Our last, light-hearted tale mentioned that Timoth and Vajra were off on another adventure. In “Scavengers,” we see what they are up to while Onyx is shirking his responsibilities in repairing Selûne’s Smile. Sadly for Timoth and Vajra, it’s not as silly as Onyx’s quest to rid Waterdeep of lawyers.

Remnants of a Battlefield

The story wastes no time in setting the tone. The first few pages are all but silent as Vajra stalks the field following a brutal battle.

Whatever happened to our heroine seems to have put her in a rough spot. From the corpses on the field, she takes a sword, some boots, and a cloak to help ward off a bitter winter wind.

Things don’t get better for Vajra, as there are more than crows in the area. Soon, she finds herself battling for her life against an orc.

Orcs are funny things in AD&D. On the one hand, they’re only 1 Hit Die monsters, so an experienced warrior like Vajra should easily dispatch one. On the other hand, they make sure good opponents that the game spawned endless variants and more powerful versions so they can be challenges at all levels. It wouldn’t be until 3rd edition that they would just get class levels which allowed a DM to easily make them as tough as the story required them to be.

More orcs arrive soon afterward, but Vajra hides until they go away. She has a companion in the barren foliage who spots the orcs first and keeps her quiet. Unfortunately, he’s not in great condition himself.

So why are Timoth and Vajra struggling for their lives on a desolate battlefield? And what do they do now, since both are wounded and they didn’t bring a healer along?

The Life of a Mercenary

Vajra patches Timoth up and builds a sledge that she can use to carry him through the snow. The following pages are done over a two-page splash, showing the two adventurers are small silhouettes against a long white expense. It’s a very good artistic choice, but a difficult one to show off using scans.

At Timoth’s request, Vajra sets off east toward some centaur tribes, although she doesn’t know if her friend is hoping to get help from them or just wishing to die among his own people. She talks during the trek, keeping conversation with an unconscious Timoth while conveniently filling the audience in. It seems that the adventurers hired out as mercenaries to a prince who claimed that his throne had been usurped, and that the troops they were with got ambushed by the usurper. Battle lost, comrades wounded, and potentially something worse about to happen…

Luckily, Vajra managed to pull Timoth far enough that they are discovered by a centaur. Very impressive, considering that she’s got a bad shoulder and is hauling somebody who is half horse.

Bitter Healing

Tioth wakes to meet the centaur who found him, Ellaya Halfmoon. She’s less than happy to see the centaur traveling with a human, thanks to a heaping helping of good old-fashioned fantasy racism.

We can perhaps forgive Ellaya for being so bitter, because she just viewed something terrible herself: a red dragon swooped down and burned the nearby centaur village to the ground. Survivors come to find her, but the reunion is quite tense.

Ellaya, it seems, used to be something of an adventurer. She now focuses on the healing arts, but her people haven’t forgotten about her powers.

The centaurs do have some common ground, however: they really don’t like humans.

The moment the centaurs see Vajra, they assume she riled the dragon up and set it loose. In truth, the dragon sensed some magical weapons and armor that Ellaya once wielded as a dragonslayer. Ellaya is too old to go on an adventure now, and the only centaur willing to engage a dragon in a fight is the one who travels with a human.

So Timoth has jumped from one battlefield to the next. Meanwhile, back at the last battle, someone has come to see what happened…

A Most Unworthy Employer

Vajra has a lot of good qualities, but she’s not exactly choosy when it comes to her employers. We find the prince and his men surveying the battlefield, and the prince doesn’t seem at all concerned about the loss of life.

The prince, Raffian, seeks to regain his crown, no matter what the human cost. With his troops having failed, he seems to have a contingency plan in place.

Whatever the plan is, it’s surely nothing good. Vajra really needs to start running background checks.

Timoth’s Trials

Back at the centaur camp, Timoth dons the armor and prepares to go fight a dragon. Meanwhile, Ellaya tells some of her story to Vajra.

The other centaurs celebrated Ellaya as a heroine for a time, but eventually came to shun her after reflecting on the violence she had committed in her tribe’s name. I personally would probably not throw shade on someone who killed a dragon to save my life, but then I don’t have the hindquarters of a horse, either.

