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--- campaigns:taika-daagru:2024-05-11 [2024-12-22 02:42] – pinkgothic
+++ campaigns:taika-daagru:2024-05-11 [2025-02-16 02:21] (current) – Today's stuff pinkgothic
@@ Line 126: / Line 126: @@
 Then Kaikai the helmswoman shouted one word, loud and cutting through the headwind. The driver startled awake, leapt to her feet, cursing in her cant, and rushed toward the prow so far that Kukri and Giya could barely follow her with their gaze. She exchanged some heated words with Kaikai and stared down at something on the ground. There seemed to be a massive tree trunk, crudely cut at both ends with branches jutting out impudently, laying precisely across their path.
+**pinkgothic**:
+Well, so much for moving swiftly. If they continued moving forward swiftly, it would and badly, and so Kukri clutched at the deck, hunkering low, bracing herself - either there would be a horrible impact and she would dislodge some of her fingers to her current posture but hopefully prevent herself further harm, or she was doing well to keep herself away from swinging ropes and the sail that might want to come around to brake them.
+**Concavenator**:
+Kaikai was turning the helm with a titanic effort, and the yet unnamed driver was directly pulling on a cable that turned the sail parallel to the wind, both of them cursing loudly. The sled screeched against the icy ground -- the helm must have driven some sort of anchor -- and there was a jolt that made the deck quake and the crates strain against the ropes. It was not enough to stop the sled, which would be on the obstacle in a few heartbeats.
+The second impact was much stronger, making the whole mast quake and throwing even the drivers off their feet with a thunder of cracking wood. The sled had crashed into the felled tree; and its branches, black against the leaden sky, reached above the sled's railing like grasping talons.
+**pinkgothic**:
+Reality landed on 'both', and Kukri howled in reflex as the jolt bit at her joints. But her anchor held, for better or worse, preventing a number of bruises - if she'd only ducked her head, she'd be caught up in those branches now, and she wasn't convinced none of them wouldn't have taken an eye. It took long seconds for her to convince her aching fingers to let go again, her breath quickened by the pain. "Giya!" she called as soon as she could think enough to do so, a spike of misdirected maternal instincts cast toward the other woman, protégé as she had become. No doubt Giya had weathered the crash better than Kukri, though, and with more sense, given all her practical wisdoms.
+**Concavenator**:
+Indeed Giya had already sprung to her feet and was rushing toward Kukri, with sheer terror in her head tilt, and the feathers of her neck bristling like thorns. She planted her boots on the deck, which was now uncomfortably tilted, and bowed down, offering her head as a support for Kukri to stand up. One of the drivers hissed at them: "Leave if you have any sense!" and disappeared in the wind.
+**pinkgothic**:
+Leaving was the only viable option, and would have been immediately on Kukri's mind even without the prompt - even if the tree had come to fall naturally onto the path, //this// sled would get them nowhere henceforth. She nudged at Giya's shoulder in a gesture of appreciation, but without taking her up on the assistance to rise, as she was most of the way there already. Disoriented by the impact, she looked for her gear. She was ready to leave most of it behind, but the research - she had to find the research and bring it back home, or all of the past days' heartache had been for nothing.
+**Concavenator**:
+Giya understood and stepped back, looking around the deck for their baggage. It was damnably dark. The sail, only half-furled, was straining painfully against the ropes, and threatening to collapse -- in which direction, it was impossible to tell, at it swayed every way in the turbulent air. Boxes rattled discordantly, wood groaned, canvas flapped; and then lights appeared. Yellow blubber lamps, suddenly uncovered, lit up the multitude of ice crystals swirling in the air; and a powerful voice cried from below: "In the name of the Republic, abandon your vessel!"
+**pinkgothic**:
+Kukri would gladly abandon everything in the vessel //except// the research. She could feel her feathers rise further in response to the added threat, but the crash had already had her on high alert, so the difference was minute. Stubbornly, she kept looking, and-- //there//! Her bag had slipped in under the corner of a crate. Without any pretense of being quiet about it - the people who wanted the crates seemed quite aware they were there, after all - she yanked at the bag, pushing at the crate with her leg. It was the damaged leg, making the pain shoot up through her as she struggled with it, but while it yearned for rest, it still had strength.
+**Concavenator**:
+Giya had started at the call, and shrunk back against a box pile, seemingly forgetting about the search. Seeing Kukri struggle for the bag, however, she stepped forward -- hunched over, with her neck retracted and her tailfan folded as flat as it could be -- and helped push the crate with her side. She seemed terrified of being seen, sharply brushing frost out of her feathers as if she hoped to melt into the shadow.
+The voice called again: "Abandon your vessel! This order will not be repeated!"
+**pinkgothic**:
+And then the bag was out and Kukri slung it onto her back and clambered from the wreckage as fast as the crooked environment allowed.
