The party returned to the Bird and Baby and sat down to order lunch.
"First things first. We are going to need to level up before we can hit that Quest." Caisin said.
Lance nodded, "A bunch of level 4 noobs are not going to do well against a level 8 wraith."
"Anyone know a place that is good for grinding levels?", Lance asked.
"Well," Caisin began, "I was given quest, but I think it was given in spite."
Lance nodded, "I am curious, do tell."
"One thing about the military is they do not like outliers. Armies are built on the concept of being the same and everyone working according to the same rules. Those who are different are the ones who cause trouble. So you can guess that the dwarfish culture here in the game, being filled with service members is going to be very similar."
The party nodded interested in what the dwarf was saying.
"Everyone, and I mean everyone in the dwarven town worships Laurin the god of crafting. If someone comes in with another alignment they either change over to Laurin or are kicked out and told to not come back. Well, when I came in with no god at all you can imagine the anger I caused. They went so far as to drag me in front of Laurin at his temple when I refused to either leave or accept him as my god.
"Lauren is just a really big and powerful dwarf so when he had heard all the complaints and heard my defense he laughed long and hard. Then he fixed me with a stare and said, 'If ye can kill you a troll, then we can talk about yer freedoms.'"
Caisin looked a little shaken by the experience but then continued. "He then proceeded to give me a quest to kill a troll and kicked me out. The other dwarves knew I would have no hope of killing a troll without their help, so they just laughed as I left."
Lance looked around the table and then nodded. Share that quest friend, I think we are going to kill ourselves a troll.
Having a plan the group worked on eating an early lunch which had just arrived.
Leaving the Bird and Baby they turned north which took them near the temple of Jearian. The temple was made of white stone with elaborate stained glass windows. Human guards stood before the temple and a slow trickle of adventurers were entering and leaving the temple, supposedly to receive the god's blessing before going adventuring or seeking a quest from the god.
"Don't want nothing to do with that!" Sparky said, "Gives me the hebe jebes for sure."
As they kept moving forward toward the north they walked through some plowed fields. As they moved a bit deeper they found a group of fifteen large boars rutting around and generally making a commotion in a farmer's field.
"Time to be makin some bacon!" Cletus said, "Let's slice and dice friends!"
All four of the assistants got into the action as a herd of virtual boars charged them only to be chopped, shocked, smashed, and generally slaughtered by them."
"Hang on." Caisin said with the kind of steady confidence that caused people to listen. "I understand that our assistants are excited for more blood, but let's do this right. Sparky,"
The elfin mage looked around at Caisin.
"You are the only one with any kind of distance attack right now. If these are like other animals we should be able to pull a few of them from the group at a time if you can hit the ones closest to us."
Sparky thought about it for a minute but then snapped a very sloppy salute and said, "Aye, Aye, Cap'n"
"Then we should be able to easily tank them." The dwarf looked over at Grog and Polly who nodded. They knew their part.
Sparky cast lightning and split it four ways striking closest boars and pulling them into the fight. As they approached all four ran directly into a fire trap set by Lance and as they came out of that Grog bellowed a taunt causing them to focus on him while he shield bashed them. Polly would heal him while all of the others focused on downing the large pigs. Grog's wolves seemed to especially enjoy fighting the large tusked pigs.
This worked wonderfully for the first two sets but when sparky tried to pull the third set he aimed a little high and got four in the back instead of in the front and all seven animals rushed toward them. As the porkers approached Grog set his feet and used a special ability. When he taunted the boars this time his shield grew to double its previous width and height. And when he bashed the creatures they did not just take damage but they flew back and crashed into the boars behind them. This caused a great confusion among the creatures and made it fairly easy for the party to take the larger group of animals down.
"Wow, what was that?" Lucinda asked.
"That is called Super Bash. I got it for my level five skill."
"Speaking of level five." Sparky said glowing brightly, "I just arrived."
Lance nodded, "Me too."
"Okay." Sparky said, "Help me pick."
