Brazen Wolfe Tabletop

Star born

214WeSB

As countless bodies leapt from the marshy bank just as many fell over the edge, their bodies burn, cut, pierced or crushed by the defenders of the ship. The loud, large croaking voice of the war chief pierced the shrieks of the toad people and the cries of pain and alarm from the humans and vanara onboard the boat.

Kiri prepared himself to begin his attack, Trip standing next to him looking jittery, with energy or nerves he could not tell. ” This is it old friend,” he began as the ship came within leaping reach, “may the stars embrace you. I dare say we will join them soon” he said, blinking his bulbous eyes once as he attempted to Swallow his nerves away. Trip just nodded before leaping onto the side of the boat along with dozens of other toad kin.

As their clawed, padded fingers expertly found hand and foot holds they scaled the side of the ship amidst the flow of bodies tumbling over the side. Their hands reached the edge of the ships railing and the volume of creatures fighting on-top of the ship was staggering, there was a wave of greens, browns, yellows and the occasional white toad as they stabbed, cut, bashed and leapt towards towards the humans. As soon as a toad fell their comrades would grab the body hastily and throw them overboard, the wounded feeding the marsh or recovering in the relative safety of the waters and reeds.

As room opened up on deck Kiri and Trip pushed up over the side of the ship helping their clansmen push a injured toad over their shoulders and into the water below. The smell of blood was ripe in the air, the sticky sweet of their kind and the harsh metallic of the humans and monkey kin. As the toads pushed forward, their ranks swelling and moving as one living mass of bodies one of the humans received a spear to their thigh, crying out their allies pulled them back behind their closing ranks as the clink of metal and the scent of death approached. A group of humans unlike the others strode forward, getting where they walked from the pile of dead toads was so many that their people were simply unable to clear the deck. The scent of fear and increase in bodily secretions grew where ever the group moved and when they did bodies lay on their wake.

“Liz! We need you!” Cried out a voice from somewhere and a door burst open a few moments later revealing something that terrified the toads more than the death bringers. A emissary of the ancient ones. Fangs, claws and a touch scaled hide of shimmering gold caused lesser toads to jump overboard. But behind the emissary is what stopped the fighting.

A fallen star walked forward, light radiating from it as if bringing warmth, hope and life to the night. The toads as of single organism dropped to their knees and bowed low on reverence as nothing was more sacred to them as the stars above.

Kiri trembled. Ancient stories spoke of stars walking amongst their kind and where they walked life flourished. That was before the great uprising where the oni attempted to enslave all life on this land and the stars vanished. Ot was during this time of war, death and fear that the shadow brokered its pact with his kind and they survived the oni somehow.

Silence and confusion littered the boat and Marsh and only the croaking of several chiefs, and the deep reverberation of the war chief could be heard as confusion stillness moved across the ranks of toad kin.

“Well. I don’t know what spell you cast Liz but they don’t seem to be attacking us any more” one human said and, risking a glance up Kiri looked towards the star and his eyes flew wide, it was a human.