RolePlayGateway™

The link to the OOC: http://www.roleplaygateway.com/plague-war-t18838.html

I've been on the move for days now. I've just now reached the forest on the edge of the Flowstone Sea, though I've camped the few days I was moving across it. As useful as we really do find it, the shit is still uncomfortable to sleep on, even with a bedroll. I've seen nothing but a few dead bodies along the path, stricken with whatever is killing so many around the land.

I've got to conserve a bit of my energy for now. I haven't eaten in days. There's nothing out on the Flowstone Sea to eat and most of the animals in the forest have run from me before I could get in range. My weakness has made me blunder about like an imbecile, yet I still have the strength to write, though that is about it. For now, I shall stop the writing and smoke a bit of the herbs I have brought with me. Maybe if anyone is close by and detects the scent, they will find me. I hope they have food.

Dating the page and signing his name at the bottom of the page, the gas masked figure flips the leatherbound tome closed, head cocking to one side for a moment. His neck cracks, a hand coming up slowly to rub at the side of his neck, then turning his head to look about once more. All he could see on every side was green and it was foreign to him, his tattered outfit standing out with its muddy color. He reaches up from his neck to one of the filters on his gas mask, starting to slowly untwist it.

When he had the filter unscrewed, he brings his other hand up from tucking away the book he uses for a journal, grabbing the filter and holding in its contents. He turns it up so as not to spill it, pulling out a small vial of blue liquid from the filter. He then reaches into an inner pocket, pulling out a small white cylinder, pulling the stopper from the vial with two fingers, placing it on his thigh. He slowly pushes the cylinder down into the vial until the tip had been submerged, pulling it back out and laying it upon his other thigh. He picks up the stopper, corking the vial again and tucking it back into the filter, slowly screwing it in once more.

When that was done, he unlatches the lower half of the gas mask, freeing up his nose and mouth, yet showing no more of his face. He slides the darker end of the cylinder into his lips, leaving the blue tip pointing outwards towards the world. Sliding a hand into his bag once more, he fishes around for his Lucifer matches, for they struck on anything. He pulls only one from the pack, careful not to strike it upon the pack itself, not wanting to set it ablaze. With a quick drag across his palm, the match lights, his glove having been taken off earlier, lighting up the cylinder in his lips.

He inhales on it slowly, exhaling the smoke from his nostrils after a few moments of holding it. His eyes turn about behind the tinted lenses of the mask, pushing up weakly with one hand. He grabs onto his staff, using it as a walking stick for now, the ruby atop it glittering in the patchy light from the forest canopy. He hobbles just a bit, for he didn't have the full strength of his body. His stomach protests its emptiness, making him places a hand on it, wincing visibly, at least on the visible portion of his face. He pants softly, pulling his chemically-laced joint from his lips and lean against a tree trunk.

A rustling in the bushes catches his ear, his eyes closing for a moment more, listening and wondering where it had come from. It never came again, though, making the flowstone channeler called TJ think he had just heard the wind. With a shake of his head, the mute man pushes away from the tree, wandering away from his pack for the moment. He wasn't going to go far, however...he didn't have the strength to go far. His mind, though, churned with ideas and questions. Why was there a plague killing only some, and not all, in the land? What was causing this plague? Why had he, a mute runner, been chosen as a champion after the call had been raised over the world for a champion from each race by what seemed to be a deity? He could answer none of them now, but he intended to find out, if he lived to do so.

Inhaling slowly, the flowstone channeler closed his eyes behind the tinted lenses once more, making his slow, almost painful way along. He stopped, however, when his mask bounced off the trunk of a tree, the young man blinking and shaking his head to clear it. His eyes crossed, staring at the bark in front of him, mouth hung open in a manner reminiscent of those channelers back home who had been struck in the head and their brain damaged. A thin strand of saliva made its way down from the side of his mouth, over his chin, a slightly dull grin forming on his face. The drugs were already taking effect in his system, having spiked the thing he was smoking with the strongest psychedelic chemicals he possessed. To the young male, the trunk of the tree proved to be amazingly interesting, rainbow bursts of color travelling up its length, then back down, forming a tie-dye pattern no one else would be able to see. If they smoked the stuff in his hand, they may have seen it, but chances were slim…the chemicals affected each person differently, for each person’s brain was different, the chemicals bonding in diverse ways to the synapses.

