Thread 6320515

“The Southlands.” That’s what the races of the Northwest call them, as if they were one place—a realm unified under a single nation or people. In truth, the Southlands are a molten mosaic of humans, beastmen, and sundry others flowing over and through each other in coexistence and in conflict. The land itself is a tapestry of desert and jungle, of low savannah and high plateau, where even the Race of Man is far from uniform: the hides of the humans here range from a ruddy tan to a deep blue-black that nearly equals the Drow of Wevenore.

Not that you got to see much of it.

You are James Efron, Senior Initiate of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower. At your age—twenty-three—you really ought to be a Mage Apprentice. You should be studying in some stuffy laboratory back home in the big city like Izirina Henzler, or maybe taking a practicum under some smaller adjunct Associate Tower like your old pal Testa. But nooo, you craved a life of action, of adventure! ‘<Fireball> is meant for the field!’ you used to boast of your favourite spell. So you’d taken the field, first as a formal Field Researcher and then later as a freelance adventurer-for-hire.

And that had led you here. To the Southlands. To this dungeon.

It isn’t the cool kind of dungeon, full of monsters to kite and <Chain Lightning> for coin, alas. It’s the kind where Southrons store their prisoners-of-war, for that seems to be the size of your sad situation: a prisoner, at the beginnings of what is shaping up to be a full-scale intercivilizational conflict.

The Men of the South may be myriad, but tensions between their ilk and the fairer folk of the Northwest—your homeland, Hawksong’s aegis—have been a unifying cause as of late, and not only for the human races. Relations have been fraying since before you were born, when a sinister cabal of dark-skinned demon-worshippers staged a terrorist attack on the Mages’ Tower itself, assassinating the Archmage and destroying the much-beloved Eternal Fountain.

For a couple decades, tensions had been limited to trade friction and limited immigration. In recent years, though, certain factions of caravan-traders and their princely backers had shifted their approach from gouging prices to gouging eyes, so to speak. That is to say: border raids by blackmen and beastmen had been striking northern trade outposts with alarming regularity, with organization beyond the capability of bandit bands, and better equipment than they ought to have been able to scavenge.

And so there’d been work for adventurers, protecting those who would brave the hostile natives to do business with those few sultans and sheikhs still willing to trade rare spell-components, luxury goods, and foodstuffs from the South for Northern food, gold, and Dwarven technology. And so, chasing coin and the old thrill of your youth, you’d followed the opportunity south.

And so, you’d determined the truth of the rumors for yourself.

You’d arrived in Chiffchaff to support a garrison and patrol the outskirts of the outpost for signs of trouble. You’d expected maybe some sabre-rattling camel-riders, or a few exotic animal-headed savage furry-folk with a dangerous proclivity for homophagy. You’d found both, but so much more: gnolls equipped with strange, stony armour, commanded by strange Southman sorcerers. The dwarven technology the Southlands had purchased had not gone to pot in the absence of regular cultural exchange: rather, they had augmented it in unwholesome fashion with the nefarious and reckless demon-magic of the Southron mages in their Black Tower, producing infernal artillery that blasted apart wooden palisades and <Shield> spells alike.

They weren’t there for robbery or for ransom. They had arrived in numbers suitable for invasion, for conquest. And they’d done it, too. You, as with the other adventurers and the garrisoned militia, had been woefully inadequate to stop them swarming over you like so many black ants over a zebra carcass out on the plains.

>>6320523
Now you lie shackled beneath the town you’d been sent to protect: once called Chiffchaff by the colonists, it is now known to its new management as Al-Duarah.

For the last year, you’ve shared a cell with your party’s dwarven axeman, Brorfor Granitechest. Of course, in his current condition, he’s unlikely to be doing his duties as frontliner in the near future… assuming you ever get free. Still, it’s a better fate than your other fighter, your fellow Northman, Tyson Handler. Handler had fallen ill with a fever, made worse by this damnable region’s oppressive heat, until finally his miserable wailing had grown intolerable to the guards, and they’d hauled him out. You’d hoped, for a time, that they’d seen sense and taken him to a healer… but he never came back. You’ve since come to suspect that the giggling gaolers of this awful place simply butchered and ate him.

And that’s to say nothing of your party’s female members, Enid and Denise. The Southrons seem to take a strong stance against the intermingling of the sexes—ha! Imagine employing maneaters as mercenaries while pretending at morality!—and so have stowed the distaff members of your adventuring company elsewhere. You haven’t seen them in many months, and fear for their fate.

Only in your dreams are you free—you shaggy face shorn of this prisoner’s beard, your wrists unburdened by chains, your future still bright. In your dreams you are with her again: with Zith-Zi. You and she had parted on bad terms—not your first fight, no, but probably your worst. You only wanted the best for her: safety, stability, the sort of proper civilized life that a goblin girl like her could never have dreamed of.

Even now though, as a ‘nilbog’, Zee couldn’t seem to settle down: she couldn’t tame her tongue, or resist the urge to roam. It seemed every time you turned your back she was off gallivanting somewhere: the Goblin Wastes, or the deep-country and high-mountains on the border of the Bloodrise Mountains.

It was a sticking point for your folks. They could just BARELY accept you seeing a demihuman, since she was (apparently) some bastard half-human sired by an errant nobleman of the much-beloved and sadly-collapsed House of Yosef. And as for you…

You loved her. You still love her. It’s why you dream of her—of the life you could have had, if you’d never come to this dark and Hellish place, far from the Gods of Light and the Paladin Kings’ Pax Argentum—the Silver Peace of the Northwestern Realms. But inevitably, every dream ends, and you wake: bearded, emaciated, shackled, caged, doomed, and damned, across from a grumbling dwarf with a ruined leg, while the marching feet and South-Common commands up above attest to a renewed offensive in the making—a war on your own lands, your people.

And without Zith-Zi.

You can only thank the Gods Above for that. If you have any solace, it’s that you spared her the Southlands.

…

Welcome back to Cambion Quest!

For those of you just joining us, or who need a refresher—or who just want to vote—the previous threads in this quest can be found at:
https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=ReptoidQM , as can its predecessors in this setting. This quest follows the split-self sisters Zith-Zi and Carazzi ‘Cara-Zi’ Yosef, a demon-tainted goblin girl split in two by a <Clone> spell, with each half transformed by time, circumstance, and esoteric magic.

This quest was intended to only last a few threads, but I’ve come to really enjoy the unexpected turns it’s taken, and the writing of such dynamic characters. I hope you’ve been enjoying it as well!

This will likely be our final thread. Thank you all for joining me on this wild ride. Let’s do our best to give ZZ and CZ a happy (or at least interesting) ending, shall we?

…

You are Carazzi Yosef, the purified and perfected shadow of a transformed ex-gobliness. About six or seven years ago now, a mage pal of yours separated you into two parts: Zith-Zi, the real and original ‘you’, became a pretty pink ‘nilbog’, while you embodied the ugliest aspects which she had abandoned. You were ‘born’ a deformed freak, greener and wartier than even other goblins, with a burning heart of Hellfire that drove you to lust, wrath, envy, and instability.

You were—are—a cambion, the secret spawn of a half-reptilian, half-human occultist’s demon-fueled gender-bending tryst with Mama Yen-Zi decades ago. Only with the help of your friends and family did you go on the long and winding journey which led you down from New Goblintown and to the far-flung Orient—the Eastlands—where you and your sister built a strange little found-family of freaks and weirdos, seized control of an ancient dungeon and its aeons-old forge, and found a way to use it to remake you into a transcendent being.

For the first time in your short life as an independent being, you have known peace.

But now, that peace is broken—shattered as the black-glass interface of your dungeon’s magical bio-spiritual ‘forge’ following your failed attempt to use it to bring back the dead. You meant well—really!—but sometimes good intentions and the whisperings of the Dark Gods aren’t enough, you suppose.

You did your best to make it right, using astral projection and the Akashic Record to locate your old demon-buddy Maladoo and his gaggle of teenage companions. While ZZ was off solving some sort of medical mystery in a Far Eastern court, you and some of the reawakened proto-Dwarven goblins who built this place worked with your fellow occult apprentice and reforged monster Dura of Steelwood—now a pretty pink ‘porc’—to repair what the botched resurrection had wrecked. When the members of Maladoo’s gang arrived, Frederich Johannes and Vel Dinh proved most adept assistants, with cost-saving connections and useful skills to bring to bear.

>>6320538
But they’d also brought news from the Southlands. News that changed everything.

Jimmy—James Efron, your other half’s humie squeeze—was in trouble. If he was even alive, he was a captive of the Southrons, who were apparently mobilizing actual ARMIES against the Northwestern Realms of the Paladin King—well, Paladin Queen right now, technically. The rest of the Maladoo Gang was still down there, helping a platoon of paladins (or something like that) battle back their forces… and Chiffchaff, the little trading-town with the funny name where Jimmy’s party had gone adventuring, was occupied by that army—an army of dark-skinned demonists and cackling hyena-men.

“…Shit.”

Needless to say, Zith-Zi hadn’t taken the news well when she came back. It had hurt you dearly to see her wide smile collapse into ruin upon her return. What made it worse was that the forge still isn’t fixed (Johannes and Vel are still working on it right now), and you’re down a frontline fighter (Murbal the half-orc had run off somewhere in shame and despair when you’d failed to bring back her dead little brother).

She’d stared, eyes wide, nostrils flared, fingers twitching with strangling intent as you listed the litany of woes, and when you’d told her the tale of James Efron’s fate, she’d screamed a string of slurs in every language she knew and stormed off to lock herself in her room, alone.

You know not all of this is your fault, exactly, and you’ve made major strides toward setting right what went wrong, but even so… ZZ trusted you with Patmo-Shoka while she was away, and you can’t help but feel you made a real mess of it. The timing couldn’t be worse, either: right about now, a fully functional forge capable of remaking a warrior into a super-soldier would be MIGHTY handy.

“Fuck.”

>>6320539
Now you and the rest of the Monstrous Regiment can only await your leader’s emergence and instructions. You know your soul-sister as well as yourself—you were once one, after all—and you know her heart will lead you south, to save (or at least avenge) her lover.

You share something of that urge—you’d worked hard to bury the sense memories and sentiments, but you were Jimmy’s lover too, once, sort of. You were a part of Zith-Zi when the relationship first started, and if your memories of your time as a unified Zi are hazy and half-formed, the clearest among them are those tied to lust, and to love, and to violence.

You remember the shared escapades and adventures—in the wilderness, the crypts, in the pubs to celebrate successes, in the bedrolls on the road and beneath the sheets of more civilized spaces.

You can remember how your—her—heart stirred when Jimmy would run his knuckles gently across her jaw, tilt her head up, and stare into her eyes.

But here, and now, as you are? You think…
But here, and now, as you are? You think…
>You ought to head out immediately—or as immediately as feasible—to go save Jimmy
>You should first finish fixing the forge, and attempt to use it for an added edge… Even if it means a delay
>You ought to be gearing up and recruiting for the adventure ahead—you have coin for equipment and reinforcements, after all
>You ought to check on the Monstrous Regiment’s morale, and make sure your ‘contractors’ are all on board
>Write-in

>>6320539
Now you and the rest of the Monstrous Regiment can only await your leader’s emergence and instructions. You know your soul-sister as well as yourself—you were once one, after all—and you know her heart will lead you south, to save (or at least avenge) her lover.

You share something of that urge—you’d worked hard to bury the sense memories and sentiments, but you were Jimmy’s lover too, once, sort of. You were a part of Zith-Zi when the relationship first started, and if your memories of your time as a unified Zi are hazy and half-formed, the clearest among them are those tied to lust, and to love, and to violence.

You remember the shared escapades and adventures—in the wilderness, the crypts, in the pubs to celebrate successes, in the bedrolls on the road and beneath the sheets of more civilized spaces.

You can remember how your—her—heart stirred when Jimmy would run his knuckles gently across her jaw, tilt her head up, and stare into her eyes.

But here, and now, as you are? You think…
>You ought to head out immediately—or as immediately as feasible—to go save Jimmy
>You should first finish fixing the forge, and attempt to use it for an added edge… Even if it means a delay
>You ought to be gearing up and recruiting for the adventure ahead—you have coin for equipment and reinforcements, after all
>You ought to check on the Monstrous Regiment’s morale, and make sure your ‘contractors’ are all on board
>Write-in

It seems our two options are to wait here awhile to repair the forge and build an army big enough to help invade Chiffchaff.

Or we go there immediately with a small force and try to rescue jimmy covertly.

If we wait jimmy could die in prison making liberating Chiffchaff pointless. I actually wonder why the southern's haven't tried to ransom him to his apparently rich family. Hopefully they aren't planning on sacrificing their prisoners in some demon ritual to push back the paladin.

Our best bet for jimmy actually surviving is to go there now with some of the forces we have on hand.
>You ought to head out immediately—or as immediately as feasible—to go save Jimmy

>>6320546
>You ought to head out immediately—or as immediately as feasible—to go save Jimmy
Even before the forge broke it always had a sky high failure chance, not worth waiting for it now.
Stealth mission.

>>6320546
>You ought to check on the Monstrous Regiment’s morale, and make sure your ‘contractors’ are all on board

>>6320546
>You ought to head out immediately—or as immediately as feasible—to go save Jimmy
>You ought to check on the Monstrous Regiment’s morale, and make sure your ‘contractors’ are all on board

We’re not going to save the world. We’re not going to save chiffchaff and repeal the invasion on our own. We just want Jimmy, and maybe whoever’s left along with him that we can bring out safely.

In that case, speed and surprise is our biggest ally. Inform our company. They can opt in or out.

>>6320537
>This will likely be our final thread
I felt I read that 3 or 4 time... In cambion quest

>>6320763
[What can I say? I expected this to last 4 to 8 threads. I have nothing planned after the rescue arc and epilogue, though. With how long threads stay on the board now, I am pretty confident we won't need a tenth, though!]

>>6320764
>>6320746
>>6320742
>>6320624
>>6320559
“I figure we oughtta just go, ya know? Like, the forge is already, uh… like, not the most reliable fer fuckin’ around with non-gobs to begin with, even if we wait. And what if the Southmen decide to, like, execute or sacrifice him or something in the meantime?!”

You look across the table you are sharing with Ayla and Veigar. The three of you are enjoying a selection of snacks they brought back from their recent journey to the east: tangy fermented vegetables rolled in rice and seaweed and dipped in some kind of fish sauce, some barbecued pig ribs, and some golden flower-shaped biscuits soaked in honey, accompanied by Dura’s heart-fruit herbal tea. The two of them chew and sip thoughtfully as you conclude what has become a rather long rant about your preferred approach to Jimmy’s liberation: an urgent extraction, without delay.

“You make a lot of sense,” Veigar says levelly, though you aren’t blind to his nervous glance towards your sensei, Ayla, who continues to masticate a while longer.

“Agreed,” she finally says, once she’s swallowed her food and washed it down with her own cup of tea.

You breathe a sigh of relief. These two are some of the smartest people you know. If they say you’re making sense, you can truly trust your instincts are rooted in good sense rather than residual emotionality. You’ve come a long way in that regard: prior to the forge transforming you inside and out, you wouldn’t have even thought to double-check that!

“THEY should heed your advice when THEY go.”

Veigar winces at Ayla’s pointed words, which take you a moment to parse. Even when you do, you find yourself confused.

“H-huh? Whaddaya mean?” you ask, looking between the two. “You guys are gonna come, too, right? I mean… ya GOTTA! This is Jimmy! He was YOUR friend before me ‘n ZZ even met him!”

“Izirina’s friend. Ezreal’s friend.” Ayla sets her cup down with a crack and thump, staring you down. “Not ours. Zith-Zi’s boyfriend, for that matter—not yours.”

>>6320804
You laugh nervously, and look to Veigar for help in persuading his wife-or-whatever. Instead, you find a more sympathetic restatement of the same:

“When I was created and named by, ah, the OTHER me… it was to live my own life. Not HIS. Ayla and I are our own people. By necessity, we’re cut off from the rest of mankind—and elvenkind, for that matter—by what we are. We don’t intervene in world affairs like these. We can’t, even for a friend like Efron. It would draw attention to us.”

“Well, uh, that’s…” You swallow what you were about to say, modulating your initial outrage. “But Jimmy’s still important to ME. -I- gotta go.”

“No,” Ayla says sternly, “you DON’T, actually. And you shouldn’t.”

She snaps her fingers and traces a symbol in the air, and a small spark materializes and travels a winding path towards you. You flinch in startlement for a moment, but it is no attack: the cantrip only alights upon your abdomen, like a firefly, before flickering out.

“Don’t forget, you’re carrying our child,” Ayla reminds you, her eyes flashing dangerously. “What part of our agreement makes you think it’s okay to take them into a warzone?”

The accusation skewers you, stammering, in place. There’s no way she can be serious, is there? She and Veigar can’t expect that just because you agreed to be a surrogate for their weird Dark God–approved Master Race baby, you’re going to just bail on Jimmy’s rescue mission?

“I’m not joking, Carazzi. You agreed to follow our instructions in regard to this pregnancy, remember?”

Veigar reaches across the table to gently place his greenish fingers over your own, drawing still more irritation from his cambion paramour. Wisely, he quickly withdraws the gesture, but his expression remains gentle, as he tries to soften her words:

“We can transport the Regiment to the Southlands… or the outskirts, anyway. Neither of us have been to Chiffchaff, but we could transport the team to Turtledove or somewhere else nearby. We’ll gladly offer assistance…”

Ayla finishes: “At a distance, where we—and OUR child, Carazzi—will be safe, from Southern soldiers AND Paladin zealotry. If you want our help at ALL, you’ll follow our lead.”

