JWTS4
The trip to Nexus was uneventful. Tarla hooked up with the Cult of the Illuminated there and found them and the city both utterly repellent. The safehouse turned out to be the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye, a big cavernous building in Nighthammer that was mainly a soup kitchen.
Tarla did get some information out of Forsaken Widow, the Shadowlands expert. Forsaken Widow flew in (with magic) fully four days before Tarla arrived, and had been irritably waiting around. In between the volleys of insults (Forsaken Widow, a No Moon, has a very high opinion of herself), the expert showed a chart she complied of Shadowlands locations and an overlay of Dragon Line patterns, leading her to believe that at least some of the Shadowlands were created to allow the draining of energy from Creation into the Underworld. Tarla also learned how badly the assault on the Prince of Shadow's enclave went for the Lookshy warstriders --
("What is a warstrider?"
"It's a magic suit of armor thirty feet high, made of solid gold."
"Hmm... what could damage something like that?"
"Nothing good.")
-- and that the Wyld Hunt had landed at Port Calim and several other ports in the western Scavenger Lands and were searching for her. She felt obliged to fulfill her mission for the Illuminated, though.
She settled on sending the Rising Gull and her crew away, after using some of the massive funds she'd collected as her fee from Lookshy to refit and disguise the ship. Kaka Sapp and Eight Planks and some hired boys from Nexus drydocked and performed annual maintenence on the ship, then painted it yellow and renamed it the Golden Dolphin. Their plan: take the menagerie south to Paragon, refill stores, hug the coast west towards Calim's Loss, and follow the navigation lines to Albalone. Once there (close to four months later) the menagerie could travel from island to island. That far out the Wyld Hunt wouldn't be looking for them.
While in Nexus, Tarla used Rolling Thunder to send the Director-General of Lookshy a letter informing him of what she'd learned from Forsaken Widow: that destroying the Manses in the Prince of Shadows's Shadowlands should end the drain on the Dragon Line. The reply came back, prompt, thanking Tarla for the information but warning her not to return to Lookshy without good reason, because "we know what you did."
Tarla sighs and wonders what she did. Now isn't the time to worry about it, though. She uses most of the funds she didn't give Penorn and the crew of the Golden Dolphin to buy a Marukan Riding horse, packs up Rolling Thunder and her albatross, and leaves Nexus headed north.
Her agenda is to end her obligation to the Illuminated as quickly as possible, then take Hezriel up on his offer and plan her next move from his palace.
The low point would probably be the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye. I tried to make it depressing and sordid and I think I succeeded too well. I'm pretty sure Tarla has decided she wants absolutely nothing to do with the CoI.
Tarla Sha sets off from Nexus and begins the lengthy ride through the Hundred Kingdoms region to Sijan, a trip estimated at... uh, it's about an inch, that's eight hundred miles, on a horse probably going no more than ten hours a day, because I don't really know anything about horses, likewise we'll pretend the horse has an average speed of four miles an hour because that makes the math easier, so forty miles a day, which is probably right within 50% or so since I figured high for the amount of time per day traveling and low for average speed... 800/40 = 80/4 = 40/2 = 20 days of travel, so three weeks on horseback.
She's passing through the rolling outcountrys on the north side of the Yellow River, a hilly region populated by small villages of shepherds and cattle ranchers and such. Her albatross, flying up in the sky above her, abruptly swoops down and crashes to earth in front of her after about six hours of travel.
Danger is coming, it indicates with beady little avian eyes. From southwest-ish.
Tarla cocks her head and hears a distant rumbling sound. What kind of danger? she asks her albatross.
Large danger, the bird's frantic hopping appears to communicate.
Tarla looks around and takes stock of her situation: no shelter, no trees to stand under... she decides leading the horse (which she has named Virtuous Racoon) to the northeastern base of a hill and squat down in the tall grass. She tells Rolling Thunder to hide, and it pulls its arms and legs up into its body and looks like a stick.
As she's making those preparations, a mouse crawls out of her saddlebags -- a mouse Tarla immediately recognizes as Forsaken Widow, by virtue of her distinctly unmouselike coloration.
"Couldn't you fly?" Tarla asks the mouse. "If you needed a ride..."
Forsaken Widow turns into the haughty humaniform shape Tarla interacted with before (I took the Lunars hardback to the game, and showed her the No Moon caste illustration) and explained to Tarla that being forced to wait three days for her in Nexus was a terrible thing. The people were unpleasant, the Temple of the Eye was dank, and the entire city smelled of excrement. To get away from the excrement smell Forsaken Widow had to fly up a good five thousand feet or so, and it's cold, windy, and boring up there.
Tarla, who had been thoroughly repulsed by the casual violence of the city, commiserated.
So, Forsaken Widow challenged Tarla to an honor duel. She had waited until they were a safe distance from any peasants or other interference. Tarla considers trying to talk Forsaken Widow out of it, but when Forsaken Widow grows three feet taller with large claws and big piercing eyes, decides to assume Serpent Form instead.
Round one: Tarla whips out her new, recently purchased sai, flips forward, and attempts to sink them into Forsaken Widow's abdomen. Forsaken Widow does not attempt to bat them away and instead Tarla finds out the hard way that her skin has toughened to the point that the sai are barely able to penetrate. (One die of damage after soak, which turns into one health level, which Forsaken Widow regenerates almost immediately.)
Forsaken Widow responds by ducking low beneath Tarla's defenses, coming up behind her, and clocking her one on the back of the head.
