James M. Zema wrote:

Getting back to reading and writing, a bit, so I thought I would 
perform a little C&C while I'm at it.  And since I play in the 
Forgotten Realms on a regular basis, I might as well start with a 
piece from outside the former bounds of the FFML.

Cool. Didn't know how well this would go over.

DB Sommer wrote:

Orc lairs were dirty and smelly, just like their owners, but the 
creatures had some sense of value. Gold, silver, and other precious 
metals could be found strewn through the refuse that lined their 
homes. Kobold lairs held less valuables and more smell, but there 
were always a few coppers and sometimes a decent weapon or two. Even 
dim-witted owlbears liked shiny objects, which meant an occasional 
gem might be found when digging through their caves.

But when it came to sewers, there was nothing but garbage, all of it 
unwanted and shoved out of sight from the city above. Tons of waste 
without a single item of value to be found. And the stench! It would 
take weeks to remove the aroma of trash, and other far more 
unpleasant smells, out of his leather armor. At least Throngar had 
possessed enough sense to wear his older set. In the worst case it 
could be tossed out� probably ending up in a sewer.
  

Heh.

One of those ironies.

As Throngar walked (and lamented) though the muck, he passed a 
bloated corpse floating on top of the knee-deep water. He stared at 
it impassively, walking past and saying, "Remind me why I'm slogging 
my way through this cesspit."
  

The (and lamented) doesn't quite seem to fit to me with the remainder 
of the sentence-- I'm not sure how one would go about lamenting 
through the muck.  Lament in general seems a bit passive for what 
Throngar was doing as well, so it might be best to just drop it entirely.

Yeah. I think I will.

The question was directed to his companion, Artemis 'the Dashing', 
who led the way bearing a torch in one hand and a short sword in the 
other. The warrior looked over his shoulder and smiled. "You're here 
for the reward Lady Embeth will give us for the return of her stolen 
precious family heirloom. Father Gorpa divined its location as 
somewhere in this area of the sewers. His divinations are rarely wrong."
"Isn't he the one we hired to locate that stolen statue and ended up 
directing us to a medusa's lair?"
  

Extra line needed between the paragraphs.

I'll take care of all of those as well.

Throngar's teeth gnashed together. He fingered his battle axe grimly 
as he shot a scowl over his shoulder. Even with the dull illumination 
provided by Artemis's torch, the young man dressed in bright yellow 
robes and a hot pink headband wrapped around his forehead, 
practically glowed in the dark. He looked like a giant banana.
  

Maybe "with a hot pink headband"?  Doesn't quite parse right to me 
with "and".

Okay

"Booty is a nautical term. On land we call it treasure," Artemis 
pointed out.
  

Heh.

One of the rare cases of displaying the characters through show not tell 
that I do. Usually it's the other way around.

Throngar examined the dagger in the light. It was more rust than 
blade, judging by the dark splotches along the length of the blade. 
It was worse than worthless given the sorts of diseases one could 
contract when cut by a rusty weapon.
  

Depends on how soon you need your opponent dead and how closely you 
want to be associated with the death.  I'm sure there are a few 
assassins who wouldn't mind a mark dropping dead of tetanus a few 
weeks after they were anywhere near them.  (No idea on how long it 
actually takes to die of tetanus.)

Given a priest's ability to cure, it's highly unreliable. Cure Disease 
is much cheaper than ressuerect, after all

"Finnegan the Flamboyant?" Artemis asked. "Effeminate wizard? Has an 
affinity for bright, sequined outfits? Serving staff composed of only 
handsome young men? That Finnegan?"

"Why yes. Do you know him?"
  

Heh.

% you gotta figure there are some... er, flaboyant mages around

"They shot at me!" the wizard complained.

Throngar resisted the urge to toss Welleby back out in the line of 
fire. "Let me explain something to you. No one comes down to the 
sewers to meet new people and engage in witty banter. They do it 
because it's an out of the way place to conduct things in secret. 
They value their privacy highly, so highly they are frequently 
willing to kill to keep it. Stop writing that down!"
  

Thus the corpse earlier on.  Though given that this is Waterdeep, 
there are plenty of other methods for it to have arrived there.

Yeah. It's origin is abiguous and irrelevent.

"How do you know?" Throngar asked.

"I was there when it was stolen. The thief wasn't human and he wasn't 
the kind to give up the item."
  

And here I'm beginning to think Artemis is the thief...  (assuming 
he's not human)

Nope. He is hidiing the true identity from Throngor, though

The trio ran quickly, opting for speed over stealth. They fled 
straight down the passageway, splashing through the refuse. Throngar 
made it a point to not look down at what they were stepping on. There 
were times when ignorance was a reward greater than gold.
  

Wise man.

Indeed.

