[!] A Varendoz Emergency

[cruzazul 2815]

   

     The last thing he remembered was praying to God. A terrifying plague-ridden face had snarled, he’d heard a hammerswing hit his helm, and his vision had faded a second before his mind did. Whilst incapacitated he could only remember that he had prayed that he would not die. For a moment, when he came to, he thanked God for having heard him. Then his vision cleared, and he felt the weight around his neck and arms, and he knew in some instances fate could be cruel and fickle. He did indeed live, but as a chained prisoner of the Ratmen. He stared around the cramped stone cell he was lying in, trying to see faces in the darkness. Were any of his fellow adventurers here? A friendly Varendozic face would be a great comfort. But he saw only old men he did not know, their eyes reflecting his own fear back at him. 

 

     He thought of his time on the surface, fighting as an adventurer in Guise. The young vintner-boy enlisted just after his eighteenth birthday, just after his brother’s ill fate of vanishing while fighting in the Kaedrini sewers that spring. Had he ended up in a place like this? If so, might he still be here? That hope gave him courage. He weakly began to stand, pushing his body up against the granite walls. Almost immediately, another prisoner crashed into him, grappling him with cold, clammy arms. He looked into the face, hoping for anything familiar, but there was no longer even a trace of humanity there. The eyes lolled, bloodshot and blind, and the withered skin was stuck to the skull like soggy paper. The madman tried to talk, but his mouth was filled with boils and cankers, and his tongue had been severed with a dull knife so long ago that he wasn’t sure he even had one to begin with. He pushed away the gnarled prisoner and raised himself up again. He could see a gate, and a light beyond it, and then all of a sudden, the light was gone. At the top of the darkness that replaced it, the light silhouetted two sharp ears, and whiskers wafting in a slight breeze. The smell stung his eyes, and he fell back. The gate clanged open, and leathery claws grabbed his chains and dragged him out of the cell.

     The world spun about him. He felt the pebbles of a rocky path cutting into his back as he was pulled forward. His head was spinning, the warhammer’s strike sent his thoughts into a blur. A sewage drain snaked around the underbelly of Owynsburg above; beyond it, a cavern of impossible size, filled with light and noise, the sound of a hundred forges and a hundred ratmen screeching their hideous chatter, though how such things could be found in the dark underground, he couldn’t understand. The dragging stopped, and he lolled into the fellow prisoners who were being dragged along with him. He saw the old madman again, still trying to form words, bellowing out urgent sounds at him from his broken throat. A warning, perhaps? A terrible cry about what was to come? What torture would they have him endure? What knowledge could they possibly need from him? Claws grabbed him and threw his body onto a wooden seat. Spikes hammered his wrist-shackles into the wood, locking him into place. Dimly, he beloved it was some kind of slave galley. An iron-bound handle sat in front of him, and the floor moved when he trod on it. Not a galley, he thought, but an assembly line, for mashing grain. They meant to use him for their cruel, primitive slave labor. Well, he could handle that. He had worked at a vineyard as a boy. It would be rough work, but at night he could plan his escape. He knew the guild would soon be on the look-out. It is not every day a brother just vanishes out of thin air. If he was able to bide his time, he could potentially unshackle himself, squirm to the surface, and make a break.

 

The Varendoz Adventurer’s are called to arms to save their guildmate before the ratmen break him!

[Thatpyrodude 2008]

Farooq grabs his sword, heading out to rescue his friend