Simon and Quassine fly over the treetops and are able to gain some time on their companions and catch up. The group reassembles and continues south to the next camp.
"Any thoughts or ideas on how to handle the locals?" Eleanor asks.
Quassine shrugs, "The goatman since they are the only locals we have made contact with, or others we have not yet met? Regardless, hopefully we don't have to fight all of the locals."
"Dude... that would, like... really suck... not good suck either. Like...suck suck... Geez. I really hope that's not the case... What do you guys think has happened in, like the last... long time we were there? What if everything sucks now? I really hope at least some stuff is still cool. The Fey live for a long time, so I don't think they will have changed that much, but humans and stuff could be, like, really different..."
He pauses for a moment.
"Oh, ya. Uh. Strategy and stuff... why don't we just do what we did before? That worked pretty well, I think..."
The group continues south, crashing through the underbrush and thick forest. It is still quite cold and chilly away from the campfire. Hopefully you did not make a hasty decision to run into the wildlerness in the early morning.
"We can't even understand them so dealing with them will be difficult. However I got an extract I can mix that would let me understand them. Sadly it doesn't work both ways, so they still wouldn't understand me. If we can't make them understand us, my best suggestion is to get out of here as quick as possible." Xanya is clearly frustrated that she hasn't found a solution able to solve all their problems.
Xanya doesn't notice the cold as she is still protected by her potion from yesterday.
"Most fey don't care much about time, unless they are living with mortals"
"If we have a goatman that doesn't try to kill us, we could try all the different languages we know."
"Perhaps someone in another camp was able to take one prisoner." Elernor says, knowing only common and dragon tongue herself.
After some 6 minutes or so of crashing through the morning forest you arrive at the next camp. A bloody battle has occurred, the dead and wounded lie everywhere. Only Goivan and Qahnaarin stand are both are wounded.
...so much pain and suffering both dealt and received and best of all it was all good due to protecting my friends.
Kiki will problbly stay neutral, she enjoyes beeing the monster in the dark that preys on the guilty, like a tiny sized batman that does it for fun, and not for duty or to fight personal demons.
Xanya turns back towards Rahaan. "We will accompany you and a those who wishes it back down the mountain to your camp. We wish to learn your language, my mixture to magically understand you only lasts a short time. We should rest a bit so your companions can recover a bit first and we can learn some before start on the journey though."
Rahaan looks at you blankly. "Some day blue Zaaaanyaaa person, we can learn each others language."
Quassine is trying to learn the language as well.
"Hello Rahaan, my name is Quassine"
"Kwaaaasseeeen." The goatling, closer now eyes Quassine's tentacles and squidlike head. It puts its fingers by its mouth mimicking your tentacles. "Huuuulaa-thaa"
"Others like Rahaan, come" Xanya tries her best to be understood as they start leading the goatmen to where they spent the night and where the goatlings lie.
Day 2 - Early Morning
Two other goatlings follow the group from camp 3. The intrepid group makes its way back to your own camp after another 7-8 minutes or so. The birds are chirping and it is quite brisk. Again your clothes get grubby, torn, snagged, filled with nettles, and you are probably covered in ticks but you get back to your camp and you and the goatlings check on the battle survivors. It appears the shaman leader is dead as well as one other. The others are extremely wounded, some horrifyingly so, but are currently stable at least.
The goatlings appear very concerned and are afraid to move their brethren, but try to arrange them comfortably.
Simon expends his other two uses of Cure Light to help the most wounded goats. He's quite eager to please their new friends.
He will also summon his companion, a flowery lion named Aster.
Aster watches the group quietly with his front paws crossed and a pleasant, consistently serene expression on his face.
Simon will slow talk and motion as much as he can with the goat people, easily starting to pick up their language. A part of his personality (INFP type) is that he understands language rather quickly.
"Sacred Spirit" Xanya says in goatling as she channels a couple more times to try to heal up the wounded goatlings.
Over the next few hours Xanya does her best of trying to learn the language of the goatmen. She also communicates heavily with Cryxial, trying to figure out a way for them to get closer. If only you could share in my rage to power you up in battle, things would be so much easier. The voice in her head replies in her native Derro tongue. [/i]I can, you only have to try hard enough.[/i]
Another thing Xanya does is to start eating all sort of weird things from her alchemical ingredients. Healing after battle is not as useful as healing during battle while fighting at the same time, if I calculated right, this should allow me to heal some without actually having to stop drink a potion or to channel, much more effecient. She then get another idea and after a few more muched mouthfulls of wierdness something odd seem to happen to her shoulder.
Xanya turns to Kiki with a smile and says. “You riding on my shoulder gave me a great idea! I can make my own companion to help me out even if you were to jump off to battle our enemies.” The lump continues to grow, sprouting things that look like limbs before Xanya gets a really focused look on her face as she clearly presses something. There is a soft pop and a creature looking somewhat like a scorpion, though entierly made of flesh pops out. “Meet Ikik! My own familiar. I named him after you Kiki, isn’t that cute? He’ll tell me when danger aproaches with his emotions so I can react faster and I hope he’ll be able to warn me of blows so I can get out of the way as well.”
