SAND IN THE GLASS ※ EVENT ※ TDM※ 2

[wildestmods]

SAND IN THE GLASS

The group's journey across the sands is fortunately one that's guided. The small desert they're in has mountains off to either side to guide them. They just have to traverse the desert valley until they reach the end.

The sun is bad but not completely unbearable. The heat is intense, but not enough to make them collapse instantly. A dry wind occasionally blows and while it's hot, it at least causes any sweat to instantly evaporate off.

But dry heat is still heat. And they still have to traverse the valleys between dunes and occasionally struggle over them if there are no dips to pick their way through. The mountains to the sides are tall and seem to have very few valleys, and their enemies are far off behind them.

The only way through is forward.

The intel from the letter they found is correct. It's only a day's journey to the ruins that were spoken of. It's evening when they arrive. A large, deep, deep well is one of the first things they find, just before the city. It still has water, clean and clear.

Beyond it...

AGRABAH

The ruins of a once-flourishing kingdom lay before them. The domes of the palace are cracked and one seems to have fallen, crushing part of the city - but there is no trail of damage. It didn't roll, it was somehow thrown by something massive.

The city has furrows of destruction and debris blocking certain streets and paths. It looks as if something tried to block certain paths and carved out other straight paths that led right to the palace. Claw marks and blade marks are visible in the debris clusters, like something tried to claw through it. Half-buried in those areas are the crushed and rotting remains of armored monsters - orcs.

The open paths have the discarded objects one might expect of evacuating people - dropped belongings, discarded bags of grain, lost sandals, children's toys. It looks almost like something blocked the monsters and created straight paths for people.

Or perhaps it's not a something but rather a someone. Right near the area they walk in, there's a massive handprint in the debris and dirt, large enough to stand in. And near the beginning of the paths to the palace there are massive finger holes dug into the dirt, like that same hand clawed those paths clear.

Whatever happened here, the city is now silent. The enemies that were here are gone and so are the kingdom's people. And it looks, from some of the belongings left behind - like children's toys that clearly look like trolls - that the trolls of Trollmarket followed in the footsteps of the kingdom's residents, through their evacuation routes.

It's safe for a moment, long enough for the group to hydrate, rest, and recover. There are even some supplies to be scavenged from the wreckage. Crude weapons they can steal from the dead orc bodies, small bags of grain, even bags of spices.

The light of the moon and stars is enough to move around with, due to the lightness of the sand and buildings. It seems to light the ruins up with its own glow. Due to the cracks in the walls and roofs of the remaining buildings, there's even some light that reaches inside them.

They'll need it because of the darkness that's due to descend.

NEW PLAYERS/CHARACTERS
Test drive memes in Wilderlands are full game events that are open to new players and characters. This means that current players can also top-level in them. Current characters will be able to sense that a new person is bound by the quest magic (so they'll know they're not an enemy) and know instinctually that they're new to the group.

Since the group already knows that new people can and do show up, they can reach out to the new character during the event to help them. There are also downtime prompts so people can intro during a quieter moment.

USEFUL LINKS


Premise/Short Facts | Arrival/Welcome | Setting Background/FAQ | Major NPCs


SHADOWHUNTERS

The Shadowhunters attack first, some of them firing arrows at the group to separate and herd them. The only words the squad hears at the beginning is a deep voice saying, "You know what to do."

The Shadowhunters are disciplined warriors. Each has an enchanted weapon of some kind, empowered to have minor advantages in ways similar to the group's blessed weapons, or magical runes for these advantages are already tattooed onto their bodies. Some can run faster than normal humans, up to 40 MPH, some have increased accuracy with their arrows and seem to never miss. Some heal much faster than normal, glowing healing runes activating anytime they're hurt. They fight with any weapons other than guns - whips, bows and arrows, swords, large knives, etc.

Their teamwork, however, seems to have its limits. While the Shadowhunters are all skilled, many of them were solo hunters, or only worked in small groups. They outnumber the squad but their teamwork isn't as impeccable as their skill with their weapons.

Nets

While they're extremely willing to injure the squad they seem to be trying to capture most of them instead of killing them, occasionally tossing out nets of glowing silver. Being caught in the nets renders someone paralyzed and weak, a deep cold settling into their bones. Some may even hear the shrieks of dying loved ones, whether they've actually died in reality or not. When someone particularly large is captured, the Shadowhunters work together to drag them in the net.

The nets are difficult to destroy, but can be with great force of some kind. It has to be aimed at the part closest to the Shadowhunters' hands, because the force required to break the nets would also injure those trapped inside them. The cold and paralysis fades when the victims are free, but some of the rescued may feel weak and need help staying on their feet. Unfortunately, even when they're broken, the nets of moonlight seem to be something they can recreate within several minutes, drawing them from runes on their arms.

