Log:Knights of Ren: Interlude: A Tale of Mushrooms
Take that, doubters.
OOC Date: November 12, 2020
Location: Hoth
Participants: Errod Zand, Imani, Malik Ren as Self/GM, Syrus, Tamsin Cas, Knights of Ren
[Malik Ren]
Hunger is setting in. It's becoming a different sort of hunger, now -- this is different than a missed-lunch stomach growl, this is the real protest of a body now going days without variety or proper nourishment. Fatigue, body ache, headache, irritability, poor decision making... all of it is just going to get worse and worse. Slug and half a ration bar just doesn't go far enough anymore, but it will have to do.
Outside, the wind is blowing -- it never stops -- but the snow is not falling today. Instead, it is a ferociously sparkling clear blue day, enough to blind the eyes a bit if one's eyes are unprotected. The dry, powdery snow sparkles like little gems under the sunlight, and the air is crisp and cold.
Not far from the abandoned hangar where the Knights have been trapped after crash landing, a herd of 12 tauntauns snuffles around in the snow in search of lichens. They're close enough to be visible without binocs this time, big, two legged creatures, powerful and making soft little honking noises as they communicate with one another.
[Tamsin Cas]
Once again, Tamsin would like to point out that she is no naturalist, however, she does know a bit about biology. And as she stood watching the animals, a hand raised, holding the hood of her parka to keep it from flapping around her face, she offered her comment. Whether or not it was taken up, well, perhaps that did not matter. "There is very little plant life here. But we may find what it seems they are rooting for," because it was clearly what they were doing, "Might be edible." She did not say palatable. Nothing they had to eat at the moment was palatable.
[Syrus]
Standing near to the hangar door, Syrus looks out towards the herd, the Force having done its part in alerting him to their presence. They are a strong and noble creature. No, they're not. They're weird lizard mammals. Probably distant cousins on the Knights own Falleen. "They themselves are edible, Cas," Syrus says, his recently-acquired helmet obfuscating whatever expression he may be wearing, but the dry tone he used saying enough.
"None among us is capable of taming any of these beasts, correct?" Syrus asks, looking at the rest of the Knights.
[Imani]
"That would probably take more time than we have," Imani states on the matter of taming the creatures. She's decked out in as many layers as she has, which seemed like enough at the time, but it's so incredibly cold here that it's just not. Maybe nothing is. She'd start moving around more to get blood pumping, but she's not trying to draw unwanted attention so she suffers the cold for now. "Are we going to hunt them?" She'd probably feel worse about that idea were she less hungry.
[Errod Zand]
"Forget what they're /rooting for,/ look at the size of them," Errod rasps, adjusting his furred hat around his ears, wild eyes staring hungrily towards the tauntauns in the distance. "Even here at the end of the galaxy, on a frozen rock scoured bare, something inside me won't let me just lie down and die. Some bone-deep drive to live animates these numb fingers even as they turn to icicles before my eyes. To live, to consume, devour. To kill and eat. To kill and assert my existence over another. To plunge my hands through the fragile skin and pull forth dripping life into which my teeth will sink, and chew, and gulp down the blood of another living creature."
The man falls silent, blowing a long trail of snot out onto the permafrost by plugging one nostril with his thumb, and then straightens up again. "What demon animates my puppet's strings? I do not believe in a god, but devils are real. Behold, and bear witness."
[Malik Ren]
"Capable? Well, none of us have tried." This is Malik now arriving, masked as the Knights often are around here, because what else is there to keep the wind and snow out of their eyes and faces? Also this way nobody can see that he's developing a trauma beard instead of the usual extremely tidy goatee. "I would go so far as to say none of us have an /aptitude/ for it, but... perhaps we could capture one, and once so, entice it to cooperation." He sounds dubious, but also sounds like he's not decided fully against this.
He waits patiently for Errod to process the meaninglessness of all things, the futility of life and the futility of surrendering to anything but life, and then continues. "We are leaving this place," Malik announces, to Errod and Tamsin. Maybe Syrus and Imani got the news earlier. "So long as the data on the Buzzard supports that we can survive a journey to Nightfall's base, we are setting out overland and going there. We cannot repair the Night Buzzard with the skills and tools here, and the rebel base is guaranteed to be habitable, with working communications and life support. This is our only chance for survival."
