The Off-Seasonal Arena- Number 1

[LittleBlueMan]

Wow. I'm next.
I hope I can take out an ogre character.
If I get the hits off with that Revered Blade of Tzunki, and manage to take him down in the first round of combat, I'll survive. Otherwise? Not a chance.

[DavidVC04]

I think Demandred has got this one. The Lizard won't last long.

[Demandred]

Better Hope I fail all my wardsaves then Or else the greedy fist will eat your weapon and then my ogre will feast on lizard flesh!

Anyways, if the past is any indication it will be a most excellent read either way. Good luck LBM

[LittleBlueMan]

I should have named my character underdog.
Also, how, vaguely mind you, does a greedy fist work. Are their tests involves, or is it a, "yum, yum, I like cheese with my Lizardman artifact."?

[Demandred]

On a successful save, the greedy fist devours the magical properties of the weapon used to attack.

So all I have to do is make a wardsave and your weapon becomes a mundane hand weapon.

[DavidVC04]

If Hrothgar dies in this arena can he fight in the other one?

Originally Posted by Demandred

On a successful save, the greedy fist devours the magical properties of the weapon used to attack.

So all I have to do is make a wardsave and your weapon becomes a mundane hand weapon.

[SteamTankDriver]

ROUND 1: DUEL 7:
ADOHI-MAZDA VS. HROTHGAR MAWSEEKER THE EVER-HUNGRY

CHARACTER RECAP:
Adohi-Mazda:
Special Rules: Scaly Skin (5+)
Light Armour: (armour save modified to 4+)
Aura of Quetzl: (4+ Ward save against attacks of Strength 5 or more)
Shield: (armour save modified to 3+)
Blade of Revered Tzunki: (+1 Strength, no armour saves allowed)

Hrothgar Mawseeker the Ever-Hungry:
Tenderizer: (counts as a great weapon, unsaved wounds become D3)
Heavy Armour: (5+ armour save)
Greedy Fist: (save modified to 4+, on successful armour or ward save the Greedy Fist "eats" magical properties of items used against it)
Wyrdstone Necklace: (confers a 5+ ward save- roll a D6 before the match before combat; on a 1 the bearer takes a unsaveable wound)
Mawseeker Bigname: (+1 Toughness, suffers from Stupidity)
Spiky Bits (2 Sword Gnoblars): (essentially 2 extra attacks)
Lucky Gut Plate (Luck Gnoblar): (allows for a single armour or ward save re-roll)

Frederick Roethliss glanced over his shoulder at the shriveled husk that called itself the lord of Averland, giving a short, derisive, snort. The wizard could remember a time when the name Matthias Tull alone was enough to strike fear into the hearts of Chaos worshippers and greenskins alike. A time when Roethliss himself had fought side by side with his lord on the battlefield, and the two of them had slain countless foes with the combined might of steel and flame. But now... Roethliss turned to regard Tull again, both disgusted and troubled by the shade of the man he had once known. Now...
"He has become weak."
The voice was gone from his head as quickly as it had come, but there was no mistaking it. Faint resonances still flickered at the corners of his mind, deep undercurrents of seething laughter that seemed to come from dozens of bloodied throats. It brought with it the images of a throne of skulls in a kingdom of flesh, of horrors beyond mortal comprehension. It brought with it a name; Kaz'rul, and the promise of everlasting power, that, despite himself, Roethliss didn't find wholly unappealing....

Tull stared at Roethliss as the wizard hazarded another glance over his shoulder, a scowl passing briefly over the man's pudgy face. Tull's eyes shifted briefly to a nearby discarded serving tray and the forgotten steak knife that lay upon it. "How easy it would be to gut you like the pig you are," he whispered under his breath. "But never fear Frederick...once I usher the legions of Khorne into this world, I shall make sure you are offered up as the first sacrifice in my honor." Roethliss came to an abrupt halt, and Tull briefly feared that the wizard had overheard him before realizing that he had raised a flabby hand to his throat and was tapping at his trinket with a commendable gusto. Tull's cracked lips parted in a toothy sneer as the wizard began to speak, and he fell back into his chair with a slight thump, his breath wheezing from his mouth in shuddering bursts as Roethliss began to speak..

