Shovash leans down just enough to place a palm lightly on Arkr's head and gives him a scrutinizing look. "You doubted me, at first. I saw your heart plainly enough. You watched me for a chance to prove my weakness." Her tone is simple and direct, only just shy of accusatory. But then her lips twist into a wry half-smile, and a radiance from her hand prompts the worst of his wounds to heal rapidly, some scarring over completely.

  "Your doubt then makes you more valuable to me now. Only a weak wrist complains the ax is too heavy; in my hands, you will split boulders. The Blood Path tribe welcomes you. Now prepare to strike back. All of you." With those words, Shovash turns her attention to the rest of the injured. Standing upright again, she drives the butt of her staff into the ground toward them, making the mounting rings jangle and kicking up a dense spray of sand. When the spray hits them, their flesh becomes like sand as well, and the dust beneath them rises slowly to fill the gaps.

Healing touch is 24-28hp, and this is one of twenty available. Particulate form from the staff is 105hp for 21 people, and she can do that three times if needed. The survivors are coming back to full health.

The Cenotaph would be a nice hunting ground, but Shovash had invited him here for a reason - to go poaching without waiting for her and her minions would be rude, to say the least. That meant Ragnar had a bit of time to kill before it was time to kill; dropping back to the camp, he headed into the ruined eastern half of the settlement. It was unlikely that any of the orcs killed here would leave ghosts behind, he could at least do the courtesy of checking. They'd properly be Shovash's to deal with anyways.

Only when Shovash has already healed the survivors completely does Graxs finally show his face. The chieftain walks up, surrounded by most of his inner circle of warriors. He has a sorrowful expression on his face which vanishes when he sees Shovash's, and Arkr's, and visibly realizes that she has already heard what happened.

"If you expect me to kneel, you will be disappointed," he says, his tone surly.

Aiva doesn't say a word, but the rougarou's expression is calm - lethally calm. She closes the distance to the disgraced chieftain without saying a word. She seizes him by the shoulder, twists his arm into a hold behind him, and by virtue of raw strength forces him onto his knees.

Only then does she speak, in fluent Orcish. "My apologies, Shovash; normally I would leave it to you to take the initiative with your people. But there is nothing I hate quite so much as a coward."

  Shovash stands taller and stiffer when she first sees Graxs approaching, wings spread high in an unapologetic threat display, and tattoos streaming smoke. There is considerable more of the demon than the orc in her appearance just at the moment. It's really just like the last time she had to put him back in his place. The staff vanishes with a flick of her tail, and a green glass knife, faintly glowing, takes its place in her hand.

  When Aiva rushes forward, Shovash's eyes follow the huntress, then drop back to the petulant chieftain, with little emotion visible beyond annoyance. She takes a step forward, then takes a moment to cast a warning glare at Graxs' inner circle before continuing. "You're lucky she changed your mind," came the sneering response once she stood over him directly. "I was just going to kill you on the spot, sending you on to the gods as a spineless deserter. But I've realized you deserve better."

  Crouching, she grabs him by the throat and lifts his face up to hers, just barely giving Aiva time to let go first. The weight doesn't seem to be a strain at all. She snarls. "You will bleed to protect your tribe today, despite your cowardice. They deserve it from you, and I will ensure they get it on the altar, since you failed them in battle."

Graxs glares with hatred naked in his eyes, and says nothing as the ritual is prepared. Several of his inner circle look like they want to intervene, but Shovash's sheer presence is enough to dissuade them, at least long enough. It probably doesn't hurt that two others look ready to wield the knife themselves. Apparently even his close followers are disgusted at his cowardice.

  If the chieftain was content to be silent, Shovash was clearly satisfied to leave him that way. Once she got him chained down to the largest flat rock in the area and filled him with the drive to prove his worth, she largely ignored him while she prepared the pyre. The only thing that suggested this could be anything but a practical necessity was letting the fire rise high enough to lick his skin before she opened his throat with the knife. She let the shaman take over and perform whatever rites he found appropriate, from there, as with the dead of the last several days.

  She, meanwhile, turned her attention to the enormous magic circle nearby. She had drawn it in her own blood, but it was silver that stained the earth. As the offering burned, she chanted the forms of her need and shaped with her hands the twists in the boundary of the Material that would extend all the way to the Boneyard.

Assuming typical stats, I've done the rolling already for a young adult crypt dragon, sr and will save. If it attempts to charisma past the diagram, the dc isssssss... 43. So good luck with that. Though honestly, she's interrupting its day to recruit it to a grand hunt.

