Alright, here we go again, once more unto the breach, etc. Again, as last time, no big announcements or anything to share, other than to mention that I'm working on another character-build post for the near-future, if anyone's reading those. (And, again, as long as it's for something I've got the book for or has a freely-available SRD, I'm more than willing to listen to suggestions for future builds.)
And with that...
We pick up roughly where we left off, with the group pressing forward after slaying the luminata. The sun's about to dip below the western mountains, dusk about to shift into night and making a bonfire at the settlement that much more visible from a distance -- though Lecht and Wandering Dawn are also visible, their anima banners still glowing from the battle. As they approach, Lecht asks the warband leader's head the safest way into the camp.
"Just sneak in," the head says. "It's not especially vulnerable from any direction."
The group confers on that, and they quickly settle on just walking in through the front gate (or whatever they have). "Best way to start a party," Wandering Dawn remarks. Lecht comments on how cheesy that is, and Dawn says people keep saying that, but he doesn't know if it's a bad thing. Not sure if Dawn's being sincere or not, Lecht just puts the head back into their bag.
Soon enough they find a clearing in the forest, with a large camp that's practically a small village, full of people sparring, sharpening weapons, cooking food, and so forth. And there's a large totem structure in the middle of the camp. It's not walled or anything, though there are guards patrolling.
The three of them just step out of the forest and approach without fear, anima banners drawing attention. Wandering Dawn's got his empty hands out, and following his lead Stray Dog's honor guard have their weapons lowered (though not stowed).
"Stop your approach and state your intentions!" the nearest camp guards yell as the group approaches. The guards, still with that unnatural wild-eyed look on their face, are the essence of 'twitchy.' Everyone in the camp starts getting their own weapons read, and there's a distinct 'one wrong move and the fighting starts' vibe.
The Circle and their sidekicks stop. From where they're at, Stray Dog can recognize a distinct infernal style on the totem -- not a surprise, but noteworthy. Lecht begins quietly praying, subtly gathering power for his magic. One of the guards asks the group who they are, while the other demands to know what Lecht is doing.
Stray Dog steps up and demands to speak to 'a chieftain or champion.' Wandering Dawn explains "My friend is preparing a funeral prayer for those who would..." He pauses, having trouble finding the word, until Lecht stops praying to hiss "Challenge us," and Dawn continues. "Those who would challenge us."
There's some movement in the crowd as a mountain of a man named Vihtori[0] steps forward, massive greatsword slung across his back, very much the Conan-esque bog-standard barbarian tribe leader archetype. He stands there, looks them over, and asks "Who are you, and what do you want?"
There's some quick whispering among the Circle as Stray Dog suggests they need a name. Lecht suggests 'Hounds of Ill-Omen.' Wandering Dawn's not sure he's into the vibe of that, but he's gonna go with it for now. He then raises his voice and introduces the group as such, then wonders aloud if they should introduce themselves individually, too. Lecht suggests there'd be a big explosion if they did. During all this, Wandering Dawn tries to do some quick mental math to work out how many guys are in the settlement, and how many of them are likely survivors of the fight back in Larkim, but there's just too much going on to get the numbers right, so he just speaks up.
"You sent a portion of your camp's force against a town not too far from here, name of Larkim. And we stumbled onto your men as they were, well, raiding. And if some of those men made it back alive they might recognize us."
"That doesn't explain why you're here," Vittori says.
"We also came out here to learn why they were redirecting the summoning of a god," Dawn says.
"That's a theory," Lecht clarifies.
"A theory," Dawn acknowledges.
"We're mostly here because they attacked a town, first and foremost."
"I didn't want to get right into that," Dawn says as they get into some more back and forth. A short distance behind the tribe's leader, among the twitching, nearly-frothing warriors of the Broken Antler, a woman with shining skin and fangs, covered in talismans and such, steps into view -- the tribe's shaman, Pearlescent Fang.
About now, Dawn turns his focus back to the tribe and explains that he's there to ask them to leave the area and leave Larkim alone. He'd prefer to start all this amicably, but... and by now, the Broken Antler are all laughing their asses off. Wandering Dawn goes on to explain he's going to wait until his friend is done with their prayer, but the warriors aren't even paying attention.
Eventually Vihtori finishes laughing, wiping a single tear off his cheek, and just casually says "Kill them" as everyone rushes forward.
Lecht begins speeding up their prayer to get to the end of it, gathering together entropic Essence for their magic. Stray Dog steps up. "You've made a terrible mistake," he says, putting his supernatural charisma behind it. "You've angered our necromancer!" he booms out, offering inspiration to the Exigent. The tribe's shaman says "Ooooh, necromancer, fun!" with a fanged grin, and her challenge seems to make Stray Dog's proclamation all the more dramatic, emboldening both of his comrades as the Broken Antler rush forward.[1]
Wandering Dawn recognize that Lecht is building up to something big. He glances back and forth, thinks a moment.
