From the administration team, I bring news! Technically Auwana now has three villages on it. The village in the mountain where some new flyers from the jungle have agreed to the same deal the Huanacan offered those from the plains. It appears they attracted a very unique specimen though, one who likes to build. They’ve started building more elaborate houses than just thrown together nests and developed their own market. Actually they’ve been coming to trade with us here at the lakeside village with odds and ends they find from flying around and scavenging down below since they tend to explore more often than we do…since they’re all capable of flight.
Add this to the existing, but mostly empty, village by the rune circle that allows us to travel by lightning to the ground below and that makes three. We may consider naming each village a bit more formally so we know whats being referenced to. I suppose technically you could argue for four villages given the Huanacan live on their own in the woods but they aren’t really far enough away that I would count that one as being apart from the main village.
We finished helping out the Milani with basic repairs around their village after…y’know…Citlanal set it on fire.
As for Kaya’s adventures, well it wasn’t cannibalism. There’s another demon druid there, which as we learned from Mor is a whole thing. Just like with the Milani, the druid appears to be kept rather closely guarded by the village. They also chased Kaya out soon afterwards.
Also despite our best diplomatic efforts, the druids don’t seem all that inclined to leave the jungle to live on a floating island that goes to who-knows where. Especially with our lack of a giant tree apparently. While they have been continuing to teach Maxhui, notably she will have to stay behind to continue her training at this rate if the island leaves the jungle.
So the problem with giving Taike a flying mount is that she seems to have issues seeing things that should be obvious sometimes. We still don’t entirely understand how her blindness works, but she has a tendency to miss good spots to land by impressive margins sometimes. At least her mount is smart enough not to listen to her too closely. I’d classify her as mobile but I wouldn’t make flying a major part of her duties if it can be avoided.
As for adding more bone to her…I dunno never tried that. This might be more of a realm of expertise for the dead raisers like Tupai. I suppose the same line of logic would lead to adding bits to our bone guardian. Tupai and Sawiri are intrigued by the idea but I’m debating if that should even be attempted at the moment, as it might kill Taike. We know Coszacatl can do it but she’s only using the bones for structure as opposed to truely animating them. We could easily tie enchanted bones into her skeleton but at that point we could just have her wear them like the rest of us do. The real end goal is making it a part of her own skeleton that she could use I imagine, and thats where it gets tricky.
The apprentices, sans half a dozen of them, are back on Auwana now and reconsidering their professions. They’re also a bit more scared of me now. I’d call that a productive outing.
Sawiri and his team have absconded with the bone guardian and affixed things to its head to work on the temple some more. Apparently they can reach much higher now thanks to it and are trying to make the temple bigger. I say trying because Sawiri has fallen off four times and put a hole in the roof that needs to be fixed twice now. So not sure if its getting any better or not.
We put bone spikes at our landing zones. Also, people still aren’t voting on the Xiomac vs Xacalli issue. At this point maybe just do whatever and tell them later that its their fault for not voting.
We’ve had Kennae and the team gather some of the aquatic wild life down below to bring back up with some effort. A lot of fish died on the trip, most likely because its a surprisingly long and bouncy flight. We’ve tried to introduce some to the lake and some of Ragash’s ponds but we’re still seeing how that goes.
To which note, we probably need to appoint someone to care for the ponds given that Ragash isn’t really around to manage them anymore.
Uyitzan and his team are still exploring in the north and have managed to find some others of the more monstrous variety to communicate with. Apparently the dead villages are a known phenomenon and that is why the area is mostly empty. People found it safer to flee to other areas than risk continuing to live by the river haunted by whatever is killing entire villages. Some gnolls in the area have rummaged through these slain villages to loot the places at the very least. They found footprints that indicate something humanoid is the cause. Of the gnolls that scavenged, only four of the sixteen survived a deadly illness that fell upon them soon afterwards. They believe some sort of spirit is haunting the river, though we still have no one to tell the tale of actually meeting whatever this thing might be. Though we were able to put the timing of the attacks to indicate the culprit to be moving along the river westward.
Also Pride Rock has attracted a few more flyers who like the whole “lack of bird eating giant spider things”. We’ve gotten them to agree to the same deal as the previous ones we set up there.
Avonaco and Sakazai have made it to the northern areas to look into these fallen villages a bit more. Fortunately people were a lot more willing to talk to them about the affair than they were with Uyitzan. Unfortunately, they don’t know much. This phenomenon has very few survivors, and those that did live were simply away from the villages at the time of whatever happened. There exists several local legends though they are wildly different and not helpful.
First bit of evidence Avonaco could find, is that there are a few, and by few I mean three, people who claim to have seen the creature. All three gave very different descriptions but they did all say it had three skulls on its head. Not sure if that’s a mask or some weird monster, but they all agreed, while having not met each other, that it was three skulls with horns. It is likely wearing a lot of black, one said it was a living shadow but the others said it was a dress or something to that effect. Either way it was a lot of black. From there they don’t agree on anything.
I’ve noticed a few elements stay the same in each myth from non-witnesses. The first being that its “horrifying”. Not too helpful. Many seem to think its some sort of supernatural entity, a spirit or a monster perhaps that just happens to have the vague shape of a man. There is also a recurring story of revenge but no one had the same reason for it wanting revenge other then “for being killed” but that is clearly wild stabs at an explanation since no one has talked to this thing.
The next question is how its killing so many people in such a dramatic fashion. While most assume magic, Sakazai suspects something else is at play. Mostly because of the story they got when they met up with Uyitzan about the gnolls becoming sick after scavenging the place. Though, upon consulting with Alihana, Alihana says its likely a mix of methods between something more physical as well as something more fantastical.
Meanwhile to the west, the Travelers have taken to wandering up and down the coast to keep an eye out of the water people. I think we can assume they didn’t find whatever they were looking for when they first set out to find the northern healer, since we found Xacalli in the south, but they just…kept on walking. I don’t think they’re coming back unless we send someone to go get them, they do tend to just wander off sometimes if we don’t keep them occupied. They found another small village along the way with not much going on.