Eragor and Friend

by Jonathan Zieg

   Eragor was a weapon master of great fame who specialized in perfecting the art of the warhammer. He was an adventurous sort who was always looking for a monster to fight, some ruins to explore, or anything that had something to do with adventure. Obviously, that got him into a lot of trouble, but somehow he was always just lucky enough to get away.

   His companion Dortan was a warmage of great power. He served as Eragor’s voice of reason, not that he listened to it very much. He loved magic items and had made more than a few himself.

   Eragor and Dortan were looking for some adventure when they spotted a town. “Let’s go rest in this town,” Dortan suggested. “There’s bound to be an inn somewhere.”

   The town was The Shire, a settlement of halflings located near the coast of the Sea of Storms, named for its turbulent weather. The pair of adventurers checked in to the inn and got a good night’s sleep.

   They would need it…

 

*                         *                         *

 

   On the Isle of Doom, in the center of the Sea of Storms, something utterly diabolical was about to happen.

   There exist in this world horrible monsters known as gargantua. They are gigantic versions of certain species that love only to destroy everything in their line of sight. The only known types are the humanoid, insectoid, and reptilian. Just one is capable of laying waste to entire kingdoms. They are almost always hibernating, which is good, because if they didn’t, they would kill off all other species.

   Once every hundred years, the gargantua awake from their slumber and terrorize the world for one year. The ones out at sea on small islands can swim or fly to the mainland to terrorize civilization. During this time they form groups and wreak horrible devastation upon the world.

   The Isle of Doom housed half of the total population of the gargantua species. Also on this island, there lived a ancient red dragon who was about to make things much, much worse…

 

*                         *                         *

 

   The companions were walking along the dockside when a man walked up to them in a cloak. He told them very quietly, “We must speak, but not here. Too many unfriendly ears.” He led them into an alleyway where he said, “Something terrible is about to happen. The gargantua are about to awaken.”

   “I know that,” said Dortan, “The gargantua wake up every 100 years. What’s so special about this time?”

   “This time something’s wrong. The seers detect something wrong with the magical forces that cause this.”

   “You mean that you think someone’s meddling with it?” asked Dortan.

   “Maybe. That’s what we want you to find out.”

   Eragor, who was tired of being left out of the conversation, butted in, “Two questions. Why should we trust you, and who is we?”

   “I am from the Order of Protectors, and we don’t like this any more than you do.”

   “I have sensed something wrong as well. Where do you want us to start?” asked Dortan.

   “On the Isle of Doom. That’s the center of the magic.”

   “Sounds very pleasant. We’ll get right on it.” said Eragor.

   “I brought with me some magic items you will find useful,” offered the stranger. “A staff of power, robes of the magi, and a ring of wizardry for Dortan, and a hammer of thunderbolts for Eragor.”

   “Where do you get all this?” asked Eragor, clearly amazed at the Order’s supply of magic items.

   “In our business, you have to kill a lot of powerful evil creatures, and they tend to have very large treasure hoards,” explained the stranger. “Oh, and I’m Goran. If you need me, blow on this card,” he said, handing Eragor a small sheet of silver with a magnificent carving of a shield on it. Goran then disappeared in a puff of smoke that blew away, leaving no trace.

 

*                         *                         *

 

   The next day the companions were on a ship to the Isle of Doom. The ship was called the Storm Conqueror because its captain had sailed in the Sea of Storms for 20 years. The ship was also well equipped for battle with two ballistae, a catapult, and now a warmage and a weapon master, too. All this is necessary because the Sea of Storms is filled with pirates and sea monsters of all varieties. Pirates like to hide out here because no local sea authorities will chase them deeper into the sea because it’s so stormy. There’s a local legend about a fleet of ships that was chasing some pirates into the sea, and a freak hurricane wiped them out except for a few men who somehow managed to make it back to shore to tell the tale.

