The cause of death won't be obvious; it looks like the wounds are on the front. He must have died later; his position doesn't look like it came from a high fall, none of his limbs are crushed or bent out of place, and the crate is intact. She'll notice a red band around the upper arm, and that he doesn't seem to have any obvious valuables or salvage on him.
Greg is nearby, and heads her way. "Found it, eh? But this could be tricky..."
Kirk takes a round about path to the crate, being sure to keep an eye out for anything or anyone that could have hostile intent.
When he does arrive at the crate he just nods to the others before looking away and keeping watch. The drow cocks an eyebrow at Albert when he speaks up.
"Kirk, and I get the feeling that'd take a bit too long to explain. Not from around these parts."
"Athas, I'm Dena." The drow replies shortly before peering at the box. "So what's inside exactly? 'Defense' is a bit vague, is it some type of weapon?"
"Well, we need to open it to see what's inside, but I am expecting at least a few weapons." Greg paces around the crate as well, trying to get an angle on the dead man. He lowers himself onto the ground, lying prone, looking at the side of the dead man. "Ah, okay, there we go. Yeah, don't touch the body. There's a prairie tick nesting in his chest."
"Got the feeling it's about to be explained." Dena says, checking herself so she didn't get infected by some tick. Thankfully her desert gear would prevent physical contact with the body.
"Same goes for me. I assume it's more dangerous than it sounds." Since Kirk has lived on the prairies and has seen ticks before3, he doesn't see how connecting them makes it bad. He'll take Greg's word for it though.
Hey! Stop pointing out the obvious exposition! You'll hurt its feelings!
Greg pretends he doesn't hear and starts explaining. "Well, admittedly, it's not a very descriptive name. They're large insects, about as big as your fist to start out with. They've got wicked hooks on the legs. What they do is go for the face, using their hooks to stick in, and try to climb down your throat to your stomach. Once there, they just start ripping stuff up and lap up the resulting blood until they swell to tremendous size, ripping apart the chest and ribcage."
"I'm fairly certain they're the result of a bet between deities as to who could create the most pointlessly horrific and cruel parasite. Now, The one in there right now isn't much of a threat, too big to crawl down our throats, see? But I'm afraid it might have some little ones in there. And those can. Hence our difficulty."
Dena frowns as she hears Greg's explanation, "I'm suddenly very glad I got my mask with me." It protects you from sand as well as from horrific belly ticks!
"So are they going to burst out from his body if we touch it?" She then asks as she holds a respectful distance from it, weighting their options.
"Yeah. After they kill something, they hide in the corpse, looking to pick off any scavengers that come for the meat." Greg thinks for a moment. We could just get some distance between us and then, start it off, and try to pick them off as they come at us, but... that might be dicey. Anyone have any ideas?"
"Makes me wish we had fire." Kirk peers at the box. What are the chances it's made of something flammable? Eh, they probably don't have anything that'd serve to light it up anyway.
Greg thinks. "Fire could work, yes, fire would do... but we'd need to make something that burns hot and fast. We could use powder from my bullets as the ignition source, it'll strike and go off easily enough, but we need some kind of fuel or accelerant. Something to get the blaze going fast."
Dena shrugs at Albert, "Makes two of us. I think I got something to solve this problem however."
The drow pulls off her mask revealing the fact she's grinning as she starts to pull off her desert robe. She puts it along with her mask into her cloak and then picks out a flask with a orange and red colored liquid.
She turns to Greg, "Put your powder on the body and make sure everyone stay back a bit will you? Going to start a fire so you better prepare for a fight, this is going to be so fun." She gives them a moment to do this before pulling off the cork and swallows a bit of the flasks contents. By the look of her face it doesn't taste particularly well, her eyes tear up as it looks like she's going to throw up.
It takes a moment.
Dena opens her mouth slightly and almost seem to be about to burp when a cloud of fire erupts from in-between her lips, moving towards the body and will engulf it in flames.
Once this is done she will quickly move backwards, starting to pull on the mask she had over her face once again.
Kirk backs away as instructed. He's glad he did too when she starts belching fire. That's... most certainly interesting. He laughs out loud even as he pulls out a pair of knives to deal with any of the ticks that might escape.
Albert steps further back when instructed. He'd been watching Dena remove her desert clothes, wondering just how much she was going to remove, but he wasn't so far gone that he wasn't listening.
He pulled out his 9mm and a survival knife, ready to fight the buggers off. He watched as the body burned, impressed by the woman's fire-breathing.
By the time Dena is ready, Greg has a bag of gunpowder to toss on the corpse. The mix goes up instantly in a flash of fire and heat, and there is an angry clattering sound as the flaming corpse topples over.