He was dead. Throngar knew it. Battling a neo-otyugh was bad enough, 
but to do it sightless with only another blind warrior and an 
incompetent mage on his side? No, his deeply unsatisfied life as a 
mercenary was over, never having made the big score that would have 
left him with an early retirement and enough gold to enjoy years of 
wine and women. He would end up devoured by an irate garbage eater. 
But if that was his fate, he would take the one responsible for his 
death with him into Cyric's dark embrace.
  

There seem to be very few mercenaries who actually reach that state of 
retirement, no matter how big the scores get.  Apart from the 
obligatory 18th level barkeeps of course.

Heh. True. But they keep telling themselves they'll retire after the big 
score. :)

A hand fell on Throngar's shoulder. "That was amazing, my friend. I 
had no idea you could fight blind."
  

And here's where he claims credit for a complete accident...

Of course. I take credit for people that think I write something 
incredibly deep when all I did was write 'it was a blue pencil.' ^_^

Throngar blinked a few times. Surroundings became light enough to 
form outlines. He squinted at Artemis's silhouette. "Yes, well, it 
takes a lot of practice to get that good with an axe." It wasn't so 
much lying as it was being polite in not disillusioning his old 
comrade. Friends did that for friends.
  

What a pal.

The very best. :)

"Temperature variations frequently produce mists," Welleby said. 
"It's perfectly natural. Nothing to fear." He entered the mist.
  

You can tell he hasn't been adventuring long.

It's his first time out of the lab.

"What was that?" Welleby asked, hands held up in preparation to cast 
a spell.

"It sounded like several people in a great deal of pain, though not 
for long since the cries died so abruptly," Artemis said.

"That�s not a good thing, is it?"
  

Well, assuming whatever caused the screams is full now, it could be, 
but probably not.

Yeah, go with the odds. Better to be wrong this way than your way.

"No, it's not," Throngar answered. "I've had enough of this. First 
way we find up to the surface, we take it. No reward is worth getting 
killed over."

Welleby said, "What if it was a resurrection scroll and ten thousand 
gold? Would that be worth getting killed over?"
  

Nah, you still have the level loss to deal with. ;)

Heh

"Let's go back." Throngar started to turn around when he spotted a 
movement in the fog out of the corner of his eye. It was slight, but 
seemed to move against the flow of the mist around it. Years of 
fighting made him instinctively tense up and bring his axe back. 
Better to draw a weapon on an ally than have it sheathed against an 
enemy was his motto. His allies didn't tend to care for the saying, 
though.
  

I'm thinking that comment about Cyric was a little more than a 
colloquial saying...

I haven't been keeping up with the strories but I do vaguely recall them 
mentionng the return of Bane recently

The zombies were upon them. Throngar noted they came in a wide 
variety, some in a very advanced stage of decomposition that made 
them appear more like skeletons than zombies, others that hadn't been 
dead for a week. All of them were deadly since their teeth and 
club-like arms were intact. Luckily, an axe was a fine weapon against 
them. Finesse weapons were next to useless against creatures that 
could feel no pain, but an axe could lop off a head, a few limbs, 
even break a back or two. It caused, as Throngar's mentor had dubbed 
it, 'catastrophic structural damage.' Not many warriors used that 
term, but most hadn't been architects before taking up the sword.
  

Throngar did strike me as a bit more intellectual than your common run 
of fighter, name or not.

Yeah. He qualifies as the thinker in this group.

Isebert Darkstone, middling priest of Cyric, gazed upon his realm 
with an imperious eye. Such as his realm was, consisting of a sewer. 
But what lay within the sewer was his key to victory and moving up 
the Zhentarim food chain. The cistern, at three stories high and 
fifty meters across,   

Taking place a few years back then?  The Banites have pretty much 
cleaned Cyric's followers out of the Zhentarim I believe.

Probably then.

was the largest in the forsaken deeps of the miles long cesspit. More 
importantly, it was filled to the brim with zombies. Thousands of 
them. They were so thick one could walk across the tops of their 
heads from one side of the chamber to the other. Well, almost. They 
were several areas free of them. The altar for one, which was seated 
next to Isebert's throne (which at one time had been a discarded 
tavern chair, but now held the honor of being the seat upon which 
Isebert's glorious posterior resided). Also it was one of the few dry 
spots in the chamber, which made it worth its weight in gold. Still, 
he made plans to buy one gilded in platinum with ruby inlays when his 
plan saw fruition.

The continual light spells cast about the cistern illuminated the 
waterfalls that were formed by the raw sewage that emptied into 
chamber, and then continued flowing out to the ocean. Those areas 
were also free of zombies. The water eroded them like it would rock, 
only much quicker, and every zombie counted when one planned on 
unleashing an undead horde on Waterdeep.
  

