The stream by Kegan’s cabin was overflowing from the winter snow melt coming off the mountains. He was going to use this waterway to travel away from the mountains. Kegan had managed to make many copper items over the winter, and he didn’t want to leave it all behind, so he had built a raft to carry all of the stuff.

At the moment he was taking stock of everything he had. Two bows, and thirty copper tipped arrows, he’d gotten much better at using the bow and it was superior for hunting small game. Twenty copper tip javelins, and forty wood tip javelins. Three spears with copper tips. And one short spear that was entirely copper, he had been pretty proud of successfully casting such a large item, but it bent way too easily to be useful in actual combat. One copper axe head that he hadn’t gotten around to melting back down, everytime he tried to make a sharp edge with the copper it would bend and dull after repeated usages. Three copper maces of various sizes and shapes, next time he had to fight armored opponents he wanted to use those.

There were three sets of armor he had made for himself. All of the armor was a mix between leather, and copper plates. He had tried different designs for each one. The first one he made was the lightest, with somewhat thin copper plates covering his back, chest, and head, but little else. The next piece he made just increased the thickness of those pieces, and also added some more thin plates to cover his upper legs, upper arms, and the gap between his neck and head. The final piece of armor was his masterpiece. The chest piece was almost a solid thick sheet of copper with a deer skin inside. At the neck hole and limb holes there were copper hooks in the armor that attached to the thickly armored head, arm, and leg pieces.

The last set of armor was very heavy, and Kegan couldn’t wear it for extended time periods without becoming exhausted. His movements were somewhat restricted in the last set of armor.

In addition to the copper weapons, he also had seven more bars of copper he had smelted down but not figured out a use for yet.

Aside from the copper, Kegan had three deer worth of pemmican, seven untreated deer hides, three leather deer hides, eight bone knives of various quality, some extra grass rope, and the eight baskets that everything was being stored in.

The raft splashed lower into the water as Jot jumped onto the raft wagging his tail and sniffing the basket that contained the pemmican. “Haha not yet boy, we gotta save some for the trip, here take this.” Kegan handed Jot some dried deer jerky.

Kegan stepped off the raft and onto the shore. He took one last look at his cabin before untying the raft and letting the water start to carry it away. Jotun didn’t like the change in motion and leaped back onto shore, before turning around and barking at the raft for tricking him.

Kegan used two ropes to control the raft, one attached to the front of the boat, and one attached to the back. He walked along the shore next to the boat with a smile on his face. This was the kind of life he had expected when he first got the perk system: easy livin, discovering new things, settling down in the winter, and a young healthy body that could take on anything.

Two weeks later

A rock whizzed past Kegan’s head. He ignored it in favor of steering the raft around the large rocks in the river. A rock hit the side of his helmet, and bounced off harmlessly. A group of goblins on the river bank began cheering and shouting loudly after the successful hit.

They had been following him for the last few hours, and unlike the other goblin villages he had passed these ones seemed unafraid of him. They had shouted at him in their language at first. After a while they gave up on verbal communication and took their slings out to start hurling rocks at him.

Jot had been sleeping, and was safely tucked away between the bins. These goblins had seemed oddly peaceful up until now, so Kegan had decided not to fight with them. However, if the goblins had hurt Jot, that would all change.

An hour later they still hadn’t left, but the rocks were far less common since they seemed to have run out of their original supply. Kegan had gotten more annoyed with them, and decided he would have some fun.

Kegan steered the raft towards the shore with the goblins. At first they got excited at the easier target and began flinging more stones. When they realized Kegan was getting close to shore they panicked and ran into the woods.

Kegan tied the raft up and then sped off after them. The goblins had scattered, so he tracked one of the larger groups, four of them. They were shorter and slower than him, so he quickly caught up.

They screamed in terror, but he only whacked them hard enough to leave bruises. Kegan also took the slings that these four were carrying and ripped them up. Kegan left them in the hopes that they’d spread the message, and he could go back to having a more peaceful river ride.

As Kegan got closer to the boat he realized Jot was growling and barking. He sprinted back through the woods to get the boat. What he came back to was a very strange sight. On the shore was a herd of large pigs eating vegetation. One in particular was massive, and even had a saddle on it. On the other side of the Hog with his arms crossed standing in front of the boat was a seven foot tall orc.

The orc turned to see Kegan come crashing back through the woods. The orc gestured to the raft and Jot and started shouting at Kegan.

