The Line of the
Oathbreaker -
Part I
From
burnt fragments of a note, recoeverd from an orcish corpse of the Death
Crow Clan
(illegible)…inal days of Roderic Fallsta…(illegible)
(illegible)…all so frustrating and
unnecessary! I was in quite enough pain already. Things were quite bad
and many times, to quote the famed Celenese wizard-philosopher Artur
D’Entte, I thought “So this is it, we’re going to die.”
Looking back over my life, or at least the recent
moments, I wondered how things had gotten so bad. Obviously signing up
with that insufferable Baltuun Chagi was a start but, despite his
leadership and seeming intentions to get us all eaten by goblins, we
had so far survived. No, it was our expedition over the mountains that
lead to this fate.
Things had started well enough. No, that is not
truth at all. We were to find the descendant of Norak, some dead dwarf,
to save the elven woods after… (illegible>)
I care naught for the fey or their trees, but access
to their magical tomes was a boon I could not pass up. We were provided
horses and our three elven guides arrived then we were off. We had
barely finished mounting the horses when Baltuun began attempting to
mount one of our guides as well, embarrassing himself (and the rest of
us). Then Serv collapsed a victim of orc
pox from the dirty blanket he had been carrying for the past
several weeks. Ill omens to say the least. We handed Serv over to
healers who said that they would… (illegible)
(illegible)… then, on the second day of our
travels, the real trouble began: we encountered over a half-dozen
green-hued men the elves quickly named “orcs”. Most were dispatched
after only a couple blows, although Baltuun was also felled (sadly he
got better) and I was brutally slashed (thankfully, so did I). After an
evening’s rest we moved on, heading to a fortress in the mountains. It
was there things became truly deadly.
The fortress had been occupied by orcs; it was the
only way through the valley to our destination. We would have to travel
though the fortress to reach the far coastland and woods or turn around
and spend several extra days in the rough mountain trails, hoping to
find passage south. We ventured to the fortress wall and skillfully
dispatch the orcs before they can raise warning. There was some tension
for a moment as the middle orc refused to fall (even after my arcane missile, Baltuun’s javelin
and Lilly’s arrow struck), but one of our elven guides finally manage
to fell him.
Then we… (illegible)… moving onto the wall and
examined the keep. The gate on the far side was barricaded, so there
was no way for us to move through the courtyard with our animals, still
laden with our coin and armour. Instead we entered a tower in the keep
and found a door at the bottom. We bickered for a moment, planning our
next move, then opened it and saw … (illegible)
We quickly … (illegible)… the horses … (illegible)…
ground to a fine paste … (illegible)… grabbed our weapons and …
(illegible)
The remainder of
the text is unreadable.