Re: Rapatua
The people of Rapatua are an "easy crowd" for musicians- they aren't critics, and they like listening to music from other places. It's a rare opportunity for them, as they don't get many visitors aside from their fellow Honoans.
They applaud their visitors wildly, and answer with their own music, and dance, because for them the two arts are linked.
And then, at last, Mary asks about... that.
Chief Kaleke looks at "Little Kahuna" Pemberil. The Halfling shrugs and says "I may have given them a few tidbits, they were very curious."
Then the chief sighs, and takes his place in the middle of the group.
"It is not a pleasant thing to speak of," he says. "There is no happy ending to this tale, yet. It begins a few years ago. Before the arrival of Little Kahuna, after the departure of the Elf Druid Rathal from Lighttree. We had some good seasons with the Chaos farm, we had hoped to tame ours the way the people of Montebon tamed theirs. It brought us wealth in trade, and good times. Rathal said it was dangerous, that we might bring plants that upset the balance here, plants that would spread across the island as invaders. We promised him we would be alert for such things. If the people of Montebon could manage, so would we.
"And then, something brought sickness to our crops. All the signs of magical attack, you can see it today, the circles of death in the forest. I searched with parties of warriors for the evil magician doing this with our best warriors but we were not able to find them.
"Every time a crop came in, it happened... yet, it was not what Rathal had warned. It was not of the chaos farm, it was something else, coming from the deep forest, past the bamboo thickets, to attack it. Several times we saw the shadows moving through the forest.
"It must have feared us because it used its evil conjurings to make plant-things to attack us, made out of our own crops. These are made with magic but they are not magic, they are mortal. We have fought them, and ordinary weapons can kill them. But several times we have been close to the plant killing magic being. It appears as a mass of gray, shapeless as a jellyfish on the beach, but more deadly. If it touches you, you will weaken and tire. It takes the life from you. Not as fast as it does from plants, but some. We have hit it with arrows and spears and a harpoon. Our weapons do not harm it. My wife has been trying to make some magic that might help, but she is a water shaper, and water magic is not strong for fighting creatures on land.
"It is a shapeless thing, but it does have substance. When it moves, it bends and pushes the plants like a man passing through the forest, though it leaves no tracks. Weapons can hit it, they just do not hurt it. One day, the gods will let us have the magic we need to slay the thing, and we will hunt it down and kill it. Until then, it kills our crops, and our village struggles even though it could be prosperous. But I can tell you, it is not what the Elf Druid warned us of, it is not created by the Chaos Farm. This we know!"