[IC] Death & Taxes (Session 4)

Nekurr spots little Peppin Galbernost and somehow manages to convince the small boy that he's not a scary tiger at all, but a cuddlier version of the Cat-man he met back at the town walls. "Hey! He's friendly!" the boy explains, as he and three other tykes hop on the were-tiger's back. Soon, Nekurr finds himself a pied piper, ferrying children to the temple grounds. In the process, he notices that there's no one running the ferry to get people across the river to safety...

Bruv is clearly near exhaustion, but he pushes on, summoning a spirit creature of the swamp to aid in moving people far better than something like himself, mal-adapted to the swamp, ever could.

Zymph nods. "Last thing's I wanna see is hangman's noose." He starts for the ferry, but stops, turning back toward Tronus. "Uh... I can tell ya that after Anzila killed your man, she put the tax chest under a false board in her house. Remember that too when all this is over..." The ferry is already crowded with a dozen or so people. It nearly capsizes with his added weight, but the expert ferryman poles it across, as the villagers rush to safety. You halfway expect to see Zymph flee along with them, but he poles back across and helps another group of people onto the ferry for the next trip.

Thinking back, Bruv felt like he should have seen this coming.

When he had communed with the primal nature spirits of the swamp, after Zymph had first lead them to the abandoned house, he could sense that a reclamation of the land was what the swamp "wanted". That the dark magicks were holding it back. Keeping it from being whole. He thought at the time it was just the crop land, but it was clearly everything.

And as he sought to stop the Ritual and end the cycle of the cult's worship, he knew he would have to do whatever he could, afterward, to save the lives of the innocent. Maybe things would have been different if he had acted faster? Maybe if he had made a few choices differently during the evacuation things would be different?

But maybe in some way maybe he had seen this coming? Not this specific thing, of course. But he had been mentally prepared to do anything, he would have fought the vulture-god herself if she had come down from the skies to protest their defiance of her decades of manipulation of the souls of these people. Why should this, the return of the swamp to it's primal state, be different?

He would have fought any thing to the death to free these people from their cycle of evil, but this wasn't a thing... and he didn't have to fight the primal spirits of the land. They were his ally. The source of all his power. It was his lifelong guide and protector that was coming for them.

And so it was with perfect clarity that he understood what he had to do...

As the waters rushed in to overtake them, as he knew he didn't have the physical strength or stamina left to save anyone but himself... and as the cries of the young and the failing strength of the elderly whom he had with him gave him resolve... he gathered the doomed townsfolk around himself speaking words of comfort. And then he called upon and gave himself over to his primal magicks in a way he never had before. Perhaps in a way that wasn't possible except to someone who was prepared to die for others?

He brought the strength of the swamp into himself, into every fiber of his being - with wild and reckless abandon, giving himself over completely - there was no time for anything else. As fast as thought, his body began to change... Thickening and stretching and twisting and splitting and hardening... it looked as though a tree was growing from inside of him, tearing apart his humanoid form, but simultaneously lifting up the stranded townfolk in it's branches!

Bruv roared in determination and exertion as he fueled the transformation with his flesh and his will, but the defiant shout was cut off as his torso and head were finally morphed into a part of the twisted tree trunk. And a split second later the waters crashed around the tree that was Bruv... the townsfolk held aloft, just above the raging torrent. With the rushing water came the ferry, and as the roots-that-had-been-toes gave way beneath the surface, the tree pitched forward and down dashing and depositing the townfolk upon the water craft!

But as the ferry pitched and yawed, the tree-form rolled off to the side, and the waters carried it away... breaking limbs from trunk as it tumbled over and over, until it vanished beneath the murky water...

Hildar stands on the bank looking to where the form Bruv had assumed washed beneath the waters looking grim. He quietly mutters to himself "I told him there would be a price to pay for this...." before sighing and turning to his remaining companions "Well, what now? Do we have to take all of these people back with us?"

"We've a bit of a journey back and it'll be slow. Some need to pay for crimes others need work, food, and shelter... The Madam was looking to expand... having a few transplants in need of a new location or two to call home isn't bad. If we saves them we take responsibility... who knows they might want remember the village." Tronus comments before addressing the survivors.

"The old ways of your village will not be repeated... dark and forbidden magic used for even 'good' purposes has a cost. A moment for the departed for their sacrifice please may they find the road they need to travel from here to the next." Announces to the crowd, not everyone would probably want to leave everything they knew behind before leaving without saying goodbye.

The Gnome healer comes forward and bows his head, watching the raging river carry away the last few leaves and branches of what was once your colleague and comrade, Bruv. "We owe your man a debt of gratitude. All of you. One minute, I was in bed dreaming of Nature's Lady. The next, the swamp waters were lapping at my bedsheets, I see the Tabbinses in chains, and your man's turning into a tree to save the entire Cross Fields neighborhood..."

Nekurr jumps on a ferry as the water rushes into the ruined village, grabbing what he can to save afloat. He watches Bruv and the other villagers stuck, but it takes them all their strengths to keep the ferry fro capsizing, making it impossible to rescue anyone stranded. Then it happens and the big were-tiger simply stops in confusion and awe. "Look an orc tree" he gets everyone's attention as Bruv works his final magic. His mental abilities clouded by the curse, Nekurr doesn't completely follow the events. Unsure what is happening, he follows the massive tree being dragged by the waters and then checks back to where Bruv was. "Were is Bruv?" he asks Tronus as he can't find the orc anymore.

"He's gone to be one with nature Nekurr. You'll have to say goodbye." Tronus states and quite out of character clapping Were-Nekurr on the lower back.