2 Chirreb 4385: Details

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Mirhandrax and Purrzhon got Summer Sky to draw a map based on his recollection of the old hideout. He said that the flock hadn't lived there -- they'd lived in a cloudnest -- but he'd been there enough times that he remembered it pretty well. Which made me wonder why anyone would take a hatchling to visit holding camp for enslaved captives and ransomees. And if Summer Sky had really been a hatchling then. But I didn't ask because they obviously didn't want to talk about it and it had been a long long time ago and it hadn't even been in Vheshrame or Ulgrane we were allied with then.

They weren't sure how many monsters and Primes were involved with the raiders, either. Summer Sky said the bolthole -- as he remembered it -- could hold around twenty people comfortably. "If you can call sleeping in a barrack comfortable. That'd be Ulgrane; you could maybe half again as many smallfolk like Cani." The Ulgrane thought that there'd been ten or twelve adult Mewellicaps in the flock back when they'd had trouble from the Mewellicaps, and that they had at least that many Prime allies.

"Of course, we assumed that their Prime allies extended to at least a Baron," Chain Lightning added. "We did not know that the ones at the snag were all there were."

Mirhandrax murmured to himself, "We still don't know that the ones at the snag are all there are."

Mirhandrax wrote down an estimate of twenty or thirty raiders and some number of noncombatant spouses/children/servants. At the very least, the Mewellicaps were there as a flock, not just a group of bandits.

That's a lot of potential hostiles! Mirhandrax and Purrzhon are good but I don't think they can take on ten or fifteen each. Not even with Trust there to heal them. And Nowhere Prison only helps if they don't resist it and usually it takes a few casts to run someone low enough on cley that they can't resist any more. Purrzhon and Mirhandrax talked over various approaches and how to make sure there were fewer people there and whether or not we should still try the ambush-a-small-raiding-party strategy.

While they argued about strategy, I asked Chain Lightning, "Why did you change your name?"

Chain Lightning clicked his beak in a grin at me, his eyes glinting. "Have I ever told you why I was given the name 'Lightning'?"

"No?"

"Oho! For many years I have been a rainmaker, Joy -- excuse me, Delight. Once, just a few months after I learned to summon clouds, I summoned my first storm. Black clouds filled the skies! Torrential rain poured down! Lightning flashed! It was ... rather more storm than I had wanted, in point of fact, but my clients were not about to complain with lightning flashing all around them, so they paid me. And I flew home through the thick of it, because it was my storm and I'd be cursed if I let my own storm ground me. My sister saw me winging through it, with a flash of lightning silhouetting me against the dark clouds. She asked if I had called it, and I said 'yes', thinking she meant the rain and not the lightning specifically. But of course, she was thinking of the lightning. Which technically was mine, although not under my exact direction. But everyone in the flock was impressed! And started calling me 'Lightning' after that.

"Still, ever since then I've wanted to be able to call lightning on purpose, and to have it be under my control and not just an unfortunate by-product of rambunctious Airador elementals combining with one of my rain-making spells. Finally, last year, I was able to trade for a copy of Call the Lightning. Which, I couldn't ... quite ... cast. At that time. Two months ago, I was finally good enough at the arts to cast it! I celebrated by firing off a whole series of them in a splendid (if ludicrously cley-intensive) light show for the flock. And everyone agreed that 'Lightning' was no longer enough of a name for a caster of such prowess. Thus: Chain Lightning!"

I applauded him. "Wow that's fantastic I heard lightning is really hard to call!" That's when I decided I should ask Purrzhon about hiring the Ulgrane.

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Then you'll have the better adventurers *and* the bigger monsters?

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

The bigger monster adventurers!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Lightning is indeed hard to call. When you are very rich, get him The Bird with Loud Wings and see what his name becomes then.

(Actually, don't. It's a mighty attack spell, and you could get in great trouble for giving it to an ulgrane.)