Xanya and Simon begins to learn the language of the goatlings, working first on common objects in the area, which will help. You sign which plants are edible.
Between the two of you, you manage to bring all of them to consciousness except 1. One is still in critical and all of them are very badly wounded still, but grateful to be alive. They mourn those that they lost.
DAY 2
Quassine also works on the learning the Goatling language and heals goatlings that Simon and Xanya could not heal or heals those that need more healing.
Quassine gestures what he thinks and hopes is healing ...
"Raahaann, Kwaassinne heeels tooo." Then gestures to stay here for a little bit to heal his friends before moving to the camp, "Weee staaay heeree a littllee looonger to heeel yooour frieennnds"
Quassine joins Xanya and Simon in a group effort to learn the Goatling language.
Linguistics
Quassine heals the remaining two goatlings at camp 2 to consciousness. Only 2 truly died. In addition to Rahaan and the other two, you now have a flock of 11. You spend 3-4 hours levelling up and learning goatling before you plan to head to their base camp which seems quite near.
Progress is going well with goatling language learning as three of you are focusing on it.
Kiki uriously watches the creation of Ikik. Once it has sepperated from Xanya, the Spiderling moves closer to the flesh scorpion and slowly holds a hand infront of it, giving it time to take in her smell and the warmth of her body.
Kiki touches the familiars skin and beginns to softly pet it, looking for any place it enjoyes.
The blue flesh scorpion sends feelings of contentment to Xanya and leans into Kiki's patting. "He likes it, he might like you." the Teeto says. The tiny spiderling and the scorpion are almost the same size.
While they rest Xanya keeps repeatedly casting darkness, she is just more comfortable with less sunlight stinging her skin even if the trees also offer protection.
Xanya teaches the others the few words she did learn from the goatlings while under the effect of her extract.
"I like him too"
"How many of you are in camp? And in village?" Xanya tries to ask, she already know some question words and the word much if not many. She hopes she is understood anyway. She tries to find out as much about the camp and village over the few hours they spend resting, reflecting and learning.
"Camp. Hmm." He holds up his hands and all his fingers waving them in an approximate fashion.
"Ten?" Xanya wonders if they have words for the various numbers. "How many at the plateau total? We had many camps. And village?" She realizes it's hard to learn a new language and that it's pretty much impossible to learn it in a couple hours, but she is still going to try.
Seeing Kiki and Ikik interact gives Xanya a brilliant idea. She turns to Kiki. "Those pincers and the tail stinger are all sharp pointy things. You don't use your fists in battle like Quassine, but maybe you can carry sharp sticks to poke our enemies with?" Without waiting for an answer she starts looking for sticks appropriate to make into tiny stakes.
The goatling seems to not understand what you are asking. "Rahaan, naa sataa anaa"
Xanya, you are able to find sticks all over, but any old sharp stick is not a stake necessarily. You decide to find some stouter ones, and ultimately pull a branch off of a tree to use that so it is fresh. YOu grind the ends down on a flat rock and make some crude tiny wooden stakes (1d2 damage)
After you give the stakes to Kiki, Rahaan nods in understanding.
Quassine has been spending time learning Goatling and teaching him Common during idle time when not attending to the wounded. When either Quassine or Rahaan become frustrated or become tired learning how to communicate, Quassine meditates to rest and reflect.
Simon will make sure Card can learn with them if he should choose to, making sure he can read both his and the goat man's lips.
Simon wants to make sure his fuzzy friend can participate in everything everyone else can do, but he isn't patronizing about it.
The group works very dilligently. There is incredible focus and teamwork put forth to learn the goatling language. And even though a few short hours go by the group seems to make fairly good progress. The goatlings make an effort to also learn your common tongue. Within that time the group is able to string together simple subject-verb concepts. The goatling language is actually structure similar to your Common tongue in terms of sentence structure, which somewhat makes sense, as the goatling language seems to be very basic, and Common arose from a simple trade tongue needed to communicate concepts. The goatlings also use a very basic runic alphabet, that does not resemble that of the dwarves or giants for example, but has some basic similarities. (There are only so many ways you can draw a line, up down, sideways or diagonally to make a symbol).
After your reflection the group has grown (level 2) and the afternoon creeps in. The sun is warmer now and while the air is still cool and the water of the lake seems to abosrb the heat, at least the sun is warm on the shores of the lake, and the rocks also absorb and radiate heat. The group feels a little nappish perhaps, but also getting hungry.
You begin to ponder your food situation as you don't remember eating breakfast, and not its well past lunch time, and you are getting quite peckish.
"Hungry, food. Food at camp?" Xanya strokes her belly to symbolize what she means and asks the goatlings. "I can hunt." Cryxial actually says out loud in common. Xanya says. "Let's go see if we can find food. We can all go and find as much as possible. I'll use my magic to boost your effectivness." Xanya channels her magic to help the food gathering slightly, guiding people to what is edible.
