S?ren dropped to his knees, the plasma pistol tumbling from his hands as they dropped to the ground. He leaned forward and retched. His stomach convulsed and the berries and jerky he had eaten for breakfast spilled onto the creep beneath him. The Engorged Hordeling spun around ignoring Neeka and Strike and charged towards the incapacitated Human traveler. Neeka followed after it, stabbing it repeatedly with sneak attacks, shredding the chitin shell. Strik followed as well, chopping at the smaller legs on the side of the hordeling.
Hari recovered from the psychic scream from the Monarch and charged at S?ren, his eyes red with rage. He shoved S?ren out of the way of two descending talons and caught them on his hands, digging his claws into the talons. His health bar dipped below ten percent as the talons cut into his hands and blood dripped down the rough runnels in the surface of the talons.
The hordeling shoved Hari backwards, its toothy maw lunging forward and trying to devour the Fuerven in front of it. Hari's toe-claws dug furrows into the creep, tearing it apart and scratching the stone beneath. Neeka and Strik paused their assault on the hordeling momentarily in awe of the raw strength being displayed by Hari. Neeka was the first to recover and rolled beneath the hordeling and struck the weakened shell, where she had ripped part of it away earlier. The new growth had yet to completely harden. Her strike finished the Engorged Hordeling. She rolled to the right of the hordeling, knocking aside a few of its smaller legs as it collapsed onto the ruined creep.
*ding* 6 / 6 Hordeling slain.
With the death of the Monarch and the Engorged Hordeling, the only sounds were the heavy breathing of the survivors and the mewling cries of the newly spawned Hordeling Spawn. Its shell was rapidly hardening and its talons and legs had unfolded from its body. Neeka rose smoothly to her feet and stepped over to the spawn, looking down at it with a tilted head. She ended the creature's life with a single thrust from her spear.
*ding* 14 / 14 Hordeling Spawn slain.
Defeat the Hordeling Monarch
A Hordeling Monarch is attempting to gain control of a Resurrection Shard in the Mourning Cave. Stop her before it's too late for Caisleán. A monarch that gains control of a Resurrection Shard can convert it into a Hordeling Den and spawn an endless horde of Hordelings.
1 / 1 Hordeling Monarch slain
6 / 6 Hordeling slain
14 / 14 Hordeling Spawn slain
Rewards
? 100 TEK
? 3 settlement build points
? [Uncommon] engram
A flurry of notifications popped up into S?ren's view as he stood and wiped his mouth using the sleeve of his jumpsuit.
Five glowing objects roughly the size of cantelopes materialized in midair above their heads, fell down, and landed on the creep. Two were green polyhedral objects, that looked like eight sided dice commonly used in board games; two pyramids attached at the base. The third and fourth also had the appearance of dice, but each had ten sides. The last was a dodecahedron, a twelve sided shape. The engrams bounced across the creep and flashed briefly as they stopped moving. S?ren snorted in macabre humor at the absurdity of the notifications and loot dropping from the ceiling amidst the shared grief following the death of Sehro.
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Neeka narrowed her eyes at S?ren and leveled her spear towards S?ren's chest, swiping away something on her interface.
"You find it funny, death of Sehro?" she hissed at him through clenched teeth.
"No! This just
"Game? Like dice. Kick ball?" Neeka asked.
"Yes!" S?ren nodded. "Games more...
Neeka lowered her spear, but still had a look in her features that S?ren interpreted as confusion and fading anger. "Do you think? We are game? World is game?"
"Don't know," S?ren shrugged. "Feels real. Could be real world. Made into game. Could be in head."
"I think we are real," Neeka said, crouching down and resting on her tail. "I know Sehro was real. To them. To me, even though I only knew him short time." She glanced over to the Monarch's mound that was scorched black by nearly two dozen plasma blasts and then looked at Hari and Strik that were standing close together with their foreheads touching. S?ren nodded in agreement with Neeka.
"These are interesting," S?ren said picking up one of the green eight-sided engrams that had rolled near him.
"Yes. There are drawings of shapes. Like these," Neeka said, nudging one of the blue ten-sided die shaped engrams near her. "On cave walls, old tablets. No one knew what the symbols meant."
"Treasure. Loot. Rewards," S?ren said. "Not worth losing Sehro."
Neeka hissed in agreement. Strik and Hari broke their connection and joined the other two. S?ren examined Hari's scales with no small amount of amazement. The Fuerven warrior had endured the equivalent of a full body acid bath after getting drenched in the hordeling's blood. His scales were pitted, burned away in places, and the flesh beneath shiny with a look like melted ice cream. His bandages were in tatters, but the acid or something else had sealed the edges and they no longer bled freely.
"Sehro will be missed. We celebrate his life tonight," Hari stated and then barked a short, sharp cough for emphasis. Everyone except S?ren did the same.
Missed something there, S?ren thought to himself. Strik knelt down and picked up the purple twelve-sided engram and turned it around in his claws, tapping on the different sides. It made a hollow metallic ping sound with each tap.
"What be these?" Strik asked, tossing it into the air from one hand to the other.
"Mission rewards," Neeka answered.
"I can try to open them later," S?ren offered to the others. He focused his Analyze skill on the green engram in his hand and received a system error message stating he needed [Analyze (Copper III)] to unlock the engram. He brought up his inventory with a thought and lifted the green eight-sided engram and trying pushing it into an empty slot. The engram vanished from his hand through a hole that appeared and an icon showed up on the inventory screen. Neeka and the other Fuerven all turned their eyes on him.
"S?ren, what did you do?" Neeka asked, both her eyes on the empty air where the engram had just been.
"Oh uh," he stammered. "
Neeka nodded and picked up the blue engram after feet. Her eyes then looked off into space in front of her, unfocused. She reached up like S?ren had and pushed the ten-sided blue object into what appeared to be a tiny hole in space. The edges of the hole warped and blurred, showing a mirrored reflection of the immediate area around the group. Then the engram vanished and was no longer in her hand.
"Interesting," Neeka said and tilted her head sideways. It was S?ren's turn to stare at Neeka. Strik also tried pushing the epic engram into the air in front of him and let go. It just bounced onto the creep at their feet and rolled away. Hari just snorted at the rest of them. Strik bounded after the engram and collected the other uncommon and rare engrams as well.
"Monarch dead. Get your shard, S?ren, and we go," Hari suggested. "It reek in here."
S?ren just nodded and moved over to the edge of the mound of scorched flesh. Dribbles of various fluids continued to spill out of the numerous orifices of the dead Monarch. A section of the platform had been revealed by an errant blast of plasma. He knelt down amidst the carrion flesh and offal of beasts the Monarch and Hordelings had fed on. His hand touched the platform and a series of notifications popped up.
Not sure what it meant, S?ren gladly tapped yes and waited to see what would happen.
"Huh. Oh... uh," S?ren looked over at Neeka and the other two. "Sehro might not be dead dead." The trio of Fuerven gave him the oddest of looks.
Date Posted.
January 24th, 2021
Date Edited.
January 24th, 2021 - Changed the loot/mission notifications to S?ren only, hinted that Neeka had her own notifications, and added text to denote the engrams as group loot. Anyone in group can pick up the loot. If there's a built in loot system for divvying up rewards, S?ren hasn't activated it. Good idea for later though.
February 10th, 2022 - Minor edits for clarity and fixing typos.
February 14th, 2022 - Changed requirements for champion resurrection to fix a minor plot hole.