Interbellum, Chapter 1: Always Greener

You can say one thing for the Barrens that puts it above Dustwallow: it's not always raining. But it brings with it is own host of environmental discomforts, most notably, the heat; which is abominable to everyone except Jakk'ari for whom it is an absolutely negligible feature. Your group was able to hitch a ride with a kodo caravan heading to the Crossroads; and your services as potential auxiliary guards was simply not required. The interesting natural beauty of the land opens up to you, on the first day of the journey. Twice, you pass small herds of zhervra; black-and-white horse-like creatures with a singular horn crowning their heads. They cluster near to the road and graze there, attracted to the open sight-lines that make it harder for predators of the land to stalk them. They don't even startle as you pass - the kodos, the extremely sunburned but cheerful dwarven caravan leader tells you, put them at ease, even though they would certainly spook if a group of humanoids had approached them on foot. Towards the end of that day, as the sun plunges into the distant valley in which you have left Ratchet behind, you spot a single, lonely giraffe nibbling at a cluster of leaves at the top of one of the savannah trees. It pauses to turn its towering neck to track you as you go, rearranging its amusingly gangly limbs to follow you for a couple of minutes at a distance that is safe enough from you that it might still turn and run if threatened, and safe enough because of you, rather than risk being discovered by predators alone. It's a good tactic - Aleeana spots, and points out, a pair of gold furred, feline shapes stalking in the tall grasses alongside the road. A pair of lionesses that might have swung on the solitary giraffe, but are warded off by the presense of the kodos - apparently, serving as a kind of herbivorous champion of the region. "The web of life here is a little complex," Aleeana offers spontaneously, perhaps just because she feels she is able to do so, out of her three weeks of experience in the land. "Most of the herbivores are no trouble, and they gravitate to kodos because kodos don't seem to differentiate between creatures more deeply than 'predator' and 'not predator'. That's why the Tauren domesticated them so easily. And most of the predators will keep away if you're near a kodo. But thunder lizards get territorial around anything close to their size, so they'll spit sparks at kodos. So kodos will run from them - unless there's something smaller than them to protect, which they treat as a vulnerable child; in which case they'll rush the thunder lizard and try their luck. But a thunder lizard won't attack you on foot. But the lions will. And the raptors will, but only if they're being aggressively hunted by humanoids, or not hunted at all. Raptors will attack if they think you - and by you, I mean the tribe they perceive you to belong to, which is something like 'biped' - are weak. That's when they'll figure they can afford to hunt you. But if the locals are killing them off in numbers, their little nest-tribes start merging into larger groups, and they'll start attacking not to hunt, but to project threat. If they kill a few folks, they'll back off and they break up into nest-tribes again. So the local hunters have to coordinate so they're hunting raptors in that sweet-spot between 'no threat, attack' and 'threat that can't be ignored, attack'. They're clever girls."

You camp with the caravan that night on the road - in better tents, now that you've had a little financial freedom to afford them - and the next day, you part ways with it. Aleeana and the caravan carry on towards the crossroads; you strike west across the open land filled with yellow grass, and grown rock mesas, and hardy, scattered trees offering brief respite from the punishing sun. One again, fortune smiles on you, and you're not disturbed in your travel. A significant streak of your overland journey is through an area where a fire has burned off most of the long grass a week ago, and stubborn green shoots are poking up, unjaded by the savannah sun. Aside from nearly stepping on a nest for a golden-brown wind-serpent (which hisses and flaps up into the air in its undulating panick, circling above you as it considers its options and choosing not to try its luck, as you move on by), the second day has little trouble to offer you all the way until the afternoon. The sun behind you, just beginning to discolor the sky, you come around a mesa and see the sudden, almost shocking intrusion of green of the oasis. A dense wall of palm trees, and great ferns with huge feathery leaves surrounds what is less of an oasis pool, and more of a small lake; surprisingly clear, and pleasingly fresh; bubbling in places where it is fed by the pressure from underground springs. It's quite beautiful, actually; with the shade cutting away much of the heat for the day, and the steamy vents feeding the pool suggesting a source of radiant warmth for a campsite through the night, or for an adventurous night-swimmer. A pair of huge tortoises, with angular, pineapplish nodes covering their shells, give you wary looks with their big, dumb eyes. They're the size of large dogs, and with a sharp, bony underbite, they look capable of chomping fairly hard; but they seem more interested in seeking food in the water than out of anyone's legs, and they maneuver away into the water at their top, embarassingly slow speed. Clusters of bright red and orange flowers, each bloom as big as a human hand, nod approvingly at your approach. And at the far side of the water, a couple of minutes walk around its perimeter, is a white-granite stone protrusion with three natural openings - two high, one at ground level - giving a kind of sloppy resemblance to a giant skull. This, certainly, is the entrance to the caverns. You could make your way to the entrance and start immediately exploring; or opt to make camp here, and start that effort tomorrow.

Spoiler: OOC Options:
Show
Welcome to the Lushwater Oasis. Everyone can give me up to two things they'd like to do as you arrive, and may feel free to proactively roll, or take a routine 10 as appropriate, for those things. Examples might include scouting around the oasis for wildlife or visitors (Perception), looking specifically for tracks made by a higher order of life than the wild creatures (Investigation), conferring with the elemental spirits in the area (Jakk'ari's Communicate), performing a cursory examination of the water's quality (Expertise: Alchemy), doing any of these things while paranoid'ly trying to remain hidded (Stealth), or any other creative thingamabob you'd like to try to get past me. Feel free to comment on anything your character might have done on the journey here, or if you're so inclined, the wardrobe changes they have adopted for this safari - wide brimmed hats, parasols, what have you. Obviously that has no mechanical effect, but you're bringing the world to life.