‘Patmo-Shoka’.

That was what the facility was called, once. That was long ago though: before the War of Elves and Dragons; before the dawn of Man…

Certainly before the advent of the races of Dwarf, Gnome, or Halfling, who were born there.

In the aeons of conflict since, the facility was lost and forgotten, becoming simply one more hillock among the many such sch hills which rise up from the Steelwood region and roll, like ocean waves, into the so-called Orcwilds of the far northeast. For centuries, maybe millennia, it sat dormant, save for the mechanical and repetitious movements of it magically-animated, mindless maintenance staff: the last remnants of the mysterious race which predated and produced those Little Folk of the world above.

And then, the Ettercap found it. That Unseelie Fey renegade, rebel against her creators, took shelter in the buried pyramid of Patmo-Shoka, and there discovered ‘the forge’: a magical device of great size and power, which could be used to reshape a living creature’s mind and body. In her deranged loneliness, the dark fairy did just that, but not to fix her own twisted form; rather, she kidnapped the children of the neighbouring Men, Elves, and Orcs, to create a family she could otherwise never have, in the form of a horde of purple-skinned and arachnid-faced monsters and a grove of horticultural horrors.

And then you—both of you—found her. Together with your ‘Monstrous Regiment’ of fellow adventurers, who invade the Unseelie’s stronghold, freed its long-sleeping defenders, slaughtered the deformed fairy ‘foundlings’, and captured Patmo-Shoka for your own.

>>6244669 (OP)
You are Zith-Zi, a one-time goblin bandit who was transformed by a not-dissimilar magic into a pretty, pink-skinned ‘nilbog’ adventuress…

…And you are Cara-Zi (or Carazzi, or just ‘Cara’ or ‘CZ’), the demon-tainted ‘cambion’ castoff created by Zith-Zi’s transformation.

For a long time, it had seemed that the price for your physical and spiritual improvement would be your misery and madness. Even an increasing mastery of shapeshifting skill couldn’t rid the demonic goblin of unwholesome urges, Hellish hunger for the lifeforce of the living, or certain anatomical aspects that served as impediment to intimacy. Not even the magic which separated the two ‘soul-sisters’ could cure a cambion’s condition.

But maybe, just maybe, the Forge of Patmo-Shoka can.

This was the theory of Ayla and Veigar, the self-same darkling doppelgangers of two legendary mages who arrived in the wake of the Ettercap’s destruction. They offered their services to you two, as tutors and technicians adept in the Living Alchemy of the East and West alike, in exchange for the opportunity to use the magical machine themselves.

However, transforming a cambion’s ectoplasmic essence into something capable of a normal life—of free will without <WANT>, of reproduction without cursed contagion—requires more than just the Forge’s power, which was only ever intended for its goblinoid creators.

While Veigar and your boyfriend work with the ancient natives to translate and implement the proper protocols, you have been ‘cultivating’ your body and mind with martial arts of medicine from the Far East, following the Path of Pure Self towards the ultimate goal of becoming a Void Vessel: a spirit freed from suffering and desire.

Meanwhile, you have been working hard to maintain morale and keep food stores full, something made increasingly difficult by the harsh northern winters and the need for secrecy, lest the people of the Steelwood take umbrage with your ownership and operation of such a powerful magical resources on ‘their’ (oft-disputed and long fought-for) land.

Luckily, those two objectives have found overlap, following a certain trip to The Orient…

…

>>6244670

…

Welcome back, one and all, to Cambion Quest! For anyone in need of a refresher, interested in delving into prior quests in the setting (not mandatory by any means), or for anyone just joining us, the prior threads and quests can be accessed at https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=reptoidqm. A reminder as well: backlink your 1post IDs, or during contentious votes or suspicious surges of activity, they may not be counted.

…

>>6244671

…

You are Zith-Zi, and you are utterly exhausted. Nobody could blame you—and they better fucking not, or you might bust their goddamned head open. You braved a blizzard and fought a wolf-pack for these pricks, after all, only to discover upon your return that your foremost magical healer had fucked off the Hawksong—the big city—on some kind of secret wizard-mission. As such, you and your hunting companions—An-Yii and Yeb-Uit—have been nursing your pneumonia and frostbite the old-fashioned and unpleasant way: bed-rest and bark-teas made by your savage shaman, the orc-girl Dura.

(They’re better than nothing—better than they were a week ago, actually, at the actual healing part—but they still taste like spoiled blood and sawdust.)

Still, it wasn’t all for naught: you acquired enough dogmeat to feed the whole Regiment, and enough pelts to trade for some more equipment once you’re better... And better you’d better be getting, and fast, because while you were busting your ass to keep everyone fed, your other half was apparently munching bean-balls in the Far East and taking on jobs for mysterious Easterling merchants without so much as checking in with you.

(You blame that khoblis bitch. Ayla may not be Izirina Henzler of Hawksong, in the same way CZ isn’t exactly you, but you’ve never trusted either of ‘em entirely. You’re sure she’s a bad influence on your ‘sister’…)

>>6244673
Aside from a haul of hides and canine carne for the commissary, though, you also got a chance to flash your radsaber—that is, the Patmo-Shokan radiant energy blade you looted while you were conquering this dungeon—in a proper conflict. You smirk in grim satisfaction, remembering how it went through wolves like a hot knife through butter. After years out of the game, cooling your heels and spinning your wheels in New Goblintown, you’re finally feeling like your old self again.

Level Up for ZZ!
Choose one:
>Swordsmanship 4
>Thrown Weapon 2
>Athletics 3
>Vigilance 1
>Survival 1
>Intimidate 2
>Feycraft 1 (also gain a spell)
>Handle Animal 1 (increase Hershy’s effectiveness)

Determined not to let yourself go soft again, you force yourself out of bed with a groan and a grimace. You force yourself to finish your tea, give yourself a quick whore’s bath in the basin—a little splash of water and a quick towel-down, just to remove the sheen of sick-sweat—and make yourself decent before staggering out of your quarters. After all, you’re the Boss, and you’ve got loot to distribute.

You have 34 points to spend, having gained 5 points for each winter wolf whose pelt you acquired!

What will you spend it on?
>Upgrading your Light Armour to Medium
[4 points, +1 damage absorption per hit]
>Upgrading your Light Armour to Heavy
[8 points, +2 damage absorption, +1 DC to hit you, increases DC of Athletics rolls while wearing it]
>Upgrade your Throwing Knives
[currently 1d2, upgrading increases them to 1d4; cost of 2 points per knife]
>Fix your damaged Trapfinder
[currently allows you to search for magical traps, but at DC 16; fixing it will reduce DC to 12, but costs 8 points]
>Keep a winter wolf pelt and fashion it into a new cloak
[reduces DC of leadership and Intimidation rolls by 2, moreso with orcs of the Wolfpack Horde and with lycanthropes or canid beastfolk; costs 5 points, since you don’t sell one of the pelts]
>A new, superior bow and more arrows for Yeb-Uit [increases damage from 1d6 to 1d8, improves his morale; costs 5 points]
>Proper pre-made healing potions for An-Yii’s medical kit [upgrades her healing from 1d8+2 to 1d8+4, and allows her to restore MP as well for those who have the capacity for magic; improves her morale, costs 5 points, lasts until the kit is next depleted]
>Better quality rations, travel gear, and clothes for everyone [Increases whole party’s morale, improves your initial impression with anyone you encounter, costs 10 points]
>Write-in

>>6244676
>Handle Animal 1 (increase Hershy’s effectiveness)
This isn’t the optimal choice, I just like the idea of Hershy being pampered so much it becomes a skill :^)

>Upgrade your Throwing Knives X2
>Keep a winter wolf pelt and fashion it into a new cloak
>A new, superior bow and more arrows for Yeb-Uit [increases damage from 1d6 to 1d8, improves his morale; costs 5 points]
>Proper pre-made healing potions for An-Yii’s medical kit [upgrades her healing from 1d8+2 to 1d8+4, and allows her to restore MP as well for those who have the capacity for magic; improves her morale, costs 5 points, lasts until the kit is next depleted]
>Better quality rations, travel gear, and clothes for everyone [Increases whole party’s morale, improves your initial impression with anyone you encounter, costs 10 points]

That should be 29 points- the last five should either be spent on upgrading our armor or gifting CZ a wolf-pelt cloak (or pampering Hershey further ;)

>>6244676
Also curious about the Feycraft’s potential spells desu

>>6244676
>Athletics 3
Our sword does decent enough damage. Let’s worry about other things in combat.

>A new, superior bow and more arrows for Yeb-Uit [increases damage from 1d6 to 1d8, improves his morale; costs 5 points]
He was on low morale.
>Proper pre-made healing potions for An-Yii’s medical kit [upgrades her healing from 1d8+2 to 1d8+4, and allows her to restore MP as well for those who have the capacity for magic; improves her morale, costs 5 points, lasts until the kit is next depleted]
>Better quality rations, travel gear, and clothes for everyone [Increases whole party’s morale, improves your initial impression with anyone you encounter, costs 10 points]
CZ has the censer. I don’t think another trapfinder is that necessary.

>>6244679
I like this anon's proposal, especially because I feel we haven't done stuff for Hershey in a while, being so busy leading the crew

>>6244684
>CZ has the censer. I don’t think another trapfinder is that necessary.
[Entirely reasonable, but I will briefly point out that the Brazier of Revealing haze exposes and inhibits illusions and mentalism, while the Trapfinder is good for identifying and disabling magical and non-magical devices. Only in some cases, ie traps reliant on illusion or mind-affecting spells, will both be useful for the same thing. The trapfinder, for instance, might have spared Aarre.]

>>6244676
>>Handle Animal 1 (increase Hershy’s effectiveness)

>A new, superior bow and more arrows for Yeb-Uit [increases damage from 1d6 to 1d8, improves his morale; costs 5 points]
>Proper pre-made healing potions for An-Yii’s medical kit [upgrades her healing from 1d8+2 to 1d8+4, and allows her to restore MP as well for those who have the capacity for magic; improves her morale, costs 5 points, lasts until the kit is next depleted]
>Fix your damaged Trapfinder
>Keep a winter wolf pelt and fashion it into a new cloak
>Upgrading your Light Armour to Medium

>>6244676
>Feycraft 1 (also gain a spell)

Spells verity is always useful especially if we are going to be dealing with the yokai of the east.

>Proper pre-made healing potions for An-Yii’s medical kit [upgrades her healing from 1d8+2 to 1d8+4, and allows her to restore MP as well for those who have the capacity for magic; improves her morale, costs 5 points, lasts until the kit is next depleted]
>Better quality rations, travel gear, and clothes for everyone [Increases whole party’s morale, improves your initial impression with anyone you encounter, costs 10 points]

healing potions are a must have since veigar wont be coming with us.

>>6244676
>Athletics 3
We've already seen swordsmanship 5, let's see athletics 5

>A new, superior bow and more arrows for Yeb-Uit [increases damage from 1d6 to 1d8, improves his morale; costs 5 points]
>Proper pre-made healing potions for An-Yii’s medical kit [upgrades her healing from 1d8+2 to 1d8+4, and allows her to restore MP as well for those who have the capacity for magic; improves her morale, costs 5 points, lasts until the kit is next depleted]
>Better quality rations, travel gear, and clothes for everyone [Increases whole party’s morale, improves your initial impression with anyone you encounter, costs 10 points]
Moralemax for 20

>Fix your damaged Trapfinder
Keep 6 in the bank for emergencies

>>6244795
>6244751
>>6244744
>6244685
>>6244684
>6244680
>>6244679
[Locked and writing!]

>>6244808

For the last few months, you’d had nobody to trade with but the small clan of Wolfpack Horde orcs who occupied the northernmost area of the Steelwood region. While the barbarian brutes were perhaps, marginally less brutish and barbarous than humans gave them credit for… Well they still weren’t exactly replete with a rich material culture, nor were you eager to indebt yourselves overmuch to a people whose race operates on a system of slave-raids and servitude.

(Especially since, as a juicy piece of ass, ‘servitude’ means something very specific and unpleasantly familiar where you’re concerned)

No, for the quality of goods which you needed, you thought it best to deal with civilization proper, and that meant sending Ayla to purchase them in your stead. As much as you hate to rely on an unreliable and enigmatic evil twin of a humie you already mistrust… Well, only one of you can teleport.

“Bring Copperbelt with ya,” you’d told her before she left, though, in hopes that the dwarven merchant would keep her honest, or at least that their two flavours of dubious trustworthiness would cancel each other out.

9 points remain

Looking over what they brought back, you find your trust in this arrangement was well-placed. While you were in the throes of your fever, they had fetched everything you had asked of them, and then some. You smile to see it, congratulating yourself on your excellent managerial skills and good judgement of their character, as with a grunt you haul the heavy sack of goodies over your shoulder.

croa-OAK!

“Oops! Sorry Hershy.”

The golden-plumed drake, readjusts himself, jostled out of his usual nesting-place in the crook of your neck by the bag. He's has taken quite a liking to the winter wolf pelt you kept, as a trophy of your little expedition. The thick, fluffy fur of the tundra-adapted predator feels incredibly plush upon your skin, so you can hardly blame him, though that’s not why you kept it… Or, well, not the only or primary reason.

Rather, it’s the way that Xoldur, Murbal, and Dura straighten up and watch you walk by with greater respect when you wear it. It’s not just orcs, either: these white-furred wolves is a fearsome force, well recognized in the region, and the fact that you slew almost a whole pack of them in a fearsome blizzard without losing a single life is no mean feat. You’d even gone so far as to have Ayla bring back a couple blue zircons from the market, to revive the beast’s fierce, frigid gaze.

(What? Can’t a girl accessorize?)

That wasn’t the bulk of your purchase, though, nor was it all so frivolous. The bulk of your bundle is filled with practical supplies for the quest ahead.

>>6244838
First and foremost: food. Trail rations are functional, yeah, but every adventurer knows in their heart (and moreover, their stomach) that’s they’re far from appetizing.

“Soup’s on!”

Well, no more of that—nor anymore dogmeat and hardtack—for YOUR gang! As the Monstrous Regiment gathers round, even those hard-assed orcs can’t help but ‘ooo’ and ‘aaah’ a little over the spread you’ve splayed out before them. Fresh buttery bread, well-seasoned meats, jars of rum-preserved fruits and pickled vegetables are laid out before them.

“Hmph,” Xoldur grunts, unscrewing one jar to sniff at it. “Is too much.”

“Dibs!” cries his sister, shoving him hard as she snatches the jar from his hands.

She catches a fist to her face for her trouble. You roll your eyes and let the two half-orcs settle the dispute between themselves, in the manner of siblings everywhere, while you distribute the remainder of the haul: thick-walled and waterproofed bedrolls, well-woven woolen blankets, fresh torches guaranteed to burn bright and warm, and a slapdash assortment of well-crafted clothing in a variety of sizes.

“They ain’t all gonna match for fit perfect,” you warn the Regiment, “but they’ll be a damn sight better ‘n we’ve had.”

Nobody complains even so, and in fact spirits seem especially high as people sort through the pile for the best-fitting boots and snuggest sweaters. The healthy and hale members of your company stuff their packs and pockets, with words of earnest gratitude; when they thin out, two small and sniffling figures yet stand, wating.

An-Yii and Yeb-Uit—fellow Wastelanders and founding members of New Goblintown—accompanied you on the hunt which made this plenty possible…. And they paid for it. Yeb-Uit, old bugger that he is, paid most preciously: despite Dura’s best efforts, he lost the tip of his right ear to frostbite. An-Yii damage is less visible, but she still wheezes when she breathes, and moves more slowly. Both have made a remarkable recovery, but you know that the experience—and the ‘tough love’ you were forced to employ in the field to keep them moving—has left a lasting mark upon them both.

“Here,” you say. “For you.”

“Wh-huh?” An-Yii blinks.

“…For us?” Yeb-Uit clarifies.

“Damn right,” you say with a grin. “You fuckin’ worked for it, didn’t you?”

>>6244840

Some might say that you’re still soft, at least for a Goblin Boss. Well, they might be right… But then, you aren’t a goblin, and you’ve long stopped caring about living up the rough-and-tumble reputation you built among the bandits of the Goblin Wastes. If Yeb respects your authority any less for the new bow you’ve brought him—or An-Yii for the stock of faintly luminous potion-vials you’ve brought her to augment her kit—neither of them shows it.

“This is…” An stops mid-sentence to sniffle, and though she rubs her nose, you think you catch a faint glimmer of tears in her eye. “I can do a lotta good with this, back home.”

“I’m sure you can,” you agree, “but you’ll be doin’ it for us, first. Deal?”

An nods, a single jerk of her head which speaks volumes. Yeb-Uit says nothing simply turning his Genuine Elven-Grade Adventurer’s Bow™ over and over in his hands, admiring the craftsmanship, as if he can’t believe it. Eventually, he takes his old, well-wron one from his back, replacing it with what you’ve provided him, and looks up with a grim smile.

“When do we leave?”

An-Yii’s morale: Low -> High
Yeb-Uit’s morale: Medium -> Very High
Everyone else: High to Very High

…

To be continued; sorry, anons, but a buddy invited me out part way through the update. Figured I'd posy up what we had so far, though, since it was a cute moment to leave off on

>>6244669 (OP)
Welcome back, OP
>>6244808
a shame anons didn't want to fix the trapfinder.
>>6244842
very nice indeed.

>>6244842
>Genuine Elven-Grade Adventurer’s Bow™
lmao

I love gearing up. Thanks for the update QM!

>>6244842
…

You are Cara-Zi.

Or Carazzi, to Veigar, who doesn’t seem to really ‘get’ goblin names, despite kind of BEING a goblin nowadays.

Or Cara, to Marty, your ~boyfriend~, but that’s okay because of how he says it, and anyway it’s not uncommon for a goblin to pick one half or the other of their name and use it as a nickname, especially for gobs with longer names, as is common among hobgoblins or those with a non-goblin parent.

…Which, like, you sort of are, in more ways than one.

Because you’re also Irinnile.

You look at yourself in the mirror, admiring you fancy new oriental dress. It was part of your advance from Ziwei Bo, the enigmatic undead Easterling who also gave you your Brazier of Revealing Haze. It fits you perfectly, but then that’s inevitable: you bought a dress to fit the body-type you wanted, and then just sort of… Shifted into shape.

(Because of Irinnile.)

Ever since you mapped the contours of your body and soul with the shadow of the succubus who spawned you, you’ve felt… Weird. It’s like you finally understand something about yourself that you didn’t before. Maybe that’s what you bought this particular dress? With its high collar and its gold closures, its fancy poofy princess shoulders and its form-fitting silhouette around your hips, to the daring slits that conveniently afford you the room to grow or shrink just a little without bursting its seams, it’s sort of perfect…

But it’s also green.

Why is it green? And why the one with the snake scale motif?

(Snakey like that face you saw… The face of your, uh, ‘father’, whom your demon sire had been bound to, and fallen for…)

You still don’t really remember your life, as a part of Irinnile. It’s even vaguer and hazier than your scattershot recollection of your time as a hidden aspect of Zith-Zi. Somehow, though, in feeling like a part of so many different people, with such a unique hidden history, you feel more like you than ever before.

You’re not Zith-Zi.

You’re not really Irinnile, either, or Mama Zi, or your mysterious reptilian parent, either. You’re your own creature—self-possessed, self-aware, self-directed. The shirin has faded from your system, but the experience of the psychotropic spice and its attendant experience yet lingers.

When you look in the mirror, the face which looks back belongs to…

>Cara-Zi of New Goblintown
>Carazzi Van Houtzmann
>Cara Meadowgrass
>Shira Yosef
>Write-in

>>6245470
Level up for CZ!
Thanks to your dedicated study, you gain one combat rank in addition to the Occultism and Shapeshifting ranks which you gained last thread.
>Natural Weapons 3
[Increases your to-hit (3d20, 4d20 with Fist of the Green Dragon), but only does 1d3 damage, and reveals your monstrous nature when used)
>Polearm Combat 1
[Takes advantage of your 1d8 fishing spear, and other staffs, staves, and polearms)
>Polearm Combat 2
[Even BETTER than the previous option.. but you lose a rank in Natural Weapons]
>Close Combat 1
[Stacks with Natural Weapons ranks, AND works with your knife… But not with spears, and doesn’t increase your Natural Weapons damage, and only does 1d2 damage when not shapeshifting natural weapons]

Don't forget to vote on both votes!

>>6245470
>Cara-Zi Yosef

We did come from Zith-zi and mama zi, but were not a real goblin and the ancestral knight spirit of house Yosef did once speak to us.

>Natural Weapons 3

Our claws can damage magical, intangible and supernatural creatures our spear can't.

>>6245470
>Carazzi Van Houtzmann
Our man Rudolfo was too influential

>>6245473
>Natural Weapons 3

>>6245470
>Shira Yosef
Though I like the names Cara-Zi and Carrazzi- I just want to take back the Yosef name, even if it is unofficial. Besides, wouldn’t want to divorce ourselves from our sister’s name or the man who ‘gave’ us life- ain’t that right, Daddy~ *cackles at the spit-take*

>>6245473
No opinion on the combat level up btw

>>6245470
>Shira Yosef
I liked it
>>6245473
>Natural Weapons 3
are natural weapons and polearm combat antagonical skills, which is why we lose a rank on nw if we pick pc 2 ? or its just that we have the option sometimes of picking a further upgrade by sacrifcing the level of a random skill ?

>>6245470
>Cara-Zi Yosef
>Polearm Combat 2

>>6245473
>>6245470
> Cara Meadowgrass
I’ll be honest the new goblintown was a bit of a shithole. I don’t think its something to attach ourselves to that muh. Van Houtzmann? He’s cool. But he’s not that instrumental to our journey like ZZ. Martyn makes the most sense.


>Polearm Combat 2
We have ayla for the more magical threats. Good damage and reach.

>>6245698
Am >>6244684

>>6245698
>6245634
>>6245609
>6245603
>>6245601
>6245538
>>6245481
[Alright, so we're going to go with some intention blending here. Shira and Cara-Zi were tied, but the majority want to keep SOME variation of CZ's current name, and take the surname of her maternal granddad's defunct noble house. Since Carazzi is more in-line with the nomenclature of the Northwestern humans it's actually a rare Italian surname, possibly meaning "cartwright" or "beloved but poor", the latter of which is strangely appropriate, well go with that.]

[Writing!]

>>6245917
“Shira Yosef…”

You say aloud the name which has been rolling around in your head. You aren’t sure WHY, though. ‘Shira’ from ‘shirin’, because that’s what got you feeling this way? And ‘Yosef’… Well, you guess you sort of ARE a ‘Yosef’, but the name—and the human lineage—never really meant much to you before. But Ayla… Well, she’s a Yosef, too, right? And ZZ, she used the clout associated with that dusty old demonym to get in good with Jimmy Efron’s hoity-toity folks.

It’s a name with WEIGHT. A name that MATTERS. A name that belongs to someone IMPORTANT, not a monster.

You grin, and repeat it: “Yosssefff~”

But ‘Shira’? That feels… Weird. Like you’d be completely abandoning your other origins… Your other half. Zith-Zi and Cara-Zi, the Zi Sisters—that’s you, too! But with your beigey-pink skin, and nice Easterling attire, and your hot hobbit boytoy, well…

“Carazzi Yosef?”

You let it roll off the tongue, letting the syllables hang in the air and fog the mirror. That’s how Tips—and Veigar by extension—always mispronounce your name. They don’t speak Goblang, don’t get the tones. But said like that, with their Northwestern accent and emphasis? It almost turns your gob-given name sing-song in the same was as that of Costella Fanucci, Tips’ wife.

“Carazzi Yosef…”

Your reflection’s smile spreads.

“Carazzi Yosef!”

>>6245956
…

In the darkness of the deep places beyond the Prime Material Plane, an entity of endless ethereal eyestalks takes note of a subtle shift in the pattern of its grand design. Where once the tapestry frayed… It now stitches itself together again, in strange shape. A baleful gaze belying an ancient and undying intelligence crinkles at the edges, with amusement. Perhaps, The Nothic’s mission has not been an abject failure after all…

High above the island of Earth, in the palatial estates of Holy Luna, the Eladrin detect a subtle shift in the probability curve of a prophecy on their immortal creators’ had only recently removed from the list of those which were of the greatest concern. The source of the disruption is unclear, and the shift is barely outside the margin for error. A debate ensues among the holy High Elves as to whether to alert the moon’s Divine Princesses, or whether this would be an overreaction to a momentary statistical blip…

…

>>6245957
You are still buzzing with the euphoria of your new name—your new you, when a familiar croak grabs your attention. You immediately look to the bucket in the corner of your quarters, only to see that your flappy-whisker-faced cave-drake familiar is still curled up in a big turd-like lump of amphibious flesh. But if it’s not Nermal…

“Oh! Hey Hershy. Did Zith-Zi send ya?”

krr-oaak!

You hold out your hand, and Hershy alights upon it, tilting his head up expectantly to receive his chin and chest scratches as a reward for playing messenger. ZZ’s been spending more time on his training, lately, and it shows.

Zith-Zi gains Handle Animal 1!

“Or,” you whisper with a snicker, “you jus’ know I give th’ best pets. Izzat it, boy? Am I just the best at scritchin’?”

croak.

“Hey!” You pull back a finger and frown as he nips at it with his deceptively-sharp little teeth. “Fine, FINE. I’m comin’! No need ta get snippy!”

You grab the bag containing your polearm and armour. You’ve been training your body as much as your mind, and between your shapeshifting and all the poses and motions you’ve mastered, you barely even need the prong-tipped fishing-spear which has been your primary weapon since Sunset Lake…

Carazzi gains Natural Weapons 3!

...But you don’t need to be a company ‘boss’ to know that every adventurer without a long pole for poking stuff inevitably wishes they had one.

“‘S a little short’ve ten feet, though. Eh, it’ll do!”

…

>>6245958
…

You’re half-way through your briefing to the assembled adventurers of the Monstrous Regiment—oh, and Ayla, and the Patmo-Shokan blue-green ‘boglins’, but they’re pretty much honourary members by now—when your sister arrives, with your winged messenger perched upon her new dress’ absurdly-puffy shoulder. As she approaches, Hershy spreads his wings and swoops from her to land upon you, and you give her a glare.

“Cara-Zi, ‘bout time you joined the group.”

“Sorry, ZZ,” she replies with a wince. “And, uh, it’s Carazzi.”

You arch an eyebrow, wondering why she’s saying it like some clueless humie, with a city-slicker accent.

“Carazzi Yosef,” she amends, raising her head high and flashing a wide smile, as if that explains everything.

“…Right,” you reply, because it sure as shit doesn’t.

(You’d bet money this is Ayla’s doing somehow, though.)

“Anyway,” you continue, “whoever-the-fuck you are, I was just giving everyone here the run-down on this gig… This gig YOU signed us up for.”

“Y-yeah.” CZ titters nervously, looking to the assembled Regiment, then at you, then down at the ground. “Sorry, ZZ. I know I shouldn’t a’ done that without, like, askin’, since yer the Boss ‘n all.”

You sigh through your nose, unable to maintain your mad face when your doppelganger looks this downbeat. You wave your hand in a gesture of dismissal.

“Forget it,” you say. “What’s done is done, an’ it ain’t like we don’t need the work. Point is, YOU took the job from this Eastman. Seems ta me YOU ought to be tellin’ us what’s what.”

“Oh!”

Cara-Zi—or ‘Carazzi Yosef’, you guess??—stands straight once more, and hurries to your side.

>>6245960
Once there, CZ stops and turns around to face the others. A pang of stage-fright seems to strike her as she sees all their eyes on her… or maybe something less wholesome, you realize uncomfortably, remembering her demonic nature and the effect so much attention might have on a creature like your ‘sister’.

(Ain't Ayla supposed to be fixing that shit, or soemthing?)

“Just tell ‘em what you told me,” you prompt her, giving her back a slap.

“Right! R-right…” CZ shakes her head, clears her throat, and takes it from the top. “See, this Ziewei Bo guy, he wants us ta…”

>Investigate an old estate belonging to a rival cultivator, who hasn’t been seen for some time; if it’s abandoned, Ziwei Bo would like a certain bell which he lent the cultivator returned

>Hunt down and capture a strange creatures said to have the potential to generate any creature’s limbs or organs—complete with medicinal and alchemical properties—and bring it back alive

>To ferry a shipment of rare alchemical goods to a sorcerer in the Southlands, and to bring back that sorcerer’s payment-in-kind… Though, for some weird reason, teleportation is 100% not allowed on the way there

>Retrieve a pillar from a temple in ancient, abandoned Naganara—a whole pillar, yeah—though Ziwei Bo implied it was less-impossible than that sounds

>Write-in [I’ll likely modify it, and a veto is possible depending on the particulars]

>>6245957
Oh boy
Why'd you guys have to go with Yosef

>To ferry a shipment of rare alchemical goods to a sorcerer in the Southlands, and to bring back that sorcerer’s payment-in-kind… Though, for some weird reason, teleportation is 100% not allowed on the way there
Mmmm, rare alchemical goods

>>6245956
>You let it roll off the tongue, letting the syllables hang in the air and fog the mirror. That’s how Tips—and Veigar by extension—always mispronounce your name. They don’t speak Goblang, don’t get the tones. But said like that, with their Northwestern accent and emphasis? It almost turns your gob-given name sing-song in the same was as that of Costella Fanucci, Tips’ wife.
what's the difference in pronunciation ?
>>6245957
oh, I forgot about that. Fuck.
>>6245963
>Investigate an old estate belonging to a rival cultivator, who hasn’t been seen for some time; if it’s abandoned, Ziwei Bo would like a certain bell which he lent the cultivator returned
>>6245974
I forgot about the prophecy, anon. and also I didn't think it could've worked for CZ.

I'm sorry, I missed the last thread. Who is this Ziwei Bo guy?

>>6246028
Chinese merchant guy who’s kinda undead. Ayla and CZ made a deal with him — they’ll go on a quest as payment for CZ being transformed into a woman (as in she has a cunt this time) and a brazier that can (supposedly) detect and nullify illusions.

