--Grandpa, grandpa wake up and tell us a story!
--Huh, what? What is it broos, Lunars, slarges? What, what? Oh. It's you
damn kids again. You almost sent me on to Waha early. I swore after the
last time that seven deaths was enough, next time I'm not coming back.
--We're sorry grandpa.
It was during Storm Season in Pavis, it'd been raining for days and it almost made a body long for Fire Season. Just almost mind you. I was with the usual bunch of weirdos I hung around with then, the Humakti, the Bison Rider, the Yemalio, the Axe Maiden and that Orlanthi who managed to die more often than I did.
The season before three of us, I think it was the Yemalio and the Bison Rider and me'd (or was it the Orlanthi who was with us?), anyways we'd been hanging out in Gimpy's when we spotted that stinkin' ogre, Harnval Threefingers and his sons. He'd somehow hooked up with the survivors of that bunch of ogres we'd almost wiped out the previous year. Wasn't much we could do about *em in Gimpy's so we tried to ignore them. They looked as obnoxious and mean as always except they had this little yappy dog with them on a chain leash. Well that mutt freaked out when he spotted us and started yapping up a storm. Harnval cuffed the dog and said "Shut up Ratbane."
Damn dog hardly looked big enough to kill rats. Then that bloody dog cast a disruption at Durnfal the Yemalio. (Guess it wasn't the Orlanthi after all). Surprised the hell out of us-I'll tell you. Never heard of a dog familiar before, especially such an unobedient one. Well, the cursed ogres left soon after that and we sat there and tried to figure out what the hell had happened. Durnfal was scared for a bit when he remembered his "moment of weakness" with that good-looking ogress the year before. He was worried for a bit there that he might be a doggy daddy. Had him scared shitless mind you. Eventually we figured that it seemed unlikely that the dog was an ogre itself.
Then we figured, that dog can't be the late lamented Dorian Tavish could it?
--I ever tell you kids about Dorian Tavish? Called himself Ogrebane? He
was a kind of reckless fisherfolk who tried to attune one crystal too many
and ended up covered with sea metal scales. Too bad it happened in the
guest quarters of the main Sun Dome Temple. Old Solanthos Ironpike was
mighty quick to pass judgement on poor old Dorian. Them thar Yemalios were
mighty quick to fry ol' Dorian. High noon, swoosh! A couple of my buds
tried to beg their gods to remove his Chaos taint but nobody was listening
to our prayers that day. Harnval even showed up under Lunar escort and
offered to take Dorian with him. Damn ogre always did claim that Dorian was
his son. Got to hand it to ol' Dor though. He refused to go with the ogre
and choose to fry instead. Almost brought a tear to my eye. *Course he was
chaos and he had to die. Least it was quick.
Now where was I? Anyways, Dorian was dead but here was that tricky ogre
with some small yappy dog who seemed to be trying to get our attention.
We decided that we'd get Gerhardt the Orlanthi to pick up a Mindspeech
spell so we could talk with this mutt the next time we saw it. Since we was
paying he didn't mind much. All we had to do once he had the spell was
stake out Gimpy's until the ogres came back. Sigh, those were good times,
especially since we were working off a pre-payed bar tab for that troll beer
we'd given Gimpy's. I think I ended up drinking most of it. Those were the
days...
--Grandpa!!
--Huh, oh sorry kids. Where was I?
Eventually the ogres came back when Gerhardt, Svart the Humakti, Greystone the Bison Rider and I were in Gimpy's. Think this was about half a season or more later. Gerhardt managed to cast the spell on the mutt and sure enough that damn dog was Dorian! Claimed he'd had to haunt the Sun Dome Temple *cause of the way he'd died. Apparently Harnval and some broo shaman had snuck up to the barbecue site and caught his ghost. (How the hell they'd snuck so far into Sun County without being spotted I'll never know). They'd taken the ghost and bound it into a little mutt that they'd just killed and damned if they didn't have a mutt with a human spirit. (Again why they'd bother I don't know).
Well, the dog, Ratbane talked to Gerhardt and told him about his life with them there ogres. He was just freakin' out and begging us to save him. He told us where the orges lived as best he could and we said we'd save him. Ratbane told us that the ogres lived in a small fort near the Wyvern gate. They climbed over the wall *cause there was no gate and lived in a big house guarded by eight big dogs. He told us roughly the path the ogres followed to get home from Gimpy's and said he'd take a dump at the spot where the ogres left the main road leading to Wyvern Gate. While Gerhardt and the dog was yappin' those buggers sent a drink over to us. Well, to show my contempt I dropped my loincloth and pissed in it (the beer, not the loincloth) and sent it back. (Almost got us kicked out of Gimpy's that did). Harnval put the beer down on the floor for that poor little mutt to drink but I guess he was too smart for that. Gerhardt ended up telling ol' Ratbane we'd rescue him as soon as we could
We went on a little scouting trip into the Rubble and managed to find the compound. It was a rough square with the walls made up of a mix of rubble and wood posts stretching between these ruined buildings that had been filled in. We couldn't get a clear view inside the fort but we could hear the dogs.
We didn't feel like jumping seven ogres and their guard dogs by ourselves so we decided to invite some Storm Bulls to go with us. We got Stikklebrix that stinkin' Pol Joni Storm Buller to approach the local Kahn about taking the ogres out. We had to get him to ask *cause the Kahn was mad at Gerhardt for suggesting he take over the Temple to Storm Bull in the Rubble that the Axe Maiden's Storm Kahn brother had left empty when he went on another one of his missions. Seems Sax Bolderson, (the Axe Maiden's brother) was a might ticked when he got back to find another bunch of Uroxi in his temple. But that's another story.
So Stikklebrix asked the Kahn and he agreed to bring seven of his followers along with him to help off the ogres. (We didn't bother mentioning the dog). He was mad when we met on the morning of the attack but decided that he'd killed Gerhardt after the ogres were dead. "Business before pleasure", he said.
First thing he did was ask us what the plan was. Well we couldn't tell him the real plan which was to use the Bullers to soak up casualties so less of us would die or be hurt. We realized that we didn't have a ladder and there was no way that we could get one on such short notice. We also wondered how we'd get rid of the dogs. Someone mentioned poison but there was no way we could get a hold of any. We thought about distracting the dogs maybe by throwing some meat over the wall. Then some genius suggested throwing an animal over the wall, maybe a cat or a rabbit. The Kahn sent Stikklebrix with some money into town to buy some rabbits. He came back a half hour or so later with two sacks with a cat in each sack. Bastard said something about "Hope these aren't anyone's familiar." We decided to ignore that last comment. Can't say that the Kahn was too impressed by our planning abilities.
To be continued....
Oliver D. Bernuetz
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #551
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
Powered by hypermail