"Most honored guests," the wizard began, "it is my great honor to bring you the next two champions who will be vying for the chance to be crowned victor of the arena! One is another brutal fighter from the steamy Lustrian jungle and the other is an ogre overlord from the tribes of the Grey Mountains! I give you Adohi-Mazda and Hrothgar Mawseeker the Ever-Hungry!"


A drunken cheer rippled through the crowd as the gates began their ascent, dozens of leering spectators elbowing their way through the stands to get a better look at the ogre, a creature that until now, had only existed in the bedtime stories of unruly Averlandian children. They were to be sorely disappointed however, as Adohi was the first to emerge.



The saurus stalked from beneath the gate, his sloping, green-scaled, head twitching from side to side as he regarded the clusters of people straining to catch the first glimpse of Hrothgar when the ogre chose to show himself. Adohi's eyes flicked across the arena as the lizardman hefted his shield, the shell of a giant tortoise that had been hollowed out to follow the contour of Adohi's scaled arm. He swept the shield one-handed around his body, making sure that the leather wrist-straps held up to a quick reversal of motion. Satisfied, the lizardman turned his attention to the sword in his other hand, a huge hunk of metal that had been smeared with a variety of noxious unguents that seemed to whorl and eddy across the blade in viscous pools. The sword came to a point at least a foot over Adohi's head, but the saurus wielded it easily, his muscular forearm tensing as he swiped the weapon through the air above his pink-feathered crest. The skull of some large pack animal dominated the center of his armour, which, unlike the equipment of the other Lustrian arena competitors, was a set of chain links that draped his torso, stitching down his back with a interlaced series of leather straps that crossed below the jagged scales of his spine. The armour flexed as Adohi moved, metal links clinking against his scaled underbelly as the lizardman dropped into a crouch and awaited his opponent.


He did not have long to wait. Hrothgar stomped from under the portcullis with a bellow, the head of his enormous twin-headed warhammer emerging several seconds before he did. The blunt side of the weapon was smeared with the dark brown of dried blood, and several scraps of hair and skin were still visible where they had been impaled on the other head's spiked surface. The ogre himself seemed to share a certain macabre kinship with his weapon, as his creased hide was also stained with gore, furrows of crusted blood leaking down the front of his bloated stomach and across the occasional armour plates that had been bolted to his skin with large metal rivets. Six of the bolts had been punched into his lower abdomen through the curving iron bulk of his circular gut plate. Bits of sharpened metal erupted from beneath Hrothgar's skin just above the gut plate, the remnants of sword and axeheads that had broken off in the ogre's hide over the course of his many battles. The ogre nonchalantly scratched at some of the shrapnel, tearing bloody gobbets from his own flesh with the glowing bear-trap device that had been strapped to one meaty fist. The inside of the device had been tamped into the shape of a gaping mouth, both reflecting the sinister nature of the artifact and ogre's tribal name. As a final touch to Hrothgar's barbarically feral appearance, a piece of raw warpstone dangled from his neck, pulsing with its eerie green light. The ogre reached up with his un-gauntleted hand, ripping the stone from its chain and cramming it into his mouth. Spittle dripped from his hand as he pulled it from his mouth with a slurp, and for a moment Hrothgar's face bunched up as if expecting a reaction. When none seemed to come the ogre relaxed, turning his beady eyes back to the crouched form of his lizardman opponent. Hrothgar bellowed his challenge with a savage, phlegm-filled roar, raising his warhammer and beginning his thunderous charge across the arena.


