You tell Penteram that you have a credible, if somewhat dated, lead on a Sand Daemon in the Godsbane Basin region. The journey will take awhile, so the large hunting party takes sets off southbound the following day.
---
While you travel, you get the opportunity to make small talk with most of your fellow hunters.
You have a few vague memories of the man who would become King Penteram from your early childhood, and aside from his moustache having changed from brown to gray, he is exactly how you remember him. Short, but stocky and muscular. A loud braggart, but with a kind heart. A deadly hunter, who loves and respects all animals. Despite have only been to the desert one other time in his life, he is nearly as comfortable navigating it as you or Keanu.
Your much older brother regularly grills you on details about the plants and animals you encounter on the journey, and he always seems grateful when you provide the answers. In return, you grill him a bit on the affairs of the world. Penteram tells you full stop that he would love nothing more than for the Confederacy to declare war upon him. Aside from slaying a Sand Daemon, winning a war is the only thing left he feels he has to accomplish in his life of manly adventures. There is no sport in beating up the nearly defenseless state of New Mahallo, and his only real chance of beating Felix's superior numbers and generalship is to provoke the Eunuch into trying to invade the nigh uninvadable Titanlands. He had thought sheltering the crusaders would do the trick, and give him a bonus of extra soldiers, but his pesky brother chose to respond by cutting off trade and leaving Penteram stuck with a bunch of heavily armed radical hardliners who technically claim that he shouldn't even hold a throne.
As you talk, you get the feeling that Penteram's interest in New Mahallo isn't terribly deep or diabolical. His initial offer of arms to the Mahallo raiders was for the sole purpose of securing himself loyal, knowledgeable, and well equipped guards for his own personal raiding and hunting trips into the elf controlled forests. He had wed Phillip to your mother so he could pass his gifts to the raiders off as a bride price, and make it seem less like a crass bribe. This arrangement, however, wound up tying him closer to your Kingdom than he bargained for. He claims to spend at least a month in Bride Price with Phillip and his grandchildren every year, and to have fallen in love with your lands and people. "Although I am not her King," Penteram admits, "today I would gladly lay my life down for the Kingdom of New Mahallo just as I would for my own lands."
You can't help but wonder if that sentiment makes him an ally, or a rival for control of the lands you inherited.
Your mother and Phillip give you plenty of details on your two youngest siblings whom you have yet to meet.
Poor Prince Alan is a wreck. He apparently suffers from 'possession', an ailment that runs in the family of Phillip's baseborn mother. From time to time he will lose control of his muscles, fall to the ground, convulse, and foam at the mouth. When the boy is not suffering from seizures, he is usually hiding in his chambers, afraid of his own shadow. The poor child believes, among many other conspiracy theories that all seem to be centered around his death, that Andre and Anders are agents sent by you to kill him, and no amount of gifts from his half brothers or explanations from the other adults can convince him otherwise. The only person he seems to trust, aside from his parents and a few of the servants, is the artist Giovani, who has taught the child to paint. The paintings that Alan produce are high in quality for somebody of his young age, but the subject matter is often disturbing. Your mother shares that his latest work depicted her being torn to shreds by wolves, with the boy saying that he saw the scene in his nightmares.
To make matters worse, many in the clergy believe that since young Alan is male and born after Queen Anne became royalty, that he is ahead of Penette in the line of succession. Even the child's own father Phillip, however, admits that putting a crown on Alan's head would probably be a terrible idea, and he has Anders and the other clerics working hard to extend your mother's childbearing years in hopes that he can have a less problematic heir.
Princess Anne on the other hand is a model child. Your mother claims that she is probably smarter than even you or Anders were at her age, and is very engauged in with the world around her for a four year old. She often chooses to sit in on regency council meetings of her own volition, and can usually give basic summaries of the issues discussed and decisions made afterward. Anne the younger would probably have traveled with the hunting party to be dropped off at the nameless city for education, but she refuses to leave her parents and her favorite brother Anders.
Speaking of Anders, you learn that your brother is more miserable and standoffish than he has ever been. Phillip suspects it is because he is overworking himself. Your brother is currently training at least six hours a day in the art of divine magic, fulfilling the ceremonial duties of an Imperial priest, and taking on any responsibility for the Kingdom that he can convince his mother to give him. You know, but don't tell, your mother and nephew/step father that in addition to all that Anders is also trying to teach himself other, more heretical, magics.
Andre, on the other hand, is doing well for himself. He spends most of his days at home drilling with the Mahallo raiders. He is apparently quite the fighter, having traveled to The Titan Canyons recently to compete in a tournament that King Penteram was hosting. Andre tells you that he finished second place in the melee, and came in fourth in the single fight bracket. He quietly admits that he think he could have won the later event, but threw his semi-final match against Penteram's son Louie so as not to cause a scandal or make an unintended political statement. Your brother boasts that he is likely to become an even more impressive fighter in time; at present he leans on his impressive strength to win him fights, and he is sure he will only improve as he gains more experience and better technique.
