Re: Kylie (Courage Wolf)
"Oh... didn't see you there or hear you come in. And most of these are from my various jobs I did, though this one on the shoulder and all the big ones on the leg here were from my last job. Sure it ended my days as an adventurer, but it was well worth it in my eyes," Alan replied when Kylie spoke up.
He did indeed have some salve of sorts sitting nearby on one of the smaller tables next to his seat, and he did indeed try to get Kylie to not worry with it. "I... was actually going to say my back doesn't hurt all that much if you can believe it. Save this one here on my shoulder that of course. But thanks a bunch. And the cauldron has some a bunch of doses of a potion I'm brewing for someone in town," Alan replied as Kylie began putting the salve on his back. "As for your potions though, I've got some done, while some are still brewing. And thanks also for the order stuff too. And thanks for the offer, but I'll be fine, I mean if you can get your dark healer out here that'd be fine, but don't go out of your way for it. As for what this project is you're wanting of me, well I'll see what I can do when you tell me what it is," he went on to say as Kylie finished applying the salve to Alan's back, her fingers delicately rubbing it in on his shoulder.
He didn't seem to feel any pain while she was rubbing the stuff in, though when she was done he stretched a bit as she wiped her hands with a rag that was laying next to the jar of salve and grimaced a little bit as he went a bit too far as it pulled his shoulder a bit. "Well... this one on my shoulder came from an axe like blade if you can believe, and the reason it's all the way up through here is because... well it was this or it would have gone through my skull. So I let it go through my shoulder and prayed to all the gods that it stopped before it hit something really vital... and guess what, my prayer was answered." Alan said, pointing at the lowest point of the big shoulder scar and tracing his fingers up. "It was an aberrant that did it, fucking nasty ass things. But I guess I should tell you about the job before I go further into detail for that. I don't know if you've heard about it, but there was a plague that swept through the alraune village some years back. They contracted me to find out what was causing it and make a cure, well they really contracted anybody that was willing to help but around here I was considered the best adventurer. I investigated for days around their village with my mage friend and his wife who was a very good sword fighter and our cleric girl, doing any kind of test or just anything we could think of to figure out just what caused it," Alan went on to say, reaching over and grabbing his mug of morning coffee and taking a sip, the aroma being quite strong and waking Kylie up if she'd started feeling drowsy for any reason.
"Anyway, we finally figured out that it wasn't a natural plague to them and was introduced to them through the water in the stream that runs through their village, my mage friend, he had checked everything in their village except the water and it finally dawned on him to check it when our cleric girl took a drink and said it tasted funny. We tracked it back to the source of the stream some miles away to the northeast, and there was a cave at the foot of the falls that their stream splits off from the main river from," Alan said, continuing his story as he reached up with his left hand to stir the liquid in the cauldron, unless Kylie stopped him and did it, with Alan telling her to be gentle with the stirring. "Where was I? Oh yeah the cave. Anyway we went in to investigate it, and inside we found a big broken bit of rock that led down into the Deep Roads. Now I dunno what you know about the Deep Roads, but it's where the aberrants come through mostly from their world, The Underdark some call it. Turns out that a trio of Illithid managed to find a way through and laid low as they roamed about down there and found their way up to the island and they always cause a ruckus wherever they go, and they had made some sort of disease that pretty much worked as weed killer on the alraune. We found their lair which wasn't too far in. We probably should have waited for backup from the guild, but hell it'd have taken them at least another two days to get there with us, and I made the call to not wait. Because those poor girls were dying, I mean the others agreed with me and said we simply couldn't wait," he continued, pausing for nearly a minute as he sat there, and just before he started talking again Kylie saw a tear fall down his cheek.
"We went in, they weren't expecting us so we caught them pretty good, killed one of them right off the bat with some of their minions they had, with that spear up there in fact. Jumped over this big rock down there and rammed it right through his back, piercing his heart. God I loved every second of killing those things. It's rare that a person can truly take any sort of satisfaction in killing someone or something, but with aberrants... at least for some of them, it's just a pleasure to kill them," he said, pointing up at a large spear hanging up on the wall over the mantlepiece, and there was also a bow, a spiked mace, a longsword, and a quarterstaff hanging there too. "The other two ran, warbling something in that Deep Speech they speak. We didn't know what they said, but we gave chase, because they were heading out of the cave with a big vat. They got ahead of us though while we were fighting some more of their minions in their hidden cavern. We finally caught up though around the entrance to the main cave where the waterfall was, and I shot my bow there and caught one in the back of the knee and made him trip, dropping the vat of the poison. My mage friend's wife... she rushed up to grab the stuff to throw it back to us so we could smash it before they threw it into the river, which would have killed all the alraune on the southern half of the island. She managed to grab the stuff and throw it back to me, but... poor woman, she never saw it coming. The third illithid blindsided her and cut her throat literally two or three seconds after she threw us the vat," he then said, taking another sip of his coffee and looking up at the sword.
