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Post by Shaa Rhunn on Dec 10, 2022 19:44:50 GMT -5
In a flash of fur and scales, the Lion Dragon emerges from Shaa’s magic bag. Where is he? Let me at em! I’ll rip em up up! Grrrrr Grrr! The beast hops back and forth scanning the area for a fight. Shaa had not expected such a lively beast to emerge from the bag. As such a large being himself, he very rarely ever rode on anything. Especially on something with so much…spunk. Are you my guy? A Minotaur! That’s AWESOME! Let’s get em! Shaa decided to go with it. It was a magic bag after all. Ok. I’m going to call you….Skippy? The Lion Dragon looked at him for a moment. Skippy….the Lion Dragon? …. I LOVE IT! I have never had a name before…. And you’re Shaa. You own my bag. LETS GO BEAT SOMETHING UP! It had been a long time since Shaa had been this excited about something. He jumped on Skippy’s back and Skippy roared with joy. YYYEEESSSS!
Astride his Lion Dragon, Shaa stirs him on towards the owl bear. With no fear, Skippy runs right out and claws at the bear. Very confused with what’s happening, the Owl Bear rears around to try and assess the situation. Skippy counters and slaps at him with his tail, striking its leg. The owl bear yells in pain. Shaa jumps off Skippy and punches the owl bear twice in the gut. The bear growls in frustration and backs off into the river. Shaa calls out.
Are you guys ok? Shaa sees Gerhart engaging with a giant rat and Zarius is nowhere to be seen. Not a great situation, but it wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle. Skippy starts splashing around in the water. I have only been alive for 5 minutes. This is so cool!
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Post by Ser Gerhart Stanislav on Dec 11, 2022 20:36:21 GMT -5
Gerhart lets go of the now singed rat, lightning still crackling along its body. He slashed across its shoulder, following it up with a forward kick to toss it backwards. The back to back attacks throwing the rat off balance and opening it up[1] Gerhart would jab step forward and thrust Double Strike into his best guess at where the rats collarbone is to hopefully deal a significant enough wound that it'll think about retreating.
"Shaa's here so you might as well give up now, wrap this all up as a little misunderstanding before we have to go ahead and actually finish this." Despite the fighting Gerhart hadn't really taken much damage so he was ready to keep fighting if the rat wasn't willing to relent. Both Sworn Enemy and Challenging Mark would have worn off by now, so it was the best chance the rat had to leave.
He pulls his sword from out of the rat before resetting himself, looking back to Shaa with a grin. "I think things are all settled here, you don't gotta worry. Find a new friend out here?"
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Post by Eameia (Zarius unavailable) on Dec 11, 2022 22:25:58 GMT -5
Zarius circles around the fighting with the intent of providing back up to Gerhart just as Shaa arrives riding on the back of some strange feline. He can't help but stop and stare at the chaotic scene as the minotaur and creature engage with owl bear. Why was it always like this whenever he's around Shaa? He's starting to think the minotaur brings nothing but trouble which makes him wonder if Karize's insistence on inviting him to the wedding is a good idea.
In his distracted state, he almost steps on something hidden in the grass. An alarmed peeping noise at his feet catches his attention and he looks down to see a small bird with multicolored feathers, puffed up defensively over an empty nest woven out of grass. He blinks and quickly snatches it up before tucking it into one of his pouches for safe keeping. After all, getting in a fight wasn't the whole point of being out here.
He sees the battle starting to turn in their favor. The twins were disoriented, the scared guy was conked out on the ground, the owlbear was distracted, and Gerhart seemed to have the rat orc kept at bay. Debating what to do, he decides to sneak about and just be annoying by pitching river stones at the rat orc and the owl bear to divide their attention and give Shaa and Gerhart more openings to exploit.
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Post by Shaa Rhunn on Dec 12, 2022 12:39:49 GMT -5
Shaa looked over the state of the scene with morbid interest. He would definitely need to get the story on how all this all went down later and what happened to Tanner. Gerhart looked ok for the moment. They would need to find Zarius, who hopefully wasn’t too far away. For now, Shaa needed to focus on this owl bear so it didn’t tear him to shreds. Fortunately he had some very large, if not spastic, backup in Skippy the Lion dragon. Skippy! Come on ,let’s flank him!