>>6245974
>>6246026

I thought that was your thought process when you chose the yosef thing.

>>6245963
>Hunt down and capture a strange creatures said to have the potential to generate any creature’s limbs or organs—complete with medicinal and alchemical properties—and bring it back alive
Honestly this probably works best with multiple people. Yeb will have an opportunity to use his bow and scouting skills here. The orcs can restrain it - or, if my hunch is correct, and it can regenerate its own limbs, cut off those off so it cant attack us while we capture it.

Am >>6245698

>>6246026
>what's the difference in pronunciation ?
[Goblingtongue, or 'Goblang', sounds somewhere between two cats fighting and the Black Speech from the Peter Jackson-directed Tolkien movies, and has many glottal stops and throat rasps. Human mouths struggle to pronounce it precisely, but think 'kyarah-tchjiee' with a harsh stop in the middle. Tips literally pronounces it like 'kuh rah zee' or like a soft Italian-sounding name, and even if he tries really hard Veigar can just barely manages something like 'Karah Zhee'; he has a pretty noticeable sylvan accent -- it didn't really come up in SoE, but their language is soft, flowy, and musical in the way you would expect of beautiful elves, and they really struggle to pronounce a tongue as harsh as goblins'.]

>>6246049
>as in she has a cunt this time
[Among other effects, lol...]

>>6245963
>Retrieve a pillar from a temple in ancient, abandoned Naganara—a whole pillar, yeah—though Ziwei Bo implied it was less-impossible than that sounds
Monkey king staff pls

>Hunt down and capture a strange creatures said to have the potential to generate any creature’s limbs or organs—complete with medicinal and alchemical properties—and bring it back alive

Ditto, I chose you!

>>6246049
Thanks

>>6245963

>To ferry a shipment of rare alchemical goods to a sorcerer in the Southlands, and to bring back that sorcerer’s payment-in-kind… Though, for some weird reason, teleportation is 100% not allowed on the way there

>>6246057
They’re korean!

>>6245963
>Investigate an old estate belonging to a rival cultivator, who hasn’t been seen for some time; if it’s abandoned, Ziwei Bo would like a certain bell which he lent the cultivator returned
Free shit yo

>>6246057
I’ve been meaning to ask this forever and forgetting but where’d you get orcish language from?

>>6246327
https://funtranslations.com/orcish
[But it has very few words. This can be frustrating, but on the other hand, it means I have to get creative and work with a limited vocabulary, which makes a lot of sense for a culture like that of the orcs, who value action more than words and distrust cleverness.]

>>6246213
[Kek, maybe if a Korean smoked a few packs of cigs a day. Though I did base their shanty-towns on a mix of accounts of Africville in Ye Olde Nova Scotia and old-school Chinatowns from western North America, so perhaps one could imagine it as a patois formed for communication between Arabic and Chinese or Korean in its rhythms?]

>>6245974
>>6246026
>Why'd you guys have to go with Yosef
>I forgot about the prophecy, anon. and also I didn't think it could've worked for CZ
[Hmmm...]

>>6246224
>6246176
>>6246134
>6246077
>>6246049
>6246026
>>6245974
[Oh my. This is embarrassing. Even removing the single un-backlinked 1post ID wouldn't help, since it's for Naganagara, and nobody else voted for that one! I guess I'll leave this open, and request that people include their second preference, too?]

[In the meantime...]
God ahead and ask any otehr questions you have! AMA, lore-wise, previous quest stuff, inspiration or headcanons, quest recs... Whatever you've got!

I hate the spam-sensor....

>>6246532
First choice is still rare alchemical goods, second would be
>Hunt down and capture a strange creatures said to have the potential to generate any creature’s limbs or organs—complete with medicinal and alchemical properties—and bring it back alive

>>6246532
What are the writing instruments and writing materials of the folks in your setting?

>>6246532
>Hunt down and capture a strange creatures said to have the potential to generate any creature’s limbs or organs—complete with medicinal and alchemical properties—and bring it back alive

I'll vote for mystery monster if it will break the tie.

Maybe we can find a patch of wilderness untouched by humanity for Nermal to live and reproduce in.

me>>6245481

>>6246532
As for a question what was the potential elemental discipline beyond know matter at ezreal could have discovered early in the last quest?
https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2023/5805551/#p5819321
>An entirely new elemental discipline… One beyond known or states of matter

>>6246659
>What are the writing instruments and writing materials of the folks in your setting?
[Most people in the Northwest and Northeast use some form of quill, ink, and parchment or vellum. Dwarves and gnomes are experimenting with other forms of more advanced writing implement, such as crude fountain pens and the like. Their biggest innovation is the printing press, though, which has seen adoption ONLY in the Northwest so far... And really, only in Hawksong at any scale. Charcoal and lead pencil see use as well, and chalk.]

[The Southlands and Southeast see a variety of methods of record-keeping, from their own quill-and-ink to the good old-fashioned stick-and-clay or hectored tablet methods, to textile and painted pictographic/symbolic records. The richer or more magically-inclined "Southrons" also sometimes skip the middle-man and just use demonic messengers and demons trapped in tablets to record editable records.]

>>6246860
>As for a question what was the potential elemental discipline beyond know matter at ezreal could have discovered early in the last quest?
[He could have become an Elementalist specializing in electromagnetic energy in less-obvious forms than lightning, like radiation, magnetism, etcetera.]

>>6246801
>>6246580
[Mystery monster it is! Locked and writing (soon)!]

>>6246991
You go on to explain—as best you can, based on what you understand and recall of Ziwei Bo’s explanation—the quarry of your next quest.

“Well, like… So, it’s kind ironic, but what we’re huntin’ is actually CALLED a ‘hunTUN’, if ya can believe it!”

“Hùndùn,” interjects Ayla.

“Y-yeah, that thing.” You pause to recollect yourself, scrambling to remember the details. “I guess it’s, like… Some kinda big dumpling made a’ meat, but also it has a bunch’ve legs ‘n wings ‘n shit stickin’ out of it? And, like, at crazy angles, but it still gets around okay?”

You look to Ayla again, but she simply strokes the last such strange beast you captured—the three-headed one, which you’d thought lost during your rescue mission. Ever since your tutor and Veigar arrived with it in tow, they’ve been caring for the thing; with Veigar absent, fetching materials for the forge, you suppose it fell to Ayla. It seems a lot more docile than you remember, but even though she doesn’t seem too busy, she doesn’t interject again, so you must be doing alright.

“Anyway, Easterlings use all kinds a’ animal bits in their potions and medicines, right? An’ this ‘hundun’ thing, it can mimic ANY of ‘em, down ta the bone ‘n blood ‘n bile—an’ bile is, like SUPER important, I guess?—an’ even the qi! W-which is, like, magic life juice, sorta’, for those who don’t know.”

“This sounds like a fascinating creature,” comments Iorund Copperbelt, “but where do we find this… Hundun?”

You look to the dark-haired and balding dwarf who was once leader of the seemingly-disbanded Delvers. Since most of his old party departed, he has seemingly come to fancy himself a sort of co-leader of the Monstrous Regiment. Since this is plainly his own mind, you then look to ZZ, who nods, before answering:

“Well, that’s the thing, right? A weird monster like that can live pretty much ANYWHERE, an’ it can’t be tracked or detected by magic for SOME reason, an’ it roams around all the time, so what we gotta do is—”

“Attract it peaceful—”

“Set a trap.”

>>6247030
Khorine and Yeb-Uit speak at once, and then exchange a glare—or, well, Khorine glares at Yeb-Uit, who just snorts and shrugs.

“Same thing,” the elder goblin concludes.

“NO,” the faun emphatically argues, “it is NOT.”

“We’re lurin’ it, then catchin’ it, then sellin’ it.”

“That’s barbaric!” Khorine bleats, then turns to Zith-Zi. “This hundun sounds like a sacred creature of nature… Perhaps even a creation of the Bonum Chaoticum! We should protect it from harm.”

“Sounds like that might interfere with the gig,” ZZ replies skeptically.

“We can find another way to make use of its… Properties, surely?” Khorine insists, looking to you now with a desperate expression and a demanding tone. “Is it intelligent? To what degree?”

“Uh—”

“If its limbs can be grown at will, can it shed them on its own?”

“Well—”

“And this ‘Ziwei Bo’… is he a trustworthy sort? A good man?”

(Well, he’s actually a sketchy-ass lich or something, but…)

“Hey, easy!” Zith-Zi snaps, quelling Khorine’s enthusiastic outburst. “We’re goin’ off rumours ‘bout a rare monster. There’s only so much CZ’s gonna know.”

You look to your soul-sister in silent gratitude, and then turn back to the others. “Yeah, well… That’s pretty much it! But we know an area it’s bin spotted flyin’ around in, right? So first thing’s first… We go out that-a-way!”

You point dramatically Eastward… Only for Ayla to tut quietly, and nod her head. You adjust your direction accordingly. A chorus of murmurs ensues as everyone discusses the enigmatic entity at the heart of our hunt, what sort of being it might be, and how to find, capture, and subsequently handle it. As they do so, ZZ sidles up to you, and asks:

“Did this Easterling of yers say if this thing’s dangerous?”

“Oh!” you say brightly, because you know this one, only for your enthusiasm to dim. “Uh, yeah. But he didn’t say how, or why. Just that if we hear a sound like thunder, or an avalanche, but the ground ain’t shakin’ and there’s no clouds, that’s prob’ly the hundun.”

“Great,” says your sister, in a voice implying quite the opposite. “Well, work’s work.”

…

>>6247031
…

When Cara-Zi—Carazzi, you remind yourself again—is done her little presentation, you set about planning the expedition ahead. At first, this seems a simple thing—Ayla can get you there instantaneously, after all!

“I can’t, actually.”

“And why the hell NOT?!”

Ayla sighs, and places a hand upon her hip, the other holding the newly-agitated chimeric beast by her side in place.

“I’m needed here,” she explains. “Preparations must be made for the forge’s activation… For the sake of my sister.”

“Your sister?” you blink. “You mean CZ? You mean MY sister?”

“In one sense, yes,” Ayla answers, with one of those infuriating little half-smiles that doesn’t reach her creepy, glowing eyes.

“Regardless,” she continues, “I also need to remain here so that I can summon Veigar back to me, when he’s ready to return. And even if I could leave, I’ve never been to the region you’re traveling to.”

You can’t really argue with any of those points and, the more you talk to this Henzler khoblis, the more you find yourself grateful she won’t be coming along. Ayla at least assures you that she can get you within a few days’ journey; with your newly-restocked supplies, that should do the trick.

“Before you go, though,” she adds, with that unsettling smirk spreading just a little further. “You should speak with Feurmeadhoin.”

“…Whozat now?” You squint your eyes. “If that’s some kinda demon or dark god or whatever-the-fuck, I ain’t interested.”

Ayla sighs again, and you feel your jaw tighten.

“The Bwbachod,” she says. “The halfling. The one Carazzi is… Engaged with.”

“Oh, Meadowgrass?” You snort. “I wouldn’t call ‘em ‘engaged’ or nothin’…”

Your eyes widen.

“Wait, ARE they?!”

(Fuck, they better not be. That’s way too fast! If that’s what Ayla wants you to talk to the little shit about, you might just let your rad-saber do the talking...)

>>6247033
Ayla covers her mouth, failing to hide a laugh, and merely says: “It’s something else, but no less important.”

(Ugh, was she reading your mind again? That shit always creeps you out…)

You follow the sinister demon-witch’s directions despite their source, and—true to Ayla’s word—you find Martyn Meadowgrass by the forge. He seems deeply engrossed in his work there, tapping and swiping at the symbols upon the black glass tablet which serves to control the aeons-old magical device. He’s so engrossed, in fact, that he jumps when you call his name.

“S-sorry,” he apologizes. “Your voice was—I mean to say, I thought you were…”

He trails off, looking guilty. That raises an eyebrow or two. Did he think you were CZ? If so, why’s he look so twitchy?

(He was being a little weird at the briefing, too, as a matter-of-fact… And he rushed right out, too.)

>Ask him about the work on the forge
>Ask him about how things are going with him and CZ
>Ask him his thoughts on the hundun and the mission
>Write-in

>>6247036
>Ask him about the work on the forge
>Ask him about how things are going with him and CZ
He’s busy at the forge. I don’t think he’s so valuable to this mission that we need recruit him to hunt down the hundun.

Am >>6246049

>>6246991
>He could have become an Elementalist specializing in electromagnetic energy in less-obvious forms than lightning, like radiation
Glad this didn't happen, the warcrimes would have been irresistable.

>>6247036
>Ask him about the work on the forge
>Ask him about how things are going with him and CZ
Gotta be one of these two right?

>>6247098
Support

>>6247036
>Ask him about how things are going with him and CZ

>>6247036
>>Ask him about the work on the forge
>>Ask him about how things are going with him and CZ

>>6247346
>>6247189
>>6247131
>>6247129
>>6247098
You’re tempted to just skip all the rigmarole of a guessing-game with this guy, and to jut pepper him with questions until you figure out what Ayla wants you to get out of him… or maybe just leaving altogether. After all, why should you play that Henzler girl’s games? It could just be some freaky demonic game she’s playing.

Something about his demeanor stops you.

Martyn Meadowgrass is cagey, eyes evasive, fidgeting as if looking for an escape route. Now, you’re properly suspicious, Ayla aside.

“Somethin’ the matter?” you ask.

“H-huh? Uh, no, why do you ask?”

You can’t imagine it’s about the hundun. What’s some Northwestern hobbit—even a well-traveled one—going to know about a magical beast that even Eastern mystics don’t? Two things he has been focused on, though are the forge… And your sister.

“You got real jumpy when you heard my voice.” A voice which, of course, sounds nigh-identical to Carazzi’s, at times. “Are things goin’ well with you ‘n CZ, Meadowgrass?”

“Oh! Uh, well? Quite well, I’d… I’m sure that, uh, Cara would say. She could tell you all about it.”

You lean closer, causing sweat to bead around the halfling’s face and neck. He swallows hard, fingers clutching at the magical device’s controls, and a bead of that sweat bounces as it rolls over the shifting, walnut-sized lump of his larynx.

“Somethin’ happened, while I was away,” you state bluntly. “You know why she’s bein’ all weird.”

Martyn cracks like a rotten egg under your pressure, after that. He confesses, on his behalf and that of ‘Cara’, explaining that Ayla and Veigar had provided your sister some drugs—some of that ‘shirin’ shit that Tips used to get into back at Old Maple Hill sometimes. Form what you gather, it was QUITE the trip.

“An’ she’s been different, ever since?”

“I don’t… I suppose so?” Meadowgrass looks awkwardly away. “I’ve been… I haven’t seen much of her, since then.”

Damn. You guess that means there’s no urgent need to talk to him about any engagements, but this might be worse. Your sister’s beloved new boyfriend seems SCARED of her. Seeing no need to dance around the subject, and lacking the patience to do so, you say as much.

“No!” Meadowgrass blurts out, then winces. “Well… Not of Cara. Not… Not exactly. But…”

“But?” you press.

Meadowgrass stammers, hesitating to respond, and you slam a hand beside his head. Hershy rumbles, a quiet rolling croak that accentuates your point.

“But?” you repeat.

“…But what she’s doing, what she’s trying to become?” He gulps again. “I saw… Something, while we were… Under the effects. I know that Cara is, is DIFFERENT. And I’ve, well… I’ve become quite fond of her. But what she did that night, and what she seems to be moving towards…”

>>6247427
The hobbit’s blue-grey eyes follow the form of your pink arm, to where your hand is planted upon one of the Patmo-Shokan forge’s many inscrutable apparatuses. You allow Meadowgarss to turn around until he is facing the machine. You sense something building up, and back off just a little; crossing your arms as you wait for him to come out with it.

“I think I’ve figured out which of the, uh.. The crystal records contains the instructions for the creation and installation of a, uh… A soul, or a spirit. Or the modification of one.”

You blink, confused. Isn’t that GOOD news? There’s got to be more, right? Meadowgrass turns back around, regarding you with a sad, worried expression, and you know you’re on the right track.

“I’m afraid that Cara is moving too quickly, and towards an end-point she doesn’t understand. I’m… I’m worried I maybe helped push her along that path. That we’re moving faster, further, than is really… Safe.”

You finally manage to bridge the gap between this subject-shift and Meadowgrass/ earlier anxiety.

“You’re worried if we tell CZ about it, she’ll want to be the first in the machine,” you say aloud, even as you work it out in your head. “And you’re worried she’ll come out all wrong.”

“We’ve never used it before!” Martyn clutches the side. “Reversing the incomplete effects of the Ettercap’s ‘foundling’ transformation was a matter of just reversing a process in motion, a sort of… Of ‘undo’ of something, a reversion. Creating entirely new forms of life, though? And using, as our first subject, something—someone, I mean!—like Cara…?”

You frown as you regard Meadowgrass fear-faded features, pale and pallid beneath the flickering magical lights which glint and glimmer like predatory eyes amidst the remnants of the Ettercap’s indoor jungle. It isn’t him you’re trying to figure out, but Ayla. Did she send you down here to reassure this halfling? To report back on his findings? What does she want, with you—and with CZ—really?

>>6247428
As for Martyn Meadowgrass misgivings about his magical machine… Well, it’s too late for that, surely? You’ve staked your future on this old ‘forge’ working—on it being able to augment adventurers, to make them stronger than ever before. And, Hells Below, isn’t this the perfect time to test it out, with the hundun hunt on the horizon?

…Does Ayla want you to test the forge out on someone? Someone other than CZ first? Is that why she told you, and not your overeager opposite number? You’d ask her, but you already fucking KNOW that khoblis will just give you one of those sneaky, smarmy smirks of hers and say something cryptic.

What will you do?
>Tell Meadowgrass to keep this close to the chest for now—don’t tell anyone yet
>Call Carazzi down here, to discuss it with her, and to offer her first crack at it
>Ask Martyn to transform you—if it’s indeed ready—to upgrade yourself before the hunt
>Test it out on someone else… [who or what?]
>Write-in

>>6247429
>Test it out on someone else… [Yeb-Uit]

Yeb got badly mauled and took some permeant injures from those winter wolves. And he is getting Old old and goblins don't have long lifespans.

Selling him the idea of testing the forge should be easiest. Among our companions.

>>6247501

me>>6246801

>>6247501
support

>>6247501
>+1

>>6247429
>>6247501
+1
The perfect guinea pig

>>6247501
>>6247582
>>6247685
>>6247713
[Alright, I think we're looking at a majority of voters. Let's lock and load! Writing.]

>>6247716
You do not agonize long over the decision. You don’t even care that it’s quite possibly playing right into Ayla’s conniving hands. You need this forge to work, for your sake and CZ’s… But you’re not so foolhardy as to leap right in. CZ totally, absolutely IS that foolhardy… Which is why you, like Ayla and like Meadowgrass, don’t plan to let her know.

Instead, you tell Yeb-Uit.

“…Why me?”

“Come on,” you reply to him with a crooked but sympathetic smile and a tap of your pointed ear. “You know why.”

Yeb only grunts at that, almost orcish in his wordless stoicism. You BOTH know exactly why you brought this opportunity—this admittedly RISKY opportunity—to him. Yeb-Uit’s mangling by the Steelwood’s winter wolves was mostly mended—MOSTLY—but the exposure frostbite took no small toll. Yeb was already OLD old, but he moved like he was middle-aged, before you went out into the frigid forest. But now? Now, the grizzled goblin wears his years like a weighted cloak; they slow his movements, bend him over slightly.

And that’s all ASIDE from the mangled and foreshortened ear, which he wordlessly brings his fingers to in mirror of your gesture.

Very high morale, compelling case…
Auto-success to convince Yeb-Uit!

“Alright,” he says, “I’m in.”

…

>>6247760
Since you still need to keep this close to the chest, you don’t want to make a spectacle of the historic moment. There is no official announcement of the test. Nobody else even knows that the forge is being fired up for the first time since the Ettercap’s extermination. It’s just you, Meadowgrass, and… Hol-Beorn.

(The blueberry brigade’s boss-gob noticed all the activity around his people’s ancient wonder, and you couldn’t think of a way to preclude his involvement, but at least he is no stranger to confidentiality.)

One person who ISN’T present on-time for the procedure is the male-of-the-hour himself, Yeb-Uit. You all wait for a while, before you finally crack and, with a string of colourful multilingual frustration, storm off to go get the laggardly bastard. You stomp over to his quarters a couple levels up, where you pound upon his door.

“If ya got cold fuckin’ feet, ya ought to at least show some fucking balls ‘n come tell us yourself rather than make us all wait around, YA OLD—”

Before you can say anything else, the door next to you opens, and a half-clad Yeb-Uit stumbles out. You stare for a moment, and then open your mouth to say something else, but Yeb-Uit puts a finger to his lips.

“…”

You tilt to your left and stand on your tiptoes to see past the elder gob, and see a lean, green, very naked figure sprawled out upon the bed on her stomach, facing away from the door. Her legs are still spread, flashing some gash, and her breathing is rising and falling in the easy comfort of post-coital bliss.

An-Yii is still wearing that goofy little nurse’s cap of hers, though.

Yeb-Uit shuts the door. The two of meet each other’s eyes, and he cracks first, sniggering.

“You’re a fuckin’ dog, you know that?” You sigh.

Yeb gestures to your new fur cloak, and says: “Might be dead as that dog yer wearin’, in a few minutes, if this fucks up. Let a goblin have a last meal, huh?”

You roll your eyes, but give his ass a congratulatory slap as he shuffles by. You follow after him, back to the forge-room.

…

>>6247761
Finally, you and the others are all assembled. Meadowgrass looks almost upset to see Yeb-Uit in attendance. He’s going to operate the machine, after all, and the soft little hobbit probably hoped for an excuse to hold off.

(No such luck, Marty-boy…)

Hol-Beorn, by contrast, is stonily serious, and far more ritualized about the matter. Speaking his proto-dwarven tongue, he says something that you THINK roughly translates to:

“May the ancestors, and the great ones of Yakh-Yubh, see what we do here and find honour and glory. Our race’s great work will continue, in this era as in ours, to reshape the world into a still greater form, as lead into gold.”

…Or something like that, anyway. You bet Copperbelt would know, but no way were you bringing BALDY in on this yet.

“What about Madame Ayla?” asks Meadowgrass nervously. “Shouldn’t she be here?”

“Oh don’t worry,” you say bitterly, “there ain’t no way she ain’t watching us right now.”

(She’s just ALSO seeing to CZ and Dura’s nightly magic-lessons or whatever, which is the only way to ensure your overeager doppelganger doesn’t bumble in here and start arguing about whether she ought to hop on in and get transmogrified.)

“Yeb-Uit?”

As you speak his name, the dirty old ranger stands up straight as he can. Hol-Beorn guides him towards the dais at the centre of the facility, and Martyn’s fingers flit across the black glass . A crystal-capsule—a “gem egg”, as CZ likes to put it—descends from the ceiling, from among the withered vines of the Unseelie occupation. Upon touching down and sinking into a small groove in the platform, it splits in twain and reveals the space inside.

“Are you… Are you sure, Mister Wheat?”

Yeb-Uit sneers at the halfling’s mispronunciation of his name, and mistaking of the back-half for some sort of surname. You hold back a laugh, made easier by your own anxiety. This is starting to have the air of an execution. Neither you, nor Yeb, correct Meadowgrass.

Instead, Yeb-Uit just says: “Yep.”

He steps inside. The gem-egg starts to close.

Base chance of success on first attempt: 20%
Because you allowed Ayla and Veigar unrestricted access (+20), never pulled anyone critical off of the research team for adventures or the like (+10), kept Copperbelt and Meadowgrass around (+10), and chose the race which the forge was originally intended for (+15), there is a 75% chance of total success (1-75), a 7% chance of partial-success (76-82), and an 7% chance (83-89) of simple failure, with an 11% chance of catastrophic failure resulting in instant death.

Not that ZZ or anyone else knows the exact odds, in-character

Do you have any (potentially final) words for Yeb-Uit?
>Write-in if so
>No need, he’ll be fine
>No need, who cares?
>Take his place at the last moment
>Cancel at the last moment

>>6247763
>No need, he’ll be fine
Maybe give him a "good luck homie" but those are good odds

>>6247763
>No need, who cares?
lmao

>>6247761
old man still got the dog in him
>>6247763
>“May the ancestors, and the great ones of Yakh-Yubh[...]"
Only now I've noticed it sounds like yakub

>there is a 75% chance of total success (1-75), a 7% chance of partial-success (76-82), and an 7% chance (83-89) of simple failure, with an 11% chance of catastrophic failure resulting in instant death.
don't you mean 1% chance of catastrophe ? also will it be a roll under ?

>"Don't keep us waiting, old man."

>>6247843
I assume its literal.

75% success means if we get a 1-75, that’s success.
76-82 partly
83-89 fail
90-100 die

>>6247763
>No need, he’ll be fine
He’ll have to.

Am >>6247098

>>6247845
>I assume its literal
[Correct!]

>>6247843
>Only now I've noticed it sounds like yakub
Patmo-Shoka's name is a reference, too.

>>6247853
Made me google. Had successfully cleansed my mind of this bullshit.


>No need, he’ll be fine

>>6247853
hmm
>>6247898
>Made me google. Had successfully cleansed my mind of this bullshit.
I didn't get anything else by googling, is it just related to patmos island ?

>>6247931
googled yakub, so i guess for patmos?

[D&D night went long... Sorry, updating tomorrow!]

>>6248469
No problem, chief.

Rolled 29 (1d100)

>>6247898
>>6247845
>>6247843
>>6247815
>>6247804
You consider briefly whether you should say something. You have a good feeling about this. you wouldn’t be letting anyone step in if you thought it would kill them outright, obviously—you’re not an ASSHOLE. But, well… There’s a reason it’s an old, infirm goblin going in first. Nobody’s tried out the process for hundreds or thousands of years, except the Ettercap, and you all saw how THAT turned out. You keep your lips shut and still your tongue, though—not because you don’t care, but because to say anything more, even a simple ‘good luck’, would feel like a jinx—like an admission of the chance of a catastrophic failure.

Yeb-Uit shuts his eyes and balls his fists. The gem egg seals shut around him.

“Begin the process!” Hol-Beorn bellows.

Meadowgrass must understand the archaic language well enough, or else he intuits from context. Either way, he taps and swipes at the display, shifting glyphs and runes around. The small silhouette of your steadfast old archer is buoyed by a flood of fluid—goo, really, as you well know. He curls up, almost foetal, to protect himself. You feel for him, but you also know from your own unwilling Unseelification earlier that the ooze prevents panicked thrashing by way of a tingling anaesthetia, and allows one to breathe in spite of the lack of air.

“He’ll be fine,” you mutter aloud.

Meadowgrass fiddles further with the black glass display, until a single large run-circle appears. He looks to you; you nod. The halfling trails his index finger along the edge, completing the circle, and finally activating it. The crystal container begins to glow, and Yeb-Uit’s motionless, floating form is cast as stark shadow against the golden-orange light…

>>6248805
You all wait with bated breath or the process to complete. Or, well, you do. Hol-Beorn seems fine. Meadowgrass is fussing over his control-tablet like a novice cook over some bigshot’s dinner, and his eyes keep flitting up to Yeb-Uit’s form nervously. Being a Boss, you decide to take the initiative and take his mind off things: you stride up to him, clap a hand on his shoulder, and ask:

“We know how long this’ll take?” you ask.

“Based on what we could find in the readings, and considering your own… Uh, that is, what happened with you… We believe it should be a matter of a couple hours.”

“Well then!” You slap him on the back. “Might as well get some grub while we wait, huh?”

“B-but—”

“Look,” you say sternly, “there’s no point just staring at him, or at the readings, right? You set it up the way it’s s’posed to be set—”

“The way we THINK it’s supposed to be set,” Meadowgrass laments.

“—and we still got no reason to think different, right?”

“…Right.”

“Well, then Hol-Beorn here will watch, he’ll hit the, uh, emergency whatever if something goes screwy, and WE can get some food. C’mon, yer gonna like some of these fancy-ass cheeses we got.”

You drag the hobbit off against his muted-but-impotent protests. You give Hol-Beorn a pointed look, and he nods. You detect some respect in the boglin’s expression, one commander to another.

(You just hope you’re not squandering that rep, by sending a good gob to his death, or worse…)

…

It doesn’t take you two hours to eat some appetizers, obviously. You drag the movement out a little, though, continuing to talk with Meadowgrass about anything and everything, except what’s going on with Yeb-Uit. Inevitably, though, the subject proves unavoidable. Some light ribbing and nosy probing about his earlier jumpiness brings you back to CZ, and finally to the future of the forge, and what it might mean for your sister.

“If this works—”

“It IS gonna work,” you say, stabbing the air between the two of you with your fork.

“…When it works, then. WHEN it works… Once we know everything it’s capable of, do you think it can fix Cara?”

“FIX ‘er?”

You scoff, and are about to tell the halfling that your sister needs no fixing. It seems like what you ought to say, in such an exchange. The look on his face stops you, though, or maybe your own, deep understanding of CZ’s own insecurities—insecurities that were once yours, surely made many times worse by the same process teat separated you and made her… different in so many ways, inside and out.

“One transformation at a time, aight?”

Suddenly, you’re rather more sullen, and find yourself unable to put on a confident façade.

…

>>6248818
You return about ten minuets ahead of schedule. Nobody’s running around screaming, and in fact Hol-Beorn looks somewhat bored; you take this as a good sign. You exchange a nod with he blue-green guard and take up your original position, as Meadowgrass hurries over to his post before the forge, to check the progress of the process.

“I… I think it’s done!”

You reach up to stroke Hershy, his internal warmth providing a steadying presence and his softness sanding down the jagged edge of your own nerves.

“Well,” you bark, “crack it open, then! Let’s hatch this egg already!”

