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 Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 1:31 pm
This Quest is for Lucijah who is striving to become a Guard.
 OOC
||. The quest prompt must be answered with a 2000 word reply (can be more).
||. Respond to the prompt given with an adventure of your own creation as long as it meets the requirements of the specific tasks.
||. NPCs may be used as long as they advance the quest in an interesting manner.
||. You cannot include any playable characters other than the quest taker.
||. Your responses will be graded with a Pass or Fail. Those who fail will have to continue with assistance from the staff.
||. Questions about quests can be asked here.
IC
Lucijah was alone in the forests of Jauhar, and the cacophony of sounds surrounded her. The forest was abuzz with the normal day to day sounds of life. A little further into the forest and Lucijah would seem to happen upon a trap with an injured maglardilla trapped inside.
Lucijah hadn't been inspecting it long before she was interupted by the hunter responsible for the trap.
Quest Tasks
||. This quest is meant to teach Lucijah a little about living on her own and finding food.
||. The quest should start with Lucijah finding the animal within the trap and being found by the hunter.
||. Lucijah could have either been inspecting the trap or trying to take the maglardilla for herself.
||. The hunter will be angry at first, but will eventually end up showing her a thing or two about trapping and where to look for other food sources, not just hunting.
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Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 9:50 am
On a map, the trek south to the border, funneling through Neued and east to a choke point that led into the logging woods of Oba, seemed ridiculously simple. Drawn in the careful strokes of a brush, the road passed peacefully and clearly from settlement to settlement, before fading into vague mystery across the border - and yet it was horribly simple, in theory. Reality did little justice to the map, which might as well have been thrown from her bag entirely.
Lucijah's initial journey had gone well enough. When she lost her way, she would deftly climb the glowing trees to peer above the canopy, using the sun to track her direction. But barely days into her southern soujourn, rain darkened the sky and poured to the forest below, drenching her top to bottom, and making for very miserable travel. Surely this would pass - all showers in Jauhar passed, she reminded herself. It was a common thing, and you were very seldom dry when you really wanted to be. So ignoring the chafing of rough clothes against her skin, Luc trekked onward, squinting to follow the dirt road, which already threatened to be erased by overgrowth in the always changing forest.
But the rain did NOT stop. It continued on with a vengeance - a wise traveler would have resigned themselves to waiting out the storm, making a water proof nest from vines and thick leaves, lighting the night with gathered crystals and taking advantage of the myriad of insects that flocked to the compost heap of rotting leaves and slushy mud that blanketed the forest floor. And yes, the thought crossed her mind... but she shrugged it aside.
That was her first mistake. Time - time was her enemy, time couldn't be cast aside so easily to sit and WAIT, when she had so far a trek ahead of her still - and in her determination Lucijah drove herself onward, forsaking precious opportunities that could be spent gathering insects and instead trying to carry on. Scrambling up slick, moss-covered tree trunks to the canopy proved useless - the sun was obstructed by heavy, dark clouds, and so Lucijah could only clutch a handful of glowing crystals and follow the road. A road that had quickly been reduced to thick, hungry mud that attempted to capture her feet in its vacuous grasp with every step.
By the time Lucijah stopped, soaked to the bone and gasping, she realized she had gone far to the west - and made a foolish encounter with an Alkidike village there.
Her second mistake. Having realized her error in moving on, Lucijah knew her best option would be to stop as she should have before. But ... heart hammering in her chest, all she could hear and see in the dark forest around her, lit only by the weak glow of crystals, was the ghostly footsteps of Alkidike - the parents of the girl who had seen her, following her every move, bows raised. From the corner of her eyes she saw them, and all she could think of was how if she died here Nera would never know, Nera would only think she had decided not to come to get her at all --
Waiting was no longer an option.
By the time the rains stopped, Lucijah was worn thin, the skin of her feet swollen and puckered from too much moisture, legs chafed raw from walking, her thirst sated, but her belly aching from hunger.
With the sun once again high in the sky, Lucijah took the risk to climb - much less gracefully this time - to the canopy, where she slept fitfully in the branches, tied securely by vines, but unable to find food. What fruit there had been had been eaten by insects, or had rotted from too much water - but now she needed rest.
Two days later the blistered flesh of her feet burst, and again she was detained - because every good Jauhar resident knew that walking about with a wound was a death sentence. The rains that had killed the fruit and runted the nuts had let herbs flourish, and so Lucijah settled herself in the trees and flinched, biting her lip and forcing back discomfort as she applied a poultice of chewed herbs to her feet.
Another day before she allowed herself to wobble along, stopping to dry her feet as best she could and reapply the poultices, trying to resist infection.