His vocoder-altered Coruscanti tones continue, dryly. "So, the tauntauns." Pause. "Either we slay them and bring their meat with us, necessitating pulling it along on sledges along with everything else. Or we attempt to capture and use them as mounts or beasts of burden, risking that failure means we may have missed our chance at meat. How do you want to proceed?"
[Tamsin Cas]
"Of course they are edible, Knight Syrus," Tamsin replied with the same quality to her voice, "But with the exception of Sebek, none of our species were evolved to survive on protein alone. We must have other nutrients besides." Her head turned just enough to catch the sight of the tall knight out of the corner of her vision, "If you like, I can regale you with a treatise on all of the symptoms we will begin to experience the longer we go without better variety in our food. I assure you, they can be debilitating. Something we do not need." And then Errod began pontificating on the need to hunt and kill that was rising up inside of him, "Well, then I suppose you know what to do to satisfy your needs." Once Malik arrived and made his own pronouncement, Tamsin turned fully to study him, weighing his words, "I will do what I can do to see to the needs of the group."
[Syrus]
"Please, regale us with all that you know of Kiffar," Syrus says with a low growl, his visor turning to land on Tamsin. There's a frown beneath that helmet. He exhales a slow breath and looks back to Malik. "We could also make use of their pelts," Syrus muses, his hand dropping from where it had been propped against the hangar door. "I have no opinion on the matter. My mind is suited for more important debates, but my patience grows thin."
[Imani]
Imani reaches up to give Syrus a gentle pat on his back -- thump-thump -- and then looks over at Tamsin. "Depends on how fatty they are, doesn't it? Long as they're not too lean that should help fend it off for a bit. Maybe they've got some good snacks at that base, so we just need to get there so we can eat the right things, warm our bodies, and then leave this place. I don't think it's a bad idea to get more food, as a pecaution since we're not entirely sure what we're going to find at the end of our trip."
[Errod Zand]
"I came to terms with my 'needs' a long time ago," Errod rasps at Tamsin, tugging at the dark scarf around his neck to cover his face now that he's done blowing snot into the snow. He's rocking a short-ish beard-ish now with no shame at all, but it's cold. "You'll come to grips with yours, if you live long enough."
Then he's on to adjusting his mittens. "Organs are nutritional powerhouses. Can't say the same for algae, or lichen, or fungus, or whatever it is they're burrowing around for. We may not even have the enzymes to digest it. Then again, it's possible those things have some body chemistry that'll fry your brain, too, but the moss isn't running away."
"On the other hand," Errod continues, holding up his other hand and looking at it, drifting off for a moment longer than a dramatic pause really necessitates, "...there's nothing to say we couldn't ride them and /then/ eat them. If they can be ridden at all."
"On the other... other hand," the first hand, which he stares into the palm of, "There's no way I can shoot those things. And last I checked, none of you were much use with a blaster either."
[Malik Ren]
Imani pats Syrus, and Malik reaches to rest a hand on Tamsin's forearm, just briefly, in a similar sort of touch -- in both cases an acknowledgement that everyone's patience is thin, that no one has a solution, and that small comments feel more rude and unreasonable when everyone's hungry. And stuck with one another constantly. And trying not to die, all day every day, in a hopeless place where death seems more likely than the alternative.
"They remind me in a way of Guarlara," Malik suddenly decides, referencing the noble equine-like steeds favored by the Naboo, popular with aristocracy of other worlds as well. "Stumpy, ugly Guarlara. I had one once, when I was a boy, and my father shot it in front of me to teach me a lesson about the consequences of disobedience. I can't believe I've remembered that, it's so seldom that I think about Oran's life anymore."
A long pause follows, then he decides, "I'm going to try to determine if they're tame. If it goes awry... throw a lightsaber at it."
He crunches forward into the snow!