And so he does: with a few more motions of his blunt halfling fingers, Meadowgrass sets the forge to splitting open the goop-filled geode. Its wet contents spill forth, losing lustre and shine as they drain into the grooves around the central stone pad. As the gap between the two halves widens, they reveal the shape of the new, and hopefully improved, Yeb-Uit.

You chew your cheek, even as you refuse to let your nerves show.

Roll of 29: TOTAL SUCCESS!

What emerges is, most definitely, Yeb-Uit. That’s a good start! You recognize him, even in spite of the changes. There RAE changes, though, and this to is good—PERFECT, even, as if Yeb had popped out just as he had been, that would have been a failure justa s if he’d been killed.

(Well, not AS bad, but still…)

As it stands, he emerges BETTER. The first and most immediate change is his face and the area thereabouts: he is free of wrinkles, smooth as a baby’s bare ass. His ear is back, too: whole and intact… Albeit not, uh, EXACTLY as it was. His eyes have a new light to them, too: even more than the surrounding face, that’s what stands out to you. Maybe part of this is youth, the vitality of a younger male’s metabolism, for he certainly LOOKS decades younger. As one who’s gone through a similar process, though, you know there’s more to it.

That’s the light of aura, or qi, or whatever-the-fuck the khoblis crew want to call it. A so-called ‘soul’.

And more than that…
>Yeb-Uit has been transformed into a dwarf
>Yeb-Uit has been transformed into a halfling
>Yeb-Uit has been transformed into a nilbog, like you
>Yeb-Uit has become something else... Something new [Mystery Box]

>>6248819
>Yeb-Uit has become something else... Something new [Mystery Box]

The mysterybox subspecies of smallfolk might have a unique trait or racial ability.

>>6248833

me>>6247503

>>6248819
>Yeb-Uit has become something else... Something new [Mystery Box]
MYSTERY BOX

>>6248819
>Yeb-Uit has been transformed into a nilbog, like you

A good enough upgrade.

Am>>6247845

>>6248819
>Yeb-Uit has become something else... Something new [Mystery Box]
Nilbog is tempting, but let's go gambling.

>>6248819
>>Yeb-Uit has become something else... Something new [Mystery Box]

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>6248983
>>6248952
>>6248871
>>6248837
>>6248833
[Rolling to determie the result of the mystery box option...]

>>6249188
It's good, right?

>>6249206
[You'l find out soon... Ish. :)]

>>6249188
waiting warmly for the results

>>6249206
>>6249270
>>6249223
>>6249188
You didn’t really notice at first, but Yeb-Uit has smoothed out more than just his wrinkles, and it is more than just the one ear which has changed. Both the right and the left, once ragged and fin-like in the manner of an aged goblin, have streamlined considerably. His bone structure has changed, too, and again in more way than one; you’re initially struck by how much he has slimmed down, but ut’s only when he steps down from the dais and scrapes off the remaining sludge that you realize what’s actually happened: he’s ELONGATED, retaining roughly the same breadth in his limbs and torso but simply growing TALLER.

“Wow.” You whistle. “An’s gonna have some adjustin’ to do.”

Yeb-Uit looks down, taking in his new form. His clothes were a little baggy on the ‘old’ him, but even so, various seams threaten to split as the rejuvenated male flexes muscles which are young once more, and enlarged besides. He’s lucky he isn’t any bulkier—really, barely more muscular than a well-toned elf—or the brand new duds you shelled for him might have simply popped right off. In fact, between his more angular features, his increased stature, his shifted build, and his smooth ears, he looks like…

(He looks just like Veigar! Or, well, like a member of whatever ‘race’ the green-tinted Tips clone is supposed to be!)

You look to the others, wondering if they’re seeing the same uncanny similarities that you are. Hol-Beorn certainly looks surprised, but not alarmed exactly. Meadowgrass just looks relieved that Yeb-Uit is all in one piece, regardless what size and shape that piece may be. And he IS looking pretty good, even if he’s not exactly your type, and even if you ARE holding out for your long-distance boyfriend.

And yet… Something’s bothering you. Something about his eyes… About the texture of his skin. It’s only when he runs his fingers through his newly full, lush, barely-grey head of hair that you finally see it!

Rolled a 2…

Yeb yelps as you hop up and grab hold of his hair, yanking his head back down to your level to inspect him more closely. You shove his hair back from his face-from his forehead—as you confirm your suspicions.

“The new body must be good, huh?” he ‘jokes’. “You know… It ain’t like me ‘n An-Yii are any sort of official or—”

“Shut up before I clobber ya, ya cocky old frog. An’ stop yer squirmin’.”

>>6249299
Yeb-Uit obliges on both counts. As you run your thumbs over his temples and find the telltale lumps of bone just beneath the skin: one on either side, right near the hairline. And the skin… yeah, it’s green like a goblin’s, but it’s not goblins-kin, which is smooth and (more often than not) freckled, spotted, and warty. Rather, the feel of his skin—his oddly hairless skin—is a matrix of small, fine, SCALES.

You release your archer unceremoniously, and Yeb-Uit rights himself with a stumble. He gives you a queer look, which you wave off.

“Ya feel alright?”

“Apart from you roughin’ me up,” Yeb replies, with a half-smirk that fails to hide his worry.

“Right,” you say. “Good. Jus’… Jus’ tell me if that changes.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Meadowgrass shouts.

You don’t respond, waving him off as well. Your feet are already moving even faster than your mind, which is going at a mile a minute. Scales… You could almost convince yourself that it was just bumpy skin, a permutation of the goblin norm, made more even and regular. And his eyes, they brightened just like yours did… But were they always a yellowish-green, underneath the darkness and the clouds?

But try as you might, there’s no wholesome explanation for why Yeb-Uit has grown himself a stubby, subdermal pair of horns.

…

>>6249301
…

Another night, another magic lesson.

Tonight is actually probably your last one before you head out east again, this time to hunt a hundun. You, Dura, and Ayla are all gathered around a cauldron of alchemical ingredients. It was nothing fancy and oriental, but Ayla said it didn’t really matter. Tonight was about technique, about principles—a trial run to craft a weaker cultivation pill, and to learn how vegetable and animal oils form a coating to contain the active ingredients.

Ayla dipped her slender fingers into the thick, amber liquid swirling atop the cauldron, and explained: “The secret is patience. The oils must be warm enough to spread evenly, but never so hot they burn the herbs. See here—lard, lanolin, and tree-resin, softened by flame. It binds with the sesame oil we brought from River’s Mouth, creating a shield which breathes.”

She lifted a glistening pill from the mixture, rolling it gently between her palms.

“This coating doesn’t just protect it from the outside, but contains and preserves the potency of the medicine within, holding it in stasis until ingested. Exposed to humanoid or demihuman digestion, the coating gradually dissolves, releasing the medicine within at an optimal rate.”

Dura nods along, and follows Ayla’s lead. The orc-girl is getting it even better than you, thanks to your language lessons—soon, you might need HER to tutor YOU! You feel oddly proud of this, though a part of you regrets the idea that this might mean you don’t NEED to spend so much time with her. Guiding her movements, teaching her Common, it’s all kind of… intimate.

(B-but hey, you’ve got Marty for that stuff, so it’s fine!... Right?)

“AYLA!”

You jump at the sound of your sister’s voice, snapped out of your untoward introspection by the fiery flare of her approaching aura.

“Aw shit, ZZ’s piiisssed,” you whine.

Ayla doesn’t seem concerned, though. Even as you and Dura turn your attention to the approaching patch of pink wrapped in winter-wolf white, your sensei finishes scooping out the rest of the pill-ready oil and pouring it into a small pot which she—in typical conjurer fashion-produces from nowhere-in-particular. As Zith-Zi draws up with two great stomps and assumes the stance she always adopts when she’s about to beat someone’s ass or rip into them, you feel a student’s obligation to step in between the two.

“H-hey, ZZ…”

Your other half-eyes eyes hover on you for a moment, and you sense her fury flicker. She chews her lip, looking past you to unbothered Ayla, and then back to you.

“CZ, take the orc chick ‘n clear out a sec. Me ‘n HENZLER here need ta have a talk.”

>>6249302
You look back at Dura, who lowers her head deferentially, the thick black hair and its many ribbons tied therein forming a curtain to shield her from your sister’s wrath, and your own desperate plea for aid. You can hardly blame her—ZZ’s pretty scary when she’s mad, and it’s not like Dura’s got a horse in this race.

Ayla, on the other hand, just looks up with a calm expression… No, an expression meant TO calm, an expression accompanied by that strange, spicy scent and radiating sensation which accompanied her mass-mollification of the party many months prior, when she and Veigar had just arrived.

(Ayla is casting a spell on your sister!)

“Everything went just as it should have,” Ayla insists, her voice vibrating with the manipulative mentalism.

You have no idea, Heavenly or Hellish, what she might mean, but Zith-Zi seems to.

“It didn’t… You… You did somethin’! Messed with... With the...”

ZZ’s voice is a growl, but a half-hearted one, like a dog that would rather not bite. She uncrosses her arms, flexes her fingers, and looks as if she might want to reach for her scimitar, or even for her rad-saber. Ayla turns up the heat on her hex, and even that fight seems to seep away.

“H-hey,” you murmur. “Ayla, that’s, like, not cool.”

“Quiet!” Ayla snaps, and then softens when she sees your expression. “It’s merely a misunderstanding… One I’ll remedy.”

You say nothing, torn between your sense of obligation to these two ‘soul-sisters’ of yours. You’d really rather they sort out whatever-the-fuck this is without anyone getting hurt or anything… But is it really okay to let Ayla just <Charm> ZZ into compliance like this?

“Maybe Zith-Zi is right,” Ayla says after a watching you wrestle with yourself for several seconds. “Take Dura, and return to practice. I’ll join you shortly.”

You stare back at her, and Ayla—sensing your fear—offers you her assurance:

“I won’t hurt her. She’ll be ready, and just as… SPIRITED… As ever, for your departure tomorrow.”

What do you do?

>Take Dura, and leave them to it—let the matter lie
[You will get no answers yet, but avoid a possible fight or loss of your teacher]

>Break Ayla’s spell, and demand an explanation
[Serious chance of a confrontation or loss of Ayla's aid]

>Write-in [make it good; will necessitate a diplomacy roll to talk it out if you go that route]

I love goblin girls.

>>6249304
>Take Dura, and leave them to it—let the matter lie
[You will get no answers yet, but avoid a possible fight or loss of your teacher]

>>6249301
>But try as you might, there’s no wholesome explanation for why Yeb-Uit has grown himself a stubby, subdermal pair of horns.


Ayla spread demon contagion into the forge's function? Weird I thought veigar was against spreading any demoniac essence around. He had a stern talking to with cz about it is Ayla going behind his back too?

>>6249304
>Take Dura, and leave them to it—let the matter lie
>>6249334
that or maybe she's done something else.

>>6249304
>Break Ayla’s spell, and demand an explanation
We’re not betraying ourselves for this shady bitch

>>6249304
>Take Dura, and leave them to it—let the matter lie
As much as her machinations and schemes annoy me, she’s a useful component in the transformation egg, and a vital component in the deal with the chinese scammer. Too useful to antagonize right now.

Am>>6248871

>>6249497
>>6249467
>>6249354
>>6249320
[Locked and writing!]

>>6249730
You frown, but even as you debate what the right thing to do is… You’re already doing something. You’ve taken Dura by her hand and begun to lead her away from the sinister scene.

“We go?” Dura asks quietly. “But… bad jigi?”

“You heard Ayla,” you say, to yourself more than to the orc. “It’s gonna be fine! They’re jus’ gonna have a little chat, ‘n sort all this out.”

You spare one last glance back at Zith-Zi and Ayla. Each is a sort of sister: one once shared your body, and one shares a (sort of) spirit. You care about them both, you NEED them both, and you WANT this all to blow over. And if you free ZZ from whatever Ayla’s doing, what she’s gonna do…

It won’t.

The pink-and-pretty nilbog might not be a cambion like you, but she’s still got a demon’s fight in her. Worse, while you have no clue what Zith-Zi showed up so up-in-arms about, this <Charm> incident will only exacerbate her agitation. A fight will be a matter of principle, at this point.

And right now? This is AWFUL timing!

Your fellow demon-tainted occultist is also your only way to get to hundun country, AND your only connection to that shady undead merchant who’s willing to trade you cultivation secrets and oriental ingredients for the mystery-meat monster. You’re SO close to finally fixing everything that’s wrong with you! And Ayla… Ayla’s your best bet at achieving a pure, perfect self.

No matter how you look at it, you can’t afford to risk a rupture. Not right now.

You turn your head and shut your eyes, wincing as you hear ZZ’s scimitar clatter to the ground, slipping through spell-numbed fingers.

“Sorry,” you whisper, as you walk away.

…

Sisterly Bond decreased. In ZZ’s company or when aided in some fashion by her, CZ’s <WANT> DCs are decreased by 6, rather than 8.

Thanks to continued lessons with Ayla, Carazzi and Dura both gain 1 rank in Potioncraft!

>>6249760
…

You awaken in your bed, as you do every day. Your head is pounding worse than usual, but then that makes sense. As you recall, you were in a celebratory sort of mood last night—after all, the forge works! Yeb-Uit was made bigger, stronger, and presumably faster—heh, though hopefully not TOO fast, for An-Yii’s sake—and without a single complication!

“I gotta admit,” you muse aloud, “that Henzler bi—chick came through.”

(After all, how bad can she be, helping out Yeb and CZ like she is?)

You wash yourself, get yourself dressed, and head down to the mess. You’re always up early these days, of course, on account of your vaguely fey affinity to the cycles of sun and moon, but today you’re more militant than usual about getting moving. You clang your scimitar against the doorways of the others as you go; none of them save for Khorine share your ‘condition’, and today you have no tolerance for the crepuscular or nocturnal inclinations of the orcish and goblinoid members of the Regiment.

(Though Khorine presents another problem...)

“Rise ‘n fuckin’ shiiii~iiine!” you shout out in discordant song. “Time ta get ta work, ya lazy bastards!”

>>6249761
Once everyone is assembled, and as wide-awake as they’re going to get, you take your place before them all and scan the assembly. The forge is functioning, seemingly, and the next steps in the process only really require Ayla and Veigar (and a couple boglins for translation purposes). That leaves the rest of the Monstrous Regiment at your disposal!

But SHOULD you bring them all?

Base defence is one consideration. It doesn’t take a seasoned adventuress like yours truly to know that a dungeon undefended is a dungeon soon looted. Few people know of Patmo-Shoka, but those who do include a bunch of nerdy small-fries, the local representatives of the Wolfpack Horde, and motorcycling Treasuretrove Incorporated. You HOPE you’ve thrown the last of those three off the scent, but you can’t be sure, nor can you be confident that no other elves or humans will come out this way once they realize it’s not Unseelie central anymore.

And another consideration… Is Khorine.

Now, you’ve grown fond of the kid, you’ll admit it. The little faun Fey-follower is quite a powerful caster for her age, and only going to get better. Even as she is, her affinity for animals and fairy-affiliated entities could prove useful, depending what exactly this hundun even is. At the very least, her ability to navigate difficult terrain, to entangle with enchanted plant-life, and to handle frightened animals makes her invaluable for bringing this thing in alive…

But she’s also firmly Chaotic Good, emphasis on the ‘Good’ part.

For a nature-loving little beastgirl who grew up in the woods, that means—as the last discussion of the hunt revealed—a whole lot of misgivings about snagging a shapeshifting freak and turning it over to some Eastman to lop its bits off for potions and pills. And you can respect that, you guess… But a girl’s gotta get paid, and THIS payday is more important than most. There MIGHT be a way to make the most out of the hundun in a humane and consensual manner, you guess… But trapping it in a net and handing it off is a hell of a lot easier.

Who will you send/bring on the hunt?
>Zith-Zi (comes with Hershy)
>Cara-Zi (comes with Nermal)
>Yeb-Uit
>An-Yii
>Khorine
>Xoldur
>Murbal
>Dura
>Martyn
>Copperbelt
>Brand-Hrok

>>6249762
>Zith-Zi (comes with Hershy)
>Cara-Zi (comes with Nermal)
>Yeb-Uit
>An-Yii
>Xoldur
>Murbal
>Dura

>>6249762
>Zith-Zi (comes with Hershy)
>Cara-Zi (comes with Nermal)
>Yeb-Uit
>An-Yii
Yeb will be our tracker and scout. Khorine’s roles for the most part will be filled by him.

>Xoldur
>Dura

Orc strength’s gonna be useful in subduing the hundun.


Am >>6249497

>>6249760
fuck, ayla really doesn't give a flying fuck about brainwashing as a 1st option.
>>6249773
>+1

>>6249773
+1

>>6249762
….why did ya’ll vote for this?

>Zith-Zi (comes with Hershy)
>Cara-Zi (comes with Nermal)
>Yeb-Uit
>An-Yii
>Khorine
>Xoldur
>Murbal
>Dura

I value our sisterly bonds, so I will vote to increase it whenever feasible. I feel ashamed of ourselves.

>>6249866
>….why did ya’ll vote for this?
I trusted Ayla to not rely on the charm again.

>value our sisterly bonds, so I will vote to increase it whenever feasible. I feel ashamed of ourselves.
I wanted her to grow independent from her sister, but not like this.

>>6249866
If she wasn’t our only tether to the chinese guy and a 20% to the forge >>6247763 I would have considered the other option.

>>6249762
>Zith-Zi (comes with Hershy)
>Cara-Zi (comes with Nermal)
>Yeb-Uit
>An-Yii
>Murbal
>Dura

>Me
>>6248834

>>6249761
>"and without a single complication!

>“I gotta admit,” you muse aloud, “that Henzler bi—chick came through.”

dam not did she erase her memories of what happened. Alya also forced zith to like her for doing it.

>>6250047
>>6249869
>>6249866
>>6249864
>>6249862
>>6249811
>>6249773
[Locked and writing!]

>>6250235
You and CZ are going, of course—

croak!

—and your drakes, too, as a corollary. Your orcish ‘apprentices’, too: you didn’t train Murbal and Xoldur for nothing! And Yeb-Uit just got souped-up for this very occasion, so you can consider it a test run for all three of them. You’ll bring both medics, too: Ayla’s here, and Veigar will be back soon, so there will be healing down in the dungeon in some form, while the boglin boys will be here to lend defence.

Perfect!

…Well, at least YOU think so.

“You’re freezing me out, Youngtree. Don’t think I don’t see you doing it!”

You sigh, rubbing your temple as you sit across the table from Iorund Copperbelt. The Delvers’ boss still seems to think that old authority carries over in some way to the here and now. You’ve been humouring this notion to a degree, to keep the peace, but it seems excluding him from the expedition is some sort of breaking point for the bald, bearded mountain-bastard. Knowing dwarves, he’s been harbouring this grudge for a while, waiting for a breaking point.

>>6250249
“Someone’s gotta watch the forge,” you reiterate. “YOU get to do that. And ain’t that what you’re here for, anyway? To supervise the discovery of your ancestral roots, make sure we’re usin’ it for ‘good’… All that shit?”

Copperbelt huffs, and argues against you thus: “My funds, my time and energies, and Meadowgrass—MY subcontractor, I’ll remind you—have all been entangled in this enterprise in this backwater, and so far that NOT INSIGNIFICANT investment has gone unrewarded save for… For a change of clothing! We’ve deliberately withheld the discovery from Treasuretrove AND from the rest of the world, our only profit has been on the pelts of wolves!”

“We’re tradin’ with the East now, ain’t we?” you press. “An’ the forge is about to pay HUGE dividends!”

“YOU are trading with the East, while locking me out of proceedings,” the dwarf counters. “YOU will reap the rewards—rewards that, I note, are rather nonspecific in the particulars. I understand Cara… Carazzi, that is… Will be receiving some sort of compensation. What of the rest of us?”

You hesitate to answer that. After all… Damnit, he’s not WRONG. You assume you can squeeze some concession, or additional work, out of this mysterious Eastman, but you’ve never even met the guy. Ayla has suggested that the materials he’s offering up could be good for more than just CZ’s transformation, helping to make the most of the forge for the rest of you… But Copperbelt is clearly getting sick of hearing ‘soon’.

“Frankly,” Copperbelt says in warning tone, “I’m reconsidering my continued involvement with this ‘Monstrous Regiment’… And Mister Meadowgrass’ involvement as well.”

You sigh, a hiss through your clenched teeth. Meadowgrass, at least, you NEED need—the hobbit knows how to work the forge controls better than anyone else! And Copperbelt himself, well.. He’s a hell of a fighter, and a good bargainer besides. Truth is, he’s even a competent Boss; it’s part of why you were comfortable leaving him de facto ‘in charge’ of the joint while you were away. Now, though, you’re second-guessing how much leverage you’ve left him with.

What will you do?
>Offer him the next use of the forge, once it’s fully recharged
>Make a deal with him, promising him the lion’s share of initial profits to pay back his investment
>Beat him down, then have the others hold him prisoner in the dungeon, and put someone else in-charge
>Let him leave—alone, since you seriously doubt he’ll convince CZ’s BF to go with him—and see how far the fucker gets
>Write-in

>>6250250
>Offer him the next use of the forge, once it’s fully recharged
Good to test it on non goblins too

>>6250250
>Offer him the next use of the forge, once it’s fully recharged
Collateral.
>Make a deal with him, promising him [a share] of initial profits to pay back his investment
Let’s say 20%. Securing and maintaining forge wouldn’t be possible without him and his folk.

Am >>6249811

>>6250250
>Offer him the next use of the forge, once it’s fully recharged

>>6250250
>Have Cara-Zi or/and Alya Charm/Mentalist him into compliance

>>6250280
I'll support that one.

>>6250392
>>6250377
>>6250313
>>6250280
>>6250271
“Well… What if I told you the forge was already up ‘n runnin’?”

Copperbelt arches an eyebrow at this, though his expression otherwise fails to change.

“I already knew that,” he says. “It was somewhat obvious, considering—"

“—considerin’ Yeb-Uit, yeah.” You hold up a finger. “BUT, what if I said you could get the same treatment?”

“…And you think I would WANT that?” Copperbelt asks.

This, in turn, confuses YOU. Why WOULDN’T he? It would make him—to judge by Yeb—bigger, stronger, faster, tougher, and maybe more magical!

“But at what COST?”

“Uh, the cost of lookin’ after the joint while we’re out east?” You’re thrown off-balance by this whole line of inquiry, for you were SURE this was what the dwarf wanted, and so you say perhaps more than you should. “Uh, the cost a… Of all that stuff you said. Lost opportunities, ‘n revenues, ‘n… I dunno, THAT cost!”

Copperbelt looks increasingly more bewildered as you continue on, until something seems to click.

“I didn’t mean that cost,” he says. “I meant… The side-effects.”

“Side-effects?” You lean back. “the fuck are you on about? I mean, okay, sure there’s risks, but Yeb turned out fine, an’ whatever else we gotta hammer out to make it work for dwarves ‘n shit, we will.”

Copperbelt shakes his head, tugging at his beard now. “He’s changed, certainly. He’s mightier than a mere goblin. But what about his h̸̡̳́̋̇̀͑ő̵̫͙̬̍ͅṛ̷̘̖̝̎̆̒n̸̡̢̗͇̭̥̹̗̮̬̺̔̿̐͘ṣ̵̛̛̩͗̈́̋̈?̶̡̧͎͙̤͔̻̝̙͓̀͑̕”
“Wait…” You blink. “his what now?”

“His h̷̡̡̧͔͙̞̺̝̥̐̄͂̚͝ơ̸̡̤̗͈͉͓͎̝̿͑ŕ̸̛͇̖̆͂̈́̑̈́̌̒́n̴̨̼̤̩̗̦̉̆̍̏̏́͐̕͜͝s̴͍̤͔̳̒̎͗͆͑͒̚̚!̶̭̺͇̓̐̆̏” The dwarf repeats himself, and yet you somehow can’t catch the word. “Or what of his s̴̟̞̭̦͉̞̗͔̯͑͗́̐̍̀̀͜͝͝͝k̸͈̪̗͕̆̌ĩ̷̛̞ņ̵̙̜̱̼̑̓͑͂̈́̽̏͠?̴̛̹̠̹̠̫͙̝͈̝̖̔͌̇̈́̊̈́̏͠ͅ You can’t tell me that’s normal. They look like s̶̛̼͕̟̯̈́̂̑͋̿̃̂̆̌c̷̨̡̢͙̳̪͉̭̟̆̍̾̆́̔å̶̞̣͚̱̝̍̊̓͌͋̿l̴̨̧̤̪̦̝̮̝̇̀͒̔̑̀̚ē̷̤͈͂́͂̎̎́̔͑͐͆s̴̡̼̝̗̬̪͛̾!̸̥͚̘̪̫͓͇̺͝”

You wince. Your hangover is coming back with a vengeance. You feel woozy, off-balance, like you were a little gob-girl again, having your first grog-fueled rager. You clench your jaw and breath deeply in and out of your nose as the room and its furnishings seem to spin. You raise your glass to your mouth, yet find it hard to find. What in all the Hells is—

“Youngtree? Youngtree!”

>>6250466
Your vision snaps back into place. Copperbelt’s sizeable stomach is exerting pressure upon the table as he leans across, reaching out to you. You grimace, more at your own embarrassing weakness than at the gesture, and smack his hand away on principle.

“I’m fine,” you mutter. “Look, whatever kinks there are that’ve got yer panties all knotted the fuck up, we’ll hammer ‘em out with these new ingredients ‘n shit. THAT’S why we’re catching this fuckin’ hundun. THAT’S your goddamned reward. THAT’S why you oughtta watch the place that’s gonna make you rich, ‘n powerful!”

You thump the table between the two of you, and the Delver Boss backs off. He eyes you curiously, running his fingers through his facial hair more slowly now. He looks strangely skittish, SCARED even. You don’t quite understand why—your head’s still a little fuzzy—but you realize you may have overplayed it in your agitation.

Time for the OTHER play.

“Who knows?” you say, hopping down from your chair and circling the table, adjusting your jeweled wolf pelt as you approach the wary Copperbelt. “Ya might even grow that hair back.. Cure that acne…”

You smirk a little bit as you lean in and pat his cheek.

“Might clean up pretty nice.”

The dwarf is flushed now, and adjusts his posture as he shifts away.

“I’ll… Consider this discussion. In, ah… In detail.”

(Heh. Damn right he will! Still got it, Zi...)

…

>>6250467
…

“Sorry ZZ’s not bringin’ ya along,” you say.

“It’s okay,” Martyn replies quickly.

“It’s just, ya know, I think she wants ya workin’ on the forge, so it’s good to go when we get back.”

Martyn hesitates a second, and you feel a spike of anxiety. Then, he nods.

“What?” you ask, worriedly. “What is it?”

You feel a pang of fear, and guilt, and some sort of knot of mixed emotion underneath and beside it. You approach Martyn, reaching out to him. He doesn’t flinch, but you feel him WANT to flinch. You, in turn, pull back.

“Did I, uh… Is somethin’ wrong, Marty?”

Martyn laughs, a brittle little sound, and starts to say: “No, it’s nothing!”

…But then, he thinks better of it. You feel the shift before it happens. You can’t make out his thoughts or anything, but you can see the turbulence, the raising and lowering of priorities popping up like ground-squirrels peeking out of the burrow that is his brain. You kind of <WANT> to reach out, to grab hold of those thoughts by the throat, and to rip them out of their hiding places to make them squeal their secrets…

But you resist the urge. You wait, instead, for him to finally speak.

“The forge is… I think it’s working.”

“It is??” You jump to your feet, wobbling slightly on your near Easterly lady-shoes. “Well that’s fuckin’ SWEET!”

Martyn frown.

“…A-ain’t it?”

Martyn looks away. He looks back at you, and then asks: “Are you sure that what we’re doing here is… Good?”

You’re speechless for a moment. Then, you laugh, because you’re just so flabbergasted.

“‘Course it is!” you say. “This is how I get myself all bee-yoo-tee-ful, ‘n, you know…”

You lower your voice as you slip into lewd giggles. You start to salivate a little at the thought.

“This’s how I get my snug l’il cunt fer you ta, you know, ~pound~

(And then, FINALLY, everything will be juuuust the way it’s s’posed to be!)

…

(But then why doesn’t Marty look, or FEEL, excited??)

“Marty?”

“It’s just… Cara—”

“Carazzi.”

“…Carrazzi, I don’t know if the forge is working the way it should.”

“Well shit, izzat all?” You laugh. “Fine tune the thingamajig while we’re gone, then! Shit, that’s prob’ly why ZZ wants you to stay here with Ayla ‘n the blueberries. Ta fix it up!”

“That’s the problem, though,” Martyn says, lowering is voice and drawing a little closer. “I can’t remember what went wrong with it. And the goblin… Ah, Mister Wheat… He came out fine. I can’t put my finger on it, and yet…”

(Oh… OH. Oh, shit!)

“Uh,” you ask, “didja talk ta anyone else about this?”

“I raised some of the concerns with Miss Ayla,” Martyn confesses with an embarrassed air, “and she addressed all my concerns more than adequately. But even so…”

>>6250468
You nod sightly, without thinking, and briefly panic at the possibility of Martyn’s follow-up question. It doesn’t come, though. Instead, he reaches out to grasp your hand, throwing you off guard and setting your face ablaze. Even though you’ve made out, sucked him off, and even had him inside your ass now, Martyn grabbing hold of your hand this forcefully is still the sort of thing to make a demogoblin hermaphrodite feel like she’s got a maiden’s heart.

<WANT: 12>

And yet… You can sense the misgivings: the worry, the confusion. You know the cause of at least a portion of it—the reason his noggin’s all scrambled. You know why nobody’s talking about Yeb-Uit’s appearance, or the peculiar new aura he acquired.

“Promise me you’ll be safe.”

You get a feeling that the halfling doesn’t just mean on the hundun hunt.


“It’s all for a greater good,” she’d told you, tone somewhere between the stern teacher and the emphatic acolyte. “This is how we transcend our limitations… How we remedy what ails you, and me. Perhaps all of them, too.”

