The Cannibal Coast: Part 2
First post is here. Enjoy these tributes to the MTG art of Margaret Organ-Kean.
yyy-xxx Tarpan
Bald dusty hills. A few spots of knobbly dwarf-shrubbery with blood-red circular leaves. A herd of 36 strange horses graze: they migrate here for the delicious iron-leeching vegetation. These are Tarpan. Their nose ridge is convex and their eyes are are a bit too large, making their heads look like rounded arrow-heads. They have grey dappled coats and up-pointing donkey ears and thin manes that fall forward over their head. They are slightly smaller than would be comfortable for a steed but have a good amount of muscle and paunch. They are delightful.
yyy-xxx Tranquillity
A thin copse of tall pines; perhaps a dozen trees. A woman sits in a side-saddle pose towards the base of one, her legs stretched out before her into a single point. She is in deep meditation. The woman's features are uncanny. She seems old, yet her skin is smooth. Her limbs are slightly too long, and her nose-ridge runs slightly too far up her face. The tips of her ears are pointed, hidden by her long hazel hair. She wears a simple, narrow smock made from pleated linen.
From the shins down, each leg has begun to meld with the roots. She is an elf, and her people were abducted by the Shalkin while hunting on the coast. For the first time in her long life, she is alone. Tanvi most of all misses her wife, the young and beautiful Sonal. She has decided to 'take to the roots', to sublimate with the land and rid herself of the pain of loss. The ritual takes a week. Waking her up is fine. Pulling her free cripples her, and worse yet severs her from nature forever.
yyy-xxx Sacred Mesa
A high plateau. The clouds hang low and a thin mist drifts over the landscape. Solid beams of golden light pierce through like bolts skewering the land. Scaling the side takes a day, and if approached from any direction but the south-east also requires equipment.
Atop, twelve Pegasi roam. Their skin is porcelain, smooth and cold. Their long peach manes fall into natural curls. Their plumage is gold and silver. These same colours snake in Kintsugi crack-patterns across their bodies. These are former steeds: once broken, now free. To confine them again would be a crime against all that is good and true. A feather from a Pegasi bears alchemical powers of purity. The magic of flight is kept in their hooves.
yyy-xxx Hipparion
A flat and snow-covered plain, crisp and sugar white under a deep watercolour-blue sky. This is the roaming-place of 24 Hipparion. These are small horses, only four or five feet tall, yet quite bulky. They have three toes. The rear of their jaws (the 'ramus') is thick and wide. They have grey coats with zebra-stripes, bold on their rigid manes (which run down the entire length of their body) yet fading away towards their sides.
For most of the day they gallop across the plain like a shoal of fish. Occasionally, one jumps, darting mid-stride through a suddenly-summoned portal, perfectly circular and violet-rimmed, before re-appearing a few hundred feet away as if nothing happened. Sometimes multiple stream through a given portal. A lock of hair from the mane of a Hipparion bears alchemical powers of sudden transposition.
yyy-xxx Lion's Eye Diamond
A cave-lion roams a freshly-burned pine barren. It is three feet taller than the modern sort, muscular and maneless. The regal beast is regarded as deific by all that remains: the trees and insects and birds and rodents fall silent as she approaches. The lion possesses a mark of royalty: an inch-wide spherical diamond occupies her left eye socket. The pine-queen is aloof to men and women, considering herself above predation. (AC 6, HD 6, hp 26, #AT 2, D 1-8, ML 10)
If extracted and held in hand during a moment of crisis, the gem can grant power: the bearer, for just a moment, can act as if three people. Each being can do this once.
yyy-xxx Heart Wolf
The pine barren echoes with howls and the heavy-thudding pads of brazen hunters. This is the stalking-ground of the Heart Wolf, her short brown-coated mate, and their six cubs. These beasts are heavy and strong, but the volume of the matriarch's and the cubs' coal-black coats, curly and long and thick, make them look even bigger. The Heart Wolf is the size of a donkey. Her mate, also female, is half her size. Her cubs are a quarter of her size: normal wolves. (AC 5, HD 5, hp 20, #AT 1, D 2-8, ML 11) (Mate and Cubs fight as normal wolves)
The pack is angry. Three cubs were spirited away by magic-wielding dwarvish poachers. If they spy short folk, they tail them for days in hopes of locating the kidnappers. And when they do, the pack will feast on the fiends' hearts.
yyy-xxx Dwarvish Poachers
Four dwarves trek through the barrens. They are currently fishing for zalmon in a river. Three, older with ruddy cropped hair, romp in the water with nets. The red and copper-green fish are swarming and throwing themselves into the nets. Next to a pack-sled two large wolves with black curly coats sit obediently on their haunches. The fourth dwarf, younger and with a shock of white in his mane, sits astride the back of a third wolf while stroking a green-glass orb in his hands. Each canine has a collar of braided leather set with five thumbnail-sized emeralds.
