Okay, so Alron had run away from the werewolves, and found out shortly thereafter that he was a wereboar. Not as glamorous as a weretiger, or as powerful as a werebear, but at least not evil, like a werewolf. Still not an ideal situation, though. He quickly headed south, so that he could find somewhere civilized to get cured.
He was making good progress, he thought, until suddenly he blundered into the territory of an ogre family... the kids being the first ones he encountered. Before he knew it, he was set upon by three ogre children... each easily as big as him, and all three together stronger than him. Without any armor or weapons, they took him down quickly, but Mom arrived shortly to spoil their fun. She grabbed the barely-conscious Alron by the foot and dragged him back to their lair, throwing him in a part of the cave with a wooden cell door over the front. Inside were a few other people, all having just as bad luck as he was. Not one to want to stick around to be eaten by ogres (or, really, to fight them while unarmed), Alron managed to convince two of the prisoners to leave with him. The others refused, too scared to make the attempt, so Alron unlatched the door from the inside, and with the two brave ones, he snuck out. He contemplated going back in for the others, but sudden screaming of those left behind revealed that dinner was about to be prepared. Not much to do, so we accepted it and moved on.
Unfortunately, Alron's changes weren't quite so regular yet, and that night, with the two hapless gents he escaped with there at the camp with him, he changed into his wereboar form.
I have no idea what happened to those two, but when he woke up, he was lying naked in the forest. He knew that he was further south, which was good, but on the other hand, he was naked. Happening upon a small village a short time later, he was investigating, not wanting to just walk into town in the buff, when he heard two men talking. Approaching, he saw two rough-looking men with a bag of something, and they were acting pleased with what they'd found... it seemed like they'd stolen the bag, or something like that. Needing some clothes, Alron picked up a stray branch, sneaked up to where they were, but at the last moment, they heard him. They turned around and saw him standing there, buck naked, with his hand behind his back.
"Hey..." the one said, bemused by what he saw... "Whutcha got behind yur back there?"
Well, Alron let him see it... up close. The branch swung around and cracked into the guy's skull, and he fell hard. The other guy ran for it, and Alron let him go. Unfortunately, the blow had killed the guy. I felt guilty about that. I'd forgotten to say "Hey Steve, that's gonna be a non-lethal attack." Bleh. Oh well. I took the guy's clothes, his dagger, and the bag of whatever it was... which turned out to be some kind of dried leaves... which turned out to be some kind of narcotic, according to a druid I encountered afterwards. He disposed of it for me... I didn't ask how he was going to do that... if he ended up smoking it, who am I to judge? heh.
The druid pointed me in the right direction, saying that there was an elven village not far away that I could get help at. I was a little leery of that, given my last encounter with elves, but I decided to just not mention the lycanthropy thing.
With word having been sent ahead by the druid, Alron received a warmer welcome from these elves. They were willing to help him, but they wanted some help from him in return. Several people, including elves, had been taken prisoner by a large group of humanoids... goblins, orcs and ogres. They wanted Alron to lead a group of elves to rescue them. I had no idea what the situation really was, so I was really uncertain about making plans without more information... Steve portayed the elves as rather dubious about that, but he and his troop of archers were soon on their way.
Continued in the next post (and you won't have to wait 2 months for it, either!)
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