Beren and Brakkus dissappear out of sight round the corner of the other path.

Bjorn slowly gets to his feet and paces over to the three stuck fellows.  He puts his hands on his hips and laughs openly "well tha's look a right bunch of fools.  Good thing ain't no goblins in these woods!".

At this Kormak goes red in the face with anger and makes a final effort to pull free but his legs are in too deep.  Veins bulge on his neck but no joy.   "Blast this witch anyway" he cries.  "Was it not us came here to help her?".

Bjorn turns serious "calm down now lad, keep a civil tongue in yer head.   If one of yous got an axe or summat, pass it here and I'll dig ye's out".

 Sir Adonis snaps back to the here-and-now a few moments after Bjorn makes his extremely foolish comment, which is probably for the best, and finding himself still lodged in the ground actually starts doing something constructive by drawing his dagger and plunging it into the sod, starting to cut a circle about himself to break up the soil so he can work himself out the rest of the way.

Brakkus appears back in the clearing.  Bjorn has managed to free one of Kormak's legs and he is now vigorously wiggling the other to free it.  Bjorn moves to help Arkenos but he waves him back and begins muttering and gesturing to himself.

Sir Adonis is sweating profusely in his armour as he digs neat but shallow circles around his feet.  Bjorn, panting, looks across at the knight and hands his sword to Brakkus "that'un 'll never get out w'all that tin on 'im. Give 'im a hand w' the diggin".

Brakkus grabs the sword and heads over to Sir Adonis, ready to aid with the digging.

"The witch told us to make haste" he tells the company.

Arkenos suddenly throws his arms up and for a few moments you see a ghostly warrior appears beside him, wielding a huge sword which he swings down into the ground below the warlock, cutting into the forest floor.   Just as suddenly the phantasm vanishes, but now Arkenos reaches down and is able to pull the earth away from his feet in big chunks.

Brakkus starts digging away around Sir Adonis.

 It's surprising really - the armour adds no more than fifty pounds or so to Adonis' already massive frame and it allows him to be a lot more slapdash and vigorous when it comes to digging himself out with a dagger-blade and one thing he definitely doesn't lack is muscle, and there's no doubt that a long-bladed dagger is a considerably better tool for cutting sod than a broadsword.

 "Damn the witch man, what the hell did you learn of our foe?" the knight calls out irritably, the descent into ditch-digging obviously not exactly doing anything to moderate his temper, though at least he's not out for a 'burnin just yet.

 If someone were unkind, they might just think he's not quite connected the daft old woman to his current predicament.

After a few more minutes, everyone is free from the soil.   Kormak storms back to the clearing and grabs Bjorn by the scruff of the neck.  "Old fool - we agreed to help you and now you lead us into to this!   I never should have listened to this idea.  Trusting a witch!"

Arkenos hurries up to Kormak and grabs him by the shoulder "calm, my friend.  I do not like this witch's ways any more than you - but it becomes us ill to manhandle her servant - the more so when he be such a wasted figure as this Bjorn".

Kormak grunts and release his grip, obviously still furious.  Bjorn shows nothing on his face - just watches Kormak carefully.  Slowly he stands himself straight and slides away from Kormak.

At that moment you hear the woman's voice again, shouting for Bjorn.  He grabs his things and hurries along the path towards the voice.  After a moment's hesitation, Kormak and Arkenos follow - the warlock still with his hand half-casually on Kormak's shoulder.

Brakkus follows the others, uncomfortable at the charged atmosphere between some of the party.

 The good knight remains aloof from much of the bickering - though this is less because of any inherent nobility of spirit and mainly because he's engaged in unbuckling the leather straps that fasten his greaves, cuisses and sabatons in place in order to fastidiously scrape the mud from each, then scrub them out with a handful of grass.

 Presumably he'll be available if needed.

[Private to GM:  I wasn't planning on it - someone said something about going ahead to speak to her and because Sir Adonis wants nothing to do with a hag, he'll just wait here, clean his armour and look through that pack he was examining before he got swamped.]
This message was last edited by the player at 11:58, Sat 11 Apr 2009.