>>6320805
You chew on this development for a while after brunch. You know Dura is on board—privately, you’re pretty sure the porc has a thing for you. You don’t doubt for a moment that you could spin this in a way that would appeal to Empy—that is to say, the amorphous hundun demigod called by his flock of Unseelie fairy-friends ‘The Naked Emperor’, with whom you’ve had an undefined but very tentacular tryst or two. Khorine’s been pretty clingy with ZZ, so you mentally count her in, too.

But as for Yeb-Uit and An-Yii, your Regiment’s OGs (original goblins)?

“Sure,” says Yeb, as ever a male of few words.

“SURE?” demands An, your team’s medical expert, incredulously. “It’s a war! Between paladins and demons! What part’ve that says ‘this is a problem for goblins’?”

Yeb-Uit just shrugs his forge-broadened shoulders, offering no justification. Perhaps he feels a debt for his multiplied strength and speed, and his reinvigorated youth. Maybe he just wants to test out his fancy new body and soul. You couldn’t say for sure, nor do you pry—it’s enough to know he’s with you, for which you’re grateful. But as for An-Yii…

“I signed up for this to do some adventurin’, an’ mostly for money to fix up New Goblintown. REMEMBER? Where we LIVE? Where people NEED us?”

The goblin-girl places her hands on her hips, giving you a reproachful look. “Now, I’m happy you’re… like you are now, rather than how you were before. But I need assurances, ‘cause where I’m standin’, I ain’t seen a whole lotta good comin’ my way, or New Goblintown’s way. Shit, I ain’t even seen me get PAID yet.”

Yeb-Uit’s face shifts slightly as, with an apparent start, he realizes the same is true of him.

At least Chang Lanseoul is easy to persuade. The Eastering came back with Zith-Zi from his hometown—some place called Durumiho Wangguk, or ‘Crane Lake’—and apparently pledged some sort of life-debt to your sis while they were out there getting her all fixed up.

“My sword is at your disposal, milady,” he says with a deep bow. “Myself and Lady Yeong-baek owe a great debt to your sister, Lady Zith-Zi, which we can never repay. I am pledged by honour and by my master’s word to serve her until death.”

“Oh, uh, cool…” You clear your throat. “We’re gonna try ‘n avoid that last bit, if it’s all the same.”

“Of course.” He smiles a gentle smile as he stands up. “Though all the same, I believe Yeong-baek should remain here, if I could beseech your continued hospitality?”

“Oh, uh… yeah, I guess that’s prob’ly fine…”

>>6320807
The Maladoos are all in, too, of course, but Vel Dinh points out a valid consideration which you’d overlooked:

“I’m not much of a fighter to begin with. My battles lay in the library!” She says this proudly, which strikes you as pretty dumb, though you don’t say so. “I also need to keep working on the forge, and I can’t finish without Freddie’s help.”

“Awww,” Frederich Johannes moans, crestfallen. “But I wanna go fight alongside the Paladins, Vel! It’s… it’s the PALADINS!”

“It would slow down progress considerably,” Vel addresses you both. “Your engineering acumen is absolutely vital.”

By the same token of divergent duty, the Blueberry Brigade—that is to say, the surviving blue-tinged goblinoid warriors who lay in suspended animation here in Patmo-Shoka for untold centuries—also show no willingness to leave on an ‘away mission’. Brand-Hrok is the youngest and greenest—metaphorically, not physically—and you’re pretty sure you could convince him to come, but you aren’t sure the others have any inclination to abandon their eternal post as defenders of this place.

>>6320808
So it is that when you arrive at Zith-Zi’s door, you hesitate to knock. You have about about equivalent amounts of good news and bad: with Xoldur and Murbal dead and gone respectively, Ayla and Veigar paranoid about paladins, An-Yii trying to haggle some sort of deal, and the Maladoo twosome busy refitting the forge, you’d have… ZZ, you, Dura, Khorine, Empy, three gyrfalcon fairies, Yeb-Uit (you think?), and Chang Lanseoul. For a small-scale stealth mission that might be enough, you guess… but Ayla and Veigar won’t even teleport your crew close unless you agree not to participate in any battles when you get there!

What are you gonna do about this? ALL of this?

Ayla & Veigar:
>Accept Ayla’s terms in exchange for teleportation and indirect aid
>Refuse their terms—you need to do whatever it takes to save Jimmy

Yeb-Uit & An-Yii:
>Offer a generous advance to An-Yii & Yeb-Uit to ensure they attend
>Agree to move New Goblintown here to Steelwood if they come along
>Leave well enough alone—they’ll come, or they won’t

Chang Lanseoul & Yeong-baek:
>Chang is good enough—Yeong-baek can stay put in Patmo-Shoka
>You need all hands on deck—if Yeong-baek has useful skills, she should come, too

Frederich Johannes & Vel Dinh:
>Forget the forge—bring them both!
>They should stay put and keep working here

Write-in arguments or negotiations are valid for each of these, too. Leaving behind any of the party members who I’ve listed is also allowed—you don’t NEED to bring Dura, Khorine, The Naked Emperor, or the Unseelie ‘gyrfairies’, but please specify if you don’t want to bring them, and why.

>>6320809
>Refuse their terms—you need to do whatever it takes to save Jimmy.

If alya and veigar refuse to fight in order to protect their secrecy but they also refuse to allow cara to join the fight as well. They can get bent, these bozo's cant seriously believe that taking two weeks off our journey is worth losing cara zi as a fighter.

>Agree to move New Goblintown here to Steelwood if they come along

We have dura's potions so we don't really need an-yi's med kits. but yeb might be useful especially if he obtains a useful spell. We did promise to help out the people of goblin town, I guess the people of goblin town, can help the blue goblins safe guard the base while we are gone.

We do need to save our money, need to see if we can buy anti-demon weapons or charms for our crew while on the road to Chiffchaff

>You need all hands on deck—if Yeong-baek has useful skills, she should come, too

I think chang is downplaying yeong's usefulness. She is a skilled spell caster and can transform into a giant crane and can carry people on her back. If chang is worried about her protection. We can lend yeong our vajra for this mission. She has 4 in religion and can manipulate divine magic, she can can probably quickly figure out all its uses.

>Forget the forge—bring them both!

The forge doesn't help us in this mission and freddy and velma might have information about the enemy forces in the area.

>>6320905
>We do need to save our money
[Oh, right! For the record, you have 92 points of unspent wealth right now.]

>>6320809
>Accept Ayla’s terms in exchange for teleportation and indirect aid
a pain in the ass, but that's the only way we can quickly get there

>Offer a generous advance to An-Yii & Yeb-Uit to ensure they attend

>Chang is good enough—Yeong-baek can stay put in Patmo-Shoka

>They should stay put and keep working here

>>6320809
>Accept Ayla’s terms in exchange for teleportation and indirect aid
Not much choice if we want to get there in a reasonable time.

>Agree to move New Goblintown here to Steelwood if they come along
Pay them on top of that too. 92 wealth saved up, no reason not to. Pay An more since yeah part of Yeb's payment is the forge treatment he got.

>Chang is good enough—Yeong-baek can stay put in Patmo-Shoka
If they don't think she's a good combatant I believe them.

>Forget the forge—bring them both!
Not in a hurry to get it working again.

>>6320809
Ayla & Veigar:
>Accept Ayla’s terms in exchange for teleportation and indirect aid
Teleporting in and out is too good to pass up.

Yeb-Uit & An-Yii:
>Offer a generous advance to An-Yii & Yeb-Uit to ensure they attend
We have a lot of money but moving an entire town is a big deal. There’s maintenance and all that,

Chang Lanseoul & Yeong-baek:
>Chang is good enough—Yeong-baek can stay put in Patmo-Shoka
If Chang says she should stay here, that’s enough evidence of her skills not being applicable to our current circumstances.
Frederich Johannes & Vel Dinh:
>They should stay put and keep working here
Worst case scenario, we need it up again for Jimmy. Help Tips and Veigar out.

Emperor and his troupe is… loud. He’s probably a good distraction if shit hits the fan. I think we should have him on standby.

>>6320746

[Hmm, interesting. I'll return tomorrow evening to see if the tie(s) are broken, and roll if needed.]

>>6321056
>>6321050
>>6321036
If Cara can't fight and Yeong-baek isn't coming. Our ONLY real spell caster is going to be Khorine.

Meanwhile the southerners have enough mystical power on their side to stalemate the paladin order.

>>6321110
I mean if your goal in bringing the couple is to out-mystic the Southlands, not even Ayla and Veigar can match an army. We're not going there to win a war, we're going to quietly spring Jimmy and hustle on out.

>>6321110
Having a magic user could come in handy while sneaking around.

I’ll amend this. Khorine could be on the team. >>6321056

>>6321205
[The people on the final list of 'gimmes' are a given. That includes Khorine, unless people opt to leave her behind.]

>Agree with Ayla
>Pay Advance
>Just Femboy no gay Femfem
>Fix the forge

>>6321339
>Just Femboy no gay Femfem
hello there, soj

>>6321364
Sojourner draws too much juicy ladyass, especially svelte courtly lady-ass, to turn down a Yeong-baek.

>>6321364
>>6321372
[The duality of man.]

>>6321339
>>6321056
>>6321050
>>6321036
>>6320905
[Locked and writing!]

>>6321402
“...So, like, that’s what I figure. We pay An-Yii ‘n Yeb-Uit, since they’ve been waitin’ an’ all—AND it’s a helluva lot cheaper ‘n faster than movin’ a whole-ass town in here! Chang seems pretty tough, but his girl’s a l’il twiggy, so she can hang here with the Blueberries. Empy ‘n the gyrfairies oughtta be good enough for backup, anyway... But they’re a little loud, so maybe we have ‘em hang back ‘n wait for a signal?”

Zith-Zi doesn’t say much as you rattle off your thoughts, which tangle up in themselves and in your urge to set things right and prove your improved ability. She is preoccupied with running her pink fingers over her white-furred winter-wolf cloak, newly refitted with regalia from her trip to Crane Lake. She seems a lot calmer than when she first came back, at least—which gives you a false sense of security until she speaks up:

“And yer gonna wait in the back with them, ‘cause you went ‘n decided to get pregnant.”

You wince a little. ZZ’s voice is level but low, and you recognize the roiling resentment in her feytouched aura.

“Well, like, it just seemed like a nice thing ta do fer ‘em, after all they did fer us, ya know?”

“For YOU.”

Zith-Zi stands up suddenly, causing Hershy to flutter off her shoulder to his perch, where he stares down with his bulging, froggy eyes as your other half stares you down.

“We came all this way for YOU, CZ. All this shit... To give YOU that body you wanted, to make YOU safer, and stronger, and to get rid of YOUR dick. Runnin’ up the forge, riskin’ our lives—shit, KILLIN’ Copperbelt—for YOU. An’ the moment you’re all powered-up, you break the thing—”

“W-well, like, Johannes ‘n Vel are gonna fix it up!”

“—and you’re not even gonna use that power to help save Jimmy?”

You bite your tongue before you snap back. Zith-Zi's spiritual energies are ablaze, unstable and flaring every which way. She doesn’t mean it, or at least doesn’t mean it how it’s coming across. She’s just worried for her boyfriend. You get that—you DO, more than anyone else ever could, because she is a part of you.

“I’ll be there,” you promise. “I just... can’t be a frontliner this time.”

Zith-Zi's jaw grinds. Her nostrils flare. You can tell she wants to say something mean, something fierce... but instead, she sighs, turning away and waving you off.

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“FINE,” she repeats, louder. “It’s a good enough plan. Makes sense. Go round ‘em up ‘n get ready.”

“...Right now?”

She rounds on you, green eyes nearly aglow, and snaps: “We’re payin’ the price for Ayla to get us there fast, ain’t we? So stop draggin’ ass an’ GO!”

You hurry out, shutting the door behind you. You wait there for a moment, meditating on your breathing before finally exhaling a long, loud sigh as you slide down the cool stone.

...

Sisterly Bond bonus reduced by 2 to 7 as a result of the last few choices in Volume 8 and now.

>>6321421
...

You take a while to stop buzzing after your little ‘altercation’ with CZ. You realize on some level you were perhaps a little unfair, but on another level... WERE you? It’s not all on your doppelganger, what’s gone down since leaving New Goblintown, but sometimes it does feel like it’s been one never-ending cascade of consequences and complications between you and any sense of stability.

(Is this what Jimmy was on about? Is this why he wanted you to give up the life—to settle down?)

When you step out of your quarters, you’re pleased to see that CZ has at least done as you asked. The whole Regiment is there, give or take a Yeong-baek.

Away party consists of:
Zith-Zi
Carazzi Yosef*
An-Yii
Yeb-Uit
Khorine
Ayla*
Veigar*
The Naked Emperor*
Three Unseelie ‘Gyfairies’*
Chang Lanseoul
* Asterisk indicates they’re in reserve, not going directly into the conflict zone.

Current funds after advances were paid to An-Yii & Yeb-Uit: 52
If either sister ever took a Mercantilism skill, it would have been reduced.

You spare a glare for Ayla and Veigar, but only the latter does you the courtesy of withering a little—Ayla stands proud and imperious, like she thinks SHE’s the Big Boss around here. You feel another flare of irritation as you remember why you never liked the Henzlers to begin with, but you suppress it when you see CZ’s expression. As annoyed as you are right now—as fearful as you are for James Efron, if you’re being real—it was on YOUR initiative that you prioritized ‘Carazzi Yosef’ over all the rest of it… And ‘Sensei Ayla’ made good on helping her, whatever her other faults.

(But after this mission, you’re going to have WORDS with that hedge-witch bitch about issuing ultimatums to you and YOUR sister...)

“Aight!” you say aloud. “You’ve all been briefed? Good. The way I hear it, Jimmy—Efron—has been down south for months ‘n months already. So! We ain’t wastin’ any more time here.”

A chorus of agreement, at various pitches of enthusiasm, follows. The hundun in particular is elated, as it espouses to its entourage of falcon-fairy friends:

“Oh delight! Oh delicious dalliances in exotic locales! Just when we’d begun to grow weary of the local fare!”

(Huh. Well, you guess you can see why the overgrown dumpling might’ve gotten bored holed up in the dungeon for over a month, yeah. Hells Below, you can even relate! After all: hating sitting still is what you an Jimmy fought about... When you last saw him...)

>>6321423
“Now,” you continue, “the only question is where we’re gonna embark from. It’s gotta be somewhere where at least one’ve us has been before, or else Ayla can’t <Dimension Door> us there anyway.”

“Correct,” Ayla chimes in.

“Don’t interrupt me, Henzler! I won’t tell ya twice!”

Seeing Ayla seethe at her long-renounced surname takes the edge off your earlier irritation a little, and so you continue at a more even tempo and temperament:

“The way I see it, we got two options! Option one: Turtledove.”

“Ooo, that’s where Testa is, right?” CZ asks.

You shoot your clone a pointed look.

“R-right, no interruptions. Sorry, ZZ.”

You sigh and shake your head, but carry on, explaining: “That’s correct! It ain’t properly ‘south’ south, but it’s pretty damn close, and we have a contact there! It’s also got a lot more resources on hand, bein’ a trade-port and havin’ a local Mages’ Tower… Though it’s a pretty rinky-dink one. Mainly deals with enchanted clothing ‘n shit. BUT, where you have magic ‘n money, you got info and equipment, you can bet yer ass.”

“But also way more humans,” Veigar says, wincing as you turn your glower upon his interrupting ass but continuing nevertheless. “Potentially Paladins…”

You want to chew the green dweeb out for being the THIRD godsdamned interruption in a row… But damn it all, he’s right.

“Well… Option two’s not perfect either. Seems the Maladoos—of which we have two handy to grab some mental coordinates off’ve—have been holed up in some private tower, owned by, uh…”

“Vincent Al-Ghul,” provides Vel Dinh from the back of the crowd.

“He’s, uh… a really UNIQUE guy,” Frederich Johannes adds, with his tone saying volumes. “I guess he’s from the North, but inherited this creepy old castle on the inner edge of the Shieldwall Mountains, full of—”

“ALLEGEDLY full of,” Vel interjects sourly.

“—ghosts,” Johannes finishes. “But hey: it’s not under siege any MORE! The Paladins already pushed forwards. And our friends are there! Maybe they could help?”

“You really think, like, NORVILLE would help us?” CZ asks skeptically. “I like the guy ‘n all, but, uh…”

“You’d be surprised,” Vel says darkly. “Being out there in the thick of war? It… AWAKENED something in him. Some kind of… killer instinct.”

“Yeah,” Johannes groans glumly. “Cyrene noticed, too…”

You blink a few times at the pair of humans, unsure what to make of their dumb teenage drama.

“Well,” you conclude, “the way -I- see it—which is what counts, anyway—we oughtta go with…”

>The border-town of Turtledove
>Castle Al-Ghul
>Actually… What if you found where Martyn Meadowgrass was? He’s been to the Southlands…

>>6321424
>The border-town of Turtledove
Castle Al-Ghul seems like a whole god damn sidequest and Martyn would not help us after that parting.

>>6321424
>Castle Al-Ghul

>>6321424
>The border-town of Turtledove
Testa’s a friend. A friend of a friend, at least. Good enough.

