Welcome to Gaia! ::

" Thanks, I think I'll sit back and read for abit....found this thing out in the sands and it's begging me to read in." Damion said, smiling before taking a seat and kicking his feet up on whatever table he had chosen. While generally Damion didn't qualify as a bookworm, anything on the outdoors or old fables kept him interested and for some reason those fell into the Leatherbound category of book binding.

The book was obviously old, the leather warped in spots where it had been carried through rain and such, gold stamping along the side pronouncing the creators name obviously, though it was in a language Damion didn't really know. If anyone could read it, and wanted to bother the earth elemental to bring his nose out of it, the golden words would read out " In here lies Wisdom, young Rangers".

And wisdom it would hold, as the first page was a very detailed sketch of a beast Damion had seen before, the Kraken. All the different points of interest were layed out, grabbing tentacles, the eyeballs, the mighty beak housed within it's writhing mass of shorter tentacles. The tan parchment left one to wonder at the color, until you looked at the small script next to the creature, like something out of a medical book! Damion was immensely pleased, his smile widening and his eyes lighting up as he settled in to his chair, lifting a hand to wave at Stephen without lifting his eyes.

Stephen smiled as he was then acknowledged and even offered to sit and eat before the review. He moved into look at the map where Cecil had offered. He looked over the setup, trying to take in as much as he could. While a review was about to commence by Sunstrike, he wanted to try and pick up as much information along the way as possible in order to keep the slowing down of the process at a minimum - it was only the polite thing to do, being late to class and all.

"So... as far as I've gathered, we're facing an enemy that's not mortal and eats life force, stealth is useless, and while they seem to have a penchant for destruction, they left whoever was fighting in the stadium alive - I'm not sure which of you that was, I only know what I've heard in rumors. News travels quickly, after all - and if we fail, the world runs the risk of being... 'Forgotten.'" He paused for a moment to think about how he was going to phrase this.

"So... let me see if I can't put the pieces together here off of what I know already. Presumably, we're under trooped. We're no doubt out numbered. We're obviously out gunned, significantly out powered, and generally outclassed in every way."

He said this very casually, his tone of voice falling into the realistic side of things as opposed to the pessimistic side. Basically, he was thinking out loud more than anything.

"Soooo... that begs the obvious question. We can kill these things, right?"

Flip....flip....flip....

Damion let whoever was doing the recap do their recap, keeping his mouth shut and his nose buried in the leather bound book, eyes wide to the point of almost falling out it seemed. He had moved on from the Kraken and through several more pages on Roc's, those giant birds he had never ******** seen once! This creature...it bored him, and thus he flipped through until he found a chapter that piqued his interest greatly, Dragons.

Dragons of all different species were described in full detail, ranging from the gigantic to the very small, from lumbering scavengers to tiny agile predators of the deep jungles. Damion was once again dragged in to his reading, stopping only once in his search at a description of Draconic Shamans.

interesting.....

"Huh?"

Lazenca was kinda busy eating, and heard his name. He had a mind to pay some kind of attention, but... the guy was hungry, and his attention was on growling at a dwarf when he tried to pull away the plate, just because the meat was half-eaten. He walked over to Maximos when he was all done and content.

"Reen, that's the name of the place they just went?" Lazenca looked towards the door... the last place he'd spotted Twitch. She was apparently outside... had she left with the scouts?

"One, two... three. We have enough for balanced teams, at least."

"like a battery pack?" Hono was hopping that whatever Reiy had in mind was a lot smaller, physically speaking, than a cistern sweatdrop the thought of having to drag a metaphysical water tower around with her... even if that kind of power would likely be useful where they were headed xp


Rae looked around and was just slightly disappointed that there were still so many people around, what she wanted to ask was something that would have done a lot better in a very small audience, but she wanted Sun and Maxi both, and since they were splitting up she needed to ask now for wonder until it drove her nuts!

"Um... Sorry, but I have a question..." She tried to keep her voice low but pitched to carry to the big boys...

Hono pondered the question for a moment, not really sure of an answer, she eventually had to just shrug, spreading her hands palms up with an embarrassed smile. "No clue... I know I like picking up new talents from other magically inclined people, where as normal humans are almost.... plain..." sweatdrop

Classically the leaders of small barbarian tribes, Dragon Shamans are born with the ability to channel the spirits of creatures with a Draconic heritage. Empowered by the dragon spirit, they are able to pull off truly amazing feats most humans are incapable of. Any dragon is possible if it is of the same realm as the Shaman. Generally, training for a Dragon Shaman begins at the age of 10, but any humanoid can channel dragon spirits if the spirit in question is bound to a Fetish item. Any item can be a fetish.

Oh yes.....that was relative to Damion's interests indeed! For a moment, everything else seemed to disappear and he could picture himself as such a being, some odd hybrid of human and dragon, racing across the plains of Gaia, ripping into his foes with real claws and fangs instead of the stone ones he had become accustomed to making. But....he didn't know how to make a fetish, or how to do any magic at all for that matter!

Quite the conundrum.....Maybe Rae would know something? Or this Cecil fellow for that matter, he seemed to know something Damion didn't after all. Or Maxi...he might know where a Fetish was or something!

Sunstrike smiled grimly.

"Tell that to the guy upstairs with his metal leg snapped in half..." Sun straightened and stretched, walking away from the table. "Probably. Is the best answer I can give, but it isn't easy, but that'd be less fun, right?"

"The first squad is the freshest people, those that can wander into town, probably travel-sick, but otherwise normal-ish, for Gaian's anyway. Reen's where we'll be heading to back them up, or just group up if they don't run into too much trouble. And we'll be leaving soon enough, after a few matters are settled.

You'll be good to bring in to clean up the mess the first might get into, IF they run across anything ugly. It's no good making yourself a target by going in amongst a group of warriors straight off. Better to pick up the pieces on the outskirts."

He looked towards Rae and tilted his head. "What's up baby-doll?"