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Smoke-in-his-Eyes comes to a great oak tree, black and broken under the magic of his staff. Inside the vasty, hollow trunk is a firepit and makeshift pots, a rotten bedroll and charms held from spider silk. A hundred charms hang in the trunk, charms of protection, charms of obscurement, charms of silence, charms of sleep, charms of diversion and deflection, charms of help and charms of simple prayer. They clatter like bones as he enters. He ignores the ripping sounds and the wet splatter of blood just outside.

A snort from the shadows and a becrimsoned snout. He pushes it away and sits inside the trunk, leeching heat from the newly made fire into his dead and frozen limbs. He feels the wood of his staff in hand, black oak, gnarled and bent. A hollow knot at the end, and inside that…best not to speak of it, or even think of it. It comes upon him again, that thing in the staff putrefies his veins, blue and black bile course up his heart and he barely makes it outside the trunk when they come up out of his mouth. He wipes his lips when a second river gurgles up and escapes.

It subsides, finally, but he clutches the staff still. He can’t let it go, he hasn’t let it go for a week. It is the only thing keeping him alive since that night. His other hand feels the scar on his chest, straight above the heart. He remembers the two men looking lost and afraid, stepping like children through the ghostly woods. Simple, amusing even. Two more for the Olliot’e to drag across the forest. Then there was the third man…he made no sound, he cut no figure. Grim of face and grim of demeanor, he had not been afraid. The knife in his hand had thrust up under his ribs. He had barely escaped that night, and now there was no hope and it was only a matter of time before he was found.

He rises, the memory sparks a furious fire and another effluence of blue and black erupts from his mouth as he screams. He screams like a mother giving birth and a child staring at jagged teeth in the dark. That man, that white man! That detestable, disgusting, obscene caricature of a human!! Smoke-in-his-Eyes rips down a dozen of the charms hanging in the hollow trunk, he smashes his staff on the ground, on the walls inside the tree. He spits froth and tears of rage stream down his face. He screams out loud for all the forest to hear.

”How dare you. HOW DARE YOU! HOW DARE YOU!!!!

He smashes his staff on the ground and five of the surrounding trees smash down on the ground with him. He grabs more of the hanging charms now and tears them down, all of them. He kicks dirt over his fire and stabs the air with his staff.

”YOU ARE MANGE AND DUST, YOU ARE A SMALL AND TREMBLING THING, YOU ARE NOT OF THE BLOOD, YOU ARE A FAILURE, AN INVADER, A SLOW WITTED BEAST, A SHAMBLING MOSS, I WILL KILL YOU I WILL KILL YOU! I WILL KILL YOU!!!”

The air groans around him, black sap breaks from the trees, wriggling worms and filthy things come up from the ground and dance. The cold laughs, pine needles freeze as they fan like sabers down into the ground. The veins in his arm bulge grotesque, he vomits forth more and more.

Then as soon as it comes on, it passes. He is crying, all the rage has fled across the sky. Only the despair remains. He cries in his hovel of a hollowed out tree, he cries in that dark and enclosing place. His fire is covered in dirt, but…a spark lights itself. Then another, and another, another and another and the firepit erupts in pink and blue and burning orange. Streaming violet and solid gray with motes of golden char. Smoke-in-his-Eyes scrabbles backwards, holding his staff in front of him. A voice echoes through the tree

”Hard to see, easy to smell. Crow feathers and old preen oil. Frost tips on the hair, caked in mud. Some hedge shaman with petty wisdom and too much terror in his blood.”

Smoke-in-his-Eyes expels his breath. This is the voice, the same voice from before that told him about the nest. He retorts with venom, helped along by black and blue bubbles dribbling from his lips.

”Begone, begone and be buried with all your kin. You have brought me nothing. You have led me to my death, to beyond that, to worse than that. You are poisonous!”

The voice is silent for a while, then a quiet sigh carries the light of the fire to the corners of the tree.

”Child…child. I shall teach you to be free. That holy staff in your hand will wash you clean of all your fears. Spill the blood of great Owl at the Cave Rock, over the Great Lake. Sink the staff in the bloody water and feel yourself be free. This I promise you.”

Smoke-in-his-Eyes laughs. There is little else to do but laugh. It hurts his lungs, it stings his throat, but he laughs all the same. He feels himself on the verge of tears once again, but before he crosses the threshold he gains his ground.

”Owl’s blood? Owl’s Blood?! You know nothing, flame talker! Great Owl is dead!”

Silence again. The colored hues splash in waves. One moment after another. The voice speaks for the last time.

”Is she now…”

In a sputter of iridescence the fire consumes itself, leaving nothing but an umbral glow playing along the shocked, drawn face of Smoke-in-his-Eyes.

An hour passes. In the cold and dark he sits. His face is wan and steeled. In the close and crooked place he sits. His staff held in his hand. In the rotted, ebon oak he sits. His breath is slow and fierce. He stands and makes his way outside. The teeth that shine jagged in the dark approach. He turns to them and the beast behind them.

”Find him, wherever he is. Kill him, and whoever he’s with.”

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P’oilkat Village, California State, Early November, 1859

Delirium is upon you. It crests with the tide of distended voices in triptych across your ears. Each word three partners in hazy tarantella, sea foam and cyprian gold. Diamond peaks and carbuncle troughs. It is hot in the room. It is hot in your head. Your face falls out and sounds like a celestial’s gong. Antler velvet underneath your nose.

It breaks with a muttering of some import. You are surprised to learn it falls from your own mouth. Badger Tail stands in his sweeping clothes as he asks you again.

“Tell me all you know of the Mawike that you saw, that Black Shaman of the wood.”

Your response is courtly, almost knightly, a lord in his chambers, a groom in his stables. The proper place in the proper time, of the place and time of your own choosing, as long as it’s chosen by somebody else.

”In that wide forest at the foot of the mountain. The witch were around some tree, speakin’ fetish and layin’ about with dire voice, with calamities unhindered. Two men were in my employ when we came upon ‘im. He done fer both of ‘em.”

Badger Tail’s face is thoughtful, an expression that does not seem to suit his features. His eyes run down like rivulets, his shadow mouths its name to you, and its name is Flames of a Funeral Pyre. Down they go, and up they’re going in chariots across the morning. It is pleasant, depressingly so.

”The Mawike killed the others with you?”

Something inside reaches its hand out for yours, its warm and mighty hand. You try and fail to grasp it.

”No…some antlered terror, like a stag but the size of a house, and scales like the Garden Serpent.”

Badger Tail turns in ferocious fashion.

”Oilliot’e to kui’kan!?” A forest shepherd? You murdered a birthing beast?!”

The chiefs clamor like rattling swords. Sun-on-Snow’s old and heavy eyes widen as they set upon you from across the fire. A few of the braves take a step toward you. The man who made your cup of nettles tries to speak above the shouting, his high, soft voice lost amidst the sea. Fortunately for you, it catches the ear of Sun-on-Snow, who holds his hand high in the air. The shouting ceases immediately, the silence smashing into your spinning mind like a stone wall.

The young man says his piece, whatever it is, and a very tense calm pervades the house. Badger Tail has regained himself, his expression relatively unchanged as he returns to his inquiries. The rest of the chiefs do not seem mollified.

”We will proceed under the assumption that the Mawike had corrupted the shepherd, for your sake, though we will return to exactly how you managed to kill it at a later date. Now…continue your tale.”

The hand reaches out again, you try to stretch out your arm, you try to loosen your legs, to pluck your ribs from you like fiddle strings, to rumple up your bowing spine and spring forth to its warm and mighty grip. You fail.

”The two men were dead, decent men as I knew ‘em. Names ‘o Quinton and Mack. It was just myself and the witch lit out in the form of a dark bird, a raven.”

Badger Tail leans in close, burst vessels in his eyes proclaiming his bloody intensity. His breath swims against the current, grain and mash.

”Are you…sure?

Your own gaze is unflinching.

”On my eyes.

He translates what you’ve said, and roars of outrage to dwarf those previous ignite the room. The chiefs all begin speaking at once, they stamp their feet and draw their knives. Gesticulations sail first one way, then the other. Inchoate energy. Relentlessness. The surge and press of lurid fervor. You are lost, you fall forward coughing, your lungs bricked up with nettles and woodchip smoke. Badger Tail grabs your shoulder as you fall.

”Listen to me. You did not come here to trade, you were running from the Mawike and got lost in the mountains. Is that right?”

The hand reaches…you grasp it. The world revolves slower, you take a breath, and the bright is in your soul.

No”Yes”

Badger Tail nods, his hand keeping you from toppling.

”There is nothing else? Nothing else you are holding back? No secrets? No lies?”

The light beats steady, the hand is warm and mighty.

Yes”No. I hunt the creatures of this land”I’m a just trader with a run o’ deadly luck.”

Badger Tail nods again, then releases you and adds his own voice to the din. You fall again, the floor rushing up, but you are too worn out to care. Before your head cracks into the ground someone else has you fast by the shoulders. Those arms pull you away from the fire, into the corner of the house as the shouting raises volume. The hands leave your shoulders, and present you with a cup of water instead.

Talons-on-the-Tree, his face black with soot tattoos, his hair freshly shorn, helps you drink. The water quenches you in all capacities and you feel the ebb of delirium leaking out from between your eyes. Talons-on-the-Tree surveys the battlefield the house has become and says a few sentences under his breath. You are sick of your predicament, of not being privy to the world around you, and perhaps it is the last vestige of the nettle vapors but you find your mouth forming the words of Coyote’s story. The one he gave you en route to the market.

The words come as though by birthright, your tongue knows them by shape and outline, by flavor. Talons gives you a bewildered stare and opens his mouth. This time…you understand him.

”Strange time to spin such a tale Lightfoot, and more than a little morbid.”

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This can’t be right…you know what he said. You don’t speak Maidu, but you know what he said. In fact, the shouting all throughout the house becomes quite understandable. A chief with a feather necklace, a fat stomach, and arms as thick as another man’s legs has his knife drawn and is doing his best to drown out the rest of the house by himself.

”...impossible to ignore! We have had to turn a blind eye to a hundred different things throughout the year and this must be the last of it! The Washoe spit tar on our face and we do not have the stomach to cut their cheeks open? Let me lead us down the mountain Great Chief, let me open their bellies and fill them with stones! A raven Mawike in the forest, outside of Washoe land? Corrupting ancient trees and forest shephards? They bring ruin to the land, to us, and to great Owl!”

Badger Tail occupies Sun-on-Snow’s other side, his shrewd, gaunt face set in a condescending glare.

”Wisdom Stone Hoof, wisdom and right thinking! Surely we will make our merry way down the mountain and through what the white man has claimed without them taking provocation. Surely we will look the glorious and good saviors of the land to the other tribes by invading Washoe land. Surely we will join battle against our enemies, who outnumber us, who trade with the white man for their guns and metal axes, and come away victorious with nary a scratch. Surely all six of your sons will not find their ears decorating a Washoe brave’s family totem!”

The chief named Stone Hoof flexes his hands until tremors set in. The young shaman who spoke up for you previously attempts to raise his voice enough to enter the conversation, but Stone Hoof’s ire is up and he launches straight into a counterattack.

”Brave and bold as always Badger Tail, I see your mind is as sharp as ever. Considering of course that we hold the element of surprise, that we are superior in ambush and flexibility, that most of the Washoe braves have yet to return for winter this year, and that Dour Wolf and all his chiefs will be at Sakil’kat on the Great Lake as they await the white traders before winter closes the mountains. What would you have us do with all our advantages, weave baskets?!”

At this Badger Tail turns to Sun-on-Snow, who has sat without saying a word thus far. The young shaman attempts once again to broach the debate, but Badger Tail ignores him and instead speaks directly to his Great Chief.

”A meet of all the mountain tribes will root this out. The Washoe hate us but even they cannot ignore the Miwok and Mono. If we demonstrate their wrong doing and corruption, their punishment will be severe, all without risking the lives of our braves in a war we cannot win!”

It is here that Sun-on-Snow raises his hand in the air once again. A hush falls over the chiefs as though the air were sucked from their lungs. The Great Chief rises to his feet, his head heavy with years, and motions toward the timid young shaman. His voice is the deepest in the room by far, the low and graveled bass that only great age can bring on.

”Light-in-his-Eyes, You do a disservice by holding back your council. Come, what does our Great Shaman say?”

All eyes turn to the young man. The same one you saw conducting the funeral for the dead braves earlier in the day. He wears himself for all the world to see, and one look finds him wanting. He’s nervous, he’s weak, he’s unsure of himself. He wishes to be anywhere but where he is. He stammers forth a reply, vague and dilute.

”I-I believe. That is I think that…I think that Owl will show the proper of course, Course! That is she will show the proper course if we trust in her. W-we must…we must find her before any action is taken. At least t-that’s what I-I believe…”

There is a stillness as the entire house strains to wait an appropriately polite amount of time before returning to their discussion. Without a word of response to the young shaman, in fits and starts, the arguments resume their fever pitch. Two sides have obviously formed now, one standing behind Stone Hoof, the other behind Badger Tail. Sun-on-Snow turns away from the young shaman to listen, disappointment evident in his face. Talons-on-the-Tree speaks softly to himself.

”A shame…his father and brother were much better men than he…”

You open your mouth to finally respond to him in his own language, and as you do so the scars on your back light on fire, the pain makes you choke and you are sure the smell of burning flesh reaches your nostrils. Words do come out, but they are in English, and you did not choose them.

“And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.”

The Maidu chiefs turn to babble and you lose all context of their speech. Your tongue tastes like hot iron. Talons-on-the-Tree is speaking to himself still. Your mind is almost completely clear now, and you think…no, you know that with the correctly placed words, you can influence Sun-on-Snow’s decision. You raise your voice as loud as you can.

”Badger Tail! There’s one more kernel I figure ye need to know!”

You could tell Badger Tail that the Army detained the Washoe in Nevada. A significant portion of the Washoe tribe spend their summer and autumn in Nevada, or down the hills in California. The Army has been getting squeamish at large Indian migrations recently, and if you tell Badger Tail that the Washoe braves and traders in Nevada have been waylaid, he could probably be convinced to take a chance and throw his support behind starting a war.

You could tell Badger Tail that the Miwok are displeased with Washoe encroachment. The hills of the Sierras, down to the Sacramento river, are Miwok territory. If you tell Badger Tail that you passed a number of trade outposts near Sutter’s Fort set up by Washoe, then he could probably be convinced that the Miwok would side with the Maidu in matters of diplomacy. This could give him the ammunition he needs to convince Sun-on-Snow to call a meeting of the mountain tribes.

You could tell Badger Tail that you saw a white owl outside the village on the night Raven attacked. White owls are not overly rare, but one daring to fly under Raven’s eye is surely a sign. Badger Tail could probably be convinced that Light-in-his-Eyes, the young shaman, has a more credible viewpoint than he first thought. If he throws his support behind him, he could convince the tribe to search for Owl before taking further action, most likely with you in the search party.

You could let Talons-on-the-Tree speak. The young outcast chief has been speaking to himself all night. He may be outcast, but you get the feeling that most of the Maidu regret that it had to be so, and that he was and still is a popular and respected figure in the tribe. If you redirect Badger Tail to him, then he will probably have something to say about this whole matter.


>Nudge the Chiefs toward war.

>Nudge the Chiefs toward diplomacy.

>Nudge the Chiefs toward shamanism.

>Let Talons-on-the-Tree speak.

-Archive(Only one thread so far)

https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2023/5718998/

-Character Sheet(I’ve done away with the minutiae based inventory and instead have streamlined things.)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQrgAfW3HDDpPDQjGBmim1bLygbLBJHRYEALENLK4XqKA30qTL8aPFcyDNotboTRwcvZJvpELqNKd9e/pub

-Characters(Major characters currently known)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRktBkJVFgsRIQ-V1Cac7PBhOQqL8EJfXvxHIrqKIOC0YE4RIKUfH81C-vRqbd3LszuCE82bhXcE2-U/pub

-Lashes(Not much discovered yet)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vT77iRm7e8bCVubmBbZZCVd6QlGNGUgIB-VUw5gk3Xenp2v6SuspKkbCvgoAolDlfJeqcQapy91V-LJ/pub


-This Quest operates on the Degrees of Success roll scheme, made up not by me but by a different QM. In case you’re unfamiliar, instead of a roll of 1d100, best of three, players roll three times against a DC. The outcome of the roll is determined not by whether the DC is passed or failed, but by how many times it is passed or failed, here is a quick look.

0 Passes: Failure
1 Pass: Mitigated Success (you succeed, but with negative consequences, or something else goes wrong)
2 Passes: Success
3 Passes: Enhanced Success (you succeed, with additional bonuses or positive consequences)

-This Quest is ideally to be updated once a day. I start writing maybe around 8:00 PM PST, and it takes me a long time to write. Sometimes we will have to move that around but I will always try and communicate any delays when they occur.

-This Quest is under a constant state of metamorphosis, sometimes things just don’t work or require adjustment, and I’m very open to that. Not to say that the rules will be constantly changing, I have a good idea of the core mechanics I’d like to deal with, but if something just isn’t working, it will probably be changed.

-This Quest will always encourage write-ins. I didn’t get them in the first thread and I suppose they really aren’t necessary, but don’t shy away from them if you have an idea, I enjoy the chaos they create.

-I am a fan of writing, if you give me a short piece of poetry or literature that you enjoy, I will return the favor.