Now that's just asking for trouble.

And our would-be conquorer is about to encounter it.

There was also a path leading from the altar up a ramp to one of the 
high sewer ways, one free of falling water. That was the course that 
Isebert's Ravaging Horde (as he had named it) would take when they 
razed the city. Once the pathway was clear of obstructions, in any 
case.   

Maybe a block or two-- given how many adventurers make their homes in 
Waterdeep, he'll be lucky if he gets that far. :)

Heh. Well, he has dreams of grandure, even if it's an overestimation of 
his abilities.

Isebert turned to see Tomas, one of his pair of acolytes, had 
returned from his mission. Dangling limply in his arms was Isebert's 
other minion, Lycas. "What has transpired?" He was boning up on his 
vocabulary. In times past he would simply have said, 'what happened', 
but 'transpired' sounded more imperious. Oh yes, he was learning.
  

No doubt Waterdeep will make him an emperor even if the zombie thing 
doesn't work out.

Heh.

Welleby's nose crinkled up as an awful stench suddenly swept into the 
passageway. It wasn't like anything else he had smelled today, and he 
had encountered all sorts of odors that he had no idea existed. But 
this one was familiar. A laboratory smell? Did it have to do with 
methane?
  

Hmm... I'm suddenly seeing visions of explosions destroying 
considerably more of Waterdeep (or at least its sewers) than that army 
is likely to be capable of, particularly if its coming out in 
Piergeron's backyard.

Just a part of the sewers, casusing much back up among the populous.

"Have at you, you little rat." Welleby cast the spell which would 
make a fan of flames burst forth form his hands in a wide enough arc 
that his foe could not possibly escape.
  

And that would do it.  Welleby obviously didn't spend quite enough 
time in the laboratory.

At least not enough to put two and two together here

"Look on the bright side, we couldn't have picked up any diseases 
from the water. The heat would have killed them," Artemis said.

Throngar's miserable stare went to his friend. "I thought you'd be 
bothered more by this. You look like a lobster."

Artemis examined his skin more closely. "I've been looking a little 
weather beaten lately. I've been getting too much sun. This will 
enable me to get my skin at just the right hue, not looking too pale 
or dark. I look best with a light tan, enough to say I'm an 
outdoorsman, but not to the degree of a ranger or druid."
  

Ahh, one of those silver cloud people.

Yep.

Artemis acted as spokesman before Throngar could react. "Basically, 
sir, there was an army of zombies led by some dark priest with an 
altar down there. We blew them up and saved the city. We should be 
heroes."
  

Probably just as well.

They'll get out of being blamed for everything. Best to cut your losses 
sometimes.

Artemis went ahead and did the damage. "It was sewer gas of some 
kind. I smelled it right before everything blew up. Take a whiff, 
some of it may still be clinging to me." He offered a hand.

"It smells like everything is clinging to you," the magister said. 
Unable to stand the odor any longer, he cast a spell which cleansed 
both the prisoners' skin and clothing. They smelled as fresh as if 
they had bathed for a week.
  

Ahh, prestidigitation.  The adventurer's best friend.

Especially the cures for hangovers and VD's. :)

"Yes, I did. When I heard what you had been accused of, I rushed to 
help. I knew you weren't responsible for making the city so smelly. 
Well, smellier than usual."

"Actually we sort of di--" Another elbow met Welleby's side. Throngar 
noted he was becoming adept at delivering them.
  

If they stick together, its likely to be a skill he'll need in the 
future, so that's just as well.

Heh. True. I might do a sequal then. Longer, though. But we'll see.

"Oh, you shouldn't have bothered. I have several dozen from her. She 
collects them and gives them away. It's sort of a hobby of hers. When 
I mentioned I lost one, she gave me three more exactly like it."
Throngar appeared as he would throw up.
  

appeared as if he would throw up?  Not sure if that parses right 
either though.

Will rephrase

Once she had ridden out of earshot, Artemis turned to his companions. 
"Did you hear that? I've been trying to get her to go out with me for 
over a month. I knew if I could prove myself to her she'd give in. It 
makes everything we endured worthwhile."
  

Assuming he survives the beating he's about to incur and can walk 
afterwards.

Heh. He will. Throngar can be bribed with drink.

"Vicious looking thing, isn't he?" Welleby said. "The only orc I've 
ever seen was one my master turned to stone. He put it in his garden. 
He's a bit weathered now and decorated in bird droppings. Nothing 
covered in bird droppings is particularly intimidating. Since there's 
only one of him, he should be easy to dispatch, right?"
  

It's never only one orc.

As they are about to find out.

  Maybe sewers weren't such bad places after all.
  

Heh.

And we tie it to the beginning.

Thanks a lot for the C+C. It's greatly appreciated.

DB Sommer

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