Day unknown, year unknown, month unknown, sanity unknown, life unknown.
Thumping?
Further insanity, it can’t be.
More thumping.
It is thumping.
I can hear thumping.
Then LIGHT!
SO Bright. It’s blinding. Forgotten what light was like.
Then voices. Try to speak. Mouth doesn’t move. “Help” is just some noise.
Screaming, and the light vanishes. Darkness returns.
Maybe it was a dream, but can feel something different on face – or more, can’t feel – can’t feel crushing pressure. The feeling of not being buried. Attempt to speak some more, mouth is problematic. I am…. I am…. I am…. Realisation. I do not know who I am. Memories so vague, lost in the blackness. A tiefling with a spear standing above, pain. Waking up, tall, powerful, looking down on the artificers instead of in the eye. “Close Combat Unit R... …. ….” Numbers and lettersthat are meaningless. Another name comes, “Rostek.” Killing Tieflings. “your purpose is simple now, crush, kill, destroy. The only good tiefling is a dead tiefling. We brought you back, help us unify the world.”
The light comes back, so bright, so amazing. Sound of footsteps, talking, so loud. Deep voices, was that gnomes? Can’t remember, maybe it was humans? Try to speak again, more screaming, and the light vanishes.
When the light net returns stay silent, the sound of picks and mining, faces swimming into and out of view, humans. Pulled out of the rock, try to move, body jammed, tiny movement before it ceases, more screaming from the humans.
Several of them together dragging, slowly, so slowly across the ground. The feeling of the ground, of nothing above. Of bumps and dips, of cursing and fear of the humans.
Then outside. Outside. SKY, had forgotten it, forgotten for so long. SUN, so bright, so very very bright. Rain, so faint, the feeling of water dropping onto a body, feelings so muted as to be unnoticed without an uncountable lifetime feeling nothing.
The sun goes down, night happens, cart stops, why…? Sleep… humans need sleep. I w=once needed sleep. Gaze in wonder at th stars, so much forgotten in the darkness.
Sun comes up, cart journey continues.
Arrive somewhere, the rain is heavy. Dumped out of the cart. A face comes into view, a gnome. It is wearing artificers tools. Another fucking idiot from the guild. Scream, as that’s about all I can do. Dragged inside, the gnome is working, many voices.
Can speak, agree not to kill the gnome, yet. It continues working, mobility restored one limb at a time. Can sit up. It is a tavern. Mostly humans. Gnome artificer. Elf. Another Elf. Giant spider. …. Giant spider? Elf is making jokes about.
Thunking noise, burning arrow through the window. Under attack. Someone screams kobolds. People move. More arrows. More screaming. Flex limbs. Move. Kobolds. Vermin. Enemy. A blur in one corner, an axe thrown to my hand.
Elves blasting away with arcane power through the windows Gnome is shooting a crossbow, grab the midget and drag them under cover as return fire comes in. Door bursts open, Kobolds charge in, I am in the way. Memory and body. Crush, kill, destroy. Axe splits them in 2.
Elf blasting something small, yelling about an imp. Spider appears, then more spiders appear, everywhere, drowning kobolds.
Charge outside, engage them there. My body moves! So strong, so fast. Arrows bounce off wood and steel. Crash into burning cart. Cart sways but stays, maybe not that strong. To move, to charge, to swing, to yell a waycry. Fighting in pouring rain, scrabbling through surface water and mud to hew another one. The wonderful feeling.
Eventually it all ends. Kobolds all dead. Look around. Gnome in one coner, still with crossbow, elves, alive, spider turns into dwarf. … … spider that turns into dwarf. Ok. Wait. Can see the eyes. That’s not an elf, struggling to remember, long ears and strange eyes, not elf..ella ella. Elladrin. Sort of like an elf.
Talking happens, barkeep is village mayor. Very grateful for killing kobolds. Want us to investigate where kobolds came from. Missing miners. Gnome is Nissa, artificer. Others are all wizards. Seems legit, arcane blasting all round. They date me, it was 30 years since I went into the mine. 30 years underground…. 30 years…. They want me to go with them back into the mine to investigate the kobolds. Back down in the dark, the village gets me weapons and a shield… I am equipped for war again, I can execute my purpose.
Most of them need to sleep. The Elaadrin mocks them, then goes somewhere to rest themselves. Weaknesses of flesh. I have spent 30 years trapped and unable to move, I spend the night wandering around the village, feeling the clump of the ground under my feat, the dull pitter patter of the rain against my chassis.
