Duty Session 254: Grunty Drive

Gwen has been quiet since her last mission inside the tower. She'd been making materials mostly for the upcoming winter, there were things to make, jobs to get ready. Commissions to fill out, also her own training to do.

Speaking of that she would be taking a break to take a job from the Hunter's Guild about a Grunty drive that needed a hand. It seemed like a good thing to get done. She'd put out a call over her friend's list to get people involved and it should be an easy run from the tower to the port city on the coast.

They can even stop for Crescent burgers and more when they are done.

"So thanks for coming and the food after we're done is on me!"

"I don't know how I let you talk me into these things." Gwen mentions food afterward. "Oh, right, that's how." Shiruba lets out a bit of a sigh after her moment of snarkiness. "But honestly it's nice to just being doing -normal- Duty Quests and not have some tremendous calamity hanging over our heads for a change. And you caught me just before I headed over to check on Ninetails, too."

"Gwen I hope you made me a cowboy hat for this." Kaydon says, as he wanders up towards the gathering group, "I mean come on, it's basically a requirement for this kind of thing, right?"

Gwen will open trade windows with everyone, dear god she did make them cowboy hats....

Goldenblade will join Gwen for the Grunty Drive, though she's not sure how she'll feel about Crescent Burger right after. She might be more into cluckclucks. Or she might be really eager for a burger, and make it suffer. Grunties can be ... trying. She's in her own training mode right now, which is why she's running this mission right now, though she looks to Gwen at the mention of cowbot hats. "It -is- traditional," she agrees.

    "It's the food. The food is how she talks you into it." Amalthea says, on arrival, to Shiruba. Lo and behold she's right. ... Then again it's not like she isn't in this for a meal from Gwen either and--
    Amalthea now has a cowboy hat in her inventory.
    Oh dear.
    "Well, I shouldn't be surprised..."

Shiruba takes the hat with an exasperated sigh. "I would be a lot more disturbed by this if I didn't know were you're from." She puts the hat on her head. Wiggles her ears. "At least the glamour effect accomidates my creature features." And it's not a flannel shirt. So she'll endure.

    Mizuki waves and smiles as she approaches, though she looks a little nervous. "A Calamity, or an endless wave of Goblins from the moon..." Once close, she sidles up next to Gwen and asks quietly, "Listen, I was concerned that people were gonna make funna me before, but it turns out that people are actually pretty supportive about the whole cat thing, so... Would you be willing to help me come up with a cute style that works, later? I wanna cheer people up..."

    She still looks pretty nervous, ears splayed, like she thinks anyone overhearing her is going to burst out laughing...

Kaydon puts his hat on, and then grins, "Looks great. Good to see the whole posse has one. Now lets roll these grunties on outta here!"

Gwen has one on her head now too and grins, she looks at Shiruba and finger guns at her. She says nothing a but those who heard her accent slip can guess where Gwen hails from. She looks over to Amalthea and Kayxon grinning even wider, Goldenblade gets a nod. She also looks to Mizuki and says. "True and I should hit that Lander Hunter up some time, also Taggart. That aside we need to go round the critters up!"

The Grunts are about the fields for the most part. The Lander children have been doing a pretty good job of keeping the Grunty's from ending up wanding off but now the time is the field has to be scoured they need to round them up and get them rolling.

"All right search the out from them up and we can get this drive underway!"

Goldenblade puts on her cowboy hat and nods, "I guess I'm ready." But is she really? Because it seems like the first thing that needs to be done is to gather the herd so that we can actually get going.

She rides out and tries to chivvy the grunties into a more or less contiguous herd heading in the right direction. By luck more than anything, the grunties she's got to move along don't put up too much of a fight. They can be recalcitrant, so she's pretty pleased that the ones that she's tasked with getting back into the herd actually get back to the herd.

Kaydon spurs his peko and brings it along to the area that's for gathering up the gruntys. He does a pretty good job of circling his peko around the creatures, to help keep them penned in, quickly moving to catch any who try to break away before they do.

"They could of at least had them ready to move out. How rude." Shiruba takes off for the edge of the field, finding a couple of the straying Grunties and ushering back towards the main herd. After finding and pulling up the lump of brush they had meandered off to gnaw on and using that to lure them back to the rest. "Wow. They really do try to eat anything, this looks more like roughage than actual foliage."

