Interim 1

Kray will be fine. He's got a new toy to try out anyway. This badass comes straight from Otessa.

Trust me... Kray relishes up close and personal. The bow is a convenience.

What are you guys thinking for a cover? Do we want to go the mercantile angle?

If we do, J, what kind of import/export would people deal in?

Never mind... missed This...

I think you might have missed this too, Ox.

TL; DR: "We can keep talking about the details, but that is generally the ticket into the City of Secrets: you are a foreign rich aristocrat group on tour to visit rich Heshbaan aristocrats in Gelshemish, to interact as fellow nobility and to talk about ways to exchange."

I've heard Ivor is crazy good at basket weaving.

Unsure of what else to do, Maeriks followed the crew to Poyam, where he spends a few days at St. Antiphon before slipping away into the city for a month-long drinking binge. He breaks down completely, losing himself in booze. He drinks to forget and he drinks to remember everything about Bat Hannoc. He wakes up every day in the street, mouth full of vomit, clothes caked with mud, only to crawl his way back into the nearest watering hole to drink again. He pays for a good half of his drinks by challenging others to out drink them or feats of strength. (Carrouse!)

Weeks pass and he begins to have nightmares, vivid visions of him, a bull, charging, smashing into trees and uprooting them in a blind rage. They gradually become worse, more painful, and more real. Until one night he dreams that he runs for miles and then smashed through the door of a poor farming homestead. Inside is a family - man, wife, three daughters and two sons. He charged directly into the man, who had just stood up to confront the invader, shielding his wife. He died when his spine shattered against her skull and the cabin wall. Still raging, he turned to the screaming children, rapidly goring them and shoving their bloodied bodies around the floor and hurling them about the tiny cabin until the place was painted in the blood of his anger.

Maeriks awoke the next morning in a field outside Poyam and began crying, for he knew that it wasn't a dream. He drank so heavily that morning that he had blacked out before it was even noon. Bryn and Ivor had been hearing of Maeriks' binge and resolved to help their friend that afternoon. They found the big man and pulled him out from under a table and took him back to St. Antiphon.

Maeriks then takes up work in the kitchen at St. Antiphon. After some days with Ivor and Bryn hovering around and watching that the big Danniean doesn't slip back into the drink, Maeriks is renewed and focused on the quiet work as a cook every day. Every night, however, he remembers the dream of the farm and focuses hard on controlling that part of him that made that happen. He slowly comes to understand the rage and the instinct and the curse that he carries, and how to control it. (Ding! Druid Level 2!)

Campaigning against the Nolgulor, Maeriks begins to train with the heavy glaive common to the Arkkadi soldiers, eventually favoring that weapon even over his glorious Reve. (Fighter Level 5!)

That looks like you ripped the tail off of a Xenomorph.