-If you would like clarification on something please ask.

>>5766469
>>5766470
Welcome back, you were missed.

>Nudge the Chiefs toward shamanism.

The most honest option is probably the best option. Let's describe exactly how it helped us.

>>5766469
>Nudge the Chiefs toward shamanism

>>5766469
>>Nudge the Chiefs toward war.
Total Indian death

>>5766469
>Nudge the Chiefs toward shamanism.

>Nudge the Chiefs toward shamanism.

We need to fight fire with fire here

>>5766470
>Nudge the Chiefs toward shamanism.

Solid choice

>>5766469
>Nudge the Chiefs toward war.

>>5766470
>Nudge the Chiefs toward shamanism

>>5766469
>Nudge the Chiefs toward shamanism

Awesome thread QM! Your writing is excellent, and the last thread was an absolutely joy to read!

>>5766469
>Let Talons-on-the-Tree speak

A clear majority for trying to find Owl, looks like we have decided to

>Nudge the Chiefs toward shamanism

Writing in Progress

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You range your words across the fire, violent enough to battle through the seize and cut of Indian voice. Badger Tail turns away from the red wrath of Stone Hoof’s face, caught by your gall. Out of all the creativities envisioned to take charge of the meet, you decide to play the truth.

”Last night…amidst the gloam I caught sign o’ some night bird beatin’ its wings outta the violence. Pure white. Looks like the girl gave up on ye.”

The muscles tense around Badger Tail’s mouth. His throat firms and he steps to you with flint rock eyes. You make his gaze like a catamount’s shine. You see it coming, but what could you really do? The slap is a hard one and blows air into your ear drums. You stay level, but only just. Your kneecaps hurt from rolling to the side. His voice is very soft, like a grave moss noose.

”I have stood your presence here long enough. I have swallowed my pride for the sake of my tribe, and now you mock me? You spin tales of some ridiculous fantasy to spurn us at our lowest place? We will see how your attitude fairs short a pair of hands and feet.”

The entire house has stilled, focusing on you and Badger Tail. Stone Hoof’s irritated sighs wind around you both. It seems you are not the only one here who wished he spoke another language. You answer. Succinctly.

”No lie, ask the boy. Kule. He saw it right enough.”

You can see the Indian’s desire to disown you and what you’ve said. You can see him working out your death a hundred times over. You can see his fingers spasm for the flint knife in his belt. You can see the hope spawned in his eyes, the calico embers. He turns on his heel and much to Stone Hoof’s chagrin bends down to whisper to Sun-on-Snow.

The old, old man bows his head and listens, keeping his eyes sealed from the light of the room and the faces of his chiefs. He heaves a sigh to move a mountain, and motions for the young shaman to join him. Light-in-his-Eyes, as you remember him called, looks about to throw up as he enters the center of the ring of chiefs. What follows is a long exchange in Maidu between the Great Chief and the young shaman, between the other chiefs, between Badger Tail, between Stone Hoof. You are adrift from the light of understanding. Whatever prompted your miracle of tongues no longer holds sway and you have little choice but to wait until you are further addressed.

That time finally does come. Sun-on-Snow plucks one of the owl feathers from his cloak and sets it alight in the firepit. He rolls it to and fro in his hands until the flame relents, and a faint smoke trickles from the plume. He brushes the smoke over Light-in-his-Eyes, over two young men standing behind Stone Hoof, and then makes his way over to you. His eyes are very large and soft. They are not friendly. Nevertheless, they take you as you are, and he passes the smoke over you.

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Badger Tail makes a motion and two braves by the door stand you up and walk you outside the house of the Great Chief. There is a trembling, a sharp line, the cold seems brighter to you. Badger Tail follows you out. He takes his own breaths free of the smokey shackles of the house. He begins without looking.

”You will leave at dawn. You will take our young shaman. You will take the young boy Kule. You will take two of Chief Stone Hoof’s sons. You will search for any trace of Owl and return her favor to the Maidu’wail. You will do this.”

It is here that he turns to face you.

”You will do this because if you do not you will be killed at dawn. You will do this because if you do you will be led down the mountain peacefully and allowed to leave our lands alive. You will do this because if you cannot find any trace of Owl in three days the Great Chief has decreed that we shall war with the Washoe. You will do this because there is no way for us to win that war.”

You say nothing. He turns again, and begins to walk away. He stops suddenly, his neck craned up to the sky. He speaks again, his words hanging misty in the air.

”On nights like this…I used to make my daughter count the stars until she fell asleep.”

It lasts only a moment, then he is walking again. To some other place. You watch him for a while, until he is subsumed by distance and the dark, then you head back to your temporary lodging. You stop before you push aside the thick curtain covering the door to your house. The moon grasps you, and the stars. You feel drawn to look at them just for their own sake. They really are beautiful, you catch yourself counting them.

One figure stands at the end of the dirt street. He wears heavy clothes of black and tan. His hair is short, soot tattoos on his face. A knife sheathed on his belt, a tomahawk too. He raises a single solitary hand in your direction. You raise one back. He lowers his hand, and leaves.
The morning rushes forth without mercy. You’re dressed, provisioned, and at the ruined front gates of P’oilkat with but a treacherous three hours of sleep. Light-in-his-Eyes is the first to arrive. He carries a satchel much larger than yours, more of a burlap pack that jangles ferociously as he sets it down, panting. You try to help him with it but he waves you away. After some radical silence he attempts what you suspect might have been conversation. It takes a full minute of him speaking Maidu by himself to pick up on the fact that you do not. He somehow repeats his mistake ten minutes later.

You are saved from malicious banality by the arrival of two tall, strong young men. The sons of Chief Stone Hoof you presume. Each has a birthmark on his face; one red, one gray. Other than that they are the very image of each other, as obvious a pair of twins as you’ve ever seen. Their grimace is not subtle and they communicate their dislike just fine with eyes alone.

As dawn passes, and light fills more and more of the sky, you find yourself turned inward by some nagging thought. You can’t fix it, but you’re sure you’ve forgotten something. You begin to run through yesterday’s events, but barely make it past your waking when a hammer knocks your ribs together.

Breaking back to the present you find yourself besieged by a pair of arms belonging to a thirteen year old Indian boy. Kule releases you with a grin stretching the entire length of his face.

”Mighty hunter, for shame! Caught by the deadly wolf! Let that be a lesson to you.”

You ruffle the boy’s hair, causing his braids to swing askew.

”Not deadly quite yet boy. I’d call it fair to leave it at perilous.”

You recall the previous night, the lone figure, hair short and black tattoos.

”Ah…listen boy, I’m pleased to see you’re mended, but about yer uncle.”

Kule’s smile had dipped to a normal proportion, but your words triggered another expansion.

”That’s alright! I know the Great Chief sent him off to find whoever stole Raven’s treasure. I’m happy to have a chance to help the tribe on my own. Well…almost.”

You’re not sure who told Kule what, but you aim to set him straight. As you open your mouth however, one of the twins begins to speak just this side of shouting. He rants in Maidu to Kule who looks suitably chastened, the grin falling from his face. Light-in-his-Eyes begins to speak now, and there is some degree of argument before Kule turns to translate for you.

”I’m sorry Campbell, I didn’t mean to take this lightly. I know we need to hurry. The owl I saw last night flew off to the east. Three places of power are in that direction. The first is Owl’s Perch, a high peak where she surveys all the mountain. We used to sacrifice many things to Owl at the top of that peak a long time ago. Gray Hoof and Red Hoof say we should go there. The second is Owl’s Nest, a ring of stone trees where they say all normal owls were birthed at the Beginning. Light-in-his-Eyes says we should search there, since the sign we saw was a normal owl.”

The twins, apparently named Red Hoof and Gray Hoof, tap their feet impatiently, reminding you of their father. Despite his thick winter clothes, Light-in-his-Eyes begins to shiver from the chill. Kule goes on.

”I guess we’re going to wherever gets the most votes. I’ll vote for whatever you vote for, but if you ask me we should go to Owl’s Rake. They’re a series of deep canyons that Owl made by dragging her claws across the mountain. Things hide in there all the time, maybe we can find something to lead us to her. Anyway, what do you think?”

You sniff and adjust your satchel and rifle on your back.

”Time’s a wastin’ whatever we do, so I saw we head out east now and make a decision when we’re closer to a branch. You ready to drive pardner?”

Kule smiles and nods, translating your words to the rest of the group. The twin with the red birthmark, Red Hoof, jogs ahead. He’s joined soon by his brother with Kule and Light-in-his-Eyes following. You bring up the rear ready to make some good trail, but just as you leave the ruined gate you feel a hand tug against your elbow.

You turn around to spy a young Indian girl, the same age as Kule, looking at you expectantly with a packed bag of her own. Well…turns out you did forget something after all.


You could Take the Girl. You promised her grandmother you’d take her down the mountain to Tahoe Lake, but that’ll have to wait. You could still take her with you for this journey and head down straight after.

You could Leave the Girl. You don’t need another child with you right now. Kule is here, and he can tell her that you’ll be back to get her in three days at the most. Surely that’s not that big of a delay.

Take the girl or not, you still need to decide where to go. Kule’s vote is with you, so you’ll have the final say.

You could go to Owl’s Perch. A peak of the mountain with a history of darker days. The choice of the twins Red Hoof and Gray Hoof, a place steeped in the Mukua.
You could Go to Owl’s Nest. A petrified forest that is said to have been the birthplace of all owls. The choice of the young shaman Light-in-his-Eyes. The owl you and Kule saw was natural, not a spirit. It might follow that it was headed off to a place sacred to its own kind. Then again, it might not.

You could Go to Owl’s Rake. Deep canyons said to have been struck by Owl herself. The choice of Kule. According to Maidu myth, many things hide in the Rake, maybe Owl is hiding as well?


>Take the Girl

>Leave the Girl

AND

>Go to Owl’s Perch

>Go to Owl’s Nest

>Go to Owl’s Rake

>Take the Girl
If we leave her then I think its obvious something bad may happen.

>You could go to Owl’s Perch. A peak of the mountain with a history of darker days. The choice of the twins Red Hoof and Gray Hoof, a place steeped in the Mukua.

>>5767940
>Take the Girl

>Go to Owl’s Rake

>>5767940

>Take the Girl

>Go to Owl’s Rake

I trust Kule's instincts here, and I think this also aligns with the idea that Raven is temporarily dominant. If Owl was faking its own death, hiding in the trenches has a certain logic to it.

>>5767940
>Take the girl
>Go to Owl’s Rake

>>5767940
>Take the Girl

>Go to Owl’s Rake

>>5767940

>Take the girl
>Go to Owl’s Rake

>Take the Girl

>Go to Owl’s Rake

Writing in Progress

Update turned out harder than I thought, will post tomorrow afternoon instead.

>>5769043
Take your time. Thanks for the notice :)

>>5769043

No worries OP, we can wait for a quality update np

>>5767940
>Leave the Girl
>Go to Owl’s Rake

File: Noka.jpg (66 KB, 900x900)

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The girl blinks freckles of ice out of her lashes. Her red cheeks and sharp nose do much to enliven her, but her eyes remain unflinching. You have scant time to ponder as the rest of the group looks on with a conjunction of irritation, confusion and intrigue. What you know is you gave your word to the Old Woman, and you’re doing your level best to have that mean something nowadays. You aren’t delving into the Malebolge, though the weather might’ve fooled you. You doubt the girl will be in much danger. You make a swift motion with your hand toward the group and she walks over.

Your obligations settled, you fall in with the others as the long step begins again out into the wilderness. East you head down the ridges and copses of pine and fir. After some discussion it is decided to try for the canyons of Owl’s Rake, about a day’s journey away. Light-in-his-Eyes is a second-rate woodsman and Kule has only heard of it. You have, of course, never been, so the Twins must lead. Red Hoof and Gray Hoof share an inscrutable look, then take to the front as the rest of you follow.
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Kule stole another glance at the girl. The tip of her nose bent up just so, like a curl of smoke. He had found his eyes tracing her cheekbones again and again, his chest warm in the snowy air. Her eyes flicked to his! That’s the second time she’d caught him. The girl walked over and the boy did his best to stare straight at Campbell’s gray leather jacket moving up ahead. The more Kule didn’t look, the more red his cheeks became and the more distance she closed until she was walking right beside him. After a few minutes of intense strain he risked a lightning glance to his periphery, only to find her eyes locked on him!
”My Gran-”

”It’s the weather! It’s cold so my cheeks are warm! It’s cold…during winter…”

He cut her off by reflex, his words flailing into a defensive posture. He realized only by degrees that his voice had cracked into a shrill whistle. It had been doing that lately. He had no recourse but to continue looking straight ahead and hope that she left him alone. Instead she just kept walking, stone faced. Very stone faced. Suspiciously so.

”My Grandmother,” Here she gave an exaggerated pause to make sure she wouldn’t be interrupted. ”My Grandmother knew your father and uncle when they were younger.”

This was not so surprising, the Maidu were not a very large tribe and his village, Wetya’kat, was only three days away. The mention of his father summoned up his death in terrible clarity, the sound of his screams and the the stink of the entire village’s fear and helplessness, his uncle’s wretched face of anguish. His cheeks had soured from flush to wan. The girl looked at her feet.

”Don’t be sad. Death is like life, just somewhere else. Your father is a thousand different lives now all through the mountain. Think of the things he could be, trees and frogs and hummingbirds!”

”Stop talking! He is not alive anymore, and if there were a million new hummingbirds in the world it wouldn’t be worth it! I would kill them all to have him back!”

The girl gently reached for Kule’s hand. The cold plateaued at her palm, and her fingers carried comfort.

”I’ve upset you…I’m sorry. My Grandmother told me of when she used to give your father and uncle honey bread when they were boys in P’oilkat. I just thought you might like to remember that there were many happy times in his life too. I’m Noka.”

Kule took her hand and wiped away the burgeoning tears swelling his eyes.

”I’m Kule. I’m sorry for getting angry but…I haven’t thought of my father as much as I should have. I should be…I don’t know, in more pain. I should summon up more grief, more rage, more something, but I can’t. It makes me afraid, thinking about him.”

He stops himself, suddenly realizing how personal he had made this conversation. Noka lets go of his hand and the two children walk together at the back of the group. She gives Kule a sudden smile and points to Light-in-his-Eyes.

”Him. My Grandmother says that he should be valued for his kind heart, since he has nothing else of value to give. You know his father, Falling Feather? He was truly a great man.”

”My uncle told me that Falling Feather had another son who died several years ago, but he wouldn’t say anything else.”

Noka shrugs, and points to the Twins.

”I know Gray Hoof, he does not talk much but he gives me strips of dried venison when he brings in a deer. Red Hoof is his father’s favorite, Grandmother said he has no sense where he puts his spear, whatever that means. They are both decent enough. That one though…the trader? I don’t know him.”

She shifts her finger over to Campbell, picking his way without a sound over a slope of rimed rock.

”Well…he’s alright. Good in the forest, and generous. He doesn’t talk too much but he’s always willing, and he can be funny. I like him, but that may be because he saved my life. He and my uncle. I don’t remember much of what happened but he was very brave.”

”I heard about that as well, it sounds to me like you were very brave too.”

The fire returned to Kule’s cheeks, but before he could respond he noticed that all the rest of their party had come up on a half-sheltered clearing with miraculously dry ground, some of it even visible through the snow. Light-in-his-Eyes sat his clanking pack down and began drawing out implements of ritual, babbling all the while.

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”I-I’m sorry everyone but I have been taught to look for signs. My father, I mean, this dry ground is surely a sign, and after only a few hours of walking. We shall invoke Owl as to where to find her. Gray Hoof could you maybe hold this, a-and please ask your brother to hold this, and children could you please form a circle?”

In the end the circle is formed, if rather halfheartedly. Campbell placed himself on a rock and watched with pointed disinterest. Kule tried to sidle over and let him in on the proceedings, but was sent back to his place in the circle by the young shaman. Red Hoof held a shell necklace, his brother a clay cup of water, Kule held a small wooden dog and Noka held an owl feather. Light-in-his-Eyes collected some kindling and broke it to pieces in his own clay cup which he then set on fire.

The shaman began to shuffle slow and clumsy in what could be called a dance only by the loosest definition. He seemed to wither under the attention from the group, particularly from the hostile gazes of the Twins. One ungainly stride after the other and a cacophony of toneless singing was sustained for but a minute before Light-in-his-Eyes tripped over the cup of fire at the center of the circle.

He falls to the ground with a hard slap, his face missing any snow and finding instead hard open ground. Campbell pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes as the Twins broke into laughter. Kule was tempted to laugh as well, but one look at Noka’s genuine concern for the young shaman chased the smirk from his mouth. As if it all weren’t enough for him, the fire in the cup Light-in-his-Eyes had tripped over had at this point caught on a leg of his pants. A fact only fully realized as he stood up and began brushing off the dirt clinging to him.

The young shaman took little notice of the snow all around him and instead hopped up and down in much more nimble fashion than his previous dance. Taking pity on him, Kule balled up some snow from a nearby drift and hurled it at the shaman’s pants, managing to pelt him with enough to put out the fire in three hits. The Twins’ laughter died down after a couple of minutes.

”I never knew your power, Great Shaman. To set a thing alight in the middle of the winter snow! I will take more care around you in the future.”

