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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 771549" data-attributes="member: 114">Fareena flames the grey creature again, while preparing to heft her iron frying pan. It bites at her and she feels the burning irritation of poison. Then a diminutive flame leaps out of her lantern and touches the creature, which instantly catches alight and it falls, crisped and curled at her feet. She checks Annia who is alive but paralysed, and stands again to inspect the scene below. Fire is flickering from the underside of the wagon where the shadowy shape fled.Clint and Beyoncay fell one of the gnolls and round on the other. It bellows angrily, hacking in wide arcs, slicing deep into Beyoncay but a well-aimed sword blow from Clint tears through some vital place and the gnoll drops dead. Below, a mass of people bundle another gnoll to the ground and fists, feet and knives put and end to it. Alavarielle’s archery drops the last entangled one in the camp and the odds are improving by the second as Katarn wriggles free from a Salamander that is weaker now for a well aimed ray from Drucilla. Between them they slash the salamander to the ground in a shower of ashes and smoke. Beyoncay and Clint target their archery out into the gloom and the distant trapped gnoll stares helplessly as a fusillade of arrows pierces it through the body. Blood foams at its lips as it buckles at the knees and falls lifeless in the grass. There is no sign of the shadowy creature that Fareena saw, and the last of the gnolls is either dead or fleeing, yet the wagon burns more fiercely. The party gathers horrified as the boards of the wagon start to crack.People gather helplessly round the wagon and it becomes clear that there simply isn’t enough water available to douse the flames. The valuable cargo must be saved, but the conflagration is too hot. This is Fareena’s moment. She spies a burly fellow in the desperate assembly and rushes to him. With urgent reassurances she waves her hands, reciting a childs charm and weaving unbeknownst to the subject, a protective spell. The fellow, compelled by her confidence, leaps into the blazing wreck with renewed courage and starts tossing smoking bundles of goods into the waiting crowd. The wagon is soon empty. Something rather odd in the back of it catches Fareena’s eye but she can’t be sure what it was and loses sight of it in the smoke.The group slowly disperses, each to their own thoughts, and the rest of the night passes uneventfully. In the morning they rise early, and an early outrider arrives to announce the imminent arrival of the other caravan. They wait until mid morning when it finally heaves into distant view. Viewing the carnage of the night before Vladimar inspects the burnt out wagon in some distress. A day is spent re-stowing the goods, and Vladimar spends a lot of time around the wreck sorting through the smoking ruins with Mischa.A quiet evening is spent girding loins for the next day, and though the new caravan has brought another Elven Bard along, the two are somehow unable to get their musical styles to work together. This foppish fellow seems to have travelled as far as Tradevitch to broaden his horizons but like so many others ended up wintering over, trapped by the lack of safe movement over the hills due to the snow. The fact that gnolls were allowed to wander almost uncontrolled in the streets of this rough frontier town at Spring tide had done nothing to improve his demeanour so the prospect of a caravan travelling across the plains was too good to miss.The night is thankfully quiet and the next day’s travel is equally uneventful, although distant figures are sighted and Vladimar comments that the tribes appear to be moving North uncommonly early this year. Perhaps it is a symptom of the unusually long winter?Heiroday also passes away without action as the miles roll away under the rumbling wagon wheels. That night Clint has a terrible nightmare that leaves him in some pain from the force of wrenching spasms of dream-fear. Somewhat alarmed he consults with Alavarielle who simply shrugs. Mischa is just as mystified and the exhausted and short-tempered Clint retires to the campfire to pass the night in wakeful alarm.The following day while Clint finds sleepy oblivion on a wagon top, smoke is sighted on the horizon. It appears a day or so away and of no immediate alarm. Smoke is often seen in the distance, usually from cooking fires, but this seems a little more abundant. The watch is doubled as a precaution. Just as the camp is settling down for the night a flaming arrow plunges into the guarded area from the East. Heedless of the fires, Fareena picks it up and removes the leather patch tied upon it. She can't read, so after opening it passes the message in crude Batu and an ear complete with earring to others. Several attempts to read the hieroglyphs prove ineffective until Vladimar arrives to investigate the sudden commotion. His face pales as he reads the glyphs and  inspects the ear. This is the ear of a competitor, one Nikita Teflikov. Nikita had left Vjelpamiri two days before Vladimar to some contemptuous cajoling from Vladimar’s own servants in the street. Now it appears from the message that he is a prisoner of a gang of gnolls who style themselves ‘Yell’s Fangs’.</blockquote>

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