Public Swift As A Coursing River: Bounty Hunter Boot Camp

[Malrok Duskwell]

MALROK DUSKWELL
⟁Tip the Scales⟁

The creature saw them.

Of course it did.

It had eight eyes and enough rage to power a siege. Noise wasn’t the cause, just the timing. The moment had arrived. Survival meant movement now.
Malrok moved in a tight forward arc, sprinting low across the jungle floor. The Rancodin’s torso began to pivot, heavy shoulders swinging, momentum building toward another charge. Its forelimbs dug for traction. The ground buckled.

He didn’t fight the beast.

He was the bait – he would distrupt its footing.

Malrok pivoted behind one of the fractured root-veins that split the clearing, reached to his belt, and drove a shockwire charge into the soil—hooking it into the root at shin height. He didn’t check to see if it would trip the creature. It probably wouldn’t. That wasn’t the point.

It would steer it.

The creature veered as its gait shifted—eye clusters adjusting, upper mass twisting toward the flash of Karesh’s voice. Perfect.

Malrok turned just slightly and pointed—not shouted—at the Rancodin’s left flank. Just a sharp, deliberate motion toward the exposed seam beneath its shoulder.

Then he held up two fingers. Not toward the monster.

Towards the others.
Then dropped one.

Strike Now.

He stayed low. The spear tip hummed with restrained tension, but he didn’t strike yet. This moment was for someone else. Someone louder. Someone faster.

He was just serting up the angle with the beast's softer underbelly.

Karesh Lachadann Rostam Khavarzai ​

 

[Diamond Dog]

It chewed through armor and bone like swampfruit rind. Blood spattered wet over the hanging vines. A shredded leg tumbled free from the beast’s maw and twitched once, still wearing half a boot.

That wasn't quite how Diamond Dog had imagined losing his leg for the first time. His imagination had involved a lot more running through fields. Maybe stepping on a personal mine while carrying a wounded comrade to safety under tense fire from Imperial guns. That had always made the heroes of those holo-war movies look super heroic.

The reality turned out to be a lot less heroism and a lot more razor-sharp teeth and getting swallowed almost-whole. If his system hadn't been completely flushed with pain-suppressants, supplemental adrenaline, and combat drugs he would have probably passed out instantly when the beast severed his leg. As it was, he was simply left to scream from the pain while he pondered how he ended up here.

The hunters outside might pick up some muffled noises coming from the beast's belly. That Rancodin had a pretty thick shell after all, and DD didn't exactly possess the voice of an opera singer.

Karesh Lachadann Rostam Khavarzai Malrok Duskwell

 

[Rostam Khavarzai]

Rostam waited as the beast closed in on the group. Malrok Duskwell stepped forward, seemingly drawing the creature's attention away from the others. It was a bold move, perhaps even calculated. Not a bad strategy. When Malrok raised two fingers, Rostam understood it was his cue to act. He did not wait for Karesh , Lachadann , or Diamond Dog , the latter of whom he had not yet noticed.

Drawing his plasma pike, the Night Wind assassin broke into a sprint, circling toward the beast's flank. In a fluid display of agility, he vaulted upward and landed atop the creature's back. Straddling the thick spine with one arm hooked around a jagged ridge for balance, he drove the tip of the plasma pike into the vulnerable gap between two of the beast's bone-plated armor segments. Though the thickest armor covered the spine and shoulders, Rostam had found a seam where the plates overlapped. He slid the energized blade into the gap and triggered the pike's electrical discharge. Arcs of blue energy surged into the creature's flesh, and with a twist, Rostam drove the weapon deeper, forcing the charge into its nervous system.

 

[Malrok Duskwell]

MALROK DUSKWELL
⟁Tip the Scales⟁

He felt it through the dirt before he saw it. Rostam’s strike. A ripple of pressure through plated muscle, an electric convulsion that jolted the monster mid-lunge.

The beast reeled, mass shifting to recover. Its weight skidded awkwardly off the shockwired root Malrok had planted. Perfect.

He moved.

No words. No cries. Just breath in the back of his throat and the steady hum of Lautreyr in his grip.

His thumb slid over the side trigger. The Phlegmite crystal activated—not with a saber’s hiss, but a low-throated thrum, like a furnace exhaling. Pale greenish light bled up the shaft of the short spear, illuminating the haft but leaving the tip unformed, more a torch than a blade.

He slid beneath the beast's shadow and brought the spear low against the rear tendon of its left hind leg. A slash angled upward; crystal edge screamed and sizzled against flesh and gristle, severing the massive support cable beneath the plated knee. The monster howled—not in rage, but imbalance.