Gray Hoof chuckled to himself and resumed the vanguard of the party. Noka and Kule helped Light-in-his-Eyes pick up and repack his implements, doing all they could to avoid looking at him. As they set out once again, Red Hoof let his stride languish until he was apace with Kule.

File: Oleander Flowers.jpg (735 KB, 1920x1442)

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”Young Kule, my brother and I have something for you, the last of the season.”

The brave untied a small pack from his waist, reached inside it and brought out a beautiful wreath of pink and white flowers. He handled them by a thread ran through the wreath, careful not to touch them.

”We knew your father and uncle a little, and after what happened to them we thought you’re close to becoming a man, and without someone to put poison in your hair and wash your face with it…well our father thought it could be his family. He thought much of your uncle you know, so did we.”

Kule swallowed hard at the talk of his father, but the oleander brought a surge of anxiety up his throat. He had never wanted anything but to be like his uncle, to be strong and fierce, but he had still never killed anything. Not even a deer. Not to mention that his uncle was still alive, he just wasn’t with them at the moment. It was kind of the Twins, but not necessary.

”I am so grateful Red Hoof to you and your brother and to Chief Stone Hoof, but I do not need this kindness. You have been misinformed, my uncle is alive, it’s just my father that…died. I also have not killed a man, so I cannot wear that wreath anyway. Thank you, but when the day comes my uncle will stand for me.”

Red Hoof did not seem insulted, but he did wear a most peculiar look. He placed the wreath back in its pouch, tied again to his belt.

”Well young Kule, I do hope that your uncle will be able to stand for you someday. As for your first taking of a life, all I shall say is that the opportunity may be nearer than you think.”

With that, Red Hoof sped his steps until he joined his brother once again. A few hours past and the midday sun was at the height of its powers. The adults decided to break for the only meal of the day and Noka set to work building a fire. Finding aid from Light-in-his-Eyes, the two struck up some conversation, the first time the young shaman’s voice had been heard since his earlier incident.

Kule took Noka in, seemingly unearthing new pleasing features with every pass. This time it was her hair, thick and soft with feathers strewn all under it and behind her ears. He sat with chin in hand, tranquil in his appreciation, when a large boot shoved gently into his back.

”Ye might wanna tamp down on that voracity boy, the girl’s virtue and the rest of ‘er attributes are wholly guaranteed by yer’s truly.”
Kule turned around and raised his fists in mock readiment for some battle. Campbell stood with his rifle unslung and over his shoulder, his other hand in his coat pocket.

”Her name is not ‘girl’, it’s Noka, and I don’t have any idea what you might mean at all.”

”Oh no? Well could just be sloth and slander on my part. Anyways, I’m sick o’ dried meat, thought I might follow a crick I saw a few minutes back to some game. Interested?”

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Kule’s stomach rumbled with hunger and fear both. He had never been a good hunter no matter how hard he tried. He could track alright and he could move just fine, but he was a poor shot and had never had the stomach to kill anything.

”I…don’t have my bow, or my sling, or a knife.”

”Well lucky fer you boy I got me a genuine answer to all them troubles in hand. I know ye Maidu folk don’t put stock in a musket, but I’ll shfit yer course on that, no doubt.”

An image of meat dripping fat over the fire brought round the young boy’s thinking.

”Well great hunter, let’s hunt.”

Campbell and Kule doubled back to the creek and followed it southeast, dropping elevation as they went. The boy was at ease not speaking, finding comfort in Campbell’s presence and the trudging along the uneven ground on the creek bank. The two went along in silence, communicating necessities through hand gestures and head motions. Not thirty minutes passed before the pair found some impressions still virile in the deeper snows, hoof prints.

Low and steady Campbell picked his way along the trail, an uneven clump of powder turning him right, one broken twig an inch from the rest keeping him straight on. Kule had lost the trail near the beginning, and contented himself with mirroring Campbell’s steps. As he followed the white man he lost himself in the type of admiration one feels when watching some skill they know they’ll never achieve. That admiration eventually balled up into raw nerves as the trail once again became visible to the boy, the freshness of it unmissable.

Campbell saw it a hundred yards out, putting up his hand to stop his young companion. He unslung his rifle, checked something, then checked something else, and slowly handed it to the boy. He kept his voice very low.

”Doldrums, she ain’t gonna sniff us out. We’ll edge up right on ‘er. Then put yer hand on that trigger, breathe, aim, and let loose. Don’t point that at me.”

Kule nodded his head as Campbell pulled his finger to the trigger guard. He was shaking, why was he shaking? They ghosted up to the doe, only moving when her head was done picking shrubs out of the snow. Soon enough they were only about ten yards away. Campbell nodded to him, Kule brought up the rifle.

The doe looked soft. His hand trembled. She had big eyes. He tried to breathe. She probably had fawns. He was breathing faster, not slower. He knew he couldn’t do this. He knew he couldn’t. Why did he come out here? She looked so content and…and he was shaking. He fired!

The shot scraped across one of her hind legs, putting her in immediate flight. Kule fell to the ground, dry heaving.

”God Dammit!! Look boy, don’t you mind, I’ve had more than my fair share o’ botched shots. You go on back now, I’ll get ‘er.”

Kule didn’t respond, but he was on his feet by the time Campbell took his rifle back. The man loped off into the woods on silent feet, leaving the boy to walk back to the rest of the group. The walk back was filled with seething resentment and disparagement all inside Kule’s mind. How could he have been so stupid! So incompetent! It was right there for him to grab. Right there! Who cared about stupid deer and their stupid little fawns anyway?

Making it back to the group’s campfire, Kule pulled bread, nuts, and squash out of the small pouch prepared for him by the healers. He avoided the dried venison on principle, and sulked on a fallen log for some time before Noka made her way over to him with her own food.

”Where did you and the white man go?”

”Nowhere.”

”Well what did you do there?”

”Nothing.”

”That sounds very exciting.”

She didn’t speak again, content to eat her own meal, dried venison included. Kule’s fuming gradually petered out, and he regretted his short temper.

”Campbell and I went to find a deer.”

”They have deer in Nowhere?”

He gave her a look.

”We were able to get right up to it, right there, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill it. I don’t know why not. I don’t have any problem eating deer.”

Noka paused, then set one of her nuts in the snow at her feet.

”You know what I think? I think you just don’t realize how much good there can be in how things work in the world. Death is hard, but it can be a friend, and it is what life needs in order to be complete.”

A small squirrel poked its head out of one of the nearby trees. Kule followed it as it made its way closer and closer to the nut that Noka had left on the ground. She did not move.

”Everything that dies nourishes other things, everyone knows that. If you choose to be afraid of death, that’s only because you’re afraid that whatever dies is gone forever, but it isn’t. Bear kills Deer, Wolf kills Deer, it is hard and painful, but Deer kills grass and brush and tree, and even Squirrel kills the nut.”

Her hands moved quicker than any knife, snatching the squirrel in her grip. The tiny animal screamed, biting and clawing at Noka’s hand, but the girl did not let go.

”Death is only once, but the fear that brother squirrel feels may happen over and over again.”

Noka adjusted her hand, placing her thumb on the squirrel’s throat and holding it so tightly that it could no longer squirm in place. The creature was reduced to a paltry shiver as it tensed its muscles again and again on the girl’s iron grip.

”In many ways it is so much kinder to take his life, rather than let him experience this over and over again. He will be happy as a new flower or as part of a wolf if we dig out the blood from his neck. Is it your vote that we should?”

Kule’s heart hammered, burning acid surged up and down his throat. His eyes were full of fear. He mastered himself as best he could.

”N-no. Not today.”

Noka released the squirrel who whipped itself back deep into its tree. After a moment, she tossed the nut close to where the squirrel had emerged. She saw the fear in Kule’s eyes, and her own began to shine with deep and sincere worry.

”I’ve upset you again haven’t I? I did not mean to, I was just trying to help. I thought maybe if you understood that death is not a bad thing you would not feel so bad about killing. Are you mad at me?”

Was he? In all honesty Kule did not know how he felt. A moment ago he was frozen with fear, he had never seen anyone behave or speak like Noka had. Of course the shamans all told the same stories about nature and the cycles and how they all were part of each other, but this had been different. Yet…she was looking at him now with caring and concerned eyes. She seemed distraught even at the idea that she might have even partially upset him.

”No Noka, I’m not upset, I think we just do not agree on things like that.”

She breathed a sigh of relief.

”Ok. Grandmother told me that there would be those who thought differently. I still think we should be friends.”

Kule nodded, forcing a smile, though it was getting easier the longer he stared at her gentle brown eyes. At this point Light-in-his-Eyes, who had fallen asleep, began screaming and shoving his arms about. Kule, Noka, and the Twins rushed to him, but nothing appeared visibly wrong , he simply kept screaming. Gray Hoof grabbed the young shaman and shook him again and again, slapping him once, then a second time. On the second slap he woke, eyes bleary and rolling widdershins. He seemed most astonished to find the group showing such concern.

”J-just a nightmare I-I assure you. Please don’t, please, I’m sorry. I-I’l…I’m sorry.”

Noka filled a clay cup with snow and set it over the fire, then went to speak with the young shaman. At this point, Campbell returned without any cuts of meat to show for it. He gave a sheepish look to Kule.

”Well the ol’ girl put one past me. Don’t that just go to show ye? Never rely yourself on an outcome pardner, good way to get the world laughin’.”

Kule couldn’t help but feel slightly better, but the sun had gone past the apex of the sky, and it was time to continue the journey.
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A cold snake lines your gut as the sun falls down to the bottom quarter of the sky. You do not like others to find your way for you, you do not like it when you can’t speak to them, and you definitely do not like it when they’ve been giving you the blank, tepid stares that the two Twins have been.

Your suspicions have been peaked for an hour now, as you ascend higher and higher on steeper and steeper slopes. You do not know your way in this place, but you have been to other mountains, and you know where you’re going. You’re going to the peak. As you leave the last treeline for a drop away cliff of dizzying height your suspicions are confirmed.

The group stops, Light-in-his-Eyes is speaking in his shrewish, confused manner. The young girl, Noka, is speaking to the Twins, and Kule comes to speak to you, licking his lips from nervousness.

”The Twins say they made a mistake, they led us the wrong way, to the wrong place. They say it has been many years since they were out to the holy places. They say that since we’re here, we should look around and try for somewhere else tomorrow.”

”No doubt. No doubt this reconnoiter is coincidence…no doubt. What’s yer shaman council?”

You move to get a better view of the below. The cliff is sheer, no outcroppings mar its surface. You can see the toy features far, far down. Kule speaks.

”Light-in-his-Eyes says that this is not a place we come to much anymore, that Owl would not be here. He says that his father told him the Maidu used to offer things off the cliff to Owl. Food and shells, jewelry and great weaving arts. Before we offered those things we used to offer other things for Owl’s favor. Animals…even…”

You can feel them there, behind you. Your head turns over your shoulder, your body follows. The Twins face you, expressionless. They form a triangle with you, your back to the cliff. One holds a club, set with a large stone, one holds a flint knife. Your hand is on your rig, your Colt is under your thumb.

Light-in-his-Eyes is confused, but Kule’s hackles are up, he’s yelling in Maidu. The girl, Noka, she’s speaking as well. They both seem outside of the world, their voices coming from someplace else. Your eyes stay on the Twins, their eyes on you. A gust of wind blows, one of their legs tenses.
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The doe walked along, limping only slightly from the graze on its leg. The sun was almost down and that meant a place to sleep. A twig snapped, its head catapulted up, scanning the immediate area. Nothing. Back to walking. No cover for a while, and it was getting darker. Leaves rustled, the doe snapped to attention. Nothing.

A vacant firepit and signs of recent habitation, nothing the deer understood. What she did understand was that it was sheltered from the snow and wind at least to some degree. She began to paw the snow away from the ground for a place to sleep. A sound like a deep snuff lit the air. The doe flung herself to focus.

There…in the dark, a silhouette. A buck in shadows, hooves stamped down the snow. A mane of hair, a sharpened step with a wicked talon. This was nothing she recognized. One eye red, one eye white, and the teeth already stained with gore. She wanted to run, she truly did, but she stayed a statue under the last ray of the dying sun.

The thing let out another snuff, this time at the firepit, and brought its gaze to the doe. It walked toward her, teeth shining in the newborn night. There were whining screams in the air. Then another snuff and the wet sound of meat being stripped off of bone. Then the steady stamping on snow, up, up toward the mountain peak.
Back on the peak, You could draw on the Twins. You know this situation, you’ve been here many times. A man does not stare you down like this unless he means to kill you. Kill him first.

You could let Kule speak. The boy is screaming a mile a minute in Maidu. Maybe, just maybe there is a chance this does not end in bloodshed. That chance has to fall with the only person here who speaks both languages.
You could wait for the Twins to act. There is no doubt in your mind what is going to happen, but what will Light-in-his-Eyes think? He’s the only other adult here, and if he doesn’t understand beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Twins struck first than you either kill him too, or risk him claiming that you murdered two of Chief Stone Hoof’s sons in cold blood.
>Draw

>Let Kule Speak

>Wait for the Twins to Act

>>5769942
>Draw
Fucking Indians, you get what you deserve

>>5769942
>Draw
But don't aim to end them. Aim to disarm.

>>5769942
>>Draw

Draw it is,

Three rolls of 1d100 please. DC 45

Passes: Failure
1 Pass: Mitigated Success (you succeed, but with negative consequences, or something else goes wrong)
2 Passes: Success
3 Passes: Enhanced Success (you succeed, with additional bonuses or positive consequences)

Rolled 92 (1d100)

>>5770505

Rolled 95 (1d100)

>>5770505

Rolled 22 (1d100)

>>5770505
Spin the guns

DC 45

Rolled 92, 95, 22

2 Passes: Success

[b]Writing in Progress[/b]

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The gunmetal is so cold. The beast within it stirs to life. Your hand hovers the rig, and one eye opens. Your thumb lights on the hammer, and it dredges furrows through its lair. Rifled thrashings of its tail. The Twins’ eyes are frozen brown. They make a covenant to speak truths, as all eyes do. You feel your weight anchor your heel like a rail spike, clean through the precipice. The whole of the vale is below you, the two Indians are in front. Kule yells and jerks his arms, but frost like cotton welds your ears. The beast opens its mouth, its gullet gleaming with ignition. One of the Twins cocks his head a quarter of an inch at something the boy says.

You draw.

The thunder cracks the mountain glass, the airy spirits tensing their cello bows. The first goes through the neck, the gray birthmark under his cheek splashes with grisly color. He topples in place, steaming the snow with vital streams. His throat convulses, coughs, and swallows, but he is dead already.

The second claws through the other’s arm, trying to suck his marrow. The last twin makes it to you with his bludgeon, his scepter of wood and rock come to drag you to the slopes of the excomunnicate. You lower your shoulder and ram his chest, the deep whip of his cracked ribs taken up like a choir on the peak. You both fall and knock bones on the stony face of the perch, covered in icy powder. He drives a palm into your chin and vaults you over him with a leg. You keep hold of your instrument, the beast’s breath dusting your hand.

You recover first. The last twin has taken a whine to his breath, no doubt a facet of his fractured ribs. Even so, he is standing and you are not. He runs to you, teeth bared, in strained ululation. He carries his war staff still, but you dip your hand into the powder and draw a palm of ivory sift. He rears his weapon from above and his eyes bleed with rage and grief, but you underhand the snow straight into them. Cold venom. He stumbles. He misses. You fire.

One in the shoulder, one in the stomach, both together undo him. He goes down with the killing weight of shame and loss. He can make battle no longer. All of it has taken perhaps five seconds. One twin lies in a ruby pool, the other breathes pathetic and faint. The ragged sounds lull the beast to sleep, and the ringing air smells like hell.

Light-in-his-Eyes stands face aghast, disbelief and dismay writ large. Noka stares at the living twin, her eyes inscrutable between slow and dismal blinks. Kule’s face is red and raw, wrecked with the beginnings of realization. He looks at each of the twins in turn and furnishes tiny, elfin nods. He avoids looking at you.

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Light-in-his-Eyes breaks the muzzled veldt with stammers and rigid backpedals. He speaks to the children, motioning toward himself with a hand even as he scrabbles farther away from you. Kule still will not meet your eyes, but he answers in his native tongue, staying where he is. He moves forward some with raised hands and subtle demeanor, not unlike one calming a wild horse.

Noka walks up to the cliff’s edge to the bodies of the Twins, passing you with contemplation sunk into her face. Your stare flies first to Light-in-his-Eyes, almost halfway back to the wood. You come down from the cliff ledge now, adopting a passive, humble mien. The moon is bright and fertile. Light-in-his-Eyes is taking longer breaths, his eyes do not circle and dart with as much velocity. You are enkindled with irritation and think again of the words Coyote taught you back in P’oilkat, the words that allowed you to understand Indian speech. You are close to applying them again, when a chipmunk runs out of the wood.

The little creature sprints past the young shaman, sprints past Kule, and sprints past yourself. All three of you follow the movement, but only for a moment, as a rabbit steals your attention, also sprinting out from the forest. A weasel follows that, then a trio of squirrels, then beavers, marmots, snakes, foxes, mice, shrews, and a family of deer. All behind the stampede is the steady step of hoof on snow, heard over the running of the others. The animals begin to scream. Every variant of alarmed audition passes through your ears, through the mountain air and up to the high, dauntless moon. They run and run, but through it all, a heavy step on the snowy ground. It sounds like drumming. The animals do not look back, they do not look anywhere, their eyes are closed, and they run and run until they run off the cliff. The worming slide of foot and claw turns silent as they vault off of Owl’s Perch, suspended in the light of the moon until they are driven down into the earth far, far below.