Brakkus and the others follow Bjorn up the path to stand cautiously in front of Olga.  Kormak keeps himself well back and looks at the ground with a scowl on his face.

[Private to Beren Sigilchyr: Please continue posting in: link to a message in this game]

[Private to Sir Adonis Campbell: Adonis, once you have cleaned yourself up, will you follow the others?  In other words, can I move you to the group with the witch?]

The others pause for a moment at the far end of the path and then move off, out of your sight.  At first you can still hear their voices but rather faintly.  After a few more minutes a silence descends, and the rushing and brushing

You manage to get most of the mud out of your greaves but you can still feel some of it squishing annoyingly under your feet.  The light is fading fast now and the trees seem to draw in on all sides of your little clearing.  You will need to wait till morning to take it off piece by piece and give things a really good clean.

Meanwhile the pack appears to be real enough, and still in pretty good shape, but you in fact find nothing in it except some leaves and sprigs.

 When Sir Adonis first realises that it's grown dark he's part-way through the process of trying to clean the gunk out of the inside of a metal plate and looks up in some surprise, having forgotten that night falls rather more quickly in forests than in the open (for obvious reasons).

 Taking a brief look inside the pack simply for curiosities sake results in a puzzled rumble from the oversized but under-brained nobleman, but just because he can't think of a good reason to go carrying plants around doesn't mean that Mr whomever-he-was didn't have one and he amiably hangs the pack back up a moment later before setting his armour plate aside to dry and looking around.

 He hums a bit.

 Then he twiddles his thumbs for a while.

 And then he starts building a fire, collecting dry tinder and wood from the edges of the clearing with the expertise of someone who spent a hell of a lot more time hunting than listening to dull, dry tutors - presumably when the others get back from whatever it is they're up to, they'll be grateful for its warmth.

Accustomed as he is to woods, Adonis at first has no trouble grabbing some bits of old brushwood for kindling, fallen between the trees just on the edge of the clearing.  However when he spots a fallen sapling, still not rotten, which could do for the core of the fire, he is unable to pull it out.

In fact, every time he pulls, the trees around get a little closer and it is almost as if each tug of his receives a stronger answering tug in response.

 It's said that fear is a product of ignorance - that the unknown lurks in the shadows of the subconscious and stalks the minds of simple men, filling them with night-terrors.

 Sir Adonis Campbell on the other hand goes some way towards disproving that simplistic notion as he completely fails to notice the thematic lurking of the undergrowth, digs in his heels and gives a damn' good yank on the fallen sapling, muttering all the while about the damn' thing being stuck.

 Failing all else, there's always his dagger - which is sort of handy for trimming things in emergencies.

The log jerks free and with it Sir A jerks backwards.  He ends up half-fallen and rather stuck between two saplings which surely weren't quite so close behind him a moment ago.  It is really rather difficult to get leverage to stand back up, with all this armour on, and pesky branches everywhere.

There is another rustling sound and then a kind of scritchy-scratch, as though a nail were being dragged across his armour plated legs.  But twisting his head as he might, Sir A can't quite see anything.

 A certain amount of ham-handed flailing follows as something more than a couple of hundred pounds of heavily muscled knight in the light, maneuverable and well-designed suit of polished steel armour that's his stock in trade is stymied by a pair of bushes.

 A certain amount of yanking and tugging goes with it.

 There's some modest cursing.

 Then some less modest cursing.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:31, Wed 15 Apr 2009.

Actually he is not!  He is really quite stuck.   Every time he flails, it seems that the edges and chinks of his armour get a little more jammed with twigs and branches.

The scratching comes again - it does not seem to shake him or damage his armour anyway, but it is rather worrying even for a big guy.

Adonis hears footsteps approaching from the path where the others went.  It is directly behind him so he can't quite twist his head to see, but he can hear them talking and makes out one of the voices as Brakkus.

"My haven't we got ourselves in a tangle" Eldor said in a voice that had a large hint of humor in it.

"I suggest, Sir knight you hold very still. The woods in these parts do not like fires being started within easy flame reach of their canopies."

Eldor moved round and crouched down so that Adonis could see him clearly.

