Back at the campsite, Galstaff had a fire going and was waiting for me to return with the water. He took the cauldron from me and set it above the fire. Once the water was boiling he threw in a packet of dried soup stock and some other ingredients to cook. On some rocks nearby the fire Galstaff had placed a few loaves of bread to heat up. The rest of the group gathered around the campfire, chasing away the chill evening air, while they waited for dinner.
To break the silence I asked, “What happened before you found me down there?”
Elas started the tale. It turns out that several months ago the surrounding area had been stuck by several large earthquakes which caused much consternation among local leaders. Normally earthquakes were few and far between and barely registered. The nearby dwarven city of Thrinain’s Hold had had several casualties due to tunnel collapses, and the local leaders had sent out adventuring parties to see what else had changed. Their party, the Brothers in Arms, had been sent from Safeld to investigate the ruins of the Black Tower.
It was at this point I interjected for a geography quick lesson. The Black Tower was once a great tower dungeon stretching miles into the sky. Adventures would come from all over to test their luck and see how far up they could go. People. There was the constant danger of painful death in the tower, but the promise of riches continually brought in more people. That is, until one day when the great dungeon doors would not open. The great black walls slowly started to lose their glossy finish and started to turn a dull gray, as if whatever kept the dungeon alive had died or moved on. It was many years later, after the vibrant town at the tower’s base had turned into a ghost town, that the tower lost the constant battle with gravity. The collapse could be heard from many miles away and the black tower that had scraped the heavens no longer stood. It was fortunate that when the tower fell, it fell towards the sea; had it fallen inland the damage would have been catastrophic, as it was the tidal wave had decimated some low-lying coastal towns on what is now known as the Sea of Tears. Where it impacted the coastline, it changed the local geography. The once smooth coastline is now full of fjords left over from when the land shattered. In the area around the tower’s ruins no human wanted to live, so monsters moved in. While not as rewarding as finding treasure in a dungeon, some monster parts go for a good price and occasionally someone would find an old lost and forgotten treasure trove in the ruins.
After my quick lesson, Elas continued with the story at hand, seeing as how the earthquakes had altered some of the surrounding area the Adventure’s Guild in Safeld issued a quest for various adventuring groups to go out and survey the surrounding land. It was supposed to be an easy job. We came, We saw, We left. Nowhere in the job description did it mention new monsters that could wipe a party out. When we got to the old base of the tower we found a set of stairs leading underground. The old dungeon had risen into the sky, what if this one delved into the ground? The first few floors were easy, with just simple vermin, but then the ecosystem quickly evolved. Soon there were goblins, ogres, and gnolls. Deeper in were the undead and then after those floors the aberrations came out to ‘play’.
Elas pauses here and shudders with the memory.
Continuing with the story I learned how the group had lost two of their members to aberrations before running into the Purple Worm and deciding to make a break for the surface. While running they had found their way back blocked and were forced to find an alternative route, which lead them to my door. I knew the rest of their tale from there.
By the time the tale was through dinner had finished cooking. Which was a good thing since I hadn’t eaten anything since that last meal at the D&D party. It was then I ran into my first problem, I had no idea how to take my helmet off. I knew that it could be done, judging by the different makeup of Space Marine figures, but I had no idea how. After a few minutes of futilely attempting to twist of pull it off by force I stopped to contemplate my options. The next step was to try voice activation. Considering that the armor is an advanced piece of technology it’s possible that I have access to voice commands, but with no manual I have no idea.
“Helmet off…helmet unlatch…helmet detach,” I tried.
The last one worked, and with a pneumatic hiss the helmet came loose. As I pulled it off I noticed the others in the group looking at me.
“What? Is there something on my face?” I asked.
“No,” the normally taciturn Grognak responded, “With your size I expected you to be like me.”
“I don’t think the class would work for me if I was anything but human,” I mused.
“Anyone have a mirror or something to describe what I look like? I’ve only seen myself in armor so far.” I explained.
Galstaff pulled a mirror from somewhere and I got my first good look at my-self. I had close cropped black hair. A pair of hazel eyes stared steadily back at me from below thick eyebrows. A tall refined nose was situated above full-bodied lips. A strong chin and a sturdy jawline dusted with stubble rounded out my square face. In summary it was a very chiseled appearance.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
After examining my features for a while, I got down to the important business of filling my belly. The soup was nice and hot to drive away the nippy twilight air and had a flowery herbal aroma and a mild sweet taste. It was very good. The bread was similar. After being heated next to the fire the loaves were hot and steaming. The bread was dense and dark brown, probably a rye, it was very good.
