Posted on 2008/10/18
Since he is trying to trap, Joe leaves Nipper in the stall - as he usually does - but takes Bramble with him to improve her new trick of spotting animals. He shoulders his pack and sighs as he fingers his still damp cloak. He doesn't look forward to yet another day of having it clammily round his shoulders. The trophy cloak catches his eye and he fingers that - dry and warm, if a bit fancy - but no-one will see him in the forest or mistake him for an adventurer there. He hesitates for a long moment, then takes the dry cloak, leaving the other one to finish drying on its hook.
He goes quickly through town with his hood pulled up and his head down so that no-one points him out and then heads out to the forest. Once under the trees, and somewhat sheltered from the ongoing rain, he pushes his hood back and studies the ground for tracks. Bramble ranges out around him, nose to the ground and wagging tail spraying water at regular intervals. Occasionally, she stops and looks back at Joe, who pushes through the web-laden trees each time to peer at what Bramble has found. Wild boar tracks and wolf tracks, mouse and rat - and rabbit!
He quickly follows the rabbit tracks until he finds a place to set up a snare, and then a second place. Maybe this time he will actually have a result and catch some thing! As he finishes placing the second snare, Bramble dives into the undergrowth on one side of the trail, yelps, and begins to scrabble frantically, apparently unable to back out again.
Joe turns his eyes briefly towards the sodden sky and then works his way around the bush to find and untangle Bramble from whatever she has got caught on this time. He has to duck under a particularly low web to get there and when he does, he finds that Bramble seems to be stuck in a web that goes all the way to the ground, covering this side of the bush completely. With a sigh, Joe pulls out a knife and tries to cut Brambke free, but the knife just sticks to the webbing with every stroke and has to be yanked free before it has any real effect.
As he makes the tenth attempt, Bramble looks past him and snarls. Exasperated, Joe mutters, “Oh shut up, Bramble,” and goes back to hacking at the web. Bramble's snarl quickly deepens into a full growl though, and Joe looks round in annoyance just in time to see a web drop down to fill the gap he entered by and a spider as big as Bramble herself dropping out of the tree branches on a length of webbing….
Posted on 2008/10/25
Joe wrenches his knife free from the last attempt to cut the web and turns defiantly to defend Bramble. Behind his legs, Bramble snarls her own defiance and Joe looks up again just in time to see the spider drop a new web directly on top of him.
With a gasp, Joe dances just out of reach of the dropped web and hurls a knife - which misses and lands in a web. He yanks another knife out and tries again, hitting the spider in one of its eyes. Unfortunately, he's so pleased to have hit it that he doesn't spot the second web coming down and finds himself webbed all down his left side.
He curses out loud, looks over his shoulder to check that Bramble is ok, and draws his next knife one-handed as the spider comes stalking down the web towards him.
Joes curses it softly to attract its attention and swallows hard as its mouth lunges at him - only just dodged by ramming his side harder into the web. He brings the knife over and rams it home in the spider's neck, before watching it fall off the web and lie, twitching irregularly, on the floor of the clearing.
When it finally stops, Joe looks round grimly and sets his mind to working out how he can escape all the webbing…
Posted on 2008/11/01
Joe pulls hard at the web, cursing all the time, and finally manages to wrench his stuck arm free. Every pull sprays a shower of water down on him, soaking him completely, but not seeming to do much to de-stick the webbing. Soaking clearly doesn't work, knives don't work, not even brute force seems to work.
Joe sighs, and tries to think what else he might try. If water doesn't work, maybe fire would? But what will burn in the sodden forest? Not much, he thinks, wriggling his pack round to see if he remembered to put his flint and steel in there. Despite much rummaging, he can't find his flint or his steel, but he does come up the flask of fire.
He hefts it in his free hand, considering, and then decides that he might as well. It can't really hurt anything in a forest this wet and it might, just might, work. Taking a deep breath, he hurls it down onto the forest floor beside the spider.
The flask breaks open, and a second later, a sheet of flame roars up, bringing warmth on Joe's chilled face. The flames race out along the lines of webbing, singing Joe's hair and breeches in passing, but leaving nothing but ash clinging to him. He moves quickly out of the way, pulls an equally singed Bramble after him and watches with a wide grin as the flames race each other along the webs in bright, ever-changing patterns.
As he watches, various branches and the like either fall free or swing round or up, each depositing another shower of water onto Joe. He doesn't pay much attention to it after awhile - until one shower hits so hard that it hurts! Then he yelps almost like Bramble and ducks sideways, only to be hit by another spatter of hard stuff.
“Ow! Gerroff! Whatthe!”
