More Mountain Lions

Torinn, Glesni, and Khalid knocked politely on the door of Arnari's office.  They'd been eating dinner the prior evening together when the noisy group returned from Stormhaven.  Those Freelancers had succeeded in capturing "Jamie's halfling friend," where Jamie was some half-elf who had been working with the pirate ship Osprey.

They'd also brought back bracers of archery for the Freelancer stores.  Glesni wondered idly how one would get them.  

Arnari waved them in and they seated themselves somewhat awkwardly on her chairs.  Torinn didn't like to sit, and Glesni's tall bow had to be held.  Arnari's desk was piled with papers.

"I have three missions of interest," Arnari started.

• Well, I promised House Aldous I'd offer it – the hippogryph eggs – so is offered to you.  I know two of you already did it once.
• Second mission.  Lakeview wants someone to check on the pollution, and hopefully it's dying down, but...

Arnari's voice trailed off in concern.  Glesni asked, "What would we expect to find?"  Arnari explained, "Extra large animals, oozes, some aberrations, some oozes.  There was a hydroose."

Glesni rubbed her left shoulderblade as Arnari said that, while Khalid exclaimed in dismay.  Arnari went on,

• Orderly Stone Monastery has been having problems with animals hassling their goatherds, and seems kobolds have been behind it.  Now, there is a mountain lion; they will pay 400gp.

Glesni was surprised.  "I thought we took care of that," she said darkly; she'd been badly injured.

Arnari:  it seems this is a lone mountain lion.
Glesni:  it this per lion head, or per person?
Khalid:  let's do this.
Arnari:  if more than one lion, feel free to press for more gold.
Torinn:  let's do this.
Glesni:  I did advise them to put a fence.
Arnari:  they move around a lot, can't fence the entire range.
Glesni:  perhaps they encroached on the lion's boundaries.

Before they headed out, Torinn bought his own longbow, and Khalid bought a shortbow.  Glesni, unsure how long they would take to find a mountain lion, picked up 5 days' rations just in case.

Both Khalid and Torinn had hippogryphs from House Aldous, so they flew up to Orderly Stones.  Glesni rode pillion behind Khalid on Khalid's hippogryph Iggy, while the much bigger Torinn rode his sturdy Greyfell.  The weather was very nasty; the eastern end of Duquesne was engulfed by storms, and the Freelancers stayed fairly low and did not stray near the edge.

They got there in the very late afternoon, and were greeted by the Rain sagani Fuifui, a monk who followed Toka.  His hair was loose and he shook it in the pouring rain.  "Oh, the rain, this is great!" he exclaimed, then noticed the Freelancers and mounts looking a bit bedraggled.  "Don't you like the rain?" he asked.

Khalid started, "Nice for a Rain sagani…" Torinn said, "That's nice, do you have some place where we go inside and watch the rain, while we dry off?"  Taleisin, the human leader of the monks at Orderly Stones, joined them while he was talking.

"The inside?! Oh, man," Fuifui exclaimed in dismay.  Taleisin shook his head, "You are so weird," he told Fuifui, and ushered the Freelancers into a common room, while others took Greyfell and Iggy to the stables.

Fuifui called after them, "You just gotta be grounded and look at the rain!"  He took a relaxed stance, and spread his arms in the rain.

Once inside and slightly drier, Taleisin told the Freelancers, "So happy you are here.  I think the kobolds are sending yet another apex predator after our goats."  Torinn frowned.  "Isn't this overkill?" he asked, meaning having 3 Freelancers come out for one cat.

"Yes; but thank you for coming," Taleisin replied.  "We'll feed you tonight and when the weather clears, can go after this latest."  He added, "I'm sure this is tiresome for you, it is for us."

Glesni was looking out the window at the rain and wind, in the fading light.  "Are the goatherds out?" she asked.  Taleisin said, "No; weather."

"Do they camp out overnight?" she asked, and Taleisin shook his head.  "Not this time of year; too much chance of storm.  Later, yes."

Dinner was plain but filling, and the Freelancers were given simple rooms, each with a pallet and a basin.  They arose the next morning to find the storm had not blown itself out.  Wondering how they would track anything in this weather, they met Taleisin at breakfast.

