RP Session 10: "Mired in the Mire"

"Still no signs of a struggle," Ej mused. "Rawiya is either traveling with these folk willingly or ... or she believes resistance would be too dangerous."

"Ohhhh we'll make sure of that," Rahkazar said in agreement, not entirely sure whether Bendane could hear her. Fleshless though that things ears were, bats were known to be quite apt listeners. "They will live just long enough to regret such actions."

Pausing for a breath, Rahkazar saw the wood shavings second and tapped Bendane's arm, calling him to return to his own eyes and ears. "What's this, Ej? Find something?"

Hardly an outdoorswoman herself, Rahkazar still bent and took a sample of the strange assortment of evidence, intent on discerning...something.

As they continued to trudge along, Rawiya was expounding on the sorts of outlaws who had crossed her path since arriving on Valani Island. It seemed a prudent choice. If this band of would-be ne'er-do-wells locked horns with her companions, it could only work in her favor if tensions were already through the roof. People should always think twice before turning to violence, but precious few ever did.

"So like I was saying, you want to watch out for Professor Bendriggan Krimspang, the famed medico-turned-executioner," she explained, crouching beneath thorny vines that gave her miniature captors no trouble. "You ever heard of 'triage'? Well, where he's from, it's this whole process that heightens the senses to pinpoint precision, letting him choose the very instant when sickness or injury has gone too far to be helped. Some say his shady magic even pushes it along the fated path." She smiled solicitously at her unlikely co-conspirators. "I mean, you all seem pretty tough, so maybe you don't have to worry. But the way this guy talks and questions and laments and opines ... you'll honestly believe you've just been through a major surgery."

Rawiya nodded, pleased with the result. Who wouldn't hesitate to take a shot a man like that?

"Let's see. Oh, then there's the mystery man referred to in taverns and forest communes alike as the Edge of Reason. He makes you love him, makes you trust him, makes you think he's your very best and kindest friend. And then the insidious bastard never gives you a reason to doubt it!" That sure sounded like Ej to her. "When calamity does eventually, unavoidably befall you, you can't find a trace of him involved. Unless of course he's right next to you when it happens. Then he makes sure it looks like his eclectic nature gifts are there to bail you out. Suspicious, yeah?"

A bent branch snapped back into place, lashing the Yarin across the chest, nearly knocking her down, and she laughed ruefully. Maybe the island didn't care for her adjusted synopsis. She was certain Ej would appreciate her fictional account, at least.

"And finally, there's Razara. Called the Purple Blade of Sunset." So what if she adapted some details from Skegmalion's Promised Storm epic? That author had no need of them anymore. "Bold and implacable, she's not just a deadly warrior, but wields unique psychic powers, too. She can make you a giant for a day with just a word or two, ready to take on the world in her name. Or she shrinks you down to nothing with but a single look. The Purple Blade cuts an insurmountable chasm, dividing champion from fool while she never looks back. Scary stuff."

Scary indeed. Rawiya had halfway convinced herself that she wanted nothing to do with these people.

"Bendane, your thoughts here?" asked Ej, indicating the debris. "Is this set of leavings just Rawiya doing as she does, or are these remnants of a spell of some kind?"

An unsettling skree-hwuh? noise came from Bendane's throat as his mind was jolted thirty-odd yards across space by Rahkazar's touch. He shook his head unsteadily, baffled by how muffled and thin the range of sounds around him was, and how... warm and wet and cumbersome his flesh felt, stretched spare enough as it was along his frame.

He dropped from Rahkazar's back into the squelching mud. The other advantage of being piggy-backed was that his boots had stayed relatively clean until now. "Make of what?" he asked, staring around the dark clearing as blind as his proverbial familiar. Then he remembered the goggles on his head and pulled them down. The three emerald lenses gleamed in the night, and he blinked as the world came into relief.

Bendane crouched and examined the 'clues'. "Huhm." Now this felt like something out of Rawiya's beloved Roland Cordial copper-dreadfuls, and he wished with a pang she was here to confabulate something amazing out of them. As it was, he would have to cleave to the facts.

"Not idly do the wood-shavings of Ola-Yetim fall," he murmured, rubbing them between his fingers. "They would not have let her wield a knife, but her pockets are often full of such debris." He sniffed a curl of wood, seeing if it was of a type Rawiya liked to keep around for potpourri. He turned his attention to the flax strands and pale stalks. Through the goggles of night seeing, everything was cast in eerie green shadows, and he needed his regular, human eyes for this part.

Bendane draped his cloak around himself to shield what he was about to do from observers, pushed the goggles up his brow, and cast a quick cantrip of illumination. He had to wait for his eyes to adjust several times in this process, but after a minute he was able to examine the plant material more closely. "Let me see... does this match the shade of her hair or skin or clothing?"