    Right then, time to rustle some grunties. Amalthea picks one... and hops on its back, donning her new hat.
    This one will be her noble steed.
    Giving the grunty a light pat and some gentle words, she has it working for her pretty easily. "I'll keep an eye for any that wander out of line over here and... Mosey them back into place."
    Yeah. She just said mosey.

    Mizuki pretty much expected Gwen to immediately start suggesting idea that may or may not be embarassing. The fashionista tank staying on-task is kind of a relief but Mizuki feels like she still has to face that later...

    Ah well. She equips the hat, which neatly adds earholes, and turns towards the grunties. "All rye-it nah, gidda long, liddle dawgies!"

    The grunties don't even seem to notice the attempt at an accent. Mizuki rezzes a scarf, ties it into a lasso, and swings it around. "Yee-haw!"

    It just wraps around her until she loosens it. "Right. I'll go looking for the missing grunties..." She heads out to find one, but seems to have some trouble getting it BACK, pushing the uncooperative grunty towards the herd!

So the round-up goes very well all things considered. Between everyone searching the Gruntie are rounded up pretty well far. The party is able to get the Grunties one way or another to go along with them. Gwen seems pretty pleased at this even if she had a hell of a time. The point is? the grunties are rounded up and the group is on their way. As the heard is on the moving thing are going fairly well at least until the howls start sometime later.

Local predator in the form of Wolves has seen dinner basically show up on their doorstep and theintend to get a bite to eat. The Grunties have little in the way of self-preservation which means they won't stampede but they will have to /defend the heard/

Gwen seem pretty pissed off. She'll be diving in, and her accent is on full display as she does so.

"ALL RIGHT YOU SPAWN OF WILY E! YOU WANT SOME COME AND GET IT!"

Goldenblade rides along with the herd, redirecting any grunties that try to wander off back into the herd. But then there's an aroo that's not from a friendly werefang, but an actual predator wolf. Seems that a herd of grunties is just like takeout for them. But that's no good, the wolves aren't going to pay us for grunties!

So, she'll fight them off, moving to intercept the pack before it can accost the herd. Both swords out, there's a lot of hacking and slashing. It's not pretty, but it's vigorous and it's much better exercise than like pilates or something. Sadly, there's a ton of wolves and one of her, and after a couple slashes, the wolves bugger off for easier game, while she's pinned down by the remaining wolves, and unable to actually kill any of them.

Shiruba actually jumps slightly when she hears the howls, her tail frizzing up. Then she relaxes a bit when she realizes it was normal wolves and not the ghastly wail of those goulish things that had tried to jump her the other day. Once she's calmed back down the Hunter takes proper stock of the situation, and pulls a few arrows from her quiver. "Our best bet is to just not let them get close to the herd in the first place." She fires off the arrows one after another, though she's apparently shooting them into the ground rather than at the wolves?! What gives? Well it has something to do with how predators in a bull rush like that aren't going to be able to stop or change direction very quickly.

It makes sense when the first wolf tries to pass between two arrows and they light up with weather magic, sending a lightning jolt between the shafts to electrocute the wolf, which chains down across the arrows to create the arcane approximation of an electric fence and catch several more before they can realize there's a trap in the path of their rush.

"Oh hell no, come on then!"

Wolves at the gate, quite literally. Kaydon rides on ahead, swinging his blade to one side and the other, trying to cut down wolves. Trampling others with the Peko. It's a pretty impressive display of riding skill for someone who usually prefers to walk everywhere.

    With the grunties successfully mosey'd Amalthea can take it easy for a little bit. Up until there's a problem...
    And then the wolves came...
    There is a brief pause as Gwen goes Full Texan and the old Paladin stares for a beat. Before she chuckles to herself.
    "Alright alright." She says hopping off her grunty and drawing her blade to start trying to scare the wolves away.
    And actually reduces a few to red pixels in the process.

    Mizuki's clothes are all dirty from trying to drag the stubborn grunty back to the herd, the experience leaving her somewhat grumpy.

    And then there are... wolves.

    "What? Wile E was a single coyote trying to capture a roadrunner with traps! This is just a pack of wolves, they're nothing alike... a HUGE pack of wolves..."

    Mizuki starts heading out to intercept, but Goldenblade tries to tank too many at once! "Hey! HEY! Get off her!" Mizuki runs over to Goldenblade, planting her feet on the ground, taking a deep breath, and

                                   R O A R !                                    

