Melock's yarn....
13 We're off to see the Shaman, the wonderful Shaman of…
The caves are dark and our torches do not stay lit, it is then that I discovered another gift from Raven, I could see in the dark. What I saw made me briefly wish I couldn't as I saw some dark shape drag one of the morokanth in to the walls. As we went deeper still Amara said it must be the earth guardians of the temple that I had seen. Just as we were about to turn and leave Gronya appears and leads us to the Earth Witch, Noita. She has been expecting us and knows of our visions and our desire to kill the Red Thorn shaman. We are question about our motives and told about Gadesha who guards the abandoned Earth Temple, which is home to the tomb of her dead husband Emesh-Ga. We must have impressed her as she offered to help us, if we free Gadesha and awaken the Earth Temple, but her aid comes at a cost, payable when we have done as we promised. An earth ritual follows where we all gain a little bit of the power of the earth.
Just as we are congratulating are ourselves, Whispers from the Sky asks where Kaonu is. We decide we should head back to the surface, as we emerge in to the light all we see is an empty camp, all our mounts gone.
Betrayal, as some of us look for signs of what happened, Amara finds Yellow Wing, Kaonu's mount, dead. Salen talks to Fireborn's hawk and we find out that Krakka took the rhinos and two thumbs took the bison and Kaonu. Gronya wasn't happy with Krakka so we know she is blameless. We decide to split up, Salen heads off after the morokanth and the rest of us hunt for Krakka.
Hoskar and Long Grass lead us along the path left by our stolen mounts. After a long day of tracking we catch up with them, Krakka has met up with some of his clan, all Storm Bulls, all getting ready for his holy day in the morrow. It's decided that as the Bulls get very drunk on their holy days, we'll strike then.
We watch them from cover until most of them leave, the only ones guarding the camp are so drunk they can barely stand and a cat, Krakka's allied spirit. I sneak up on the cat and manage to bag it before it knows I'm there. It yowls and alerts the guards, I run away and dump the cat behind some rocks. In the confusion the others grab their rhinos and a few others, while stampeding the others to cover our escape. We manage to steal 5 of their rhinos and there is no sign of them following us.
We ride for the whole of the next day listening to Fireborn complaining about how uncomfortable riding a rhino is. As dusk darkens the sky, we spy a stand of trees with the glow of a fire visible, we approach carefully and are first greeted by the grunt of Fireborn's bison Cloud Killer, then Salen steps in to view with sadness in his eyes. Once camp is made, Salen tells us how he caught up with the morokanth at the ravine we used and with the help of the mostail drink thing and the spirits of the place he rescued our mounts and then attacked the morokanth and killed half of them, but 2 thumbs allied spirit, which was in a gern, had a knife to Kaonu's throat and instead of parleying, killed him, while 2 thumbs used magic to run away. The gern died and so did the other morokanth. More oaths of vengeance were sworn that night.
The night is quiet and the day pass quickly as we approach the hiding place of the Red Thorn shaman, the Giant Finger Holes, but we arrive at dusk, not the best time to attack. A quick scout around revels lots of ghosts and burning Tamarisk trees and 1 weird pygmy. After a quick discussion we decide to climb down in to the biggest hole, hoping it is the least guarded, though there is a good reason for that, as it's at least 50 meters deep. All of us made it down safely and found ourselves in the ruined entrance to the Earth Temple. The shaman might not know we were there, but we could feel in our bones that Gadesha did, just as the earth rumbled. Whispers and Greeshar manage to open a magical door and we race through it to avoid the ghosts that had spotted us.
We found ourselves in a flooded and defiled part of the Earth Temple. A set of bronze doors have been broken open and another exit carries a scent of carrion. The bronze doors have images of an armoured man engraved on them and solid darkness fills the corridor behind them, from the darkness come the rage filled voice of Gadesha calling for her dead husband, Emesh-Ga.
