03/03/2013
The group began by turning its attention to the gith they captured. Yaotl held it down, while Ren, Kaza, and Roan psionically broke its mind. Roan, using his psionic probe ability, was able to determine the location of the gith camp and the location of the slaves in the camp.
They turned the gith over to Ishak, who tied him up.
“We turn him over to your justice. Free him, kill him, it is as you wish.” Ren explained. “Tomorrow, we will go and find the people they took from you.”
“If you bring them back, we will let him go. If not, he dies.” Ishak stated.
“I understand.” Ren replied.
The party slept, Ren kept watch.
In the morning, the clerics and Aziza memorized their spells. Afterward, the party began travelling into the rocky badlands to find the gith camp. After an hour of travelling, they were attacked by a hunting cactus. Yaotl and Kaza were surprised.
The cactus fired a volley of needles into the group. Everyone, except Roan and Aziza were paralyzed. The cactus moved forward and started sucking the fluids from Kaza's body.
Aziza attacked the cactus with her tortoise blades and is able to free Kaza. However, it eventually paralyzes her. The paralysis is short lived and nearly everyone recovered and attacked the cactus. The cactus escaped, by launching another volley of needles and paralyzing half of the party, then, it shuffling into a small rocky crevice and out of sight.
The group took a real beating from the cactus and decided they were in no shape to take on a village of gith. They found a nice, out of the way place and rested for the rest of the day. Water finding was successful, so Ren decided to find some food. Yaotl went with him.
They quickly found a cave, which Ren believed was a mushroom cave. Yaotl had his doubts. Upon entering the cave, Ren and Yaotl were startled to find a wild Carru inside!
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| Carru on the left. Vicious and grass hungry. |
it back to camp.
No one knew how to butcher the animal, so they ended up wasting half of it. They still ended up with about 125 lbs of meat, so they were all in all happy. Cyrus complained about his broken bow string, so Aziza lent him the use of hers.
In the morning, they continued looking for the gith camp. They found the entrance, a one yard wide gap in the rocks, surrounded by a 25 foot cliff. Ren decided to climb the cliff and scout out the camp. Ren crawled on top of the cliff and spotted the camp, he could see about a
dozen gith patrolling. As he turned to go, his hand slipped and he sent a cascade of small rocks tumbling down the cliff face. The gith let out an alarm and many of them started running toward him. Ren heard a non-gith call out in the gith language.
“Get them! Make sure they don't get away!” It shouted.
Ren jumped up and ran back toward the party. The rest of the party heard the cry and began climbing the cliff to help. Aziza refused, because she's afraid of heights, and Roan failed to climb properly and fell to the ground. The gith, meanwhile, were leaping onto the cliff. Ren activated flesh armor.
Two gith engaged Ren, as his friends were still climbing the cliff. Aziza ran down the gap and engaged some gith inside. Ren quickly knocked out one of the gith with some well placed punches. When the rest of the party finally reached the top of the cliff, more gith had entered the battle as well. Yaotl and Kaza enter the fray, swinging their weapons wildly. Aziza and Roan were holding the gith in the gap. Poor Cyrus broke the string on his borrowed bow.
From the moment the fight started, it was pretty one sided. Twelve gith, in all, attacked the party and they didn't stand much of a chance. The final gith faced Ren, it was clearly afraid of him.
To Rens surprise, the gith said, “I must try.”
After Ren knocked the last gith unconscious, the party healed up and entered the village. The gith were all hiding in hide tipi like structures and were clearly too young or too old to fight effectively. The party knew the captives were inside a shallow cave and quickly found it. Ren went inside first.
“Stop where you are.” A human was inside, holding a bone dagger to a young girl's throat. “Leave now, or she dies.”
“We don't want that.” Ren quickly responded.
The man was well dressed, wearing a nice shirt, vest, leather shoes, and breeches, instead of pants or braies. The rest of the party entered the cave, but stopped short when they saw the man. He looked more nervous as the rest of the party entered.
“Look, don't kill me and we can split the profit.” The man stammered.
“We're here to free these people.” Ren stated.
“Why?” The man asked, confused.
“Because slavery is wrong!” Ren proclaimed.
“Ok, sure.” The man began, not understanding Ren's position. “Let me
go and I'll give you anything you want, gear, weapons, anything.”
Ren grew tired of the man's pleas and activated cause sleep. The man
dropped his bone dagger and collapsed on the ground. Yaotl wasted
little time, running over and slapping the man across the face, waking
him violently.
“Wha? What happened?” He demanded.
Yaotl just growled at him. The man decided to remain quiet, now that his hostage was free and he was unarmed.
Cyrus, who was seeing to the welfare of the captives, spoke up, “Some of them are missing. Ishak said there should be twelve, but there are only eight.”
“Where are the others?” Ren demanded, as he turned on the man.
The man spoke quickly, hoping to save his own skin, “I sold them.”
“To who?” Yaotl asked, scowling.
“Nibenay.” The man answered quickly, “House Shom.”
Ren and Yaotl nodded to each other.
“Go.” Ren commanded.
The man scooted around the party and made his way to the entrance to the cave, happy to be alive. Yaotl grabbed him, just as he was about the make his way out.
“Take me to these goods you spoke of.” Yaotl demanded.
“Of course.” The man cowered.
The party attended to feeding and watering the captives, while the man lead Yaotl to a tipi with various boxes and a barrel. Erdlu were behind the tipi, grazing on the light grass. Yaotl pulled out his scimitar and the man cringed. Yaotl slapped the man on the behind.
“Go on, get!” He yelled.
The man ran into the gap.
Ren had a discussion with the remaining gith, letting them know that
some of the warriors are just unconscious and not dead. The gith go to
help the wounded.
An old gith approached Ren. “We must leave this place.”
Ren stared at her. “Why?”
“Blackspear will drive us out, since we will not join him.” The gith explained.
“Who is Blackspear?”
“A powerful gith, who is forcing all gith to join his tribe. That man and his allies were protecting us from him, but now we will have to leave.”
Ren nodded. “We will leave food and water for you. No raiding.”
The gith nodded and began gathering up her few belongings.
The goods in the tent turn out to be water, rice, extra spears, and canvas backpacks. The party, with the exception of Ren, trade out their basket backpacks, for the larger and more comfortable canvas backpacks. The group takes half of the rice and spears. They also filled up their waterskins. They left the rest for the gith.
The group traveled back to the village and found Ishak. The village was extremely happy that eight of their people have been returned. Ishak thanked them profusely. In addition, the party gave Ishak the spears, to defend the village, and food, to feed it. They warned him of Blackspear and suggested he continues to build the wall around the village. Ishak agreed and promised to train his people to fight.
Ren sought out the captured gith and used his psionic ability of regenerate to heal its shattered knee. He then let him go.
“What are we to do now?” Aziza asked Ren.
“Our mission is not complete. We must go to Nibenay and free the rest of the captives.” He replied.
Aziza smiled. “Good.”
“Should we return to Master Pirro first?” Yaotl asked.
Ren turned toward the group, “Do you wish to return to Master Pirro and tell him we have not yet finished our task?”
The party answered with a resounding, “No!”
“Then, let us go to Nibenay.” Ren commanded.
“I know the way.” Roan offered as the party walked into the sunset.
Note: I believe the Carru and Aprig, pictured above, were painted by Thomas Baxa.
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