The viese chatted among themselves before assembling into scouting groups, while Picille lifted off.

After seeing the falling wing, Picille spotted something scampering up the tree.  It was some manner of orange-stripped brown lizard with bulbous pads at the ends of its paws.  Someone had lashed an odd arrangement of sticks and cloth to its back.  At least one stick had a finely manufactured blade at the end.  The creature was roughly a meter long, not counting the tail.

As Picille watched it climb onto a branch, one paw came off the tree, and she saw the front limbs had opposable thumbs.  The horizontal pupils of its bulbous eyes focused on Picille as it pulled a staff topped with a hoop and canvas sack from its back.

Now there's an odd-lookin' creature! The reptilian creatures of Arthos were generally pretty docile, as most terrestrial creatures on that moon were. None, far as Picille knew, were sentient. She drew a little bit closer to better inspect those sticky-looking pads. The creature obliged, perhaps a little too readily -- and then she saw a net coming for her. "Eep!" she squeaked. With a swiftness of recital that comes only from many long years of practice Picille bends the laws of nature once more, creating a tunnel of compressed space that lets her cross a dozen meters' distance with but a few wingflaps -- causing a spectacular distortion of her perceptions (and from the outside, others' perceptions of her) as she travels.

Assuming she is successful, she turns back to the tool-using critter and yells loud as she can to cross the distance with her tiny voice. "Hey! Can you understand me?" If the creature had any capacity for language at all, it would. Some species used magic to facilitate communication but the viese spoke with the voice of their goddess, their linguistic abilities just one step removed from divinity itself. It was, sadly, the only latent divine ability her people had.

11:56, Today: Picille rolled 1 using 4 Fudge dice.  Teleport! With +3 Esoteric Lore that is a 4.

The creature stared a moment after Picille evaded its net.  As it stood straight, its long tongue darted out a short distance, landing over the creature's own eye.  It drew its tongue back in, then repeated the procedure for the other eye.

It drew back at Picille's words.  "You talk!" it gasped in a high-pitched voice.  "Yes! I understand.  Never see talking bug before.  Star People might give big reward.  But talking might mean bug is person.  People are not to be taken like beasts.  Did Lords of Night make bug people?  Don't run Bug-person; I want to talk closer."  With that, the creature stowed it' net, and jumped off the branch.

It fell for only a short distance before it pulled a cord in it's harness, and the wooden sticks and canvas on its back spread out into a glider that carried the creature across the gap to the tree nearest Picille.  It reached out to hit the tree fingers and toes first, clinging to the bark as it began collapsing its glider back into a seeming bundle of sticks and canvas.

"Yes! I talk!" Picille beams with earnest happiness. She maintains what seems like a safe distance just in case the species has a propensity for deception, but for the most part she believes the arboreal lizard-person is genuine. So she stays where she is and spectates.

There's something beautiful about so-called primitive technology. There are limits to it the likes of which the viese frequently come up against themselves, but there's something wonderful about taking basic natural materials and turning them into something elegant and comprehensible that can be replicated more or less on any inhabitable world. The bioglass plant and the symbiotic hodgepodge of tree species that make up the Tree Ship might be cultivated and selectively bred and even genetically engineered to an almost excessive degree, but the way it is actually used has been known to give other species a seizure trying to figure out how such "primitive" technology could not only fly but do so better than any of their cold steel or unfeeling silicone computer-brains.

Picille lands on a branch near the lizard-person and plops herself down into a sitting posotion atop a mat of soft-looking tree moss. "My people only just arrived in this system; we are from very, very far away. Our goddess Anna created us. We are called the viese; what are your people called?"

Picille inserts additional questions where appropriate.

"Star people? We saw some other vessels descending just before we did. What can you tell me about them?"

"The Lords of Night? I am unfamiliar with them; are they gods? Does this world have gods?"

The creature watched Picille.  It never blinked, but it licked its eyes again.

As Picille spoke, the creature softly repeated the viese word for star system, a sign that the word had no translation to it.  "Do you mean across the ocean far?  Or Star People far?  My tribe is the Huitzilin.  I am one of the Forest-People.  There are also Sky-People in our tribe.  Mountain-People do not live here; the dampness of the forest rots their scales.

"Our gods are The Lords of Night.  They punished the First People by cutting them all in two, and half became a Sky Person, and half a Forest Person or a Mountain Person.  The Lords of Night have not appeared to us in many generations, and we pray they will not; most of them are hateful and cruel.  They never forgave us for the First People stealing life from them to become alive."  She grasped a necklace, and held up an ornate carving of a hissing snake with great feathered wings, and feathers covering its body.  "Ixcaxahual, the Feathered Serpent, he is the Lord of Night who cares for the people.  We pray to the others to placate them, but to Ixcaxahual, we pray for protection.

