Open Chronicles Smoke on the Swampwater

[Harrier]

CROSSROAD MIRE
BAYOU GARRAMARISMA
MIDNIGHT​

Harrier Wren gasped herself awake, choking on bad dreams and smoke. For just a heartbeat, the necromancer thought she'd left the fire on, let the pot of bones boil over, but the smoke tasted heavier, as if the swamp was burning.

She scrambled achily out of bed, cinched her robe shut against the clammy chill, and threw open the door. Five separate blazes licked at the gray timbers of shacks and docks and boats. The saltwater swamp bubbled and hissed, drowning out the panic of Crossroad Mire's waking denizens.

Intentional, certainly: attack or distraction. Harrier — devoid of tools, weapons, and most of her clothes — sprinted sloshily for her precious moldy library in unlaced boots with murder on her mind.


OOC/ Unspecified people are attacking Crossroad Mire, and it might be you! Or perhaps you've been spending time here, or are just passing through.

 

[Maraad]

The beast lashed out with a vicious punch that connected. Maraad was struck in the forehead by its fist, which caused the four-armed guy to stumble.

The sheer power of this clumsy aberration took him off guard. As soon as he saw the thing, he knew it was powerful, but he hadn't anticipated it to move so quickly.

Maraad's massive frame stopped moving a good few meters from the anomaly. He tasted something metallic in his mouth. The loosely compacted clay in front of him was stained by his spittle and blood as he scowled.

He glared at the thing with disdain, and it responded in kind, hissing at him and making an apish face.

The creature was a textbook example of ugly. It had a faint humanoid appearance, yet it was oddly oversized. Its enormous, fur-covered body moved in a strange way. No, bristles, not even fur.


They furnished its entire torso and a sizable portion of its lower body. Where a man's head should have been, a flayed baboon head with a gaping, incessantly salivating maw was present.

Maraad dodged by lurching to the side as it attempted to bite him. The creature did the same, turning its torso a full 90 degrees as if it had no bones.

It happened quickly, but this time Maraad had gained the upper hand. He mustered the quicksilver speed that was unheard of among creatures his size, dove under its flailing arms, and unleashed a powerful right cross.

Even though it was strange, the monster had enough intelligence in its deformed head to attempt to deflect the attack, but Maraad just wouldn't let it.

He punched it in the face, feeling the lower jaw's bones grind and break against his knuckles.
As Maraad's fist made a fast turn and flowed through, ripping off the creature's lower jaw in one fluid motion, muscles tore and joints cracked.

The creature staggered back as its talon-like feet carved furrows in the dirt, its visage now defaced.

Injured, but not dead, Maraad told himself.

To take out this specific quarry, much more would be required.

Harrier

 

[Harrier]

Crossroad Mire's library boasted one of the world's largest collections of mildew. Harrier unlocked the door just long enough to verify the interior was undisturbed, then bolted it firmly and turned back to the chaos.

Big brutish shapes, somewhat manlike, moved against the backdrop of the fires. Perhaps they'd set those fires, or been turned loose by whatever did, or — if they'd arrived by unfamiliar magic — the fire could be a byproduct of their arrival. Enough locals had gone to ground or scattered into the swamp that motion signalled violence. Perhaps a dozen locals of the forbidden-swamp-arts variety, people much like her, were engaging the attackers here and there. It was far too early to tell whether that engagement qualified as eradication or desperate resistance or somewhere in between.

Harrier flinched as one of the massive creatures tangled with a four-armed half-clothed Kha'atari man. Still crouched in the library's doorway, the necromancer snapped chemical-spotted fingers. Her ragged robe swirled in a breeze. A storm of dead scavenger birds exploded from a hollow tree at the edge of Crossroad Mire. Driven by an amplified version of their usual hungers in life, they swarmed the injured creature with beaks and claws and buffeting wings. It was already losing blood from the serious wound to its jaw; now the dead birds converged on that wound ravenously. Maraad now had space and time to engage as he saw fit.

 

[Maraad]

Birds?

Where'd those come from?

Nevermind, thought Maraad.

A handful of them were whacked by him as he ducked behind the perplexed oddity. His ripped arms formed a snake-like embrace around its skull. Its neck was snapped like a popsicle as he slammed its head against his upper chest and pulled viciously.


The majority of living things would instantly perish if their necks were rotated 180 degrees, yet this one didn't. As it fixed its attention on Maraad, its shady eyes expanded and their pupils dilated.

Powers above and below, what the fuck is this? Why won't you die?

The tips of its fingers suddenly developed larger claws that dragged across Maraad's exposed skin. If he hadn't protected it in time, their claws would have left glaring lacerations on his naked flesh.

Maraad pushed his free hand into the creature's turned back, unfazed by the attack. It exploded on the other end, but Maraad was certain he hadn't touched a single essential organ as it passed through.

The half-decomposed wings of one of the birds struck him in the face, but he had no time to think further.

