IC: The Sun Never Sets, IC thread for The Sun Never Sets Options

[AtroposReborn]

Ellesar awakens refreshed and alert. The warming atmosphere mixes with Jake's body heat, creating a cozy pocket of warmth for the elf to bask in. He stands and begins to stretch out his muscles for the coming day.

"Jake, you make quite the heater. Say, Stogie, where did you happen to find this fine dog anyway?" As he speaks Ellesar opens his pack and shifts through it to be certain that all his gear is still there.

[phlapjack77]

His morning rituals taken care of, Smohalla gathers another small sip of power to him.

The small glowing mote, taking the form of a bluebird, appears in front of him, hovering.

Smohalla asks his new friend to guide his three friends at the camp to this location as quickly and safely as possible.

[pbangarth]

"I found him at a sheep herding trial. He was a champion herder from a line of champions. What set him aside in my mind from all the other champion herders from lines of champions was his personality. He looked into my eyes and I knew him for a friend. I knew without a doubt that this one would lay his life down for me, as I would for him. A dog in a million."

Stogie waves one hand towards himself and Jake trots over and sits. Tears in his eyes, Stogie passes his hands down Jake's muzzle and across his ears. Once, twice... a third time. Jake's eyes bore into his. We make good pack.

Stogie stands and whistles, low hi low, and Jake runs directly away from Stogie. long low, and Jake drops to the ground. low hi "Come by" ... Jake runs in a long arc clockwise. hi low hi, and Jake returns, circling around Stogie to sit at his left side.

"I mean it, Ellesar. I would die before I allow this dog to come to harm."

[Tecumseh]

Eagles, it should be noted, lack a urinary bladder. That, of course, is no barrier to Smohalla for the odd occasion when he wishes to mark his territory. He shifts into human shape and clutches the treetop tightly. The rapid shift in mass causes the tree to bow suddenly as Smohalla does his best to aim downwind. It would be a remarkable sight, a naked man relieving himself from the top of a swaying tree at dawn while casting a purifying spell over his stream, but sadly nobody is around to document the scene.

The plant spirit escapes into the astral realm moments before Smohalla's golden shower rains down from above. His task complete, Smohalla returns to his warmer eagle form and begins to summon a spirit of air. It emerges easily before him, forming readily from the surrounding mana. It coalesces into a tiny blue bird, delicate and adorable at first, but then it keeps growing. The blue bird expands, and swells, and feeds off the energy of the place until it's much larger and aggressive than what Smohalla requested. One might even call it an angry bird. It looks at least three times bigger than he expected.

Smohalla directs it to find his friends and to bring them back with all possible haste. The bird clenches its beak together and rockets away faster than if it had been launched by a giant slingshot. It bursts with a puff as the materialization returns to the astral for faster travel.

The spirit explodes back into the material plane in front of Stogie and Ellesar as they're taking a quick breakfast. There's enough leftovers from last night for everyone to take some along with them, with plenty for Jake too. Popular culture has yet to identify goat stew as the breakfast of champions, but you feel that Ellie could convince society otherwise if she had the opportunity. It's delicious.

The blue bird, the size and shape of a bowling ball, hovers in midair, its brow knitted tightly in a deep frown, as it waits impatiently for Stogie and Ellesar. Oh, and Jake too, it supposes.

[phlapjack77]

Smohalla snorts in amazement at the result of his summons.

His power focus glows warm against his chest, a necklace consisting of a small feather lost amidst the eagle's plumage.

The warmth is enough to remind him that his human clothes are back at camp, along with the rest of his small items of travelling.

[pbangarth]

"Whoa!" Stogies steps back a pace or two as the spirit erupts into the physical realm. "Looks like Smohalla means business this morning. If this thing is any indication, we better get moving." He packs up quickly and efficiently, and moves a few paces in the direction the 'bird' indicates. Jake is ready, as always, to move.

[AtroposReborn]

Ellesar makes a quick roll over the log he is sitting on, removing the tomahawk from it's notch in his suit. He relaxes slightly after hearing Stogie's words but still eyes the creature warily. "I'm going to assume you have some way of knowing it belongs to our friend and isn't here for it's breakfast." He returns the tomahawk to his side and turns to grab his bag. "I'd really rather not have to carry all this stuff if we're going to be traipsing across the terrain. It does wonders to the back."

