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At Large
Prompt 1

Can be used toward Battle req (or RP req only if done with a friend)
Solo word minimum is 500, RP post minimum is 7


It was bound to happen eventually.

With rumors of great beasts roaming the shores of Yael, many mainlanders flocked across the sea to capture the exotic beasts. In no time at all, they returned with large scaled monsters, dangerously translucent serpents, and turtles that carried the earth. These traders traveled across the Mainland to parade the beasts, going from Matori to Zena and everywhere between. Soon enough, everyone had either seen the Yaeli beasts or at least heard of them.

And they were sure to hear about the beasts when they escaped.

With such little knowledge of the foreign creatures, the traders underestimated the animals. In no time at all, the Yaeli beasts escaped into the wilderness and ended up near your location. With new creatures all but knocking on your door, what do you do? Do you dare to try and tame them, or do you run them off back into the wilderness? You better hurry, because these creatures are lost and scared, and are sure to cause some damage before they are captured once more....

|| The Yaeli familiars have been spotted in the following locations: Tintural (Oba and Matori), Keldari (Jauhar/Chibale and Tale), Limbara (Sauti and Zena). Only individuals in set locations can encounter the specific familiars.

|| If you are located in Yael, respond to this prompt as if you witnessing a mainlander abducting one of the newly announced familiars. Do you step in or run away? Use the same rolls below, but instead of subduing the beast, you are rolling to test your success for freeing it. You may encounter any beast on Yael if you are located there, but you must declare which one you are facing when you make the roll.


This prompt will be resolved by each player rolling 1D100 to test their success. (You can only roll once - there are no reattempts!)

xxxxxPrentice must roll 60-100 to successfully subdue the beast.
xxxxxStage 2 must roll 50-100 to successfully subdue the beast.
xxxxxStage 3 must roll 40-100 to successfully subdue the beast
xxxxxStage 4 must roll 30-100 to successfully subdue the beast.

|| Success or fail, completion of this event rewards you with 15 EXP!

|| If you roll a 95-100, you get to keep the familiar! Congrats!

|| Those who win a familiar should be followed up by a PM to our Beast Battle Mule: Beast Tamer Freya with this form:



|| Title your PMs with "Tamed"

Len scuffed her fingers through her hair, nose wrinkling with distaste as her stomach rumbled. Again. Releasing a puff of an exhale, her round eyes skimmed out over the crowd, heels scraping back against the brick of the wall behind her. She had a small stash of coin left, but it was hidden away, tucked into ‘her’ storeroom and current abode, and it was meant to be for emergencies. This wasn’t an emergency. Yet. It had only been a day and a half or so since food, and that was thanks only to very poor luck. She was getting better, overall.

Of course, there were certain merchants who knew her face, too, and it was lucky she lived in the capitol, or she’d have quickly begun to run out of options. A center of trade, however, brought newcomers, and with them, new options. There was flux and flow, flexibility, and a rotation of faces so that the city seemed to never be exactly the same place in the morning when you woke as it had been in the evening before going to bed.

It kept things from becoming boring, at least.

Her attention caught on a pair of men. Foreigners, which wasn’t promising, but behind them, they dragged a cart of merchandise, a few portions of which looked to all but be falling out. It wasn’t a sure thing, but they were distracted amongst each other, and if they left the thing alone for just a moment, she’d have a solid opening. So, willing to bet on a lucky shot for the moment, she trailed them, weaving along their short trek through the city until they came to the outskirts. There, though, as the crowds thinned and the cart was brought to a stop to the side of a significantly larger transport wagon, loaded already with great crates of imposing size, Len admittedly grew a pinch more concerned.

There was no telling what exactly was in any of it, but she had seen what looked to be a satchel of fruit in one — likely for sale on the mainland, if they were set to travel out, as they seemed they might be — and so she bided her time a portion more, hanging back as the men chattered with someone already by the larger wagon. After a brief conversation she didn’t overhear and an exchanging of coin, they left, and Len watched intently as the wagon keeper dallied, rested his weight back against the hull of it—and then settled to a sit atop a storage case, lighting a smoke and shutting his eyes as she did.

One, two, knot up my shoe…

She slipped forward, winding around to the back of the smaller crate.

Three, four, your mum’s a whore…

Her heart sped, quietly giddy as she fingered over the top few bags, searching for something that she could tote easily and — if she were very lucky — would have lasting benefit. She was all but fully settled on just snagging up one of the smaller fruit bags — What were they feeding with all this, a farm? — when the tips of her fingers tapped something that clinked, tucked down amongst the produce. Coin in here? She grabbed, and attempted to tug—

On the back pull, she thudded up instead against something — or rather, someone — far more solid than the air that had been behind her moments before, and she whirled around. One half step and a scurry to the side, though, came too late, an iron grip already shackling her wrist as she was yanked to face her captor.

“You boy,” the woman barked, voice gruff as though it had been rubbed raw, and by the gods was her skin dark. Lenila stared mutely for a handful of moments, silent as a dumbstruck prey animal. “What d’ya think you’re doin’ here, eh?”