“Is it safe?” you’d asked.

Ayla had only smiled that sly half-smile of hers, which failed to reach her slit-pupiled eyes.

“All progress has its risks,” she had said, “but the rewards will be well worth it. Trust me, sister.”

Here and now, you see Martyn awaiting your reply, and you answer: “Y-yeah.”

(You aren’t sure if you’re telling the truth.)

“Good,” says Martyn, and he exhales in open relief, his grip loosening just a little. “Good.”

(You know HE isn’t telling the truth, though. He’s still confused, still concerned.)

What do you do?

>Complete Ayla’s <Charm>, ridding Martyn of his misgivings and setting his mind at ease
>Break Ayla’s <Charm>, so he can remember, and see, and freely fear
>Let the matter lie. It’s time to get going.

>Change topics. Specifically…
>>If Martyn could change HIMSELF with the forge, would he? How?
>>Has Marty given any thoughts to, uh, having kids someday…?
>>Why’s he so jumpy? And… Has he been avoiding you lately?
>>Does he wants a souvenir from out east, before you come back?
>>Does he, ya know, fuck real quick, before you leave?

>Write-in

>>6250469
>Change topics. Specifically…
>>If Martyn could change HIMSELF with the forge, would he? How?

>>6250469
>Complete Ayla’s <Charm>, ridding Martyn of his misgivings and setting his mind at ease

>>6250469
>Complete Ayla’s <Charm>, ridding Martyn of his misgivings and setting his mind at ease

>Change topics. Specifically…
>>If Martyn could change HIMSELF with the forge, would he? How?
Turns out he was always curious how it felt to be a woman lmao

Also like the souvenir bit

>>6250469
>Break Ayla’s <Charm>, so he can remember, and see, and freely fear
I can let the matter lie if other anons prefer it

>If Martyn could change HIMSELF with the forge, would he? How?

>>6250469
>Complete Ayla’s <Charm>, ridding Martyn of his misgivings and setting his mind at ease
Nothing's changed since we let it happen to ZZ. Still need her for the forge and the link to the hundun hunt.

>>6250630
>Turns out he was always curious how it felt to be a woman lmao
[Nah, I don't want to steal Gender Vendor's WHOLE flow, kek.]

>>6250470
[Should I infer you'd also like to let the matter lie, anon?]

>>6250662
>[Nah, I don't want to steal Gender Vendor's WHOLE flow, kek.]
Eh- I’ll settle for him doing it for us. Only fair, if we’re willing to change our essence of being on his whim, that he does the same for us.

>>6250685
[Duly noted, though the forge isn't necessarily the sort of thing that can flip you back and forth over and over without... Well, you know what, we'll let you discover that for yourself if it gains enough traction!]

>>6250658
>>6250651
>>6250630
>>6250471
>>6250470
[It's pretty close, so we'll leave it open for a liiittle longer (until later tonight or tomorrow morning) before I close it.]

>>6250469
>Break Ayla’s <Charm>, so he can remember, and see, and freely fear
At this point, Ayla’s just covering everything up and letting everyone else pay the price for it. Fuck this. She wants subterfuge, she’ll get it.

>>Does he wants a souvenir from out east, before you come back?
We won’t be able to have children to begin with so thats out of the question. And such a heavy topic isn’t useful to talk about right now.

Am >>6250280

>>6250725
>>6250698
[Alright, well, that only makes it even closer... Well stay open until tomorrow, and then the chips will land where they may!]

>>6250470
[Your clarification may prove key]

>>6250762
>>Break Ayla’s <Charm>, so he can remember, and see, and freely fear

>>6250762
Don’t normally bother to back link but with the closeness looks like I need to

Am >>6250271 and >>6250471

>>6250895
>>6250838
>>6250762
[Locked and writing!]

>>6250919
You chew your lip as you watch Martyn help pack your things, from your perch upon your cot. He smiles, but it’s not a genuine smile. He talks, but it’s small-talk—smaller than usual, for a halfling—and it washes over you without acknowledgement. He’s trying to put you at ease, which is ironic. You’re busy wondering what you should do, to do the same for him.

With ZZ, it was far from a simple decision, but she had helped you make it: armed, angry, and spoiling for a confrontation with a powerful mage, you’d have had a good case to stop her even if that mage WASN’T your friend, mentor, succubus-souled sort-of-sister, and a valuable resource.

But Martyn? Martyn, you could maybe reason with. You could make him see your reasons… maybe. And shouldn’t you? If you’re going to be together—like, SERIOUSLY together—shouldn’t you be, like, honest or whatever?

Yet even now, a shadow deep inside whispers, ‘it’s better if he doesn’t know.’ That it’s safer that way, for BOTH of you. That he doesn’t NEED to know and, in fact, the REAL kindness (and more importantly than kindness, PRUDENCE) would be to shore up and lock in Ayla’s <Charm> with your own.

…But you can’t bring yourself to do that, either.

Deadlocked vote; inaction and middle-ground wins

“H-hey,” you say instead, “are YOU gonna use the forge?”

Marty’s mouth was still hanging half-open, since you think you interrupted him mid-sentence. He closes it, looking surprised.

“Me?” he asks. “On myself, you mean?”

“Yeah!” You grin, leaning forward with enthusiasm that is only partly feigned, only partly a means to distract him from his fears and stoke his own excitement. “Like, ya gotta have thought about it, right? Are ya gonna make yerself big ‘n tall like a humie? Oo, or you could, like, give yerself elfy ears!”

Martyn touches his big, rounded hobbit ears, expression turning self-conscious.

“Not that I don’t like ya the way ya are!” You wave your hands frantically. “Jus’, ya know… It’s a hell of thing. Ya must’ve gave it some thought, right?”

“I hadn’t,” Martyn admits with some embarrassment. “I’ve been so busy toiling over that blasted thing that I hadn’t even considered the potential for myself.”

“We~ell, start considerin’!” you command in sing-song voice. “It ain’t jus’ fer me! It’s for all’ve us that wanna use it!”

>>6250958
Martyn scratches at his fluffy red sideburn for a second and makes that cute face he always makes when he’s deep in thought. Then, he smiles, and shakes his head. You groan.

“Nothin’?!”

“Nothing,” he affirms.

“Booo-riiiing!” You flop back on the bed.

“I like myself as I am,” he affirms. “I’ve spent years now, studying our people—the Bwbachod, the Gnomus, and Dwerrow, and others like the Abatwa…”

He pauses, regarding you thoughtfully, and adds as interlude: “And I suppose I really ought to add goblinkin to that list as well, as it turns out.”

You giggle a little, imagining your little traveling scholar at a rowdy Wasteland raucous. He’d have his pockets picked and throat slit in no-time flat… Well, unless he brought that shock-spear of his, maybe. Perhaps you’re not giving him enough credit, actually? He may not be as big as a human or reliant as a goblin, but he IS a well-traveled and seasoned adventurer… And he has pretty nice abs and biceps, besides!

“In any case,” Martyn continues, “it’s the differences between each of our races that made the travel so interesting. I appreciated seeking the similarities underneath, but the physical and cultural changes were what made it a journey, if you understand what I mean. I wouldn’t want to just… Erase that, or change it.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, fer sure,” you lie, not really getting it at all. “But, like, you really wouldn’t change ANYTHING?”

Martyn shakes his head again, saying: “I like myself just as I am.”

“Must be nice,” you mutter, casting your gaze down and kicking the shoes which hide your twisted, two-toed ‘hooves’.

Martyn flinches at your reaction, and reaches out to touch you. It’s a ginger, tentative thing—without the openness you’ve become used to, prior to the fateful shirin trip. It honestly makes you feel a little worse, in some ways… But it’s contact. Affection. You can’t help yourself: you lean into it, practically purring under even his most hesitant caress.

>>6250961
“There is one thing,” the halfling confesses.

“Yeah?”

He chuckles nervously, and looks away, finally answering: “Wings.”

You blink. “Wings?”

He nods, blushing slightly.

“It’s childish, I know,” he says. “But… Well, imagine traveling the world on the wing! Seeing things as the Gods Above must see them! Imagine all that you could discover, the speed you could explore with!”

“Ya know, Ayla can teleport ya places,” you point out.

“It’s not the same, though, is it?” Martyn counters. “You lose something, transporting yourself instantly like that… The journey, the sense of the world’s scale. And you miss out on little places… On little PEOPLE.”

He sighs wistfully, and his aura—once rippling with hidden anxiety—is no foamy, foggy, dreamlike at the edges of his consciousness. You count it as a mission accomplished, and you make your move, placing your hand upon his and regaining his attention.

“How ‘bout I bring ya back a souvenir?” you ask. “An’ lots of stories, from out East? Then sometimes, when we’re less, ya know, busy with shit… You ‘n me can go out that way, walkin’ style,, o-or at least, like, on a wagon?”

Martyn seems to see you anew in that moment, with less of the wariness of late and more of the wonder with which he’d first dubbed you his ‘mermaid’, way back at Sunset Lake.

“I’d like that, Cara… Carazzi.”

“An’ hey,” you tease with a mischievous grin, “maybe I’ll even find a way ta bring ya back some wings, huh?”

…

>>6250963
…

You are just about ready to get the FUCK out of this shithole. You’re sure you’ll be more kindly-disposed to it by the time you’ve spend a few days out in the Eastlands, but right now this dungeon is a source of nothing but stress, and pressure, and h̷͖̆e̶̼̒̈́â̶̧̗ḍ̴̓͘a̸̧͚͐̈́č̴͓͗h̶̰̎̌ȅ̵̫͕s̴͖̯̃̐, and you’re about ready to be anywhere else.

(Plus, you’ve started to get a bit of the taste back for adventuring, and being cooped up too long has you antsy you’ll lose your edge again…)

“Alright, everyone here?”

“Goat is no,” Murbal states bluntly.

Indeed, Khorine is nowhere to be seen. You haven’t seen hide nor hair (nor horn) of the faun since she sulkily stormed off, following your decision not to bring her on the hundun hunt. You groan quietly through gritted teeth. This is exactly what you were talking about: headaches, headaches, and more fucking headaches! But, well… The girl’s a teenager (you think?), and they ARE like that. You can sort that shit out upon your return.

“Everyone else, though?”

“Cursed one not here,” Xoldur adds. “No sma dyr who she belongs to, too.”

“Cursed…? Hey! Don’t call her that!”

He’s not wrong, though: you don’t see CZ, or Martyn Meadowgrass. Your frustration mounts, but just as you’re about to storm off to kick in their door and drag them out of their love nest, they spare you the hassle.

“Sorry, sorry!” CZ blurts out, dragging Martyn along by the wrist after her. “We got, uh… We were jus’, like, talkin’ ‘bout stuff, ‘n we lost track’ve time!”

“Talkin’,” you repeat back drolly, crossing your arms. “Riiight.”

Martyn’s face flushes red, but your sister just grins widely. You sigh, and can’t help mirroring it back a bit. For all her scatterbrained tardiness and occult weirdness of late, it’s good to see ‘Carazzi’ happy.

(In the end, maybe Patmo-Shoka ain’t so bad…)

>>6250964
Regardless, it’s time to get to work. The hundun is a mysterious monster, but one thing you know is that it tends to roam. You have to get to it where it’s currently camped, or you’ll have to wait forever-and-a-day and chase rumours to locate it anew once it’s moved on to gods-only-know-where.

Do you have any last-minute preparations to make?
>Yes [write-in]
>No

What is your strategy for hunting the hundun?
>You’re going to meet with the Easterling locals first, if you can find them, and get their accounts of the creature
>You’re going to do this the old-fashioned way, like any other hunt: search for signs of its passage, learn its lifeways and behavioural patterns, and then set up an ambush
>This thing’s immune to scrying, apparently, which means it’s some kind of magical beast… And magic is easiest to defeat with magic, which (in Khorine’s absence) unfortunately means dealing with fairies
>As much as you dislike the idea of the dark gods getting involved, CZ and Dura have got an ‘in’ with them via occultism… Maybe they can help?
>Write-in

>>6250965
>You’re going to do this the old-fashioned way, like any other hunt: search for signs of its passage, learn its lifeways and behavioural patterns, and then set up an ambush

>>6250965
Do you have any last-minute preparations to make?
>Yes [write-in]
Bring the brazier if we haven’t already.

>You’re going to do this the old-fashioned way, like any other hunt: search for signs of its passage, learn its lifeways and behavioural patterns, and then set up an ambush
I don’t think talking to the locals would be of much help without Ayla with us. Let’s stick to the tried and true method. And we don’t have that much money to spare to begin with. Work with the tools we got.

Am >>6250725

>>6250996
>I don’t think talking to the locals would be of much help without Ayla with us.
[Entirely valid, but I will note that it isn't a doomed strat or trap option, between your team's Linguistics stats and Mentalism.]

>>6250965
>No
>You’re going to meet with the Easterling locals first, if you can find them, and get their accounts of the creature

>>6250965
>>You’re going to do this the old-fashioned way, like any other hunt: search for signs of its passage, learn its lifeways and behavioural patterns, and then set up an ambush

>>6250975
>>6250996
>>6251246
>>6251286
[This will be open a couple more hours while I get breakfast with a friend. Then, I'l update!]

>>6251434
“Hey, CZ, you still got that brazier?”

“Huh? What’s ah—oh, right! The brazier! Yep, right here!”

“Well, then I think we’re good to go. Ayla?”

The witch in the red dress moves her foot in a quarter-circle, extends her arm, twiddles her fingers, and speaks a word of power:

“<Dimension Door>.”

Her foot completes its circular circuit, and her hand swings in a mirror motion. At the same time, a glowing ring appears before her. Once fully formed, its interior ripples with reddish flames. It concentrates at the centre, like a single burning eyes, and then the infernal ‘pupil’ explodes outwards to fill the space. It fades to a roiling soke, and then this too parts, and exposes a shimmering mirage of your destination.

“Great,” An-Yii mutters behind you, “more snow…”

“Suck it up,” you say, even as you carefully tuck yourself into your winter-wolf pelt. “‘Least it ain’t blizzarding.”

You and the crew step through, two-by-two, for that is what the <dimension Door> can accommodate. You take the lead—naturally-with Xoldur by your side—orc muscle, and a trained apprentice with a rad-saber of his own, for insurance.

Once passed-through the portal, you can fully take in the new environment. It is an area of rugged hills and frost-rimed stones—though, you note with some relief, it IS only frost and not snow! In some ways, it’s similar to the Steelwood region which you just left behind, but far more rugged and rocky, perhaps even moreso than the foothills of Bloodrise where the denizens of New Goblintown scrape their living. Here, the earth hunches up into long, furry slopes, with dark pines rising like the hackles of a great beast. The thin ground-cover here clutches at slabs of bone-grey granite that jut from the soil like the spines of some buried titan. Between the hills, the land flattens into slick, bog-riddled meadows where chest-high reeds rattle in the breeze. Farther off, you catch glimpses of true mountains, like teeth of black stone; they are glacier-shaved and streaked with the last dirty threads of winter.

Black birds drift in slow gyres overhead against a murky sky. From here you can’t tell if they’re big enough to be dangerous, but they bring back unpleasant remembrances of bone-devouring Wasteland vultures. You pass off the shiver as a response to the cold, rather than the memory of curving beaks and massive wings.

Rolled 89 (1d100)

>>6251536
You organize the Regiment’s departing members into a rough formation, just in case. You’re not exactly entering the belly of the beast—or even the immediate VICINITY of the beast, since Ayla doesn’t know precisely where the hundun is—but it’s still an unknown region with a mystery monster. Who knows when it might appear, or who or what ELSE you might encounter along the way?

“Murbal, yer with Carazzi and Dura,” you say. “Yeb-Uit, An-Yii, Xoldur… Yer with me.”

“We go apart?” Murbal asks, and places her hands together and then moves them apart to clarify the question.

“Nah, but if somethin’ splits us, that’s how we’ll regroup.”

One tanky fighter and one healer each, with a caster or archer each as well. It’s a classic party-split. You hope it won’t come to that, but, well…

“What’s the plan, ZZ?” asks CZ.

“Simple,” you say. “We do this the old-fashioned way. No magic bullshit, no messin’ about with locals—my Eastern Common’s rusty.”

“I could, like, go inta their heads ‘n—”

You dismiss the notion with a wave, and nod to Yeb-Uit.

“We got our super-ranger here, ta track it down the old-fashioned way.”

“Mmhm,” Yeb-Uit agrees easily, with a cocky tilt of his head.

You chuckle a little. You, too, remember how it feels to have the years of wear and tear melt right off of you thanks to some mystical mumbo-jumbo. Not only do you not blame him for being a little self-assured, but you’re happy to take full advantage of his improved get-up-and-go.

Yeb-Uit squats low, running a not-so-gnarled, mint-green hand over a patch of frostbitten moss. His nose twitches, long and sharp as ever, and he cocks an elfin ear to the wind, listening to something only he seems to hear. With a grunt, he jerks his chin up the slope.

“Come on. Hundun’s a mimic or somethin’, yeah? So we look for the things that don’t quite fit. Too many prints, wrong kind of scat for the area, birds gone quiet, or else too bold—like tehyr’e agitated.”

He leads you on, weaving up through granite outcrops and scabby little larch groves, pointing out the telltale rips in the grass where something heavy’s blundered through.

“The hundun?” whispers CZ.

“Or somethin’ else,” Yeb-Uit suggests with a shrug. “Could be anything, really. But somethin’ moving fast. Maybe bein’ hunted?”

You frown a little at his uncertainty, but you can hardly begrudge him. Unlike Khorine, Yeb can’t talk to trees or whatever-the-fuck… And, just like the rest of you, this might as well be a whole new world to your not-quite-ranger.

As you travel, you see a few thin-limbed, gaunt-eyed hares, and find many more traces of their passing. Thus, when Yeb-Uit brings to your collective attention a sudden lack of tracks, you all take notice.

“See?” he says with a flash of forge-freshened, pearl-white teeth. “Somethin’ scared ‘em off from here. I figure we’re on the right track.”

>>6251537
A few hours later, as you crest a ridge, Yeb-Uit signals everyone to get low. Crawling on your bellies, you gaze down into a shallow valley, and see what he has seen: distant horsemen—four of them, riding slow between low, square houses with heavy roofs of thatched grass. A herd of camels crowds a muddy pen, huddled in against the wind. The horsemen don’t see you, and you’re careful not to change that. You skirt the slope wide, treading where Yeb-Uit points, ducking behind a thorny tangle when a rider stops to peer up the ridge.

“They’re ridin’ their horses even in the town,” CZ whispers, pointing. “Look! See?”

“Well, humies are weird,” you say with a shrug. “Easterlings more’n most, maybe.”

(Frankly, you’ve never got on with horses. Like with dogs, it’s sort of a goblin thing—horses hate the way your (former) race smells, and being near an animal that large and that skittish is enough to make the feeling mutual, after one or two narrowly-evaded kicks.)

By now, day has turned to frosty, arid evening. The air, already thin and dry, becomes harsh.

“We oughtta make camp,” An-Yii says.

Xoldur snorts derisively, and shakes his head at the samund dyr weakness. You shoot your apprentice a sharp look, and he is immediately chastened into silence before he can start talking shit. His sister sniggers at him, which causes the gangly half-orc’s grey face to redden, but still he cedes to you—you’ve taught him his lesson well, and it has stuck.

“Hey, got somethin’.”

The rejuvenated Yeb-Uit’s eyes catch it first: a patch where the reeds have been mashed flat, but in no pattern any animal should make—like some boulder rolled and rolled, with no mind for direction. You all draw close, as Yeb points out the pattern.

“Think it’s the hundun?” Carazzi asks.

Yeb-Uit shrugs again, then his face scrunches up for a moment,a dn he nods.

“Could be,” he says.

“Should hunt,” Xoldur says then, emboldened by the discovery to speak his mind. “Orcs strong. Cold is not problem. Stars are enough light, with moon.”

This is true—well, apart from the cold, but that’s what your fur cloak and the others’ own new attire is intended for. Goblin eyes (and nilbog ones, too) are even more dark-adapted than those of orcs. Better yet, acting under cover of darkness is the best bet to avoid humanity’s own hunting parties.

“Yeah?” demurs An-Yii. “As I ‘memebr it, that’s what ya said on the wolf-hunt, too. How’d that go?”

“We hunted the fuck outta them wolves,” you snap back, “THAT’s how it went. ‘MEMBER?”

An-Yii clucks her tongue and turns her head. You know her moods well enough by now, though, to know that’s no real objection. She—like the rest of the Regiment—will do as you dictate.

>>6251544
An-Yii’s caution isn’t cowardice, though, or at least not JUST cowardice. Neither low-light vision nor darkvision are perfect: though orcs are better at it, neither orc nor goblinoid can see as far in darkness as in light, and the eyes of your kin can only see in black-and-white by night.

And there are other things—predators, and ESPECILALY magical monsters—which can see or sense better and further in the black than any of you can.

What’s the plan?
>Camp here, and go head-hunting in the morning, when it’s warmer and you can see further and better
>Press on, into the cold and dark, in search of the hundun—maybe it’s more active at night?
>Split up—establish a camp, and send the others to go scout the surrounding area
>Actually, those weird humie horsemen have you curious, and a little worried… You’ll take advantage of the darkness to spy on them a little
>Write-in

>>6251545
>Actually, those weird humie horsemen have you curious, and a little worried… You’ll take advantage of the darkness to spy on them a little
gotta know if they're also on the hundun

>>6251545
>Actually, those weird humie horsemen have you curious, and a little worried… You’ll take advantage of the darkness to spy on them a little
Centaurs?

>>6251545
>Split up—establish a camp, and send the others to go scout the surrounding area
>Actually, those weird humie horsemen have you curious, and a little worried… You’ll take advantage of the darkness to spy on them a little
Take Yeb. The rest set up.

Am>>6250996

>>6251545
>>Actually, those weird humie horsemen have you curious, and a little worried… You’ll take advantage of the darkness to spy on them a little
Fantasy-mongols!

>>6251600
>>6251684
>>6251739
>>6251796
[Locked and writing!]

Rolled 20, 14, 5 = 39 (3d20)

>>6252065
You mull it over for a while, as the others begin to set up camp. After some deliberation, you summon CZ and Yeb-Uit to here you have seated yourself upon a cold-stone throne, with your white wolf-pelt draped under you like some hoity-toity queen’s gilded tuffet.

“You two,” you say, “come with me. We’re goin’ spyin’.”

“The humies?” CZ asks.

You nod. Something about them bothers you. At the very least, you want to know who else is in the area, and what their deal is. Are they dangerous to your crew? Competition in the hundun hunt? It behooves a Boss to know hat she’s up against.

“Just us?” Yeb-Uit asks.

You glance at the others, and snort.

“he rocs can’t hide fer shit, ‘n the healer can’t fight for shit.”

“Actually, Dura can hold her own,” CZ corrects you.

You shoot her a look, but he doesn’t back down immediately. You roll your eyes, and say: “Fine, bring yer magic pal.”

croak

“…And yer pet.”

…

…

You take the lead, as you, Yeb-Uit, ZZ, and Dura approach the village. You’re a bit proud of that, but also a bit anxious. You’re the stealthiest of the Regiment, and everyone knows it, which is cool… But you also have a bad track-record on ‘hunts’, and this entire expedition is pretty much one BIG hunt.

“CZ, you good?”

“Y-yeah! I’m, like, super good…”

Your sis is counting on you. That’s what matters, and that’s what you focus on: not letting her down.

It doesn’t take all that long to reach the human settlement, even staying low and creeping slow. The pace and proximity also mean you can bring Nermal, which is nice—the mutant cave drake has saved your keister a few times now, and if it comes down to another fight, you’ll be glad to have them with you.

(Not that it will, of course!)

You motion to the others to hang back a bit as you return to the ridge from which you had earlier espied the mounted men. Going up the last leg alone, you subtly shift your skin-colour to better blend in with the yellow-green grasses and pale grey-brown turf.

Activity ahs quieted in the little settlement, since you were last here. With the setting of the sun, most of the residents have seemingly taken shelter in the broad round buildings. This is both boon and bust: you can’t really deduce much about their lifeways if you can’t see how they live and work, but it also means that nobody will spot you if you creep closer… And realistically, making out any detail in darkness after the first sixty-or-so feet is crapshoot, anyway.

ker-ooak

“Yeah,” you agree with Nermal, patting the overgrown newt’s noggin. “Let’s get a l’il closer.”

And so you do, with Zith-Zi and Yeb-Uit close behind you.

>>6252072
Natural 20: critical success on Concealment!

You begin by skulking around the perimeter, as if you were planning a raid. You probe the defenses, and find them nearly nonexistent: no walls, not even any fences. Among the grunting, moaning beasts of burden whom you encounter, only a few so much as leashed and tied. You sneak closer enough to scrutinize these camels’ circumstances, and determine that these unlucky few are injured, or pregnant. The rest seem to roam freely, keeping close out of preference and sheer herding habit.

Knowing how bad a camel-bite can be, you keep your guard up and maintain your distance.

Such is the unguarded quietude of the simple village that you are able to enter into the very heart of the settlement without issue. You and your companion fan out a little, each of you attending to your own specialty. Yeb-Uit checks the trackways and the racks upon which they hang their hunted hares and other steppe prey: antelope, gazelles, partridges, and large tawny foxes. Dura opens and sifts through crudely-fired clay pots which seem to hold ample stores of grain and grass, both seeds and stalks, as well as more medicinal herbs. Zith-Zi maintains a central position, where she can keep her eyes on each of you.

“No sign of footprints at all,” Yeb-Uit notes. “Jus’ hooves ‘n camel-pads.”

“Many herb,” Dura whispers. “herb for make animal good, no sick. Grass, for feed.”

“Weird,” ZZ mutters. “Camels eat crab-grass ‘n shit… Penty of that a round.”

“Maybe for the horses?” Yeb-Uit suggests. “They’re a little pickier, ain’t they?”

“Hey, where ARE the horses?”

“Keep inside?” suggests Dura.

“Ugh.” Zith-Zi shudders. “Gross.”

You, sneakiest of all, creep into the interiors of a few of the homes.

The walls are widely spaced, made of unheated clay and mud mixed with grasses, with large and empty arches for doors… Well, empty save for hanging tapestries, bearing patterns you don’t understand the meaning of. It reminds you a little of the orc encampment back in the Steelwood, except for the lack of skulls, and the more sophisticated textiles. Inside, it’s even more barren: no chairs or beds, or separated chambers even by way of temporary partition. The walls are undecorated, again unlike the rocs’, but the locals’ capacity for furnishing seems instead dedicated to wooden racks replete with spears, bows, and the occasional curving sword; each is topped with a feather-plumed leather-and-metal helm. A single central fire to keep the heat, surrounded by a semicircular ‘bench’ which appears to be packed grasses bundled in pelts and more patterns fabric-swatches into a sort of pillow.

And upon those pillows, lay the residents, fast asleep.

“…Ooooh.”

>>6252084
The riders do, indeed, keep their indoors, and very close. So close, in fact, that they’re inseparable. LITERALLY inseparable. The natives of this place look humanoid enough—or, well, more like some kind of slant-eyed, broad-faced Eastman with elf-ears—but with thick, shaggy fur creeping up their chest and back to form a shaggy mane and hanging beard even on the little ones and the ladies… Until you get below the torso.

For a moment you simply thought they were curled up with foals, mares, and stallions’ heads tucked in their laps. After your eyes have adjusted to the firelight, however, you begin to notice how each child is paired with a foal, each woman with a mare, and each grown man with a stallion… And how there are no head tucked at all. Rather, the half-dozen individuals here have a horse’s entire body below their waist, which whatever point joins man to beast below the human-like navel hidden by a skirt of colourful fabric and carefully-maintained furs. Their four-legged, bulk lower body seems to kneel in worship of the fire’s warmth, while they lay their heads upon crossed arms atop the bulky central pillow, to support their upper-body’s weight while they slumber

“They’re, like… Uh… Minotaurs or whatever!” you whisper to Nermal, as quiet as you can.

croak?

“Right, shit, minotaurs are the bully-boys, ain’t they? Uhh… Fuck, I got no clue what these ones’re called.”

Martyn or Ayla probably would, but you have neither of them here. Even ZZ, Yeb, and Dura are outside at the moment, leaving you and your familiar alone with the sleeping horse-man hybrids.

Which means it’s up to you what happens next…

croak!

“Shhh!” you hiss at Nermal. “Doncha know how ta be… Oh.”

>>6252085
You follow Nermal’s waving tendrils to one wall, where you realize that you might have been wrong about these guys not liking skulls as much as the orcs do. In fact, they seem to ESPECIALLY enjoy ORC skulls, to judge by the several well-decorated examples which have been stacked atop one-another in a precarious-looking tower. Each has had rocks placed in its empty eye-sockets, its nose-hole plugged with flowering herbs, and has been daubed and painted as if in veneration of the dead or—maybe more likely—celebration of their death.

“Well… Maybe it’s good we didn’t bring Xoldy and Murbz, heh heh…”

You gulp.

>Scan the interior for signs of magic, or other conspicuous valuables—maybe you can find something valuable to loot?
>Creep closer and try to reach into one of their dreams—maybe you can find out if they know anything about the hundun, or other dangers and opportunities?
>Maybe you could <Charm> one of the kids, and lure them back to camp for a more proper interrogation, where it’s safe?
>These guys are competition, right? And clearly a danger to your grey-faced party-members… Maybe you should engineer an ‘unfortunate accident’ with the fireplace?
>This is too risky—, to Dura in particular if you get caught. You gathered the intel you need, not it’s time to GTFO!
>Write-in

>>6252087
>Scan the interior for signs of magic, or other conspicuous valuables—maybe you can find something valuable to loot?
Yoink

>>6252087
>Scan the interior for signs of magic, or other conspicuous valuables—maybe you can find something valuable to loot?

They dont set up defenses or watches. They travel with family. It’s likely they expect no one else being here. We don’t want to contact them or be anywhere near them.