15 Tip toe, through the forest
Using some of the magic given to us by the Earth Witch, I slipped through the bronze doors to see what was hidden. I followed the passage way and soon came to a room with an earthen pillar standing near it's entrance and the pillar wept. This was the first time I saw Gadesha, thankfully the magic meant she did not see me, else I would not be here to tell this tale. As I looked closer I realise that the pillar looked like a voluptuous woman with a square block for a head. I quickly return to the others before that magic faded.
"As for what happened to the others while I wasn't there, I only know what they told me."
13 We're off to see the Shaman, the wonderful Shaman of…
Moments after I disappeared, the others were attacked by pygmy ghouls, it was a close thing but they killed all bar two, who ran away, though for some reason Long Grass was unconscious and took his time coming round. I arrived back just as they were patching themselves up. We could smell fresh burning and started to worry that the shaman was about to do something nasty. It was decided that I would go and talk to Gadesha in the hope she could help us against the shaman, while the others would hunt him down.
16 Broken hearted
To give myself the air of authority I use the gift of illusion from the Earth Witch to make myself look like Tada. Doing what a Raven does best, I played the part of Tada flawlessly and not only convinced Gadesha to let the others enter safely, but I also spoke to Emesh-Ga and told him we were there to reawaken him. Once safe passage was assured I left to help the others.
13 We're off to see the Shaman, the wonderful Shaman of…
The others charged off through the other exit in to a massive cavern, where they are attack by the remaining ghouls and a couple of skeletons, but my friends make short work of them. The shadowy figure of the shaman watched the fight and faded away when his creatures lost. Hoskar, Whispers and Long Grass stay in the cavern while the others chase down the enemy, splitting up and running through tunnels hoping to corner him. Just as they find him, I ran in to Whispers, Hoskar and Long Grass, but this time it is the true Long Grass. He sends Hoskar and myself after the others while Whispers summons an ancestral rhino spirit. We all attack him at once and it's Greeshar who gets the killing blow in, using the power of death he got from the Earth Witch. Even with his body killed we can still hear the laughter of the shaman, but that ended abruptly when the rhino spirit came charging down on him. We waste no time burning his body to stop him coming back.
As we search for loot, Salen finds two Sable women who have been poisoned with ghoul venom. They need help and fast, but first we go to free Gadesha.
Nervously I lead the way to her, we enter the room I first met her, but she has disappeared. Emesh-Ga's voice is heard in our heads as he greets us, shortly afterwards Gadesha appears, flowing through the ground. We introduce ourselves and manage to open the tomb and make our way down to Emesh-Ga's final resting place. There are remains of the last people who entered, they have looted some of his treasures, but his helm and shield are still there. We swear an oath to Emesh-Ga and his spirit merges with his helm.
"The same one that Kobal carries, and his shield is carried by Hoskar"
Surprisingly the night is uneventful, maybe we scared everything away or perhaps it was the place it's self. In the morning we explored some more. Then those on lookout spied dust being kicked up as people approached from two directions and Kobal called out that the Earth Witch is in the Earth Temple.
The first group to approach us from the wastes are the Storm bulls who were with Krakka when we got our mounts back. Harsh words are exchanged as they wanted their mounts back, but their Storm Khan, Well 'ard 'arry issues a challenge to Amara, if she wins in a head butting contest with Stubby, a female Storm bull, we get to keep what we raided. The contest is about to begin when the other riders trot out of the scrub. It's Micklebran the Howler and our clans own Storm Bulls. The challenge stands and Amara gets the first butt, though it does her little good and she is felled by Stubby's first butt. So we loose, but after the Storm Khan has talked to Micklebran and Long Grass, he decides to only take one rhino from us as Stubby's prize. Making use of the Storm bulls skill in sensing chaos we checked the area for problems and then the Bulls depart, taking some of the treasure we found.
Emesh-Ga calls us to the Earth Temple to meet the Earth Witch. She greets us warmly and we answer her questions as she answers ours. She tells us if we want to heal the Sable women we need to head west to Grandmother Spider's sacred place and either kill her children for their venom or summon her and ask for help. We pledge ourselves to her for two weeks every Earth season as payment for past and future aid.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:25, Mon 27 Aug 2018.