[X] A tangled mangrove swamp, mist drifting through the trees.
You wake up eye-to-eye with a dragonfly-bee the size of your hand. It buzzes its wings at you for a second, and you shriek (in a very manly way) and hurl yourself away. You've heard of those things, they're supposed to be incredibly vicious and - wait, where is the ground, why is there nothing beneath you -
You drop into the blood-warm water with a splash. After a moment's panicked, waterlogged flailing, you manage a passable eelhound-paddle and drag yourself up on to a broad tree root. You spit out a mouthful of brackish water, wipe the swamp-slime from your face, and feel thoroughly miserable.
"Lixue?" you call. "Pingyang?" Nothing - that's not good. You shuffle a bit closer to the trunk of the tree, looking around carefully.
You're in a swamp of some kind. Coastal, maybe, since the water's salty? The closest thing to a swamp you had dealt with before now was when Big Sister Shan was practicing her Earthbending in the wrong spot and flooded the courtyard gardens. That doesn't help you at all. And how did you even reach the swamp, anyway? The last you remembered, you were bedded down on the slopes of an inland mountain.
You wrack your brain, trying to remember anything that could help, but Pingyang had been concentrating on the forests and grasslands you had been traveling through, and all you can think of is a little rhyme your father taught you for when you were in trouble.
Remember, Xiaolong, he would say. When in danger, or in doubt - run in circles, scream and shout.
You are pretty sure your dad is a jerk.
Maybe you should try climbing the tree? It only takes a little bit of scrabbling for you to climb up to where the tree branches out - and, oddly enough, the branches reach out and connect to other trees. You've never even heard of that.
((8:36:49 PM) laundreu: roll 6#d10
(8:36:50 PM) ***QQ-Dicebot --> "laundreu rolls 6#d10 and gets 6, 4, 2, 6, 7, 9." 26+5 = 31 Survival)
You grin and move across the branch, arms held out for balance, looking every which way. The water is flowing, very slowly, and you follow the current from your (super cool!) arboreal highway. Pingyang told you to follow the water if you get lost, you'll always find your way to people eventually. You'd thought it'd be hard to apply that to a swamp, what with being surrounded by water on all sides, but - did that log just move?
That log just moved. You freeze, balanced on the thick branch, and stare down at the log floating in the water - and moving against the current. After a few minutes, it reaches the shore, and drags itself out of the water. It's huge, bigger even than an ox-goat, with short, stocky legs and webbed, clawed paws. Its broad head has an almost comically short snout, and it's still probably almost as big as you. The thrashing eel-carp it has in its mouth is certainly larger than you are.
It's an ottergator! You're almost giddy with excitement. They're reclusive beasts, and most people go their whole lives never seeing one - even people who spend all the time in the same environment, like fishermen or sailors!
You're pretty sure they are not supposed to have three tails, though.
"Correct," rumbles the ottergator, lashing one of those three tails. "Took me quite a while to relearn how to swim when I sprouted the second one."
You blink. Did the ottergator just...talk?
"That was a bit of a surprise, too," the ottergator admits, settling down on the shore and propping its head on its forepaws. "Of course," it continued, sounding contemplative, "speaking gave me cusses. Useful things, your human cusses. Much better than the typical grunts and growls."
You want to stop and stare for a while - ottergators are awesome, and talking ones are even more awesome! ("Thank you," the ottergator says.) - but Lixue's stories always made a point of being polite to things that talked when they weren't supposed to. "Hello, honored elder uncle!" you say, and bow. "My name is Li Xiaolong, what's yours?"
The ottergator rumbles, deep in its throat, and after an instant's panic you realize it's chuckling. "Don't rightly have one. Not terribly useful for ottergators, names." It pauses for a moment, grumbling and muttering like the majordomo's grandfather did at home sometimes. Finally, it says, "You can call me Kumawani, though."
"Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Kumawani!" You shift, until you are sitting on the tree branch. Kumawani plants one large paw on his dinner's head, seizes the body in its mouth, and yanks. You wrinkle your nose up in delighted disgust when the eel-carp is torn in two.
"Nice to meet you, too, child," it says, after a moment's chewing. "What're you doing in my swamp, though, is what I'd like to know. Only human folks I've seen 'round these parts are those whatchamacallits, the Foggy Swamp Tribals, and you definitely don't look like one of them."
You've never heard of the Foggy Swamp tribe, but you have heard of the Foggy Swamp. "I don't know how I got here," you admit. "Last I knew, I was camping out with both of my sifu, but that was at the base of Southern Mount Heng, and that is hundreds of miles away!"
"Hrm," the ottergator says, lifting its head up and sniffing the air. "More like a thousand, child. Never fear, though, I know what to do." It stares fixedly at you, eyes gleaming like jade. You stare back. "You need to wake up," it intones, its voice ringing like a bronze bell. You jerk back, gasp -
- and open your eyes to a bright blue sky. "Up you get, slugabed," says Pingyang cheerfully, prodding at Lixue's sleeping furs. You and the shamaness share a look of mutual sympathy; Pingyang is one of those hatefully cheerful early risers. "We'll be reaching the Azure Dragon Temple by early afternoon, you guys!" The spearwoman turns to you, seizes the edge of your bedroll, and mercilessly yanks it out from beneath you. "Xiaolong, we'll be staying for a few months while Lixue does her shaman-thing, so what's say you and me pick these monks' brains for kung fu?"
You grin despite your tiredness; you are always up for kung fu! You sink into the morning routine of stretches and simple kata, beneath Pingyang's watchful eye. The whole time, though, you are thinking about your - vision? Dream? You're not sure how to take it, honestly. Maybe you were just tired and stretched yourself too far last night...
[ ] Do you talk to Pingyang and Lixue about the swamp affair? If so, how do you want to approach it?
Pick one option from each category to study while you are at the Azure Dragon Temple:
[ ] External Kung Fu! The direct arts of combat. Mechanically, they will provide bonuses to your six combat stats as seen on your character sheet in the second post. Do note that only one style may be used at a time.
- [ ] Heavenly Mountain Fist, practiced by the monks! Strong, tough, and direct, this style is definitely Earth Kingdom.
- [ ] The Way of the Flowing Universe, from Lixue! A style modeled after the movements of the moon and the ocean. It specializes in defense and counterattacks.
- [ ] Storm Dragon Style, from Pingyang! A linear, aggressive style, tremendously destructive and frighteningly quick.
- [ ] Eight Trigrams Guardian, from Pingyang! A style that requires a long-ranged weapon, the practitioner learns to control the area around them and so control the flow of combat.
[ ] Internal Kung Fu! The manipulation of chi. Here lie the more blatant supernatural effects - hardening one's body enough to deflect a sword with a palm, poisoning a foe with but a touch, deflecting a strike before you even detect it.
- [ ] Iron Mountain Method, the monks' secret techniques! Users train until their body is as hard as iron and tough as the mountain.
- [ ] Arts of Discernment, from Lixue! Supernatural perception in a can, basically.
- [ ] Way of the Fox-Spirits, from Lixue! Deception and illusion. Turn your foe's instincts and sixth sense against them!
- [ ] Heavenly Lightning Methods, from Pingyang! Grasp the nature of the thunderbolt, and use it to slay your foes and save your friends.
- [ ] Your chi is unsettled; it feels like it's pulling on something, or something's pulling on it - especially near the temple's bodhi-tree. Perhaps something can be made from this...