In the end, all that remains is the step, repeating. The step, resounding. The step, resolving again and again. The wood turns red, the trees draw blood against the grain. It comes into view, as you knew it would, face shrouded in shade. The grease slick coats your face. The tip of your nose and the tip of your tongue and your fingers and the words in your mouth. All sink into a fetid murk. You recall your first hunt in these mountains, the thing that Badger Tail had called an Oiliot’e. This looks similar, but if the other was a shepherd meant to guide and gather, perverted to malice by that Black Shaman, this was its opposite. This is abomination, this is meant to profane, to murder, to sup life’s most sacred blood.

A glorious red cloak of viscera enclothes it, the moon shines bright. The trees are red around it. You have your rifle, and you have your pistol. Your cross is bereft of lamb’s blood, you do not know if you can kill this thing. Kule is in front of you, hyper-ventilating, Light-in-his-Eyes has thrown his pack to the ground and is tearing through its insides. Noka is…Noka is plying all her strength toward hauling the wounded Red Hoof to the edge of the cliff. The moon is white and glassy eyed.


You could try to take the thing head on. You have bullets, and little else. Your makeshift cross is still looped onto your belt, but it has not been anointed since your first hunt. Perhaps you only need bullets…

You could try to flee with the children. Take Kule and Noka and run, from what you observe the thing does not appear too agile. Run to better, prepared ground, or simply run away. Unfortunately Light-in-his-Eyes is not too agile either, and you doubt he can make his escape with the rest of you.

You could try to draw it away yourself. Tell Kule to leave with Noka and Light-in-his-Eyes, you will run and make it follow you somewhere else, somewhere they will not be in danger. Splitting up leaves you isolated, but surely none of the others would be helpful anyway.

You could write in your own strategy.


>Take it head on

>Flee with the children

>Draw it away

>Write in

>>5771258
>Take it head on
Noka is trying to sacrifice Red Hoof, right? Maybe that'll be enough to get owl to help out. We'll have to but time for the injuns to work

>Take it head on
We have more than bullets. We have our lashes, a blade, an ally, and someone to protect.

>>5771258
>>Take it head on

>>5771256
>Take it head

File: Cold Moon.jpg (24 KB, 612x408)

24 KB JPG

Fear is a storm, its Eye is courage. You enter that place amid the fits and buffets of your churning stomach, your rattling breath, your clattering teeth. You’ve spent most of your life in pursuit of murder, one way or the other. Here is a chance to lend out your aegis, a chance to keep a thing from its unraveling, you need only choose to take it. You make your choice, and unsling your rifle.

For its part, the creature seems in no great haste, the steps come one after the other, pas à pas, under the moon. The great gore cloak that drapes the thing creeps its fingers over the snowy carpet. The caress makes the powder seethe into bubbling, sticky red. Thick like candy. There is a glimpse in the black silhouette, a human face crying out. Then nothing. Your finger finds its way down the trigger guard to the small iron lever, and you pull.

The moonlight spooks at the sudden sound as your fingers twirl in familiar motion, loading shot and pulling the trigger. Three more times the rifle rings as you advance toward the creature. The first shot hauls for center mass and bites into its shoulder joint. Triplet chips of gray mottle spray from the impact, but neither blood nor viscera shows itself. Three more shots, and three more small bloodless chasms prove themselves into the thing. Still it steps.

The ground is swelling with claret moss sprung from the creature’s cloak. You hear a vague ruckus back at the lip of the cliff. Noka has dragged the wounded Red Hoof almost all the way, but he is full awake and present now. Shot in the stomach with broken ribs and a lame arm, he is still a full grown man and Noka is a young girl. They struggle at the perch, Red Hoof on his back but resisting any of the girl’s obvious attempts to throw him off.

Light-in-his-Eyes is still incensed with something at the bottom of his woven pack, and he fumbles through every auxiliary artifact like a man past his reason. The red creeps closer to him. You swivel to discern Kule’s state when the creature vaults into motion.
It picks up its steps from heartbeats to snare rolls and you whip back to follow it. The thing trails the bloody cape like a plowshare through a field. It gallops to you on heavy hooves as you break into a run of your own, desperate to stay out of the reach of its antlers. It swerves to match your gait and out of the blackness of its face shine a double row of luminous razors. You can see no nose, no eyes, no architecture of any kind, simply the blazing white knives. It swoops down and gnashes at your head. You throw yourself forward with abandon, the wind crushed out of your lungs by your sudden meeting with the ground.

The creature is far ahead now, but turns about to charge you again, teeth snapping. The snow is all awash now in the red, sprouting crimson velvet. You move to rise, still trying to gain your breath. Your hands stick in the putrid mire. You free them only with difficulty. You load another cartridge and level it as the creature gallops at you. You aim this time for the black, empty face, and fire. You instead scrape the thick trunk of its neck, resulting in yet another pallid chip twisting off into the night. No blood.

You only just reload when the creature is upon you, fangs thrust forth from the black. You dive again for your life, this time underneath its belly. You feel a tear in your back and roll to barely avoid a hoof crushing through your chest. You are underneath it now, and in a single moment you can see that it is not made of flesh. At least not any kind you’ve encountered. The cloak is something like flayed skin, but the body of the creature is something like frozen, petrified wood.

Your rumination ends when that ruined, tattered skin wraps around you, enclosing you like a putrid womb. The claustrophobia sets in, it tightens and ensnares. You start to breath short hiccups, you are consumed, the air is waning. Your back burns like fire. Not the shallow tooth mark, but the lashes, your holy scares. They rip open and pour down liquid hosannas that stain through your shirt, through your coat. The skin cloak retracts like a frightened child. You can breathe again, and the creature lets out a low drone, turning to face you directly.
Blood continues to drip. The thing lowers its thicket of antlers and paws the ground. You reach behind you, to the makeshift wooden cross stuck at the back of your belt. The low drone of the thing abates, and a vicious sound like a snuffling growl proceeds from the black void in its face. You draw forth the cross slowly, like Arthur and the anvil. It charges. Your blood is on the cross. You feel the earthquake of its coming, and put your faith in God.

The Divinity answers. You are pushed back through the snow as if you were grappling a bull. Your feet almost slip more than once, but you stay with the cross thrust out. The emanations of the Divinity stick in the creature’s crown, keeping a fair teen feet of distance between you even as you’re pushed and pushed. The force upon you weakens, but still acts. The red ground around you is burned away, but still you are pushed. The creature’s momentum lessens, and lessens. Your strain and strain, feeling the bones in your arm begin to ache and fracture. Your feet slide over snowy ground to the edge of the cliff. You do not look behind you, all your attention is focused on stopping the thing’s movement, but you can feel the horrible drop coming closer. The creature is slowing, slowing. The Divinity holds fast. Your heels hit on empty space. It stops.

You do not look behind yourself, instead you put everything into raising your knee for one step forward. Forward you go, and the creature lets out a shrieking drone as topples sideways to the ground, ragged cloak spilling out over it. You take the pause to run forward, finally risking a glance behind you. You are right on the edge of the south side of the wider cliff face. The creature is stunned, your cross casts a faded glow. You know that you cannot channel it forever, but you figure you can invoke the Divinity twice more until it fades.

Across on the north side of the cliffs, Kule is stuck fast in the red grime. His knife is out and swinging wildly, you can see the rapidity of his breathing from here. You could make it to him if you ran, the Divinity seems to scour the red out from all the snow surrounding you. The creature begins to stir, trying to find its way up from where it has collapsed.

To the west, where the thing came out of the forest and much closer to you, Light-in-his-Eyes shouts in triumph. He holds something aloft that he has just rummaged from his pack. His back is to you and you can’t quite make out what it is. You do see a crowd of small, round objects littering the snow around his pack. You recognize them as the small beads the strange blind man at P’oilkat’s market was selling. Each engraved with the image of a mighty animal spirit, he had said that crushing one with an honest prayer would call them to you. You can’t make out what likeness is on them from here, even with your eyes. The creature lets out a snuffle, and puts itself rightwise up.

To the east, where the cliff narrows into a thin perch, Noka still struggles with Red Hoof. He is still on his back, but has gotten the young girl off her feet as well. She has a weapon, but she appears to be losing. The creature stands to its full height, shaking out its macabre cloak. It snuffles again, then looses a droning roar. Its black void of a face stares at you, then looks away to the others. Three people, three different directions. Which way are you going to run?

You could run west to Light-in-his-Eyes. Your experience of the young shaman has found him to be incompetent and buffoonish. However, he does know more of the rituals here than anyone else, and he seems to be excited about something. There is also the matter of those beads…there is little chance they will work, but you have few other options but hope and prayer. He is also the closest to you by far.

You could run east to Noka. You are not a fool, the girl is obviously trying to sacrifice Red Hoof the way the Maidu did in older days in order to gain Owl’s favor. Will it work? You do not know, but regardless she seems to need help to subdue Red Hoof. You have no idea how much longer she will be able to hold out.

You could run north to Kule. The boy is stuck fast in whatever taint the creature spills out from itself. He is completely vulnerable and has no weapon other than a simple knife. If the creature decided to leave you and find easier prey, there would be nothing he could do to defend himself.


>Run West

>Run East

>Run North

>>5773333
>Run North
This is the most important choice but also the one with likely the highest difficulty.

>>5773333
>>Run East

>>5773333
>Run East
>Kill an Injun
>Maybe save our life and Noka's life
EZ

Heading East

I require 3 rolls of 1d100

0 Passes: Failure
1 Pass: Mitigated Success (you succeed, but with negative consequences, or something else goes wrong)
2 Passes: Success
3 Passes: Enhanced Success (you succeed, with additional bonuses or positive consequences)

>>5773736

Rolled 57 (1d100)

>>5773736
Wait let me try again

Rolled 34 (1d100)

>>5773736

>>5773736
Oops, I also forgot to set the DC at 55

Rolled 77 (1d100)

>>5773736

Rolled 3 (1d3)

We have a straight success. This roll dictates where the creature will go.

1.West to Light-in-his-Eyes

2.North to Kule

3.East to the perch, same as you.

File: Tsö'ye'wail.jpg (653 KB, 3580x2000)

653 KB JPG

Three visions occur to you as you sweep the field. The fate of each member of your company if you are not fast to their side. The black empty of the creature accompanies you, touching each cardinal and its attendant possibility. After the sands run their course but twice you fix your mark. The creature lands its void upon the same. Noka. You both know it somehow, your leg muscles and whatever infernal machinery drives the thing both contort, then spring like a striking snake.

Your legs pump through the snow, the hostile red foliage darting back from the Divinity as you run. The thing is galloping with its grisly cloak streaming behind it like some rotted crest. It outpaces you quickly and you adjust the rifle back on your shoulder and your cross moves to your left. Then your Colt is in hand to fire off a pair of snapshots. One sails wide, perturbed by your jostling. The second cracks fire into one of the creature’s hips. The thing loses a step before bounding on. You will your body faster, faster, as fast as you can, and your will keeps you just at the creature’s haunches.

You pass Light-in-his-Eyes, himself at a fair run northwards. You see Kule in front of you, desperate to scrape away the cursed red detritus sucking at his feet with a knife. You see terror in his eyes as he looks at the creature bearing down on him. He looks as you gain on the thing with foam flying from your tongue and heaving breaths. It makes it to the narrowing shoulder that branches east onto the true perch before you. It pauses only briefly, its hooves raising diamond dust as they slide jagged across the snow. You have one moment before it charges Noka, one moment where you make up its speed. It paws the ground and lowers its head and you take one last step…and jump.

Your torso smashes onto it, a landscape of bruises no doubt laying root. You scrabble to keep your place, one hand filled with a glowing cross, the other with your revolver. The creature is too big and too wide to drape your body across it, or to swing your legs over it. The skin cloak flutters in front of you, shying away from your cross as if alive, seeming to fester from a crease along its back. You manage to haul a knee up on its back and, lacking any time to formulate a proper course, plant your revolver into the crease. You fire.

The thing bucks immediately as a short, sharp scream erupts into the air. It has abandoned all attempts to reach Noka and instead jumps and flails, determined to see you separated from its vulnerability. Both hands occupied, you hold on only briefly until you are expulsed, though you manage to loose a second shot into the bloody crease. The creature screams again and leaps back and forth in some attempt to assuage its pain.

You are left on your back in the snow, the white, white moon kissing your eyes. You hear the pained snuffles of the creature, and are brought to attention. You bolt to your feet and make for Noka, who is still locked in a struggle with Red Hoof. Both are on the ground, but Red Hoof has gained position on top of the young girl, his hand clasped tense around her throat. As Campbell runs along the narrowing outcrop of cliff to the perch, he uses his momentum to drive his boot straight into Red Hoof’s face. The crunching bone and spraying blood leave the brave a ruin and topple him to his back.

Noka sputters for air, coughing in fits and taking breath in irregular chokes. You grab an arm and haul her to her feet when the stamp of hooves from behind brings you round. The creature can just barely fit itself on the path, but it still comes tearing toward you. The thing turns on a swivel and catapults both hind legs at you. With no room to maneuver, there is only one option. You extended your cross and let the Divinity make itself manifest. It rushes through your soul like a golden river and rides out to meet the double hooves. The impact is titanic and you are almost overwhelmed, but your arm is afire and throwing white lights. You stand your ground, and the creature is thrown back, its rear hooves charred and smoking in the snow. You feel as though you can summon the Divinity once more.

The creature turns and walks from you a while, slowly. It reaches fifty yards away, and turns to face you. Behind you, the gurgling brook of an open vein. Noka has taken Red Hoof’s knife, and drawn it clean across his throat. She meets your eyes and with one last heave, sends him off the cliff.

You wait…what for you don’t know. The moon is still bright. The air is still thin. The night still fills up the cliff drop with black, Red Hoof’s body is long vanished down that gullet. A low snuffle, and the sound of a hoof pawing the ground. The creature lowers its crown of antlers. You set your feet, and grip your cross so hard your hand aches. Noka does not look at you, nor at the creature. She stares out into the dark of the cliff drop. The creature paws the ground once more, then the hoofbeats start and it stampedes forward. You don’t have any room, its antlers are wide enough to take up the entire space of the perch. Last time you failed to stop it cold, you have no room to be pushed back here. Your destiny seems to be off the clip and into the ink below. You hold your cross in front of you regardless, and speak the first words you’ve spoken in what seems like days.

”Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.”

The collision comes, but not unto you. On silent wings, with no voice and the light of the white moon filling its sail. The size of a house, four wings and four legs. The owl beast seizes the creature’s antlers in its talons and stirs the wind all around the perch with three breaks of its mighty wings. With a tremendous draw it flips the creature once more onto its side far back down the slope of the perch. Then it dives upon it, ripping with all its weaponry, coaxing genuine shrieks of something like fear from its black void face.

The sound of the owl beast’s wings shatter the red foam swamp, icing it over into luminous white. The creature’s flayed skin cloak swirls a tight spiral around it, but the flying beast lifts off to a fair distance before being caught. The owl beast stalks, circling the creature as it brings itself up from the ground a third time. Everywhere it steps the red turns back to white crystal. The creature is on its feet again, its composure somewhat regained. The skin cloak twitches, large furrows rest in its wooden body, the creature is injured beyond any doubt.

You stand at the precipice of the perch, still holding your cross in front of you. You lower it, unclenching your hand. You holster your Colt, grab Noka by the arm, and make haste down the slope toward Kule.
You could run back to P’oilkat. Whatever this creature is, it serves as proof that Owl still answers at this place. The two creatures seem intent on each other, and you have two children and an incompetent to think of. It may be best to make a break back to P’oilkat and inform the rest of the Maidu of what you’ve found here.

You could stay and aid the owl beast. You do not know what it is. It may guard the Indians, but it may also be hostile to those that have no place on the mountain, such as yourself. Besides, your bullets seem to have no effect on the deer creature and the power of the Divinity is almost spent. What help could you be?

You could run to Owl’s Rake or Owl’s Nest. This would require another day’s travel, but you’ve seen the canyons from the Perch, and without the Twins you could find your way there in a day’s time. You came out here to find more thorough answers, and more might await you at other locations.

Something draws you back to the Perch. A small part of you, a very small part, wonders what would happen if you threw someone else off the perch. Light-in-his-Eyes has been nothing but an inconvenience and a waste, perhaps he could serve his people in another way, and guarantee the death of whatever this deer creature is that has cornered you here.
>Flee back to P’oilkat

>Attempt to fight with the creature

>Investigate Owl’s Rake or Owl’s Nest

>Try and sacrifice Light-in-his-Eyes

>>5774081
>Attempt to fight with the creature
Wield our blade and go for a critical wound.

>>5774081
>Investigate Owl's Nest
Campbell's mark doesn't demand it's death, and we don't have the tools to kill it anyhow.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

Split decision, let's sort it.

1.Attempt to continue fighting.

2.Leave and investigate Owl's Nest.

Looks like we are attempting an escape, will update tomorrow evening.

>>5774081
Delayed vote but.

>Investigate Owl’s Rake or Owl’s Nest

Also QM FYI one of your voters wanted to let you know that they’re having some issues voting these past few days due to a 4chan pass expiration but are still actively reading your updates!

>>5775293
Thank you, that means a lot.

