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Experience

BULL-MAN POKES THE OAK

January 19, 2008

We start out at the center of the earth, the location to which we were transported by the Last Hunter of... Dang. No, not the "last hunter of dang". I'm just having trouble remembering the place he'd come from. I keep thinking Zaal, but I don't think that's it. So for our purposes, he's "The Last Hunter".

So anyway, he is our mentor. He teaches us about where we come from, and much of this was done last game. This time we mostly discuss a few mechnics and whatever questions have cropped up.

Changing forms...

What other forms you ask? It seems we have the ability to take on other animal shapes, learned by simply spending a numer of hours observing, stalking, harrying, and ultimately hunting and devouring the heart of whatever normal (read: non-mystical) creature we might like.

Our mentor then tells us the 5 LAWS of our kind. Let's see how many of those I can read from my horrible, horrible notes..

Our mentor telports out of the cave after telling us about a little test we're taking. We must find our way out of the caves. This will likely require assuming the form of something else, which means we must hunt something in the cave and use its abilities.

So at this point it's just 2 of us to start out (Joe hadn't shown up yet). We make our rolls. Davion fails his roll, but Viox botches his, which gets us lost somewhere. (Joe shows up) We find Karth. Guess he was lost too. Together we hunt down some kind of horrible blind Lizard creatures called Olms. It takes Viox and Karth only an hour to hunt theirs but it takes Davion 3 hours, what with all the marinating and tenderizing.

So, with our new distinctly ugly forms, we scurry out of the cave and into the forest. There, we find the cottage that houses our Mantis friend, his half-mantis experiments, and a termite-like creature. We talk some more, rest, and then we are told of how we will be given CHALLENGES that we must complete. They will assist in our growth and help us prove ourselves to our new benefactors.

We are to find out our first challenge in Megalos, from our good friend... Um... Strength of Many? Yeh! Think I got that one right. Anyway, he's the Bull-man who discovered us originaly.

In our meeting with him he tells us our task is three-fold:

  1. Free the gladiators at the arena
  2. Free the slaves that are being sold to a Raksha lord.
  3. Free the slaves of the Raksha lord.

We are given a requirement by the Last Hunter. He said that Viox and Davion should employ a Predatory animal form for this, while Karth sould employe a Domesticated animal form. So we do a little bit of hunting.

Viox hunts down and consumes the wiley bobcat. Davion actually has to fight a Black Bear. Karth stalks the elusive Warhorse, in its pen, pays the owner, takes it outside the city and eats it.

For stage one of our plan, we decide we should find a way to access the gladiators, arrange a path of escape, and find a means of travel for them from this city. So for this Viox does a lot of digging among his underworld friends. He figures out which guards to bribe and which path through the undercity will take them all the way to the docks. We also track down a ship's captain who has a debt, because then we can buy him by purchasing the rest of his ship for him. Davion performs the bribery on the guards. Using our spider and scoprion forms, Davion and Viox relay information to the slaves. On the day of the escape, the bribed guard drops his keys into a bowl of gruel and weapons have been left in the sacks. We wait at the gate of the arena and conduct the slaves through the undercity to the ship. There, they board and the ship makes for Chaithess (the land we started out in), where they can use soldiers, laborers, and ship builders.

Stage two will involve finding out information. It seems the slavers have a meeting each week; we sneak in and listen, like a spider (and scorpion) on a wall. We don't get the location of the transaction but we find out that they are sending slaves to an elven lord (a patently illegal transaction), and when.

We decide we will free the slaves in route, and with the help of someone local who is anti-slavery, will shepherd them away from harm. Then we will go meet the elf lord in their stead and free his slaves.

We go out and get bird forms just in case. Davion gets a Tern, Viox gets a Pelican, and Karth gets a bald eagle.

This works out pretty well, except that attempts to poison the many, many guards into unconsciousness results in paranoia. A caravan master decides something is wrong and manages to figure out that someone has poisoned the vegies that are being dropped in the stew.

That's when scorpion boy leaps into action. Viox appears and seizes the caravan master, forcing the guards to drop their arms. Davion and Karth arrive, but don't have to do all that much. When the caravan master shouts for them to kill us, Viox slits his throat and seizes the other caravan master. Now they're impressed enough not to try anything.

Davion sends advanced word to the abolitionists, and Karth run the slaves to the abolitionists, while Viox keeps the guards in check. The guards are chained together and we head north.

Stage Three is the freeing of the Raksha lord's slaves. We find the area, which is not all that far from the borderlands into the wyld. It's a nice tidy little glade. We enter in animal form and wait as hidden as we can be.

When at last they arrive, they are 6 Elves, the Elf Lord and 10 weak and barely mobile slaves. We wait a few minutes and then the elf lord announces, in a language we understand, that he doesn't think that slaver caravan will be showing because of the animals that are waiting in the North East corner (This is our bobcat and sabertooth). So Karth transforms and enters the clearing. He makes a statement that they should relinquish the slaves and leave. The elf lord has a better idea; He instead transforms the slaves into highly trained knights, with but a snap of his fingers.

Interesting thing about these knights: They don't so much look like Knights to Davion. No, to him they still look like the same weakened beings they were.

They face off with Karth. Viox tries a couple shurikens, giving them some small wounds. Davion grows to full size and joins the duo, and suddenly he's Conan the Barbarian. With his simple chain, he beheads three. Unfortunately this insight seems to be non-transferrable, as it's some sort of magic resistance.

When the ten slaves are finally down, and Karth is a little bit dinged up, the elf lord snaps his fingers, and they pop back up again, whole, and resume attacking. Now, they can't do ANYTHING to Davion, who goes to town on them, while the other two move on the elf lord. The other elves fire arrows at Davion, giving him a very small wound. Karth and Viox proceed to maul the elf lord pretty damn well. Enough so that a familiar mantra is heard from the GM: "Never die with smartbombs, right?". The elf lord twists his ring and the entire glade is set on fire. Only thing is, it must be the same kind of magic as the other, because Davion is immune. Now he's walking through fire like he's got asbestos undies. The other elves were not immune. They burn! Viox and Karth make saves to keep from suffering the flames.

Our mentor had gifted us something, by the way. "Trinkets" with very special powers. Nasty, nasty abilities. Also, it seems they cut through our foe like a big pointy-eared stick of butter. They bring him down and drag his severed head from the fire. Davion uses his chain to snag the very pretty white horse the elf lord had been riding. He later does the hunt on it and has a horse form.

We go back to Megalos and meet with Strength of Many. He gives us a gift; Needles. They are mending needles used to heal.

As an epilogue, Karth threatened the slave caravan guy to get out of the business or he'd hunt him down. Upon return to the city he's nowhere to be found.

Challenge #2 will involve doing everything necessary to achieve an end.

 

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