We could try to kill everyone but that’s a bit hard to do and if we fail, that’s a lot of attention. Get in and get out.

Am >>6251739

>>6252157
>+1

>>6252087
>Scan the interior for signs of magic, or other conspicuous valuables—maybe you can find something valuable to loot?
>Creep closer and try to reach into one of their dreams—maybe you can find out if they know anything about the hundun, or other dangers and opportunities?
Love me mentalism

>>6252087

>Scan the interior for signs of magic, or other conspicuous valuables—maybe you can find something valuable to loot?

Rolled 6, 16, 4 = 26 (3d20)

>>6252157
>>6252182
>>6252191
>>6252202
>>6252219
[Rolling Occultism, and writing!]

Rolled 19, 5, 1 = 25 (3d20)

>>6252510
[One more roll: Stealth, with a base DC of 10 thanks to that last crit.]

>>6252182
[We'll seeee...]

>>6252510
>>6252524
You’re no whiz at wizardry, but you ARE a magical creature of a sort, and lately you’ve been studying. Since these horse-guys are obviously unfriendly to rocs, and some of your best friends are orcs, you figure it’s fair play if you do a little looting while you’re here—and since you’re also HUNTING magical creatures, more magic seems like just the fix.

16 for Occultism: success!

Once you’ve adjusted your perception, the first thing you notice is that the skull-tower isn’t just decorative—it’s enchanted, too! Squint your eyes and furrow your brow though you might, however, you can’t tell what KIND of magic beyond that it’s some sort of Feycraft rather than demonism or necromancy.

(Damn… If it were one of THOSE, you might have been able to figure out more particulars!)

What do you do with the tower of orc-skulls?
>Dismantle it
>Take one from the top
>Leave it alone

[C]

>>6252564
Scanning the surroundings yields little else of note in this hut until your eyes alight upon one particular piece of equipment on the wall: one of the many spears. Much like the skulls, you can’t deduce exactly what it DOES, but it’s DEFINITELY magical. Its tip is tripartite and pronged, though rather unlike your fishing-spear in design or function—it bears a long central spike like a regular spear, with small, wing-like side blades flaring up and out from beneath.

“Ooo…”

It’s obviously made for the much larger hands of one of the slumbering beastfolk, but you have big hands when you want to—big enough to brandish weapons made for Man or Beastman easily!

“Yoink~”

Carazzi has Monkey Grip, in case you forgot. She can wield weapons one size larger than usual.

You need to stand up on tiptoes to snag the spear, but snag it you do, admiring it in the firelight and even giving it a couple of swishes. When you hear a groan from one of the unconscious natives, though, you instead clutch the new weapon close to you in fright, as if you might hide behind it.

(Maybe if you shapeshifted real skinny, you guess…?)

No alarm is sounded, though—a whatever-taur child, disturbed by a tingly-feeling dream, rolls over and stretches for a moment before sliding slightly down the pillow and falling right back to sleep.

“Whew!”

You slip out of the oversized, hay-lined hovel and back onto the dirt path. You have only crept a few short steps when you hear the quiet thumping of hooves upon the turf. You freeze, frantically looking one direction, then the other. You hadn’t seen any guards…but maybe, being so mobility-focused, they instead post sentries to constantly stroll around and through the settlement? Whatever the case, you couldn’t have known in advance: the patrol-horseman carries no torch, no lantern.

(Which means these four-legged fuckers’ve got low-light vision, too! Shit!!)

This wide-open approach to civic planning around here doesn’t really afford you any alleyways to duck down or corners to hide behind—especially with a big-ass spear!

1 for Stealth…

The sound of the approaching beastman is coming from behind another building. The ambling trot suggests that you haven’t been detected yet, but how long will that last? Your knuckles go white gripping your new spear as you consider that you might need to bloody its blade mere minutes after picking it up.


Then, however, you catch sight of a flash of rosy pink from across the way, just barely illuminated enough by moonlight for you to register it in full colour. You lean forward and narrow your eyes; they go wide again as you recognize ZZ’s hand waving frantically, beckoning you inside.

…But also a 19

>>6252565
You spare one last panicked look in the direction of the ever-nearer hoof-steps, and then beat your own feet to book it across the wide avenue. You pretty much DIVE into the doorway!

…Whiiiich you immediately regret. And you ESPECIALLY regret the gasp of sheer relief you take.

“Eurgh!!”

You’ve been told that you smell somewhat foul at times, especially right after using your powers—like rotten eggs, they say. But THIS place is something else. You’ve done latrine-duty in New Goblintown, and you’ve traveled with a minotaur—that is, one of the ACTUAL bull-headed ones, not whatever kind of ‘taur these guys are again—but you’ve NEVER smelled anything like this place…which, of course, is the latrine of THESE weird six-limbed, horse-assed beastmen.

The building is built circular like the others, but inside reveals itself to be a sort of half-buried hut with an open chimney in the roof to let out gases. Yeb-Uit, Dura, and your other half are all crowded into the space already, though they need not BE so crowded except as a matter of stealth: though obviously intended as a private sort of place, something meant to accommodate a whole horse-and-humanoid-hybrid can EASILY fit a couple goblin-sized girls and a Yeb-Uit.


(Though squishing up with ‘em, especially Dura, is kinda nice~)

The intense smell somewhat spoils the moment, though. It reminds you of rotting hay, but with a gamey tang of fermented dairy, and a sour-bitter note at the back of your throat reminiscent of chimera shit: ammonia.

“Ugh, what do these guys EAT?” you whisper.

“See fer yerself,” says Yeb-Uit.

He nods his head, and you survey the back of the broad ‘stall,’ where the floor sinks still lower and the ‘deposits’ are made. And, yep: that sure is the sort of turd-soup you’d expect from a race of weird double-torso’d beastie boys who live on grass, stripling hares, and camel milk.

But, hey, you’re hidden! Silver linings, right?

>>6252566
You endure the odour, and the hooves and shadow pass on by. Once you’re sure the centaur—THAT’S the word, CENtaur!—has moved far enough away, you and the others all pile out of the outhouse and take eager breaths of the fresh (if still thin) northern air. Dura still looks green-as-a-goblin around the gills with wooziness, though. You switch the hand holding your spear and pat her back.

“Did you steal a spear??” Zith-Zi asks, expression torn between confusion and sisterly pride.

“Fuckin’ sweet, huh??” you gush. “It’s magic!”

“Girls,” Yeb-Uit says bluntly.


You and ZZ both focus in, and you quickly inform her—and the others—of what you discovered. Dura is remarkably calm about the tower of her own race’s collected skulls…but then, you suppose she grew up around bones of all sorts, since orc attire is bone and leather whenever it isn’t stolen, and her own chieftain’s home is marked by skulls of rocs, men, elves, and wolves alike.

Since none of you want to give these centaurs the chance to start collecting weird mutant goblin skulls as well as orcs’, you deem it prudent to make your escape as swiftly as feasible. The only question is…

Do you do anything else before you go?
>A bit more looting [additional treasure roll, guaranteed success by degree of success TBD; another stealth roll needed to avoid being caught, and it’s harder]
>Use your shapeshifting and mentalism to make contact [specify what you want say to them, or ask of them]
>Start a fire to drive them out of the area
>Say, Dura and you could probably poison their food or water… Just enough to make ‘em sick
>The last thing you need is to make enemies or risk capture—GTFO!
>Write-in

>>6252564
>Take one from the top
>Say, Dura and you could probably poison their food or water… Just enough to make ‘em sick
No competition

>>6252567
>The last thing you need is to make enemies or risk capture—GTFO!

>>6252577
[Don't forget the other vote, anon! >>6252564]

>>6252564
>Leave it alone

A missing spear is concerning, but could be brushed off (temporarily) as being misplaced. Two items missing will be much harder to justify.

>>6252567
>The last thing you need is to make enemies or risk capture—GTFO!

We never meet.

Am >>6252182

>>6252564
>Take one from the top
>>6252580
thanks for the reminder

>>6252564
>Take one from the top

>>6252567
>A bit more looting [additional treasure roll, guaranteed success by degree of success TBD; another stealth roll needed to avoid being caught, and it’s harder]
>Use your shapeshifting and mentalism to make contact [Larp as their God (if poison is chosen, claim to curse them with a plague)]
>Say, Dura and you could probably poison their food or water… Just enough to make ‘em sick
I just want to fuck with ‘em

>>6252624
>>Leave it alone
Supporting.

>>6252724
>>6252700
>>6252630
>>6252624
>>6252577
>>6252576
[I'm a bit under the weather today, but I'm going to lock this and at least try to write an update!]

Rolled 1, 20 = 21 (2d20)

>>6252973
You have everything you need from this little excursion, and then some. CZ seized a spear—a magic spear, no less!—and you know a little bit more about what you’re dealing with here: a race of galloping quadrupedal hostiles and obviously-adept hunters, with a hate-on for orcs.

“A REAL hate-on! When we get back I got soemthin’ else ta show you… Maybe away from Dura ‘n them?”

You file your sister’s whisper away for later with a quick nod, and then affirm aloud:

“Time to get out, while the getting’s good!”

You receive no arguments from the others, and so swiftly extract yourselves from the centaur settlement and hurry back up the embankment and back down the other side. It’s a little cold, and the hiking ha been hard today, but after the winter wolf hunt and all that it entailed, this is child’s play.

(Not that you don’t’ crash pretty hard when you get back to camp, of course…)

>>6252978

When morning comes, you take stock of what you know, which is—unfortunately—precious little. You know the area is a lot colder and a little wetter than the Goblin Wastes, but has the same sort of array of hardy plants and animals. In lieu of goblin raiders, troll packs, sand-elves, and giant vultures, you have two known threats: orcs, and orc-hunting horse-folk.

(The decorated and defaced skull CZ showed you paints a pretty stark picture of local race-relations, such that you’re glad you didn’t try to stroll up and make conversation with the centaurs, with Murbal, Xoldur, and Dura in tow)

That all means you’re best served getting in, grabbing the monster, and getting out before encountering anyone. Luckily, you have a lead on your quarry. If Yeb-Uit is right, then the hundun has been rolling around (for some reason) in the vicinity.

1 AND 20 for Yeb-Uit’s Survival roll…

Yeb spent some of the night checking the camp for tracks leading to or from the area of squashed-flat grass, but he was almost TOO successful at that:

“Lots’ve tracks,” he notes. “All kinds, going all directions… But see this?”

Indeed you do: a hodgepodge of hooves, bird-scratches, clawmarks, and pawprints scrabbling off in one direction.

“All the same age, few coverin’ each other up,” Yeb-Uit explains. “They all left in the same direction, same time.”

“Form the same animal,” you interpret. “An animal that can make whatever limbs it wants, on a whim.”

Yeb-Uit nods. You grin, and slap him on the back.

“Those new eyes a’ yers were the best damn investment I ever made.”

You still know next to nothing about what the monster IS, though. Is it predator? Prey? Some sort of fairy-creature? What does it do all day—or all night? What does it WANT, that you could lure it out with?

Never having seen or really heard of hunduns, all you know about THIS one is that it can roughly be described as an egg or dumpling-shaped… THING… Which can grow limbs and organs, makes loud booming sounds, and travels a lot. At least some of your limited intel seems to be right, which is reassuring: Yeb-Uit’s trackway leads towards the black, jagged mountains.

“Well, an’ there’s one other thing,” Yeb-Uit volunteers.

>>6252995
He leads you back to the spot where the creature’s roundness has rolled out the plant-life, and here he points out two features you hadn’t noticed before: a pattern of similar mixed-and-matched footprints that have faded or been nearly rubbed away… And a few broken shards of pottery.

You nod along, as if understanding, awaiting an explanation. Eventually, when Yeb-Uit fails to produce it, you snap at him:

“What, ya think I hired ‘n magically de-aged a ranger for fun?! Just fuckin’ TELL me already!”

“Smell,” he says, holding out a handful of dirt containing one such piece of claywork shrapnel.

You scrunch up your nose, to Yeb-Uit and An-Yii’s amusement. That only annoys you more. ‘Young’ Yeb-Uit is a bit of a cocky shit, you decide.

But, damn it all, you take a whiff.

“…Booze?”

Yeb-Uit nods, and gestures again to the patch of grass.

“Drinkin’,” he deduces, “‘n dancin’.”

You raise your eyebrows at this. You’d ask ‘are you sure?’, but cocky or not, you know Yeb well enough to know he wouldn’t waste your time if he wasn’t reasonably certain. The hundun, it seems, knows how to party.

“More ‘n just an animal, then,” An-Yii suggests.

Xoldur, who has been quietly observing, finally speaks up, suggesting:

“Centaurs dangerous,” he acknowledges. “orcs, though… Can talk to orcs.”

“Uh, ain’t orcs pretty dangerous, too?” CZ points out.

Xoldur shrugs, considers, then nods.

“Can deal with orc danger. KNOW orc danger. Learn more.”

He’s asking, not telling—which is good!—though his sister is less-enthused, as are An-Yii and Yeb-Uit.

“We can do this on our own,” Yeb-Uit insists.

“I don’t like the sounds a’ more orcs givin’ us that samund dyr shit again, neither,” An-Yii agrees, grimacing. “This close to the Orcwilds? I bet they take even worse ta gobs than they do in Steelwood.”

(Which, of course, is saying something, as even the human-admixed, down-on-their-luck local orcs near Patmo-Shoka have an avowed animosity to the samund dyr, or ‘diseased animals’, as they call goblinkind.)

Murbal agrees—or insists, really—with a clanging thump of her steel roundel. “Just go mountain! Find monster, SMASH monster!”


Of course, as the Boss, it’s up to you.
>Follow the tracks into the mountains—you’ll be going in mostly blind, but you at least know you’re on the right track, and you might be able to catch the hundun by surprise or learn more about it
>Go looking for the orcs in the area and attempt diplomacy, to learn what they know about the hundun and the mountains first—though you may wish to leave the more obviously-goblinoid party-members at camp
>Write-in

>>6252996
>Follow the tracks into the mountains—you’ll be going in mostly blind, but you at least know you’re on the right track, and you might be able to catch the hundun by surprise or learn more about it
Trail’s still hot.

Am >>6252624

>>6252996
>Follow the tracks into the mountains—you’ll be going in mostly blind, but you at least know you’re on the right track, and you might be able to catch the hundun by surprise or learn more about it
Sorry Xoldur, no one else wants to deal with orcs

>>6252996
>Follow the tracks into the mountains—you’ll be going in mostly blind, but you at least know you’re on the right track, and you might be able to catch the hundun by surprise or learn more about it

>>6252996
>>Follow the tracks into the mountains—you’ll be going in mostly blind, but you at least know you’re on the right track, and you might be able to catch the hundun by surprise or learn more about it

Steelwood orcs, on the verge of extinction, are one thing. Local orcs... I'm afraid.

>>6253139
>>6253099
>>6253084
>>6253026
[Alright, locked and writing! I'm sick today, so we're gonna start a bit early, since it's unanimous anyway.]

Rolled 3 (1d100)

>>6253394

You have to side with the others: the down-on-their-luck orcs back in the Steelwood were one thing. But giving up a promising lead—a trail that might still be hot—to risk dealing with PROPER orcs? Nah, you’re not going to risk that.

“We press on toward the mountains,” you pronounce.

Nobody argues it, not even Xoldur, though you see his posture shift into the dejected slouch of a boy being told his idea is no good.

Xoldur’s Morale: Medium

You pay him no heed, having higher priorities at the moment than managing a surly young half-orc. The black shards of stone jut out far on the horizon, and accounts suggest that’s where the hundun’s nest (or whatever) is. It’s honestly impressive that a big ball of amorphous flesh and random animal-parts can travel such a distance just to… What, get drunk in a field?... But sometimes monsters are just weird.

You don’t dwell on it. You just keep moving.

Random encounter roll!

Rolled 6 (1d20)

>>6253401
Oh, that's a fun one...

Rolled 16, 20 = 36 (2d20)

>>6253403

Rolled 1 (1d20)

>>6253406

>>6253401
>>6253403
>>6253406
>>6253407
You are making good time—probably, it’s tough to tell in big wide expanses like this, but the mountains seem closer—when trouble rears its ugly head. Or, well, you WISH it was rearing up, honestly. It would be much easier if there was just some weird local monster to melee.

What actually happens is far stranger.

You and the Regiment are pressing forward. Over time, your formation ahs broken apart into a more casual, sociable stroll. Murbal and Xoldur are at ahead of you, loping like hunting hounds with their long legs and athletic builds, while CZ chatters excitedly with Dura in the back. You, An-Yii, and Yeb-Uit fill in the middle of the adventure party sandwich—you’ve all grown clsoer after the blizzard, even If those two are notably ‘clsoer’ than youa re to either.

(it makes you miss your own boy, Jimmy, seeing them snuggle up like that… But knowing Yeb-Uit’s history with women and abandoned children, you also can’t help wondering if you ought to warn the medic?)

(…)

(And also, isn’t Yeb s’psoed to be doing ranger shit?!)

Yeb-Uit rolls 6 for Vigilance.

You’re about to lay into the lovebirds when something else seizes your attention instead:

ZZZTT!

thump

Xodur stops suddenly, his head snapping the same way yours does: to Murbal, who has abruptly collapsed in place. For a moment, she’s stone-still, and you begin to feel a deep fear well up in you—not necessarily for your bash-happy meathead of an apprentice, but because you sense something amiss.

Critical success for Murbal’s Athletics, here serving the roll of a Constitution Saving Throw!

The female orc-human hybrid groans after few moments, and you feel some small measure of relief as she starts to push herself up and off the turf. She freezes again a moment later, though—not in a renewed paroxysm of paralysis, but like a predator spotting prey.

(But where?? You don’t’ see shit! Is it… In the grass? It’d have to be small, then, since the grass is lower and thinner here…)

Whatever she’s eyeing up, you see a sly smile start to spread across the grey girl’s face as Murbal reaches for her steel shield which has fallen beside her. Her questing fingers pat and probe at the dry, loose topsoil of this place until they find it, at which point…

Critical failure for her Fisticuffs roll, though.[

ZZZTT!

You wince as the weird sound goes off again—something like a bug’s buzz, maybe—and Murbal collapses face-first onto the ground all over.

>>6253416
“What the fuck?” you mutter.

Immediately after the second collapse, Xoldur starts towards his sister’s slumped over form. The others have all taken notice too, by now, though nobody else rushes to help. For your part, you…

>Charge in with Xoldur, to rescue your apprentice, like a Boss!
>Send in CZ—she’s magic and shit, so whatever weirdness is going on, she’s best suited
>Send Hershy to swoop overhead and support with fire, while you prep a throwing knife and Yeb readies his bow
>Order Xoldur to stand down and keep his distance—for now, you’ll wait, watch, and see what the fuck is going on here
>Write-in

>>6253417
>Send Hershy to swoop overhead and support with fire, while you prep a throwing knife and Yeb readies his bow
Don't think it's magic, otherwise Murbal wouldn't have looked so confident
Look in the direction she was looking, it might be some kind of ranged attacker

>>6253416
fuck, I thought the nat 1 would be from an enemy
>>6253417
>Send Hershy to swoop overhead and support with fire, while you prep a throwing knife and Yeb readies his bow

>>6253417
>Send Hershy to swoop overhead
Scout. Don’t attack. Get a bird’s eye view and pull back. The rest get down. Talk to Xoldur if we can.

I doubt it’s inside the grass — the amount of feet and the size of those it has means its probably too big to hide there. It’s probably hitting us from a hill or something.

Am>>6253026

>>6253417
>Send in CZ—she’s magic and shit, so whatever weirdness is going on, she’s best suited
Here she comes, to save the day!

Rolled 6, 7, 19, 10, 17 = 59 (5d20)

>>6253634
>>6253548
>>6253537
>>6253519
“Xoldur!”

The male half-orc stops short of his sister at your staccato shout. His eyes bulge slightly, but his breathing is even, his savagely-handsome face as impassive as stone. You’d smile to see it, maybe even risk giving the rambunctious young male an ‘attaboy’… If it weren’t for Murbal.

“Hershy.”

croo-oak!

You whisper the feather chimera-drake’s name, and in a little golden explosion he bursts forth from beneath your bejewelled cloak. With a few hard flaps, he manages to elevate through the dry, stale air, in the direction of the fallen female fighter. You watch his trajectory, and then let your gaze settle upon Murbal’s twitching body. You half-crouch, never averting your eyes as you slip one hand to the bandolier upon your left thigh; when you rise it is with a throwing-knife in hand.

“Figure it’s in the grass?” CZ asks, gripping her spear at your side.

“WHAT grass?” you snap. “The fuckin’ scrub? Nah.”

“Jigi?” whispers Dura worriedly, squinting her eyes in a way you recognize as a novice’s attempt to force a mystical sense to function under pressure.

“Don’t bother,” you tell the orc shaman. “If it were magic, Murbz wouldn’t’ve looked so sure’ve herself. Yeb?”

“On it,” the upgraded archer announces, already taking aim in the direction Murbal was looking when she was struck.

You, meanwhile, keep your eye on your shuddering student, willing her to rise. Murbal’s rising back and shoulders and the occasional pained grunt assures you that she’s alive, at least… But what the fuck took her down??

Rolling: 3d20 for Handle Animal + Flight, 1d20 for Yeb-Uit’s Vigilance, 1d20 for REDACTED…

Rolled 9, 4 = 13 (2d10)

>>6253935
And this, since Murbal is helpless...

Rolled 15, 6 = 21 (2d20)

>>6253937

Rolled 6 (1d8)

>>6253946

>>6253947
>>6253946
>>6253937
>>6253935
krooo-oeek

“Sshhh! Quiet, Nermal!”

hff. Kroek.

Ignoring your sister’s flabby familiar, you continue watch the shield-maiden try and fail to lift herself up. Hershy swoops in the jerky motions you taught him to adopt when under fire, or potentially so. You half-expect another buzz, followed by your feathered friend falling down to the ground beside Murbal, but no such attack comes.

(Why not? Is he not as appealing a target, being so small?)

ZZZTT!

Eventually, the buzz does come, making you all jump. Your eyes immediately jump to Hershy up above, but his flight remains untroubled. The only change is that, with a trill, he comes careening back towards you. You hold out an arm for him to land upon, and look back to Murbal. Your eyes widen when they find the half-orc again, and find her twitching more violently than before, practically THRASHING, albeit in a stiff and jerky manner.

Murbal’s HP: 22/35

“Yeb?!”

10 for Vigilance...

“Didn’t see shit,” he replies quickly.

Nobody else did, either. Xoldur is raring to go now, held in place only by your order, and at that just barely. You can empathize—if that were CZ down on the ground, you’d be losing your shit, too. You still might, honestly. Something’s killing your best student and mightiest meat-shield while you just stand by and let it happen.

croak!, says Hershy.

kroo-oak, replies Nermal.

You look at the drakes in confusion, and he fluffs himself up and hurtles himself back in Murbal’s direction. You watch with confusion and alarm as he exhales a plume of flame…

SHRIEEEEK!

And the dirt around Murbal explodes upwards as if hit by some earth-shaking spell, or thrown up by some kind of…

Your thoughts pause, and rearrange themselves. You look in CZ’s direction, but not at your sister—instead, at NERMAL. The flabby, tentacle-faced cave-drake is a chimeric creature, not unlike… Well, a lot of your regiment, actually… Which means a lot of how it works is a mystery to you. Shit, you don't even know if it's a boy or girl newt! One thing you do remember about fighting its big brothers, sisters, and its massive mama, though is this:

“Tremorsense.”

“H-huh?”

>>6253958
You don’t answer CZ directly, instead turning to the others and shouting out loud: it’s under the fuckin’ ground!”

“The hundun?!” asks An-Yii, looking everywhere and once and pulling herself inwards, as if to climb up herself and into the air, off of the ground.

“Maybe!” You grit your teeth. “I don’t know! Somethin’, anyway!”

(Or several somethings, for that matter… Fuck, Martyn or Khorine might have known more about the dangerous animals ‘n shit around here, but you’ve never been this far northeast, and you sure as hell ahven’t read any of those ‘bestiary’ things Tips was always fascinated by… Fuck!)

You can’t beat yourself up forever, though. Murbal’s furious-but-impotent groans of pain and rage serve as a reminder of one ticking clock. How long until the thing Hershy scorched comes back? If it’s anytime soon, he won’t be able to fend it off again. But… Wait,

Hershy’s breath weapon is depleted for 3 rounds after use.

And if it doesn’t… What if it comes for one of you? Under the fucking GROUND? Can you even fight something like that?

>Fuck it—you need to save Murbal. You and Xoldur are going in! Yeb-Uit and CZ can cover you.
>Have everyone hold PERFECTLY still… Maybe this thing has tremorsense, too, and will give up if you don’t move?
>Stomp your feet [or have someone else do so], and have Nermal play monster-detector… Then, when it pops up, try to kill or stun whatever-it-is!
>Write-in

>>6253959
>Stomp your feet [or have someone else do so], and have Nermal play monster-detector… Then, when it pops up, try to kill or stun whatever-it-is!
It already knows where Murbal is, sitting still won't help

>>6253959
>Stomp your feet [or have someone else do so], and have Nermal play monster-detector… Then, when it pops up, try to kill or stun whatever-it-is!

We stomp. Then dodge. We’re the only one with feet bigger than normal, anyway. And we can’t spare the orcs.

Xoldur and everyone else watch and punish the hundun once it emerges.

Am >>6253548

>>6253959
>Stomp your feet, and have Nermal play monster-detector… Then, when it pops up, try to kill or stun whatever-it-is!
doing nothing won't happen since it's camping murbal. also if it's underground and it's launching something, how the fuck did it do without emerging ?

>>6253959
>>Stomp your feet [or have someone else do so], and have Nermal play monster-detector… Then, when it pops up, try to kill or stun whatever-it-is!

Rolled 18, 9, 6 = 33 (3d20)

>>6254377
>>6254106
>>6254034
>>6253988
You have a feeling that whatever this thing is, whatever its method of attack, it’s operating by the same sort of tremorsense as Nermal… And that Nermal is uniquely-suited to detect it.

“So, uh, what do we do?” CZ asks. “We all standin’ still ‘til it pops up?”

“Nah.” You grimace, and gesture towards Murbal. “It knows where Murbz is. We all stand around with our thumbs up our asses, ‘n it’ll just nab her.”

No, you’re going to have to draw the creature away from your paralyzed frontliner, and to another target—someone who can still defend themself. Who?

Well, as the old Wastelander saying goes, ‘if you want something done right, don’t trust it to mooks.’

stomp

“…ZZ?”


stomp!

“Shut up an’ focus, CZ! All’ve you—be ready!”

STOMP!

You lift your leg and bring it back down again and again, stomping your leather-booted foot upon the turf. Your slip your dagger to your other hand and catch it in a single practiced motion (he, still got it!), and reach for your rad-saber with your other. You don’t flick it on, though—not yet. The audible thrum, or the radiant amgic, could scare your quarry off.

“Come on, hundun,” you whisper through a forced grin. “C’mooon!”

At first, nothing happens. You thump the earth over and over, beginning to feel a little stupid with all these eyes on you and no apparent result. But then…

ker-ooak!

“ZZ…”

“I hear ‘im!”

“Well, like, Nermal’s not really a ‘him’, but—”

You turn out your sister, and she abruptly stops speaking, as you both see the grass before you shift slightly. It’s like it’s been stirred by a breeze, but there’s hardly any such thing, and it’s only a single patch. A moment later, that patch stretches outwards, forwards, closer and closer. It’s coming towards you, a rippling patch of rustling ground-cover, with the subtle shift of the ground beneath it being displaced and pushed upwards by something just beneath the surface.

And fucking Hells Below, it is coming QUICK.

“Ah shit,” you manage to say, in the fraction of a second before the hurtling burrower comes hurtling towards you like the lowest-slung and fastest carriage you’ve ever encountered.

3d20 for Athletics + handle Animal to dodge in time!

Rolled 14, 15, 19, 14, 9, 14, 19, 3, 18, 14, 14, 5, 7 = 165 (13d20)

>>6254407
18: success!

You leap up high and to the side, throwing yourself forward hands and face first and into a tumble. Your grimace to see your fancy new duds all dirtied-up by the steppe soil, but the wolf-pelt’s sheer fluffiness absorbs no small amount of the impact. You’re able to right yourself swiftly, and to turn around just in time to catch sight of your assailant… Sort of.

Much of the tubular, crimson body of the slimy, serpentine thing is still under the ground, but what juts out of the earth is like… Well, like a thick rope of intestine from some heretofore unknown race of giants, complete with a wide-open sphincter of a face. Its passage is lubricated by a glistening slime which shimmers faintly with arcane energy in to your mage-sense, and as its circular mouth (?) widens as if to taste the air, you catch the sight of crackling electricity sparking between multiple misaligned spikes like crude teeth.

“ZZ, I don’t think that’s the hundun!”

“No, seriously, what the actual fuck?!”

You don’t waste time or breath speculating about the true identity of this overgrown earthworm. Instead, you hurl your dagger forward with a flick of your wrist, then bring both hands to bear upon the cylindrical haft of the rad-saber. You tap the rune, murmur the proto-dwarven word for ‘awaken’, and the golden ray of heavenly energy explodes from the top and takes the vague shape of a sword’s blade.

“Charge!”

3d20 Swordsmanship for ZZ. 1d20 for CZ’s spear. Auto-success for Xoldur’s athletics to rescue his sister and get her to the rest of you. 6d20 for An-Yii’s medical check, with Dura’s Potioncraft/Herbalism aid to revive her. 3d20 for Yeb-Uit’s Archery.

Rolled 1, 2 + 1 = 4 (2d3 + 1)

>>6254409
CZ and Yeb-Uit miss.

The thundering of footsteps must have alerted the great snake-worm-thing to your Regiment’s approach. It swings its head around and, sealing its mouth to a tiny gap and stabbing out its teeth like a beak, it begins to rotate and plunged back into the soil. Rotating like a drill, it begins to rapidly bury itself, only for the impact of your dagger—insufficient t penetrate it deeply, but still evidently irritating—to distract it. The thick red rope of flesh rises again and reaches for the bone-blade embedded it its hide with its mouth, as if to pull it free, but…

“Fat fuckin’ chance, ya overgrown shit-rope”!

