Lagumbay.com Reflections on Love, Rage, and Fear

Did you know that a Divine Union of Hirelings exists? Apparently so! In the last union meeting, countless speaker cards were filled out in order to address the issue of hireling maltreatment and abuse, with many hireling clerics speaking out against doing contract work for a Drow Wizard named ElTechno De La Biblioteca.

Yes, they spoke out against me and they made me sit through the whole thing. One cleric recounted the time when I cast Expeditious Retreat and Invisibility on myself and left her to run after me through mobs of hostile soldiers and scorpions. “I came back to pick up your soulstone!” I exclaimed. Another spoke of a time when I went for a swim through an underwater cave and left him to fight trolls and rust monsters alone. while someone else testified that I had locked them out to face Whisperdoom alone.  Yet another recalled a time I watched her get electrocuted to death by a trap I had jumped over. “That’s because most people would step away from the trap BEFORE healing themselves!” A few others spoke of being tactlessly commanded to use runes, open doors, heal others not specifically named in the contract, having to heal spiders and miscellaneous pets, and being injured numerous times by a summoned arcane skeleton mage. “You command Drow Scorpions as pets! Consider yourselves fortunate that Vulkoor has not manifested his wrath upon you!” I yelled in exasperation.

After a bit of gavel pounding, the whole episode ended with me being limited to non-union contracts over at House Kundarak. I wasn’t too worried since I knew a lot of the union clerics secretly moonlighted as bodyguards in House K. However, until the excitement that my name invoked wound down, I decided it was best to hit the realm’s Looking-For-Group Bulletin Board again for a while. Good thing, too, because I had found a group running the “Diplomatic Impunity” quest which in turn led to my being accepted into a guild.

“It’s a bit like Craigslist for looters and grave robbers,” he thought as he reluctantly asked to be invited into a group running the “Depths” chain for House Deneith.  The quest required more work in the sewers which sent his former hireling packing in a fit of rage, grumbling as he left about a dry-cleaning bill.  Not wanting to go solo, ElTechno had to resort to becoming more sociable in the hopes of having a group to go questing with.

At the group leader’s approval, ElTechno was in and on his way to the sewer entrance.  He gave a brief and almost-sociable “hello” to the other members.  As he looked over everyone in the party, he assessed each of them in his head.  There was a swordsman and an axe swinger as cannon fodder, a sneaky rogue to disarm traps, a spell caster like him, and a cleric to heal everyone’s ills in case of a pneumonia outbreak.

Spells and incantations that empowered party members were cast at the dungeon entrance as was the custom.  ElTechno cast his one mass-effect spell of Protection from Evil as well as Bull’s Strength for the cannon fodder.  He then summoned his skeleton mage and a giant spider to assist.  He turned to his side to find that someone had summoned a Drow scorpion as a pet.  It was the cleric.

“I find it a bit offensive that you would take a Drow scorpion as a pet.”  The Drow scorpion, a Drow Elf with a scorpion body, was revered by the Drow as elves that had transcended into a higher union with their scorpion god.  The cleric dismissed the anthropology lesson and said “gets the job done.”

The quest had gone quite well until the rogue took a wrong turn and gathered more blades to his torso than his health cared to handle.  With the rogue’s demise, ElTechno silently appointed himself the new trapmonkey.  After inspecting a suspicious apparatus in one particular hallway, he quickly yelled “trap!”  He leapt above a ledge to disarm the trap and others in the group tried to follow.  One fell off and was immediately cut down by giant rotating blades that had been cleverly hidden within the walls.  It was the cleric.

“Gets the job done,” ElTechno thought.  “Keeps one of my people as a pet,” he thought.  “Stupid enough not to heed my warning,” he thought.  With a sigh, he took the cleric’s soulstone and dutifully brought it with him to the resurrection shrine around the corner.  That is what any good party member would have done.

There was an unpleasant stench. Ankle-deep sewage flowed downstream like the hopes and dreams of the young Drow elf who reluctantly navigated the sewer system in search of a man named Atlas or Argos or Arlo Guthrie or something. He motioned to his hired healer who rolled his eyes and reminded him that the man they sought was named Arlos.

Even though he made more platinum than most hirelings, the unpleasant sewer smell nor the sociopathic nature of his Drow employer made the healer believe that the trip was not worth twice the money he was offered. Triple, maybe, but only if one factors in the dry-cleaning bill for the +1 to healing plate mail he was sporting.

Further along the path, the Drow elf wizard’s conjured pet charged forward to confront a couple of Kobold warriors. The preoccupied wizard took a slight left turn to break open a few barrels and crates on the floor. He pocketed the scattered contents.

“Why would you do that? You don’t even own a bow!” the hireling inquired rhetorically.

“Masterwork arrows fetch a decent price at the vendors” said El Techno with a charismatic smile.

He then looked up and nonchalantly took a couple of steps back behind the hireling as fire potions rained down from a Kobold thrower ahead, bouncing against the cleric’s armor. He checked his robe for ashes and looked dismayed by the couple of spots he found.

“Well,” said El Techno, “get to work.”

As the cleric charged forward to fight alongside El Techno’s pet, a loud alarm gong rang followed by the appearance of a large ogre set on defending his territory.

“I guess I have to get my hands dirty,” sighed the wizard, pulling an eternal wand of acid splash from his backpack.