>>6321056

>>6321424
>Castle Al-Ghul.

Avoiding people who know them and potential paladin patrols. Is Veigar and Alya main goal. I imagine that making our base turtledove will mothball them even further. And I can't imagine the Emperor can go wandering around in public city streets.

Castle al_ghul is closer to our destination, and is more private.

Me>>6320559

>>6321804
>>6321600
>>6321529
>>6321451
[A tie, huh? We'll hood our for a tiebreaker, and roll for it if none emerge in time.]

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>6321827
[Writing!]

>>6321827
>>6322005
Turtledove had been your decision. It had its own share of hindrances associated, of course, but so did the other option. CZ had appeared about to interrupt you, but thought better of it, and by the time you are all packed up and ready to go, she’s positively excited.

“Do ya think Testa’ll like the new me?” she asks eagerly. “Ooo! I KNOW she’ll like the new you!”

“That a crack about the scars?”

“Wh—no! I meant ‘cause ya got that snazzy cloak ‘n that oriental skirt ‘n shit!”

You steal a glance down at your new duds and puff up your chest in pride. “Ya think so?”

“Oh yeah!” CZ grins and nods. “She’s all about that, uh, sar-toh-ree-al shit!”

While you’ve never been a ‘girly girl’ by the standards of mankind—not at all like Nicolette Testa herself—you admit some satisfaction at that thought, even if you’re pretty sure your sis is buttering you up to get back in your good graces. Testa is more of a friend-of-a-friend in all honesty, and in the past has been more of a frenemy, but over the years apart you’ve managed to grow a little fonder of one another. At the very least, her fashion sense is something you can’t deny, nor is her loyalty or ability to keep a secret.

(And speaking of secrets…)

“That pet hundun of yers is gnna have ta lay low,” you tell Carazzi.

“Huh?” She blinks, then chuckles. “Oh, duh, because of the whole…”

“Bein’ a giant freaky monster?”

“…I was gonna say bein’ the descendant of a Dark God.”

“Yeah,” you agree, “that too.”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” CZ assures you. “They’ve all been pretty well-behaved! Well, like… as far as I KNOW.”

(…Huh?)

“A-anyway, let’s go!”

You give your sister a look, then sigh as she keeps her cool and remains clammed up. Whatever… how bad can it be?

You heft your pack, she hefts hers, and with your two chimeric drakes in tow you join the rest of the away party and pass through the portal which Ayla has prepared, and into the low, dry heat of a southerly night.

…

>>6322042
Meanwhile, across the patchwork of splintered and schismatic settlements that is the Steelwood, evening has only just begun. Human women call their children in from their playtimes with uncommon urgency. Men stand guard with rusty relic-weapons or freshly purchased pikes and hatchets, and eye the woods. Still elsewhere, in the deeper woodlands, the half-human mongrel elves of the local clans raise prayers to their ancestors’ gods and invoke their Seelie spirit-guardians against the threat which has all the piecemeal peoples paralyzed of late.

It is not the orcish warband who stalk the hills to the north, occasionally daring raids on settlements when times are tough. They have been quiet of late.

It is not the bruised and black-eyed chittering child-things which plucked and picked at the abandoned battlefields of old, and which once haunted the dreams of young children and their parents. They seem to be gone entirely, for which the locals are glad.

It is not even the wolves of winter, who have retreated many months ago with the coming of spring. They will return from the Orcwilds and deepwoods, but not for many months, for that is their cycle.

No, there is a new nightmare in the Steelwood nights. It comes singing lovely songs, whistling on unseen wings. It is accompanied by an ominous omen: an eclipse of the moon, as if by another heavenly sphere. Some say it has tentacles, and others say it has talons. It has been said it has a sharp and jagged beak, like a great shrike, and massive paws like a lumbering bear. Some say it is the one who sings; others say it is orbited by spectral emissaries or envoys. The humans deem it demonic; the elves say it is Unseelie.

Only one easily overlooked individual, who has been waiting out the winter and working off the debt incurred for shelter during that time, knows its true nature, its origins, and where it might be found when it is not terrorizing travelers, collecting ransoms of alcohol or entertainment, or flattening fields of crops in unusual and occult-looking arrangements.

Martyn Feurmeadhoin—Meadowgrass, to those who call the Bwbachod ‘halflings’—hears the rumours, and is forced to decide what, if anything, he ought to tell the people of Steelwood about the strange visitor which has come among them these last few weeks.

>>6322043
…

You are practically blasted off your feet by the climatic clash between Steelwood’s early-spring chill and the comparatively sweltering and summery weather of the realm outside Turtledove. Even under the light of the moon, the rugged turf here still carries the heat of the sun; Veigar once told you how ‘Holy Sol’ sails low and lingers long here most days, bathing the ochre soil and reddish rocks so that grass grows in broken, water-hoarding clumps of precious shade beneath ancient—yet still small, gnarled, and knotted—grey trees with waxy, light-green leaves.

“Oh my! How exotic—and yet it reminds me of home. Is it not so, my little friends? Or maybe it IS not so… Maybe I’ve been here before, in another life? My, what a twist that would be—me, indigenous to such a queer place!”

Something in The Naked Emperor’s muddled musings must stimulate his Unseelie servants’ poetic inclinations, because they burst out into a song to accompany it. It’s lovely, as all fairy songs ever are, but you see the vein threatening to pop out of your other half’s pretty pink forehead, and you hastily hush them.

“What part of stealth… fuckin’… MISSION… do you chumps not GET??”

You grimace a little, for even in the torrent of tumultuous and ephemeral emotions which characterize Empy’s aura, you can see anger flare at being spoken to like that by your sis. You know it’s a product of stress—she always gets like this when things are especially dicey or when she feels disrespected—but you don’t think a hundun used to being called ‘Emperor’ is going to suffer it long-term. You jump between them, interjecting yourself and providing a diversion:

“Hey, Ayla, how ya feelin’?”

“Exhausted,” Ayla admits, supported by dutiful Veigar and holding aloft the faintly glowing vajra-wand which you seized from a certain lich’s collection. “If I didn’t have this, there’s no way I could have transported so many all at once…”

Vajra: Exact stats unknown, but this double-headed club of a wand can shoot bolts of lightning doing 2d8 damage, provide some sort of protection to its wielder, and is a powerful recharging mana-battery for mages.

“…especially not goblins,” the winded witch finishes.

“Well excuuuse us fer bein’ khoblis-proof,” An-Yii retorts with a roll of her eyes. “It might not be a bad thing ta BE, if we’re fightin’ demonists.”

“Ain’t wrong,” Yeb-Uit agrees.

“Yeah, that’s true,” you chime in, with an eye towards Empy’s bristling array of spines and spikes, and ZZ’s crossed arms and wide, bossy stance. “Like, there’s lotsa times two people can both be sorta right ‘n sorta wrong, right? Life’s, like… funny that way.”

>>6322064

Zith-Zi at least seems to take your meaning, huffing and turning away to survey your destination. You gravitate to Empy—who isn’t exactly your boyfriend, or even a BOY, but even so—and smooth down his spines until he’s flat and faintly gelatinous once more.

Turtledove itself has changed since you last saw it. It’s still a little patch of greenery amidst all the brown, sandwiched between the foothills of the brown mountains beyond and thus trapping rain and tapping mountain streams to slake the thirst of plants, animals, and people. Where once it was a welcoming little oasis for those few traders still doing the south-north schlep, though, it is now armoured-up: wooden walls with spear-like points have been erected on the side facing the north, and a bigger barricade of imported timber and local stone blocks off the southern pass entirely.

“Huh,” you comment, “guess they don’t want any of what they’re sellin’ anymore…”

Khorine, meanwhile, hews closer to Zith-Zi and looks down with her oblong-pupiled eyes wide, and asks: “Zith-Zi, did you not say this was a SMALL settlement…?”

“I would not call it overly large,” Chang comments neutrally.

“Well it ain’t no Hawksong or River’s Mouth,” ZZ agrees, “but it’s definitely grown…”

When last the two of you visited, Turtledove was a town on the outs, in all honesty. With such limited trade between the Southlands and the Northwestern Realms, there was little purpose for such a port. Now, though, it is a curious contradiction: with open war on the horizon, it has exploded, such that shanties, shacks, and many a tent have spilled out beyond the smaller wooden wall, and lanterns are still alight in many quarters as people go about their business.

“Garrisoned soldiers can become a captive market, in a prolonged campaign,” Chang notes.

“Like a bandit camp economy, ey?” ZZ sniffs. “Been there.”

“Testa must be thrilled, at least,” Veigar says with a rueful smirk. “She always did like a big, strong man in uniform… Poor Pearce.”

While your wizard-friend reminisces about his school days, ZZ approaches you and nods for a sidebar. You join her, eager to prove yourself.

“Whaddaya figure?” she asks. “I mean, obviously we can’t bring the hundun, but I figure we can maybe gather some intel, if it’s just a few of us… See what’s goin’ down, who to watch out for. Recon.”

You consider this, grateful even to be asked after everything, and suggest…

>Who will you bring? Who will stay?
>What instructions will you give those who remain outside Turtledove? Will you have any sort of signal for them?
>What is your objective: go straight to Testa, or roam around the night-markets and alehouses?
Remember CZ’s spell-list includes Transmogrify now…

>>6322043
Oh right the hundun is rather mischievous like that. Hope it hasn't killed anyone.

>>6322065
Let's bring uuuuuh
Not Veigar, he might want to see Testa but he'd want to expose his existence less from what he's said in the past. Ayla stays behind too because she's a huge antisocial bitch. Gobs should probably stay back since they don't have the best reputation. I guess that leaves CZ, ZZ, Chang, and Khorine? Maybe a single Gyfairie too that we can send back to the external group in case of emergency? Since they're essentially invisible.

>Right to Testa

>>6322091
>+1

>>6322091
Supporting that.

Missed the vote to beeline for Norville.
Too bad.

>>6322065
>Roam around the night-markets and alehouses
I like roaming (mainly just curious if we’ll see an old friend), but if we do go with Tessa, trolling her with with shapeshifting the build of Pierce seems like a wonderful way to surprise her with how we changed.

>>6322289
>>6322164
>>6322133
>>6322091
[Locked and writing!]

>>6322408
You and ZZ decide it best not to leave Empy and his crew to their own devices… You know, just in case. After some Elftongue arguing back-and-forth, you requisition one of the gyrfairies—‘Jhaan’, apparently?—to tag along invisibly, to serve as a messenger pigeon in the event of an emergency. The other two stay with their big blobby boss, as well as Ayla and Veigar.

(Ayla because she’s, uh, not the most social… and Veigar to look after Ayla.)

Yeb and An remain behind too, being gobs and all. Goblins only have a marginally better reputation than orcs or Southmen these days, and you decide it best not to chance it. Sure, you could probably <Transmogrify> them, but with their spell resistance being a lot less flexible than your own, you aren’t sure how well the disguises would stick—or when they would slip. Best not to chance it. By the same token, you sadly leave Nermal behind—the desert air isn’t agreeing with the amphibian, and they’re a pretty distinctive (and kind of disgusting, in a cute way) creature to be bringing into ‘civilized society.’

“So what, just you, me, Chang, ‘n the kid?” Zith-Zi asks.

“It’s not like we’re plannin’ ta run inta any trouble, right?”

“We never PLAN on it,” ZZ huffs. “But aight, fair. Just a straight shot to Testa. Everyone got that?”

And so it goes: the four of you—five counting Jhannie-boy, six with Hershy—head into Turtledove under cover of night.

The atmosphere here does indeed bring to mind the bandit-gatherings with which you and ZZ are familiar. The bulk of the populace is human or halfling—or maybe gnome? You can never tell with those little guys. The humans are primarily Northmen: pale ruddy skin, blue or green eyes—but a rougher sort than you usually see. There are soldiers, sexpots, and suspicious salesmen aplenty, soliciting all sorts of things from one another… and from you.

“Heeey little ladies~” slurs one drunkard in official-looking medium-light leather and mail. “You lot camp followers? How much to follow me back to my place, huh?”

“…You mean me?” You point at yourself and feel your face flush at the unfamiliar attention. “Oh, uh, thanks, but like—”

“More’n you can afford, fucko,” snaps ZZ, stepping protectively into place with a flourish of her cloak and a lifting of her lip.

“Aww, don’t say that,” he coos condescendingly, leaning down and grinning wide. “I know a full-sized human’s a BIG ask, but I can be gent—AAH!”

The unfortunate man makes the mistake of reaching out with a hand, which Chang swiftly intercepts. He grasps the man’s wrist in a delicate hold, but with a shift in his finger does something that pings your mage’s sense, and sends a spike of bluish-white frost racing up the stranger’s arm.

“Milady said no, good sir,” the flowery Eastman says softly, with a kind smile. “Please, do not make her repeat herself.”

>>6322432
You all hurry on, with Khorine in particular obviously overwhelmed by the onslaught of sights, sounds, and smells.

“I’ve never been around so m-many people,” she says, little ears twitching nervously in every direction.

“Well this is jus’ the outside,” you explain, “so it’s gonna be a lot busier INSIDE.”

Khorine goes pale, and ZZ elbows you in the ribs.

“O-oh! But, uh, also, ya know, less rowdy. They prob’ly got guards ‘n shit…”

And speaking of inside, you shortly arrive at the gates to Turtledove proper—which, as it turns out, has a gate! Or, well, an opening in the wall, guarded by a better class of armoured Northman. The four-to-six of you queue up for processing, and even at this time of night the processing entering and exiting is such as to make it take a while.

“No Paladins, though,” your sister points out.

“How can ya tell?” you ask, a little nervous even now that you aren’t TECHNICALLY a demon, and shouldn’t show up as such on a casting of <Detect Evil>.

“No big fuckoff gryphon, for one,” she says, with a shiver. “Plus, those metal-plated motherfuckers like their shining silver armour. These’re just… regular-ass soldiers. Shouldn’t be much worse than town guards back in Hawksong.”

“Oh, okay,” you say, as if you have any experience with THOSE sorts of humies, either.

After something like ten to twenty minutes, you arrive before the entrance and stand beneath the gaze of the tall town guards—or garrisoned soldiers on guard duty, or whatever these guys are. You might not have brought any gobs or globsters, but they still look surprised to see you, and not especially impressed.

“Got a bunch of foreigners, Franz.”

“Let’s see… Easterling, gnome, halfling, and… a sheep-girl?”

“Goat-girl,” ZZ corrects.

“FAUN,” Khorine bleats angrily.

“I’m, uh, not…” You hesitate. “Well, I guess I could be a halfling…”

The guards—and your friends—all look at you strangely. You clear your throat and tug at your high, oriental collar.

“State your business,” says the one whose friend called him Franz—a black-haired and grey-stubbled man with tired eyes to match his burgeoning beard. “But just to let you know: adventurers without a royal writ are to wait BEHIND the gate. Her Majesty’s orders.”

“Huh?” Zith-Zi balks. “Whyzat?”

“Too damn many of you lot have been showing up spoiling for a fight,” Franz’s friend says. “It’s a disturbance to the public order! A nuisance!”

“Plus, you’re outside the chain of command and might kick stuff off,” Franz adds.

“Or sell us out to the Southies,” friend-of-Franz says snidely. “Adventurers aren’t loyal to naught but coin. Everyone knows.”

You and ZZ exchange a look, and decide it best to…
>Let ZZ and Chang talk your way inside [what do you say?]
>Put on the <Charm> with some Mentalism
>Distract the guards while someone slips inside [who?]
>Write-in

>>6322433
>Put on the <Charm> with some Mentalism
Love me a bit of Charm and Mentalism play

>>6322433
>Put on the <Charm> with some Mentalism
Since we don't have proof of ZZ's noble heritage.

>>6322433
>Put on the <Charm> with some Mentalism

>>6322433
>>Put on the <Charm> with some Mentalism

>Put on the <Charm> with some Mentalism
We aren't the droids you're looking for.

Rolled 11, 2, 19 = 32 (3d20)

>>6322575
>>6322536
>>6322529
>>6322480
>>6322464
“I got this.”

ZZ doesn’t argue with you, though you can see some uncertainty in her green eyes. Instead, she takes a step back as you both literally and metaphorically step up to make yourself useful.

“Hey~”

Almost immediately, Franz clucks his tongue and shakes his head. “You can drop the tone. I got a wife back home that’s twice the woman you are—literally, little lady. You won’t be the first one to try that tack, but it won’t work.”

“Aww, don’t be like THAT,” you say as slyly as you can—which, admittedly, still isn’t especially sly.

(You may be a succubus’ spawn, but you aren’t exactly experienced at this whole… seduction thing, okay?? You spent most of your short life looking freaky, and from what you remember of being Zith-Zi, you/she always took the direct approach to getting laid!)

“Being what?” Franz asks boredly. “Loyal? Professional?”

His friend is sniggering at you now, and you feel a flush rising up your neck and to your cheeks. You empty yourself of your embarrassment, though. Your friends are counting on you! If your newfound charm is letting you down… well, you still have your old <Charm> up your allegorical, arcane sleeve!

Rolling Carazzi Yosef’s Mentalism, 3d20…

>>6323017
You reach out a tendril of your aura and slide its slender sorceries up Franz’s spine and into the stem of his brain, where his spirit anchors to his senses and mixes with his memory. There you find what you need: a wife to whom he is indeed quite dedicated, but also… a daughter.

