Previous: Desert's Masquerade, Post 2
The following entry was heavily inspired by my repeated attempts to make any progress in the Sega Genesis game Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun in the short time I had access to it through the Sega Channel. I did not, in fact, make progress and continually lost 3 of the 4 members of my party. But the game allowed resurrections...
(Content Warning: Corpse Transportation, Them Old Dnd Themes of Xenophobia)
Genesis (Gen to her friends, none of whom were present), knew she couldn't linger overlong here. She and her putrid baggage were just outside of the Beastman territory they had so recently failed to pass through. The young cleric was exceedingly aware of how quickly the smell of her cargo could bring predators from the surrounding woods. She wasn't overly concerned with the Beastmen. They had an almost supernatural reverence for their borders. She remembered how she had tried to convince Fist-a-phonius or whatever the hell his name was that crossing those borders for the sake of a few hours shortcut was absolutely not worth the trouble but the pompous ass would have none of it.
Genesis glared down at the red robed corpse with the mangled face and the absurd, pointy hat. How it had stayed atop his overlarge melon was a miracle in and of itself. She only hoped that this experience would teach him some respect and caution. Because she really, really did not want to do this again. Phony-face truly seemed to enjoy his turkey legs and ale.
In any case, she knew that the Beastmen were almost as fanatic about keeping to their own lands as they were about keeping others off of it. No, she was more worried about all of the scavengers in the area. The Beastmen had claimed a large circular swath of land just north of the Imperial town and it was a tight pinch for anyone caught between the two. Travel from the town back toward the capitol was diverted out of respect for a tenuous peace treaty with the xenophobic anthropomorphs.
Unfortunately, the town sat at the fork of a very wide, fast moving river that rushed out to both the east and west and this whole geographical and political situation forced the new roads to run through long bottlenecks on either side of the Beastman territory. Naturally, highwaymen and their like had been taking advantage of the situation for months as Imperial Guard presence was very low in the area and not at all likely to be reinforced any time soon. Worse, the indigenous wildlife, much of it flush with divine natural magics, had begun to pick up on the new pattern as well. It was a bad show in every direction and Genesis thought that the Imperials would probably have long ago abandoned the frontier town were it not for their overwhelming greed and the ridiculously lucrative piles of resources running rampant throughout the region.
The diamond mine beneath the town alone would be worth the trouble. Consequently, that mine was the only reason she was bothering to drag these numbskulls back to the town's temple. Diamonds were a prime component in resurrection spells, she knew, and she suspected the mine must be rich indeed for the temple to be offering free resurrections to adventuring parties. She could feel the flow of magic all around her, as well, infusing the earth and trees and the very rocks themselves. It had an erratic, primal feel to it and she couldn't quite get a grasp on it when she sought to manipulate it. It danced out of her magical reach, like it was alive and laughing at her.
Genesis knew her own magical abilities were borrowed, granted to her by some divine force, but it was not compatible with whatever flowed through the veins of this land. She didn't know which Deity had deigned to grant her the powers she had, mere hours ago, failed to use particularly well. She didn't even know if it was a god or goddess that granted them and not just some reservoir of naturally occurring celestial energy from which she drew power. It was unusual for one of her kind. Most clerics served a member of the Pantheon directly and drew their powers from worship and prayer. Many of her fellows barely acknowledged her standing.
It wasn't like she cared overmuch anyway. She enjoyed her spells and the good she could do with them but her primary merits lay elsewhere. A strong back, a deeply useful penchant for common sense, and an uncanny knack for survival. She supposed that's what made her a popular pick for a guide for adventuring groups passing through the area. At the very least, she could drag their dead, idiot bodies back to town for a free rez. What did that make, she wondered, five...six parties in the past month? They were getting bolder. And she was tired of the nickname "corpsebearer," which seemed to have stuck with the local clergy. She had more than enough platinum saved up from her activities here...maybe it was time she was moving on.
Speaking of which, she thought as she levered herself up from her makeshift seat and rubbed her hands together. She could sense the energies in the area shifting and figured she had better get a move on before she didn't have any parts left for the temple cleric to resurrect.
Next: Boarding Party, Post 4