The world is filled with different beings that can communicate with man. Interbreeding is also highly common, with some complications of course. A giant has been known to take on a dwarven mate, and humans just can’t seem to leave well enough alone. Storm Folk are one of these offshoots. They claim to be the descendants of Storm Giants and that much is obvious. What of the other parent? They never say. That parent was humanoid of some sort.

#Warnik’s Perspective

He got to watch as Dimitri negotiated with the storm folk. He did have a chance to look between the various figures, each as much taller than he was taller than Dimitri. The tallest of them must have been over ten feet tall, yet the bodies followed the standard proportions that a human would have.

He scanned around the room, it didn’t feel cold to him, it felt normal. One of the problems with being bigger than average was that the ratio of area to volume was smaller. Which made shedding heat generated in the body harder. Being a Mountain Man, he felt better in the colder areas. These storm folk must have felt the same.

His eyes turned back to the storm folk, they were still wary of the two adventurers, and he was warry of them. He was only half-listening to the conversation, of course, he could only understand half of it. Half of them had removed their hoods to reveal their faces. The complexion was a mixture of pale skin, with streaks of dark skin.

The occasional crackle of lightning ran along their skin, following the dark lines. His mind wandered a bit, wondering if the melanin in the skin helped them channel the elements, or if the melanin formed in the skin due to the light of the lightning. Whatever the cause the result was exotic, and he found it fairly attractive.

One of the female storm folk caught him looking, and gave him the standard what look a female gives a male whenever he’s caught doing something. He thought about how to respond, gave a smile then ran his finger along the lightning lines, and gave a thumbs up.

She returned the smile and they went back to listening to the two talk. He still didn’t understand it, but at least with some non-verbal actions, he could still communicate a bit. He did wish he knew some sign language.

“[Why not magical? Don’t think he’s good for it?]”

Dimitri shook his head quickly, “No. Anything magical gets drained around him. Magic just doesn’t work on him. We did find some boots that would magically resize, but they didn’t work for him.”

The storm folk calmed down after a moment, Warnik was wondering just why it upset him that Dimitri said no magic. Almost like the tallest giant was defending him. They did just fight and came to an understanding through their fists, and feet.

“[We do have some craftsmen back at the clan. I think our boots would be too big, maybe we can something.]” The storm folk leader seemed to be helpful, he just wished he understood. “[Velda, run back to the clan, get one of the elders.]”

The one woman he had looked at before slipped her hood back on and left the group. He shrugged his shoulders and decided to take a few moments to look over his poleax and see how damaged it was. There were a few nicks in it, but nothing major yet.

It wasn’t that he knew much about weapon maintenance, but he did hang out with some mechanical engineers who designed the enclosures for the product they were creating. You do pick up some things from osmosis if you listen to people ramble on. If the nick in the axhead was sharp he would have to deal with it since it could cause a crack to form. A crack could cause the weapon to break at the worst times.

“An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.” He muttered to himself. He found a coarse sharpening stone in the essential adventurer’s supplies and started to work it over the blade.

The action seemed to calm the storm folk, as they started to tend to their weapons, just the act of maintenance broke the remaining tension between the two groups. He didn’t know what he was doing but he focused on the task, slowly working the stone back and forth till he was satisfied that the small nicks were out of the blade, and then worked on sharpening the blade again with a finer stone.

Dimitri had gotten down to what they could trade with the storm folk and they had settled on some of the magical gear that they had found. The magical gear wouldn’t work for Warnik, and it wasn’t suitable for Dimitri. His current gear was already better than the stuff they had found.

After what seemed like fifteen minutes two storm folk joined them. One was Velda, the other was an older looking female. Her skin was almost completely dark and wrinkled. Her hair was white and fine. There was a slight stoop to her shoulders, but she still looked fit and active.

The current leader, Bruin, gave a respectful bow to the older storm folk and turned back to Dimitri, “[This is Elle one of our elders.]”

The woman stepped forward and slapped Bruin on the back of the head, “[And you’re still too trusting of adventurers, Bruin!]” She gave a why-me sigh and then looked over at Warnik.

