- Excerpt from Treatise on Sky Vigils by Feridun Brightbeard Astrolarch Stargazer
[Paelothian forest]
The crab bent and twisted trying with all its might to fend off its assailant. Its claws grappled with the creature’s front paws. The pair of them scraped and scratched, pinched and postured, but neither was gaining any ground against their foe. The fuzzy gray and black animal lunged forward to attempt to bite a limb off of the crab, instead it found that the crab brought its claw up to intercept, the hard shelled grasper refusing to give against such a chomp.
The creature was roughly twice the size of the crab and far faster. It ducked and swiped at the defending crab, but only came away with sore paws and a bleeding snout for its troubles as the smaller crab viciously pinched the raccoon’s nose in its claw. The fight did not last long, as the crab managed to fend off the attack quite well. The furry backside of the creature disappeared into the underbrush and the crab sank down to a less aggressive posture, filled with relief.
It had been in these woods for several days now, more and more knowledge unlocked with each passing moment, but that didn’t mean it was easy. The challenge was threefold. First, the crab was ignorant of the dangers this place held. That meant that its interest and attempts to understand its surroundings were often met with an assailant or hazard. Second, it was weak. The crab now vaguely understood the meaning behind some of the weird list in its head. Some of them were monitors of its progress in certain areas. It certainly knew now that the one called ‘Intellect’ was responsible for how much it understood things.
Lastly, the crab struggled against the denizens of this world. It soon distinguished what class of creatures was a threat and those that were not. Its fellow crabs were seldom aggressive or dangerous, numerous though they were. The huge colony of migrant crabs stretched nearly four days of travel for it to cross, traveling downstream, but only once had a larger crab seemed particularly dangerous. That one had been near the center of the cluster and stood nearly three times as tall as the newborn crab. It had sported orange scratch-like patterns on its body and had wickedly sharp claws. Still, it had only momentarily seemed dangerous when the curious youth crawled a little too close to its senior’s underside.
Predators seemed to avoid the central mass of the crustacean migration, choosing to pick off stragglers and fringe explorers, like the new crab. It had run into a fox, another owl, and several of those raccoons in recent days of skirting the crabby procession. Each had been a difficult beast to tackle. The crab ran from the fox, hid from the owl, and like this last example, fought off each raccoon. In the process it had observed that list deep inside its mind change. As it tried to see inside itself again, something changed. It felt as though a weight had been taken off of its little mind and thinking became easier, clearer, and it intuitively understood much more.
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Nameless
Role: Lesser Migrant Crab
Ascension: 0
Force: 4 Endurance: 12
Intellect: 15 Potency: 5
Skills: Discernment [2], Hide, Scuttle [2]
Some things were changing and others seemed to stay the same. The crab didn’t understand why, but it felt better in the knowledge, or at least the assumption, that it was making progress. It continued prodding this knowledge internally as its eight legs scraped across a slick wide stone in the center of the brook. The sun was nearing its zenith, leaving the crab much time to explore yet, but it was hesitant to go much further. All around it was a smattering of larger crabs scaling downstream the same as it, but they were so few that it gave the newborn a moment of pause. Should it continue or turn back?
After a few moments of silent contemplation, it thought to push forward. Scuttling backwards just in time the crab avoided another flying creature's talons. The large hawk swiftly swung around, still aimed for the smaller crab. Nowhere to run in the open stream, nowhere to hide either. Instead of submitting to the dread swelling in it, the crab decided that the hawks would not get them. Whatever it took, the crab would make it out alive. With all its might the crab, now isolated even further as other crabs rushed away, bolstered its defenses and clung low to the rock.
The strike it was waiting for never came. The talons of the hawk came within a claw’s length before being snatched out of the air by a much larger swooping form. A scaled winged creature, as long as a tree was tall, grabbed the loudly protesting hawk out of the air and flew up out from the tree cover into the pale blue above. The crab barely noticed, since there was an itch in its core that needed to be resolved with danger now avoided. It had begun to itch as the hawk approached the second time and was a wiggly nagging voice at the back of its mind. Turning inward, the crab found a new line added to the list.
Nameless
Role: Lesser Migrant Crab
Ascension: 0
Force: 4 Endurance: 12
Intellect: 15 Potency: 6
Skills: Discernment [2], Hide, Scuttle [2]
Sorcery: seeded domain requires reinforcement
More things to ponder.