Having been kidnapped as younger children, subjected to cruel abuses, and indoctrinated in the ideology of the Cathedral of West Cove, the girls have an altered sense of reality and a skewed moral compass, but they are still young, yet. Taylar's second statement has more impact than his first, faltering the approach of three of the four girls. The leader of the unit is too far gone, not only has she been subjected to abuse, she has been trained in administering it.
The one girl screams in a feral manner, saliva flying from her mouth, as she charges at Taylar in complete foolhardy stupidity. She does not throw the small knives she draws. She rolls them in her hands so that the blades point downward. She launches herself in the air, raising both arms as if to bury the knives in the top of Taylar's head.
The tactic is so absurd that a dozen different responses race through Taylar's head in the span of two seconds. He even has time to shake his head, sadly, as he steps aside and clubs the girl once. She falls to the ground. Her head is bleeding and she is unconscious, but she is breathing.
A second of the girls takes a step forward from where the three had stopped encroaching. She is shaking in trepidation, almost to the point of convulsion. She stammers. "We, we know of no other life now... Our, our families are... no, no more. What, where is this new place of which you speak?
While this is happening, Raven Elk motions for the two girls near him to remove all of their knives and drop them to the ground. He then ushers them near the present site of conversation.
Adisakti only moves ever so slightly out of hiding. If anyone looks his direction, he may be seen. He relaxes his hold on the waylines that had made him harder to notice.
Taylar addresses the girl that spoke. "The ones that destroyed your families are zealots. They kill your people so that no one is left to help you and you must conform to their rules. Sometimes they wipe out entire communities, leaving nothing behind. At one of these places where all were killed, we have set up a new place to live and grow. We learn what we wish to know from each other, and share our own skills to make a community that wants to be together, not forced to. We will take you to this place, and protect you along the way, but first, tell us what you know about this training area. Are there are any more people about?"
Adisakti walks to the unconscious girl on the ground. He strips her of all weaponry, then checks her head and moves her to a more comfortable resting position. "She will recover within the hour."
The second girl shakes her head, speaking more calmly, the adrenaline subsiding from her system. "No, it was we six and no more. We were each brought separately. We are trained individually until we reach adolescence, then we were brought together, here. We were all blind folded when brought in so that we do not know where we are or how we got here.
Though it is such a critical decision, there is really no choice in the matter. The five conscious girls agree to the relocation.
Taylar agrees to take the girls to Refuge. Before they depart, search the area for anything interesting, search the corpse of the Markidian. If there is nothing else of interest, leave and make camp a safe distance away.
While Taylar searches the belongings of the fallen Markidian, Adisakti and Raven Elk pick up the unconscious girl and carry her back to the barracks. Adisakti speaks in Markidian, just so the girls will understand him. "She would prove dangerous to take with us, and I cannot see killing her or leaving her there on the ground. Though it is very likely she will continue down the path as she has been instructed, I do not care if she eventually reports to someone of our deeds. She would not know enough information for her words to be viable; and filled with such prejudice, she would paint an inaccurate picture. At this point, I want your malevolent leaders to come looking for us, anyway."
Searching the man, other than the obvious metal sword, wooden shield, and leather tunic, Taylar also finds a leg bone of some feline strung from his belt and a jawbone of some pig fashioned as a necklace about his neck. The very presence of this fetish and talisman are directly opposed by the religion that this man is supposed to uphold. Taylar is not at all surprised by the hypocrisy, having sensed during battle that the man could bend waylines. The sword and shield are decent, as well as the leather tunic. The clothing may fit Raven Elk but would be too small for Taylar.
Back at the barracks, the girls instinctively retrieve their bows. With a few seconds hesitation, one of the girls offers her arrows to Adisakti. Adisakti nods and motions for the other girls to follow suit. He allows them to keep their bows.
In the main structure there is the expected food stores and water barrels. The sacks and containers are too large to conveniently carry, indicating that they had to arrive by wagon, prompting Raven Elk to ask some questions.
"How often are supplies delivered? Which reminds me, how did you arrive, on foot or by horse?"
As it happens, the supplies are delivered once a tenday. Two of the five girls arrived on foot. One says that she had been first carried by boat. The other three were carried in by horse. Once Taylar arrives, Raven Elk conveys his opinion in Maldrog. "Wherever these girls were kept until adolescence, one was close by. I suspect one was from the abandoned village across the bay. The other three were at some distance too far to reasonably walk."
In addition to the edibles, there are six leather tunics that would fit the girls, all of which are marked on the back with the symbol for Dusk, which has been erroneously taught as the symbol for Dawn, wooden practice weapons, and a wooden desk containing a ledger with writing and 34 loose marks.
