Return to Port Lorrel

[Alberich]

As she'd reached the top, Tamina had been able to see behind the new wall - there was nothing there except a couple of ladders, which these berobed ninnies had used to scale it.

At her "show me," the male bandit lifted one arm - slowly - and pointed to the top of the left hand cliff. "We're expendable," said he.

"We're all gonna die!" said the female, very cheerfully.

Now Tamina could look where everyone else was looking. (Except Nera and the horses.) It was a sight to wet Jamie's dreams. A large, bald, muscular bandit stood there, shirtless, in bright mauve pants. He was controlling a large weapon, which was pointed down towards the wagon and all its occupants. And "all" was the right word. It was of the same genus as Udo's fan-gun, but boasted twelve barrels to his six, all of larger caliber, and stacked in two layers.

"Fuckin' weave!" exclaimed Udo. "That's a Santam Arms-of-Doom Bonesmash Gutmaster! They're near impossible to find!" Any sane marksman would take one look and understand why. And would not want to be within several hundred yards of it, in any direction, to include the firing position. If this man was compensating, he was in a sad state indeed.

"We are so fucked," said Gary. "I guess we're getting some naked time."

And then there was a crack! from behind the rear wall somewhere. The cliff-bandit's head turned bloody, and the weight of his weapon dragged him forward. He and it fell to the bottom and were smashed to pieces. At some point on the way down, the weapon also went off, and several of its barrels burst before they were all torn apart by the impact. The horses weren't too hard for Gary to control - they wanted to panic, but they literally had no place to run.

That left the wagon still trapped by walls and cliffs, but menaced only by two grinning dolts, neither armed, both covered by kobold's claws.

Two hundred yards to their rear, and unseen by them all, Jasmine nodded in satisfaction, then remounted her own horse and rode to a hidden place. Whatever was going on up there, the odds should be all right now. Let the stupid girl fight her way out of it. Then maybe she'd see some sense. There was a much easier way for a young woman to live. This kind of foolishness should be left to the boys. (Who would naturally make a pig's breakfast of it.)

In looking around their little prison, Jamie noticed one matter of interest - a glitter from near the top of the cliff wall. She pointed it out. Udo squinted and identified it as a crystal ball. Seizing up his staff, he took a careful aim - only to have Jamie blow it to shards before him. Now, at least, the enemy was blinded, but who knew how long it'd be before more of them arrived?

[Alberich]

[OOC: Okay, fixed.]

[Sareth]

Jamie lowered her rifle after blowing away the crystal ball, then swore. She glared at the cliffs up behind her.

"Mother! I just know that was you. You might as well show yourself."

Other than her own echoes, nothing could be heard from above. Neither could anything be seen.

"You could at least drop some explosives down here. Digging through that wall is gonna be Hell!"

Still there was silence.

Muttering, Jamie glowered at Gary. "You wouldn't happen to have any explosives in here, would you?"

"You really are a lunatic, aren't you?"

Jamie smiled. "That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day. So, how do we get that wall down?"

****

The well dressed man glanced over to Jasmine with an arched eyebrow. "Explosives?"

"Even if I had any, do you think I'd give her some?" Jasmine's whisper carried the sort of tone reserved for idiots, children, and politicians. "She'd either blow herself to kingdom come, or she'd bring the wall down on herself."

"No doubt," the man responded. "Still, she knows you're here. Why are you hanging back?"

"She'll be so desperate to escape knowing I'm right behind her that wagon will be back on the road in minutes. Just watch."

"Given her proclivities, I'm half way to believing you." The man settled back in his saddle to watch.

[Alberich]

"No explosives," said Gary. "And there's no way these horses can knock down a stone wall. A wizard put these walls up and it'll take a wizard to get 'em down again." (He said this after working with Jamie to get Nera quiet - she'd found the explosions unsettling.)

Udo disagreed and was prepared to display his vast knowledge of siege weaponry, from ballistas to petards to trebuchets. The prospect of such a lecture stirred Gary's fatigued, light-headed brain into action.

"You know," he said, "we're not even an hour's walk from town now." He wasn't going to do any walking - he was in no condition to walk far, and if he could get into town with some cash in his pocket, he'd get to where he couldn't walk at all. But maybe these crazy-brave protectors of his could go do something like that. He'd be glad to babysit back here, especially if it was quiet.

There was something odd about this. This close to Port Lorrel, one could assume the Eisenfaust was a major presence (likely the major presence) in any town, even Ester. So how did so many bandits cram themselves into this tiny little route, and operate this close to town? Maybe the locals hadn't coughed up the cash yet. Sitting around pondering the issue wasn't Jamie's style or Tamina's either. What was?

[Jack Rothwell]

(OOC Quick question. Unless the walls completely enclose the wagon and its occupants in, couldn't they just manually move everything around it a piece at a time? Horses and all?/OOC)

[Alberich]

[OOC: The cliffs are steep on both sides. The walls rise from the earth and are flush with the cliffs. Somewhat thusly:

C.......C
C=====C
C.......C
C..W...C
C.......C
C=====C
C.......C

...with C as the cliffs, ===== as the walls, and W as the wagon. The dots.... are empty spaces because when I tried this with blank spaces, it collapsed my cliffs together and made nonsense out of the diagram. My understanding of the rules, which may be faulty, is that I can't just draw a diagram in Paint and paste it in as an image, or I'd do that instead. Walls are about 15' high, but are not completely unscalable, as witness Tamina's rapid ascent of one with her claws. One of them has two ladders behind it, by which Tamina's two prisoners ascended to the top.]