Flying Monkeys

Exactly what it says on the tin. Chimp-sized flying screeching monkeys in dapper little hats and vests help the Shadowhunters by grabbing and carrying people towards them or their nets, herding them, or attacking and grappling with people to make them more vulnerable.

Orders

The Shadowhunters are dogged, and seem to have very clear orders: they're trying to capture people the way the Sisters did. They seem to have different sensibilities on how they do it with different types of people. They can automatically sense what kind of person someone is.

• Mundane humans or PCs with blessed weapons get the kid gloves, with the Shadowhunters telling them, "I know you don't understand, but we need you. There's a war, innocent people are dying. We need normal humans to join our cause." They'll still go in for the capture, but only with as much force is necessary.
• Nonhumans like aliens or metahumans with superpowers (who aren't mages, fae, vampires, or werewolves) get a slightly more brutal beatdown. Though sometimes the less disciplined Shadowhunters (since some are young or new) might coo over the cuter squad members (cute furry ones, short ones, etc) in a dehumanizing way, like they should be pets.
• Classic supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves, fae, and most mages (with the exception of Necromancers) get sneers and particularly brutal attacks before attempted capture. They're not averse to putting them in traction before carting them away.
• Those that have unholy inclinations, like wielders of Cursed Weapons, Necromancers, and demons, they try to kill these people on sight, often using their seraph blades, holy weapons that can burn with a holy fire. Just a nick from these weapons causes a serious searing wound, and a full on stab anywhere on the body is instantly fatal. Any survivable wounds will automatically get a holy infection resistant to any external forms of healing other than the body's, though this is survivable if they're small.
• Actual Biblical angels will have the Shadowhunters straight up bow down before them and refuse to lay a hand on them - because they have oaths beyond that of the Unfinished Princess.

NAZGUL

Shortly after the Shadowhunters attack, a cold dread fills the city. A darkness sweeps through its streets, even though there's no change in the moonlight. The sky seems colder and the stars seem much farther away. A knee-deep fog seems to roll in from nowhere and cover the ground.

A piercing chill fills the air and a quaking dread rolls through the streets and alleys in waves. Regardless of who an individual is or what they've faced in life, regardless of powers or telepathic blocks, the dread and terror is a magical force of nature. Even those who never feel such fear will feel it now.

The Shadowhunters feel it too. There is a thin, anxious cry of "Nazgul!"

Dark cloaked and hooded shapes now move through the city streets, and something terrible happens: they multiply. Nine shapes enter, and as they stalk through the streets, they split into even more shapes. 9 becomes 18, 18 becomes 27. Each of the Nazgul is able to prism into 3 Nazgul total, linked as one mind, able to spread through the city and attack separate enemies.

They start slaying Shadowhunters immediately, creating chaos as the Shadowhunters attack back while still trying to complete their mission of kidnapping. There is mass chaos. Flaming arrows and flaming swords start lighting canopies and stands of cloth rugs on fire - at least enough to show the Nazgul are not particularly fond of it.

"Use a scatter rune, throw them off balance!"

A rune is activated, but the person that activated it is stabbed from behind right when they do, causing the spell to misfire, and instead of throwing just the Nazgul off balance, everyone is scattered through the streets. The Nazgul are not a terrifying united front now, but the squad and Shadowhunters are scattered as well. And though the spell will eventually burn out, it keeps firing off for a time, causing people to be teleported around. The only way to stop the effect is keep trying to move out of its range, deeper into the city, towards the palace.

Not an easy feat while the looming shapes of Nazgul stalk the streets and carved out evacuation paths, moving like ink.

Nazgul Effects

• Terror. Regardless of how big and bad a member of the squad is, regardless of whether or not they can usually block psionic influence, every character will feel stomach-churning, "what the fuck is this??" fear in the presence of Nazgul, though it depends on them how they work through it. They're not just ghouls or ghosts, they have the power of basically a world's version of Satan (or at least Satan's apprentice) working through them. While they don't cause flashbacks like the Nightrenders, they give off an unblockable aura of cold, monstrous, terrifyingly pure evil
• Morgul-blades. Their normal swords just work like normal swords but the Nazgul also have long blades they stab people with that have a shard of the blade fall off into the wound. This shard slowly works its way to the heart of the victim and eventually turns them to a wraith like them, forever subsumed to the control of the Dark Lord. While healing powers will be able to help somewhat with these wounds and slow the progress of the shard, they won't cure it or push the shard out of the body. Even those with surgical skills will find it impossible to pull a shard out - it'll always slip away from things like forceps. They'll have to reach Rivendell in time and get healing from the Elves to remove the shards.
• Black breath. If they can get in close - and especially if they can touch someone, the Nazgul can inflict a serious and eventually fatal condition, an infection from their aura. If they don't knock the person out instantly, they'll gradually lose consciousness and have a coma state filled with terrible nightmares. Then they'll eventually die. Players can decide how long it takes for their character to be affected, whether they go unconscious instantly and have to be carried, or last long enough to reach the woods beyond the palace. These characters won't have to wait for Rivendell to heal, a certain plant in the woods past the palace can be used to draw them out of their comas and cure it.