His cries, and movement into the trees loose a soggy brown lump from its spot halfway up a particularly web-laden tree. The lump plops down a level, rolls a bit, plops further, is caught halfway by a jutting broken branch and releases a torrent of hard what-ever-they-are's onto Joe's head.
“Aaargh! Ow! Stop it, you…”
The later ones hitting the ground, clink against the earlier ones and Joe yelps again in surprise. It's money! Good, spendable copper coins! He grins, dodging out of the remains of the coin shower and peering up into the branches to see if there are any more lumps like that one….
Posted on 2008/11/08
As the webs continue to burn away, Joe finds more stuff tumbling out of the trees and thinks it's probably been held there by the webs until now.
There are burnt and broken and rotten weapons, a tattered, smouldering cloak, a set of studded leather armor shedding the bones still in it every time part of it hits a branch, a badly torn pack with a single pocket still intact, three odd shoes, candle ends, lantern shards, broken plates and jugs and mugs, ragged sacks and strips of cloth, bits of fur and bones and still braided hair (now singed and smouldering), belt buckles and broken cloak pins, scraps of leather and parchment, crushed map cases, half a rusty cooking pot and the ripped off cover of some book or other.
Joe tries to dodge as much as possible, even as he decides that he's just created the first spider rubbish heap. Still, he thinks, there might be a few things worth selling or using in the pile. And the coppers that came down first of all are definitely worth gathering up.
As the burning webs die out into dimming daylight, the torrent of rubbish also stops and Joe ventures out of shelter to collect what he can. He shovels coins into the sack by the fistful without really looking or counting. He also scoops up the armor, the surprisingly heavy tattered pack, and any useable or still pretty objects - candle ends, a brooch with a purple stone remaining among several empty sockets, a dagger hilt (minus dager) with a yellow stone set as a pommel, all kinds of cloth oddments for patching and rugmaking, buckles and pins for sale to the scrap merchants.
Heaving his now stuffed sack and pack onto his shoulders, he calls Bramble to his side and trudges out of the forest towards the town and home. Once through the gates, he pauses long enough to work his way through the market, buying a don't ask pie and a couple of carrots as he goes.
Finally arriving at his own home, he dumps the pack on the table while he feeds and mucks out Nipper and the mule. Then, he tips out the gathered goods and begins the long tedious task of sorting and counting, taking bites of pie to eat as he goes. Halfway through counting though, he nearly chokes on a mouthful of pie as he realises that a few of the 'coppers' are actually gold…
Posted on 2008/11/15
Shoving the gold to one side out of the way of the spendable coins, Joe bumps the unusually heavy pack again, grazing his knuckles on something hard inside the remaining pocket. Sucking his knuckles, and swearing a bit, Joe wrestles the rusty buckle open and rummages inside the pocket, only to find a pouch containing even more coins. Tipping that out onto the pile, he is relieved to find that the coins are silver, not nearly unspendable gold.
He shoves the gold into the pouch where the silver was and tosses it into a corner, to stow in the bottom of his clothes chest when he has time.
Thinking of clothes and reminded of his own damp clothes, he rummages through the rags to see if there is anything wearable, or indeed anything worth keeping at all. Finding a couple of blankets, he sets them aside for cleaning, along with some of the old sacks in the pile. Rummaging further, he finds a grubby brown tunic with only a ripped shoulder to repair, a pair of dark-green breeches with holes in both knees and another pair of grey breeches with frayed hems and waistband. Two shirts that might be white if they were clean land on the 'keep' pile, as does a long, warm-looking, but filthy coat. Joe drops a loose yellow robe on top of the pile and adds a matching sash to it, before deciding that there isn't really anything else he wants to keep from the clothes.
Joe tries the studded leather armor for size, but decides keeping it, finding it stiff, uncomfortable and too restricting, even if it does save his shins from a bruise after he stumbles in it and hits the end of one bench. The stones remaining in the brooch and dagger hilt are pretty though, if he can get them off their broken settings and the mirror and candle ends will be useful. He decides that 1 spare flint and steel is worth keeping, but there is no way he needs all the ones he has brought back.
On the other hand, even if he doesn't manage to catch anything in his snares, he might actually be able to afford to buy meat occasionally….
Posted on 2008/11/23
Joe stuffs the rest of the clothes and scrap metal into the sacks he isn't keeping and puts them aside to be sold in the morning. When morning finally comes, it finds him stiffer and more sore than he expected. His daily tasks of feeding, grooming and mucking out the animals are accompanied by a constant grumbling mutter, until Nipper's teeth clash together an inch shy of Joe's arm. After that, Joe locks the grumbles away behind his teeth and works in cross silence instead.
