Aha! The players begin to arrive. Wonderful.
Shucks, now that you've made a Karrinkas account it makes it harder to kill ya off.
Well, in that case it is only appropriate to post one of Karrinkas's dreams. Karrinkas is a
Karranas, and has a somewhat different outlook on things than the hoo-mans. One other slight complication is that he is not literate in the languages of the Haraivans.
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You dream that you are silently stalking forward, low and on all fours between the brush. The early summer sun has begun to set as you creep along the line of the hill. You have passed a few outer scouts who generally are more concerned with gossip than holding a good perimeter. Their attention seems turned to the city beyond the hill, before which is a huge host of humans. Never have you seen such a number in one place. The Claw Lake Tribe could be repeated a double-handful times over before it matched this host in number. They seem to intend to do something you've never heard the humans to do: to actually attack and breach the walls of a City. But their warriors do not seem to relish this though. Unlike any other gathering of human warriors, they do not boast and sing as the sun falls, but instead sit together quietly in their camps.
The sun casts its rays redly across the field, and campfires begin to dot between the tents. A steady clanging catches your attention, and you creep toward vantage point to see a big pavillion of black and silver. A man in a long dark robe slips between the guards and into the tent, and they seem to take no notice of him. The clanging continues for a while, and there is a great shout of man that carries power and pain.
In that instant, there is the booming sound of thunder, rolling across the fields, and the fading sunlight begins to dim faster. You look to the sky and see a great dark thundercloud sweeping in from the north, with lightning dancing across its surface. Then you hear a collective gasp from the encampment, and you see many of the humans look to the south. From the sea is a sight that makes fur bristle. A cloud, a mass, a fog of shifting, glowing greens and blacks and reds rises from the south winds. The line where the two great forces meet is seething with brilliant explosions of dark color and brilliant bolts of lightning. They push and receed from each other, then meet again.
There is a terrible crackling, and you look up again to see a dagger of flourescent green stabbing deep into the heart of the thundercloud. Lightning begins to spray haphazardly across the thundercloud, and then begins to reach down for the ground. With a sudden stroke, a bolt slams into one of the large tents, and the horrified screams of men wild with pain. You can see a strange rain fall, only from the strange cloud, and only on the army encampment. The men seem to be trying to get out of the rain, which seems to almost glow in colors itself.
You look up again to see the thundercloud shattered in a burst of red and green light. Against this light you can just make out the figure of a human-like figure, falling from the cloud. As you squint, you see a sudden form race in from the north. It looks like a man on the back of some great beast which strides through the air as if along land (1). The rider stretches forth his hands, and snatches the falling man from the air, swinging him to lie limp across the back of his steed. The rider and beast then turn back north again, pacing the wind.
With a roar of sound, bolts of color chase after the rider and the axe-warrior. The bolts explode into the fleeing figures but cannot drop them. But from the senseless hand of the fallen man, you see something fall. It drops out of your sight behind trees, and suddenly the very earth beneath you leaps, and you clutch at the ground with all your claws.
The strange rain, and cloud, seem to begin to fade away. You down up to see the black and silver tent collapse. In it, you see the dark-robed man. He is kneeling over a man on a pallet, and then rises with a flash of metal in his hand. Then he gathers his robes around him and disappears into the mob of humans.
Then, beyond the encampment you hear a crashing sound, and from the shore you see men coming towards the camp. But you immediately recognize them as not normal humans, but the blue-skinned men (2) that you saw so long ago, after you first came to the human city of Luinlassa with Balius. They are naked, and each seems to carry long white spears. They move slowly, methodically, and silently, with no calls to battle, horns or banners. There seems to be a continuous line of them from the sea, marching a dozen men across. Some part of you knows there will be a terrible massacre, and your consciousness fades away.
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(1) There are no horses in the Haraivan area, though they have been known to ride on the tops of oxen. Bulls, sacred to
Tangri Moonfather, are even used as steeds by some holy warriors.
(2) Servants of
Aquella Firstborn, best described as undead of the drowned and damned.