PROMPTS

a) HOTTER THAN HOT
The desert is not infinite but it is unforgiving. A day's journey is still a day's journey and because the Nightrenders will become active when the sun sets, you can't wait to travel by night. You have to hope that the information the group got about the length of the crossing will make up for the fact you have to trudge across it under the ruthless light of the sun - and hope that your water supplies will hold out.

It's a journey that will be difficult to make if you don't support each other, share water and food, help the weaker members keep moving - or even carry those who wind up collapsing of exhaustion and dehydration. It'll take a group effort to get everyone to the end.

If you're new, you'll have an even worse time, thrown in to the ravages of the desert with no warning. The caravan of oddball strangers you're drawn to may be your only salvation.

b) WHEN THE WIND'S FROM THE EAST
The desert gets especially bad when that big dust storm rolls through, whoops. You'll all have to hunker down, take what shelter you can in the rocks, and hold onto each other. And help dig out the smaller members after the storm to keep them from being buried alive.

And then there's the first aid after, like helping get sand of each other's eyes and tending to scratched corneas and sandblasted skin abrasions.

c) 'NEATH ARABIAN MOONS
Rejoice! You've arrived! And the well water right before the ruins is still pure, unspoiled, and abundant. There are also some supplies that can still be scavenged from the abandoned market. Fresh fruit and vegetables are right out because they've definitely been rotting at least a few days, but there are bags of rice and bulgur wheat grain, and some of the more nonperishable foods were left covered or in tightly sealed barrels, like dried dates, nuts, pickled turnips, and olives. You have some time to collapse and drink your weight in water, rest, replenish, and scavenge from the marketplace in the fading evening sun and the light of the rising moon. The empty marketplaces also leave room for cooking fires and some of the surrounding buildings have cooking oil and the right cookware to grind grain and make things like flatbreads.

d) A FOOL OFF HIS GUARD
Of course your period of rest is interrupted by another attack. Pretty typical by now, right? The Shadowhunters at least aren't as coordinated as they could be, but they are effective in their different squads. However, while they have subtle advantages in stretch, speed, agility, and accuracy from their angelic runes, they can't quite match the raw power of some of the squad.

Especially if you stand together.

So whether it's fighting Shadowhunters, swatting at their flying monkeys, freeing each other from nets, or protecting the group's more demonically-inclined from very fatal seraph blades, your best bet at everyone getting away is by trying not to do it alone.

e) COULD FALL AND FALL HARD
The dark shapes of the Nazgul are good at clinging to the shadows but the light of the stars and moon seem to be working extra hard at causing their movement to be seen, almost as if there is something holy to them that's watching over the group. The Nazgul don't speak, their gliding movement just push them inexorably after their prey. They don't seem to be trying to capture them. Just like the Nightrenders the group has dealt with in the past, they mostly go in for the kill.

The only exception is the times they draw one of their shorter Morgul-blades. Those wounds don't have to be fatal - any wound anywhere on the body will cause someone to succumb to becoming a wraith in time, forcing them to join them in the cold clutches of the Dark Lord, trapped into obedience to him forevermore.

One advantage you have is that the Nazgul aren't particularly acrobatic as keeping a solid form is its own challenge to them. You can take to higher ground to move safely, run through broken down walls, climb up to roofs, and/or jump across to other buildings. You may have to also make quick escapes, taking advantage of holes in floors that lead to stores of soft grain, scaffolding, ladders, ropes, or soft, bouncy canopies over shops that can act as trampolines.

Sometimes the only way to get away from the danger is by staying one jump ahead of the hitmen, one trick ahead of disaster, and one skip ahead of your doom.

f) WILDCARD
Maybe you decide to do none of the above. Or want to play out something like your character getting another to safety away from the battle. Go nuts!

OOC DETAILS
❧ Quest magic: Players can handwave that the quest bond magic is tugging the group together, and towards the palace and the lands beyond.

❧ Archivist Spells: There will be little eddies of leftover genie magic that allow Archivists to bank 4 iterations of a Sandstorm spell during downtime before the attack. This spell allows for a localized mini-tornado that can sandblast 1 enemy. Alongside disorienting and distracting them, the tornado's winds are strong enough to damage corneas and cause some abrasions.

❧ Teleportation: The flawed scatter spell one of the Shadowhunters activated with an angel rune can explain why two characters that might otherwise stay together through the whole thing might get separated. They'll blink around a few times before they can make their way out of range of the spell zone.

