Red Dead Annihilation: Campaign Thread

At the top of the cliff, Mica is crouched in conversation with Ran's bird pal.  There is no sign of Inete anywhere in warm jungle dusk.

Mica:

Danica puts a hand on the dwarf's shoulder and says with heavy voice and heart, "We do what we must." Giving a solemn nod to Meili as she returns.

Scrambling up to Mica, the elf stares between him and the bird, able to understand the conversation due to her own spell still being active and winces. Not able to see any sign of Inete but knowing that the ranger was far superior at tracking, she asks, "Any sign?"
After being given the run down, Danica frowns, fingers fidgeting as she hated to admit that this was all too eerily similar to Velan's disappearance. Was someone targeting them? Going after the more magically inclined of the group first? Was it not related at all to Velan and mere coincidence? Or...

Green eyes flicking up into the sky, the sailor's mouth opens slightly. "There's more. The little one said that there were more than what we cut down in the nest. What if one was flying and swooped up an grabbed her?" 
Looking back down to the tiny pterosaur hanging upside down off her hip, Danica asks, "Where would your former masters take a fresh captive? Prey. Nest? Or somewhere else?"

The little pterosaur looks confused.

Danica and Mica:

“No sign at all, it is like she disappeared, Cap’n” Mica responds to Danica and fills the others in as they make their way back to the top.  He gestures to the parrot.  “And all this bird says is gibberish about feeding the little ones.  Doesn’t make any sense.  Are there other little ones around here?” He looks to the bird “Can you lead us to the little ones?”

Mica’s look grows grim as Danica speaks to the little dinosaur “It must be the hag.  Inete was already targeted by the deathlock. It must be her.  We never should have left her alone."

Everyone else hears the red bird give a loud, frustrated sounding "Wrank!!! (whistle)" and hop back up to Ran's shoulder where it seems to sulk.

Danica and Mica just hear more of the same song.

Meili took off her mask and wiped the sweat from her brows. It was a long day which was far from over yet. She sat tiredly on the ground watching Mica and Danica interrogating the bird, which yet again seemed to be unable to explain what she wanted.

"It's like the bird's curse forbids her to talk. Did we ask her already to guide us to those birds we are supposed to feed? She can not tell who we have to help but maybe can show their location?" Well could be they"ve already asked it - with all the later events Meili simply did not remember anymore. Between the hag, the sisters, and the other grim inhabitants of these lands, she personally felt as trapped as that woman inside the bird's body or mind. "If it were other pterafolk, who took Inete, they might come back for us if we are exposed here. We can leave me in the open as bait with others rest more hidden and see who will bite."

“We’ve asked the bird to lead the way.  But all the damnable thing does is scream that silly verse.  No good setting out as bait either, the little one said the pterafolk always take their prey back to the nest.  It had to be the hag.  We should go right back to the village now and confront her.  We can use one of our questions to find Inete.” Mica stops pacing and looks back at the others “But can we trust the hag? We are in no shape to face her right now.”

"According to the book, we should not trust her. Nor can we fight her now or later. Yet, Amphyretta and her aunties proved it is not always the case." They have talked about it too, of course, but back then Inete was with them. "We did not know Nanny when Velan disappeared in the same manner. But the Sisters were already after us. I do not think Nanny is responsible here, but she can know what happens. I agree, the sooner we get to the village, the sooner we can learn about Inete."

Meili stood up again, ready to walk back to Nanny.

[If your plan is to question the hag, do you want to talk about what questions to ask first?  And maybe we should wait to see when Ran comes back.]

Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Danica glances between the parrot and tiny pterosaur. "Back to the nest...to feed the little ones. But the only 'little one' we found was this one." Nodding to the dinosaur on her hip. "Eggs unhatched. Unless we didn't look well enough. Or maybe it's circling around with Inete and going back to the nest now." 

Grimacing at Meili's questions and Mica's answers with a frustrated nod, the sailor then abruptly shook her head, making a slashing motion with her right hand. "We're not using anyone as bait. We've no way to track you so we'd just be down one more of the crew." 