Skippy stops splashing around and focuses, moving carefully to the side. We got him! Oh we are going to get him good! Grrrr! Grrrrr! As the two started to circle, the owl bear panics and lunges at Shaa, biting down his arm. Shaa takes his free hand and jams it into the beasts nostril to force his beak open. The maneuver is enough to keep the owl bear from biting clean through his arm. Even though unencumbered by pain, Shaa can tell the bear has cut into him deeply. Skippy jumps on the bears back and starts to rake him with his sharp claws. Let him go stupid bear. Grrrr! Stones start pelting the bears face but Shaa can’t turn to see where they are coming from. The extra weight up top and the bears thrashing from the rocks throws all three off balance as they all fall into the deeper part of the river, vanishing beneath the surface of the murky water..
Back with Gerhart, the Ogre Rat is bleeding and partly shocked. Despite the injuries, she is more determined than ever. There will be no draw in this contest. One of them is not waking away alive. Steka bellows out a horrible shriek. Dozens of burning rats return from the field and start to converge at Gerhart’s feet, scratching and biting at his ankles. As they continue to swarm, Steka leaps for Gerhart’s throat and tries to bite a chunk out.
Stone Giant- Shaa Claws - Skippy
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Post by Ser Gerhart Stanislav on Dec 12, 2022 12:58:53 GMT -5
Gerhart lets the rats crash against his greaves, the small flames of puffing against the metal but not strong enough to make it through. There's a brief look of shock on his face as the rat comes for his throat.
He leans down, dropping his swords, so the rat will instead impact against his shoulder. Gerhart took the moment to grab it around the midsection and suplex it backwards. As the rat bounced off its back, he would grab his Blurred Blade to bring it down on the rats sternum aiming to pierce its heart. "You should've given up."
He panted heavily as he left that sword in the rat, picking up double strike to turn towards the others. "Hey Za, just let out a caw if ya need help!" He had lost where the tiefling went in the chaos, but he trusted Zarius wasn't the type to abandon them.
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Post by Eameia (Zarius unavailable) on Dec 12, 2022 13:27:53 GMT -5
Zarius watches as the owl bear, Shaa, and the lion all fall back into the river with a grand splash. There's a fair amount of thrashing but it's hard to make out who is winning the struggle. Shaa might actually need some assistance after all.
Dammit. Just his luck.
First thing's first, the tiefling runs up next to the twins as they recover from the stun and start to look around to try and find the invisible foe while keeping their backs to one another. He dodges a swipe with a dagger from one of them then grabs either sides of their heads and bashes their skulls together with a loud crack as his invisibility falters. The two collapse on the ground leaving only one hunter left to face off with Gerhart alone.
Glancing down at the two unconscious casters, he sighs and looks back at Gerhart.
"I am fine, finish up here while I see if Shaa needs any help."
Gerhart was more than capable of handling things here, and while Shaa likely did not need any help, he would never hear the end of it from Karize if the minotaur drowned on his watch.
Wading out into the water, he looks around for any sign of the fighter specifically. There wasn't that strong of a current here, so chances of them being swept downstream were not high.
"Shaa! You alright?" He calls across the water.
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Post by Shaa Rhunn on Dec 13, 2022 8:38:51 GMT -5
How long had Shaa been under water? Time seemed to slow down to a crawl as the flow of the murky liquid rushed over their bodies. It was nearly impossible to get any type of bearing between the muddy river and the now incensed owl bear. In a fortunate turn of events, because the owl bear’s beak was jammed open as they fell in, he had taken in a huge mouthful of river as they all went down. That made him much more focused on breathing rather than trying to eat Shaa’s arm. The bad part was that reason and calculation to that end had all but gone to pot and everyone was in survival mode now. Fight for the surface, that was all. There was a peaceful serenity in having such a singular purpose in mind as a doom clock somewhere was ever pushing forward. Get to the surface. Breathe. Tic. Tic. …Tic.
Even though the bear had long since let go of this arm, Shaa could still tell that he was under him in the water. Move stupid bear! What was he thinking? What do owl bears think about? Are they sad they can’t fly? Do they get really confused looking in a mirror being all like “ I’m an owl, what the heck”! It’s weird the things you think about at the bottom of a river. Shaa wondered what happened to Skippy. The turn of thought made him sad. He was so full of life for being something that came from a bag. Alive 10 minutes, attacked by a bear, drown in a murky river somewhere. Living life like a firework…..ergghh nope. Not today. Screw this!
Bursting like a mountain out of the river, 30 ft giant Shaa emerged with Skippy on his shoulder and water saturated owl bear in hand. GO HOME! He shouts at the water logged bear as he rolls its soggy body back into the forest. The bear hacks up half of the river onto the ground as it waddles off into the forest. Skippys spirits have not been dampened by the river. WOAH! You were riding me now I’m riding you. That’s so cool! …ummm is it ok though if I don’t like rivers now?