This is so frickin’ cool. Ahaha, pretty colors. Now if only I could find some food, I’d be doing good.

His right hand, still holding the white cylinder, moved slowly out from his bare lower face as he thought the words, closing his mouth for a moment when he finally registered he was drooling. His fingers traced over the bark, the colors in his mind reacting to the touch and changing as his fingers moved, radiating out in ripples from his flesh. His gloves that he normally wore rested in his pockets, for he hated trying to cling to the little tubes of drugs he smoked. It was not like the marijuana of other races, instead a specially made herb genetically engineered by the geniuses of the Channeler Academy. The herb seeds were designed to grow in any soil, with little water and care, growing to fruition in only hours, during which it produces enough of the drug to last a single channeler three weeks before withering and dying right before one’s eyes. The young male was due to plant one of his seeds soon, for he was almost out of the ready-rolled cylinders that he had been given before leaving. So lost in his own thoughts was he that he never noticed the soft sounds of the large creature rustling in the underbrush.

Only when the creature hissed did he realize something was there, jumping in fright…but not as one would expect. Instead of whipping straight around, the channeler instead twitched and smacked his face off the bark of the tree. Had he had the ability to speak, he would have been cursing at the pain of the mask being shoved into his nose again, reaching up to rub it. He whipped around at the call from…someone, the young man pressing back into the tree when he loses his balance. Though channelers often smoked the drug to keep their nerves calm in battle, what the young man had added was a powerful psychedelic drug and also affected the coordination, leaving him quite disoriented at the quick turn. His eyes focused on the creature that had been chastised, his eyes widening further behind the tinted lenses in surprise. He looked between the creature and his drugs, the drugs and the creature, then promptly lifted his left hand, stubbing the thing out on a callus that had obviously come from many times of doing the same thing. He tucked the half-finished cylinder behind his ear, chocolate colored skin a bit paler around the cheeks, though that was all that was visible until he pulled the mask closed again. He smoothed a hand over his braids, brushing a few errant braids back into the pack descending from the back of his head.

He then turned his gaze to the speaker, glad he had closed his mask over his face once more, for his mouth dropped open when he saw her. He was also glad that she could not see that his eyes had widened to their fullest extent, scanning over her entire frame, from her head down to her feet, then back up to the skirt she wore. His fingers clasped each other for a moment before moving down to pull his gloves out, made of soft leather, just like his boots, not stiff. As he pulled them on, he noted that she drug something that was apparently heavy, finally realizing it was a deer when she pulled it far enough from the bushes. It was only as he looked back to her face that he realized she had turned her attention to him, holding up his hands in a sign that he wasn’t quite armed at the moment aside from the staff he was leaning on again. In answer to her question, he just tilted his head back, pointing to the scars upon his throat, then making a motion with his hands to mime a mouth moving, shaking his head as he did. He wasn’t the best with the sign language, so he hoped she understood enough of it to get that he couldn’t speak.

His eyes traced over her form once more as she turned away to place the carcass over the giant lizard’s back, proving that the thing wasn’t just a figment of his chemical addled mind. His face twitched beneath the mask, fingers doing the same at his side, head jerking just once. He would have squeaked if he could have when she stalked towards him once more, holding up his hands again and waving them back and forth before him, palms facing out towards the female. He didn’t know her, so he didn’t understand that she wasn’t truly angry with him, more so worried, so all he could do was try and deter her “anger” at him. At her next question, he could only nod vigorously, pointing at himself as she asked. Her next question made him pause, though the third made him frown. He didn’t obsess over it, even if he did have a giant gourd full back at his little base camp. He pulled his right hand up, miming writing upon his left, then looking up to her expectantly.

