Aithaloessa weighs Ibhrim and Antarah’s words, before looking over to consider the scoundrel in question. Knows about gnolls, and the area. What passes for a hunter in the desert? Some sort of ranger? She checks for anything that could open up an unthreatening avenue of conversation: an obvious favoured weapon or other accoutrement, that sort of thing.
Of the other adventurers, she asks quietly, “Is any of us particularly good at being friendly? I was the nice one, sometimes, during interrogations, but I’m not the best at it. Alternatively, if I can convince him that he’s got a better chance with someone else…”
Give them what they want. The priest was chummy-chummy, this one looks like he wants us to think he’s about to bolt. Compared to her stooping to Zastoran’s overtures, she straightens sternly before striding briskly towards Dashki. That her armour is currently somewhat the worse for wear after poking about the soaked and sooty remains of the burned wagon only makes her demeanour of the fastidious officer look that much more expressive of displeasure.
“You look nervous,” she says bluntly, as she draws up in front of the man. Her eyes gleam as if already judging, though she continues with deliberate mildness. “Think that blaze might have caught the eye of somethings out there?”
She gestures to the expanse of wilderness, with all the raiders it might conceal. “Bad business, this.”
Yasmeena accompanies Aith as she goes to speak to Dashki, hoping her natural charm will help win over the man. Scanning the horizon, she shudders and adds, "Do you think there are gnolls out there, or worse? Do they know we are here?" She tries to make friends by drawing out his pride at scouting, impressing them.
"Sure there gnolls out there. But far. They not coming for us. Burning wagon is bad, yes. Eloais man with cards dead. Very bad." Dashki tells, all the time looking nervous past the two women questioining him.
You are unlucky to stand upwind of Dashki, so you get an first hand olfactory impression of his lack of body hygiene. You don't smell like roses yourself after a day of travelling and putting out a fire. But this is different. And not in a good way.
Yasmeena makes an effort not to show her nausea at the man's unpleasant smell. "Did you see the Eloais man before the wagon caught fire?" she asks casually.
"No. Eloais man in wagon all evening. Not come out." Dashki replies. He now looks at Yesmeena, but he is still nervous as if something would jump him any moment.
Yasmeena smiles, and tries to put him more at ease with her untroubled stance and friendly demeanor. "We are wondering why the fortune-teller didn't leave the wagon once it started to burn. It looked like there was some sort of struggle inside-- he was injured. Do you think anyone could have been in there with him?"
Yasmeena wonders at the man's smell. Some kind of curse? she thinks. Is he something other than human?
The man looks human enough, but his upbringing seems questionable as he lacks proper skills in the use of the common language and his whole clothing style is off. For sure there are lots of styles that vary from area to area, but his doesn't match any you know. It's just parts put together, that haven't seen a cleaning in month.
"No. Eloais man alone in wagon. Guards at fire, Old Zastoran at fire, Almah in tent, Hadrod, and Hadrah with animals. Almah's special guards at tent. Dashki eating at campfire."
“Right,” Aithaloessa says dryly, unsure what to make of the man’s odd way of speaking, to say nothing of his appalling pong. “And then we arrived with Garavel. So what are you so afraid of, if it was all just a terrible accident, everyone else is more or less alright, and it’s not attracting unwanted attention?”
She looks pointedly over her shoulder to wherever it is Dashki might be watching, before her eyes flash back. “You know, everyone else had their own ideas that they were eager to share. And hear you are, obviously upset, but with nothing to say. Why would that be?”
Is it just a language barrier? A ruse? Or is he just a fugitive from somewhere? Her glance slides to Yasmeena as she tests a hypothesis.
“<Maybe this one’s seen a djinn, do you think?>” she scoffs in Kelish, in a stage-whisper, hoping the uncharitable imputation might provoke a revealing response, if Dashki is only pretending to struggle.
Yasmeena covers her mouth for a moment to avoid obviously laughing and then replies "<They do say the experience changes you forever!>"
Ibhrim stood silently for most of the exchange. The smell of the man reminded him of what he himself must smell like after days in the desert. He made a mental note to pay more attention to personal hygiene.
While the others are either friendly or silently mocking Dashki, Ibhrim decided on a slightly more direct approach, "I think you took fire from where you were eating and used it to set the wagon on fire. Now I don't know why you would do that." Ibhrim put extra stress on the "why", "Were you jealous that he got to talk to the princess and you didn't?"
