You're not quite sure why Sala wants you to both deliver messages and destroy things, but it sounds like a good time. Unfortunately you had to memorize the messages, because after carrying a credit chit you can't really carry many more messages. Gotta get some kind of purse, soon, or sort out some method of tiny writing.
The first major stop is in the city of Daro, on the borders of the unimaginatively named Great Forest. Which apparently isn't that great, not anymore, having had significant portions of it being chopped down. So Raucous spends several days flying east, going past a number of small villages and two small towns. There isn't too much to notice in them. Farms, ranches, an odd crystal farmer who grows tiny clear slabs that come out of the ground, a strange rocky field full of metal chunks. Unfortunately, despite creating exotic materials the whole process is quite tedious. The owner walks out, clips them into forming specific shapes with this weird sonic tool, and waits several months for each one to grow. Multiply that by several thousand of them, including seeding new ones.. Nah. It's farming. Weird farming, but farming all the same.
Although it does make learning farming through levelling a lot more appealing. As great as food is, food apparently isn't the only thing you can farm. Hmm.
There are a few encounters on the road. A couple packs of those hyena beasts which require abandoning a nest and flying for several hours at night. A pack of hostile insects which demands a very wide berth. When an insect may well be able to kill you in one bite, they demand a lot more attention than they used to be. And a peaceful encounter with a woodcutter that provides food and shelter for simple entertainment was fun. Telling the story about trickster gods who are both their own worst enemies, but are necessary when all else fails, is a new experience for the man, and his stories about the great hero he once ran with are also interesting. Apparently there was a person in this world who could warp space with gestures, bridging hundreds of meters with a single step, entrapping people in mazes of air, or remaining safe as he was always miles away from any attack.
Fighting someone like that would be a challenge. Blindness? Some kind of gas, maybe? Poisoning his food? Wouldn't be easy, that's for sure. And since the guy could do it all day, basically at will.. Maybe some kind of betrayal would work? It's an interesting puzzle, in any case.
And, after a question or two, apparently that guy was far, far weaker than the kind of broken abilities demon champions are supposed to have. At this point, the bird is a bit too scared to ask for more information. Which doesn't help, because apparently one of them could kill people by entering their dreams.
That was not the thing the bird needed to hear before going to sleep.
The second town Raucous goes through is on Hammer Lake, and is the first real waypoint Sala provided. It's really two lakes, in the shape of a long haft and a hammer head, joined by an extremely short river between them. It also has the first job for Raucous, who needs to deliver a message to a deaf bookkeeper who lives here. Along with the other half of the job, breaking some kind of big smokey engine in it's own shed, on a platform in the middle of a river. The stream of smoke and the animal paddock make the location obvious.
The paddock also has the counterargument to learning farming. This town has someone raising goddamn dragons. Not flying dragons, but big, horse-sized armoured scaled fire-breathing lizards. About a dozen of them, sitting around in the sunlight, wandering around, playing with each other. Breathing fire into the sky. All living on a stone platform surrounded by metal fences, on top of the lake.
Okay. This clearly calls for more investigation before anything gets broken. And 'animal husbandry' is looking a lot more appealing if it means 'raise goddamn dragons'.
You're not quite sure why Sala wants you to both deliver messages and destroy things, but it sounds like a good time. Unfortunately you had to memorize the messages, because after carrying a credit chit you can't really carry many more messages. Gotta get some kind of purse, soon, or sort out some method of tiny writing.
The first major stop is in the city of Daro, on the borders of the unimaginatively named Great Forest. Which apparently isn't that great, not anymore, having had significant portions of it being chopped down. So Raucous spends several days flying east, going past a number of small villages and two small towns. There isn't too much to notice in them. Farms, ranches, an odd crystal farmer who grows tiny clear slabs that come out of the ground, a strange rocky field full of metal chunks. Unfortunately, despite creating exotic materials the whole process is quite tedious. The owner walks out, clips them into forming specific shapes with this weird sonic tool, and waits several months for each one to grow. Multiply that by several thousand of them, including seeding new ones.. Nah. It's farming. Weird farming, but farming all the same.
Although it does make learning farming through levelling a lot more appealing. As great as food is, food apparently isn't the only thing you can farm. Hmm.
There are a few encounters on the road. A couple packs of those hyena beasts which require abandoning a nest and flying for several hours at night. A pack of hostile insects which demands a very wide berth. When an insect may well be able to kill you in one bite, they demand a lot more attention than they used to be. And a peaceful encounter with a woodcutter that provides food and shelter for simple entertainment was fun. Telling the story about trickster gods who are both their own worst enemies, but are necessary when all else fails, is a new experience for the man, and his stories about the great hero he once ran with are also interesting. Apparently there was a person in this world who could warp space with gestures, bridging hundreds of meters with a single step, entrapping people in mazes of air, or remaining safe as he was always miles away from any attack.
Fighting someone like that would be a challenge. Blindness? Some kind of gas, maybe? Poisoning his food? Wouldn't be easy, that's for sure. And since the guy could do it all day, basically at will.. Maybe some kind of betrayal would work? It's an interesting puzzle, in any case.
And, after a question or two, apparently that guy was far, far weaker than the kind of broken abilities demon champions are supposed to have. At this point, the bird is a bit too scared to ask for more information. Which doesn't help, because apparently one of them could kill people by entering their dreams.
That was not the thing the bird needed to hear before going to sleep.
The second town Raucous goes through is on Hammer Lake, and is the first real waypoint Sala provided. It's really two lakes, in the shape of a long haft and a hammer head, joined by an extremely short river between them. It also has the first job for Raucous, who needs to deliver a message to a deaf bookkeeper who lives here. Along with the other half of the job, breaking some kind of big smokey engine in it's own shed, on a platform in the middle of a river. The stream of smoke and the animal paddock make the location obvious.
The paddock also has the counterargument to learning farming. This town has someone raising goddamn dragons. Not flying dragons, but big, horse-sized armoured scaled fire-breathing lizards. About a dozen of them, sitting around in the sunlight, wandering around, playing with each other. Breathing fire into the sky. All living on a stone platform surrounded by metal fences, on top of the lake.
Okay. This clearly calls for more investigation before anything gets broken. And 'animal husbandry' is looking a lot more appealing if it means 'raise goddamn dragons'.