   The first few days proved semi-uneventful -- they’d had man over board after a storm --  but there were no pirates or sea monsters. Then on the fifth day they saw a ship flying the Jolly Roger!

   “Man your stations!” shouted the captain. “Archers, prepare to light your arrows; ballistae and catapult men, get your weapons cocked and ready; warmage, prepare your spells; everyone else, get your heads down and let the battle begin!”

   The pirates were well-armed also. They had a catapult, a ballista, and something else, something that was hiding beneath the waves, waiting for the perfect time to strike…

   The Storm Conqueror had the first move in the battle. Their catapult fired with amazing accuracy, setting the mainmast aflame and catching three pirates in the blaze.

   The pirates returned fire with their ballista, but this was their ballista operator’s first raid, and he just barely passed the pirate admission exam and had never gone to pirategarten, showing that it does really make a difference. Hear that, parents? If you don’t send your pirate to pirategarten, your young pirate may miss a critical ballista shot!

   Frustrated with his stupidity in assigning what must be the worst pirate ever to ballista duty (The captain tried putting him at every other station, and he was bad at all of them, so he had to be at least semi-good at the ballista) the pirate captain took out a strange horn with pictures of snakes carved into it. When he blew it, a deep, resonating sound came out of it.

   Dortan fired a lightning bolt at one of the archers. The mainmast collapsed and crushed the pirate catapult. Eragor threw his hammer of thunderbolts and blasted a hole in the hull, the magic of the hammer instantly returning it to his hand. Any idiot could see that the pirates were clearly done for.

   Then the monster of the deep, heeding the call of the serpent horn, burst from the deep and began enveloping the Storm Conqueror in its mighty crushing coils. This was a sea serpent, and this one in particular had sunk many ships for the pirates.

   “This one’s mine!” shouted Eragor as he jumped on to the serpent’s back and started whacking it with his hammer.

   “You idiot!” shouted an exasperated Dortan, “Of all the stupid things you’ve done, this one tops the list!”

  “Nope, I’ve done stupider things!” replied Eragor, still pummeling the sea serpent.

   The serpent was taking some real damage and had been forced to release its hold on the ship. Now it was thrashing around, trying to shake off Eragor with little success, for Eragor wore a girdle of giant strength, which made him as strong as the creatures the girdle was named after. So even though he was only holding on with his legs, he might as well have been stuck on with super glue.

   Dortan had boarded the pirate ship and had incinerated, electrocuted, blasted, and frozen half the pirates. Looking at Eragor’s predicament, he decided that Eragor had gotten enough fun and was about to get killed any minute. (Dortan had decided that 50 times since meeting him.)  He strolled over to the pirate ballista, put some enchantments on a bolt, and then realized he didn’t know how to load and fire a ballista. He looked over to the ballista operator, who had decided to stop firing, since water was the only thing he’d been hitting, and said, “Hey, how’s this thing work?”

   “Oh, um, like this…,” he proceeded to load the ballista and showed Dortan how to fire it because he thought Dortan was a pirate.

   “Thanks, chump,” said Dortan as he kicked him overboard. Dortan aimed at the thrashing serpent’s head and fired. He hit the base of its neck, breaking its spine. As the serpent went limp, Eragor jumped off the serpent, landed on the pirate ship, and proceeded to smash the remaining pirates.

   Two days after the pirate attack, they reached the Isle of Doom. The companions got off the ship and set up camp. The first night was a peaceful and undisturbed one.

   It was the first and last quiet night they would ever get on the island….

 

*                         *                         *

 

   The companions woke up the next morning. “I’m hungry. What kind of food’s on this island?” asked Eragor.

   “How can you be hungry?” replied Dortan, “The crew of the Storm Conqueror gave us a huge feast for killing that sea serpent before dropping us off here.”

   “Well, we should still see what there is to eat here.”

   “I guess you’re right. Let’s go.”