“[Is it true you can’t speak the standard language?]”

Warnik does his best to get the meaning from the woman’s words, and then shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. Pointing to his ear and then waved his hand back and forth.

“[You’re either a good actor or you can’t speak the language.]” She looked over at Dimitri, “[Ask him to say something maybe the language is spoken by others that we’ve met.]”

Warnik received the translation and watched the elder shake her head. He couldn’t help but to give a sardonic chuckle and spoke a few sentences. He didn’t think that there would be anyone around that would speak English. He had the feeling that being summoned from another world didn’t happen all that often, and it took a lot of energy to carry off.

“[I think we can trust you enough to show you the clan outpost, we can see about making your companion some boots. Though we don’t have any crossbows.]”

“Any ranged weapons?”

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“[Slings, and lightning javelins. I don’t think they’d be useful to you.]”

#Demitri’s Perspective

They continued to talk as the storm folk lead them through the level, passed some of the rooms, and deeper to where they thought the boss room as. They didn’t go into the boss room, but instead took a sharp turn and moved towards the edge of the map that Dimitri had in the journal, and beyond the explored regions.

“Why are you down here? I mean why do the Storm Folk inhabit a dungeon, Elle?”

“[Most Storm Folk live to the east in the stormy mountains. The name is what you lowlands call them, we just call them home.” She sighed as she thought about things, “We’re a crafter expedition. We came to the dungeon to use the air elemental aspect of this level to help create arms for sale.]”

“You haven’t been here too long then?”

“[We’ve been here too long this time. We’ve been here about five changes of the seasons according to our notes. When we settled in to start crafting, the dungeon changed. The boss room on the fire level changed.]”

“You mean the lava lake? And the islands change wasn’t recent?”

“[Recent? No, why do you think it was recent?]”

“We found this journal.” He said showing the journal to the Storm Folk Elder, “That had pretty good descriptions of things, down to the boss room on the fire level. It’s a dungeon spawned thing, adapted from some explorer’s notes from twenty years ago, so we don’t trust it.” He quickly added defensively.

“[It’s good you don’t trust it. No, it changed just after, or pretty soon after we got down here. Trapping us. With the boss there, the door is closed and we can’t exit this level. And no adventurers have made it down to this level since then.]”

“And now we’re here?” Dimitri thought for a moment, “Ahh….” He said after a moment, “Warnik was being a bit paranoid and wondered why you were being so helpful, especially after the fight. The door is opened and you can get away.”

“[We can’t anymore.]”

“Why not?” He looked concerned.

“[We’ve been here so long that we can’t leave the level, we can’t even go down a level, the dungeon has made us its slaves. We still resist its impulses but we can’t change levels.]”

“So you’re also helping us out of spite?”

“[That’s part of it, yes.]”

He turned to repeat what he had learned to Warnik. The tall barbarian thought about what the warlock had related to him and snapped his fingers after a moment.

“I really don’t like the idea that these people have been held captive by the dungeon. We can’t destroy the core but I’d really love to, Dimitri.”

“We can’t save the world. And you do want to save that naked girl on the upper level.” Dimitri added with a teasing lilt to his voice.

“Saving Hermosa is definitely on my list of things to do.” The barbarian looked at the Storm Folk, “Ask them if conquering the dungeon will disrupt the magic and let them get away?”

He related the question to Elle and she thought for a moment, “It might. But you will have to do it soon, many of us have given up the thought of getting away. Recently they’ve been letting their urges get the better of them.” He heard some nervous shuffling from some of the storm folk as they walked.

“And you don’t want the babies born in the dungeon?”

“[Yes, I don’t know what that will do to them, they might become the spawn of the dungeon and can never leave. Who’s this naked girl you want to save?]”

“She’s the Ice Nymph a few levels up. I think she was the level’s boss. At least you had to get defat her if you wanted to get farther into the dungeon.”