"There are rumors of a shaman to the south who discovered a new god.  They also say the god grants great power, but the priest makes those who would follow eat his tail.  And some of the Star People brought a god with them; it lives in a great pool in the City of Metal.  It is like a upturned bowl with long dangly tails hanging down from it, and its body is clear, and you can see its organs.  We thought it was a pet, but then a warrior tried to kill it, to prove we were not helpless before them.  But it... it broke his mind."

The lizard took a deep breath.  "The Star People came a few years ago.  They built the City of Metal in just a few days.  And they conquered the Ixtli Empire in a single afternoon, the Ixtli ruled us, and took our people to feed the Sun.  Now the Star People rule us.  Some call them the Arm Prickers.  I have seen the Head Bashers and a nice tusked man who carried sorrow about him like a cloud.  I have heard that beyond the mountains, different Star People came, but I know nothing about them."

Once she realizes how much information is being offered Picille quickly taps one of the dataprisms on her sash. It glows once and begins an audiovisual holo-recording that she can share and examine with the other viese later.

Picille cocks her head quizzically at the Forest Person's lack of understanding. Arthos was a land of mirrors and lenses and optics and prisms, which when met by instinctual viese curiosity and fascination with the stars meant that her people had charted the stars incredibly early in their history. She supposed that not every species might have done so, but given the presence of the so-called Star People and the clear signs of artificial insemination of this system in particular Picille would have expected the concept to have meaning.

Do you mean across the ocean far?  Or Star People far? "Even farther than the Star People, probably!" Picille chimes happily, feeling pretty proud of her people. "We come from a star so far that it cannot even be seen from here!"

The Lords of Night do not sound like any gods that Picille has ever heard of. It is more likely that they are, or were, the people who had initially constructed or seeded this star system. Picille isn't particularly interested in disabusing the Forest- or any other -People of this notion however. This Ixcaxahual sounds interesting though! "Ixcaxahual sounds like a great god. Have you ever met him in person?" she inquires.

Shaman to the south? Discovered a new god? Picille has never heard of a people discovering their own god, but she supposes that stranger things have happened. She maintains a healthy skepticism however, remembering how quick primitive peoples can be to label anything they don't understand as divine. Eating of tails sounds weird. Psychic jellyfish sounds very weird! "Broke his mind? That sounds horrible!"

"It sounds like a lot is going on!" Picille remarks. "Where is this city of metal? Can you take me there? Also; we are looking for an ancient stone city, is there anything you can tell me about such a thing?"
This message was last edited by the player at 17:54, Mon 29 Nov 2021.

The creature's mouth hung open a moment.  Then it shook it's head.  "Stars are so far above the sky no Sky Person can fly up to them.  You from higher than the sky, you are Star Person."  It frowned.  "Are you here to conquer us?" it asked in a soft, low voice.

It shook it's head.  "Ixcaxahual has not traveled the world openly in many generations.  Not since before the grand father of my grand father's grandfather hatched, long before any of us knew of Star People."

It nodded.  "It is; I've heard that sometime, he just stops and either stares at nothing, or he starts screaming and quivering with such fear that his tail falls off!"

It nodded.  "The metal city is by the ocean.  Yes!  I know stone cities.  The biggest and oldest is Teyaquetzal, it was the heart of the Ixtli Empire, now it is ruled by the Star People."

"Haha, I suppose you can think of us that way if you must!" Picille says in good humor. "In time however I think you will find we are an entirely different breed. We are not here to conquer; by divine mandate of our god Anathema, goddess of reflections we travel and settle worlds across all of creation in defense against and pursuit of an ancient enemy from above even the stars that seeks to end their light forever." She puffs her chest out with pride, placing a delicate scaled hand over her sternum. "We're completely autonomous, so we don't need to conquer anyone. We only want to help!"

Picille hums thoughtfully in response to Ixcaxahual and the madman. There's not a lot more to decipher from words alone; she would have to see these entities in person, and there's more important concerns right now.

Teyaquetzal is definitely her mission objective. "That sounds like the one! Is it far from here?"

"Don't think it matters," the creature said.  "Above the sky is stars; comes from stars is Star-Person.  Don't know about anything above the stars."  It leaned away from Picille.  "Does Anathema demand sacrifices?"

The creature shook its head.  "Not far," it said, "five days by road.  One day for a fast Sky-Person."