Subtly, you shapeshift your eyes a titch larger, adjusting their hue from your (super)natural golden default to something flecked with hazel. Your facial proportions adjust, too, as you turn your head up—not enough to notice, except subconsciously. You pluck the heartstrings of sympathy, voice raising an octave and register adjusting to evoke the familiarly familial.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to imply anything. It’s just… I don’t know what else to do.”

“You could turn around and go home,” Friend-of-Franz scoffs.

“It’s just that we traveled all the way from Blackpine, looking for… for our father.”

Like a lockpick clicking into place, you feel the catch-and-rattle of something in Franz’s mind. His posture loosens; his expression shifts.

“Your father…?”

“He… he’s a trader, sir,” you lie. “I know that trade’s not, um… you know, ELGAL, but things have been hard lately, and goods from the Southlands still sell for a shiny silver or two, you know… And after the winter, and what happened to our farm…”

“Your farm?”

“Bandits,” you say sadly of your non-existent family farm. “They were extorting us for so long, and when we couldn’t make the payments… well, that was it. We had to move from—”

(Fuck! What’s a name? You dig a little deeper in Franz’s mind.)

“—well, you’ve probably never heard of it, but it’s this place called Titmouse?”

“TITmouse?” Franz’s friend groans. “Seriously? That’s the best you could come up with?”

“My cousin’s from Titmouse,” Franz growls. “It’s a fine town—honest folk. Hit hard by the dragon attacks… Banditry’s been a problem ever since.”

“Oh, uh… sorry, Franz. I didn’t mean anything by it…”

Franz waves off his companion’s apology and turns back to you.

“Tell me more,” he asks you, “please, Miss…?”

“Youngtree,” you provide, with a quick glance to an impressed-looking Zith-Zi. “Uh, Cara Youngtree.”

From there you spin a story of a halfling farmer family, down on their luck and forced into grey-market shenanigans by the desperate need to keep their family alive and well through the winter. You, of course, are the demure daughter of the family’s honest, hardworking patriarch, whose search for a stable livelihood carried him north to Blackpine—a region you can speak about with more confidence, without plumbing about in the man’s brain for particulars—and then into joining a merchant caravan that aimed to secure Southerly specialty goods currently under embargo, for resale.

Rolled a 19...

>>6323030
“When we heard about, um, you know… WAR… Mama just got so worried, and… as the eldest daughter, I just…”

You begin to sniffle, and Franz rummages around to produce you a handkerchief with which you dutifully blow your nose.

“Please, I don’t have much after hiring these nice people, but if you could just let us ask around inside, I’ll give you all I have. Any information I can find—ANYTHING—whether he’s alive or… o-or…”

“Now hold on—” Zith-Zi interjects at that, eyes widening.

“Your companion’s right,” Franz says, standing up and shaking his head. “We can’t take bribes. But… well, if you’re not here to adventure, I see no reason why you can’t go set your mind at ease. And you’d best take your adventurer friends; there are some ruffians in this mix, and make no mistake.”

Success!

Zith-Zi leans back, face neutral but her aura awed.

“Thank you, sir! Thank you so much!”

As the party passes through the gates, you spare Zith-Zi a wink. She returns it with a spreading smile and an unmistakable spark of pride in her eyes.

…

>>6323031
…

Thanks to your sister—and gods be DAMNED, what a show SHE put on!—you and your Regiment are allowed entry into the Turtledove with which you’re more familiar: not shacks and tents, but old structures of baked-clay bricks and stacked stones, dating back decades or centuries, hidden behind patched plastered facades. It’s still a changed place in its character, though, even if more recognizable structurally.

Where inns once sat empty, and taverns ran dry, war has brought opportunity back to those hardy frontiersmen who stayed here through the elan years, like dried moss clinging fast to a rock and awoken by an unexpected rain. The beige-brown hobbits who seem indigenous to the area are bustling here, there, and everywhere, underfoot yet nimble enough to avoid being trod upon by the soldiery and admitted adventurers. By their numbers, the humies must occupy every available room and then some. Most are males, and smell as expected for men on campaign—which is to say, not great, but a good sight better than goblins. They’re better behaved in here, though, despite that Franz guy’s warning—probably for fear of being kicked out by the Paladins.

You finally spy a few of their overly-shiny ilk here: Northmen in silvered armour bearing the royal crest of Hawksong—a sword crowned with a solar disk, brocaded by the spread wings of a great bird of prey. Your eyes dart about for signs of their famed bird-faced lion mounts, but you can breathe easy: if they brought gryphons, they must be stabled elsewhere at the moment. You still steer clear as you lead your little legion on a straight(ish) shot to a building you couldn’t mistake if you wanted to.

The Mage’s Tower of Turtledove is less than a quarter of the height of the big fuck-off white spire in Hawksong, but even amidst this newly-reinvigorated milieu, the gaudy structure remains the biggest and boldest attraction in the area. It’s a different colour than the last time you saw it, but that’s nothing new: you’ve been here maybe three times in your life, and seen three entirely different and equally-loud paint-jobs—pink, purple, and once a baby-blue like a clear noon sky.

Right now, its fine filigree is silver, and its walls a pristine white flecked with shimmering shards of diamond reflectivity that cause it to sparkle and glimmer from every angle, as if advertising: yes, we have a Tower here, too, and it’s just like the one back home!

(As if the newfound patriotism of the flapping flags doesn’t make it obvious they’re trying to go for a home-away-from-Hawksong thing already…)

Even the door—once a lustrous gold—now shines with sterling silver, and its knocker resembles the head of one of those awful chimeric mounts which the Royals and their pet paladins prize so dearly. With a dismissive snort, you seize the knock and slam it a couple times.

>>6323051
One of the little, light-brown locals opens up after a couple moments, and she immediately is taken aback—first by your party, and then by you in particular—pink, pointy-eared, shortstack you.

“Welcome to—Oh! You must be…”

“ZITH-ZIIII! Omigoooods, long time no see!”

The reason for the door-hobbit’s recognition comes rushing towards you, scooping you up in a hug. She, of all creatures in creation, looks the most like you—more than your own clone—and that’s no coincidence. Despite the affinity which binds the two of you, you dangle awkwardly like a cat being picked up by the scruff as she swings you around—of the several more subtle differences between you two pink-and-pretty nilbogs, one not-so-subtle one is that Nicolette Testa still has a solid foot of height on you.

After a couple ‘appreciative’ slaps on the back to approximate a hug, Testa gets the hint that she should set you down. You make hasty introductions of the others, and count yourself lucky that you brought Chang and not someone more like Xoldur (poor bastard…) since Chang is too effeminate to engage the boy-crazy broad’s homing instinct for hunks.

“But you MUST tell me what you’ve gotten up to these last… what has it been now? Two years? Three?” Testa says, as she—despite your protests—instructs her servants to bring out her ‘special occasions’ tea set and to boil the pot.

You sigh as you settle in, knowing that you won’t get out of here without at least a LITTLE chat, and you deign to share…

>The story of Sunset Lake—of the mysterious monsters you caught, tracked down, and more-or-less massacred
>The story of your eastern adventures—on the steppe, in River’s Mouth, and finally Crane Lake
>The whole story of the forge—of being kidnapped by an Ettercap, rescued by Carazzi, and rewarding her with her new body
>Keep all that close to the chest, and share a story from before the Regiment or New Goblintown… of the last adventure you went on with Jimmy and your old party
Please choose only one.

>>6323052
>The story of your eastern adventures—on the steppe, in River’s Mouth, and finally Crane Lake
Explains Chang and also lays out our certified badass credentials.

>>6323052
>The story of your eastern adventures—on the steppe, in River’s Mouth, and finally Crane Lake

>>6323052
>>Keep all that close to the chest, and share a story from before the Regiment or New Goblintown… of the last adventure you went on with Jimmy and your old party
This could tie nicely to our ask.
However,
>>6323092
got a solid point about "Badass Cred"

>>6323092
>>6323102
>>6323163
[I have D&D tonight, so we'll lock and write now!]

>>6323306
There’s no shortage of tales you could tell, thanks to the rather eventful couple of years you had. Even before forming the Monstrous Regiment, you and Jimmy had yourselves more than a few adventures of note—adventures you’re more than a little nostalgic for now, with Jimmy in chains or…

…

You set that thought aside. Better not to think about the old days just yet. Thinking about those times, when the man himself is still beyond your reach, it’s… too much. And anyway, this is Nicolette Testa you’re dealing with. You know Testa. You know what she’s like, what she values. Testa isn’t an adventurer—she doesn’t know that life, and certainly doesn’t care about the nitty-gritty of it.

“You want a story, huh?” You lean back. “Well have I got a story for you. See, me ‘n my new adventurin’ crew, we’ve been out east. FAR east. Ever heard of a little place called Shuǐmén?”

Testa gasps, and leans forward. “You’ve been to one of the Three Sacred Treasures? Oh my gods, JEALOUS!! I’ve always WANTED to go. Is it as beautiful and exotic as they say?”

“Hm? Oh yeah, I guess so…” You steal a quick glance at Chang. “But it’s got nothin’ on this other place we went. Ever heard of Durumiho Wangguk, the imperial city of the Dawnlands? The Frozen Lake of Cranes and Blue Flowers?”

“I can’t say I have, but it sounds POSITIVELY fascinating. Is that where you found, Mister, uh…?”

“Chang,” he reintroduces himself, setting his teacup down daintily, and bowing before your host. “Chang Lanseoul, milady. And yes—I am a Knight of the Order of the Blue Flower. Albeit, ah…”

“Albeit in exile,” you finish for him with a knowing grin, “for charmin’ his way into the chambers of the heavenly bride of the King of Cranes.”

Testa, despite not knowing who any of these people are, gasps again, while Chang subtly cringes behind his slim, stoic smile. “Oh my! That sounds like a JUICY story.”

“It really fuckin’ is,” you agree, “an’ it’s the story of how I nearly died, fixed myself up, ‘n got these scars. It’s got two emperors, fairies, angels, a motherfuckin’ LICH… an’ a whole lotta romance.”

NOW you have her. If there’s one thing Nicolette Testa loves above all else, it’s love itself. Drama, passion, the aesthetic of it… and for your money, MAKING love, too, which is to say she’s sort of a hoe. But she’s a hoe you have hook, line, and sinker now, and so you reel her in.

>>6323324
You spin a lightly-embellished and only soemwhat-censored yarn for your fellow nilbog. It starts with Ziwei Bo’s Emporium of Wonders, and icarries you to the steppe to the realm of the Naked Emperor, where Carazzi—who blushes and chuckles nervously at the telling of it—charmed a wild and terrible monster-king and his fairy court with song and dance and quick thinking, won his aid in defeating a wicked wizard, only for you to be struck ill by his final spells.

You tell her the tale of how fortune brought you and Chang together, of a noble knight and an ailing king, of a love triangle the nearly ended an ancient and heavenly dynasty, and how from the ashes of their misery a new life and love blossomed: of how you saved his master’s life, your own life, and the life of Chang’s wife—the Crane King’s angelic ex—and their soon-to-be-born baby from courtly intrigue in the Far East.

Needless to say, there’s hardly a dry eye in the house when you’re done, and nobody’s quite as moved as Testa herself.

“What a beautiful story,” she gushes.

She dabs at her eyes with a napkin, then delicately blows her nose. With a flourish of her wrist and a quick incantation, she Prestidigitates the cloth clean, before tucking it into her rich purple robes.

“And now, Mister Chang, you’re returning the favour, are you?” she asks him. “She saved your love, and now you mean to save Zith-Zi’s—is that it?”

“You could say so,” Chang agrees. “I am indebted and pledged to Lady Zith-Zi’s service, and shall do as she requires of my humble self, even unto death.”

“How chivalrous,” Testa nearly swoons. “Well, after a story like THAT, I simply MUST offer my own services.”

>>6323327
You blink at that, taken off-guard. You’d expected a strong reaction, but not THAT strong. “Really? You mean, uh, direct-like?”

“Of course!” Testa stands up, striding toward you. “You’ll need all the help you can get! Just say the word, and it’s yours!”

She hesitates a moment, looking ambivalent, and then hastily amends: “Well, it’s not ACTUALLY my Tower, EXACTLY, so… I can’t just GIVE AWAY anything of Master Gartner’s, but anything I can provide is yours!”

Because you chose the option with the most appeal to Testa, you scored an automatic success in securing her aid!

What exactly do you want? Choose as many as you would like, though some may come with complications or caveats.

>Information—what does she know about these Southmen that invaded Chiffchaff? What exactly has she heard?
>You need magic items—she can’t provide them for free, but she can offer a discount, surely?
What do you have in mind? If you choose this one, specify.
>She’s a mage, and a feytouched mage at that—can she hook you up with one of the local fey spirits as a guide?
>You’re going up against demonists and whatever else… Loathe as you are to ask, could she make introductions to a Paladin?
>Testa’s an adept illusionist, and you have a crew containing some unusual allies—can she help you sneak them through Turtledove and to the front?
>Write-in

>>6323328
>She’s a mage, and a feytouched mage at that—can she hook you up with one of the local fey spirits as a guide?
We've got a very Fey friendly party.

>>6323328
>Information—what does she know about these Southmen that invaded Chiffchaff? What exactly has she heard?
>She’s a mage, and a feytouched mage at that—can she hook you up with one of the local fey spirits as a guide?

>>6323328
>Information—what does she know about these Southmen that invaded Chiffchaff? What exactly has she heard?
>You need magic items—she can’t provide them for free, but she can offer a discount, surely?
What do you have in mind? If you choose this one, specify.
Some kind of illusion trinket. Make us less likely to be seen or detected. And some kind of healing potion or item in case Efron is a little too close to death’s door.

>She’s a mage, and a feytouched mage at that—can she hook you up with one of the local fey spirits as a guide?

>>6321600

>>6323328
>>Information—what does she know about these Southmen that invaded Chiffchaff? What exactly has she heard?
>Testa’s an adept illusionist, and you have a crew containing some unusual allies—can she help you sneak them through Turtledove and to the front?

>>6323392
>>6323553
>>6323722
>>6323734
[Locking for info and fairy friends!]

>>6323779
“The first thing we need is information,” you say, “and the second is a guide.”

Information, alas, is in short supply. Testa provides what she can, which is more than you had before, but it’s less than you’d like.

“Most of what I’ve heard is from returning adventurers,” she explains. “Before, you know, the whole ‘war’ thing, it was pretty much only freelancers like them that took the mountain pass… Even though they weren’t supposed to. Not that I’m judging—I’m glad! The Southlands have the BEST fabrics, besides maybe Wevenore spider-silk, and that’s even HARDER to get, somehow, even with us trading with the dark elves now... Raffia, barkcloth, kapok… Not to mention the dyes! I can use magic to APPROXIMATE indigo-blue, but it’s just not the SAME as the natural sort, you know? And there’s some BEAUTIFUL purples, reds, even this one type of mud that makes a really vivid yellow when you—”

“Testa.” You stare at her, dumfounded. “You think I give a shit about fabrics ‘n dyes?”

Testa gestures to your new, oriental attire. “Well excuse ME for assuming you’d finally learned how to dress yourself!”

(You’re beginning to remember why it took a magical rite of attunement to make you and Nicolette Testa get along…)

“Anyway, my master had been employing small teams of adventurers to go beyond the border to fetch us some things like that… You know, many Southrons didn’t care much about the feud, either, even after that nasty business with Prince Alexos. They were as eager to trade with us as ever, once you got past the patrols and managed to meet with them! But then, something changed. I suppose Hanif Sultan must have gotten a new… General or captain-of-the-guard or what have you.”

“Wait wait wait, slow down a sec… Hanif Sultan is who, now?”

Hanif Sultan, it turns out, is the local lord just south of the mountains, and it’s his turf that Testa’s master’s mercs do their trading with. According to those same adventurers—those who managed to return, which wasn’t all of them—the army that marched on them and chased them back to the Northwest wasn’t just significant for its armoured gnoll shock troops, but for its human composition.

>>6323794
The old guard could be easily paid off or evaded with knowledge bought from the others, and were of the sandy-brown hue more common to the region in halfling and humans alike; the new crew were led by what the Northwest calls ‘blackmen’, a human subrace with woolly hair like a sheep and skin dark as a Drow’s, from the real deep South… And these new humies were serious business.

“Of course, adventurers ALWAYS say things like that, when they lose—YOU know, Zith-Zi, I’m sure. ‘They were as tall as giants’, ‘they were obviously trained warriors’, and on and on. I’m sure SOME of it is exaggeration, but the bit that piqued MY interest was the enchantments.”

“Enchantments?”

You’d heard by way of CZ what the Maladoos had seen, in the siege of Castle Al-Ghul: that the gnolls were clad in strange, stone armour. Apparently, that was also true of their blackman officers, and spellcasters among the adventurers had identified these all as being enchanted.

“Like the, uh, ‘infernal artillery’?” CZ asks.

“Not quite,” Testa corrects, “or at least nobody SAID as much. Honestly, while I haven’t encountered it before, demon-powered weapons are nothing new in the Southlands. They’re sort of infamous for those! But that sort of thing usually amounts to trapping an imp in the base of a cannon and having it summon hellfire to launch—it’s barely better than an elemental, except of course that you don’t need to continually recast Summon Elemental, and it can operate a bit more independently. But this was… Something new. If you believe them, the armour actually shifted and moved on its own, reforming to block and deflect attacks. Some of them even said the ARMOUR seemed to be moving the GNOLLS… Like, it was as if when a blackman issued an order, the gnolls would move to follow it right away, as if they’d all received the command instantly. Even faster, maybe, because can you IMAGINE how many times you’d need to repeat yourself for a GNOLL to understand? Ha!”

