The Templars slowly marched through the bogwater.
The others were alert, weapons drawn, always surveying their surroundings looking for looming dangers. Their scouts had told of Kruleboyz sightings in the area, and then…
Templar Oron the Steadfast impaled a small diregator’s head with a swift stab of his sword. It hadn’t been expected in this low depth, but well, there it was. He put his armoured clawed boot on its head and pulled his sword free.
… there also was the small inconvenience of this being an especially ghurish part of Ghur.
Archprophetess Sytarith herself, though, only had eyes for their surroundings. After all, after long days of wandering, they had finally found something of interest.
These buildings, the whole sunken town – was strange. It felt out of place. It was nowhere near as ancient as she had expected the ruins inside the Dell to be. It certainly had not been that long abandoned – an astonishing number of buildings still stood, and with some of them, it was even immediately apparent what they had been once used to. Most of them mundane, but some of them… the towers, maybe there could be still something of arcane interest there.
She was trying to get a feel of which tower they should investigate further, when Templar Oron made the decision for her.
“Archprophetess.” he spoke calmly, getting her attention. With the tip of his sword, he pointed at a symbol, obviously freshly cut into rotten wood. The three circles of Nurgle.
Her red eyes narrowed. It was obviously a marking meant for the followers of the archenemy, probably a shrine or safehouse… and in finding it, they had made themselves a target.
“Ready for battle!” she shrieked, mere seconds before four emaciated humans, clad in dirty green rags, rose from underneath the bog, where they had laid in waiting. They wore strange helms made of bamboo, and from the symbols on their rags, it was obvious they were Nurgle’s faithful.
Oron the Steadfast brought his runeshield up and deflected a poison dart aimed straight at her neck in the last second, before another Templar managed to skewer the attacker on his halberd.
Two of the Nurglites were hacked to pieces by a group of Sariant warriors, and the last one was shieldbashed and beheaded by Templar Oron in righteous fury.
The fight had been quick and bloody, with luckily no Templar life lost. However, Sytarith knew better than to assume those four were anything other than a warning… or a distraction.
The Archprophetess led her warband down into the rotten basement of the hollow tower, where pockets of breathable air allowed further investigation.
Down in this… dungeon, multiple dark corridors went off in several directions, a surprisingly complex system of rooms with treasures yet undiscovered. In the damp darkness, barely illuminated by torches, the Nurglites lurked.
A deadly game of cat and mouse started with the rest of the Nurgite cult inside the complex, and with the Nurglites forewarned and familiar with their surroundings, it was hard if not impossible to make them give battle, they simply slipped away into yet another corridor.
Sytarith hated being outsmarted by these mud-footed primitives. Just when she had spotted one of them, he had just vanished behind a corner, never to be seen again. In anger, she conjured an arcane bolt at one of them with speed and finesse she did not deem herself to be capable of, but it was not as if she noticed in this very moment of frustration.
In the end, Archprophetess Sytarith had to admit that the Nurglites obviously managed to slip through her fingers, taking the most valuable treasures with them, no doubt. The Templars had to make do with the leftovers, and had not managed to destroy the cult.
There was, however, sometimes great value hidden in the subtle things, and Sytarith doubted the Nurglites would have an eye for something like that.
