#NPC: Carol (Carol) the cow-owner

[askponevernites]

Finding Bodies, Making More: [Silvar]

NOTICE OF REBOOT:

The following post is preserved for archival purposes only. It is no longer canon. The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth’s tale has been postponed.

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Cleaning the floor turned out to be easy, if tedious. The powders Crownscar had mixed into the water bucket smelled pretty good, but he’d specifically forbidden her from sampling any of it. She got her fifteen coins.

Then she noticed it. It was subtle, beneath the sheer weight of presence the great deadness to the south, but something the size of a pony was dead in that direction, too, and much closer. Closer than the indistinct haze of the river that met Silvar’s walls along its southern side.

“Something wrong, Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth?” Crownscar asked, the name awkward on his tongue.

She pointed with one hoof, towards the door. “It feels like someone’s dead near the edge of the river, that way.”

Crownscar spat out a vehement word the Nine-Hundred-and-Nintey-Ninth didn’t recognize, and rose from his seat. “Show me.”

She knew the tone of this is not up for discussion when she heard it, and diligently got up and started out the door. At first, she could stick close along the line of buildings to her left, but that didn’t last forever. She hesitated.

“What are you waiting for?”

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and made a mad dash across the horrible open space between her and the deceptively tiny door nearest to where she felt the body’s presence.

CRASH!

She hadn’t estimated the distance correctly at all, and found herself tumbling across the floor of a room full of strange equipment that smelled of mushrooms and sour milk. A woman to her left screamed.

“Sorry, Carol.” Crownscar trotted in. “She’s, uh...  a bit odd. We heard--”

The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth picked herself up and crossed the rest of the way to a section of the back wall. She placed a clawed hoof on it. “Here. There’s something dead behind this.”

“What?” Grabbing a key between her teeth, Carol immediately turned around and stormed over to the side door behind her. The door clicked and swung open, revealing the yard of unfortunate stinking beasts.

Crownscar hastened to follow her, so the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth did as well.

“The cows are all still here,” Carol said. She turned to frown at Crownscar. “How did you hear that clunking from so far away?”

“That is a good ques--”

“All members of the Wolf Matron’s Thousand Pilfered Young can feel the size and location of unburied dead things nearby,” The Nine-Hundred-and-Nintey-Ninth said, carefully skirting around piles of manure as she approached a crumbling section of wall. Life in the Forest That Is a Mountain had honed a keen sense in her for good places to climb. Her first attempt at a quadrupedal jump didn’t quite get her there, but, the second time, her claws caught purchase in the cracks and she hauled herself up. The gap was too narrow for the large cows to squeeze through, but she made her skirts manage. She touched down on a narrow strip of land between the building and the river, and looked to her right.

At first, the hooded figures seemed like ponies, but as The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth approached, she realized that their legs had the wrong proportions, and their garishly bright colors were too smooth and shiny to be fur. They weren’t happy to see her, and drew weapons.

The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth brazenly walked toward them, and the front two charged in turn while the third -- slightly larger, with a bristly horn -- backed away and shouted something she didn’t understand. Almost immediately, a much larger shiny-not-pony emerged from a rocky outcropping in the river, with strange wings buzzing, and imposed themself between their horned ally and the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth.

“KID those are changelings!” Crownscar shouted. He’d climbed over behind her but seemed reluctant to take to flight. “They’ll kill you!”

The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth did not verbally acknowledge him, and jabbed the changeling in front of her with her spear. That didn’t do too much, actually, so she did it again. The changeling’s return strikes didn’t even hit her, but in the time it took her to do that, the changeling had sped up, quickly followed by apparently everything else. If the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth were the sort to wager, she’d have bet that had to do with the chanting the one in back had started.

Nonetheless, her next strike struck home, and the first changeling crumpled to the ground just in time for the largest one to step up to take their place, now cloaked in a shimmering field of something magical. She ducked beneath the sword of the other small changeling, and attacked the large one. Her spear pushed through the large one’s shroud with difficulty, only making a shallow cut, but her followup headbutt knocked the changeling straight into the water, and Crownscar pounced, engaging them in a splashing melee.

That made the other small one the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth’s new target, who missed her again when she struck. Had these changelings even been prepared for a real battle? The one in back kept chanting, and she was too slow to compensate for the fighter’s dodge, and she was punished for it with a painful blow to the side of her neck with the butt of the changeling’s sword, causing her spear to fall from her mouth. “YOU WRETCHED --”

She kicked the changeling in their exposed side and clambered on top of them while they were winded. All the speed in the world wasn’t going to save them if they couldn’t get up or crawl away, and the hard skin of their face buckled beneath her prying claws as she tore and stomped. When she felt the still-twitching body pass on, she turned her attention to the last target responsible for this attempt on her life: The chanting one with the horn.

