Assault on Hailstone

[LucyWrambles]

The ratman stirred the ashes in his pipe with a toothpick, somehow seeming crestfallen despite the twitching whiskers and often difficult to read expression on his furred inhuman face. Flicking the toothpick over the barrier into the fighting pit, he then flashed Alice the hand-signs for safe and stay.

In her peasant girl guise, Alice returned the sign for acknowledgement. What is the rat up to now, she wondered, her eyes fixed on the ringmaster as he raised his voice over the clamor.

“Next up, Orangey and Georgie! PLACE YER BETS!”

“Seems I’m out of the good stuff,” the ratman mused, turning morose eyes to the hooded brigand beside him. “Know where a rat could score?”

What indeed. Alice kept her thoughts to herself as the apes tore into one another at the ringmaster’s signal, the air thickening into a spreading cloud that augmented the stink of the tavern, adding tufts of wiry fur, blood, and spittle to the general miasma. Or perhaps the stench was just the general miasma of the rickety, trash-filled hovel the brigands called a tavern. It was hard to discern individual causes in such a conglomeration of putrescence.

Long practice kept her true distaste hidden, not just staring impassively but actively engaging with the barbarity before her. Sir Hector had failed spectacularly at this task minutes earlier, but he hadn’t had a role to keep, a disguise to preserve, and a clandestine persona to maintain. Liliya was a rough, bawdy woman of ill repute, little coin, and fewer morals. What unproductive righteousness could the desperate and downtrodden afford, in a land such as this?

The ratman and his mark stood and thumped their drunken way down the stairs and out the front door. Alice tracked their progress by the sounds they made in her carefully memorized map of the scattered trash and trinkets that littered the floor below, then heard the door open and Wirt the doorman shout a slurred welcome.

“GET ‘IM, GEORGIE!” Alice bawled, leaping up as Liliya and shaking her fist at the ring. “Pull ‘ish earsh off!”

Suddenly, Wirt pounded up the stairs, his peg leg thumping an irregular rhythm, his eyes wide in alarm. “They’s taken Pain! THEY’S TAKEN PAIN! Them fookin’ knights done taken Pain!”

“WWWHHHAAAT?!!?” roared Slipp, the largest and foulest of the brigands, erupting in drunken rage. “I’ll rip THEIR ears off! OUT! EVERYBODY OUT!!!”

The tavern’s hospitality magic, if the strained hearth could still be called hospitable, forcefully thrust Alice outside and into the snow. She caught herself on bare hands and knees. Slipp and his crew burst through the door behind her, and he directed an errant kick at her backside, sending her sprawling. “You’d best run, girl, ain’t no place or time for the likes of you now.”

“Run?” Alice blinked Liliya’s wide, worried eyes, brushing snow from her tangled hair. “But where’sh I gonna run in all thish shnow? You wouldn’t turn a girl out in the cold, Shlipp, not Liliya...”

“I SAID RUN!” he bellowed, with all the ferocity of his earlier outburst. Alice fled, whispering thanks for the foresight that had her wearing heavy trousers and boots beneath Liliya’s illusory bare and bruised legs.

A kidnapping? She thought, stumbling through the snow as the brigands stomped away. Now? Why didn’t the rat brief me on this? Just what is he playing at?

Kal Ort Por!

 

[LucyWrambles]

“Alice, virtues it’s good to see you,” breathed the sister as Alice approached, her glamour discarded and dressed in her crisp uniform with a quiver over her shoulder and a strong bow in her hand. The sister leaned wearily on the haft of a halberd. “We have barricades at the gates, but I haven’t heard anything from our guards.”

“I’ll scout,” Alice offered. “It can’t be long now.”

She sprinted toward the barricade, her rope carrying her over the piled furniture and logs before she vanished into the shadows.

Her first circuit revealed only a Prevalian guard camp near the graveyard. She reported it back to the sister.

Her second: a single orc snotling stumbling blindly through the woods, a stained bucket helmet over its eyes. Her finger hovered over an arrow, but she shook her head and returned with her report of the potential enemy scout. Or a lost snotling.