>>6323795
“Surely that could just be more Dark Magic?” Khorien chimes in.

“Maybe,” Testa says with a shrug, “but the Paladins couldn’t just smite them into oblivion, so…”

So: a new guard of unfamiliar humans with an army of beastmen in enchanted armour that let them defend and attack with unparalleled coordination and response time… And they were unexpectedly aggressive, and not easily handled even by divine Paladin power.

(Yeah… Better to avoid taking all THAT head-on, then.)

“Hey Testa, you’re a mage. An’ a nilbog, like me—”

“Well, not EXACTLY like you, but…”

“If you bring up height, I’m bringin’ up bust,” you warn her.

Testa pouts, but stops talking. You take this for a victory.

“We need a guide, someone to get us to Chiffchaff… Someone who knows ways off the beaten path.”

“Adventurers aren’t really coming and going anymore,” Testa laments. “All the freelancers have either fled or been pressganged by the war effort.”

“I wasn’t exactly thinkin’ an adventurer... Ya know any of the local fairies?”

Testa’s button nose wrinkles at the query, which both lets you know you’ve got an option, and that you might not like it.

“There are some catfolk and foxfolk we trade with sometimes, and they pray to these… THINGS, these horrible little creatures they call ‘mephits’. I SUPPOSE they must be fairies—those genie sorts of fairies, like you and Tips said you ran into in the Goblin Wastes years ago, remember that?”

You do indeed remember that adventure: encountering the Asherati race of sand-elves and their elemental fairy patrons. They’d made the goblins wait at the base of their mountain, where you’d been accosted by giant vultures and other wasteland monsters, rather than letting the likes of you onto their sacred stones—or, well, your other half, when she was still greenskinned Cara-Zi rather than styling herself ‘Carazzi Yosef’, but also An-Yii and Yeb-Uit.

>>6323797
“So they’re pricks, then?”

“They are… Not fond of foreign trade, no. Once I went to go meet with them, to negotiate better prices, and they were rather surprised that I could see them, and positively OFFENDED when they realized I didn’t speak the Feytongue… As if simply because I’ve been turned into a nilbog, I ought to have some sort of affinity! Really!”

“Didja get yer discount?” CZ asks.

“No,” Testa huffs, “I did NOT. They declared me ‘unworthy of the precious treasures of the arid places’, according to my translator, and then they summoned up a sandstorm and disappeared.”

Well, you can see how that might be a problem. Nilbogs are a new race—if you even count as such, when it’s literally just you and Testa, and MAYBE sorta kinda CZ and Yeb, though they’re a lot less fairy-flavoured. Unlike Testa with all her fancy Tower education, though, you DO know a bit of Elftongue, which was near enough to the ancestral fairy jibber-jabber to get through to The Naked Emperor’s crew. And better yet, you’ve got…

“…Why are you looking at me like that?” Khorine asks.

Do you have any other questions for Testa?
>Yes [write-in]
>No

By now, it’s quite late—what will you do?

>Sleep here tonight, and see about purchasing some equipment in the morning, when the market opens
>Slip up into the mountains to go see about contacting the mephits under cover of darkness
>If the local fairies are a problem, maybe this calls for a more occult option… Carazzi can take a crack at that
Write-in

>>6323795
>If you believe them, the armour actually shifted and moved on its own, reforming to block and deflect attacks. Some of them even said the ARMOUR seemed to be moving the GNOLLS… Like, it was as if when a blackman issued an order, the gnolls would move to follow it right away, as if they’d all received the command instantly.
Oh boy, sounds like they found shoggy.


>>6323798
>Yes [write-in]
We might be able to talk to them - Jhaan certainly can. Any other tips she might have for dealing with them?

>Slip up into the mountains to go see about contacting the mephits under cover of darkness

>>6323798
>>Slip up into the mountains to go see about contacting the mephits under cover of darkness

>>6323795
>If you believe them, the armour actually shifted and moved on its own, reforming to block and deflect attacks.
Atlas, is that you ?
>>6323798
>Slip up into the mountains to go see about contacting the mephits under cover of darkness

>>6323886
>shoggy
[Not quite...]

>>6324072
>Atlas
[I saw it immediately, but it'a actually a setting element I've been planning for years...]

>>6324132
>[I saw it immediately, but it'a actually a setting element I've been planning for years...]
kek, it's not like the other qm invented the concept of moving magical armor, but still

>>6323886
>>6323984
>>6324072
[Locked and writing!]

>>6324452

“Fairies may be annoying little shits sometimes, but between Khorine and, uhh…”

“Jhaan,” Khorine provides.

“Yeah, between Khorine and John, we can handle this ‘mephit’ guys, easy.”

“If you say so,” replies Testa, showing absolutely no indication she believes you.

You roll your eyes, immediately defensive, but force your pride down. “Well, if such hardcases, maybe you can give us some pointers, huh?”

“Oh, you know what fairies are like, I’m sure… The beastmen are much more reasonable, in their way.” Testa’s face brightens immediately as she recalls. “And they’re SOOOO cute!~… But, ahem, DON’T call them that. They take offence, for some strange reason.”

You arch an eyebrow, and make a mental note—not that you’re terribly inclined to start complimenting random beastmen. Apart from that tidbit, Testa can tell you little more about their culture, save that they seem to prefer to meet in the rocky areas of the mountain, that they speak the southern trade-tongue (which you barely do, unfortunately), and that their North-Common is passable enough for barter (about as good as your South-Common, then). Apparently they prefer to meet up low down along the mountains as opposed to in the valley below, but Testa reckons that they must live in the desert on the other side by their style of dress, and by the goods they bring to trade.

“They have these lovely little baubles which can ONLY come from The City of Glass.”

“The what now?” Carazzi asks, as if reading your mind.

“One of the great cities of the South, or so they say. Nobody from the North has ever been there, but out amidst the sand there’s allegedly a city ruled by some Southron sorcerer or other, made with mysterious magic so that it is ENTIRELY made of clear and coloured glass! It’s supposed to be beautiful…”

Testa sighs dreamily, imagining it.

Rolled 73 (1d100)

>>6324466
“Besides that, it’s the usual stuff: ore and minerals from out in the desert, and the usual sundries from the south that get passed back and forth. No fruits, though, and many more dried geckos and snakes than anyone would ever want—ugh!”

(You’ve been known to eat a reptile or two, as a matter of fact… But admittedly, not since you developed a taste for better fare. Testa's not wrong to think that probably indicates they're living somewhere less-than-pleasant.)

As for the mephits, Testa can offer little besides what she already shared, and a physical description: “Like hairy little creeps, with black eyes and long noses and these AWFUL wings… Not cute at ALL!”

With little else to go off of, and no time to waste, you thank Testa for her help and set out with your fellow nilbog in tow, that very same night. Testa whines, but Testa is wont to whine—you learned that about her ages ago, and expected nothing less. It’s still one more mage for the Regiment, at least for this one critical mission, and you won’t say no to that!

…

>>6324467
…

The Regiment—plus Testa—creeps through Turtledove under cover of darkness. The guard presence is light around Gartner’s Tower, presumably because even the Paladins trust that a pair of mages can handle themselves when it comes to riffraff, which works to your advantage. You and the crew are able to use the darkvision or low-light vision which most of you possess to navigate the outskirts of the settlement, evading any questioning by the guards…

Well, until you reach the wall.

The stone wall on the south side of the settlement is much more imposing than the wooden one on the north, and better-guarded as well. Instead of a smattering of bored and tired looking soldier-types, there is a much better-drilled crew whose chestplates are polished to a shine to really show up their Hawksong heraldry. Presumably, they’ve done this at the instruction of the pair of Paladins who are with them… And accompanied by a gryphon.

You can feel the psychic shock and the bolt of primal terror shoot through Zith-Zi without even turning to her. It’s buried in your bones, too, and the self-same shock shoots up your cloned-and-refined spine. Thanks to your ascended state, you’re able to empty yourself of that anxiety quite quickly, but ZZ isn’t so lucky.

“Fuckin’ creepy-ass giant-ass motherfuckin’ cat-birds… Ugh, I HATE those things!”

“What?” Testa laughs. “Really? -I- think they’re gorgeous. Majestic!”

“Yeah, well you ain’t bite-sized, are ya?!”

“I thought you didn’t want to bring up height, Zith-Zi?”

“Top-tier tits ain’t gonna do shit about a beak the size of my head, now, are they?!”

>>6324477
While the two of them bicker, you consider your approach. Mentalism worked well on the guards at the gate… But you have reason to suspect the warriors of the Holy Order of Hawksong, renowned for their demon-busting ability, might be less susceptible than the rank and file. That you won’t ping as a being of Pure Evil anymore is a boon, but it’s not like they’re letting normal humies through, either… Not without a ‘royal writ’.

(Heh, shame you can’t get one in the name of ‘Carazzi of House Yosef’, huh?)

The wall isn’t all-encompassing, though, nor evenly patrolled. You and the Regiment could sneak around the side and up over the rougher rocks at the canyon’s edge, but it would be rough going, and a longer hike. Testa is pretty sure these beastmen keep a camp locally, but she’s always taken the once well-trafficked roadway through the mountains—you’d be relying on your survival skills to find them and to navigate the treacherous terrain without map or memory or go off of.

(And only yours, too, since Yeb’s waiting back behind you… Although maybe Khorine can help?)

You can’t stay crouched here all night, though. You have to try SOMETHING. But what?
>Fuck it—go around the wall and up the side of the Shieldwall Mountains. You’re no stranger to outdoorsy shit in arid areas!
>Just because the Paladins are resistant to mental shenanigans, doesn’t mean their lackeys are—maybe you can brainwash one into letting you through?
>Say… Testa’s an illusion and enchantment mage, and you ARE a Yosef… Maybe you could forge a write and bluff your way through?
>Write-in

>>6324478
>Say… Testa’s an illusion and enchantment mage, and you ARE a Yosef… Maybe you could forge a write and bluff your way through?
Voting this for the future drama it sets up.

>>6324478
>Fuck it—go around the wall and up the side of the Shieldwall Mountains. You’re no stranger to outdoorsy shit in arid areas!
mentalism on a lackey could be sniffed out and I'm sure that bluffing through an illusion would be a hard roll against them

>>6324478
>>Say… Testa’s an illusion and enchantment mage, and you ARE a Yosef… Maybe you could forge a write and bluff your way through?

>>6324562
>>6324661
>>6324665
[Locked!]

>>6324961
“I ain’t goin’ near that monster, I’ll tell ya THAT for free.”

“Well we have to get past them SOMEHOW, Zith-Zi. Be reasonable.”

“I could lead us up the mountain. As a Disciple of the True Fey, I am at home in all Mother Nature’s wild places.”

“See, the kid knows what’s up! Steers us wide an’ clear of those UNnatural-ass gryphons.”

“HIKING? In THESE robes? And look at how STEEP it is. I refuse! It simply WILL not do.”

“Well who fuckin’ asked you ta come, huh?!”

“YOU did!”

“Uh, hey guys?”

“Did I? Way I ‘member it, your ass just volunteered.”

“ZZ? Testa?”

“You asked IMPLICITLY, you ungrateful little—”

An exasperated Chang finally clears his throat, politely but firmly putting an end to the hushed-but-harsh exchange of barbs, and says: “Miladies, I believe Lady Yosef is trying to attract your attention.”

You give him a grateful look, and then turn to the other eyes glowing faintly in the dusk, all focused on you—Zith-Zi’s green, Testa’s blue ones, and Khorine’s orangish-brown. Two more shimmer at the edge of perception: Jhaan the gyr-fairy, phased half-in and half-out of the Prime Material Plane, awaiting instructions. Poor Chang alone lacks the eyes to see clearly in the shadows—one more reason to avoid a trek along the night-blackened Shieldwall’s steepest and least-steady goat-paths.

“Lady Yosef?” repeats Testa.

“Y-yeah,” you say, “It’s, like, this thing I’ve been tryin’ out, ya know? ’Cause me ’n ZZ—”

“Mama Zi got herself knocked up by some slummin’ noble, turns out,” Zith-Zi quickly interjects. “No biggie. Probably happens all the time, when ya think about it.”

Testa wrinkles her nose. “A nobleman and a GOBLIN? I don’t know about THAT…”

Before this can provoke another fight—as you know damn well it will—you launch into your pitch:

“Well, either way, it happened the once, an’ now that I’m all purified ’n whatever, maybe it’ll be a bit more believable?”

“Well, there’s one problem with that,” Testa points out. “The House of Yosef is defunct, twice over. EVERYONE knows that. It was QUITE a big deal—first that dreadful business with the murders of Lord Isaac Yosef and his family, and THEN that Sir Heinrich Yosef was still alive, and then he went MISSING and…”

Testa’s eyes widen, and her glossy lavender lips form a little ‘o’.

“Oh my gods, THE GREEN KNIGHT is your FATHER??”

You exchange a look with ZZ, who shrugs. He’s not, of course, but it’s certainly a more auspicious paternity than a shapeshifted snake-lady and her pet succubus who maybe might have been the one to do all those 'dreadful murders'. At the very least, it’s much more useful for your current purposes.

“Uh… Yeah!”

>>6324987
“That’s amazing!” Testa gushes. “Oh, but it’s a shame you’re illegitimate… You’d be the heirs to probably THE most storied noble-house in all of Hawksong—besides the Royal Family, of course.”

“…And ya figure they’d let us through the gate, if they knew that?” ZZ asks, scratching her head and clearly giving the plan some serious consideration.

“Oh, they’d HAVE to!” Testa’s smile shrinks slightly. “But they wouldn’t just take our word for it, of course… We’d still need documentation.”

You nod excitedly. “Yeah, but you can do illusion ’n enchantment ’n shit, right?”

Testa’s eyes bug out a little. “You want me to FORGE a fraudulent document? LIE to PALADINS?”

ZZ crosses her arms. “It’s that or take a hike.”

Testa looks up at the sheer cliff-face one more time, and then with grim certitude concludes: “Forgery it is.”

Zith-Zi happens to have parchment and ink handy for Testa to work her magic on, emulating a flowing cursive. Some hastily-nabbed candle-wax from a hovel’s window, plus some arcane augmentation, serves to make you a wax seal which is (you hope) authentic enough to pass muster. You all lean in to admire the results, with Testa going so far as to produce a little <Light> for Chang, who nods politely even as you sense his confusion—the Easterling may speak the Commontongue of the Northwest rather well, but he clearly has no clue how to authenticate a royal writ from Hawksong.

(Neither do you, for that matter, but Testa seems to think it’s good to go, which is good enough for you!)

Together with the team, you slide out of the shadows and back into the intermittent and uneven light cast by torches mounted and in-hand. You feel a familiar spike of terror in ZZ’s heart as you near the pair of Paladins manning the gate—or, more pertinently to her panic, the gryphon, whose great feathered head turns to regard you archly as you approach—not in your petite “halfling” form now, but taller, like when you first visited River’s Mouth.

(Good thing you got it with those slits to let it shift around your form, rather than splitting open at the seams…)

“Halt,” says the older of the metal-shelled knightly-types, holding up his gauntleted hand. “It’s a little late for… whatever this is. State your name and business.”

(Moment of truth time… or rather, a moment of falsehood with a GRAIN of truth and a dash of magic.)

“My name’s Carazzi Yosef,” you say. “Uh, of House Yosef. You know, the… uh. That one. With the money, and the, uh… Green Knight?”

That gets the attention of the man’s younger companion, whose blond hair gleams as a golden accent to his silver armour.

“I beg your pardon, but that’s impossible.”

Rolled 5, 20, 15, 16, 4 = 60 (5d20)

>>6324988

“Well, I’m, like...” You giggle nervously, and you don’t need to fake your anxiety in the slightest. “Ya know… a bastard? Just got, like, discovered 'n confirmed 'n shit.”

“And you’ve been… Where, exactly, all this time?”

You start to flounder, mouth hanging open as you struggle to come up with the backstory you’d neglected to flesh out. Luckily, Chang again comes to your rescue.

“Lady Yosef has been a guest of my master, Pae-ryeong-gun, in Durumiho Wangguk… To the east of your most hospitable and magnificent realm.”

“Well, that’d explain the clothes,” the elder Paladin notes neutrally, giving you a once-over that tingles unsettlingly—evidence of some passive scanning-spell, most probably the Paladins’ famed <Detect Evil>.

“And the company,” his junior adds, less neutrally.

“Even so…”

“I promsie, I'm like... Totally legit! Look, I got this writ that says so—that me ’n, uh, my adventurin’ party here are allowed to head south. Kinda a hush-hush secret mission thing, ya know? From, like, the tippy-top!”

The Paladins look suspicious, and their gryphon’s squawk sounds unsettlingly hungry. You hurriedly produce the scroll which Testa had so freshly enchanted, and offer it up as proof…

Rolling 3d20 for Testa’s Material Enchantment, +1 bonus die for her skill in Illusion, +1 for Chang's Diplomacy…

>>6324992
You and the Regiment all hold your breaths as the Paladins silently stare down at the scroll, and it’s seal. With great delicacy, they place their steel-clad hands upon it, and produce a brief spike of magic. Testa’s own arcane energies tense up like a clenching sphincter—probably ALSO occurring…

Natural goddamn 20: critical success!

