From: aaron@space.ualberta.ca (Aaron Humphrey)
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 16:03:56 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [KQ] Maleiu[Warehouse]: Losing Their Nerve

Maleiu manages to hold off the guards besetting him while Colin spars with
Wernher.  They seem to be evenly matched.

There is a yell of "Fire!" out in the hall, and Maleiu sees out of the corner
of his eye a burning crossbow being dropped by a yelping guard.  Rhoan is
cutting an amazing swath through the guardsmen with his battleaxe.  Then he
sees another flurry of motion as Colin suddenly breaks from the standard
fighting style he had been using and goes into a flurry of motion with his
blade, moving it faster than Maleiu would have deemed possible for any such
hunk of metal.  Some of the guardsmen pause, following Maleiu's gaze to where
their commander is put increasingly on the defensive.

Colin backs Wernher up against the wall and offers him surrender.  Wernher
spits in his face.  "I never renege on a contract."  Colin shrugs and runs him
through.

There is a sudden silence as Wernher slides down the wall and collapses to the
ground.  The guardsmen suddenly lose their fighting spirit, as they realized
that not only is their commander dead, but all his lieutenants as well, felled
by Rhoan's axe or Maleiu's spear or Azzar's arrows.  And despite the fact that
their attackers number six and they still a dozen, they feel outnumbered.

They fall back further and further.  Colin turns away from Wernher's corpse
with battle-lust still in his eyes.  Maleiu takes advantage of the distracted
state of his opponents to knock them out with deft blows to the skull with his
spear-cum-staff.  Finally one of the crossbowmen, reduced to fighting with a
shortsword at close range, yelps as Rhoan knocked it out of his hand and falls
to his knees.  "We surrender!"

Immediately his companions get the idea and echo his sentiments.  Colin and
Rhoan stop their attacks, breathing heavily.  Kron nods.  "We accept your
surrender.  Is there rope in those lockers in there?  Colin, follow this man
and make sure he gets rope and nothing else."  Colin, grinning evilly, pulls
one of the guardsmen over the lockers where he does indeed produce several
coils of rope.  Maleiu, Rhoan, and Azzar tie up the guardsmen, an indignity to
which they meekly submit rather than face whirling katana or battle-axe.

Kron queries a few of them about a teleporting man who got his Joystix here,
but none of them know.  "Elstrek or Quruuminias would know," one brave one
pipes up.  "They'd be downstairs--if you can get them to tell you."  A few
others snicker at this.

Kron nods.  "Thank you, we'll have to do that."  To the others, he says, "I
certainly hope that Thk and Marcel are down there--I don't want to have to go
traipsing all through this place looking for them."  From another of the guards
he gets directions to the stairs down, verifying them at swordpoint, as well as
the fact that there are no further traps.

"Watch out for that squidface Quruuminias, though," he says, suddenly eager to
suck up.  "He's got some weird mental powers..."

After bandaging the wounds suffered in the battle, Captain's crossbow to the
chest being the nastiest, the party moved on down the stairs to the next level,
where they found another battle already in progress...

--
---Alfvaen(a.k.a. Nysinra, rot13 Psycho)
"While we talk, I will hit your head with a nail
 to make you understand me"  --Ivor Cutler
Current Album--Chris de Burgh:Crusader
Current Read--Charlotte Bronte:Villette