Run Dog, Run

[North Cen­tral Bas­in, Scu­pi Prov­ince Sheus(9) 1024]

You spend a night and day in Brogine’s tem­ple ru­ins with no more vi­sion­s. The writ­ing is a di­alect of El­der Pelosian. Ian dubs the place Ru­ins of the El­der­s. Search­ing about you dis­cov­er oth­er ru­ined bldgs and a sev­er­al un­der­ground ar­eas. Ex­plor­ing those you en­counter and de­feat con­struct­s, el­e­men­tals con­jured by trap­s, and a nest of nasty gi­ant desert hor­net­s. You dis­cov­er sev­er­al bits of mag­i­cal loot and a small pile of valu­able junk.

You fol­low hye­na men tracks to a cam­p. A “war” camp as it tem­po­rary and con­tains on­ly fight­ing males. Hav­ing sur­prise and con­coct­ing an ex­cel­lent plan you as­sault the camp and slaugh­ter far more than you num­ber. One dog is cap­tured alive but re­fus­es to speak. Af­ter much per­sua­sion it is dis­cov­ered it speaks Khem­ish with a thick ac­cen­t. “Kill me now soft pigs for the pack won’t take me back with your stench on me.” Asked if his pack was the one that cap­tured you. “No pigs, that was not us. Let me lead you to them so that they can feast on your pink flesh.” What are you do­ing here “Other than be­ing tor­tured by pigs? Ugh, this is our land. We fight oth­er packs and we run down tasty cat­tle like you.” How do you know Khem­ish “They don’t taste as good but one can’t al­ways find juicy pink pigs to gnaw on.” Asked about pack size/lo­ca­tion oth­er tac­ti­cal­ly use­ful in­for­ma­tion he is silent and soon suc­cumbs to over per­sua­sion.

Over the next week you chase and slay ev­ery hye­na men group you can track down. You nev­er find any set­tle­ments or signs of fe­males, young. That night Tariq lay­ing awake think­ing of home when he spies a lucky fall­ing star. Be­fore he is done mak­ing a wish he sees an­oth­er and an­oth­er. Ian on watch no­tices too. Then they both hear a thump. Turn­ing around they see more stars fall­ing. Sev­er­al blaze across the sky and im­pact with thumps or small ex­plo­sion­s. Soon dozens of fir­ery rocks are rain­ing from the sky. Some of your equip­ment catch­es fire in­clud­ing a camel! You all get burned or knocked down from near miss­es and hits by small­er bit­s. A few mo­ments lat­er it is over. The bright streaks of fire re­placed with the flick­ing glow of your burn­ing stuff.

Djinn con­vinces the rest to head south in­to the cen­ter of the Basin. He’s wants to hunt these Ash­worms he has heard of. This is the worst part of the bas­in, dry, hot, des­o­late. South of the road it turns in­to salt flats and that is where you find some trails which Djinn tracks to an Ash­wor­m. Which ends up not be­ing a chal­lenge when pep­pered with bows and spells from camel­back. While Qazir does his rit­u­al and sam­ples a morsel or two Ian no­tices a strange de­posit. Djinn says that it’s a drag­on tur­d. Qazir con­firms this and af­ter brief ex­am­i­na­tion guess­es it to be from a black drag­on, a large one. Prob­a­bly there is a salt marsh fur­ther south and it makes its home there. The group is unan­i­mous in mak­ing haste North and then along the road to Scu­pi where you trade with a very dan­ger­ous look­ing Ka’im, Mubak, (some­one Qazir knows?). Ex­chang­ing the junk found in the ru­ins for a hefty sack of gold, no ques­tions asked.