   They tried sticking to the shore for safety, but there was no food there except some poisonous berries that made Eragor throw up and gave Dortan a good laugh. Inland they found some good food. There were fruits and other perfectly edible plants. The only problem was that they were ten times their usual size.

   “Is there anything on this island that’s normal size?” asked Eragor.

   “There are two things here that are normal size, and their names are Eragor and Dortan,” answered Dortan.

   Then there was a roaring noise and the ground started shaking in a pattern that resembled footsteps.

   “That didn’t sound good,” said Eragor. The thumping sound got louder and louder and seemed to be getting closer and closer.

   “Okay Eragor, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to run now,” said Dortan shakily.

   “I agree, let’s get out of here!”

   So they ran, and ran, and ran, and couldn’t lose it. They didn’t bother to look back, seeing as they already had a good idea of what was chasing them. What was really amazing was that it knew where the companions were running, as it was making too much noise to track them by sound, and couldn’t see them below the treetops. “I’m tired of running. When do we get to fight?” asked Eragor.

   “When he stops chasing us!” replied Dortan hastily.

   “Well, we did say we’d solve the gargantua problem.”

   “We said we’d see if someone was meddling with the gargantua hibernation pattern, not exterminate the entire race!”

   “Dortan, if you don’t stop running now, I will tear up all magic scrolls we find in our adventures!” commanded Eragor.

   Eight magic missiles slammed into the humanoid gargantua as the start of one of the nastiest barrage of spells Dortan had ever launched. Eragor was pondering the best way to tackle something like this.

   “Let’s see, the way the dwarves would do this would be to smash its kneecaps and when it fell over, they would attack the rest of it. It’s worth a try.” decided Eragor. So he tried breaking the knee caps, but he couldn’t reach that high so he settled for the toes. It actually worked out fairly well. After it fell over, Dortan’s spells finished it off.

   “How about next we go and find a hiding place?” asked Dortan.

   “That sounds like a good plan,” agreed Eragor.

   It took them a day to find a good hiding place. At about 3:00PM they found a creepy looking cave.

   “Let’s see what’s inside,” suggested Eragor.

   “What if someone’s inside?” asked Dortan.

   “I don’t know, I don’t plan that far ahead,” replied Eragor.

   It was a very large cave and went deeper than they could see. Dortan put a light spell on Eragor’s warhammer and proceeded in to the cave.

   What they saw was very strange. There were three gigantic eggs and a huge moth-like creature beside them.

   The moth-thing attacked them on sight. Dortan started things off with a fireball, incinerating its wings. Eragor latched on to its underside and whacked it from there, jumping off at the last minute.

   The creature tried to bite Eragor, but he was too quick for it, countering with a smash to the face.
   Dortan shot it with a lightning bolt, and its spasms threw Eragor to the back of the cavern. All this thumping around made the cavern start shaking too. This quickly turned into the ceiling collapsing.

   Dortan got to Eragor just before the entrance was blocked off. The giant moth was smashed by a particularly large rock and the eggs were crushed as well.

   Once the dust cleared, the companions were able to examine their surroundings. There was no way they could leave the way the came, there were rocks everywhere and a few were still falling. The tiniest movement of the smallest pebble could cause the collapse of the entire cavern.

   “Hey Dortan, bring your light over here,” said Eragor. At the back of the cavern, a hole had been broken open. When they looked at it more closely, it looked like it was a tunnel that was blocked off a long time ago had been reopened by the collapse.

   “I say we go in,” voted Eragor.

   “We don’t know what’s in there,” said Dortan.

   “We can’t go out the way we came,” pointing to the collapsed entrance, “and the tunnel is the only way out.”

   “Okay, we’ll go in,” grudgingly agreed Dortan.

   The tunnel was too smooth to have occurred naturally, so it must have led somewhere and still might. It was solid rock and had no loose stones. The floor was covered in claw marks and the entire tunnel looked scorched and melted.

   Then two huge salamanders dropped from the ceiling and began to speak! These aren’t the salamanders you find in your garden. These are fire salamanders; their bodies are like a serpent and their torso is like a man. Their heads look like a lizard, and they carry spears.