    That probably sends some of the wolves packing, and maybe leaves Goldenblade's ears ringing for a bit. SHE'S the top predator here, why face off against a tiger when there's probably easier food somewhere else?

    She walks up to Goldenblade to help her up. "It's WEIRD that there were so many, right? It's been awhile since I could just read random animal facts on Alexandria, but wolf packs aren't usually so big, are they? Then again, in our world there's been nothing scarier than humans for ages..."

Goldenblade does pretty well helping to drive the wolves off as the pack is first intercepted by her she does a good job fending them off as Kaydon piles in from another point cutting down several of the wolves. Amalthea follows things up and she's so imposing she makes several wolves think better of this. This lunch isn't so free and they take off. Well, those that survive her initial attacks that is. Miziki follows up with the rest. She gets no comment out of Gwen who is fighting in the pack of wolves it doesn't take long for her to take out several Wolves, Gwen gets some serious attention but shockingly doesn't manage to talk any out. The last of the surviving wolves now turn tail and run. This was no free lunch at all for them.

The wolves are gone however now they have a new issue, they need to seek out some of the Gruntie who got scattered in the attack.

"Here we go again..."

It's time to round up those mia Gruntie that can be found before they move on. It's leaving money and food on the table if they just head off now.

"No," Shiruba replies to Mizuki as she puts her longbow away. "But a realisticly sized pack wouldn't of been an appropriate challenge for a band of Adventurers, either."

And with that she bounds off to look for any Grunties that ran off from the herd because of the howls. Fortunately, Grunties aren't very smart creatures, and just plowed through whatever was in their way which leaves a trail of trampled bushes and broken branches to follow.

Goldenblade looks up and grimaces with relief as Mizuki comes to bail her out. "Yeah, I definitely bit off more than I could chew," she admits. And then, "Who can say what's right and wrong? There's no zombies in our world, but they have them here... It's almost like this is a make-believe game world where game designers just make stuff up." If only there were an irony tag in verbal speech.

She's lucky that the others are more successful fighting the wolves than she was, panting hard as she sheaths her blades. "Is that it, then?" she wonders? But no, of course not. The herd is slightly dispersed, and so she'll ride off to try and undisperse them. This is almost a bit like gathering the herd up at the beginning, except that any strays will likely be eaten by the wolves we'd just driven off. But do the grunties care? Noooo. She sighs, will lasso some of the strays and lead them back to the herd. Or drag them back, as they seem insistent on the grass over here and not the grass over there.

Oh boy, here we go. The wolves are dealt with, but several of the grunties have run off in one direction or another, "I'll grab the ones I can!" Kaydon calls out, as he rides off after a group of them.

He pulls alongside the group, and digs his blade into the ground, carving a path and forcing them to turn around and run back towards the main part of the herd.

With that small group dealt with, he can go try to find individuals who got away.

    And the wolves are handled.
    But the grunties have moseyed again.
    Amalthea rubs at the back of her head and hops back upon her noble grunty steed and starts wrangling.
    "I'll handle the ones on this side." She calls out to the others, bumping and nudging grunties back into the herd.

    "I suppose they could have just not used realistically-sized wolves..." Mizuki muses. And then someone announces some of the grunties ran off. "Oh, no, not again!" She follows her nose off into the wilderness, and this time seems to have found a grunty more amenable to just following her back to the pack.

Shiruba pulls out her hunting knife... and hands it to Gwen. "Here, you're probably going to need this." And then walks away. She succeeds at cooking by making sure the one that can actually cook has decent tools instead of making any terrible attempts of her own.

The Hunt is going well between the combined efforts of Shiruba's tracking the Gruntiue down for the others to round up. Goldenblade is successful in capturing a number of the Grunties thanks to Shiruba's and Kaydon is able to make use of her aid as well to capture a number more Guirnties followed up by Miziki as well. Amalthea meanwhile seems to be a bit of a Gruntie whisper as she's able to get a fair number to return as well.

All things are going well

The rest of the day goes well until it comes time to set up camp. There is no doubt what Gwen's doing she get a fire going and get to making food, is that something akin to pork and beans. Yes but she's also grilling some stuff as well and it seems to be coming out pretty good.

She takes the knife and get to work, on further cooking.

Kaydon is not a builder. If you gave him some scrap metal and a campfire and told him to put together a knfie he could probably make it work, but for his part he does try his best to build a bed.

