The Lisk Campagn
From Rikva's piont of view...

Part II... The story continues...

We returned to our warehouse where the dwarves had managed to acquire some furniture (where they got it from I don't know and am afraid to ask). The rest of the evening was given over to quite contemplation punctuated only by the periodic thud of the ten ton press and giggling from the next room.

The next we all discussed what we were going to do about Lisk. It seems that he has embarked on a political career here in FIVE in order to gain control of the MC, and boy, is he going all out. Shaking babies, kissing hands and all that crap. He has even written a book - "How to succeed politically by killing off everyone in your path". We decide to track his movements so we hit the local radio shack and purchased a small concealable tracking device. this we inserted into a small, clip-on lapel bear, and headed off to one of his book signing's. Artemus had the task of posing as a fan and requested Lisk to wear the lapel bear in support of a fictitious charity - he agrees to wear it.

We head home via the "Elvin Emporium - if it aint elven, we aint got it". Lori and Artemus pick up some elven wine and I graciously decline the proprietors offer of a free set of elven ears. Ig & Oog think they are rather convincing in there fake ears and I was forced to point out that most elves are taller than 3'4 and they usually have less body hair.

The next few days are given over to keeping an eye on Lisk and hanging out at the local shopping centre, crushing the egos of the valley girls that hang out there. During our wanderings one morning Lori and I excused ourselves to visit the ladies room. upon entering we heard the strangest sound coming from one of the cubicles. Closer inspection revealed one of the valley girls slumped on the floor with a needle beside her. Yep - she'd OD on the same drug the guy in the cafe did. Realising that we only had limited time before she demoned out, we got the guys and called an ambulance. after convincing the paramedics that I was her sister, I went with her and the others liberated a cab and followed.

Now I'd like to take a moment to digress from the story and explain a couple of things. In order for Lisk to take over the world so to speak, he needs to control the populace. to do that, he has developed two highly addictive drugs. one is the blue drug that turns you into a demon eventually. the other is Green Stew. he gets your hooked on both and when you turn demon and die, your body is taken to the factory and become part of the GS ingredients. And it's not just OD victims that get taken. Anyone who needs an ambulance for whatever reason, is likely to end up as green stew. OK - got all that? Good. Back to the fun......

En route to the "hospital", the paramedic in the back with me suddenly lunges at me with a face mask and presses over my face and let me tell you, it aint oxygen. it's a strong sedative and while I'm not totally knocked out, I'm fading in and out, which makes it difficult to prevent him from strapping me to the other stretcher. I manage to push him off me and into the driver who loses control of the ambulance and starts to swerve violently all over the road. this thankfully alerts the guys behind to trouble.

Thanks to some expert driving by Lori and Artemus's natural ability to bonnet surf on a moving vehicle, they managed to run the ambulance off the road and rescue myself and the girl. we quickly take her to a non-Lisk hospital and she is taken care of by the friendly staff. After shooing the twins away who were concerned for my well being, I realised that Lori had been strangely cool towards the girl and once we reached the hospital was practically hostile towards her. It turns out that the girl - Margaret was her name - is actually an elf, but she has cropped her ears and turned her back on elven culture. Being that Lori was heir to the elven throne, naturally she was not at all pleased with Margaret's lack of respect for there shared heritage.

After ensuring that she was in good hands, we returned home and proceeded to get extremely drunk. Somewhere in the early hours of the morning the craving for kebabs became intense, and since we were in no condition to go insearch of food we sent the dwarves out with explicit instructions to purchase 4 kebabs with the lot, 1 large peperoni pizza, 1 bottle of whisky and 2 bottles of Elvin wine. They returned with the correct food - a miracle in itself - but also with the news that they had gained us employment in our chosen felid - Heroes for Hire.