Writing in Progress

Unforeseen consequences prevent me from posting tonight, I'm sorry. I'll try and do two tomorrow as penance.

>>5775911
No worries! Quality is worth the wait. I can't wait for this quest to become popular again.

Hi OP. I am the anon >>5775293 mentioned. I've been lurking this whole thread so far and will be voting again going forward. nice call on upping the saturation on the OP pic btw

No worries about skipping a day, it happens to every QM no matter how dedicated/monomaniacal/autistic you are about the quest. source: myself Also don't fret too much about updating 2x if it'd eat up too much of your day. out of professional curiosity, how long do they take you to write? they're LONG

>>5775980
I admire your optimism but I wouldn’t hold my breath friend.

>>5775984
I was advised to make the picture clearer last thread and I think it turned out well, so thanks. It takes me about 3-5 hours to write an update, for the longer ones like the the OP it takes around 7-8 hours.

I don’t know how long people usually take but I have a hard time focusing so I bounce around/get distracted a lot, a habit I’m trying to holster.

>>5776380
>I was advised to make the picture clearer last thread and I think it turned out well, so thanks
That was me, so you're welcome!

>It takes me about 3-5 hours to write an update, for the longer ones like the the OP it takes around 7-8 hours.
That sounds standard based on my experience and other QMs I've talked to. The rule of thumb seems to be 1 hour=1 post/~500 words, adjusting up or down for distraction or flowstate accordingly.

By the way, I don't know your IRL situation/energy levels, but please make sure to pace yourself. New QM burnout is real and kills a lot of promising quests.

>I don’t know how long people usually take but I have a hard time focusing so I bounce around/get distracted a lot, a habit I’m trying to holster.
This also sounds standard. I've been doing this for years at this point, and I have some nights where I blow straight through it and some nights where I write 50 words then get distracted checking my email for 45 minutes and then repeat. Writing is hard, and don't let anybody tell you it isn't. (That being said, turning on airplane mode/keeping my phone out of reach seems to help.)

>>5776380
>7-8 Hours
Unfathomably based and high-effort pilled.

I'll echo what everyone else says and point out that the time you spend really shows in the quality of your writing and storytelling. If you don't mind me asking is this your first ever quest or have you run somewhere else before?

File: Owl's Nest.jpg (415 KB, 1440x1080)

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The Divinity clarifies a path through the horrid red snow. The shine pulses out from the cross in your hand, sending the ever deepening underbrush skittering away. Your legs are long, and Noka has trouble following. You half drag her in your haste, muscles hot and liquid. Light-in-his-Eyes has made it to Kule at the north end of the cliff where he too has become stuck fast. That is where you run, skirting the ring of battle formed up between the owl beast and the deer creature.

The two monstrosities charge! The owl beast’s long tail curling as it takes to the sky, the deer creature’s antlers goring empty air. The deer creature rears on its hind legs, its low drone shuffling the snow. Razor sharp teeth lunge out from the black, empty face, snapping like a whip at its foe’s foot. The owl beast flurries its wings and is once again gone from the path of the strike. It takes the overlunge as opportunity to land itself on the deer creature’s back, alternating gouging talons into its bleeding red crease. The deer creature screams again in a wilting fashion, and its flayed skin cloak seizes two of the owl beast’s feet, finally throwing it to the ground in a crash of flailing wings and limbs. Again the deer creature raises on its hind legs, and comes down with savage weight onto the owlet’s chest. The wind picks up and howls its response, putting agony in the silent mouth of the beast..

It is here that you reach Kule and the young shaman, the Divinity pulses and their restraints are undone. The owl beast is tossed once again, shaking the ground not ten feet from you all. Kule is stood frozen in fear, his eyes wide as saucers and fixed on the melee.

”Run!”

He does not move.

”RUN BOY!!”

As you and Noka pass him by, the girl reaches out and pulls on one of Kule’s braids. Hard. He almost topples to the ground, but the spell is broken, and you, he, Noka, and Light-in-his-Eyes run down the slope to the wood, through the wood to the other side, down the rocks and paths, down the trails, and across the frozen, snowy ground, leaving the two whirling monstrosities behind you.

For an hour you all run, the pace is ragged and there are short stops for breath, but never for very long. After an hour, the Divinity sheds whispers of light and extinguishes itself, at which point you figure you may have gone far enough. You halt, and so do the others as you all break into heaving gulps of air. The night is cold, too cold to make due without a fire. Light-in-his-Eyes and Noka take on the responsibility as you sit yourself on an old, vacant stump, and Kule looks back the way you’ve fled.

The two build the fire large and defiant against the fear of another encounter. Your hand has clutched hard on the wooden cross for an hour. Splinters abound, your grip is fastened, your bones are twisted. Only the warmth from the fire unthaws you. The tendons in your arm thrum ferociously. For the first half an hour, nobody speaks. Everybody seems to be waiting on some fresh hell to have followed them. Eventually the fuel to sustain these attitudes burns out. The shoulders draw down, the food is brought out. Eventually, you speak.

”In the mornin’, I’m makin’ my way back. I wash my hands o’ this errand, I wash my hands o’ yer chiefs, and I wash my hands especially of yer people’s lack o’ civic conduct.”

Kule slowly raises his gaze to you. His eyes are ashamed. His voice is low and soft.

”I thought…I did not know they would…I don’t think that was the Great Chief’s plan. To sacrifice you like that…but yes, we must return to P’oilkat.”

”No boy, I mean I’m abscondin’ back down the mountain. I do not truck with a people who maintain a workin’ sacrificial apparatus. I will find another locale to ply my wares and that is the end of it.”

”I’ve never seen a trader overcome two men like that, or rush into a corrupted Memdewi, or throw magic from his hand. You are a trader like I am a hunter Campbell, but I don’t care.”

”Well, it was a thin premise, but yer right.”

Light-in-his-Eyes stares into the fire. He doesn’t react when Kule translates what you’ve said, but Noka does. She sits closer to the fire, and asks the boy a question. He turns to you.

”Noka wants to know if you are still taking her to Daowaga, the great lake.”

His eyes catch yours, asking you a question you can’t quite determine.

”Tell ‘er I will, Im forgin’ out o’ this blasphemous place regardless and it is in my direction.”

Kule’s eyes fall again as he repeats what you’ve said in Maidu. Noka smiles, and says a short phrase that you can only assume means thank you or the like. Silence falls again as you all return to your makeshift meals. The events of the night catch up with you, the cold makes sore every joint in your body, the bruises and sprains come like waves. A dozen small cuts make themselves known to you. You know a watch must be kept, but you need to sleep. You’re about to announce the fact when Light-in-his-Eyes looks up at you and speaks. He knows you don’t understand, but he looks at you nonetheless. Kule pauses for a moment, then translates for him.

”He says…he says we must keep on. He wants you to keep on with us. He says…he cannot do it himself.

Kule grows uncomfortable and stops. Light-in-his-Eyes still keeps your gaze, you think you see glistening in the corners of his eyes. Kule resumes.

”He says the others back at the village do not care if he lives or dies. He is…a burden on his people and a disgrace to his father’s memory. He needs to do something, but he cannot do it himself. He’s asking you, to help him.”

Kule has his face away from the young shaman’s obvious tears. Light-in-his-Eyes manages to hold off from naked crying, and wipes the evidence off on his sleeve. Noka looks at him with tender eyes.

You are about to respond, about to levy a serious and unkind denouncement agreeing with him and criticizing his outburst, but you stop yourself. You think of the man you were only a few years ago. The things you’ve done, the people you’ve killed. You think of that night…the only night you ever dream of anymore. The people in the church, prayers on their lips. Their dirty, sweaty faces shining out, the litany of implorations on their lips. The men around you empty oil on the walls. Welliver stares you down. The torch is in your hand.

You stop yourself, and instead remember Cornelius. How he saved your life and brought you to your feet. He didn’t ask, and you didn’t tell him. He simply took you in, on one condition. That you expunge the dark things in the world where you find them, that you do your best to help those who find themselves at the mercy of things beyond their ken. You close your eyes and take a very deep breath.

”Alright…it’s yer show shaman. Shall we retread the Perch and slay the beasts?”

Kule turns, dumbfounded. His eyes change from ashamed to terrified and he grabs you by the arm.

”You can’t mean that. Chief Stone Hoof’s sons are dead, we have found…I don’t know, something! Something about Owl. That is what we were supposed to find! There isn’t anything left to do! He’s just…just scared!”

Light-in-his-Eyes slides his eyes from you to the boy, having yet to receive a translated reply and no doubt unsettled by the furor which has possessed Kule. You look the young shaman in the eyes and nod, relief washes over his face almost to the point of collapsing him. You look back at Kule.

”You’ve caught it kid, he is scared, as is befittin’ our endeavor. He would be foolish to go along unchanged by tonight’s dust up. Yet he must know that we don’t have much but braggadocio and tall tales to forestall a man who’s boys’re growin’ moss, and who I would be astounded to learn is as forgiven’ as he looks. Though he should do ‘is best to remember that he ain’t helpless, and he ain’t alone.”

Kule looks into the fire as you speak, making idle drawings in the dirt with a charred wood stick. He swallows, and translates to the other two. The plan is set, you decide to investigate Owls’s Nest in order to accomplish your original goal, finding some remnant of the Great Spirit. Once settled, everyone is too tired to engage in the prudence of moving farther away before setting camp. The party one and all lie down by the fire, Light-in-his-Eyes taking the first watch, humming happily to himself. You close your eyes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kule bolted from his sleep screaming. That terrible black face stood right above him, unmanning him, dousing his blood into pale blue water. That terrible skin cloak, dripping with sanguine dew wrapped around his arm. Sound came forth from the empty void, the skin cloak shook his arm. More sound, more jostling.

”-me. Kule!”

Noka shook him once more, her hand gently clasping his arm. Her big blue eyes cooled his fits. Like the mountain snow, like a bath of crystal on a burn. The morning light shattered into a thousand mirrors on the snow, tracing the air with winding gold leaf. Kule felt his lungs afire, raw from the mad dash away from the monstrosities. Noka’s face still filled his eyes, a single slight of hair fell over her right ear.

”I’m ok! I’m fine, just a nightmare.”

Campbell was crouched on the ground examining a crude, dirt drawn map made by Light-in-his-Eyes. The young shaman paced back and forth, sometimes misstepping and scuffing away part of the map, continually trying to speak to Campbell in Maidu, remembering it was an impossibility, then trying again a minute later. The trader, no…the whatever he was, held a stoic biting of his tongue, though his fingers drummed often on the pistol at his side.

Noka handed Kule a piece of bread and a cup of boiled snow while equipping herself with the same. The boy watched her sip from her clay cup, taken with her soft, delicate hands. They were so small, her sleeves almost covered them. A tan dress, but dark brown on her sleeves-in an instant his eyes reeled back to the previous night, Red Hoof’s stolen knife between her fingers, her hands dyed red, pushing him off the perch-he shifted slightly away from her.

”Um…Noka, last night y-you…why did you do that?”

She took another sip of water, watching the two men on the other side of the camp.

”Death is not so terrible. He could not survive anyway, the man Campbell had gutted him. Then I knew somehow that She needed his offering. If they had beat the white man’s head in, I would have slit his throat and thrown him over, but they did not.”

Kule felt like cornered prey. Something in him was trying to bolt, but something else felt like a great, taloned bird diving down. He looked away from her.

”I…did nothing, I did not fight or stand up or shout. I could not even MOVE!”

The boy surprised himself with the violence spit upon his words. Light-in-his-Eyes looked over to him until Campbell snapped his fingers to return his attention to their route. Noka’s face fell into that tender expression he had come to desire from her.
”Listen…that man Campbell, he has seen much and fought for many years, do not stack yourself against him. What did our Great Shaman do? Ask yourself that. Besides, you did not move because of the red snow, I saw it entangle you. If it had not been there, you would have jumped onto that creature’s back with your knife in your teeth. I know it/”

”No, you don’t know! How could you know!? I don’t even know that!”

Kule’s voice trailed off at the last into a paltry wisp. Noka took his hand in hers.

”I can see it in your eyes and your chest. That’s how I know. Trust me with this.”

She smiled, trying to catch his eyes as she did so. Kule took a deep breath and met her gaze. After a moment Noka reached into her bag and pulled out an even smaller canvas sack, one that Kule recognized as having been worn by Gray Hoof. She reached into it, and pulled out the garland wreath of pink Oleander.

”I hope you are not mad at me. I heard you and Gray Hoof talking the other day, and…well, I could not just leave it on his body. Here, turn around.”

Kule wanted to argue, he wanted to tell her it was wrong to do this with flowers from a dead man. He wanted to tell her that he needed a brave to weave the poison in his hair, he needed his uncle. He wanted to, but he didn’t, he turned his back to her. Noka pulled the flowers into sections with her hands, producing several corresponding needles to pin them into his braids. Not one touched his scalp, or any of the bare areas on his neck or cheeks. She wove them like a sunset, the colors bearing down as they traveled from forehead to nape. It took her only five minutes, and all the while he could feel her cold breath tickling his shoulders. She stuck the last needle in place and tapped him on his cheek.
”There, wear them until they rot and fall out, then you will have the poison run in your blood. You will be brave and fearless and strong. Perhaps you will realize that you have always been those things.”

Kule had to stop his hands from reaching up and fondling the flowers. He turned to look at Noka, her face had a small half-smile. Her cheeks were very red in the cold. He leaned closer.

”QUIT BRAIDIN’ AND MOVE CHILDREN!”

Campbell’s dusty roar shook him loose, starting the both of them to action. They leapt up, gathered their things, and followed him toward Owl’s Nest.
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You muse on how quickly the day has passed, on the high spirits of Light-in-his-Eyes, Noka, and Kule. You muse on the lack of detriment to your party, to the speed at which you’ve covered ground. You come to the disheartening conclusion that something must be about to go wrong sometime soon.

For now though, no observer would ever guess that the night before had seen the group lose two members and be confronted by a disfigured horror. The mood is energetic, optimistic even. That passes as you approach Owl’s Nest.

It is not one particular thing, it is not an event nor an action, it is a mood. The trees form concentric rings, they are all frozen like the limbs of some grand giant underneath the world. There is a pall in the air, a desperation. Your jubilant spirits stick to the trees as you pass, there are depressions in the ground. They are not something you can see so much as feel. Unearthly depressions, the wake of a thing beyond feeling, beyond seeing or thinking. The light of the moon, that’s what you think of. You might call them footprints as you might call the tracks on the moon pockmarks in a lady’s face. The trees become bigger, more rigid, more straight.

They dwarf you now, ten times your height. One last circle of them, littered with the ghosts of molted feathers. This last ring of trees is petrified, turned to stone. They frown out their mouths stuffed with snow, they frown to the center of the clearing.

In the middle is black ash and an enormous plate of gray wood. The remnants of a bonfire. You and the rest move in lockstep, afraid to gain any distance from each other. The wind blows through here. There is nothing but frozen ground and the bones of a spent flame. There is nothing.

Light-in-his-Eyes falls to his knees, the wind carries away his howls of disbelief and betrayal. He opens his mouth again, again the wind steals his breath. A third cry springs from him, all his fear and dark desire made manifest. The wind rattles and buffets his voice…but, there is a spark.

A second spark, then a third, another and another and another and then the bonfire erupts in pink and blue and burning orange. Streaming violet and solid gray with motes of golden char. The wind is eaten by the heat, the color sways the circle of trees, their stone mouths are drawn in terror. The four of you surround the bonfire, each at a cardinal degree. Then a voice, melting off the bone.

”A hunter, a dark river runs through him, blood drips from his fangs, he gorges on horrid fruit. Golden scars. I’ve been waiting for you, weary running man.

The colors move your eyes in their sockets, your pupils bleed their colors into your whites. Light-in-his-Eyes shouts something in Maidu. The voice answers back.

”Dead. Dead and swept into the wind, out to the stars, and beyond that and beyond that. Dead forever…or is she? Time will tell.”

Kule and the young shaman both reel backwards as if struck a physical blow. You take a step forward, the hot ash air burns the hairs on your face.

”Begone specter! I will not condone yer manipulations and false portents. I will drive ye from yer place and set the Lord over it.”

The ash raises a whirlwind, you begin to cough, as do the others.

”I am a teller of truths, running man, I tell truths and nothing else. Here is one for you. Him who you seek will present himself at this place.”

The fire smoke shifts and bends into a charcoal sketch of a mighty lake, and a great rock outcropping stretching out above it. You recognize the lake, Tahoe, but the rock formation is from some vantage you’ve yet to encounter. The smoke changes again to a vision you recognize. The Black Shaman, putridity spilling down his face from every orifice, his black staff in his hand.

”You see? I will give each of you a truth. First, for the boy.”

The smoke changes, and Talons-on-the-Tree sits in a cave, a bloody wound staining his tunic. He is alone with a dying fire, paintings of birds swirl around the walls. He hums weakly, voices draw close.

[]i]”For the young shaman.”

The smoke changes, and the two dead corpses of a man and a woman lie in a meadow. They are entwined together in an embrace, their heads savagely smashed in by some rock, dripping crimson beads nearby. The woman looks like someone…something in her features reminds of you of…you don’t know. The man is not dressed like any Maidu you have seen, his markings and jewelry are quite different. Next to them is a hunched figure with broken nails, he is dressed in fine, shamanistic robes. Blood is on his hands.
For the girl.”