Kegan had a copper tipped javelin out, and a club out as well. The orc seemed unconcerned with Kegan’s weapons. There was a large sword strapped to the orc’s back, but he hadn’t touched the sword.

Seeing that Kegan wasn’t understanding him, the Orc started switching to different languages. He must have started on the most familiar languages, because it sounded less and less sure of its words as it kept switching.

“I don’t think we share a language. I - just want to take - my raft - and - keep going down river.” Kegan was doing his best to gesture to signal what he meant.

The orc cocked his head to the side “Oooman dade speeks?”

“That kind of sounded like my language …”

The orc kept trying new words and gestures to communicate what he wanted. Kegan realized that the orc wanted Kegan to come with him, leave the wolf, and avoid going further down river. Kegan simply tried to communicate back that none of that was going to happen. Eventually the orc got angry wished Kegan a painful death, got on the large hog and rode off.

A day later of drifting down river Kegan passed an area of burned out and destroyed forests on both sides of the river. The woods were slowly getting more dense and swampy. Some areas of the river didn’t really seem to have a bank, instead the river just spilled onto the land as far as Kegan could see.

Kegan was staring into the marsh expanse when he heard the sound of bows twanging behind him. He spun around to see a hail of arrows coming from the bank towards the raft, without hesitation Kegan dove and covered Jot with his body. The arrows thudded into the raft all around him. A few arrows hit Kegan, one penetrated the copper plate but was stopped by the leather underneath, three others were deflected, and one hit him in the back of the leg where he was unarmored.

Kegan quickly pulled one set of armor out of the baskets and propped it up around Jot. “Stay here boy”

Then he started strapping on other pieces of armor as a second volley of arrows thudded into the raft. Kegan was now better covered and a smaller target than he was earlier, so the few arrows that hit him were deflected. Jot seemed to be safe as long as he stayed under the armor Kegan had laid out.

Kegan could see his attackers in the trees. They were large naked orcs, about fifteen of them covered in paints and mud that made them blend in well with the surrounding area. The arrows they were shooting were stone tipped. Kegan got the wood tipped javelins out and started hurling them at the orcs.

The javelins broke up the group of orcs and they instead started firing arrows individually at Kegan. Two orcs quickly went down before they adjust to Kegan’s javelins. They were running from tree to tree for cover, and then leaning out to shoot arrows at him. Kegan started timing the moments when they would jump out of cover, and caught three more orcs in the chest with a javelin before they wised up to his new tactic.

A few minutes later both sides were at more of a standoff. The orcs were being more cautious, and Kegan was trying to conserve the javelins he had. Kegan noticed two of them had run off further into the woods. He thought if he could just chase off the rest somehow he’d be good.

Half an hour later Kegan had given up on the idea of chasing any of them off. He had gotten a few more lucky javelin throws in, three more orcs were down, but Kegan only had ten more of the wood tipped javelins. There were only five orcs left, and he decided to take the risk of fighting them on land.

He maneuvered the raft towards the shore. The orcs took notice and got more aggressive in trying to shoot him with arrows. Kegan had gained a lot of confidence in his armor, and knew the arrows couldn’t hurt him.

Kegan jammed two of the javelins into the mud and threw the raft ropes around them so it wouldn’t float off. Two of the closest orcs came running up, neither orc was carrying a weapon. Kegan threw another javelin and caught one in the chest, but the orc kept coming. Kegan had whipped out a copper club, and broke the arm of the uninjured orc as it reached for Kegan. It screamed in anger then landed a haymaker against Kegan’s helmet with the other arm. It knocked Kegan’s head down and aside, but he stayed on his feet and was able to bring the club into the knee of the orc. The orc went down to the ground screaming in more pain.

Kegan’s range of vision suddenly expanded and he realized his helmet was gone. The other orc had pulled it off and tossed it aside. Kegan also saw the other three orcs rushing up to the fight. Kegan grabbed the javelin sticking out of the orc’s chest and yanked it out. The orc’s face changed from anger to surprise as the hole in its chest started spewing blood. Kegan threw the javelin past the dying orc and hit another orc in the face taking it down instantly.

Kegan clubbed the face of the orc directly in front of him, killing the orc, and knocking the body aside. On the backswing of the club he let go of the handle. The club flew into the chest of one of the charging orcs and knocked the orc onto its back. Kegan had no time to do anything about the last orc, and he was taken off his feet when the orc dove onto him.