The shaman, in a truly stunning display of disdain for the deceased, refuses to perform funeral rites for the chieftain. Several of his followers glance at each other with open snarls at this, but they can't exactly force the shaman to do it, and they can't perform the rites themselves, either.

The circle is drawn in blood and silver, the way is opened...and the call is answered. A dragon, scales pale grey like weathered bone and stretched tight over an emaciated body, steps through into the circle. It barely fits. It looks at Shovash, tilting its head to the side, and then speaks in a voice that can only be described as sepulchral.

"You sacrificed one to bring this one here. Your sacrifice is worthy - the sacrificed allowed the cycle to be broken, in a most grievous way, and his death is a righteous one. Tell this one, what do you call this one here to do?"

  Before she responds, Shovash actually bows, though not far, somewhere between the angles of acknowledgment and respect. She never takes her eyes off the dragon, of course.  One doesn't do that. "We are encamped near the base of the Cenotaph," she begins in formal draconic. "—with the armies of the Whispering Tyrant gathered beneath our feet. We are the conquerors of Lastwall; our greater strength proved their inadequacy at their own reason for being, and it will be our axes that exterminate what they could only contain. But the price in orc blood has been high, and we need time to rally the force to finish the job."

  She pauses briefly to cast her eyes over the gathered tribe, and doesn't quite manage to suppress a proud smile. It remains when she returns her attention to the summoning. "I want you to accompany me and my allies into the crypts, to heed my direction faithfully, and to guard my Children who gather here, for a month and a day. I want you to send lingering souls on to judgment en masse and dismantle their mindless puppets. And I want you to leave one particular graveknight to my disposal. I will support you as any of my allies, or of my children, at your option. And I will press this campaign beyond your time here, until there are no servants left to wake Tar-baphon." Finished, she approaches the circle with her tail poised to sever it.

  "Are these terms suitable?"

The dragon considers for a long moment, and then speaks. "This one accepts. Direct this one and this one will send the restless dead to their judgment." And it smiles.

  "Then we are sealed," announces the summoner. She doesn't cut the circle; it burns away from the spells' release. The tail, then...? Only a few of the observers might even know that, though, and she doesn't leave time for questions.

  "Ragnar!" she shouts, stepping away from the whole ritual space. "Have you found anything important, scouting? And come meet my dragon; you'll have a lot in common." She doesn't exactly leave time for answers, either, before turning to address the remaining orcs.

  "Rest until nightfall, at least. I want you restored, and I want you angry. Our dead are defiled, and our living are treated as cattle in a pen. No one gets away with this. I fought the gods themselves to stop them throwing your lives away for their own glory! I will go down and slay death if I must! My children belong to no dusty carcass, no defeated prisoner, and no cowardly parasite! Orcs belong to orcs. So make ready to prove it. And I want any of you who think you will lead the Mutilated Corpse to come to my tent in half an hour. We cannot afford a fight to the death for it." She stalks off then, with a wave for her entourage to follow, toward the charred section of the camp where her tent had been.

The entourage moves into the tent (including Arkr, who seems at a bit of a loss now that he's been accepted into the Blood Path). Half an hour later, three orcs show themselves in. One is the stereotype: a huge brute of a man, carrying a greataxe and with a distinctive gleam of barely-controlled wrath in his eyes. The second is smaller, with a wry smile, and a slender sword on his hip.

The third is an outlier. A woman, for one, though she's bigger than the second arrival. Unarmed, for another, despite heavy muscles that suggest a fighter. She has a blank expression, and unlike the other two, she bows to Shovash, short and stiff, never looking away from the Witch-Queen.

In reply to Shovash Godsbane (msg # 16):

Now that Shovash's matter of internal discipline is dealt with - always good for outsiders to remain uninvolved in such matters - Ragnar descends to join her again.

"Both the corpses and the ghosts left behind have been taken back into the Cenotaph."

  "Sit.  Be comfortable," Shovash said to Arkr with a tap of her tail on a scorched rock beside her.  Then she turned to Ragnar.  "The bodies are unfortunate, but with any luck, they'll become empty things, just puppets of meat.  Any whose souls are still trapped within, like the ghosts, we will set free as soon..."

  Something about the thought tripped her up, and her gaze drifted off into the distance as she considered it.  Whatever it may have been, a toothy smile developed ever so slowly as the idea took shape, and when she finally returned to the conversation, she looked exultant.  "We will set them free as soon as we meet them.  They will not be conscripted by the enemy, if I have any say in it.  I don't know if any of you have ways of destroying the eternal, but if so, I want my people spared that fate.  Did you get any sense of the raiders' numbers, Ragnar?"

