. I am worried that the area between the road and the river is a perfect spot for bandits. Once we pass this little patch of woods we can cross back over the road, and follow the Chekun river to the woods SE of Chelto I am not to concerned about getting lost, since we have the Druid, his wolf chronos, and the compass spell to keep us on track. We can hide out in the forrest south of town, while the humans scout things out for us. We will obviously have to be ultra cautious as we are entering a wild area of the world. But with Chronos, and occasional birdseye views we can scout fairly effectively. We can minimize our use of campfires with Krinn's umbrella spell, which controls temperature +/- 20 degrees.

Barry answers: This shold be relatively tame territory. The peasants are probably just peasants. Sid proposes we follow the river north toward Chelto *moving only at night*. We use the wolves to do our scouting and we avoid contacts, unless interesting. If the wolves sniff out something biffable, then we can exercise our creativity.

Else let's go to Chalto, leave Glorm and Cookie outside of town whilst the others of us do a little snooping incognito-like. That place exports minerals: we can check out the trade goods and invest some cash. If minerals means gems, We can slip Glorm back into town with his platform heels on to assess them and see if we can get any reasonable bargains. We invest the rest of our money in nonperishable food stuffs and slip up to Nyquet (chapter 4-3). There we can unload the k-rations to make a small profit and check out their armor and battle-magic: We need to improve our armorments, both offensive and defensive, if we are going to travel around. We already have a kickass sword. In Nyquet, maybe we can get a good suit of armor for Cookie and a quality weapon for each of us.

Our money is fairly limited but we can consider liberating a few items from the hospitable city residents or their visitors as an alternative. Giving one high-level target a heart attack and scooting with the loot might serve us well: If one of us slips unseen and unheard into some upperty-schmuckitty's room in the middle of the night or trails him to the brothel or does him in his office and finds a few trinkets, what's the harm? One detests stooping to common thievery, but occasionally one must make allowances for circumstances.

If we can find some baddie to biff, so much the better. Maybe we'll stumble across some bandits as Glorm suggests. They are probably really poor (else they wouldn't be bandits, right?), but a selective strike at night might net us enough cash for our weapons. We *are* pretty good in the dark: we have an area (10') silence spell, a smoke/fog spell, a blend spell, hide-in-shadows and an anti-esp spell and *animals* as scouts (Rosebud might even be able to be directed into snagging a small item for us by herself). we (or members) should be able to get pretty close to a party in the wilds at night. we should be pretty good at rustling horses and chickens with the silence spell alone. if we biff the sentry and obscond with the horses and pack animals, we can make some good pocket change and (at least as important) put ourselves on horseback to increase our rate of travel.

After Nyquet, we can check out Penne. Any place the Elves don't like is AOK with the Sid. We triangulate for gems as we go. We can then go north or consider going SW to grab a boat in the illegible town at the SE tip of Evael and go to the Elvish Trading Isle to snoop and cause trouble.

if Sid and Dom are now KandayBoys, and we keep Glorm on stilts for a while, we may be able to avoid detection by the bad guys. We didn't have a troll prior to this, we are three Barbarians not one or two, and Krinn we can disguise a bit since she is half human as well. Can Glorm play a hobbit or a Gnome or something??

Continuing the story

Delrin paused, the strong arms of an ancient oak more sensed than seen blocking out the stars above him, then hooted quietly in a way he hoped sounded like a owl. It was difficult moving through forest in the dark, but they didn't feel comfortable with a light that could to easily give them away to any onlookers. Ahead of him, Chronous growled nervously.

Glorm came galumping up. Delrin hissed "where is El..." then jumped as he realized the man was standing next to him in the dark. "Don't DO that."

"Sorry" said the Sid with a tone of voice that said he wasn't. "Trouble?"

Delrin frowned. They had been skirting cultivated fields for a while, but they were getting closer together and harder to avoid. It wasn't obvious that moving through them would be a problem, as long as they stayed away from the homesteads, but Chonous would not venture into them and Delrin felt such unease in the wolf he had insisted they stay to the edges. Cookie had looked longingly at the vegetables and other foodstuffs but had followed the party's lead.

Now Chronous was walking back and forth, sniffing and growling in agitation, but there wasn't any obvious sign of habitation. Delrin tried to query the wolf. "People/metal/traps?" he sent more empathetically than telepathically.

"Old/death/bad" was what the wolf sent back.

Delrin shook his head. "Old death?" I'm not sure what he senses" pointing at the wolf, "but he doesn't like this place.

They were close to the river, with most of the cultivated lands closer to the road having forced them near the river bank. There wasn't much room for maneuvering. They would have to back track to cross the roads, head through the fields, or continue to move through the forest.