Slain by Elf

'As far as we can see, we can't see anything.'—Lucien.

Brother Thaddius disappears, sucked in to the warp, only to be instantly replaced by Brother Cadmus, a Dark Angel devastator marine.

'You're from the Dark Angel chapter too? That gives us three Dark Angel brothers, who keep to themselves and are naturally withholding of personal information, and one Ultramarine.'

'So, three Brits and one American?'

The sheep skull is out of the lake, its flow of poison no longer affecting the river, and the skull itself looking more like that of a dragon now that it's not distorted by the water and we had a small discussion about how we've probably seen etchings of dragons enough to make the connection.

A voice calls out, 'That's my skull! Drop your weapons and flee back to your mothers!'

'But it's a long way', says Toogood, ever practical.

'The owner of the voice is on a cliff, about 40' above you and 70' away, wearing armour that looks to be made of bone, wielding a bow, has brown eyes... not that you can tell from this distance.'

'Hey! What colour are your eyes?! It's important!'

'Are they soft and kind', shouts Duncan, 'or hard and steely?!'

I think we can assume hard and steely when he starts pelting us with arrows, prompting us to fight back. Our armiger, Farrel, not equipped for any kind of ranged combat, has trouble coming up with any suitable action beyond shouting back to him.

'Like what?', I say, 'Stop attacking us, or I'll smash the skull?'

'I wasn't thinking that, but it's better than what I was thinking.'

'Was it more like, 'suck your own cock'?'

'Yeah, something like that.'

'Oh, shout 'suck your own cock, or we'll smash the skull', if only to see the look on his face.'

Duncan, speedy Harrier (with a munchkin level of Executioner), has a more direct plan: scramble up the hill, climb the short cliff face, and attack our aggressor directly. And that's what he does. He's up the hill easily, a bit of deft footwork gets him across the scree, and an expert piece of climbing has Duncan almost jumping up to face our attacking archer.

'Hah, nobody expects the Spanish Executioner! ...Harrier!'

Gowan the Bone Harvester denies this claim, having seen Duncan make his way up the hill and climb the cliff over a few rounds of combat, and simply slams his body forwards, bull rushing Duncan quite effectively.

Almost as soon as Duncan has made it atop the cliff face, he is falling back down the cliff face, down across the scree, and down the steep hill.

We've found the source that's poisoning the river. It's a skull. Now we just need to recover it from the lake and take it back to the village to prove that we were the ones who have cleaned the river.

'Who's going in to the lake to tie the rope to the skull?'

'Toogood. He has rope use as a skill, so can probably make the best knot.'

'And what are you taking with you?'

'A knife, I guess. And a weasel.'

'Why the weasel?'

'Isn't the weasel the underwater version of the canary?' says Farrel.

'So what does Toogood do when the weasel drowns?'

'Come up for air.' What a question.

So in to the river goes Toogood, diving beneath the surface to reach the—does Toogood have Knowledge (Arcana)? No?—to reach the sheep skull. He ties the rope around the skull and 'I tug on the rope'.

'What does that signify? Did you work out a code?'

'Yes. One tug means 'pull the rope'. Two tugs means 'pull the rope'. Three tugs means, well, pretty much anything I do means 'pull the rope'.'

I point out 'the small flaw when he first dived in and starting pulling the rope as he swam. But when we yanked him back out we had a quick chat and cleared up the confusion pretty quickly.'

Tracing the source of the poison in the river should be as simple as tracing the source of the river. To do that, you head upstream. We negotiate expenses with the town governor to help her hamlet, which thankfully gets us out of wagon-guarding duty in the process, and we follow the river to see where the dead sheep's rotting carcass is dumped.

The evidence of poison continues all the way to the source of the river, which is a lake that is thankfully not regularly shaped. And not all the source is obviously poisoned, with most of it still being fresh spring water. The source of the poison is clearly near where the water leaves for the river.

The poison seems to be mostly on the surface too, which lets one of us dive underwater to investigate how a dead sheep could be causing so much pollution. I am foolishly the first to suggest swimming down to take a look, so I hand Farrel my bow, borrow a dagger, and dive in.

Getting closer to the source I can see something through the water. 'Is it a dead sheep?'

'It's a skull.'

'A sheep skull?'

'Not any sheep you've seen.'

'That's not a no.' But as I turn to report this polluting sheep skull to my companions, my attention is caught by some creatures swimming towards me. Not just any creatures, but weird skeletal snapping turtles. In my astonishment, I briefly forget how to swim, allowing the bony bastards to catch me and start pecking away.

I am startled for only a few seconds though, and manage to get to the surface to signal for help. 'Throw me a rope!'

'Throw us the idol!' Thanks, that's helpful. 'At least you survived the surprise round this time.'

The question 'Has anyone taken the Heal skill?' gets a chorus of negative replies from around the table, hearing which has our GM delighted to inform us that our NPC companion, Heathor, has the skill.

'Our NPC traitor, you mean. Oh, don't look at me like that. With you running the adventure the NPC's betrayal is going to happen.'

But our GM seems a little upset that we'd treat his creation in such a suspicious manner. 'You can always ask him to leave.'

'We can, but he'll just leave the party, stalk us from a distance, and still ambush us at the given time. We may as well hold on to him until he inevitably turns on us, and reap the benefits of his healing in the meantime.' Still the GM fakes being hurt. We're not buying it, we have experience. We'll see who's right soon enough.

We start the adventure, reaching a hamlet where the locals are suffering from what is claimed to be a recently poisoned river. In particular, a rapscallion pleads with us, obvious adventurers, to save his little sister. We can't say no to such a request—apparently; we initially tried our best to avoid the plot.

Heathor examines the young girl. Noting her grey pallor, he says that 'this is definitely the result of poison, although not one that I've seen before.'

'Oh really, Mr Healer. And just how many poisons have you seen before?'

'Many', he says, with a glint in his eye.

Right. This is definitely not the assassins' guild agent out to betray us later in the adventure. Nothing to worry about here.

'Are you a straight Harrier?'

'No. Harrier 3, Executioner 1.'

'And how would you describe your character?'

'Flamboyant.'

Definitely not a straight Harrier, then.

Smashing in to and dropping out of a warp breach half inside the legendary space hulk Mortis Thule changes our mission objectives a little. We have standing orders for being Space Marines, as well as for being Deatchwatch Space Marines in particular. On top of that, detaching ourselves from the Morthis Thule so that we aren't dragged back in to the warp with it seems a little important.

We debrief ourselves and choose a new oath to take for the updated mission. But each oath has chapter restrictions on who can lead the squad, so we also need to make sure we have the right leader.

'Who can lead us in the oath?'

'Lucien, Maynard, or myself', says Brother Lucius.

'So any of us except Brother Thaddius? I'm already feeling better for our chances of survival.'

Having recovered the Watch Captain's Maul we make our way to the bridge to discover just how dire the situation is. One thing is obvious, we are told.

'They're all dead?'

'Yep, all the crew are dead, some of them dead in pieces.'

'So it is Red Dwarf.'

'Except they aren't all piles of white dust.'

'Oh. I was still trying to eat them.'

'You have found the Maul.'

'I thought there was only one.'