EVENTS:
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Peggy: "No, I'd rather stay alone with the pervy, murderous sheeple lady. Of course I'll come!"


With that, the party heads into the forest. You see Mary tending to her sheep on the way, and she waves at you as you breach the treeline.

A while passes as you once again navigate the green maze. Eventually, you find a bulbous deer with far too many horns, drinking off a puddle. It doesn't seem to have noticed you.


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EVENTS:
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Rosa activates her cranial HUD, going the whole nine yards with it. Rangefinder, thermal vision, auto-stabilization, target predictor. She clutches her rifle tightly, activates silent mode, and fires.

*CRACK*

With a muffled bang, the bullet pierces thorugh the deer's spinal cord, jugular vein and windpipe before embedding itself on a nearby tree. The creature is dead before it hits the ground.


Moving closer, the party inspects her kill. The deer is... Larger than you'd expect, though a significant amount of its mass lies in strange, warty growths that cover its face and most of its backside. One of them was ruptured by Rosa's shot, and is now oozing a rather pungent yellow liquid, which seems to pulsate and spread in a strange geometric pattern as it slowly flows down the creature's matted fur.

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EVENTS:
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Eigla: "Nice shot."

Eigla does her best to butcher the deer in situ. The pelt does't come off easy: Each wart seems to send down filaments into the flesh below, anchoring itself firmly. The ones in the head go particularly deep, and the deer's brain seems encased in a gelatinous, yellow layer. You decide not to take the skull, as it smells far too bad.

A short while later, she has a reasonably whole pelt, minus a few holes for where she removed the growths, and a good amount of meat and tendon. The antlers are surprisingly stiff, so she cracks a pair with her hands and adds it to the loot bundle.
Tying the pelt neatly, she hands it to Peggy.

Eigla: "Carry this. Use the antlers and tendons to make a bow later."

Peggy: "Y-yes Ma'am!"

She spreads the offal and bones on the floor to serve as bait, and guides the group into hiding.

Eigla: "Now we wait for the wolves."

...

An hour passes. Just as you're losing hope, a lone wolf appears amid the foliage. It notices the carcass, sniffs it a bit, but does not approach. Everyone lets out a collective sigh as it moves back into the woods.

A few minutes later, the wolf returns, accompanied by a few of its kind and a biter. The undead creature inspects the body, then begins clawing parts off and separating them into rather neat piles. One of them contains the warts and skull, the other mildly yellowed meat, the other clean, unaffected meat and organs.

As the pack begins to eat, the wart pile goes untouched. The wolves divide themselves among the two remaining piles, while the biter consumes only the parts untouched by the slime.


They don't seem to have noticed you at all. A surprise attack could be very effective.


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BATTLE:
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As soon as Rosa opens fire, the wolves are startled and begin fleeing. Her first shot is deflected by the Biter's pelt, as well as her pistol barrage.

Switching to her sniper as the creature begins to gain distance, she manages to rip off its pelt and part of its head with a well-placed bullet, then destroy its jaw and tongue as it turns to bark at her.

The wolves are nowhere to be seen, having already fled the clearing, but the Biter seems disoriented, unable to find a path through the dense underbrush. It still moves with preternatural speed, however, so it's hardly an easy target.




Battle map:
[Biter] - Tartarus
[] - Hades
[] - Limbo
[] - Elysium
[Rosa,Eigla,Klimt] - Eden

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