   Just as they were about to attack, Dortan froze them solid with a cone of frost. “You know, you’d think that who ever runs this place would guard its tunnels better,” said Eragor.

   “He did,” replied 20 salamanders as they dropped from the ceiling, ten on each side of the tunnel.

   “You take the ones blocking the way we came, and I’ll take the ones that are blocking us from progressing forward,” said Dortan.

   “Either one of us could take on all 20,” replied Eragor.

   Dortan cast a telekinesis spell and ripped out a chunk of rock from the wall and used it to smash his share of salamanders. Eragor swung his hammer at a salamander who tried to block with its spear, but the hammer blasted through both spear and salamander. The whole thing was over in five minutes.

   They proceeded through the tunnel, dodging some minor glyphs of warding, but nothing else serious happened. Eventually, they came across a pool of water.

   “Let’s get a drink here,” suggested Eragor.

   “What if it’s got some guardian?” warned Dortan.

   “Don’t worry, he can’t have trapped everything,” said Eragor.

   Eragor took a drink… and the floor collapsed and dropped them ten feet. They landed on a slide that took them 200ft down.

   They got up and examined their surroundings. They were in a circular chamber with some writing on the wall along side a panel with pictures of the three known gargantua on its buttons, one picture per button. It also had a second control panel with various buttons with the letters of the alphabet carved into them.

   It said,

 

   To escape this chamber you must ascend.

    Magic will not help you to this end

   You must pick the creature whose power is flight

    Or you’ll be stuck here for the rest of your life.

 

   “Let’s check that no magic rule,” said Dortan. He tried casting a spell that would take them back to the tunnel. He finished the spell and nothing happened. “It looks like we’ll actually need to solve the riddle,” said Dortan, who was very annoyed about his magic failing.

   “Well, it looks like we’ll need to push some combination of those buttons to get out,” suggested Eragor.

   “It said to pick the creature whose power is flight, so we just need to push the button with the picture of a creature that can fly,” guessed Dortan.

   “There’s a picture of that ape-thing we fought, a giant lizard on two legs, and this looks like the big moth that we killed to get in here. I can barely make this out. These aren’t even decent drawings, they’re stick figures! Even I can draw better than this!” exclaimed Eragor.

   “Yeah, you draw so bad that you made your mom’s pea casserole look like green glop!” laughed Dortan.

   “I know, but that was an accurate portrayal.”

   “Ok, back to the riddle. The moth is the only thing that can fly, so we’ll push that,” selected Dortan.

   When he pushed the button, more writing appeared on the wall.

 

   You have chosen correctly, that much is true

   Now you must spell the name of the creature you choose

 

   “Ok, where do we do that?” wondered Eragor.

   More writing appeared.

 

   I didn’t know you were lame in the brain

   Type it in on the second panel, that should be plain

 

   “The moth’s name is insectoid,” said Dortan.

   He typed it in and the floor opened up below them again. They fell ten feet on a giant catapult basket and were shot up 100ft to land on a ledge.

   “This doesn’t look like where we started,” said Eragor.

   There was a straight tunnel leading up to a huge iron door. The rest of the passageway was unremarkable.

 

   You now approach the master’s lair

   You must be strong, or you won’t have a prayer

 

   “Well, let’s go through the door,” suggested Eragor.

   They opened the door, and what they saw astounded them. Beyond the door there was a virtual sea of treasure! Piles of gold, chalices of platinum, scepters of silver, a king’s ransom a hundred times over!

   “Wait,” said Dortan “when ever you here about treasure hoards this size, the always belong to a—”

   “Don’t say it,” halted Eragor.

   The answer swooped down on them to attack as they both shouted in unison, “DRAGON!!!”

   The dragon was a gigantic red dragon of 1500 years. It was 165ft long, making it the biggest of its kind, and when you get into a dragon’s hoard, they get very, very angry.