The creature suddenly looked around.  "Jungle is quiet." it said.  It looked at Picille.  "When jungle is quiet, hide."  It scampered along the branch, ducking into the tree's leaves.

"Sacrifices?! No, never!" Picille is genuinely aghast. She's heard some gods occasionally slaughter their worshippers for short-term power boosts, but never Anathema! ... Then again, she frequently ends up tearing holes in local physics with her mad experiments and getting a bunch of people killed, so maybe that serves the same cosmic purpose? Picille doubts it, though.

Would sacrifices on this planet even reach Anna? Picille knows that Anna's divine powers fade when distant from Arthos' surface and that it is incredibly tiring and painful for her to leave the moon for even short durations. It's kind of sad to think that viese might get caught up in other worlds' life cycles instead of returning to the bosom of their creator.

Picille frowns, looking around. Silly viese girl; you've been in a spaceship too long and forgot the laws of the jungle. Silly, stupid girl. She darts away to hide among the moss, wrapping her cloak around herself to hide her natural bio-luminescence.

15:21, Today: Picille rolled 2 using 4 Fudge dice.  Stealth! With a +4 mod, that's a total of 6. SUPER SNEAK~

As Picille hid in the moss, she soon caught sight of why the jungle had gone quiet.  Slinking along a branch was a large feline with a lithe build.  It had six legs, and a coat of reddish fur with black spots.  It was easily ten times the size of the lizard Picille had been speaking with.

The creature sniffed the air, then its two long, whip-like whiskers lashed ahead and left a glimmering rift in the air.  Another glimmering rift appeared on a branch closer to Picille.  It stepped through, and sniffed again before hopping to the branch the Tree-Person had been speaking from a moment before.

Viese were, generally speaking, pretty good at hiding. As a botanist who frequently strayed far from safe settlements to explore the wilderness, Picille was better than most at hiding. As an ambassador viese, she had received formal training in hiding. In short, Picille considered herself pretty damn good at it.

Viese also tended to smell a lot like plants, on account of growing plants in their own flesh as a symbiotic relationship. A lot like plants, but perhaps not entirely like plants -- and almost certainly not like any plants native to this planet. So surely nothing should have any interest in hunting her own.

So went the logic. Picille really hoped she was right, but planned for the worst, muttering the preparations for a repulsor spell under her breath. Just in case.

04:14, Today: Picille rolled 4 using 4 Fudge dice.  Repulsor (just in case).
Oh jeeze, maximum roll result. With Esoteric Lore, that's +7.

The feline creature sniffed at the leaves the lizard had scurried into, and even batted at them with one paw.  It suddenly hopped back coughing and shaking its head.

The predator began looking at other branches, then another creature crashed through a nearby branch.  It was a feathered avian, roughly the size the lizard Picille had been speaking to.  It had a heavy beak and bight green and red plumage.  It wore a satchel on its front, and had a barbed arrow piercing its body near one shoulder.  It struggled to maintain its balance on a branch, coughing as it steadied itself.

The feline predator looked to the new creature, and bared its sharp teeth.

Some kind of repellent? Picille will have to ask the Forest Person about that.

Bird! Injured bird! Coughing bird? Very abrasively colored bird! Bird bird bird. Picille covered her mouth with both hands to suppress a giggle. Now was not the time for giggling!

Picille tried to judge whether the bird was a mount of some kind or one of these rumored Sky People. It didn't really matter that much except for accounting; the life of this creature was not her responsibility, no matter how pretty it was. Noninterference clause!

The feline watched the bird, and when the bird stated to fly again, the feline swiped the air with its long whisker cutting a glowing portal in the air before it and in front of the bird.  The bird was too impaired to notice, or perhaps just too slow, it tumbled through the portal and right into the cat's paws.  It had a moment to shriek before the cat pinned it to the ground.

"Help!" the bird screamed in its alien language, though Picille likely wouldn't need her gift to translate it to understand the meaning.  The cat prepared to lean in to bite the smaller creature, when a stone hit it in the face.

The lizard scuttled forward, spear drawn and gleaming in the light.  "Go away!" it shouted, "I am a mighty Huntress!  My spear is a gift from the Star-People!  Battle me, and you will fill the cooking pots of my village!"

The cat regarded the smaller creature threatening it, and roared.  The lizard quivered a moment, then inflated its throat to let out an much less impressive croak.  But Picille's power caught another meaning to the croak.  "Huitzilin!  Help me!"

Oh dear. Sky Person confirmed? On the one hand, still noninterference clause. On the other, she's being asked to render help. What would Anna do?