Their horn flashed brightly, and suddenly there was an armed skeleton between herself and the changeling, but the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth was tired of their obstacle game and pushed past its clumsy sword swing. There was no elegance in the way she stabbed the struggling spellcaster until they stopped moving. The summoned skeleton found itself fading from existence before it ever managed to cut more than fabric, and Crownscar emerged from the water, soggy but victorious.

“You really are full of surprises, kid,” Crownscar said. “Go ahead and take those spies’ gear; you’ve earned it.”

The changelings had had some coins, longswords, shields, a dagger, and another dark bottle full of liquid.

“That’s a healing potion,” Crownscar added helpfully.

[+ 45 coins] [+ Healing Potion] [+ Bronze Longsword] [+ Iron Longsword] [+ Iron Dagger] [+ Iron Smallshield] [+ Iron Smallshield] [+ Smallshield (unidentified)]

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[askponevernites]

Getting in Trouble: [Silvar]

NOTICE OF REBOOT:

The following post is preserved for archival purposes only. It is no longer canon. The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth’s tale has been postponed.

←Previous

The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth had followed the river, sticking as close as she could to the sparse stands of fungal trees along the way, until, to her relief, she met another place surrounded by a wall. As she stepped through the gates, one of the two armored guards nodded to her and said: “Welcome to Silvar.”

She nodded back, but said nothing, then stepped around him and slipped into the alley opposite-of-south. The narrowness was more comforting and it didn’t smell nearly as bad as the fenced-in place to the south where several jaundiced, non-pony quadrupeds were milling listlessly. A comforting tree sat on its own in the corner, and she leaned against it for a short while before moving on.

The alley opened out to the street in front of a gate, with its own pair of guards, that led opposite-of-south into more city. There were a variety of mushrooms lining either side of the cobble path. She approached carefully, and bent her head to have a nibble of one of the more fragrant caps, but then the ground was suddenly receding from her, cloaked in a bright red haze. (The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth did not have a word for yellow.)

“Miss, please do not eat the ruffled mooncaps,” said the guard nearest her. The red haze was coming from the spiral-grooved horn on the unicorn’s forehead. “They’re ornamental and extremely poisonous.”

The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth stared at her blankly for a moment. She knew what poison was; the Shepherd could get sick or die from poisons, so he had to be careful what he ate. But she wasn’t like the Shepherd. Fate had allowed her to survive drinking the Wolf Matron’s poisonous milk, and in turn she’d been transformed by it, made immune. To the Pilfered Young, the Forest That Is a Mountain was abundant with delicious toxic berries and mushrooms, each carefully crafted and meant for only them.

That was why, when the guard asked The-Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth if she understood, she nodded. That was why, when the guard let her back down, she took a big bite out of the ruffled mooncap.

“OH FOR LUNA’S SAKE! ARE YOU TRYING TO DIE?” The unicorn picked her up again, continuing on with a string of angry-sounding words, most of which the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety Ninth found completely unfamiliar. “HEY CROWNSCAR!”

A pegasus with extensive scarring on his face stuck his head out of the window of a nearby building. “WHAT’S THE RACKET, SPINNY?” There was no functional reason for him to yell so loudly back; the distance between them was only a few pony lengths.

‘Spinny’ telekinetically shook the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth slightly for emphasis. “I’ve got a little madwoman eating the mooncaps on purpose. You got any curing elixirs on hoof?”

“I’m not a madwoman, I’m the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth of the Wolf Matron’s Thousand Pilfered Young and I will be just fine! Release me this instant!”

“I do,” Crownscar said. “Bring her on in.”

“I don’t require your assistance, you thousand-times-tricked buffoons!” The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth flailed her limbs as angrily as the gesture was ineffective, until she managed to kick off one of her boots in the direction of Spinny’s head.

Reflexively, Spinny used her magic to stop the boot before impact, but she didn’t have the focus to levitate two objects when one of them was a struggling pony, and she inadvertently dropped the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth, who scrambled off to the south, hanging a hard left around the corner of the building.

She didn’t make it terribly far. The road opened up into a vast center square, and she froze long enough in agoraphobic terror that Crownscar had time to burst out of one of the doors ahead of her.

“Hey, kid, it’s okay,” he said calmly, as if he hadn’t just been in a great rush to cut her off. “Come on inside and sit for a bit. If you really don’t get sick from bad mushrooms, I won’t waste a potion on you, but you gotta prove it.”