[Tamsin Cas]
If Tamsin was bothered by the clear anger in Syrus' tone, it did not show. But any reply she might have wanted to make to the Kiffar was forestalled by the touch to her arm. She offered no words to Malik either, only a nod of her head. As Malik moved, Tamsin did as well. Not far, but enough that she could get a better view of the creatures as they were grazing. And, perhaps more importantly, where they might have come from. Creatures tended to have bolt holes, didn't they? As she moved, she offered to Errod, "Thank you for vote of confidence." If anyone was going to need the luck of the Force to survive, it was quite likely to be the good doctor.
[Syrus]
Moving to follow after Malik, Syrus looks back to Errod. "I suppose we'll just have to figure something out. Ours is a formidable order, full of the brightest minds the Galaxy has to offer. Our thunder and fury will crash upon these mammal lizards like forty thousand of their blizzards," Syrus promises, just kind of listing behind the leader, his hand reaching for his saber.
[Imani]
Imani listens to Malik as he relates the story of the past that he's so often detached from, curious, but now isn't the time to pursue more details. It can wait for later, or not at all if they die. Either way, not now. "You're going to..." But he's off, crunching through the snow, and so she's going to follow as well, trying to move with as light a foot as she can to not alert the creatures that they're there. "Having experienced the might of just like one blizzard, I'm not so sure we're that mighty. But we're pretty mighty. Mighty enough. How hard do you think it is to ride one of those?" She gestures out at the tauntaun. "Those, not a blizzard."
[Errod Zand]
"He should have made you shoot it yourself," Errod replies to Malik's story, frowning with disapproval behind his scarf, brows knit together like needles. While their leader moves in to attempt a Dances with Tauntauns moment, the hunter swings out and away, moving in a wide arc to cut off one avenue the herd might run in. His mittened mitt reaches up over his shoulder and unracks the chain-whip riding there, but doesn't activate the plasma rivulets just yet. That would be disruptive.
[Malik Ren]
DOUBTERS. Look at them, DOUBTING. Everyone's always doubting! Stuff like, Malik, you can't handle a tauntaun, and Malik, you can't dismantle several millennia of force traditions, reshaping the universe into a structure replacing organized force religions with secular dictatorship run by maybe probably not definitely but possibly yourself.
Always doubters.
"Don't kill it," he hisses at the hand going near the saber, and then continues stepping forward, taking the time to distractedly note to Errod, "If he'd handed me the weapon, I'd have shot him instead. I liked the Guarlara much better." He pulls the helmet off as though to make himself less frightening to the tauntauns, setting it down in the snow as he slowly, slowly walks forward. The tauntauns make some worried, warble-chatter noises and snort and stamp a bit, but they seem... well, they really don't seem to want to leave this area, they like what's here, and perhaps their natural senses of danger seem slightly dulled.
One large female leader swivels her ears towards Malik, and chooses to cautiously inspect his outstretched glove instead of fleeing or kicking the shit out of him. Something's definitely making them more mellow, unless they have a naturally tame disposition.
[Tamsin Cas]
Tamsin, who had much knowledge of biology, but was no tamer of animals, did as she had intended to do, and she roamed, carefully, towards the area where the tauntauns were grazing. Watching the animals closely, she took a knee as she focused on a patch of whatever it was that the animals were eating. She moved with care, retrieving a specimen bag from her pack and plucking a few of the mushrooms from the frosted ground, "Mushrooms," She looked up at the animals and the Ren standing with one of the larger ones, "Psychoactive, if they are of the variety I believe they are. It might be making them more biddable." Or The Force might simply be with Malik. The Force...or some ghost of Oran That Was.
[Syrus]
At Malik's order, Syrus does not ignite his lightsaber, but it's a comforting thing to have in-hand around wild beasts, so the hilt remains. The big man approaches one of the tauntauns, himself, his hands extended palms-forward as he does so. "I'm your friend now. We are friends," he informs the beast. The tauntaun disagrees and begins to wander off.
[Imani]
The others are trying to calm the creatures, and Imani creeps closer as well. They did it, maybe she can too. Maybe the shrooms have calmed them enough that this will be easy. The one she nears snorts and gives her a sharp enough side-eye that she stops, and takes a step back. Looks like she might be walking.
