The halfling offers the small wooden crate up to you as you approach. Its lid has already been removed, revealing several items inside. One rather obvious piece of equipment is a steel boot tip with small clawed spikes. You also notice some leather strapping, and what looks like a belt with a series of small pouches on it. You could probably see more if you removed the contents from the case, or at least took the case from the halfling.

Reyolen, Aanile, Drakkenmaw

Taylen abandons the dwarf's body near the edge of camp, and silently makes his way over to Jean. The two meet near the center of camp, where Taylen leans over slightly to look in the crate Jean carries with him.

Falaanla

The elf whose shoulder bears you makes his way over towards the center of camp, leaving the dwarf's body behind. As he leans forward to look into a small crate offered to him by Jean, you have to put your hands down on his shoulder to keep your balance. From this perspective, Jean looks kind of odd, like a small colorful animal staring back up at you.

Most of the straps appear to be connected to each other, forming a sort of net or harness. At one point where several straps meet, you notice a peculiar metal contraption with two small metal wheels. Near the bottom of the crate, you find a second metal boot toe, with straps extending off it to another metal piece (possibly a heel), and additional straps and buckles that would lash around the average boot.

Drakkenmaw

The body is too pale to be an orc, even a dead orc, and doesn't have enough fur to be a wild beast. There's only one dead body you know of in the area, though it seems a bit odd that animals haven't eaten it by now. The group has been away from it for several hours. The elf appears preoccupied with some leather straps that don't appear familiar. It seems peculiar that he went through the effort of dragging that corpse all the way to the orc camp.

"Taylen, do you still have the orc rings?" Aust asks, approaching the others. "This lizardman believes he can get them to work, and I'd like to find out."

[Ara]

"I just want to get to somewhere civilized," Ariana cuts into the conversation from beside Silvan. "Whatever you all intend to do, I wish you would do it now, so we could get this whole wilderness excursion over with."

Taylen reaches into his pocket and pulls out the rings, "Yeah I still have them right here. I also thought we might try one on the dwarf to see if they have any effect."

"Werrre did you get this..?"

Though the item would be fairly simple to put on, you have not worked with one of these before. From all appearances, it would be useful for climbing. Meanwhile, you seem to still have your hand closed around the orc rings, and some of your companions are getting restless.

Reyolen

You see Taylen pulling at a bunch of leather straps and metal trinkets. Whatever they're for, he seems to find them fairly interesting. Jean watches his face intently, and it appears everyone else is either curious or trying to get the woodsman's attention.

Taylen looks at the others, "So should we try Drak's idea first, or try using the rings on the dwarf's corpse? I'm for trying it on the dwarf first as using it on anything else could prove... Problematic if it goes wrong."

"I am not for these items being used at all. This is highly unnatural, highly... artificial. I don't think it will work the way you expect it to... and it's not right to see how it does work."

"You could try both at once, if you have enough rings," Ariana interjects, still standing behind the others. "I'm afraid I didn't hear what exactly you intend to do with them, but I do recall there being more than one ring. How many do you need?"

[Aust]

Aust smiles, turning to face Ariana for a moment, "That's a good idea! Taylen, why not do it? They all work at once anyway, no sense pouring it all out onto the ground."

Taylen walks over to where the dwarf's body lays and places the ring on the dwarf's left ring finger.

Aust accepts the rings from Taylen into his cupped hands, then steps over to the armored orc. Kneeling down beside the creature, Aust sets the rings down in a small pile on the dirt beside the body, then takes one and starts shoving it onto the creature's finger. Once it moves no further, he picks up another ring, and repeats the process on another finger. "Jean," Aust looks up at the halfling, "would you mind cutting its hand off?"

Jean blinks, staring back at the elf with a quizzical look on his face. His tone is gruff and cynnical, "You want me, Jean Olivier D'Underhill, who lifted the golden bands from the very fingers of the great wizard Ethenial, who drove back a dozen armored soldiers with naught but a pair of rusty daggers, to strip the hand of a dead orc?"

"Yes."

"Alright," he answers in a cheery tone, as a broad smile acrosses his face, reversing his demeaner entirely. Pulling out a small dagger, he sets to work on the orc's wrist, while Aust waits at his side.

[Ara]

After watching the elves divide the rings and begin to decorate their respective corpses, Ara walks idly over to the group. She leans down, bending her knees only slightly as she stoops to pick up one of the abandoned rings from the earth. Turning to face Silvan, she asks in Elven, "Might you be willing to spare one of those skins?"

The dwarf's thick finger soon puts up resistance, and you find that it takes nearly as much force to get the ring onto his hand as it did to remove the band from whichever orc first had it. You manage to get it about half way up his finger before the shallow spikes begin to scratch Khazmon's skin.