They crashed into some of the bins on the raft. The orc had Kegan pinned, and it began punching Kegan in the face. Kegan was doing his best to block the punches but also reach for the nearby bin of javelins. Suddenly there was a blur of white fur, a growl, and then the orc was off of him. The orc threw Jot off of himself, but that was a mistake. Jot had latched onto the orc’s throat, and when he was ripped away the throat of the orc came with him. The orc panicked and tried to hold its throat together as it was drowning in its own blood. Kegan grabbed a copper tipped javelin and ended the orc’s life. Kegan also walked on shore to finish off the two wounded orcs, and retrieve his gear.

When Kegan came back to the raft, it appeared that Jot had decided that orcs taste good, and was ripping off and eating pieces of flesh from the orc.

“Not on the raft Jot! You are making a mess, its gonna smell like blood for weeks now!”

Jot looked up with a guilty expression, but slowly lowered his head keeping his eyes on Kegan, and began licking the blood from corpse

Kegan chuckled at Jot’s antics as he dragged the corpse off the raft. Jot began eating the corpse on the river bank, and Kegan was trying to wash off the raft with river water to get rid of the blood. A few minutes later Jot’s ears perked up and he started looking into the woods. Then he whimpered and got back on the boat and crawled under the armor shelter that Kegan had set up for him. Then Kegan heard orcs screaming and shouting in the distance. A lot of orcs.

Kegan pulled the javelins out of the mud, and pushed the boat off the shore, trying to get some distance. The shouting and screaming only got louder.

Then Kegan saw a huge group of orcs crashing through the woods. Right behind them he was surprised to see a group of goblins split off and go to the orc corpses. The goblins were tearing into the orc corpses, and devouring chunks of the orcs.

The orcs came rushing towards Kegan and the raft. There were dozens of orcs, and they were carrying an assortment of weapons. There were clubs, bows, spears, and two large rusted swords. Kegan quickly started throwing his remaining javelins at the orcs that were not carrying shields.

They were in a frenzy, and packed densely, so he couldn’t miss. Kegan’s raft was only twenty feet from the shore, and the water was about five feet deep where he was. The orcs had come running into the water and were wading their way towards Kegan’s raft.

Kegan was out of wood tipped javelins, instead of switching to copper tipped javelins, he switched to the bow and arrow. At the close distance he was able to shoot the orcs in their vital spots, the heart, throat, or head. Two orcs with shields were now at front and getting close to the boat.

Kegan set aside the bow and got out the all copper spear he thought he’d never use. He was pushing off the orc shields with the copper spear to get the boat further out into the river. Some other orcs had now caught up, but the raft was far enough away from the shore that they had to start swimming.

Kegan was surprised to see the orcs swimming. He didn’t know how to swim, and thought that being in deep water would force them to just give up. Kegan began whacking or stabbing any of the orcs that got close. On each strike the copper spear would bend, but Kegan was using each strike to balance out the bend from the last spear in order to keep it mostly straight. Soon there were just lifeless orc bodies floating around the boat.

There were still some orcs shooting bows from the shore at him. Kegan didn’t want to waste any more of his own arrows, so he started collecting the arrows they had shot into the boat and firing those arrows back at them. Each orc that died would be torn up and consumed by the group of goblins that had been following along. None of the goblins would get in the water though, so the bodies floating alongside Kegan remained untouched.

There were a little less than twenty orcs that had been shooting arrows at Kegan, but he quickly took them out. Their arrows couldn’t hurt him, and none of them were taking cover from his return shots.

Some of the goblins kept following along the bank, Kegan was using the remaining stone arrows to shoot and kill them. They’d eat the dead goblins and then keep following along. Kegan noticed that there were always more goblins joining from the forest, so there was always a couple dozen goblins following the boat now.

The river was winding back and forth through the trees, and getting wider and wider. The tree cover suddenly ended and it looked like an endless land of marsh and grasses stretched out on either side of Kegan. However, what caught his eye in the distance was a huge white tower that rose out of the marsh. Kegan had no idea that towers could be built to such a height, and he had never seen a stone that color before.

He made his way slowly through the marsh over the next day and night. Kegan spotted roving groups of orcs and goblins in the distance, but they hadn't spotted Kegan. As the sun rose and shined on the tower he realized why he had never seen stone like that before. Because it wasn’t stone at all, it was bone.