Quest Dispatching Kraits

[Reven]

A round of requests for an illustration of the creatures in question, and Gilcrest, after turning and glancing over the contents of his desk, perhaps expecting one to be there, shouted for an orderly. An orderly arrived dutifully at the door, Gilcrest relayed the request, and the orderly briskly disappeared on his appointed task.

"I should take a moment to describe the loathsome beasts, perennial thorn in my side they've proven to be," Gilcrest said with some disdain. "You'll see in a moment that they are truly hideous things. Mage-hunters. They can eat flesh, but very much do they prefer to drain mages, or magic things, of their arcane substance. They accord themselves like wolves—or hyenas, if you have seen those rarer animals—but, whatever analogy suits best, they accord themselves as pack hunters. Trust in what arms and armor you carry, because I tell you that any magic will have scant effect—though I imagine it will be useful as bait."

Gilcrest glanced to Zael, and Zael spoke of his own personal experience. "They like to hit-and-run, so watch your back—your back and your buddy's back. It's easy to scare 'em, they only really got confidence in numbers, but they're some dogged little bastards—they'll scamper away and then come right back. Watch the magic though; too much and they might go frenzied."

He sucked his tongue against his teeth and then, after that small pause, said, "They usually run around on all fours but...sometimes they stand up and walk like a man, or some strange parody thereof. And uh...I heard some of them talkin."

"What?" said Reven, taken aback.

Zael waved his hand, tempering wild imaginations. "Na, not like people, but like...you ever see one of those real smart birds? The colorful ones? The ones that can copy a voice?"

"Parrots," said Gilcrest. "Crows and ravens also have a similar intellect, bestial though it may be, and said ability to copy."

"Yeah. Like all those birds. Those kraits can copy what you say—some of 'em, anyway. They don't understand, obviously, but they're damn clever. One of 'em learned my name. Walked up to me on two legs in the dark of night and said it to me, and ran away when I figured out it wasn't my buddy Alistair. That little shit had me tricked for a moment there."

The orderly returned, and he handed the illustration of a krait to Kaelan first—this at Captain Gilcrest's behest.

Kaelan Pomrick Bloomsfield

 

[Kaelan]

Mimicry? Wonderful. A flash of another hunt sprang to Kaelan's mind, and he wasn't pleased about the prospect.
"Oh, Elements...just like those horrible swamp mimic creatures...'epigones,' I think it was," he muttered, suddenly feeling much less comfortable.

Then he saw the illustration. No, it was quite unlike an epigone, this creature. It had a carapace like a black ant, but spindly limbs like some sort of primate. The illustration matched the stories that Kaelan had heard quite well.

Ultimately though, the request had not been for him.

"Awful things, really," he said, handing the parchment to Pomrick.

 

[Pomrick Bloomsfield]

Pomrick took the parchment, at first blinking with befuddlement. Then, when he looked the image over, his eyes widened like saucers, mouth drooping open.

What--what were these horrible abominations? He hardly dared imagine what one would look like in the flesh. Or . . . carapace . . .

Suddenly, he began eyeing the door again. Reven had given him a chance to leave. Oh, by Astra, why hadn't he taken it? Then he could make some excuse to his master that they had deemed him unfit or sent him packing or something. But now he had to hunt these things? Imagining animated crates had been scary enough. But this seemed far worse.

With a shaking hand, Pomrick handed the parchment back to the orderly, leaving behind his clammy touch. A cold sweat was breaking out on him, feeling as trapped as in any cage.

Reven
Kaelan

 

[Reven]

Reven made a not-so-subtle show of glancing Pomrick's way once the illustration was in his hands. He noted his face. Eyes. Mouth. Without a spoken word he looked to the orderly once the illustration was presented to him. He only spent a moment or two looking it over.

"Those are some ugly fuckers."

"A plague upon our fair Arethil. A better day will dawn when they're all eradicated—or, at least, driven back to the Ixchel Wilds. But that's neither here nor there." Captain Gilcrest straightened up some, inclining his chin just so. "Good luck, hunters. If nothing else, I won't turn down a few more krait heads. But if you do find something of note in your hunt, even if it's merely some sort of sign or clue, or something out of the ordinary you might not understand, bring it to me, or tell me of it. Dead kraits are all well and good, but to at last be rid of this scourge is best, and that is what the Chamber is aiming for."

Zael gestured to Kaelan, and said to Reven and Pomrick, "He knows the way. That bridge is as good a place as any to start."

Reven gave Zael a nod, and then the Captain. "We'll get it done, Cap."

A glance to Kaelan, a glance to Pomrick, and Reven made for the door. They'd a bit of walking to do before they'd get out onto streets of Elbion and could saddle up, and the three of them could make some small acquaintances. Well—what acquaintances ain't already been made, anyway.

Kaelan Pomrick Bloomsfield

 

[Zael Castomir I]

Zael would watch the three men go.

And he'd wait there in Gilcrest's office.

He had a special request for them, but...one he didn't want to mention in front of the Captain.