("Can I dodge?"
"Do you have the reflexive dodge charm?"
"...no."
"Then you take... what's your lethal soak?"
"One."
"She's using Subduing the Honored Foe to convert dice of lethal damage to levels of bashing damage... you take six levels of bashing damage."
"I pass out.")
Tarla slumps forward, and wakes up several hours later. The ground around her is churned mud, covered with hoofprints. She and Virtuous Racoon avoided trampling, however, possibly through action of Forsaken Widow. Rolling Thunder un-hides, and Tarla makes a note: learn Shadow Over Water and Seven Shadow Evasion.
Still, no permanent harm done, and Forsaken Widow is off her back. Tarla mounts Virtuous Racoon and continues her journey, for a whole half-hour.
At which time, the albatross warns her again of approaching danger, this time coming from the northeast. Tarla can hear it again, too: the thunder of ten thousand hooves.
Glancing in that direction, she observes a large rabbit (unmistakeably Forsaken Widow) fleeing the charge of a stampeding herd of cattle. An Immaculate monk (who burns with a strange orange aura) rides the lead bull.
Spotting Tarla (who has reluctantly gotten off her horse), Forsaken Widow sprints toward her, shifts to warform, and requests her assistance defeating the Bronze faction's agent.
"Do I have a choice?" Tarla asks.
"Well, he'll try to kill you, too, Solar."
As the herd envelopes them, Tarla adopts the Graceful Crane Stance and leaps onto the horns of one of the cattle. Huffing, Forsaken Widow leaps onto another cow, and manages to not break its back. She begins using sorcery, as the monk (Iron Rose) assumes Tiger form. Tarla shifts back into Serpent Form, and watches -- with horror, as her Perception+Martial Arts pool is huge -- as Iron Rose wears the Celestial Tiger Hide. Forsaken Widow's spell goes off -- silver fire falls from the heavens and burrows into the ground at Forsaken Widow's cow's feet, kicking up mud as it furrows toward Iron Rose's cow and then explodes beneath him, killing the cow he was riding and several nearby cows. Iron Rose, however, emerges from the fireball all but unscathed (losing only three of his eight health levels) and vaults back onto another cow. Sai in hand (and still Graceful Crane-ing) Tarla leaps forty feet or so through the air and bounces off of Iron Rose's head onto a new cow. As she does so she attempts to flip his jade tiger claws out of his hands, but fails.
Ignoring Tarla for the moment, Iron Rose leaps -- nay, pounces on Forsaken Widow, who flips away to the ground and begins casting that same spell again. Tarla moves up through the herd towards Iron Rose, and executes the same jump-over-and-disarm manuever, again without success. Forsaken Widow's silver fire kills more cows and Iron Rose begins to show wound penalties. In response, Iron Rose claws at Forsaken Widow once, twice, thrice, cutting her to ribbons, albeit regenerating ribbons with claws.
"Wait!" Tarla shouts at Iron Rose. She Commands Respect with her Attitude. "You can't attack us, because you aren't fully cognizant of the situation. You see, Forsaken Widow and I..."
(I ruled that attacking Tarla would fall under heckling, an action prohibited by Respect Commanding Attitude. Now, truth to tell, I'm not sure that I'd allow this use of the charm in a game with other player-characters, but it's a solo. Anything that makes Tarla look cool goes. Tarla can prevent people from attacking her using the awesome power of filibuster!)
While Iron Rose stands there, tapping his foot and waiting patiently for Tarla to stop talking, Forsaken Widow comes up behind him and claws, claws, claws, slowly cutting through Iron Rose's mystical Tiger Hide. After only a few seconds, however, Iron Rose stops tapping his foot and looking polite and starts clawing at Forsaken Widow -- for her claws have shredded his ears and deafened him, such that he can no longer hear Tarla's words!
(Yes, Forsaken Widow botched.)
Tiger claw, tiger claw, tiger claw, and Forsaken Widow is an incapacitated pile of meat. Tarla scoots around Iron Rose and tries, once again, to disarm him, unsuccessfully. She commands him to not kill her, but Iron Rose is deaf to her honey tongue.
So she conveys her message to him using the magic of dance!
(Actually, the first time we ran through the combat, Tarla instead tried to flee, and Iron Rose pounced on her and ripped her arms and legs off. Neither Emily nor I wanted the game to end so abruptly, though -- I was teasingly accused of executing a "total party kill." After a couple minutes of brainstorming we came up with the dance as a possible solution. Again, the whole "solo" thing makes it a special case.)
So Tarla holds Iron Rose there, by dancing, for ten minutes or so, until Forsaken Widow's bones knitted and she was able to stand up and throw silver fire at him one last time, which proved to be enough.
Then Tarla and Forsaken Widow both lay down for a while, as they were both starting to get low on Willpower and Essence. After eating some rabbit (caught by Forsaken Widow and cooked by Tarla) the No Moon admitted that all in all, she owed Tarla a favor -- the Immaculate had been chasing her, after all -- and Tarla said she'd contact her.
Once Forsaken Widow had returned to wherever she'd been going, Tarla collected Virtuous Racoon, Rolling Thunder, and her albatross. I've been thinking, she told Rolling Thunder, and I think I want to take your master up on his offer of hospitality.
"Cool!" says Rolling Thunder. "C'mon around this hill."
Rolling Thunder leads her around a hill, and Tarla discovers that she and her horse and seabird have been transported to the undersea palace of Hezriel, Lord An-Da-Sha of the Thunders. It's very lovely.
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