When we had sobered up the next morning, we managed to extract some details from the dwarves about our job. We'd been hired by the proprietor of the elven emporium to free a hostage being held by Lisk at one of his factories/hospitals across town. Getting into the factory wasn't all that difficult. we simply stole an ambulance, dropped Rae a couple of blocks away to cover our retreat, sent ig & oog to the other side of the building to create a diversion and Lori and I dressed as paramedics, put Artemus on the stretcher and proceeded into the building. we talked our way passed a couple of pathetic guards and located a room with other stretchers in it. we headed in and let Artemeus up and set off in search of our hostage. We found the corridor leading to the room he was being held in, but it was guarded by about a dozen guards, one standing by each door down the hallway. Artemeus decided to draw there attention away by killing the first guard having the rest of them chase him. This left only one guard at the door of the room that most probably contained our man. Lori used her ring of invisibility to sneak up on him and render him unconscious. We entered the room, convinced the guy we weren't here to kill him, and set our for the exit. At the end of the corridor we encounted some guards, but Lori's shout of " He went that way - quick" sent them running and left us to find our way out.

many twists and turns led us eventually in the right direction. Unfortunately, coming up behind us was Artemus and a score of guards in pursuit. We rounded a corner and directly in front of us was the dwarves being chased by about 40 or 50 guards. You can probably guess the outcome of this equation. Both groups ran into each other. Somehow Artemus, Lori, Myself and our rescued friend managed to keep clear of the confusion and escape, stealing another ambulance and speeding away. a few streets away, we dumped the ambulance and Rae picked us up in our stolen cab. It was at this point we realised the ig & oog didn't make it out, but given the fact that they always managed to stay alive and find us, we didn't concern ourselves to much with it. We headed back to the elven emporium where our employer was most pleased that we had accomplished our task. However, he was less than please by the news that the boys were missing in action. We asked him to explain his concerns and he told us that Ig & oog are the twin sons of the dwarven king.....Meaning, they are dwarven princes'. Artemeus digested this information by sculling a hipflask of whisky. Lori and I were speechless and just stared at each other blankly.

Unfortunately, circumstances didn't allow us to dwell on this for long. Our goal here was to destroy Lisk. The man we had rescued was a reporter who had some interesting video footage of Lisk making deals with the local drug rings for supplying GS and the blue drug. there was also some disgusting footage of Lisk engaged in some indecent acts with an Orc. After promising the reporter that he would be protected from any backlash, he agreed to give us the tapes so we could use them to expose Lisk. The next step was to get the footage aired in the most public way to cause the most political damage. We new that Lisk was giving a speech at a major charity dinner the following evening, Whilst Lori and I pondered how we could get in, the proprietor produced two tickets to the dinner and promised to help us in our quest to destroy Lisk. The reporter agreed to tap into the TV system so that every TV in FIVE would show the footage of Lisk.

The next morning, we headed back to the hospital to check on Margaret. Between Lori, Rae and Artemeus, they managed to make her see sense in regards to her heritage and she agreed to come with us when we went back to the Steps. She was released into our care and we all headed back to the emporium to plan for the evening ahead. Lori and I would pose as guests use our feminine charm to get into the video booth and get the tape aired. Artemeus would wait outside to follow Lisk when he ran and Rae and Margaret would wait around the corner in a get away car.

The gala was just getting started when we arrived. We mingled with the guest and cased the place looking for the video booth that controlled the giant screen behind the podium. we found it relatively unguarded with guest moving freely around it. Just before Lisk was to take the stage, Lori took the tape and in an Oscar winning performance, swept into the booth and instructed the lackeys the tape she had was the new edited version that was to be played while Lisk was speaking. They believed her and she returned to the table we were seated at and we awaited the outcome of our plan.

A short time later, Lisk took the stage and began his speech. The screen behind him came to life and the shit hit the fan. At first Lisk was unaware of what was being played behind him, but once he realised that no-one was listening to him he turned and looked at the screen. He froze, not knowing what to do about what was being showed. A couple of bodyguards mounted the stage and escorted him out the back. The crowd broke into confusion, people not knowing what to do and security running everywhere. We took this as our cue and made a hasty exit, heading to the car and then to the emporium.

