"Perhaps we should wait until morning and see how Mahjik is doing," Jask suggests. "Then we can decide what to do."
It's been a quiet night--as quiet as things get on this island at any rate. There's a light rain falling. About a half hour into their watch, Douena and Makoa hear a loud flapping sound pass over the clearing and the camp. With the clouds blocking the stars and moon, and the rain causing your fire to smoke, it's impossible to see what caused the sound. Makoa just makes out the tip of a large leathery wing pass briefly within range of his darkvision, but then it's gone. The flapping fades into the distance.
Douena hops up excitedly. "It's Lorenz's big flappybite! Did you see it, Makoa? Did you see it? Is it big enough that we could all climb on its back and fly to the mainland?"
"Thanks for the kind words, Gelik. I'll be sure to remember your advice next time." Thoughtfully going over the story he'd told, Lorenz made some internal changes to practice.
"Well today was a fun day! Lots of entertaining things happened and I'm quite interested in that camp we found. I wonder what happened to the people there?" Lorenz says thoughtfully. Then his eyes lit up as he thought of something more cheerful. "So how's your egg doing? Is it any closer to hatching, do you think?"
Jask paces back in forth in an obviously agitated manner for several minutes at the beginning of the watch. "I had a disturbing...vision," he says finally. "A dream, I suppose, but not like the dreams Douena has had. Not as vivid. Nethys is even more mysterious than Desna, and that's when he's in a giving mood. I saw... I saw a disease gripping this island. Not a disease like the one that has afflicted our group of castaways. It's more metaphorical than that I think. I saw it taking over this island, like a fungus or mold spreading out and devouring every plant and animal on it."
"Well today was a fun day! Lots of entertaining things happened and I'm quite interested in that camp we found. I wonder what happened to the people there?" Lorenz says thoughtfully. Then his eyes lit up as he thought of something more cheerful. "So how's your egg doing? Is it any closer to hatching, do you think?"
Sasha has had the egg in front of her for the whole watch. Her eyes brighten up when Lorenz inquires about it, and she picks it and the nest up and brings them over beside Lorenz. She stares intently at the egg. "I have no idea," she says excitedly, "but surely it can't be too much longer. I've been keeping it warm and protected from the elements." She covers it with a blanket as a few drops of rain begin to fall. "I'm getting anxious for it to hatch. I can't wait to start training it! You can help if you want."
Lorenz's grin broadens at Sasha's offer. "Really? I'd like that! I don't know much about training animals, but it'd be fun to learn. I think feeding it sounds like fun too. It's going to be so neat to have a little fellow running or flapping around camp."
On watch with Aerys.
"So. Anything you'd like to talk about tonight or do I take a nap while you watch? ;-]
Douena hops up excitedly. "It's Lorenz's big flappybite! Did you see it, Makoa? Did you see it? Is it big enough that we could all climb on its back and fly to the mainland?"
"I'm not sure, I only saw it's wing.. it could have been a dimorphodon. It's wing was like leather. So it's either a dimo or a really big bat."
A few moments later an Makoa seems to be watching something out of the corner of his eye, smiling.
"Even rain won't stop them.. just like I remember.."
"So. Anything you'd like to talk about tonight or do I take a nap while you watch? ;-]
Aerys puts down the papers she's been squinting over in the dim firelight and looks up apologetically. "I'm sorry, am I being antisocial? I do that sometimes, especially since I started drinking because that leads me to either get drunk or spend all my time on this--" she holds up the papers-- "because this helps take my mind off the urges to drink." She sighs.
"Urza, as part orc, you've probably had to deal with people treating you like an outsider or outcast. I don't mean to pry or get into sensitive issues, but how do you deal with it when it happens? I got into sailing because I love the sea. I love the act of sailing. But the people sometimes are awful. It's such a male-dominated field. Half of them think it's bad luck for a woman to be on board ship and try to get me thrown off. The other half take bets on who can be the first to bed me. I try to serve on ships with woman captains when I can, but there are so few of them. How do you deal with it when people just won't treat you like a fellow person?"
Mahjik screams in agony, clutching head. His eyes are closed, and he appears to be sleeping - or at least not being fully there. After a while he subsides more and more til he's sleeping again normally.
Now accustomed to Douena's screams, Lorenz snorts, rolls over and goes back to sleep.
Mahjik screams in agony, clutching head. His eyes are closed, and he appears to be sleeping - or at least not being fully there. After a while he subsides more and more til he's sleeping again normally.
Ishirou, who is on watch with Gelik at the time, rushes over and awkwardly tries to tend Mahjik and make him comfortable.
