Tunnel Rat

The miners behind the barricades watched in disbelief as the three recent arrivals leaped a perfectly good barricade, and raced to see who could get to the monsters first. Several shook their heads in disgust, seeing idiots who should know better than to run to their deaths. You simply couldn't kill the lurkers, even these little ones, without hitting them dozens of times. It took special teams who worked together, and hopefully had a couple of amulets with them.

The older dwarves had a much better idea of what was going on. They recognized those large, ornate spanners that were clipped to the newcomers’ belts. These were Engineers, and two of the Engineers running at the lurkers had some very pretty armor. The one in front didn't and wasn't even a dwarf. But he was obviously a powerful mage of some sort. And he was fast! It wasn't even a contest to see who got to the monsters quickest. The mage was at least twice as fast. Money changed hands and bets were made.

Milo had an agenda. He wanted to test some things today. Milo believed in robustly testing components, including himself and his friends. Today he wanted to see what his new abilities could do, and also what his fellow engineers were capable of. Stone Lurkers were slow but powerful and could take a good hit. Perfect test subjects, even if these did seem to be on the weedy side.

[Immature Stone Lurker

This newly formed stone elemental has 100 points of Heavy Armor. Damage will slowly wear this down. Mining tools and weapons that pierce armor will be the most effective way to kill them. The presence of several of these monsters indicates a nest of the creatures, or the gods have mercy on you, a Brood Mother.]

Milo angled his charge to the right as he got close to the lurkers, slashing at them with his tail to get their attention. As expected, he did no damage to them beyond a few scratches on their armor, but it upset them and they focused on him and quit advancing towards the miners behind their makeshift fort.

Milo was far faster than the lurkers, running circles around them easily. He cast Brittle Bones, moved, and cast again. Around and around the pack he ran, keeping them bunched up and putting the spell on all of them. Then he turned and attacked with Shadowblight. As he raced by the rightmost lurker, he aimed a swing at it, going for a kneecap on the closest leg. Expecting to do only one point of damage, he was surprised when his weapon chipped off a chunk of stone and did a dozen points of damage. These were a lot weaker than the lurkers he had fought before. The monster kept coming, but slower than its fellows.

Milo's next attack was a Bone Spike. The piece of bone he used was old and carved with the velocity rune, one of the weapons he had prepared for Shalassa. He was pretty sure if his spell could wound the elemental, it could also hurt these heavily armored creatures. He aimed at the lower leg of the lurker in the lead. The missile shot out from his hand far faster than an arrow, penetrating just above the ankle and continuing into the solid rock. With a jerk, the lurker quit moving, its leg pinned in place and heavily damaged.

There was a few seconds before the dwarves got to their targets, so Milo tossed an exploding skull down and watched as the lurkers were knocked about, and small chips of stone cracked off their armor. All of them were quite annoyed with Milo at this point and not paying any attention to Throttlecog and Two-screws.

Two-Screws charged the limping lurker. His spinning augers penetrated the lurker's armor but only penetrated an inch further...at first. His weapons continued to spin, drilling deeper into the lurker. After only a half dozen seconds, they shattered the armor on the chest, drilled entirely through the creature, and out the back. The lurker was injured but still fighting. Two-Screws took a hard blow to his side, unable to dodge, but seemed unhurt inside his armor. He pulled his weapons out of the injured monster, doing as much damage on the way out as on the way in. The creature shattered into small rocks so suddenly that Two-Screws overbalanced and landed on his butt in the middle of the rubble pile.

Throttlecog used a classic dwarven style of attack. He spun in a full circle before attacking his target, building momentum for his blow. As he came around again, he swung for the lurker's head. Stone and wet, pulpy ooze went everywhere as the lurker's head was splattered asunder from the two-handed blow of his wrench. Throttlecog hadn't expected his blow to go all the way through the beast. His spinning didn't stop until he ended up in a heap.

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Milo ducked a piece of the lurker's brain and laughed as both dwarves ended up on the ground. He was still facing two lurkers though, one of them trying to free its pinned leg, so he paid attention to the fight after a brief look. Seeing one go down to a hit from Throttlecog’s gigantic wrench told him these were much weaker than the ones he'd faced before. He moved to the next test. He was sure he could kill both with Shadowblight. But how powerful were his claws now?

Milo ignored the pinned monster and attacked the last unhurt lurker. His tail entrapped its front legs, causing it to stumble. While it was off-balance, Milo leaped at it. One hand reached out for its head, the tips of his claws digging into the creature’s rocky armor. Swinging to its back he placed both hands on its head and tried to tear off its head.

This tactic failed. He simply didn't have the strength in his body for such a move. He switched to digging in his claws and shredding the armor. This was much more effective.

Against stone, his claws had many times the strength of his body. The tips of his claws penetrated deep into the creature which let out a high, keening noise. Then like a man using two hands to tear apart a rotten apple, his claws ripped the immature lurker's head in half, spraying himself with the stinking grey goop that made up the creature’s brain. The keening stopped for a moment, and then the other lurker began making the same sound. It backed away from Milo and began to turn, but didn't get far. Milo leaped high, landing on the creature and digging his claws into its back, severing its spine. As the creature came to a halt, Throttlecog landed a blow to its chest and killed it. Milo was disappointed that the fight was over so quickly. The monsters were dead after a couple of hits each.

Throttlecog held his wrench in the air. "Ha! I win I killed 2 to only 1 each from you lazy lobs. Sort of disappointing though. I remember lurkers as being bigger and tougher."

The other miners were running up to them, astounded at the carnage they had just seen. Most of them weren't warriors at all, just standard miners. And a miner using a normal pick had almost no chance to kill a lurker. Four lurkers at once would have been destroyed only after a long fight, with many miners dying. Instead, they watched all four die in less than a minute.

The oldest of them approached Throttlecog. "Oh, don't you worry about that. There's more. Lots more. The Brood Mother hatches these out constantly. We've been killing them for days, and losing a lot of people to do it. One wrong move can end in a broken arm or crushed skull. What they lack in toughness they make up for in numbers. More and more of them are loose down here, and we think the big bitch has been advancing toward us. She heading for the way to the top. If she controls the only way out of the mines, then she can just sit there and send waves of these things to kill us. She can take her time and then start attacking upwards until the beasties can move into the city. The mines would have to be sealed off until the city council can pay for a high-level group of adventurers to deal with it."

His eyes gleamed as he looked at the three people in front of him. "Of course, now we have three Engineers show up out of nowhere with weapons and armor not seen for generations? Damn, but I'm keen to see what you three can do to stop her."

Two-Screws laughed. "Kill a few little ones and suddenly people want to toss you at the big mother." He reached out a now mostly normal hand to the older dwarf. "Senior Engineer Two-Screws." The old miner shook hands carefully with him. "Darnfeld Stoneforger. A pleasure to meet you, even like this. But as to tossing you at that Brood Mother, I've always been told that's what Engineers are for. My pappy always said, 'When you get a tough problem, you call for an Engineer.' You just got called."

Throttlecog stuck his thumbs in his belt and struck a pose, raising his voice. "Damned right about that. The Deep Rock Engineer's Guild is here, and we'll pick up the slack. As soon as Senior Engineer Milo gets lurker guts cleaned off his face, we'll go talk to the Mama of these things.

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