[Errod Zand]
Forget the tauntauns, they're eating some type of FUNGUS, and as soon as Tamsin suggests that she thinks they're psychoactive, Errod is /in there./ The man hits his knees almost immediately, sinking into the frost and stowing his weapon again so that he can rummage the mushrooms out with both hands. He holds one up in the cold breeze, its wrinkled fruiting body flecked with ice, and stares at it, muttering "on the other hand" under his breath and tipping his head from one side to the other a few times before popping the thing into his mouth whole.
He doesn't flop over dead. Yet.
[Malik Ren]
Maybe something of Oran is left in there after all. Malik does seem to like this tauntaun more then he likes most people on Nar Shaddaa, but then again, the tauntaun is useful to his survival in a way the population of Nar usually isn't. The large leader-like tauntaun seems to be comfortable coming closer to inspect him now, and he carefully reaches into a pocket to withdraw a coil of rope -- Tamsin will probably recollect it as part of the climbing supplies her team fetched out of the slug cave when they went to go loot bodies. The rope is carefully lifted, then tossed around the beast's neck and knotted. It bucks and hops for a moment, then seems to accept this fate and begins to walk forward with its new friend.
Said new friend is pondering the doctor's comment about the mushrooms, and looks over his shoulder to see the way the other tauntauns are uncertainly following their leader. Not so sure about it, but also unwilling to be left out of whatever good thing the first tauntaun found. "Feed them the fungus, and they'll be docile enough to --"
Oh there goes Errod eating it. Malik sighs and picks up his helmet. "Or that. Or do that."
[Tamsin Cas]
Once Tamsin had filled her little bag with as many mushrooms as she could hold, she moved, still slowly, still carefully, towards one of the creatures, the smallest one she could find. She held the bag open, so that the smell of the mushrooms could escape it, reaching in with her free hand to retrieve a pair of them. If the creature should look in her direction, she'd offer the treat to it. Perhaps it would look more kindly on her if it thought she had what it wanted. //Which she did.//
[Syrus]
"Listen to me, you wretch," Syrus says, marching after the tauntaun, grip tightening around the saber. "You will do as I command. I will bend you to the will of Iro'syrus," he informs the tauntaun, who's currently only interested in bending down to munch on some of them sweet psychoactive fungi.
[Imani]
Imani notices others doing a whole thing with mushrooms, and being the sort not to object to bribery, she roots around to find a few mushrooms to use. With those in hand she rises and again approaches the shorty side-eye creature and sloooooowly extendss the frosty fungus out for it to sniff. Which it does. There are a couple more sniff-snorts, and then it takes a nibble. Then it takes the whole mushroom. "It's working," she says, sounding excited as she glances around at the others.
[Errod Zand]
Everyone else is feeding mushrooms to the tauntauns, but Errod isn't everyone else, much to the regret and dismay of the same group of people. Rather, he is hurriedly filling his pockets with the things, muttering inaudible snippets of the same sort of things that the others have come to expect from him by now. Once they're full, he grabs one more and stumbles upright, his eyes looking more wild than before, if that's possible. The hunter takes a few steps towards the nearest tauntaun, then falls to his knees once more before it, staring up at the creature.
"That's a big beast," he finally breathes, in awe, the mushroom in his hand resting against his side. "...I can respect that."
[Malik Ren]
The first thing that's evident about the tauntauns here is that they clearly want to follow the leader -- where Malik leads his, the others really want to go too. The next evident aspect is that they're obsessed with these mushrooms, much like Errod Zand. Tamsin finds herself quickly approached by the one she wafted mushrooms at, and it makes a bleating sound and shoves its face at the food, liberally coating her hand with tauntaun drool.
Next aspect to note: They smell terrible. They smell like they peed on themselves and then wafted it around as a perfume of pride. Maybe that's exactly what they do.
Malik is ignoring the smell and leading his disgusting lizard-mammal steed forward toward the base. He is offering no help to Syrus, who continues to try to command the beasts. They don't want orders, they want drugs, and if you give them drugs, they'll join your team. Again, like Errod Zand.
