"Well it's the first guests since we've been here, we should go greet them." Unless stopped Lucina would head toward them.
"Mmmm. We could. But we'd need to explain that we don't speak their language, get a translator, and hope they don't just shoot us to death on the way... but the alternative is either standing here, or making a fire and doing the smoke signal thing to them. Or obnoxiously loud applause." she looks to Teniel with a doggy grin.
"No," Teniel replies, smiling as he pulls the small reading primer out of one of his pockets. "You don't. I've been studying it for three whole days!"
"Can you give me a Clarion Call?" he asks Tavros.
Teniel sends up a cloud of silent image fireworks, and bellows at the top of his lungs, easily audible at a quarter mile, in his best broken Vudrani (?)
Tavros easily casts his prepared clarion call on his friend, watching the ship with interest. "I wonder why they're just sitting there." Then he is suddenly distracted by some large tropical leaves and his new idea to use them for fan dances. Which he should probably first teach himself. His eyes glaze over slightly as he starts trying to choreograph some moves.
Teniel sends up his fireworks and with Tavros' clarion call, he amplifies his voice toward the ship, cupping his hands, and using his best performance stage voice, forming the words recently learned from the local language.
It appears that you were clearly noticed. Many of the people on the deck pause and move to the edge to peer out at you. One of the people uses a spyglass to get a look at you. There seems to be some a discussion ongoing, and then again a wait. No one disembarks, no flurry of arrows or any response other than the ship seems to be also waiting.
Several more minutes pass.
Teniel's prepared to wait them out, if nobody else suggests something.
Teniel's prepared to wait them out, if nobody else suggests something.
I used to live near a zoo, you could hear the male lion all the time. According to google maps, it actually turns out that the distance to the zoo was also about a quarter of a mile. According to the Pathfinder rules I should have had a DC check of well over 100 to hear the lion based on distance alone. I probably makes more sense to have some sort of penalty based on each doubling of distance. If it becomes common enough I think I could devise some chart. Meh, other more important things to work on like making the magic item system more clear for you guys.
After a few minutes, it seems the entire crew is standing on the deck peering to the shore, hands to their foreheads, shielding the tropical sun to get a better view. The crew does seem armed, although at this distance it is difficult to tell exactly how well. You see a few cutlasses and crossbows, but at this distance, anything smaller is difficult to make out.
"Do we want to send them a message?" Teniel asks. "I could deliver it, if we wrote it out."
"I... Honestly don't know. This is not a situation I had prepared for mentally." She says, tails swaying with slight agitation as she looks towards the ship. "One moment." She says, before slipping into the vegetation, and then transforming into her 'local' body... and making the effort to come out of a slightly different area.
She then proceeds to wave to the folks on board the ship.
The people on the ship seem to point at local Makoto and after a pause, a few of them wave back.
As Maks starts to leave Lucina follows after her but tries to stay hidden while Maks draws their attention.
Tavros seems encouraged by the waving, even if it isn't at him (although it's not clear he actually realizes this last bit). He starts dancing his impromptu palm frond dance. It looks very enthusiastic, but somewhat disjointed. There seems to be some goat tribe dance mixed in with some cartwheels and attempts to do "the wave" with the palm leaves artificially extending his arms. He is probably too far from the ship for them to see his silly grin.
Tavros' dance seems to be attracting some attention, but at this distance, expressions and reactions are difficult at best to see or gauge.
Lucina slips into the foliage.
More time passes and you wonder why the ship is just sitting there and the people making no effort to communicate or engage you. Could it be your monstrous appearance? Local Makoto has appeared but nothing seems to have changed.
"Makoto, can I borrow your paints?" Teniel asks.
Using his small, thin fingers, he stitches a few pieces of paper and sailcloth together into a small banner, and uses his fingertips to trace large, looping letters, forming the message as follows:
Hello! There were monsters here. Monsters now dead. We are musicians. We are turtle friends. If you don't eat turtles, we are friends.
Then he adds doodles of smiling turtles to the margins, each surrounded by a family of happy baby turtles, and draws a picture of a smiling minotaur waving hello in the bottom right hand corner.
Finally, Teniel rolls up the banner, and uses his new shadow puppets set to create a celestial eagle made of pure shadow, which picks up the banner, soars into the air at rapid speed, and as it flies over the distant ship drops the message to land on the deck.
Once Makoto figures out what he's doing, she begins to add more contour to the banner to make what he's drawn more evident.
Lucina calls out from her hiding spot. "Should we just leave them be? Not much we can do until they land."
The banner is dropped onto the ship. The entire time that it was being made the people just stood around and watched or most of them went back to what they were doing.
When the shadow eagle flies to the ship there seems to be some defensive positions taken but when it just drops the banner off, the people slowly move to look at it. One of them disappears with the banner somewhere.
Nothing seems to change.
Teniel, Miyu and Makoto all seem to notice something strange. They get the sense that are being watched. A rustle of the air...above you...a noise, but nothing is there.