Just as Timoth sets out, something odd attacked Vajra.

I’m very disappointed because this thing isn’t a flumph. Not that this story is a particularly good one to add a flumph, but the monster looks like one and now I really wish we had a friendly flying spaghetti monster serving as Timoth’s sidekick.

Ellaya urges Timoth to abandon Vajra and set out on his mission, but he refuses to do so. With Timoth’s help, Vajra slays the belabra, which is emphatically not a flumph, and the adventure can continue.

Accompanied by Ellaya and Vajra, Timoth enters a forest where the trees are twisted by fell magic. He figures out where the source of the evil lies and rushes off to face it, ignorant of potential danger along the way.

Vajra yells to Timoth to stop, snapping him out of his frenzy.

The two dead troops aren’t the only ones in the area; an archer attacks Ellaya before Vajra takes him down. Then Raffian himself arrives on the scene…and gets a surprise when his mage tries to attack Timoth.

Vajra has some choice words for Raffian, but since everyone is here to see a slain dragon, the argument is ultimately fought with words rather than weapons.

In their zeal to slay the dragon, Raffian’s forces caused more trouble than they bargained for. The wizard who served as the dragon’s companion and kept him from attacking has been slain by the very archer that attacked Ellaya.

And the dragon is…not pleased.

Time for Timoth to do the dragon slaying thing…or is it?

The Dragon Strikes

The dragon is outnumbered, but by no means outmatched. On one side is a motley crew of mercenaries, one spoiled prince, and a centaur with some magical doodads. On the other side is a red dragon with rage in his heart now that his sole companion has been slain.

Raffian doesn’t care one whit about the dragon’s loss. While Ellaya takes this as an indictment of all humans, Timoth points to his friendship with Vajra as a counterargument.

Timoth keeps the dragon at bay, and Raffian sends his mage off to find the treasure they were looking for here. Meanwhile, one of the prince’s other soldiers makes the mistake of giving an all-too-familiar laugh.

After killing the archer, the dragon flies outside with Timoth in hot pursuit. Raffian’s mage, meanwhile, finds a powerful treasure on the dragon’s hoard.

Nothing bad ever came from stealing from a dragon’s pile of treasure, right?

A Most Unworthy Prince

Vajra does her best to fight the dragon, but gets swatted away as nothing more than a pest. Raffian is there to pick her up, and he’s not exactly couth toward her.

I really wish we got a shot of gratuitous violence here as Vajra cut some choice parts off Raffian’s body, but the moment gets interrupted by the return of the hoard-stealing mage.

Raffian proves as heartless as ever, not even pausing to mourn his faithful mage before he picks up an “orb of power” from the treasure hoard. This sets Vajra off, as she has finally had enough of the selfish prince.

The orb lands right in front of the dragon, who becomes even more enraged now that he knows somebody stole from his hoard. Raffian tries to reclaim it, but it’s like he’s developed complete amnesia after watching the last person who held it melt into goo.

I can’t say I’m sad to see him go.

Unfortunately, the orb’s rays also wound Timoth, leaving Vajra to take on the dragon all by herself.

For most of these comics, Vajra has been kind of a faux action heroine. We’ve been told that she has amazing combat abilities, but she tends to get knocked around badly whenever fighting anyone but random mooks. But not this time.

The dragon plummets to the earth, dead. Vajra takes a lot of damage, too, but that’s to be expected when you go flying without wings.

Ellaya initially denies Vajra healing, telling Timoth that humans will never give him what his fellow centaurs can. Timoth stops her cold with a simple question: “What have the centaurs ever given you?”

Realizing that race doesn’t matter as much as friendship, Ellaya saves Vajra’s life.

And so our heroes head off for home, side by side. Vajra still has one question left, though: how did Timoth find her all the way out there on that desolate battlefield in the first place?

And that tears it. Both Timoth and Vajra have to do background checks before accepting any future jobs. And they should also coordinate their trips.

_{Images: DC Comics}