Shouldering the stuffed sacks, he takes them down to the rag merchant and the scrap metal dealer and haggles a reasonable amount out of them, although he easily finds a gloomy expression to put on to twist more from them.
With the scrap sold, Joe whistles Bramble to heel and hobbles off to check his snares in the wood. When he finally arrives, he finds the first few sprung but empty. Moving slowly on, he finds 2 with a rabbit caught in each one, removes the rabbits and makes sure they are dead before strapping them to his pack. The next three are empty but unsprung and Joe sighs and looks round to see if there are any better places to put them. As he is looking, he hears shuffling feet coming through the trees. Bramble's head comes up, ears pricked and nose twitching. All of a sudden, her head goes up higher, her tail slides between her legs and she bolts into the undergrowth in the opposite direction from the shuffling.
Joe grumbles and curses under his breath and starts after her. Before he has gone more than a few paces, the owners of the feet come into view - one is another of the bony men and the second, although more solid, is no less dead…
Posted on 2008/11/29
Joe swallows hard and hurls his first knife at the solid figure, reckoning that it will at least hit something other than a hole there. His knife thumps solidly into the figure's shoulder but doesn't seem to affect it otherwise. Both figures keep heading straight for Joe, even as he takes a step back and hurls another knife, hitting again just below the first one. The two close in and a curved sword swipes at Joe. In his effort to avoid it, he steps straight into the path of a swinging club and gasps for breath as it hits hard.
All that gasping and staggering clear means that his next knife misses completely, but then so do the next swipe of sword and club. Joe tries again and successfully jabs his knife into the solid figure's other shoulder, before ducking under both swipes and coming back up to ram his knife into the solid neck. As he pulls the knife back out, the figure's head flops backwards on the cut neck and the rest of the body follows it back onto the ground.
Joe circles away from the fallen figure and tries stabbing the bony man. As he feared, his knife just slides through a hole without doing any damage, so he backs away further. His heel bumps into something and he glances down to see one of his own, unsprung, snares. Cautiously stepping over it, he continues to back away and the bony man continues to follow him - until it puts its foot in the snare and is pulled over onto the ground.
Joe slams his knife back into its sheath, nerves himself and leaps to grab the fallen bony man. He lands on him grabs the shoulders and begins bashing the bony skull against a tree root. Clawed fingers scrape across his leathers and skin, but he tries to ignore them. Finally, the skull cracks open and the bones lie still under him. Joe shudders and scrambles up, brushing himself down frantically to remove every trace of bone. The shudders don't stop him grabbing up the curved sword, or the shield before he hobbles off into the woods calling for Bramble…
Posted on 2008/12/07
As Joe calls and pauses and calls again, he eventually hears yaps and yelps from the forest on his left. Mumbling curses about stupid female dogs that are always getting themselves into trouble, he trudges in that direction, wearily easing a dagger in its sheath as he goes.
He clambers through a tangle of brambles by dumping the shield on them and stamping down on it, using the heavy metal to protect his feet, and finds Bramble right in the middle of her namesake plants, tail between her legs and one forepaw held pathetically in the air. Joe swallows the additional curses he is about to heap on her, and scrambles the final few yards to check her over.
Scratches and burrs matt Bramble's coat, but the real damage seems to be a thorn stuck in her paw. Joe groans and picks her up briefly to get her out of the brambles. The weight causes all his own injuries to start screaming with renewed pain and by the time he gets out of the bramble patch he is gasping for breath. He dumps Bramble on the ground and bends over her, trying to get his breath back.
'Bramble,' he mutters, 'you're just too blasted heavy to carry anymore. How we going to get you back to town?'
Bramble whines, lifts her injured paw a little higher and looks pathetically at him.
'I've got a good mind to make you walk back,' Joe snaps. 'Bad paw and all. It's your own fault! You shouldn't have run off like that!'
Bramble turns pleading eyes up to Joe's face and licks his cheek before he can straighten up.
'It's no good. I'm not carrying you all that way. No matter how much you whine. No way…' Joe looks across at the shield and a memory of winter's snowy hills slides into his memory. 'Hmm. Maybe that thing can actually make itself useful after all…'
He digs his rope out, ties it onto some of the shield's leather straps and dumps Bramble onto the makeshift sledge. The shield jerks and shudders as he pulls, and then gives up and slides across the muddy leaves. 'Better, you pest of a dog?' Joe asks, piling some fallen branches for firewood onto the shield as well.
Without waiting for an answering whine or yap, he draws the rope over his less bruised shoulder and begins to pull in earnest…
This game is DMed by Heros_Backpack from the wizards.com boards. He holds the copyright to all content.
Here's the original thread, complete with comments from other posters.
Here's the complete list of items brought back, for those interested.