…But you all breathe out in great relief as her illusion-enchantment responds in kind, ‘verifying’ the ‘authenticity’ of your extremely fraudulent royal writ, to the Paladins’ apparent satisfaction. The elder human nods his salt-and-pepper head , breaking the seal and unfurling it to scan its contents. His younger companion peers over his pauldron to read along, and his eyes widen as he does so.

Finally, the more aged warrior rolls the scroll back up and, with surprising reverence, returns it to you. You take it back, murmuring a thanks. You never expected a Paladin to be looking at you quite like these two are now—not as a Hellish pest to smite, but rather as someone f great importance, meriting utmost respect.

And you SURE never expected them to BOW, but gods-be-damned if that ain’t exactly what the old humie’s doing!

“Praise be to Marese, and glory be Moroth’s!” He looks up at you—now blushing at the joy and wonder in his expression and his aura. “It’s a miracle… A true miracle!”

“I am?” You cough. “I mean, uh, it is?”

“What else can it be?” The paladin slowly rises, still focused on you and you alone. “In our time of need, as the Southron’s turn their demons and their monsters upon us and threaten civilization itself, House Yosef is returned to us, bearing the banner of Hawksong… And wearing GREEN no less.”

“Huh?” You blink. “Oh, you mean, like…”

“Not the Green Knight I would have expected,” jokes the younger Paladin, “but the letter’s legitimate, and you obviously wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t handle yourselves.”

You laugh nervously at that.

“We are at your service, Lady Yosef,” the older Paladin says, standing at parade-readiness. “Whatever you need, we shall provide, to the best of our abilities.”

(Oh… Oh damn!)

Do you need anything from these Paladins?
>Yeah, actually…
>>How about an escort?
>>How about a gryphon?
>>How about one of those fancy swords?
>>How about…[write-in]?
>Nah, just keep doing what you’re doing (and don’t ask any more questions, please)

As you reply to the paladins, you return the scroll to Zith-Zi, who places it in her pouch. Split down the middle though it may be, the falsified seal is still seated upon it, exhering to the exterior. It is the seal of…
>Queen Ekaterine of Hawksong, the so-called ‘Paladin Queen’
>Prince Consort Long Wang of Hawksong… Or, as he is known in other quarters, to a select few, The Copper Dragon King of Bloodrise

>>6324997
Based Testa coming through for us with that nat 20

>How about a gryphon?
We're gonna help ZZ overcome her trauma with shock therapy.

>Queen Ekaterine of Hawksong, the so-called ‘Paladin Queen’
I don't think they'd have been so excited for a letter from Extensive Dong

>>6325020
[To clarify, their enthusiasm and willingness to aid will not be affected.]

>>6325027
I'm too invested now to change.

>>6325047
[Totally fair! I just wanted to be clear that it won't retroactively invalidate the 20.]

>>6324997
>How about a gryphon?
I gotta try one

>Queen Ekaterine of Hawksong, the so-called ‘Paladin Queen’

>>6324997
>>How about a gryphon?
>Queen Ekaterine of Hawksong, the so-called ‘Paladin Queen’

>>6324466
Is Jhan… Jan? As in the polish name “Jan” (pronounced Yarn?)

>>6324997
>>How about an escort?
>>How about a gryphon?
We’re scouting the chiffchaff. Could use an aerial view.
>Queen Ekaterine of Hawksong, the so-called ‘Paladin Queen
I think this is a safer bet. House Yosef does concern her directly.

>>6323722

>>6325273
>Is Jhan… Jan? As in the polish name “Jan” (pronounced Yarn?)
[I got it from a random elf name generator's outputs, desu, so I gave it little though. In my head I've been pronouncing it a little like the Martian Manhunter's name, something like 'Zhuh-ahn']

>>6325273
>>6325127
>>6325053
>>6325020
[Locked and writing!]

>>6325463
While your friends all whisper about what they might want, your eyes fall again to the split-apart seal upon the falsified document which bought you this opportunity. The sword, halo, and eagle-wings somehow speak to you in that moment—not LITERALLY or anything like that, but to your spirit…

To a dream, dreamt every few knights for many a year…

To a mysterious echo of an armoured ancestor, now a little less distant.

Your gaze moves from the wings upon the wing to the shifting wings of the great beast behind and between the two silver-clad holy warriors before you. Somewhere deep inside you, you feel a sudden, mighty need—not <WANT>, thank the Dark Gods Below and Beyond, but something else.

“Oh no. No fuckin’ way. I’m serious, CZ…”

Zith-Zi has cottoned on to your sudden impulse, before you even speak it, and she is NOT pleased.

“Aww, c’mon ZZ, doncha think it’d be handy? Think of, like, the aerial recognizance!”

“I don’t believe that’s the word you mean to use, milady,” Chang gently corrects.

“WE already got, uh, John or whatever for that!”

“I don’t think that’s how you say his name,” Khorine interjects.

“I don’t’ fuckin’ CARE!” ZZ crosses her arms and narrows her eyes. “I ain’t getting’ on no godsdamned gryphon! Not even for Jimmy!”

You fix her with your best ‘little sis’ puppydog eyes, made a little awkward by your being so much taller than your other half at the moment. What she lacks in height, though, Zith-Zi makes up for in stubbornness… But then again, you’re something of a Zith-Zi[/green[ yourself, when you get right down to it.

…

Rolled 8, 17, 13, 15 = 53 (4d20)

>>6325468
Rolling for Carazzi’s Mentalism + Khorine’s Handle Animal.

Rolled 13, 13, 12, 10, 14 = 62 (5d20)

>>6325469

…

“AaaaaaAAAAAH fuckfuckFUCKFUCK mother-goddamn-ass-shit-FUCK!”

“ZZ, c’mon, she ain’t even barely off the ground!”

“And she’s only a LITTLE creature, anyway, by the standards of her race.”

“Great, so it’s gonna shred me before it eats me? Awesome. Spec-fuckin’-tacular!”

Despite your better judgement, CZ, Khorine, and Testa had conspired to stage a mutiny against your wise counsel. With trickery and manipulation—which is to say, a lot of bitching—they’d eventually brought that simp, Chang, around tot heir side. Finally, the four of them and worn you down in turn… And they’d gotten their gryphon.

You’d at least negotiated a sort of compromise, taking advantage of the Paladins’ own reticence to part with one of their precious beasts to make the case for a small model: a female. Among eagles, the female is the larger, but gryphons seemingly take more after their lion aspect in that regard, lacking both the bold white feathers of their fellows and their greater muscularity.

“Matilda’s a lean one, but quick as a whip,” the blonde knight had cautioned you. “And young, too. She’s, ah… Spirited.”

Now, a ways down the road and out of sight of the Paladins, you realize that Sir Whatshisnuts was underselling the damnable cur of a cat-bird. Even with Carazzi pulling a mind-whammy on the monster to help calm it down, and Khorine cooing to it and proffering it food from her pack, ‘Matilda’ is a menace. It takes you the better part of an hour to get her to accept an unfamiliar rider in her saddle, an accessory she periodically tries to shake off or roll out of. When she DOES accept you, she immediately launches upwards in wing-aided jumps of joy that fill you with the absolute opposite emotion, clearly assuming you’re taking her for some unexpected night-time exercise.

(Well, you guess you technically ARE, but you’d rather do just about anything else…)

Jhaan, manifest once more and fully visible to your barely-trained eye, floats in the air and watches you with those midnight eyes of his (or hers?), plainly amused. Reactions down on the ground range from mirroring the gyrfairy to sad sympathy. Even Carazzi and Hershy—HERSHY! Your own goddamn drake!—are giving you pitying looks.

“No way,” you growl, seizing handfuls of fur and feathers and eliciting a squawk. “No. Fuckin’. Way.”

Rolling Leadership + Animal Handling for Zith-Zi…

>>6325473
14…

skreeee!
“aaaaaaaaHHGHH--!”
thump!

…is a failure

In the end, CZ mounts up on the asshole aerial animal she acquired—a green knight on a noble steed. You, meanwhile, brush the red-brown dust off your white-wolf cloak and stick to the little feathered fucker who settles upon your shoulder, instead.

“Hmph. Hershy’s better anyway.”

“Well… Yeah,” Carazzi admits, soothing the eagle-headed horror. “But Tildy ain’t half-bad, either. Isn’t that right, girl?”

chirrrup~

But the 17 for CZ and Khorine is a success!

You scoff at the saccharine scene of your sister snuggling the savage, then turn your attention from your humiliation at the talons of that terror and back to the task at hand. While ‘Tildy’ might not accept your direct command, she seems to obey CZ well enough. If your soul-sister can keep that up, you can see the value in a 250-pound flying furball… Especially in expediting your alliance with these mephitis or whatever.

“We can avoid the hike altogether, this way!” Testa enthuses, and then with a sidelong look at you adds: “Well, some of us can.”

You flip the other nilbog an entirely different form of bird, and the sartorial sorceress sticks out her tongue at you in response.

“..Could make for a faster extraction for Jimmy, though, yeah,” you admit, and grudgingly add: “Good work, CZ. Kid.”

Khorine hides a smile at your praise, while Carazzi basks in it, such that she practically glows astride her new gryphon.

“But, uh… If yer not ridin’ Tildy, who IS gonna come with me?”

The gryphon can reasonably carry up to two people of your sundry sizes. Jhaan can fly all on their own, of course, as can Hershy, but for the rest of you…

>Gryphon or no gryphon, you’re all sticking together even if it takes you longer—you’ve already split the party once tonight!
>Speed IS of the essence, so you’ll send (along with Carazzi)…
>>Khorine, being a Feycraft-practicing god-botherer and all
>>Chang Lanseoul, since he’s a charmer and a courtly diplomat
>>Testa, on account of she knows these shmucks already
>>Yourself, swallowing your fear and pride to do what a Boss ought to do

Do you have any special instructions for how to approach this?

>Offer your gold and gems—they’re traders, right?
>Appeal to their fairy friendship—you’re all fair folk, sort of kind of
>Sew fear about the intentions of this demonic Southron legion
>Write-in

>>6325468 (You)
damn, that's my first formatting fuck-up in a while, I think...

>>6325480
>Speed IS of the essence, so you’ll send (along with Carazzi)…
>>Khorine, being a Feycraft-practicing god-botherer and all
A good start to the negotiations

>Offer your gold and gems—they’re traders, right?

>>6325480
>Speed IS of the essence, so you’ll send (along with Carazzi)…
>Khorine, being a Feycraft-practicing god-botherer and all
>Testa, on account of she knows these shmucks already

>Offer your gold and gems—they’re traders, right?

>>6325480
>Speed IS of the essence, so you’ll send (along with Carazzi)…
>>Khorine, being a Feycraft-practicing god-botherer and all
They earned the gryphon’s trust. Probably best we use that.

Everyone else on foot. We need testa if we want to negotiate anything worthwhile. CZ and Khorine’s there just to scout and overwatch.

>>6325273

>>6325480
>>Speed IS of the essence, so you’ll send (along with Carazzi)…
>>>Khorine, being a Feycraft-practicing god-botherer and all

>>6325612
>>6325595
>>6325590
>>6325482
[I'm a bit wiped from work, and so while I will likely update tonight, it'll be after a nap. In the meantime, any feedback on the arc, favourite characters or beats, etcetera would be appreciated, and I'll do my best to answer any questions left here as well!]

>>6325872
I like the Testa reunion

Rolled 14, 14 = 28 (2d20)

>>6325891
[I'm glad to hear it! It's fun to write her again, too.] it's been a long time coming, as I always intended to bring her back for this quest

>>6325872
[And now, without further ado...]

>>6325901
…

As it turns out, THAT means you and a certain faun whom you nearly eviscerated upon your first encounter back on Bloodrise are now sailing uncertainly through the star-spangled skies of an entirely different mountain range, half a world away. If Khorine feels any kind of resentment towards old-you or new-you, it doesn’t stop the teenaged goat-girl from clinging close, arms around your waist and horned head pressed against your back as you steer Tildy toward your destination: a corrie amidst the jagged umber of the Shieldwall’s north-western expanse, where the mortal servants of the so-called ‘mephits’ maintain a periodic presence.

“Don’t tell me yer scared a gryphons, too?” you shout over your shoulder and over the rushing wind. “You were doin’ so good, before!”

“I’m NOT afraid of gryphons!”

Khorine’s protest is undermined by the frantic, caprine cry she emits as Tildy dips into a dive, sailing down a swell of air with a gleeful spiral before spreading her eagle-wings wide and rising anew.

“…I’m afraid of HEIGHTS.”

“But yer from a mountain,” you point out.

“THAT is NOT the same as THIS, Carazzi!”

A few short weeks ago, you might have found the faun’s fear deliciously distracting, but just as Bloodrise Forest and Shieldwall skies are worlds apart, so too are then and now. In the present, you find yourself focused but frustrated—darkvision only extends so far before it fogs and fades to black. Luckily, the pure-black eyes of the True Fey are not subject to the same limitations, or so you must assume, for the gyrfalcon that suddenly appears alongside you soon cries out in a victorious alert which your new mount quickly echoes.

(Of course, you then have to dissuade Matilda from chasing and eating Jhaan, but that is a much smaller obstacle.)

Rolled Survival for Carazzi and Khorine…

14 is a success under the circumstances, and with aid!

Again, your she-gryphon descends, this time with greater control and less shivering from your rear-mounted beast-girl. You land upon a patch of stone that seems carved out into a great bowl amidst jagged, finger-like outcroppings. Between the ‘index’ and ‘ring’ fingers, there is a steep and winding path that, if you had to guess, leads down to the sadly abandoned roadways trafficked by traders before the war. Like many small divots in the Shieldwall, this place is enlivened by ferns and olive trees, and small yellow and blue flowers closely clustered in humble but natural bouquets; here, the plants seem especially lush and productive, thanks to the trickling of a secretive spring that splits the stone.

This, in turn, explains the tents.

>>6325906
At first blush, the tents of the traders are not so dissimilar from those favoured by the nomadic raiders of your half-remembered Zith-Zi youth. As you and Khorine creep closer, though, you can see they have more of the permanence of the Steelwood Orcs’: rocks and timbers have been erected to form a triangular base for each of them in lieu of simple stake-and-line setups, and extra layers of patched and reinforced tarp add insulation and weather-proofing against the chilly night winds. Beaten paths lead to and from the mouths of each, intersecting with one another and connecting up to the road below—signs of frequent and consistent use—and barrels and crates attest to ongoing storage.

“They’re still here, then?” Khorine asks.

“Yup.” You dip your finger into an empty stew-pot to sweep the edge, sucking the tip and tasting residue of recent cuisine. “Had dinner a few hours back.”

Hershy climbs up and over your shoulder, croaking a protest, and you dip your finger again to give the old drake a taste, too. He likes it a lot less, but his face amuses you. It IS pretty herbal, and proper spicy even as a fading after-taste of the actual meal—but hey, he asked!

“What do we do, now that we’ve found them?” Khorine asks. “Should we go get the others?”

Before you can answer, another voice pre-empts you.

“Marhaban?” comes a muted query from a tent across the way, its flap half-flipped. “Man hunaaka? Taha, hal hadha sawtuka alladhi asma‘uhu?”

You turn to Khorine, who shrugs—this isn’t Elftongue or any relative thereof, it seems. Probably South-Common, then, or maybe some local Beast-tongue. Well, you don’t speak either of those, but you DO have one universal greeting handy: the jingle-jangle and tinkle-crinkle of a big bag of gold and jewels, fresh from Ziwei Bo’s Emporium and the vaults of the Craen Lake king!

“We’re here ta trade!” you announce.

A pair of huge, tawny ears, fluffy with fur inside and out, rise up from the tent entrance at the sound of your booty—and perhaps even at the word ‘trade’; if these beasties speak any North-Common, it’s gotta be a word like that, right? Whatever the incentive, a face soon emerges, and then a body, both belonging to a robe-wrapped little fox-woman with deep-blue, almond eyes and a golden coat.

(And holy HELLS, Testa wasn’t kidding—these fuckers are CUUUUTE!)

The petite foxy is smaller even than a goblin—well, maybe not An-Yii—but with an oversized and plushly pelaged face, with eyes to match the ears and a little twitching nose. She approaches cautiously and then, startled by your gryphon, dives back into the tent.

“Hey…”

Rolled 10 (1d20)

>>6325907
A moment later, she emerges again but pushes before her an apparent family member or mate—a male of the race, a little larger but still not especially fearsome, even with a thin, straight-bladed knife strapped to his hip in an ornately embroidered sort of scabbard.

“Anta... min ash-shamal?” the fox-man asks, unintelligible to you but with obvious confusion as he looks between the two of you. “Rubamaa min ash-sharq ash-shamaali?”

You nudge Khorine, who stammeringly spits out a few uncertain words of the language shared—or partly shared, at least—by most of the Fair Folk who worship the Wild Gods:

“Udos orn'la saph ulu Wuzul mei'q xuil dos... Belaern lu'se'visos?”

You brought no diplomats, and conflict has made the traders wary, but bringing a beast-girl who can speak some Elftongue wasn’t a bad idea, nor was money! 1d20, DC 12!

>>6325908
fuck

>>6325908
The adorable locals tilt their big noggins sideways and chatter amongst themselves before mustering a reply. To you, it sounds near-enough to whatever-the-fuck Khorine just said, but the goat-girl looks roughly as disoriented as the smaller beasties. They go back and forth like this a few times, with increasing twitchiness of the ear and—in Khorine’s case—stamping of her hoof.