A while later Artemeus returned with some disturbing news. He'd followed Lisk to the GS factory where we had entered the city. He'd taken a position across the street and planned to kill Lisk, but, just as he was about to take the shot, his bodyguard Sin, noticed him and cast a spell to attack him. (More accurrately Sin jumped out the window of the building an made a B-line for the bulding that Artemus and reatenon had set themselves up in, Luckily they managed to out run Sin back to a waiting goblin drawn 'rikshaw'....Gee those goblins can run..)

He managed to avoid any serious injury but missed the opportunity to kill Lisk. The only good news was that he had cased the place and had discovered Ig & Oog being held in one of the rooms. We quickly gathered our things and set off for the factory.

We rented a couple of rooms in the hotel across the street from the factory and set about deciding the best way to get in. From our vantage point we could just make out the boys in one of the rooms on the first floor. When we approached the factory wearily as there was hardly any security to prevent us from entering. The reason for this became clear as soon as we entered the building, the place was deserted. signs of a hastily evacuation were evident. we search around the building but were unable to locate to twins. they had obviously been taken when Lisk left. He was on the run and we didn't know exactly where, so we took the best course of action and returned to the Steps to wait and see what action Lisk next took.

Our return to the steps was met with mixed reactions. The dwarven ambassador was mortified that we'd managed to lose the boys and that they were hostages of Lisk. Word came that Lisk was marching his army of darktrolls towards the Dwarven enclaves. After consulting with the ambassador, the elven mage and high ranking military officals, we decided to rally the elvin army and head for the enlaves. we set off and left the army to follow as quickly as possible.

Our journey took us through the the town of Sephardeesh. Upon entering the town we noticed some of Sin and some of his personal guards seeking accomodations at one of the local taverns. We decided to take rooms at the tavern across the street and keep an eye on what they were doing. The following morning, we saw two guards leave and ride out of town. Obviously, Sin wouldn't be far behind them. We decided to slow him down abit by tampering with his horses. (in fact this was a lead the players never realy followed up on one of the two who had left the town early that morning was a wizard on a search and retrieve mission for Lisk the specifics were never dicovered. But a tracking device was fitted to one of the horses. Sin later realized that the group was in the city and attempted to slow them down .... permenantly... however by deftly dodging several crossbow bolts to the leg and running around the town in ever increasing circles our hero's eventually managed to escape, Rivka with no less that 3 extra crossbow bolts in her left leg...)

After escaping the town we headed directly to the mountains were we could gain entrance to the dwarven enclaves. To do this, we had to go through the Gnomish trading centre. We approached the entrance to the trading centre with caution as it was guarded by some of Lisk's orc's. We were in the process of dispatching them when the the centre of the clearing erupted and out of the earth came a darktroll. I think I speak for every one when I say it was brown trousers time. Darktrolls are not fun!!!! Tall as a house, strong and extremly deadly. And just for laughs, if you spill it's blood, it will reproduce itself from the blood.Cool huh? Anyway, lets just say that mental freakouts were reigning supreme at the mooment.

Artemeus was attempting to subdue the troll, Lori was gaing entrance to the caves and I was despratly trying to get a straight shot ot the remaining orc's. All was NOT going to plan. By the time that the troll turned to attack Lori, she had managed to get in and was closing the heavy wooden doors to keep him out. This did not please him, and he proceeded to pound on the door with his very large hammer. Just when it looked as if he would succeed in breaking the door down, it flew open and out flew a ballista which promptly sliced him in two. Before the blood could settle on the ground, Rae hit it with a fire ball, cauterizing it and killing the trolll. Thank the gods for dwarven seige weapons..

