One very sweet mission finishes!

This mission, as you've seen, introduced Fenni and Raw Hide to the list of AiL players! Their debuts were both solid, good reading. The mission completes with a lot of bloodshed, as you'll see below. This was also the roleplay debut of Blahking, and it featured Dash and Konall, who were the sole co stars of the sample mission.

Having forced their way into the Penguin Mafia headquarters for the sake of planting false documents to incriminate the Knob Goblins, Sebastian Dash, Konall Bearsmasher, Prince BlahKing, the Fluffy Hamster, Raw Hide, Fenninarnos, and TheChad have to get OUT of the deadly confines of the Penguin Mafia! It's a humorous, action filled finale to the series that clearly establishes a winner. Everyone gets a part to play, though.

The forces of KOKOL are united in the first official mission in KOKOL's history, but will it be enough to overcome the Penguin Mafia?!

Konall was running down the hall, not taking time to enjoy the scenery. Since the scenery was mostly dead penguins, the seal clubber wasn’t missing much. “Spaz, how are you doing?” he called out and looked back. Apparently he was now Spazless. The imp was probably off looking for something. Konall hated to leave someone behind, but he had no chance of finding Spaz. Since the demon could track down Konall fairly easily, the berserker had no worries about losing his friend. Spaz would catch up whenever he got around to it.

Konall came around the corner and ran into Dash.

“Konall,” the rogue said, “Good to see you. Do you happen to remember which way is out?”

“My seal clubber sense of direction never fails me. It’s right through this door.”

“That would be a broom closet.”

“…and through the wall in the back of the broom closet. I’ll have to do a little smashing. You didn’t let me finish.”

“You stopped.”

“I was pausing. Blahking, can you hit that wall with a flame spell?”

“No can do; I’m a bit tapped out on magic power at the moment.”

Fluffy chose this moment to wake up.

“Fluffy,” Dash said, “you know how to shoot fire. Could you hit that wall with some flame?”

Fluffy complied, sneezing a giant fireball into the closet. The sudden shift in temperature was enough to crack the ice. Konall started hammering on the ice with his claymore.

“Shoot! This thing is thick. It’s almost like mining through solid rock. I’ll need a few minutes, unless you can find someone else who is covered in rippling muscles,” the berserker said.

“Someone call me?” Raw Hide asked.

Konall said, “A little help here.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“You want out?”

That was enough. Konall and Raw Hide struck the wall at the same time, shattering it into a thousand shards.

The adventurers piled through. Blahking took the lead. "I have no memory of this place," he said "but the air doesn’t smell as foul up this way. It’s got to be the way out."

Suddenly, a patch on the icy floor ahead of them glowed red. It melted in a matter of seconds, and up through the hole came something straight from the bowels of hell. It was evil. It was malevolent. It was Spaz carrying a case full of purloined goodies.

“Spaz!” Konall said. “It’s good to see you. Let’s get out of here.”

They headed around the corner. At the end of the hall was freedom, and it was blocked by a group of penguins. They were mafia elite enforcers, specially trained for combat operations, and they were not happy. The ten of them slid down the ice on their bellies, a classic tactic to make as little of themselves open to enemy fire as possible, while allowing for maximum speed.. They stood up, in triangle formation, and prepared to fire.

The Chad said “That looks fun!” He slid towards them on his belly. The penguins hadn’t finished cocking their heavy crossbows yet. When The Chad collided with the first, he send it flying into the two behind it, hitting the three behind that one, and toppling the four behind those three. All of the penguins hit the ground. Blahking and Dash moved in immediately, slashing the birds before they could get back up.

The adventurers sprinted out the doorway, through the cave, and out towards the open air, only to be blocked by the biggest penguin they had ever seen. He lifted up his massive, auto-cocking crossbow, prepared to fire, and fell over dead. In doing so, he revealed Fenni, with his clockwork sword sticking out of the penguin’s back.

“Did I arrive too late?” Fenninarnos asked.

“No,” Blahking replied.