Patter-patter-patter-patter, Len’s pulse skittered around in her throat, a frightened rodent trying to find its way up and out.

“I was hired t’ inspect the merchandise, ma’am,” she said. “Before it got sent out, an’ such, see? ‘Cause there’s certain things…” Breathe. Len cleared her throat, and the woman’s red eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Things…”

“Things, tha’ could be wrong with the fruit you bring from ‘ere to your lands—stuff y’ don’t know to look for. They told me, they said, if I’d just look over it proper quick like, I’d be given a ten bit piece and could be on my way.”

“You’re a little liar…”

“I ain’t!”

Argue.

Distract.

Flee at the first instant that the arm on her loosed, if discussion wasn’t going well.

That was the plan. The Plan, even. Len was fairly experienced at executing it, having done so an embarrassing dozen or so times. Perhaps more. And it was well underway, or had been well underway—when circumstances abruptly changed. Len’s attention snapped to the source of the interruption, and for a few seconds of dizzying disorientation, not everything fully registered at once. Her focus was elsewhere, her heart was quick in her chest, and most of her thoughts were dominated by an overpowering sense that now was the time to get out.

Except that after that, recognition filtered in in pieces. She knew this girl. Despite the obscure ‘accent’ put on. She knew that face and that voice, and what was Taijana doing here? But now would be a poor time to ask, so she settled first for a bemused squint of a stare and a half-open mouth for several long moments until the woman holding her spoke instead.

“Shippin’ laws,” she repeated, dubious, and her dark eyes flit from Taijana, to Len and back. “Full of it. Both of you are. I’m not buyin’ it for an instant—there hasn’t been anyone said yet to me a word about—”

“It’s your business, miss,” Len piped in, having regained control of her tongue and thought processes—for the most part. “But I was just workin’ on instruction. If you’d rather have us move out quick like, we can, but…” A creaking, and then scraping and groaning of wood from the larger store wagon froze Len’s tongue in its tracks, and her gaze snapped to structure. “Miss…” She cleared her throat to knock the hoarseness from it, hopefully. “What, eh…are y’ transportin’ out?”

Len was still waiting, mostly, for that moment when the grip on her relaxed enough to pull out of. Granted, Taijana’s presence complicated things, but by the fates, she hadn’t asked the girl to come about, or planned for it. Was it really her responsibility to pass up a perfectly viable escape opportunity when it came and put herself further at risk for the sake of her? Tai had approached on her own, presumably, which meant that perhaps she even had a plan of her own and didn’t need—

Any hope for whatever Taijana’s ‘plan’ might have been evaporated into dust the instant she sank an arrow bolt into someone’s body. Len’s reactions came in disjointed, rapid-fire segments: shock. She had just shot someone. A live someone. Someone who was now bleeding. And while Len had encountered a certain degree of street violence in the past, it had never been quite like this, and never initiated by anyone of Taijana’s stature.

Panic.

They were going to die. They were going to die. They were going to die.

Len’s pulse lurched rough against the cage of her chest, and after the ‘shock’ phase wore off enough on the woman holding her, her grip did loosen—and Len yanked away in an instant, stagger stepping as far from her as she could. She was going to run. That was the plan still. Obviously Taijana had plans of her own, but if she was ready to draw weapons on people who hadn’t attacked her yet, Len wanted nothing to do with those plans because, so far as she was concerned, the sooner weapons were introduced into any situation, the more rapidly the likelihood of painful death approached certainty.

But there were other factors at play. Unfortunate, large, predatory factors. To set the record clear, Lenila had never been fond of animals larger than her pointer finger, and most of those that size or smaller were pests besides. Bigger ones bit, carried disease, were unpredictable and mean. Thus, when the scuffling came again, the contents of the wagon shifted and fell aside, and Len was standing, braced, little more than a few arms’ lengths away, there was a moment within which her bowls threatened to betray her.

Smugglers, Taijana had said.

Well, that did indeed seem to be petrifyingly correct.

Len’s voice was a hoarse squeak. “We are gonna die.”

“I’ve got this.”

Few words accurately described Lenila’s gut reaction to the assertion, but her answering expression which she shot towards Taijana at the words, torn somewhere between wild disbelief, confusion, and terror — Had the girl gone mad on top of all else? — came as close to an on-point descriptor as anything. She opened her mouth, but then thought better of it.

The cause was lost.

Taijana was firing another shot, and the best Len could hope to do at this point was escape with her life. So that was what she did.

Or, rather, that was what she aimed to do.

Unfortunately, three steps into bolting, an iron grip was snagging her tunic and, sure as a dog strung tight by the end reach of its leash, Len was yanked to a standstill, screeching her objection. “I didn’ have nothin’ to do with nothin’, lemme go or I’ll—” She fumbled at her waistline. She actually did have a weapon of her own. A slim dagger with a sturdy handle, plenty sharp enough to dissuade at least the lowest levels of unwanted company. But as a matter of course, she tended towards not using it.