In reply to Shovash Godsbane (msg # 19):

"Five hundred and twenty-eight attackers exited the Cenotaph. However many survived to retreat is unclear, as they followed the same path, but they left none of their own dead behind either. It is highly unlikely that they committed more than a pittance of their total numbers to the raid."

"As for the eternal, I can do only what any mortal is capable of, destroy whatever corporeal shell is being animated and allow the animating spirit to depart."

  "Yes. Any mortal..." Shovash looked thoughtful in the way that usually meant some new blasphemy was in the works. She had already mixed beyond the excitement and into whatever planning it was going to take: her eyes were more distracted than mirthful. But then she was back in the moment and especially serious about it. She leaned over to whisper something to her newest follower before continuing.

  "We were born to fight in tunnels. And ruin comes for who it will, wherever they hide." She patted Arkr's forearm and inclined her head toward Aiva, but she addressed Ragnar and their enormous, nameless ally. "But if there are supports that would make your power more overwhelming in a grand catacomb, tell me now what you need from me. And then finish your own preparations while I restore leadership to this tribe.

  "The halls have been ceremonial so far, not properly fortified or trapped, so we can focus on taking initiative and counter-ambushes over long-scale caution. It's the undead way; they always have bodies to hurl at a threat. With only five of us, they won't be able to replenish their numbers as they'd prefer. Just make sure if you are injured to let me restore you, and kill them as suddenly as possible. The walls knit dead flesh back together and sicken our wounds."

"I could use a little of your special touch, but beyond that I don't have any special requirements. And I'll leave your people's souls be." The wolf-woman seems a little disappointed at this, but perks up a moment later. "Of course, we're sure to see other ghosts down there that don't belong to you. So Amaranthine won't go hungry."

  Shovash grins broadly and licks her tusk with a bright red tongue. With little further to say, she spends some time sorting and replacing spell components, cleaning her weapons and casting tools, and honing the teeth on her haramaki. That last one involves reaching with a whetstone into a space that should have been completely full of her own body, as well as the one growing inside hers. It gets even more Wrong when she tests the sharpness with a large tongue that emerges from that void. She looks up when the hopefuls eventually arrive and gives them each a canny appraisal.

  "You look like you can all fight well enough, in your own ways." She gives a nod of approval and then stands up. She examines the musculature of the biggest as she walks a slow circlevery closely around him. More than once, the tip of her tail nips at a flank, a bicep, or some other bulk. The smallest, she gives more space and keeps her eyes on the small movements of his hands or the shifting of his feet. When she gets to the woman, she pauses. That one, she only sniffs at before returning to her spot in front of them all.

  "I want to be very clear. Graxs did not die on the altar for not dying in battle. A new chief every month makes a tribe weak and easy to take over. He died because he protected no one but himself, and he pulled some of the strongest warriors away from the battle to do it. He would not face danger with his people, so they are no longer his. I need to know the next chief will not sell the lives of dozens so cheaply." She sniffed the air again, and it brought a satisfied smile to her face. "So you, then you, and then you: tell me about the most difficult enemy you have ever defeated. And then...

  Tell me about your most humiliating defeat."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:48, Fri 21 Feb 2020.

All three of the orcs seem visibly uncomfortable with the intensity of Shovash's focus as she examines them, one after the next. When she tells them what she wants to hear, none of them look happy, but they don't look as though they will protest.

The muscular one speaks first. "The most difficult man I ever fought was a human, from the far north - the Lands of the Linnorm Kings. He struck me twice with a greataxe, here and here, before I split his shoulders from his spine. I wear the scars he gave me with pride." He hesitates, obviously unhappy, then admits, "But I lost when I challenged Graxs for the tribe. He beat me senseless and laughed, and didn't even give me the honor of seeing me as a threat." He falls silent, glowering.

Then comes the lithe man, whose voice is surprisingly deep for his slender frame. "For me, victory came in a raid against another tribe. I killed three warriors before the witch doctor came forth and sent magic against me. I danced through the flame and the lightning to pierce him through the heart. But when the Mutilated Corpse went against the Broken Tree tribe, I lost two fingers and a warrior broke my arm. I had to flee the field to stay alive." He shrugs.

