Archived from groups: alt.games.diablo (More info?)
Bloodraven, Part II
Stopping only long enough to kick a couple of hedgehogs to death and
raise fresh Barries, he strode briskly towards Flavie's annoying
outpost. He noticed that there were four skeletons now.
One of the hedgehogs, nonsensically, had given up a fairly decent pair
of boots when it died. Where this human-sized article of clothing had
come from was anybody's guess - likely they came from the same place
as the full human skeleton that seemed to emerge from the ruins of the
spiny rodent. Maybe the skeleton had been wearing the boots, before it
became Barry. Either way, the boots couldn't possibly have been any
use to the hedgehog, but they somehow fit Hamster II perfectly, so he
shook his head, pulled them on, and continued on his way.
Eventually the Blood Moor gave onto the Cold Plains, which at least
tried to live up to its name. Not that the Blood Moor hadn't seen its
share of blood, but the whole thing still seemed silly to him. He
battled his way through a few roving packs of grey-skinned women who
sounded suspiciously happy to be dying, and another few hedgehogs, and
some ever-present zombies. By the time he'd fought his way to the
wall, he'd found himself a nice warm wooly vest and a pair of gloves
to dispel a bit of the Cold Plains' fabled coldness. The gloves were
damaged, but at least the vest was pleasant. It took a nice hammering
from the grey-skinned orgasm-deathrattle chicks, too.
Arctic Furs, the tag said. Hamster II wasn't too sure about that, but
they'd do until the real thing came along. The wall itself went on,
seemingly all the way around the Plains and even boxing off certain
parts of the middle of it, for no apparent reason.
After a lot of irritating wandering around in the Cold Plains,
fighting pointless jabbering creatures that all seemed to have a
grudge against him but nobody else, consulting his 'quest book' -
which suddenly appeared at unwelcome moments in his backpack and told
him he was apparently scheduled to perform not just this annoying
Bloodraven task, but apparently a few others, as-yet undisclosed - for
its unhelpful advice and inexact directions, and exchanging shouted
insults with Flavie over in the distance, Hamster II finally arrived
not only at the dreadful Burial Grounds of doom and terror, but also
at the end of one of the longer, more grammatically fudged-up
sentences of which he'd ever been a part.
He'd only recently popped out of blissful nothingness into this
unsatisfactory world, so he hadn't heard any of the jokes about
graveyards being the dead centre of a given community, or being so
popular that everybody was dying to get into them. But if he had heard
any of these jokes, he'd have rolled his eyes and reflected that it
showed just how much your average moron knew about ... well, anything.
Including graveyards.
His professional eye - if indeed you could call so criminally
underpaid an eye 'professional' - took in the wandering skeletons, the
mossy, moaning zombies, the tumbledown tombstones and mausoleums.
People might have been dying to get into this place, but it seemed
like they'd found a loophole once they were inside. This wasn't a
boneyard, it was a throbbing, jumping necropolis.
Hamster II glanced at Barry.
"Like it?" he asked idly.
Barry, for once, seemed unenthusiastic. The mouldering skeleton
exchanged sockety glances with his comrades, also-Barry.
"It's alright, boss," one of the Barries offered.
"Bit crowded," said another.
"Not the sort of place I'd consider raising a family," Barry pointed
out.
Hamster II shuddered away from the implications of this last factoid.
"Okay," he said, loudly enough to drown out the little voice in his
head that was persisting in an exploration of Barry's reproductive
methods, and incidentally also loudly enough to attract the attention
of some of the shambling zombies. "Okay, let's bash them all up."
"Yeah!" Barry said with all his usual fervour. "Yeah, yeah, let's kill
some guys."
"I wanna kill that one," Barry added. "Can I, boss? Can I?"
"Let's all kill some guys," Hamster II said expansively, "but I have
to remind you - this is only a demonstrative exercise. We'll bash some
of them up, show how superior you are to the average zombie, maybe
I'll raise a couple more skeletons, show my skills, and then propose
an alliance with Bloodraven," Barries were not, of course, listening
at this point, but Hamster II went on happily anyway. "And then we can
get out of this crummy graveyard, at the head of an army of the
undead, and we can wipe out that stupid encampment full of idiots, and
I can get out of here and do something less dangerous."