Bruised and battered, we headed into the caves and made our way to the trading centre. The market place was frenzied, with taders and customers yelling, shouting and generally have a great time. We went in search of supplies and a guide. The latter presented itself in the form of a shifty eyed half-crazed gnome called %. Finally, we agreed to let him and his brother lead us to the dwarven city. (this was mainly to shut him up rather than his abilities as a guide). After securing our provisions, we set out. Sometime later we made our camp and settled down for some much needed rest.

GM: Artemus was on guard. As the bordem of the nights watch settled in his mind wondered, his stare unfocussing. Then the rock wall the he had been staring at refocused into the shape of a being. A Dark Elf, and his guards. Five in total.

I was awakened later by Lori and was greeted with the knowledge that we were not alone...

(Rivka:During her watch, Lori became aware of a figure watching us from the shadows, and as she had reached for her gun, she was stopped by the sudden appearence of 5 elves. Dark elves to be exact. )

There presence as very unsettling - especially to Lori. There leader introduced himself as Zarg-naar, and claimed that they meant us no harm, they simply wanted to travel with us. After some discussion, we decided to allow them to join our group.

We followed our chattering guides and there overloaded donkey untill we reached an underground river. Once there % produced canoes from the mountain of goods strapped to the donkey and we set off down river.

Artmeus was in his element, he spent most of the trip messing with the minds of the darkelves. We didn't know whether to pitch him overboard or just let him do it. We decided on the latter. the river eventually opened out to a huge lake. We were making our way across to the wharf on the otherside when the light from above was suddenly blocked out by the arrival of a very large dragon. Yes - you guessed it, the same one that had attacked us awhile back. Thankfully it didn't head for us, rather it headed straight down into the water and was soon lost in the depths. we were just breathing a sigh of releif when the wave from the dragon hit us. Before you could say "what the ..." Artemeus, myself, two of the darkelves and the guides brother were over the side and in the water. I was happy to discover at this point that I could in fact swim, and made my way towards the boat with Rae & Lori. As she pulled me in we realized that Artmeus had not surfaced. He had been wearing chainmail and various swords and guns, not to mention his heavy backpack. The expression sink like a stone came to mind. I dumped my pack, grabbed a couple of magical breathing gems from inside my shirt. Popping one into my mouth, I plunged back into the water in search of my friend. It was suprisingly clear down there and I quickly spotted Artemeus struggling for the surface. He'd managed to dump his pack but was quickly running out of air. I reached him, popped the other gem into his mouth and helped him back to the boat. After we had been pulled back into th boat. We discovered that the guides brother and one of the darkelves had been lost in the water. In fact, the darkelf was taken by the dragon. We reached the wharf as quickly as possible and made a hasty exit from the dragons domain.

After about an hour or so the tunnel we were following opened out into a large area at the foot of the cliffs that led to the city. Attached to the cliffs were 4 ladders side by side, the only way up or down the cliffs. We decided to rest a while, dry out and then proceed up the ladders. Artemeus was upset that he had lost his spare weapons and ammo in the lake but was soon cheered by the thought of the reigning terror on Lisk and his army.

However, all was not sunshine and lollipops in the darkelves ranks. Zarg-nar was extreamly upset with his general. Apparently when their companion had fallen into the water, the general had refused to help him and let him be taken by the dragon. Needless to say that this made us all very wary of the general. Before long the general got up and started up the cliffs without us. We let him go and once we were all rested we began our assent. Zarg and 2 of his remaining men took one ladder, Artemeus and Rae took the second, Lori and I took the third, and our guide and the last darkelf took the forth. About halfway to the top, the first two ladders began to shake. Not sure of what was causing it, we kept going, but cautiously. We started to notice a sticky substance on the ladders, this made us even more wary of what was above us. (NB - check with GM for details of this)

Stay tuned for; a bloody big spider, musical ladders, a Flying Gem to the rescue and arrival at the dwarven Enclaves……

Part III... Is still being written. It will appear here sooner or later ;)

Part I : The first part of the Lisk Campagn...or hit your back button...

Gameworld : Where this is all set