The story of Gnosha Curosinei

Totte

Sir Heskan says with his deep thundering voice: – “It was a diversion then, but lucky that you seem capable when you have such slow horses.”

The knights set off again and after another thirty minutes the little troop left the main eastern trade route and turned left onto a small trail that leads north in the direction of the von Kettling manor. After about two hours of hard riding, there is a pause to rest and water the horses, and eat some lunch. The journey continues with between two and two and a half our riding, and then between fifteen and twenty minutes of rest. In the evening they came in the vicinity of a lake called Loch de la Tanesse. They decided to make camp about ten minutes northeast of the lake. Guard duties are set up like always, and this time Gnosha was paired with another Knight, Sir Pieter de Willems, and his combat name was just Piet. They got the wolf hours, between two and four in the middle of the night. 

After about an hour, Gnosha hears something, a sound, like a flapping or buzzing sound, and he gets the feeling he is being watched. Gnosha looks around, trying to see what it is, but in the moonless dark night, it’s hard to see anything. He says: – “Piet, there is something out there, something with flapping wings”, but Piet just replies: – “It’s probably just a bat or something, nothing to worry about.”

Gnosha sniffs the air to try to locate whatever it is with his nose, but he doesn’t pick up any scent at all, so he loads his crossbow, just in case. He then looks in the direction of the horses, but they seem to be calm. He walks a little round around the camp, better to be safe than sorry he said to himself, and he keeps his eyes out into the darkness, hoping he will spot something, but nothing.

Suddenly, something comes flying from behind and attacks Gnosha, and bites him in the neck. Gnosha spins around, and seems a little pink and purple coloured thing, the size of a little rat, but looking like a small dragon. He tries to figure out what it is, and Coral Capuchin comes to his mind, before he shoots it with his crossbow, and the little beast explodes as Gnosha really hits it straight on. He quickly looks around and doesn’t see any more, but he reloads his crossbow and says: – “Piet, it was a Capuchin, and it attacked me.”

Totte

Before Gnosha can’t really notice if Piet got the information, he is attacked by two more Coral Capuchins that both fail to bite through Gnosha’s leather armor. Gnosha spins around and fires his trusty crossbow once more, and hits one of the small beasts in the wing, then he quickly reloads. Ghosha hears some movement from the camp but ignores that as he is under attack. The two Coral Capuchins attack again, sneaking up from behind, and one of them bites him in the back of his left shoulder and it hurts, and the wound feels wrong, but Gnosha doesn’t have time to think about that now. Gnosha fires another crossbow bolt at the one he just wounded, and it hits in the other wing, and the little beast falls to the ground. One down, one to go Gnosha says to himself. He drops his crossbow and draws his rapier instead. The remaining Coral Capuchin comes up from behind again and bites Gnosha in the neck, and it hurts. Gnosha suddenly feels all sweaty, but he turns around and pierce the Colal Capuchin with his rapier. 

He suddenly feels very thirsty, very very thirsty. He tries to investigate the wound, and recall what he knows about these small beasts. He is sure the cause of his sudden thirst is not venomous bite, but probably some kind of transmutation, as these creatures are semi-magical, and they live in water. He tries to make some first aid on the wound, but fails, and he still feels very thirsty. He shows the wound to Piet, who just says: – “You have to be careful and avoid getting dirt into the wound, that can be dangerous.”

Gnosha meets Aered who has been woken up by the sound of Gnosha’s crossbow and when Aered sees one of the dead Coral Capuchins he says: – “Oh, that is a Coral Capuchin, they are cursed. Don’t tell me you let yourself be bitten? I don’t really know how to get rid of it, but I’ve heard of it.” Gnosha thinks for a while, a water based curse, how can I get rid of it. He really has no skills whatsoever in any kind of curse removal. He thinks to himself, maybe I need to find some kind of hive-queen and kill her, or maybe not. 

He feels even more thirsty, and starts to feel a longing for water, like his skin is drying out. The thirst is really hurting him, and he feels worn down by it. Aered puts his hand on the wound, and Gnosha feels a bit better, but the thirst is still there, hurting him badly, he starts to feel weak soon again after Aered heals him.