“No, no, uh… Naut whol l'trezen hosse! Whol udossa! Uns'aa lu'ussta abbil ph'naut nesstren dal l'trezen!

The female fox yelps and snaps her cutesy-wutesy widdle jaws, and points up into the air from the direction you came, reverting to the OTHER tongue she first spoke, and saying: “Lakinaka ta’ti min ash-shamal. Nahnu na‘lamu anna hadha haqq!”

“Not goin’ great?” you hazard.

Rolled a 10—failure.

Khorine turns back to you, face red with annoyance and embarrassment alike, declaring:

“They must not speak the same dialect of Feyspeech as I was taught!”

Though a moment later, she admits abashedly, kicking a nearby stone as she does so:

“O-or I don’t speak it qu-quite as well as I thought…”

“What’s the hold up, exactly?” you ask, peering past her at the hopping-mad female and the wary male.

“I can’t EXACTLY say I don't udnerstand their objection, but the biggest problem is that they think we work for the army, or are scouting for the army, or maybe that we just will resell whatever we buy to the army for better prices?”

Even as Khorine explains this, her confidence falters. It’s telling that she may or may not have even gotten across that you want a guide, rather than to buy goods. Furthermore, it’s clear from the foxfolk's auras that mistrust is at the centre of it. By now the commotion has begun to attract a small crowd: mostly more foxes half-out of their tents, though there are a couple grey, stripey cats closer to a human's or hobgoblin's size as well, and you sense at least one dissimilar aura at the back of the camp, parked amidst a little copse of fruit-trees in the heaviest-duty tent, almost more a cabin with its many wooden support-struts along each side.

“Hey,” you say, “I got an idea…”

>Leave Khorine here to stall for time while you go get Zith-Zi and lead them here
>Pour out some ‘free’ gold and jewels, to buy goodwill with a gesture but without guarantee
>Have Jhaan take over—perhaps the appearance of a True Fey will solidify your credibility
>Go to the big dog—the apparent Boss in the back—and knock on the door
>Mentalism hasn’t failed you yet… Well, BARELY ever! Just use that, Charm ’em!
>Write-in

>>6325911
>Have Jhaan take over—perhaps the appearance of a True Fey will solidify your credibility
Too many dang languages to deal with, everyone should just hurry up and speak good Queen's Hawksongian already.

>>6325911
>Have Jhaan take over—perhaps the appearance of a True Fey will solidify your credibility

>>6325911
>Mentalism hasn’t failed you yet… Well, BARELY ever! Just use that, Charm ’em!
These are the friends you are looking for….

God I love mentalism.

>>6325911
>Mentalism hasn’t failed you yet… Well, BARELY ever! Just use that, Charm ’em!

our mentalism is pretty reliable, And jhaan is an unseelie there is a risk that the bestmen will be able to tell the difference.

>>6325976
me>>6321804

>>6325911
>Have Jhaan take over—perhaps the appearance of a True Fey will solidify your credibility
If that doesn’t work, then use our charm.

>>6325595

>>6325989
+1

>>6326005
>>6325989
>>6325976
>>6325933
>>6325928
>>6325914
[Locked and writing!]

Rolled 7 (1d100)

>>6326277
“Jhaanie’s, like, a thousand or whatever, right? They prob’ly speak the real old fairy language from way back when! I bet”

Khorine is miffed to relinquish her role to the steppe-fairy, but she cedes without any argument save for some mutterings about how she totally could have done it. You, in turn, don’t argue with that. Teamwork. While you’re both getting out of the way, Jhaan does as you say, whether he (?) wholly understands your words or not: the feathery fairy appears as if from thin air, making himself visible to the shocked assembly of animal-people.

“Rūḥun muqaddasah!”

“Min ash-shamāl? Lam ara mithla hādhā min qabl...”

“Hal yumkinu an nakūna wāthiqīn annahu laysa shayṭānan?”

“Ayyuhā al-aḥmaq, unẓur ilā ‘aynayhi! Ushumm al-hawā’, ataḥissu bidhālika al-wakhz? Innahu ṭiflun li-ālihat al-ḥurriyyah!”

You wait, tamping down anxiety and keeping your body language friendly, as fox-boys and cat-men babble in their local language. The tone and collective qi feels less like alarm than like awe, however, a promising start!

Eventually, one of the cat-men, wearing a funny little hat and sash over an otherwise naked (and VERY fluffy, squishable-looking) body is brought forward. He stares up at Jhaan, who is floating there looking bemused. His tail flits nervously near the blunt tip, and the cat-man bows low, turning palms inwards and pressing his furry forehead to the sand-swept stone of the Shieldwall.

“Gi sil'in athiyk d'l'Phraktos d'Duul'ssom, vel'bol silara dos ulu udossta ib'leua delmah?”

Your untrained ear is not so tinny that you can’t tell that the beastman has shifted from the somewhat harsh and throaty trade-tongue of the South to the musical, lilting language of the True Fey. You nudge Khorine and ask her what he said.

“He wants to know why we’re here?”

“You didn’t tell ’em?”

“I TRIED!”

“Okay, okay. Well, uh, tell Jhaan to tell Mittens there that we’re here ta pay ’em for a guide to Chiffchaff… Someone who knows the lay of the land, an’ who can tell us a bit more ’bout what’s goin’ down.”

>>6326301
Khorine relays this to Jhaan, who giggles at her pronunciation, much to the faun’s further humiliation, but nods and relays it thus:

“L'heethir'ku wun to'ryll zhah natha yornurn c'nros, vel'uss ussta kar'et uriu morfel abbilen d'. Il lac'na ulu dormagyn ilta dalninil's m'ranndii, xor folbol saph nindel... Usstan joros nindel dos xxizz. Yewl natha bekea mrigg, ulu nau'thal mina ulu vel'klar rivvin morfeth thalack harl. Gi, lu'nind orn yaith dos, ka dos saph.”

“…Izzat the right thing, what he just said?” you ask Khorine again.

“How should -I- know?” she bitterly retorts.

Whatever the exact phrasing, it seems to produce better results than last time: greedy, beady eyes turn to your coin purse with a lot less suspicion than they bore before. Suddenly, the loud-mouthed little fox-girl is fighting off all comers, eager to secure your loot for herself and her male companion.

“We good, good traders!” she insists with a sharp-toothed little grin. “Laqad kāna akhī bayna qawmi al-ḍibāʿ min qabl... bal najā ayḍan! Hādhā akthar mimmā yastaṭīʿu ayy shakhṣin hunā an yaqūlah.”

You run your fingers through your hair as the yappy little cutie reverts to South-Common in her excitement and shoves the male forward. He looks nervous, but nods at… whatever she just said.

(Ugh, why can’t everyone just speak ONE Commontongue? Or better yet, Goblang! THAT, you understand!)

“Jhaan…?”

Jhaan via Khorine manages to relay that the pair of pint-sized porters have (allegedly) traded with the gnolls before, and lived to tell the tale, something they claim nobody else here can say. When a burly-looking cat-man steps up, ears pressed back and flexing his claws with a snarl, you turn to Jhaan yet again and get another option: the cat-man insists he is the better fighter, the more experienced guide, and that the situation down below is one of such hostility and danger and that he is more valuable than a small, weak, and flighty pair of foxes who happen to have met the cackling hyena-folk before.

“Hmmm…”

The cat-in-the-hat also speaks up, and after the same old song-and-dance of translating a translation, you learn he's ALSO willing to offer his services. He's older, less martial, but perhaps a little wiser and more measured... And he'll do it for cheap, out of loyalty to the True Fey.

“It’s a good thing they don’t know that Jhaan’s…” Khorine has the good sense not to say ‘unseelie’ aloud, just in case, though you sense a pang of guilt flash across the surface of her spirit, at working with such beings to deceive a fellow Feycraft follower.

What will you do?
>Take the pair of fox-folk for 25 points of wealth
>Take the burly cat-man for 20 points of wealth
>Take the old cat-man for 10 points of wealth
>Hey, what about those, uh… Mephits?
>Write-in [create a fennec fox or snow leopard furry OC! Don’t make it too ridiculous. more abilities means more expensive!]

>>6326306
>Take the pair of fox-folk for 25 points of wealth
Jesus those prices, wouldn't even consider this if we weren't at the end.

Really should have put levels into merchant I guess.

>>6326306
>Take the old cat-man for 10 points of wealth

>>6326306
>Take the old cat-man for 10 points of wealth
We KNOW we can communicate with this one.

>>6326306
>Take the old cat-man for 10 points of wealth
He’s loyal. Good enough.

>>6325989

>>6326366
>>6326394
>>6326441
>>6326494
…

When your [greeen]sister[/green] returns with Khorine, astride their awful new animal companion, they are not alone. The gryphon labours heavily under the additional occupant as it approaches, dipping and wobbling erratically and very nearly faceplanting upon its arrival on the dawntouched, golden face of the Earth.

“Aww, I’m sorry Tildy. Ya okay, girl?”

sqwaaak

You step up, cutting a wide arc around Matilda the gryphon’s oh-so-noble jaws, to where CZ, the kid, and their new companion dismount and gather. They’ve brought with them some local breed of catman, with snow-pale face around his eyes and muzzle and a certain cloudiness about the eyes—an old boy.

“Who’s this, then?” you ask.

The aged cat-man steps forwards and presses his paws together, before rotating each wrist in opposite direction and bobbing his head slightly, so that his beaded hat shifts. “Barakāt ālihat al-ḥurriyya ʿalaykum ayyuhā al-ghurbāʾ,” he says.

Yous quint, mouth moving as you silently repeat the phrase, working out the meanings from the smattering of Southtongue you can recall from trading booty and captives a lifetime ago, out in the Goblin Wastes. ‘ālihat al-qānūn is what the Southron humans call THEIR gods, so ālihat al-ḥurriyya is presumably the fairy-gods worshiped by wild beastmen like Khorine, and this guy… The rest, you’re pretty sure, is greetings and well-wishes.

“My name a Bhislani of the Numūr al-hiḍāb,” he adds. “I am guide for you, take you to your husband.”

You blink a couple times, then feel your cheeks heat up. HUSBAND?? To avoid letting your flusterment show, you turn your attention to your split-self and your… Khorine.

“So this Bhislani Al-Hidab geezer’s seriously the best the had?”

“He is the most loyal to the Bonum Chaoticum, and so the most trustworthy,” Khorine replies, quick and a little defensive.

“Best value fer money,” CZ admits. “ZZ, if you’d a heard what they were askin’…”

“Tell me.”

(Carazzi does so. She was right.)

“Holy fuckin’ SHIT,” you say, and turn your eyes to Bhislani. “10 points for this guy??”

Current wealth: 82 points.

You glare at Jhaan, who had appeared in the interim, and who withers back down to falcon-form under your glower. Carazzi and Khorine are quick to the fairy’s defence, though, explaining:

“We didn’t wanna stick around ‘n haggle, in case a mephit showed up!”

“The language barrier was… unexpectedly difficult, even for ME, and I’m—”

“‘N like, from the way Khorine told it, base don how Jhaan told it, based on how BHISLANI here told it, it’s like… SUPER dangerous, even ta Southies ‘n furries ‘n shit.”

“We didn’t have many other options…”

>>6326518
They ain’t wrong, but still… That’s as much as you could get a seasoned warrior in his prime hired on for a mission, back in the Northwest! It’s tough to imagine this creaky old feline being worth half that.

“You know any magic, Stripes?” you ask him.

“Ah, ‘Stripes’?” he asks, then kindly corrects you: “No no, ibn al-ʿamm al-qazam al-ṣaghīr, my name a Bhislani. I am a know a some little, little little…”

The way he pinches his fuzzy fingers together so the half-retracted claws nearly touch makes your stomach churn, the way it always des when you’re worried you’ve been tricked or scammed. You quickly snatch back the coinpurse you left in Carazzi’s care, and she gives you an apologetic look, but you sigh and shake your head.

“You know the area well, though?”

Bhislani Al-Hidab bobs his head in a nod.

“Good enough. Welcome to Al Fawj al Bashʿ, Stripes.”

“…The Ugly Soldiers?” he repeats, confused.

“Somethin’ like that,” you sigh.

You’ve secured your guide to Chiffchaff, a gryphon for aerial extraction, and the sort of official permissions that might come with Paladin aid, in a pinch… Though kicking off a wholescale war when Jimmy’s still in Southman hands is far from ideal. A quick, clean extraction is still your best bet, but Bhislani Al-Hidab here informs you that on foot, you’re looking at a two-day trek even from where you are now…

What’s the plan?

>Camp here tonight, and send CZ back on her gryphon to go get the others. When Ayla’s got her juice back, she can teleport to you, then teleport a small squad closer to Chiffchaff straight away by picking Bhislani’s brain.
[Small force, no more than four people, faster]

>Take your time and save your sorcery by beginning the travel on-foot—CZ can send an akashic message (or whatever) to Ayla, and they can meet you up on the road
[Full force, takes two days, good chance of random encounter]

>Write-in
[Well thought-out approaches score bonus benefits!]

>>6326519
>>Write-in
Mental ping to Maladoo And Finale Form Chad Norville to join us

[Oh, and here's the updated Regiment roster, plus contractors and allies, though keep in mind your away party consists of >>6321423 plus Testa, Matilda, and Bhislani, and of those, An-Yii, Yeb-Uit, Ayla, Veigar, Empy, and two of your gyrfairies are back behind Turtledove and the Shieldwall Mountains at the moment.]

>>6326519
>Camp here tonight, and send CZ back on her gryphon to go get the others. When Ayla’s got her juice back, she can teleport to you, then teleport a small squad closer to Chiffchaff straight away by picking Bhislani’s brain.
Smaller team to scope out the situation and rescue themselves if possible, if not they can prepare until the main force arrives in 2 days.

>>6326519
>Camp here tonight, and send CZ back on her gryphon to go get the others. When Ayla’s got her juice back, she can teleport to you, then teleport a small squad closer to Chiffchaff straight away by picking Bhislani’s brain.

>>6326677
>>6326660
>>6326535
[Locked and writing!]

>>6326922
You make the decision to make camp. Dawn is coming, which makes it tough for someone feytouched like you or the beastmen in your party to sleep, but there’s nothing else for it. Chang is flagging, though he chivalrously refuses to so much as sit down until you give the order to rest. You force yourself—and the others—to follow suit. Though your biological clocks might try to align with the local time, you know that all the way back in Steelwood, it would be the middle of the night. The ache behind your eyes and in your bones attests to this, and you know you’ll be no good to Jimmy if you and your Regiment arrive exhausted.

“Alright, everyone! Time ta make camp. Get some shut-eye—even if you can’t sleep, it’s fine. Trust me: even if you just rest yer eyes and slow yer breathin’, that’ll get ya half-way to rested.”

CZ, though, has other ideas.

“I’m not, like, really tired or nothin’,” she says, “an’ anyway, Ayla taught me this whole meditative breathin’ thing, right? I can get my rest while I’m awake, ‘n I figure me ‘n Tildy can head back ta bring the others up to speed.”

Huh. You didn’t know CZ could do that… But then again, she’s been full of surprises ever since the forge got finished with her, for both good and ill.

“Chan taught me somethin’ like that, back at Crane Lake,” you say, feeling a sudden urge to assert yourself. “Got this new pep in my step for if things get dicey at Chiffchaff.”

“Oh? Cool! I hope I get ta see it!... or, uh, ya know, NOT, since that’d mean…”

It’s honestly still a little unsettling, to see your own shadow so transformed… But you’re proud of CZ, too, of course. Seeing her still slip into embarrassed giggling like this over a faux-pas just serves to remind you she’s still your soul-sister. You’re happy to take her up on her offer.

“Memorize where we’re at, so Ayla can teleport ya back here,” you command. “Then, it’s game-time. We’re goin’ in direct-like, small squad.”

“Got it, ZZ!”

…

>>6326936
…

You sometimes surprise yourself, with how easy things come to you now. Techniques martial, magical, and meditative which were a struggle for demogoblin cambion Cara-Zi are child’s play to Carazzi Yosef!

(And a good thing, ‘cause you still have plenty of fuck-ups to fix, and a Jimmy to save.)

You find yourself thinking about this as, thighs clamped around your airborne steed’s sides, you sail under the Shieldwall’s shadows and into the light of a brand new day. You pass over Turtledove, more bustling than ever inside and outside its walls as the humans and halflings rise and shine in great numbers. Those Paladin guys are probably heading to bed, though, going against their diurnal nature just as Zith-Zi is for the sake of war. You imagine one of them—maybe the cute blondie—looking up out of his window and seeing the silhouette of you and your gryphon…

A Green Knight of House Yosef. A miracle, they’d called you!

The way they’d looked at you… You’ve never felt quite like that. You’ve been wanted and desired—sometimes more naturally and sometimes SUPERnaturally—but never RESPECTED before. Not like that, anyway. Those humies thought you were, like, a HERO!

When you close your eyes, slow your breathing as you were taught, and slip half-way into the collective unconscious: the Dreamscape.

“How peculiar… I never would have thought I would see the day.”

Though nestled within your own unconscious mind rather than risking the attention of angels or other agents of light, you are startled to hear an unfamiliar voice. You fear you’ve been discovered somehow, and scramble to explain your presence and nature in this place, but as a form half-shapes itself from the foggy haze of daylight on the inside of your third eye’s hidden lid, you recognize the shape, and then the voice.

“Heey, yer that, uhh… Knight guy!”

“Indeed,” speaks the tinny voice from within the memory of a full-face helm, “I am he.”

