And we pick up where we left off with Onget getting too friendly with the local elves. We immediately left north. Originally I went west to some cave to steal some amulets and figurines, but they must have been cursed to break my game or something and I forgot to go there until I had already made two days of travel north. One good thing about leaving Cog for so long is that I forgot most of all the things I did before the crash.
Sneaking out in the night after a brief nap, Cog left in the night. He reached for the bag in his hand and fished out a barrel and mango.
An awful concoction of honey badger blood, watered down and cooked, washed down with mango - all part of a healthy balanced diet!
Well, it was a diet. Maybe not healthy or well-balanced, in any sense of the phrase.
Cog traveled the night looking for something meaty to cook. Strangely the night was quiet besides the chattering and plodding of his good traveling associates; despite the warm airs no animals sought to enjoy the warmth and soothing night in these tropics. Usually something would go out of its way to try and eat Cog, or see him and bolt away - there was however, nothing. Perhaps everything that lived in these jungles only surfaced in the day, or the Elves had eaten them to extinction.
Eventually the trees grew too dense and the marsh too forbidding to hunt, sooner or later someone was going to get split up or eaten by crocodiles. Cog stopped sneaking and just walked northwards, waiting for the illumination of the day to guide his friends.
Cog found himself in the middle of nowhere. He continued walking north but it was unusual to find so little of anything, there were only trees and trees aplenty. It seems the jungle he had just waded through was simply too dense for Elves to live within, he did not envy the merchants of Sparklelens who had to travel to and fro with bins of fruit aplenty.
Cog continued walking north until he found a landmark that seemed familiar; an area of the world that was the birthplace of several rivers. And to the east - civilization. Elven civilization, so there was not much in the way of culture beyond trees, furniture, elves and fruit. It was still something, and maybe it looked impressive to the people who could see. Up ahead a group of Elves were chatting and Cog felt this would be an appropriate time to begin spreading rumours, alongside his name of course.
Cog shared some tales and inquired as to the whereabouts of the nearest northwards settlements, and the Elven clothier Enina was helpful in that regard. They rested on the outskirts of the Elven forest retreat, or whatever the elves are calling it these days, and slept for a while. Upon awaking Cog set up a campfire and readied breakfast, exchanging stories with Quathari and Onget.
The breakfast meal was quite enjoyable, some fine cuts (crudely sheared from the mutilated corpse of a honey badger) were shared around some boiled honey badger pudding.
It had been caught earlier at the river sources.
And Onget and Quarathi finished it off, with gusto.
The journey north was encumbered slightly by Cog insisting on bringing all the remains of the badger with them, and in addition they somehow nearly got stuck on a tree.
Quarathi was the one to point it out to Cog, somewhere along the tune of "it is terrifying. By the way we're in a tree."
But really I think it amused them to see Cog fumbling around the tree. Whilst he was there he did pick some willow tree leaves, good for chewing or brewing.
On the way to the Elf settlement the clothier elf had pointed the trio to, they bumbled right into a major elf settlement - one with a market tree. They called it Riddlepear, with the riddle supposedly being in finding out what a Pear was - Cog had never seen one in his life. Although perhaps it is more useful to say he never tasted one in his life, as pears were not sold by the merchant elves nor did they seem to know what pears were.
The carefully butchered badger remains were exchanged quite amicably for lychees. Cog initially tried trading them for 90 lychees but got haggled down to 15 lychees with the addition of 3 willow leaves. The elf Atiforifafa seemed impressed that Cog could actually say his last name and also seem impressed more when Cog began preaching the medicinal properties of ground up honey badger bones, nervous tissue and whatever else. Eat the honey badger and gain the power of the honey badger.
The joke's on Atiforifafa, that honey badger wasn't very powerful, but these lychees are lychees of power. Shame on those willow leaves, at least Cog still has a few.