Nebrion's Quest

Jean Dark was a little more comfortable wearing her new armor despite it pinching and rubbing in various places. She liked the fact that she was no longer naked. She did look good in it despite her being a lizard -- woman. Further, despite her altered appearance, I knew she wanted me. However, our lizard appearance and physiology were making physical manifestation of that desire difficult.

Be that as it may, we were making our way through these mines. We were looking for the wizard who transformed us to lizard people. I hoped that we could find this individual before long and retrieve our things. We would have to make due with the weapons we have scrounged. Jean had the 'Orc Slayer' that I gave her. This helped our situation greatly.

We were deep in these mines, and there were many creatures lurking in the shadows. As we explored the caverns, we tried to fulfill Nebrion's quest. That is, with each orc and monster killed, there was one less monster that could terrorize the city. Thus, our actions helped aid the city.

This portion of the quest was not important to me, as I was in it for the treasure. Thus, I quickly noticed that orcs carry little treasure. With each monster, I gathered in some more arrows, but not much else. Occasionally, an orc chieftain would have something special. Mostly, they just had little trinkets with almost no value. Every now and then, we would encounter an orc shaman who would have scrolls that our sorcerer, Glaf Hellion, could use. However, mostly we would gather a gold piece here, a gold ring there...

What upset me most about the situation was that I had to lead the way. At various places, there were traps. None of the others had the talent and skill to spot these. Thus, it was my job to make sure the way was clear.

In addition, I had to scout out orc locations and numbers. Thus, I was doing valuable reconnaissance work. This allowed our fighters to have a chance against the monsters. After each encounter, each member of the team would search the corpses for treasure.

Naturally, I did not complain about doing most of the work and not getting most of the reward. That is, what reward was to be found. I am not that type of person. I just did my job keeping everyone safe. Even though I did not join the group for some grandiose goal of helping people, I kept my displeasure to myself. I never mentioned my lack of reward to the team.

Nevertheless, I am here to tell the story of our adventure rather than discuss how unfairly the party treated me in the mines.

While deep in the mines, I did discover the living quarters of some of the orcs. We found a few trinkets in these small huts. To me it seemed that these were rewards for some action on their part. Orcs do not generally pillage corpses. They eat them sure, but they do not rob them of treasure. Thus, why would they have adventurer items?

From the adventurer items, we managed to armor many of our party. These items I graciously gave to the other members the items that I purloined from these huts. In fact, I obtained my dark armor from this area. It gave me some extra protection without compromising my sneaking skills. It was not much, but it was something.

We encountered several groups of orcs while trying to extricate ourselves from the mines. I judiciously used my arrows since my supply was spotty. I would take some arrows from corpses and occasionally from bow wielding orcs. Every now and again, I would retrieve some of my own arrows from dead orcs. This would not happen often, as they would be difficult to retrieve.

The mines were dank and dark. There was danger at every turn, and we worked our way through the tunnels. We cleaned out tunnel after tunnel from the monsters that may have been plaguing the town. We wound our way upward towards the exit of the mines. At least, I hoped that was what we were doing.

We wandered the mines for quite a long time. It could have been days. I just kept pressing us onward. Many orcs lost their lives as we wound our way out. Eventually, we found ourselves at a sturdy wooden door. I noticed a small light emanating from the other side of the door. Perhaps we were at the end of our journey.

We took our normal precautions. This means that I snuck into the room and looked around. This was a little more difficult as the room glowed. Glowing pits of molten lava surrounded the orcish dungeon. Clearly, much suffering had occurred in that room. However, I managed to stay in the shadows and was not spotted by the orcs that were guarding the room.

It appeared that we would not be free yet. We were going to have to fight our way through an orcish dungeon. There would be various well-armed creatures. With orcs, it is difficult to predict what type of thing goes on in their dungeons. We were going to have to fight our way out of this dungeon.

There was trouble too. I tried to return to our party, but it would not let me back through. I could not open the door behind me. Therefore, I had to wait and hope the team would figure out what had happened.

After what seemed like hours, the rest of the group joined me in the dungeon. It did make sense that prisoners should not be able to find their way into the mines. Thus, they had a one-way door at this point.

When the party joined me, they were ready to fight. Thus, we continued our battle with the monsters who had been plaguing Nebrion and the city.