Finally, signs of the south emerged - the humidity of the forest abated some, but the horrid heat persisted, magnified under the shade of the forest. Lucijah stank from sweat, but was too worried about crystal rot in these unfamiliar lakes and rivers that she didn't dare wash herself. She felt weak, stretched thin and what mammals she spotted she couldn't catch, not hobbling along with her feet as she was - and a handful of insects could only take her so far.
Luc had all but given up - even if she had made it almost to Oba, each wobbled step closer stole more energy, and logically she didn't know if her love's people would even welcome her should she appear in town. Sitting at the base of a tree, chewing bark in some attempt to fill her belly, Lucijah thought of her darling Nera, those somber eyes and turned down lips haunting her even when she closed her eyes.
She could almost hear the wrecked sound of her cries - although she had only heard Nera cry in her dreams, and never so much face to face.
It was then, with the ghost of her lover haunting her thoughts, that Lucijah heard the cry of a maglardilla.
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Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 9:51 am
It was too good to be true. Pushing herself gingerly to her still ragged feet, Lucijah forced herself to swallow the spicy bark she had been chewing hopelessly at then, with one hand settled against the large tree beside her, the Shifter stepped around the large trunk and listened, head canted eagerly. For a short time the cries faded - but then began anew, accompanied by the sound of scrabbling against something hard. With renewed vigor, Lucijah followed the sounds, steps growing faster and faster until finally - finally she broke from the treeline and saw it.
A bright green Maglardilla squirmed about under a massive log, emitting high pitch screeches as it dug, helplessly, at the dirt beneath it. It still appeared incredibly energetic - perhaps it had been trapped quite recently? But the logistics didn't concern Luc - instead she dropped to her knees and instead crawled towards the creature, scooping up a stick (the tip of which was inexplicably sharp, though she was in no state to question such providence), eyes locked on the creature. One good stab with the spear and the beast would be dead for sure - then she could rip open its carapice and feast on the meat within. Too goey for her tastes normally, but after eating nothing but bark and leaves for weeks Lucijah didn't have it in her to be picky.
With one sure motion, she would stab the spear through the Maglardilla's eyes - but instead, a hand closed around her wrist.
Snapping her head up, Lucijah came face to face with the strangest creature she had ever seen. Amber eyes narrowed in a blue face, giving the appearance of an ice earthling - but only in the vaguest sense. The eyes were strange - beastlike, and on its face the creature had frills, though one was horribly torn and scarred over. The creature scowled and wrenched the spear from Lucijah before she could collect herself, and then with a shove sent the brute sprawling to the mulch-covered ground, flabbergasted.
"My trap, savage! Get away!" The creature called, voice low in timbre. It waved a hand at Lucijah as if trying to scare away a small beast. But as it was, the shifter was too caught up in the bubble of defensive rage that rose in her to give the gesture any though - with strength she had thought long diminished, Lucijah shoved herself to her feet and lunged at the creature with an unearthly scream.
The sudden motion took her foe by surprise - a startled gasp escaped it, before it evaded by throwing itself out of the way - just in time, too, as Lucijah's bulk could easily have somewhat evened the playing field. ...But, instead it missed. Lucijah went sprawling face first into the ground once more, and by the time she stood again, feet as wobbly and ungainly as a toddler, the blue thing had caught its senses and stood in front of the maglardilla protectively, holding a throwing knife deftly in its grasp. "Move again, and I'll gut you! Leave - I won't say it again!" The hunter shot, voice loud but shaken. The attack hadn't been expected, and no doubt they expected a repeat of Lucijah's violent tactics. Which would have been a correct assumption on any other day.
It would only take one step for the threat to come to pass. Lucijah could lunge once more, sure - and she might even be able to knock the person away and rip at least part of the maglardilla out from under the log. But then there was the risk of being sliced - a threat that, in that moment, was not a risk she could take. If she turned away from this meal, she may never find anything else - she may collapse under a tree, or in the sands, and never be found. But if she took a gamble, and was cut she would be even worse off than she currently was - and it simply wasn't the risk. So, with a ragged breath, Lucijah tore her eyes from the hunter's knife, and instead took a step backwards.
The motion away reflected in the hunter's posture - they relaxed, marginally, eyeing her warily but lowering the blades as a minor sign of goodwill. Not thoroughly aggressive then, just... scaring away scavengers.
...Maybe there is another option, Lucijah's mind whispered. Any other time she would have laughed at the idea of it - would have chosen a fight before this - but now? Now she had everything to lose if she DIDN'T do it.