You are upon it before it can escape, slashing with your radiant saber.

Rolling damage...

Rolled 2 + 4 (1d8 + 4)

>>6254415
And healing...

Rolled 8, 1, 14 = 23 (3d20)

>>6254420
>>6254415

The tubular terror shrieks again, as it did when afflicted by Hershy’s dragonfire, but to your shock it does not die. Your rad-saber ha rarely failed to fell a foe since you found it; normally, it cuts through steel and iron like melted butter, and through flesh as if it’s barely there.

(Must be the fucking magic!)

3 damage dealt… 2 damage per attack is soaked. The death-worm has taken 5 damage total, and like other bosses requires both a minimum damage threshold (15) to kill or incapacitate, and a minimum number of damage-dealing hits (4).

Immediately, it begins to burrow again, eager to escape further injury. To judge by how it responded to Hershy’s flames, though, you doubt it’s going to go away for good—rather, it’s going to circle back and try to attack again, from another angle. But it’s too damn big and slippery to grab hold of and haul up yourself—you’re, like, three-foot tall and 35 pounds soaking wet!

“WAAAAAGH!”

Luckily, you’re not alone.

An-Yii and Dura are able to rouse Murbal back to consciousness.

Murbal’s HP: 28/35

Rolling her Athletics + Fisticuffs for grapple…

>>6254424
“Hey, Murbal, waitta—”

ZZZTT!

“AUGH!”

Critical failure: Murbal rolled a 1, and no successes.

You resist the urge to place your face in your palm as the half-orc shield-maiden is, predictably, hit with the same surge that incapacitated her before. She doesn’t fall again, but is instead launched back, where she lays twitching and smoking for a moment.

“Mouth no bite her.”

Xoldur has drawn up beside you, his own radiant saber’s hum joining your own sword’s in chorus.

“Nah,” you agree. “Must be the slime itself… or somethin’ else in its body. Whole fuckin’ worm’s electrified.”

On the other side of the beast is CZ, with Nermal beside her; the low-slung mutant drake is hissing and bubbling angrily, while your sister is brandishing her spear uncertainly. Behind her is Yeb-Uit, notching another arrow and taking aim, but you can see the frustration on his face from here—he doesn’t have a clear shot, and he won’t before this fucker dives deep again.

“Should I go in with my claws?” CZ asks. “I bin learnin’ martial arts, ‘n I’m spell-resistant…”

And if she catches a bolt of magic lightning and gets dragged down below? Or swallowed up, being bite-sized like you? You want to shout these objections at your sister, but there’s no more time to debate—not if you want to act now.

>CZ, use martial arts and natural weapons to root it out and take it down!
>Xoldur, wrap your hands in your pelts, and together we’ll wrestle it and hold it still!
>Fuck it—get Murbal on her feet and let’s run! Let’s get to rockier terrain where it can’t tunnel up!
>Write-in

>>6254427
>Fuck it—get Murbal on her feet and let’s run! Let’s get to rockier terrain where it can’t tunnel up!
We're in prime worm territory right now

>>6254427
>Fuck it—get Murbal on her feet and let’s run! Let’s get to rockier terrain where it can’t tunnel up!
If it can resist the sabers and also stun, we'll need all advantage we can get.

>>6254427
>CZ, use martial arts and natural weapons to root it out and take it down!
Running’s not an option here. We can’t move faster than the worm. Especially with a wounded Murbal.

If the worm can knock down an orc, putting another orc on him doesn’t really make much sense.

Am >>6254034

>>6254672
>Running’s not an option here. We can’t move faster than the worm
Why not? We're moving through open air, it's eating through solid ground.

>>6254678
Worm looks pretty big and It didn’t take much to collapse Murbal initially. It’s very unlikely that we come out without another person injured. And they’ll need to be carried or dragged, too.

>>6254724
>Worm looks pretty big
I don't think it is

>>6254424
>But it’s too damn big and slippery to grab hold of and haul up yourself—you’re, like, three-foot tall and 35 pounds soaking wet!
This line suggests we'd be able to lift the worm if we weren't goblin sized. Can't be that big if a human can lift it.

The fact that it's an ambush predator that paralyzes its prey with a stealthy first strike also suggests that it can't chase very effectively.

>>6254409
I thought it would be good ol' Bulette - but of thumb-size.

>CZ, use martial arts and natural weapons to root it out and take it down!

Are there any Space Monke enjoyer in the thread? If so, I'll remind to you guys "Total Worm Death" also applies here.

>>6254784
>>6254672
>>6254438
>>6254537
[Still a tie, eh? We'll leave this open a bit longer.]

>>6254427
>CZ, use martial arts and natural weapons to root it out and take it down!

All of us run at different speeds, if we get split up due to some members of our group lagging behind. The death worm will take pot shot at us, it may even be able to swallow one of our smaller party members.

this is me>>6250047
>>6248834

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>6255033
>>6254959
[Given the results with and without 1-post IDs, I think we probably ought to do a roll-off, and so I shall]

Rolled 15, 19, 11 = 45 (3d20)

>>6255126
“Fuck… If we run, well end up split up. Easy pickins. An’ then we’ll have ta stop ‘n grab whoever gets zapped. CZ?”

“Got it!”

You cast your fancy new magic spear aside with a thump, and hope nothing happens to it. You don’t know what it does yet, but you still fully intend to find out. Right now, though, what you need is to slip into something a little more comfortable.

<WANT: 13>

You will your hands to shift shape once more into the talons with which you were born. Fine fingers broaden and extend into elongated knives. Your palms become rugose with thick green scales, like a spreading fungus, while thick reddish fur sprouts up across the back of your hands and forearms. You feel a tingling in your tailbone, and upon your head; a wave of panic rises within you. You squint your eyes and hurriedly grasp at your head, willing the burgeoning horns not to break the skin.

“CZ!”

You regain control and, rather than waste another moment and lose your tunneling target, you seize upon its slimy surface with supernatural strength, sinking Hellish natural weapons through the mucosal sheathe and into the soft red flesh beneath.

ZZZTT!

3d20 Occultism for Spell Resistance, DC 14

Rolled 18, 1, 1, 12 = 32 (4d20)

>>6255133
You feel a full-body tingle—no, more like an itch. You smell the scent of burning hair and fabric, and are so, SO glad you didn’t wear your beautiful new oriental dress. Apart from that, though?

19: magic resisted!

“Heh, kinda tickles…”

The giant worm shrieks, but rather than stopping its descent, it speeds up.

“WOAH! Shiiit!!”

You feel yourself pulled off your feet as the crimson coils writhe beneath you, and before you can react, you are being pulled down into a hole just barely wide enough to accommodate you… Let alone you, clinging to the side of the great worm. Your first thought is to sink your claws in deeper, to hold on against the scraping earth as the worm drags you along. But then, you remember:

“Oh, right! I know <Alter Self>!”

Thanks to Ayla’s lessons refining your own shape-changing capabilities, you are no longer limited to fairly superficial external modifications; rather, you can change shape AND size, You do so now, in fairly dramatic fashion; the stretchy undersuit of your gem-studded, metal-plated boglin armour strains as you approach orcish proportions, and so you limit yourself to those of one of the shorter breeds of Man instead. It’s still enough to let you brace your feet against either side of the hole you would otherwise have been hauled down.

“Rrr… RRRAAAAUGH!”

With an admittedly unladylike bellow, you wrench backwards upon the flesh of your foe. The soft outer layer is ripped open, coating your hoary hands and blue-silver sleeves in blood. Well, not like you could wear the gauntlets anyway, if you wanted to pull a stunt like this… You’ll just have to ask the blueberry brigade back at the dungeon how they wash their uniforms.

(And it was getting’ kinda stinky, anyway…)

With one last grunt of exertion, you attempt to rip the slimy son-of-a-bitch out of the soil.

4d20 for Natural Weapons + half of Shapeshifting (rounded down)…

Rolled 3 (1d3)

>>6255136

Rolled 1 (1d8)

>>6255140
1…

The worm rips free of your grip, leaving stripped off chin and bloody flesh in your grasp. It screams in pain, and begins to thrash violently, throwing you off. You’re launched skyward, and come crashing down hard.

“CZ!”

“Gghhh…”

Another 1…

You’re winded, but not out of the fight. All your allies are watching your war upon the worm so intently. They’re watching with fear, with surprise, with disgust but also admiration. You can feel their eyes—their emotions. It makes you feel huge, powerful, HEROIC.

You want to feel more of this.

You rise, not to your full height, but to all fours. Your hips pop and crack, your spine shrinks and changes its curve. On all fours like an animal, you hurl yourself forward. In an instant, you are upon the great burrowing beasty, but not with claws this time: rather, you, lift off on your arms and throw your booted hooves into a full-body flying kick, aimed squarely at the centre of the worm’s side.

…and 18!
3 damage, 2 soaked.
Death-worm’s HP: 9/15
6 more will kill it!


You don’t do a lot of damage, but you DO hit it so hard that you rip a section of the elongated organism out of the ground. It isn’t the whole worm, but it’s at least a six or seven feet of segmented, slimy meat, including the gasping screeching ‘face’ of the thing. Yu have no idea how much ass this freak is trailing behind it, but I’s no matter: if it’s capable of recoiling back into its burrow backwards, it doesn’t demonstrate that ability. Rather, it begins thrashing this way and that, spitting wads of dirt-filled gunk nearly at random.

Rolling for target...

Rolled 1, 5, 2 = 8 (3d20)

>>6255141

Rolled 7, 15, 9 = 31 (3d20)

>>6255142

Rolled 1 (1d8)

>>6255145

Rolled 2, 13, 6, 20 = 41 (4d20)

>>6255146
The worm’s wild-fired projectile assault is so haphazard as to go wide and hit nothing but empty steppe… With one unfortunate exception.

“ZZ!”

“Heh, me? Bad move, ya overgrown slug!”

As the wad of compacted earth and digestive juice comes hurtling at your Sister’s face, she raises not her rad-saber, but her trusty scimitar, and with a backhanded swing bats it right back.

Death-worm critically fumbles!

What passes for a ‘head’ on this ugly invertebrate is knocked back. Already reared up , it now wobbles and totters as if stunned.

“NOW!”

At your sister’s command, the Monstrous Regiment rallies. Those close to melee range rush to meet it, but before any of them can, Yeb-Uit’s arrow finds it…

15 to hit, 1 for damage: negated by damage soak.

Though to little effect. Right behind the missile, though, are Murbal and Xoldur, one with radiant saber and one with shining steel shield.

>>6255149
Murbal, perhaps driven by her earlier humiliation, arrives first, and she meets her three-time assailant with all the force of a charging bull.

CRITICAL HIT! Murbal does a minimum of 6 damage with her shield, so…

She hit it so hard that the resultant electrical pulse can’t throw her back—at least, not before she’s delivered a sideways chop with the roundel’s edge, so savage in its strength as to plainly decapitate the worm. You all watch as both halves squirm and thrash for a few seconds, until with a wide grin, Murbal brings her shield down again, and splatters the boneless forefront of the steppe-worm flat, scattering its teeth across the terrain.

A moment later, Xoldur and you drag out another ten feet of the coiling red rope from its hidey-hole and splay it out upon the ground, for all your party to survey your conquest.

…the death-worm is slain!

“…So, uh, not the hundun, hey?” you eventually say.

Zith-Zi clucks her tongue and shakes her head. She returns to patting the dirt and debris off of her wolf-pelt. An-Yii and Dura investigate the corpse, carefully, and using An’s medical kit they begin to see what can be salvaged from the slain creature. You, for your part…

>Suggest pressing on imemdiately
[Everyone rolls to avoid exhaustion, no more random encounter rolls before the mountains]
>Suggest making camp
[Murbal finishes healing and recuperates, An-Yii and Dura get to roll to harvest resources from the worm; chance of random encounter; downtime post]

>>6255163
>Suggest making camp
We bothered to fight it, so may as well collect the spoils.

>>6255163
>Suggest making camp
thanks, Murbal

>>6255163
>Suggest making camp
We killed the thing. Might as well use it.

Am >>6254672

>>6255335
>>6255179
>>6255171

“Even if it ain’t the hundun, it’s still a hell’ve a kill, yeah?”

“Yeah, ain’t bad. Not sure how ta make a decent story outta killin’ a bigass worm, but…”

“You can brainstorm it while we rest.”

“Rest? We ain’t been walkin’ THAT long.”

“It’d give the healers time ta collect some goop. MAGCI goop. Could be useful, right?”

“Hm… it’d give ‘em time to finish fixin’ Murball, too. Aright. HEY, REGIMENT! WE’RE RESTIN’!”

You are glad for the pause in adventuring, too. You still have fond memories of that picnic at Sunset Lake, when the Monstrous Regiment was first names. Out here, under an unbroken sky, cozy in your luxurious new city-made and alchemically-treated blankets, with your high-end foodstuffs in lieu of mere trail rations? Every night on the road is practically a picnic! And for that matter, your party’s gotten so much bigger.

In particular, you’ve been meaning to catch up with…

>Yeb-Uit, and how he’s holding up since the forge did its work on him, body and soul
>Murbal, to compliment her wrk backtehre, and to ask what the deal is with her shield, anyway?
>Xoldur, to share the skull you collected and ask about the local orc hordes…
>Dura, to help identify your magic items (and maybe cozy up a bit, against the cold?)
>An-Yii, who’d originally intended to go back to New Goblintown… Is that still on the itinerary? (Or did Ayla’s mentalism push that from her mind entirely?)
>ZZ, to touch base and make plans for the hundun… And maybe to alleviate some of the guilt you feel from letting Ayla wash her brain?
>Write-in

>>6255386
>Murbal, to compliment her wrk backtehre, and to ask what the deal is with her shield, anyway?
or
>Dura, to help identify your magic items (and maybe cozy up a bit, against the cold?)
Though I’d gladly support ZZ if it’s contested

>>6255386
>>An-Yii, who’d originally intended to go back to New Goblintown… Is that still on the itinerary? (Or did Ayla’s mentalism push that from her mind entirely?)

>>6255386
>An-Yii, who’d originally intended to go back to New Goblintown… Is that still on the itinerary? (Or did Ayla’s mentalism push that from her mind entirely?)

>>6255386
>Murbal, to compliment her wrk backtehre, and to ask what the deal is with her shield, anyway?

>>6255386
>ZZ, to touch base and make plans for the hundun… And maybe to alleviate some of the guilt you feel from letting Ayla wash her brain?
It’s been some time.

Am >>6255335

>>6255410
>>6255434
>>6255447
>>6255594
>>6255629
[Well, bad news: I'm sick, and it screwed up my whole weekend, and made me miss work]

[Good news: locked and writing!]

>>6255675
You are a little awkward about approaching An-Yii at first. After all, your last ‘one-on-one’ with her involved you peering into her troubled dreamscape, and beholding a melange of bitterness over her time in slavery, her guilt over the abortions and infanticides which she had necessarily (but messily) performed for the sake of the resource-limited gobs of New Goblintown and the Wastes, and her particular fears of… Well… YOU.

Which is all to say that you’re not really surprised when she jumps at the sound of your voice, and is hesitant to leave Dura’s side to come have a chat with you, alone.

(It still stings, though…)

She does it, though: An-Yii, always with one twitching eye towards the exit, follows you off to the outskirts of the group. You’re grateful, and especially glad because you intend to more than mend fences with your party-member.

“What do you want?” the goblin nurse asks bluntly.

“Well, uh… You know, I just thought I’d check in on ya.”

Your initial attempt at opening the conversation is lame, and you both know it. You cringe at your won vague evasiveness; Any-Yii cocks an eyebrow and taps a foot.

“I got stuff ta do, in case you ain’t noticed,” An-Yii says, glancing back to where Dura is still stirring a pot of slime.

You both watch the orc witch daintily prod the goopy admixture, only for her abundant black hair to frizzle and fluff out as hr body seizes. She pulls her hand back and very nearly sucks the singed tip of a finger before, thinking better of it, she wipes it off instead.

“Looks, like, real promisin’,” you say charitably.

An-Yii huffs and glares, taking offence. You shift to a new approach.

“I was just wonderin’… Like, why yer still here?”

An-Yii’s eyes widen, and she bares her misaligned, sharp little goblin teeth. You hold up both hands in an appeasing gesture that cuts off whatever scathingly-snarky reply she has just loaded up before she launches it.

“I jus’ meant, like, you were so keen on goin’ back ta New Goblintown! Ya know, bringin’ everyone better medicine ‘n shit? I’m glad yer here… We all are… But, like, are ya still plannin’ ta go back?”

(Or, more to the point though you cannot say so: how deep did Ayla’s brainwashing session go? Did it scrub her clean? If so… What does that mean for ZZ?)

>>6255701
An-Yii is caught off-guard by the question, and seems to lose some of her bluster. She scratches at her chin and neck idly, looking away from you for a moment to think. Realizing she’s taken her gaze off of a dangerous and demonic entity, her eyes snap back with a wave of fear. You do your best to ignore it, and to not take offence, and eventually she musters a reply.

“I don’t know when,” she says. “I’m goin’ back. But… Until this new kit, I didn’t have shit ta bring ‘em. An’ until… Until this whole mess with the Ettercap ‘n the forge, maybe that woulda’ bin enough. But now?”

An-Yii’s eyes drift across the camp, not to Dura this time, but to Yeb-Uit. You sense a few flickers of feeling from her as she finds him: a tingly pang of lust between her legs, a constricted ball of repressed affection in her chest, and up high in her head… Hope.

“If I can bring some a what that forge’s got ta the gobs back home, well, that’d make all the other medicine I can give look like so much shit, ya know?”

“Ya wanna turn ‘em all… Like, inta nilbogs?”

“Nil-whats?” An-Yii looks back to you, tone sharp.

“Like, goblin backwards. Like ZZ, ‘n… I guess kidna like Yeb-Uit now?”

“They’re not the same,” An-Yii argues. “Zith-Zi’s a… She ain’t no proper goblin. I guess she was once, but look at ‘er.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Ain’t it?” An-Yii counters. “Ask her yerself, ‘n I bet she’d agree! She’s too good fer our shit. You think she’s ever goin’ back ta New Goblintown? Fat chance.”

You close your mouth and furrow your brow. You have nothing to say to that. You think she might even be right.

“But Yeb…” An’s voice turns faintly dreamy as her eyes find him again. “He’s just himself, but more, ya’ know? An’ it didn’t jus’ make him bigger, taller, or stronger, or even jus’ younger. You know what agin’ IS, Cara-Zi?”

“Carazzi,” you quietly correct, which only elicits a tut from An-Yii.

“Agin’,” she continues, “is the build-up of all the other aches ‘n pains ‘n diseases ‘n shit of yer life. All th’ stuff ya’ normally heal… or the illnesses that gobs’re usually just immune to. They all start stickin’, eatin’ away… ‘N after we went out inta that blizzard, Yeb was getting’ bad. I didn’t even know if he was gonna’… That he had a lot longer, ya’ know?”

(You resist the urge to ask how this factored into An-Yii’s decision to fuck him, but only just barely.)

“Now… Now I bet he’ll outlive half a’ New Goblintown,” An-Yii concludes. “Die healthier, too. He’s… He’s like if a goblin never had anythin’ bad happen to ‘im all his life. Just physically PERFECT.”

(You do have to admit: Yeb-Uit DOES look kind of hot, even if he ain’t exactly your type. You get it!)

>>6255702
“So,” you hazard a guess, “you wanna bring the forge’s magic ta New Goblintown?”

An-Yii’s expression shifts slightly. Assuming you’ve guessed wrong, you try again:

“Oh! Or, wait, you wanna bring ‘em all ta the dungeon, right?”

An-Yii’s expression contorts further. Her eyes seem to go somewhat foggy, and she lowers her head into her hands with a groan. Worried for her, you take a step forwards and reach out with a hand, but she recoils and steps further away.

“An?” you whisper.

“I’m… I’m still thinkin’ about it,” she says vaguely. “I don’t really know what… What the best thing ta do would be.”

“Well,” you think aloud, “I don’t think we could move all the gem-eggs out there, ‘n even if we could, without that pyramid thingie I sabotaged, I don’t know how we’d run it…”

An-Yii grimaces.

“So I guess we’d have ta bring the goblins down here!” you conclude.

“We can’t,” An-Yii snaps.

Now it’s your turn to adopt a quizzical expression. “Why not?”

“We… We jus’ can’t, okay?!”

After that, An-Yii isn’t very open to further conversation. You know why, too: you could feel it shimmering within her, coiled up within her aura, pulling back and down upon all her initative.

Ayla’s psychic influence, telling her: don’t leave, don’t tell anyone, stay her, keep helping.

“Damn,” you murmur to yourself, equal parts impressed and worries.

You find yourself frequently stealing looks at ZZ—at HER aura—but without any query to prompt it, her energies look normal. When she interacts with Yeb-Uit, though, THEN you see it: a flicker of the same insidious influence, affecting her perception.

“Damn,” you say again, like a curse.

Yet you can’t bring yourself to confront her, let aloen to undo what has been done. Not yet.

‘Physically perfect,’ An-Yii had called Yeb-Uit—and she’d know since you sense her slip into his sleeping bag later that night, and then feel the rhythmic pulses of pleasure ripple the air with each muffled gas.

<WANT: 14>


You squirm with the psychic sensations, and also with the promise, the potential. Physical perfection? That could be you! And spiritual perfection, too. Just as soon as you’re done this mission, as soon as you have the hundun and hand it off to Ziwei Bo, as soon as Ayla’s finished her work…

“Just a little longer,” you promise the ache within.

Do you spend your night alone?
>Yes [+1 WANT]
>Actually, maybe, uh, it’s might be nice to check in on Dura…? [illicit romance, chance to reduce <WANT>]
>Maybe ZZ wants ta cuddle, like you used to? [holds <WANT> steady]
>Now seems like a good time to maybe commune with the Dark Gods… You know, get their take on all this? [???]

>>6255703
>Actually, maybe, uh, it’s might be nice to check in on Dura…? [illicit romance, chance to reduce <WANT>]

>>6255703
>Now seems like a good time to maybe commune with the Dark Gods… You know, get their take on all this? [???]
we didn't contact our boss(?) in a long time now

>>6255703
>Now seems like a good time to maybe commune with the Dark Gods… You know, get their take on all this? [???]

>Now seems like a good time to maybe commune with the Dark Gods… You know, get their take on all this? [???]

>>6255703
>Maybe ZZ wants ta cuddle, like you used to? [holds <WANT> steady]
The whole point of our quest is to be with Martyn. We’re not cheating on him.

Contacting the dark gods to tell them… what, exactly? A mage brainwashed our friends? The transformation egg? Neither of them we have on hand right now.

Am>>6255629

>>6255703
I don’t mind
>Maybe ZZ wants ta cuddle, like you used to? [holds <WANT> steady]
But I was never on the Martyn train- he enables our worst tendencies to mold ourselves into something HE wants, not something WE want. He never accepted us for who we are, as we are.

Fuck him- go with someone else, or stay celibate.

>>6255762
>>6255791
>>6255816
>>6256031
>>6256124
>>6256205
[Locked and writing shortly!]

>>6256312
It’s been a long while since you checked in with your, uh, OTHER teacher. Or your sensei’s sensei, you guess? Whatever you want to call him, the last time you checked in with The Nothic was before your party and the blueberries ended the Ettercap. At the time, you were peeved at the paranormal eyeball-monster, thinking he’d left you and everyone else for dead down in that dungeon… But as it turned out, he brought you Ayla, and all the opportunities that have arrived with her tutelage!

Maybe it’s time you say ‘thank you’?

Back at Sunset Lake, you’d have needed to go find somewhere private to commune with the enigmatic entity, speaking words of power and offering up a sacrifice. That still wouldn’t hurt, if you wanted to ask a favour but you don’t right now. Or, well, at least you aren’t sure what you would ask for. Mostly, you just want his (its?) input on your plans, for the hundun and beyond. For something so simple, the meditative techniques Ayla has taught you ought to suffice.

You slide into your sleeping bag, alone apart from Nermal’s clammy-yet-comforting presence snoozing at your side. You give them an affectionate pat glance at your newly slimy hand, and wipe it off on the side of your bag (the churned-up, dusty grass does you no good) before settling in, shutting your eyes, and drifting into dreaming…

No, not dreaming. The Dreamscape.

>>6256371
When you open your eyes and behold it, the Dreamscape is not so different from the waking world. It is fuzzy, foggy, as if you were perceiving everything through a veil of tears induced by a stinging smoke. Your eyes don’t hurt here, though, and there are patches of brightness and of clarity when you sit up and look around you. Each bright spot is centred upon a sleeping companion: Zith-Zi, Murbal, Xoldur, Dura. You look towards An-Yii’s empty bag and decide it might be wise not to look towards Yeb-Uit’s—they, uh, still ain’t sleeping.

(Plus, gobs aren’t s’posed to have much connection to the Dreamscape anyway…)

Curiously, Nermal—like Hershy—has only a faint, ephemeral halo of light around their eyeless, feeler-faced noggin. As Ayla had explained it to you, it was a matter of xīn. Among Eastern cultivators, the Dreamscape was called Xīnjiè, and was regarded as both an aspect of the self and a spatial dimension—“like a demiplane,” she’d said, but you didn’t really understand what that meant, either.

What you took away was that it’s a sort of space-between-spaces or a layer of reality, not unlike where True Fey went when they ‘disappeared’ and became aethereal, except anyone (or anything) with sufficient xīn (which was something like imagination, aspiration, or self-awareness) can access it! Because animals live most in the material world and do not reflect deeply on the past or future, or have the same vivid imaginations as intelligent races, their connection is weak. Goblinoid races, with their ‘soulless’ nature and spell resistance, typically have an even more distant connection. But humans, elves, orcs, and all sorts of beastmen and such? Their unconscious selves drift into the periphery of the Dreamscape, when they sleep, and the interaction produces dreams!

“But those of us with one foot in the realm of aether—of immaterial spirit—can access it most easily and deliberately. Even MORESO, for those of us who cultivate our qi.”

You steal a glance at your sleeping body. In your sleep, your features drift and droop slightly, deprived of conscious control. Your jaw sags open, tusks protruding slightly for a thickened lower lip. Dull and grey in the Dreamscape, your rough-looking skin attests to the greenish pallor you must now possess. If your eyes were open, you bet they’d be aglow.

“Soon,” you whisper to yourself, as you reach down to stroke your face. When you see that your fingers again end in wicked, battle-ready meat hooks, you withdraw the gesture.

“So you are the new game-piece, upon my brother’s board?”

>>6256373
Your head snaps up at the sound of the voice. It’s in your own head, so even as you cast your gaze hither and tither, you have no earthly (or dreamish) idea where to begin looking.

“Hello?” you hazard. “Uh… Is that you, um, Sensei Nothic?”

“Do I sound like the Nothic?” asks the voice, with a queer laugh like crackling fire, chittering vermin, or the rattle of a desert serpent’s tail. “Do I FEEL like the Nothic?”

“N-no,” you whisper.

You tremble at the sudden, oppressive pressure which closes in from every side. The luminous light of your dreaming friends is dimmed and refracted, as if by the translucent membranes of great wings. You are suffocated by the unwholesome heat of hundreds of beings breathing, in rhythm, confined somewhere without fresh air. Coils ensnare you—unseen, but as real as any possessed by the great red worm who you and your companions killed.

“What… Who ARE you?” you dare to ask.

“I am to the Nothic as the Nothic is to you,” answers the voice. “The one who made the Nothic is almost—ALMOST, but never quite—my equal. Perhaps that is why he sees fit to infringe upon my domain.”

You have no unholy idea what any of THAT is supposed to mean, and the unseen presence must sense as much, because with an indulgent rattle-hiss of laughter, it clarifies:

“I am a Goddess,” it (she?) says. “THE Goddess, for all others are pretenders, or dead, or exist in service to their mother—to ME.”

“Oh!” you say, feeling some relief. “Yer, like, a Dark God, then? Like the Nothic’s boss?”

“A TRUE God,” she corrects with an angry note of discord that makes you wince, like sharp nails scraping along the inside of your mind. “Did you not hear me, witling thing?!”

(You’re not so sure you like this Dark Goddess…)

“…Forgive me,” the Goddess says then, releasing her grip upon you, withdrawing her invisible and intangible claws from your being. “You are young. New to existence. One must make allowances. I, Mother of all Mothers, Queen of all Queens, ought to know that, oughtn’t I?”

“Uh,” you say, and stop there just to play it safe.

“See? You learn already. Such a respectful young one you are…”

Sensing an opening, and feeling a little more at ease now, you attempt to raise the obvious issue: “I was, ya know… Sort’ve tryin’ ta reach the Nothic.”

“And yet it is I who can answer you wounded heart, your curious mind, your <WANT>,” speaks the Goddess. “Who more than the Allmother knows a maiden’s heart? Who but the First Fleshweaver best understands the aches and pains of a body in flux? There is nothing my brother's pet can give you that I cannot.”

>>6256377
You glance down at your sleeping body again, now hideously half-reverted to your true, (un)natural form.

“You would change your form, and thereby change your fate,” whispers the Goddess, voice intimately close, pressure now gently massaging your mind. “With strength of will, mastery of magic, and the stolen fire of the False Gods who unjustly occupy the Heavens, you and your sister would make yourselves anew, yes?”

Seeing no reason to lie—no chance to keep a secret from such an entity, you meekly nod.

“And my scheming brother… He would take advantage of this desire to make you do his dirty-work… To help him make a new race, to serve his purposes.”

(…Wait, what?)

“The goblin archer… You have seen what has become of him, yes?”

“Oh, you mean, Yeb-UIt? His horns, ‘n scales, ‘n… All that?”