❧ Network: The network can be used by current players. Mirrors can and do float, and can follow someone as they move, allowing people to communicate while running or fighting. Feel free to use the network in parallel with the log events. Prospective players can handwave not using the mirrors because they haven't kicked on yet and it takes some time to figure out how they work, like magical Zoom calls.

❧ NPCing: The mods won't be npcing but players are free to npc the actions of the Shadowhunters, flying monkeys, and the Nazgul. The flying monkeys won't speak. The Shadowhunters can be npced as speaking, as long as it's kept to the listed rules for how they treat each type of person. They won't reveal any information other than they're kidnapping them to take them to the Unfinished Princess to fight in some kind of war, and are less likely to share this info the more inhuman a character is. he Nazgul, on the other hand, will never speak.

❧ Enemy damage: Players can have their characters successfully kill Shadowhunters if they would do so. They're a bit tougher than normal humans, but not by much. The Nazgul, however, can't be killed, though they can be routed off by holy attacks, fire, or powers players have gotten approved as being able to hurt unholy or ethereal beings. If you have a question about whether/how something will affect either enemy, feel free to ask the mods in the first comment below.

❧ Environment: Feel free to manipulate the environment. There are lots of buildings close together with scaffoldings, ladders, ropes, piles of barrels, just about everything you would want if you were either Jackie Chan fighting bad guys while holding a baby, or trying to PARKOUR! The orc corpses provide options for necromancy if Necromancers have powers to animate the date, and also crude weapons that can be scavenged for use.

❧ Experimentation: We'd like to encourage people to experiment! Obviously ask other players if they're down first, but it could be fun to do something other than 2 person threads, like maybe 2 PCs banding to rescuing a 3rd. Players are also encouraged to set limitations if they think it'd be more interesting, like locking their final escape prompt through the palace to the other side to a single thread partner and playing out the drama of a full escape.

Comments

Alloran-Semitur-Corrass

[takenalive]

[you know what I'll respond to this comment with prompts as I come up with them]

[takenalive]

Too Hot (Hot, Damn!): If he was alone, Alloran could have crossed the desert swiftly in bird morph. He does spend some of his time like that, a six-winged alien bird riding the thermals and keeping four eyes out for things to report; how far they've gone, how far they've yet to go, outcroppings of rock along the way, dust storms. Much of the rest of the time he's towards the back of the group, as an alien monster slightly resembling a twenty-foot tarantula studded with rocky plating, picking his way on three pillarlike walking-feet, dragging ceramic water jars on a wooden frame behind him with any pair of the morph's three slablike arms. It's a big enough morph that someone could seek shade under it, probably.

Whenever he returns to Andalite shape he spends as little time in it as he can - his eyestalks droop, his tail lies on the ground, he often doesn't bother standing, and his nostrils flare as he gasps for air - before returning to the bird or the tarantula. Morphing or demorphing is a hideous, horrible process to behold. It looks monstrous; it looks incredibly painful, and it's never the same twice. This can be elaborated upon.

[outofgalway]

Colin has seen weirder, even just in the last 24 hours (or however long that was, who knows with fairies) before he found himself here. The giant spider at least seems friendly, and with the group, which is more than he can say about say, the skeletons on the moonpath.

And he's getting tired - residual tiredness from not having slept for however-long does not help - so he needs to do something about that, and with no other means to entertain himself but the people around him, he ends up sidling up next to the tarantula just as it starts changing. Huh.

That... sure doesn't look pleasant, but as pained as the person looks they don't look distressed so he's not going to worry as such. And it is interesting, so he just hopes that he's not being too intrusive here because like hell is he not going to watch this. Plus, he feels, it's just better for safety to stop as this process happens and make sure that nothing happens to the person while they undergo this change and they don't get left behind.

canon typical body horror!

[takenalive]

Transforming from a three-legged lamlet into an Andalite, at this point, takes him around four minutes. It's... being up close makes it worse.

That twenty-foot-tall shape writhes, one of the pillar legs thickening and fissuring into two. Sensory hairs between the plates shrivel away as if burned. The stony plates themselves scrape and crunch and crack as his limbs reshape into four legs ending in gleaming black hooves, two arms with seven-fingered hands, and an incredibly, absurdly long tail with a plate sticking out of it at a sharp angle, which grows and darkens into a gleaming black blade longer than Colin is tall. The rest of the plates, by now placed rather irregularly in wrinkled flesh, soften and break up and sink into his mass. As they do a network of prominent blue veins rises and stands out in the flesh as it becomes taut and blue, and now his body reshaping sounds squishy and organic. Opaque black skin appears in patches and stretches to cover that flesh, then spouts metallic blue and tan fur, some of it longer than a human arm.

Only then does he start shrinking, and not at a regular rate, either. Parts suddenly contract and scrunch inwards - limbs bulge weirdly and settle - he goes to his knees, kicking up some sand with the impact. The morph completes with his big Andalite head seemingly inflating out of the eye-studded knob the lamlet had for one, the eyestalks sprouting like mushrooms, huge green main eyes bulging out, forming eyelids and long dark eyelashes.