She hesitated. Spinny was right behind her by then. Running didn’t seem safe. “I do not acknowledge your coercion as hospitality.”

“That’s fine.” Crownscar took the boot from Spinny and, with one wing on her shoulders, herded the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth into the building.

She begrudgingly took a seat in the chair nearest the door (although she didn’t know the word chair yet, she understood what a seat was, and every bit of slightly higher ground counted to her) and accepted her thrown boot without comment.

Crownscar said watched her put the boot back on and frowned. “You have claws.”

“So I do,” the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth said. Her glare tracked Spinny until the unicorn went out of sight to return to her post. “What of it?”

“Not something I’ve seen before.” He eyed a strange box on the wall briefly. “You said something about a wolf and pilfered young.”

“The Wolf Matron’s Thousand Pilfered Young,” she repeated.

“And you’re the nine hundred and ninety-ninth.”

“Yes.”

“Where are the others?”

“The Forest That Is a Mountain.”

“Never heard of it.”

She said nothing.

“… You have a name?”

“I’m the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth,” she repeated. Even through asking directly, he’d come to the end of what information he was entitled to.

Despite that, Crownscar seemed unsatisfied. “You call that a name?”

“It is my name.”

“Well, Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth, what do you plan to do, once this foolishness about mushrooms is over?”

“Once your foolishness about mushrooms is over?”

“Sure, kiddo.”

She said nothing.

Crownscar sighed. “Do you have any family down here? The Empire doesn’t usually send teens your age down.”

Unlikely. The Horsebreaker had died many growth cycles ago, and was so far down the list of Fathers in importance that he’d yet to be replaced. The Forest That is a Mountain was waiting for him to be well and truly forgotten by the sapient horses of the multiverse before gambling on his narrow specialization again. It was possible that other demons of the Forest That Is a Mountain came to Tartarus, either to Pilfer supplies or strike bargains with unwary summoners, but they wouldn’t stay long, and might not know to look for her – or how to look for her, in some cases.

She said nothing.

Crownscar took the hint, and resumed what must have been his usual activities – cleaning weapons, restuffing dummies with chunks of coarse, stringy mycelium, repairing training arrows – while keeping an eye on her and regularly asking her if she was in pain anywhere. He tried once to prod her stomach, but backed off after getting a scratch from her. A little while after that, he started to wobble, and staggered to a cabinet as quickly as he could. He withdrew a dark glass bottle, pulled the stopper out with his teeth, and guzzled down the contents so fast it gave him a brief coughing fit. “You’re not a pony.”

“As I told you, I’m the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth of the Wolf Matron’s Thousand Pilfered Young.”

“You never explained what that means.” He tipped out the mushy dregs from the bottom of the potion bottle and rubbed them on the scratch for good measure. “But I’m guessing that part of it is that poison is your friend.”

Hellebore had heard the Shepherd say something similar once. She decided to respond: “That is one way to phrase it.”

Crownscar began wrapping his injury with a roll of thin rough cloth from a bag in the same cupboard as the potion. “I’ll ask you again: What do you plan on doing here in Tartarus?”

“Why are you asking, if you didn’t get an answer the first time?”

“Because I’m still deciding what to do about you.”

She understood the threat embedded in that sentence. “I’m planning to find a way home.”

“Back up to the surface?”

“No, back to The Forest That Is a Mountain. Your ‘Surface’ is completely wretched.”

For some reason, Crownscar started laughing. Then he abruptly stopped, and his face turned completely serious. “And what happens after you get home?”

The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth’s gaze dropped to the floor. She’d have to beg the Wolf Matron’s forgiveness. She’d cost the Forest That Is a Mountain the life of the Childsnatcher – the most important of the Fathers – and then managed what no member of the Pilfered Young had ever done before and left the Forest That Is a Mountain. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t wanted to leave or known that leaving was what she’d been doing; the path of her fate had hurt the Wolf Matron’s, and there were going to be consequences. She didn’t want to talk about that. But that wasn’t really the question Crownscar was asking, was it? “… I never should have left.”

Something in the set of Crownscar’s shoulders softened. “I can’t get you home, but if you need a bit of coin, I can give you work.”

It wouldn’t be the first time the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth exchanged goods for toil, and it wouldn’t likely be the last. “What manner of work?”

“I’ll give you fifteen coins if you mop the blood off the floor of the pit.”

“I don’t know what ‘mop’ means.”

Crownscar chuckled a little. “Okay. I’ll show you.” 

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