Relas is caught off-guard by the initial attack on Gniel, but is already moving by the time Palomia calls to him. He runs up and attempts to take a huge bite out of the lion's flank.
The lion shakes off the daze spell, blinking in confusion for a second before shifting his weight to avoid the bite by the smaller feline.
Abbas shrugs off his heavy pack and pulls his falchion to get in the face of the lion. Here! Here!
ROUND 2!
FIGHT!
Order : Tolla, Lion, Gniel, Relas, Palomia, Abbas
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32
|
Tolla lets out a suprised huff of a breath at seeing that her attacks missed. "You think you're so tough, huh? Don't ignore me, you stupid brute!" she shouts, growing angrier, her veins starting to throb. She stomps forward and attempts to strike at the lion with two claw-shaped hands, the first aiming for vital nerves in the lion's neck.
The lion cries out in pain as Tolla unleashes a torrent of blows against it. The shocked animal turns tail and runs.
"You'd better run!", yells Relas.
He walks over to where Gniel is standing. "Palo, he doesn't look so good - is there any way to patch him up?"
He stands near Gniel protectively, watching for any further danger.
Gniel fires a parting shot
"That's right you, you better run! he slurrily says from the blood loss.
The lion crashes to the ground.
As the lion flees, Tolla exhales deeply and the rage flows out of her. She sits down with fatigue for a few seconds, as the anger is replaced by aches. "Nice shot, Gniel," she says after recovering. She stands up and rolls her shoulder to relax the muscle, coming over to Gniel and Palomia. "I'm not exactly trained for this, but I think I can make due. We should get you back to that platform, Gniel, before we encounter something else dangerous. I've never had lion before, but I don't see much choice if we want to conserve rations," Tolla says, with a face that isn't exactly excited at the prospect of eating the cat.
Tolla gestures to Abbas to come with her as she walks toward the lion's corpse. Before they heave the thing into a tree for field dressing, though, she looks through her equipment for a suitable tool, and finds only her throwing axe and her shurikens. Sighing, she asks the group, "Does anybody have a dagger or something to cut this thing up?"
Seeing the Lion fall to the ground he shouts HA! Did you guys see that! What a shot!
He thrusts an arm in the air, but winces.
OwOwOw Yeah I think I'll need some time to be patched up. But I don't want to stop exploring...
Abbas and Tolla struggle to hang the 800 lb dead lion from a tree and field dress it, and both are out of practice with something this large, and it turns into a giant mess of blood and guts and organs. Abbas ends up being more of a hindrance than a help in the project.
As you smell the blood and organs as they butcher butchering the lion, something that has never happened before happens. Your mouth waters at the offal they rip out of the lion's torso. There's an overwhelming good smell coming from the organs, your stomach growls and your mouth waters at the smell.
"Ugh," Tolla says, shaking blood and tissue from her hands. Abbas hadn't been much help, but then she was no master skinner herself. "Well, that was a waste of time. I thought we could extend our rations, but now I just want to take a bath." Tolla thinks for a moment of her monastery, of the ascetic but functional little bath they had there. Of her stables. Of how she didn't know where home was, or if she could even get there anymore. She lets out a long sigh, and her next words sound deflated. "I'm sure we can wash off back at the ocean. Once I'm clean, I can take a look at Gniel's wounds."
That smell...it's so...moist...what's this strange feeling?
Almost as if in a trance, Relas walks over to the pile of organs. He sniffs at them again and, after a moment's hesitation, takes a small nibble from one.
Everyone watches as Relas suddenly buries his head in the organs and begins wolfing them down as if he'd never eaten before in his life. Indeed, he hasn't.
After about three or four giant throat wrenching swallows, the cat suddenly stops, his mouth full of liver and intestines, and then he spits and rubs at his muzzle to get the meat off.
The hunger was overwhelming, for the first 3 bites. Then something small, round, and gummy got bitten into, and you swallowed it. It was the most delicious thing you've ever tasted, not hard given you haven't tasted a lot. It was like sun and honey and warmth. At least, how you imagine those would taste based on your human's descriptions. And then the rest of the offal tasted like.. blech... nasty, disgusting. But you feel so much better now, not weak and lethargic like before.