After dinner Elas, Galstaff, Garret, Grognak, and Janek discussed watch rotations. I was apparently exempt since I had had no prior experience with guard duty. As I reattached my helmet with “Helmet reattach”, I laid down and tried to get comfortable. Seeping in power armor is no fun let me tell you. The best I could do was to lie with my arms to my side and on my back. I recalled that a Space Marine could enter a state of suspended animation or rest half of their brain at a time, but I didn’t want to deal with any of that. I wanted to go to sleep and hopefully wake up back in my own bed.
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No such luck. Upon awakening dawn was breaking on a clear blue sky with one of the moons hanging forlornly above. Janek had taken to whacking me with a stick to try and wake me up (apparently I sleep like the dead which is a bad survival trait). Breakfast was served and the group was ready to hit the trail back to Safeld. Breakfast looked like cream of wheat with some apple chunks thrown in. it was hot and filling. As we were about to leave we ran into a few problems. The Brothers in Arms had arrived on horses, meaning there were two leftover from the members that had died in the dungeon. However since I weight about as much as a large horse there was no way they could carry me, apparently horses can comfortably carry about 20% of their weight. If I was ever going to get a mount I would need a cart, some monstrous animal able to carry my weight, or a way of lightening my load with magic or something.
It was decided that the group would be on horseback and I would walk alongside them. As we walked I noticed that the further we got from the ruins the more trees I saw. Elas described that as the previous dungeon town had grown woodcutters had made an ever increasing circle of stumps in the forests as the town demanded more and more wood to grow. Now that there was no more demand for lumber, the trees had started to reclaim what once was theirs.
In power armor it appeared I could keep up a brisk jog indefinitely. After trudging along the trail for several hours I was wondering if we were ever going to get anywhere and see anything other than trees for the rest of the day, when we suddenly met up with a road. I stopped to look around. Where there trail met the road there was a sign post with three arrows on it. One pointed back the way we came, one pointed left and the other pointed right. Elas explained that the road ran north and south. To the north was a small hunting and woodcutter town. The town was considered a big deal since it had an inn, a tavern, a lumber mill, and a wall to keep monsters at bay. Adventurers went to the town quite often to forage for herbs that the apothecaries and herbalists needed (and paid well for any rare finds) and to hunt the large beasts that roamed the northern woods, since adventurers walked the road frequently monsters had learned to avoid it or die.
We were headed to the south towards Porthaethwy, the large town on the shores of what used to be a lake, but after the tower fell had turned into bay. Porthaethwy, while not as large or prosperous as Safeld, was considered to be ‘all right’. There was some fishing in the fjouds to the west of the town and when winter fell the bay froze over you could use an ice boat to cross it. Think like a very large skiff with huge runners supporting it on the ice. The Brothers in Arms had planned to return to Safeld by crossing this bay since using this method since it cut almost a month’s worth of travel time compared to the overland route. From this point it was almost 3-4 days of my speed to get there. Fortunately we would not be sleeping under the stars seeing as how there were traveler’s waystations at regular points along the road.
As we got underway I managed to increase my pace to a steady run. If I had to guess I was doing about a 5 minute mile (which was nice considering I had never been able to do that before). As the road flashed below my feet I concentrated on breathing and not tripping. Although anything I stepped on was squished flat by my weight…I was going to have problems in multistory buildings.
We passed few people who were headed north on our journey south. The reactions were hilarious. The peasant almost drove his cart off the road when he saw me, a group of 5 adventurers stopped their horses to stare, and what looked like a pony express rider almost had his horse veer into the woods. Here I was a veritable mountain of armor bearing down on them, and then I was gone thundering down the road. Not a sight you see every day.
Pausing for small water breaks I had been keeping the pace up for almost 2 hours and was wondering how long I could keep running for when we stopped for lunch. Lunch was a simple affair of bread, butter, cheese, and vegetables. Then after feeding and watering the horses it was back to running.
We reached an inn about an hour before sundown. We noticed as we rode in that the inn was crowded, what looked like a caravan had parked their wagons by the stables and had a few guards posted to keep watch. As the Brothers in Arms stabled their horses I was left to observe the inn.
The inn was situated in a circular clearing with the road running through the center of said clearing. The inn was on one side of the road and the stable on the other side. The clearing was about 50 yards in diameter with nothing growing higher than knee high. The inn looked to be of solid construction with thick timbers holding up a gambrel wooden shingled roof. Between the support timbers there were stones for the wall. It almost looked like a repurposed barn, but the colors were the building materials natural look. A wisp of smoke was rising from the chimney and I took my helmet off to smell the night air better.
Something on the air smelled delicious and as the Brothers in Arms rejoined me I replaced my helmet and we headed into the inn to see what was for dinner.