We dress out the dead megatherium...
Its stomach filled with meat contaminated with Cursed Khort...
Clearly deliberately poisoned...
Khut excises the digestive tract and turns the rest into jerky...
Khadagan gets a nice pelt to wear.
We entreat the Drowned River spirit to help us find where Cursed Khort grows...
Khut spots Watery Horntail spores on the wind...
We follow them northwest looking for a monsoon tarn...
We find the Tarn...and a large camp of the Black Crow tribe...
Maybe 300-400 tribesmen...3 wind-beasts (standards) flying...
Notched Curled Horn (Hellhorn standard)...
With the triple-curl of Orbghuz IronCrown...who hates us...
Also standard of Brackith Axetooth (another vanguard clan)
Also black-hand-on-white-field of the Black Hands...
Including Naquim Black-Hand...who hates us...
Lots of Black Crow hunting ripclaws circling around overhead...
We crouch discussing whether there is any hope for peace...
Khad spots an albino ripclaw flying in from the West....
making a bee-line for the camp...
Khut shoots it down, the bird vanishes, and drops something...
Khut stealth-sprints and grabs a bamboo thing that the bird dropped...
Warbeasts thunder out of the camp...
Ado creates an alarm cascade in the local fauna distracting them...
Two peal off...two head strait for Khut's position...
Khut goes flat and hides...
AND escapes by the skin of his teeth...
Sorq sends Alev, her miacid familiar to retrieve the arrow...
Khut hands over the bamboo thing to Sorq to figure out what it is...
It is wrapped in a strip of paper with black-shaman runes on it...
Wrapped around a stick of specific length...
then re-wrapped to make it incomprehensible...
Sorq interprets the markings and figures out the right stick size...
"Beast herd west, bring everyone, the hunt begins"
Ado decides to entreat the Dust spirit for aid against the Hellhorns...
Khut gopher-snares a licken...and hands it over to Ado...
Ado rips out the licken's throat, makes a circle of blood around himself...
His attention is drawn to the Hellhorns...
Who are breaking camp...slowly...
Khadagan entreats Drowned River to mire their wagons...
We send Semek's wife back to Drowned River to rouse the hunting parties...
Seeing the hunting parties saddling up, we decide to cause trouble...
Sorq sends Alev in to set fire to the camp...drawing off one of the parties...
1 down...
2 Blackhand, 2 Axetooth, and 3 Hellhorn hunting parties left...
We run down the southernmost Black Hand hunting party...
Chase them for 20 minutes...Sorq shrinks and rides Khut's shoulder...
Catch them up on a south-facing slope, out of sight of the others...
Khut leaps onto the rear-most warbeast...
Sorq color-sprays the driver...
Khut body checks the rider and spearman off...takes control of the animal...
And Charges his Rhino into a headlong rush against one of their Rhinos...
And Sorq paralyzes their driver...
And Vadim comes up and blows the spearman off with a gust...
Ripper runs off after a licken, taking Ado into the thorns with him...
And Ado gets shot a lot...
I mean A LOT...
Khad charges down a ridge and tackles a rhino, grabbing its head...
and actually brings it to a halt...
Sending its rider and spearman flying...
The lead rider releases a Ripclaw to warn the others...
Which is promptly shot out of the air by Khut...
A spearman climbs up on Vadim's Rhino and is promptly thorn-whipped off...
Then the Driver is gusted off...
And Vadim has his own rhino...
We run around and pound them with Warbeasts...
and grind them into the dust...
We take their pikes, a case of healing potions, and the 4 warbeasts...
We toss down healing potions...and ride hell for leather to the west...
We catch up and see a lantern-flash signal from another hunting party...
Telling us to circle with our pikes...
AND we see that it is a herd of Holy Mountain Beasts...
Apparently they are trying to drive them off a cliff...
We jump a ravine and circle to the west to try to cut off the herd
hoping to drive them south instead of NW to the ravine...
Vadim lays down some thorns in front of the next closest hunting party...
Then he and Sorq rush headlong into a forest of Holy Mountain Beast legs...
And Vadim makes "Friends" with a HMB bull calf...
AND makes a friend for life...
AND gets STOMPED by the angry mother HMB...
Sorq sends her cat in...which claws its way up on one....
And vanishes in a flash of fire...
Causing six HMBs to charge, panicked back to the east...
Strait at the Black Hands...
Vadim gooses it and bursts out ahead of the HMB herd...
Meanwhile, Khut slides his beast into a ravine for cover...
AND does a looooooong, arcing shot in the dark...
AND tags an Axetooth standard bearer...
WITH a Black Hand arrow....
Hilarity ensues...
AND...we run into some Quicksand...
Khut barely rears and pivots his beast before it goes in...
Two Black Hand hunters peel off and chase to Khadagan...
Khad shoves a bag of poisoned thermopsis powder in a spearman's face...
And then the Driver vanishes, shot off the beast by Khut...
The second driver gets Ripper-poo flung in his face by Ado...
Who swings down under his warbeast to dodge their counter-attacks...
AND jabs his spurs into his own beast, unleashing a Thunder Wave...
Blowing them and their beast away...
One more beast comes up behind him...
And the third driver vanishes just like the first...
Suddenly, out of nowhere...there are swarming clouds of Ripclaws...
Which tear into everyone...
Khad spots a flickering crow...a shaman in spirit form...
AND cleaves it with his axes, dissipating the flock...
Sorq, now out it front, bursts into flame, spewing fire everywhere...
AND TURNS THE HERD...
Everything in the north turns into a royal cluster-fuck melee...
Hellhorns vs. HMBs...
Khut does some surgery to a warbler arrow...and launches it...
With a long, shrill cry of "FUCK YOU ORBGHUZ IRONCROWN!"
We start driving six HMBs south...Vadim's baby, the mama, and four others...
Sorq drives them with firebolts...
Ado mimics the cries of a calf to draw the mothers on...
AND then the Nohai come running on...
We send them circling out to the edge of the fight...
Orders to pick off stragglers and wounded (of whatever species)...
They come back hauling enough meat to feed the tribe for 13 days...
We get back to Drowned River...
With six Holy Mountain Beasts...and Literal TONS of meat...
Khad takes a fresh HMB Steak to Semek...
and asks him to step up the manufacture of his Razorclaw-talong swords...
The starving Nohai gorge themselves until they pass out...
And for once the Steppefolk don't mind...
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