⇨ THE HUNT

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 173, the Afternoon
Where: Heartstone Manor Courtyard
What: Everyone goes into the forest with arrows, swords, and horses and is told to hunt and the kill the biggest beast they can find. Best kills win a prize! Or, if you'd rather not, you can wander around the forest and pretend to hunt instead.
Warnings: Violence and ethical quandaries.

BEASTS OF BURDEN↴ Come the day of the Hunt, everyone will be brought to the courtyard forest and provided with arrows, bows, and blades as requested. Magic and other weaponry can be used to hunt, but it is suggested by the Prince that the best kill is the one done in a gentlemanly manner, which probably means he will be most impressed by those using the tools provided. The "Best Kill" will be determined from a mixture or whatever beast the Prince decides is best, and the method in which it was killed. The less damage done to the body the better - tearing the body apart will receive poor grades. The corpses are not yours to eat or keep, and all must be returned to the Prince at the end of the day for judgment. The servants are especially nervous, tense, and solemn today, and unless they have no choice, most of them will be trying to give the courtyard a wide berth. Those that have to serve will have stony expressions, or at best will be trying to put on a cheerful face. If casually asked why they are upset, most of them will say something vague about the Hunt making them nervous, and how dangerous it is to participate. OOC: Those who make top levels will have a chance to be randomly selected for a couple particular plot events, so be prepared for that.

Comments

[kingsroads]

TEAM BAD DECISIONS: Strange & Lambert

Lambert is a mutated killing machine, specifically trained to fight monsters and will be wielding a sword. Strange is a magician who knows how to shoot a gun but not use a bow and arrow. They'll be focusing all their efforts on the bicorn.

Strange will serve as the bait/distraction, while Lambert stalks in the shadows. Any tracking is 100% on Lambert's end as he's got those witcher senses which can be put to good use. Once they spot the bicorn, Strange will serve as a big obnoxious distraction. Most of this will involve just shooting arrows near the thing but eventually fuck it, he'll use magic: putting up walls of earth to try and close the bicorn off, asking the tree roots to grab it's legs, etc. If the bicorn tries to gore him, Strange will try to puff into smoke in order to get the hell away from murderhorse. While this happens and yakety sax plays in the background, Lambert's going to use his witcher magic to either calm the thing down/force it into submission/attempt to break any transformation curse that might be on the thing.

WINNER!

[ringleaders]

According to the dice results, Lambert and Strange have won this hunt. More than that, they won it with a natural 20 roll, meaning their their attempted taming of the bicorn will go better than they were probably expecting!

The combination of magics from Lambert and Strange will seem to be having uncertain effects - the bicorn will be somewhat panicked from being captured at first, and while it will be forced to stay still by magic it will be wary of their intentions. This can escalate to the mentioned "horse kissing situation" however you like, but somehow that does end up being the last little push that their attempted magic takes to work.

Finally, they will feel some kind of enchantment snap, clearly fae in origin. The fully equine nature of the bicorn will seem to fade away like fog, revealing the exhausted form of a willowy and beautiful woman - though one that still has the horns, tail, and fully bestial legs and hooves of her previous form.

She is otherwise naked, and will pass out shortly after the spell is broken. Her hair is long and white, just like her mane was a horse.

TL;DR: They try to wake her up with red phoenix fruit and also there's a lot of invisible people.

[whattaprick]

Before the lady passses out, Lambert will catch her and try to ask who she is/keep her conscious. The latter part will obviously fail, but can he get a name?

Strange will give the lady his jacket for some decency and offer words of encouragement/keep an eye out for other people approaching/try his hardest not to look at her boobs.

9S and Rita will be in the vicinity as they break the enchantment. 9S will immediately be ordered by Lambert to look for the rest of nightrunner crew, Syrlya and Scout.

Rita will examine the unicorn lady for injuries or any indication of the cause of her fainting. She’ll also be looking for magic traces of her transformation curse or whatever else may be present. Lambert will stand guard until 9S gets back (which will be pretty quick, since they're not far off either) after which he will be sent out to look for Childermass.

