RP:Gruesome Cargo

From HollowWiki

Part of the Venturil's Bane Arc


Redhale travelled with a caravan that was making it's way down along the plains from Cenril, although the man himself could not be seen. What was visible were a small group of wagons, each closed and covered, pulled by a pair of horses each and driven by a trio of bored looking old men. The reality was difficult to tell apart, as not only was it covered so expertly but wasn't altogether so different from what was portrayed, but those in the know were likely to feel the smallest tug of a familiar sensation scanning the landscape around the convoy and an unusual chill breeze as it drove on past them.


Maladroit rose from a lazy glide around the upper reaches of the gorge, currents of warm air making this so easy that the creature emerged from the fissure in a swift upward spiral that spun it into the sky above Milous, and with only the slightest tilt of wing zoomed southward. It had visited many places this day, old haunts about which the temporal strings of memory hung, some in tatters, some bright as strings of tinsel. Maladroit preferred to navigate by instinct and impulse, and both had encouraged it here, pulling it toward the one place it didn't really want to go... The caravan below was a welcome distraction from that eldred homing beacon. For a moment, anyway.. the wagons were redolent with the same breed of energies as his intended destination. A ‘same dog, different leg’ kind of feeling, though Maladroit didn’t exactly think in those terms. Drawn to this new conundrum, it made another wing-tilt and dropped from the sky like stone, extending its batlike sails only when the ground seemed imminent. Cushioned in the resulting drag, the familiar touched down gently atop one of those wagons, blind head peering left and right, strange sensory adaptations seeking the source...


Redhale hadn't spotted Maladroit in the sky; he wasn't so concerned with an attack as he was with keeping his trade route in as normal as possible an appearance. The odd creature was spotted, however, when he began to dive, and those invading energies were soon felt in a much greater magnitude by the impish familiar. Redhale's lack of immediate response wasn't because of trouble recognizing the creature but due to something closer to a feeling of surprise.


Maladroit tramped across the top of the wagon to its edge, and holding to the wagon-top by prehensile toes dropped down to hang like a bat for a time. Leathern wings extended for balance, barbed tail assisting in holding the familiar steady, it would twist its rubbery neck to turn its blank head in whatever direction Redhale would be found. And, on finding him, Maladroit would offer a wibble of manyjointed fingers.


Redhale couldn't exactly be found amongst the crates and sacks loaded into the wagon, but he soon spoke up, his voice quiet but close to Maladroit's ears, "Here is one I wouldn't have expected to find interrupting me. Fool I would have looked trying to deceive you with all this," With that the air within the caravan, originally smelling of fresh apples and salted fish, turned thick and rank with the stench of rotten flesh, though the meat still seemed heavily salted, "What brings you back to these soils, Maladroit? And where is your companion?"


Maladroit shrugged to the former question and pointed skyward to the latter, these cryptic responses all it offered for the moment. Flipping down to the buckboard, the familiar showed no disgust or displeasure at the rankling odor, par for the course in its necromantic origins and habitats. It peered into the space where the Wight wasn't (to any other sight) hoping perhaps for a whiff of the rift that had plucked it from its new home in the Shadow Realm, where the King of Shadow reigned. And where the King's wife was, it was very sure, stomping around the obsidian palace looking for her helpmeet and not finding it. There was a pause, and the finger-wibbling began again in earnest, filaments of time, space and memory drawn out of the air and the land and its own spongy flesh, from ancient starlight and the breath of insects.. And both truth and illusion was spun between those digits, so that Redhale may see the Mistress on her throne, and her King, and her home in the stars. And the Void, wherein the gaunt had less fallen then been torn from the fabric of its new home-world when this world has screamed for a balance to be struck, for the Vailkrin rift's debt to be paid. No eyes were needed for this vision to be seen, it was plucked like a harp in the wind and sounded across all barriers, imparting meaning and memory where none had been before.


Redhale 's form appeared in the midst of the luggage, the shadows pooling together to weave the robes from which his porcelain face arose, "I see…" He mused. He hadn't paid a huge amount of attention to the portal. In fact, he hadn't paid a huge amount of attention to anything lately, saving perhaps the population numbers of the dead city, which were understandably suffering after a civil war and interstitial calamity, "Here I thought you had come with requests, orders, or even just news, but I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything more than practical chaos through implied purpose, our curses are carried everywhere we go, it seems."