After rifling through the pack Ellesar pulls out his camera, a large knife, and a long section of rope. He closes the pack and ties the rope to the two armholes on the back. Finding the nearest tree, he tosses the rope over a branch at least ten feet off the ground and begins to hoist the pack into the air. It takes little time before the pack is secured in place among the branches. The other end of the rope is then tied off around the base of the tree and covered by anything the elf can find on the ground, such as dirt and leaves.

Taking a last good look at the hidden goods Ellesar nods in approval. He slings his rifle, pockets the knife and camera, and heads over to where Stogie is walking. "Don't you think we ought to take something for Smohalla as well?"

[pbangarth]

Assaying kit, first aid kit, reloaded Enfield and extra ammo, fineblade knife sharpened, food for me and Jake. All set.

Stogie considers Ellesar's idea. "Yeah, we can pack his gear between the two of us. He travels light. Comes from having to doff it all every time he changes form. I keep forgetting to bring Jake's cargo pack. Of course, he keeps hiding it, so I will forget."

[Tecumseh]

The blue bird spins around Stogie, Jake, and Ellesar in a tizzy, warping the mana so that it roils and rolls. And just like that - zing! - the party is off at a breakneck pace. It's very similar to the experience of chasing after Toothy, except this time you're trying to keep up with an angry bird that seems annoyed by your sluggishness, no matter how fast it seems to you. The slowest walk turns into a fast run, and a casual stride transforms into a all-out sprint. Jake is bewildered and barely knows what to do with his speed. On four legs, he rockets around like he's on the Autobahn. If only there were some sheep to chase, life would be perfect.

Thankfully, the spirit uses its Guard power to ease the trip. Branches bend out of the way, rocks flatten, and the path seems to straighten magically. Ellesar hazards a glance behind him and sees rough and ragged terrain, leaving him to wonder if the magic actually pressed things aside or only made it seem so. His head pulses with the mind-bending nature of it all. Looking forward again, the world warps around him, as if he were slipping between the folds of reality.

The spirit flies straight up and over a cliff, which is more than the bipeds and quadruped can manage, no matter how hard the spirit tries. It returns to the group, grumbling, and grudgingly leads them around the mountain. Regardless of the detour, the party is making fantastic progress. Bobbing and weaving through mountain valleys, what would normally take half a day on foot is compressed into thirty minutes. They know they've arrived because the bird is no longer fifty meters in front, yanking them along. It slams to a stop in the middle of a clearing before melting back into the astral realm. The earth around the men calms like boiling water being taken off the fire. The ground simmers and shimmers for a moment, then slides to a stop. Ellesar's head spins with a woozy wave of vertigo. He braces himself with one hand on a tree. Smohalla looks down at him from his perch above and caws a greeting.

[Tecumseh]

While the spirit is making its return journey with its passengers, Smohalla circles the area. In the growing daylight, the remains of yesterday's encounter are obvious. Three bodies lay in the clearing in varying states of dismemberment. They all show elemental damage of one sort or another. One fellow was skeletonized by fire, another looks like he went three rounds in an electric chair, and the third is bloated and deformed, looking like he drowned in the middle of the forest. Maybe it was due to the magical nature of their demise, but none of them appear to have been picked at by animals yet. Their equipment is in various states of repair, mostly varying between totally destroyed and just mostly destroyed. Smohalla is not an expert in modern gear and equipment - all guns look alike to him. Ellesar will have to sort through those.

Satisfied that they're not going to get away, Smohalla leaves the bodies for a moment to explore the surrounding woods now that he can see. He soon comes across the source of the explosion from last night: a massive fir tree, a hundred meters or more, weary with age, gave into the wind and detonated near its base. Smohalla looks on the shattered stump with amazement. The trunk is huge and suggests an ancient age, surely before Europeans ever stepped on the continent. Smohalla mourns the loss of so great a tree, one which has been green for centuries on end. But nature has already started to reclaim the deadfall, and Smohalla knows that this tree will be a nurse log for decades to come.

Looking about, this tree is not the only casualty of the windstorm. Many trees are missing branches and entire limbs, other have been uprooted and thrown to the ground like pick-up sticks. Smohalla looks back to his own resting spot for the night. It looks comparatively modest, maybe even flimsy. He's left to wonder if that's what saved the tree - a slight, supple trunk, adequately able to bend - or if his plant spirit somehow reinforced it, preventing its collapse. Had it collapsed while Smohalla was asleep, he would have just woken up and flown away. But if the tree had collapsed while he had been astrally projecting ... there might be nothing left of him now except an eagle pancake. Such is life in the forest and the cycles that it keeps.

