Secrets revealed...

The old ashik looked across the fledgling fire at the two herders making sure that they were listening to his tale. It was important that they heard everything that he had to say, every aspect of his tale must be told and more importantly heard. Seeing that they were indeed hanging on his every word he began to weave his spell once more.

As Arthur of the Mul-Ard clan drops lifeless to the floor, the soldier Wezer moves past him in the corridor and begins to engage Scar and Balboa. Within heartbeats there is the flash of an obsidian blade and Scar’s shortsword dispatches the Wezer. The second soldier Wezer does not appear to have moved from its position and is doing nothing but making an almighty buzzing sound. Scar and Balboa quickly fall upon it and make short work of silencing the creature.

They both look at Arthur and can see that he is lying dead still. Balboa sadly moves across to his corpse and double checks. He looks up and smiles at Scar when he realises that Arthur has a pulse, but he is still absolutely rigid. Scar surmises that he has been paralysed, and they both realise just how dangerous the soldier Wezers actually are. They each grab one of Arthur’s arms and drag him unceremoniously through the tunnels back to their entrance point and the handholds that Balboa had moulded into the rock. Balboa climbs out and runs to where we are camped;

Quick! Help! Arthur has collapsed!

We grab our very few possessions and run with Balboa back to the entrance to the hive. Kank climbs down into the tunnels and, tying Arthur across his shoulders, climbs back out. Ka-Reen quickly checks on Arthur and confirms that he has definitely been poisoned, but she has no idea how to counteract it.

Leaving Miloch to guard the unconscious Arthur and Ka-Reen; Balboa, Kank, and Scar head back into the tunnels in the hope of discovering water. As soon as they have climbed down into the tunnel they see a worker Wezer flying straight at them, Scar and Kank move to engage and Kank takes a blow to the head from the Wezer’s tail stinger. Eventually, Scar manages to strike it and it falls dead from the air. They push forward into the unknown depths of the hive with Kank to the fore, he hears a noise in front of him and signals for the others to hold while he creeps forwards to investigate. He sees what he believes to be a soldier Wezer guarding the main entrance to the hive.

Kank drops quietly back to the others and they agree to rush the chamber, knowing that it is large enough, Kank unslung his new maul and with a broad smile across his face he charges into combat. Kank bursts into the entrance chamber catching the Wezer by surprise, he swings his massive maul and the soldier Wezer crashes into the opposite wall of the chamber dead. Balboa and Scar enter the chamber, a little surprised at how effective Kank’s maul was. Balboa looks at the head of the maul and says;

The stone is happy!

Kank smiles and heads directly across the chamber and into one of the other tunnels leading off of the entrance chamber. They turn left and then right and then take the centre corridor, with no structure to their search pattern. As they are passing a junction they are ambushed by two soldier Wezers. As they have been attacked from behind it is Scar that engages them, Kank squeezes past Balboa to try and get into the action. Kank suggests that they carry out a fighting retreat, but Balboa shouts;

We are retreating into the unknown!

Balboa also notices that the floor of the tunnel is slowly angling down and so the group agree to try and hold their ground.

Scar faces off against the two soldier Wezers and the action ebbs and flows, as each side tries to get the upper hand in the battle. It is Scar that takes the initial advantage when see strikes twice with her obsidian shortsword and one of the Wezers drops to the ground. The second of the creatures attacks with its stinger and Scar only just dodges the blow. The fight is forcing us to back slowly down the tunnel and suddenly Balboa, who is now at the rear, is attacked by a third soldier Wezer. Fortunately for him, it misses.

They are now trapped in the tunnel with soldier Wezers to either side. Balboa succeeds in hitting his opponent twice but the blows bounce from its chitinous armour. Scar is hit deep in her abdomen by the Wezer’s stinger and she drops rigid to the floor, this is not going well. Kank steps into the gap vacated by Scar and manages to land a blow with his clenched fist, with the tunnels being to tight to fight with his maul. Kank then hears Balboa’s strangled screech from behind him as he is stung in the leg. A heartbeat later, Balboa also collapses paralysed to the floor.