Sunrise happens, their bodies have received enough sleep, I hammer on the door and wake them up. They are not happy about it, they need untiring bodies. I will help them as far as the mine, in payment for the villages equipment. We head off.
A miner rescued on the road, there may be 2 others alive. We continue, a Raven calls out to us. We walk into an ambush, more kobolds on a ridge. A tiefling runs our of the trees, “kill the one in the cloak.” Probably the elf Eloise. The only good tiefling is a dead tiefling so I smash my shield into her face before she can order the kobolds further. Tiefling gets me in the back before I can finish her, tiefling on one side, Kobolds on the other. Crush, kill, destroy. Tiefling runs away, stuck engaged with the kobolds. Nissa yells something about the war being over, a little busy fighting the kobolds.
Dillander goes down, rest of the kobolds are killed. Nissa has exhausted her magic and is trying first aid. Dillander is definitely leaking, try to remember back. Attempt to stick fingers in leaking bits of flesh, but she just seems to leak more. Fleshling weakness.
Raven speaks, tiefling will help if I don’t kill her. Others are quite insistent, war is over. Did we win? We clearly didn’t lose. It’s a tiefling, you kill it, preferably before it sets you on fire. Reluctantly agree – if she saves Dillander I won’t kill her, immediately. If she doesn’t save Dillander of course, she dies.
There is some singing, poking and insults and dillander gets up. This means no killing the tiefling yet. Claims she was not working with the kobolds but was a prisoner. I am suspicious, more likely she just switched sides when she saw how it was going. Don’t trust her. Don’t really trust the others, but trust her less. Trust nissa to be stupid and insane, she is an artificer.
We reach the first mine and watch a human giving orders to the kobolds. Splitting his forces up. There is a brief discussion, the tiefling, Trouble agrees that we wait until he splits his forces, then kill them individually. Why is the tiefling agreeing with me?
We engage him once he has split his forces and sent others off. His kobolds die easily, but he is a tough enemy, surrounded by aura. He takes a lot of killing, when he dies I take his axe – frosted battleaxe.
We venture into the mine, I am not keen, the tiefling mocks. I might smash her in yet. There is not much, we quickly end up in a fight. Oh. Dragons.
Kobolds, shamen, dogs and small dragons. The battle begins, it goes badly for Shinarra when dogs and dragons flank her. Dillander leaps across the mine to intercept the shamen before she can hatch the remaining egg. I attempt to relieve Shinarra, Dillander kills the shamen and smashes the egg. The dragons engage trouble, this is a mistake, one has turned its back to me, I cleave it in 2. The battle turns, we are left. There is the remains of the cart with a surviving minor and some oxen – dragon food. Shinarra teleports on top of the chest, Eloise runs over to the chest – minds focused on treasure.
We rest. The fleshlings sleep. Next day we hunt hobgoblins between the mines. Catch them late in the day, wait for a night ambush. We are not stealthy, amubush is not totally successful. It is a fight. Shinarra once again teleports on top of the chest just in case it has treasure in it.
We reach the last mine. I am not keen, the fleshlings just die in mine collapses, my problems are much more long term. We meet a clockwork pigion outside. It was sent for Nissa. It calls me a pile of scrap, unfortunately it’s too far away to just crush.
We go into the mine, Dillander says it is stable, I am not so sure. They only have to die. There is an ambush in the tunnels, they might have blasting powder. Trouble points out that they can bring a huge section of roof down with that, probably the wide junction where they re standing – lure the attackers forward then bury the maximum number of them. Screw that. I have javelins.
Shinarra goes forward and manages to trigger pit traps, with creatures in them. Cruthux. Disgusting little things. Nissa summons a springboard and the wizards all decide to advance. I on the other hand am staying fr away from the unstable roof, so this is not going well for them – there is not much room to move and the cruthix it turns out can tunnel to attack them from the side. Kobold archers to the front on the other side of traps, animals attacking from the sides.
Decision, that is my gnome, dwarf and elladrin, hands the fuck off, moving forward, lets hope that they didn’t mine this section. Cruthix are encouraged to attack me instead. Kobolds let rip into Dillander, I attempt to encourage them to shoot at me as well, but so long as there is a dwarf in view they keep attacking her, so we drop her bleeding body into the ditch so they can’t see her.
Shinarra makes it further forward and there is much arcane blasting, resulting in many dead kobolds. Advance slowly, looking for traps, but there is no blasting powder set up. Safe from cave in for now.
We meet some miners who have barricaded themselves in the storeroom using… …. My drill. They tell us there are more kobolds, but pass me out some platemaille.