He entertained brief daydreams of setting up a shop somewhere, in a
vibrant and exciting city full of enlightened and intelligent people
who could make real conversation without sending him on quests. A shop
where he would resurrect the bodies of dead pets for grieving kiddies,
or maybe the bodies of dead kiddies for grieving parents. Or for
grinning perverts. He hadn't decided yet. It was a nice daydream. He'd
make millions.
So he still had a smile on his face as he elbowed his way through the
gathering crowd of zombies, whacking one or another of them
occasionally with his wand, and came face-to-face with Bloodraven
herself.
She was a corrupted Rogue of some sort, and she looked like one of the
grey-skinned demoness women out on the Cold Plains, and they were
meant to be corrupted Rogues as well, so he supposed things made sense
as far as they went. The weird spiny red outfit made less sense, and
her desperate dashing back and forth and shooting flaming arrows
everywhere was downright silly. She was quite, quite mad. Hamster II
suspected, in fact, that the only reason she had collected a vast army
of undead monstrosities was because cats wouldn't have anything to do
with her.
"Join my army of the dead!" she cried in an unnecessarily theatrical
voice, in between pelting Hamster II and his associates with burning
twigs. Hamster II ducked behind a tree that was festooned with the
bodies of dead Rogues. He wondered, with professional curiosity, why
Bloodraven wasn't using these fresh bodies to create stronger, more
vital reanimations. She was drawing tired old carcasses out of the
ground, and Barries were carving through them without a great deal of
difficulty.
"Okay," he called, deciding that affable agreement was called for.
"Darn it, I will. Where do I sign?"
There was, temporarily, no response to this, and the skeletons and
zombies intensified their attack. Bloodraven capered back into view,
and shot another arrow.
"I must say, it's nice to finally meet a fellow necromancer," Hamster
II tried to break the ice. "It'll be good to work alongside you in a
spirit of cooperation and..."
"Urrrf."
"...and goodwill, and take care of that bunch of annoying Rogues and
Warriv once and for all. I thought we could share the workload, namely
by your forces ... quit that."
"Arf."
"Namely by your forces taking out the Rogue archers, or by acting as a
sort of shield, if you will, and allowing me to kill Gheed and Akara,
although I have to warn you I think she's got some secret weapon ...
and she's a nutter ... look, would you call off your zombies? We're on
the same side."
"Urf, arrf," the zombie in question took another slow, leisurely swipe
at Hamster II, missed, and caught Barry a glancing blow to the
ribcage. Barry chuckled and attacked. You couldn't hold it against
zombies, they had a long attention-span but not much room for new
ideas.
"Anyway - ha ha, okay, cut it out - I have these four skeletons,
they're pretty good - see, they're chopping up that zombie of yours,
sorry about that but I'll make it up to you. Anyway, I'd be only too
happy to - yes yes, urf arf, very nice - happy to rent these boys out
to you for a very reasonable price. Ow."
The zombie had managed to get a blow in under Hamster II's shoddy tin
buckler, which lived up to its name and buckled. Hamster II's arm
throbbed. The red-clad woman with the stupid hat laughed, ran around
very fast for no apparent reason, and shot an arrow at him.
"Ha ha ha, look at me, boss, look what I'm doing."
"Go easy, Barry, don't want to jeopardise our working relationsh...
hey, I said quit that."
"Urf."
"Oh, heh heh, I get it," Hamster II grinned. "Hazing the new guy, eh?
Well, I guess that's traditional. Okay, I - ow, not the face."
Bloodraven laughed and shot some more burning arrows. Barry went down
with several lodged in brain pan and pelvis, still swinging and
cackling as he disintegrated.
Bloodraven moved in for the kill.
Grimacing, Hamster II swung his brittle wand again and again,
reflecting - not for the first time - that this probably wasn't the
best use for a magical implement, even a magical implement that only
cost one gold piece. He became dimly aware that he was alone, and took
a moment to raise a selection of new Barries. If he'd thought for a
moment that this demonstration of skill would awaken Bloodraven to the
possibility of a truce, let alone an alliance, he was very much
mistaken. Again, this wouldn't be the first time.
"Why are you hiding in this graveyard?" he gave it one final try. "The
Cold Plains are full of zombies and corrupted Rogues, the Blood Moor
is overrun with demon hedgehogs, and there's nobody outside the
encampment who would actually attack you except for Flavie! Why aren't
you taking your fight out there? I saw any number of dead Rogues on my
way here. In fact, I looted a few of them. We don't have to be
enemies. We can take them! It'll be ... will you quit that?"
