Okay, so as I begin writing this, I'm still a little behind overall; there's this session and then another to write-up, and hopefully I can get those both done before the next session I actually run so I've got a few minutes to work on other stuff.
In the meantime, just as a quick reminder, I recently posted a bit of fiction with some side-characters, technically properly introducing one for the first time. It takes place alongside the last story, and in fact the session depicted in this blog post alludes to those events somewhat. I just wanted to give a couple of characters the spotlight, set up a couple little things, and write some action sequences. It assumes a basic familiarity with the setup of this chronicle, so it's not entirely standalone, but reading it isn't necessary to understand anything in this session.
Anyhow...
The Circle (plus Stray Dog's entourage) make good time from Larkim and catch up with the caravan while they're camped out for the night. Everyone seems a little more on-edge than usual, and Lecht flags down one of Stray Dog's followers and asks what's up. She's glad to see everyone's back, and says they got attacked by some bandits. Everybody's fine, however, and Oguri and Kasyan are off disposing of the bodies a safe distance from the group.
It's actually at about this time when Oguri and Kasyan actually return, smelling faintly of smoke and the latter still lightly glowing. They quickly catch up on the basics, and Lecht informs them that there shouldn't be any more significant threat from the Broken Antler. Oguri says that that's good, as there was definitely something wrong with the ones they encountered, which is why they took the bodies some ways from the road to burn them, and make sure nobody blew back on the merchants.
Lecht asks if anyone needs assistance, and Oguri mentions that her bodyguard had a head wound and is laying down. Lecht concerned that Mahi might have a concussion, Lecht pretty much kicks in the door of the wagon where Mahi's resting. Mahi freaks out a bit and reaches for her sword, but Lecht quickly stops her and checks under the headband she's wearing to find a shallow cut underneath. She says, in heavily-accented Skytongue, that "Head wound bleeds like pig," suggesting it looks worse than it is, and insists she's fine.
Lecht still properly examines her, and notes that the sash she's got wrapped around her face like a scarf has a number of talismans sewn into and hanging off of it. They don't recognize most of them, but those they do recognize seem to be related to death in some fashion -- some evoking gods Lecht recognizes, and others evoking gods Lecht's unfamiliar with but the style pretty clearly suggests death-related concepts and entities. The Exigent gives her a look, and she asks if something's wrong. They just say 'No' and head out.
Oguri asks if everything's alright when Lecht comes out, and they just say they wanted to be sure she didn't have a concussion but she seems to be fine. Oguri says that she knows Mahi can be a little brusque even before the obvious language barrier, and thanks Lecht on her behalf.
With that settled, the rest of the night goes pretty smoothly and the caravan gets on the way in the morning. About a day and a half later, they come to something out of the ordinary. See, there are little shrines to Meyu the Journeyer (the god of the Traveler's Road) all along the way. Some of those shrines have little stations to leave extra supplies, items found on the road that may have been lost, and so forth. Some of the shrines also include a warning about nearby threats, and they come across one that has such a sign, about the village ruin of Zavrich, which was wiped out by some sort of attack from a nearby Wyld zone, and it's not entirely safe.
The sign itself is not the thing that stands out, though -- what stands out is what's clearly signs of a large group leaving the road and venturing out to those ruins. They take a closer look at the tracks, out of concern -- Wandering Dawn and Stray Dog both make out signs of a couple dozen people, possibly a couple of horses, and at least one cart. Dawn, in particular, recognizes a pattern in the footsteps and the style of the bootprints that suggests a scale (25, plus possibly an officer) of Realm troops has headed for the ruins.
Lecht misses these details at first, because they're a little concerned about the body in the foliage up ahead. They pull their wagon and horse to the side and rush over to check the body along with the rest of the Circle. They find a dead man in House Ragara colors -- his skin is blue and a little green, and he looks like he choked to death, with self-inflicted scratches on his throat as he struggled to breathe his last. The position and condition of the body suggests he was fleeing from something, but it was already too late. Lecht investigates the body, checking to see if he choked on an object, and determines it was some sort of poison, possibly a gas or a fine powder.
Wandering Dawn racks his brain for what might kill this way, and as Mollie sniffs at the body with a distinctive growl -- her usual warning of Wyld-taint -- he realizes it's probably a cockatrice, a creature often born from yolk-less eggs in Wyld zones. Its bite, its claws, its breath, its skin, its gaze -- everything about it is potentially lethal. He explains to the others that there's an extremely good chance this Ragara group has been wiped out. Lecht checks the guy's pockets for anything interesting or useful and pockets a few coins, lamenting he probably wasn't paid enough for the danger he was in. They then use a bit of their magic to rouse the corpse enough to question it.
"What killed you?" they ask. "Was it some sort of cockatrice?"
"A chicken-monster breathing death," the body explains.
Lecht has a quick aside to Dawn. "Does it look like a chicken?"
Wandering Dawn explains that it's lizard monster with a rooster's head and a serpentine tail.
Lecht takes that in. "Does it taste like chicken?"
"Every part of it is poisonous," Wandering Dawn matter-of-factly says.
Lecht turns back to the body. "How many in your group?"
"A scale, plus the lieutenant. Twenty-six in all, plus a couple of horses."
"Were you hunting the cockatrice?"
"We were using the ruins as a base camp and it surprised us."
Lecht asks if the others have any questions.
Wandering Dawn chimes in. "Why are you using the ruins as a base camp?"
"We're on a surveying mission," the body explains. "This is the portion of the landscape we were supposed to map."
"Just like the other ones," Lecht observes.
"Hopefully they were just surveying," Wandering Dawn thinks aloud, remembering their recent run-in with the rogue unit.
"Well, let's go," Stray Dog comments, clearly getting ready to go after it.