On her third circuit, it began. A moongate tore through the veil, and after a brief pause, they began to pour through. Orcs, drow, brigands, undead... All this for one brigand? But the flow of invaders continued to emerge from the shining blue gate, many bearing crates and crude tables. She’d rarely seen so many in one place. Just who was that brigand, and what is that rat playing at?

The orcs wasted no time in getting to work. The larger ones bore whips that they used to lash at the snotlings and smaller orcs, who began felling trees and hastily piling debris to form a rough wall. “GUK FASTUR, SNOTS!” one bellowed. “GUK! GUK!!!”

Alice raced back to the wall, her brow furrowed beneath her dark hood. She reported to the sister, who sent a runner, and Alice scaled the barricade once more.

Some time later, peering from a concealing bush, Alice heard the sister shouting. Moving soundlessly through the treeline, she re-approached the wall, seeing Sarafia standing on the wrong side of the barrier, halberd in hand, standing down the host of evil that had come howling to their doorstep.

“It is not too late,” Sarafia said. “You can leave here unharmed, and no blood need be spilled. Truly, what do you stand to gain by this raid?”

Alice materialized beside her, the glamour of shadow in which she had cloaked herself melting away. “A noble effort, sister, but has it ever worked with orcs?”

Sarafia looked weighted by memory. She shook her head silently, then resumed her plea. Alice nodded, her gaze sweeping the rising orcish wall until she locked eyes with a drow priestess. Lips thinning, she drew blood moss and nightshade from her pouch and hurled them to the ground.

An Lor Xen!

 

[LucyWrambles]

“THEY’VE GOT A BOMB! ARCHERS!!!”

Sarafia’s cry came too late. The orcish bomber was too fast, possessed with a single-minded purpose instilled by his superiors. “KRENBLUK SEE EE!!” he howled as he bit through the glass neck of a purple potion bottle with his broken yellow tusks, exposing the volatile liquid to the air. It began to bubble and sizzle, and the orc veritably dunked the potion into the barrel packed with gunpowder and sulphurous ash before turning and running as fast as his legs would carry him.

Not fast enough.

The explosion shook the very ground, a shockwave slamming into the orc’s back and hurling others in all directions. Alice was thrown back to slam against a tree, collapsing like a discarded doll thrown by a petulant child in a shower of withered winter leaves, acorns, and a WHUMP! of snow that nearly buried her. The defenders on the wall teetered at their posts, and a great cloud of dust was shaken loose from the stones and mortar, choking the gate.

Digging her way out of the snow, Alice forced herself to her feet. She checked her bow, nodding tersely. Drew an arrow from her quiver, throwing it aside when she found it snapped in half from her fall, and drew another.

The fight was joined.

 

[LucyWrambles]

First at the wall, and then in the streets of Hailstone, they fought. The barricades constructed by Hailstone’s townsfolk corralled the fight, but did little to stem the orcish tide. There were simply so many. Alice moved through the shadows, watching for weirdlings, spellcasters, and enemies sufficiently wounded that an unseen arrow might send them scrambling away from the fray, or to their deaths.

Emerging to loose an arrow at an orcish shaman, she faced a line of charging orcs with wicked-looking axes. Thinking quickly, she vaulted over the fence into Elliot’s sheep pen, hurled her rope up an escarpment and turned gracefully end over end as she went. But thinking she had found safety and an archer’s perch, she instead found a drow’s pale grin and a poisoned rapier that pierced her side.

She let out a startled cry, her free hand clutching at the wound, but she already felt the poison coursing virulently through her veins. Lolthian poison... she knew that agony well as it twisted her insides. In a bleary daze, she stumbled away, pouring the contents of a potion down her throat before dropping the glass bottle and reaching for an arrow, but the curing tincture was no match for the poison. She felt the rapier stab through her shoulder as she spun to try and avoid that wickedly tainted blade, but to no avail. Shadow passed over her eyes and she fell as her breath left her.

 

[LucyWrambles]

The battle progressed through the streets, moving ever nearer to the castle. Archers peppered the assaulting force with arrows, mages hurled spells, and chemists lobbed purple potions from Castle Hailstone’s ramparts. Alice, having found resurrection in the castle chapel, drew the fletching of arrow after arrow to her cheek, loosing her missiles in the direction of orc, drow, and brigand. So many, there are just so many...

