Shadowmaze

A hired hand is not a friend and is not family, and every farmer who has ever taken one on knows the arithmetic of it, even if he does not know the word. You pay him by the day. You feed him. If he is any good you keep him through harvest…

I woke up with a screaming headache in a room packed with mongrelmen and three adventurers. They were negotiating looting the body of a fallen comrade. Once dragged into the room by a mongrelman, the body was Irulan. I was too late. She'd…

On a farm, nothing is wasted. That is not a sentiment, it is a fact about how a farm stays solvent. The ox that goes down in the traces is butchered before it turns, and the parts nobody will eat go to the dogs, and the parts the dogs…

The card this morning was the four of swords, reversed. Feeling stuck or burned out from a misuse of resources or energy. Slight delay in heading out due to first making a new rope ladder, and then opening the door to see pitch black skies…

Every farm hand is taught the same thing about a gap in a hedge, which is that you stand in it. The hedge does the work everywhere else. The gap is the only place anything gets through, and a man with his arms out fills most of a gap, so…

I whacked one of the zombies that wasn't running, and it's wobbling, but still up. It and the other one went for Anister again, but both missed as he clung to the back of the statue. Anister dropped it, but it got back up. Bancroft hit it,…

Every animal that works a farm will run from something, once. A horse that has never shied in its life will shy at a paper sack caught in a hedge, and when it goes, it does not go anywhere in particular. It just goes, ears flat, blind, and…

The tarot card I pulled this morning was the five of pentacles, comfort in companionship. Is this supposed to make up for the lack of treasure to get me out of this moldy hole? Clarisse finally made an appearance. Anister said it was going…

There is a thing every farm child learns before he learns his letters, and it is this: you do not dress a carcass near the house. You take it off a ways, downwind, and you bury the offal deep, because blood carries. A gut-pile left in the…

Card this morning was the hierophant, my favorite card because it's associated with prophecy. Follow the rules, but turn a blind eye to the ones that don't make sense. Mazzah's spell found the two swords were not magical, so not much of a…

Bancroft's mother had a saying, and she came by it the hard way: more men are killed by the work than by the beast. A bull gores one man in ten years. The hayloft, the well rope, the cart that slips its chock -- those take somebody every…

Tarot card this morning was 8 of wands – stay on your toes. Seems apt, given the circumstances. I was previously separated from the party and kept trying to lose the group of 8-legs following me. I finally managed it, then heard the…

There is a kind of helplessness a farmer knows. A calf comes wrong in the night, breech, and you have your arm in to the shoulder and you can feel the life in there and you cannot turn it, and all your strength is worth nothing because the…

They were three days north of Helix, up where the land begins to climb toward the mountains, when the stranger walked into the firelight. Bancroft's first clear thought was that the mace had been right about the north again. His second was…

Vrak and I headed back to the dungeon to try to get the diamond in the burial alcove. If we can evade the grey ooze. Maybe it wandered off. Nope. Bastard was hiding on the ceiling and started moving towards us. We ran down a hallway,…

I said I would go back. You'll have read me say it. I am a man of my word -- which is, I notice now, the only thing I was ever actually paid in.

Not having had any action in a while, I went out to the barrows with the four new guys, after a day of one of them making and selling a chest, and me whipping up a rope ladder. I gave that to Vrak to carry. We went down the main entrance.…

Thrain talked all the way to the maze.

Morning card was the Queen of Swords reversed – too self critical, too aloof, too direct. Bancroft said he needed to hand the mace off to a priest in some ruin in the north. So much for magic to help us in the barrows. We geared up and…

He wrapped the mace in a horse blanket the night they got back, and tied it shut, and set it on a chair across the room as far from his bedroll as the room allowed, and he still woke in the night with the feeling of being looked at. In the…

He had knelt down in the ashes the night before with nothing in him but the sorry, and the god had not answered, and he had stayed on his knees anyway because that is what you do when you have done a thing you cannot undo. You do not get…

The rain started in the night and it was still going in the morning, the kind that doesn't mean to stop. Bancroft heard it on the shutters before he was properly awake. He lay there a while and listened to it and thought, without any heat…

The last twenty minutes of the dig went like the first three hours had gone, which was to say it went slow and steady and without anyone dying. Bancroft worked the trench with Irulan. Anister kept the watch above. Clarice was not with them…

Bancroft came up the moor road late, a half-hour after the others, because the cobbler in Helix had needed an extra hour to put the new sole on the left boot and Bancroft was not going to dig in a wet boot if he could help it. By the time…

They went back in the morning because no one could think of anything else to do.

The first thing Riyou did was throw fire.

Bancroft got to Helix three days behind the others. The disease from the Huecuva had taken longer to shake than the priests of St. Ygg had promised, and by the time he walked through the gates he was light on coin, heavy on fatigue, and…

Four new faces at the entrance to the barrow. Bancroft sized them up the way his father had sized up hired hands at harvest -- which ones would last the day, which ones would wander off, which ones would break something expensive. The…

We headed out to the skull door barrow (D10). As soon as I opened the door, a stack of skeleton heads tumbled loudly down the stairs. Somebody's homemade alarm. I saw torch light at the bottom of the stairs, and let the others know. Nobody…

The necromancer fled north through the barrow, and the cleric followed.