Anna would meddle, of course. She likes colorful things. Then she would capture the cat in one hand and drag it off to her flying archipelago to experiment on. That was a little beyond Picille's modest abilities; she had no archipelago! But she could probably still render some manner of aid.

Picille's magic was ill-suited to attacking, unless she wanted to get really messy. She didn't, so that left getting physical. She took her bioglass spear and pressed her palm up against the edge, smearing its tip with bio-luminescent blood. On Arthos it was intensely toxic to birds, but that was more to their lacking antitoxins than due to any special quirk of the birds themselves. Could work here. With her spear envenomed Picille slips from her hiding place and stealths her way towards the confrontation, flying beneath the branch to conceal her approach. Once she judges she has passed the cat she zooms straight up, does a u-turn, and then drops straight down again towards the cat's neck like a falling dart.

The feline swiped at the lizard, who rolled off to cling to the side of the branch.  She then stabbed at the paw pinning the bird down, inflicting a mere scratch, but the feline's paw jerked away from their prey.

Picille then plummeted down, her spear sinking into the larger predator's neck.  The creature roared and then jumped off the branch to another, shaking to dislodge Picille's spear, even as she still clung to it!

Picille let herself be flung off in a semi-controlled fashion. All the damage she could do was now done, and all that remained was to see if her naturally poisonous blood would be effective. If she were a better soldier then she could have severed the brain stem. Viese had been fighting creatures larger than themselves most of their existence and had gotten very good at developing tactics to use their few advantages to their... well, advantage. Picille had spent most of her time learning magic, botany, and magical botany, so unless she was planning to lovingly handcraft the warp-cat a bouquet of flowers this was the best she could do.

She didn't want to be warp-sniped while she waited so she used her magic to scramble the higher dimensions about herself, creating a three-meter-radius no-warping-allowed bubble.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:02, Wed 29 Dec 2021.

Picille was flung off the cat, and off the branch, catching herself on another branch, barely holding on to her spear.  The feline stood, and one of its long whiskers touched the wound, and came away with a glob of liquid clinging to the whisker, then falling to the branch.  The feline then jumped to a branch further away from Picille and the natives, before creating another gate to jump through.

Picille did not see where the other end of the gate opened.

Picille... waits to see what happens next, remaining on guard.

At first, there was silence, then something started making a repetitive tapping sound.  Something in some other branch started howling.  The lizard huntress peaked over from her branch down to Picille.  "Are you okay?" she called out.  "Did the Thaxemko hurt you?"

"Thaxemko!" Picille repeats with a soft giggle. "That is a fun word to say. Thaxemko. Thank you, I am fine! This is, uh, self-inflicted." She shows her palm, glowing blood still visible. "Are those things common?"

"Good," the lizard said.  "Do you need a bandage?  Can you help with this Sky-Person's wounds?"  She shook her head.  "No, they are not common.  They claim territory and do not tolerate each other, except for their mating season.  Which is good; if they were more numerous, they would devour us all.  Though we are usually beneath their notice; unless we are hurt and look like easy prey, or they are starving and desperate.  This one will not return; we proved we were too much trouble for only a couple of mouthfuls.  It wants something bigger and less fierce."

Do you need a bandage? "That would be nice!" Can you help with this Sky-Person's wounds? Picille hums thoughtfully. She doesn't know this species' biology, but given that the trauma is likely mostly physical the best thing she can do would probably just be to suture them. Heck, she doesn't even know if the SkyTreeLandSeaWhatever people even have basic germ theory figured out; the simple fact that she knows to sterilize her tools could be a huge help.

"I can try," she says, producing a simple suture kit from her hip pack. "Your people are about three times as tall and ten times as massive as mine though."

"That one might not ever eat anything again," Picille adds. "Viese blood is intensely poisonous to most creatures."

The lizard pulled bandages from her pack, and set a white pad on the wound before tying on a bandage.  "That's okay," she said.  "I called for help; someone will reach us soon."

She shook her head.  "Thaxemko almost never die of venom," she said.  "They are shaman, and can draw venom out with their powers.  Even the strongest poisons we know.  They are mighty."

The bird was laying uncomfortably on a wide part of the branch.  They had an arrow through their shoulder.  There was cloth wrapped around it, but it was only a stop gap.  The arrow head was fully emerged on the other side.  It was a chip of obsidian with luminescent blue veins.  Oddly, the blue veins seemed to spread from the obsidian to the wooden arrow shaft.

"See what you can do," the lizard said.  "I'll try to cut off the tip of the arrow without making it worse."