Subject: Re: The Journey Begins; A Distant Cry

Buchek rushes ahead through the tall grass, drawing his axe to the ready. The squeal was certainly one of pain, but he knew it couldn't be human. It was like someone had kicked a dog, or more like some sort of night scavenger. But it was so... loud. No animal could have projected that sound, at least in Buchek's mind. Yet, as he quickly pressed for the top of the hill, the hairs started rising on the back of his neck.

Telwyn followed closely behind with Tichenor moving with head low at his side. More careful, his bow drawn out of caution, he fans just to the right side of the barbarian and presses for the rise. The sound made no sense to him. It sound like... well, like the sound rats made when he shot them with arrows as they crept along the perimeter of his campfire. But that sound could not have been made by any rat... or, any normal rat.

The rest of the party follows from behind, leaving the mules behind to graze on the tall grasses around the trail they had been discussing. Pressing up the hill, trying not to make too much noise, they see Buchek and Telwyn stop suddenly short at the top of the rise, standing uncharacteristically tall with no thought of concealment or stealth. Getting closer, Erk notices their shocked stares and mouths slightly agape, then follows their line of sight to the plain below.

There, flanked on all sides by warriors of a barbarian tribe, was a staggeringly massive weasel of some kind, at least sixty feet long, thrashing wildly at the long pikes struggling to keep it at bay. Spears sprung forth from its blood-soaked back like the quills of a hedgehog, rippling with the wild, jerky movements of the beast, and one pike had pierced the neck clean through from one side to the other and whipped back and forth with the creature's frantic head movements.

All stood in wonder for a moment as they watched a group of three warriors press forward with pikes at the massive weasel's throat, then stared horrorstruck as the animal seized the lead man with its teeth around the midsection. With a rapid twist of its head, the unfortunate man's body was torn in two in a spray of blood that caused the ring of tribesmen to fall back momentarily before rushing in once more.

Everyone in the group stands in utter silence and awe, unable to look away or see anything but the startling speed, strength and agility of the enormous animal. [Pathetic saves vs. fear against DC 15: Buchek, 3; Erk, 12; Telwyn, 9; Holn, 5; Elotai, 6; Kayla, 12]

Buchek stares in disbelief at the melee, whispering only, "they have invoked the wrath of the weasel god...". Holn swallows hard at those words, fighting to fit the presence of the totemic beast into his view of the world and his people, but not able to find any words to describe it.

Erk says an instinctive prayer to Clangeddin for protection against supernatural forces, and Kayla vividly pictures what the weasel would have done to a halfling over and over in her mind. Unconsciously, she takes a step closer to Erk and his metal shell.

Elotai takes a step back, startled by the gruesomeness of the man's death before his eyes, never imagining that particular vision could have been so gut-wrenching. He fights the bile rising in his throat as his eyes follow the man's torso as it flies through the air, raining blood in all directions. It lands against the side of a tent, and Elotai finally realizes that there is more going on than the battle with the giant beast.

This was a village, or at least an encampment, and he can pick out the wreckage of temporary structures torn and knocked down, littered with torn corpses of women and men. Glancing further from his high vantage point, he can see a small huddle of women and children hiding in the grass a hundred feet or more away from the battle, surely praying to their gods that their warriors emerge triumphant.

Another shrieking squeal from the weasel snaps his attention back to the fight, and he sees a spear protruding from one of the beast's eye sockets.

Subject: Shock and Awe

Damnit, I meant to change the header on that last email. Hmph. Ah well.

Just for clarity's sake, you are all still about 600 feet or more away from the battle, at least two football fields.

Subject: Re: The Journey Begins; A Distant Cry

Buchek watches the battle below, struggling to master his fear. As the wind shifts, he gags slightly at the beast's oily musk. He almost thinks that he can smell the copper tang of blood, the stench of the dead men's offal, but knows that it's his imagination, filling in the details. He is too far for such a scent to carry to him.

He shakes his head slowly, torn as to what to do. As a boy he'd sat at his father's fire, shivering with delicious fear at tales of gods such as this thing. But when Kipshaa failed to protect his father he'd angrily turned his back on her. Had turned his back on her until he awoke on in the Tall Grass with his grave goods laid out around him, the unruined side of his face covered with burial tatoos. Since then he had been less sure. Had a god brought him back from death for some purpose? Had death spat him out as the Cushat had, unwilling to count him as its own? Had he merely been lucky, survived by chance?

All of this doubt shrinks to a tiny, irrelevant speck in the face of the attack going on below. There is a god down there, tormenting The People. And for what? For some missed sacrifice, when they could barely feed themselves on the lands left to them by the Sunset People? Because they were pawns in some other god's plans? Anger flares through him, and his fist tightens on Nauhata's haft. Those were his people down there, being trampled and gored by an avatar of Khoftak. Not his tribe, true, but more like him than any other here, save Holn. He can't just stand by as they are killed.

And yet...a part of his mind argues. This is not his fight. Khoftak is not an ally of Kipshaa, but neither is he an enemy. They fight sometimes, but just as often they do not. If he attacks this avatar below there is no guarantee that Kipshaa will favor him for it. And honestly, can he even be sure that Kipshaa counts him as one of her own? If so, why would she allow his uncle to succeed?

No, it would be foolish to enter this battle. It can do little more than earn him the animosity of a god, a god whose territory he will soon be entering. This is not his fight. The screams of the tribesmen below carry across the grass. Damn it. This is not his fight. And yet...

He turns to Holn. "Those are our people being slain down there, brother. We cannot leave them to their slaughter, Khoftak's anger be damned." With this he starts forward, then stops, suddenly aware of all of his companions. "We cannot leave them," he repeats more loudly, almost defiantly, as though they rather than he had been arguing against taking sides in this conflict. With this he turns and begins striding toward the battle, trying to resist the temptation to look over his shoulder to see if his companions follow.