Skirmishers and Non-Skirmisher Friends of Port Katherine,
I have hired Hobbs to track down Seline Dawson, our missing - and presumed kidnapped - skirmisher teacher. With any luck Hobbs will have actionable information on their whereabouts this upcoming Festival of Dawning.
For those who don’t remember, or don’t know, Seline’s brother attacked the town with a hive of large mosquitos-like creatures last Remembrance. Many rose up to defend the Town, but, despite our best efforts, the brother escaped. In the aftermath, Seline’s vest was found - bloodied.
I believe Seline was kidnapped by their brother. Furthermore, while I hope they are still alive, I expect they are likely injured. If not, they would have surely escaped and returned to Town on their own by now; they were nothing if not competent.
We know little about the brother, other than he tried to summon a Changeling and was driven mad - or nearly mad - for his efforts, before being banished to the interior of our island. We know this due to Arcane and/or Spiritual (my memory is fuzzy here) residue left over from the summoning, located in a secret room of his house. As such, it is possible that those with the power to sense Arcane and Spiritual energies may prove helpful.
We also know that he either controls the bugs, or has some sort of accord with them, as they did not attack him; just the Town, and possibly Seline.
If a rescue mission is feasible The First of Dawning, who can I count on to stand with me?
If she’s hurt you’ll need a surgeon. I’ll come along and do my best to keep you all from joining her. It just saves me a lot of time and I do make house calls after all.
You may call on me if my services will be of use, but I expect I am more likely to be of use if you need an engineer to get into their tunnels than if you need people to fight.
I fear the worst for poor Seline, but if by some miraculous circumstance either sibling has survived among the macroinsectoids for the entire winter, they must surely possess a trove of observational data. By all means, if you have located a nest and believe we may conceivably recover Seline from it, let us do so.
However, I must urge caution if you should wish to undertake such a rescue mission. I performed an anatomical dissection of a macroinsectoid drone after the last attack, and noted in particular the presence of a tarsal poison sac on the forelimb–containing, not an ordinary Venom (which quickly incapacitates, but can be counteracted with purifying tonics), but what is likely a more complex hæmotoxin that slowly degrades bodily tissues from within, to aid in the creatures’ digestion of their prey.
While not itself lethal if properly treated, the sting causes affected flesh to atrophy as though Diseased, rendering it unresponsive to ordinary healing. Apothecarial remedies do, fortunately, exist, and I believe some of our more experienced physicians know of treatment methods; I strongly recommend arranging for such advanced Curatives to be on hand if possible. At a minimum, local surgeons ought to be apprised of the threat of this toxin, and advised to check whether patients have suffered a sting before administering healing aid, lest their efforts be wasted.
Unfortunately you’ll need something from the apothecaries as I am unlikely to be able to treat such an advanced condition, otherwise this may be a fool’s errand.
Even us advanced surgeons don’t have too many of those advanced Curatives laying around. I’m happy to help prevent more people from dying & tagging along, if necessary, but having a well-stocked apothecary might be better than a well-learned surgeon.
I would be happy to tag along if you need another set of hands. Although I haven’t met Seline, I know many of the skirmishers respected them and their skill and I would like the opportunity to meet them if possible.
Any way I can help I am happy to.
We will see what Dawning his for us, but I am inclined to take any able bodies fighter, as well as a Doctor or two.
My thinking is this:
The main objective is to rescue Seline.
If we have the opportunity, putting an end to their brother’s threat would be nice, but I don’t want to lose any of you fine folk just to get him. We can always hunt him down again later if needs be.
Similarly, I personally consider these bugs a threat to the Town, but we don’t have enough advanced curatives to make a concreted effort to deal with them this time around.
So, we focus on rescue, then we focus on retreading.
More detailed planning can wait until we see what we’re up against.
This Festival of Fire we will be trying, again, to rescue Seline Dawson. This time with more success in tracking them, we hope.
So, I am once again putting out the call - who will stand beside me on this mission?
We don’t know what we’ll face, but I suspect it will be more of those bugs that attacked our town last Festival. To that end, I have procured several elixirs for dealing with the Disease-like venom carried by these creatures. Additionally, anyone going on this mission should have at least one purify vile on their person.
As long as we fight smart and don’t loose consciousness, these preparations should be over-kill. But just in case, I’d rather see everyone return safely.
I am willing to donate my blades and blood to this rescue. If there are already enough fighters, I am happy to provide additional aid at the Fire Festival, in whatever form is needed. I have an interest in retrieving Seline Dawson, alive and in teaching condition.
As for their abductor, if his whereabouts are discovered and it becomes an added task to deal with him, consider my bullets at your behest.
Once again I will lend my surgical expertise to this endeavor. Though limited, I have the ability to deal with the disease like venom as well as regular venom.