Episode 57

The party returns to the encampment with Lily carrying the egg in her mage hand. As they enter the main tent, a conversation is interrupted between the professor and her assistant. The egg is settled into an obsidian jar and is placed onto a nearby shelf for safe keeping. She says she is impressed that they managed to harvest an egg and the eye stalks are handed over as well. The original job would have been set at 1750 gold, but with the egg, the party is given 3000 gold for their labor.

Marisol asks if there is anyone in the encampment that delivers letters. Since Marisol’s letter would take weeks to arrive in Gaoli, Lily offers to send it instead. In the end, Seipora sends a message to Press for her. As return to the Solar Sails, Ingred voices her dissatisfaction about the job. The party begins their journey back to Velden. The weather is fair and they make it back in three days. Halfway through, Press lets them know that the Behir is Northeast and the job is contracted by a “bitchy” (his words) woman named Calakka. He warns that she is a no-nonsense individual who is known for canceling contracts if the hirees piss her off. They should head to Stroitwud since it is close to the site.

The party decides to continue using the solar sails and pays an extra 200 gold each for them (out of the group funds). Marisol pushes the Captain off of the dock, but gets zero reaction from him. They leave for Stroitwud. The travel time would usually be 4 days, but a strong wind and clear weather sends them a day ahead of schedule. The hills below are green and many mountains are seen in the distance surrounded by towns. Suddenly hitting a pocket of dead air, Lily, Marisol, and Ingred are thrown off their Solar Sails. They manage to collect themselves, but not until after scraping against the tree canopy.

An hour later they arrive at Stroitwud. It is a walled off town, so the party waits outside of the front gates to be let inside. They leave their Solar Sails at the local stables and a guard leads them to the office of Calakka, a two-storied cobble building that sits directly off the main road. He tells them good luck before leaving. The party goes inside after knocking. The building is set up to be more business appropriate. People are dressed in workplace attire. A woman who sits behind the biggest desk in the room asks what the hell they want. She introduces herself as Calakka and puffs on a cigarette before telling them all to sit. She blows smoke at them as she talks, making K cough a lot. The Behir has been killing livestock and bothering people. She tells them to kill it so she can get what she wants. The party exits the building. Marisol trails behind them with an amused expression on her face. A guard lets them know that the behir was most recently spotted stealing livestock. Chale could give them more information.

As they walk through the mountains they pass through some small farms before approaching a ranch with some bison-like animals with tusks grazing in the fields. Lily leads the party inside and asks a ranch hand for Chale. He directs them to the barn. They enter. The smell of iron and blood hits them quickly before they see some ranch hands butchering the livestock. They go to the Kill Box to find Chale. He is a skinny tall human man with a very scraggly beard and ponytail, working on bleeding out one of the creatures. He calls them Unka.

Kova has crazy eyes but K manages to keep her focused. “There’s a blue snake in the forest,'' says Chale. They’re in the mountains. He waves a filet knife in the air as he talks. There’s a cave about a day and a half’s journey into the mountains. The Behir came down two weeks ago and it tends to feed within two week’s time. Ingred asks Lily if it would make sense to stake out the Behir on the ranch, but Chale doesn’t like the idea. He tells them that if they can get him a scale, he’ll give them some free Unka meat. As they leave, the party notices the big sign out front which reads “Chale Meat Co.”

They discuss options before heading to the cave. Ingred leads them before finding a decent, recently used Behir trail. They settle down for the night. Ingred and Marisol bicker a bit before the watches begin. They all wake up fully rested. Lily mentions that she saw the Behir during the night. After some quick hunting and breakfast, the party continues their journey. They quickly find the cave around a blue stone area. Ingred and Seipora enter first to do reconnaissance. Upon their return, the girls share what they saw inside the cave. About 140 feet in they saw a carpet of bones. There is a path straight, but the Behir can be found sleeping in a giant, hidden nook to the left. There are no human remains. The party spends about ten minutes discussing options of attack. They decide to all go in stealthily. Lily levitates Anthos, K, and herself. They manage to slip into the nook and K points out the location of the sleeping Behir. He dives into the darkness followed by the others. Everyone gets into position and Ingred engages with the beast, shooting a poisoned blow dart at it. It bounces off however, waking it up.

The encounter is relatively quick, but the Behir proves to be incredibly dangerous. Both Anthos and K get dealt some heavy damage after being constricted by it. K whales on it hard. Marisol, Lily, and K get struck with lightning before K entombs himself with the Behir, killing it in his bloody sand. The crunching of bones and its shrieks are the last noises to come from the beast.

After everyone is healed up (with K getting some extra medical attention from the girls) all 18 claws, 5 teeth, and the lighting gland are harvested. It is about the size of a shield. Other goodies are harvested too. Lily gets one of the horns, K the head, and Anthos the scales. They also find Chale’s filet knife sunk into the body of the Behir.

The party goes back to Chale Meat Co. and are surprised to see that a lot of stuff is destroyed. Chale is eager to get his knife back and gives them the meat of an entire Unka (about 385 lbs and high quality) for the scale. He tosses an Unka liver at Ingred so she can feed it to Kova. She tosses it to Kova. Kova looks displeased at the tossing.

Chale offers to clean up the Behir head for K, so he stays behind as the rest of the party returns to Calakka. She takes her time to inspect the harvested materials before nodding and saying they appear to be in decent condition. She says that she will tell the company that it is a job well done. Marisol mentions that the guard should get a raise. The party thanks Calakka and spends the rest of the day unwinding. They are each awarded 720 gold pieces for the job. K’s skull is cleaned and is given straps to turn it into a backpack.

The party rests at a hotel. It is much needed before they head back to Velden.