[sblock=Erin and Enko]Feel free to continue your conversation in sblocks. I'm quite interested in the responses to all these questions! But the game needs to continue.[/sblock][sblock=Third Watch: Ryon (and Growl)]Sometime shortly before midnight, Erin shakes you awake and informs you that it's time for your watch. Enko is already making himself comfortable again near the fire.
You notice once you fully awaken that the thorn-singers have gone silent, but the forest is still noisy as ever. rrrrreeeeeeee ... rrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeep ... rrrreeeeeeeooom! szzzzszszszzzzzzzzzzszzzzzz
You recognize the former as the call of the leafback toad, a small nocturnal toad that gets its name from its habit of burrowing into the rotten leaves littering the forest floor. Although their skin is smooth, it's covered in a sticky mucous that binds leaves to it, trapping moisture against its skin and providing camouflage from predators. If caught, the mucous from a leafback toad's back can be carefully scraped off and thickened to create a serviceable glue, without harming the toad.
The latter noise belongs to a death's-head beetle. Death's-head beetles are so named for the white markings on their iridescent blue shells, resembling a leering skull. Despite their ominous name, death's-head beetles are harmless unless eaten. Their horribly bitter taste and mildly poisonous nature, however, generally results in the emptying of their predator's stomach. The noise they make comes from the rapid beating of their hardened chitin wing-covers as they cling tightly to plants.
About a half hour after your watch begins, a slight rustling of the underbrush catches your attention. At first you pass it off as just a small animal or a gust of wind, but then you hear it again, closer to camp, and Growl suddenly stiffens and starts to snarl. Straining your eyes to see in the near-total darkness, you think you can just barely make out a small form crouched about sixty feet from the campfire, slowly making its way towards where Alistia is curled up.[/sblock]