Day 2 - early afternoon
Cryxial splashes into the water and is able to catch some fish, quite a few crayfish, and found several waterfowl nests with eggs.
This all takes some time, so the five or so meals don't show up immediately, but Xanya and Cryxial are assumed to be hunting and foraging the rest of the day, any movement will be halved as they are going slow to catch food. (If you move away from the lake, Cryxials food finds will be logically replaced with inland food sources, like birds, rabbitts and edible plants).
The goatlings also attempt to forage a bit, but they seem to indicate they would rather go to their camp that perhaps there is food there. They have been from time to time stuffing local plant life in and chewing it, and also they appear to chew cud, so they may be bipedal ruminants and can digest food that would provide little or no nutrition to normal single stomach humanoids.
Cardau hangs around with Simon and the goatlings, trying to pick up what he can.
"Let's appease them and head to this camp of theirs. The rest of you can help out foraging as well as we travel. It would be nice to have food for more than today so we don't have to do this every day." Xanya says in common then to the goatlings. "Go to camp?"
Day 2 - Mid afternoon
The group is slowly making their way west as they forage and hunt.
Quassine and Simon both notice something in the sky. To the west, perhaps near the camp where the goatlings would be taking you, you see giant rainbow colored letters in the sky. They appear to spell out 'Goats Misunderstood in Common'.
Quassine nods at Xanya and then looks at Rahaan, using gestures like a lot of races do to help communicate, "Rahaan, and kinsman, are you ready to go to your camp? You all are good enough to travel. We will walk side by side with you." Quassine looks back to Xanya, "I will multitask along the way by foraging for food."
Quassine calls out, "Stop! Xanya and others look!" Quassine points the letters written in the sky. "Is Rahaan misunderstanding us or them?"
Survival
Simon helps look for food as well.
They soon see a large message up in the sky.
"What do we think that could mean?"
Simon is able to flush out a bevy of quails which will feed the group nicely for today and then some when combined with Cryxial's foraging.
Rahaan responds to Quassine, taking some time to process the words. "Camp. Yes. Go." The goatling makes a walking action, and gathers the others from camp 3 as well as the rest of the goatlings from camp 2. Your merry band begins moving through the forest slowly. When the letters appear, the goatlings grow very excited. "Sky Spirits! Words" They point and nod to each other, a few give gentle head butts to each other like a bros giving chest bumps.
The other goatlings have also tried to learn Common, and are often trying to teach you goatling words for things in the environment.
"I think it probably means what we already discovered, that they are here as part of a ritual and misunderstood us being sent by their ancestors as a test. They were not attacking us because they meant harm or because they thought we invaded their territory. Let's just hurry on to the camp to make sure though of course I am always right..." She answers with the greatest certainty then turns to Rahaan to explain the message and her conclusion as best she can with her limited command of the language.
"Wow Simon, what an awesome Hunter you are, even better than Cryxial! This deserves a reward tonight when we camp."
Quassine nods, "That makes sense and who wrote that?! It should have said, "Goats Misunderstood." And yes, we already know that. Let us continue to their camp?"
Rahaan nods at Xanya, he seems to get the gist of it, but clearly doesn't grasp all of the complex topics, but you keep it basic and simple. The large contingent of people move further into the forest, continuing to hunt and gather, but making haste as able. As before, the thick forest prevents swift smoothe movement. The prickly evergreen branches scratch you, their sticky sap gets all over you, and those without shoes and natural thick skin, have a tough time of walking on the rough, debris covered ground. At least in the forest, the trees afford more shadow.
Many of the goatlings notice that Xanya and Simon have runes on their foreheads that match those on their eidolons. They point at them and you, and ask "Spirit?"
Seeing Kiki and Ikik interact gives Xanya a brilliant idea. She turns to Kiki. "Those pincers and the tail stinger are all sharp pointy things. You don't use your fists in battle like Quassine, but maybe you can carry sharp sticks to poke our enemies with?" Without waiting for an answer she starts looking for sticks appropriate to make into tiny stakes.
Kiki hugs Xanya('s head) and gives her a kiss on the cheek "Thank you, I felt incomplete, fighting with only one weapon"
The spiderling leaves the comfortable spot on Xanya's shoulder "I will scout ahead "
Xanya pats Cryxial's flank, smiles and nodds. "Good spirit, life spirit, rage spirit. Keeps me good. Battle helper also. Goodwin helped." She wants to explain that by channeling her rage and powers, with Goodwin's help, she managed to draw forth Cryxial to aid her and that he helps keep her good when she herself is unsure of the path. At the mention of Goodwin's name she makes a sign of reverence. "Do you have spirit?"
The goatlings point to the sky when spirit is mentioned.
"Sky spirit? Tell more. What is it called?" Xanya says. "Does The name Kon Lesh say you anything? There used to be a monastery of his not too far from here."