Maladroit’s head lifted and dropped ponderously, as though the creature were agreeing with this last observation. Hunkering down somewhat, it took an odd sort of comfort in the Wight's proximity, a truer familiarity than it felt almost anywhere else in these lands. A long digit indicated the 'luggage', the blank face canting, like a curious hound's.


Redhale reached his own bony digits out to pull back a section of cloth to reveal a small wooden crate packed with humanoid limbs and various chunks of body parts, "All a bit far gone, unfortunately, but we're pretty desperate for numbers back in Vailkrin. We've had a couple of violent episodes and my brethren, unfortunately, make a good front line. Luckily a few ships have recently been sunk of the coast. Unluckily the fish found the wreckage before we did.


Maladroit was composed of just such 'parts', albeit from a wider variety of species, and the creature honed its odd perception to each of the sundered limbs, sensing its former life, the experiences enmeshed in the meat of it. The creature reached for one of the fresher arms, took it up by the stump and flapped the fish-nibbled hand at Redhale. Jokes aside, Maladroit was desperate to find purpose, unused to having none all these long centuries it had been enslaved - or in service, depending on how one looked at it - to one being or another. It had no use for being at a loose end, and perhaps a hint of this general sentiment would radiate from Maladroit, as the hand flapped merrily on.


Redhale was hardly an empathetic soul, but his illusionist training and nearness of spirit to Maladroit afforded some basic understanding between them, "I can't say I can offer you more purpose than you might find on your own. I can offer you a place to be, though. As I said before, Vailkrin needs a population boost, and I'm sure you can provide numbers beyond the one of your own self… Perhaps the drow, Daath, might have work for you. He has been attempting to continue your lady's legacy in necromancy."


Rowen the rat scampers along the road she perches atop a dust covered rock, and greets the two not exactly living creatures in an almost absent-minded manner. "May Daedria bless you both." The rodent regards the luggage and sniffs. "I need the forearm of a dwarf skilled as a necromancer accountant and at least twenty one inner ear bones...have them engraved as royal wedding souvenirs." She cleans the dust from her whiskers with her single forepaw." Have any of the body parts got any cute bunny rabbit tattoos? If not, why not?"


Maladroit was very still for a time after Redhale had spoken, finally lifting and dropping its shoulders in accord to the Wight's suggestion. If there was any other response to be given, it was interrupted by a faint squeaking, which grew louder and was at the same time drowned out by the rumble of the wagon's wheels. Luckily, Maladroit did not need ears - for he had none, anyway - to sense and comprehend the rat's meaning. It held out the arm it was flapping at Redhale a moment ago, stooping over the edge of the wagon, as though to offer it up to Rowen's approval.


Redhale , in a rare show of patience, indulged the rat's questions, "I doubt they have any rabbit tattoos, they must simply not been that caliber of sailors. Perhaps that is why they find themselves in this predicament." He wouldn't offer the cargo to her though. Supreme Empress or not, Vailkrin couldn't afford to give these bodies away. Noting Maladroit's less than enthusiastic response he made further offers, "Any help you can offer us around Vailkrin while you find your feet would be appreciated, but I'm afraid I simply don't have the capacity to be managing individuals at the moment…" Himself included.


Rowen sniffs at the proffered arm. "It doesn't smell like this fellow was a necromancer accountant to me. Seems more like a necromancer/insurance salesman who kept dwarf-eating bees." The rat indicates the areas where the flesh has been nibbled by fish, peering a little more closely." These wounds were evidently made by the rare jazz musician bee whilst improvising a new composition. I guess this arm is satisfactory, if you don't actually have an accountant. Have it delivered to my cellar in Vailkrin, beneath my Naga servant's laboratory." She turns to Redhale. "You don't have time to manage people. What a shame. I recall when you took care of a huge pet rock...by chaining a ogre to it. I at least still have time to look after my loyal subjects."


Maladroit was not by nature enthusiastic about much, other than cephalopods and both invoking and avoiding Tenebrae's wrath. It was willing enough to be useful to the goals requested, and nodded to Rowen, tucking the severed arm under its own. To the Wight, it gave a long moment's pause, in which it radiated a keen sense of loss, and with this note of woe clambered back onto the top of the wagon. Leathery wings shuttered open, and in a trice the gaunt was soaring toward Vailkrin, glad to have been given reason to turn back from the dark fortress and its attendant energies. There wasn't much in this or any other world that unnerved the familiar - in truth, it had no nerves to lose. But that fortress was enough to scare the scariest of things..