Wherever It Wants

[kiya]

• Session 16: Man Bites Dog
  
• Session 17: She's closing her eyes, she's starting to dream, she's pulling the strings. . .
  
• Session 18: When Dwarves Hurry. (Hoom hum.)
  
• Session 19: 'Scuse me, looking for a cliff to hang from.
  
• Session 20: Wallops and Castor
  
• Session 21: Let's Split Up. We can do more damage that way.
  
• Session 22: Shamantic Disposition
  

So we spent some time talking with people and puttering about. Wren and I talked with Isovortu about what being a shaman means, and about orcs and what being an orc means. And about being a proper example to the clans and guiding them even though we're sort of shamans but not quite shamans -- we have the recognition of the ancestors, but not the training. It gets sort of complicated.

Karas spent time talking with people about trade goods and making connections and doing Karas things. Which he's good at, and that's a good thing, because it doesn't make any sense to anyone else. Except maybe halflings. (Session Quote: "Karas wants to be a Halfling when he grows down." -- Thiara)

Wren and I spent some time talking about magic, too, and the way the world works, and translating things and making sense of them. And Karas was sort of interested, and then he and Adosar went off on the subject, which is all right, because I really didn't know how to explain it. So the fact that they got into discussing something entirely else made that all right.

"I know the words they're saying, the connections just don't make sense."
"Do you really want me to go into the minutiae of linguistic theory?"
"I'm a loremaster! Of course I do!"
- Karas, Adosar

Then Karas asked me to come look at the place that the big nasty giant died, because he was hearing something there and wanted me to look at the magic patterns. So I went and looked at the stuff that was left over from the demon-giant blowing up, and we talked about magic and theory a little, and he was doing things a little differently from anything I do (which is awfully neat, since I do a couple different kinds of magic but not that one). It was sort of like ancestor magic like the orcs do, but not quite. Adosar got kinda grumpy about it, though. (Session quote: "Ah, humans. They think they need to listen harder and suddenly access a new form of magic. Not research, no no no." -- Adosar)

Eventually the orcs stopped giving us presents and talking with Karas and everything, and we started off towards where Xenecal was. Or whatever it was that was driving the orcs to move, but Xenecal was a good guess.

"Are you sniggering while reading the monster manual?"
"Yes he is."
"That's always unfortunate."
- me, jikharra

We found things occasionally. Dead orc renegades here and there. Signs of kordaro. That sort of thing.

Wren heard what sounded like howling or fighting, but she couldn't make sense of it -- her magics that let her speak to animals weren't working right. So we went to investigate.

We found another one of those giants, and a pack of fire-breathing dogs, and they were fighting other dogs. Dogs that seemed to flicker from place to place. Karas told us a story about the flickering dogs helping travellers in need as we figured out what was going on, and we knew that the giants were serving the dark alar, so we went in to help the jumping dogs.

It was a pretty quick fight, and afterwards we spent a while talking to the dogs. Conscience was really, really interested to meet other dogs who are as smart as he is. He spent a lot of time thinking real hard. Then they left, and they ran fast -- they'd run and then flick! They'd be a bit further away, still running. Wow.

Anyway, the giant had a magic sword of some sort, and we decided to try bringing it with us. It got sort of lopsided, but one of the horses could carry it. ("One of our horses now has a side fender." -- jikharra)

And we kept going. It was like there was something following us, it seemed sometimes, but we never managed to spot it. Which is sort of nervous-making as such things go.

Anyway, we figured out who was following us eventually. In the sort of obvious way.

It was a couple of dire wolves and a big nasty wolf-man-thing. Wren apparently knew what he was, she spent some time muttering about spells she knew but never knew why she had them before because nobody'd seen anything like that in ages. But that's after the fight.

"You're asleep, but you'll be waking up shortly."
"I go on Z."
-teinedreugan, Shane

I was up fighting the wolf-man-thing, and he hit hard. I mean really hard, and he was really strong and everything. I had to use everything I knew to keep him from just knocking me down fast, and then Adosar came up behind me and . . .

. . . well, okay, that was odd, all right? I got to be as big as the wolf-man, and I was still holding my sword and everything, but I had four arms and a lot of fur. It was awfully confusing for a moment. I decided not to think about it and just kept fighting, though, because it seemed best. Having four arms is really useful, though, because it meant that when the wolf-man-thing knocked Wren down I could grab her with one of them and drag her out of the way and drop a healing magic on her ('cause I'd just figured out how to do healing magics) without having to drop anything.

The wolf-man-thing started laughing at us and said that the hunt would be easier than he expected. And then Wren got to one side and had her bow out, and Adosar went to the other side because he was done preparing his magic and doing things like turning me into a giant four-armed furry thing, and Wren shot him and the arrows glowed white, and Adosar did something and after that he didn't hit nearly as hard. And he seemed not sure whether he wanted to try to hit Wren or Adosar, and tried to hit Adosar, and we killed him pretty quick after that.

Conscience dealt with one of the wolves pretty much all on his own, but he was looking awfully wobbly afterwards. Karas dealt with the other one.

After we killed the wolf-man-thingy he sort of went all weird and shrinky and turned into a human, just like I did after I stopped being a gorilla. Only I stopped being a gorilla on my own, not by being dead. He had some really sparkly metal armour that Karas really liked, and some other magic stuff too. (Session Quote: "This will look wonderful in court." -- Karas) The really neat thing about the armour was that it didn't make much noise when people shook it, which meant that it wouldn't be bad for sneaking around in except that it's, y'know, shiny, which can get kinda noticeable. But it was good for Karas.

Wren was awfully worried about everyone, and made sure to have a magic that kept us from catching whatever disease the wolf-man-thingy had, and she did that for everyone as soon as she could.