This is a hunting-party of the Kean clan. They have quested for the past year in search of the Heart Wolf's pack, led by the frivolous and daring enchanter-bewitcher Vram. A week ago he "handily" stole away three of the wolf-queen's cubs with the use of the Hold and Sleep spells, and has since bound them with Charm-collars. He is eager to return to Kean Keep with his marks and earn a place at his mother's side while dining. Yet, getting back is difficult: the wolves are harder to feed than he thought.
Vram is a 4th Level Magic User with 10 hit-points that uses a flail and spells. His companions are 2nd Level Fighters with 10, 8, and 6 hit-points respectively, two with flails and one with a shortbow. They all wear padded dog-hide parkas (8AC).
yyy-xxx Kean Keep
An old hill-fort stands on a steep and imposing promontory. Hand-cut steps have been carved from the cliff's slate and buttressed with wood. They snake around the side to a narrow peak, on which stands a compact keep-hamlet. A stone tower, hewn from a single huge rock, rises above cottages and store-houses and an mead-hall-cum-audience-chamber, all of it enclosed by a pine-log palisade. Alleys snake between these structures, none more than a few feet wide: space is tight up here.
This place - Kean Keep, of the Dwarvish Kean clan - is totally abandoned. There is no trace of living organic matter. No moss, no rats, no grass, no algae, no rot, no nothing. It's as if a grand army of cleaners came and wiped the whole thing totally clean. It's unnerving. Around the village, 32 piles of clothing. There's everything that could be expected of a ten-house-hamlet here. A dozen tiger heads have been mounted on the walls of the mead-hall. In the third of the tower's four floors, the clahnag's bed-chamber has a chest with an OSE Type-B trove.
On one of the logs of the palisade’s interior, a scratched message, as if with a pen-knife. It's at a dwarf's chest-level. It looks fresh. There's an H. There's an E. And then, a single cut that rises all the way to the top of the log.
yyy-xxx Foxfire
Half-a-dozen-or-so motes of light drift through this snowy reach of the pine barrens: emerald and viridian and jade and verdigris and turquoise. This is foxfire, also known as the "will-o-wisps". They are helpful. The foxfire cackles to warn people away from danger, and mewls to beckon people to safety or comfort.
yyy-xxx The Skeletal Snake
A frightful serpent dwells in this flooded reach of the barren. A huge viper, 20' long, with pallid, flaking skin. It rises silently from the brackish mire and begins to shed: first a layer of papery molt, then the scales, then the flesh, then the nerves, until only a skeletal frame remains. The beast becomes faster yet more fragile the longer it is allowed to continue uninterrupted.
(AC 5/7/9, HD 5, hp 20/13/6, #AT 1/2/3, D 1-12, ML 11; slashes indicate scales/flesh/bone)
yyy-xxx Ajus, Many-Eyed
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. An azure-skinned giant logs the pines. He is eighteen feet tall. His axe is as big as you are. Dozens of eyes cover his body. There's no sneaking up on this guy.
Ajus is a hateful sort, spurned by the world and thus spurning it in turn. He mumbles and grumbles. When he does speak clearly, he speaks very fast. He thinks anyone who is nice to him is trying to trick him. He's building a big bonfire, big enough to be seen from the moon, where he hopes that there's someone who likes him. (AC 6, HD 8, hp 36, #AT 1, D 3-18, ML 9)
yyy-xxx Empty Yurts
A cluster of twelve yurts, each made from fine cerulean cloth and embroidered with thick white threads in geometric patterns of interlocking quadrilaterals with cut-away corners. This was once a goat-herding community. You can tell from the goat-horn drinking mugs, and the sixteen piles of clothing (loose shoulder-pinned and belted smocks, typical of herders) around the village, and the fact that there are four posts across the settlement, each hammered into the ground and each holding eighteen leads that trail off into random spots
There is no living organic matter around the village. The ground is bare. No moss, no worms, no grass. One of the yurts is stacked with airtight terracotta pots of milk and yoghurt and cheese. There are a few more around the village which have been unsealed. These ones are empty, completely shorn of even trace amounts of produce.
yyy-xxx Lost Archer
The scent of mint wafts on the air. A woman sits in the shade of a nose-shaped boulder. She is wrapped with a goats-wool wind-cloak and wears but a simple tunic underneath. Her hair is bound into a bun. Her limbs are covered up to the joints with tightly wound starchy white bandages. A composite bow is slung across her back. She puffs on a portable brass-and-glass hookah set down before her. This is Shweta. She has taken on a pilgrim-vow to find her people, who all vanished from her village a month ago while she was away grazing a few goats. She is pleasant enough but her mood is serious, her brow furrowed whenever she remembers her task. Shisha is pretty much her only source of respite now and she is even becoming dependent on it to sleep.