"Your friend Brakkus has come to rescue you from these dredful trees and my mother asked me to give him some aid in his quest."

Standing and laughing lightly he turned and walked off a few feet. Then raising his arms he started to speak. There were no words just sounds like that of creaking timbers and snapping branches.

Once he'd finished he lowered his arms and waited for a reply to his request.

There is a silent pause.

[Private to Sir Adonis Campbell: The scratching on Adonis armour plates also ceases.  For a moment he sees two green eyes glowing a face brown and wrinkled in lines that run down, like the bark of a tree.  And feels a breath which is musty as leaf-mold but not altogether unpleasant.]

Then the branches and twigs and roots creakingly draw back - slow enough for Adonis to get his balance back without any trouble.   Adonis is rather red-faced and flustered but apparently none the worse for wear.

[Private to Sir Adonis Campbell: The only strange thing you notice - even you cannot help but notice - is that the pack you found is now hanging from your shoulder.  You are pretty sure you left it in the clearing when you went to collect the log.]

 "I don't give a fig for what they like dammit!" declares the struggling knight as he attempts once again to wrench his arm free from the hooked branch that's caught itself in his plate sleeve, apparently having not quite caught up enough to current affairs to realise that Eldor is someone new, "No man worthy of the name would allow his fire to spread in the wildwood and it's a damn' impertinence for some forest boggin to suggest otherwise!"

 It's an open question whether someone should be more dismayed by Sir Adonis' hard-headedness, his complete inability to assess the extent of less obvious flavours of danger or his unfortunately towering personal courage.

 When he's finally deposited back upon the living earth once more and the undergrowth retreats a little, he might be expected to take the opportunity to exact a little petty revenge with mailed gauntlet and armoured boot, but the same ironclad upbringing that's made him such a horrifying liability when dealing with the uncanny ground manners into him as well, and so narrowing his eyes a little at something he sees in the undergrowth behind Eldor he offers a small bow of the head in acknowledgement... and then swings about to face the elf.

 In his usual stentorian bellow (which isn't so much angry as much as it is larger than life) he starts to open a 'conversation' with "You there! what in the blazes do you mean b..." only to break off in astonishment and make the sign of the cross before his breast - not so much in warding but rather to turn the accompanying minor blasphemy into an exclamation - "Saviour's blood man, you're a fairy!"

 He's quick this one, isn't he?

Eldor's smile returns to his face "No sir fairies are a lot smaller and have wings so I'm told but that kind of depends on whether you believe your huam n stories or our elven ones."

He steps forward slightly and bows making sure the highly stung knight can see both his hands. He didn't want to have to face mother's anger for wounding or killing this human because of a misunderstanding.

"I am Eldor Leaf-fall at your service good sir and have been sent with your friend Brakkus to bring you to the hut of my mother". With that he turned and started back into the woods the  way they had come.

 Highly strung he might be, but the same willow-switch that beat his lessons into him as a child carried with it a solid core of good manners as well and so the Knight, once he's drawn himself to his feet, doesn't engage in any improvident mayhem, but rather stands in astonishment and, perhaps unfortunately, cheerful delight.

 "Nonsense, there was a picture of one in the Ambrosius Bestiary and you're the spit of him!" announces Sir Campbell with his usual three-sizes-too-large-for-his-frame voice, plainly delighted by a turn of events that see's his 'adventure' bringing him into contact with a genuine fairy.

 The introduction is taken well and responded to with a "By my word, and you have a name as well!" in tones of genuine amazement (as has already been intimated, Sir Adonis isn't precisely what might be called a mental giant) before the good knight extends a hand just as he might to a real person of station, declaring "Beholden to you sir. I have the honour to be Sir Adonis Campbell, and I would be delighted to accept the invitation of the good lady, the moreso since peasant rumour would have it that a witch lurks in these woods!"
This message was last edited by the player at 14:42, Sat 18 Apr 2009.

You follow Eldor along the main path and after hundred yards or so come out in a larger clearing.  Off to the right a large campfire is blazing and silhouetted around are various human figures.  Some sitting, some standing.

Please continue posting in: link to a message in this game