Dashki looks at Aithaloessa and Yasmeena as they have a private talk in a language he doesn't understand. But when Ibhrim openly accuses him he explodes with words.
"Dashki had nothing to do with the fire! How do you know the fire was set? Elioas idiot burned a hundred candles in wagon. Perhaps he just had bad luck. We in gnoll country. It was pugwampis for sure."
So if it's a language issue, it's not Taldane or Kelish... Osiriani, this far north? I can't help with that, in which case.
Ibhrim's accusation and the outburst it provokes cuts across Aithaloessa's thoughts. She intervenes quickly before anyone does anything rash.
"Everyone, stay calm!" she snaps, drawing herself up to her full height, hands clasped in front of her as if blithely unconcerned that the scene could escalate.
"Bad luck I can understand, but pugwampis? And what's the connection with being in gnoll country?" She's stern, but the way she stumbles over the matter of pugwampis, down to the way the unfamiliar word sits in her mouth, reveals that she's not following.
"Pugwampi's and Gnolls - you not know? Terrible critters what crawled up from the Darklands below the earth. ‘Jackal rats,’ some folks call ’em, for their pointed little heads. They worship gnolls as gods and infest their communities like rats. Wherever pugwampis go, bad luck sure follows."
"Gnolls hate pugwampis for it, and try to kill them all the time. But Pugwampis always come back. Pugwampi bad luck caused the fortune-man’s candles to start fire? Yes, pugwampis. I am certain it's pugwampis."
"No." Dashki tells and looks to the ground.
“No, I didn’t know,” Aithaloessa offers in turn. “Magic doesn’t work in the city I come from.” I would never have thought that could be a blessing, but compared to something that positively generates bad luck…
“So,” she continues, “How do we stop them? Can we scare them off? Or can they be killed? Is the problem that they breed too quickly, or what?”
The thought of taking the lead from gnolls is disconcerting, but if the alternative means a likely proliferation of fatal accidents… “Please tell me they don’t have any other nasty tricks like turning invisible or anything, like they say pixies and other fairies can. How big are they? Do they just sneak around, or how do we catch them?”
"You smash the ugly dogs with a club? Pugwampis just hard to hit. They size of cat."
Yasmeena seems skeptical, but encouraging of Dashki's helpfulness. "How close would these creatures have to be to affect Elioas's wagon?" she asks.
"In it? Under it? Close." Dashki tells.
Yasmeena makes a subtle show of looking around in their place in the camp. "You haven't seen any tracks or other signs of these creatures here, have you? I would hate to think that such nuisances were underfoot this whole time, but it could explain some things..."
While he's no expert, Tariq suggests that a tracker might want to check around the burnt wagon if there are any possible footprints or similar.
"Dashki has not searched for tracks."
Yasmeena makes a sweeping gesture. "Excellent! This then would be a good way to show everyone your skill, and demonstrate that your theory's sound! Let's take a look, together." She leads Dashki closer to the burned out wreckage and begins going over the ground, specifically in the areas opposite where the firefighters were carrying water.
Yasmeena looks around fo ra while, using dancing lights to be able to see anything in the dusk. After a while she finds some prints that could be from a creature, cat sized, walking on two legs.
Dashki follows along and looks out for tracks too. "I don't see any." he tells with frustration.
As he's pointed to the tracks by Yasmeena he confirms "These pugwampi foot prints. But too dark to follow now."
After mulling it over a few times Ibhrim was about to break in on the whole Pugwampi talk when Yasmeena found the tracks.
"Well I'll be damned. There are tracks here from some weird creature. There is a point to your story then. I'd say it's probably best if we report this to Garavel even if we can't track down this "Pugwampi" right now." The name for the creature still felt weird.
"Pugwampi, what is that?" Garavel inquires as he joins and overhears the last of the conversation.
After some explaning the current status of investigations he concludes "Interesting. I'll tell that to Princess Almah. Maybe you want to come along?"
A short walk later inside the tent, which is guarded by the four special guards, Garavel explains the situation to Pricess Alma.
"If my expert is correct," Alma says, "the hills around here should be crawling with these pugwampis, or at least some sign of their passage. If what Dashki says is true, it should be easy for him to find one and bring it back to me."