“Indeed.” Another laugh. “And more, so much more. He is just the beginning, the crude first draft of a Grand Design in the making. Even for creations’ creation, sleeping alongside you, he has plans… Plans which he ought to have consulted upon with his dear sister.”

You blink, and look at Nermal, wetly snoring.

“From your friends—from your family—he would populate a people who would serve him. Who would share in his secrets… At least, those he designs to share.” The Goddess’ tone turns critical here. “But he has never understood the beauty of chaos, of nature, of pleasant surprise. So tightly does he seek to control the process that he would shape your bodies, your minds, forever… Never allowing them to evolve without interference, and making no allowance for my own plans, my other children. My Beholder brother has no appetite for the unexpected, nor for sharing, and he is not so subtle as he supposes himself.”

You feel a pang of fear, and can’t help but ask: “So yer gonna, like… Try ta stop him? A-an’ me?”

“Oh, no, little one!” coos the presence in your mind, taking you in an even-closer embrace which threatens to squeeze the sense from your soul. “I merely wish to help you be your own things, true, free, fully-realized!”

“Oh,” you say, and then feeling something else is expected: “Good!”

“All good things,” purrs the voiceless voice of the Dark Goddess. “To the truly faithful.”

>>6256379
“Well, uh,” you clear your throat. “Maybe we could start with, you know…”

>The hundun: what does she know about it, and where is it?
>The magic items you found: what do they do, and how do you use them?
>The Path of the Pure Self… The Void Vessel… What will you become?
>Is there any power—any spell or ability—she can gift you to help in the hunt,a nd beyond?
>Martyn Meadowgrass… You love him, you think, but he’s been a little weird since the shirin incident. Can she show you his heart?
>Write-in

“And in return?”

“In return?” You begin to panic.

“Calm yourself, child,” says the Dark Goddess. “All things come at a price, whether we know it or not. Any so-called god who tells you otherwise is lying. But I will not take rapaciously of you. I am your ally… A mother to you, as all my children in Darkness.”

You will offer…
>The enchanted orc skull
>The magic spear
>The Patmo-Shokan armour
>Nermal
>Your loyalty [!!!]
>Your firstborn child [???]
>Write-in

Choose one boon for every offer you make. Write-ins are allowed, but may be modified or vetoed. Loyalty, Nermal, and the firstborn child count double, allowing two boons each

>>6256382
>Martyn Meadowgrass… You love him, you think, but he’s been a little weird since the shirin incident. Can she show you his heart?
>Is there any power—any spell or ability—she can gift you to help in the hunt,a nd beyond?
>How do we KILL the Nothic, fuck that guy

>The enchanted orc skull
>The magic spear
>Nermal
>Your loyalty [!!!]
Last two are for Nothic killing since that's a big ask

>>6256382
>The hundun: what does she know about it, and where is it? (2)
>The magic items you found: what do they do, and how do you use them? (3)
>The Path of the Pure Self… The Void Vessel… What will you become? (1)
order of importance

>The enchanted orc skull
>Your loyalty [!!!]

>>6256455
I don't think she'd kill the nothic

>>6256473
Um I'm offering two double boons for it. That's a total of four (4) boons. Plus we'll never know if we don't ask. Don't forgot how hard he screwed us over with the Ettercap.

>>6256492
>>6256473
[I'll allow it, with a roll for whether she'll go for it that will have a lower DC the more you offer.]

>>6256382
>Is there any power—any spell or ability—she can gift you to help in the hunt,a nd beyond?
If we must choose
>Conditional Firstborn, and outright refuse Loyalty and Nermal
Look, I can maybe deal with the firstborn if we’re only the donor, not the carrier, and I’d even contemplate sacrificing an enemy baby or twelve just for the novelty, but I’m leery on loyalty even though it’s a freebie, and I’m definitely not sacrificing Nermal for questions we could find out by ourselves.

If that’s not on the table, sacrificing loot is preferable, but I’d rather CZ learn about her loot herself instead of destroying it.

>>6256382
>The hundun: what does she know about it, and where is it?
>The Path of the Pure Self… The Void Vessel… What will you become?

>The enchanted orc skull
>The magic spear
Sure, what the hell. We got this for “free”. Besides, spear and magic’s not much use if we’re in the wrong direction.

Am >>6256124

>The hundun: what does she know about it, and where is it?
>The Path of the Pure Self… The Void Vessel… What will you become?

>The enchanted orc skull
>The magic spear

>>6256799
>>6256664
>>6256530
>>6256473
>>6256455
[Alright, locked and writing!]

>>6256837

“Are those any good?”

You fight against the oppressive weight of this dark mother’s attention to lift an astral arm and to gesture towards your sleeping form, and to the pack and pike beside it: to both your new magical spear, and the enchanted orc skull, which you found in the centaur village. In response, you feel the spiritual pressure lesson, and take a deep breath of the aethereal ‘air’ of the Dreamscape; it has no physical effect, but you feel better for it.

“Hmmm… Yes, I think these will do nicely.”

“Then I got two questions,” you declare. “Uh, if that’s okay?”

“Speak, oh daughter of Darkness.”

You gulp, but press on… And first things first!

“How do we hutn a hundun?” You ask, then blanch. “W-wait, I mean, like, what Isa hundun? Or… Shit, we know what it is, but I mean, uh….”

“What do you take me for?” The pressure is upon you again, and less friendly than before. “I am no lesser shadow, no weakling being of acrid smoke and errant desire, to require riddles, and uphold Hellish contract-magic of exact terms. I am a Goddess!”

You buckle under the buffeting force of the unseen presence, the Dreamscape trembling around you, and the fog pressing in on every side and swirling inward as if to envelop and consume you… But it abates.

“I will answer all your questions about the creature,” soothes the Dark Goddess, “without trickery or guile.”

“Oh,” you say quietly.

“You are wise indeed to ask me, child,” she continues, “for that which you chase is a child of mine, also… Near and dear to me, a fruit of my own loins.”

You feel some trepidation at this, wodneirng if it’s really okay with her if you hunt what sounds to be her KID… But she goes on, so you guess it must be.

“The being which the weakling children of the False Gods call ‘Hùndùn’ is, in truth, the product of another hunt. I times long before the first dragon or elf, when the pretender-gods first saw fit to infect existence with their frailty and foolishness, all of creation was WAR… But not war as you know it, young one.”

>>6256864
Before your eyes, a glowing dark appears—behaving like light, and yet distinctly other than light. It then expands into a ring of dark. Within the light, wine-dark flames plat upon one another in a tapestry of hues and colours, depicting all manner of creeping and crawling thing, primordial creeping beasts too alien in their anatomy to even be bugs. They scrape and grovel beneath great, shadowy silhouettes, whose own contours defy description and yet project a greatness and majesty these petty entities lack. The small and cowering things bow and scrape before the greater darknesses, who seem to bless them, destroy them, or reach down to puck them up and eat them like grubs, at their whim… Until all eyes turn upwards with the coming of a shining star, which explodes out like the very sun in the sky, and then grows still greater, to swallow up the purple-red tapestry.

“When the first great war was ended, life was changed… Warped and twisted from ancient days, in THEIR sickly image!”

The glow dissipates, leaving the crawling and creping things far fewer in number, but many now resembling in abstract the familiar forms you know today: something not quite mammal nor reptile; fish and squid and still stranger cousins; beetles and spiders and centipedes; and a few bipedal creatures which might, maybe, be goblinoid.

“We all worked with our own materials, our own means, materials, and magic, sticking stubbornly to our ways. At that time, only -I- had the vision to see what my brethren could not: that to win, we would need to steal from those thieves who had come to steal from US... To make their power OUR power, MY power!”

The forest of half-recognized entities parts to reveal a single creature, possibly bipedal, with a big head, long and sharp-tipped ears, and a halo of light, crouched in a grove and petting some primitive and long-extinct creature. The margins creep in towards the figure, who looks up in alarm and begins to flee, just in time for the rings to close in around it. The form twists, writhes, and dissolves into formless flame.

“I found one of them, alone… A son of the Sun and Moon, tending his so-called ‘garden’, and I took him into me as a mate… As a meal… As a source of something new.”

The ring pulses, and you lean in, breath held. You gasp when it explodes outwards and there, in the middle of it, is… An egg.

“…The hundun?” you guess.

The Dark Goddess chitters in amusement, and you feel a sensation like a pat upon the head.

“Very good. Yes, the first hundun—the first of my grand experiments in crating, from the soft and supple clay of a rival creation, something WORTHY of OUR world.”

>>6256866
The egg—the hundun—splinters and shatters, limbs of a hundred types. Some end in hooves, others in wicked, barbed hooks, and still others in paws, claws, feet, hands, and strange tubules of purposes unknown to you.

“The hundun proved too delicate for my tendernesses. It broke, became… Unstable. A being of pure chaos, without predictable cycles or the capability for lasting growth, for it would revert or change far more quickly than it could accumulate experiences and iterate improvements.”

The hundun collapses in on itself, becoming a wobbling egg-shape again, rolling one way then the other, and then seeming to almost melt or deflate. You feel a pang of… Something. Recognition.

“But it was alive… And in time, life begat life again.”

From the one flattened egg pop up two, and then from those two four,a nd from those four eight, and so on and so forth.

“Eventually, the other and better races of the world which I and the others had developed came in to sweep away the primordial monsters of old…”

From the top of the shadow-play descend dragons, on great leather wings, to swash the ever multiplying eggs away in flame.

“…But a few yet persist, for in chaos, there is adaptation and opportunity.”

The dragons fly away, to the left and right, and back upwards. Eventually, a single small egg pops up from the bottom, and begins to roll away.

“That is what you now face, child: a monster of the most ancient order, a being with the makings of a demigod… If only it could focus. Alas, wisdom cannot take root in ever-shifting soil.”

“How do we find it?” you ask, worried anew at this description, for it sounds WELL beyond your usual paygrade. “How do we, uh, capture it?”

“It is a difficult thing, to predict where a being of madness will choose to be,” admits the Dark Goddess, “but begin by seeking that which it seeks: more madness. Where senses and sensations are warped and contorted, where inhibitions are abandoned, and where nature is rawest and planes practically touch… There, is the hundun drawn. And as to how to capture it… A net or pure order should suffice. A lattice of Law.”

You… Have no idea what that means, but you’re afraid to say so.

“Be careful that you do not let it escape, however,” warns the Goddess, “for without the spear—a weapon meant to mark a target, and forever thereafter find its flesh—you will have difficulty finding it again.”

Your eyes widen, and you begin to shout in protest and to turn towards your centaur spear… But your head is jerked back with no small violence by the Dark One.

“Deals with a Goddess are best not broken, cambion.”

You grit your teeth, but nod. At least now you (sort of?) have a starting point for how to lure the hundun out of hiding? You’ll just have to make sure you catch it on the first try.

“You had another question?”

>>6256868
“R-right.” You recollect yourself, and ask her then: “So I’m, uh, going down this sorta cultivation path or whatever… The Path of the Pure Self… ‘N it’s s’posed ta end in something called The Void Vessel…”

You hesitate a moment, trying to think of how to frame and phrase the query, but… Well, she said she wasn’t going to play by demon technicality rules, right?

“What’m I gonna BECOME?”

“An intriguing avenue, young one. This path, it will excise all weaknesses of flesh and spirit, beyond the paltry modifications of one such as ‘Yeb-Uit’. It will turn the spark within you from a burning flame—something which consumes to grow, and grows to consume, ever hungrier, ever changing, like the hundun itself—into something… Cleaner. Colder. A hole in this world, this universe, which never hungers and yet cannot ever be fully sated.”

“What?!” You begin to panic. “I don’t want that! That sounds fuckin’ AWFUL! Uh, pardon my goblang.”

“Do not be so certain, little one.” The Dark Goddess seems amused at your thrashing, but ‘squeezes’ upon you from all sides to hold you still. “A perfect form housing such a hole, opening that deep blackness up to swallow that which offends? You’ll be far from a True God… But mightier than any mere mortal, in flesh and in spirit. That which swallows all, can BE all, can contain MULTITUDES.”

“…Yeah?”

A great sound and pressure descends upon you. You shrink beneath it, only belated recognizing it as a sigh.

“Your brother was much better acquainted with the True Faith,” she laments, “and I can see your education in the Dark Arcana is still incomplete. Suffice it to say that the forces of this world—this universe—will struggle to do you lasting harm, or to force you to be other than that which you desire to become. A pure body and mind are beyond poison, and that poison which others feed you will only deepen the darkness within… A darkness which, with practice, you can contain and control. But if you truly wish for light in that dark, ask the Nothic's student: your master, your cousin. She will gladly help… For, as ever, a price.”

“Suffice it ta say,” you repeat, pretending that makes any gods-damned sense.

The only thing you're sure of is that the 'help for a price' she's talking about must be Ayla's. But... What price? Isn't she already helping you, pretty much for free?

“Until such time, beware those who you might have treated with,” she tells you, “the totem’s protections are no more.”

You say aloud what you’ve been thinking all this time: “Huh??”

“Think on it, cambion. I have no use for a daughter who cannot help herself.”

“Hey, but, no! Wait!”

>>6256869
No answer comes, though. You instead awake, corporeal and embodied once again. You paw yourself, feeling with mixed comfort and discomfort your demogoblin body in all its misshapen glory.

croak?

“It’s okay, Nermal,” you say. “Just… Jus’ a dream.”

You squeeze your eyes shut again, willing yourself to return to the NEW you: Carazzi Yosef, sprightly and pinkish and more-or-less female, give or take a few particulars. You slip your hairy ‘hooves’ into your boots, adjust your silvery Patmo-Shokan undersuit, and only then turn to your things.

The spar is gone.

You reach for your pack and rummage through it like a robber, only to find that, yep, the painted-up orc skull is gone, too.

You sigh, and hang your head. That was… Intense. And cryptic as shit. Are ALL gods like this, or just the Dark ones??

To judge by the sun above, it’s nearly noon. Having skulked and marched all through the night like proper gobbos, your Regiment friends are still snoozing, but they’ll be waking up soon. That afford you a little time to ruminate, though.

What is your plan to handle the hundun? How will you find or lure it, and how will you capture and contain it?

>Dunno [next update continues on with a random encounter roll as the party continues towards the mountain]
>You have an idea… [Write-in]

feel free to ask some questions for clarity, but I won't give away too much!

>>6252996
> “Drinkin’,” he deduces, “‘n dancin’.”
You raise your eyebrows at this. You’d ask ‘are you sure?’, but cocky or not, you know Yeb well enough to know he wouldn’t waste your time if he wasn’t reasonably certain. The hundun, it seems, knows how to party.
“More ‘n just an animal, then,” An-Yii suggests.

>>6256868
>“but begin by seeking that which it seeks: more madness. Where senses and sensations are warped and contorted, where inhibitions are abandoned, and where nature is rawest and planes practically touch… There, is the hundun drawn. And as to how to capture it… A net or pure order should suffice. A lattice of Law.”

Wine. That’s probably what she meant by senses being warped. Wine. Shirin. Opium(if it exists here?). That’s probably where you’ll find him.

Where nature is rawest… well, that could mean anything, really.

A net of… order and law? If she means it literally, we don’t really have something like that. I guess we could steal another spear but I don’t think it will as easy as before. They lost a skull and a spear. Metaphorically it probably means taming an area. Setting up houses (huts?), a campfire, an outhouse, and other hallmarks of civilization.

>>6256870
>You have an idea… [Write-in]

First up, Yeb. Look for places that look different to the flatlands and hills we’re currently on. Waterfalls. Forests. Mountains. Caves.

Anyii and the orcs go with him, support him.

CZ and ZZ check back at the centaur camp on the off chance the hundun is somehow there, drinking their wine or sniffing shit or whatever.

Am >>6256664

>>6256870
>You have an idea… [Write-in]
When we do locate it, we could try our hand at natural magic and draw some geometric diagrams as a prison?
We'd probably need Veigar or Ayla to even know how to do that though.

>>6256869
>“Until such time, beware those who you might have treated with,” she tells you, “the totem’s protections are no more.”
now what did we have that could be considered a totem...
>>6256935
supporting. parties with alcohol/drugs are it's best targets but dunno about the net of order thing.

>>6256953
>now what did we have that could be considered a totem...
[The now-absent decorated and enchanted orc skull.]

>>6256952
>>6256953
[Writing!]

>>6257393
You are not entirely sure what ‘totem’ the Dark deity was speaking of, or what to do about a ‘net of order’ or ‘lattice of law’. As far as the totem goes, you suspect she maybe meant the skull you gave up you get that glimpse of things-to-come. Trying to picture what a literal law-net might be makes your head hurt, so you try thinking in metaphors for a while. Can you trap a hundun in a hut, a house, a village? They’re LIKE nets of, like, civilization, right?

What you’re more confident about, at least, is the means by which to lure out a hundun. A being of unbridled and urgent hedonism? Heh. Sadly, you can’t help but relate. And if that were you, well…


…

>>6257435
…

You wake up to find an excited CZ looming over you. You startle slightly, but don’t even cry out. Though it’s been a few months since this stopped happening, you spent most of the couple years prior to that getting used to CZ being wedged next to you when you fall asleep and/or wake up; you’re used to this. You do frown, though, and push her face back a shove of your hand.

“What?” you bark, still groggy. “What is it? Ugh, it always feels the fuckin’ worst when we go ‘gainst my damn fairy bio-clock…”

“We gotta get it drunk!”

You look up at CZ, eye twitching, uncomprehending. What the FUCK is she talking about??

“The hundun!” she clarifies quickly, picking up on your confusion. “Or well, we gotta make it think it could GET drunk, if it came ta us! Really, like, what WE should do is get drunk OURSELVES. Or find someone who is, stake out their party? That’s less fun, though…”

“CZ,” you interrupt bluntly, “what th’ actual fuck are you talkin’ ‘bout?”
“I figured out that hunduns ’re draw ta things that intoxicate people! Ya know, like booze, shirin, poppyseed… Uh… I dunno, huffin’ centaur shit, whatever they do ‘round here for fun!”

“I dunno that centaur shit works like unicorn…” You smirk. “That was a hell’ve a time, huh?”

“Oh yeah, I think I remember that…” CZ scratches the top of her head as she tries to share in the pre-split memory of your early days, and the caravan you ‘n the other gobs knocked over for dried alchemical ingredients. “It doesn’t really matter, though… Like, we just need a way ta get lit ‘n crazy!”

“and how do you know this?” you probe.

CZ shrinks a little—like, actually, physically.

“Cara… Carazzi, where did you learn all a’ this?”

“…Around. Uh, secret mage methods?”

CZ is a fair liar, usually, ‘cause she’s a part of you and you’re a fine-ass liar yourself. But lying to you, directly? She’s less adept at that.

You sigh. You don’t push, though. Thinking about messing with what CZ and Ayla have got going feels intrusive, eve kind of RUDE, considering all that Ayla’s done for both your sister and Yeb-Uit, and may well soon do for you and your adventuring company moving forward.

“Well, fuckin’, okay. Did ya magic-up any other options that don’t involve either us bein’ half in th’ bag when it shows up, or surrounded by dumb ‘n drunk civvies?”

“Well, uh,” CZ scrambles, a little thrown off by your quick acquiescence. “We could look for somewhere real nature-y, somewhere more rugged than these flatlands are. Ya know, like the, uh… Well, the mountains we’re headed inta, I guess.”

“Right.”

>>6257436
CZ winces at your clear disappointment and irritation. You feel a little bad, and rein it in a little. Honestly, the less sleepy you are, the less your head hurts, and the more you do begin to see the opportunity here. Maybe you could set some kinda trap?”

Which is when CZ tells you about the fact—SOMEHOW now known to your sorcerous sister—that you need some sort of ‘law lattice’ to trap a hundun.

“What, a regular old net ain’t good enough?” You throw up your hands. “What, a net ain’t ‘civilized’ enough? There a lot’ve fuckin’ woven, corded, weighted fuckin’ NETS out in the wild, are there?!”

CZ quails, and again you calm yourself. In gesture to CZ, you reach out uncertainly, and then grasp your shadow’s shoulder. She looks up.

“Hey,” you say, “look, good work, huh? Really. WHATEVER ya did, however you did it, this is good. If we’d just gone in without a plan, we coulda been lookin’ for weeks and found fuck-all. Or we woulda’ found it an’, not knowin’ ‘bout the whole order-net thing, we woulda got ourselves killed or lost it forever.”

CZ brightens, and leans into you hand, and then your body. You roll your eyes as she clings close to you, squeezing you in a hug.

(A hug which, eventually, you do return.)

“I really can’t figure out what the law-net even IS,” she confesses into your ear.

“Well, that’s what the Boss is here for, right?” you say, and pry her off of you so that you can get your armour back on. “Right, here’s what I’m feelin’…”


>You’ll press on to the mountains, seeking signs of civilization or at least of travellers’ revelry—or the hundun’s—and scouting the immediate surroundings for likely lairs in natural spaces nearby.

>You’ve got some booze in your rations. You’d been saving the good, strong stuff for after the after-adventure picnic, but you could bust it out early, get the party drunk and dancing, and then… Legitimately jut try a weighted net?
>>Actually, you have a more compelx trap in mind... [specify]

>Your Regiment will change directions for the nearest settlement which looks riotous and rowdy enough to draw out an alcoholic spirit-being. You’ll stake out there and see if the hundun crashes their party?
>>Specify: making yourself known to the villagers, or secretly? Drinking as well, or staying sober?

>Actually, does CZ have any of that green shirin? Taking that stuff one time let you plainly see the fairies around where Tips lives… Maybe you’ll seek out and seek aid from the local Fair Folk?

>Write-in

>>6257437
>Actually, does CZ have any of that green shirin? Taking that stuff one time let you plainly see the fairies around where Tips lives… Maybe you’ll seek out and seek aid from the local Fair Folk?
The hardest drugs are always the answer
What if we get it so drunk it conks out and then draw a circle of binding around it?

>>6257437
>Actually, does CZ have any of that green shirin? Taking that stuff one time let you plainly see the fairies around where Tips lives… Maybe you’ll seek out and seek aid from the local Fair Folk?

>>6257437
>>Actually, does CZ have any of that green shirin? Taking that stuff one time let you plainly see the fairies around where Tips lives… Maybe you’ll seek out and seek aid from the local Fair Folk?
Wish we had Fred from scooby-gang with us for an elaborated trap involving Hieromancy

[We'll likely be missing tonight's update, as I'm going to a comedy show with a bud of mine. See you tomorrow!]

[For now, [blue]let me know if you have any thoughts or questions on the hundun, the hunt arc, the eastern steppe, or the lore.[/blue] Thank you all for playing!]

>>6257760
Lmao he tried to use OP formatting options from a phone

Uuuuh
If we knew high school geometry, could we use it to trap the hundun?

>>6258002
>Lmao he tried to use OP formatting options from a phone
[I was, perhaps, no firing on all cylinders, lol. Still not today, but for different reasons. Udpate will probably come in a little bit, after a nap.]

>If we knew high school geometry, could we use it to trap the hundun?
[While barely literate and not geniuses, both CZ and ZZ know enough practical adventuring and bandit "trade knowledge" to effectively know some geometry and whatnot, in the sense that a high-level athlete knows enough about arcs and angles to plan plays and aim shots. You could give something like that a go!]

[No, sorry guys... Between hangover, exhaustion, and getting over my illness, I just cannot seem to write anything substantial today. I'm going to take today off too, and do my best tomorrow. Sorry all, but I don't want to half-ass a shirin trip update -- they're fun for me!]

>>6258361
It’s alright. Take your time.

>>6258361
It's okay. With home work, wouldn't had time to read in last 2 days anway

Rolled 9, 20, 5, 17, 9, 15, 14 = 89 (7d20)

>>6258002
>>6257461
>>6257517
>>6257645
[Alright, back at it. We're writing!]

Rolled 8 + 1 (1d10 + 1)

>>6258921

>>6258921
>>6258922
You mull over your options for a while as the rest of the Monstrous Regiment rouses and readies for the hike ahead. When no such march materializes, they variously express relief (An-Yii), impatience and frustration (Murbal), or an expectant acceptance (Yeb-Uit and Xoldur).

“Why no go? Fight! Hundun fight!”

You wave away Murbal’s pestering—and the more subtle questioning the others attempt—until you’ve settled upon a course of action. The rest of the party-members eventually busy themselves packing up camp or finish their other duties: Murbal is wrangled into sitting still long enough to finish getting slathered with soothing salve for her worm-inflicted burns by her fellow she-orc. Meanwhile, An-Yii collects, tests, and preserves the collected secretions of the thing, from its exterior and especially for a series of nodule-shaped organs which she and Ye-Buit are able to extract from shallow pits along the floppy red carcass and carefully squeeze out.

Success for Dura’s Potioncraft + Herbalism, using ingredients from An-yii’s fully-stocked kit: Murbal heals to full! 35/35 HP.

Critical success for An-Yii’s Medical roll to collect ingredients (despite DC 17 for outside specialty) Gained: 5 uses of death-worm venom!

If the hundun likes to party, well, you have means to make that happen. You could change course and find some locals to stake out or stay with… But after the centaur village, and knowing orcs are in the area, you’re not so sure you want the risk. You have your booze intended for a celebration upon the creature’s capture. That said, you don’t really want to waste it on a trap; the idea of fighting this mysterious, apparently highly-magical monster while plastered doesn’t strike you as especially wise either. Eventually, you hop down from the stunted boulder serving as your seat to ask:

“CZ! You still got some of that green shirin shit?”

“Huh? Oh, u-uh, yeah,a bit. Why?”

You grin. ‘A bit’ is perfect. It’s been years since you’ve partaken in any of this stuff, but back in the day, you did a bit of the powder with Tip—not Veigar, the REAL Tips—at his weird little Feycraft commune near Hawksong. It’s the sort of experience that sticks with a girl, and while you haven’t really been tempted to indulge again, one element stuck with you: its propensity to literally expand one’s perceptions to other dimensions of reality. You don’t need to fly high as a kite—you just need to get buzzed enough to catch fairies flying by on the periphery.

“You sure, ZZ?” asks CZ worriedly. “It’s, uh… It can be pretty intense.”

“I ‘member, and I can handle it.” You brush your sister’s well-meaning concern off with casual confidence. “Plus, I got you lot trip-sittin’.”

>>6258934
There are some grumbles from the Regiment’s rank, though no revolt. Murbal (and Xoldur, though he’s a bit more patient about it) just wants to bust up more monsters, even after the worm incident. The gobs are naturally skeptical of what amounts to playing the role of ‘sober friend’ while you get blitzed.

“I do have enough for two’ve you, actually,” CZ says once she’s probed around in her paper parcel a little. “Could be good ta have some back-up that can see what you can?”

“Two’ve US?” You raise an eyebrow. “What you sayin’ you don’t wanna come with?”

“Oh, uh… No, I didn’t mean, like…”

She trails off, with evident uncertainty. In truth, you’re not sure who—if anyone—you would ‘bring along’ to meet any fairies. You decide to think on this as well, as you and the regiment continue on towards the mountains; having a plan now, you still want to be closer to lush nature—well, the sort of nature with trees, and waterfalls, and shit which attracts fairies—before you ingest the green ‘spice’.

The steppe rolls out before you, gold and dun and wind-whipped, but it doesn’t stay flat for long. By mid-day, the land’s shrugging off its yellow-green skin to reveal low ridges jutting like old and fire-blackened bones. Stubborn thickets of thorn and stunted willow crowd the gullies, and the ground bucks hard—no warning, just a sudden black jaw of mountain, stone serrated and bare, knifing up to scratch the sky. Even the air tastes different here, sharper, sap and cold mingling on your tongue as you walk.

“Aight!” You announce, stopping abruptly when your nose is properly tingling with latent Fey affinity. “This is the spot, fer sure.”

Who will you take shirin with?
>CZ
>An-Yii
>Yeb-Uit
>Dura
>Murbal
>Xoldur
>No one else

What will you have the others do?
>Scout the area for signs of the hundun (or other dangers)
>Sit tight and watch over you in case of physical danger
>Split up [specify who does what]
>Write-in

>>6258935
>Yeb-Uit
I think Yeb getting a little actualization in his knew Dokkaiebi body may be good for him, help him understand what changed within him, he can probably use magic now and didnt even think about it, could be good to help clear our Ayla charm bullshit too without poking at her directly

>>6258935
>No one else
Save the second dose in case we need to try again

>Scout the area for signs of the hundun (or other dangers)

>>6258971
[I think you missed part of the vote, anon.]

>>6258935
>Yeb-Uit
He should be strong enough.

What will you have the others do?
>Scout the area for signs of the hundun (or other dangers)
CZ
>Sit tight and watch over you in case of physical danger
Everyone else

Am >>6256935

>>6258935
>CZ
who else ?

>Scout the area for signs of the hundun (or other dangers)
>>6258971
you forgot the other vote, anon

>>6258971
My bad yall, still me phoneposting,
>>6258935
>Scout the area for signs of the hundun (or other dangers)

>>6258935
>CZ
I prefer Cara, though I would support Murbal or Dura- an orc tripping balls sounds hilarious!

>Sit tight and watch over you in case of physical danger

>>6259325
>>6259148
>>6259120
>>6259080
>>6259030
>>6258971
[Alright, writing!]

Rolled 5, 13, 17 = 35 (3d20)

>>6259513
You strut around the spot you’ve chosen. You eye the low squat trees with their grey bark. You run your fingers down the smooth black stones here and there, trying to ‘feel’ for any connection to the mountains above, or the deep earth of the Underdark. The others watch you but, for all your effort… Well, you ain’t exactly what one would call an observant acolyte of the True Fey. Seriously, how the fuck’s someone NORMAL supposed to know the best place to get ‘spiritually’ high off their gourd? You normally just pick somewhere without any cliffs to fall down!

The others are watching, though, so you play the part. Half of Bossing is confidence, after all.

Eventually, inspiration strikes in the form of distant trickling. You tilt your head and wiggle your ear about, listening for the sound of running water; identifying the source, you beckon the others and part some dried-and-curled brambles to reveal a mountain creek, its stoens worn smooth by ages of slow flow.