Shweta is a 4th Level Cleric that knows Cure Light Wounds, Purify Food and Water, Bless, and Snake Charm. (AC 7 HD 4, hp 12, #AT 1, D 1-8, ML 10)
yyy-xxx Implements of Sacrifice (MTG)
This reach of the pine barren is coated with bracken. Rising from this expanse, a crest topped with three collapsed dolmens in a row. Only the lichen-covered slate "table-stones" remain. Next to the middle one, a pile of blackened human bones: six bodies, hacked apart in combat and burnt. These were once Bokshi: shaman-witches. Yet, their hex-circle was raided during a weather-changing ritual by witch-hunting sorts.
Two monochromatic ghosts sit upon one of the old mossy capstones. One is an old fat woman dressed in heavy sack-cloth rags adorned with animal bones. Her hair is messy. The other is a fair and meek young woman, perhaps in her early twenties. Her eyes are large and round and deep. Her hair is long and combed. The older ghost turns to travellers, lowering her brow, pursing her bejowled lips, and glares, taking estimation. Then, she rises, walks to the edge of the ridge, and points down at an overlooked hessian sack, fallen into a dry nook down the slope, hastily discarded during the raid, overlooked for decades. It's yours now. Take it. The ghosts look at you with an ambiguous expression, melancholy yet almost mischievous.
The sack contains the Implements of Sacrifice: a straight-edged knife and a mortar-bowl, both carved from a single piece of onyx. Feed the mortar with lifeblood for a dire gift:
- Dying throat-blood grants a 2nd Level Spell Slot that can only be used to cast evil spells (such as the "reversed" versions of cleric spells).
- One can also spend an action (and d3-1 hitpoints) to quench the mortar with palm-blood, thereby immediately gaining two actions.
yyy-xxx Zebra Unicorn
A fine and fair and regal beast is the Zebra Unicorn. A boon of beauty from the heavens itself! It has stripes to stand out in both night and day. It has hooves to race over the sun-lit land and bring the sight of itself to all. And it has a horn to pin-prick pierce the moon-lit sky and let in the stars. A truly magnificent creature... This specimen was captured a decade ago by master-trappers commissioned by Walla the Cat, head of the Thief-Guild in Seaopolis. She had it sought out so she could give the god-steed as a present to her favourite girl in her harem, naming it after her: Venv, the most eerily beautiful woman on all of Udore Island, deserved no less. It was prized by all in the Guild, yet after years of captivity it finally mounted a successful escape. Now it grazes and lounges in these quiet and sparse hills. It still answers, with a sudden and panicked twitch, to the name foisted upon it.
The Zebra Unicorn bears alchemical and magical powers of duality, of linking, of night-and-day. The horn and hooves of the beast can each be used to make a magical item. The being's coat can be used in concoctions. (AC 3 HD 4, hp 20, #AT 2/1 (hooves/horn), D 1-4/1-4/1-8, ML 6; heals for damage dealt with horn)
yyy-xxx Cloak of Confusion
A Grand-Bandit lairs in this reach of the barren. A leather tarpaulin has been strung between trees, sheltering a pocket of dry ground which has been covered in wonderful rugs and cushions and mahogany stools and side-tables. This furniture all surrounds a beautiful bronze brazier, the ashes still hot. One of the tables contains a jewellery box with 1800G in random mixed gems and baubles. A hookah sits on another table, the pipe trailing up to an occupied hammock, the owner wrapped in blankets.
This is Nishant's oldest trick: the old "stuff the blanket with pillows so it looks like you're in the bed before ambushing whoever decides to muck around with your stuff". The young and slim and sly man, with tied back cropped hair and a mono-brow, is hiding up in a nearby tree. He is wrapped in a silk cloak, almost translucent, decorated with a maroon and peach checker-board pattern. That is his second-oldest trick: the Cloak of Confusion. He looted it off a travelling-sorcerer he ganked a decade ago in Dahleena City named Faisal the Fantastic. One can castConfusion twice a week by twirling and whipping it around.
The rogue leaps down silently and "subdues" foes with his snaking silver dagger. He is a 6th Level Thief: (AC 7 HD 5, hp 18, #AT 1, D 1-6, ML 6). He is more than willing to surrender and "call it quits" and volunteer his services if bested: Nishant the Knife doesn't want his story to end quite yet. He transports all his stuff with a purple-silk purse-lipped Bag of Holding on his belt. He once used that baby to evade the iron-guards of The Swan Palace in Bel-Zarath!