From the corner of her eye, Alice watched in horror as the orcs strapped a harness over a snotling, stuffing purple potions into purpose-made pockets. She tried to send arrows into that group of orcs, but couldn’t quite make the range, her shots falling short into yet another hastily constructed orcish wall.

“ARCHERS!” she shouted. Few remained. “Mages?”

No one answered. Alice nocked another arrow, whispering something under her breath as she sighted along it, and released. Again, it fell short.

The harnessed snotling stood, a grotesquely ornamented tree of green flesh, glass, and leather, and began a stumbling run toward Hailstone’s gate.

Alice fired again, missing. A third, a fourth; these struck and caused the orc to stagger. Still it came.

“R’HIR IN DA HOLE!” howled a larger orc, hurling a purple potion at the snotling as it reached the portcullis. More potions arced through the air to follow the first, and Alice threw herself down into the courtyard behind her, landing with a breath-stealing THUD! as the explosions began.

BOOM! CRASH! BANG! KABOOM!

The sound of twisting, tortured metal screamed through Hailstone. Alice crawled, dragging herself across the courtyard towards the stairs.

KRRRAAAACCCKKKKK!! KABOOOOOM!

Another blast rocked the gate, tearing through metal bindings and spraying splinters back into the howling orcish ranks. She hauled herself up the steps, gasping for air, and pushed to her feet.

SLAM!

The gate burst from its hinges in an eruption of wood, flame, and shattered iron. Alice reached the inner keep door and, with a squire’s help, stumbled inside. Knights worked frantically to reinforce the portal and construct a barricade to hold it shut.

 

[LucyWrambles]

Chaos.

The noise was earsplitting. Screams - orcish, human, and drow - rose from Hailstone’s courtyard as the pitched battle raged. Alice sheltered on the ramparts, leaning over to loose arrow after arrow into the melee below, choosing each target with care to avoid her own. Spells and arrows, potions and bodies, great hulking beasts of war that slammed themselves against the barricades blocking the chapel and keep, each thundering impact answered by the screams of townsfolk sheltering within.

They were losing. Rapidly.

* * * * *

OOC: This is how it (sort of... narrative license) actually went:

Alice saw a giant beetle steadily dismantling the chapel barricade, and spat a curse. She glanced at the magically darkened sky, and then she ran. She raced along the battlement, ducking arrows and weaving past spells launched her way from below. As she rounded the corner, she saw him again: the drow with his green-dripping rapier. He saw her as well, and his lips split into a wicked grin.

They both ran, seemingly straight for one another, before Alice veered and once again threw herself from the wall. Her rope snaked out, yanking her to safety just as the drow slammed against the stones behind her, his face a mask of hatred and loathing.

On the ground, Alice was buffeted between bodies in the press. She had landed amid the orcish forces still surging outside the gate in a twisted, squealing sea, but through luck or glamour, they hadn’t yet noticed her.

Ahm

She shoved through the crowd, making for the gate.

Mu

A dagger parried a wild axe swing aimed at her shoulder.

Ra

She spun around a weirdling, her back rolling over his as he let loose a piercing screech.

Beh

An arrow slammed into her shoulder. A drow in the distance had noticed her.

Cah

Ducking behind the orcish wall, she grit her teeth, pushed the arrow through, and channelled healing magic into the wound.

Summ

Her knife drove up into an orc’s belly; she screamed as she threw her weight behind the thrust.

Om

Alice neared the gate, or what remained of it. The portcullis was torn and jagged, and the gates were gone, lost in the churn of blood and mud that had overtaken Hailstone’s once beautiful green courtyard.

Lum

Silence fell over her. The world seemed to slow. Alice whispered a prayer, searching the darkened sky for the twin moons Trammel and Felucca. She stood, raised her hand, willed her heart to follow, and opened her mouth to call out...

IN VAS SANCT LOR!

 

[LucyWrambles]

OOC: And here’s what definitely didn’t happen, but how I prefer to picture it in my head, had we had a little more time to play it out.

