Waldhaxen Channel

[Graybeard]

"Well, thanks a lot for costing us any chance of surprise," Grope muttered under his breath as he started to rappel and the shots rang out. Didn't the Small Ones have any tactical sense at all? Sometimes it seemed like they just ran around shooting at things, doing the same kind of random violence that they thought trolls did. The irony of that wasn't lost on him ...

On the other hand, if they did succeed in evening the odds, there was something to be said for their pre-emptive strike. He was a bit too occupied with the rappel (the chain was passing uncomfortably close to some bits of anatomy that were ... delicate, even on a troll) to pay close attention to what was happening on the deck, but a pair of screams from down below made it sound as if the gunnery hadn't been entirely in vain. By the time he reached ground level (he had to jump the last little bit, but nothing he couldn't handle), there was no one left alive on the deck of the under-sea-boat ...

... But the hatch had been closed. And that meant that there was still someone alive on, within, the boat.

Pausing only to check that Scrobian had started on his rappel, he secured the Robe and dove into the water.

[Sareth]

"Three of 'em," I commented. "The fourth was faster than I expected. He managed to get to the hatch while I was bagging the others." I had to admire his speed. That deck had to be slick with water, and yet he'd made it down inside the boat-thingy even though he'd started furthest from it.

I continued to sight down the barrel, but there was nothing to shoot at. It was all up to the trolls, now.

[AdamZero]

I watched as the Grope reached the water and dove in, I felt it was an ill idea, but the troll had decades, maybe even centuries of experience on me. I couldn't really second guess him at this point. I looked to Lucas and Jamie. "Once Scrobi... Grope's nephew is down and in the water, we'll make our descent. Hopefully the trolls can outlast the Prinnies, but if not, Jamie you'll have to shoot near enough the shock from the water mucks up the bird-brains."

I watched as Boris examined his blade. It'd been a while since he drawn that sword. He'd used others, but that blade.

That blade is what made him into a legend before he died; and a myth afterwards.

I rolled my shoulder and examined my hands, the flesh rolling as I eased the Grey into the bones. It wasn't a pretty technique, but I'd get the mechanics of the ship into my head, at least long enough to write them all down before they faded from my mind.

[Graybeard]

Just as Grope hauled himself up on the now-empty deck of the under-sea-boat, he felt a rumble from below. Someone inside the ship was getting engines going. He wasn't going to have much time.

Scrobian was only a minute or two behind him, even though he'd started down the chain-rope several minutes after his uncle. Grope's competitive nature flared up for a moment; had his nephew really outpaced him in the water by that much? Well, now wasn't the time to worry about such things. "Quickly!" he shouted. "We need to rip this hatch open and get at the bird-keepers before they escape!" The rumbling intensified as Scrobian came aboard. The trolls' feet vibrated with the throb of the engines ...

... And they ripped off the hatch cover.

For just the barest moment, they were looking down into a well-lit compartment, with a not-quite-human thing looking back at them, its mouth agape. And then they realized what they had done.

The motor that was now roaring down below hadn't been for the purpose of making the boat drive along the surface; it was to make the boat sink. And it was sinking, a great deal faster than it was designed to ... because water was now pouring across the deck, and into the hatch that the two trolls had just ripped apart.

Well, so much for that idea. "SWIM FOR YOUR LIFE!" Grope shouted to his nephew, then dove off the deck they'd just worked so hard to reach, hoping they wouldn't be caught in the undertow.

[Sareth]

I rolled over, putting my hand over my eyes. "I think our plan just went under..."

[Graybeard]

An oil slick bubbled to the surface above where the under-sea-boat had become a boat under the sea, as two bedraggled trolls reached the north shore.

"Well, not to put too fine a point on it: we screwed up," Scrobian gasped, hauling himself out of the water.

"So we did," Grope agreed. "I wanted to take the damn thing over, not sink it. Now how are we going to find the Island of Thralls and the tribe?"