That done, he extinguished the light spell, went through the process of adjusting to the goggles again, and examined the first traces they had found. He measured the span of the buttock-print with his hands. Gnomes were beamier about the backside than halflings, on account of the latter's proclivity for walking about and a generally more gracile build. Then he worked the chalk and fat between his fingertips. It seemed like a simple recipe for a white pigment that would not wash off easily...but perhaps there was another purpose. He licked his fingers to see if he could identify the species of lard used.

At last, the necromancer turned to his bemused companions and raised his hands. "Very well. Here is what I believe happened..."

"...Outsiders. Fiends from another plane of existence. Clearly, she was abducted by otherworldly malefactors! We must find her before the probing begins!"

Ej tried to dive to one side into the gloom of a tangle of tree roots.

Rawiya smiled, glad she was getting somewhere with the small folk ... even if she still couldn't say precisely where they'd end up.

"Always happy to take my cut," she agreed, and then her Yarin ears perked up, alert for danger. Her nimble body was in motion even before her mind could react, ready to take a fall or spring back up with a flourish. It paid to be prepared, to treat each new adventure as opening night.

Trudging along the thigh-high path that was leading them inevitably towards the wee folk who had captured their bard, Rahkazar was in high spirits. Or as high as could be on account of the unexpected midnight sojourn through the mire of this island. She had to admit, she was curious: who exactly were these people who had taken Rawiya captive? What would they fight like? She hadn't had a lot of opportunities to fight smaller folk; they ended not to fare well in open warfare. They were probably quick, and nimble. Or mages, reliant on spell craft to do their dirty work.

But no matter how focused she was on the confrontation to come, she always paid at least a little attention to her surroundings. You never knew when you might step on a trap.

"I believe a better question," said Ej, holding very still, "is 'why do we find ourselves following the same quarry?', though I admit now to a curiosity about what I'm standing in, so I might ask about that soonish."

Caught with her druid knee-deep in a trap no good options to get him out without aggravating the one who (apparently) set them, Rahkazar looked up and took in the sight of their new 'friend.'

"We are the Driftwood Bravos," she answered, feeling it best that at least one of them answer. "And unless you are three feet tall and found yourself the captor of an exceptionally talkative Yarin this evening, it's not you that we're following."

Bendane had not resumed his position as Rahkazar's papoose, but instead trudged through the mud with the rest of them. He trusted to Lahra's goggles of night to find his way, as his familiar's echoing cries had revealed little so far.

Perhaps that had been a mistake, if the marshlands were so treacherous underfoot.

Just before the druid's cry reached his ears, there was the odd sensation of his cloak bunching up around him and yanking him back, as if caught in an wind otherwise unfelt. The wizard hissed through his teeth as Ej's plight revealed he had nearly fallen into the same trap. He windmilled his arms to catch his balance and was about to hurry forward to Ej's aid when the voice came from above.

The flare of light was blinding through the emerald filter on his vision, making him wince and look away. "They... would not have... unveiled themselves... purposelessly. My surmise is... naptha... oil... some flammable liquid. Am I... correct?"

His voice was disjointed as he used the fact his eyes were covered to his advantage, closing them and catapulting his perceptions back to the skeletal bat winging silently but aimlessly through the dark. Bendane heard the shape of the pillar-like trunks, the rustling haze of the canopy above, and willed his familiar to swing towards the source of the torchlight and words. Close enough to perch on the tree and hopefully get a better look – or to provide a moment's distraction should the figure attempt to make the situation worse.

"I think you mean kidnapped by thieves," Rahkazar corrected. "Or 'captured' if you prefer, for reasons we are most anxious to discover ourselves. Though either way your observation on the boastfulness of it all remains accurate."

Barely suppressing a scoff, Rahkazar answered again, somewhat curly. "We were making our way to Kulik by river when we were bid to stop to search for a rare plant that's said to grow in the area. More than that I will not say, not to a stranger while we are standing in alchemists fire with my friends foot in a snare. Come down from there, and let us speak like civilized folk. You are not our quarry, and we have no enmity with you lest you cause us harm. Our focus is on these thieves you mention, who clearly seem to be intruding on your privacy. We would not be trespassing here were it not for them taking our friend."

Sending an opportunity almost as soon as she spoke, Rahkazar added, "Perhaps there's a mutually beneficial agreement to be made here. At the very least, we seem to have a common irritant."

"Not moving. Might be a decoy," Bendane murmured, his own lips nearly as still. He willed his familiar to stay where it was and opened his eyes. Avoiding the brightness above, he looked with affected casualness around the undergrowth and rest of the canopy, to see if there was any sign of the 'real' trapper's position or other unwelcome surprises.