Writing Challenge Day 1: Munendes
The small city of Amarell was peaceful and prosperous. There were two small dungeons nearby, but they were easy enough for the city guard to manage and had not breached in hundreds of years. The Farms and farmlands produced plenty of food, enough that they could export a reasonable quantity. They produced most of what they needed, and had a straight line safe roadway to several larger cities for those few things they could not produce themselves. It was a good and pleasant place to live.
Until the intrusion of calalucruin arrived in the nearby lake. Within an hour of them being sighted, there were half a dozen meetings between various factions within the city about what to do. Many wanted to kill them or drive them away. A few thought it would be better not to aggravate them, for who knew if they had any active control over their ability? A handful suggested the city summon a tamer or spiritualist who might be able to reason with them. No one, not a single one, though they should let the calalacruin stay and settle in.
When floating on the water or nesting on the ground, they might look like slightly larger but otherwise ordinary geese. They might seem harmless, as they tended to avoid people and never attacked anyone who didn’t attack them first. Even if they were up and walking, their little calico cat feet looking adorable beneath their gooselike body, all they appeared to be was a small and awkward cousin of the griffin.
But calalucruin brought strangeness and misfortune wherever they went. They came to a peaceful place like Amarell and upended it with chaos. They were the embodiment of bad luck. Somehow or other the city had to get rid of them.
Fortunately for the people of the city, they did not follow the poor (and entirely unknown to them) example of Killingsworth, and sent out a summons to help them rather than trying to take care of the problem themselves. Unfortunately for them, the expert that responded was the infamous Lady of Spirits.
She strolled into town, seemingly from nowhere, about two days after the request had been sent out. Since that was too early for even the closest city to have received it and dispatched someone, the city’s mayor was unsure of how she’d known about their request. But he did not doubt her credentials even for a second, because everyone knew about the Lady of Spirits. She was accompanied at all times, the rumors went, by three large leopard sized cats, one of solid black, one of dark red, and one of white lightly spotted with pale blue. She was also, so those same rumors spread, more powerful than any living mystic, although she was still a spiritualist. Like most laypeople, the mayor decided not to ask how that was possible.
“May I ask how you knew we needed help?” He asked, after she had settled into his nicest couch, the cats roaming around his sitting room like they lived there.
“Passed a guy on a horse that said you had a magical creature problem. Thought I’d stop by on my way and check it out.”
On her way to where? Every place worth going from Amarell was easier to reach from some other destination. They weren’t quite the last place on the edge of nowhere, but they were close. They had sent the messengers to the west, toward the three larger cities nearby. To the east, there was little of interest but mountains and forest and half a dozen small villages. Again, he did not ask.
“Yes, we have an intrusion of calalucruin who just arrived nearby.”
The Lady of Spirits nodded, pursed her lips slightly, and looked around the room. Then she tilted her head. “And that’s a problem…why?” She looked honestly confused, which in turn confused the mayor. He had said nothing unusual, as far as he was concerned.
“Cala-calalucruin bring misfortune and chaos wherever they go. This is a peaceful city!”
“Hm.” One of the large cats jumped up on his beautiful, priceless couch and he wanted to cry. It started purring as it lay its head in the Lady’s lap. “Calalucruin are a rank one magical creature with an innate AoE probability shift power. They aren’t really dangerous.”
Now he had to ask. “I apologize Lady, but what do you mean? What is AoE? What is it mean to have a probability shift power?”
“So what it all means is that calalucruin have magical power they have no control over, as it is innate and automatic. It has an area of effect radius of about 5 mile, and it upends and alters probability in the area.”
He still looked very confused, so she sighed and continued. “So when you throw a six sided die, you have an equal chance of getting any of the sides. When a calalucruin is in the area, you might have a triple chance of getting a 4 and a zero or near zero chance of getting a six. Or, say, if you drop a fragile bowl, odds are it will break; with a shift in probabilities it might not break. It might even break the floor instead, I’ve seen that happen.”
“Then you see why we want them gone!” The mayor cried. True, he hadn’t known that they could bring good or strange fortune as well as misfortune, but he did not care. Such a chaotic world was not one he, nor the people of this city, wanted to live in.
The Lady of Spirits just shrugged. “Not really. They aren’t harmful.
“But they are!” he insisted.
“Build a casino and gamblers will be lining up to play. Learn to live in an uncertain world. They’re just tiny griffins.” She sounded horribly unsympathetic, and yet she was the most qualified person to get the ‘tiny griffins’ as far away from his city as they could go.
“Please, Lady, we do not want them here. We do not want gamblers roaming our streets, nor uncertain odds of dropped crockery breaking, nor anything of that kind. Please, remove them.”
The Lady pursed her lips again and grimaced slightly, but then nodded. “I will ask them to move to an area at least five miles from any inhabited town or city in the region. However, I will not force them to move.” She paused for a second, and then continued. “Do you have maps of nearby bodies of water they could use?”
He shook his head. “Only of areas near towns, of rivers and dams and lakes they use or claim ownership of.”
Another grimace. “I’ll ask my uncle for help then.” She stood up and began to leave, and the mayor wondered if he should ask about her uncle. From what he had heard, and she was a common topic of conversation among dungeon divers and city gate guards, so he had heard a reasonable amount, she had neither family nor friends, and wandered entirely alone from world to world, seemingly for her own unknown purpose. But, again, he decided not to. Those who had questioned the Lady all had the same thing to say about their experience - it was like hearing a person speak a language you knew perfectly, and yet not understanding a word they said. Just as long as she got rid of the damn cat goose griffins he would be perfectly happy knowing nothing more about her.