“[I don’t remember there being an Ice Nymph here. But she’s Fey, and you should watch out for Fey they can be tricky. They may be beautiful, but that type of beauty is skin deep. Fey are driven by their magic and their whims more than reason.]”

“She said she had been here for thousands of years. Actually, you may not have met her. There’s a room with what looks like an ice fountain in it, and an elemental made of ice.”

The elder took a few moments to think about the story, “[Well yes there is the room with an ice elemental that was resistant to our lightning and hit very hard. Are you saying that ice elemental was a nymph? They can change their appearance, but I didn’t think it was to that extent.]”

“No, the ice elemental is a puppet. She hid in the fountain until Warnik disrupted the magic holding the puppet together. And then disrupted the dungeon’s control magic. She seemed to be pretty happy to see us. At least Warnik. After all, she kissed him on the way out.”

The elder gave Warnik a sharp look as he walked along with the other warriors. Some other storm folk gave him a look as well.

“What? It was only a kiss, and she surprised me, it wasn’t something I asked for.” The forsaker tried to defend himself.

“[It’s said that a man who gets a kiss from a Nymph will gain some fey like qualities. A lot of magic doesn’t work on Fey, they’re creatures of magic. They seem to ignore magic if they want to.]”

“You think that’s where his inability to use magic comes from? No, it’s because he’s a Forsaker.”

“[A forsaker? That is an ominous term. Sounding like a taboo.]”

Dimitri did his best to explain, but the concept of a video game and a technological world was just too foreign for them to get the meaning across. The linguist skill he had also seemed to translate his speech directly into their language, and if the language didn’t have the word then a lot of the meaning was lost.

They arrived at the outpost and were greeted with another large room, the roof lost to sight overhead. It might have been that high, or it might have been an illusion. The image it gave was of a cliff face with many caves and a large open area for a communal area.

There crude buildings made of stone, with just simple hide over them to keep the heat in, not that there was much heat to trap. And conventions being what they are, people must have some sort of roof over their head.

Another pair of, what he considered, old storm folk came to greet them. Pleasantries were exchanged and they were able to get everyone’s story straight.

“[Can you tell your companion to go with Velda here to go to the cobbler? We have someone who was an apprentice before the trip, and he’s been fixing our boots since. He should be able to get some boots for your friend.]”

Warnik left the warlock and entered one of the caves. Dimitri had a look around, there were around fifty of the storm folk here. A few firepits were roasting what he hoped wasn’t a bat, but they’d have to use whatever they could find. There had been a few giant birds, that identify told him were Argentavis. Though when he identified the meat on the spits it only said [meat, roasted].

The identify skill was still not very useful but he had reached level six of the first tier. He wasn’t sure what level six gave him, since all he saw was the name. It was up to him to figure out what it meant, and that often took some doing.

He was given some time to grind his identify skill, as he talked to some of the other storm folk. There just wasn’t a great amount of common ground, and when the initial newness wore off the warlock and the giants didn’t have much to talk about.

His companion arrived after what seemed like an hour wearing a new set of boots. They weren’t high quality but they did put leather under his feet, and the leather was secured around his calves with straps that pulled the leather tighter so they wouldn’t slip off.

“It’s good for a rough set.” Warnik said to him, “They’ve been here for a while, and they don’t have much. I’m glad they’re able to at least get some stuff for boots and clothing. Most of it appears to be looted from the chests since it is so random.”

“They had some leather though?”

“Yes, again it isn’t very high quality but they’re able to get some hide. The cobbler even had some monsters in a pen back there. Which is an interesting way to get ammonia.” Warnik commented as if it was one of the most interesting things in the world.

“Whatever, my man. Elle said that after a meal, and a rest that they’d lead us towards the boss room, and exit to the next level. They can’t enter the boss room because of the dungeon magic, but at least we can get there without facing anything more.”

Velda was waving to them from where the community had gathered around a common meal area. She saved them some seats next to her and handed Warnik and himself each a jug. The sharp smell coming from it told him it was something distilled or brewed.

He drank deeply of it and regretted it instantly as he talked to the different storm folk and made plans for the next stage of the dungeon conquest.