"What do you have so far?" Lucinda asked.
"At level 2, I got Forked Lightning, I just thought it was cool. At level 3, I got Cantrips for some variety and bought four of them while at the witches' hut."
Lance's eyebrows raised. "So what is a cantrip? Does it help you trip someone?"
Sparky laughed, "No, a cantrip is a simple, useful spell that is not attached to my element. I picked up Light, Mend, Create Bonfire and, Glamor."
It was Lucinda's turn to laugh, "That is so cool; you are making me want to be a mage!"
Sparky continued, "My Options this time are:
"Thunder - Your lightning now comes with thunder which has a 50% chance of causing enemies near a strike to be deafened for 20 seconds and a 10% chance for them to be blinded for 5 seconds.
"Electric Stun - Any opponent struck by your lightning spell will have a 20% chance of being stunned for 5 seconds.
"Electrocute - A full lightning blast (not split) has a 1% chance to kill your opponent outright.
"Summon Elemental - cause a small electrical elemental to appear and fight for you. The elemental will level with you."
Sparky looked at Lucinda and Lance, "Thoughts?"
Lucinda contemplated the choices for a moment, "Hmm, everything there is good except maybe Thunder."
Lance nodded vigorously.
Sparky looking a little downtrodden responded, "Thunder was my first choice, why shouldn't I choose it."
Lance was the one to speak up, "Oh, the effects are great, but think about making that kind of noise on our mission to kill Borgakh. We would be summoning every guard in the temple instantly. Or even on a normal quest, every creature within a mile radius could be pulled in."
Sparky blanched, "Ooh, had not thought about that."
Lucinda jumped back in, "For me, I would be between the elemental and the stun, the 1% is too random to be of any real use. It would, however, be a great way to take down Borgakh."
"True, true," Sparky responded. "I have seen some choices, like Cantrip, come back. So I am hopeful that if I pick stun now, which would be great against larger numbers like the boars we just fought, I may get another shot at the elemental later."
"I agree." Lucinda continued, "They are both great choices. But with the way you fight, I think the stun would be more useful. I don't think you are going to want to mentally direct an elemental while you are sparking things up in a battle."
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Sparky nodded and made his choice.
Lance looked at his own notifications.
After consulting with his team and with Cletus he decided to go broad instead of choosing a min max strategy and put one point each into wisdom, intelligence and constitution, and dumped the other two into dexterity where he also put his new points. He looked over his attributes and was satisfied.
Next, he selected the learn weapon ability and selected sword. He had advanced to level five with dagger while fighting the boars, but he had studied swordplay as part of his martial arts training. Jiu-Jitsu was the martial art of the Samurai, and many more traditional Dojos offered weapon training. All this caused him to hope he would level faster with that weapon.
He transitioned his steel dagger to his left hand and then took a few slashes with the blade he had found in his starter valley, and it felt good. He moved through a sword kata, and it all went smoothly and felt natural.
Lastly, he had to select a level five skill.
[1. Climb - Scale walls and cliffs significantly easier.]
[2. Movement Poison - Successful weapon attacks have a 50% chance of adding a movement poison stack. Each set of two successful applications will add a stack which hinders the victim's movement by 10%. You may have up to five stacks active at any time.]
[3. Martial Dagger - Integrate the ability to use your dagger into your martial arts ability.]
[4. Pick Locks.]
Lance felt that there were no weak skills being offered to him, two he had seen before, but they were still strong contenders. At level 3, he had chosen the ability super sneak, which halved the stamina cost of sneaking while doubling the effectiveness of the skill so he felt as if he was full up on movement abilities skipping over climb. Martial dagger again drew him, but he felt he was not using his martial arts abilities as much as he had hoped. Using them in a dojo was one thing but on the field of battle against multiple enemies it was much harder. This left pick locks and movement poison both of which looked amazing.
"Lucinda," The other thief looked around and Lance continued, "You said you can pick locks, right?
"Sure can; pick something else. I have that covered."