A trap door is discovered under a woven rug. The opened door reveals a hidden compartment with a large wooden crate. Once the heavy crate is lifted and opened, the Outliers discover a cache of much better quality throwing knives and a very thin, arm length sword made of some iridescent, brownish metal. The pommel is modified with an enlarged, outward swept hand guard designed to deflect other blades.
By their reactions, the five girls had no idea about the trap door or its contents. By question, they affirm that they have never been in this building where the man slept.
Collect all the valuable stuff and give the girls their own portions of food to carry.
Taylar says, "Keep your leather tunics on for protection. It's still a dangerous journey back to our home. You can have new tunics made after we arrive."
At camp he will continue to drill the group on their martial skills to keep them busy and too tired to run away. He won't engage in psychological manipulation or religious indoctrination, preferring to let the girls begin to think for themselves.
He will attempt to determine the wayline proclivity of the talismans they found.
Raven Elk has had his fill.
Slavery, Subterfuge and Indoctrination.
What other horrors do these vile zealots have in store? "My friends. The bile in me rises with every disgustingly new act these vile harbingers of deadly zeal concoct."
Taylar replies to Raven Elk, "The problem is the illusion of control. People can't control other people, no matter how hard they try. Trying to exert control over others leads to frustration, since it is not possible, and so strict measures must be adopted and enforced so that the few may continue to profit from the efforts of the many. People can be manipulated, coerced, or dragged kicking and screaming, but ultimately each individual still makes their own decisions. We see this everywhere in civilization."
The words Adisakti had spoken as he and Raven Elk carried the fallen girl back to her cabin had only been partially true. Once settled in a bed and Raven Elk had departed, Adisakti says to the unconscious girl, "You are too far gone. Perhaps your next chance at life will prove better."
He cups her mouth and slits her throat, feeling his hand start to cool before he pulls it away and walks back to join the others. He feels no remorse or malice for having done such a deed. He deemed it necessary.
One of the girls says, "This armor you found. It has the color and insignia for the Daughters of Dawn. We were to be raised as such when we completed our training. I do not know how long that was to be. Wearing this armor may have unforeseen repercussions."
The girls are used to taking orders and they don the tunics, carry their own bows and supplies, san arrows, which Raven Elk and Adisakti carry, allowing one girl at a time to knock one arrow for hunting and to see if they can be trusted. The girls are completely conditioned to follow orders and seem to look at the situation as having simply changed leadership.
With Taylar dual-wielding sticks for clubs, he presses the girls using his superior size, strength, and uncanny motility. The objective for the girls is to defend themselves with their bows and to try to keep away. It is good practice for them, their melee style being focused purely on motion. Adisakti uses stones and trains the girls in their primary style of combat, allowing them to throw at him as he throws at them. Raven Elk uses a cut sapling instead of his spear to round out their training against various styles of combat.
Adisakti cocks his head at the emotive statement from his quiet friend. Though the question was rhetoric, he has a sudden epiphany. "Propaganda. Propaganda comes next. Once key positions have been established in the surrounding communities and definitive threats have been eliminated, mass teaching will be used to infect the up and coming generation to maintain its own prison. Nothing could be more effective."
Taylar begins by holding the jawbone necklace, Raven Elk takes up the bear claws that have been carried around for quite some time, and Adisakti examines the leg bone fetish.
After almost six hours of holding the item, Taylar sees a vision of a large boar that was finally brought down by a spearman on a horse. The vision skips to the jaw being cleaned and boiled in tannic water, then strung with a cord to be fashioned as a necklace. When the man dons the necklace a translucent image of the boar circles the man and enters him, bolstering his resilience.
OOC:
Confluence +3
After almost 10 hours of fiddling with one of the thumb claws of the bear, Raven Elk suddenly realizes that he has been seeing a pattern of life through the eyes of a bear and has been infused with its physical nature.
OOC:
Strength +4
Though Adisakti can determine that there is a particular proclivity to the leg bone fetish, he cannot determine its nature.
During one of the training sessions, Taylar calls an immediate halt. One of the girls is able to darken the natural illumination around her, making it more difficult to focus on her. When she does so, the other four girls immediately cause the same phenomenon around themselves. The girls have no idea that they have manipulated waylines. They have been taught that by due diligence to their religion and training, they may receive blessings from the Lord of the Day. Having received such a "blessing" outside of any homage to their god causes them great confusion.
Keep the boar jawbone necklace. (marked on record)
Taylar will halt martial training for the day and focus on the girls manipulating waylines. For the simplest analogy, he will take fire making tools and use them to make a fire, showing the girls what he is doing. Then he will put it out, and manipulate waylines to start a fire.
He explains, "The same thing is happening to start the fire, but when you focus your will you can make the fire start without tools." Taylar has each of them practice starting a fire on their own.