"You'll be fine," he tells them.
"What?" is all they get out before he grabs them and throws them forward into the crowd of warriors, boosting the effort with some off-book usage of his Charms. The throw goes a little off but Lecht manages to land with a minimum of fuss, almost right in front of Pearlescent Fang, clocking her as probably a Wyld mutant. She starts building up power for her own sorcery.
Meanwhile everyone else crashes into each other as Vihtori gives his troops an encouraging speech about how they are the Broken Antler, who rejected the Bull of the North, threw off the shackles of the avatars, and they're strong enough to handle these few upstarts.
As the warriors clash and are fended off by Wandering Dawn, Stray Dog, and the wolverine and honor guard, the Solar laughs mockingly at their efforts. This draws Vihtori to step up and take an unsuccessful swing at Wandering Dawn, who draws strength from the other warrior's audacity.
"That's not how you hit somebody!" he yells, then lowers his vice and grins widely. "This is." He uses his spear like a club, swinging with everything he's got. With a brilliant golden flash he sends Vihtori flying back -- the blow itself doesn't seem to do much damage, but following the old axiom of 'the bigger the are, the harder they fall,' the champion lands hard, winding up prone next to Lecht as they're finally regaining their footing after being thrown.
Everything slows down as Lecht calls out "Enough!" and slams their staff into the ground, casting their spell -- Flesh-Sloughing Wave. The world moves into film negatives as an ivory wave of energy sweeps out in all directions, ignoring inorganic matter but stripping flesh from bone in a radius -- a radius that does not differentiate between friend and foe but, conveniently, ends a safe distance from the rest of the Circle thanks to Wandering Dawn's throw.
Like, this is the sort of thing I normally save for footnotes, but Lecht's player got a ridiculously-good roll on the spell's damage. The wave one-shotted the shaman, finished off the leader, and thoroughly ruined the battle group consisting of the settlement's warriors.
The remaining combatants, still crazed, keep rushing forward with everything they've got left, even those grazed by the spell and partially skeletonized as a result. They don't have the numbers to keep fighting, just running on steam -- probably unnatural steam, if the totem in the middle is any idea.
So the Broken Antler are about to end with a bang followed by a whimper, which the luminata who's been waiting nearby, immaterial and invisible, takes as the perfect opportunity to materialize and ambush Wandering Dawn with its rubbery tendril-antlers.[2]
"Wandering Dawn, it's another of those demons!" Stray Dog yells, as if the Solar didn't notice the attack. "Kill it, kill it!" he adds, putting the full force of his Infernal might behind his words to encourage/empower the Dawn Caste. The entourage and Mollie both rush at it to defend Wandering Dawn, but can't quite get much purchase on it as everyone's caught off-guard by the sudden appearance.
Wandering Dawn whirls on it, channeling his power into his strikes to swing at it twice with perfect jabs and swipes of his spear that just can't find purchase. Mollie manages to get hold of it and yank it to the ground, as Stray Dog keeps everyone good and fired up and his flunkies put the boots to it, medium-style.
Lecht, who's still got some power left even before Stray Dog's encouragement, puts everything they've got into Crypt Bolt, their anima banner hitting iconic (a first for this chronicle)...
Everything goes dark, silent, and still as the grave. Vantablack-darkness, except for the glows of the camp's torches and bonfire, which now appear a sickly pale green or ghostly blue. The others see spectral presence of a man, woman, and child staring forward at Lecht with a gesture of thanks, pointing towards Lecht who's got that ethereal female figure floating above them again. Both their and her arms are outstretched as they unleash their full power, and then raise a single finger to unleash a blast of ghostly flame that obliterates the luminata.
And from there, it's pretty easy to mop up the last few Broken Antler warriors, bordering on an anticlimax (or perhaps a cooldown exercise).
But we leave off there for now, with the camera lingering on the totem structure in the middle of the camp...
[0]-- We didn't get a good chance to get into their names in-character, but I'm putting the named NPCs names here just so I'm not saying 'the leader' and 'the shaman' over and over.
[1]-- Basically, Stray Dog rolled to Build Power, using the Inspire action to generate power to pass to Lecht, and got such a high roll he passed a bunch extra onto Wandering Dawn.
[2]-- I did say last session that there were two, after all. Depending on how fast the fight against the first one went I was considering having it jump in in the middle, in kind of a 'clever girl' moment. But we got was close enough to the next session I decided to save it as a fun little surprise.
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