Lost Trails Chapter 14: Hunting the River-Monster

[ewancummins]

FISHY BUSINESS

The world looks strange through fish eyes and dim waters: many things seeming much larger now than before; reeds looming overhead like trees rising from the flood, the enormous hull of the longboat, the gigantic freckled face of Rowan peering over the side at Benn with her mouth open in an O, and boulder-sized pebbles strewn along the silty river-floor.

Swimming swiftly, Benn reaches the other vessel. The strange boat rides low in the water; he cannot peek over the side into it but he can swim under and around with ease.
Benn finds a crack in the hull under the waterline but it's too small for him to wriggle inside. Swimming alongside it and looking through with one eye, he sees a murky, undefined space swirling with dead leaves and dark water. The craft must be partly flooded.
A submerged dead tree, toppled on its side, has fouled a frayed rope hanging from the boat's bow into the water, and this snag keeps the vessel from drifting away with the slow flow of the Lis' main stream.
A long scratch mars the port side of the boat.

Moving out in a wider circle, several feet (but it looks longer to him) from the boat, Benn spots pale pillars rising beyond a cluster of thick reed stalks. Closer, and he sees the columns for what they are: a dead man's fingers. The corpse to which the fingers and hand belong sprawls gigantically in Benn's curved field of vision. Dead-blue eyes stare upward, and beyond a waxen brow blond locks sway in the turgid current, but below the cheekbones and upper lip only a horrid ruin remains. Not rotten so much as burned and melted, puckered pink and blistered black with yellow-teeth shards lining a jagged chasm that was once a human mouth.
From the neck down, even less is left... Links of tarnished, pitted mail glint among the ghastly remains.

[alhoon]

As Bennedict dives under the water and changes to a fish, Raen nods his head, impressed. "I see I am not the only one that has access to shape-changing magic." Then he turns to his allies.
"I would like you to know that I could also change my form, or the form of one of you, but I was considering changing to something like the big guys we encountered earlier - assuming they can speak. "

[ewancummins]

As Bennedict dives under the water and changes to a fish, Raen nods his head, impressed. "I see I am not the only one that has access to shape-changing magic." Then he turns to his allies.
"I would like you to know that I could also change my form, or the form of one of you, but I was considering changing to something like the big guys we encountered earlier - assuming they can speak. "

Rowan scratches her neck and says,
"Longarms? I've never heard one speak, but I'd only seen them at a distance before that attack...Anyhow, all the old-timers in my village swear they can talk.It's in the stories about them, too."

[Adam]

Bennedict flits back towards the others, releasing the spell as he pulls himself over the side.

"Looks like a wrecked boat," he says, "I don't know whether anything is in it or not, but nothing interested in fish, at least. Also, there was a dead man further ahead. He seamed burned or seared with chemicals."

[alhoon]

"So, acid it is... " Raen said.

[ewancummins]

Cautious scouting reveals no threat from the derelict boat nor any monsters hiding in the shallows or rushes.
The party takes the longboat through the marshy channels on to the east, into the foggy zone, where Benn had suggested the lair may lie.
Tonio, Theophilus, and Rowan work the oars, the Zhentish laborer setting a slow, steady pace that the river-girl and the wiry ex-scrivener’s apprentice can match without difficulty.
The longboat glides deeper into the thickening mists.

Gray-white vapors hide the sun and obscure all details more than a few paces distant from the longboat. The adventurers could easily be rowing in circles. Counting oar strokes gives a rough idea of time; over an hour before the party loses sense of how long it has been moving through the fogbound marshes.

A lone skeletal tree-shape appears in the mists ahead.

Soon after passing the first tree, blighted willows and dead oaks slide into sight through the shifting murk, bare limbs and peeling trunks rising over hummocks like wooden grave makers planted atop burial mounds.

A soft rush of air blows down from above, accompanied by a clap as of sailcloth slapping in a stiff breeze. For a moment, the fog rolls down and away from the longboat. Sunlight glares through the shredded vapors above and quick eyes catch a big shadow that soon vanishes like a racing cloud.

In the thinned-out fog, the group can see what hangs impaled in the branches of a swamp oak jutting out of the water just ahead and on the right: a skeleton in acid-pitted armor. Empty eye sockets stare at the adventurers, seeming to follow their movement.

The fog rolls back in and covers the world again. A gray-white void moves around the little island of visible reality in which the explorers travel.

The air grows warmer and the smell of stagnant water and decaying vegetation grows stronger.

Sweat drips from Tonio's neck and arms as he works the oars.

Alwina stares blankly out.

Theophilus suddenly whips his head back and forth, eyes-wide, and misses a stroke. But there's nothing out there, not that he can see.
He settles back in to pulling. Exhaustion shows on the young man's drawn face.

Rowan, resting now in the prow, guides the oarsmen with whispers. A little right, a little left, slower, now faster rowing around a submerged sandbar, through an aisle of water lined with stunted trees hung with rotten moss, across wide shallows where the boat bottom intermittently scrapes against unseen surfaces.

A pale shape stalks the mists ahead, something bigger than a man, horizontal body moving on four long legs. Then it's gone.

[Adam]

Bennedict numbly reaches into a pocket, fetching out long burnt cinders of charcoal, and begins etching warding runes at the 4 cardinal points of their boat. With one final invocation, magic flares to life briefly, casting everything in brief light.