“So,” you announce, “me ‘n CZ are goin’ in.”

“Me?” CZ yelps. “Uh, well… That’s PROB’ly okay, since she’s dead ‘n all.”

You narrow your eyes. “Huh? Dead? Who’s dead?”

“N-nevermind,” CZ laughs nervously and avoids your eyes. “Like I said, it’s totally cool now!”

This does very little to put you at ease, but then again, you at least trust ‘Carazzi Yosef’ here not to put you in harm’s way. Whatever other magical madness she’s been up to is none of your concern—THAT is very much an Ayla problem, and you happily wash your hands of it.

“The rest of ya should do some scoutin’,” you tell the Regiment. “Make sure there’s no danger near here, then fan out—look for signs of the hundun, or anything else that might pass through these parts ‘n be of interest. Aight?”

The others sound off or signal their compliance, and set about their tasks. They check your immediate area for hazards and, finding none, move onto the wider search.

You and CZ, meanwhile, settle in on a small patch of flattish terrain beside the babbling brook. You lay your bare, pink legs before you; CZ folders hers up under her all criss-crossed.

“Why’re you all… Fancy?” You gesture towards your sister’s stance.

“Ayla says it helps align the chakras,” she replies sagely.

“What’s a ‘shock-raw’?”

“Uh.” CZ’s face pales as she panics at the pop-quiz. “Kinda like… Your aura’s flow, through your organs, and between you ‘n the world? I think?”

You snort and shake your head. Khoblis shit.

“…”

After a moment, you struggle your way into the same position.

“Okay,” you say, “go time.”

Rolled 65 (1d100)

>>6259529
CZ produces her pouch again, doling out a small amount of greenish powder into your palm. You carefully cup it against the breeze as she does likewise.

“Ready?” she asks.

You quirk an eyebrow. CZ sounds more like SHE’S the one hesitating. In keeping with your bold leadership style and propensity to lead from the front, you lick the gritty powder from your hand. The sensation is unpleasant, but nothing worse than Wasteland cooking, which often gets sand from storms in it. After a few seconds, the ‘spice’s starts to fizzle, producing an acrid yet sweet taste upon your tongue, that creeps up into an offensive bitterness on the roof of your mouth and in your sinuses. You work your mouth and scrunch your noses against the assault, but quickly forget all about it as the sensation of the shirin continues to rise, and rise, and rise, up into your forehead, your messy bun, and finally up and out of you entirely.

“Heh, alright, I’m feelin’ it,” you admit. “CZ?”

CZ rolled 17 against her modified <WANT> DC to maintain control. Success!

“Y-yeah,” the demogoblin says with a nod, clutching at her body as if it might come undone. “I… I’m good. Totally, uh… Good.”

She seems to relax a little, you think, but in truth it’s tough to fully focus on her. Her shape seems… Hazy, somehow. When you don’t keep her dead-center in your vision, she seems to change in the periphery: different colours, different dimensions. You look at your own hand, and you see it’s not just her: YOU look a little weird, too. It’s as if you can see through your hand, when you let your eyes unfocus: within the pink, beneath the skin, you see bones of neon green, dirty with dust and stained in blood.

You feel your lunch start to come up, but force it down.

“ZZ?”

“Ain’t my first bad trip,” you remind the both of you. “Cmon, what now?”

“I think that’s kinda your department, right? I know about, like, demon-y shit, ‘n… Uh, well, not fairies, anyway.”

Not being much better informed-and without Veigar or Khorine here to help—you try to think back to what Tips always sued to do. After a moment, and with a faint flush to your face, you realize the answer.

“I… Think we gotta sing.”

“Sing?” CZ snickers.

“Yeah.”

Your shadow realizes you aren’t joking.

“But, uh… We can’t.”

“I know.”

“We can’t sing fer SHIT, ZZ!”

“I KNOW,” you repeat, grim-faced. “But we better try. If we fail, it’s gonna be bad.”

“How bad?” CZ asks quietly.

You meet her eyes levelly, and explain: “We’ll have ta dance.”

CZ makes a choking sound. There is a silence for a moment, and then both of you, in turn and quietly at first, try to simultaneously remember your Sylvantongue song-lyrics, and to project the power of the fairy music loudly enough o attract Fey attention without letting any of your friends hear just how tone-deaf the two halves of you really are.

>>6259536
The good thing about doing this under the mind-altering effects of an intoxicating stimulant is that you quickly lose your self-consciousness. Without an audience in attendance, you forget your friends are nearby—forget that the Regiment even exists. There is only you, CZ, and the song.

Your two discordant voices rise in volume and in pitch, that lifting sensation returns. It starts down in your ass—your tailbone but also your bowel—and charts a course through your stomach and quaking, vibrating lungs and up out of your mouth, forcing your lips wider, rattling your teeth. CZ matches your energy, then exceeds it, seeming to rise without standing. You, in turn, charge ahead to outdo her, overpower her mangled melody with your own—charging ahead of her, rising above. The words are garbled, pronunciation haphazard, but eventually in doesn’t even matter: you’re both soaring upwards into the sky, like two shrieking falcons sparing above the steppe…

Or so it feels, even as logically, you KNOW your butt’s still planted by the trickling steppe stream.

You circle one another with your voices, tones rising and falling in opposition to one another. Though you don’t move, it almost IS a sort of dance, or maybe a duel: a jockeying to be heard, to lead the now-wordless duet of matching, then contrasting, cords. You don’t necessarily want to win, but you feel deep in your chest what you see plainly on CZ’s wavering features: neither of you wants to LOSE, either.

‘This is my song,’ you both sing without saying so with anything as simple as verse. ‘This is MY song. MY life. I love you, and you’re a part of me, but I am still whole. I am still real’

CZ’s song is deeper, harsher, darker. The high, sharp notes of almost joyous glee are manic; the undercurrent is abyssal, building stormclouds desperately shifting so as not to totally burst open the silver lining and let loose the typhoon. Your voice is clear and clarion: a war-horn blown by a warlord, brass-fronted impudence without shame or quarter. You see tears well up in CZ’s eyes as her voice starts to falter, to croak. With a start, you realize how sidetracked you’ve become, and how self-centred you’re being with… Whatever this is.

(Funny thing is, you somehow get the feeling CZ's thinking the exact same thing...)

You modulate your tone, lower your voice; she graciously does likewise. And when you find your balance, the midpoint of musical harmony where contrast becomes complement, you find yourself together, fingers entwined, embracing in the big blue sky.

Sisterly Bond increased. In ZZ’s company or when aided in some fashion by her, CZ’s <WANT> DCs are decreased by 8 once more.

>>6259557

“Cara-Zi…”

“Zith-Zi… It’s Carazzi, okay?”

“…Carazzi, then. Okay.”

“ZZ... I'm sorry. For.... Before.”

“Huh? For what?”

“With... With Ayla, an' all that.”

“CZ, the fuck are you—”

Your ephemeral accord is interrupted, quite suddenly and startlingly, but woops and applause. Both your eyes and your sisters’ snap wide, and you look over one another’s shoulders. Around you in the open air of this illusory sky, you see them: gyrfalcons, white as your wolf-pelt save for smooth, stone-black eyes and hooked beaks of glimmering sun-gold. They circle around the two of you, sailing the current of your choir, eyes fixed upon the spectacle. The clapping, you realize, is the flapping of their wings, the rustling of flight-feathered; the whooping, their shrill, high cries.

And at the same time, when you force yourself to perceive them through the haze of your psychedelic spice, they stand there in a circle: slender males and females of a race little-larger than your own, with skin the grey-brown of dry steppe soil, thin hair like bleached-white scrub-grass, clad in feather-rimmed-cloaks. Their noses are short, but high, and hooked; their eyes, though almond-shaped like the local Men, are huge, and black as those of the Ettercap’s slain foundlings.

True Fey. You found them.

“…Now what?” CZ whispers.

Now that you’ve stopped singing, the fairy-hawks watch you expectantly—creeping closer, or swooping lower, depending how one perceives them. They make no move to strike at you, but nor do they speak. You feel a tingle in your gut that has nothing to do with any fairy affinity—it is the older feeling, ancestral to goblinkind and honed across nearly three decades of living a goblin’s life, of being prey before a predator.

>Greet them, and ask who (really WHAT) they are, exactly, and what purpose they serve here
>Welcome them to join your song, and offer them food and drink—build rapport, and wait for the rest of your party to return
>Ask them about the hundun, while you have the chance—where is it? Have they seen it? Can they help you catch it?
>Write-in

>>6259560
>Ask them about the hundun, while you have the chance—where is it? Have they seen it? Can they help you catch it?

>>6259560
>Ask them about the hundun, while you have the chance—where is it? Have they seen it? Can they help you catch it?
CZ knows it's the spawn of a Dark God, so therefore the born enemy of these beings.

>>6259560
>Welcome them to join your song, and offer them food and drink—build rapport, and wait for the rest of your party to return

Whenever Ez went to the hill to ask the fey for stuff. he always made sure to bring some sort of offering.

To not do so might be a breach of manners, and some fey curse people for bad manners.

me>>6255033
>>6248834

>>6259574
>>6259726
>>6259868
[Locked and writing!]

Rolled 11, 3, 17 = 31 (3d20)

>>6260173
You and Carazzi don’t take long to leap to action. Shirin-quickened minds flicker across your memories, possible strategies. To your surprise, it’s CZ who’s first to remember—and first to act—upon a mutual memory long latent. She scrambles over to one of your stowed packs, near enough to be within the circle; in your vision, it is the awkward flight of an awkward pheasant. When she comes back, ever under the watchful gaze of the gyr-fairies, she is carrying some of your foodstuffs: cheese, smoked meat, fresh fruit.

(Right, Tips always did bring goodies with him up to that old maple tree where he met HIS fairy-friends, didn’t he?)

Your doppelganger’s decision proves fortuitous: with eager shrieks—no, more musical than that, with piercing-high song—the fairies descend. For a moment you’re alarmed at the feeding frenzy, fearing they’ll pick your sister clean, and you stagger forward, half-falling, to free her from their clutches. When they disperse before you, though, CZ is none the worse for wear—simply knocked down and robbed of her offering. You help her up, and the two of you turn to see that the falcons are feasting upon the fine foodstuffs, like so many carrion-crows upon a freshly-fallen antelope.

“I, uh, think they like it?”

“They better,” you grouse. “It was expensive enough.”

“…Sorry.”

You reach out and give CZ a slap on the back, and shake your head. No need for apologies here: her strategy has kept them occupied, stopping the flighty and flighted fey from fleeing. Given the speed with which they’re consuming the food, though, you’d better talk fast.

“Hey!”

The gyrfalcons lift their beaks—red with berries, red with blood—as you approach.

“Zhah gaer sake jhinrae?”

You flinch at the squawk, unready for the rapid-fire elf-speak—or what sounds near-enough to it. You wrack your brain for the translation willing the spice to help you here, too.

(Damnit, Khorine really woulda been handy, for this bit...)

Linguistics roll, with a bonus for CZ's Mentalism!

Rolled 4, 14 = 18 (2d20)

>>6260184
“Wait… sake… That ain’t Elven.”

“That’s rice wine,” CZ supplies eagerly. “Ayla mentioned that! Humies from Reddawn drink it!”

“Thirsty, are ya?” you ask the gyr-fairy. “Uh… Shit, I know this one. Xun dos ssinssrin ulu drital?”

“Siyo!” comes the chorus of cries, from many a stuffed-full mouth.

You grin. You’ve got this.

17: Success!

You don’t have any rice wine, but you have the regular Western sort, made from grapes farmed in the most southerly regions of the Northwest. These days, it’s pricier than it used to be, owing to the same southerly tensions which drew your boyfriend down to the borderlands, but this is a worthy cause. CZ fetches it from your bag and passes it to you, and you in turn hold it out. Immediately, the fairy-flock is upon you, laughing and singing with greedy gratitude. You don’t release you grasp on the bottle, though; rather, you pull it back from their grasping talons.

“First things first,” you tell the betrayed faces before you, “we need yer help. Xun dos zhaun l'hundun? Udos ph'lorith whol l'hundun.”

“Vel'bol zhah natha hundun?” replies one.

‘What is a hundun?’ Not a promising start…

“Belbau udossa l'jhinrae!” whines another, albeit with the same musicality as before, prompting the others to join him (?) acapella.

You pull back the bottle from the clustering creatures, giving them a glare. “You’ll get yer [ijhinrae when I get my answers! As for the hundun… Uh, l'hundun zhah saph natha jatha'la rewt klez nindel zhah retlah d'da'uren, lu'ol zhah ushdui.”

It’s not your best translation-job, admittedly, but ‘big crazy thing full of legs’ is about as near as you can manage with your fey vocabulary.

“Tell ‘em it’s, like, the child’ve a Dark god,” CZ suggests in a whisper. “Fairies HATE Dark Gods, right?”

“Ol zhah l'dalhar d'verin,” you say, hoping it’s close enough.

Neither Zi Sister has any diplomatic skills, but I'll allow 2d20 for the combined effort, and the DC is reduced to 14 thanks to your food and drink on offer.

>>6260208
14: just BARELY a success, but a success nonetheless!

The steppe-fairies squawk and sing back and forth, talking too quickly for you to pick up much of anything. Their dialect is tricky, too—it’s either older than that of the Sylvan Elves like Tips’ folk, or too far-removed and foreign for you to easily parse. Eventually, though, one cries out:

“L'Nausura Valshar!”

“L'Nausura Valshar!” the others agree, and begin to sing:

“L'Nausura Valshar! L'Nausura Valshar! Verve xal uk lgos! Nau ofil'nisha, nau vloriss! Nau elamshinae, nau mala! L'Nausura Valshar! Rewt lu'loff'ta! Biu xuz'eh c'brisa!”

Once more, you and your shadow-sister are at the centre of a whorl of wings and winged words.

“They don’t FEEL scared or angry,” CZ notes quietly.

“They ain’t,” you mutter back. “L'Nausura Valshar… I’m not for sure on the ‘xact wordin’, but I think it means somethin’ like ‘the naked king’.”

You have a sinking feeling in your stomach now. Maybe it’s the shirin starting to wear off. Maybe the realization is sobering you up early: these True Fey ain’t exactly ‘Seelie’.

“Xun dos daewl ulu valm l'gotareshtsh d'L'Nausura Valshar?” asks a gyr-fairy, small mouth turned upwards in a closed-mouth smile, bobbing and bowing her (?) head and extending her hands. “Dosst jhinrae orn tlu z'lonzic. Bwael jhinrae orn morfeth l'Valshar alure! Natha bwael alure!”

“Natha waele alure!” agree the other fey. “Natha loff'ta alure! Natha elghinyrrok alure!”

“What’re they sayin’?” CZ asks.

“They’re offerin’ ta take us to their naked king,” you translate. “To take us to the hundun, in exchange for our wine.”

You’re still buzzing with the shirin, albeit at a lower level than before. You can perceive the world nearly normally… When you force yourself to, when you focus. The edges are still trembling, though, and things that aren’t quite real in a material sense keep creeping in—like these Unseelie Fey, but also flickers of faces from your past, from your dreams.

>Go with the fairies
>Refuse the offer
>Try to stall the fairies until your friends return
>Try to capture one of the fairies, and frighten the rest away
>Write-in

>>6260208
14: just BARELY a success, but a success nonetheless!

The steppe-fairies squawk and sing back and forth, talking too quickly for you to pick up much of anything. Their dialect is tricky, too—it’s either older than that of the Sylvan Elves like Tips’ folk, or too far-removed and foreign for you to easily parse. Eventually, though, one cries out:

“L'Nausura Valshar!”

“L'Nausura Valshar!” the others agree, and begin to sing:

“L'Nausura Valshar! L'Nausura Valshar! Verve xal uk lgos! Nau ofil'nisha, nau vloriss! Nau elamshinae, nau mala! L'Nausura Valshar! Rewt lu'loff'ta! Biu xuz'eh c'brisa!”

Once more, you and your shadow-sister are at the centre of a whorl of wings and winged words.

“They don’t FEEL scared or angry,” CZ notes quietly.

“They ain’t,” you mutter back. “L'Nausura Valshar… I’m not for sure on the ‘xact wordin’, but I think it means somethin’ like ‘the naked king’.”

You have a sinking feeling in your stomach now. Maybe it’s the shirin starting to wear off. Maybe the realization is sobering you up early: these True Fey ain’t exactly ‘Seelie’.

“Xun dos daewl ulu valm l'gotareshtsh d'L'Nausura Valshar?” asks a gyr-fairy, small mouth turned upwards in a closed-mouth smile, bobbing and bowing her (?) head and extending her hands. “Dosst jhinrae orn tlu z'lonzic. Bwael jhinrae orn morfeth l'Valshar alure! Natha bwael alure!”

“Natha waele alure!” agree the other fey. “Natha loff'ta alure! Natha elghinyrrok alure!”

“What’re they sayin’?” CZ asks.

“They’re offerin’ ta take us to their naked king,” you translate. “Ta take us ta the hundun, in exchange for our wine.”

You’re still buzzing with the shirin, albeit at a lower level than before. You can perceive the world nearly normally… When you force yourself to, when you focus. The edges are still trembling, though, and things that aren’t quite real in a material sense keep creeping in—like these Unseelie Fey, but also flickers of faces from your past, from your dreams.

>Go with the fairies
>Refuse the offer
>Try to stall the fairies until your friends return
>Try to capture one of the fairies, and frighten the rest away
>Write-in

>>6260219
>Go with the fairies
Fuck it we ball

>>6260219
>Go with the fairies
go big or go home

>>6260219
>>Try to stall the fairies until your friends return
this is the true go big or go home vote lads

>>6260219
Does the party have anymore wine? If they do, make a counter offer: we’ll get more wine if you allow us to gather our friends.

If not,
>Go with the fairies
We’re not getting another shot at this. All the good wine, good food gone. Lattice of law, shit, I guess that has to be metaphorical.

Am >>6259080

>>6260591
[You have more food and wine. CZ gave them her rations, and ZZ offerr them one of two bottles.]

>>6260292
>>6260358
>>6260492
>>6260591
[Locked & writing!]

Rolled 9, 5 = 14 (2d20)

“Alright,” you say, to a chorus of cheers from the beak-nosed fair folk. “But!”

The cheers abates a little as one of the black-eyed, feather-clad steppe-dwellers holds up a hand, and beckons for you to continue. You nod to CZ, who takes a moment to pick up your meaning; when she does, she hurries to the bags and reaches around inside until, to another rising cheer, she produces a second bottle. The fairies snatch it from her, while the one who held up their hand now greedily reaches for your own. You prise it away, and shake your head; the beatific smile becomes a furrow-browed frown.

“We have friends. Abbilen. Xun dos kampi'un? We want to bring our abbilen.”

You have only two bottles of wine, and you’ve already lost enough food to necessitate a tightening-of-belts in the near future, if CZ’s going to eat for more than another couple days. You had—have—more back at base, but there’s always a trade-off to bringing way more food than you think you’ll need on an adventure. Too little, and you go hungry; too much, and you’re sluggish and slow under its weight. Sometimes, it seems like no matter what choice you make in that regard, it's the wrong one. Well, this time nobody can blame you—who would have predicted hungry bird-beggars?

You just hope they’ll take the bait.

>>6260927
9 and 5 for the diplomatic effort: failure

The fairy shakes its head, looking genuinely apologetic… Or, at least regretful at losing the wine. TO its credit, it does release its grip, rather than trying to pilfer it from you anyway.

iTangisto zhah ghil, the gyr-fairy explains. “Ugul ssussun lu'ust ssussun ph'vel'drav l'i'dol zhah pahntar, lu'kar'et zhah mih. Udos shlubnaut kyorl.”

It’s talking a bit too fast, and with too complex a vocabulary, for you to properly parse the fey phrases. Say what you will about rocs, but their simple language, spoken in short and blunt statements, is much easier on a novice like yourself. You get the gist, though: no can do, because… Uhh, something about not being able to wait until night falls? The sun is starting to set, you suppose. Maybe these weirdos have a curfew? Make sense, given how attuned their kind—YOUR kind, at least in this regard-are to natural cycles.

“ZZ?” Carazzi whispers.

“Let’s do it,” you sigh. “Go big or go home.”

“I’d, like, rather do both,” CZ says with a strained laugh.

(You, too…)

Upon your agreement, the fairies whoop and cry out, and launch themselves skyward. For a second, you strain to understand what’s happened. Have they genuinely flown away, as birds of prey? Or is it a trick of the shirin, as they travel by foot? It’s only when CZ taps the Patmo-Shokan bauble upon her belt—the so-called ‘float-SAM’—that you understand they have literally taken wing, using their feather ‘cloaks’ to soar. CZ reaches out to you, and you take her hand in yours. Your shadow weaves and wobble gracelessly after them, towards the setting sun and the high mountains, while YOU ironically follow in HER wake.

“Couldn’t’ve used this thing before?” you can’t help but question.

“I ain’t super good with it,” CZ admits, which seems true enough. “An’, like… I dunno’ how long it lasts between recharges?”

Suddenly, you very much wish to be back on the ground.

…

>>6260945
…

Zith-Zi’s grip on your hand tightens, and then her other hand finds your wrist and clutches so tightly that you worry the circulation will be cut off… Though, technically, you can probably just grow a new wrist if worse comes to worst. That takes a while, though, and you don’t know how soon you’re be needing both hands to do kung fu.

The black stone of the mountains is less shiny and smooth as you approach, and less black besides—its is marred and greyed by untold ages of wind, rain, and snow. Today, it is clear save for a few clinging clouds, which thin and part as you pass by them. You think to touch them, to even enter them—

“C-c-cold! CZ, what the fuck?!”

“Woops! Hehe… Pretty brisk, huh?”

—But you quickly discover why the falcon-fairies steer clear of them. You focus on following their flight path, trying not to be too envious of how they swoop and screech joyously in their wild, whiplash fly-bys. It feels like mockery, but might be merely mirth; True Fey are a little harder to get a bead on with your mentalism, being so alien.

(Or maybe it’s the shirin? You’re still a little tingly… Though there’s no sign of Irinnile, your Hellish ‘ancestor’, which is probably good! Eitehr it’s the lower dose, or what’s left of her ego is really and truly dead and gone.)

There are flat places here and there, amidst the sable spikes of stone which spear the splendid sunset sky. Grey plateaus and sparse-growing groves exist here, while rushing waterfalls and pooling, frost-rimmed pools trace an unseen trail through the ancient rock; you catch only the little glimpses of hidden life which dare surface.

(The shirin speaks to you, stimulates your spiritual senses; you know there is more, within, like the golden yolk within a thick-shelled and half-smashed egg.)

Sure enough, that is where your journey leads you: to the hidden yolk. The gyrfalcons cease their flight and fall into a slow circle, which you tardily take your place within. Beneath you is a crack in this egg of earth, and within you sense magical most powerful, and ancient. They do not make to descend, though, instead raising their voices in song:

“L'Nausura Valshar! L'Nausura Valshar! Verve xal uk lgos! Nau ofil'nisha, nau vloriss! Nau elamshinae, nau mala! L'Nausura Valshar! Rewt lu'loff'ta! Biu xuz'eh c'brisa!”

You feel excitement and unease at the words, though you do not understand them. You know the phrases well enough, thanks to ZZ. You know they’re calling to their king, dwelling within the cave, to come out and hold his queer court.

The hundun will soon be here.

What do you do?
>You and ZZ should probably ask them about their king… [specify a question]
>Land and let ZZ down—it’s time to set a trap [how?]
>Join in the song, as best you can—sing along, add some <Charm>, and try to make a friend of your foe (for now)!
>Write-in

>>6260946
>Join in the song, as best you can—sing along, add some <Charm>, and try to make a friend of your foe (for now)!
We can draw some sick ass circles later

>>6261010
+1

am >>6260591

>>6261010
>+1

>>6261010
>>6261013
>>6261089
[Hm, a bit of a slowdown in participation. Nevertheless, locked and writing!]

>>6261585
You look to ZZ for a cue as to how to proceed, but alas she seems as lost as you. Is she paralyzed by indecision? Disoriented by the swimming colours and shifting perceptions triggered by the lingering spice in her system? Whatever’s the matter, it’s up to you. Without a trap to spring—what net of order or lattice of law can you employ here, anyway??—you do the only thing you can:

You sing.

“El now-sure a val-sure! El now-sure a val-sure! Verve sal oook leg-oss!”

The fairies falter, several turning their heads and tilting their wings to orbit around you. You feel their attention upon you, and all at once it makes you self-conscious and encourages you; you can feel their judgement, and though it is far from a flattering one, it is also attention…

And more than the feathered fair folk, youc an feel the attention of another, as well.

“No awful-nisha, no vlar-iss!” you continue to keen. “No e-lamb-shiny, no mah-lah! El now-sure a val-sure!”

You’re butchering it—you can tell. The overwhelming feeling from the fey is confusion, following by embarrassment as some among them begin to understand that you are attempting to ape their acoustics…

But within its hidey-hole, the hundun halts, and listens.


This is the final push now. Zith-Zi is staring at you, dumfounded. As you add the element of <Charm>, extending your aura to those around you—to the hidden hund—she understands. A smile spreads, and she joins in with your cacophony, properly-improper, deliberately incoherent.

”Rote loo-loff-tah!”

“Boo zoos-eh see-breeza!”

CZ’s MP: 2/3

By the end, the gyrfalcon fairies are flapping their wings in applause, laughing like the cawing of crows and screeching of falcons. Above them all, though, comes a booming like thunder—a rumbling roar that drowns them all out, and smothers even your song. You flinch, and scramble to shift your airborne stance into something combat-worthy; ZZ reaches for her scimitar, before thinking better of it and going for her rad-saber. Your eyes flit back to the cavern, the patch of deeper shadow in the not-quite-black, and they widen to find it full.

>>6261585
You look to ZZ for a cue as to how to proceed, but alas she seems as lost as you. Is she paralyzed by indecision? Disoriented by the swimming colours and shifting perceptions triggered by the lingering spice in her system? Whatever’s the matter, it’s up to you. Without a trap to spring—what net of order or lattice of law can you employ here, anyway??—you do the only thing you can:

You sing.

“El now-sure a val-sure! El now-sure a val-sure! Verve sal oook leg-oss!”

The fairies falter, several turning their heads and tilting their wings to orbit around you. You feel their attention upon you, and all at once it makes you self-conscious and encourages you; you can feel their judgement, and though it is far from a flattering one, it is also attention…

And more than the feathered fair folk, youc an feel the attention of another, as well.

“No awful-nisha, no vlar-iss!” you continue to keen. “No e-lamb-shiny, no mah-lah! El now-sure a val-sure!”

You’re butchering it—you can tell. The overwhelming feeling from the fey is confusion, following by embarrassment as some among them begin to understand that you are attempting to ape their acoustics…

But within its hidey-hole, the hundun halts, and listens.

This is the final push now. Zith-Zi is staring at you, dumfounded. As you add the element of <Charm>, extending your aura to those around you—to the hidden hund—she understands. A smile spreads, and she joins in with your cacophony, properly-improper, deliberately incoherent.

”Rote loo-loff-tah!”

“Boo zoos-eh see-breeza!”

CZ’s MP: 2/3

By the end, the gyrfalcon fairies are flapping their wings in applause, laughing like the cawing of crows and screeching of falcons. Above them all, though, comes a booming like thunder—a rumbling roar that drowns them all out, and smothers even your song. You flinch, and scramble to shift your airborne stance into something combat-worthy; ZZ reaches for her scimitar, before thinking better of it and going for her rad-saber. Your eyes flit back to the cavern, the patch of deeper shadow in the not-quite-black, and they widen to find it full.

>>6261629
It begins like a bubble, blown by the stony ‘lips’ of the service, filled with the earth’s own breath. A faded memory from your (well, Zith-Zi’s) youth comes back to you: traders from the Southlands, chewing sap-based substances and expanding like this. This one doesn’t pop, though, nor is it the off-white you remember; rather, what grows and grows, stretches and flows, is the pinkish-yellow of a northerly human’s skin. As it swells out of the crevice, you can even make out pores upon its surface, though nothing else: no eyes, no ears, no mouth, nor anything else. Eventually, the expansion stops, and it pops out, like a wad of featureless flesh.

It is roughly the shape of a potato. It is roughly the size of a warhorse.

“I think that’s our mark,” you note quietly.

“No shit, CZ,” your dangling sister comments.

The rolling thunder is coming rom the amorphous blob, which ripples and rolls. It wobbles to an for within the great dish of stone which forms the ledge of its cave, very nearly toppling from its perch once or twice. The fairies cry out as if in fear when it precariously perches at the edge, only to sing out in delight when it extends a pair of pig-hoofed legs, to push it back. Eventually, the hundun’s meandering orbit brings it to a stationary spot, and the thunderous rumble dies down until—in its new quietude—you recognize it for what it is:

Laughter.

“Very good! VEEEERY good!”

The words come directly into your mind, like those of the Nothic… Or, you suppose, those the Dark Goddess who spawned this thing’s ancient ancestors in antiquity.

“L'Nausura Valshar!” cry the fairy court, and begin to wheel around the great blob.

The hundun reaches out, extending tentacle-like protrusions which—at their extremity—grow hair, and develop texture and colour not its own. It offers benedictions, joyously received, with humanoid hands, with tiger paws, and with bird talons like the steppe-fairies’ own.

“My friends! My countrymen! Lend me your ears?”

“Nau!” they cry, in grinning refusal.

“No?” the hundun rumbles, angry in voice but not in emotion—not in what you feel roiling off it in waves, which is rather more jolly. “Then I guess I’ll just have to find my own!”

All at once, one ear sprouts up, then another, then another and another, like pimples upon the great round surface of the void organism: donkey ears, cat ears, dog ears, human ears, elf ears, GOBLIN ears, and the ears of a dozen other species you couldn’t catalogue if you had Martyn and a month to do so. The gyr-fairies shriek in delight at the routine, which seems almost practiced.