Bloodraven, battered and snarling, fired another burning arrow. This
one lodged in Hamster II's shoulder and set fire briefly to his hair.
He growled, broke his wand over the red-armoured loon's head, and
kneed her in the face while she was doubled over. Suddenly Barry and
Barry were there, swiping and hacking, while Barry and Barry provided
cover from the encroaching mass of skeletons and zombies. And then,
before Hamster II could shout 'don't cut her arms, legs and head off
and stamp on her torso, she's our best chance to get out of here',
Barry and Barry cut Bloodraven's arms, legs and head off and stamped
on her torso.
With a great and dramatic moan, Bloodraven's life-force exploded out
in a great blue-green wave, her soul departed for the place
over-actors go when they die, and a huge rope of lightning scrawled
its way through the graveyard, knocking zombies flat wherever it
touched them. With a final ominous roll of thunder, the boneyard fell
silent, the dead remained dead, and Barries, miraculously untouched by
the lightning of undead-killing +2, picked themselves up and started
to chuckle and give one another clicky high-fives.
"So much for that," Hamster II grunted. "What an amateur..."
He trailed off, looking down at the sundry remains of the terrible
Bloodraven. The secret of where she'd managed to store so many
napalm-soaked arrows had mercifully died with her, but it seemed to
Hamster II that there were still things there for the taking. He
considered briefly returning to the Rogue encampment with Bloodraven's
head on a spike, but decided he couldn't be bothered. On the other
hand, it looked as though she'd been carrying...
"A crossbow?"
He bent and picked it up. He could have sworn that she'd been firing
flaming arrows at him with a long bow of some sort, and yet here it
was, a crossbow. Inexplicable but apparently true.
"This is stupid," he muttered, casting around for the long bow he was
sure he'd seen, and finding nothing but blood-soaked ground and
crispy-fried zombie-bits. Stupid. It was a sentiment he felt he'd been
expressing for his entire short life, and would likely continue
expressing on a regular basis until he could get away.
Bloodraven, his apparent ticket out, had transpired to be a waste of
time.
C&J
--
Beware of Trojans, they're complete smegheads.
- 13 & 13b of 12, the CMM Collective.
- www.afrj-monkeyhouse.org
Bloodraven, Part II
Stopping only long enough to kick a couple of hedgehogs to death and
raise fresh Barries, he strode briskly towards Flavie's annoying
outpost. He noticed that there were four skeletons now.
One of the hedgehogs, nonsensically, had given up a fairly decent pair
of boots when it died. Where this human-sized article of clothing had
come from was anybody's guess - likely they came from the same place
as the full human skeleton that seemed to emerge from the ruins of the
spiny rodent. Maybe the skeleton had been wearing the boots, before it
became Barry. Either way, the boots couldn't possibly have been any
use to the hedgehog, but they somehow fit Hamster II perfectly, so he
shook his head, pulled them on, and continued on his way.
Eventually the Blood Moor gave onto the Cold Plains, which at least
tried to live up to its name. Not that the Blood Moor hadn't seen its
share of blood, but the whole thing still seemed silly to him. He
battled his way through a few roving packs of grey-skinned women who
sounded suspiciously happy to be dying, and another few hedgehogs, and
some ever-present zombies. By the time he'd fought his way to the
wall, he'd found himself a nice warm wooly vest and a pair of gloves
to dispel a bit of the Cold Plains' fabled coldness. The gloves were
damaged, but at least the vest was pleasant. It took a nice hammering
from the grey-skinned orgasm-deathrattle chicks, too.
Arctic Furs, the tag said. Hamster II wasn't too sure about that, but
they'd do until the real thing came along. The wall itself went on,
seemingly all the way around the Plains and even boxing off certain
parts of the middle of it, for no apparent reason.
After a lot of irritating wandering around in the Cold Plains,
fighting pointless jabbering creatures that all seemed to have a
grudge against him but nobody else, consulting his 'quest book' -
which suddenly appeared at unwelcome moments in his backpack and told
him he was apparently scheduled to perform not just this annoying
Bloodraven task, but apparently a few others, as-yet undisclosed - for
its unhelpful advice and inexact directions, and exchanging shouted
insults with Flavie over in the distance, Hamster II finally arrived
not only at the dreadful Burial Grounds of doom and terror, but also
at the end of one of the longer, more grammatically fudged-up
sentences of which he'd ever been a part.