“What are we doing now?”

“Running.”

As they made it out of the igloo, they stopped to catch their breath. Dash said “So, Konall, you’re looking nice and clean there. I suppose you think you’re too important to sully yourself with penguin blood.”

“Dash, that’s not funny,” Konall answered. “I told you guys how important it was to clean yourselves off before coming back out of the igloo.”

“Umm… No you didn’t.” Dash replied. The others echoed that sentiment.

“Of course I did. I mentioned it right after I said…Shoot! I didn’t mention it. So no one has any way of cleaning this stuff off.” No one said anything.

“Okay,” Konall said, “let me think… Got it.”

“What?” Fenninarnos asked.

“We run.”

Konall bolted off down the hill. The others knew enough about the berserker to know that he didn’t spook easily, even when he should. Perhaps sticking around and fighting wasn’t the best option here. Spaz flew up alongside Konall. “What do you want me to do with the loot?” he asked.

“Drop it,” Konall replied. “It’ll just slow you down.”

The demon complied, setting the case down on the ground and flying beside Konall.

As the adventurers took off down the slope, Blahking spoke up. “What are we running from?”

“Every once in awhile, one of us Nords gets in a fight with a penguin. From killing and skinning penguins, we found out the hard way that the blood attracts yetis. They’re not drawn to hunt either. Yeti’s hate penguins with a burning fury that even I can’t match. The blood from one penguin will bring in every yeti within a mile. And we just killed…” Konall started counting on his fingers “A lot of penguins.”

Dash spoke up. “Konall, if you don’t have any soap or water, how’d you get clean?”

“I used a plot hole.”

From behind the hills came a massive roar, and a yeti came over the rise. It was a full 8 meters (25 feet) tall. Covered in white fur, it carried a massive spiked club. It wasn’t quite as agile as a human, but since it was so massive it was gaining on the party, and by a substantial margin. To top it of, several dozen of his friends were running with him. It almost looked like an avalanche sliding down the mountain. The main difference was that an avalanche would have been easier to fight.

If the adventurers were running before, they were sprinting now. They each knew inside that it was only a matter of time till the yetis caught up to them, and that they were completely outmatched, but there was a little part of them that told them to just keep running. Only Raw Hide had enough breath left in him to talk.

“What was in that case that your little demon pal dropped?” he asked.

“A (pant) set of (pant) mafia penguin (pant pant) wine,” Konall replied.

“Isn’t that worth-”

“Yes.”

“And all you’d have to do to sell it is-”

“Yep.”

Raw Hide stopped in his tracks, turned, and charged back towards the igloo, back towards death by yeti. Dash and Blahking turned to help, but Konall blocked their path.

“Raw Hide has gone suicidal,” Konall said. “There’s nothing we can do to help him. We’re injured, and tired, and there’s no way we could face that many yetis on a good day. Now, I know it hurts to lose one of your fellow teammates, but there’s no sense in all of us dying when it won’t add a minute to Raw Hide’s lifespan.”

Blahking said, “Unfortunately, he’s right. Keep going.”

Meanwhile, Raw Hide felt his adrenaline surge like never before. When he got near the beasts, he ran up an ice flow, reached the end, and leapt straight into a yeti, hacking the creature right in the neck with his axe. As the yeti fell over backwards, Konall jumped again slashing the next right in the heart and continuing on to the ground, landing in the snow.

The seal clubber kept on going, the yetis right on his heels. The money, the death, the danger; it gave him a rush that he had never felt before. As he ran forward, he glanced back often to hack at a yeti hand before turning back to watch where he was going. He reached the villa, and looked frantically for the dropped case. In a few seconds he found it, so he quickly ran over and picked it up on the run.

The yetis had started becoming a bit more cautious, chasing the warrior at a slight distance. When he slowed down to grab the case, they took the opportunity and surrounded him. Raw Hide stopped, considered the situation, and blitzed the nearest yetis, smashing kneecaps with his axe. He dove forward, just barely dodging a yeti club, and pulled a somersault, leaving him back on his feet. He took off back down the hill, the container of mafia wine tucked under his arm. His comrades were far in the distance now.