Scout will cast her cloak-of-shadows glamour dealie on everyone at the scene, with the Nightrunners and Childermass as the exceptions who can see through it. This power doesn’t make someone invisible/inaudible/scentless/whatever, it just makes them not consciously register to people unless they do something super noticeable. Works less reliably on fae, on whom “super noticeable” is also a broader topic. She’ll also see if anyone’s bleeding or in pain and block that. She’s had her daemon around since before 9S fetched her, so he’ll also keep watch. As a simple spell one he’s not corporeal and probably can’t be seen.

Syrlya will put them all under an invisibility spell, don’t u love having that. So many people at once is a strain so he can’t leave it for long and will emphasize they need to move her quickly, because they sure as fuck can’t go back to the Prince like “by the way we have your servant you fucking MONSTER”. Someone should get her out of here while the rest attend the judging like Nothing Is Wrong. He’s not bothered by her being naked, because you know, sometimes people just are.

After some rapid discussion, the group collectively decides that an attempt will be made to wake the horse lady up because consciousness is a good thing. Lambert is going to coax her into drinking a vial of the distilled red phoenix fruit juice he has on him, which is basically a milder adrenaline shot than eating the fruit directly.

[ringleaders]

1) The bicorn woman will manage to faintly reply with "I don't know..." before passing out completely.

2) It seems that she passed out mostly from the shock/exhaustion of the hunt, and then her transformation. She's unconscious for now, but it's reasonable to expect she will wake up in the foreseeable future.

3) The red phoenix vial will wake her up! She is disorientated and confused, but it will definitely get her conscious, and she doesn't seem to have any major cognitive or physical dysfunction beyond being super physically tired. She seems shocked by the fact that these people are apparently trying to help her.

[whattaprick]

With the bicorn woman awake, it’s time for some questions! Lambert will cut off anything he doesn’t deem immediately useful/relevant to the situation, because he’s an asshole, but … as soon as she’s conscious and can support herself, he’ll stand and direct his attention outward, warily watching for any sign of interruption (and hopefully, Childermass and 9S reappearing).

Syrlya is going to crouch to horselady’s level and speak softly because someone needs to be like, soothing here. He got this. But if no one else has any questions before he reassures her “we’re friends, and we want to help you”, he’ll get to the most important: Was it the Prince who did this to her, and why?

“Do you even know where you are?” Lambert will add to that, frowning.

[ringleaders]

She's disorientated enough that it takes a bit for her to explain anything, and requires some coaxing, but she will say that she does know where she is, and she remembers what was going on during the hunt. The Prince had transformed her previously as a punishment.

"It was a punishment. I... I ran from him. He was displeased."

She'd been changed a while ago, and had been a bicorn for some time already before the hunt. She's not sure how long. Maybe weeks or months.

[whattaprick]

Rita, who very nearly shot an arrow into the bicorn earlier, is seething, fists clenched at her sides. "That bastard..." she hisses, but manages to compose herself enough to ask some questions of her own. "Are all the animals out here like that? Wait... where were you before the hunt began?" This big forest wasn’t here before, or at least it didn’t seem that way.

This poor bicorn’s just getting question after question as Strange quickly pipes up, “You ran from him? Were you planning on going somewhere specific?”

Scout goes pale. “These poor people,” she says to herself, horrified. Not wanting to crowd the bicorn she removes the soft outer cloaklike part of her hunting-habit to pass to Syr to give to her. She’s got Strange’s jacket, but this could go over it, she thinks.

Lambert doesn't crowd the bicorn either, but he's thinking. The Ringmaster had mentioned concubines, and despite her currently inhuman features, the bicorn woman looks like she would have been quite the beauty as a human. Could she be one of those?

[atouts]

That 'hopefully reappearing with Childermass' takes some time. Not terribly much, but the fact that the man chose to ride back to where they are rather than taking himself, an Arcanine, 9S, and a Mudbray through the shadows does drag that time out some. Even so their arrival isn't hard to spot thanks to the massive fire dog trotting on up alongside the little orange donkey 9S is riding. The massive fire dog who also can't see there's an illusion ahead, though familiar scents do cause him to slow to a stop. Considering Childermass is on his back, that probably makes sliding down off of him all the easier.

The Arcanine will start snuffling around the edges of the illusion just, but Childermass, unlike Baker, looks directly through the illusion. Well then. That's all something. The magician grabs the Arcanine by his ruff, pulling him into the illusion with them.

"What do you think you're doing? You broke one of the Prince's spells?!"

Yeah, rather than being helpful, he's here to tell them their utter morons.