He'd only recently popped out of blissful nothingness into this
unsatisfactory world, so he hadn't heard any of the jokes about
graveyards being the dead centre of a given community, or being so
popular that everybody was dying to get into them. But if he had heard
any of these jokes, he'd have rolled his eyes and reflected that it
showed just how much your average moron knew about ... well, anything.
Including graveyards.
His professional eye - if indeed you could call so criminally
underpaid an eye 'professional' - took in the wandering skeletons, the
mossy, moaning zombies, the tumbledown tombstones and mausoleums.
People might have been dying to get into this place, but it seemed
like they'd found a loophole once they were inside. This wasn't a
boneyard, it was a throbbing, jumping necropolis.
Hamster II glanced at Barry.
"Like it?" he asked idly.
Barry, for once, seemed unenthusiastic. The mouldering skeleton
exchanged sockety glances with his comrades, also-Barry.
"It's alright, boss," one of the Barries offered.
"Bit crowded," said another.
"Not the sort of place I'd consider raising a family," Barry pointed
out.
Hamster II shuddered away from the implications of this last factoid.
"Okay," he said, loudly enough to drown out the little voice in his
head that was persisting in an exploration of Barry's reproductive
methods, and incidentally also loudly enough to attract the attention
of some of the shambling zombies. "Okay, let's bash them all up."
"Yeah!" Barry said with all his usual fervour. "Yeah, yeah, let's kill
some guys."
"I wanna kill that one," Barry added. "Can I, boss? Can I?"
"Let's all kill some guys," Hamster II said expansively, "but I have
to remind you - this is only a demonstrative exercise. We'll bash some
of them up, show how superior you are to the average zombie, maybe
I'll raise a couple more skeletons, show my skills, and then propose
an alliance with Bloodraven," Barries were not, of course, listening
at this point, but Hamster II went on happily anyway. "And then we can
get out of this crummy graveyard, at the head of an army of the
undead, and we can wipe out that stupid encampment full of idiots, and
I can get out of here and do something less dangerous."
He entertained brief daydreams of setting up a shop somewhere, in a
vibrant and exciting city full of enlightened and intelligent people
who could make real conversation without sending him on quests. A shop
where he would resurrect the bodies of dead pets for grieving kiddies,
or maybe the bodies of dead kiddies for grieving parents. Or for
grinning perverts. He hadn't decided yet. It was a nice daydream. He'd
make millions.
So he still had a smile on his face as he elbowed his way through the
gathering crowd of zombies, whacking one or another of them
occasionally with his wand, and came face-to-face with Bloodraven
herself.
She was a corrupted Rogue of some sort, and she looked like one of the
grey-skinned demoness women out on the Cold Plains, and they were
meant to be corrupted Rogues as well, so he supposed things made sense
as far as they went. The weird spiny red outfit made less sense, and
her desperate dashing back and forth and shooting flaming arrows
everywhere was downright silly. She was quite, quite mad. Hamster II
suspected, in fact, that the only reason she had collected a vast army
of undead monstrosities was because cats wouldn't have anything to do
with her.
"Join my army of the dead!" she cried in an unnecessarily theatrical
voice, in between pelting Hamster II and his associates with burning
twigs. Hamster II ducked behind a tree that was festooned with the
bodies of dead Rogues. He wondered, with professional curiosity, why
Bloodraven wasn't using these fresh bodies to create stronger, more
vital reanimations. She was drawing tired old carcasses out of the
ground, and Barries were carving through them without a great deal of
difficulty.
"Okay," he called, deciding that affable agreement was called for.
"Darn it, I will. Where do I sign?"
There was, temporarily, no response to this, and the skeletons and
zombies intensified their attack. Bloodraven capered back into view,
and shot another arrow.
"I must say, it's nice to finally meet a fellow necromancer," Hamster
II tried to break the ice. "It'll be good to work alongside you in a
spirit of cooperation and..."
"Urrrf."
"...and goodwill, and take care of that bunch of annoying Rogues and
Warriv once and for all. I thought we could share the workload, namely
by your forces ... quit that."
"Arf."
"Namely by your forces taking out the Rogue archers, or by acting as a
sort of shield, if you will, and allowing me to kill Gheed and Akara,
although I have to warn you I think she's got some secret weapon ...
and she's a nutter ... look, would you call off your zombies? We're on
the same side."