Considering he's used to sleeping on rocks and eating MREs, this really isn't anything that special for him.

Goldenblade smirks to Mizuki, and asks, amused, "So, the Werefangs and zombies are all more realistic?" Or, wait, is she saying they are or are not realistically sized now? But the rest of that day's drive is dull by comparison, and nicely without too much peril. She's never played Oregon Trail, so she doesn't quite realize the list of dangers that might befall them.

Luckily, they make it to the end of the day without losing any more grunties or party members. Clearly, her job will be setting up camp, and she starts by using her relic, which looks now to take the from of a surveyor's glass, and flattening the terrain, taking out the sort of uneven bumps Kaydon is used to sleeping on. Once the terrain is flat, like completely steamroller-flat, tents and such are laid out in neat rows. Lines are strung, and stand-torches are placed for illumination once the sun goes down. She's planned for this.

    Camping! Mizuki offers fireball for cooking, but more skilled heads prevail.

    Eventually, things are somewhat relaxed. There's a warm fire, hot food, and a sunset. Mizuki looks out at the stars over the grunties, and feels moved to hum the Lon Lon Ranch theme / Epona's song. It's very pretty when she does it!

    She'll offer to workshop lyrics for it with the party as a fun exercise, singing whatever they come up with at the end before they turn in for the night!

    The Grunty Whisperer is fine and fair when it comes to rustling grunties.
    But not when it comes to making a place to sleep.
    Amalthea picks up a hammer and gets to work on fixing a tent.
    The sound of something breaking can be heard after a firm strike.
    Amalthea puts the hammer down and never speaks of it again.

The setting up of Camp going pretty well there's good food, the camp gets set up with little issue and there are even some songs it's a quiet night nothing goes wrong and the group is able to make it to market with no issue at the port city. Gwen ends up front and center to haggle with the Lander over the price. She's clearly going for the throat here when it comes to money she playing hardball like she knows the Lander is and would be insulted if he did not.

Shiruba tries to get in on the haggling because she's a Cait Sith and business is what they do. But then the Lander starts complaining about the Grunties being skinnier than expected. Her tail flicks in annoyance. "Yes, well, you manually hike your heard of Grunties across the land and that's what you're going to get. Lean meat." The Lander doesn't look all that impressed with her attempt to turn the complaint around though, considering this is an age where they don't care about how much fat and lard you bonfire something in to make it edible.

Goldenblade is well-rested and chipper the next day thanks to a restful sleep, and the grunties are easily driven to the market town. She makes sure the best grunties are the most visible around the outer edges of the herd, so that they are the most visible to our grunty buyers. There's no way they can look at all of them, and so the ones that wolves have taken a few HP from are toward the center of the herd. Having arranged things just so, it's a very good-looking herd that their appraisers will be bargaining to buy.

    With a good night's sleep had by all, it's time to bring the grunties to market. While Goldenblade positions the best grunties to be seen by all, Amalthea aleady gets to cutting deals and making sales for the best prices.

    Mizuki does not know how to haggle at all. Also, what even IS a fair price for the grunties? She should have collected advice from the landers before leaving...

    Naive and trustingly, she doesn't assume the lander is trying to scam them...

Generally Kaydon would negotiate via agressive negotiations but that doesn't look like it'd work out well with this particular group of cowfolk. Or gruntyfolk, as it were. So he defers to the others in the group who are actually like, used to talking to people.

She will grin at Mizuki as she ifnishes up the neogations it was hard but the group managed to make a small profit. Not as much as they could have but it was still worthwhile in the end.

"You asked about outfits right? Come to my shop later and we can talk about that Mizuki. Meanwhile lets get our butts to Crescent Burger like I promised!"

    Mizuki jumps as Gwen suddenly brings that up again a literal day later. "Right! Yeah, will do! Mmm... I haven't had a burger in ages... I'm so glad we figured out how to make food with taste..."

"I'm looking forward to the burgers myself. We should grab them and figure out our next move. Like getting back.." He does at least enjoy his new cowboy hat, at the very least.

Goldenblade will also follow along to Crescent Burger. She normally eats menu food, which is marginally better than her trying to actually cook, so CB is a rare treat for her.

Oh good, Gwen can focus her fashioniable terrors on Mizuki for a while. Shiruba is just along for the food at this point, because it's food, and how she got roped into this in the first place.

She's keeping the hat though. Even if this isn't Hat Fortress 2.