[Sareth]

"You know, if we just had 200 feet of rope, a barrel of pig grease, and 10 nubile exotic dancers I'd know what to do right now," Jamie mused. "But since we don't have those, I guess we'll need to get into town tonight. Let me think about this."

Jamie began pacing. She paced the distance back and forth for a minute, glaring at the wall before pausing. "Tami! How thick is that wall you're standing on?"

With a cat that ate the canary grin, Tamina bounced on the wall and then held her hands about three feet apart. "This much! It's too easy! Tree branches are more fun!" With that, the catgirlkobold aped balancing on foot while standing on a tree limb.

"Is that all? Excellent!" Jamie clapped her hands together. "Gary! Get the horses out of their traces. We'll need those to get the water barrel to the top of the wall where Tami is. Ludo or Bluto or whatever your name is, help me tear the wagon to kindling. I have a plan!"

Gary turned gray.

[Alberich]

Udo jumped off the wagon with alacrity, ready to help. Perhaps he saw the inner wisdom of this plan (if so, he had a rare kind of mind). Perhaps he was simply glad that someone had an idea. He didn't seem to object to Jamie's assuming a leadership role as brains of the outfit - when the time was right, he could display his own technical and tactical proficiency.

Gary wasn't moving as Udo unhitched the horses and began unfastening the shafts. Then he began to protest. Udo responded with "Shut up, civilian! We're the ones who stand on a wall and guard you while you sleep! It'll be that wall over there in a few minutes. After we've finished saving your butt, then it'll be time to listen to your opinions. Not!"

Despite her ballerina-like posing, Tamina's prisoners made no effort to escape. (And indeed they were in no position to do so.) They kept their inane, childish smiles -- not as wide as before -- and commented on what was going on. There was no overt sarcasm in their voices, just a happy, optimistic tone.

"We don't stand a chance," said the man.

"That's true," said the woman. "When our brothers arrive, they'll be slaughtered. You can outfight them for sure."

"Also," said he, "with a plan like this, you'll outsmart them, too."

"And you'll have the element of surprise," said she.

Gary, in despair, threw his hands up. "You don't have to tear it all up, do you?" Getting nowhere with Jamie and Udo, he addressed his complaints to Nera. "Little girl," he said, "You can see this doesn't make sense, can't you? They're hired to protect the wagon. Instead they tear it up! If you hired them to stop the town from burning down, they'd burn it down themselves, and say, see, it can't burn any more!"

[Jack Rothwell]

Tamina giggled and pirouetted happily on the thick wall under the polite smiles of the strange people, now having decided they were no longer a threat. She reached down happily and ruffled the hair of the boy at their positive estimation of their situation.

"I like these peoples. Can we keep them? Picking up lots of people today!" She exclaimed, and then, noticing the despairing on Gary's face at the sounds of splitting wood and cracking barrels from the wagon. "Umm... want these?" She reached out of sight and began pulling one of the ladders up from the other side of the wall.

The ladders.

The wooden ladders.

"Oh!" She squeaked, making the cultists just in involuntary surprise. "Could... ahh... make the ladder bigger! Well.. umm... sort of... just need to..."

The kobold positioned the climbing apparatus so the bottom rung touched the ground on the wagon-side of the wall. She lay flat and pushed the thing down as far as it would go so the bottom of it was as far away from the stone as possible, then channeled.

There was a rhythmic creaking sound like a rocking chair on an old porch. The ladder took on a faint glow that would've reminded the convey of a jack'o'lantern had they celebrated Halloween, and the ladder began to change. The wood warped by degrees, taking on an organic look which seemed to pulse with life. Shoots erupted down the length of the ladder, sprouting leaves and expanding into branches that anchored themselves to the side of the wall like a vine growing up the side of a house. Roots of the bottom of it burrowed into the soft earth and expanded the base with dizzying rapidity as though being into contact with the ground galvanized the spell even further. Within a minute, the most curious looking tree the group had ever seen lay slanted at a 45 degree (OOC I hope there's space enough for that, pm me if not/OOC) angle, widened by a maze of criss-crossing branches as though a tentacled, wooden giant was trying to push the wall over.

Tamina, now looking decidedly tired, beamed anyway.

"Did I do good? Can do the other side too!"

[Alberich]

Gary's eyes bugged out in wonderment, as Tamina's magic converted a ladder into a ramp - if they were careful, they might even use it to get the wagon to the top of the wall, though a little carelessness would send it crashing to the ground. Even Udo fell speechless. The young man whose head had been scratched kept the same vacuous smile. "This only seals our doom," he said. "But we were doomed anyway."

"Yes, definitely," replied his companion, swinging one leg back and forth as she sat on the wall.