Douena hops up excitedly. "It's Lorenz's big flappybite! Did you see it, Makoa? Did you see it? Is it big enough that we could all climb on its back and fly to the mainland?""I'm not sure, I only saw it's wing.. it could have been a dimorphodon. It's wing was like leather. So it's either a dimo or a really big bat."
A few moments later an Makoa seems to be watching something out of the corner of his eye, smiling.
"Even rain won't stop them.. just like I remember.."
Douena turns a skeptical eye on Makoa. "Are you watching invisible wolves again?" she asks, moving over to stand in what seem to be his ghost-wolf's footprints. She looks up into the half-orc's eyes for a few moments, then turns and peers into the darkness of the jungle behind her. "If we find a dead monkey again, you're going to have to stop seeing them. Maybe you're summoning phantoms without meaning to."
Jask paces back in forth in an obviously agitated manner for several minutes at the beginning of the watch. "I had a disturbing...vision," he says finally. "A dream, I suppose, but not like the dreams Douena has had. Not as vivid. Nethys is even more mysterious than Desna, and that's when he's in a giving mood. I saw... I saw a disease gripping this island. Not a disease like the one that has afflicted our group of castaways. It's more metaphorical than that I think. I saw it taking over this island, like a fungus or mold spreading out and devouring every plant and animal on it."
"Do you have an idea of what this might be? I am afraid the mysteries of the Shaman are beyond me; interpreting dreams and signs just leaves me confused. But perhaps it has something to do with why or how we were trapped here? Maybe Ieana was involved in it somehow?" He stops for a minute to think, then asks, "Did your dream show you where the disease was spreading out from? Where it started?"
"Do you have an idea of what this might be? I am afraid the mysteries of the Shaman are beyond me; interpreting dreams and signs just leaves me confused. But perhaps it has something to do with why or how we were trapped here? Maybe Ieana was involved in it somehow?" He stops for a minute to think, then asks, "Did your dream show you where the disease was spreading out from? Where it started?"
Jask thinks for a moment. "The west, I think. Over the bay. But they were very vague images and they are fading from my memory in the way that dreams do. I cannot even describe what the images looked like any longer. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it has something to do with Ieana. That would be a logical conclusion."
"So. Anything you'd like to talk about tonight or do I take a nap while you watch? ;-]Aerys puts down the papers she's been squinting over in the dim firelight and looks up apologetically. "I'm sorry, am I being antisocial? I do that sometimes, especially since I started drinking because that leads me to either get drunk or spend all my time on this--" she holds up the papers-- "because this helps take my mind off the urges to drink." She sighs.
"Urza, as part orc, you've probably had to deal with people treating you like an outsider or outcast. I don't mean to pry or get into sensitive issues, but how do you deal with it when it happens? I got into sailing because I love the sea. I love the act of sailing. But the people sometimes are awful. It's such a male-dominated field. Half of them think it's bad luck for a woman to be on board ship and try to get me thrown off. The other half take bets on who can be the first to bed me. I try to serve on ships with woman captains when I can, but there are so few of them. How do you deal with it when people just won't treat you like a fellow person?"
"I don't know. I've been doing it my whole life. I guess I'm just used to it. It's actually kind of scary when someone doesn't treat me differently." Urza pauses for a moment in self reflection. "My mother taught me that what I think of myself, how I see myself, is more important than how others see me. I guess I believe her."
"How I see myself," Aerys repeats. "I like that. Thank you." She smiles and looks down at her papers. "How I see myself. Can I use that? In my poem I mean. And in real life of course."
"Of course you can." Urza smiles at Aerys. "Could you read me some of your poetry? It's been forever since I've had a pretty lady read poetry to me.
"When it's done," Aerys says. "I have to finish it first. But soon. It's nearly done. Oh, and I already promised Makoa he could read it, so he really should get first dibs, but you can go second." She starts hurriedly writing. "I hope my ink doesn't run out before I finish," she mutters.
"Well you keep on writing then. I'm going to get some beauty rest. And you can use that to write a poem about too." Urza leans back and closes his eyes.
Douena turns a skeptical eye on Makoa. "Are you watching invisible wolves again?" she asks, moving over to stand in what seem to be his ghost-wolf's footprints. She looks up into the half-orc's eyes for a few moments, then turns and peers into the darkness of the jungle behind her. "If we find a dead monkey again, you're going to have to stop seeing them. Maybe you're summoning phantoms without meaning to."
"Bah," Makoa says, turning to look at Douena. "Wolves couldn't cut the monkey's throat like that, and we wouldn't leave a fresh kill untouched. They can't climb trees either, so even if they caught a monkey on the ground, they wouldn't be able to put it in the tree. Wolves are good, but not that good."
"Besides, I doubt the wolf cubs I'm seeing right now are dangerous. Their play might get a bit rough, but that's natural."
