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I trust by now you have had the time to digest the first portion of my tail. And now perhaps, it seems to me, that the time has come to continue it. So gather near fellow heroes, and I will tell it like it was. Let me see...Ah yes, I was just telling of the vow that Butch and I had made to avenge the deaths of our families and the decimation of our lands................. Now that Butch and I had decided to avenge the grave wrong that was done to us, we needed to discover what had happened, and who was to blame. Naturally when I brought this point up, every head in our party (roughly twenty strong) turned toward the witch. The witch reacted quite negatively to this notion that she would know the whole story. First her eyes slowly widened in disbelief, and the color was drawn out from her face. Then she started shaking her head vehemently. As I remember, she cursed and screamed and repeatedly said, "NO YOU CRAZY @*%$#@$%!!!! ARE YOU INSANE!?!?!?" I ordered my men to restrain her before she did something stupid. Unfortunately, she managed to do something stupid anyway. She cursed me. Not just your average run of the mill ha-ha-now-you-cannot-change-gear curse either. This was more a wham-bang-now-you-are-an-old-blind-man curse. I instantly aged to somewhere around 250 and was blinded. While the witch admired her handy work, my not too pleased councilor Scottie locked eyes with her and instantly mesmerized her. Then he calmly reached into his belt pouch and withdrew two vials. One was filled with a substantial amount of Youth Elixir, enough to return me to my normal age. The other vial contained seltzer water. Normally all on has to do is rinse the eyes with seltzer water and instantly they blindness would pass. However, seltzer water was designed to rinse out blinding dust. My blindness was caused by a curse, so the seltzer water had no effect. Scottie then tried to use his mystic powers to heal me, but the power of the curse prevented his intercession. Even the mesmerized witch could not remove her curse, such was its power. Scottie was, however, not overly concerned with my current state. He suggested that after we finished discerning the recent events from the witch, that we make a trip to the Valley of Yapap, where his people lived. The combined strength of all his mystic relations might be enough to overcome this curse. With that settled, we turned toward the witch again and forced her to tell her story. And thus did the which speak, "Not long after you departure, I felt some strange disturbance in the magic of this land. I could not quite place it, as it was like none other that I had ever felt before. My first thought was that the mystics of Yapap were trying another of their foolhardy attempts to absorb all knowledge from this world. But I dismissed it almost at once for I could feel that this disturbance was dark, and almost never have the mystics of Yapap used the dark magic. So I got to thinking, who could do this kind of powerful magics. I must admit, I was stumped. I could fathom it, until something caught mine eye. The very ground seem to be pulling away, as though there was something so repulsive to it that it could not bear to come in contact with it. I followed this pattern with mine eye until I was pretty sure I could tell where this repulsive thing was, Borwune Castle. As the Bulldogs had never done me any wrong, and were in fact my best customers for my potions, I decided to scurry on over to see what was going on, thinking to myself that I may be of some use in dispatching this repulsive force. When I arrived, this sight froze me to the bone. An army of ancient druids had circled the castle. These were not mere mortal druids, but the undead druids that our legends say would rise from the dead when the Awakening is at hand. These undead druids were lead by a tall, dark figure whom I took to be the Summoner. He began chanting in the long forgotten tongue of Catrin. Because of my many years, I remember it still and was able to determine that he was calling for the spirits of the dead to posses the living of Borwune and destroy the royal family and with them all who tried to protect them. Fearing for my own life I did nothing and watched in horror as the peasants became possessed and did as they were bid. The druids seemed to control be the ones who controlled these spirits, but the Summoner controlled the druids. Then, as quickly as I had come, the druids and the Summoner vanished. They left behind the royals dead as you have found them, and the peasants were left as nothing but ashes." And thus ended the story of the witch. The fire once again is in danger of burning out and leaving our poor bodies in the cold bodies cold. Perhaps what is worse, is that my mug of ale seems to have gone dry. Fear not my friends, I shall later explain the legend of the Awakening to you, as you are not familiar with it yourselves, being from other lands than my own. In the mean time, WHERE IS THAT BLASTED CUP BEARER???? Ace Dogg of Doggainia |
