Stone Walls: Ancient and Primitive / In Character Discussion / Forums (2024)

"Oof! Begging your pardon, milord!" Luther stepped back from the armoured man, brushing himself off. "Oh, Eight blessings, what a coincidence!" he cried, noting Johannes' armour and the sword at his hip. "We need your help, milord! Sea monsters!" Luther dashed off, a few steps ahead.

"Sea monsters?" Johannes had muttered to himself skeptically. He loosened his sword belt. Following off after a "citizen in trouble" in Lowtown could be a dangerous prospect, especially for a Flame or a Knight. An ambush was more than likely, and so it was a great surprise when, indeed, "Sea monsters" turned out to be an apt description.

It wasn't an hour later the calls for the fire brigade were heard all over Laketown, and a man walked away from a fishery consumed in cleansing fire, his resolve hardened.

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"Can you stop yanking on my arm? I'm coming." she replied, pulling her hand away, but giving him a look of concern. "Just tell me what it is I'm coming towards."

Three more steps and her boot landed with a splash, and "it" was made obvious. The streets nearest Lake Haldmont were slowly filling with water, and where she stood, it was already ankle deep. A handful of locals, those with homes or businesses nearby, thought Sika, had already cobbled together some shoddy barricades, trying to prevent as much damage as they could, but it was obvious they were struggling. She tossed aside her cloak, and began dragging sandbags to shore up the barricades as quickly as she could.

"The gods are good!" cried Sika upon seeing Malachi and Lomir, who quickly realized the problem, and began sandbagging on their own. It wasn't long before the flooding had slowed an appreciable amount. "So glad for your aid." Sika said to them both, when she had a moment. "This could've been far worse." She glanced towards the worst of the flooding, past the barricades. "I wonder what happened?"

The three intended to find out. As they picked their way carefully across the flash-frozen flood waters, courtesy of Lomir's quick thinking, one of the locals called out to them, "The wall is broken! Find my boat, you'll find the break!" and it wasn't long before they did. It was Malachi who saw it first: a broken section of the retaining wall that kept Lake Haldmont out of Lakeside. Until it was fixed, it was clear the flooding would continue.

"Sea monster" had adequately described what Johannes found in the now-razed fishery, and the words served their purpose again. As Lomir directed a bound storm elemental to keep the waters at bay, it had emerged from beneath the Lakeside woman's boat, all teeth and fists, and intent on pulverizing Malachi, Sika, and Lomir, seemingly in that order.

The skirmish was over quickly. Despite the shock and surprise of seeing the creature, Lomir off-balanced it with another display of ice magic, and Malachi's axe found its mark in the beast's chest. As it slipped back beneath the dark waters, questions swirled in their heads as quickly as the eddys in the enveloping waves.

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“Oh, Professor Hood!” Sika began, apologetically, “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.” They spoke for a few minutes about the ongoing excavation works of the old Gottsteinsch ruins, but it wasn’t long before Bamaeus picked up on her distracted nervousness.

The two returned to the dockside, and were joined in short order by a local wizard Sika had not met, a man named Calahan, alongside Lomir and the noted knight Dmitry. As they searched for any reason the creature would have emerged where it did, and they examined the fishing boat, theories swirled as to the cargo of the ship or the overgrown vegetation; nothing was too far fetched given the circ*mstances. The disturbance in the water had gone unnoticed by all, until the boat gave a mighty lurch. A terrible sea creature blocked their path back to the city, and Sika was hurled into the blackness of Lake Haldmont.

When she finally emerged, owing to the efforts of Lomir and Bamaeus, she saw Calahan and Dmitry fighting with all their might and for the first time in days, Sika wasn’t concerned. Pulling herself to her feet, she saw a welcome sight in the elven magister Elvalith approaching from the street. She gently discarded her grey magister’s robes and without a pause or question as to the situation before her, began weaving magic. Sika had always been impressed by elven magic, and the grace and serenity with which Elvalith worked her talents seemed effortless. As the creature bore down on this suddenly appearing new threat, Elvalith calmly rewrote reality, and the monster’s fist smashed into what seemed to be a wall of glass. Disoriented and sent spinning, it was finally the sword of Dmitry that brought it low, impaling the hideous sea creature into the cobbles.

The six of them stood surrounding it, looking down, as it wailed and swung angrily at them; its last moments, so it seemed to Sika. Her companions had other plans, learned as they were, and meant to discover its origins.

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