 

Totte

Gnosha feels that he really longs for a bath, to get his whole body into the water. It was still dark and night, but he said to Aered: – “We need to get down to the lake, I need to take a bath.”  Aered replies in total surprise: – ”To the water? A bath? Now?” Gnosha first asks Piet if he knows how to remove a curse, but Piet just looks at Gnosha and replies: – “A curse? You’re just weak.”

Gnosha and Aered walk down in the Loch de la Tanesse and Gnosha strips off all his clothes and the shore. The lake is dark, the sky is dark without any trace of moonlight, and they hear frogs in the water edge making funny noises, and the water looks a bit murky. Gnosha slowly walks into the water, with his rapier in his hand, deeper and deeper into the rather cold water. He feels that he wants to go below the surface, dip his whole body into the water, but he resists that urge and instead he walks out of the lake again. It was very refreshing, he didn’t feel dry and thirsty anymore, maybe that was it Gnosha thought.

Aered wraps a towel around Gnosha and asks him if he feels better now, and Gnosha says that indeed he does. Gnosha gets himself dressed again, and they walk back to the camp, but as soon as he leaves the water, he starts to feel sick again, and after when they are back in the camp, Aered looks at Gnosha and says: – “You look sick again my friend”, and gives Gnosha a new healing on the wound. 

The sun rises and Gnosha says to Aered: – “This bloody wound keeps hurting me, I feel so thirsty and dry all the time, I don’t know what to do, I feel so lost right now.” Gnosha tries to push his head into one of the water buckets used for the horses and the head felt good, but the rest of his body still ached for water. Gnosha said to himself, I really need to go to the lake again and dip my whole body. Gnosha tells Aered to fetch a rope, but Aered had already done that, and replies: – “Great minds think alike.”

They went down to the lake once more, and now it wasn’t dark anymore, and after he has removed his clothes again, Aered tied a rope around Gnosha, and Gnosha went into the water, and when it was deep enough, he put his whole body below the surface. He started to count for himself, one bottle, two bottles, three bottles… and when he got to twenty he came up again. He realized that it was not at all had to hold his breath under the water, much easier than he ever felt. 

He decided to stay longer below the surface this time, to a deep breath and started to count bottles again. When he had counted to sixty, he felt like a pressure over his chest was released, and he suddenly had to quickly surface to catch his breath. He went back to Aered, who wrapped him in a towel again. Gnosha dried himself, got dressed and they walked back to the camp. When they reached the camp, Aered asked Gnosha how he felt, and Gnosha replied: – “I feel great, just as I did before that thing bit me. Not at all thirsty or dry, and I’m hungry, let’s have some breakfast before we set off again”.

Totte

Gnosh writes some notes about this strange beast in his notebook during breakfast, and then they set off north to reach the von Kettling manor at lunch time. Gnosha and Aered feel a bit tired due to the lack of sleep, but nothing to worry about, they have been through worse. They ride fast with only one break and at lunchtime they arrive at the von Kettling manor. First they pass through some farms, and many orchards, as apple trees like the soil here and the farms around the von Kettling manor are mostly large orchards. The farmers stop working and look at the troop of six Knights of Erast, lead by Paragon Knight Sir Heskan, hurrying on the road towards the mansion. 

When they approach the mansion itself, and hold their horses outside the large main building, a well dressed elf approaches them and says: – “My name is Aloden, can I ask, what brings the Knights of Erast here?”

Sir Heskan makes one of his grunting sounds, which Gnosha have learned means that someone else can speak, so Gnosha replies: – “Sir, my name is Gnosha Curosinie and I have some important information regarding a large group, probably over a hundred people, that is heading this way, by boat, under the command of the evil necromancer Odan, to bring death and destruction to this very place.”

Aloden looks shocked, and replies: – “This sounds terrible, let me take you to the Baron without any further delays.” Gnosha asks if they could stable the horses, and Aloden calls for two stable boys to help with that while he runs off to tell the Baron that he has important guests. 

Sir Heskan, Sir Pieter de Willems, Aered, Gnosha and Thefvae follow Aloden to the main building, the rest stable the horses with guidance from the stable boys. They walk through a large hallway and Gnosha looks at the building itself. The outer walls are stone, and the interior is mostly built in wood. From the main hallway they are led into a large room, not as large as the Audience hall in the castle in Erast, but quite large. In the far end of a large table, sits a man in a large grand chair, not a throne, not a chair, but something in between. When he sees the guests, he says:  – “Come and have a seat, you seem to have a lot to talk about.”