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No. 36210
The peasant asked me to kill the spouse of the shadow monster. The lair was a little disgusting, but I managed to pick around and find a few coins from its human and goblin victims, minted by the Nation of Rabbits and the Tick of Constructs respectively. The spouse itself was dispatched with relative ease. I went straight to the castle overlooking the river to report my deeds. The lord there sent me off to kill the dark creature bridegroom, and I took a swordsman with me.
The river ran pretty close to the gates, and when I walked out, we had a little alligator trouble. Well, the swordsman had more trouble than I did and ended up in the middle of the river where I couldn't help. The alligator became Skinnyrends and I left on my quest. I found a bronze breastplate in the first chamber, with no sign of the bridegroom other than the mess. I found him in the next room and lopped his head off with my axe. He wasn't alone however. The dark creature was still living there! This would be much more difficult. After getting my weapon stuck in her shoulder, she bit my arm and kept shaking it repeatedly. I broke free after losing a lot of blood, and that's when she took her copper meat cleaver to my toe. I fled, leaving my toe and axe behind.
I made it to a market just before nightfall and the shopkeeper graciously let me sleep on the floor overnight. In the morning I gave up my coins, my breastplate and half of my clothes to get a bronze great axe. My right arm was still useless, but I could manage the weapon with one hand. I went back to the castle by the river to report my success... a technical success, anyway, since the quest was for the bridegroom. As I stepped through the doors of the keep, I witnessed a scene of horror. The alligator Skinnyrends was inside, and the lord was next to his own head on the bloody stone floor. One of the lord's soldiers was holding his own, but I managed to put down the murderous beast myself. I reported my news of the spouse to the soldier, and with my late rescue in the keep, I became a greatly respected figure. Unfortunately, I would need to travel to a castle far away to quest for further glory. Outside the keep, I noticed an elf prisoner. I also noticed his nose was missing. A forensic examination of the keep revealed the body part among the remains. I needed somebody to travel with me in the wilds to help dissuade night attacks on the long journey, so I invited the prisoner along. We made it to the second castle after sunfall and slept in one of the towers.
In the morning, my potential was recognized, and the lady of the castle, speaking for the Nation of Rabbits, sent me after a malicious goblin outlaw, Strodno Stealfrenzy, who was no longer associated with the Tick of Constructs but was still a leader of a large band. I invited a couple of lashers who were in the keep, and along with my elf buddy we set out for the nearby hideout. I ran out ahead of my buddies and took a few grazing crossbow bolts for my haste, but I managed to put down the archers and faced the leader. He only had a bronze slicing knife, but it was his weapon of choice and he managed to cut me all to pieces before I finally took his leg off. I thought that would be the end of him, but he hacked my useless hand off, so I kept my distance while he bled. After I killed a few of his soldiers, he started crawling away into the woods. I went back to the main battle which had gathered behind me to find all of my friends were dead, surrounded by injured goblins. Despite my wound, I was able to avenge my companions. Strodno was pretty far away by this time, but I found him at the bottom of a hill. He deflected the blows I was sending in at him, so I put my great axe away, grabbed his knife, wrenched it away, and threw it at his arm, where it stuck. He punched my foot, and I took out the axe and stopped the fight.
I grabbed up some human armor they had stolen, and one of the lashers' helmets bearing the maple tree insignia of the Nation of Rabbits. Then I realized that it was the late afternoon and I was alone in the wilderness with a long way to travel. Fortunately, there was a village on the way, and I crashed in a cheesemaker's house for the night after pulling a couple of bolts out of my body. He respected me for my deeds, and I convinced him to come along with me to the castle to avoid night trouble. We were attacked by bandits on the way back, but it was a small group and they weren't very talented, so I was able to fend them off myself.
The lady of the castle decided it was time for a real task, and I was quested to slay a minotaur. This time I brought a halberdier, a pikeman, a bowman and a spearman. And the cheesemaker. The labyrinth was a long journey, and we were attacked on the way by a self-styled goblin captain leading the Trampled Plagues, a group of about ten goblins. I knew the leader of such a large group would be difficult, but I didn't want to risk losing my overly brave companions in the wilderness, so I stood and fought with them. It was the heroic thing to do, anyway. The captain was tough, and he parried all of my strikes, even cracking out one of my teeth with a thrust of his iron longsword. My halberdier arrived and stabbed him in the side, at which point I saw a great opportunity to kick him in the hand. A fairly revolting compound wrist fracture ensued, and he was easy to defeat after that. The battle had raged all around, and I found that our only casualty aside from my tooth was the poor cheesemaker.
We had been avoiding sleep -- even in a group, if you are caught sleeping things can go very badly. On the other hand, if you avoid sleep everybody becomes ineffective, and we were all very tired. In a stroke of good luck, there was a village hidden in the unexplored area between the Nation of Rabbits and the minotaur's labyrinth. We rested there until dawn, anticipating the final assault.
We descended into the labyrinth in the afternoon and quickly became separated. As fate would have it, the minotaur found me first. I didn't want to be completely heroic all by myself, so I fled back down the passage. I bumped into my archer, and he sent an arrow at the charging beast, to no effect. As I flailed helplessly, the minotaur gored me, knocked me over and then, remembering its human parts, got me in a hip lock. I kept missing, so I took the only opportunity that arose, and bit the monster on the chest. After that it wrenched my leg nearly off, ripping all sorts of connective tissue and an artery. It then knocked my bowman over and wrenched out my other hip. Just at this time my halberdier arrived, covering for my inadequacy yet again by hacking off the minotaur's nose. That was the last thing I saw before I passed out.
I was really surprised to wake up, but there I was. I checked myself over and found I hadn't suffered a single additional injury, and I couldn't see the minotaur. Ah, there it is! Dead. I looked at the halberdier. His left ear was busted up, but otherwise he was fine. Both he and the pikeman had minotaur blood on their weapons. Then I remembered I could look reaaaally closely at the weapons and divined that the halberd had indeed killed the minotaur in the year 257.
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