19th of Davor, 1329 Avard

Droog and Barome alternated turns resting, until later in the afternoon. They moved out with all seven of the kobolds loping along with them, barking and yipping to one another on occasion, but silent for the most part.

They travelled hard, towards the west, towards the supposed desert elven ruins that the kobold leader knew of. The kobold directed them as best it could, towards those ruins, using familiar landmarks. During the night, the seven kobolds were joined by thirteen more – and five kits – the rest of that kobold clan.

Droog provided water, and the abundance of minotaur lizard meat meant there was plenty to go around. Barome loped along on his own two feet, while the kobolds took up positions on the back of his camel, Poncor, and Droog's draft mule, and his carriage.

They made excellent time, moving far faster than the kobold leader had expected. Unfortunately, they found themselves being followed early in the morning after a long night of travel, Droog sleeping on his carriage seat.

Droog awoke that morning to the excited chirps of the kobolds, who had spotted coyote-mounted kobolds off in the distance. Five of the Ogre Nations' kobolds, with spare mounts, paced them for quite awhile, before splitting one off to, presumably, get reinforcements.

They picked up the pace, and drove even harder, aiming for some rocks that the kobold leader saw in the distance. Unfortunately, the God of Destiny and the God of Storms – one and the same god – had something else planned for them. A mid-summer sand storm began to brew out of the south, and they could see it coming.

The ogran kobolds following them hunkered down to wait out the storm, but Droog and Barome decided to run for it, thinking they might could just out run the storm to the shelter of the rocks.

There was a flash of light, off of metal, from off up on top of one of the tall spires of rock they were driving for. Friend, or foe? There was no way to tell, and they drove on.

The storm was upon them just as they made the rocky spire of wind-worn standstone. Droog leapt out of the carriage, and laid his hand upon the stone, even as the storm became so strong that they couldn't see more than several paces in front of them, and the light became a strange, yellowish color.

Droog leapt back into his carriage, and directed his shire-mule around the rock. He had felt, from the way the winds struck the stone, where the hollows within the rock were.

The desert elves of the Choranil tended to build their homes in wind-swept rock hollows, near where they could build a well or some other source of water. They would use their shamans or their patience to craft natural-appearing caves within the stone, practical, cool, and defensible.

Droog led them to one of the family-sized rooms within the stone rock face. Another room identical to it was probably just down the rock face from them, but they couldn't see it in the storm, nor the well that probably sat in the middle of the rock out cropping that formed a broken circle, from the air.

They had to disconnect the draft mule from the carriage to get him in the doorway, but managed to squeeze him, the camel, all twenty kobolds, and Droog's chest in the room. The carriage was picked up by the wind, and then disappeared in the storm.

Before they could get settled in to wait out the storm, despite the lack of a door on the doorway, an orc walked into the room. The orc seemed as surprised to see them, as they were to see him, but the orc attacked quickly, scimitar already out, and his shield at the ready.

Droog rushed the orc, using his carriage chest as a stepping stone to leap towards him, battle axe already drawn. The orc dropped into a squat, his shield upraised, and flipped the dwarf over his shoulder through the narrow doorway, and out into the sandstorm.

Barome had fought orcs before, but never one of the Ogre Nations' orcs – he was a tough, wiley, combat-effective son-of-a-bitch, and the desert elf suddenly wondered just how deep in it they were. His attacks were doing little against the orc, and orc was easily keeping him off balance.

An angry, hissing sound came from behind Barome – and it wasn't the kobolds, but rather a dozen arrows being drawn from a dozen sheaths. They had strung their bows in complete silence, letting Barome buy them time.

The orc stumbled out into the sandstorm peppered with arrows, his shield looking like a pin cushion. Droog, trusting in the stone beneath the sand to guide him back through the storm, took the orc from behind with one swing of his axe.

Barome, not wanting to leave the body there for other orcs to discovered, quickly turn to the kobolds. He pointed at the body, and in the ogran tongue, shouted, “Meat!” over the howling wind.

