KHAZUUL

"Ah yes, the "situation." I think we should offer our help, but not until we fill our bellies. We could check out that hollow, like Sow says. My head is thick with fog from all this rain. A nice bit of sun would do me wonders, and food beyond stale bread. Shall we try once more and failing that do as Freki suggests?"

Thorn's lovely long locks had gone frizzy. Patting down his hair absentmindedly he sighed loudly. "But let's do something as I cannot sit here one more minute. Even the fire is more smoke than flame."

Before Samir and his sister are within earshot, Sow nods at Cutwell and agree with Thorn. She eats the last of the very questionable cheese she’s been saving. It’s not good.

"Yeh," she vocalizes falteringly, chewing as she adds, "there’s more to their story. Coins to be wrung from it, too, I bet."

Day 5, First Watch
Hex: 3
Wilderness Action: Supply Action
Weather: Inclement (Add a Fatigue or add +1 watch)

The group moves out into the jungle once more. The heat combines with the moisture to create a rolling fog that spreads through the trees and undergrowth, obscuring the distance. Samir hisses, "the breath of Khazuul always brings danger," as he makes a holy gesture to ward off evil.

In the early hours of the hunt, the earth beneath you begins to shake, a steady beat reverberating through the ground. The rhythm intensifies, echoing through the silent jungle, twigs snapping in its wake. Emerging from the mist and leaves, a colossal reptile materializes, dwarfing anything in your wildest imaginings.



Nostrils flaring, it inhales the essence of the jungle, and a chilling realization creeps over you – the tables have turned, and you've become the hunted. With a thunderous roar, the colossal lizard asserts its dominance.

"Don’t look like the type to cower now, does he?" Cutwell asks, as he comes face to face with the creature.

"Might be that they weren’t afraid of the storm after all. Maybe it was him that scared off all the food…" he gulps, stepping backwards in the slick mud.

"Right. Back to camp, is it?" he shouts, as he starts to run!

"Whoa! That's ..." Freki exclaims in shock and wonder but doesn't have time to finish his expression because he immediately recognizes an animal on the hunt and that it sees the group as prey.

"We gotta get out of here, go, Go, GO!" He yells urgently as he turns to run.

Sow is shocked by the size, ferocity, and speed of the reptilian monster, and most of her companions have already taken flight by the time she has her wits back about her and is running herself. There’s no way to straight outrun the thing, the girl instinctively knows, so she frantically searches for a hiding place as the huge lizard thunders along, coming. A gully, bushes, a dead log to climb into — anything, any place that is either out of sight or small enough to admit her but not an enormous and fanged lizard snout!

Thorn is sopping wet again. If it's not the damn rain it's the humidity, he thinks as he plods along.

Upon hearing and feeling the ground shake, Thorn's least worry is his discomfort. The creature was massive and coming their way. Thorn looks for a tree to climb because surely such a beast wouldn't be able to follow, but how high would he have to go to be clear of it? Still, he ran and tried to find any kind of shelter to hide in.

The gargantuan reptile watches as the people scatter like fieldmice. Cutwell and Freki split directions and race into the jungle. Saffron hesitates a moment, but Samir yells to her in the Gurkish tongue:

"تذكر واجبك!"

With tears streaming she turns and runs like the wind, much faster than you would have imagined.

Sow and Thorn race to hide in and among the trees and undergrowth, but it is just bad luck that they are unable to obscure themselves in time. Almost casually, Grimjaws selects between these three mice to devour.

Samir's final message to Saffron draws Grimjaw's attention. It stomps into the clearing, opens its jaws, and crunch down on the young man. It's massive teeth rip into his flesh, sending blood spurting and bones crunching. It playfully flips his body onto the ground, and it's tongue tastes the blood on its teeth.

Samir makes no sound, but those who can see him can tell he is barely clinging to life.

Glancing back over her shoulder as she scrambles to get away, Sow sees what Grimjaws does to Samir -- and it's not pretty! The girl yelps and squeaks as she tries to go faster, scrambling on all-fours, hand over hand as she tries to find any kind of cover!

Cutwell skids to a halt in the wet mud. He can’t hear the man, but he can hear the beast, and the devastation it wrought on flesh and bone.