With that, Jake races onto the scene, tail wagging happily, followed soon after by Stogie and Ellesar, no tails in evidence. Smohalla looks down on them and greets them with a shrill call.

[phlapjack77]

With the arrival of his friends Smohalla feels much better, much more relaxed.

Strange that after years of solitude, he could take comfort in the company of others.

The eagle launches himself from his perch and glides down to the scene below.

Realizing that with so much time having passed that most magical traces will have vanished, he still doesn't want to leave that stone unturned.

He opens all of his senses, magical and mundane, to try to learn what he can.

[Tecumseh]

Smohalla checks the scene but all magical traces have long since passed. While one might figure that powerful magicks feeding off the aligned mana of the place might last longer than usual, it is also true that they're actively washed away by the steady stream of mana emanating from the living earth. The only detectable magic is the lingering essence of Smohalla's plant and air spirits. Whatever spells were cast yesterday, the only traces that remain are the three corpses.

Toeing the corpses gingerly, the drowned man appears to be (have been) an elf. The charred skeleton is unrecognizable, but he/she was certainly not a dwarf nor a troll. The electrocuted victim seems to have rounded ears, so human seems like the most likely diagnosis. Jake sniffs at them distastefully.

[phlapjack77]

A memory surfaces in Smohalla's mind.

Dinner the previous night...a fire spirit, a water spirit, and...another kind of spirit.

Three women, three types of spirits, three corpses dead by burning, drowning, and electrocution.

Even without any residual magical traces, it seems evidence of the Sisters' involvement.

Ellesar, Stogie, Jake - can you find any information of value in these remains?

[pbangarth]

"Aside from the obvious, I can't tell much from the remains. I'll take a look to see if anything meaningful hangs astrally. I dunno... it's worth a try." Stogie opens his perception to the astral and studies the area, including the human remains. Jake sniffs around the periphery.

[AtroposReborn]

Ellesar circles the area, making sure not to step on what could be important clues to what happened here. "I think it best if I go ahead and get some pictures of these poor souls before we go rummaging through their remains." He pulls the camera off from around his neck and begins photographing the bodies and area from all directions. After finishing with the broad brushing he walks closer to each body individually and pokes around their belongings with his tomahawk.

[phlapjack77]

Smohalla realizes his exposure as a cold gust of wind hits his featherless skin.

Having noticed the parcel the others have brought, he gratefully slips into his clothing.

That accomplished, he squats down next to Ellesar and watches the examination.

[Tecumseh]

While Smohalla dresses, Stogie combs through the area and Ellesar captures the scene on his camera. Astrally, Stogie doesn't find anything that Smohalla hadn't already noticed. There's little doubt that the Sisters were here, although it's an open question as to whether it was spirits or spells that sent these men into the afterlife. The terrain clearly favored the Sisters, with abundant mana for them to draw on. It's not as strong as at the campsite, but it has the same flavor as what Smohalla and Stogie have detected elsewhere around Rainier. Each of you can attest to the potency of Smohalla's spirit this morning: what was intended to be a mid-range pick-me-up was actually a high-grade kick in the ass, more like rocket fuel than regular petrol.

Stogie's attention to detail leaves little unnoticed. The drowned elf matches the description Ellie gave last night: blond mohawk, leather jacket, and no mountain gear. He looks entirely out-of-place, and Stogie wonders if he might have just frozen had not the Sisters finished him off first. Ellesar quickly locates and identifies the twin of the gun Ellie showed you yesterday: "a Ruger Thunderbolt with an internal smartgun system and customized grip and an under-barrel weight, loaded with EX-explosive ammo." The Ruger is found under a bush, not immediately obvious but not particularly well hidden. It's unclear why the Sisters left it behind, unless they just didn't see it and didn't care to look for it.

Poking through his gear, Ellesar picks out a heavy pair of goggles. They look familiar to him, like something he wore while training for the military years ago. Slipping them on, he immediately notices that they offer thermographic vision and visual enhancement. They're a nice complement to his natural low-light vision. They offer vision magnification too, which Ellesar knows would help in long-distance shooting. They also come with an image link and a smartgun link. Ellesar figures that they would have been useful with the Ruger Thunderbolts.