The smoke changes, Noka is on the outcropping above Lake Tahoe that you saw earlier, tears stain her cheeks. She is falling far below, there are rocks in the lake. She cracks against them, every limb broken to an unnatural angle, her eyes glassy and lifeless. Blood pours from her mouth. She is dead.

”QUIET!”

Kule screams, throwing a clump of snow off the frozen ground into the smoke image. The smoke curls back into the fire, the colors rotate one after the other, they spin inside themselves, and the entire flame vanishes. You lay your eyes over each of your party, one after the other. Light-in-his-Eyes sits with his head in his hands, rocking back and forth. Kule’s fists are balled up and shaking. Noka stands unphased, her eyes narrowed at the remnants of the bonfire.

”Kule, what did he say in yer tongue. What’s got the shaman lamentin’ so heavy?”

”He said…It said that Owl is dead.”

Well, that’s not good. You hate to admit that you are less attached to the admittedly consequential revelation than you are to the visions you’ve seen. There is no way to trust that they were real, or that they meant what you assume they meant, but you were shown the reason you came up here, the Black Shaman. You were shown somewhere he might be, somewhere to investigate. Now, with your task for the Maidu complete, you have nothing tying you here…but there are of course, complications. What then to do?


You could Investigate Light-in-his-Eyes’ vision. The least clear and least relevant to you. This would most likely keep you up here and see you back in P’oilkat. You would need to speak to the young shaman and get him to shed some light on what you all saw. You’re not sure how this could benefit you, or even if it would at all, but whatever you saw, it did seem important.

You could Investigate Kule’s vision. Talons-on-the-Tree looked to be in danger, serious danger. You aren’t sure where he went after he left P’oilkat, but the cave looked fairly distinctive. Perhaps it is a well known place. Perhaps you can find him before he suffers whatever fate has in store for him. Perhaps not, perhaps it will be nothing but a waste of your time, perhaps he is already dead.

You could Investigate Noka’s vision. The young girl should be safe from what you saw if you don’t lead her down the mountain to Tahoe. However, both she and her grandmother are insistent on her going. Why? You could ask Kule to ask her, or you could dare Coyote’s spell and ask her yourself. However you choose, you may not get a straight answer, or the answer may be unhelpful. At the end of the day, you could always simply take her back to P’oilkat and leave her.

You could Make straight for the lake. You’ve wasted enough time. If the vision is to be believed you know where the Black Shaman will be, and if you head there now you can prepare the ground and lay in wait for him. You’ve discharged your duties to the Maidu, it’s time to finish this. Your marks call for his death.
>Investigate Light-ii-his-Eyes’ Vision

>Investigate Kule’s Vision

>Investigate Noka’s Vision

>Make for the Lake

>>5776439
I will do my best to pace myself, I may end up doing every other night instead of every night. I feel the writing suffers quite a bit sometimes, and it's noticeably uneven. For now though, I'll try and power through.

It's nice to know that I'm running fairly standard though, I will try docking my phone.

>>5776629
That's very kind of you to say. This is the first time I've written anything creative. I'm very glad I took the plunge because I've already soon so many things wrong with me that I've had a chance to fix that I never would've seen otherwise. I hope to continue to improve for everybody who deigns to take a quick look at what I write. Thanks for doing that by the way.

>>5777147
>>Investigate Kule’s Vision

>>5777147
>Investigate Kule’s Vision

>>5777141
>Well, that’s not good
kek

>Investigate Kule’s Vision
We can't let down our bro Talons after he got excommunicated for us.

>>5777150
>I feel the writing suffers quite a bit sometimes, and it's noticeably uneven.
You vastly overestimate the standards of the average /qst/ reader and underestimate your own quality. Your "noticeably uneven" updates are noticeably better-written than 85-90% of the board, and I say this as a persnickety reader and writer myself.

I don't mean to be presumptuous, but it appears from the way you write that you're pretty hard on yourself. You don't have any reason to be, and I speak from direct personal experience that you'll have a better time QMing if you can loosen up a little bit. Just food for thought.

>This is the first time I've written anything creative
Based. My quest was the first time I wrote anything creative, too.

>>5777147
>Investigate Kule’s Vision.
We gotta go after this first. I think we owe it to Talons at the very least.

>>5777150
Same I never wrote anything creative before trying to QM. I haven't noticed the writing suffering at any point, but its never a bad idea to move to a more sustainable schedule esp. if you have other stuff to do during the day.

>>5777147
>>Investigate Kule’s Vision

>>5777147
>>Investigate Kule’s Vision

Just wanted to say: I'm still catching up, but you're an excellent writer, QM! Keep up the good work!

So we've decided to try and ford the phlegethon and carry out our Injun friend.

It may take me until tomorrow night to post because of a family birthday celebration but consider

Writing in Progress

>>5777569
You're kind to say so, though if I want to improve as a writer I need to be realistic about what my faults and failings are. Thank you for the concern though, it's nice to have people care.

>>5777739
Something about the limited format makes questing seem more approachable to first time authors maybe.

>>5777913
Thank you, I really am happy when people find some pleasure in whatever it is that I've done/

Alright, I' caught up. One thing I strongly suspect is that Coyote is either a shaman or an avatar of the trickster deity himself, and that his interest in Noka is not that of some child molester but a literal predator. He wants to kill and maybe eat her, to take her power, as she seems to be some sort of witch.

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29 KB JPG

The wind still smells like smoke, miles out now through the frozen rock trees. Owl’s Nest is left behind you, but none of your party have spoken since the foretellings of the man in the flame. Finally, the edge of the wood is broached, back onto the snowy meadow led to it, patched with faint oases of dirt. Kule has spent the return fuming, pacing with special violence and unnecessary energy. Light-in-his-Eyes walks straight, but his face has run the rainbow of the thinker all the way back. First utter confusion, then apprehension, concentration, shock, dismissal, retrieval and now resting on thoughtful surrender. Noka walks as she always has, eyes undemured, curious.

As the group exits the petrified forest, you spy a clear spot of ground and sit yourself down on it, rubbing your eye. There are motes of ash still freckling your face and coat. Brusque steps sift behind you. You do not need to look up to know that it’s Kule. You do anyway. Naming his expression as intense does it a disservice, the light purple flowers woven in his hair do little to stay its vinegar. His arms are crossed, and he pins you with his gaze.

”Well?"

You rest your cheek on your fist, looking back at him. Your other hand begins to rummage around the interior pockets of your coat, looking for your cigarillos. It is with the utmost dismay that you remember they were all spent several days ago. Kule’s chest rises and falls hard. He does not desist.

”Well!!?”

”Well…you reckon that pack horse may’ve graced our expedition with tobacco leaf and an implement to abuse it?”

You jerk your head toward Light-in-his-Eyes and his large, woven knapsack. The contents of which he has begun, once again, to dig through for some miscellaneous item.

”WHY ARE YOU MAKING JOKES? WHY HAVE WE STOPPED? WHY AREN’T YOU MOVING!!?”

”Take a breath.”

”DO NOT TELL ME WHAT TO DO! My uncle is dying, DYING somewhere in a lightless cave with nobody to help him. Noka is going to die if she continues with us, with you. THIS IS NOT A JOKE!! He would do it for you, he would help you, but you don’t care. Do you think I won’t go? Do you think I can’t? That I’m helpless? I don’t need you Campbell, I’ll go by myself! I’m going to find him, then I’m going to kill whoever is after him, then I’m going to drag him back to our home and then he’s going to be fine! You really think I need you, or anyone? I DON’T!”

You endured around half of the tirade before you stand and make your way over to the young boy. He is too busy spitting blood to care about your approach. When you find yourself in range, you slap him. It’s…robust, enough to send him down on one knee. He holds the side of his face.

”Harsh action unhindered ain’t somethin’ to sprint toward, you creep at it with blade in teeth, lest the devil hear ye comin’. Take a breath. Work it out.”

Kule closes his mouth and stands up. Staring at you, he adjusts his pack on his shoulder, and without a word turns and leaves. You rub your brow and release a sigh.

You can’t help but start to chuckle. Coming up this mountain you had one purpose, to find and kill the Black Shaman that you encountered down in the vale. You’ve roamed the peaks for what seems like forever on a dozen different errands and have yet to pin down any sign of your quarry. Lost in grisly executions of your own people, murderous raven spirits, and tribal politics you finally come to a place where you are guaranteed the end of your hunt, and you are going to abstain in order to try and find a man who you’ve known for less than a week and who you are not sure is even alive anymore.

You do not notice Noka stepping up beside you. She comes only to your chest, but you feel almost as though you’re looking up into her eyes. Her face is not masked over in condemnation, disappointment, or judgment of any kind. She instead holds that same look of curiosity and sadness. She chews on a corner of her lip, and simply looks at you. You return her gaze.

”I suppose to you this is all a hoot. Watchin’ disorder assert itself. What’s that ye say, ‘Let’s set off into the unknown and bludgeon every man we see ‘till we’ve accomplished our goal?’ First rate, girl. I’ll let the boy off on ‘is own, axe brandished, to be shot at dawn by some other accursed Injun!”

Noka does not respond. She sniffs once and rubs her nose. You gesture wildly toward Kule’s rapidly vanishing form.

“Please, intercede at any time!”

She rubs her nose again and breaks eye contact to look at the boy in the distance, then looks back at you. Truth be told, you had already come to your conclusion from the moment you saw the images graven into smoke. You are going find Talons-on-the-Tree, and you are going to either save his life, or revenge his death.

”Fuckin’ Injun truants! KULE!”

You stalk off after the boy, yelling at him to stop. Your longer legs eventually conquer his head start and you’re about to put a hand on his shoulder and spin him round when he stops. You clear your throat and stay behind him.

”You ready? Figure he’s got two day’s head start. Nothin’ inconceivable.”

Kule still doesn’t turn around. You see him bring an arm up to his face, then his voice comes through, calm and determined.

”Yeah…I’m ready.”

You linger for a moment, then walk back to the others. He follows shortly. On your return, Light-in-his-Eyes has repacked his debris and Noka is making small, crude figures out of snow. Kule speaks a brief fragment of Maidu and Noka stops, making herself ready. The young shaman does not. He responds with a lengthy diatribe, his voice a little less warbling than you’ve known it to be. Kule’s face is cast with a palette of emotions, but eventually he brings an end to the conversation with some final phrasing and comes to stand near you.

”Light-in-his-Eyes is not coming. He will travel back to P’oilkat and tell the news of what the fire said to the Great Chief, of the beast and of what happened at Owl’s Perch.”

Light-in-his-Eyes hugs Noka and joins the both of you, patting Kule’s shoulder. He gives you an uncertain look. You see nothing for it, and raise your hand in farewell. He may not have contributed, but you suppose he has earned a small amount of tolerance simply by his continued existence.

”To what degree you think he’ll throw in on my side? Regardin’ the tumult between me and them two dead boys.”

”He said he’ll tell the Great Chief what happened plainly. I don’t think he will speak against you, but it probably won’t be enough to keep you innocent. Who knows. It isn’t that important right now, we’re leaving anyway.”

That last comes out heavy, the tone rough. You bite back any retort and simply begin to walk. The children follow you, Light-in-his-Eyes waits a while, then turns to walk his own path westward, slowly fading into the late afternoon.

There is little time left before the sun sets, and about three hours see the world grow dark. The silence of the day persists around you, Kule, and Noka, thawing a little between the two children as they exchange some sentences every few miles. Soon enough a halt is called and camp is set. Dinner is had, but the rations packed by the Indians have all but run out, leaving you with plenty for yourself from what you’d bought before coming up, but less than is comfortable when feeding Kule and Noka is taken into account.
The three of you gather around the fire, picking at the threadbare remnants of your meals. The crackling comfort eases the spirits of the entire group, and Kule finally speaks to you for the first time since you set out.

”So, do you know where we’re going? I’m not sure where Uncle went other than ‘not here’.”

”I’d have to weigh that. I can tell ye that our first hurdle is goin’ down the mountain regardless o’ where else ‘e went. What’s yer recollection of ‘is situation in that vision?”

”He was hurt. Very badly. There were sounds coming toward him…”

The boy retreats into himself. Noka takes notice and sits beside him, a low back and forth traveling between the two. The girl suddenly leans forward and draws in the dirt around the campfire. She is adept enough, but her finger is not the most sterling channel. Still, the image is clear enough when she finishes. A bird, its talons and beak sinking into another bird below it. She draws another set, then another, then it dawns on you.

”That’s right girl, the cave wall, you’re right. Pictures on it. Birds in pairs, the black ones murderin’ the white. You think…”

”Momil”

She gives you a grim smile as she finishes your thought. Ravens, again. Ravens were all over the mountain, but you highly doubt that the Maidu would have caves or places depicting pictures of their rivals. Especially of their rivals killing their own figure of worship. Kule jumps to his feet.

”Washoe dogs! Uncle must be somewhere in that backward place where they wear black and worship Raven bones! We will journey to Sakil’kat and kidnap some shaman and force him to lead us to their holy places one by one!”

”Temper yerself boy, I agree with yer sentiment but we should take heed o’ the situation once we arrive.”

”So we’re going?”

”I’d say we procured a direction, yeah.”

The caution in your voice is lost on Kule, who is as galvanized as you’ve ever seen him, practically humming out of his skin with newfound purpose. He whoops once and makes a lap around the camp. Noka flashes you a smile, genuine this time. She takes some more dirt from around the fire, sets it in her open palm, and blows it onto the images of the ravens until they are one and all covered from view. You instruct them both to go to bed, and stay up for half a night’s watch.

In the late hours, the problems turn like a spit in your head. You are about a week away from the lumber camp where you set off. Washoe territory as you understand it is at least a day away from that. Talons-on-the-Tree was bleeding out in that vision already, and a gut wound like that would not last more than a few hours at the most if it didn’t hit anything vital. He may have been finished off, he may have been taken to safety and patched up, he may not have been as badly wounded as the brief vision led you to believe. Any which way, the variables were too many to be reckless. Satisfied that tonight wouldn’t bring any measure of hostility above the ordinary, you finally drag yourself to the ground near the fire, and sleep.

The next day is a blur, dirt is thrown on the firepit, breakfast is eaten on the move, and Kule seems determined to outpace the wind itself. Silence reigns again, but today it’s perfunctory rather than uncomfortable. Talking wastes breath, wasting breath wastes energy, wasting energy wastes time. By noon you’ve already made it back to the general area of P’oilkat, you can see smoke from the many fires outside in the near distance. Instead of turning north however, you turn south to the small stream which brought you here so many days ago. It bounds and prances downslope, over frosty rocks and around white plain curves. You stay alert to any fresh signs of deer, or anything to hunt that might restore your coffers.

Nothing strikes you as you follow the stream, no recent perturbation or unmoored aspect in the terrain. Kule’s pace does not slow all throughout the day. He is all but jogging forward and you even suspect the noise the three of you make may be warning any probable dinner specimens off of the trail. Mostly, you worry for Noka. The girl is tough but she has not lived a life ranging in the forest. She does not show it but her breathing becomes more and more labored, her feet falter, her head stays down. You notice, and call a halt before the sun sets, much to Kule’s chagrin. You ignore his protestations and instead take them both east off the stream trail to find a place to camp. You must admit you’re impressed, your small group has managed almost a day and a half of travel in less than a full day.

As you pick your way over snow covered roots(more exposed than they were even only half a day downslope)you discover a different sign, one you didn’t want to see. Someone was here. Someone is here. There are no tracks per say, but there is not enough coarseness on the ground. The forest floor is sanded smooth like a river rock, something you doubt someone would notice unless, like you, they employed some of the same techniques to hide their passage. There are few good places for one to conceal oneself, the trees are too brittle to hold any weight, and are stripped of foliage regardless. They are slight from the winter and this high up are mostly thin planks of various types of fir. A thin tree is a poor cover. The ground doesn’t hold any litter other than snow, which tends to stand out in color against most clothing.

Of course…whoever he is could have left, but there is a trick you remember learning on your way up to P’oilkat. You approach one of a few nearby snow drifts, your eyes having marked out the only ground in the whole clearing which looks scuffed. You motion to the children to stand ready, take a knee, and aim your rifle at the large clump of powder.

”Stand clear! Whoever ye may be, the cold agitates my finger, make yerself known.”

Kule says some mirror of your phrase in Maidu, and after a moment, the snow drift shakes. It shakes again, rustling skim off the top until a faint bit of brown shows through. Finally, in a flourish you might name dramatic if any of it was intentional, a man erupts from the cover, standing tall in the afternoon sun. You keep your rifle trained but…you think you may recognize him.

”Do i know you pardner? God dammit…Kule is that-”

”Grass-under-Snow!”

It is! One of the original group of braves that set off from Talons and Kule’s village to see you to P’oilkat. You remember him as serious, quiet, and reserved, but reliable and not too concerned with your foreign heritage. You feel relief at seeing him, perhaps out of proportion, but it seems like it’s been a very long time since you’ve seen anyone you could even vaguely consider a friend.

Kule chats away as Grass-under-Snow walks out of the drift. His hands are up at first, but he gauges the situation quickly and soon they’re wiping snow off of his feather cloak. He gives you a terse nod, which you return as you lower and sling your rifle. Despite the sun still being in the sky, when you tell Kule and Noka that they should make camp, they jump at the chance.

