When Beatrice makes her way out of her tent in the early morning and heads down to the nearby stream to collect so water to freshen up with, she's not surprised to see her companion Janey already there. The minotaur was very much a morning person, and always liked to start the day off with prayers to her goddess, as well as a bit of ritual cleaning. Unfortunately, those morning rituals don't seem to stop her from turning towards Beatrice with a smug look on her face. "Well?"
The monster slayer rolls her eyes, even as she attempts to play the ignorance card. "Well what, Janey?"
"How was he? Sold you on the benefits of beastkin, hrmm?"
The scarred warrior can't resist a glance back towards her tent, where Kliss, the group's lizardkin rchant associate, is still snoring away. "...I'll admit. I thought you were making it up when you said that he had two...well, you-knows. I can't figure out why, though! How is that a - a biological benefit? Are they supposed to be with two won at once, or sothing?"
Janey raises an eyebrow at Beatrice as the human kneels down next to her, collecting water with an enchanted flask which does the work of filtering it for her. "What, did he not show you the 'biological benefits' last night? Cause he surely showed a trick or two - like when he - "
The Embracing Acolyte is cut off with a raised hand. "Hey, hey, you talked into giving it a try, but that still doesn't an I want to hear the details of your liaisons, yeah? But uh...yeah, don't know that I'll be making a thing of it, but it was definitely...novel."
The minotaur laughs loudly, though hopefully not enough to disturb anyone in the camp who's still sleeping. The forested environnt does at least muffle the sound a bit with all of the trees, although nature is beginning to provide its own soundtrack with the call of birds and the hooting noises of small mammals. "Yes, novel, it was certainly that! Now I just need to convince Tassa to take a turn! Kliss certainly has enough interest on his part, I know."
Beatrice sighs at her companion's exuberance. "Hey, look, Janey, I get that matchmaking is a service you provide in the na of Taina, or sothing like that, but you can tone it down a little, maybe? I don't know that Tassa is the sort for one-night stands, and this caravan is only a week out from its last stop, so it's not like we'll be spending that much more ti with Kliss." She continues, although the next part is slightly mumbled. "...Besides, if the entire team spends a night with the man, it might give us a bit of a reputation..."
"True, true, although I don't think she's as closed-off as you imagine. I've noticed her giving people looks, and I do have a Priestess-of-Love-Sense about these things!" Beatrice gives her a disbelieving look, and Janey grunts. "...Okay, I don't have a spell for that, strictly speaking. I'm only an Expert, and that's usually more of a Master-tier thing. But we are going to be passing through a rabbitkin village today, and it's not like I'm going to be passing up that opportunity."
The slayer narrows her eyes. "An opportunity for what, exactly?"
Janey smiles. "To do what I've been doing this entire trip - confirming rumors!"
Beatrice shakes her head, but can't help chuckling. "Sotis I get the feeling they're only getting 'confird' because of your efforts to make it happen. But as long as you don't cause any trouble, or annoy Tassa too much, well...I wish you luck."
The trading caravan had been a very variable thing, ever since it had first left Yotel-on-the-Sea about a month and a half earlier. So of the trading wagons, carts, and transports had only been interested in trading with other goblin cities along the coastal region, and nearly half of the caravan had swapped out once it had begun heading towards the Untad Reaches. That included the people staffing it, as well as the goods being transported - while it had originally been perhaps nine-tenths goblins, at that point it had beco a quarter beastkin, and that percentage had only continue to rise as it went deeper into tribal territory.
Despite the region's na however, and its reputation for being 'uncivilized', Beatrice had actually found the trip to be extrely relaxing. There was apparently a rather wide mix of bios within the Reaches, and an equally wide mix of people living within them. At first, near the coast there had been open plains and swamps, ho to mouse and frogkin. It had soon turned into more of a forested territory though, where they had encountered wolf and bearkin villages, and the deeper they went, the more the Reaches turned into sothing resembling a thick jungle. Beyond what she had personally seen, Kliss had told them that there were cold mountainous regions populated by large, heavily-furred apekin, and to the north the Reaches turned into steppeland, bordering the Hordelands. Those lands were populated by orcs and the large plains-variety of gnolls, but there were apparently large communities of forest gnolls living in the border regions.
Beatrice's quest however was taking her in a different direction. She'd been continuing her attempts to practice magic but to no avail, but fortunately she had heard confirmation of Sincere's rumors about 'inkbinding' rituals, which could implant magical skills within a person's body through the use of, essentially, enchanted tattoos. While the practice had been invented by demons, if there were still any living around these parts they were remaining well hidden. It had been confird however that there was at least one tribe of boarkin who practiced the rituals, and they were the party's final destination. There was still so distance to cover, though. In a week they'd be visiting Kliss's ho village of lizardkin, and there was apparently at least one major village of catkin to pass through after that.
Today's destination however was Thumptown, ho of the rabbitkin. When the caravan finally reaches it, a few hours after lunch, Beatrice again has to consider how the beastkin villages can easily shatter her preconceptions of what such 'tribal' villages might be like, if only because they were all so incredibly unique. So were barely villages at all, and instead more of a temporary campgrounds for a nomadic tribe. The bearkin village, a place nad Longrest, had been a place of massive wooden structures with every building being designed to twice the scale that Beatrice was used to, making her feel like a dwarf the entire ti she was there. anwhile the boarkin, she had heard, were great craftsn of stone, and the place she was heading towards was apparently almost more of a giant fortress than a city. Thumptown, though, is very much a place of earth and trees.
