Minx's Diary

General Summary

Caravan Trip

So we rode past Nexus on the Yananze, crossed the Yananze, entered the plains there. Stelsor just had a bee in his bonnet about brigands, and we did kill a group of about 24 of them, Stelsor kept their grisly skulls as trophies, he doesn't know, but they'll be used in a ritual to enslave their souls to the people they tried to rob. Sijan's idea of justice is very thorough.

Then we arrived at the Caravan's destination, loaded a few things on some pack animals, and entered the Jungle, after the first clearing, we had an 'honor guard' of two exalts apiece, it was unnerving. It got worse, once they recognized me and Ardigan as dragon-blooded, the exalts of the wild places and my people do not get along. My nascent friendship with Silver Shadow surprises me about as much as the lack of trust I have with these people, for all I admire one of their number, the mighty magelady Raxsi, perhaps the most puissant exalt alive right now. Anyway, they escorted us, a show of aggression or power as much as anything else. Silver Shadow played a prank on Stelsor, she couldn't stop grinning, but I didn't know what she did. Stelsor apparently got a note from Oft-Missing-Vixen, and so has been a little more stable.

At any rate, we spent three days crawling through that forest, accompanied by the most distinctive exalts it's been my pleasure to meet. The Scallop-type exalt and the 4 meter tall Great Siaka made quite a pair. The lady they called Golden Chrysantemum tried to intimidate me, it didn't work, and she flew off in a huff.

We then witnessed something rare, after bringing our copy of the The Triptych of Luna Unleashed and they brought theirs. The aforementioned lady, apparently the local bigwig's oldest surviving student, and the trainer of one of our party, led the locals into a ceremony to Luna. Apparently, enough whiskers got bent that they all transformed, which... got ridiculous, I mean, I'm pretty sure I saw the Scallop and the Siaka find a pond, or maybe it's a part of the underground river that flowed into that main cavern, but they just upped and turned into a Rhino-sized Scallop, and a full-sized Siaka, complete with black and white markings, and they just completed the song from within the water... I don't think anyone but me noticed though, all of the 'boys' were busy staring at Silver Shadow's missing boobies.

Then Dove-lady, I never did get her name, shrieked, and told us something was wrong on the back of their triptych. I went and checked, and it said "Autochton Lives!" in some kind of magical script, since we hadn't seen it before. Now, Fortifier, usually the most sane, sensible and stable member of our moiety just decided to have an incident by himself, trying to teach everyone about the glories of Autochton, and how this was the most important event in the history of ever... He went on and on, until Dove-lady and her Falcon-dude brother just went and lifted him bodily, yeah, birds, doing that... Both of them might be part bird, but full warrior, and the type that always engages in calisthenics and trains compulsively. If the brother hadn't had his head firmly stuck up his ass, I might have flirted a little.

We need to calm him, he's making all sorts of drawings, trying to 'explain' how important this is to us, but he's not even starting at who Autochton is, which is probably a good first step... Although, I taught Malachy about alchemy, Autochton, and how he helped invent exalts. So I know who he is a little, but why they'd make the statement that he lives is a pretty serious headscratcher. Autochton's a primordial, like Gaia and the Yozis, he can't be killed, not in the death sense, and they stopped killing primordials in the War of Heaven because their 'not-deaths' did damage on a scale with the great contagion. Now, if I get some of the babble from Fortifier correct, there is like hundreds of his kind, some much more powerful than him, since he's apparently been locked up in a tomb, not learning how to use his exalt powers properly, although, too much of that, and you become part of the landscape.