The rain slowly dies off in the early hours before the sun rises. Eventually the sun begins to creep up over the trees and the heat begins its inexorable climb to the heights it will eventually reach at midday. Jask, already awake on last watch, has breakfast ready by the time he and Aakif start waking everyone. Jask brings some food to Mahjik and insists that he stay in bed at least until the group decides what they are going to be doing today.
"Mahjik has been hit pretty hard by the illness," Jask tells the rest of the group. "I am very hesitant to move him since it will slow his recovery. However, there may be other more urgent reasons to move on. The longer we take to find a way off this island, the more likely it is that more of us will get ill. And there is the matter of Ieana and the captain." He goes on to tell the rest of the party of the dream he had in the night .
Gelik straightens his hat as Jask finishes the story and stands up. "I believe I've made well known my opinion of the predictive power of dreams. However, there are numerous reasons beyond silly dreams to move this camp. I suggest we move on. We do have a disease-curing potion and some restorative ones that we could use on Mahjik if that would make it easier. Perhaps we should use them?"
Examining the blade of his rapier for any signs of rust or nicks, Lorenz looks over at Gelik. "Where would we go to, though?" He carefully slid his blade back into its scabbard and stood.
"We don't really have another campsite ready yet. Sure, there's the old camp we found but we have no idea what's at the end of that trail, or what it was that killed the people who had been there. Moving there could just make things worse."
Turning to look into the jungle's depths, he shrugged. "I guess we could try heading back toward the other side of the island where we didn't have weird monkey attacks but without knowing where we're going, we might not find a good place. We could use one of those potions on Mahjik but we already know how to help someone with that kind of disease recover their health. What happens if we use this potion and someone later catches a different disease that we don't know anything about? It's the jungle that makes people sick, not the camp."
He turned back to the others. "I'm not opposed to moving the camp but I think we ought to have a better idea of where we're going first."
"If nothing else, I can carry Mahjik. I need no blade to fight, so I wouldn't be at a disadvantage in a fight."
"I move faster than most everyone here as well, so I could scout ahead and make sure you have enough of a warning to be ready."
Gelik strokes his beard. "You have a point, Lorenz my boy. However, as I understood it, moving the camp would put us in a better position to explore the island, particularly to find out where that trail you found leads to. At our present location, by the time you reach the trail, you have to turn back. I agree with you about the disease-removing potion, though. That should be saved for a case that is more critical. However, we do have multiple restorative potions. We could give Mahjik one of those. It wouldn't cure him, but it would help reverse some of the disease's effects. These are just suggestions, mind. You and the others are the ones out there day after day trudging through this interminable forest, not me. You know the dangers better than I do. I perhaps was just overly spooked by the monkeys yesterday."
"I'm with Gelik on this one. I think that other camp is creepy, but it has to be better than this one."
Mahjik sits up unsteadily, half-following the conversations. He attempts to nod profoundly, mumbling to himself "Wise man once said, only in concealing one's identity, can one truly be known."
Jask hurries over to Mahjik's side and helps him to lie back down, urging him to rest.
Lorenz looks over at Jask tending Mahjik. "I don't know, he doesn't really sound all that different."
He turned back to the others. "I don't really believe the camp we discovered yesterday is going to be at all safer than where we are now, but it does make sense to keep the camp close to where we're going. If that's what we're going to do though, we should probably get started before."
Douena sniffs a bit when Jask relates his vision. "If it's really important, I can't imagine why Desna wouldn't have told me," she mutters. On the question of moving camp, though, she is more positive. "We've travelled about as far as we can in either direction from here," she says, "so we're going to have to move pretty soon anyway, unless we just want to sit here and stare out at the water. The other camp would be all set up for us, but I don't think it's very safe. I wonder if that trail was there when whoever-it-was set up camp there in the first place; it's like sleeping on someone's doorstep. Our other options are to set up camp somewhere else on the beach and hope the tide doesn't get up too high or maybe at the top of the cliff where we climbed down; then we wouldn't have to figure out a way to get everything down the cliff right away." She looks around at the materials of their camp. "I wonder how much we could just throw down and not worry about it breaking."
Mahjik nods sagely as the discussion goes thoroughly above his head, but apparently he does pick up on some division among the castaways; his response to this is: "Wise man knows that the four elements, like man alone, are weak; but together they form a stronger fifth element: boron." Then he seems to drift off in a spell again, half dozing half completely asleep.
Mahjik nods sagely as the discussion goes thoroughly above his head, but apparently he does pick up on some division among the castaways; his response to this is: "Wise man knows that the four elements, like man alone, are weak; but together they form a stronger fifth element: boron." Then he seems to drift off in a spell again, half dozing half completely asleep.