"I don't know. As weird a thought as it is, should we do what your Small One friend wanted to do and go north in search of a boat of our own?"

Grope thought about it for a minute. "Probably. His ideas seem to be working better than mine. Besides, when the bird-keepers figure out that they've lost this boat, they'll send out a reconnaissance in force -- more force than we can battle. We don't want to be here when that happens."

"No, we don't," the younger troll sighed, sounding like a steam locomotive expiring in agony. "Well, shall we get on with it?"

"I suppose." They started to climb the cable-rope as Ayiee's detached hand sailed overhead.

[AdamZero]

I was swearing a blue streak a mile wide, hands returning my grey back into my body. Boris sighed and returned his saber back into his portal. I grabbed Jamie's crutch and helped haul her onto her feet. "Come on, we've lost enough time with this debacle." I snarled, heading along the channel along our original path. Boris sighed. His mind working over the consequences of our actions. "Depending on wether or not the guy sent of a distress call before he sunk, or how long they were due for a report, we won't have much time before they send people out here..."

He looked to Jasmine and Jamie, both already following behind me. "Might as well make some distance."

[Graybeard]

OOC:

I grabbed Jamie's crutch and helped haul her onto her feet.

Was this a typo? /OOC...

By the time the two trolls reached the top of the cliff, Harzh'biah and the humans were ready to move out. Harzh'biah, Grope was pleased to note, was looking much more prepared for travel than when they'd gone down to attack the boat; what a troll's native powers of recuperation hadn't handled, her spellcraft had. She'll make a good Matriarch some day, Grope thought -- but first things first.

"So where now, friend Lucas?"

-----------

Layla finally succeeded in disentangling herself from her unprecedentedly ... emotional ... mother, noting that she still had dishes in the sink. That was very unlike Faye; her house normally raised tidiness to an art form. What had upset her so badly? Layla wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Well, there was one possibility that she did want to know -- or at least to rule out. "Any news from Ace?" Faye looked relieved at the chance to think about something other than what was bothering her -- and that made Layla a great deal more relieved as well...

[Sareth]

[OOC]Well, better her crutch than her crotch. We've got a "fade to black" rule, after all...[/OOC]

The crutch was definitely a hindrance, and certainly I was going slower than I would have liked. The rougher terrain made it quite difficult to get any kind of decent rhythm going with it, and every time I hit a less stable rock or stick than I expected it caused things to slip and roll in ways that jabbed me right in the armpit.

"This sucks," I muttered. I looked around at the nondescript trees that we were ever so slowly passing by, up at the same relatively featureless sky overhead as the one that had been overhead an hour ago, turned my eyes back to my mother's back as she trundled along in front of me, burdened with Nera and her pack. Boooooooooring.

Then I got an idea for entertainment.

"Are we theeeeeeeeeere yet?"

Mother twitched. "No..."

I waited five minutes. "Are we theeeeeeeeeere yet?"

*twitch* "... No..."

Five more minutes.

"Are we theee"

"DON'T MAKE ME TURN AROUND, SO HELP ME!"

Nera giggled.

[Graybeard]

OOC: On this note, I think we're in a position where we could fast-forward, and in principle, close this thread and start a new one. The question is: where? Earlier in this thread, or maybe it was in a private message, I thought someone suggested that we just go ahead and move the merry crew to the outskirts of Rinkaiel, skipping all the stuff that might be encountered in the boonies of northern Farrel. Obviously, we could do that, at the expense of getting rather badly out of synch with developments in the other thread since it would take several (game) days to get there. Or we could just plunge ahead and go overland the slow way, with individual fast-forwards as we go from encounter to encounter. That keeps things better harmonized with the Veracian thread, and also lines up with some stuff happening on the margins (Layla and Elke), at the risk of things possibly dragging if there are no encounters in the boonies that make sense. What are people's preferences? I can go either way.