Shaa gathers up a bunch of water from the river and uses it to douse the flames of the field. He works quickly and soon the field is mostly just soggy ash. Now where was the giant rat?
Giant Size
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Post by Ser Gerhart Stanislav on Dec 13, 2022 9:05:13 GMT -5
Gerharts shoulders relaxed a bit seeing as it looked like the fight was coming to an end. There weren’t many fighters left besides themselves. He gave the sword that was in the rat a twist just to make sure it was dead before he pulled it out.
He rushed over to the last hunter, body checking this one as well with a rushing charge. He would follow that up with a low to high diagonal strike as the hunter is off balance, knocking his weapon away with Guard Break. At the opening he would jab step forward and hit him just under the sternum with the pommel of Double Strike knocking the wind out of him. There….that should be everyone and thankfully they only had to kill the rat.
”Down here Shaa, I think that’s everyone!” He gave the Minotaur a smile then turned and gave one in the general direction he last heard Zarius. Gerhart took a moment to look over the field, glad the fires are out. “Sorry we got distracted from the hunt, boss. We can get back to that I think I have a couple leads on the snipe.”
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Post by Eameia (Zarius unavailable) on Dec 13, 2022 11:01:14 GMT -5
Ah. So Shaa is fine. Big, but fine. He wonders why he even bothered to worry about the minotaur. Clearly an owlbear is no match for him.
The tiefling looks around at the mess. Much of the grass on the bankside had gotten scorched by the rats. Shaa's quick thinking at least stopped it from spreading too far up the slope where the wind would have carried it across the dry plains unimpeded. Honestly, it could have been so much worse and those idiot hunters should have known better than risk starting a raging grass fire they clearly could not stop.
Idiots. So much for a peaceful change of pace. He sighs and looks back over at Gerhart.
"Actually, we might have gotten lucky despite the unexpected interruption."
He reaches into his back pouch and retrieves the cowering bird from it and holds it out for the two to see. It certainly is a strange looking little shorebird with some oddly brilliant coloring for the region and environment it was nesting in.
"It was guarding its nest during the whole commotion. Seems to fit the description."
He hoped they had lucked out in this regard. Who knows how many other roving bands of hunters the smoke would draw the attention of if they lingered for too long in the area.
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Post by Shaa Rhunn on Dec 13, 2022 11:23:29 GMT -5
Shaa shrinks down to his normal size to take a closer look at all of the damage. It was this kind of nonsense that made home ownership nothing but a pipe dream for the Minotaur. Looking at his arm, he pulls out his trusty medical kit and starts stitching up the gash in his arm left by the owl bear. Skippy is watching him with fascination. Ohhh does that hurt? No. That looks fun, can I do it? Definitely no. Can I go find the owl bear and see if he needs stitches? No, just sit down and wait. I hate waiting. Not as much as I hate rivers now, but pretty close. He finishes up the stitching and wraps his arm in a bandage. He has had way too much practice with that.
Well I can’t leave you guys alone for a minute. Shaa starts laughing and takes a closer look at the nomads. Hmmm looks like Tanner was right. Raiding party. You guys were lucky. These are no joke. Could have been a lot worse. On the bright side, I did bring pie. Shaa looked over at the smashed and soggy pies on the ground. Some of the local squirrels had already started harvesting. Hmmm maybe an iou on those. Speaking of Tanner, I don’t suppose you guys ran into anyone else out here did you?
Shaa walked over to Zarius to examine the bird, Skippy hopping after him. Prairie Ground Wren. Not a snipe, but a good find none the less. Shaa sighed deeply. Actually..I need to tell you something. We need to forget the snipe and report this to Thunderhoof Village. If tribes are sending out raiding parties all the way out here to the hills…. Something is going down and the tribal councils need to know. ROAD TRIP??? Skippy says excitedly. Road trip.
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Post by Ser Gerhart Stanislav on Dec 13, 2022 12:37:04 GMT -5
“I think that’s a bit too small for a snipe.” He gave a little bird whistle to try and coax the bird to perch on his finger. Regardless of whether it does or not he will encourage returning it to its nest.
”Aw come on boss, a couple of raiders are no problem. I am so close to finding that snipe, I’m pretty sure I can sniff it out.” He grinned, as if somehow he could convince Shaa through sheer force of will. He wasn’t lying though, he did truly believe he could find the snipe if given the chance. He just need a bit more time and less raiders in the future. They probably scared it off those bastards.
