A DND Adventure: The Bard Festival

Burn it Down

Concurrently as Jake moved towards the mysterious glow, Serana, Todd, and Delvore had noticed the same things. The glow of a fire, but too early for it to be the bonfire, and we're on their way to investigate.

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Delvore, being the furthest north, was able to get eyes on the problem before anyone else. What he saw chilled him to the bone. The flames were no bonfire, it was the town itself being lit ablaze. He saw people running away from the fire and letting it burn further south.

"Who would run and let their home burn?" Delvore thought. He was about to call for buckets to try to soak the next buildings and save the rest of the village, but then he saw why they were running. The village was being attacked. Immediately Delvore pulled his bow from his back and climbed to a higher position. Once on the roof of the nearest building, he got a better look at the attackers. They weren't bandits, nor an Orc raiding party, or any other type of monster he knew of. The attackers seemed to be ordinary people. They were dressed in normal types of clothes, wore no armor, and wielded no weapons.

Though their hands were empty, it didn't lessen the deadly attacks they delt. In fact, the people might have faired better had the attackers used swords instead.

Body parts littered the street behind them before being engulfed in flames. Delvore watched as a large man, probably about twice Delvore's size, was holding two people back at the same time. As he was trying to talk with them, a third person ran and tackled his legs at the knees, snapping them backwards and toppling the man. His body was torn apart in seconds then the attackers continued on. Delvore, realizing he was severely out numbered, chose to run south along the rooftops to escape the carnage.

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Serana was having trouble dodging the legs of everyone running south. The festival had taken a dark turn as someone announced that they were being attacked. Not wanting the fire to spread to the forest past the village, Serana chose to run north to stop these attackers. Unfortunately, running against a tide of people was not a Halflings strong suit.

Finally she had made it past the crowd safely and now had a clear path to the fire. She began running hard, no more of this town would burn if she had anything to say about it. She heard the sound of heavy footsteps behind her, and they were approaching quickly.

"Are you ok?" A deep voice said.

She turned her head and saw a Half-OrcOrc leisurely jogging beside her. She chose to ignore him and picked up her speed. The Half-Orc easily stayed with her without any effort.

"If you are going to fight, I could carry you." He offered. "It seems like we are going to need every warrior we can get."

"Fuck off, I'm not that short!" Serana said angrily.

"I was just offering help." He said as he ran past her.

"Well I don't need your help!" She screamed at his back. He was too far for her words to reach him.

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Todd laughed to himself at the image of the little Halfling running behind him. He could tell that she would be useful in a fight, but she didn't want any help. There was no way Todd was going to run at a Halfling pace, and he chose to get to the fight instead.

As he rounded the final curve he came upon the same scene Delvore had discovered. Blood and gore covered the attackers as they tore through the village's people. The Orc half of him wanted to dive into the enemy and die fighting, but the human half of him spoke with reason and knew that if he died here, no one would know. It would be a meaningless death if there was no one to write a song or stories about him. He estimated the enemies numbers to be around 30, give or take a few, and that was just the ones in front of him. There were many other roads through this village. He turned and began running the other way. If he could help more people escape then that would be how these people could remember him.