Tolla looks disgusted at Relas digs into the offal. "Well...at least someone got dinner out of this," she says, wincing and frowning deeply at the sounds Relas makes while eating. She wipes her hands on the grass and on the hem of her skirt. "I think we should look around the rest of this area, to make sure there's nothing else that's going to jump out at us in the night. Then we'll make camp once the sun goes down, and I can see about trying to treat those wounds, Gniel. After that, I say we expand our search out, but let's not get too far from the boat curtain."
[ooc]I think that plan of approach works as faras hex order.[/b]
Abbas swears throughout the field dressing, and ultimately throws his bloodied hands up as the project ends completion, It was as though I am a boy with no experience!
As Relas digs in to the food Abbas merely watches in contemplation, considering the creature and its appetite.
As Tolla mentions continuing to move the warrior nods and grabs his bag.
"Wow...Palo, I don't know what it was, but *something* in there tasted wonderful! It felt like how people look when they eat something sweet. And I feel better now, too! I feel stroooong!" Relas bounces around excitedly for a moment, looking like an overgrown kitten.
"The rest of it was awful, though. I don't see how real predators can eat like that."
"So, I'm confused," Tolla starts, frowning at Relas and Palomia. "Maybe this is obvious, but I'm an idiot about these things. Relas, you're obviously not a normal cat--do you even need to eat?"
She furrows her brow and purses her lips. "I'd rather not have to kill a lion every damn day if we can avoid it, you know?" Tolla says, her face relaxing into a smirk.
"Well...not normally, no. This is the first time I've ever felt a desire to eat. Sometimes I've had to fake it to blend in (Palo usually says that I'm a panther when we do this) but I've never actually been hungry or anything. Though if that's what hunger feels like, I can see how some humans get so big!"
He pauses and looks at Gniel. "I don't want to have to kill a lion every day either! We don't have enough gnomes to use as bait," he says, stifling a laugh.
The party continues to explore, with Tolla giving Gniel medical treatment over night for as long as the med kits hold out.
The next day, they explore the next little area near the dock, they find something odd. An old wagon, that looks like it was destroyed by something smashing it into the ground, along with some odd looking bones. It's hard to tell what the bones were, as most are smashed and cracked open.
They were not human, but were humanoid, medium sized creatures.
The group then moves into B8, and begins to explore. About halfway through the day, they literally stumble across four monitor lizards, thanks to the high grass.
Round 1
Order : Gniel, Lizards, Everyone Else
A8->A9->B8->B7->A7
A8 : Done
A9 : Rolls
Feature
None
B8 : Rolls
Standard
MONSTER
None
Move-Load Xbow.
"You're not going to get the jump on be this time, creature!"
Abbas is shocked at the sudden outburst of activity and is slow to respond as the gnome fires at the lizards.
Gniel pops a bolt into the closest lizard, hitting it in the mouth, enraging it. An amazing shot, hitting well despite the grass giving them cover.
Then the four lizards hiss and race forward in an ungainly shuffle that is shockingly quick for it's ungainlyness.
They swarm Palomia and Relas.
Two get good bites in on Palomia.
Both attempt to grab Palomia.
The first one Grabs Palomia's leg and knocks her off her feet.
#1 : 4
#2 : 0
#3 : 0
#4 : 0
Palomia : 2 bites
Seeing her new companion fall to the lizards, Tolla grits her teeth and her eyes become fiery. Tolla shifts into her fighting stance, then charges at the lizard biting Palomia with her hands curled into claws, her run similar to a more graceful version of the low reptiles' run, before raking at it with a vicious strike while shouting obscenities.
The lizard, now with blood leaking from it's nose in addition to it's mouth, hisses angrily at Tolla, letting Palomia's leg go. It's teeth snap at her in reflex, but it's nothing more than reflex.