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Post by Eameia (Zarius unavailable) on Dec 13, 2022 21:36:13 GMT -5
Zarius gives Shaa such a stinkface when he identifies the bird as a simple prairie ground wren. He was hardly an expert on birds so who was he to call out the minotaur on his identification. He lets the bird go and it flits over to Gerhart like the young man was some sort of fairytale princess.
The tiefling's tail switches in annoyance and he sighs. Guess this trip was both over and far from done.
"Fine then. Hopefully the trip back is uneventful."
Too bad there was no wood to knock on after making that statement. Knowing their luck, there certainly would be trouble.
He looks at the young human fighter.
"Remind me to send you some scouting and hunting jobs sometime. Perhaps you and Cyran can track down some...loose ends for me."
Who knows if Cyran would have any interest in working with Gerhart, but it couldn't hurt to try and make sure his allies got along with one another. It was partly why he kept giving missions to Cirice and Iryla as well. The more people with their eyes and ears open out in the world, the better for him. Last thing he wanted was to get blindsided by the results of some big event he wasn't around to witness.
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Post by Shaa Rhunn on Dec 13, 2022 22:58:34 GMT -5
Yeah yeah, I know guys. Believe me, no one is more disappointed than me to cut our peace and quiet Out like a bloody tick. But if these jerks are any indication (Shaa walks over and kicks one of the twins) stopping what’s coming will be a lot easier than stopping it after it starts. Don’t worry though. I have lots of friends in Thunderhoof Village. Friends that can get their hands on….items….that are hard to get your hands on. Shaa tries to give a knowing wink but fails miserably. It just looks like he is getting a facial spasm. Anyway, pack your stuff, we are out as soon as your ready.
While the two prepared to leave, Shaa walked over to the body of the Rat Orc who had reverted back to an Orc after her death. Shaa picked up a random branch and poked her just to make sure she was dead. Shaa looked over her tattoos and recognized some of them. Thinking for a moment, he put it together. Just what where you doing out here Steka the fire rat? I know the tribes would hire merc from time to time, but you are a different breed aren’t you? He poked her a couple more times and the tip of the stick and it burst into flame. Tossing the stick, Shaa kicks her corpse into the river to wash away. Good riddance.
What did ya find? What, what? Skippy asks enthusiastically. Trouble Skippy, Trouble.
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Post by Ser Gerhart Stanislav on Dec 14, 2022 22:54:11 GMT -5
It wasn't hard to tell that Gerhart was a bit disappointed at the end of the hunt especially when he was so close to catching the completely real bird. He let the bird hop up to his shoulder before he gave a quick spin of swords before sheathing them with a sigh looking over the field. Shaa did have a point though, this seemed a bit bigger than a random attack.
"Fine, fine, you'd think taking such a beating like this they'd think twice!" He grins widely. "But letting people know will make sure others don't get hurt or surprised."
He kicks a rock towards the river before turning to walk with Zarius to go bust down the camp. "Oh so you're in the business of hiring people too? You sure you can afford my rates? I've got some good experience under my belt since we first fought." Gerhart gives a confident smirk before the face breaks with a little laugh.
Of course, he was still naive to Zarius background dealings. Some where in the back of his mind he probably knew there might be something slightly suspicious about his friend, but for now Gerhart was more than happy to push that down. The world had enough cynicism and mistrust in it, he was gonna hold on to his current approach for as long as he could.
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Post by Eameia (Zarius unavailable) on Dec 15, 2022 12:45:27 GMT -5
Zarius rolls his eyes at the young fighter and shakes his head. There is a smile on his face, so he's not actually annoyed or anything.
"I can afford most things, and I would be happy to financially support your growth into an even more capable adventurer."
The tiefling then looks to Shaa as they finish packing up camp and prepare to head out. He walks over to the minotaur.
"I am sorry your snipe hunt got squandered. It was a nice change of pace while it lasted. That said, I am afraid I cannot join you in Thunderhoof. I have to get back to my own work."
He wished his vacation could have lasted longer, but it sounded like whatever was going on with the tribes could easily turn into a long term venture. He wouldn't be opposed to providing support to Shaa and Gerhart, but he needed to gather more intel on the situation on his own terms so he could weigh the risks with as little bias as possible.
"I wish you both the best of luck. Knowing you, I am certain you will get to the bottom of whatever all this was. Take care."
With that said, he nods to the both of them and heads off across the hills towards the border between King's Valley and the Zeinav Desert.
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