"Gods she was so brave a sword fighter, didn't even care her throat had been cut. While she was gurgling and spitting up blood, she spun around and took the third illithid's head clean off its shoulders and dove at one of those blind aberrants that they often use as minions, running it through as she died. Her husband as you can probably imagine went crazy at the sight of his wife dying right there with no way to stop it. I grabbed our young cleric and dove back into the cavern they'd been hiding in as he went ballistic, and if you've never seen a mage pissed off about something, you don't know what I'm talking about. He threw out some magic so powerful he nearly collapsed the whole cave on us. We waited until the fighting started dying down a bit, because we couldn't go out there in that inferno he was causing, and I saw my best friend's head in the last illithid's hand. I charged at the bastard to buy time for our young cleric to run out past him, because it was just him and two of their minions left. I managed to stab the illithid's shoulder and knock him down and ran out after her, with her carrying that vat of the poison. We ran and ran until we simply had to stop and rest. She was crying her eyes out, but she stayed focused enough to make a cure from the poison, using one of her holy rituals to do it. And as soon as she had it done we got moving again, because we knew that last illithid would be hot on our trail, and soon enough he was. We got about... a league from their village when he caught up to us, but he wasn't alone... no...." Alan paused again, looking up at the weapons hanging above the fireplace for a long moment before looking back to Kylie.
"He had another one of those blind creatures, the Grimlocks if I recall correctly, and he also had a Thoon Hulk. That bastard crashed through the trees like they were twigs, but I knew it was fight or die, so I stood my ground. That poor girl, she took out that last Grimlock, but that fucking Illithid grabbed her while I was busy fighting that Thoon Hulk. I heard her scream in agony and turned my head literally for a second before I was pinned to a tree by that Hulk, one of its big axe hands went through my leg down here, separated what tendons in my knee and leg that it didn't slice through. The illithid though was biting into her head and I drew the sword I'd taken from my friend's wife's body on the way out of the cave before and swung down, cutting that Hulk's arm off that had me pinned right as it swung down with its other one, catching me in the shoulder here. The tree blocked a bit of the blow thankfully and stopped its swing dead as I rammed my spear up into its heart. I had one dagger left on me, and that poor girl, that fucking illithid killed her in as painful a way as he could and ate her brain. So as soon as he dropped her, I threw that dagger as hard as I could and stuck it right through his goddamn throat. And while he was bleeding out, struggling to breathe, I unpinned myself from the tree and hobbled over there to him and I made him suffer for every second he had left. I cut that son of a bitch's arms and legs off piece by piece up until the point he died," Alan said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, a bit of anger very obvious in his voice as he finished.
"After that, using my spear as a crutch, I limped back to the alraune village and gave them the cure that my friends all died for. They administered it while a couple of them helped me down and tended to my wounds. I was half dead when I'd gotten there, but they saved me. Gods... sometimes I wish I'd died too though, because I was the leader of our adventuring group, and I got them all killed. But I know they'd have gladly done it all over again, especially knowing how many people they were saving in the process," Alan finished his story, taking a calming drink of his coffee as the story sunk in to the girls minds.
"So... that's why the alraune revere you so much. I had no idea," Giselle said when he was through, tears in her eyes as Alan nodded.
"Aye, they honor my friends every year, without fail, on the days they died. For two days, they burn their incense and everything and pray for their souls in thanks for making the ultimate sacrifice so that they could live," Alan replied with a nod. "And thus ended my days as an adventurer, because I'd never walk without a limp ever again, and the shoulder here prevents me from swinging a sword or hefting that big old spear anymore, well, lifting them and actually using them like I once did anyway. But I also killed the first Thoon Hulk sighted in Midgar in over two hundred years," Alan went on to say after a few moments, looking to Kylie.