The electrocuted man seems to have been the team's electronics guy. Why they thought that would be useful in the mountains is not obvious. Most of his toys have been fried by the massive currents that stopped his heart and cooked his brain. His armor, however, is in better shape. He's wearing a camouflage suit and, just as Ellie said, it seems to be brand new. It shows little wear - other than some electrical damage - and someone might reasonably conclude that this was his first time wearing it. It seems that he was carrying two guns. In his hand is a standard Remington 950. Ellesar looks it over and concludes that it's a stock model, as new as the armor. Slung across the man's back is a Franchi SPAS-22. It looks like it received a little more love in the man's lifetime, the barrel showing evidence of regular use. What catches Stogie's eye though is the gun's folding stock. Stogie's not an expert on modifying guns but the folding stock looks to be roughly the right size and shape to fit on the back of his Enfield AS-7. That would require getting the folding stock off the SPAS and onto the AS, but it seems possible. In theory. Hmm.

There's little left of the man who burned. His rifle exploded; Ellesar's guess is that the gun's explosive ammo detonated in the fire. His gear is dust and his armor is blackened and unrecognizable.

[pbangarth]

"City folk. Urban weapons. These people didn't know what they were getting into. If the Sisters hadn't gotten them, the forest would have. Who the hell would send an unprepared, unsuited team like this into the wilds?"

Stogie checks out the shotgun on the back of the electrocuted man. "I can use this." Stogie straps it across his back and looks for some ammo on the dead man. Scavenging, yes, but then, that's what happens out here. In the city, too. "Ellesar, you know anybody who can modify weapons?"

Jake continues to sniff the periphery. The dead bodies are of passing interest, but they are a bit repulsive, especially the badly burned one.

[pbangarth]

Another thought comes into Stogie's mind. "Ellesar, let's check out their commlinks. There may be some info on why they are here, and who sent them." Stogie adds that item to his scavenging list. And food. Probably these fools didn't bring much of that either, but you never know. The singed camo outfit would be good. "Can you use this camo suit, Ellesar?"

[AtroposReborn]

Ellesar lets the goggles rest on his forehead as he continues searching the others. He's forced to keep the Ruger in one of his free hands due to the current lack of a backpack. Not seeing much else of value he makes another pass over the bodies to check for any undamaged comms.

"My thought exactly, Stogie. The problem may by actually finding one that works."

He makes his way over to the electrocuted man, where Stogie is standing. "Well I already have a suit but I can always use a spare." The thought of a change of clothes reminds Ellesar of his encounter at the lake. "As for modding weapons I don't know anyone personally. I do know someone who may know someone else though. An old military buddy."

[Tecumseh]

If the man who burned (body #1) had a commlink, it either melted or otherwise disintegrated into the forest floor. It's gone now.

The electrocuted man (body #2) had a high-end commlink but it fried. He does have a backpack though. It has some freeze-dried food in it that looks reasonably edible, plus a bivy sack: a small, one-man tent. He had a hundred rounds for the SPAS, half of which were slugs and the other half flechette. The SPAS takes the same gauge as the Enfield, so the ammo is interchangeable between the two.

The drowned elf (body #3) has a basic commlink but it's water-logged and seems like it shorted out. That makes Ellesar pause, wondering about the quality of the ammo on the corpse. The rounds in the gun seem to be fine, but everything on his person seems to be thoroughly soaked. He had ten extra clips of ammo: 2 clips EX-EX, 2 clips gel rounds, 2 clips stick-and-shock, and 4 clips hollow point. How much of it is usable is an open question.

[pbangarth]

"Alright! Jackpot here, Ellesar. Some food, ammo I can use, and a one-man tent that looks in good shape. How about your chummer over there?"

[phlapjack77]

Smohalla stands up as the others look for usable weapons and food.

Not having any use for the equipment, he stays out of the others way.

His ambling takes him in an ever-widening circle, his eyes alert for any missed clues.

[AtroposReborn]

"No bones," the elf replies. "This guy might as well have jumped in the lake for all his gear's worth. Hopefully the ammo's not all lost." He pauses as he sifts through the rounds. "Wait, did you say a one-man tent? Why would only one guy have a tent for just himself?"

[Tecumseh]

Smohalla doesn't find much in the way of additional clues. The encounter seems to have been very short. Ellesar checks the clip of the Ruger and counts three missing rounds. Either the elf was slow, or surprised, or was otherwise unable to pull the trigger more than once.