And then Alloran is done, a sort of blue alien deer-centaur, his sides visibly heaving with deep breaths as he wilts in the bright sun. Morphing is a tiring process already, morphing in heat greater than his body can actually tolerate and rest in is worse.

[outofgalway]

Colin does step closer as the transformation is complete, kneeling down next to the the blue deer-like creature in worry. Because with how badly this person seems to be doing, and assuming this is their native form that they just changed into - if they were a Changing Breed that he's used to, this would mean that the person has fallen unconscious.

And in this kind of environment, that might as well be lethal. So he reaches out, his mind already trying to go over options, and gently puts a hand on what might count as a shoulder while saying: "...please tell me you're not unconscious."

[takenalive]

Alloran doesn't have the energy to twitch, though he doesn't like to be touched unexpectedly, and certainly not by strangers. This... is a stranger, right? He genuinely has trouble telling humans apart, partially because their small bodies are unpatterned and covered with clothing, partially because he's just not good with facial features. All he's sure of is that he's not close with this one.

<I'm not,> he says heavily. Thought-speech feels very much like hearing normal speech, and someone not paying attention tends to assume they've heard someone speaking out loud. <Will you do me a kindness? Go to that frame structure. Open one of the ceramic vessels and lay it before me.>

The travois he'd been dragging is ten or fifteen feet away where he'd laid it down before demorphing. Most of what he's been pulling on it is large clay pots, their lids bound to them with twine.

[outofgalway]

To Colin, the thought-speech feels like speech conveyed over the pack bond, just not (and this person certainly isn't pack), so there's a startle and then a nervous word of: "Sorry, I'm- I- yes." before he hurries away and briefly after returns with the requested item, trying to follow the instructions as well as he can without actually knowing what he's trying to achieve here.

[takenalive]

The pots are filled with water. Most of them. A few have managed to crack, or they've fallen over and despite the binding their lids have gaped open, letting their contents escape. A full one will feel cool to the touch and be quite heavy.

Alloran struggles to all fours, standing rump first, shoulders second. His slitlike tripartate nostrils gape as he pants, showing blue inner tissues. <Thank you.>

Lifting a foreleg, he puts his hoof into the mouth of the opened pot, and the water level starts to lower. This is how an Andalite drinks. Enough sand was stuck to his hoof and the long fur of his lower leg that it's a gritty drink, but his kind don't mind that the way humans generally do.

[outofgalway]

Colin can't but watch with interest. That's not a kind of drinking that he would have expected, but that sure seems to be what it is... And, the way it sometimes happens, his curiosity distracts him from being apprehensive about talking to a stranger, at least for a few seconds.

"What are you? - I mean, I have never seen someone drink like that, that's what you're doing there, right? Drinking."

[takenalive]

The water is helping. This is still an intolerable place to be an Andalite, something that doesn't sweat, but it gives him more energy to drink and feel the water, however unpleasantly warm, coming up his leg. What a miserable trek this would be if he couldn't morph.

<Yes. I either don't have a mouth or I have one at the end of each leg, depending on how you define the word.> Generally, Andalites differentiate their feeding and drinking stoma from those of aliens by saying a 'mouth' also functions in breathing. Mouths are very common out in the galaxy.

[takenalive]

In Light of the Moon: Alloran's doing okay when they reach the ruins. No heatstroke, no sunburn, no sand scour. Morphing is a very versatile ability, but the process itself is tiring and he's been on the move with everyone else, having little opportunity to rest. You can see him treading on some of the dried grass that he and Concrete Blonde have to share, or at the well, drawing a bucket of water with the help of his long prehensile tail and then putting a forehoof into it. Uh. Should he be doing that? Is that hygienic?

Otherwise, he pushes past the weariness and walks circuits, stalk eyes scanning. Someone has to keep a watch. He's expecting Nightrenders crossing the desert after them, but none of them know anything about this ruin and why and how it was abandoned. Anything could happen.

closed to kerrigan

[takenalive]

The scatter rune fires off again. Alloran appears and immediately falls against a low wall with a thud and a bloody smear, barely keeping his hooves under him. His stalk eyes twist and jerk, looking, looking, looking, seizing on someone nearby, and his head comes up. This time he's able to identify her more quickly. It's the armor. <Kerrigan!> he says tightly, and despite everything a stupid joke immediately comes to mind, we have met like this twice. He doesn't put in the effort to find a better phrasing, or say it; he's seen the figures at the far end of the alley, several human hunters with torches. They haven't seen him yet, but it's a matter of time.