The merchant princess turns to the new mercenaries. "As he is, however, also a suspect in this affair, it would not do to send him out into the darkness alone. I’m afraid that your investigation is not yet at and end. Go out into the desert with Dashki and find me one of these pugwampis."
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Antarah goes into princess Almah's tent very nervously. As he receives a command, he unwillingly chooses to follow it blindly. Only later does he realize that it is the fact that she is a woman that made him be so obedient. It would take him years to realize it was due to the poor relationship with his father and the mysticism about his mother.
He motions to go to the hills in search of pugwampis, but waits until everyone is ready to leave the tent.
“Yes, ma’am,” Aithaloessa automatically acknowledges her orders. “Before we go, we should mention – Dashki said these pugwumps have to get fairly close to work their unluck. While we’re at risk everyone, but especially the guards, should be ready to engage at range. At worst, we spend an evening slinging rocks at any tiny desert beast that creeps too close.”
She strings her bow as she speaks, then bows out herself to take a look at the tracks Yasmeena found.
"I think they're headed that way," she says, pointing out a direction into the wild. She tilts her head as she mentally calculates how long they have before it gets quite too dark for most everyone, her elven eyes glowing as they catch the evening moonlight. "We'll have to move fairly quickly. There's only so long before even with lantern- and spell-light the search will get ridiculous."
Yasmeena eagerly joins the group in Almah's presence, pleased that their efforts have garnered positive attention.
As the group begins following the tracks, Yasmeena casts dancing lights so that they can see.
Aithaloessa with her training in tracking is very sure, that she has no clue where to go. But on the plus side that is better than getting lost in the dark.
As Dashki is tasked to come along he tries to be helpful and not look unqualified for the job he was hired for.
"Tracks lead there!" he tells, pointing in a slightly different direction than Aithaloessa did.
After following the tracks for some yards it becomes clear that it was more than one of those creatures. And another sort of tracks is seen amidst.
The hunt takes place in the rugged hills at night. In order to negotiate the rocky terrain and its many painful cacti, you must rely upon a light source. As you proceed into the wilderness, with the uneven shadows cast by the dancing lights you see things moving in the corner of your eye all the time. But it's either phantom creatures that in reality are only a shadow of a rock, or a plant, or at some nocturnal birds or rodents that haunt the underbrush.
An inexplicable rise in the natural tension of the environment crawls up your spine, as if you expect something terrible to happen even though nothing about the terrain has changed. Soon thereafter, a sound not unlike the brief cry of a human child comes out of the darkness ahead.
As you progress toward the sound, the local cacti grow more and more intense, until the you find yourselves at the edge of a dense thicket of the prickly plants. The sound of the bleating goat is now obvious to everyone—and it seems to be coming from somewhere deep within the cacti.
From 50 yards away you can tell that you will be able to see the camp with the fire in the middle for quite the distance. If there was an intention of keeping the camp a secret, it failed miserably. The burning wagon was probably visible for miles. Right now you can see the reflection of the dancing flames on the inner sides of the wagons circled around it.
Ibhrim simply nods at Almah's command. She pays so she decides.
As Dashki seems rather adept at following the tracks and apparently keen to prove his story Ibhrim simply follows him.
"They took a goat. Didn't the two camel drivers say they missed one? It didn't come willingly. Do those pugwampi things eat goat?" He asked the question to all though he only expected confirmation from Dashki.
As the sounds around them become more prominent Ibhrim extends his claws, just to be ready.
At the first cry coming from the dark Ibhrim sighs, "They're hurting the goat. At least it gives us a direction to move into."
As they get closer and are sure the sounds comes from amid the cacti Ibhrim's voice drops to a whisper. "These things are unlucky, right? Does not sound like a good deal with all these cacti."
Yasmeena's expression darkens slightly. "If they are like gnolls, they eat anything they can catch." She grimly draws her bow and readies an arrow.
The cactus forest, though very wide, is not so terribly deep. Only 25 feet separate you from the trapped goat. Rombard, the goat, is tethered to a scrub bush by a hairy, knotted length of rope. As the light goat approaches, the goat’s tiny bleats erupt into full-fledged brays of fear as it tugs in vain at the rope around its neck.