Soon enough, though evening is still some hours away, you decide the second meal of the day should be eaten. Grass-under-Snow surprises everyone by clearing away one of the other snow drifts to reveal the carcass of a wild deer which he had just killed only an hour or so before your confrontation. He offers up fresh venison steaks to the fire and the smell of cooking meat makes joyous the camp. Little by little, you both relax, and Kule translates what brief conversation the man makes to you explaining his presence.

The first question the boy asks is, rather predictably, has Grass-under-Snow seen any trace of Kule’s uncle. The man responds that he has indeed, that he met him passing down the mountain almost two days ago and that the exiled chief had sat down and traded tobacco with him. They had discussed many things, among them his destination. According to Grass-under-Snow he had said he was traveling south and then southwest, into the south peaks and to the territory of the Mono people. Apparently he had heard of someone with a great secret there, and was determined to find them.

Two things occur to you; First, how could Talons-on-the-Tree have gotten all the way to Washoe territory with only a two day head start? You should have thought of it earlier. You suppose traveling alone, with purpose and without rest he might have possibly been able to make it, but it’s unlikely. Second, even if he did make it down the mountain in that time, if what Grass-under-Snow says is true, he wouldn’t have gone the way of Washoe territory.

Again Grass-under-Snow speaks, and though Kule seems to be coming to some of the same conclusions as you as marked by the increasing dismay in his expression, he continues on translating for you. Noka, for her part, is listening intently while eating a particularly large strip of gristle.

Kule asks what Grass-under-Snow is doing away from P’oilkat in the first place. The brave replies that since the ravens have stopped flocking during the night, Chief Stonehoof saw fit to send individual scouts down to form camps and prepare for war with the Washoe. His task is to hunt and carry food to stock the makeshift camps. However, there is only so much he can carry and still move at speed, thus he does not mind sharing his kill with you.

Trouble again as you and Kule look at each other. The war was not supposed to be a given, and Stonehoof must have commanded this be done yesterday or the day before. Perhaps this will all blow over when Light-in-his-Eyes makes his way back.

Through Kule, you offer Grass-under-Snow to stay at your camp for the night, but he refuses, begging a long road and a preference for traveling at night as his reasons. The three of you see him off, and are thus left with your thoughts. You busy yourselves with the banalities of making a proper camp until the sun goes down. The last breath of Helios is drawn and does not expel, suffocated by Mother Nyx.

Once again you commit to the first watch, the encounter with whatever unnatural creature accosted you at Owl’s Perch still fresh in your mind. The children fall asleep by the fire, exhausted after the day. You find yourself struggling to hold on as well, a little haggard from keeping watch the previous night. You doze a little, your lids are heavy, a wave bearing down on your fragile consciousness. Your eyes snap closed for the briefest of moments, and then they snap open, and someone is there.

Coyote sits on the bare ground, out in the dark, twenty feet away. He is as ragged in both physique and dress as you remember. His gaunt face is sucked in, collapsing. You don’t remember drawing, but your Colt is in hand and aimed true. Coyote beckons with a hand, a slow rolling motion, out into the dark. You stay planted. After a moment, he stands up and starts to approach you instead.

Every step your finger tenses another fraction on the trigger. The hairs on your arm and neck are on end. You consider firing, whether or not it’s an apparition or a reality. Every step makes your heart beat faster, but as the adrenaline crashes into crescendo, he stops. He’s five feet from you now. You regard each other in the dark, you with your back to a dimming fire. He speaks first.

”You. Do. Not. Tell. Your. Story.”

Your eyes crinkle in confusion for a moment, then you recall that he did indeed ask you to repeat whatever arcane phrase he imparted that let you understand the Maidu language. He asked that you speak it every night over a fire. Not suspicious in the least, that.

”The terms look to be irrelevant pardner, as I do not recall an agreement.”

Coyote makes a full round licking his teeth. He touches his tongue to the tips of his incisors. Hard enough to draw blood.

”Trading. Difficult. When. No. Trust. But. Breaking. Is. Deadly.”

”Well if it comes to it, indigent, I’d bet on myself bein’ deadlier.”

Coyote sniffs the air, then licks it. Your heart is still beating very quickly.

”You been lampin’ our trail? I fail to consider how our conversation could otherwise be possible. You know what, don’t respond, simply disperse. Any more travailin’ our way leads to extinction for you.”

The squalid figure does not move, his eyes glint in the dark like mirrors. You set your pistol straight to him, and cock the hammer.

”You. Want. To. Save. Someone.”

His statement puts a hook in your head.

”Who do you know about it, heathen?”
”Exile. Blood. Birds.”

”Is he alive?”

”Yes… No…”

You resist the urge to push the revolver’s barrel up against his forehead.

”Speak plain, and stop yer opaque formulatin’.”

Coyote looks up to the moon, not nearly as bright and luminous tonight. He sniffs the air again, this time rubbing his fingers all along his teeth. He presses a finger into an incisor until he draws blood.

”Raven’s. Nest. He. Looks. For. Eyes. Lost. There.”

”Where?”

”Raven’s. Nest. Is. Where. Nest. Is. I. Will. Take. You. The. Red. Nettle. Will. Take. You. Hurry.”

”Ye the Good Samaritan then? Yer people got no Book, and I will not trade on goodwill. Why the charity?”

“Important. And. Favor. This. Time. We. Make. Agreement.”

You’re standing in the cold night with the children sleeping behind you. You do not trust Coyote. You do not know how he found you, what he wants, why he wants it, or what he’s willing to do to get it. Part of you, a fairly sizable part, wants to simply pull the trigger and watch his head crumple and burst. At least that would be the end of it. Still, there is another idea…if what he’s saying proves true, you think there may be a way to circumvent him. He stands, waiting for your response.

You could take Coyote’s offer. The wild man says that the smoke of the Red Nettle can take you to Raven’s Nest, wherever that is. He also says he’d be willing to help you use it for a favor in the future. There are few propositions more dubious, but if Talons is really dying, do you really have a choice?

You could decline Coyote and head to Mono territory. You know little about these people and they have seemed irrelevant up until now, but Grass-under-Snow mentioned that Talons was headed to them in search of some great secret he knew was there. It’s possible Coyote is lying, and the exiled chief really did head south, care to wager his life on it?

You could decline Coyote and seek help from the Washoe. Technically…technically Talons-on-the-Tree is no longer Maidu at all, and technically he is engaged in a task given by Raven himself. If you really believe Coyote, maybe you don’t need him, maybe the Washoe shamans will actually be willing to help you, as long as you can talk them into it. Maybe it would take too long to get to Sakil’kat, maybe Talons will be dead by then.
>Take Coyote’s Offer

>Decline Coyote, go to the Mono

>Decline Coyote, go to the Washoe

Anon from Quest rails

Pharah is best brown girl

Mod ban, liked Nessa

>>5783822
>>Take Coyote’s Offer
I concur with anon >>5780963 here.

>>5783826
kek

>>5783822
>take Coyote’s offer
I don't like it but the other options are too risky. It's obvious what he probably wants. In addition to accepting, I say we let him know we gave our word to the old poison woman and intend to keep it.

>>5783822
>>Decline Coyote, go to the Washoe

>>5783822
>>Decline Coyote, go to the Mono

>>5783822
>>Take Coyote’s Offer

>>5783822
>Decline Coyote, go to the Washoe

>>5783826
Fuckin lmao

>>5783822
>Take Coyote’s Offer
Need to make the terms clear.

>>5783822
>Take Coyote’s Offer

>>5783822
>Decline Coyote, go to the Washoe

>>5783831
>>5783858
>>5784131
>>5785161
>>5785464
>Take the Offer

>>5783923
>>5785135
>>5785780
>Decline and go to the Washoe

>>5784112
Decline and go to the Mono


I'm attempting to take longer in between updates because they're pretty long. The other option however, is to update more frequently but write shorter updates.

Let me know what you prefer, but either way the next update will be tomorrow.

>>5785917
I personally prefer longer updates, but it's ultimately up to you! The board is pretty slow now, so either works fine really depending on what your schedule can manage!

>>5786272

Supporting, makes no difference at this point QM

>>5785917
I prefer shorter daily updates, in part because it's fun to have something to read every day and in part because I think having a more consistent rhythm is a prophylactic against flaking. But it seems other people disagree, so the most important thing is just to do what works for you and stick with that.

>>5783822
>Take Coyote’s Offer
Risky, but our best bet.

>>5785917
Whateve rworks best for you is fine, but my personal preference is shorter daily updates.

File: Raven's Nest.jpg (101 KB, 1680x1050)

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”Alright, I’ll deal with ye. Two things; no harm comes to that girl, and if any falseness lights from ye, I’ll answer it with the sound of a bullet.”

Coyote sticks the finger he’d cut on his tooth into his mouth, sucking the blood off with an obscene noise. He peers past you, languid, at the still forms of the children in the distance. He takes his finger from his mouth.

”Harm. Will. Come. Oh. Yes. But. Not. Now. Not. Tonight.”

You lunge forward and grab what passes for his collar. A tatterdemalion array of bone neckwear. Your knife dives like a snakebite in your other hand to just in front of his face.

”Do not game me, indigent, profess yer peace or I’ll cut another mouth to help along that stutter o’ yours.”

Coyote is unfazed for his part, but he does switch his focus from Noka’s place by the fire back to you.

”Not. Now. Not. Tonight. Now. Agree. To. Lend. Favor.”
His cheek twitches a dozen times in succession, he rounds his teeth with his tongue, his eyes drop down to an invisible something haunting their corners. You doubt you’ll get more clarity from him, you’ve seen men act like him before. They do not respond to fear, rationality, or any other semblance of human operation. If you’re going to take his help, you need to deal with him as is. You let him go, and sheathe your knife.

”You’ve my word, I’ll help ye in some unforeseen labor.”

He stares back from the ground to you. His eyes are mud brown and do not blink. He backs up a step and bites down on the air, the clack shifting the feathered hairs on your neck, and echoing much louder than it should. He backs away from you slowly, swaying. He turns around, his head swiveling behind him.

”Cup.”

With that he walks off to the black, empty plain from which he emerged. You return to the campfire, smoldering low, and reclaim your satchel with the tin cup you bought back at the Lumber Camp’s general store. You walk out to meet him, your makeshift cross a comfortable weight in your belt. The farther away from the fire, the darker it gets, almost unnaturally so. The black presses close to you like silken veils blowing in the wind.

Coyote is on both knees, he tilts his chin up as he puts something in his mouth. Nettle leaves are in his other hand, the stinging needles driving through his skin as he crushes them all to pieces. You present the cup, kneeling down on one knee to match his height. He puts the crushed Nettle leaves in the vessel, and spits a deep red from his mouth to cover them. Whether berries or blood, you cannot tell in the dark.

You realize suddenly that you carry no light for the leaves, if they would even catch fire after having been drenched. You start to rise to return to the fire pit, but Coyote clasps your hands around the cup like a patient grandfather. He taps your hand with his, pulls them away, and the cup begins to smoke.

The red embers eating the leaves hurt your eyes. They crawl like infernal caterpillars across the surface of the Nettles. You look up as the black presses inward again. The silken veils turned to woolen tapestry. You meet the muddy brown eyes across from you, and you know what you must do. You breathe.

The conflagrant snakes, many-headed, swim up your nose and ears, into your eyes. That red smoke that marks your vision in a wall of vibrant stain. The black presses on you like two stone walls, smothering, crushing. Coyote’s face disappears, you are engulfed. The red smoke is in you now, burning up your lungs. The black presses on you, carved out of mountains.

Then you paw an arm through the recalcitrant sable, the muck of the empyrean. You can move. You can kick your legs with great difficulty, you carve upwards in hewing strokes of desperation. Something is failing you, something is fading from you, the smoke, the bloody smoke.

Your head crests the liquid into a gored sky. It is red and black here, red and black. You heave yourself out of the mire, the smell of tar invades you in tandem with pine and whirling air. You know this smell. You observe your hands and arms and the rest of you. You are covered in pitch, dark as sin. You try and cleanse yourself as much as you can, but your inundation is not the gentle sort. Your beard is raked through with it, and your hair, it blesses all aspects of your clothing.

Your attention is drawn in many directions other than your recent covering, particularly to the sky. Black like the pitch, but more terrible, tinted red. The land is a marsh strewn with rocky towers. You’ve just drawn yourself from a small pond of black tar no bigger than two men abreast. The stuff breathes through the earth, the ground is slowly sinking.

You settle on an enormous moon. One may as well not call it moon but rather emperor, reigning like Nero over this dark place. The sky is so large, and there flutters a shadow over it. A beak, talons, black wings on black canvas. It is enormous, beyond the world you came from, but fitting to this one. You know the shape well by now, though you might wish you did not. You recognize Raven taking flight.

Luckily, that is all he is doing. Donning the sky as a shawl he begins in your view and passes from it in the same moment. The grand red moon bends out to touch him with its fingers. You see something in the distance, on a path a ways ahead. Something burning. It is then you expel your air and notice that red smoke emerges from your mouth. You realize you do not breathe in, the very action seems deadly, and you do not even feel the need. You expel once more, and once more that vicious red smoke propels from inside you in a plume.

You feel fainter, diminished. You do the only thing you can reconcile, and drag yourself toward the light in the distance. Foot after sticking foot squelching along in the pitchy earth. You feel even fainter. The smoke you expel is less vibrant now, less odious, less tenable. You still do not breathe in, and you pass desiccated corpses of every conceivable creature as you walk. All of them are missing their eyes.

The light shines brighter, but your smoke depletes, only vagrant puffs make their way out of your lungs now. You feel the constriction, and you know this feeling. You are suffocating. You fight the urge to run, but your body begins to panic, it starts to shake, your vision swims. The light is ahead. Nothing is coming out now. You break into a run, there’s nothing left in you, you almost trip over a desiccated cow. You breach a formation of brittle rock.

You stumble to your knees and breathe. You breathe in red smoke quickening from a small fire. You recognize its beacon as the one you’ve been chasing. On your hands and knees you begin to breathe properly, red smoke crawls into your lungs from the fire. You look up, and Coyote is seated at its parallel edge, looking at you. He licks his lips.

You devise more than a few questions for the man, but as you open your mouth Coyote quickly raises his finger to his lips. You stay silent, and not a moment after the cratered celestial in the sky changes, twisting, darkening, then opening. A great eye all too familiar to you sweeps the land. You feel yourself drawing toward it, you lean forward as if falling into a pool, the memory of lacerations beyond space and time shiver throughout your recesses.

Then it is over, the eye closes, and turns back to the red moon, Raven’s titanic carriage making for some other direction across the sky. Coyote looks at you, finger still to his lips, and beckons you to follow him. He takes you not a minute’s walk past the small enclave that hides his fire and you find yourself at the edge of a vast lake.

You can tell it is the same pitch that you crawled out of when you arrived, but this is somehow darker still, the color is sucked from your red smoke whenever you breathe out, down into the pitch, leaving only transparent vapor. The great lake is a ring, you cannot see how far around it goes, but you can see an enormous island of brown and red rock in the center of it. As your eyes meet the island, the lashes upon your back begin to raise hosannas all together in a blast of ivory choir. You feel it, your faith, the Divinity, dragging you toward something at the center of that island.

Yet Coyote does not spare a glance for it, he takes his finger from his lips and holds it in front of your face until slowly, slowly pointing down. He motions to the lake, the terrible lake. He points to its terminus, directly down, to the bottom. You suffer a route of apprehension, further convoluted by what you spy over Coyote’s shoulder. The trail going around the lake leads down to a deep valley of stone. Even from here you can see that in the valley there are passages leading to covered natural awnings and braces of caves. What’s more, there is a crude mark where the stone valley begins to dip, a raven killing an owl.

You watch the red smoke flow out from you. You feel the well of it tossing and turning in your chest. You predict that you might travel Five lengths before it dims in you again, but where to go, and what do you trust?
You could make for the stone caves. An obvious choice, these are Two lengths away and seemingly the same area where Talons-on-the-Tree sat wounded in the vision. They are even marked with what look to be the same sort of crude drawing that covered what you saw of the cave interior. Is he still there? Was he ever?


You could do as Coyote says. Coyote tells you to dive down into the pitch, into the lake. He points to the bottom as where you must go. Why? He has brought you to this place, but does he hold your best interest at heart? Perhaps he does. Perhaps for reasons known only to him he wishes you to survive, but then again perhaps he is simply trying to kill you.


You could make for the island in the middle of the lake. There are no boats. You must swim. This is Three lengths away and would offer no cover if Raven flew overhead. Still, something calls to you there. Something is required of you there. The lashes will it, but are you ready for what you may find? This is not a forgiving place.
>Make for the Stone Caves

>Do as Coyote Says

>Make for the Island

Thank you guys for your responses.

I'm going to try and forge an isthmus between the long and the short. Hopefully shorter than what I've been doing, enough to post every night and maybe twice, but long enough to be a considerable chunk.

Please bear with me as I fine tune it to get it right for all of you spending your time reading this.

>>5787365
You could make for the island in the middle of the lake. There are no boats. You must swim. This is Three lengths away and would offer no cover if Raven flew overhead. Still, something calls to you there. Something is required of you there. The lashes will it, but are you ready for what you may find? This is not a forgiving place.

The lashes are the best part of this quest. We have never not listened to them.

>>5787365
>Make for the Island

>>5787365
>Make for the Island

>>5787365
>Do as Coyote Says

>>5787369
Sounds good OP. I've had success with 3-5 post daily updates, but figure out what works for you.