The fur on his side is matted and gleaming with blood from a long, deep slash that he keeps part of his tail pressed against. One back leg won't bear his weight, courtesy of a smaller wound near his knee, and that somehow feels much worse even though the bigger cut has his whole body wracked and trying to lock up. A Shadowhunter had also managed to club him across the upper chest at some point, he's not sure when by now. In the moonlight, it's not really visible that his blood is blue, just that it seems paler than the blood on his tailblade. He's not in condition to run, or even walk at better than a hobble.

<Kerrigan,> he says again, marshaling himself with difficulty. <They seem... you should take the chance and leave. I'll have their attention.> He needs to morph, but between exhaustion, pain, and fear - the gliding figures were already terrible, actually being cut by one has set off all those prey instincts Andalites like to pretend they don't have, and they're screaming that he has to run, that he has to hit something with his tail if he can't - it's very hard to concentrate enough. The Shadowhunters aren't so terrible, but they will capture him. He can't bear that, not again. But he has his tail, and the proud warrior culture expectation of that is in a way reassuring.

[zerg_rush]

Alloran's not a true psychic; Kerrigan can't speak into his mind, his limits in turn limiting her, but as she sprints the few paces to his side, the sense of you look like shit comes through easily enough without words. The human instinct to console comes to the fore subconsciously while she studies Alloran's pursuers and thinks about tactics, her gloved hand absently patting him on a spot on his back that seems intact. His offered self-sacrifice is greeted with a firm sense of denial and a glance that says you idiot with perfect clarity (at least to anyone who can read primate facial expressions) as the human instinct to bond with anything that moves crowds out her xenophobia.

She squints past the hostiles, down the alley and across the street, and as their torchlight falls on a window, any glass or shutters that had protected it long gone, she can make out a shelf stacked with cookware. Perfect. This doesn't require precision, and Kerrigan simply yanks a pitcher out into the air and lets it fall, where it crashes into something on the floor she can't see, making an even more satisfactory shattering, clanking racket than she'd been anticipating, immediately grabbing the torch-wielding mob's attention.

Misdirection accomplished, she turns her telekinesis on Alloran, lifting him off the ground with invisible force—or that's the theory, anyway. The mental sensation is like yanking on something bolted down. Dammit, just how much does he weigh? With a put-upon sigh, she starts maneuvering to get him slung over her shoulders like a hunter would carry a deer. Why does this keep happening? Even with telekinesis neutralizing the majority of his weight, Kerrigan staggers a little under the remainder, slowed considerably and about as graceful as Alloran is at the moment.

"Turn into a bunny or something," she grumbles as she shuffles sideways to get them through a doorway and out of the alley.

[takenalive]

Instincts that served his ancestors try to tell Alloran that he's cornered and has to strike this fast-approaching predator before she pounces and eats him. Fortunately he hears Kerrigan's alarmed/concerned allysong, as he parses the empathic effect, and he's military. Even if she doesn't sing the kind of allysong he trained to trust all those decades ago, it's a similar enough sort of thing that it overrides the instinct to lash out. Pupils still fully dilated, he manages, <Those shrouded people... if you see any, don't engage. I'm lucky I got out at all.>

Having telekinesis turned on him is the strangest feeling. It's like being immersed in water that takes most of his weight. If he was only worn out, or not so injured, that would have been plenty to get him moving well. But he's having to put a lot of pressure on that big cut to keep it from bleeding freely, and there's a completely unfamiliar throbbing cold to the wound on his leg, that doesn't numb it at all.

And then she's... dipping under him and the world seems to rock and what just happened? Wait. What? What? Kerrigan's not a small human, but he's so much larger that he struggles a moment to realize what she's doing. Also, the long metallic-colored fur of his undermane is absolutely getting in her eyes.

<How strong are you?> he asks faintly, and forces himself to focus. <No, get... get my forelegs, let my back half trail. I can still kick off the ground with one hindleg.>

He doesn't have a bunny morph, and is out of it enough that as he thinks of options literally all of the ones that come up at first are giant monsters.

[zerg_rush]

"Strong enough." She puffs air up through her bangs and his fur to blow it out of her eyes, which works for about three seconds before she's partially blind again. Kerrigan's certainly never skipped leg day, and taking the telekinesis into account, she thinks she's physically lifting somewhere around her own weight. Not easy, but doable, at least if Alloran had been less unwieldy to maneuver. Having his belly so far off the ground actually took care of the worst part of a heavy lift. "I'm getting most of it with TK."

However, she doesn't mind letting him carry the part of his own weight he's still capable of managing, and that arrangement will be much more survivable if she has to drop him to fight. "Survivable for whom" is a thought she pushes away firmly. You do what you can with the resources you have, and if he bleeds out, she suspects that would be preferable to capture by the idiots in black, or to whatever horror the things in black want to wreak.

Muttering in annoyance over how awkward it all is, she shifts around beneath Alloran to let his hindquarters down, withdrawing enough of her telekinetic hold to let them float gently to the ground. She's sure the pair of them look patently ridiculous.

