Chapter 2-53: Pleasant Surprises (2/2)
Soak: 106 (70 (4x (d10+1FC+7 Con)) + 16 (Toughness/2) + 20 (Tough Spirit))
Ki: 20
Valences: 28
Null: 21
Talent: Natural Swordsman
Racial Benefits: Latent Hagchild; Null Forsaken; +2 to 2 ability scores (Con, Int)
Traits:Latent Hagchild
Karma: Current Seven (25%)
Base Abilities...
Feats/Class Abilities...
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Sama smirked at the Soak total despite herself. Ten years old, mwa-ha-ha-hah! Three uses of Resolve/Vigor backed by Battle Vigor... as long as she wasn’t paralyzed or something, she would be very hard to stop.
Time to prepare for those looking...
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Even looking for it with a +23 modifier, she almost missed the Scrying Focus when it popped up.
It was just a little bubble, a distortion in the light in front of the truck. Buried under the leaves of the brush thirty yards away, she caught the flicker, and focused on it.
So, a connection to a Witch or a Shaman. If they weren’t that strong, well enough. If they were, well, she had a problem. Ten more points of Null on this world would be a lot...
Chomps was further back, with instructions to make sure he wasn’t seen or followed. Actually, he had done something sneaky for them, hauling around a stinky mass of stuff that completely covered up any scent trail that they had left behind. Anything sniffing around for them was going to get a nose full of skunk and weasel in heat, and not a whole lot more.
Chomps had crisscrossed their trail for miles just to mess everything up the more, so nobody would be following a scent trail back anywhere. If they could pick out hoofprints, that was something different, but the thing about creatures with enhanced senses was how much they relied upon them. It was a huge change going from tracking via scent to visually.
Now it was just patience.
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They arrived in less than an hour. Sama narrowed her eyes as they pulled up in two jeeps.
She identified the four werewolves among the eight men at a glance. They all had a family resemblance, however warped, to the two werewolves or the sheriff.
But the other four... they weren’t human at all.
She blinked as a fluttering aura of concealment passed before her eyes, but seemed to hit something around her that wasn’t her Vajra, and lost its touch on her.
They were dressed in human clothing typical of a workplace, but their heads were smooth, bullet-shaped, and eel-skinned, with flat mouths that gaped open to talk in Aklo with razored teeth.
Werewolves and Aberrants? Wasn’t that like the very epitome of natural corruption? Just had to add in a few twisted Fey and things would be nice and swell...
It looks like I’ve stumbled into a major source of Karma... She had to stop herself from salivating.
The werewolves were particularly upset about the dead guy, of course. However, none of them headed off on the trail where the girl had been camped out, possibly not knowing she was there. They were all swearing at the stench around, certain someone had used it to conceal their scent... but they were talking about rival werewolf clans making moves and sending a message, to the point of using human weapons instead of honorable claws and fangs...
Okay, that was just plain weird. The slug-things just confirmed possession of the human meat in the back of the truck... and since the keys were in it, were completely uncaring of anything else.
Sama watched them radio the sheriff of their discovery, which, judging by how loud the reply was, seemed to get them to investigate off in the direction of the camping trailer, while the truck with the meat and one of the jeeps took off for somewhere else, driven by the eels.
Ah, splitting the party. Sama smirked... but she didn’t go after the one left behind. That was too obvious. Instead she went after the three heading off to investigate the trailer.
She’d already treated herself alchemically to leave no scent, and was perfectly confident in her Stealth modifier of +25 or so in this, her Favored Terrain. The weres still hadn’t bothered to transform, so they didn’t even get the wolf bonus to their senses, and she certainly wasn’t worried about the spirits or something warning them of a Null in their area.
Unworried about scuffs or scratches with DR 4/- and both Force Armor and Natural Armor, she flowed through the forest as little more than an errant breeze, lightfoot moving her further along than the distance of each stride, rapidly catching up to the three werewolves.
Two, when she actually caught up to them a quarter-mile later. One of them had just ducked off the trail to the other side of the road...