The woman speaks last, and slowest. "I suppose the most difficult foe I ever defeated was a human paladin who came to pursue a claim that my first tribe had attacked a caravan. We had, but they were in our land and ignored our order that they leave. I ended up clawing his throat out after a lengthy battle. But the same moment was the most humiliating loss I ever experienced, because I had failed to resolve it without wasted resources." She smiles, tusky and feral. "Killing is an answer, but it is rarely the optimal one. There are more efficient ways to deal with problems."

  "Good. You must know how to lose, or you will do it badly, and the first time will cost you everything." Shovash smiles. At the men, anyway. The woman... She gives the woman a sidelonglook, not suspicious, but communicating distinctly less openness. "And you must be able to learn from those losses, or you will repeat them."

  She turns first to the smaller orc. He did still have a few inches on her, but she tended to occupy more space than she took up. "When you are injured, in dire straits, what will you do? What assurance does the tribe have that you will not abandon them as Graxs did? Without that certainty, they will not follow.

  "And with only one type of strength, you cannot lead," she continues, flicking a wing in the direction of the biggest. "There will always be someone stronger if you search. When that someone comes, who can overpower you, will you stand and die with glory, leaving your people without your strength and leadership? Or will you make a fool of that greater power? How?

  "What. Did. You. Learn?" she emphasizes, taking in both of the men at once. She keeps her attention on them, too, as she crosses behind the woman and sets one hand on a meaty shoulder. Her demand comes at a hiss. "And tell me, as carefully as you just hid the truth, why I should ever think of trusting you with my most precious resources."

The two men glance at each other, but it's the woman who responds first, softly, but with a great deal of passion in her tone. "You shouldn't. Trust is a fool's choice. But I can tell you this. I watched my tribe die for my mistakes once. I will set this world on fire before I let that happen again."

  "Daughter," Shovash whispers, pitched like the answer to a question. The sharp edge of accusation had turned fiercely appreciative in an instant. Even before she inclined her head to touch the woman's shoulder with her crown of horns, she had managed to go from standing behind to standing with by the merest change of posture.

  "So she learned to focus on her real priorities," said Shovash, addressing the two with tied tongues. "Speak up, you two. These aren't trick questions."

"I learned not to fight battles I can't win. Gotta pick and choose when to fight, and see when you ain't got a chance at it." The muscular man shrugs. "There's a reason I ain't looking to duel for this if you say no. I know some of what you done."

"For me," the slender man says softly, "The lesson had to do with practicality. Understanding that, ah, resources need to be sent where they'll do something. Knowing that one has lost, one can retreat rather than die for glory. Had I been in Graxs's position, I'd have pulled the whole tribe away, rather than just myself."

  Shovash's smile only grew broader at those answers. "My sons, welcome," she whispers, then steps back to where she faces all three of then again. With her back a little straighter and her posture more open generally, she makes one sweeping gesture that encompasses the group.

  "So you have all learned the same lesson, then. That we are most important. Not glory, or pride, or even the thrill of battle. Those are vital; they make life good, and I want them for you. But I want you, first. There will be time to fight each other when we have conquered. For now, if we don't think bigger than who is the strongest among us, we. Won't. Be. The Strongest. Our gods, our gods, lead together. And so will you."

  She held up a hand to forestall any objections, then pointed with it at the big warrior. "I want a warleader who knows when to fight. I need your wisdom, guiding your might to victory." The smaller, next. "I want a master of raids who knows how to do only what is needed and stay out of traps. I need your cunning: it makes your sting deadly. And I want a warden of the camp," she finished, directing it at her fellow hellspawn. "—who can inspire courage, to make our defenses into a wall our enemies will break themselves on. I need your resolve to be as endless as your vigor."

  Art that, she paused for a deep breath, and the exultant tone gave way to a somber one, some time during. "Your tribe needs these things. Your family. The orcs who will feast with you after a good battle, and who will rage in your honor when you have died. I make my choice for the good of the Mutilated Corpse. If this is to much to expect, tell me now, and I will set a challenge to select one of you. Do not accept your place and betray it with constant fighting among yourselves."

The three orcs look at each other, and consider for a long moment. Then, in turn, each of them nods. "Reckon I can live with that. Not like the chief don't already share power with the shaman, right? So long's I'm the one in charge'f my stuff, it isn't important whether I have the longest title." His expression goes contemplative for a moment. "Reckon that's why I stepped forward back then, too, y'know? Because Graxs was always so focused one being higher, he had to shove everyone's head in the dirt. Treated us like slaves, but we're orcs."

The other two nod emphatically. It appears that everyone is in agreement on this point.