Relaxing just slightly as Meili abandoned the idea of being bait in lieu of getting answers from Nanny, Danica states, "I'm just going to have one last glance and set fire to the nest. That was part of the agreement. And we need to make sure we follow it to the letter now that we're truly depending on those answers."

Jogging back to the opening, the elf descends and before her spell can wear off she asks the pterosaur, "What do you want me to call you?"
Doing one last sweep through the nest, she then used Druidcraft and a torch to light anything flammable left in the nest, working her way backwards to the exit and returning back to the others. "Back to Nanny then." Clapping a hand on Hew's shoulder with a serious expression. "Hang in there. She promised us a non-enchanted cure." 

Investigation: 6

[Sorry, didn't refresh page before I posted. Definitely want to talk over the three questions first.]

"I don't know if there's much point in us asking her how to stop the Death Curse. I feel like it's a given that she wouldn't know. Inete, Velan and Shepard are all missing. But so far apart that I don't think we'd be able to squeeze into a single question. We have to expect her to take our question wrong, so it has to be water tight."

["Definitely want to talk over the three questions first." - and wait for Ran too. I think one of the questions was supposed to be about his sister?]

Ran Dex Save: 13 

Ran climbs his way up over the edge to catch the end of the conversation with the bird. He shakes his arms and rolls his shoulders a little. Looks like the only damage he ended up suffering was a glancing blow from Mica. "Fair's fair," he mutters.

When the bird gets on his shoulder again he looks carefully at it.

"So Inete disappeared?" Ran asks. "Just turned invisible or flew away?"

He looks around at the others as they decide what to do with the questions, seeing the hag, and the eggs.

"I'm with Hew. Just chuck those over the side and be done with them," Ran says, gesturing at the pack with eggs. "A few scrambled eggs now and a few more travelers who don't get eaten later."

He pulls up his knotted rope and coils it as he mulls over the problem of the questions.

"Yeah, I want to know if this bird is my sister, but it might be better to know who to change her back to her original form regardless of who she is."

"We have three questions. Nanny said she does not know of the secret city we are looking for. But she knows about the wizards Inete was looking for, and their purpose. Even how to get to them safely. That was supposed to be the question and answer for Inete. She also knows about Sisters - who they serve and what they built, and how to avoid or hide from them. That was for us. Looks like our first question should be about Inete. Then the bird, And lastly we have one more to learn how to deal with one of the problems or both."

Mica pulls a bandage tight around his upper arm. “Perhaps we should take a quick breather here to rest and gather ourselves.  No sense meeting her half cocked. She has the upper hand anyway.”  He looks at the others, especially Hew as he tries to see how much the dwarf has left before he drops “Three questions - one for Inete, one for the bird, and the last for the sewn sisters, or the red wizards?”  He pauses “Something worries me about those wizards we were following though, Nanny says they were fighting the pterafolk and then disappeared.  But there were only two bodies in the nest.  Where are the others?”

Ran looks over at Mica when he mentions only two red wizard bodies.

"Maybe Inete didn't get nabbed," Ran ventures. "Maybe she was do a bit pacing about up here while we were having fun and stumbled into a bit of magic."

Ran goes over to where the others had found the last of Inete's footprints.

He puts his own boots in the spot where Inete's footprints are and then looks around. Ran then shrugs and takes one step forward, squinting his eyes a little in case he gets zapped with something.

Ran tests his theory... taking a blind step forward from Inete's last footprints... and nothing happens.  On his shoulder the bird just shakes its head, embarrassed for the both of them.

Ran looks at the bird and frowns.

”Magic isn’t my thing. But you would have been impressed if I disappeared.”

He looks at Mica and nods.

”Resting our dogs for a few minutes isn’t a bad idea.”

"More like scared to death," quietly noted Meili, as she lowered herself to the ground again for a brief rest before embarking on the journey back to Nanny.