"If we can harvest enough fungus to keep them compliant, I imagine we can either ride the creatures or use them to pull sledges," Malik is thinking out loud. "If we're exceptionally lucky, riding them would save us a tremendous amount of time traveling by foot, and any haste we can make might save our lives as we cross the frozen wastes toward the Nightfall base. If we're unlucky... then we have fresh meat on the journey." And, they can stuff somebody inside one. To keep the person lukewarm.
"I intend to keep them in the hangar. I don't want to hear about the smell."
[Tamsin Cas]
Once Tamsin had gotten the small tauntaun's attention, she offered it a few more mushrooms. This was clearly not to its liking, as it soon has its head buried in the literal feed bag. "I will stay behind and harvest as many as I can. I will need something to collect them in. But at least I can work while the weather is still good," for some value of good, "And someone can bridge back a container for me."
[Syrus]
Sy's tauntaun, not fit to burst with super cool drugs is in a much better mood and leans its head down to nuzzle its horns against Sy's chest plate. "I...well...that's better," Syrus says, lifting his mostly-organic hand to give the creature at pat on the neck. "I will devour you if you fail me," Syrus assures the tauntaun, beginning to scritch at its fur. It's very much the same speech he gives to the new recruits.
[Imani]
Imani feeds what mushrooms she had to the tauntaun, and then quickly drops back to the ground to start rooting around alongside her new friend for more of them. She manages to find some, has to share a few, and rises with a small container attached to her armor that's positively stuffed with the fungus. "Can I get on now?" she asks, giving the tauntaun a gentle pat on the back, letting it become accustomed to her being this close first, and then attempting to climb on it. No stirrups to help and no saddle to settle in, the whole affair is a lot more awkward than it might otherwise be. Eventually she gets there, and once settled it starts to move in this game of follow the leader, which nearly unseats her and makes her lean forward to almost hug the thing around the neck until she's more steady. This is going to be great.
[Errod Zand]
On his knees in the snow, Errod has begun to chuckle dryly to himself, slowly at first but now a long unbroken string of amused Errod-noises, which basically sounds like a really old engine puttering away with cylinders randomly misfiring. The tauntaun in front of him reaches down with its weird tauntaun neck and eats the mushroom he is loosely holding, then starts trying to get in the man's pockets for the others, nuzzling him then licking him with its gross, rough tauntongue, nearly pushing him over. This only serves to amuse the knight further.
"I feel warm inside in some places and frozen solid in others, like reheated food," he volunteers as he lies in the snow, arms spread out while the tauntaun attempts to graze from his pockets.
[Malik Ren]
At Tamsin's suggestion that she needs a receptacle for holding fungus, Malik unfastens his cloak and proceeds to tie the corners into a sort of makeshift, overlarge knapsack, which he tosses her way. The flying fabric briefly startles the tauntauns, but they seem to be accepting their fate in life remarkably quickly -- maybe this is why the long-ago rebels had luck using them for transports... maybe they're just going to flip out when the fungus wears off. "Harvest as much as you can," Malik advises the doctor, "I'll be back to assist." Not too proud to scrabble around in the snow and pick up shrooms, apparently... but the shrooms might be the key to surviving all this, if the tauntauns are.
The tauntauns take some coaxing to herd through the blast doors of the hangar, and one has to be shooed away from eating the frozen Lieutenant Kepp's head that still sits outside the door, mistaking his frozen hair for lichen. But in they manage to go, immediately filling the place with animal warmth and bleating, and... the smell.
"Prepare what you can," Malik advises the team, voice echoing in the hangar, "As soon as we have data suggesting we can leave, and as long as the weather holds... we're making the overland crossing. Everyone needs to be alert, aware, ready to go."
A glance over his shoulder pauses on that, studying Errod... studying.... He's being licked by a tauntaun and he feels like reheated food.
"Nothing we can't handle," Malik decides, and sets about stacking crates for a makeshift tauntaun pen.
Take that, doubters.