Violence bred violence, after all, and she was far from a trained fighter, knowing little beyond the basic sharpened end goes in the opponent, preferably. It made it into her hand, though, and successfully got her out of the woman’s grip—again. Unfortunately, given the angle of it and the supporting nature of her hold, the instant she shrieked and released Len, Len toppled, dropping to the ground rear-first and scrambling backwards. All of this just in time for the first creak and ominous SNAP, crack of something brittle — wooden, metal, or both — and in moments, if there wasn’t already enough shouting going on, it amplified. Two men rounded around the front far end of the wagon, roused by the noise, and the limbara, still apparently at least partially drowsy from whatever had drugged it into temporary submission, gave its first staggered step off the wagon platform and into the soft earth, which sank several inches under its weight to make room around the foot.

“Take…’em?” Len’s voice wavered. Her stomach felt loose in her gut, jostling messily about with the rest of all her organs, and she felt paradoxically split — caught halfway between wired muscles ready to spring into a wild escape, and a body that wasn’t necessarily responding to any of her commands. Her vision swam dizzily.

She pushed to a stand. Her knees quavered.

When Tai’s bolt stuck a man in the gut, spearing through him like a sharp poker through farm meat and blood followed from it, Len felt a moment of numbness. Red. Red. Red. It was all so very red, and she’d never been so close to this much active violence unfolding. Her grip on her dagger scrunched tighter, so stiff for a moment she could barely feel her hand. Then, she slipped to the leeway side of the beast and back, putting it decidedly between herself and the so-called ‘smugglers.’ It wasn’t moving all that fast, and if she stayed out from under its pounding feet and out of range of its gaping maw, it seemed less dangerous, certainly less quick and intelligent than the outsiders who would very surely attempt to end both her and her mad company as soon as possible.

“We don’ need t’ kill no one t’ get out o’ here!” she snapped. “You keep on like that an’ you’re gonna have all the city on you ready t’ see you swing sure as a hooked fish!” She wasn’t positive it was true. Smuggling yaeli’s wild beasts off of its shores was probably illegal. Taijana seemed to find it especially offensive, certainly. But Len had never been an animal enthusiast, nor an expert in or even follower of most of the city’s laws, and the only things that kept her from instant flight then were: a) the very real possibility that one of the foreigners had some equally deadly projectile that they wouldn’t hesitate to use on her the instant she took out over open ground, and b) the weird sense that, caught up in all of it as she was, if she was going to be on any violent armed mad-woman’s side, it ought to be her fellow Yaelian.

The instant the fates presented her with a safer option, however, she fully intended to bank on it.

There was something sobering in Taijana’s panic. An odd sense of validation of her own fears, and in a bizarre, sea-saw effect, it seemed to ground and calm her—as though only one of them could afford to be fully panicked at once. Or the chances of both of them being killed increased exponentially. So, she nodded, allowing the almost surreal sense of calm overtake her, though panic still swam just beneath the surface of it, and she moved to help Tai up if she wanted. There was no way she would be getting on the beast herself, but leaving immediately seemed to her to be the best idea the other girl had had yet.

Surely they only had a few scarce moments before the smuggler’s minds caught up with them and those not injured came after them to kill them. Perhaps she would just continue to stay on the wayside of the beast. So long as it was between her and them, the situation was better than it might be.

“I’m sure he ain’t dead,” ‘…yet,’ she said, eliminating the latter part of the thought and keeping that to herself. Gut wounds weren’t always fatal, right? It just seemed like far more blood than was healthy to have pooling outside of the body. But there were other things to worry about. “Just…get on if y’ can and let’s out…like…now, yea?”

Despite the relative evenness of her voice, Len’s hand was shaking where it gripped her dagger, and a numbness was creeping at her toes. She wondered if this was what Taijana felt like moments before fainting.

Len tensed.

‘Come on?’ No, she wasn’t—she didn’t—she couldn’t possibly—

Lenila’s heart lurched and staggered in her chest, and her eyes darted from Taijana’s hand, to the poachers. She wanted almost literally nothing less in the world than to climb atop a beast multiple hundred times her weight with the capacity to eat half of her body in one bite. Unfortunately, one of the infinitesimally small number of things that she wanted even less was to be killed by the poachers themselves. So, when it became painfully and regrettably evident that Tai would not leave otherwise, Len let her hand be grasped, squeezing her eyes shut as she did and scrambling.

She could barely breathe around her pulse.

They were going to die.

They were not going to die.

But oh, surely they were.

She didn’t mean to, but her fingers pinched tight, all but digging into Taijana’s hips as she struggled not to hyperventilate and instead cinched her knees in to either side of the beast. She’d never been on one before. Never been up—not like this—and gods above, why was it even letting them ride it. When it began to move, Len’s body might as well have turned to iron as stiff as she became, and it was every wonder that she did not lose consciousness on the spot. When she spoke, it was barely a whisper.

“D’you pray t’ gods?” She knew there was a god and goddess that looked over them, but for the life of her could not remember their names, and had never prayed to them before, causing her to worry that if she tried now, they might be offended. But perhaps if Taijana did, that would help them, and they’d be less upset.

She just seemed to be the sort of girl who might. Possibly.