I write this story as a clarification of sorts. I have heard many stories floating around about what happened one fateful day at Orakken, and I want to set the record straight. I hope you'll forgive me if I point out seemingly insignificant details, but it is all in the interests of keeping good history. And please, if you as the reader have something to add onto this account, be sure to let me know.
With that said, I have to be honest. Most of you probably have no idea what
or where Orakken is, and that's understandable. Orakken is a little territory
on the corner of Kincora that is currently in dispute. It is claimed by Kincora,
Avendale, and two different duchies of Evendarr, with neither of them being
Ravenholt. I mention the fact that neither duchy is Ravenholt because it leads
to an interesting oddity in my story. Even though Ravenholt seems to be the
only place that has no interest in Orakken, most of the adventurers mentioned
in my story are prominent heroes of Ravenholt.
Before I get into that, though, let me start from the beginning. A gathering
was called for in Orakken because some dwarves were having a bit of trouble.
It seemed that they had angered some fire creatures, and the fire creatures
were now attacking the dwarves. Not knowing what to do, the dwarves did what
anyone in their situation would have done, they called for adventurers.
Now, I do not know how many adventurers were called for, but I know that somewhere
around thirty showed up, perhaps a few more. Significant amongst these thirty
was the fact that almost the entire Court of Cumberland and almost the entire
Court of Westmarch from Ravenholt both showed up. That was the major reason
why there were so many citizens of Ravenholt in Orakken on that particular day.
I am not sure why the entire Court of Westmarch decided to show up, except that
I believe that they have some type of connections in Kincora. Also, I heard
that Baron Jayson Askani of Westmarch had visited Orakken once before, and knew
something about the fire creatures that were plaguing the dwarves. As for the
reason Cumberland was there, I think it was to help their court merchant, Squire
Amra, establish new trade routes.
The early part of the day went fairly well. There was some trouble with ogres
and trolls, but nothing heroes of Ravenholt couldn't handle. It was the latter
part of the day, though, when trouble really began to rear its ugly head. Some
elves that lived in the nearby forest showed up, and they too had problems with
the dwarves. However, the dwarves were not their primary concern. Of greater
concern to them was the fact that sacred ground in their forest had been trampled,
and they were having a werewolf problem. Because they didn't trust non-elves
to deal with the werewolves, a group of elves had to be assembled to root out
the werewolves.
It was a fairly impressive group, too. It was organized by Baron Askani, and
included Brentorian and his wife whose name I unfortunately do not recall, Sir
Antro, Gail Willowshire, myself, and two others who fought valiantly but whose
names currently escape my memory. We fought through several waves of werewolves,
and eventually made our way to the den mother. By this time, a heavy rain was
falling in the forest and it made fighting very treacherous. Unfortunately for
us, the wolf was more comfortable on her feet than we were, and so she bolted.
Baron Askani chased after her, but was knocked down. I stopped to heal Baron
Askani while Sir Anthro chased the wolf. Before I could even get a spell ready,
though, Brentorian was standing over Baron Askani, healing him. Being relieved
of that duty, then, I chased after the wolf with Sir Anthro. We did manage to
gain ground on the wolf, but I then realized that even if we caught it, we couldn't
really do anything, given the ease with which it had taken down Baron Askani.
Fortunately, something that might be called a miracle occurred. For some reason,
the wolf turned around and charged us. We managed to get out of the way, and
it kept running back towards everyone else. Now able to fight it with a full
group, we took it down with relative ease.
Of course, all that goes well does not necessarily end well. It turned out that
we had taken out a powerful wolf, but not the wolf we were looking for. The
werewolf who was causing all the trouble in the forest was still on the loose.
Worse yet, it was now mad at us. And that brings me to the significant portion
of my story.
It was still raining about an hour later as I sat around in the Westmarch cabin,
chatting it up and not really thinking that anything else was going to attack
us that day. And of course, I was wrong. Some undead came clawing on the door
of our cabin, but we had a ward up, and so they left us alone. We didn't hear
from them again for a few minutes, but then Brentorian arrived at our cabin,
telling us that the undead had just taken down everybody in Cumberland.
Along with Baron Askani, Chester Kapel, and some other fighter types, I charged
out of the cabin to help them go help Cumberland. Just as we crossed onto the
main field, we were assaulted by the undead. They were swinging for paralyze,
and so we didn't last long. All the fighters got paralyzed or dropped, and I
made a beeline back to the Westmarch cabin to get more help.
Now, this is a major area of controversy in this story. There are two alternate
claims advanced as to what happened at this juncture, and I am going to go over
both of those alternate theories before I discuss what really happened from
my perspective.
The first alternate scenario holds that the monsters suddenly became weakened,
thus allowing us to easily defeat all of them. If this happened, I did not notice
it. The monsters I originally fought were strong, and the monsters I fought
after that juncture were strong. I think this theory takes away credit from
the true heroes who really saved the day.
The second theory holds that Brentorian saved everyone, and essentially beat
back the monsters by himself. Now, I do not want to lie here, Brentorian was
certainly a major part of the reason we won the fight. However, this theory
seems to imply that Brentorian was the only reason we won the fight, and this
is simply not true.
As a matter of fact, if I had to point to one person who I would say was the
biggest factor in us winning the fight, it would be Baroness Marina, the weasel.
She led the second charge of Westmarch people, consisting mainly of healers
and almost no fighters. However, it worked because the healers were able to
use their harm and destroy undead spells to great effectiveness, and beat back
the undead for long enough to get out and heal the fighters. We were then able
to fight our way over to Cumberland, where we discovered that most of them were
okay, as they had been merely paralyzed, and not flat-out taken down.
The rest of the night saw an ongoing conflict with the undead, including the
werewolf lord himself. I learned a lot of information from talking to Gail Willowshire,
and fortunately we both managed to keep ourselves alive. I say fortunately because
for a while it looked as if we would both be killed because of being elven.
After all, the werewolf lord was out for elf blood, particularly the blood of
those who killed the den mother, which of course was us too.
As luck would have it, though, the heroes of Ravenholt managed to hold out.
We all left sometime around ten o'clock or so, and I suspect that if we had
tried to hold out much longer, we would have had a lot of heroes end up in the
earth circle, if you know what I mean.
Well, I hope that story provides some account of what happened in Orakken. It
is not complete by any means, as I left out information regarding the trolls
and ogres, and I left out crucial bits about the fire beings, and I am sure
there was a lot of other stuff I missed as well. However, as a clarification
it should suit its purpose. And if it teaches you one lesson, let it be this:
elves should beware the land of Orakken, because the werewolf lord still prowls
the night.
Scribed by Seronia on the 7th day of June in the year 602.