"Urf, arrf," the zombie in question took another slow, leisurely swipe
at Hamster II, missed, and caught Barry a glancing blow to the
ribcage. Barry chuckled and attacked. You couldn't hold it against
zombies, they had a long attention-span but not much room for new
ideas.
"Anyway - ha ha, okay, cut it out - I have these four skeletons,
they're pretty good - see, they're chopping up that zombie of yours,
sorry about that but I'll make it up to you. Anyway, I'd be only too
happy to - yes yes, urf arf, very nice - happy to rent these boys out
to you for a very reasonable price. Ow."
The zombie had managed to get a blow in under Hamster II's shoddy tin
buckler, which lived up to its name and buckled. Hamster II's arm
throbbed. The red-clad woman with the stupid hat laughed, ran around
very fast for no apparent reason, and shot an arrow at him.
"Ha ha ha, look at me, boss, look what I'm doing."
"Go easy, Barry, don't want to jeopardise our working relationsh...
hey, I said quit that."
"Urf."
"Oh, heh heh, I get it," Hamster II grinned. "Hazing the new guy, eh?
Well, I guess that's traditional. Okay, I - ow, not the face."
Bloodraven laughed and shot some more burning arrows. Barry went down
with several lodged in brain pan and pelvis, still swinging and
cackling as he disintegrated.
Bloodraven moved in for the kill.
Grimacing, Hamster II swung his brittle wand again and again,
reflecting - not for the first time - that this probably wasn't the
best use for a magical implement, even a magical implement that only
cost one gold piece. He became dimly aware that he was alone, and took
a moment to raise a selection of new Barries. If he'd thought for a
moment that this demonstration of skill would awaken Bloodraven to the
possibility of a truce, let alone an alliance, he was very much
mistaken. Again, this wouldn't be the first time.
"Why are you hiding in this graveyard?" he gave it one final try. "The
Cold Plains are full of zombies and corrupted Rogues, the Blood Moor
is overrun with demon hedgehogs, and there's nobody outside the
encampment who would actually attack you except for Flavie! Why aren't
you taking your fight out there? I saw any number of dead Rogues on my
way here. In fact, I looted a few of them. We don't have to be
enemies. We can take them! It'll be ... will you quit that?"
Bloodraven, battered and snarling, fired another burning arrow. This
one lodged in Hamster II's shoulder and set fire briefly to his hair.
He growled, broke his wand over the red-armoured loon's head, and
kneed her in the face while she was doubled over. Suddenly Barry and
Barry were there, swiping and hacking, while Barry and Barry provided
cover from the encroaching mass of skeletons and zombies. And then,
before Hamster II could shout 'don't cut her arms, legs and head off
and stamp on her torso, she's our best chance to get out of here',
Barry and Barry cut Bloodraven's arms, legs and head off and stamped
on her torso.
With a great and dramatic moan, Bloodraven's life-force exploded out
in a great blue-green wave, her soul departed for the place
over-actors go when they die, and a huge rope of lightning scrawled
its way through the graveyard, knocking zombies flat wherever it
touched them. With a final ominous roll of thunder, the boneyard fell
silent, the dead remained dead, and Barries, miraculously untouched by
the lightning of undead-killing +2, picked themselves up and started
to chuckle and give one another clicky high-fives.
"So much for that," Hamster II grunted. "What an amateur..."
He trailed off, looking down at the sundry remains of the terrible
Bloodraven. The secret of where she'd managed to store so many
napalm-soaked arrows had mercifully died with her, but it seemed to
Hamster II that there were still things there for the taking. He
considered briefly returning to the Rogue encampment with Bloodraven's
head on a spike, but decided he couldn't be bothered. On the other
hand, it looked as though she'd been carrying...
"A crossbow?"
He bent and picked it up. He could have sworn that she'd been firing
flaming arrows at him with a long bow of some sort, and yet here it
was, a crossbow. Inexplicable but apparently true.
"This is stupid," he muttered, casting around for the long bow he was
sure he'd seen, and finding nothing but blood-soaked ground and
crispy-fried zombie-bits. Stupid. It was a sentiment he felt he'd been
expressing for his entire short life, and would likely continue
expressing on a regular basis until he could get away.
Bloodraven, his apparent ticket out, had transpired to be a waste of
time.
C&J
--
Beware of Trojans, they're complete smegheads.
- 13 & 13b of 12, the CMM Collective.
- www.afrj-monkeyhouse.org
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram