The Silly Narrative Continues

 Heck yeah, I'm going to keep this going. Games are still happening! Plus it's keeping mew writing. It might not be great writing, it might not even be good or make sense, but writing it is. Onward!

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From the Journals of Telik, Last of the Sepa tribe

I was sure I was dead. Everyone else had been killed after all, so why not me? I'm still asking myself that, really.

My tribe had managed to hide for a long time in that cave, even as the followers of the mad blood god had slaughtered... just about everyone else, it seemed. But nothing good (or for that matter, just not horrible) lasts forever, and they found us. And they did what they do best. Really, I don't want to go into the details here, the point is that everyone I knew died. I got away for about an hour, and then they found me, and then... things got strange.

I'm still not sure why they saved me. The one who I've learned is called Yolig tried to explain in his own way, talking about singing stones and breaking the bright walls. It's all very mystical and all very confusing. 

But here I am, alive, and in the company of giant creatures from the deep caverns. I'm sure they'll eat me eventually, but until then, we've got to "find the swamp friends" whatever that means.

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What it meant, it turned out, was sneaking into some ancient ruins, where the "swamp friends" were said to live. Yolig tried to explain to Telik (in his own way) that she'd have to prove to them that she was worthy of "the gifts of the swamp"

She followed after one of the other troggoths, feeling very uncertain.

Of course the ruins were haunted. The real challenge would have been finding ruins that weren't. The risen spirits in these particular ruins were not happy at being disturbed. Risen spirits never are.

One particular spirit holding a bell drifted through the crumbling wall until it met the troggoth guarding Telik, and with its strange bell, it dealt him a fearsome wound.

Yolig found himself fighting strange ghosts that seemed part man, part horse. They stalked through the ruins, holding long glaives, so Yolig started thinking of them as "spiky horse ghosts".

Luckily for all of them, the ghosts of various kinds still responded to being beaten up with clubs and boulders in the same way that most non ghosts did.

That is, until the leader of the spirits arrived. Drifting on a wave of cold horror, and bearing an executioner's axe, it felled the troggoth guarding Telik with a single sweeping blow.

Telik did the wisest thing and ran, once again proving her worth to Yolig

"Tiny one! Say the good words! Make the swamp friends come!" Yolig bellowed, which was pretty much the only way he talked. With that, he charged the axe-ghost, he favorite boulder held high.

Telik wanted to shout back that she had no idea what he was talking about, that she didn't know any words, good or otherwise, but that didn't seem like a path to survival right now. Nothing did.

But she had to do something. For some reason, her mind went back to an old rhyme, a nursery rhyme really, that her father once told her, something involving mice and cats. She said it. Nothing happened, and she could hear Yolig yelling in pain. 

With nothing left to lose, and more spirits closing, she shut her eyes, and shouted it as loud as she could.

What followed was not what she expected. There was an overpowering smell of rotting fish, for one. That was unexpected. And there were the swamp friends, popping out of the strange plant that she hadn't even really noticed.,.

Yolig was barely hanging on, his stony hide bleeding from several deep wounds, but he grinned hugely and said "Yes, good! Olvarn will be pleased!"

The swamp troggoths lumbered into battle, and to Yolig's rescue. At least, that's what they seemed to be doing at first. Telik was also caught off guard by what happened next. The troggoths opened their mouths as if for a mighty roar, and then instead.... they vomited. Profusely. All over the ghost.

It worked. Whether the spirit was truly slain, or just so profoundly humiliated that it fled the world of the living, Telik would never be sure. But it was gone, either way. They had won.

Telik could only wonder at what might come next.

A Little Narrative Game and a Silly Goal

 Well, it's been a bit again. The world is still a mess, so I'm messing about with tiny people because that's what I've got to do to keep myself busy for now. 

So, this will be a battle report of sorts, and it's for Age of Sigmar, and this one... has a story (oh no). I've got a goal, you see. I'm going to be putting up a series of these as me and my friend who is part of my quarantine bubble work together to have some fun and tell a story through... tiny figures. I can't promise it will be good, the painting will definitely not be good, and the story will be about as far from canon as you can get. It will be, and I mean this, extremely silly.

So, let's start! Our story begins in the dang old Age of Chaos, in the Realm of Ghur, with our heroes... the troggoths.

"The story is in the stone and the stone is the story". That's what Yolig knew even before the great dig up began. He and the other boys, they weren't sure where they were digging to, or why, but the stone was telling them it was the right idea. Olvarn, the king, who had lived longer and lived deeper than any other troggoth Yolig knew, he could hear the stories the stones were saying as clear as a drop of water in a still pool. They said "go up, find the last of the little ones in the caves where the sun can see, and keep them safe. That one is a good one. They will help you, good Troggoths. They will help you find the door to heaven, and you will tear it out of the ground".

 There was more to it than that, that was just the part that Yolig could hear. Olvarn heard it all, and he sang back to the stones as they dug. That's why he was the king.

Soon they came out into a cave where the sun could see them. The sun wasn't a friendly thing, but for the stones they would face it. And when they found those caves, where the sun could look in edgeways and see them, Yolig was the second one through, standing behind Olvarn as the huge king watched, and grinned. There below them were the mad warriors of the mad god, and there was the last of the little ones. The stones were silent now, but that was because they didn't need to say anything more. The troggoths knew what they had to do.

The mad warriors were quick, of course, as mad warriors usually are. They charged in, frothing and screaming about various things that Yolig couldn't really follow. They surrounded the little one, though, and that was a problem.

And there were quite a few of them too. Yolig and his brothers thought about charging in and stomping them into the ground, but the stones didn't seem to like the idea just yet, so they waited. 

The king, on the other hand, had spotted the strange crazed beast, sneaking up between some cave pines and cave coral (troggoths aren't known for naming things with any originality). The beast growled out something about skulls, and Olvarn, giving this statement the full consideration it deserved, bashed the beast's skull in. The stones seemed to approve of that.

The followers of the mad god had surrounded a grave site. Even Yolig knew that was a bad idea, and the raging spirit that awoke and slew two of the warriors was just further proof that you should never mess with raging spirits.

Yolig had to admit later that he'd spent a little too much time thinking and to little time listening, because when he looked up a human with an axe was trying to disembowel him. Luckily, his thick skin saved him from getting anything more than a deep scratch, and he and his brothers laid about themselves with club and boulder

It was quite effective. The lone survivor fled the field, or in this case, the cave.

The other mad warriors were feeling a bit less mad now, as they tried to escape with their prize. And escape they might have, as Yolig had started thinking again, and only made it as far as the grave stones. King Olvarn was a better thinker, and had already thought out a solution: He crushed one of the warriors in his hand, and smashed the rest to pieces. Not elegant, but it was the kind of solution that the stones liked.

He looked down, and saw the last of the little ones. They seemed concerned, even after Yolig told them "We not eat!" which should have allayed any concerns. But they had done right, as good Troggoths should, and now, the story would continue.

(So, that's that! You may notice that the battle was a little... one sided. That may have been on purpose, for this post. The next one should be a bit more even.)