"A bunch of Realm soldiers get killed, that's not my problem," Lecht says, thinking. "But a cockatrice that might get around..."
Wandering Dawn explains that sometimes you can avoid them. But if they wander, and get too close to a village... well, these things have been known to wipe out villages.
"Damn." Lecht sighs. "Alright, let's go get the cockatrice."
They fill in the caravan on what's going on and send them up ahead, and someone goes to pray at the shrine to the road god. Lecht gives a prayer over the body, tells him to go back to sleep, and then the group starts following the soldiers' tracks towards the village.
As they head into the wooded area in the foothills, the camera pans over to one of the warning signs on the shrine, which reads...
"Eggshells"[0]
As the Circle travels along an overgrown but still-visible road to the village, they find more bodies -- except these look like they've been burned by acid.
"Lady of Grace, they do that too?!" Lecht exclaims.
"It's corrosive," the monster hunter explains. "Try not to touch it."
Stray Dog ponders that for a moment and tells his personal brute squad to head back to the caravan for their own safety and keep an eye on things there. Wandering Dawn does the same with Mollie, as he's not entirely sure he could prevent her from getting herself hurt fighting something like that -- despite her durability, experience, and the familiar bond she shares with Wandering Dawn, she's still a wolverine.
It's not long before the group comes up on the village ruins -- bits of buildings that have been overgrown, lots of foliage -- and as they get closer they can see the signs of recent habitation. Most notably, a loaded wagon of supplies and bodies strewn about. There's also an unnaturally-foul smell coming from up ahead, and they can hear signs of something shuffling around -- and Stray Dog can also hear something moving around in the supply cart, underneath the equipment. He quietly indicates that to the others as Wandering Dawn begins to take point.
As they start to work out who's going to check the cart, Lecht uses their power to animate one of the bodies to use as a possible decoy. Wandering Dawn mouths 'good idea' to Lecht as Stray Dog decides to get the cart since if the group gets jumped, the other two will be better-prepared to handle it. The Infernal creeps up to the cart and finds a guy dressed like a scout hiding in it.
"We need to get you out of here. Reinforcements have arrived," Stray Dog says as the man lets out panicked hisses about how the monster got them unprepared, killed them all so quick, and that it got the lieutenant. A bunch of the other troops ran away, he says, and adds that the ones who died fast were the lucky ones -- because he saw how bad it was for the ones who died slowly. Stray Dog directs him to follow the path back to the Traveler's Road and to seek out the caravan for protection, and the guy takes off running.
With the zombie decoy walking ahead, they reach the center of the village, where amongst the bodies -- soldiers slain by claws, acid, poison, and several that looked like they burned up from the inside -- they find the one they assume was the lieutenant. He's a young man, young enough this was probably his first proper outing with the legion, decked out in armor like Dreadful Thorn's and gripping an artifact spear -- a direlance, in common parlance -- with a shaft of white jade and gold veins giving it a marbled appearance, with an oversized triangular red jade head that has a gem-like gleam to it. He stares up at the sky, a look of shock and pain on his face, his body stiff like rigor mortis has already set in, holding the spear up like a macabre sundial.
The group listens, and they can hear a creature scratching and shuffling around just out of sight. Lecht realizes something, and they look up to see the cockatrice on the roof of one of the ruined buildings, looming over them. It roars at them, utterly unafraid.
"It's bigger than expected, sorry this doesn't rhyme, Lecht get him!" Stray Dog tries to quickly sing as the cockatrice gets ready to pounce.
Lecht has the zombie turn around, as if someone unaware of the immediate danger, and manages to draw its attention as it dives at the zombie. During the brief distraction, Lecht readies their Crypt Bolt, anima blazing around them as they swipe at the air with clawed fingers and sends shimmers of power to impact the beast. Wandering Dawn rushes in with his cold iron cudgel and a battle cry, socking it once and then spinning to bring the club up under it with an uppercut to break its jaw.
Lecht readies for another blast, their efforts fueled by Stray Dog's ringing shield and Yozi-empowered voice. The combined efforts unleash a bolt that utterly rocks the creature's system, causing it to stagger around as its humours are out of balance. It then keels over with a hiss and an exhalation of smoke.[1] Lecht then brings their hand up to their face and blows a bit of smoke off their fingers, gunslinger-style. Wandering Dawn's impressed, and Lecht insists to give Stray Dog credit where he's due -- that when he gets going, his talents amplify everything.
"Music does that," he points out. "Music elevates the soul."
Lecht agrees. "Without music, humans can't express themselves, they fall into war and chaos."[2]
The group proceeds to go through the village ruins, finding another half-dozen survivors hiding out. They direct them back towards the Traveler's Road and bring along the Ragara soldiers' supplies -- it just so happens that there's a camp they can report to in Silverpost, the next city along the road, so the rescued soldiers and scouts will accompany the group that far. It's tough to say how many of the scale survived since a bunch of them fled and there's no way of knowing how many actually made it, but best guess is that out of the 26 Ragara, somewhere between 8 and 12 made it. As they go, Wandering Dawn uses his cache egg artifact to stash the Ragara lieutenant's direlance, so as not to leave it there.
But the trio meets back up with the caravan without further incident, getting back on the road to their next destination. As they go, the camera pans up and over the forested foothills they just left, where another cockatrice roar faintly echoes across the landscape.
And we leave off there.
[0]-- I'll admit, the title's a bit of a stretch. It was the best I could come up with, and reflects both the origins of the cockatrice and evoking the idea of broken 'dragon eggs' in the form of the unfortunate scale.
[1]-- Yeah, that was quick, a combination of decent plan and some decent rolls. To be fair, when I emphasized how deadly it was, I never claimed it was especially durable.
[2]-- Yes, we've been watching the new season of Doctor Who.
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