He, in this case, is the same ghostly ancestor—but not a ghost! He was very insistent on that point—who you last saw on a mud-splattered, tear-stained night, beneath a footbridge near Sunset Lake. It had been after your abortive attempt at an amorous encounter with a certain thick-brogued, thick-thighed dwarven boat-captain. You’d lost control of your unholy urges and made a mess of things, before retreating to a place suitable for the monster you knew yourself to be.

>>6326938
“You have changed, little one. Grown up.”

“Huh? Oh!” You titter nervously. “Uh that’s… I do that. Shapeshiftin’. I got better at it, even since we last talked, uh… Sir Yosef, right?”

That was how this same spirit—or memory, or echo, or whatever this guy is—had made himself known to you when you encountered him in your unconscious. He does so again, here and now, almost word for word:

“I am what I am, just as you are: a knight of House Yosef. The embodiment of our ideal—our best self, our calling to greatness, and to goodness. The calling which you now follow.”

“Hey, wait a minute now,” you blurt out, “I ain’t no knight!”

“That isn’t what you told those Men of the Holy Order.”

“Well yeah, but that was like… Bullshit! That writ was totally fake.”

“But what it claimed was nevertheless the truth,” asserts the suit of astral armour. “Is your bloodline not true, made pure? Are you not even now astride a gryphon—the very symbol of our Paladin King, made manifest in flesh and bone?”

“Well, I mean… I GUESS, but—”

“You ARE of House Yosef. You ARE here to serve a noble cause: the salvation of a good man of Hawksong nobility from a terrible fate at the hands of demons and Darkness. You ride a Paladin’s mount, possess a holy weapon.”

“Huh? What do you… Oh, the vajra or whatever?”

The non-corporeal knight doesn’t answer, but rather continues on his pronouncements, declaring “A time of great peril is upon the world. The Race of Man turned in upon itself by malevolent forces inside and out. In such times, so uncertain, the people require exemplars. They need heroes, who can make miracles and save their spirits—their sense of hope, for peace in the present and a glorious tomorrow.”

“That’s, uh…”

That sounds insane to you—UTTERLY insane, as crazy as anything Ayla ever cooked up about this ‘master race’ baby up in you, for sure. You’d sort of assumed it was the demon-juice driving her more intense ambitions, but then, what’s THIS guy’s excuse? Are Yosefs just LIKE this?

“Leave lesser men—and women, I suppose—to their small, peaceful lives,” the knight answered your unspoken inquiry. “Ours is the grander purpose of making such lives possible. Is that not why you invoked the name of our house, and revived its memory?”

>>6326939

You struggle to formulate an adequate answer. You’re no Knight of Light or whatever—just a few days ago, you were sifting through the Akashic Record of the Dark Gods, for Hell's sake! And yet, even now, the silhouette taking shape within your subconscious looks less like the knight you encountered in the memory of your inception, when last you spoke—it's shorter, slimmer, a little curvier. And the voice… without you realizing it until just now, the register had slipped, shifted. The octave had elevated, its tone no softer but the lilt higher, a clarion call echoing a woman’s voice rather than a man’s.

In your own voice, the spectre of your ancestors asks: “Is that not why you have come here, O Green Knight?”

>Hells no! Picking the name ‘Yosef’, pretending to be a knight or whatever… It’s all just a means to an end! You’re a follower of the Dark Gods!
>While Darkness has been a useful ally, you have to admit it: you kind of LIKE shining bright, in the light. You don’t know about being some noble knight, though…
>Though it feels weirdly dirty to admit it, you really like this whole ‘Miraculous Lady-Knight Yosef’ thing… Maybe you’ll give it a try?
>Write-in

>>6326941
>Though it feels weirdly dirty to admit it, you really like this whole ‘Miraculous Lady-Knight Yosef’ thing… Maybe you’ll give it a try?
Never forget how the Nothic screwed us over.

>>6326941
>While Darkness has been a useful ally, you have to admit it: you kind of LIKE shining bright, in the light. You don’t know about being some noble knight, though…

>>6326942
>Never forget how the Nothic screwed us over.
I forgot the specifics now, what was it again ?

>>6327048
We made a deal with it when fighting the Ettercap and it didn't give us shit. Just called Veigar and Ayla over after the fight was already done.

>>6327048
Secondborn child gets to be his

Didn't we promises ayla we wouldn't join in on any of the fighting?

if we take up the mantle of the green knight, brandish the vajra and wade into battle. We would be breaking our agreement with her.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>6326942
>>6327047
[Well, it's been 29 hours, so I suppose I'm rolling for it!] Feels weird on such a pivotal choice...

>>6327480
“I… I can’t.”

“Can’t?” the green-clad mirror image recoils as if slapped. “You mean to say that you would shirk the call of duty? Refuse to do that which must be done, at this most pivotal of moments?!”

“Uh?” You smile a nervous, lopsided smile. “Kinda? I mean, like… Yeah?”

The chivalrous spirit glares at you with your own eyes. It’s an experience unnerving similar to when you upset Zith-Zi, and so you do your best to explain yourself a little better. That feels weird, too—this is just some ancestral memory, right? inherited from a parent you never met, who didn’t even care about any Yosef shit?—but it still feels like the right thing to do. It should help to put your own thoughts in order, if nothing else.

“It’s not like I’m, ya know, super attached to the Gods of Darkness or nothin’,” you confess, for you well recollect the transaction and circumstantial nature of their aid. “An’ bein’ a bright-‘n-shiny knightly-type sounds sorta’ neat. I mean, imagine it: ‘Lady-Knight Carazzi Yosef!’”

You beam broadly, allowing yourself to indulge in the idea, even as the embodiment of that ideal stares at you, face wrought with confusion and distaste.

“Then why?”

Lots of reasons spring to mind. For one thing, you’ve promised one or two of your kids to the Dark Gods, and even if you’re a surrogate to the first and the second is purely hypothetical, you are pretty sure the Gods of Lights won’t much care for that. Even if they did, you KNOW Ayla sure as shit won’t, and the first kid is—as she’s made clear, and you’re happy to oblige—really HER kid, and Veigar’s. As part of that same arrangement, you already promised not to fight on the frontlines; taking up the vajra and riding Matilda into pitched battle KIND of goes against that. You value them—and the whole motley milieu of the monstrous Regiment in general—too highly to risk their estrangement for some long-lost legacy and the appreciation of Hawksong humies.

“Sorry, uh, sir or ma’am, or whatever,” you say to the spectre. “I made promises I gotta keep. This ‘shining knight’ shit? It’s nice… But it ain’t for me. I’m not here for some human war… I’m here for my friends, ‘n my family.”

“I see.”

>>6327491
You half-expect a tirade of accusations, of ridicule. You expect the Green Knight to coerce and conscript you, or to shame you for your decision. A part of you even feels you deserve it, somehow, though you swiftly empty yourself of that. Calm and steady, you meet the knight’s gaze, finding again the empty visor of a human-height, masculine figure.

“The path of chivalry is not one that a man can be forced to follow,” it declares. “Of all the reasons to refuse it, duty to one’s kin and clan is among the most noble.”

The empty armour begins to fade within the field of dreams. You breathe a small sigh of relief.

“Just know this, Lady Yosef…”

The armour lifts its head, and you feel the weight of ages—past, and perhaps future—settled upon you as it speaks final words of warning:

“With each generation that refuses the call, it will grow louder. Each parent who chooses ease condemns their child, or their grandchild, to hardship. The armour which is left to rust grows heavier, and heavier, with the passage of time. House Yosef will answer the call, even if you do not.”

Suddenly alarmed, you open your eyes and banish the sight and sounds of Sir Yosef. Finding yourself once more atop Tildy, you glance down at your abdomen, and at the spark of new life inside it.

…

>>6327492
…

You watch CZ sail away on that abominable chimeric creature of hers, until the silhouette becomes an imperceptible fleck against the gold-and-blue. Only then do you turn away, and begin to join the others in making camp. You can see the weariness of time and travel in their movements, and on their faces.

(Well, not Testa so much. She’s just shirking, ‘til you kick her ass into motion!)

Despite this, none of you find sleep easily. There’s the fairy bullshittery keeping you up—like Khorine and Testa, too—and for Bhislani, this is just morning.

“I must admit, milady, this the furthest I have yet traveled from my home,” Chang admits, when you ask him why HE isn’t resting, to which he adds: “And there is also the threat of our enemy, whom we shall soon face.”

“Well, don’t expect no big heroic clash of armies or any’ve THAT shit,” you remind him. “This is a clean in ‘n out operation… Like you n your bird-girl, huh?”

“Milady, please…”

“Aaah, learn ta take a joke, Chang!”

“Yes, milady.”

You crawl into your bedroll, squeezing your eyes shut against the sun and doing your damnedest to ignore your artificially-acquired instincts. Eventually…

>You find rest, without further conversation [skip scene]
>You chat with Chang… About Jimmy. Chang’s big on romantic shit, and you still have a whole mess of feelings to work through.
>You bother Bhislani—what does he know about this army, anyway? These gnolls, and black-skinned captains working for the Sultan?
>You join Jhaan—staring out at the sun—and ask what exactly an Unseelie even IS, exactly, and what they think about all this fell magic down South
>Go for a stroll with Khorine—a bit of scouting the scenery and learning the terrain could be handy, and she seems antsy
>Write-in

>>6327494
>You bother Bhislani—what does he know about this army, anyway? These gnolls, and black-skinned captains working for the Sultan?
New character!

>>6327480
yes, I expected at least a third anon to vote by monday
>>6327494
>You bother Bhislani—what does he know about this army, anyway? These gnolls, and black-skinned captains working for the Sultan?

>>6327494
>You bother Bhislani—what does he know about this army, anyway? These gnolls, and black-skinned captains working for the Sultan?

Damn, missed the knight vote.

>>6327634
I would have voted, but their wasn't a consensus on cara's future actions.

We agreed to Ayla decision to not take part in any fighting. (a bad decision in my opinion but whatever.)

But the mantle of the green knight is all about fighting, specifically fighting demons undead and other monsters. If we aren't gonna fight then embracing the mantle would be useless for us.

>>6327880
[In fairness, it would have offered up mid-term and long-term opportunities beyond just the rescue mission, for CZ and her kid(s), but so too does NOT become a defender of the realm. C'est la vie!]

>>6327553
>>6327634
>>6327742
[Anyway, locking and writing!]

>>6327956
Bhislani Al-Hidab is wide awake when you locate him. He’s only a short distance from your camp, kneeling in the dust with his back to you and his face to the sun. Squinting against the light, you wait for it to climb just a little higher before you clear your throat, and get the grey-and-white catman’s attention.

“I interruptin’ somethin’?”

“Prayers to Sha-Hamash,” answers Bhislani. “I thank him for labouring to bring us his light, as I do each day.”

At least, that’s how you interpret his answer—Southtongue isn’t your strongest suit, and Khorine already made it clear that the local fey dialect is a crapshoot. You’ve never heard a fey-follower call the sun-god that name, either, but you can piece it together from context.

“I guess we oughtta be grateful for it, huh?” You hold your hand above your eyes and squint ones more up at the light before turning away. “What with all the demons ‘n shit? You god-both—uh, pious-types must hate that shit, huh? Livin’ next ta humans who worship demons or whatever?”

Bhislani looks at you. His cat-like facial-features making his expression tough to read, but you get the sense he is perplexed.

“Human not worship demon,” he says, speaking the tongue with which you’re more familiar, presumably for clarity.

“Oh yeah?” You raise an eyebrow. “That’s not what the other ones say—you know, the pink ones, the Northmen?”

Bhislani shrugs, as if to say ‘what do humans know, about anything really, even one another?’ You guess that might apply to you, too, to your annoyance—you’re plainly ignorant of the situation’s specifics.

Well, time to rectify that, then, since you can’t sleep anyway.

Bhislani explains the situation in digestible bites. There’s no small amount of fiddly translation-work, though Jhaan hovers closer to help with that much, for the fallen fairy is plainly interested as well.

“Human are many types, many many many,” the local beastman tells you. “Them who is here, they do not pray to sun and moon, but they are honouring of ancestor—ours and theirs. They who are like your djinn here, a name Jhaan? They are given gift for favours. But human MOSTLY no pray… They ask ancestor for advice.”

“Like… Old people, or readin’ books, or…?”

“Dead ancestor, summon up,” Bhislani explains.

You grimace, feeling the phantom of the burning, uncomfortable itch which lingered under your skin for more than a month after your LAST encounter with such a spellcaster. Necromancy!

(Ballsy move, considering what Death tends to do to people who mess with his domain...)

>>6327987
“What about the demon artillery or whatever?”

You clock Bhislani’s blankness of expression is incomprehension, not just feline face-muscles failing. Jhaan shrugs—the True Fey have no word for ‘artillery’, you guess. You settle for making sound effects and expanding your hands out in pantomime of an explosion, though the motion annoys slumbering Hershy.

“Ooooh! Madāfi. Mm, yes, they come from far down south and east… Ar-rijāl as-sūd. Men with nighttime skin, black black.”

“An’ they’re new here, right?” You feel on firmer footing now, as Bhislani nods. “What do you know about ‘em? Their weapons?”

“They no worship demon either, no,” the catman carifies. “Slave them, make them work… No pray, no honour. USE them. And the As-sūd not NEW new. Just not live here—come here often, when human fight war. They big, fighters with strong arm, good weapon. The rijāl aṣ-ṣaḥrāʾ who live here pay them good, for fight other human, or specially for fight al-ghīlān—the hyena-man.”

“…Huh?” You’re lost again, to your frustration. “I thought the black humies ‘n the gnolls were on the same side?”

“Normal, no, NEVER,” Bhislani says emphatically. “Al-ghīlān—what you are call a ‘gnoll’—has no friend, none ever. THEY are like a demon from Jahannam, always full of hunger and hatred for all. They live in foul places, and stalk across the world, eat up EVERYONE. The very-black human come here in past often to drive them away…”

The old cat’s ears fold back, a sign that even you recognize as signalling distress.

“‘Til now, huh?” you hazard.

Bhislani nods.

“The pale-skin human from North make his sand-skin brothers nervous. I not surprise to see him call out to the very-black man, to come with his black iron, and demon weapon. But this time, they come with NEW weapon, NEW slave… Al-ghīlān who do what they say. They were strange thing to see, too—move together, no fight for rank or meat. And no As-saʿālī!”

“No what now?” you ask, head beginning to hurt.

“Ah, the… There are the women, who are like an… An Ilf, like the one on gryphon. They are woman of the hyena-men. They lead them. Instead of them, these gnolls have men this time—human men, the black-skin men-of-war. But THEY are strange, too… Quiet, except to give orders. And then their leader is most strange thing of all!”

You and Jhaan both lean forward now. “You’ve seen these guys’ leader? Like, the main one? And it ain’t… Uh, Hanif Sultan or whoever?”

>>6327988
“Maybe he work for Sultan,” Bhislani admits. “I am not to know of how humans do. But in the field, he is one of Sultan’s people—a man of sand, with the light skin, and thin beard. But he dresses like the black human, and the black human turn to him for advice. He is the one that when their weapon is to fail, he fix, or give them new weapons, NEW new. It is him who is king now, in Al-Duarah… What the pale-skin human who made the place call ‘Chiffchaff’. It is HE who is master of the black man and the ghūl bi-raʾs ḍab!”

“Do you know his name? Where he came from… What he can do?”

“Only what I say to you,” Bhislani admits. “Sometimes, abnāʾ al-ʿumūma aṣ-ṣighār—ah, you call them ‘fox-men’—they go among Al-ghīlān. Fox and hyena is like cousin, and when they are not so hungry, As-saʿālī sill sometimes trade for nice things. But the gnolls have none of their queens now with them, and the black human here are so strange as well… None of our little cousins will go to them. They have been afraid.”

Do you have any other, more specific questions for Bhislani about the enemy? About the region or its peoples?
>Write-in if so
>No
Feel free to ask for clarification on any points here that got jumbled by dialect and diction, too.

>>6327991
>Why do you think the southerners decided to attack, since until now both them and the northmen were just raiding each other ?

>>6327991
Ok so just to make sure I understand:
The sand people live here and have a tradition of using speak with dead to consult their ancestors.
The black people come from even more south and have a tradition of enslaving demons and coming up here for mercenary work.
The gnolls are traditional gnolls, evil and eat everything. Enemies to everyone, blacks often come up to fight them.
Now though the blacks are here to fight the paladins, and instead of demons they've somehow enslaved the gnolls.
The gnolls enslaved this way are acting weirdly compliant, and their normal queen leaders have been replaced by more blacks who are also oddly compliant.
They're all lead by a sand who dresses like the blacks, he distributes all the weaponry and the orders.

That all correct?
Also what is ghūl bi-raʾs ḍab?

>>6328060
>That all correct?
[You pretty much got it all! though certain of the particulars may be at least partly biased by the presenter

>Also what is ghūl bi-raʾs ḍab?
[Just a poetic flourish on my part and on Bhislani's: "ghoul with a hyena's head", just another name for the gnolls, who are more commonly called "ghūl" or "al-ghīlān" by Southlanders -- literally "ghouls".] longtime readers will remember that the Dragonborn Antipaladin also encountered a race of dogheaded people with a similar name...

So for me :
Black people are Black Dwarf from Warhammer old word, industrial revolution using demonbound.
They used demonbound exoskeleton/some kind of Mind Control on the gnolls