Regis the Grey tells a stirring tale of the continuing adventures of Blackjack and his band, adventurers of the forest. He tells of Earc Orctongue of Toll's Tower and Olaf Olafsonson as well as the salty Achaedany and brazen Akkara. They speak of negotiating with ogres and orcs, of facing dryads, dragons, centaurs, walking trees, and gigantic cyclops. Of descending into the very bowels of the Morlock lair to seek the sources of their grumpbear and weaseljay abominations. The tale is well-received by the woodcutters as they drink their ale.
Alethan wrote:Earc approaches the local bard, hands him a sack of coins and says, “Here’s the gist of it. You can make up the details,” and winks.
“Five of us left for the Morlock tunnels – ‘Blackjack’ Amistad, Olaf Olafsonson, Achaedany, Akkara, and me – Earc of Toll’s Tower. We left the Frogmorton’s in the early pre-dawn of 06 July. The plan was to follow the river up to where a morlock tunnel was found in some old ruins near the confluence of the two rivers that form the Gaul River.”
“By mid-afternoon of the first day, we’d left the relative safety of the areas patrolled by the ArchDuke’s men and it was shortly thereafter that we came upon a wooden palisade protecting a bunch of tents. It was inhabited by ogres who were not terribly happy to see us. But I spoke with their leader and we agreed they should head north and look for the orcs who were poaching on their land. So that’s what they did. We continued on our way.”
“The next day, we met a dryad and then WE were the ones who were persuaded to do something against our wills! Seems she’d lost an orb she needed back. Problem was there were two very young green dragons swimming about in the nearby pool and they were the ones who took it. Amistad and I retrieved the orb for the dryad and we continued on our way, leaving the green dragons alive, but worse for wear.”
“Before we left her, though, the dryad gave us information about the morlocks. They work on their experiments in the morning. They sleep in the afternoon. They hunt the upper world at night.”
“Little did we heed her warning, though. That night we had morlocks attack our camp, trying to capture us. We fended them off.”
“The next morning, we came across some orc scouts. Like the other orcs Blackjack and I had dealt with before, they were well equipped and properly trained. Not too much for us, though, and so the northern orcs have two less of their numbers to contend with. The third one agreed to speak with us and give us information in exchange for his life. It was from him that we learned they were of one of the three Flamerock tribes – the Flayed Hand Tribe, the Red Eye Tribe, and the Black Tongue Tribe, coming from the solitary mountain peak north of Gaul. He said there were many, many in each tribe. This concerns me almost as much as the morlocks having no masters… but I get ahead of myself!”
“The morlocks tried again the following night and again we were able to decisively fight them off, capturing one of them in the process. We tried to speak with it through Akkara, who has learned their language, but got minimal information for our trials. They’ve already proven to be dangerous prisoners, able to summon wild creatures with their humming, so we did not leave it alive. Before the last one died, we learned something frightening from it. There are no more Masters. We don’t yet know what it means, but… it seems like a frightening thing to hear.”
“Finally we arrived at the ruins and found the tunnel entrance. We climbed down, using the hand- and foot-holds made into the side of the tunnel for the morlocks to use. The tunnels were twisty and full of turns, making mapping difficult. But we took our time and were rewarded by not getting lost!”
“We discovered a cavern of bat-bird hybrids we smartly left alone, but weren’t so lucky with the cavern of bug-bears. After they were defeated, we removed another group of morlocks and were approached by a dragon-puppy hybrid that we could not tame. Wounded and low on supplies, we decided to leave for Gaul with the information we had. On the way out, we came across a bunch of feathered serpents feasting on a morlock. We left them alone.”
“On our return trip, we were harassed by cyclops, watching trees, and centaurs patrolling the woods. We were attacked by a grumpbear and, not wanting to give us even a night of uneventful rest, a hoard of rodents of unusual size ate most of our supplies the last night out.”