He could run, and possibly make it back to camp. But they were scattered. He could barely make out where the others had gotten to. For all he knew, it was the beast, the barber, and the bloodied boy left behind.

The chance was slim, but it was a chance. Cutwell draws his knife, and flexes his metal arm. He steps back towards the way he came, towards the figure of the boy and the beast looming over him. He starts to hammer the knife against the metal arm, sending a clanging into the jungle. His voice booms as he advances.

"Oi! Oi! Oi!" he chants, clanging metal against metal as he goes. Given half a second, he intends to drag the boy by the collar and into the woods to safety.

Thorn had a moment's reprieve at the boy's and Cutwell's expense but he couldn't decide on the best of his bad options. Cutwell was buying them time potentially with his own life at risk, so he owed him a favor. The creature knew where Thorn had hidden, if he could call it that so moving was at least the first step. But to where and do what?!

He would flee but not before trying to drag the boy away once the beast's attention was turned to Cutwell.

Sow manages to find a shallow gully to scramble down into that allows her to get out of Grimjaw's line of sight and slip away.

Cutwell begins his daring maneuver, shouting and clanking to distract Grimjaws! Seeing that Cutwell is turning back to save her brother, Saffron cannot help but abandon her flight. Stopping dead in her tracks, she turns and draws her glittering sword. Her face is a mask of rage.Grimjaws sharply looks up in Cutwell's direction, it's nostrils flaring. The beast breaks into a thunderous charge, shaking the ground and crashing through branches to reach him!Saffron and Thorn watch from their patches of jungle as Grimjaws chases after the barber-surgeon, leaving massive footprints in the mud. But, the way to Samir is clear! Saffron rushes up to her dying brother. Pressing her hand into his spurting wound, she tries to lift him up, but her strength is not enough.

Before the barber can reach the stricken man, he draws the attention of the beast. That was the plan, but now that all that meat was bearing down on him, Cutwell’s heart couldn’t help but shudder.

He turns, and runs again, clanging his knife against his arm as he does so to draw the beast. Ringing a makeshift dinner bell throughout the jungle…

The huge beast crashes after Cutwell and his dinner bell, expecting to snack on the bell ringer. Remarkably, Cutwell nearly trips over a crevice, a long slit in the earth as if a giant had stabbed Khazuul with an enormous sword and it had left this scar. Realizing it is just wide enough to slide down and deep enough to hide in, he and scrambles down inside.

Grimjaws catches up and slows to look down at its prey. its massive body blots out the sun, making it pitch black within. It gnashes at the crevice with its teeth, and scrapes at it with its talons, sending a hail of mud and loose rock to rain down on Cutwell. Foiled, it screams a deafening roar into the crevice that rattles Cutwell to his bones.

It turns back to where it left its snack, only to see two little mice trying to escape with it! It pivots and charges back the way it came.

Freki collapses into the cradle of a large tree's roots panting, trying to catch his breath after sprinting to escape the beast. The could still hear the muffled horror of the monster in the distance through the tangled jungle. He had heard the disheartening screams of Samir as he ran and now he hears clanging metal and an awful oinking sound, Oi Oi Oi, like teeth chomp on a metal arm and the muted death thoes of the beasts next victim ... Cutwell, you poor bastard, he realizes as he chokes back tears.

When he had started to run he thought Cutwell had had a good head start ... I guess the beast found him anyway ... Freki shudders and gets up to start circling around keeping distance using the victory roars of the Grimjaw to gauge, hoping to come across the tracks of one of his companions ... someone else must have escaped, he hopes but without much optimism at this point.

Thorn tries to drag Samir with very little success as he stumbles behind Saffron who looks like she might have a chance of getting her brother to safety. That's if he doesn't die first. The Marchguard hears the creature stomping and crashing through the brush and the man knows that he has to act quickly. He hears Cutwell clanging his metal arm followed by the ear-splitting shriek of the beast as it slices deafeningly through the air.

Poor Cutwell.

With his heart pounding, Thorn remembers his fireflask. If he times it just right, that dinosaur will be fried meat at best, confused and delayed at the least, giving him and the others a chance to escape. Digging around in his pack he finds the flask and hides behind a tree, waiting for his moment.