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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 838563" data-attributes="member: 114">Pre-dawn sees the group gathered in discussion of what to do about Clint. Was he a religious man? No-one seems to know. Mischa resolves to find out, and passing behind the screen that protects the corpse’s dignity from prying eyes, lays a hand upon Clint’s chest. His message reaches across the endless planes to the left hand of Death where Clint’s unbound soul awaits judgement. In a brief and unsettling conversation with the unquiet soul Mischa determines that Clint feels his purpose in life unfulfilled. He does not accept this fate and would prefer to walk the earth again. He knows that to do so he must bind his soul to Mischa’s God, Fharlanghn, and that he can only return if others are prepared to sacrifice a small part of their souls to appease Death. This deity of the distant horizon appeals to Clint’s sense of fate, and perhaps that trickery domain is strangely compelling too.In the watery light of a distant rising sun a disparate group gathers round Clint’s corpse. The Corellonites have abstained from this show on principle and look on from a distance. Beyoncay, Vladimar, Mischa, Drucilla, Dariol, and Fareena stand in a circle, left hand resting on the shoulder of the next in the circle, right hand on Clint’s body. Mischa intones a disturbing dirge that sends a chill down the spine, and an unseen cloud passes briefly across the rim of the rising sun. A moment of inner pain and light shocks the company momentarily, leaving each of them feeling slightly empty, and Clint’s body heaves a breath. He is with them again, diminished but not defeated, bound now yet free once more. He gazes at each of his companions in turn, nods to Mischa and turns away to inner contemplation. They leave him to his thoughts.While Clint sleeps to regain the strength lost on the long journey from death’s domain, the caravan rumbles on. Three days pass uneventfully, (other than a few mad midnight ravings from poor Old Stefan) until contact is made with a great column of beasts led by Dirkan-Var. Dirkan is another of Vladimar’s cohorts, this time out of Bisigrad, who tells of a journey plagued by strife. A spy in their group has slaughtered a number of beasts with a plague of some kind. He was discovered and chased, but managed to swallow poison before they could question him. Dirkan is a dour individual but clearly rugged and capable. His Barbarian origins are less clear from his garb which is clearly Gorovadian in style, than from his mannerisms and accent that are entirely steppe like the hardy pony he rides.The caravan is now enormous, stretching nearly half a mile in length across the plain and comprising near two hundred beasts, ten great wagons, and over a hundred people. Groups of riders are now needed in all directions and Vladimar sends his best to the fore in the shape of the party members. As the sun rises to its apogee on Korday of Foreweek in the last stretch of Low Spring, a cloud of dust can be seen directly in the caravan’s path. The party spurs forward to investigate, Sharpeye circling high above. The keen eyed hawk reports a number of ‘daylight two legs’, some riding ‘four legs’, and in battle with ‘hard shells’.  Finally through the dust the party can see a surging swirling melee to their front, two Pechenki horsemen have lassoed an angry Ankheg, but cannot pull it from its feet. Why they’d want to capture rather than kill an Ankheg is a mystery! The spitting creature is lunging at a single unhorsed figure on the ground who flips to his feet in an instant, a scimitar springing into its hand as if by magic. This fellow’s practised swings bite hard through the creature’s carapace, flying ichor visible to the onlookers even at distance. Interesting enough, and a fair fight perhaps, until the ground erupts behind the lone figure and a swarm of Ankhegs engulf him in a cloud of dust.What should they do?</blockquote>

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