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The tall grasses of the plains tickled the kithkin female’s wide, somewhat bulbous, but not grotesque, nose, making her face wrinkle for a moment. Due to the fact that kithkin shared an overmind, she could hear the thoughts of her mates, the other kithkin spread out around her in the tall grasses. They all stayed kneeling in the grass, wide, golden eyes keeping watch over the leonin making their kill. Though they could have attacked them already, the kithkin were here only to watch and observe. The kithkin overmind buzzed as they all thought together, though it was not a hivemind. A hivemind normally had a single brain, controlling and regulating many underlings. The overmind was merely a connection between all kithkin, stronger the closer a kithkin was to its kin.

The kithkin female brought her hand down to the short dagger at her side, though a short dagger on someone of such a small stature proved to be like a small sword. Her eyes, which lacked pupils, tracked the leonin in the grasses only because they were conditioned to do such. Any other kithkin would miss the subtle signs of the leonin hunter. When they struck, she nodded just once, giving a single thought to the overmind.

Well done.

The kithkin squad nodded as one, the female making a single movement with one hand, the sharp-eyed kithkin keeping themselves silent as they move away from the leonin squad. Only when the leonin began to speak did she pause, the female turning an ear to the words and listening to the sage advice. She shook her head just once, brushing her hair back behind her ears, wide, pumpkin-like head onto a strong neck, just like all kithkin. She moved as quietly as she could, the young kithkin woman planning to head back to the doun, report in with the overmind, finding it harder to relay information over large distances. Though the kithkin lived in relative harmony with the leonin, they still liked to keep watch upon the hunters, learning anything new that they could of their ways. It was only due to the scent-killing herbs and soaps the kithkin used that the reconnaissance squads weren’t immediately picked out by scent.

Blood, the essence of life. So carelessly strewn around, in a world where the plague has infected and even the earth itself sometimes rises to devour it's victims, man and beast aren't the only ones who hunger for flesh.

The red fluid that oozed from the punctured deer moistened the ground, an unmistakable scent filled the dead silent air that the Dragonsoul had so long ago left behind. But while she was claiming her hunt, she was not alone. As the blood soaked into the ground, frayed roots grotesquely wormed through the soil where it wet. Like a river of serpents, pulsating wooden tendrils began drinking what was left once she evacuated. It was enjoying, it had been awhile since it last tasted the iron rich liquid and now that it has, it wanted more.

The crooked tree, derelict of green and almost dead, was just a facade hiding the horrors the forest held. What was once an embodiment of nature has now been transformed by the plague, into a manifestation of evil. It's rotting body begun to creak as it tried to pry itself free from it's earthen prison, it's roots expanded and contracted shaking off dirt as smaller ones continued feasting on the sustenance it was so generously given. Halfway across it's trunk, a rope wrapped across it's branch and dangling from it was nothing less than a full humanoid corpse bones picked clean by various organisms and held together by dried cartilage. One might assume someone had ended their own life on those branches, long before the birth of this being but they could not be more wrong. To the barked monstrousity, it was a trophy, one it proudly displayed even though none were ever unfortunate enough to notice it in the darkness of night.

With a sickening snap, it was finally free and it's true form became clear. 'Standing' at a height of three men stacked on top of one another, it's trunk bore resemblence to both flesh and wood in a veined yet barked manner. Wide and thick branches stuck out from it like arms, one was bent awkwardly with a sprig of dried broad leaves pointing upwards the other was ripped off by the weight of another corpse which had long sunk into the soft earth. But it did not seem that pain of was much of a concern, it's 'foot' consisted of three large roots that wound together to support it's body. It's movement was disturbing, each step it took seemed unbalanced as it constantly tried to readjust to it's balance, as if trees weren't made for walking.

Having no apparent eyes, it started to move along the trail slurping the soil clean with it's mouth located underneath it which was a meaty cavity filled organs of sorts that it ate through. The Channeler and Dragonsoul would soon bear witness to this blind abomination, not before the poisonous scent of rotting flowers filled their nostrils forwarning it's ponderous arrival.