Bancroft and I chased the necromancer up the hallway to the north. Then Bancroft's light spell died and I heard the necromancer cast a spell to the south, then it hit me. I yelled at Bancroft that this was his damned mission from god I was…

Nine of them at the skull door. Four who had been here before, five who hadn't. The five were men from the Gray Company -- Gallo, Larwyn, Tolm, Tarsil, and Kholix the torchbearer -- and they stood at the entrance with the expression of…

We went through the no longer secret door, which is now disabled, by levering it open with a crowbar. We checked the statue room to the south, now blessedly rat free. Bancroft insisted in climbing down the pit for some reason, and found a…

The sword was right there. You could see it glowing from across the room -- white, steady, the kind of light that says valuable in a language anyone can read. All we had to do was cross a room full of animated stone lizardmen, climb a…

The next day, I got together with a new group from the Grey Company after getting myself checked out by a St. Ygg priest for piece of mind. An elf mage, Serie, and four newbies: Pippin (halfling), Thrain (dwarf), Caleb (human), and Vrak…

Bancroft was lying on the stone floor.

Seacrock and I rounded the corner, charging after Riyou's kidnappers. Seacrock was unable to put the necromancer or the mongrel to sleep. The mongrel ran off carrying Riyou, who started to struggle. As the mongrel ran out of sight, I saw…

On the way out the barrow, we were confronted by another adventuring group of 9 people with slings, insinuating we were wounded and had treasure to steal. Bancroft gave them the demanded 5 gold and urged us to listen to wisdom. Seacrock…

Four people walked into the Brazen Strumpet the night before. A human, a dwarf, a half-orc, and a halfling -- new to town, down on their luck, the kind of people who end up in Helix when the road runs out somewhere else. They arrived…

Cade and I had been standing outside the barrow for a while. Which, strictly speaking, put us on the right side of things -- fresh air, no immediate monsters, exit readily accessible. Our employers were on the other side of a sealed stone…

Roderick gave me a dagger to pop the door open before the acid burned the mechanism out. I yelled at Vorn and Cade to help open the door the rest of the way, after I got it open 6 inches by ratcheting the gears with the dagger. They whined…

I drew the 8 of swords this morning: all tangled up, unable to see clearly. Now I have to figure out what we're tangled up in that we're not seeing clearly. Riyou wandered off again, so we inspected the hirelings presenting themselves.…

The morning was cold and gray in Helix. Bancroft woke early, already thinking about the barrows.

One scorpion tried to hit a statue, but just scraped it. Bancroft ran to the slab and threw the other bowl of gems on top of the first scorpion. The statue next to me hit me. The other statue went for Bancroft, not the scorpion with the…

Aura and I discussed our brilliant plan to shoot the book with an arrow with a rope attached, and pull the rope with gloves on, so we weren't actually touching the book or anything attached to the book. Pulling the book on the rope worked,…

The first blow that day came with the ordinary violence of the barrowmaze--bloody, sudden, and oddly intimate. Bancroft planted his feet, cursing his missing shield, and brought his sword down across a shambling zombie's shoulder. The…

The morning sun cast long shadows across Helix as Bancroft made his way through the town's winding streets, his mind turning over an intriguing conversation from the previous evening. He had encountered a small goblin wizard--scarred and…

The morning after their devastating encounter with the mimics found the survivors nursing both wounds and wounded pride. Druidly's absence hung over them like a shroud, but the barrowmaze waited for no one's grief. Bancroft had managed to…

The morning found their company diminished but determined. Druidly, the half-orc wizard whose arcane studies had served them well, shouldered his pack with the quiet confidence of one who had mastered the mysteries of sleep and flame. "The…

Bancroft staggered through Helix's gates like a man touched by plague, his once-proud bearing reduced to a shambling gait. Yellow mold clung to his skin in sickly patches, and his head bore fresh dents from their harrowing escape. Most…

The shadowmaze had claimed its victims, and now it hungered for more.

Bancroft and his friends searched the area once the strangers had left. One of the nearby rooms had a table with three polished skulls sitting on top -- very strange decor. Druidly thought they might be magical, so the party kept them. A…

Bancroft stood atop the barrow and looked down upon the tilled earth with satisfaction. Weeks of effort to uncover a fresh barrow had finally paid off: the door had been uncovered, revealing a chamber with four sarcophagi and many giant…

Bancroft stood atop the barrow and watched his friends dig. Someone had borrowed his shovel and there were not enough to go around, so he kept watch. It was almost like watching crops grow -- slow and steady. Occasionally a frog, scorpion,…

Wyz the smart goblin and a dozen of his closest friends lined up for the barrowmaze, enduring the cold rain. In point of fact, only two of them were very close, the rest were near strangers. But he'd been watching them; choosing them…

Wyz the goblin waited by the side of the road, wringing his hands. His friends had left for the barrowmaze that morning as many aspiring adventurers did. That was hours ago. Now the slow trudge of discouraged feet returning to town rang…

Our group went out to the barrowmaze. Two of my friends, Sidney and Khezzean, stayed to dig; Xanrion the haberdasher and I went to take a closer look at a tomb where others had found a pair of nice vases. That tomb contained a wicker frame…

Bancroft and Darmek queued for the barrowmaze with about eight in their group. The day began poorly: they were ambushed by six giant frogs before reaching the barrows. The party ran; three frogs pursued, then only one. They managed to kill…

The trip to the barrowmaze began on a solemn note: the party had lost friends in one of the barrows and needed to retrieve valuables from their bodies. The bodies themselves were not where the friends had fallen; something had dragged them…