Wan is a
relatively large city. At least for these barbarian northern lands
where it's usually too cold for proper farming. No farms means you
can't concentrate food means you have to hunt more means you have to
have less people since there are only so many animals to hunt. But Wan
is the largest city we've been to since Tenenbrea, housing maybe a
thousand of the little Ga folk. And they're all even more narrow-minded
and xenophobic than the outlying villagers. Must be the sulfurous air,
being next to a volcanic mountain and all.
In any case, once we arrived we were immediately taken to see the grand
high priest poobah and the city elders. This time we had to answer a
lot of silly questions: have we ever had a beam of light talk to us,
can we fly, do we have any special powers? Then we had to relate all of
our notable exploits. As Tok listed our great accomplishments, I
couldn't help but think that we haven't really done all that much.
Certainly all of our "great exploits" seem quite minor to me when told
to a disinterested third party.
But we embellished and exaggerated a bit and really impressed the city
elders who oohed and aahed at our fanciful tales -- they don't get out
much. And if it had been just up to them we'd now be on our way to the
top of Mount Xargar and the sword. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to be
that easy because the High Priest refused to be convinced of our
worthiness. He wanted us to complete seven tasks to prove ourselves.
Did we have a choice? Nope. So off we went.
The first task was rather simple: take this stone to a far off temple
and bring back whatever was on the altar. One of the little guys could
do the trip in 25 hours, we had 10. While everyone else argued about
using mobility or running a lot, I suggested we ride our beasts. Sure,
the Janer aren't all that fast, but that Telzor is a screamer. So we
loaded up Timroth on the little Telzor and off he went. Tok and Tev
pursued at a slower pace, with Tok riding a Janer, in case something
went wrong. But only a few hours later they were all back with a black
marble that Timroth found on the altar. That was easy.
|
The next day
was the second task: fill up one of the city's water
towers during daylight hours. First get something from a temple, then
fill up a water tower, this better not be a sneaky way to get us to do
all their dirty work. Once again everyone started computing how long it
would take a bucket brigade to haul water from the creek and up the
water tower. Brilliantly, Timroth noted that if the creek was right
here then he could use his water blast spell to hurl the water into the
water tower rather easily.
Well, why not? So we diverted the creek to run down the street to the
water tower. No sooner had we done that though than a holy warrior
sauntered by and got angry at us. We could barely make out what he was
upset about, though obviously it was about the creek now running
through town. He huffed off after hacking up some buckets I had
borrowed. In any case, we finished filling the water tower and
proceeded to put the creek back. That was a bit harder and we got water
going everywhere until we fixed our mess. But at least we passed test
two.
Another day, another test. And boy, was this one a doozy. A gnartroll
had rampaged through a nearby village. We were to find it and "put an
end to it." Ok, a gnartroll is significantly out of our league, but we
cheerfully set off because at least we had some action to look forward
to. It didn't take long to find the beast. It was busy digging a burrow
in a hillside. Wow it was a big sucker, over twice as big as the one
that had attacked us on our way to Wan.
We snuck up on him and attacked. Hit hit hit, special special. No
damage. Strangely, it asked us to "beat off you hosers" in Ga. Then he
cast a high- level protection. I didn't think gnartrolls cast spells.
Still, we attacked again. Special, special, special, hit, hit, hit.
Still no damage. Now he was ticked off. "What the heck do you think
you're--- oh! You're not Ga!" he said as he changed to Vikul. It turned
out that he was a friendly gnartroll, one of the few intelligent ones.
And he wanted to be left alone in peace. We convinced him to leave the
place and he even offered to bring back a dead gnartroll so that we
could take it back to Wan. Anything to fool with those damn Ga, he
said. And so we completed our third quest. |