Tall Tales 3

Honestly I’m not sure which words Amber is even after. I’d argue wendigo is a technical term but who knows with that woman.

As per your instructions I have announced the town’s supernatural presence. Invoking a slight panic and people preparing to leave town. Though not too many of them. No doubt we’ll soon be having a chat with the federal rangers about all this. Not that they hadn’t already figured out most of it, it’s why they like to use our town as a staging ground, but I imagine this will have some sort of political ramifications for the state.

Apparently John and the bite boys have found some leads in the big city as to who we’re looking for. The bandits that came for Amber’s shop are theorized by many to live somewhere in the miasma. One of the old vampires are pretty sure there is a city in the mountains somewhere that might be above the mist but have lost contact with the rest of the country. There are multiple rumors of their presence but no one has really amassed enough information on it as a particular interest. Though some think they are a sort of expeditionary force whose city has become so isolated that they’ve become independent and hostile while they try to build their own nation.

How did meeting the wendigo for yourself go? At the very least it sounds like she’s a product of another’s machinations rather than a power hungry mortal who sought the easiest path. Though I am concerned about what those plans might entail if they involve creating wendigos and who knows what else.

Also asking Alihana to not be an arrogant grievance for all she encounters is like asking a mountain not to be tall.  Fortunately, Rohaka is the one who gets to do the talking for the most part.

As requested, I have built what they call a ‘porch’ outside of our new abode. I’m still fixing the roof but it shouldn’t be too much effort.

Oh right, the other creepy thing in the fog. Yeah we could send Halona to look for that too.

Training shamans to hold the shrines would involve years of practice. Given that the risk should they let their ward slip would be an almost inevitable death were they by themselves. Though we could have some of the more experienced ones walk the path to check on the shrines and maintain them to a degree, placing a guardian over each one might take some time to cultivate. Depends how large you wanted to make them.

Noel is on her way back to Tall Rock. The damage the town has suffered can no longer be easily alleviated by her presence. Especially with their recent decision to release many of their secrets. They had far more than I had anticipated. To the point that it is abnormal, even if they were openly recruiting all they could it is strange so many creatures would find a way to making their home there. I think Kathryn is either intentionally gathering them or that there is something strange about that town specifically.

According to Kathryn, they control the wendigo by…doing almost nothing different. I suppose the threat that Kathryn will kill them if they break any local laws isn’t that different from the rest of how their society works. So it is an uncontrolled cannibal they just give stern warnings to. I’m going to say that town might be crazy, I would dispatch the hunters to deal with it but for some reason that creature is under Kathryn’s protection.

The southern reports are in. The Shiyo are indeed nowhere to be found. It would require Noel to say for certain but it seems the realm has shifted once more, an iron road is where it once wasn’t and the Shiyo forest is gone. Replaced with a bunch of rocky hills.

So what counts as offensive? Can we call Salvatore a vampire? What about his feeding stock? I’m guessing fangfucker is out but what about cattle?

Also yes, Van Tien is a bit of a tricky toy to navigate. It’s what makes our trackless train work, as well as the cannon Lenard put on it, though it miiight be responsible for some of the things we now understand to be kept in Kathryn’s basement.

I suppose I could make something resistant to Lenard’s radiating energy and give him a blanket or something.

We’ve taken to enforcing the shop with really big guns. I will say, I think the shop has never looked better.

Also I can make construction cranes out of steam engines if you want though we aren’t building anything too tall…then again I could put it on wheels. Hrmm…I’ll look into that. As for fireproofing, we have metal. Though that’s expensive to make houses out of.

As for the more interesting matters, Nathan has been looking through the bandits bodies. They show minor but detectable mutations that would be caused by prolonged contact with the miasma. Very prolonged and unmanaged contact. They would have had to be swimming in lakes of vapor oil or something. Some even had dramatic mutations implying being out there for multiple generations.

Their armor is expensive and difficult to produce but not technologically exceptional. I can make this with enough time and materials but equipping so many this heavily would be prohibitively expensive and require more resources than our entire town has. They had miniaturized engines in them to power the armor though, which is rarely done except for exceptionally heavy shock troops. I don’t know what is implied by them all having this level of equipment.

I’ve started recruiting some new hands from around town to work at the shop. Keeping the basement labs restricted for now, don’t need them getting into Nathan’s chemistry warehouse or my bombs.

I’ve seen to getting the hunting lodge look down just to heavily imply that we eat more deer than the people expect. Though with the recent revelation of how many oddities are in this town, at least the attention isn’t as intensely on us as it was before. Though it is still a lot.

Ah yes, getting everyone else a job. That I can do, if half of us weren’t away at Wallhalla. I have Shen keeping up the whole woodcutting job, its reliable right now with how much of the town is being rebuilt. Grimold wants to start a smoke shop of some sort and I have to keep explaining to him how expensive that is and how terrible we would be at competing with Amber’s shop in ‘pipes’. Though he started a garden with a lot of questionable herbs in it recently.