Kank realises that he is all alone and in a whole heap of trouble. He decides to go down fighting. Kank lands another blow against the one that he has been battling and cripples its wing, the Wezer returns by stinging him in his chest but Kank sees the blow slide off of his armour. Once again Kank manages to land a thumping fist against the creatures body, his blow shattering chitin and destroying internal organs. The Wezer drops dead to the floor. Kank quickly spins around expecting to be attacked from behind but sees the other soldier Wezer dragging the rigid body of Balboa off down the tunnel.

Kank leaps into attack and slams his fist straight into one of the beasts compact eyes, covering his arm in body fluids up to his elbow. Unsurprisingly, the Wezer collapses. With the adrenaline pumping hard around his body, Kank places the paralysed body of Balboa on top of the rigid form of Scar and starts to drag the pair of them back to the entrance point. By some miracle, he makes it back to Miloch and Ka-Reen without incident. Kank, as he did with Arthur, carries the bodies of his friends up out of the hive where Ka-Reen confirms that they too have been poisoned. With half of the team down, the group agree to wait.

Ka-Reen sees to Kank’s wounds while the group of freed slaves wait to see what is going to happen to their paralysed friends. After two hours of nervous rest Arthur sits up with a start. It shocks the others, but after a moment they breathe a collective sigh of relief. Arthur confirms that he was conscious for the whole time, and that his head hurts more than a three day hangover. And hour later Scar comes to, and three hours later so does Balboa. It is now just over an hour before dawn and we have lost most of our night. Arthur and Scar head out to forage but find very little, what they do see, however, is a large amount of worker Wezers leaving the hive.

We agree to wait until the workers start to return to the hive and ambush them to try and steal their water. Several hours later we start to hear the unmistakable buzzing noise of the workers returning. Balboa and Scar begin to use their slings to try and take down the Wezers at range, while Arthur and Kank form a second line that will engage them in melee if they get past the ranged attack. Our first target is missed by the sling stones but when it gets to Arthur he strikes it with his mighty fist and it drops out of the air. We are all incredibly relieved when the wax ball that it is carrying in its mouth doesn’t shatter. Arthur carries it back to the others like it is the most precious thing in existence, which at that moment it was.

He breaks a small hole in the top of it and takes a mouthful. He sighs in ecstasy as the sweet water soothes his throat, it is the best thing that he has ever tasted. Arthur believes that there is about a gallon of water, just enough to sustain one person for a day. We agree that he should drink it and so he upends the wax ball and drinks the contents. Then Miloch shouts that there is another one coming in, we quickly get into position and once again it gets past the range attacks but fails to avoid Kank’s maul. This time, however, as the Wezer falls from the sky its wax ball shatters and it’s precious contents bleeds out into the arid sand quicker than we are able to do anything about.

The group reset and wait. It isn’t long before another one is spotted and this time Balboa brings it down with stones from his sling. Thankfully for the freed slaves the ball does not break and Arthur runs in and scoops it up in one mighty paw before running back towards his friends. Just in time to avoid the three soldier Wezers that buzz out of the central entrance chamber of the hive. They patrol up to ten yards away from the entrance but the group are able to remain out of sight. Arthur hands the wax ball to Scar and she drinks it down.

It is good isn’t it!

We continue with our guerrilla tactics and manage to gather seven wax balls in total, two of which contain a solid, set honey, like substance that when eaten seems to relieve the fatigue of our exploits. In the end everyone has had their full share of sweet water with the exception of Ka-Reen and Kank, who share a single wax ball between them. The group are forced to retreat from their ambush setting when a large group of soldier Wezers emerge from the central entrance chamber. The freed slaves didn’t stick around to count them, but Kank believed that there was at least twenty soldier Wezers.

Hidden in the sand dunes south of the hive the group discuss what their next move should be. They are unanimous that they need to stock up on water before moving on and that the hive is their best chance for doing that. Once the sun has set the group head back to one of the surface domes that they have not yet investigated and break into it. They discover the putrid body of a dead elf, hosting a live larvae, laying within it. The group ignore the body and break through the waxy plug in the floor. They are greeted by a worker Wezer, and as soon as the break through it starts to buzz loudly. The life expectancy of the group may have increased slightly, but if this worker attracts more soldiers it may not be increased for very long.