A few bright red insects fall out of the chest cavity, writhing and smoldering, followed by a giant one, bloated and heavy with blood erupting from the corpse. It twists and smokes and burns, only managing to crawl a few feet from the body before collapsing, quivering.
A fast, darting red shape comes in its wake, and Greg turns it into sticky mist with a single bullet; as he works the bolt action of his rifle, 2 more emerge and make a beeline for them, moving fast and low, only occasionally visible through the grass.
Dena just takes off her robe, underneath it she got her usual clothes (which can be seen described in this post).
The drow quickly backs away, pulling her own two short swords, one which have a blue shimmer to it, ready to cut any parasites attacking her to pieces.
There isn't time to blink before Kirk launches a knife at one of the ticks with unerring accuracy. A difficult throw to be sure, but Kirk rather talented with those knives of his.
Unlike the others, Albert isn't nearly as cool. "Woah!" He begins firing rapidly at the approaching bugs, only keeping it together enough to not shoot in the direction of his friends.
After a few shots, he begins to target the creatures a little better.
Kirk pins a tick down like a fly to the wall, the gross bug squirming around the steel blade impaling it. Albert's 9mm fusillade doesn't strike the other emergent bug, but one of his rounds that goes high takes out another bug emerging from the smoke of the burning corpse. Greg finishes cycling the action and leaves the rifle, waiting for another bug to emerge for the corpse.
Snicker snack! Through and through goes the frost hoary edge, severing the little insect in mid flight. The two flailing, struggling halves strike her body and fall to the ground, harmless, leaving only a red stain on her clothes.
There don't seem to be any more insects emerging from the corpse. The fire spreads out along the dry grass of the Veldt, but the area near the crate is mostly smoldering now. The crate itself stands intact, uncharred by the flames.
Albert releases the spent cartridge and slams in another one. "What the heck was that!" he looks to Greg. There a look of realization in his eyes. "You wasn't fooling around, were you? This really is another world."
Then he looks toward Dena and Kirk. "And you two, you're not human. You're... some kind of elves, right?" Evidently he's never played dungeons and dragons, or any other game with dark elves.
Clearly Albert just fell asleep in the snow and is currently having a hallucination. Wait, that's pretty dark isn't it? Let's just go with him seeing elves.
Dena who's about to investigate the box gives the pilot an odd glance, "Yeah? And your some kind of human." She replies, shaking her head as she focuses on the crate, investigating it thoroughly before attempting to pry it open with a spud bar conveniently hidden away in her cloak.
Greg shrugs. "I tried to tell you, man. You went down the rabbit hole. Welcome to Wonderland. First stop: death and horror."
The crate easily pops open, and Greg crowds in as a faint orange glow emits from the suddenly opened box. Lying inside on top of everything else is what looks like fragments of ceramics and pottery, inscribed with scrawling symbols and writing, and emitting the orangish light that washes over the faces of anyone peering in. The bright golden script seems to crawl and shimmer across the reddish clay of the fragments. the surface There's something about them that immediately draws the eye and attracts attention. When you look at it, the writing seems to respond, changing into something comprehensible. A sensation begins to prickle at the back of the drain, like a dawning realization, the onset of epiphany, a triumphant eureka that you've been waiting for your whole life...
And then it vanishes as Greg throws a tarp over the fragments and bundles them up. "Right, this here is the 10% my friend wanted. The rest is all yours."
Below that, there is a thin layer or art objects, jewelery and the like, in silver and gold, and probably worth some raw cash. Beneath that are a set of cases in sable black. Inside one is a sheathed knife, balanced for throwing. A small slip of paper with directions and illustrations seems to indicate that it safely returns the user after being thrown. Inside another case is a brand new Luger pistol in 9mm, with a small supply of ammo. Finally, there is a large canteen that is never empty, always having just a bit of water in it.
"If you can't find enough to satisfy you, I'll arrange for additional compensation."
Kirk eyes the pottery fragments curiously. Hrm, interesting. Tearing his attention away from Greg he looks in the crate. He reaches almost immediately for the knife. He pulls it from its sheath to admire it. He also grabs a couple jewelry pieces, though not a lot. He doesn't have a lot of use for the money that it'll get him. The knife is worth it, however.
Kirk nods to the bundle of fragments Greg has. "So what are those all about then?" He asks.
"Hey, this place gives away water and metal for free, that makes it more then okay in my book. You have no idea what I had to do to get these two swords." Dena comments, then as the one that opened the crate likes to get her hands on the gun which catches her attention.
She will then go to grab the ammo and the canteen unless someone protests. If anything is left behind she will take that as well, carrying everything in her cloak of holding.
"I'm curious about it too, what's with that stuff? Is it valuable?"
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Re: [Nexus] Neon Knight's Plots
Lexdoll by Recaiden
He'll take Greg's word for it though.
