"Wake them up, now. We are leaving."
But for now, the exploration simply leaves her finding more and more dead ends... and more and more dead people. Her swift exploration, always keeping her mind on where she was and where she'd been so she could easily retrace her footsteps, results in finding several interesting looking bodies.
An ancient mummified corpse dressed in what appear to be monk vestments wears a half-rotted leather thong necklace with a tarnished silver holy symbol dangling from amidst the webbing. Carefully tearing her way through, Aisha finds a belt pouch affixed to a pair of tattered steel-and-cloth scarves around what was once the body's waist. Within the box is a Crusader Cross made from clay, and carefully painted with a small family or perhaps clergy. On the opposite side is etched 'Songbird Hall, Kintargo'. Also in the pouch is a wooden box, sealed tight, with ten small bags filled with white leaves. She takes the time to restore all of these things to their former glory before she collects them.
Next, she finds a dead horse, saddle and saddlebags still attached. Within the saddlebags, the only things that haven't completely rotted away are small bags of sealed seeds. Clearly the horse had belonged to a farmer who lost his way, or traveled too far in search of a new life.
Next was a person in boring-looking leather armor. The individual was wearing bright colors, marking them as a traveler, and bore dozens of equally brightly colored tattoos. Aisha collected her scarf - a pocketed one like her own, which held a set of thieves tools, as well as a masterwork backpack, which held very little of value bedsides an additional set of silk rope. The bright holy symbol tattoo of Desna on the desiccated corpse had not done enough to ward away unluck, it seemed.
Finally, just on her way back, she finds another body of a halfling, or perhaps a gnome. Aisha finds a waterproof bag, which prevented the rot of the objects inside entirely. Within the bag are a pair of vials with strange chemicals Aisha didn't recognize on sight, and a small book. When she opens the book, a dried and pressed flower falls out, much to Aisha's consternation. She picks it back up and places it back in the book carefully, kneeling as her dancing lights swirl overhead... then makes a low growling noise. A book! And she could not read it!
Masterwork Backpack
Silk Rope
Thieves Tools
Pocketed Scarf
2 Saddlebags
Pack Saddle
A large variety of seeds for farming
A tarnished silver shelynite holy symbol
A Crusader Cross with no name addressed to Songbird Hall in Kintargo Cheliax
A small box with 10 doses of Night Tea
Two reinforced scarves
A belt Pouch
1 Vial of Realgar (1 dose)
1 Vial of Magnesium (2 doses)
A Waterproof Bag
A book written in Sylvan, Aklo, or perhaps both. (Masterwork Toolx2)
21.5 GP in assorted coinage.
Total Weight: 49.5 pounds, 31 of which in the horse gear.
Sylvan
Aklo
"Very well. I shall go do so now."
With that he turns and goes to wake his companions... though he remains wary of those behind him. He little liked the threat implied in their behavior, but the odds were poor if it came to battle... especially since it seemed Aisha was not back yet.
Ishana rises quickly, and re-clothes herself, having changed into sleepwear while resting. She checks to ensure that most of her gear is still intact, before heading out to the gate to meet Marcus. "Whats the issue, is there a problem with the patient?" she asks, going through the possibilities.
By the time Kaussek arrives at her tent Lyon has already awoken and gathered her weapons, ready for a fight. "That wasn't Marcus or Ishana, what's out there?" If anything had gone wrong she had expect he would have shouted instead of walking to the tents but strange voices in the night were pretty much never a good thing.
If Kaussek explains what is happening isn't happy with it but doesn't see any other realistic option. She takes her bag and goes outside to meet the centaurs.
"Has Aisha returned?" he asks, looking around for her. "If not we should let them know we can't leave her behind."
"Missing patrol," Marcus answered. "This way."
Ishana pats the boy on the shoulder, who had escorted her to where Marcus was standing.
"There is no cause for alarm, I'm sure they just lost track of time" she responds soothingly to the boy, before sending him on his way.
When the boy leaves, Ishana turns to Marcus with a slightly more severe look on her face. "Do you know what area they were last scouting? I presume the previous watch group had reported no issues or complaints"
Once--and assuming he agrees, of course--Kaussek explains the situation to the Centaurs, Lu heads over to the spider's den and calls into the cave.
"They were not scouting. I set a patrol schedule. They were not supposed to leave the path around the camp," Marcus said. "They are more than a half hour overdue for the end of their rotation."
"Lets hope its something fairly trivial and not something more sinister" Ishana remarks cautiously, falling into step alongside Marcus. Lacking darkvision, she clicks her fingers, casting Dancing Lights, illuminating the path ahead.
He turns back to the centauroids. "Bizim nöqtəmizdən biri hələ cavernləri araşdırır. Yoldaşım onu çağırmaq istəyir," he calmly explains.
When she reaches the appropriate mouth, she finds Lyon packing up and Kaussek speaking Sylvan with a large group of menacing leonine centaurs. As the other three explain, they are being made to pack up and get going. The centaur chieftain wants to speak with them.