"I hope you can morph yourself into one piece, because I have no idea where any of the healers are."

[takenalive]

<TK... Did you know, I always thought that besides telepathy the various powers ascribed to so-called psychics were mythical. They may be, in the reality I come from. This is... very impressive.> It's enough of a surprise and a novelty that the fear recedes further, into a little corner where it's easier to ignore.

Which is good because when he gets his good leg down, planting the hoof at a tripod position that at least makes the whole arrangement feel more stable, he shifts his other leg and that cold lance seems to press into him like something's being pushed into the wound. He swings his stalk eyes around, trying to see - there's nothing to see, in the moonlight and with his eyes being rather far from his hind legs, just blood running freely to patter onto the packed earth.

<As long as I can focus enough and for long enough to complete a morph, it won't matter if I'm a brain in an oxygenated nutrient solution. I think.> That may be too much. He's twenty-five years out of date when it comes to morphing as science, but he's seen the Animorphs, the human children with the morphing power who had fought their guerilla war against the Yeerks for three years, take injuries much more severe than a few bad cuts and come right back.

Humans. Earth. Oh, yes, his smallest morph is one of the small companion cats from the Rig. Alloran remembers it. Striped in orange and white. He holds the details in his mind and tries to want to be that animal. Slowly - much more slowly than usual - he starts to shrink.

[hallelujahjunction]

By this point, Dan's realized that he's among the unlucky people who have somehow kicked the Shadowhunters' puppies. The Shadowhunters are being gentle on a portion of the group, and aiming for others, like him, with all the nasty force they have possible. Dan's taken this as an impetus to not get closer to anyone else in the group, lest they become a pincushion for the many arrows aimed for him.

That leaves him racing through the streets of the abandoned city, trying to both stay ahead of enemies that keep up with a galloping horse as if it's nothing and seem only slowed for a few minutes by arrow-fire. And unfortunately, they're more nimble than a horse, as Dan realizes that instead of the exit he thought he was heading towards, he's wound up in a tight labyrinth of alleyways and corners. He snipes three of them in a row - headshot, headshot, headshot - but he knows it'll only be a moment before they're back on their feet.

That's when he comes across Alloran as he rides into a courtyard. "I got three of them on my tail."

[takenalive]

Alloran's been trying to get clear for long enough to morph - in this darkness, probably bieleverd again, he could act as aerial support and swoop down if he has to, and defer the decision about whether he should kill humans. No one's calling for him to join them and they aren't leaving him alone, but he's also something unfamiliar that doesn't provoke instant hatred. Mostly unfamiliar. One of the younger hunters has seen him bolt past and cried "A unicorn!", and subsequently been mocked by her companion.

'On my tail' is an idiom that doesn't translate particularly well - that is the lethal part of an Andalite - but he picks up Dan's meaning and raises his tail, scorpionlike, into that big ready arc over his back, loading that great column of muscle with tension.

<Understood.> Alloran's eyes flicker. He continues scanning with his stalk eyes as he gets ready to ambush anyone coming in the horse's wake. <I'll try to disable.> He knows the technique, how to turn his blade to hit with the flat, to aim for the skull. As in many canons, concussions mean headache nap time where he's from.

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan realizes a moment late that he probably should have chosen better wording, but he doesn't expect on my six would be any more clarifying. The point is, Alloran understood him.

He pulls the horse around into a trot, listening as much to her as to danger; she's been carry cargo all day across the desert, and a flagging horse is as dangerous as being on foot. She still has energy in her left. He brings her around Alloran, a few feet behind the reach of Alloran's tail in case they're snapback, and draws his bow again.

The three Shadowhunters start to flood through the door, and Dan doesn't wait for Alloran to make his move before he fires the first shot. Alloran's probably faster, and Dan has no doubts Alloran knows what to do.

[takenalive]

Alloran's hindquarters bunch, back hooves planted. His hands don't reflexively form fists like a human's might in this situation, but his arms bend at wrist and elbow, drawing his arms close and out of the way.

Fwap! Too fast to see his tail fires off, cracking in the air to drive the flat of his tailblade into the temple of the closest hunter and retracting as a blur. She folds with a startled look, bleeding from where the edge of the blade grazed her cheekbone, and Alloran charges the one rushing in past her, aiming to bodily crash into him - he can't work up the power and precision he needs to pull another strong torf maneuver nearly as quickly as he can just slash with the edge of the blade.

[hallelujahjunction]

It gives Dan no end of relief that Alloran - stately, militaristic, unapproachable Alloran - follows through on his promise to disable instead of kill, when the latter would be so simple. It feels like Dan's trust is being rewarded.

