“Dig”. That had been the only glyph written on the stone Dethmuttera had sent in reply to Snagruk’s question about what to do with the amber blood. He had flung the stone right back at the ardboy that brought it to him. He had cursed the shaman, and Urgoth for telling him to listen to the weirdboy, and the bad luck that caused Rondhol to drive him from his homey swamp on the river. Never mind that Urgoth was the same boss that gave him more orruks to boss around than he’d ever had before, or that the swamp stank and was full of bitey things big enough to take an orruk’s head off. Weeks living off of the land fighting brainwashed humies, orruks and other, more dangerous things and the only answer he could get as to what to do with the substance he was tasked with obtaining was “dig”.
When he was done cursing, Snagruk set to work. He buried the amber blood (well, almost all of it) as deep as he could make the ardboys and other assorted orruks under his command dig without a mutiny. Then, he set to find more. Many of the dig sites and groups transporting the realm’s lifeblood were too heavily defended to take without losses but the Kruleboy boltboy boss held off his more eager underlings from anything stinking of a fair fight. The Fae’s operations had stepped up considerably and that meant opportunities arose. Overstretched convoys and poorly guarded dig sites found themselves ambushed and overwhelmed, their amber blood taken.
Each time Snagruk managed to steal some, he would have his troops bury it. If possible he chose an old, unused dig site, but if that didn’t work he would scout out places as far from the active sites and transport routes as possible, reasoning that if he couldn’t return it somewhere it came from, he could at least make it hard for the Fae and their brainwashed gitz to find.
It didn’t all go his way. Several times he called off raids as more Fae troops appeared, or sounded a retreat when they put up a tougher fight than he expected. One time one of his raids had been going great. He had gutshot the dig site’s leader and was debating how slow he should make their death. Then, seemingly out of nowhere a bunch of trees attacked the orruks. Zoggin’ trees! As he ordered his orruks to grab what amber blood they could and retreat, he had a sneaking suspicion the Sylvaneth had waited for his forces to get stuck in and softened up a bit by the Fae knights. Dismissing that as nonsense, he had continued his retreat.
The worst raid was the most recent. The Fae glamoured troops guarding the dig site were taken out easily enough and the haul of amber blood was a good one, but then there were the humies sittin’ in a cage. Urgoth said to only go after “dose Fae gitz and der boyz” and ignore other humies. Maybe Snagruk could justify leaving them but he knew the boss wanted him to avoid conflict with the regular humies in the area. Reluctantly, and disgusted with himself for the awful wastes of letting them go, opened their cages and told them to scram. He had never hated himself so much
Snagruk continued to curse his bad luck but he had to admit to himself that things weren’t so bad. Good boyz fighting with him, a simple objective and a boss that let him fight his way. All in all he was having fun, even if he wouldn’t admit to anyone, least of all that smug wierdboy.
