RP Session 10: "Mired in the Mire"

The Yarin rose carefully, with both hands tied, prepared to follow where this motley crew led.

"Oh? Does that mean you never heard of it?" Rawiya asked of the halfling, playing crestfallen with aplomb. "I suppose I can understand that. These jungles and swamps and rocky ruined shrines sure make for an awful lot to keep track of!" She grinned, indulgent. "So ... Do you mostly just know the river, then? I bet that's still pretty useful."

Her innocent gaze roamed the other faces present.

"What do the rest of you guys do? I mean, when you're not spearheading brave, moonlit hunts for errant Trapmakers. Please tell me you've a musician or two in your midst!"

Ej had an hour or more till he took the final watch from Rawiya, so it came as an unpleasant surprise when a slender hand surreptitiously took hold of his shoulder. Cracking an eye (he was never truly asleep after all - sleep was form mortal men, and it was merely his body of bone and flesh and sinew that needed such trifles) he found Che'vanna crouched next to the low palette that he'd made his own.

"I woke a few moments ago for air. I think Rawiya's gone" she reported unbidden. "I didn't hear any struggle..."

Ej's open eye was joined by the other as Che'vanna spoke her news. With a grunt of acknowledgment, he motioned her back out onto the deck and followed her into the open air.

"I am glad you woke another instead of looking alone. If there is danger near, it is foolish to approach it one at a time. Though if Rawiya fell victim to danger, why her and no one else?"

He looked out into the murky darkness, thinking aloud and unconsciously quirking a smile. "Rawiya cannot help but speak whenever in any company. If she encountered something, she would at least narrate the experience. For her to have gone quietly would suggest she is alone. Could she be ... hunting wood?" he glanced at Che'vanna with a smirk. "It seems to be a favored pastime for her, and not in a euphemistic way."

"Still," he finished. "Let us take a pass around the boat and see if she has left a trail. If she was taken we should find signs of struggle. I hope."

"There are times I am glad to have few expectations regarding life and the permutations of how to live it," mused Ej, standing in the clearing, digesting the implications of the tracks. "This is not something I think I would ever have predicted." He shook his head with a wry smile, then looked to Che'vanna. "Let's wake the others."

Bendane had finally fallen into a sleep that his body desperately craved, but was in no way psychically restorative. When Ej awoke them his eyes and throat felt liberally coated with coarse sand, and his nerves jittered like broken glass. He groped for understanding as the druid laid out what he and Che'vanna had found, pulling on his boots and slinging his kit over his shoulder; being able to spring out of the bunk ready to march in short order was one of the few virtues military life had instilled.

He crouched and touched the silver thread that ran around the cabin of the barge. "The ward is still intact. She did not fight back, but let them bind her? They must have betwitched her," he said grimly. Or dangled a shiny trinket in front of her face. "That second set of prints... could another interested party already be in pursuit of Rawiya's abductors? We may have allies in this fight. Or more likely competitors."

The wizard sounded particularly grim and determined as he climbed out onto the barge's deck. His familiar peeked its head out of his mantle, chittering anxiously. Bendane wished he could send it out scouting, but he'd never be able to walk through the mire with his senses dislocated from his own head. He waited for Rahakazar to emerge, and cleared his throat, not quite able to meet her gaze. "Warleader, if you... carry me... I can send my familiar ranging ahead of us with all the subtlety of a nocturnal predator."

Being jolted awake from a reasonably restful sleep hours before dawn was not exactly what Rahkazar had expected, but as Ej explained the reasoning behind the intrusion the war leader of their band shook off the remnants of sleep and slid boots onto feet and weapons onto her belt. "More than likely she just found a group that didn't want to be found but was willing to let her talk," she groused in response to Bendane's musings, trying to smother her own worry. "I'll take it as a good sign that there's no blood yet."

Preparing her sword and poleaxe for the trip into the brush, Bendane's suggestion stopped her short. For what felt like a full minute she blinked dumbly at the idea, glancing between him, his boney little pet, and the jungle. She was tempted to refuse just on principle, but for once the usefulness of the skeletal bat could not be ignored. "Fine," she said, stowing her poleaxe and shifting her sword belt to better accommodate the weight. "But you'll have to hang on tight, I will need at least one hand for balance or worse. You're lucky you're scrawny."

Rawiya tried at first to enjoy the novelty of being led through the swamp.
It was sort of like being a poorly trained pet or perhaps a towering simpleton trailing in the wake of the wee folk. She did have experience playing all sorts of unusual characters, of course. And it wasn't the first time she'd worn a leash.

Even the entertainer's unflappable playfulness frayed before they got too far. The bugs were more of a nuisance when you couldn't easily swat at them. Rawiya sorely wished she had the time to rummage for herbal remedies. There were plenty of options to repel nibbling, sucking, skittering varmints if you knew which herbs and flower bulbs to mash together.

When they began their trek together, the Yarin guessed her longer legs would give her the advantage on the sloppy terrain. But she was heavier too, thin as she was, and she sunk deeper than her hosts with every step.

Crouching down on the slick grasses near the shore to catch her breath, she thought of Snap and Tooth, wondering how they might have fit in here. Hopefully, when they did hatch, the Driftwood Snappers wouldn't be too snobby over their oceanic heritage to vacation in a marsh.