"THANKS FOR THE MAGIC EYE!" Teniel calls out at the ship.
Maks casts detect magic, and looks in the direction of the disturbance.
Miyu, for his part, watches the empty space with idle curiosity, ears pointed towards the sound.
Tavros notices nothing. Except that he keeps seeming to kick up quite a bit of sand. It's beginning to get everywhere and itch in awkward places. Pausing in his dance, he moves a short ways away from his companions and attempts to shake the sand free from his fur. In its own way, it's yet another dance.
Lucina comes out of hiding looking a little disappointed. "Their not coming are they?"
Makoto casts detect magic and beams her cone into the air about her. She senses magic within her cone, and as she continues to concentrate, seconds later the magic is gone. Whatever was radiating magic, is no longer within her detection field and before she was able to determine number of auras, strength or particular schools.
Something was there though....
"Yeah. Maybe we should move off the beach, and see if they come ashore."
Maks sighs and nods, keeping her human form. "We don't really have a way of making contact. Maybe we should build a raft?" she says, providing a small shrug, as she begins to make her way back into the forest.
After some more time and the peculiar non response to the antics of the group onshore, you decide to move off and see if they do anything different.
The group moves into the brush more and watches for a bit from its concealment to see if the reaction of the ship and its crew changes. Another five, ten and fifteen minutes pass without any appreciable change.
"Well, looks like we may have to wait all day," Teniel remarks. "Go about our normal hunting and woodworking and sewing, but stick to this side of the island, maybe? There's a chance they're waiting until nightfall."
"I have no idea what they're doing." Makoto says, shaking her head. "Perhaps they are simply dropping anchor? But that doesn't make sense, given the weather and timing..."
The group decides to go back to their normal activities while keeping watch on the ship. The ship does stay anchored offshore as evening rolls in.
As you still puzzle over the ship's plans. You see the light of a fire coming from near the center of the island (square J11).
"I suppose that is our answer. Perhaps it was not scrying, but instead one capable of both flight and invisibility." Maks suggests, before beginning to move towards the fire. "This appears to be our best chance to investigate and talk."
Tavros looks towards the fire and then back towards the ship and then back at the fire. "How did they get all the way over there? Is this a distraction?"
"You'll need my magic to put it out," Teniel comments. "Let's go."
Tavros looks towards the fire and then back towards the ship and then back at the fire. "How did they get all the way over there? Is this a distraction?"
As the group makes their way through the thick jungle to the fire, you see another spring up to the south. It is small, and the likelihood of the jungle starting on fire is small, but it is concerning.
Shortly thereafter a fire to the north is evident as well.
"Perhaps a ritual?" Makoto suggests. "They may come to this island for something else, besides the turtles."
Lucina follows the fires happy to have something to do after so long on the island."Or a signal of some kind?"
"We should keep moving to the first fire, see if the source is still there. I'm the only one here who can Create Water, so I don't know if splitting up makes any sense."
The group moves together to the first fire. It takes a bit to get through the jungle and you may have been scattered a bit, so you assemble and arrive, and you see a large fire has been built from brush and timber and even some debris from the ship that suspiciously got moved here.
There is no one around that you can see, nothing else of interest, no sign of a ritual, no sign or food or a camp. You look for tracks, in the flickering fire light and find none. Your own trail through the jungle is quite clear and evident, particularly given Tavros' size. You find no other trail through the thick foliage, no signs of leaves or fronds been or small plants crushed or pushed aside.
"Let's go back to the ship. This is almost assuredly a distraction." Makoto says, looking over everything for a moment. "Stranger still that they moved part of the boat into the forest."
"Perhaps it'd be better to move to the turtle nest closest to the ship since if they're distracting us, that's probably what from. Although perhaps your or Teniel should do a quick sweep for magic first."
Teniel casts Detect Magic, then dumps several Create Waters around the border of the fire.
Your detect magic finds no auras, and the create water hisses and sputters as you douse the ground around the fire, and splash it good enough. You reason it will die down on its own in time.
There are two other fires started as the group discusses its next plan.
"Should we split up and check both?"
"That could be dangerous." Teniel frowns. "We're close to the center of the island—maybe we can climb to a higher vantage, and see if there's any movement on the beach?"
"I... don't know." Maks says after a moment. "If it is someone capable of both invisibility and flight, and large enough to maneuver all of this... they may be quite dangerous. We shouldn't split up. I suspect they may target our home, though, if we don't guard it." she sighs. "We should disguise it later, but for now, we need to see what the sailors are up to."
As if on her command, as soon as Makoto mentions their ridge top home, you see fire coming from your sailcloth hut up on the ridge. Panic goes through your minds, all your supplies and tools and collected items are up there. It is over half a mile though the dense jungle, and up a steep steep hill. The adrenaline kicks in.....
"Well guess we know where we need to head first." She starts of running towards their makeshift home.