The kobolds rushed forward, snatching the orc's pack off of him, and quickly cutting him to pieces small enough they could drag back into the shelter. The draft mule balked at the smell of blood, but Barome quickly soothed the animal, and his camel.

Inside of the orc's pack, one of the kobolds found a thick, oil-skinned leather tent – and immediately set about using it to secure the doorway against the wind. Barome helped, and soon the doorway was secure against the sandstorm outside. Barome's desert elven kin preferred curtains to real doors, but when the weather turned frightful, such curtains had to be secured against the doorway. In an odd way, the desert elf felt he was returning home.

He knew that the sandstorm would probably only last an hour or so, being as it was a summer storm. The spring and fall sand storms could last whole days, but in the summer, they tended to be short affairs, though more brutal than the spring or fall storms.

Having had a taste for ogran blood, he wanted more. Using his hundred feet of silk rope, Barome tied it about himself, and secured the other end to Poncor. With a steady nod from Droog, Barome set out into the storm.

The storm was still strong enough to get him lost several times, and had it not been for the rope, he likely would have gotten lost completely. He finally found the stone-covered well of the elven village, after exploring a number of rooms. From the well, he knew how to make his way back. Barome had already realized that, because of the translation problem with the kobolds, they were far, far from their intended destination. The abandoned elven village was desert elven, and perhaps one of the clans he had visited in his youth so many decades before – but it did not hold whatever secrets Mistress Brin of the academy had sent him to search for.

He was interrupted from his musings in the midst of a storm, by an orc. The porcine beast took him by surprise, and the battle was fierce. Barome was on the defensive until he could finally, finally begin to draw blood against his opponent. Scimitar met scimitar, and it was all Barome could do to hold his own. The final blow took his opponent down, headless – but it left Barome with his blood flowing so freely that not even the wind-blown sand could hide the flow of blood down his leg.

He pulled on the rope – and pulled and pulled, only to find the far end cut.

Hope running out, and nearly delirious from blood loss, Barome managed to stagger through the storm to the correct rock face, where he had left Droog. He finally found the covered doorway, and stuck his hand in to move the heavy curtain aside – and something nearly sliced through the tendons on the back of his hand.

Nursing the cut hand, he whistled hard for Poncor, his ever-faithful camel.

The camel bawled, and burst through the doorway, giving him a glance of what had happened in the roar of the wind and the sight-blinding sand.

The kobolds had taken their opportunity, and turned on Droog, blasting him with more arrows than the dwarf could handle. He lay face-down inside the room, while the kobolds went through his equipment, and tried to break into his chest. Droog's draft mule was still unharmed, and the animal looked on the verge of panic by the sudden force of the wind, and the blood that pooled about Droog's body.

Barome ducked out of the way and against the outside wall as a hail of kobold arrows went by.

A brief but one-sided battle ensued, and in the end, the remaining kobolds tossed out the head of their leader. The new leader, apparently, was the one that Droog had saved back in the canyon.

Barome managed to save Droog by using the desert elf's store of healing restoratives, and also convinced the remaining kobolds to return everything.

The sand storm began to dissapate, and the situation became even more dire: there were plenty more orcs in the desert elven village.

Droog and Barome made the decision to re-arm the kobolds with their bows. Droog drew from his carriage's box a horn of silver and steel. When it was blown, it echoed across the village, and smoke pored forth from it with each blast of the horn. Barome home-made flash-bombs – alchemist's fire, smoke sticks, and acid flasks all tied together – helped add to the confusion as they tried to escape from what had been a safe place in the sand storm, but was a trap in the open air.

The battle was one-sided. None of them ever had a chance.

* * *

They were stripped of all their possessions, and sent to across the desert on the back of a minotaur lizard, burned by the summer sun and heat, and denied water or food, save enough to keep them barely alive.

In the heart of a strik nest the ograns had taken during the early part of their war, they saw first-hand the extensiveness of the Ogre Nations, and their alchemical experiments.

Droog was tortured, by having acid dripped on his bald head, until he screamed for mercy. Barome was thrown into a cage of kobolds, and they were allowed to beat and bite him into submission whenever it pleased the guards.

