In Dingradur Yspadadden had been smithing. While he was smithing he’d been thinking about that axe. It sat ill with him that Gore Raver, that ancient dwarven artefact, should still be in the hands of the giants after all these years – and not in his. From time-to-time he would use his arts to check on its whereabouts. It had not moved from the castle near the shores of the Inland Sea where they had last seen it (Giant’s Castle – D5) almost five years ago.
Customers arrived. A band of centaurs came to pick up the armour he had wrought for them; with them came an elf named Cassira for whom he had made a fine runed mithril longsword; Wilfred too had come to pick up a magic hacking spear; while Salrod and Hilda had simply turned up to see if he had anything interesting he wanted to sell them (he needed more customers like this). Fingolwyn and his centaurs owed him a service for the armour. Cassira too lacked the full weight of gold for her sword. So here was the perfect party to make another attempt to bring back that elusive axe so carelessly cast aside by Silden (B22) over a decade before. Yspadadden, Ranulf, Wilf, Salrod, Hilda and Cassira each mounted a centaur and they set off for the Giant’s Pass and the Inland Sea.
This was the way to travel, thought Yspadadden. The smooth gallop of the centaurs was very different from the bone-jarring gait of the ponies Yspadadden normally rode if he had need of a mount. Nor did they need to be protected or tethered at night. A mountain troll that tried to attack their camp in the Giant’s Pass paid with its life. A passing dragon (a small flightless wyrm) took one look at the party and fled. Nor was terrain a barrier to them. Yspadadden well remembered the previous party abandoning most of its mounts in the pass, but the centaurs carried on regardless. Even rivers were nothing to them, as they simply galloped over the surface of the flood. They preferred to travel at night and since it was nearly mid-winter they made good progress. The main challenge for the riders was to wrap up warm.
When they reached the Giant’s Castle, it became clear why the axe had not moved all these years. The castle was a ruin and its stones had been used to raise a great cairn. Its headstone read: ‘Ukko Turso sleeps in his second age until the due day under the protection of the all highest Xikala’. The axe lay beneath the cairn with its most recent owner. Initial efforts to tamper with the cairn provoked the manifestation of a fiery serpent that flew out of the crater of the nearby volcano, doubtless an avatar of Xikala. When the party retreated and the serpent flew around the grave and then left.
For their next move, Yspadadden carved each party member an amulet against fire, before they once more began moving stones from the cairn. The serpent reappeared. It conjured a ring of fiery blades to defend the tomb. Yspadadden’s amulets worked well enough, but all attempts to wound the serpent guardian failed. (This was particularly annoying to Yspadadden since virtually every blade and arrow had been forged by him and all failed to penetrate the serpent.) Hilda had some success with ice magics, but in the end the party was forced once more to retreat having made little impact on the cairn. Again the serpent did not pursue but this time spoke, warning them off.
The adventurers hatched another plan. While Yspadadden refreshed everyone’s amulets, Hilda teleported to Chittagong. She reappeared the following day with a scroll. Meanwhile the dwarves had constructed a shelter by the cairn. The following day everything went surprisingly smoothly. Using the scroll, Hilda summoned a large earth elemental. It excavated the cairn, swiftly and with such violence that the party were glad of their shelter. By the time the fiery serpent issued forth from the volcano once more, Gore Raver was revealed. Hilda successfully dismissed the elemental and Yspadadden leapt down to snatch the axe. The party were mounted upon their centaurs and away before the fiery serpent arrived.
The journey home was not without event. Several days later they encountered a man, eight foot tall and surrounded by a pack of great white wolves. He gave his name as Kveldulf and issued a challenged to any who would fight or wrestled him. Salrod (who could never resist a challenge) wagered his sword against Kveldulf’s spear in a passage of arms. It quickly became apparent that Kveldulf was inhumanly quick and strong and highly skilled. Salrod gave a good account of himself and struck a few telling blows but was laid low with a spear-butt to the jaw. The wolf-man went on his way, laughing. He left Salrod his sword, avowing himself entertained by the bout.
The trip was capped off with a raid upon a griffin’s nest. The griffins were a perennial nuisance to the centaurs so they were only too happy to show the adventurers a nest in return for a share of the loot. Hilda and Yspadadden flew the rest of the party up to the pinnacle on which perched a nest. They slew two griffins and made off with a good haul of treasure and valuable griffin feathers.
E-7
OE Date: December 690
Characters: Yspadadden, Ranulf, Salrod, Wilf NPCs: Hilda, Cassira, Fingolwyn and other Centaurs
Real World: August 1996; Where – Putney?
See also Salrod’s Diaries