Too Many Nightmares
Or, To Whom do I Complain about these Giant Deathless Pigs?
The good folks of Irondelve have been kept out of their ancestral mine by fears of some Dopplers that were found inside. I'm told these are identity-stealing Horrors, which seems a nasty thing, indeed. William and Jael wanted to go back and I felt this was a good mission. Especially as it would let the people of Irondelve manage their own land rather than having a trading company (Borodai) come in and steal it from them.
On the way there, we were attacked by the most ridiculous pigs of all time. Seriously, there is just no reason for these pigs to exist. For one thing, each of them was taller at the shoulder than an ork. An entire ork! I could build a house in one of those pigs if I wanted some kind of damn pig house. On top of that, they had not two, not four, but sometimes as many five or six tusks which is just plain showing off. And those tusks weren't just toothy material, but were iron, too. What the actual hell?! To top it all off, their hide was covered with not just hair, but slivers of steel. And when we knocked one out, when it should have had the damn good sense to stay down, it just decided to ignore death and keep running around tusking us.
Deathless steel pigs the size of houses. That's what the world has come to. I would like to lodge a complaint.
Anyway, we did those pigs in proper, taking a few solid cuts and sprained joints and countless bruises along the way. Nasty business, but it was done. No sense letting all that good iron go to waste (as it was already wasted on, and I repeat, some damn pigs). So I collected a bunch of the tusks and a goodly swath of Razor Boar hide. I'm thinking I might be able to enchant up a good cloak with this hide. Real potential to turn this nonsense into good honest craftsmanship.
So we came to Irondelve, and the people greeted us kindly enough. We headed down into their mine to solve their Doppler problem. Good news - there was no Doppler problem. Bad news - that means the Dopplers are out and about somewhere. Further bad news, there's some kind of Obsid Liferock that's gone mad and is spitting out Obsidifolk all mashed up in twos and threes. Horrors, let me tell you. With a capital damn H.
These nonsense-makers and trouble-casters assaulted us with their minds. Did quite a number on us, just from the pain, but that wasn't the worst of it. They hit us with some kind of illusion, made us feel like we'd been transported to some terrible place where innocent folk were getting tortured and abused. It was, well, Horrible. I managed to free myself from the illusion after charging madly at one of the torturers only to have it vanish beneath my ask.
Then I slapped the madness right off Vlolkir, because that is how it's done. I do not stand for this kind of tomfoolery. Illusions of torture indeed. Harrrumph! I tried to tell my friends that it was all in their minds but they were hell bent on murder.
Eventually, their desire to kill the Horrors matched up with their ability to kill the Horrors and the thing was done. Strange, the folks of Irondelve didn't even remember the tunnel we'd gone down, let alone the Liferock at the end of it.
There's clearly some seriously bad business going on here but I don't feel comfortable making any permanent decisions without talking to some Obsidifolk and maybe a Purifier or three. I decided to spend a week at Irondelve helping the folk settle in and start working the safe parts of the mine. Vlolkir also stayed, so I figure that slap did him some good.Statistics:Posted by bronzemountain — Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:05 pm
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