The priest is tied helplessly between the pillars and, as the party head towards him, he starts begging them to help him. They ignore his cries. Mapauche, in true sadistic fashion, cuts slivers of skin from his legs..some of the cuts a little deep and blood is soon coursing around the floor. The priest is still conscious and is screaming! The king blanches and starts to speak but doubles over and vomits. Then Grellak sticks the priest with his spear and the priest wails before gurgling frothing blood and slumping forward. The king is just recovering as the head is severed by Grellak and sent tumbling to the feet of Graypatch. After the hollow hopping noise the head makes down the stairs, silence drifts across the courtyard. People are staring incredulously at what has happened. The skies immediately start to boil and vast black clouds gather rapidly. The king wrenches his face up and screams: "Guards!" this cry is taken up by the towns people, then the king continues, "Kill them! They have brought doom upon us!" The guards back away� threatening with their spears�you hear running feet behind you as the garrison has been turned loose�it is this reason why the first guards have not attacked. Honel is caught away from the party and seem to go down under the flood of thirty or so well armed Ogres. A skirmish breaks out as 11 Orcs start hacking their way through the circle, they seem to have a goblin in their midst as well, � one of them shouts out "Master! Master Grellak! We are coming Master!" and he is promptly cut down by the swinging blow of an Ogre The Orcs are slowly moving forward by sheer weight of numbers than anything else.. finally they break through and run towards you�Goblin intact..[OOC: They now stand near Grelak, except for the goblin who cowers around by a pillar�. The Ogres still do not attack.
Lucky seems to have disappeared and his Hawk can be seen flying in circles around the yard�some Ogres are already shooting arrows at it�these self same arrows clatter amongst the cobble stones and some people in the crowded food market in the next alley are screaming in pain. At that moment a small child exiting the temple, stops and picks a small square of material from a nail�and he mutters "Oooh, pretty" before being snatched away by his mother and shepherded behind the temple towards the farming community. At that stage Honel�s body is roughly thrown into the centre of the ring. "Oy! You lot must surrender now or we do to you what we did to your friend �ere!" shouts an Ogre Sergeant. You can see Honel still spews blood from his mouth as he convulses. His life rapidly ebbs away from numerous non-lethal stab wounds and pummels until he lies still�and dead. � There are around thirty Ogres now in a semi circle around you. The king is behind them ranting and ordering to attack, and quite a distance behind him, behind two rows of houses�just touching down� is a strange funnel shaped cloud� bits and pieces are being flung towards it and the wails of people rise in the air� "Doomed�the gods have doomed us!" The moment of impasse is over..The Ogre soldiers slowly start moving in. Mapauche heads closer..brains obviously not his strong point...The crowd grows, an angry mob they are, with pitch-forks and butchers knives. Some have run from the storm in fear..but most are too angry at what your group has called down upon the city...Grellak, in awe inspired fashion with a tornado racing towards the square starts his oration. "See, the gods are cheering, leadin' us on" The crowd jeers and boo's at this...and surges forward another meter or so..the Ogre warriors, hard pressed to keep the crowd back and stay in fighting stance, appear in two minds. Grellak continues "Do ya really think that Gruumsh would be upset 'cause we whack a traitor priest, no, he 'as sent this storm to get the traitors soul so 'e could throw it in the pit" The front rows of the crowd start to slow, and appear to listen a little more clearly, in fact a few blows are thrown at the more roudy ones. The ogre soldiers realise the crowd has stopped...they do too. The Orc continues "This ain't no doom, this is victory, our gods are tellin' us that we whacked the right guy" he laughs, "An' if Gruumsh were mad wi' me, don't'cha think 'ed 'ave knocked me down by now, eh?", he looks around and says "An' you should think that you've never seen blood before, or a storm. Are you Orcs, Ogres and goblinkin, or are ye a bunch of schtinking elfshits". At this the crowd goes wild. Shouts are heard...shouts of "NO!"...even the warriors stand still. Only the clash-bang of flying objects and the howl of the approaching tornado breaks the silence...some at the back, looking over the roofs give up the oration and run... Skuzzlebutt then jumps up a few steps of the temple and shouts "Grellak right! We chosen ones! We smash puny humans! We get back hand! You see! This be test! Only ones Brave enough to kill stupid priest still be alive!" He storms forward and then smashes his club into Honel�s body. "Gods kill him! He not brave! He hide by wall, as if he be human!" Skuzzlebutt then picks up Honel�s body, and throws it back into the crowd. "Take weakling back! Only Brave and Strong be able to stand with us!" The crowd cheer! Doink feels the crowds mood and joins in: "Grellak tells the truth, I have proof. The priest was an unfaithful one. Search his quarters, your highness, and you will find a book detailing his transactions with the local human merchants for materials he used in the ceremonies. Such transactions you forbid some years ago. Further proof is hidden underneath the false altar-top, where the priest keeps the money he uses to make these illegal transactions. The humans must have used these transactons to trace us. We were all notified of his betrayal by the great spirit of Gruumsh when we accepted his gifts and his mission and any one of us would have made the kill were not Grellak the closest to the traitor." At which the king starts to shout "Liar! Him hate humans!", then to the crowd he screams, "They lie! Kill them, kill them all..." he is joined by the new just-installed-by-you High Priest "Our king say the truth gruumish leader hate humans! Kill them!".. The crowd starts fighting amongst themselves as most obey the king... The soldiers and the majority of the crowd starts forward...the end surely seems neigh for there are too many to fight...Grellak, Doink and Skuzzlebutt all try to sweep the crowd up again but to no avail...the spell is broken... Graypatch hisses and fingers his dagger...his eyes shifting as if seeking a way to escape the fight...At that moment.. just before the crowd sweep forward in a mad rush... the body of the decapitated priest seems to move and from it rises a strange spectral shape...a ghost rises from the body and pointing at the party, and speaking with a strangely familiar non-ogre accent mutters "You all bad, very bad for killing me, You CURSED to find hand of Orgiarian! You Soul not rest until you find! Better Find Quick!" Some of the crowd scatter...wailing into the storm they head...others collapse on the ground and prostrate themselves before the image. The ghost looks at the king and points "YOU! You order stupid warriors to kill priest! The godly brothers Gruum and Orgiarian not happy with you! Whole TOWN cursed till put head of king on alter!" This has done it... the crowd is hysterical and turns against the king...you see the crown fly and then nothing. What passes through the mind of the more intelligent ones of you is who on earth is going to lead the armies against the humans now? The king is dead... the people in hysterics as they march forward towards the alter with the kings head before them... The storm veers away and the soldiers scream and run away towards their barracks...where their pay and women are now, as we speak, being tossed to the sky... Rain pelts down.... And only now do you realise that you are standing alone...in front of a crowded temple... accompanied by two headless corpses, one head, 18 dead Orcs (6 of whose are grellak�s) 3 dead goblins, a dead � orc and around 30 dead Ogres.. the storm still rages...you have no idea where you should go..who you should see and what you should do...somewhere there had to be clues...someone had to have some idea... hell... you dont know what the human land looks like...but you guess that it is big!...