On the marriage front, Andre is playing it by ear. He confesses to keeping a few lovers around Bride Price, but unless one of them falls pregnant and points the finger at him he has no intention to wed any of them quite yet. "I don't know how the political situation will play out when you come into power, brother, so I'm keeping myself avaible in case you need a family member to marry off to pacify the Mahallo or the Crusaders or something."
---
Maeve thinks it may be possible to get a brittleness hex onto the Sand Daemon. Her preferred plan would be to spot it from afar, and have the unimportant hunters cast lots to form a small group of two or four to charge and get killed so everybody else can gauge its abilities. Depending on how quick its movement speed and reaction time are, Maeve might be willing to try and sneak up on the beast alone at night, when vampires are fastest, and slap the hex on. This of course would depend on both Penteram and the prey being cooperative enough to wait a day between sighting each other and starting the fight.
You and Maeve spend an hour or so each night practicing your brittleness hexes. You can hex your mentor with about thirty seconds of skin to skin contact, and vampires are fairly hex resistant. Depending on the Sand Daemon, of course, it is probable that it will be quicker to hex your intended target if it gets distracted enough to let you in up close.
As for useful illusions, you can create an animated false image of the 25 hunters under your banner, and maintain it for about a minute and a half, or two minutes if you are willing to strain yourself to the point of extreme exhaustion. Maeve can do all fifty of the uniformed hunters, and hold them for closer to six minutes. Illusions are arcane magic, allowed if not necessarily encouraged in Imperial culture, but most people with a noble upbringing know that the Bleachedkin are the ones who teach the art in the Nameless City; A blatant display of illusionary power would betray the fact that you have at least some affiliation with the vampires, and allow those in the know to probably infer that you are trained in hexes as well.
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"You know why they call it Godsbane Basin?" Kane asks the assembled royalty and hunters as they sit around the large oil lamp on their first night in the aforementioned region. "Ages ago, a pre-imperial god of nature and beauty, name forgotten to history, resolved to make this place green and fruitful. The god tried for years, but he could never make a hospitable climate take hold. He tried for so long and so hard that eventually even he, a god, succumbed to dehydration and exposure. Wild beasts tore into his carcass, and enough blood came gushing out to create the lake that carved the basin. For decades, the Lake of blood was the forgotten god's only legacy. And then even that dried up."
Your friend takes a long sip from his wineskin. "That is what the desert does to outsiders. Dries them up, chews them up, kills them, and leaves their legacy to the mercy of dust and time."
The rest of the hunters seem impressed. Struck by the profound parallels between themselves and the nameless god, both out to accomplish a task above their pay grade and against the will of the desert. You can't tell for sure if Kane is speaking the truth; You have never heard that story from Matriarch Mire or Vishnu, and your friend does enjoy telling a good ghost story from time to time.
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The party wanders Godsbane Basin for months. You take down many wild Dire Kangaroo Rats, Fiend Centipedes, Impregnator Wasps, and other impressive prey animals, but your true quarry eludes you.
At one point you find what looks to be the trail of a titanic Vinegaroon, a surefire sign that the Sand Daemon Pierre spoke of had been around. You follow the trail. For days. But eventually it vanishes on the banks of a temporary river created by the extended cool season. The party combs both banks of the river for weeks, hoping to pick up the trail again, but to no avail.
Eventually the time comes to turn back and leave the desert, perhaps for the last time, before the cool season ends.
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During the journey home, talk shifts more and more towards you and your reign. You will have to endure about two months of minority between reaching Bride Price and celebrating your 17th birthday. King Penteram offers to fund an excessive birthday feast to celebrate the start of your reign as an adult monarch. He has several ideas on how you might celebrate, noting that your appearance at the party will likely be your realm's first impression of you.
Party Ideas:
Tournament: Call all the knights, champions, and raiders in your realm to do battle for glory! Optionally you may choose to participate to show your courage and honor.
Magic Tournament: Invite Imperial Clerics, Mahallo Druids, and other miscellaneous spellcasters to compete for dominance! Optionally you may choose to participate to show your skill and cunning.
Legendary Feast: Provide meat, booze, and entertainment to the entirety of Bride Price for a whole week!
Safari: The plains and scrublands of New Mahallo are full of prey species you'd never see in the desert. Get over your failure to find a Sand Daemon by bagging your first lion or rhino.
Raid the Elves: Traditionally Mahallo men celebrate coming of age by riding in the first canoe of a raiding party.
Although you will not hold any real power until your birthday, you will have a personal guard and free reign to explore your realm. Is there anything you would like to try and do/see/accomplish before the party?
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Topic: (SG) Petty Kingdom of New Mahallo: Reign of King Arawn (Read 20206 times)