Monster Party Book Seven: There's some things you're never gonna help or change, but hunger is something we can turn around!
Chapter Four: So hum hallelujah, just off the key of reason
"Your mercy, I beg, faithful of Zhakata..." A thin voice called out.
"Please, a mere crumb, a moldy crust! Anything, for the love of the Beast-God who sees over all!" Begged the pathetic figure in ragged red robes.
Petchko's words fell upon utterly deaf ears at first, but his luck was not to last. Soon people ceased to simply ignore him, and instead turned open derision upon the recently transformed priest.
"Leave us alone you filthy animal!" Insisted one man who spat profusely upon Petchko.
"Zhakata bless you all!" The former priest answered in stoic acceptance of such unkind treatment.
His well meaning words seemed to only further enrage those about him.
"Shut your mouth you vile cur, who gave you the right to speak like a man?" Growled another peasant who took Petchko by the throat and easily lifted his slight form off the ground.
At the same time, others began to lay into the red clad figure with kicks and punches.
"What… what are you doing to him and why?" A confused thin voice called out to the crowd.
The rapidly forming mob turned their attention to the new arrival.
It was hard to determine the figure's gender as nearly all of its body was hidden by a brown robe leaving only its hands visible at the moment.
They were awkward ungainly things, inhumanly thick and covered by silver fur.
"It is another one of those cursed beasts come to help its friend!" Chuckled one of the men who had been abusing Petchko only a moment ago.
"Let see what sort of monster this one looks like!" Another declared joyfully.
Two men seized the new arrival by its wrists, while a third threw back the brown cloak's hood.
That was when the mocking laughter stopped.
Petchko was an ill fitting mishmash of human and various different animals, this new arrival was different. He was simply part man, and part wolf.
While Petchko's face was fit to inspire derision and mockery, the new arrival had an elongated muzzle full of sharp gleaming teeth. His hands which only a moment ago seemed so ill suited suddenly grew larger and more sure of themselves.
Only his eyes seemed strangely at odds with one another, his right was an amber orange color while his left was green. The new arrival's body seemed to swell and grow with unnatural ease, as muscles that hadn't been there a moment ago expanded into being starting to tear his cloak apart. His arms flexed, and he easily broke free from the men who had sought to restrain him.
"What are you doing to him, and why?" Demanded the wolf monster, in a voice that was somehow all too human.
It grew bigger with every passing moment, reaching at least seven feet tall from pointed ear tip to its clawed feet.
There was a lot of gawking and babbling.
Then there was a lot of screaming and running.
Guards would be summoned soon, but not quite soon enough, for the moment was Petchko left to his own devices, the silver furred wolfman grabbed him in a tight grip. Its legs pushed off against the ground, and it was able to clear the alley's walls in one clean jump.
That wasn't the only jump it was planning on either, let the faithful of Zhakata try and keep track of it while it was bouncing pell-mell around the roofs of their city! By the time it had completed the third such leap Petchko had fainted dead away from shock.
XXX XXX XXX
"Are you all right?" Were the first words Petchko disgraced priest of Zhakata heard when he regained consciousness.
Looking around he found himself in an alley no less decrepit than the one that he'd originally been accosted in. His company was far more welcome though, instead of an angry mob there was only one man who was leaning over him in a nonthreatening manner.
"I… I have been better..." Petchko squeaked, still equal parts horrified and humiliated by the twisted sound of his own voice.
"Any idea how you got here? I was just heading back to my guesting house when I heard a tremendous 'WHUMP' noise and found you laid flat out on your back." The unknown man explained.
"I was accosted by my fellow worshipers of Zhakata because of how I look and the crimes I was falsely accused of." Petchko began mournfully.
No sooner had those words left his mouth then there was suddenly a great passion in his eyes and something at least vaguely resembling strength in his voice.
"Then, then I was suddenly rescued by a tremendous beast! It surely must have been an avatar of Zhakata, sent to show that while my fellow priests may have plotted and schemed to against me, even going to far as to foully delude the High Priest into twisting my shape, