Private Tales Caves and Blades

[Sung Na]

Sung Na, warlord of his home province back east, was in Arethil. A man of ambition, aggressive warfare, brutal, straightforward and effective, as well as cunning, manipulative and malicious. He was not what many people would call a good man, but he wasn’t necessarily evil by most standards either. He wore the best armor that his people had to offer, a chest and backplate, with mountain pattern armor everywhere else, basically eastern brigandine armor. He had in his left hand, facing backward and blade along his forearm in a comfortable and non-aggressive grip, a podao, a heavy saber with a handle as long as the blade, and reaching a total length of three feet. At his hip was a long dagger.

He strode through the dark caves that he had fallen into. He had sought shelter in one about an hour beforehand, before falling into a deeper cavern with no immediate exit. With no one around to help him and no one aware of his whereabouts, he had to find his own way out, and so he strode deeper into the caves in hopes of finding an exit. He was not aware of the patrolling soldiers that were soon to cross his path. Soldiers belonging to Zathria At’Arel. It was only a matter of time before they descended upon the perceived intruder.

(You go ahead and describe how they attack/approach him. You know how they’ll behave and what the soldiers are like.)

 

[Zathria At'Arel]

Zathria frequently took patrols out into the underrealm, and today it was another of the same. With a squadron of drow under her command, the weapon master and her forces crept quietly through the tunnels. A mix of handbows, swords, bucklers, and even a pair of javelin were the tools at their disposal.

They moved in pitch darkness, their vision in the dark as clear as most during the day. As quietly as the soldiers ahead might have moved, the drow knew these tunnels well. The slightest sounds alerted them to what was coming.

With silent hand gestures, she signaled for the drow to set up an ambush point, watching the soldiers go by. Poisoned arrows would be the first to strike. With another silent signal, the attack began. Whether they would wipe out all the humans or capture some for slaves remained to be seen.

With her own swords in hand, Zathria leapt from the darkness, hacking down at one of the soldiers walking by before spinning into a thrust against another. She was efficient, and all in the complete darkness.

 

[Sung Na]

There was only four total soldiers, plus him. And thanks to his life,img training, often while wearing a blindfold, he was just as proficient in the dark as he was in the day, even without his sight. He was swift to attack, the sound of a growling tiger leaving his throat as he cut one of her soldiers in half at the waist as his blade arced, swift, broad and merciless. The arrows weren’t too useful thanks to his soldier’s armor and they themselves proved a little more difficult to defeat than she’d think. Their armor, almost entirely mail and mountain pattern, did well against her blades, and their own jian swords swept forth with intent to kill, while the remaining two rushed in to help.

His eastern training had proved to be superior to that of the confident, unprepared soldiers, and soon only a few were left standing. His podao was drenched in drow blood, though he had no clue who or what his attackers were. He let loose the growl again, and sped toward the rest of the soldiers, mercy being far from his mind.

 

[Zathria At'Arel]

Zathria moved quickly in the dark and though she saw two of her soldiers fall under the front man's blade, she was undeterred. They were just the males after all. Their lives were intended for dying anyway. The females, trained at the academies, faired much better.

While some of her soldiers engaged the last two soldiers of the surfacer, Zathria closed with the man in the lead. He seemed the most competent of the group and she fell upon him quickly.

As he rushed forward, her soldiers moved, falling back before he could reach them. Zathria slashed low with her left sword first, swinging at the back of the knee where armor would be weakest.

 

[Sung Na]

Swift in his response he leapt into a swift turning back kick aimed at her head. Followed up swiftly with a low leg sweep and simultaneous sideways cut at her hip. It didn't stop there, his barrage of blows never ceased, and when blocked, he simply changed the direction of his attack, and kept going. The tigerlike growls continuously being sounded, ferocious and hungry for blood. His men were hardly incompetent though, and while they were slain eventually, they took a life or two themselves before falling. Clearly, they were professional soldiers, and they would die before they allowed themselves to be captured. And the endless aggression of their leader, who was clearly visible to them in the dark, was not from any known place on the continent, their strange armour and weapons were the first clue. The second was their fightning style, they kept themselves in a lower stance than any other on the continent, their legs often being bent at nintey degrees or something close to it, letting them put a lot of leg strength into their attacks, which was seen to be substantial when they saw how high he had just jumped, putting his foot at a high enough altitude to meet the woman's face.

The tasseled helm atop his head was open faced, letting his furious expression be seen, as his open maw continued to let loose those growls that sounded so much like a big cat. Until he said something in a clearly foreign language, "Sǐ!"

The curved blade of his podao let loose broad, swift, vicious arcs, all intending to kill everyone around him.

 

[Zathria At'Arel]

Zathria was unperturbed. He may have leapt over her first strike, but she had a second blade for just this reason, and it hadn't been striking. As his leg swung around, she simply swept the blade up, smashing into the exposed limb where the skirt armor wasn't low enough to protect and the boot wasn't high enough. It would serve to both block his strike and also cause damage. At worst (for her) it would interrupt his momentum and prevent him from following through on the other sweep and slash but at best it would cripple him.

Either way, Zathria had already stepped back from whatever follow up strikes he might manage to unleash and any sweep at her legs or slash at her hips would find nothing but air as he went on the offensive. She simply backed off.

She could see that five of her drow were still alive and unwounded when the foreigners were finally finished, but she waved them off to stand at a distance as only this man was left. That wasn't because she was an honorable fighter, but because she had an idea of her own.

She let him keep swinging. And swinging. And swinging. His vicious energy was designed to kill with every strike, but the weapon master had been training soldiers for nearly as long as this one had been alive. Skilled as he may have been, an elf would always have the advantage of years and experience.

She evaded his strikes with precision. He maneuvered his thrusts and ripostes to flow from one into the other, but the drow was simply far more lithe and agile than he was. Not to mention her two swords to his one. She didn't meet his blows power for power, but simply worked his momentum against him in parrying or redirecting when she couldn't dodge outright.

She spoke up in her own tongue a moment later, saying something he wouldn't understand to the other soldiers gathered nearby. He might almost get the impression that she was giving a lesson while locked in deadly combat.

She didn't know what the man said, but neither would have the chance to inquire of the other before something would draw everyone's attention away from the duel.

A sound emerged from down the tunnel. A low rumble that Zathria recognized well. She didn't tear all her attention away from the man in case he continued to attack, but she immediately began giving orders to the soldiers who seemed to lose all interest in the humans as they prepared for what was coming.

The sound was one they knew well. It was an eight legged creature with scales and spines running its body. An entire platoon would have been more appropriate to duel a creature of this size, but a half dozen soldiers was what Zathria had.

 

[Sung Na]

He didn’t seem to notice the injury, even if he was less experienced, he was definitely much tougher than she’d think, he didn’t even flinch as blood poured from his leg, he just kept going. He realized that she wasn’t going to be hurt by continuous attacks, so he closed the distance very rapidly and basically picked her up by her wrist and elbow, threatening to break the arm as he slammed her full force into the ground, immediately followed up with a chop down towards her head. She would undoubtedly dodge this, but the breath would be knocked from her and her arm hurt, then the spider showed up. Fun.

“Yaoguai.” He said calmly, before dropping into mabu, with his legs at ninety degree angles and his sword high to protect his head. He was not in the mood to deal with this monster for long.

 

[Zathria At'Arel]

Zathria felt his hand grasp around her wrist and she poured magical energy into herself, resisting the slam and lessening the impact. Not that it didn't hurt, but it was less detrimental than a fracture inducing slam. The downward hack was evaded as she rolled to the side, a slash of her sword forcing him to release his grip or lose the arm while simultaneously preventing the downward blow connecting.

Her attention, however, was now moved more toward the creature that approached. It tore into the cavern with a guttural roar, charging forward at both Zathria and Sung Na.

With a swipe of one of its massive claws, it tried to fell the warrior. Zathria darted aside, clearing out of its way as she tried to gain higher ground on one of the ledges lining the caves from above.

 

[Sung Na]

Her blade never would have cut through the pate gauntlet around his forearm, but he released her anyway at the appearance of the huge spider, whom he called “yaoguai”. He sped forward with impressive speed for a human, almost elven speed though not quite, and dodging its legs he dove between them and cut one of its eight legs out from under it. It’s exoskeleton was cut quite cleanly by the masterfully made podao blade. And he didn’t stop there. Dodging retaliation, he dove back the way he cam and cut up across it’s face, cutting through two of its eight eyes. He remained mobile, impossible to hit for such a large creature, a blur of motion nothing else. And he was out for blood. First he’d take care of the spider and swiftly butcher her remaining men before finishing her off. Of course, this wasn’t the only thing that could happen, but that was his plan.

 

[Zathria At'Arel]

It was good that he had released her arm because dark steel blades combined with magically enhanced strength could cleave through all but enchanted armors.

Without further postponement, she gave directions to her soldiers to attack. The creature's hide was thick and even heavy strikes had difficulty piercing the hardened spine.

For her part, Zathria went high. She dropped in from above, landing on the creature's back. With deft agility she hacked down on the creature, plunging one sword into flesh as the other one hacked down with power that would have broken a conventional blade. Instead, it opened a gash into the creature and blood poured free.

The other drow had taken up positions and hurled javelin and dart into the creature, causing it to reel back and expose its belly.

 

[Sung Na]

He took the opportunity to leave. After having left it with only seven operable legs and six usable eyes, he left, taking the heads of the drow fallen, and the bodies of his comrades with him as he left. But he would be back, oh he’d be back with vengeance. Her people would know the true meaning of terror by the time he was done with them.

So he managed to find his way to the surface, and marked the cave by cutting a character of his language into a tree, before bringing his dead comrades further out. He was however, exhausted from having dragged four dead bodies through the caves. But, fighting through the exhaustion, he built and lit a large fire. A few weeks later, he was with his armies again, the four men buried, and riders sent out in search of his brother, it was time to make peace with him.

Sung Chei and Sung Lin were to be found.