Third adventures of Pik and Desli, Part two
The town of Incenseorder, realm of the charcoal brute lord Yane Crowdsquashes, lay empty as ever. The lonely lord waited in the empty keep, until the day Pik and Desli arrived. When they entered, he became enraged and attacked them unprovoked. The enormous four-horned sauropod bathed them in fire, and roared in fury when they stood unperturbed, having blocked its flames with their shields. The beast stood no chance in hand-to-hand combat, Desli striking the final blow. The town lay empty now.
The surrounding hamlets did not. Many of them were inhabited, but overrun with blighted thralls. It felt like the pair killed hundreds on the march south towards Boltspumpkin, hundreds of innocent civilians lay dead in piles on the floors of their own homes, eaten alive by their friends and families, or unceremoniously hacked to pieces by the wandering adventurers. The duo had the ever-creeping sensation of deja-vu as the encounters became more and more familiar, even apparently repeating, as if he universe did not approve of the culling of the infected. Finally, after what seemed like weeks, but only took three days, they reached the Museum.
Once there, they began searching the archives for answers to the source of the recurring, waking "dreams." There were many dozens of such reports, including Desli's own dream of fighting the undead, long ago while she herself were alive. The phenomenon occurred seemingly at random, but like their dreams of fighting the blighted thralls, would sometimes recur many times in quick succession. But, there was no conclusive answer as to why, or what these dreams meant. The sufferers always seemed to be adventurers. Adventurers who sought out the Museum, even, as these dreams did not affect the average wanderer.
The dreams didn't happen for the rest of the week, and eventually exhausting all information, the pair decided to leave behind their own description along with a new piece for the museum; an artifact grate left on the second story. Their own story was thus;
"Desli and I both have been experiencing shared 'waking dreams', where despite not falling asleep we would find ourselves in a different place, usually a hamlet or village, the ones north of the museum, near the sea. The hamlets were empty or filled with corpses, or terrified villagers fled from their homes before we reached them, chased by their own crazed kinsmen. We fought to defend the villagers but all too often they would be torn to shreds. Once, even, I was overwhelmed and torn to pieces. I say once, because the dreams would repeat, even as we actually walked south towards the museum. It often felt viscerally real, and then suddenly we would 'wake up' back at some point we believed we'd passed hours before, only to repeat again as we approached the hamlet where the events of the 'dream' had happened. This repeated over and over, until we passed through most of human civilization and were only two days travel from the museum, and has not occurred again since."
Soon the pair were debating returning north as they left the castle, and encountered a dwarf in. He introduced himself as Zon Packedtrusses, a representative of the Walled Dyes and merchant. He sought an adventurer or party to help move goods from the old fortresses of Championvaults, now apparently overtaken by goblins, and Sealsabres, and bring them to a site they had selected for a new fortress. The job was to be done discretely, as it was of great importance to the Walled Dyes. Although payment was a nebulous promise, including a pile of gold and equipment, the pair agreed, largely uninterested in material wealth.
This trip took several weeks, but once it was done, the pair settled down in a new log cabin, in the mountains near a stream, across a lake, where they would once again be largely alone, in another scenic location.
So that was it. The "dreams" were repeating crashes while going through hamlets on the way south. There wasn't a plan or intention when I started my adventurers, I didn't actually have a plan. I did decide after making it to the museum and depositing that artifact grate, to borrow some equipment from Championvaults and Sealsabres to establish Warshrieks and a militia that I used to engage in war against the goblins and that pesky human civ that theyre at war with, which led to becoming a barony and the establishment of the hillocks. Unfortunate that it was all lost.
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Topic: Museum III, adventure succession game (DF 0.47.05) (Read 473173 times)