That settled it for Lance as he chose movement poison for his level 5 skill.
"Okay!" Lance said excitedly, "Everyone ready? What's next?"
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As the party moved forward from the battle, the land began to turn upward and after a few minutes, they were walking along a path in some low hills. As they tromped through the hills, they regularly came upon all sorts of creatures who were ready to die to defend their area. A pair of level seven goats were the toughest fight they faced. After they had finished them off, they took a break. Lance was happy to see that his experience bar had been making steady progress toward level six.
"According to the quest we should be coming upon a gnoll camp somewhere soon here. They seem to be the gateway to the trolls lair." Caisin said as the party sat down to take a rest.
Lucinda had not been wounded in the fight so she went out to look for the gnoll encampment while the others took a break. As she moved through the forest on silent feet she began detecting more signs of habitation. She wished she had a tracking skill, but just pressed on more carefully. A few minutes later she poked her head around the boll of a downed tree and noticed a small cave with four humanoid creatures with the heads of hyena lounging outside. They all shared the same tag.
"I found the Gnolls." She announced as she arrived back at the small camp. "Four of them sitting outside a cave, all level six"
The party immediately began packing up the few supplies they had taken out.
"Where to?" Lance asked.
"Follow as quietly as you can." She said in reply.
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The party moved somewhat less quietly than the thief, especially with the heavy leather armor that Caisin and Grog wore, making their footfalls a bit heavier. As they moved, Caisin laid out a basic plan in a low voice. Hyenas were pack animals who loved to hunt wounded prey, and it could be assumed that their humanoid counterparts would be similar. This formed the basis for their attack plan, and in the end, they arrived at the edge of the camp undetected.
One of the goats had pressed the party hard enough that Sparky had taken a solid blow to his shoulder. Polly had immediately healed the mage, and after the battle, Sparky had been able to use his mend cantrip to fix the damage to his robes, but the blood that stained them still looked pretty fresh. When he stumbled out of the forest in front of the Gnolls' cave every canine head had snapped around to look at him. When he ran back into the forest, laughter, the terrifying kind that hyena's use when hunting, erupted from the mouths of the creatures. When they had given chase and run over Lance's fire trap which engulfed them in flames, the laughter suddenly cut off. Grog and Caisin had then fallen upon the group, Grog from the front and Caisin from the side, the four Gnolls had formed a protective barrier around the smallest of their number.
"Caster", Sparky yelled as Lance popped out of sneak behind the group of dog-like humanoids stabbing the nearest and scoring a nasty slice across its still smoldering hip, leaving a blue-green token next to the gnoll's name. At the same time, his attention was pulled away from that gnoll and onto one that looked beefier and more sturdy. "Tank too" Lance shouted at the same time as Grog stepped out and pulled the attention of the four knolls onto himself.
"Burn the tank down!" Caisin yelled as he crashed into the gnoll tank with his huge axe blurring with speed from a skill. The gnoll howled as the axe attacks, a poison bearing knife, and a lightning bolt slammed into it at almost the same time. But the gnoll at the center of the groups hands glowed green just before touching the tank. The skill healed all of the wounds, even the burn damage.
"Healer at the center." Sparky hollered as frustration began to take hold. They had been hoping for a quick resolution to this battle. As he thought this, a barking sound erupted from behind him. Spinning around he saw three more knolls exiting the cave mouth, but these were wearing gear, two in leather armor and the last wearing a large pendant. "Adds in gear," Lance yelled. Lance was now out of position, standing between the two groups and unable to reach the tank gnoll to attack. Before he moved around to the other side of the pack they were facing, he bent down and set another fire trap.
As Lance arrived at his party's side of the battle he saw that things were going fairly well, it looked like the healer was not able to keep up with the pace of damage being rained down on the tank, and as Lance added his strikes the Gnoll went down. At the same moment, the fire trap he had set for the knolls went off, announcing the arrival of the other, tougher-looking group of mobs. The one leading the charge howled, drawing Lance's attention just as the first tank went down. No one needed to know what that meant, so Lance kept his mouth shut and the blows coming. The space was tight for Lance, Lucinda, Grog, and Caisin to all be on the front line.