The young man who went with Ishana doesn't seem convinced, and chews on a nail worryingly. When Marcus and Ishana set off into the night, he retreats back behind the fortress wall.
The watch schedule was broken up into two four-hour parts, so there was no first watch group to report no problems. This missing watch group is the first watch group, and was to be replaced by the pair of Brevic farmers.
Their route was about two houses out, and ran a circle around the perimeter of the fort. What happened to them becomes clear fairly quickly - around 60% around their patrol circle, their tracks become muddled by several pairs of larger-sized tracks, one clearly Large-sized humanoid and four pairs of booted feet at the bottom of beefy Medium-sized humanoids. Clear drag marks exit the scene towards the north. Apparently they were attacked by something and dragged away some time ago.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Preceded by her perfect array of dancing lights, Aisha comes out of the cave, wearing a second backpack awkwardly on her chest, covered in silver, head tilted. In one hand she's carrying a pack saddle and a pair of saddlebags. She unceremoniously places both on the ground, before acknowledging her surroundings, her astral suit rolling off of the objects like water as she reaches for them.
"Oh, hello cat-people." she says, acknowledging their presence with an interested nod. "Why am I needed?" she asks, dumping the saddlebags and the pack saddle onto the ground without ceremony. "I found many shiny things. But more importantly, stories!" she tells the others as she pays little attention the centaurs, unaware of what is going on.
"Something large, something humanoid that could take on four farmers. Ishana remarks wryly. "Just a guess, but I imagine this is the consequences of killing those four ogres earlier in the day."
Ishana reflects for a moment, before turning to Marcus. "Are you confident in taking this thing head on? Or do you think its safer to get Ven's assistance as well? I'm fine with either option."
Marcus ground his teeth beneath his mask. "We can handle it, but we do it right this time. We shape the battlefeild and use the terrain to our advantage. Follow my lead and stay behind me."
"Very well, I'll follow your lead on this" Ishana responds, evenly, before a thought strikes her. "Aisha mentioned one of my spells will damage you, but it only harms evil creatures. Should this be something we factor into our tactics, or was Aisha wrong?" the arcanist asks, a little nervously.
"Which spell?" Marcus asked.
"Immediately." Aisha repeats, using the exact same tone as Kaussek. "Did you all sleep well enough to recover?" she asks, taking off the second backpack for someone without one to perhaps grab... or to leave it for the other group. If she left the shiny things for the other group, that would assuredly tell them that something was up! And it would be so much more interesting than a note. Yesss... She would leave a message only if one of the others tried to take the backpack, and then she'd write it on the saddle with prestidigitation, drawing 'kitties came to get us' in the dirt and dust of the saddle. She then moves to retrieve her own backpack.
While the others go shout for Aisha Lyon starts taking down her tent and packing it up, hopefully she has time to get it all down and strap it onto her backpack.
These people are going to get me kill, if they haven't already. She was getting stuck in her own head but to be fair it was the only safe place she had left.
If she has time to properly put her tent up then she would wait for the others to move forward before she'd follow. If they didn't give her time she would leave her tent there in whatever state she'd managed to get it in so far.
"Its Burst of Radiance, a spell that will damage evil creatures in its area, as well as possibly blinding them. It means that if you were planning to engage them in close quarters, its harder for me to damage anything you are in closer proximity to" Ishana responds, noticing that Marcus had not immediately denied what Aisha had alluded to.
"Ah. Yes," Marcus said. He'd been affected by that spell before. It had been a favorite of the Saranite resistance.
"Wouldn't that spell blind anyone in it's area, regardless of their moral leanings?"
When they reached the house, Marcus didn't go right it. He did a full circuit of the building first, carefully and quietly.
"Yes, you are correct, the spell can blind anyone in its area. The damage the spell inflicts though, only harms people of evil alignment. I presume this was the reason Aisha made such reference to it earlier today."
Ishana hangs a step or two behind Marcus, ready to intervene should she needed to. She watches the man scout the terrain carefully, and remains alert to see if she can spot anything.
Marcus is also able to confirm the presence of one ogre and two ogrekin inside the building by double-checking.
What do you do?
Suspecting their long conversation might make them suspicious, he turns and says, "Şəriklərim yoruldu, amma mən onlara məlumat verdim ki, biz dərhal yola çıxmalıyıq," he explains.
"I'd prefer not to be blinded. Just be careful with your targeting." Marcus said. He stood up from his tracking. "One Ogre. Two Ogerkin. This will require some finesse."
Marcus continued to scout around, looking for wherever the Ogres were using as an outhouse. They might be relieving themselves inside, but Ogres were usually smart enough not to s$%+ where they live.
The centaurs pack up and then usher the party down the mountainside. It would seem that, wherever the party is being led, it is to the northeast, and off of this mountain. It may take several hours to reach.
"I should be able to aim correctly, provided we don't get ambushed by them en mass." Ishana responds anxiously, planning through possible scenarios and trying to think of a way to even the numbers down."Are you thinking lure them out or away, or wait for them to isolate themselves further?"