Taleisin:  we'd sent the goat herds north east, towards the mountains.
Glesni: should we fly, or go on the ground because of tht tracks?
Khalid:  go on ground?
Torinn:  does anyone know about mountain lion tracks?
Glesni:  I saw them last time…
Torinn:  can they be seen from the air?
Glesni:  uhhhh   <narrator voice:  Shari rolled a 5 nature>
Taleisin:  probably fly to the pastures and look there.
<Taleisin regarded the weather outside.>
Taleisin:  on the hippogrpyh, would take an hour, but the weather is shitty.

The Freelancers didn't want to go, because how would they catch anything.  They stayed in the dining hall, as did many of the monks, some talking, some reading.

Fuifui started talking to others about being grounded, "you just gotta feel the rock beneath your feet."  Torinn, unused to a person that into the god Toka, just nodded and smiled.  Taleisin gave Torinn a bit of a side eye, and said, "Let's go practice forms!" to Fuifui.

Torinn asked, politely, if he could use the training area to practice throwing handaxes.  They agreed and the Freelancers were shown to the practice area.  While Taleisin and Fuifui went through katas, Torinn started heaving axes at the convenient practice targets.  Khalid just crossed her arms and watched.

Torinn got the hang of it really fast.  But as he walked to the target to retrieve his axes, Glesni sank an arrow into the haft of one of the handaxes in the target.  Torinn turned to look, surprised, and she just smiled tightly at him.  Khalid rolled her eyes.

By the time Taleisin and Fuifui were done with their forms, the storm had broken.  The remnants of the clouds were scudding across the sky and the Daystar shone fleetingly in fits and starts.  It looked to be turning into a beautiful day, although the ground was going to be wet.

Torrin, having missed Glesni's question the night before, asked Taleisin, "How many goats do we expect to find up there?"  Taleisin sighed just a little bit, but merely said, "Zero."

The Freelancers flew on Iggy and Greyfell the same way they'd travelled to Orderly Stones, and just as Taleisin had said, found the meadow in question after an hour.  They landed and started looking around for any signs of cougars.  After a time, they found tracks on the northern side of the meadow which they were pretty sure were large lion tracks.

"Let's  follow them on the ground, with one person up top," Glesni suggested.  "Good idea," Torinn said.  They decided to have Khalid on Iggy flying above, with Torinn on Greyfell following the tracks on the ground, and Glesni pacing him off to the side.

Thus arrayed, the Freelancers easily followed the tracks northward to a small meadow surrounded by a bunch of trees.  A large cat, not much smaller than their hippogryphs, was sunning itself outside a cave opening to the side.

Torinn held up a hand, and Glesni stopped as he pointed out the cat.  Khalid circled silently above, then Torinn and Glesni advanced, cautiously, not that it mattered because Greyfell stepped on a twig which broke, and Glesni, still not used to her height, caught the top of her bow on a low-hanging branch.

The cougar looked their way and stood up.

Glesni drew and shot with almost the same motion as freeing her bow.  Heart racing, she drew and shot again immediately.  The cougar roared as the arrows struck home.

• Torinn rode up on Greyfell, then jumped off right in front of the big cat.  He raged, swinging his great maul, bludgeoning the cat in the shoulder.
• The cougar was pretty injured!  It roared again in pain.  Another mountain lion ran out of the cage and pounced on Torinn.  It slashed the Bronze dragonborn but failed to knock him down.
• The roaring cougar also slashed Torinn.
• Out of the forest to the east, came Momma.  The Freelancers, upon seeing the arrival of a large female cougar, realized the other two were immature.  Momma pounced on Glesni, slashing her badly, but somehow missing the bowstring.  Glesni was bleeding badly, but kept her feet.
• Khalid shot Momma with her short bow, and while the arrow hit, it didn't do much.  Iggy flew low and also attacked, beak piercing and claw slashing.

Glesni dropped her bow, drew her longsword, and crit Momma with a two-handed swing.  Then she picked her bow back up.

• Torinn swung his great maul into the shoulder of the first cougar.  The maul crunched into the big cat's shoulder and broke its neck, killing it.  He backed up towards Greyfell, and the remaining mountain lion slashed at him with its claws, missing.  Greyfell attacked it, missing with his beak but slashing with his claws.  Greyfell moved behind Torinn.
• The cougar, deprived of Greyfell, attacked Torinn, but missed.
• Momma spun in place and grabbed Iggy by the throat!  Her big teeth punctured Iggy's neck and the hippogryph was badly injured.
• Khalid attacked Momma with her short sword and whiffed.  She followed up with a daggar in her offhand, piercing Momma behind her head.