If it weren't for the strange monstrosity that demanded the majority of his attention, he would have exclaimed, "Damned thing!"

Maraad raised the beast upward while keeping his forearm firmly in its midsection. Three additional hands took hold of it and started to tug in different directions.

The thing made popping noises and howled shrilly, coughing blood from its ravaged mouth.
Its torso suddenly split, tearing where the spine and hips converged. Green ichor squirted out of the the ends of the torn muscles, cutting a wide arc through the chilly air. It sprayed in Maraad's face, temporarily rendering him unaware of the carnage he had inflicted so carelessly.

Harrier

 

[Qiven the Tall]

Qiven the Tall rushed around frantically with leaky buckets of water, trying fruitlessly to put the fire out. Having just been woken up by the flames in the bunkhouse. Soot was smudged in dark patches across his lightly furred face, and his silken blouse had been singed by what must have been the rudest of awakenings.

He emptied the bucket on what one could assume used to be part of a slop shop, but now was little more than burnt planks. At the splash of the bucket's water, he heard the damned howl of whatever creature Maraad was rending. Qiven snapped his head to look in the direction of the battle and beheld the sight in absolute horror. Between the kha'atari-- a people he had not yet seen in his travels -- and the abomination said kha'atari had slain, he did not know what feelings to have.

After a few dumb mumblings, he rushed over to the man. The stringed instrument on his back clanged loudly as he ran; at some point during all this fiery commotion, a string had snapped. "Are you all right?" Qiven stammered. His voice was thick with an unusual and somewhat slurred accent. "What is that?" As he got closer, he noticed Harrier Wren in the doorway, and the collection of undead carrion birds that she had called. He looked desperately between the two of them and let the bucket slip out of his fingers onto the floor.

Harrier Maraad

 

[Harrier]

Like Cerak At'Thul and the bad parts of Alliria, Crossroad Mire had the ambiance and functionality of a junk drawer. Unusual folks (like Maraad and Qiven the Tall and, indeed, Harrier) were the usual, accents and all.

Along similar lines of assumed normalcy, Harrier didn't bother explaining the undead birds.

She snugged up the sash of her robe and eyed the...bard? Was it a bard?...as he dropped his bucket. "Thanks for trying," she said, gesturing at the fire in the slop shop.

The ripped-asunder monster — a word she used sparingly — caught and held her attention. Truth be told, she found herself almost as tongue-tied as the bard. What a mess.

With a grimace, she unlocked the door to her precious library and beckoned Maraad and Qiven inside for shelter. Other sentinel undead were lurching from the swamp to help the corpse birds repel the attack.

 

[Maraad]

"Eh?"

Maraad appraised Harrier with an expression of confusion plastered all over his face. Who was she and what did she want from him?

He looked down on the creature. He looked at what remained of it: two broken portions, upper and lower body, no longer conjoined by an intact spine. The former of the two was still alive, writhing and crawling.

Despite its broken neck the creature still had some fight left in it. It dug its fingers into the muddy ground and lurched itself forward.

It didn't get far, for Maraad brought its crawl to an end by stomping on its head hard enough to bust it open. Bits and pieces of fractured skull flew in all directions, but there was no blood or brain matter to be seen.

He kicked the now disabled upper body away from himself. It slid across the slick ground, coming to a halt only when it successfully collided with one of the nearby tree trunks.

Maraad shrugged and, spinning on his heels, made a break for the library.

He all but barged inside the building, squeezing his large body through the inadequately sized frame with such swiftness that he nearly knocked Harriet over.

Once inside, he shook himself off like a wet dog. Annoyingly enough, droplets of semi-coageled ichor clung to his bare form like ticks.

"I've no clue who you are, but thanks for inviting me in."

"I mean, it isn't like you could stop me either way if I decided to enter, but still..."


Harrier
Qiven the Tall

 

[Qiven the Tall]

Qiven, being the gentle troubadour that he was, felt put off from the violence he witnessed. He shielded his eyes from the carnage as Maraad crushed the head and kicked it, and then instinctively stepped back as he rushed the entrance of Harrier's library. If the fire had not pried all the sleep-fog from his brain, this guy certainly did.

Shaking off the shock, he headed for the library door. As he went, he tried to dust all the soot off of himself. He'd hate to track filth into a library like that. That would be terrible manners, even if there were a fire outside.

"Is it safe? In there?" he asked as he bent down under the shape of the door. "With the fires and all?" He was tall, but not as wide as Maraad was with all his muscles. Qiven's lankiness made only verticality a challenge, but a challenge he had grown quite used to. Few buildings in Arethil were built for him, after all. Once past the doorway, he felt more at ease. He looked around the room, examining it, though not much admiring Maraad's shaking.

His politeness prevented him from saying anything, but he smiled awkwardly and flashed his fangs as he did so, just barely concealing a grimace.

Harrier Maraad