Having been routed in the courtyard, the defenders of Hailstone who yet stood watched the orcs run out to chase after skirmishers in the town, running in great loping strides with their overlong legs. The hall door cracked open; priors and townsfolk filtered out to tend to the wounded and resurrect the fallen in the brief reprieve. The orcs would no doubt return soon.

Alice caught Sister Sarafia’s eye. The sister rested against the great statue of the knight who stood vigil over Hailstone, and Alice limped over to meet her.

In Vas Mani

The sister’s healing magic knit Alice’s wounds, and the veteran of Hailstone, knight of the Order of Whispers, smiled and nodded her silent thanks.

“Sister,” Alice said, breaking the pregnant silence that hung over Hailstone like an oppressive fog. “We haven’t much time, and I’d wager we haven’t much chance when they return.”

The sister grimaced, and looked as though she might protest, but seemed to bite her tongue. She leaned more heavily against the haft of her halberd.

“But we may have one final chance... will you help me?”

Exhaustion lined the sister’s face, but she nodded. “If it will save Hailstone, what would you have me do, Alice?”

* * * * *

The assaulting horde surged and howled in the yard before Hailstone’s shattered gate, readying themselves for another attack, slavering and hungry to rain torment upon the forces of good once more.

Standing in defiance, the knights, priors, and townsfolk who had fought or taken shelter within the castle’s grounds and keep, were clustered before that torn and twisted portal. In their midst, Alice nodded to Sarafia, offering the sister her hand. One by one, each of those gathered at the remnants of the gate linked hands into a great living chain.

The brigands hooted and hollered, hurling taunts and insults at the curious display.

Sarafia’s voice cut through the din, “Friends, citizens of Hailstone, please have faith, and join me in meditation on the virtues.”

“Ahm,” she called.
“Ahm,” came the answer.

“Mu.”
“Mu.”

“Ra.”
“Ra.”

“Beh.”
“Beh.”

“Cah.”
“Cah.”

“Summ.”
“Summ.”

“Om.”
“Om.”

“Lum.”
“Lum.”

“Ver Amo Cor,” she finished, reciting the Axiom of Infinity, her voice calm yet filled with strength and confidence in the virtues, even as death’s teeth gnashed not a jousting list’s length from where they gathered.

Alice released the sister’s hand and that of the knight beside her. She stepped to the centre of the mass, whispering a prayer and glancing to the sky to find the twin moons, Trammel and Felucca. Alice raised her hand to the heavens.

IN VAS SANCT LOR!

 

[LucyWrambles]

The silence held for a lifetime. Then, light burst forth from the clouds and seared down in luminous pillars over every orc, drow, brigand and filthy, evil thing standing in Hailstone. The light burned, searing unclean flesh from bone. Orcs still in the courtyard fled through the shattered gate, arms flailing as they scrambled to escape the unexpected judgment from the heavens.

Weary, Alice joined the rallying forces of Hailstone, snatched up a discarded bow, and sent arrows chasing the fiends into the swamps as a great cheer of “HUZZAH!” echoed from the people of virtue.

Finally, it was over. Charred bodies littered the yard outside the castle, and more bodies besides littered the courtyard within. Alice leaned heavily against the sturdy stone wall, watching as Slipp, that mighty, malodorous, roaring brigand that had kicked her into the snow, stalked forward, his back hunched with exhaustion, to spit and swear and demand his man from Sir Adontis.

It had been a fierce battle, and Hailstone had paid dearly. Without virtue and the will of the heavens, the castle might have fallen. But whatever the brigand demanded, it was over, for now.

 

[LucyWrambles]

OOC: Damn! That ended up a lot longer than I'd hoped, and my alternate ending didn't help. Epic event, as always, but man the community pulled out all the stops for this one. ~50 participants between the two sides, amazing special effects by Atropa and Erik, tavern hosted by the Brigands with ape fighting and all, and some absolutely spectacular role play throughout!

Screenshots are stolen from Discord or Xu's video here:

AI art of Alice casting the finale spell prompted by Xu.

And everything else thanks to YOU, Outlands role play community! Thanks for a wonderful night! <3

 

[Sister Sarafia]

Bravo Lucy!!! Spectacular writeup and writing. Golly I want to publish this in a set of books for the library.