"I don't recognize them either, but then again, I'm not a botanist."
Responding to Enoli, Chakos says, "I do indeed, and strangeness is rarely good these days." He checks his pistols, and readies his rifle."[/b]
Antonio looks into the jungle with alarm. "Should we hide?" He looks down at the car. "Perhaps drive the car off the road so it's not noticeable?"
Abraham simply nods in agreement; this whole situation was strange and abnormal. The sounds coming from the forest though was unearthly and it made the man grip his rifle tightly.
"Pull over and kill the engine. Take cover and keep quiet." Abraham murmured to the others. Who knows what this strange forest held within it.
Elliot readies his shotgun and nods at Abraham. "Could be one of those beasts that we saw stuffed back at camp. I imagine them making a noise like that." He whispers.
And indeed, that it is what it is.
It resembles elephants, due to its long trunklike proboscis and size (being a little larger than a horse). Its mauve-green skin is soft and felt-like. Protruding from its back are two rows of blunt spine-like growths. The ears are shaped more like human than elephant ears. Its eyes are large and disconcertingly intelligent looking.
Enoli tries to blend in with the strange local floral as Grandfather had taught him so many times....
Enoli never really paid attention...
Chakos tries to hide...
Success
Chakos whispers, "it's an oliphaunt."
Antonio tries to see if there's any sign of serpent-men accompanying the creature or if it seems to be wandering of it's own accord.
Crouching behind the vehicle, Abraham stays as quiet as he can as the strange creature surveys its surroundings. Licking his dry lips and ignoring the dull pain in his whole body from their earlier plane crash.
"Just stay still and stay quiet. It'll pass." Abraham growled, watching it with narrowed eyes. He did not want to waste the ammunition on a beast of this size, not when the bomb was sure to clear away the strangeness of this jungle.
Elliot nods tensely at Abraham's words, his eyes wide at the sight of the living creature. It was impressive dead, but this... "Dear God..." He croaks softly.
Enoli is just standing out in the open () when he thinks he hears Elliot, he spins his head around just in time to see Elliot actually disappear, shifting to blend and mimic the foliage.
You park the armored cars behind a sandstone bluff and wait until the strange and mournful creature has left. Then ride on.
Forty minutes later and the jungle is even stranger. Some plants seem to glow with an inner light while others seem to writhe at your approach. Weird hoots and cries can be heard in the dense foliage.
As you round a rocky bend in the trail, Father Antonio hears something.
Chakos dives again for cover and concealment.
The priest stops suddenly, putting his arm out. "Something is coming. Quickly, into the jungle again!" Then he turns to see Chakos already diving for cover. Antonio follows him and tries to crouch behind a tree.
"Damn it." Abraham mutters, killing the engine and letting the vehicle roll to the side of the road. The jungle was only getting stranger and stranger as they rode up the mountainside. Quickly getting out of the vehicle, he moved off to the side and took cover behind the jeep's metal frame.
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As the team moves for cover, Chakos stumbles, catching his boot on the root of a tree. He falls prone just as a nightmare monstrosity hoves into view, crashing through the trees like a battleship through the waves.
A huge beast, vaguely humanoid, approximately twenty feet tall, with four arms ending in wicked talons.The most horrible thing about it is that its entire head opens vertically essentially splitting open down the middle, and is ringed with razor-sharp teeth. Its body is covered in a coarse and dense fur. Your minds can barely process what they are seeing!
Despite the horrific appearance of the beast, Elliot keeps his mind from becoming completely unhinged as he moves to help Chakos to his feet, shotgun held in one hand. "I uh... think we'd better get moving again. Quickly!" He hisses to the others.
Chakos feels his grip on reality slipping away…
Antonio just stares at the creature though he can hear someone screaming. Wait, is that his voice screaming?
The thing that comes out of the forest is massive, this four-armed, split-head, gorilla creature straight from one's own nightmares. Terror seizes at him for a moment but the screams of his fellow men steels his resolve. Bracing the rifle on the jeep's hood, he takes aim and gets ready to fire.
Fail! Woot!