>>5787365
>>Make for the Stone Caves

>>5787365
>>Do as Coyote Says

>>5787365
>>Make for the Island

File: Kāgi-bapa.jpg (80 KB, 736x736)

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Coyote’s finger hangs ominous, spearing the air with old, arcane authority. Down. Down into the black morass, straight down this old, sleeping charybdis. You look at his finger, then travel up his arm and to his face. Like shorn granite he remains inviolate. You feel his purpose and screw your courage to his certainty. You prepare to risk yourself in the unknowable dive. Then…his cheek twitches. Just the once, but it makes you blink in turn, and suddenly, you’re not so sure.

Alternatives sluice through you, battering your thoughts with what ifs and whys. You are beset and spun into chaos. You do not know this place, you do not know this man who led you here, and you do not know which way to go. All you can know for sure, is that the marks on your back beckon you to the island in the center, so that is where you will go.

You take three steps back from the edge of the black lake, then sprinting forward you dive as far as you can into the mire. The pitch clings to you at once, to your skeleton, to your soul. You wade through with enormous effort, pushing one arm after the other up and over and down. You force yourself to continue, kicking dark and sticky strands into the air. You do not look back.

As you pedal and row you feel the pitch begin to drag something from you. Something more precious than all the accoutrements of your body. You feel portions of whatever it is attach to the pitch with each stroke, pulling away from its mooring with languid violence. You puff out the red smoke from your exertions over the placid black lake, but every swing of your arms and legs gets more and more difficult.

You are halfway across now, nearing the rocky shore of the large island at the center. The sky rests downward as if something heavy is put upon it, bending convex. You push as hard as you can, the red smoke spills across the pitch, but does not descend into the lake, instead blooming across the top in short flares of vivid fire. You push even harder, but it’s gotten so difficult, so immensely tiring. You see your hand stroke past your face and it looks…old. Wrinkled past recognition, the nails long and yellow, the veins bulging out against paper skin. The pitch is clinging to you. Gray hairs are struck from your beard, then white, left along the lake surface. You are so tired, it’s so difficult, but you’re almost there.

The sky bends back to its proper shape, a silent scythe issues from above across the world’s blood red ceiling. Raven’s black shape is everywhere and nowhere and the wind culls out in all directions. You can almost reach the shore of the center island, but you know you will die before you set foot there. Your beard is long now, so long it trails to your side and past your waist. The red smoke expels itself across your portion of the lake. You reach the island, slapping your wizened hands and your rail thin arms onto the rocky shelf…but you have nothing left in you. You don’t have the power to push yourself up and out of the pitch, for the one last effort that would save you. An eye has somehow turned in your direction. It traces the smoke and its many arcs out across the black surface, back to their source.

Just then, you feel two arms grab hold of you. Strong and vital things, they heave you up and out of the pitch, out of the drowning well, and then again up and against some rocks out of sight of the moon and the eye. A moment passes. Your vision swims. Then the eye moves on, and Raven takes flight again to another place.[20/100]

Your vision clears and fear sets in. You search yourself, you pat your arms and stroke your beard and feel your face, but everywhere you are returned. You are not aged, you are not weakened, you are yourself. It is only after this surge of existential panic passes that you actually set eyes on who pulled you from the lake. You are met with…bewilderment.

Talons-on-the-Tree stands in front of you, both hands on your shoulders, concern in his eyes. He searches your face for signs that you’ve regained your mettle and finds it when you meet his gaze and take his hands off your shoulders. You do not understand how this could be. The exiled chief is lean, and looks more haggard than when you last saw him. The soot tattoos have rubbed off for the most part, leaving only hints of a design at the corners of his cheekbones and one stripe down along his chin. His clothing is intact except for a fairly large tear on the left arm of his shirt, but no blood emanates from it. In fact…he is completely unwounded.

You open your mouth to say something, anything, but seeing this the Indian raises his finger to his lips, glancing up at the sky, then back down to you. He pats you lightly on the chest, then wipes the pitch off onto his trousers. Your view broadens to the area around you and you realize you are in a rocky covering much like the one on the other shore. Like the other shore there is a campfire in the center, partially obscured from the sky, though nowhere near as thoroughly as the one you’ve just come from. At the moment it is unlit, no flickers light its halls, though it seems prepared to ignite at a moment’s notice.

You exhale red smoke, noticeably more dilute than before, but you do not yet feel the oncoming suffocation. Talons-on-the-Tree sees this, and as he too exhales red smoke of a matching hue, he plucks a pouch off his belt and shows you its contents; a slew of Red Nettles. He motions you to follow, then exits the outcropping.

As the larger part of the island comes into view, you take another moment to gather your bearings. The tarred lake is behind you, only a two foot drop off of a small, sheer rock shelf. To the side is where you just came from, a half a dozen stone pillars bent at an angle like the traveling tents the Plains Indians use. One way they provide cover, but the other they are almost completely exposed. This is where the unlit campfire rests. Beyond that small cover winds a path of dirt heading up into the center of the island. This is the path Talons-on-the-Tree motions you down.

The two of you travel quickly, but quietly. The path leads up a ways, then plunges down into a crater, encircled by tall, rocky spires. You walk a ways, and see a raven fly down the path. Talons-on-the-Tree does not react to it, but hot pain lances through your back. A second plummets down the path and still he does not react, though the ravens do not seem to take notice of him either. The lashes throb in time with your steps. More appear, eliciting the same stoicism from your friend and the same liquid burn up and down your old scars, but eventually, the path opens.

The two of you arrive at the entrance to a large, circular nest. The bottom is made of black thorns, sticking up from the black branches on the floor and out from the black branches bent in a bowl up the sides. The rocky spires frame it, lifting up to the open heavens above. Inside the nest stand ten miniature nests made of black wood and thorns, twisted up into pedestals.

On top of each of them lies a naked Eye of enormous size, about as big around as your outstretched hand. They stare, unmoving but somehow still quite alive, gazing with indescribable sight in whatever particular direction they are faced. There are ten thorny pedestals…yet one is without its display. There is one Eye missing. Each of them swirls with mystic vapor, but they are not what your lashes require.

At the very center of the nest, at the center of the ten pedestals, is a single egg. It is a color that your short time in this place has convinced you never existed, it is white. Pure white. Blinding white. It is a perfect white, an oval of enormous size, requiring at least two men to carry. It hums with cold, frost leaks from rime-fissures cascading along the surface. It hurts your eyes, but that is not what your lashes require.

In the middle of the pedestals, standing above the egg of bright white, is a creature. A thing. It stands tall, twelve feet perhaps. It is humanoid in shape, two arms and two legs. It carries one eye, and a curved, guillotine beak. You look upon it, and your lashes sing their hymn, you know it must die. You look upon it, and you are afraid. This is what your lashes require.

You can feel the coughing shadow boiling off of it, rank in every orifice. This is on a plane far beyond your measly station. You have felt two others. Once in San Francisco, when the man named Jeremiah John devoured your mentor and friend Cornelius. Once a few days ago, when Raven himself stripped you from the world. This creature is not like they were, it is not unassailable, it is not impossible. Yet aside from those two, it is more than anything you’ve faced yet, and you are not sure if you’re prepared.

As you examine the creature you notice that it has yet to move or react in any way to you or the Indian beside you. Ravens flock around it in lazy patterns, but it remains completely still. More importantly, you notice it does not have two arms as you first assumed, one of them is missing. It’s hard to make out any familiar tract on its gruesome skin, but its right arm is completely gone and consumed in hideously burn scars. Not only that, but your eyes swear to you that the burn scars shimmer in strange, alien colors, such as might be made by the smolderings of some iridescent fire, if such a thing existed.

The Divinity stands ready, muffled here in an outer world, but present nonetheless. You have your arms, though you are currently caked in pitch, making the use of a gun a dubious prospect like to end in inferno. If you do decide to risk it, you remember a bullet fit for your rifle with unknown lettering engraved on the bottom. You have the poison clay of the old woman, made from Owl herself, and you have a strong knife. On top of it all, you feel the red smoke breath dwindling inside you, and you know you have only twolengths of time before you begin to suffocate once again. Talons-on-the-Tree is looking to you, and he motions forcefully to the egg.

You could try and take one of the eyes. You do not know what they are or what they do, but they are alluring, to put it lightly. One could fit in your satchel, and you have a feeling it is a gateway to a…different sort of power. Not to mention that you’ve made something of a personal enemy of Raven, and such an act would surely seem to upset him.The exertion would require one length of time.

You could try and take the egg. It would require the two of you to lift and carry, but it does not look too heavy really. Assuming everything goes well, the sentinel standing above it may not need to awaken…assuming everything goes well. This would require one length of time.


You could attack the unmoving creature. Your lashes call for its death, will you answer? This will require an unknown length of time.


You could turn back to the campfire. Talons-on-the-Tree possesses the Red Nettles, and from what you can figure he may be able to restore your breath by lighting the fire with them. This would resuscitate your dwindling lungs with the air of this strange place, but the campfire is partially exposed, and may catch Raven’s eye. Resets you to five lengths of time. May increase visibility, current visibility is [20/100].
>Take one of the Eyes

>Take the Egg

>Attack the Creature

>Return to the Campfire

>>5791461
First of all, I am glad talons is okay. Second, wow these are some important options.

So the eyes give the impression they could potentially grant access to Mukua.

The Egg is by no means worth it.

I am tied between options three and four for apparent reasons.

>Attack the creature.
We have limited time, but this is why we chose to come to the island. That engraved bullet should be our finisher and will likely raise visibility. Use the poison and aim for a killing or silencing blow. Yes, it will have a high difficulty but that should be lowered by it being unaware.

>>5791461
>>Take one of the Eyes

>>5791461
>>Take the Egg

>>5791461
I don't want spooky eye magic. Those things seem like bad news. I'm potentially interested in the egg, but...

>Return to the Campfire

Regroup and see if Talons is able to communicate a little more to us there.

>>5791461
>Return to the Campfire
It's risky, but we need more time to kill that creature. I say we do so because God wills it

>>5791795
I think we should as well, though I agree that 2 lengths of time doesn't seem like enough if it's tougher than our other foes so far. Have we consecrated our cross at all or are we screwed there?

>>5791810
>Have we consecrated our cross at all or are we screwed there?

The blood from your lashes serves as consecration. Be warned that the Divinity is muffled here, so it may sputter after only a single usage instead of three.

>>5791461

>Attack the Creature

Hit it with the magic bullet, follow up with poison attack

Tie between attack the creature and retreat to the campfire. 30 more minutes and then I’ll roll to break it.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

Let’s find out our fate

1. Attack the creature


2. Retreat to the campfire

>>5791461
>Take the Egg

>>5792217
But if a tie-breaker is needed...
>Attack the creature

File: Scripture.jpg (48 KB, 492x388)

48 KB JPG

Talons-on-the-Tree gestures again to the splendorous white egg lorded over by the tyrant creature. He begins to move forward, carefully placing weight on the ebon bramble of the nest. You open your mouth to call him back and remember the moratorium on speaking, this makes you curse at the inconvenience of it all. A curse which you manage to stop from leaving your lips only at the very last possible moment.

While you wrestle this menagerie of feeling, Talons-on-the-Tree has set out almost a third of the way to the center. He picks his way around and over the myriad thorny protrusions of the nest, careful to remain in absolute quiet. Your eyes light upon the creature, and the clarion of scars pitch to a grand fervor. All considerations other than purgation push their way out of your mind, and you find your fingers reaching inside your satchel and pulling out one, single, .52 caliber cartridge.

The ammunition is unremarkable except for an inscription of foreign lettering at the bottom, wrought circular in some mysterious fashion. You plant your rifle butt down with your other hand and begin to clean as much of the pitch off of it as possible. You scour the barrel, the muzzle, the trigger mechanism, and the breech. You aren’t able to remove all of it, and there are dollops of black filth coating your clothes and skin, but the weapon is functional at the least.

The cartridge in your hand vibrates a tenor, striking chimes throughout your body, answered by stained glass choirs dripping golden blood from the fresh wounds in your back. This is a precious thing, found in an obscure and dusty corner of a tent belonging to a dead man. Precious it is regardless. It is yours to spend, but not lightly, you know there are few like it in the world. A holy relic, it reads, אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה.

Talons-on-the-Tree hesitates, then tries a step past the ring of thorny pedestals and pervading Eyes. He is silent as sin, and though you expect some fresh disaster to detonate upon his footstep, he lands his limb without incident. He continues toward the egg. The creature above it does not move, though ravens dart to and fro about its form.

You hold the holy cartridge between two fingers, and dig out from your coat pocket a second instrument of power. A clay egg made from a feather of Owl herself pressed into a maiming powder, So the Old Poison Woman says. As you slip it from your coat the clay is no longer drab and earth-toned as before. It is the same varnished purity of the huge egg in the center of the nest, billowing its own frosty ardor in a small cloud around your hand.

Talons-on-the-Tree has trespassed finally to the center of the nest, a firm fifty feet away from you. At last, he looks back to see you bridled for war. He shakes his head slightly, but you are loosed, and will not be denied. God Wills It.
You still carry enough breath for Two lengths of time. All options below cost One length of time.

You could Fire the holy bullet. This does not require a roll if a majority vote to expend it. This can be done at your current range, it will drastically increase your Visibility.


You could Throw the white-clay poison. You will need to move closer onto the nest to do this. The DC will be 50. This will increase your Visibility.


You could Fire a regular shot. This can be done at your current range. The DC will be 25 to hit the creature. WARNING, you are currently soaked in pitch. Any attempt to use normal ammunition for either firearm has a 1 in 4 chance of catching yourself on fire.


You could Attempt to engage it with your knife. You will need to move onto the nest to do this. The DC will be 50. This will not increase your Visibility.


>Fire the Holy Bullet

>Throw the White-Clay Poison

>Fire a Regular Shot

>Attempt to Engage it in Melee

>>5792498
We only have two rounds? Interesting. Can we try to increase our length of time before attacking somehow or immediately try to increase our length after or during the fight?

Also, You could Attempt to engage it with your knife. You will need to move onto the nest to do this. The DC will be 50. This will not increase your Visibility.
Perhaps we could gain a bonus since the creature is unaware or use the poison clay on our blade.

>>5792498
We also have no way of knowing what happens when we reach zero lengths of time. Perhaps the vision quest ends or perhaps we start to have to make checks to stay around/not suffer damage.

>>5792498
>>Fire a Regular Shot

>>5792498
>Throw the White-Clay Poison
I consider the increase in visibility an acceptable tradeoff for the increase in lethality

>>5792498

>Fire the Holy Bullet

We should launch our nuke now, we’re fighting under serious time constraints. We don’t have the time to muck around with typical arms.

>>5792498
>>Attempt to Engage it in Melee

>>5792498
>Throw the White-Clay Poison
Poison for round one, bullet for round two.

>>5792540
>We only have two rounds?
This is why we needed to go back to the campfire!

So far it seems that there is a tie between using the poison and engaging in melee. I’ll give it 30 to resolve then roll.

>>5792496
>"I will be what I will be."

>>5792498
>Throw the White-Clay Poison

The poison it is…

Fuck I forgot.

Roll 3 1d100s please. The DC is 50 to avoid waking the creature.

Lest we have forgotten with the dearth of rolls in this game,

0 Passes: Failure
1 Pass: Mitigated Success (you succeed, but with negative consequences, or something else goes wrong)
2 Passes: Success
3 Passes: Enhanced Success (you succeed, with additional bonuses or positive consequences)

Rolled 72 (1d100)

>>5793556
Here goes.

Rolled 45 (1d100)

>>5793556

Rolled 10 (1d100)

>>5793556
Too bad we did not get any bonuses otherwise that second roll would have been a pass. I really hope this roll is not low.

Welp, Mitigated beats a Failure at least.

Don't forget to archive this thread OP, if you're still here.

>>5796615
Good idea. It is on Page 10 now.

I'll archive this, but you know I think I'm gonna call it here. I've been banging my head into a wall creatively the past few days, nothing seems appropriate or competent enough to post and my brain is just all locked up. It's unfair to become inconsistent just because I can't write.

For a first quest this has been an excellent experience for me, educationally in terms of actually putting words on the page and learning the rudiments of building a story/writing prose, and socially. You guys have been very welcoming, understanding, and encouraging, and I want to thank you for that.

I'm sorry it didn't work out, but thank you very much for participating. Hopefully I'll see some of you in another quest down the line.

>>5796691
Aw. And I just caught up. For what it's worth, I think you're doing great, and if you change your mind and choose to continue, I'll be there.

>>5796691

Eh, never say never, QM. If you’re anything like me, you might chip away at the “what next?” problem until you have a solution. Hard to leave a goody story unfinished, you know?

This has been a fantastic effort and you have a true talent for writing. You have an unbelievable ability to write in period-appropriate language!

>>5796691
I'm sad you're leaving this, but having done the same in the past myself I completely understand the feeling.

Your writing is fantastic and I'll definitely participate in whatever quest you run next, should you do so.

>>5796694
>>5796708
>>5796712

Thanks boys, those are some very kind words. I hope to see you around.

>>5796691
Aw, RIP. Thanks for the heads-up (a whole lot more than a lot of QMs ever give), and know that you're welcome back with this quest or another anytime.

By the way, if you ever want to talk shop between this quest and the next, you have some fans in the QTG discord (link in the QTG).