From behind him, Lance heard a squeak of frustration, and then Polly shouted, "I am running low on Mana." This put Grog in a difficult situation, should he drop his taunt and let the damage be distributed around the party or hold his position for a few moments longer and maybe die? Grog summoned his huge shield and pushed the gnolls back two or three steps. The creature that had two stacks of Lance's movement poison stumbled as their party was thrown into some confusion by the action.
"Can you do that one more time?" Lance asked Grog.
"Once more, if I last that long," Grog replied.
Lance could see the damage piling up on his new friend but did not hesitate. Lance sprinted around the group of knolls who were all focused on the Orc and, a second later, shouted, "Push them now!"
Grog did, but as he did, he succumbed to his wounds and popped out of existence, leaving a glowing ball behind. But the ploy had worked. Lance had set the fire trap he had just laid to trigger only when the gnoll healer was at the center of the trap. The creature, like most casters had sacrificed toughness for mana and this had been its downfall as the flames rising around it caused it to fall lifeless in the middle of its companions.
Grog being gone allowed the gnolls to focus their attacks anywhere, and it was obvious that they were trying to get to Polly, but the wall of flesh around her and the lack of a gnoll mage kept her safe for now.
Lance was out of position again but decided to stay where he was. His stamina was too low for another trap, so he waited. Within a few seconds, the second gnoll tank fell, and Lance immediately got to work on the other armored gnoll. He used a jujitsu leg sweep to take the hyena man to the ground, where he could stick it full of holes. The battle devolved into a melee as all of the tanks were out of the fight. Lance's movement poison made the fight with his Knoll shorter than it would have otherwise been. When he looked up from over the dead body of his enemy, he could see that the fights were almost over. He moved over to help Lucinda take her gnoll down, noticing that her poison was more of a sickly green-yellow than his blue-green dots.
Lucinda had apparently noticed the same thing, "What kind of poison did you get?" She asked after their battle was complete.
"Movement.", Lance replied.
"Nice!" The other thief replied, "Mine is kind of a bomb; if I get six stacks, I can trigger it for a large amount of damage. If I wait for twelve, which can be hard to get against some creatures, it can take some enemies out entirely."
Lance walked over to Grog's orb. "Hey Otis, is Grog coming back or will he spawn somewhere else?"
Cletus appeared, "We lost Otis when we lost Grog, but I am guessing that we will have them back in." The small raccoon pushed up an imaginary sleeve to look at a huge wristwatch, "About three seconds."
A moment later, Grog's form replaced the glowing globe.
"So Grog," Lance asked, "How does death work?"
"Well, for me, at least, it offered me a choice." The large orc replied, "I could have spawned back at the Bird and Baby immediately or I had to wait until the end of the current battle. I had the option to spend a point of Power to come back faster, but apparently, you guys did a great job cleaning up after I died."
"Any penalties."
At this, Lucinda chimed in, "I died in the battle for Traville, and I lost all of my experience points toward my next level. And, of course, the limit of three deaths is always an issue."
"Same here." Grog agreed.
Cletus popped up, "May I correct you Lucinda?"
"Sure," The thief said.
"In cases like the set battle for Traville, or if you guys do any dungeons, you get two free deaths there that don't count toward the three you get in the starter area before getting moved. Grog's death here does count toward that however."
They looted the bodies of the knolls and found several nice things. Lance ended up getting a steel knife that had an enchantment adding a little extra damage on every strike a nice upgrade for his current knife. Polly got a staff from the knoll healer that reduced the cost of healing spells, a great item for any healer. Others upgraded parts of their gear from the knolls as well.
The party approached the knoll cave with trepidation but their fear evaporated when they found that after a single turn there was a sleeping area and that was the end of the cave. There was a small chest that Lucinda unlocked with no difficulty. It contained some silver which was automatically distributed to the party.