Similarly, it gives Dan a counterintuitive sort of relief that he couldn't seem to kill these enemies if he tried. It simplifies the moral calculus that's always running around in his head during a fight, the question of whether he has the right to kill, whether he's exhausted other options. Causing pain isn't a light decision to make, but it's a less loaded one than murder. And when he isn't running that ethical math in his head, he's all the quicker on the draw.

Which means he gets the one keeping up the rear through the neck, and follows up Alloran plowing into the middle one with a shot to the forehead. The three Shadowhunters all sprawl on the ground, temporarily neutralized.

He jumps off the horse, pulling rope from one of the saddlebags. "They don't stay down long. Let me get them tied and we'll figure out what to do next."

The sounds of the fight echoing through the labyrinth indicate that they need to move quickly.

[takenalive]

As an impromptu ambush goes, this went quite well. Humans are too big and bony for him to trample easily. Alloran rubs the grasping-pad near the end of his tail over a smarting foreleg and considers the three. The woman he first attacked has that minor cut which is already scabbing over, as if she's a Hork-Bajir.

Alloran will kill if he must, or help others to do so; he doesn't mourn Planker, who now lives only as a pattern of DNA circulating through Alloran's bloodstream, just like every other sentient being he's ever acquired. But he knows nothing about these people, if they were coerced or are deluded. Even if they're not, he's so blood-soaked already. It would be simple enough to take easy justifications to slip back into old habits. He's just so tired of being that kind of person.

<They may carry something that will help us learn of them later.> Keeping his stalk eyes alert, Alloran slips his tailblade into the collar of the woman's black jacket and cuts it away, working on the logic that this is faster than searching pockets. This puts rents into her shirt as well, revealing the tattoos on her arms and under her collarbone, and scores her skin lightly, like she's been scratched by a cat. One of the tattoos shimmers and these too scab over rapidly. <Hmm,> he says, and uses a forehoof to draw the weapon she'd dropped away from her hand as he cuts through her laces and then pulls off her shoes. Alloran doesn't really understand the nudity taboo and why anyone might object to him removing someone's pants but he's figured out by now that humans have soft feet.

[hallelujahjunction]

"Avoid the breast and groin area, if you can," Dan says as Alloran cuts up some of the clothing, hogtying one of the unconscious Shadowhunters with the deftness that only comes from both training and professional use; from driving rich people around in sailboats to working construction to subsistence hunting to certain elements of his stripping career, Dan's used ligatures and knots as often as most people use pens and pencils.

He, too, is keen to get the Shadowhunters' shoes off for the same reasons as Alloran, but instead of cutting out the shoelaces, he takes the extra ten seconds to yank them out. Sturdy string is hard to come by in the wilds.

"Them tattoos mean anything to you?" He can't remember if Alloran knows that he can't read, and Dan's sense of what counts as letters is so poor that he isn't sure if the tattoos are any kind of recognizable language. He throws the stripped shoes over a wall.

He's out of rope by the time he's done tying the second Shadowhunter, but rather than use the shoelaces - still valuable currency for later - he uses the woman's jacket sleeves to tie her up. He considers their options. One of the Shadowhunters is already stirring, and any of the Shadowhunters are likely to be able to, with time, unbind one of the others. It's easier to tie up one person than a group, especially with nothing to tie them to.

Hopefully it's a lot of time. Dan made some pretty sturdy knots.

[takenalive]

Before Dan gets to the second hunter, Alloran cuts the man's jacket, collar to lower hem and crosswise across the arms, and slides the garment out from under him, all with his tail and hooves. On this he piles strips of jacket and pants that contain pockets, and the smaller weapons, before folding it into a bundle and tying the sleeves up rather less expertly than Dan. This goes on the harness that was made for him on the Rig, which fits closely enough to his body that it morphs with him.

<My translation chip has stopped functioning altogether.> It hadn't worked on the Rig, but he'd been able to access it, however uselessly. Alloran suspects that between twenty-five years without proper diagnostics and software updates, and electrocution once the company had him, this is to be expected. Now it's like it's absent entirely. <So I can tell that one reads 'Live Laugh Love' and there are feathered wing designs, but otherwise this is inscrutable. I'm not certain all of these symbols are of the same origin.>

Some of the tattoos are not magic, after all. Alloran tries to slice up a whip and finds his blade can't find purchase on the enchanted leather. That's annoying. He uses his tail to knock the hunter's weapons away out of easy reach. <We're going to have to move on. There are a lot of these people.>

[hallelujahjunction]

"I reckon you could tattoo yourself with worse slogans than sage life advice and wings." Dan isn't sure how that ties into the fact that the tattoos glow, nor is he sure Alloran isn't fucking with him.

He starts to climb back up onto his horse, taking his longbow out again and nocking an arrow. "You got anything special in the tank? I can give you cover."

He saw Alloran's very cool, very sexy tarantula morph, and he suspects there may be something else similarly useful in Alloran's repertoire.