The next morning...
"Ah, its good to be alive, and its nice to be good." Jay El remarked, refreshed from his morning prayer.
"..." Said Manbearpig, scratching his ear and wondering which side of his hair to twig.
"Well, let's go look for some adventure!" Ash prompted, pointedly looking at the universe so as for it to provide some sort of direction. The gems in his pocket did their very best to kick him in the testicles, but they were an elusive target.
"Oh hey!" Tribby remarked. "I have one of those gems by the way."
"You do?" Jay El queried. "Man. What are the odds?"
"I know right?"
"Yeah. Well, so anyway, what do you guys want to do?"
"Hmmm... want to go to the tavern and ask for any weirdness around town?"
"Sure, we could do that. Yeah."
Not much happened. Although Ash got pretty excited about someone complaining about the increasing amounts of thefts in town by an unknown group.
"(sigh) Well, I found one of those incredibly unique and implausibly-popular-amongst-the-four-of-us gems the other day, too." Ash offered.
"Huh. Really?"
"Yeah."
"Man."
"Yeah."
"Well..."
"Wanna see where I found it? It was on this Orc fellah. He... was dead when I got there."
"Oh! That sounds questy. Sure, let's do that."
The horse looked up and did its best to prompt "But don't we already ha..."
"Shh! We're questing!"
"Yeah! Stupid horse."
And so the party made their way to the semi-liquid and now semi-putrid Orc.
The four of them possessing some probability shattering amounts of this unique and unidentified gem, three out of four of the party knowing full well that when the gems had been pressed together there had been magical effects, and, at the very least, that Gustoff might remark on the rarity and seemingly improbable event that had occurred, all headed out to find that Orc that Ash had killed the other day.
And, through a series of impressive rolls, tracked this Orc's trail back to its home village two days trek away.
"Okay. Well, it looks like an Orc village."
"Yeah. Definitely an Orc village."
"Hm."
"Well, we're here to... find a... shard. Right?"
"Yeah, let's go with that."
"Okay. Well, let's sneak in and look for it."
"Makes sense. Wouldn't it be pretty tiny and stuff? I mean, what if its in someone's pocket?"
"Either way, we should sneak in."
"Yeah. Send the bearpig."
"MANbearpig"
"Yeah, Manbearpig. You're up."
"Okay!"
Manbearpig's horse, Gluestick, thought to itself how easy it would be to climb a tree if one wanted to scope out the village. The fence being about 10 feet high. It stomped its foot on the ground three times in an effort to explain its brilliant stratagem.
"Shut your horse up, meatpig! We're creating a plan!" Ash barked.
And what a plan it was.
They cast whisper, so as to be able to communicate, and obscuring mist, on the main gate, so the orcs wouldn't be able to see them sneaking in.
A perfect plan.
Manbearpig made his way to the gate, climbed up and looked in. It was all very foggy, and misty.
This made his survalience more difficult.
He opted to see how many Orcs he could hear.
He also ascertained that the door was barred with a rather large log, and that it would be very difficult for him to lift it, he not being an Orc.
Stumbling his way through the fog, he listened intently. "Yes... okay, I hear one talking about taxes, and at least one snoring, while yet another is playing the drums..." it was slightly difficult for him to tell all the different sounds apart. Harder still, was it for him to hear the sound of the gem. But, as far as he knew, it never really made a noise anyway, so he couldn't be faulted for that. There was a fairly big party going on, by the sounds of things.
He made his way through the fog, and saw some tents.
"Awesome." He said to himself (and thus the people on the other end of the whisper spell, who were discussing on weather or not the whisper spell extended to them in, thankfully, fairly whispered tones) and, figuring there might be some pretty cool... things... inside, attempted to move silently towards the tents, and failed utterly.
If Orcs had access to vinyl records, now would be the time where their song would scratch and the music would instantly stop. However, they didn't, so, they just kind of stopped drumming and a few battle cries erupted instead. It was kind of like a scene out of a teen movie where the nerd shows up and the frat boys are all like "what are you doing here" kind of deal, but, with Orcs, axes, and a Druid.
"FIRE ME BOY!" Ash bellowed, taking a running leap and slamming into the wall. "I'm okay." he wheezed.
Tribby and Jay El ran up to the gate and looked at it with stern looks.
Orcs, seeing people who weren't part of their household, being in their household, defended said household from said people, and ineptly attacked the magnanimous Manbearpig, who lit them, and their houses, on fire. "Burn orc bitches!" was not what he said.