Not to say it's unworked nature, by any ans. In fact, an earthen wall surrounds the entire village, protecting the place from the many monsters of the Reaches, with a heavy wooden gate eting the road. Rabbitkin spearn and archers guard the gate as the caravan passes through, and the warrior has to struggle not to stare at the adorable noses sticking out of their leather-and-mail helts, but her attention is soon grabbed by the sight of the village itself beyond the gate. The first structures she sees are almost burrow-like, although she suspects that they're perhaps based around more traditional construction materials and then only covered in soil and grass to give them the appearance of small hills afterward. In between those buildings however are the trees.
There's at least twenty of them scattered throughout the village, and each of them is huge. At nearly four tis the height of the surrounding forest, Beatrice has to crane her neck upwards to see into their upper branches, where she finds to her surprise that there's a rather large number of small, wooden hos built among them. A more distracting sight however are the swarms of pastel ribbons which circle the trunks and hang from the branches of every tree, before eventually trailing off to connect to the next nearest tree or to reach downward to ground level. It makes the place look like it's in the middle of a festival, although as far as she can tell there's nothing special going on at the mont. Still, Beatrice finds herself a little confused, and prods her guide-slash-experintal hookup with a question.
"Hey, Kliss, what's the deal with all the vertical construction? Not that people need to, ah, conform to stereotypes or such, but I didn't think rabbitfolk would be big on climbing."
The rchant turns to look up at the nearest tree, and smiles when he realizes what she's talking about. "Oh, did it not co up? Thumptown is a mixed community - it's about three-quarters rabbitkin, sure. Well...give or take how long it's been since the last, uh...festival night. But the other quarter are squirrelkin."
"What? Squirrelkin?" Beatrice looks around with widened eyes, hoping to catch sight of one of the unfamiliar beastkin, and nearly leaps out of her boots when she turns to her right and finds one staring at her from only a handful of feet away. The woman - she's pretty sure it's a woman - is wearing a green vest with quite a few pockets, a smile, and absolutely nothing else. Now, by this point the lack of pants doesn't entirely surprise the monster slayer much - many of the fur-covered beastkin seem to treat clothing as an optional, utilitarian piece of equipnt. But this is perhaps the first ti Beatrice has caught a pantsless woman leering at her in such a way.
"Gahhh! Ah - ma'am? Can - do - can I help you with sothing?"
The woman's bushy tail ripples a few tis in excitent, or fear, Beatrice isn't entirely sure. "Wow! A real monkeykin! I've heard about you!"
"I - what? I'm pretty sure if I was a monkeykin, I'd have a tail. And fur. I'm a human. You haven't seen one before?" Beatrice stops to see what the woman might want to talk about, not worried about the caravan passing her by as she does so. In a village this small she'll hardly lose track of the group, and Tassa and Janey do notice the commotion and co over to check in on her. As they approach, the squirrelkin takes note of them as well.
"What's a human a kin of? And I see we've got so cattlekin here!"
Even Janey's friendly eyes grow a little wide at that. "Cattle - what!? We're minotaurs, miss! Not beastkin! Not that there's anything wrong with being a beastkin, of course. This town must be pretty sheltered, huh?"
"Not beastkin, they say! Wow, I've never heard of anyone being that much in denial before. I once saw a horsekin who kept saying he wasn't a horsekin, too."
Various images flicker through Beatrice's mind before she figures out what the woman is referring to. "You an...a centaur?"
"Is 'taur' just another word for kin? Though I don't know what a cen is. Anyhow, welco to Thumptown! You can be in denial and be in Thumptown at the sa ti, we're very flexible like that. I'm Laquerel!"
Tassa speaks up, perhaps hoping to speed the conversation along by doing so. "...Nice to et you, Laquerel. Are you the, ah...welcoming committee? Or just so street crier to try and direct us to the nearest inn?"
Laquerel blinks her large, black eyes. "Eh, I haven't cried on the street in at least a month! No, I'm here to buy your stuff before anyone else can get it! Waiting for folks to set up stands or stock the shops is way too slow. We don't get caravans very often this far out, unless you count the cats, but that's hardly a caravan. More of a catavan, really."
Beatrice chuckles, sowhat awed by the childlike nature of a woman that she'd judge to be in at least her twenties. "Ah, I'm afraid you're mistaken. We're travelers, we've been helping out with security but we're not actually part of the rchant group, we're not selling anything."
"Oh." Laquerel blinks again, but makes no move to leave. "How much for a story, then?"
Janey's attention is caught by that, enough for her to glance upwards from Laquerel's mostly-bare bottom half. "Oh? You pay people for stories? Because I'd tell those for free! Or for a drink, perhaps. I'm Janey, by the way, and this is Tassa and Beatrice. What is it you do around here, Laquerel? Aside from buy things off strangers, that is."
"Oh, I'm a thief! And yeah, I like to learn stuff about folks!"
Tassa's eyes narrow. "So...when you said you were looking for new rchandise that was coming into town..."
"Hrmm? Oh, no, I'm not going to steal any of your stuff! I'm a professional thief!"
Beatrice attempts to parse the difference, but fails. "Which ans you're not going to steal stuff from us because..."
Laquerel rolls her eyes. "Because no one's paid to! What, you think I'm gonna work for free? Besides, I don't work in the village. The village council usually pays to steal stuff from the other tribes and bring it back."
There's a bit of silence at that, and Janey pauses to scratch her horns. "I think if you're stealing on behalf of the governnt, it's called sothing else. ...Right?"
Beatrice looks up at her companion. "...Involuntary tax collection?"
"I like the sound of that! Maybe you're not so bad with words, not-a-monkeykin! So, do we have a deal? I'll trade you drinks, and you trade stories! Or I can tell you stories about this part of the Reach? You look new, I could trade you so cheap ones for sure."
The monster slayer takes a mont to consider it, but not a long one. "...Well, we are stuck here for at least a day or two while the caravan does its business. So sure, why not? Tell , Laquerel, you ever hear a story about a dungeon?"
User Comments
0 comments from readers