Ah yes...
Gnolls IMC are chaotic neutral, not evil, and are very close to nature, shamanistic and spirit-worshipping. They displace elves as the primary nature race, but they're still seen by most human nations as barbaric savage humanoids.
And so, when the aasimar sorceress met a band of her countrymen preparing to defend against a gnoll assault, it certainly wasn't a standard case of 'good guys vs gnolls'.
To simply cut and paste the appropriate part out of my story hour...
Now onto the tale of Melisande...
Her story began on the edge of the borderlands between Carthagia and the nation of Naseria, a land ruled by noble Houses of sorcerors, and defended by the elite Elemental Orders of the Mage-Knights, the Flame Hawks, Iron Hawks, Wind Hawks and Wave Hawks. She'd never travelled there before but had heard tales of the land; and it seemed a good place to start her new life.
Carthagia and Naseria have often been in conflict, most recently in the Fang Wars of 20 years ago, so named after the Carthagian fang dragons involved in the conflict. Due to this there is a thick swathe of no-mans land wilderness between the two nations, seperating the northern lands of the brutal militaristic and feudalistic nation of Carthagia (ruled by a Warlord) from the lands of the southmost Naserian Houses (Thrazan, Corvus and Merlihr). This was what Mel was going to have to cross.
To her south, the mighty mountains of the nation of Carthagia rose up, while to the north, the wilderness of forest and wastelands stretched. She set off without any real worries - Mel can be well described as 'naive'...
She wandered along a path through the forest. It was drizzling, the onset of spring bringing such weather, and the forest was still largely rather barren and leafless, but Mel and her love of living things was happy to see things such as foxes skittering away occasionally, reassuring her of the cycle of nature here. Then she heard cries of alarm up ahead.
She stepped out of the clearing to see some two-dozen Carthagian men clad in chainmail clustered in the middle, shields up in a protective wall. At her appearance one of the men gawped at her, amazed at her blue skin.
She was used to surprised reactions but this was a bit much - then she suddenly realised that a score of soldiers clustered togather was unlikely to be purely due to her skin colour. This was reinforced when an arrow from outside the ring of trees tore the mans throat out. It was accompanied by shrill whistling like that of birds, that sounded like it was being used as communication.
Mel suddenly felt fear as the men began to shout more orders and brought their shields back up again, the odd-looking woman forgotten in the face of the unseen enemy. She rushed up and wormed her way inside the shield wall, trying to find out what the hell they were up against, but in their panic, firing crossbows at the slightest movement amongst the trees, they just ignored her. After an entangle spell had caught some of the men and odd coloured lights amidst the trees had cries of 'shamen' rising up, gnolls swarmed out from the trees as the Carthagians fell into absolute panic.
Mel had only ever seen bits of gnolls in the bio-labs - to see a real one was impressive. Think of Native American style decorations - the gnolls festooned themselves with little bead charms and feathers, as well as being covered with extensive tattooes and warpaint depicting patterns and totem images. One particularly decorated individual must have been the druid, while two more gnolls loped out of the trees with hands twisted into claws and muzzles full of fiercely sharp teeth - shamen (egoist psions in fact).
Seeing that some elementary nature magic and some bright lights had spooked the humans, Mel invoked her natural ability to create light to light up the point of her spear and hold it up, trying to rally the men.
This failed miserably when instead it distracted one man enough for a gnoll archer to bring him down with an arrow.
Battle erupted, the shamen and gnoll warriors scything through the humans; but the Carthagians weren't green novices and were putting up a fight. A dual-wielding gnoll ranger struck Mel and sent her toppling over into the mid as he eviscerated another Carthagian, and as she squirmed in pain and tried to avoid getting stepped on, the druid called lightning to incinerate one of the men. That was pretty much it for the Carthagian morale, and they began to get slaughtered.
Once the battle was over, the gnolls proceeded to move amidst the carnage, finishing off the injured. The ranger moved over to Mel, preparing to finish her off; rather than the bloodlust she expected to see in its eyes, instead she saw only sadness and maybe even fear, and it sighed unhappily, weaving the sign of Immar with one hand, as it prepared to finish her off.
It was halted by the druid. As the gnolls vanished back into the forest again, leaving only the carnage, the druid spoke to her in poor, snarled common, pointing deeper into the forest in the direction of a path.
"Look at truth, there."
Then it too left her, all alone, severely injured and lying in the mud. Using her spear as a walking stick, she slowly hobbled off, determined to see the 'truth' the druid spoke of before she died.
She found the truth, as after a long time she came across a druid grove - a ring of stones, next to a small brook. The plant life around it was abundant and green, despite the time of year.
It would have all been a beautiful sight apart from two things.
One was the line of gnoll graves, each marked with the sign of Immar.
The other was the crucified fleshtearer; the beast was pinned up with large wooden splinters. It looked, from the blood on its talons and spilled over its furred chest under its muzzled face, as if it had been in battle, with most of the blood on it probably being that of enemies before they finally managed to bring it down.
She settled down in the peace of the grove, crying because she felt awfully alone, hurt and wanted the protection of her mother, before washing herself in the brook. She considered all that she had seen and came to the conclusion that what must have happened is that the fleshtearer had killed many gnolls, but in the end they'd brought it down. She had no idea why it had been released out here, and assumed the Carthagian warriors had been attacked as retaliation, although since Carthagian soldiers usually wore heavy metal armour made from the ore of the mountain mines, the lightly armoured humans must have been militia or scouts.
She'd only ever seen a fleshtearer once or twice, been allowed a quick view into a containment chamber where one was crouched in the corner devouring a meal. She knew some of the basis of the theory, had seen 'tearer parts being grown in thaum-tanks and put together with Manipulation magic and science, but the final ritual of creation was done with priests of Toran.
(Unlike other Carthagians, who almost all worship Toran, Mel is disillusioned by what she has seen in the Manipulator laboratories, and has rejected his faith).
). Why, he even gave it the same seal of approval with that picture!