It was only then that he noticed the penguins scattered around the nearby area, all of them keeping their distance. A few had started taking potshots at him with their crossbows. Too bad he didn’t have time to teach them a lesson. He gave them the finger and yelled “Later losers.”

He continued darting on down the slopes, starting to tire. When he reached the ice flow again, he gave it a solid blow. It shattered, leaving a relatively flat piece, exactly what he was hoping for. Jumping on, he rode it like a toboggan. He remember back in his childhood, having fun sledding. Now it was just a way to get from here to there.

The yetis had been giving him plenty of space, now they just gave up chasing him. But they still had that bloodlust. They had smelled penguin blood; they had lost friends. Something had to pay. One of them caught sight of the villa again, noticing for the first time the penguins scattered about. Penguins! The beast motioned to the others. Soon the villa was facing a second round of invaders.

Raw Hide walked up to Konall’s shack, hoping for some rest. He pushed open the door, and ran into the last thing he expected, cheering. Konall shoved a stein full of mead into his hand and called out “A toast, to Raw Hide!”

“To Raw Hide!” Everyone called out.

Blahking said, “Raw Hide, that was amazing. I’ve never seen someone fight like that. You may have had selfish intentions, but with you drawing off those yetis, you saved us all.”

Rawhide stood there, dumbstruck. He was a hero, whether he liked it or not.

Forsten was afraid for his life for the third time today. He was now facing Don Aptenodytes, second-in-command to Don Pygoscelis. Don Aptenodytes said, “Just tell me what happened today.”

Forsten said, “It was a group of knob goblins. They came in and they-”

“Slow down,” the Don replied. “I need details. How many goblins were there?”

Forsten thought to himself. He wasn’t sure. He had only seen a few, and from what he gathered, about a dozen total had come in. But he wasn’t about to tell the Don that. As a mafia soldier, Forsten was assigned to defend this villa. If the Don thought that the place had been torn up by just a few Knoblings then the Don would be in a bad mood. And when the Don was in a bad mood people died.

“There were about two hundred of them,” Forsten said. “They came out of nowhere.”

“And you know it was the goblins?” the Don asked.

“Yes. I’m sure of it. We all saw them. And one of them left a message by peeing in the snow. Only a goblin would do that.”

“Hmm… Good analysis. There were, what, ninety penguins here. I only see thirteen here. Where are the others?”

“Um, sir, I don’t know quite how to say this, but there are no others.”

“This…this upsets my heart. I see some yeti bodies here. Were they the ones that tore up the villa?”

The yetis were indeed the ones that had gone on a rampage, smashing everything. When they had first struck, the penguins had been in a panicked state. The penguins were too overwhelmed by the recent attack to mount a good defense. By the time they finished off the yetis, the villa had been completely trashed. The Don, however, would never hear this. A mafia penguin soldier was to remain calm and cool at all times. And one who was specially trained to take on yetis was supposed to do that. Most of the penguins here were too shell-shocked to remember what had happened, and those who were still in possession of all their senses were soldiers as well, ones who would reach the same conclusions that Forsten had and wouldn’t be contradicting his story. Not unless they were intent on dying sometime in the near future.

“No,” Forsten said. “We took care of the yetis pretty quickly. The goblins did this all.”

“Then the goblins will pay for what they did here. I swear it on the grave of my dead father, Don Padrino di Bordicello.”

“Sir, well, sir, there is one other thing you should know. A few of the survivors mention the goblins looking for this thing called the Orb of the Sun, some sort of powerful artifact. It’s supposed to be on the Nearby Plains.”

“Well, if the goblins want it, then we’re going to have to get it. Guido,” the Don said, turning to his assistant, “I want you to notify all the Dons. Tell them that the Knob Goblins have disrespected us too much this time, and that we need every soldier they can spare to come to the nearby plains and get ready for war.”