The two sides stare at each other, realizing that each side is helping an injured man. The gabbling speech of the others is incomprehensible, but your comms begin to speak in fragments.
"...here...eat...now."
"...spears...fight..."
On the plus side, no one has begun shooting yet. On the downside, you're standing in the rain while one or more vicious predators is stalking you.
Jhoolz lowers her rifle and moves out of the concealing long grass and approaches the new people unarmed.
"Hey now...we are all in this together...let's just take it easy and we will share out our rations with you."
She slowly reaches into her backpack and removes a ration pack that she holds out to the people.
They look at you incredulously. The female leader shakes her head and mimes something large biting her arm.
She speaks again and the comms translate. "Move... Many move." She points into the ruins for emphasis.
"I think," says the vargr Sanderson, "That our new friends want us to go with them to a place of safety. I'm for that."
Jerry quickly looks at the situation, trying to grasp what is occurring. He begins to speak slowly.
"Not fight with you," he says. Jerry then gestures towards the darkness.
"Fight that ... thing."
With rain dripping down his face, Daneel turns to the equally bedraggled vargr. "Me too. I like our chances following them way more than stumbling through these ruins on our own." He moves to follow the strangers.
The communicator gabbles away, apparently attempting to translate your Galanglic into the local dialect.
The locals move out cautiously and quietly, far more quiet than anyone in your group. They travel a circuitous route through the city, slipping through abandoned buildings and using bombed-out basements as passageways. Eventually, they stop for a rest.
By this time, the communicators are somewhat more accurate.
"We go to village before things beyond the light come. They come in many. We...do not <garbled> you...tell us why you come and what you...know... of tribe/people/land. You are from fight in space/sky? We saw junk/garbage/debris fall."
Byron will slowly put his gun away and stand up. He then says, "We were travelers who were shot down by the attack in the sky. We have also been attacked by an animal. If there is a safe place we would be honored if you would show us."
"Like you, we seek shelter from the weather and those creatures," Jerry continues.
"We can share what little we managed to save."
"What...you know about...us?"
Jerry looks at the locals, trying to estimate their ages and experience.
"A long time ago ... too many changes of the seasons to count ... this place used to home to thousands of people like you and I. Then, war ... conflict or battle between large groups of people ... came here and this place was attacked by flying machines much like what brought us."
He pauses, trying to gauge how the locals were receiving this information.
"Many people died. The great buildings were knocked down, leaving some places like this. People could no longer make the flying machines, and other things like them, and ... eventually ... forgot how to make those machines. Some times, and some places, even forgot that such things existed."
"Still, your ancestors survived. But they lost contact with people living in other places like this, ones that were too far or difficult to travel. My ancestors were luckier, I guess. But some of my companions come from places just like this, until they took a chance to leave."
The leader nods, seemingly satisfied. She taps her chest and says "Delinda."
Then she starts walking more quickly and indicates you should do the same.
"Village ahead. Village...secret place. Alone. Safe from sky raiders. You never tell or we die."
She leads you through a maze of alleys and crumbled buildings. From time to time as you travel, you can hear the sounds of something behind you in the dark.
At last you begin to see people in the ruins and you realize that the low-tech village is hidden in plain sight amidst the ruin of the old city. The people are actually reasonably well-dressed and you see signs of a functioning low-tech society of about TL 4
Byron looks around at the area, "Thank you for bringing us here to safety. Your secret is safe with us."
The villagers seem alarmed at your approach, but Delinda informs them that the garinimbreight are coming and that you are friends, so the villagers move to their defenses, taking up positions on walls and at barricades. They're armed with spears and axes as well as a (very) few ancient single-shot pistols. In all you see perhaps 20-25 people.
A bell rings out a warning and children who run and play one moment turn and take up arms with their parents.
"They are coming," says the comms as Delinda gabbles at you.
"Take a position!"
Byron draws his pistol and moves to find cover inside a building glancing out through a window.
Jerry turns to the leader with whom he has been speaking.
"Who is coming? Or, what is coming?"
Jerry follows Delinda's lead, ensuring that his people have taken action or sought cover before following her.
Daniel moves to a spot on one of the walls. He draw his laser pistol and scans the surroundings for movement
"Those who live in darkness, <The Garinimbreight>" the translator chirps.
The locals withdraw to a single building. Adults and children both arm themselves. Sanderson picks up a pike and moves to stand in the doorway. Phynan and Karine rush to get into the building behind him.
The bare light of a hissing lantern is the only light in the building.
Daneel waits on the wall in the darkness. He reaches out his senses to try and detect the coming attackers.
Life Detection
The most elementary form of Telepathy is the ability to detect the presence of other minds. Life detection enables a Traveller to sense the presence of other minds, the number of other minds present, the general type of minds (animal, human. etc.) and their approximate location.
Life Detection is reasonably sophisticated, and can distinguish intelligent beings from bacteria or unimportant animals in the area. It functions best in detecting intelligent minds. Shielded minds are undetectable. If an individual whom the telepath knows in detected using this power, he or she will be recognized.
Check: Easy (4+) Telepathy + PSI (1D x 10 seconds)
Reach: Distant
PSI Cost: 1
You can sense four or five minds very nearby, perhaps a dozen further off.
Daneel calls down from the wall, "I can hear them - they're close! Does this place have any lights?!?"
Are you telling me that you were wearing a Combat Environment Suit on the commercial transport to a job interview?
_________________________________________________
The villagers have oil lamps, but no electricity. They're not in the habit of lighting bonfires, especially not with Oghman raiders loose and on the prowl.
Daneel gropes around in his survival backpack and pulls out the flashlight. He turns it on, then sweeps the beam in the direction he sensed the nearest predator.
Jerry fumbles in his pockets, seeking his personal computer. Once it is in hand, he thumbs it to life and flicks through some command icons until he is holding a very expensive flashlight.
Like Daneel, Jerry holds it up to illuminate the nearby area. Perhaps it does not work as well as the purpose built light of his companion, but it is better than sitting in the dark.
"I hope that this does more than simply marking me as a target," he thinks to himself.
A pack of five predators...garinimbreights... bursts into the village and makes for the building containing the villagers, as if they knew where it was.
Daneel takes aim at the lead beast and takes a shot with his laser pistol.
Byron waits to see what is attacking.
A pack of five shaggy creatures, somewhere between wolf and crocodile burst into the enclosure. They seem to know where the humans are holed up and move in force towards the door of that building.
Daneel fires from the roof and hits one in shoulder. It stumbles and growls but continues to run with the pack, albeit at the back.
Byron takes a shot at the leading creature.
Byron's gauss pistol chunks and one of the garinaembreights takes two more steps before falling dead, twitching as it bleeds out on the ancient and weedy puffcrete road.
The pack leaps at the doorway. Standing there in the way is the vargr, Evan Sanderson. Well-off, polite and probably an office worker, Sanderson is nonetheless brave enough to stand between these people and danger. HE stabs forward with his pike. He has no skill or experience, however and his blow is too early, and the vicious beasts rush inside. So eager are the killers to get in that although one creature snaps at Sanderson, it does no more than knock him aside.
Inside, all is mayhem and confusion. Ancient pistols boom in the darkness. Snarls mix with screams as the scene is lit mostly by confused muzzle flashes and a the light of a madly swinging oil lamp.
Byron tries another shot.
Daneel hurries down from the wall and makes his way towards the doorway that the beasts entered. He has his flashlight and laser pistol pointed forward and at the ready as he approaches.
Jerry rushes forward, even though he has no useful weapon. He looks about for something to use ... a stick, even a handy rock that he can throw or use in a fist.