Aisha stops the cat-person from collecting the saddle and saddlebags... unless it's clear that the leonin creature intends to wear it. If that were the case, Aisha is imminently interested in the possibility! Instead, she digs into the bag she'd pilfered from down below, opening the sylvan/aklo flower book, and quickly scrawling on the first page with a bit of charcoal - lightly - 'Kaussek says we are going with the cat people.' before placing the book back into the waterproof bag, and putting that bag into one of the saddlebags. The rest of their collection was being taken with them by the cats... unless someone else grabbed the second bag.
"Yes. Ogres have a weakness for sadism. If they perceive someone as vulnerable, they will often make foolish choices. How do you feel about being bait?" Marcus asked.
"I have nothing like that. Simply mark on the ground as we go. They will have plenty of time to interpret the signs. No need to leave scraps which might be carried off by the wind," Lu says at the suggestion they write notes.
The centaurs' hooves make very little noise, and they step carefully on the mountainside. They seem very well-used to the terrain, and don't really seem interested in speaking. Each has a severe look on their face, and they keep a vigilant lookout for nighttime predators. However, sixteen people traveling together aren't really a good target for a leucrotta or even a chimera or wyvern.
The sun is beginning to rise when the party reaches its destination three hours later - a village nestled in a a copse of woods in a valley of the mountain. The party is greeted by another four leonine centaurs led by a powerful-looking female noble centaur. She calls out in Taldane Common - "Thank you for coming without a struggle," she says. "My name is Aecora - the chieftain of the Nomen tribe. I wanted to talk to you about your missing villagers, and about Varn. Please, come." At that, she leads the party into the village and into a tall longhouse, only different from a human longhouse by the lack of a long central table. The short-haired angry-looking woman and two other centaur guards follow you, but the rest remain outside and disperse.
The centaur chieftain starts short and to the point. "I don't think you should go looking for your missing people."
Lyon gets paranoid when the centaurs move towards her and the other party members don't try to stop them. She backs away slowly reaching for her gun until they start removing and her tent and she realizes what they are doing. She slowly returns to the tent and silently dismantles it with them, strapping it to her bag once they've finished.
She didn't think paper would last long and the rain, and she didn't want to waste the only journal she had, so she wouldn't speak up when Kaussek asks. She would just hope he didn't remember all the times she'd written in it. Aisha seemed to have handled it anyway. Once everyone was ready Lyon would follow, trying to stay as far to the back of the group as the centaurs would allow.
Lyon seems to be more comfortable now that they can all speak to someone, but a frown replaces her brief relief when she warns them against saving the town. "Why not? We can't just leave them to die and clearly whatever happened to them wasn't done with their best intentions in mind."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"We cannot judge others as a whole, only as individuals. Everyone has a different story, different climaxes, different endings. Maybe some of them are bad and should be punished, but not all of the people who were charmed by Aria are bad. That is a statistically incredible improbability!" Aisha exclaims vivaciously.
"Besides," she continues, "we cannot stop because then no one would tell heroic tales of us. No one would save them. And maybe the evil that is happening to them would happen again and again, or grow, or move. Maybe it will change targets!" Aisha says, bouncing on the balls of her feet, her external leg structure more akin to the centaurs than normal human feet at the moment. "And even if it does not, maybe worse people will come to take their place!"
"I'll be completely honest here, I don't think anyone is thrilled with the idea of being bait - including me" Ishana remarks truthfully. She idly wonders if Marcus was worth trusting with her life, since Aisha had mentioned his questionable morality. After a moments hesitation, she discounts her ill feeling, Marcus had shown nothing but steadfast loyalty both to the allies of the caravan, as well as a willingness to help others. Deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt, she nods in agreement towards Marcus.
"That said, I tend to agree with your line of logic. They have a numbers advantage, so any tactic to separate or divide them is worth pursuing. I'm definitely the most vulnerable looking between the two of us, so I'll play along with your plan and act as the bait. What does the rest of the plan involve might I ask, is it as straightforward as leading them into an ambush?"
Trudging through the rain, Lu attempts to leave a path on the ground, ripping out clumps of grass and tossing them in the direction they're heading. The rain would likely obscure their tracks, but the grass would mostly stay in place.
When they come to the village Lu is surprised to find permanent dwellings. He hadn't expected Centaurs to... well, he hadn't really thought about Centaurs before at all. The moment they get indoors, the wet mass huddled against his neck takes off into a corner and proceeds to shake off most of the water, beginning the long, tiring work of preening its feathers. Lu lets off a little laugh and then turns to the chieftain as she greets them. Once again he is surprised to find that she speaks Taldane well.
He waits for Kaussek and Aisha to finish speaking and then speaks up himself. "I am Faluhann Windborne, and speak for the Windborne tribe"
"Aisha is right. I cannot believe the entire town was wrong somehow. They likely had children there, were they guilty of something? Whatever those in charge of the town may have done in their dealings with you, it shouldn't extend to all the people. Tell us what you know, and why you think they are not worth saving?" he asks, moving up to the front of the group.