Ash climbed down, breathing hard from the impact, but unscathed, and ran full on into the immense gate, cracking the large log that was keeping it shut, exactly in half. He took a second to look pretty darn smug about it. "huh huh, running into things will always win, because things can't dodge." he gloated, rubbing his sore head and balls.
Tribby looked at the gate, Jay El looked at Tribby's breasts when Tribby wasn't looking, then, looked back at the gate.
"Shit piss fuck ow sonova!" was not what the rather quiet druid said as he was stabbed to death by the enraged owner of one of the burning houses.
The mighty Ash heaved half the door's barrier out of the way.
"Y'know, we could climb over." Jay El suggested, having had his fill of cleavage.
"Good idea!" Tribby replied, and thus they climbed over. Tribby struggled a little, but Jay El made it over like a Jackrabbit and readied his whacking mace.
Ash swore under his breath. "Wish everyone could friggin' jump over the friggin'..." he lifted the other barrier off the wall. "There! At least now we can... get... in... okay, well... now we can... get OUT! At least. I'm useful god damn it!"
"OW! Bloody orc with your smegging..." is not what Manbearpig said, as his rather motivated stabber continued with his work. And a burning, panicking woman ran by screaming something undoubtedly similar to "ow ow I'm on fire" in Orc.
"I'll save you!" yelled Jay El and Ash with varying levels of conviction.
Tribby jumped down, put her back to Ash, and launched a cone of fire behind everyone, at nothing in particular. The wall lit on fire, but thankfully, the gate wasn't engulfed.
"I'm covering our exit!" she exclaimed as the battle went on around them.
Jay El healed the bloody druid's wounds as Ash did what Ash did best (though without the jumping) and eventually everyone but Ash was back at the burning gates. Tribby, hoping nobody blamed her for the fire, went back towards the flames she'd created, and readied her crossbow for the next Orc she saw, which happened to be a terrified child.
Thankfully, she failed to hit the child, and hit its panicking mother who was attempting to catch it before it got too close to this lawful good band of marauders, instead.
"No biggie!" She pipped, and reloaded her crossbow for another shot.
"What the fuck!?" Screamed the rather upset Cleric
"Hey, what'd I miss?" Ash retorted, brushing the remains of the Orc child's father off his shoulder.
"Nothing important. I'm going to look for that gem." Tribby replied.
"You... we... there's..." came Jay El's continued indignation.
Manbearpig did not comment, but also did not kill any more innocent Orcs with balls of fire launched from his hands. He'd found it somewhat distasteful, burning unarmed women and children, and, for some reason, felt it best to withdraw. At least, this is what the party assumed from his silence.
"Oh, sweet. Yeah, detect magic." Ash suggested. "Who shot the unarmed woman over there? Man, right in the throat! There's a shitty way to die. Is she still burbling?"
"Yeah, that was me. She was thrashing a few seconds earlier. Hey, I'll detect magic, but, if I find anything, we should split it only 50/50, because those feebs want to leave."
"Yeah, that seems fair. You find it, and I'll go get it."
"Righto."
"YOU FUCKING KILLED A..." continued the Cleric, who attempted to snatch the gem from Tribby's neck SO POORLY that it did not even seem as though he'd attempted to do anything but simply gesture in disgust.
"Yep, I'm getting sssssomething..." she mumbled to herself as the Orc woman twitched her last twitch and her now orphaned child let out a wail of sorrow upon finding its buchered father.
"I am SO FREAKING OUT OF HERE!" Jay El screeched. Manbearpig, whose full name was silent bobmarepig, continued to stare forward for a moment.
"Yep, clearly there's some mega magic here... that's mostly plot devices though...
As an afterthought, Manbearpig followed Jay El.
"ah, there we go, there's a really minor source of magic."
"Hm. The others took off. Wanna go?"
"...yeeeeah.... I guess."
"Because we could stay. We could starve them out, and pick them off one by one as they tried to leave."
"That's true... and if we did, we'd probably get upwards of twelve gold pieces and some burnt leather."
"Shit, that sounds like its worth commiting more atrocities... but... its getting late."
"Yeah, let's go with the party."
"Okay."
And so, the night concluded with the party walking away, leaving the Orcs to their screaming sounds of anguish, pain, frustration, anger and despair.
After a time, they decided to make camp, and bunk down for the night. I mean, what could possibly go wrong at this point?
XP AWARDED:
Tibby 743
MBP 1350
JL 1417
Ash 1484
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