_________________________________________________________________
STATUS
Elliot (Dex 90)
Abraham (Dex 80)
Enoli (Dex 80)
Minerva (Dex 80)
Chakos (Dex 60) - Prone
Gug (Dex 55)
Antonio (Dex 40)
Abraham takes aim at the creature as his comrades panic around him, the fear in his heart being swallowed down into control. He just had to breathe. Breathe and squeeze the trigger. The Lee-E's retort adds to the chaos around them
Elliot yells like a madman and charges the thing, knowing that he needs to get close in to use the shotgun!
Sawed off 12-gauge Shotgun (2B): Regular: 60 / Hard: 30 / Extreme: 12 ; Damage: 4d6/1d6
………………… Range: 5 / 10 yards ; Attacks: 1 or 2 ; Ammo: 2 ; Malfunction: 100
for 1st shot
for 2nd shot
Chakos shakes off his initial concerns, once he realizes that this is nothing out of the usual, and he brings up his shotgun to blast the beast...
So the damage is 24+10=34!
Before Enoli, Antonio or Minerva can react, and before the monstrosity can bend down to crush Chakos, Chakos, Abraham and Elliot unload freakishly accurate weapons fire into the giant's chest. It staggers back and crashes to the ground, dead!
Chakos stands tall and casually reloads his shotgun. He turns to the group, ”weird monkey eh?”
"What...what... what the hell was that?" asks Enoli, clearly shaken. "That is NOT natural."
Antonio finally takes a breath after what seems to be like hours. He stares at the gruesome creature. "That is....horrible."
He looks off in the direction the monstrosity came from. "I can't believe I am going to suggest this, but...Perhaps we should follow the path that these things made. Something tells me they came from the serpent-people."
"Why would the serpent people be mucking about with deformed apes?"
Elliot glances at its backtrail dubiously, reloading the shotgun and thanking his lucky stars that the thing never got a chance to grab any of them. It must have been about twenty feet tall! "We could be backtracking its path for hours, or days even. Our time is limited. I think we should continue onward and check out those camps. Seems likely the serpent people are interested in them. If we find nothing, we can always return. We have a very big landmark to remember where it fell."
"I mean, it's not that big. No larger than your standard greyback I'd estimate."
"Whatever it is, bullets kill it just fine. Nice work, men." Abraham says between gritted teeth, reloading quickly and efficiently to ensure full combat readiness. He gets back into the vehicle, turning the engine back on before looking at the others. "I'm with Elliot. We could be wondering for who knows how long. Thing didn't seem that smart anyways. Let's get a move on."
Elliot looks at Chakos incredulously. "Not that big? Good Lord man, that thing was bigger than a two story building! I don't know much about greybacks, but I don't think I've ever heard of one that's quite that big. Did you get a look at its mouth?" He gestures at the hideous 'face' of the monster. "Splits its head along the vertical? And four arms besides? Whaughhh.." He shudders and turns away quickly, lest his mind start wandering down dark paths. He nods in appreciation of Abraham's words, but wonders if any of them will get out of this jungle alive. Maybe they'll find some much needed answers up the road at those encampments.
"Our own species produces such oddities as hermaphrodites and Siamese twins. What that ape displays is a simple genetic abnormality, as well as being at the upper end of the statistical curve for size of its species."
Chakos moves back to the vehicle. "shall we head on?"
You drive forward up the mountain track, which is getting harder and harder to discern as the jungle closes in, but Enoli has noted a man's footprint following this route.
But you find that the road ahead is now completely blocked by spider's web of gargantuan dimensions, strung from tree to tree across the road (evidently after that man went this way). The threads are thick and huge.
Chakos takes a good look at the webs and concludes, ”that is going to be a big spider. What I want to know, or maybe I don’t, is what does a spider that big eat, to get that big?”
He looks for an axe, or a saw in the truck, ”what? We’re cutting through,right?”
Antonio looks up into the trees. "Uh, spiders usually lie in wait for something to disturb their web. If we try to cut through it, it will likely come for us. We either need to go through very quickly or find a way around it. Or, perhaps burn it? Fire might dissolve the web and dissuade the spider from approaching. But we should still be prepared to run."
Spiders... why did it have to be spiders...
"Uh... yeah, burning the web sounds like a good idea. Maybe we won't even have to get out of the car, right? Anyone still carrying that gadget we found in the pyramid back in Bolivia?"