"You said this Jarbar has a history with pirates," Rawiya commented abruptly. They most certainly had not volunteered such information. "That's a subject I've studied in depth, I must confess. Let's put our heads together and come with a plan. We're not completely witless and unprepared, are we?" While the intrepid young thespian couldn't identify all the risks in motion, it seemed a prudent gambit to offer some guidance on circumventing the meticulous menace of the Trapmaker's lair. She'd heard things, after all. If she portioned out what she knew and what she could surmise, she needn't show all her cards.

"She sounds like an educated woman, or at least very experienced, if she's lived long enough to build a reputation. You say she runs the shiny? So that makes her a master of coin as well as traps." Awkwardly, the Yarin raised both bound hands to tap a thoughtful, muddy finger against her chin. "Among corsairs and buccaneers, the most level-headed among their ruthless numbers usually serve as treasurers as well, balancing accounts. Lots more inventory and logistical planning than you might think in that racket. Especially when you get all your stuff through bloodletting and skulduggery." Rawiya grinned. According to Captain Tenazza, Jarbar had indeed held this role, in addition to being second in command.

"And if she operates alone, I'm betting she's got a fair bit of personal power too. Sturdy build, at the very least. Plenty of stamina." Also true, as she recalled. "But she'll think like a human, I'm betting. Not so good for traipsing around in the dead of night, which means she would have designed her defenses to compensate for that weakness. No help for us there, though those folk often underestimate clever, smaller adversaries who move with subtlety. And that sounds just like us."

Uncomfortable in her bindings, she shifted in place before finally plopping to the ground on the seat of her pants.

"We're not precisely the variety of opposition Jarbar will expect. And if she's both forceful and exacting in her schemes, she'll definitely leave a bolt hole or two, just in case she's overwhelmed. That means there's a safe path to her doorstep, if we can find it." She nodded with satisfaction. "Charging straight at her is a silly idea. Assuming we can sneak up is also a fool's errand. I vote we occupy ourselves with some other innocuous task in this vicinity. We make ourselves visible—inadvertently, if you take my meaning—giving the impression we're pursuing unaffiliated goals, and Jarbar will pretty much need to investigate. She can't afford to ignore trespassers who won't do her the common courtesy of getting themselves killed or attacking outright. We just let her come to us."

Rawiya looked around at all the dirty, tired faces, gnome and halfling alike.

"You're quite fortunate you found me, yeah? Harmless interference is kind of an artform where I come from."

"It is this diet of island food. Crab meat and fruit. Not enough good stodgy starches," Bendane said, half-defensively. In fact he probably had lost a few pounds since arriving like so much debris on the shores of Valani – not that he had many to spare – but the healthy seafoods and strange plants that made up most of the staples here had probably cleansed some of the grey pallor from his skin and toned up his vanishingly wiry musculature, when combined with ample hikes through dense jungle and the occasional fight to the death.

He clung to Rahakazr's back like the Old Man of the Sea in one of Rawiya's old stories as they set off in pursuit. He made for a disquieting passenger; his eyes rolled back in their sockets, revealing only bloodshot whites, and a low, nearly subvocal stream of senseless murmurings uttered from his throat as he concentrated on perceiving elsewhere. His familiar was visible only as the occasional flicker of fleshless ivory wings in the murky dark ahead of Ej, sweeping an arc ahead of them and singing the silent hunt-song of a bat.

"No trace... so far..." Bendane croaked, his voice disjointed with the effort of thinking in two places at once.

Rahkazar grunted and shifted her shoulders, adjusting the man once again to wipe the sweat from her brow. Hauling a stranded barge out of the muck had proven harder work purely based off of the soreness of her muscles recently, but that task at least had the benefit of not disrupting her sense of balance nor denying her a hand to wipe her brow with. And despite her promise to keep one hand free, carrying the hollow-cheeked wizard on her back while traipsing through the mud required her full attention.

Rawiya had better have damn-good explanation for all this. And her captives better have some damn-good loot on their corpses.

"Any clue how long they stayed here?" she asked breathlessly, taking a sip from her water skin. "I'd very much like to know that we're catching up."

Rawiya rubbed her wrists, pretending to think it over, eyeing the band with wary interest as she did.

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe we can do business and maybe we can make a deal. Maybe your Trapmaker rode here on that ship I'm after, so maybe we'll find it and all have a merry St. Spencill's Day."

She smiled slyly then, shaking her head in playful disapproval.

"But it doesn't really matter if I'm another distributor. Or if I just wandered off a tour and got lost in crocodile-infested swamps. Or if I'm secretly the most dangerous spymaster on the island. Trust is a two-way street, yeah? So pretend I'm an ignorant city girl and fill me in. What is it you aren't telling me about this Shiny?" Scoffing, as if she's reaching for anything to solidify their unspoken arrangement, the Yarin looks to Bigwhistle. "No reason not to share what you know about the tree I seek, at least. I find it very hard to believe none of you know what I'm talking about."

"If they've... harmed... so much as a strand... on her head... or her lute..." Bendane mumbled, not even realising he was vocalising as his senses wheeled in the night sky as far as the bond with his familiar could stretch. "The marsh... can swallow many bodies..."