Instead of backing away, Lucijah sank to her knees, fingers clasped together infront of her. "Please - please, just part of it. I'll do anything - please!"
The hunter became clearly uncomfortable, scowling and ducking down to scoop up a stick, which they tossed halfheartedly at the fallen Shifter. The stick bounced harmlessly off Lucijah's shoulder, but the motion reinforced her hopes - that this hunter wasn't heartless. If she could just she push enough... "What-- no! If you want it so bad, set your own traps."
"I don't know traps - please, I beg you, just a leg! If you don't I'll starve for sure!"
"That's... that isn't my concern, savage." This time the voice was clearly uncertain - eyes turned down to look at the maglardilla, which had long since stopped wiggling about, and instead stirred only occasionally as a twitch of legs. Lucijah stayed silent, letting the hunter ruminate on whether or not to share their meal - until finally the creature let out a breath and lowered their knives. "... If they find a dead Shifter nearby they'll start defending this area better - and that wouldn't be good for me, now would it?"
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Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 9:58 am
After what felt like hours, Lucijah found herself besides a fire in a small shelter- built of stacked, molding logs, with a hole in the ceiling for venting smoke. In the center was a fire pit, but around the sides were stacked leather sacks and wet wooden crates of foraged things -things that Lucijah had never seen before. Her own life was spent in the canopies, more often than not, scooping up fruits and nuts- while the forest floor was used more for transportation or exploring. Now, as she watched the water earthling cracking the shell from the maglardilla, and spitting the meat to smoke over the fire, Lucijah realized with a feeling of sickening embarrassment that a water foreigner knew more about the land here than Lucijah, a native, did.
It had been the same with Nera - a girl who had taken to foraging in the wilds of Jauhar so well that Lucijah had attributed it more to Nera's fierce intelligence than anything else. The shifter, on the other hand, had always focused more on sheer force - forcibly digging food from the ground, or focusing on building things with her mother.
While the stranger - who had introduced herself as Muira - cooked, Lucijah had been given a bowl filled with strange nuts and leaves, which she ate voraciously. By the time she had also eaten the maglardilla, the shifter had fallen into an exhaustion driven slumber. One moment she was setting her bowl aside, looking to the amused looking Muira - the next she was cracking her eyes open. The fire was put out, and across from her the water earthling was ...weaving. Scrambling to sit up, the shifter looked to her skin - her breath hitching when she saw it was bright white. "How-- how long was I..."
"At least half a day." The earthling responded, giving Lucijah a look before returning to her weaving.
Half a day... it was much needed rest and sustenance, but at the same time... another day she hadn't come into town. Another day into spring, and another day Nera could be watching the roads, pushed farther and farther away by time and disappointment. Heart sinking, Lucijah stared at her hands for along while, fighting back tears of frustration... but eventually she forced herself to calm, before looking up and watching Muira's work, anything to take her mind off her continued failure and reliance on others.
The weaves of this... whatever it was ... was nothing like that tightly coiled vining that built up the nests of Lucijah's village. The vines were spread wide, with holes between them at least of a few inches each- with smaller vines coiled around the bigger ones tightly to make thick cords. Vines were coiled at an angle, making a net - but it wasn't tight at all, and would be absolutely useless for holding fruit, nuts, or even sieving through the murky shallow waters at the forest floor, where smaller grubs and insects could be fished from the soil.
"You can't catch anything with that." Lucijah grumbled, aghast. But Muira simply smiled and shook her head, stretching the netting wide - it was massive, the net worked into a massive rectangle upon sturdier, much thicker vines. "This is a maglardilla net, and it definitely works. I thought a shifter would know about these things!"
Lucijah glared, baring her teeth in a snarl, but Muira seemed undeterred. Instead she gestured skyward. "You stake out where maglardilla glide - the paths through the air that they take, and you set up this net. It blends in to the rest of the forest - they can't see it until they've hit the net." With her hands, Muira made a motion of smacking into something, then falling down, making a whistle to accentuate. "Once on the ground, they try and figure out a way back up - the dumb things' first instinct is to go high again - So if you set a deadfall or a snare at the base of the trees..."
She smiled and motioned towards the leftover carapace, cleaned and leaning against the wall of the shelter. Muira also leaned forward and picked up a wooden bowl - which was filled with some sort of cold soup, handing it over to Lucijah, who took it gratefully and ate. It was fish. "Or you can fish with the same net by weaving another pass on both ends, make it a bit tighter."