After suddenly realising that the worst is over people look around at each other and grin. The rain slowly drizzles down onto the paving and Skuzzlebutt heads into the shelter of the Temples entranceway. Grellak, his new Orcs in tow, head out into the storm and start stripping the dead Orcs. Mapuche helps them to stand the dead Orcs upright or manhandles them to make the process of stripping armor off of a dead orc a lot easier. His four new warriors get dressed in the garb of the dead after washing it in the free standing puddles that have formed. As they do so, they notice that everyso often, bodies seem to move, robes flutter against the wind, and a general feeling of uneasiness resides over the square. Lucky suddenly reapears in your midst and grins at Graypatch and Grellak as Graypatch states that he will make an excellent scout and lucky believes, although he cannot track, he will make the journey interesting. Doink, who has been sheltering from the rain, now heads down towards Lucky and bends as if to speak. No clues flutter about the wind, no footsteps are present in the ever-thickening mud�the hand? Where on earth could it be? The people in the crowded temple are now in the middle of a religious service. The kings head is on the altar and they seem to be begging forgiveness. Grellak starts trying to impress some young Orcs standing around by talking of gold and caravans and fights and by patting his axe and decent chain-mail� There are four young Orcs listening to this with wide eyes. They follow and hang upon every word. As you finish one of them looks at his friends, gulps and then mutters. "Sur, wie Urks strong! Wie urks fite gud! Yu us nied! Wie kil mani 'umies. Wie git mustch luut und wipons und fuud. Kan wie go with yu?"
Mapuche, Grellak�s Orcs and Skuzzlebutt get down and dirty burying the dead. With the sheer number to bury the hole has to be deep and wide. Once the mass grave has been dug each of the warriors starts throwing in dead bodies. Soon all of them are covered in a clay-type sludge of mud and blood. It has stopped raining and the puddles offer little chance to wash clean. It doesn�t bother anybody though and you head off, following Lucky�s nose. Lucky�s hawk is no-where to be seen, although when asked Lucky points south, knowing his hawk to be there, although not sure how far. The step is a lively one, even if it is into unknown territory. None of you have ventured South. The pickings are poor, the trade is worse. Only soldiers go south. Most traders, and their accompanying entourage of thieves and businessmen, feel the threat of war and loss is far to great. Before you are the badlands. Rumours regarding The Lone Forest and the ruined city of Velart abound. Those banished from society, or those with a price on their heads always head south. It is not the brightest place on earth. beyond all the rumours and the tales that scare children, lies the frontier. A patrolled and guarded perimeter on the North side of the Black River. Here, the remnant human armies were always destroyed as they tried to cross the river. Piled along its length are rocks for giant and ogre to throw. It is said that arrow heads from thousands of years ago can still be found in sun-bleached Ogre skulls..but that too could be a tail. Beyond that..far far ahead lie the mountains of the moon, Dragon�s Teeth to some. There lie some of the gods and their mountains that spit fire at those who venture too close. Beyond these lie the human lands. The mountains have prevented armies from reaching their destinations intact and surely are the reason why the division between the lands of the Alliance and the human tyranny exists. An invading Orcan army will be sorely diminished by the time they had crossed those hills�and the humans will be waiting�. All the more reason for you to get the hand. Let the humans come and fight here. Then go and rape pillage and plunder their lands. Still, the road ahead is coated in mud and very slippery. Some start remembering that they left some things back home..well, what you haven�t got, you haven�t got. The road winds down a slow hill, and more than once the less dextrous of you end up falling. Lucky is pressed to keep up with the longer strides of his fellows and eventually climbs aboard the Orcan cart, much to the scared grumbles of Grellak�s orcs. The day wears on. Slowly the clouds build once more and after they have laid upon the ground in mist-like wraiths, a slow drizzle starts. After a while a dark mass starts writing in the mist ahead. Slowly branches appear and the forest bursts into view. The path turns left, bypassing the forest at a good bow�s range. The drizzle stops. A strange eerie silence descends upon you. Only the wind can be heard, howling. The howling seems to grow louder. From behind you hear a more distinct howl, and through the mist 6 pairs of yellow eyes seem to shine through the half light. Snarling and gnashing can be heard as they obviously hunt down the scent of blood.