   “YOU DARE ENTER THE LAIR OF PHILLESTOS, DRAGON LORD?!?!” bellowed the dragon, its roar echoing across the cavern and causing gold piles to tremble. “PREPARE TO FEEL MY FIRE!!!”

   They just barely escaped by hiding behind a pile of treasure. “You just had to take that job, didn’t you, Dortan!”

   “You’re the one who said to open that door!” said Dortan.

   “I don’t care who started it, you’re going to end it!”

   “How?”

   “I don’t know, throw something at it that goes boom!”

   Dortan cast a fireball at Phillestos, making quite an explosion and shaking the cavern ceiling. Phillestos took the whole thing, his head being engulfed in flames.

   When the smoke cleared, Phillestos didn’t look like a very happy dragon. One of his horns had been broken off at the midpoint and his head and upper neck was covered in minor scorch marks.

   “Ok, let’s see if this does some damage,” said Eragor. He threw his warhammer at Phillestos, its crack of thunder stunning it, which gave the companions time to run to another pile of gold to hide behind from the fire breath, the previous one having been melted.

   “Let’s review our successes,” said Dortan, “We have broken one of his horns, given him some scorch marks, and made him angrier than before if at all possible.”

   “Maybe we should summon Goran,” suggested Eragor. He blew on the silver card and Goran appeared in a puff of smoke.

   “Hi guys, what would you like me to do for—DRAGON!!!!” he shouted as he dived behind the pile of gold Eragor and Dortan were hiding behind.

   “Couldn’t you have summoned me at a slightly less lethal predicament?” asked Goran, “And it doesn’t look like you’ve been making much headway,”

   “Yeah, yeah, just tell us anything important you know about red dragons!” shouted Eragor.

   “They’re huge flying reptiles that breathe fire, one of which is attempting to cook us well done! What more do you need?”

   “I know! Fire is their primary weapon, so they should be especially vulnerable to cold,” suggested Dortan.

   “Great! How many cold spells do you have?” asked Eragor.

   “Zero,” replied Dortan.

   “The staff I gave you has cold spells,” said Goran.

   “Ok, let’s try that,” suggested Dortan.

   Dortan fired a cone of cold at Phillestos. The dragon shrieked in agony from the burning frost.

   “Well, that’s more effective, but we need more firepower,” said Eragor.

   “I’ve got another idea! I’ll summon an earth elemental and use it to collapse the cavern,” said Dortan.

   He summoned the elemental and told it to collapse the cavern, then teleporting the group to just outside the cave with the giant moth.

   “Ok, I’ve just received messages from my friends at the order that the magical disturbances have stopped. The disturbances in the gargantua hibernation patterns have stopped!” exclaimed Goran.

 

*                         *                         *

   The group went back to the mainland and had a great feast. They hired cargo ships to  haul back the hoard after the rubble was cleared away.

   The next day, Goran came back with bad news.

   “Bad news, guys,” said Goran, “The porters haven’t found the body of the dragon we fought.”

   “Are you suggesting he’s still alive?” asked Eragor.

   “Yeah, he’s most likely got a huge vendetta against you. Dragons tend to do stuff like that when you steal their entire hoard.”

   “Hey, you were there too. He’ll want you dead as much as he’ll want us,” said Eragor.

   “Oops…well, I’ll just have to get a desk job at the Order and stay away from the field. What are you going to do?”

   “Well, that depends. Do you know of any areas with a high concentration of monsters?” said Dortan.

   “There’s a town called Hommlet that has a bit of a history of that kind of stuff. Would you mind keeping a lookout there for a while until we send in some more permanent guards?” asked Goran.

   “Not at all, we’ll be ready to go there by tomorrow ,” said Eragor.

   The next day they were on their way to their next adventure.

 

 

 

 

 

Next, will Eragor and Dortan conquer the Temple of Prehistoric Evil….or will they meet their doom there?