It collapsed sideways with a buckling crash. Dirt and root systems unearthed by the fall.

Malrok was already stepping back, spear low again, clearing space.

Let someone else finish it.

Rostam Khavarzai Karesh Lachadann Diamond Dog ​

 

[Lachadann]

OOC/ Going to move on from this one - have fun, folks. Get them bounties.

IC/ As Rostam Khavarzai and Malrok Duskwell got in good shots and Diamond Dog got more or less eaten alive, the rancodin's huge tail swatted Lachadann well off her feet. Her droid plating buckled. Holding to her gear just barely, she tumbled through the woods into deep undergrowth and all went black. Not a great day! But then again she really had picked up some nifty toys from today's body count.

 

[Diamond Dog]

The muscles of the beast's throat attempted to crush DD while he travelled through its digestive system from mouth to stomach. Fortunately, his bones and body were reinforced with various metals and sub-dermal durability enhancements. If they weren't, he would have quickly been crushed and died.

He struggled in the claustrophobic, damp darkness, trying to shimmy his hand free to access his belt. With some luck, his vibro-ripper knife would still be tucked away there, safely. With that, he stood a chance of escaping.

The pressure of the beast's muscles bore down on his arm, and he only manged fractions of an inch with every attempt to move. He could feel something vaguely made of artificial wood--the same material his knife handle was made of--when the creature's muscles began to suddenly spasm and convulse. At the same time, DD felt a strong electrical current run through his body. Someone outside was electrocuting the thing that had eaten him.

He began to shout for them to please, stop that.

Malrok Duskwell Rostam Khavarzai Karesh

 

[Malrok Duskwell]

MALROK DUSKWELL
⟁Tip the Scales⟁

The beast collapsed hard, tail sweeping wide in its death-thrash.

Malrok stepped back from the fall. Not in fear. Just enough to avoid being caught under its weight. Enough to listen.

There.
Movement in the gullet. Noise. He heard it faintly through the convulsions.
A muffled voice yelling something about electricity.

He moved without comment.

As the beast spasmed, Malrok approached the slope of its twisted neck, where armored scutes gave way to the thicker, pulsing membrane of the lower gullet. The skin here wasn’t armored, only layered and vascular. Soft enough for a focused cut.

He knelt low. Ignited the Phlegmite spear again—its tip burned with dull green.

With one hand, he reached for a fold of the throat where the muscles flexed around the swallowed mass.

Then he cut sideways.

A surgical slash just deep enough to tear through the muscle sheath and into the tract beneath. The stink hit immediately but he just widened the hole with a hook-pull of the spear’s shaft. Then he waited to see if the thing inside was still living.

Diamond Dog Rostam Khavarzai Karesh ​

 

[Diamond Dog]

DD continued to yell at whoever did the electrocuting, even as he felt the beast sway where it stood and then fall over, landing with a heavy impact. He continued to wriggle in the opposite direction of the beast's stomach. The idea of being sizzled alive by the type of acid this beast would need to digest prey considerably larger and tougher than DD did make him a little nervous. He was tough, but not invulnerable.

Fortunately, a kind stranger cut a hole into the beast's neck, just wide enough for him to poke his face-mask'ed head through.

He inhaled a deep, joyous breath of freedom. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, or the electrical currents frying the circuitry on his emotional inhibitors, but he couldn't help but feel glad to see an old-man face.

"Uhm, hello!" If he could smile through the mask he'd be awkwardly doing so.

Malrok Duskwell Rostam Khavarzai Karesh

 

[Malrok Duskwell]

MALROK DUSKWELL
⟁Tip the Scales⟁

The head that emerged from the rent in the beast’s neck was blood-slicked, masked, and surprisingly cheerful.

Malrok blinked once.

The stranger greeted him. Was it a mask, or was it an oddly smooth face? The stranger seemed awfully well for how severed their leg was.

Malrok tilted his head with visible confusion, watching the man like some befuddling specimen rare. He didn’t offer a hand. Just took a half-step back to clear space and replied:

"G'Evenin' t'ye."

No more than that.

Malrok's voice betrayed a thick accent and odd wording, a little off, a little archaic.
The spear lowered again. The light dimmed to a simple grey-green crystal.

The Condorian seemed to always have a vague look of confusion on his face – maybe it wasn't scrutinizing DD in particular?

Malrok scanned the treeline before continuing:

"Yer leg's off. Can ye walk?"

Diamond Dog Rostam Khavarzai Karesh ​