"Well, I'm definitely for moving the camp," Sasha says. "As long as we're careful not to break my egg," she adds. "I like Douena's idea of setting up the camp along the beach, perhaps right at the base of the cliff rather than the top. We've been there during high tide so we know how far it comes in. We could easily set up the camp in far enough. We'd then be in an easy spot for catching fish and crabs. Well, crabs at least, since we can fight and kill them. The fish seem a lot more slippery."
Jask looks to the others who haven't yet voiced an opinion.
Aerys shrugs. "I think we should probably move. We have to keep moving if we ever want to find a way off."
Ishirou says, "I will support whatever the group decides."
"It would appear the majority are in favour of moving the camp," Jask says. "As Lorenz says, then we should get to work."
You begin packing up the camp supplies. Having done this a couple of times now, you are much more proficient at it, and you have the camp dismantled much more quickly. Jask wakes Mahjik up and helps him to his feet. You then set out into the jungle.
"I like Sasha's idea of locating the camp on the beach out of reach of high tide. That'll also make it more difficult for us to be surprised by mean creatures who leave behind dead monkeys." Lorenz says as he hoists his share of the gear onto his back.
"Plus, we get to throw things down the cliff," Douena says excitedly. "Canvas won't break, right?"
"Canvas won't break, but it might get caught in a gust of wind and blown out over the water," Gelik scoffs as he adjusts his pack and makes certain it's sitting in just the right way to complement the rest of his outfit. "We've got loads of strong people here who can carry things down the cliff. It'll be good exercise for them. Keep them in shape."
Douena scowls at Gelik for raining on her parade. "What if we throw you down, see if you bounce?"
"If we did that," Sasha says, "it might mess up his clothes and make his pack crooked, and then no one would take him seriously anymore."
Over the first couple hours of the morning, you trudge through the jungle, the next clearing, and then the jungle again before finally reaching the point where the cliff moves away from the coach. You then begin to prepare your descent with all the camp supplies. You get ropes secured and then begin the process of bringing the supplies over. The strongest party members get stuck with the brunt of the work, but everyone (including Gelik) pitches in with whatever they can manage. Gelik peers over the edge and visibly whitens, clearly not liking the idea of the climb. However, he does not in any other way resist helping out and making the descent.
Jask does his best to help Mahjik, but he cannot physically help him down. () Mahjik is still physically able to make the climb himself; he just needs a little guidance (). One of the stronger party members might want to keep a watch on him though. Jask climbs down beside Mahjik to help guide him.
The most difficult part comes with getting Soulwind down the cliff. It takes a little while, but you are able to lash together a makeshift harness and pulley system with the ropes and a number of tree branches. Soulwind is noticeably uncomfortable during the descent and Aakif needs to keep him calm. There are moments when it seems a bit touch and go, but you get Soulwind down to the beach without harm.
By that time, the hot hours of the day have started and it's time to rest. Setting up the camp will have to wait until the temperature breaks.
Douena sits looking up quaveringly at the tall cliff and the narrow line of rope dangling down it. "What if whatever killed the monkey comes and cuts off our rope and we're never able to get up there again?" While she was bored with the view of the bay when the camp was up there, faced with the prospect of never seeing it again, she is having second thoughts. "What if there's nothing down here but sand and we can't get back up to the rest of the island and we're stuck here forever?"
Sasha sits down beside Douena. "Well, if the rope gets cut, then someone climbs up on their own and throws down a new rope. I think the cliffs here are much less of an obstacle than the sea itself is."
Mahjik is amiable enough. He follows suggestions easily and accompanies conversations he overhears with quite inane babble. Though any who take a closer look at him see a soft underlying horror in his eyes as if he cannot quite fathom what is going on with him, as if he isn't fully the master of his own actions.
"I'm not very good at climbing," Douena tells Sasha. "Or swimming." She turns an eye on Mahjik. "Poor Mahjik. You weren't near this annoying when you were sick," she reassures Sasha.
Sasha looks over to Mahjik. "Yeah, poor guy. He seems to have got it a lot worse than I had it. It does weird things to your head. Mindfire is a good name for it. Hopefully, he'll recover soon. With you and Jask looking after him, I'm sure he will."
"Oh, right," Douena says, a bit shamefacedly. "I guess someone should go take care of him a bit. Mahjik!" she calls out to him. "Come sit over here in the shade, and I'll make it rain on you." Patting a shady patch of sand invitingly, she sets him down and cools his brow with a light drizzle. Finding him a captive audience, she extracts her collection of treasures from her backpack and begins acting out a complicated story about Mr. Duck (the root) and his travels on the model-Jenivere, complete with pirates, vampires and a gargantuan flappybite.