The orc leader known as Gorethak took his time with the two, delving into the mysteries of their equipment, their mission, and their presence.

In an attempt to unlock the mysteries of the spell-protected book that had been in Droog's carriage box, Gorethak used their portal token as a bargaining chip, and a tease.

The portal token would take them home, or so they had been told, if only they could break it. Neither Droog nor Barome had thought to separate it from the other tokens, and so when they had needed it during the battle, they had been unable to find it in time. The other tokens – message tokens – had been taken from them as well. Droog had been forced to use some of the message tokens at Gorethak's behest, as he tested them and their magic.

The sheer size and scale of the orc's alchemical enterprise frightened Droog and Barome. They were exhausted, hungry, dehydrated, sleep-deprived, and denied even the dignity of clothing or a slop bucket.

Gorethak held in his hand the portal token. The Book of Rahob, written in draconic script and powerful behind Gorethak's understand, lay open before Droog. The orc was ready to kill Barome if Droog did not begin translating the book, or unlocking its secrets for Gorethak.

There, Gorethak finally made a mistake.

Speaking not in the draconic tongue he did not understand, but speaking instead in the dwarven tongue, Droog quoted a passage from the Book of Galgiran from memory. The passage held power, and for one of the priests of Galgiran, it held incredible power.

One of the guards realized what was going on, but all the others, including Gorethak, stood transfixed, hearing the Power of Galgiran spill forth from Droog's lips. The other guards relaxed their grip on Barome, their own mental power weakening beneath the onslaught of Galgiran's power, channeled through Droog.

The lone guard that realized what was going on rushed forward, and brained Droog with the flat of his scimitar. Barome leapt forward, though, and grasped the token held in Gorethak's hand – and broke it.

With Droog out cold, the remaining guards seemed confused for a moment. The one that had brained Droog, though, slashed and thrust at Barome in an attempt to kill him. Barome used every ounce of his flexibility and reserves to stay out of the reach of that scimitar, as a blue star appeared in miniature where the token had been broken.

Barome dodged and weaved, doing his best to lead the guard away from Droog, and yet somehow stay out of reach of the blue star. He knew that when it expanded into a ring, opening the Eye of Galgiran, that it could cut through stone.

And cut it did, taking half of Gorethak's face and one arm off.

The guards snapped out of their strange trances, and rushed Barome – killing him.

So ends the 21st of Davor, 1329.

There's more to the story, but it will have to be part of the story for Erin's other character. He had been wanting to bring in another character from the wings, but had not had the opportunity to do so. I don't think he planned for so dramatic a means, though. Barome gave his life protecting Droog, and the two had even exchanged names, some time during their travels that day, before they were caught, and imprisoned.

James and Erin are coming to understand that I hold no leashes on the party. I will never force their hand. Where their characters go, is their will and their will alone, though they may ask for hints from me, from time to time. They made a few mistakes, and they learned from them. They made a few tactical mistakes, and they learned from them, too.

Ironically, the scriers at Lok Magius had been hunting for the two for some time, but once they were captured by the ograns, they had become shielded. The mages at the academy learned quite a few valuable lessons from Droog and Barome's adventure, but one serious question was being asked: Why were the two of them dropped so far behind enemy territory?

Father Rolth had been recalled to Mount Lavanor, and so was unavailable to explain what had happened. The records show coordinates for deep in the Choranil, where the pair had been sent – but those were not the coordinates that Mistress Brin had wanted the two sent to. They were supposed to have been sent to a pass in the Tikranor Plateau, where they would be relatively safe, and where a set of ruins might have held clues to the origins of the desert elves – a task the two alone could have easily accomplished.

Many questions are being asked, and much chaos is being spread.

Droog has survived, although barely. As he lays awake in the infirmary at Lok Magius, he must ask himself, “What happens next?”

Addendum (17MAR2006): On Mission Three, both James and Erin had worn red shirts, and we joked about how the red shirts always died in Star Trek episodes. This must've been a two-parter. Only Erin wore a red shirt, this time – and his character did die.

1,500. (total character XP to date is 7,000)