"I hope you know what you'rrre doing." She whispers for him to hear only.

Aust stands, and steps over to one of the remaining posts. "Alright, that's three. Which one of you will press the fourth?"

"Don't look at me," Jean shrugs, looking up at the faces of the others. "Ariana, why don't you do it?"

"Because my hands are full as it is," the elven woman responds, as she lifts the empty wineskin out of Silvan's hands. "If this ooze is as valuable as it sounds, I think we should be taking some of it with us." Carefully holding the orc ring between her fingers, she settles it against the rim of the wineskin, holding it there carefully, with her other hand wrapped around the neck of the skin itself.

[ 12-15-2002: Message edited by: Reyolen ]

Inside the box, you see a bunch of leather straps. One has a bunch of small pouches on it. The rest don't look like anything special.

Taylen

With only you pressing in on your lever, it moves no more than an inch. Freya appears to be gripping her lever tightly, but may be waiting for some cue before exerting herself. Aust isn't even holding the post by him yet, as Silvan finally steps in front of the fourth post. Jean finally succeeds in severing the orc's hand, as Aust requested, and a small amount of blood spills out.

"So, um," Jean looks at the severed hand, then at Aust, "did you want this for something?" Holding the hand out towards Aust, and away from himself, he waits for someone to tell him what's going on.

He doesn't have to wait long for a reply. "Don't spill that!" Aust shouts at the halfling, and Jean quickly fumbles the hand around so that the opening which was once a wrist now faces towards the sky. Aust breathes a sigh of relief, "When the rings start working, I want that orc hand to be as if it's still part of the orc. If I'm right, It'll start spilling out a fluid that will heal any wound."

"And when this miraculous nectar comes forth, how do you expect me to preserve it?" Jean asks, with a cynical tone in his question.

"You can use this," Ariana says, still preserving her elven accent, as she sets the wineskin Silvan handed her onto the ground in front of Jean. He carefully picks it up, and holds the orc hand up next to it. "This is ridiculous," he frowns.

Ariana then takes her own waterskin, uncorks it, and tilts her head back with her mouth open. Carefully tilting the container, she takes a few long drinks, while spilling as little of it as possible. Despite her efforts, she manages to soak the front of her collar. Then she pours the rest of the container out over the one-handed orc's armored body. "There, now we have enough containers to go around."

As Aust pushes on the final post, all four slide at once into the construct. At once, the one ring set upon the ground begins to ooze a thick red liquid. The ring Ariana holds also begins to expel the vile liquid into her waterskin. For a few seconds, nothing more happens.

Then the orc hand bubbles and foams at the wrist, before dripping with an odorless liquid, as thick as the ooze from the rings, but slightly lighter in tone. Jean fumbles with the hand nervously, and finally gets the liquid to drip from the hand into the wineskin he received from Ariana. For a moment more, nothing else seems to happen, and all is silent.

A sudden loud popping sound breaks the silence, as Khazmon's hand suddenly bursts open. The swolen hand lets loose a near-black liquid, which bursts forth and covers everything within a few feet in each direction. After the initial burst, black liquid continues to flow out slowly from the opening.

Taylen walks over to where the dwarf is and pulls the empty vial out of his pocket, then lifts the dwarf's hand over it trying to catch some of the black fluid in the vial without getting it all over himself.

Ewwwwwww thats gross! I'm not gonna touch or get near that stuff!

Once her waterskin has nearly filled, Ariana takes no chances. Propping the bundled gowns behind her elbow, she tosses the still-oozing ring away from herself onto the ground. She quickly corks the waterskin, pressing the cap tight. "There now, that's plenty enough I think," she says to no one in particular, as she slings the waterskin over her shoulder by its carrying strap. The bundled gowns drop loose again, hanging from the elven woman's forearm.

[Jean]

As if taking Ariana's cue, Jean lets the orc hand drop to the ground beside him, and steps away from it. "I have handled less pleasant materials in my time," the halfling says in a chipper tone reminiscent of a public official, "but never by my own intent. These are very strange times, when the hand of an orc becomes a thing of value." With that, he stuffs the cork into the wineskin, "Now that that's settled, to whom shall this strange prize be returned?"

Gathering the black ooze from the ground doesn't seem viable, but it takes only a moment before enough of the black substance drips from his hand to fill the vial.

Falaanla

"What's gross?" you hear the voice in your head. "Can I see can I see?" A few seconds later, Ithar flits past you, then circles back, winding loose and chaotic loops around the center of the orc camp.

Drakkenmaw

While things do grow a bit busy following the bursting of the dwarf's hand, there is little indication of any impending disaster.