+**Concavenator**:
+Just fast enough, as the top of ladders was clanging against the handrails, and soon lanterns and reed helmets were peeking from below. But there was no need to cut off paths of escape; Kukri and Giya, the latter looking powerfully sick, were down on the frosty ground. A dozen people stood around them, with the padded jackets and green banners of Chaatai police, most of them carrying air rifles and ice hammers. One, who had a teratorn sigil on her jacket, stated with a voice as level the sea pack: "Identify yourselves".
+**pinkgothic**:
+"I am Kukri Taika-Daagru, of the Society of Natural Philosophy of Grikaa," Kukri obeyed the instruction, blinking in disorientation. The driver's urgent advice - //Leave if you have any sense!// - clashed with the uniforms. Had they been stolen? Why would the police cause a sled to crash, and try to get its riders to abandon their cargo? She limped into better view, hoping that it would be seen as a sign of cooperation. It was good that it was almost an instinct - with these numbers against them, cooperation was the only viable strategy, anyway. "This is my protégé, Giya." She didn't hide the confusion from her voice. "With no disrespect intended, what is going on here?"
+**Concavenator**:
+The officer tilted her head and looked at them sternly, up and down. "You're hereby detained on suspicion of contraband and general crimes against order. You're advised to produce documents proving your identity and present yourselves for perquisition". She had spoken calmly, and the air rifles were mostly pointed at the frozen ground, though it would take an eyeblink to turn them against a target. Their glances, too, wandered all over, on the sled, on the trees, on both directions of the hard sled-path, and on the travellers too -- though it seemed that they set on Giya much longer and more often than on Valcen.
+**pinkgothic**:
+The emotion Kukri felt was a mixture of annoyance and relief. They had no contraband and she had done nothing that would be considered a crime against order, so this was a matter that, while it set her back in schedule, should be able to clear up just fine, as soon as her heart stopped beating quite so frantically.
+"I presume we were traveling with criminals, then," Kukri mused, slipping her bag down to - with cautious motions, as not to startle anyone who was armed - look for the identification papers that gave her marginal authority to speak for the Guild so far out as Yakak'ratu, if certainly not back home, where the Major Members did the same. Quite calmly, ignoring her own body that was still rigged for a fight now that this no longer seemed like a threat to her, she added: "That would explain why they ran as fast as they did." And, for that matter, why she had felt unease about their mannerisms. "I had thought the crash might have been a pirating ploy from their reaction - that someone wanted their cargo."
+**Concavenator**:
+The teratorn-marked officer -- a sergeant, probably -- nodded with strange nonchalance. "Hm-mh. Let's see. How many were they? When and where did you meet them? Who was governing the vessel? What is in the crates? Where does the other come from?" Another officer stood by Kukri, with a keen interest in the content of her bag, exactly where Giya was standing a few moments before.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"There were two," Kukri answered the questions in order. "We met them in Yakak'ratu - I had completed a survey expedition further south from there that Giya kindly helped me with and was in dire need of transportation back home, since the resources my Guild blessed me with have run dangerously low, and I prefer not to starve," she continued, allowing herself a fragment of levity, though her tone was friendly and conversational rather than sarcastic, as though she were sharing in the joke with a loose friend. "I did not have the good sense to ask the sled drivers for their names - they had a sled and were willing to take me back to Grikaa, and I thought them merchants ferrying blubber and fine goods between the two, and I wanted rest, not chatter.
+"I do not know what is in the crates, but by your involvement I assume I erred when I assumed legitimate trading goods. And Giya..." - just as she found her documents in her somewhat unwieldy bag with its materials for tenting and presented them with a respectful gesture, she also swept her muzzle to amicably gesture at her new protégé - "...made my expedition possible. She is from Yakak'ratu and I have adopted her as my protégé. I would have been in dire danger without her guidance and it would be no exaggeration to say I owe her my life. The least I can do is to introduce her to my Guild."
+**Concavenator**:
+The sergeant grabbed the documents and scanned them quickly. At least, she found no reason for immediate complaint; whether she believed Kukri's answers was a whole other matter. Giya was now standing many paces away; another officer was interrogating her. She was much more cowed than Kukri, with her head hunched into her chest and her back bristling, though they were too far away for Kukri to hear exactly what they were saying.
+The sergeant turned somewhat more cooperative. "Very well. We will confirm with the guild in Grikaa. You will be both in custody until we receive a response". She handed back the papers and sharply turned toward Giya, studying her for several heartbeats. Then, in a more conversational tone, but still staring at Giya, she said: "I've never seen the like of that in a higher guild. Is that what she's for? You wouldn't be the first philosopher who got bored with books and touchstones."
+**pinkgothic**:
+"Naturally," Kukri nodded in response to them wanting to confirm the matter with the guild. It was annoying and tedious to utmost degree, not to mention a manner of humiliating, but it would do no good to complain about it, and the answer was certain.
+"I grant it's unusual, but she really is my protégé. As you can see, she has much to learn," Kukri remarked, but she did so with fondness in her voice, and dared to approach the two that were locked in unpleasant conversation, with the full intention of smoothing whatever hackles were raised back down with what little authority she'd managed to salvage.