Adohi, determined to meet the ogre's charge head-on, rushed forward, angling himself to dodge around the ungainly swing of Hrothgar's hammer, but it was the saurus' first time engaging a tyrant of the Grey Mountains in combat, and he had fatally misjudged his opponent. Ogre and lizardman crashed together in a shower of sparks as Hrothgar swung his hammer in an downward strike that Adohi barely managed to block, steel grating against steel as the two warriors struggled to gain the other hand for a few tenuous seconds. The lizardman's eyes bulged as his strength started to wane, and the ogre's hammer began to dip lower and lower towards his crested skull.


The unguents on Adohi's blade bubbled as they ate away at the head of Hrothgar's hammer, but the ogre kept forcing the weapon downward, snarling as he did. With a sudden crack the saurus' sword snapped, pushing the two combatants apart and firing pieces of jagged metal in every direction. Several shards flew into the stands, catching an overzealous patron in the neck. The man yelped as blood spewed from the hole, and he tumbled over the railing, slamming into the arena floor with a crack like a snapping twig.



Momentarily distracted by the patron's fall, Adohi didn't have time to dodge Hrothgar's renewed attack, and the warhammer slammed into the lizardman's chest. Scales crunched and splintered under the hammer's head and Adohi flew backward, trailing blood like the tail of a kite as he spun through the air and thudded into the arena wall, scarlet trickles running from the corners of his mouth as he slid to the ground with a greasy red smear. The saurus' shield and sword fell from his hands with a clatter, and Adohi tried to backpedal up the wall, but his legs just flailed limply underneath his armour. Hrothgar advanced on the prone lizardman, letting his warhammer drop to the ground as he waddled up to the Lustrian warrior. Adohi redoubled his efforts to scrabble up the wall, but to no avail.


Seizing the lizardman by the shoulders, Hrothgar enfolded his opponent in a crushing embrace, forcing the bits of broken weaponry embedded in his skin through the links of Adohi's armour and into the open hammer wound. Blood pooled across Hrothgar's stomach as the lizardman screeched in agony, throwing his head back to keen his dying cry. The ogre leaned forward, biting into the undulating craw of his opponents throat, spritzing his lips and teeth with crimson fluid.



Adohi's body went limp as the ogre's jaws gnashed together and Hrothgar let the saurus' corpse drop to the ground. He bellowed towards the domed ceiling of the arena, an image of death incarnate in his blood covered armour as he howled at the very gods themselves before turning to exit. Stomping towards the gate, Hrothgar stooped to collect both his weapon and the corpse of the unlucky patron, ripping one of its arm's free of its socket and tearing off a piece of the limb before shoving it into his mouth and chomping it into a bloody mess.



The crowd roared approvingly at the brutality of the ogre, chanting his name in a fervor of bloodlust and excitement. Tull even inched forward in his chair, nodding approvingly at the tyrant as the massive warrior lumbered under the portcullis. A retching cough issued from the back of the box as Roethliss vomited a stream of bile across the floorboards, his stomach unable to fathom the violence which the ogre had partaken in, and how quickly it had happened. Tull laughed at the wizard's weak constitution, and, feeling particularly sated by the bloodshed of the day, arouse to announce the last match of the first round himself.



COMBAT RESULTS:

(i): H-3



Hrothgar simply was too powerful for the lizardman to handle. At Strength 7 he just plowed through Adohi, and the saurus' armour and ward just were not enough to save him. To add insult to injury however, the last wound was caused by the spiky bits, so essentially, Adohi was done in by a sword gnoblar!


I hope to get the next match written up sometime this week, so keep your eyes peeled. I would also like to add that I really appreciate all the comments that everyone has been leaving and the awesome help I have been getting on the roll-ups from DavidVC04. Much obliged.
-Tom

[Phoenix]

Fantastic!

[DavidVC04]

Another terrific read. You do a great job portraying the characters--I'm trying to take lessons from that.

And the gory ending for Adohi, the squeezing and throat-chomp. Nice. Another wincer.

[mpdscott]

Wow....that was just.....horrifically brutal....
I'd almost fear for The Blade Weaver if that was the match up....