Glesni dropped the bow again, and again crit Momma with a two-handed swing, killing her.  She picked her bow back up.

• Torrin mauled the remaining mountain lion, then stepped back.  The cougar slashed him with its claws.  Then Greyfell stepped in, beak piercing, and crit the big cat with a powerful slash of his own claws, enough to split the cat's skull.

The Freelancers looked around.  Three mountain lions were bleeding into the mud.  They didn't see any more cats.  Iggy landed.

Khalid looked to see if they'd missed things; she didn't think so.  Torinn saw nothing.  Glesni pulled out her healer's kit to staunch the bleeding, then used a fighter trick Tomtom had shown her to recover somewhat from the wound.

The Freelancers all looked at the cave, then concluded they should take an hour as a restorative before risking another fight with dangerous cougars.  That helped Iggy recover as well.

Then it was time to look in the cave.  Torinn and Glesni looked, but didn't find much of interest, but there was a crude scratched-in and painted depiction of The Snake at the back of the cave.  Glesni didn't think it was magic, but it was the right height to have been placed there by kobolds… or maybe some people a bit taller.

They also found what looked like a goat-fur stuffie/chew toy.  They wondered if this was used to … train the cougars?  Torinn took it.

As they came out of the cave, they saw Khalid had started to skin Momma.  Torinn moved to skin the cougar he'd slain, and Glesni did her best with the cat Greyfell had mangled, but only managed to get scraps.  Glesni loaned Torinn her longsword to use for beheading the cougars.

When they were done, Glesni said, "I'm thinking about where all these things are, in relation to Orderly Stones, and they seem deliberately spaced."

She continued, "I'm also wondering about the location of the caves, is more likely from this spacing?"  Torinn said, "I'm also wondering about that."

She and Torinn drew a map out in the mud.   The attacks did form an arc around Orderly Stones, with some gaps.  They tried to figure out if there was another location common to them all, but no.

It was a bit past Daystar zenith, so after making sure Iggy was good, they flew to the closest likely location.  Sure enough, there was a cave similar to the one with the cougars.  However the opening in the forest in front of it was neither mud nor grass, but webs.

Giant, horrible webs.  Glesni and Khalid looked at each other.  "Let's burn the webs," Glesni said.  Khalid opened her mouth to protest, and Glesni said, "There won't be a forest fire, it rained."

Glesni got out her tinderbox and lit an arrow on fire.  Then she sent the burning arrow winging down on the webs from above.  The webs caught and Khalid urged Iggy higher.  The damp trees did not catch fire, but all three Freelancers saw a giant horrible spider run into the trees.  None of them could tell about the cave itself.

Tired, injured, and horrified, the Freelancers returned to Orderly Stones Monastery.

They arrived at Orderly Stones mid-to-late afternoon.

Fuifui:  I'm so happy to see you guys!
Taleisin:  how did it go, did you find the mountain lion?
Khalid:  we found three!
<Torinn produced the heads.>
Glesni <darkly>:  we found more than that.
Torinn:  the next thing you will be attacked by is spiders.
Taleisin:  euuuweh.  Where?  How?  

The Freelancers took turns telling Taleisin and Fuifui that they'd found webs, set them afire, and saw a spider skitter into the woods.  They drew a map of the area and used it to explain why they'd looked.  Taleisin was deeply unhappy about the entire spider affair.

As he went into the monastery strongroom to pay out the gold for the cougars' heads – 400gp each – Glesni said, "Killing off these apex predators is not healthy.  You probably want to go after the kobolds to stop this."

Torinn agreed, "Glesni's not wrong!"  Taleisin nodded.  "Rest here tonight, and I will send you to Arnari with a couple requests for her!"

He sighed.  "I know about giant spiders," he said somewhat reluctantly, "this is not their usual behaviour."  Fuifui looked startled.

Glesni asked, "How do you train spiders?"  Taleisin took the question literally, and said, "No idea, actually."  Torinn quipped, "On skates, obviously."  Glesni thought about ice spiders on Coldstream, but Khalid burst into laughter.  Fuifui's mind was blown.