[kintire]

Kat sits in the boat, silently looking around. she seems relaxed, but she is poised for action at any moment, hand never far from her hilt.

[SkiBird]

Through the vastness of the gray and silent fog, just off the prow of the longboat, a figure in the distance! Little more than a formless shape at first, a disconcerting bulge that stood out against the forlorn outlines of rotten logs and stunted trees that dominated this sunken place. The unmistakable rasping sound of steel being drawn from a scabbard carried through the dense fog. The squelch of the grasping mud betrayed the bulk of the thing as it shifted its weight. Too large to be a man.

As the distance closed, however, the billowy mists thinned and revealed their secrets. A single rider, mounted atop a white charger up to its forelegs in the vile muck of the swamp. The horse's reflection in the murky water became a misshapen, rippled parody as it shifted its forelegs. Nostrils flared as the horse gave a whinnying exhalation. As it chuffed, a long snow-white mane shook in the damp, fetid air. A forelock of silver-white hair fell over its fiery golden eyes and as it shook its mane, a long billy-goat of a beard that matched the rest of the mane shook as well. A single spiraling, ivory horn extended from the center of the finely crafted headpiece of its leather barding, but rather than ornamentation ... the horn had quite obviously grown from the mount itself.

This was no horse. It was a unicorn. Fabled protector of the woodlands. Fierce. Noble. As famed for its legendary horn as it was for shunning the world of man.

Atop this magical beast, a lone rider. At first glance, had all the appearances of a knight. Gleaming breastplate, the unmistakeable glint of mithril managing to shine in the wan, diffuse light. A sturdy war-lance rose high above, stowed in the rider's saddle. This was no showy implement of the parade field, rather, this was a steel-tipped instrument of death. A triangular pennant hung from it, displaying a standard; a white rose against a field of light green. A similarly decorated shield, and an ornate longsword — filigreed along its length, from razor-pointed tip to lustrous, golden hilt — completed the look.

A moment's examination, however, revealed that this rider was unlike most knights one might typically encounter in the Vast. Firstly, the rider was a common-looking young woman barely past her twentieth nameday, she did not have the look of peerage about her. She lacked the haughty expression one might find among the gentry. But what she lacked in refinement, she more than made up in confidence. In determination. Her demeanor was straightforward, indicating a self-assured manner that brooked no nonsense. Her hair was done up in a reddish-blonde, broad plaited braid that would keep it free of her face as she rode ... or fought. Her eyes were the pale green of the underside of a fern, and there was no softness within them. Her piercing gaze carried hard edges and unspoken accusations.

"Ho, the boat!" The woman called. "Who is it that skulks here along the marsh?"

[ewancummins]

Tonio and Theophilus let their oars dip low, no longer rowing but only staring at the maiden-knight and the unicorn.

Rowan falls very still in the prow and doesn't make a peep.

Alwina turns to look, raises one dainty hand to her lips, and remains that way as if caught at the edge of an exclamation that never arrives.

[Adam]

Bennedict's eyes widen and he raises a finger to his lips, making a hushing motion. "We believe there is a dangerous creature in the area, young lady," he whispers, "You had best be cautious, lest you draw its attention!"

[ewancummins]

The unicorn whispers in musical tones and in a foreign language quite unlike the Common Tongue (Sylvan):

VIEW CONTENT:

''One alone among them bears the mark of Evil. The others seem clean...

[SkiBird]

"Your belief is well founded." The knightly woman replied, sheathing her sword in a smooth, practiced motion. "I too, hunt this river-monster."

"I am Meela," The young Chondathan woman intoned, accompanied with a nod of her head by way of greeting. "Meela SummerStone, Knight of Summer and protector of the Flooded Forest."

"My friend here," She continued, patting the unicorn's neck affectionately. "Is Karathos."

After her mount spoke, the woman leaned forward in her saddle and spoke to him in low tones. The language was an old one. It had a lyrical quality, not unlike true tongue of the Tel'Quessir, but it sounded far more wild and much less civilized than the elven folk were known to be. This was the tongue spoken by the fey.

(Sylvan)

VIEW CONTENT:

"Keep your ears pricked, old friend. I would know which of these vagabonds to keep an eye on."

[ewancummins]

The unicorn wickers, then replies in the same musical language in a small, soft voice that does not carry far.

VIEW CONTENT:

"The one with the curled whiskers on his lip. You mark him now? He sits near the skinny boy at the oars and the girl-woman with golden hair. "

[ewancummins]

The longboat drifts even closer to the unicorn and armored maiden.


Meela gets a better look at the occupants.

Some look unarmed or else must have weapons concealed by the boat, their cloaks, or the fog:

In the bow, watching silently with a raised lantern, a slender young woman dressed in boy's clothes with her chestnut hair pulled back in a ponytail, some loose locks plastered to her forehead with condensation or sweat.

Two plainly-dressed young oarsmen gawk at her. One, scarcely more than a boy, looks underfed and the other, somewhat older fellow bulks big with muscle.

A petite blonde, young and slim, sits near the younger oarsmen and another traveler. Her pale blue cloak seems to bleed into the fog at the edges.


In the aft rides a tall man in a dark cloak and a great sword laid across his knees, his right hand clapped to the hilt. The fog obscures further details of him.

The vapors shift, and she may be able to make out the man who answered her hail, and the others seated in the crowded longboat....