It was a personal thing. Maybe hopeless. But he had to ask.

 

[Kaelan]

Ah, there it was. The boy's reaction to the illustration saw to it that he finally understood what the three of them would be hunting. Not wooden boxes, but real monsters. Good. Kaelan would not deny him the hunt, but leaving him unprepared was cruel.

The elf followed Reven out, and once their ragtag band was back on the streets, Kaelan would take a brief look around and exhale. The cities outside of the Falwood were never particularly comfortable places for him, being so stony and processed as they were. Elbion was no different, only more rife with arcane magics. Even so, Elbion was at least hospitable towards his kind, and Kaelan was no anarchist like some of his more extreme kin.

"Happy to meet you both, by the way. I'm Kaelan," he greeted his companions formally now, a gentle smile on his lips. "I track, I hunt, I dabble in some druidic techniques, and...well, I'm an elementalist."

Might as well get the basics out of the way, if they were to be hunting and, likely, fighting side by side.

 

[Pomrick Bloomsfield]

"Oh, um, good to meet you -- too. I'm P-pomrick, and I . . ."

Sleep, pretend to study, raid the pantry and carry my maester's items. No, that wouldn't do. He needed to make it sound more impressive than that. Kaelan sounded so capable with all the things he could do. He needed to at least be somewhat on par with that.

"I'm an apprentice to Maester Krellos Thunderbeer. Beard, sorry. Thunderbeard. And I dabble in . . . esote-- eh, exotic potioneering and flaccid transomancy." He frowned. Didn't sound quite right. Had he mixed up schools of magic again? Roll with it. "So that makes me a, um. A, um. A potion-guzzling transmomorphogrist with a speciality in prismatic excretion. Indeed," he added, thinking that people who used the term indeed instantly sounded like someone with credibility, though it felt foreign to his own tongue. "I carry an arsenal of spirits and poultices that taste REALLY bad, by the way, but that'll -- like -- heal wounds and stuff."

Cue awkward pause. He drew his machete in a sudden swipe, brandishing its runed steel -- and near cutting the feather off of a bypassing pedestrian's hat.

"And I got this!! The Blade of--" what had Krellos called it again? Oh, right. "The Blade of Nictation!"

Kaelan

Reven

 

[Reven]

Reven liked this elf Kaelan. Simple and straight to the point. Pomrick, on the other hand...he just didn't fuckin' belong. He needed to be cooped up in some dusty old room, copying down books or something, menial work. And as Pomrick stuttered and stammered his way into an introduction, Reven started to think him to be just a plain fool; the sort of fool that was only good for water-fetching, or, failing that, doing what he and his old raider buddies did with useless captives: tying him up to a tree, putting an apple on his head, and throwing knives at him.

Reven trained a face of withering impatience on Pomrick as he spoke, talking about flaccid this and excretion that. But when Pomrick pulled his machete and swung it, Reven changed in an instant.

He immediately assaulted Pomrick, snatching the wrist of his sword-wielding hand, sweeping the back of his leg, and driving him hard down to the stone of the street. Reven had a knee pressing into Pomrick's chest, had his sword-wielding hand pinned to the street, and he glared down at him.

"You coulda killed that man," Reven said, flicking his eyes to the shocked pedestrian. Had he been walking a bit closer, or Pomrick's draw been a bit wilder, and there'd be blood on the street. That didn't bother Reven, but what did was that Pomrick would be at his other shoulder when they got into a fight. He trusted Kaelan. He didn't trust Pomrick at all.

Reven looked back to Pomrick.

"Yer gonna act right, or you ain't makin it back from this. You swing that thing anywhere near me and I'll kill you myself. Better yet, maybe you oughta earn that shit back. Kaelan? You wanna relieve this man of his weapon?"

Kaelan Pomrick Bloomsfield

 

[Kaelan]

Kaelan listened with equal parts good humor and apprehension as the younger human, Pomrick, explained his own specialties. Some of it sounded like it could be legitimate, such as "exotic potioneering." "Alchemy" was probably a more apt term to describe such a thing, but Kaelan wouldn't judge differences in dialect.

Certain other parts though..."flaccid?" "Excretion?"

"Right, um..." Kaelan started to reply before that ornate-looking longknife came out of its sheath. The elf ducked aside with a "Woah!"

Before he even had a chance to understand what was happening, Reven had pinned the boy to the ground.

"Kaelan? You wanna relieve this man of his weapon?"

The actual answer was "not really, no," but he didn't want to be to cause even further division in their already ragtag band. He sighed and knelt next to the young mage and the merc on his back.
"How about we swap for now? I have a nice hunting knife you can hold on to," he said, pulling the sheathed tool from a belt and holding it so that Pomrick could see it.

"Also...are you sure about joining in on this hunt? You seem, um...a bit novice? Completely novice, if I'm being honest, and you stand a solid risk of dying on this trek," he intoned, glancing briefly up at Reven. "And not just by the hand of the man on your back. Why not start with hunting something more mundane?"