With the soup finished, Lucijah set the bowl down, wiping her mouth with the back of her arm. Then, she stood - grunting as her aching muscles stretched. She already felt stronger, just from eating. Muira watched her for a moment, then stood and set her net down, taking a deep breath. "I'll show you a few things - but if I see you again I'm not helping you, next time."
"Why?" Lucijah asked, instead, surprising herself - and evidently Muira too. The woman blinked, then shrugged a shoulder, gesturing for Lucijah to follow as she stepped outside. "Why what?"
"Why would you help me? You could have given me some food and thrown me out - why let me sleep? Why give me all this - why tell me anything?"
Muira pondered the question, gazing at her home - which, from the outside, looked like a sunken hunt. Once it must have been a good home - made from thick logs and leaves. Now, the rainforest had eroded its strength with its humidity and rain - the home couldn't have been more than a year or so. "I came out here when the war started - I was on my own. Starving - if one of your kind hadn't taught me all this, I wouldn't be here." She trailed off, then cleared her throat and looked at Lucijah once more, given a lopsided grin. "I don't want you setting up here - this is MY home. MY hunting grounds - and I don't want to share my game any more than I already have. If I tell you how to survive and you move on, it doesn't hurt me, does it? And I won't feel guilty for the rest of my days either for not returning the favor."
Another day lost - but throughout that day Lucijah had gained so much. After showing her how to weave the nets to catch maglardilla, and how to alter it for fishing, Muira led Lucijah to where she had caught the insect, pointing to the higher canopy, where the net she'd hung up was barely visible against the glow and leaves above. On the forest floor, she sent Lucijah scrounging for logs and sticks - and together the sat with a fragile shard of maglardilla horn, sharpening the sticks to points. After at least an hour of trying to arrange the notched sticks together, only to have the log propped against the trigger stick fall on her hand time and time again, Lucijah finally leaned back from her trap - and it remained upright. A rock thrown at the sticks demonstrated the deadfall's abilities - the log fell instantly.
"If you put nuts or fruit, or even meat from your last kill - you might get more than maglardilla." Muira advised.
"Where did you get the nuts though - from last night? They're all..." Lucijah frowned and gestured to the sky. Together, the two stood and Lucijah followed as Muira led her through the trees and thick plants - until the stopped and knelt beside a plant that Lucijah didn't recognize.
"You said you grew up to the north, near Tale? These wouldn't grow up there - but they grow throughout all of southern Jauhar, as far as I know, and especially here." GRipping the base of the plant, Muira yanked it from the wet soil, grunting as she fought the networks of roots that Lucijah never would have expected such a small plant to have. Once yanked from the ground, however, with the dirt knocked away - she saw it. Connected to milky, glowing roots - were nodules, small bulbs that would, with time, grow to nuts. Reburying it as best she could, Muira pointed to the leaves. "When there are small glowing flowers on the leaves, the nuts are probably ripe - and if you dig through the mulch you can usually check without uprooting the whole thing. The stalk is pretty good, too - good for teas and soups."
Lucijah watched, fascinated. Nuts and fruits were associated with the canopy for her - the idea of such delicacies on the GROUND - it was... unheard of! Then again, why shouldn't the lush forest have such variety? Living all her life at the thinning edges of the forest, she had never realized how much of actual Jauhar survival she was lacking.
Back at Muira's place, Lucijah slept another night with a full belly. Come morning, there wasn't much to be spared but Muira grudgingly packed a small leather pouch full of the ground nuts and strips of smoked meat - as well as a small net that Lucijah had weaved the day before, under Muira's lessons. "Reference, so you don't forget." Muira had said with a roll of her eyes.
Patting her hand over the bag, Lucijah smiled, brightly. Just two days ago she'd felt certain she would die - but now, though still exhausted and feeling weak, she had a few days of food if she stretched it out - and knew, now, a few skills for keeping herself sustained, without having to chase her meals. To her it felt revolutionary...!
"Will you be here? When my mate and I come back north, I can thank you -"
"And share this land with you? Please." Muira shook her head and looked back at her hut. "I need to build a new place and make a move - or go home to Matori. I just... can't part from here until things die down some more." Lucijah nodded, but frowned - she was sure the water earthling would survive, but it puzzled her to willingly stay seperated from your loved ones. With a final wave, she stepped backwards away from the hut, then finally heaved a sigh and turned her back on the woman who had saved her life, slutching the satchel against her hip. "Just a little while longer, my love - we'll make it this time."
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Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:21 am
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Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2015 6:52 pm
Class Quest Result
Pass!
Lucijah has passed and received a rank of Guard!
Congratulations Lucijah!
Scarlett Arbuckle Lucijah may pick one shop item for her quest! PM Suhuba with your choice.
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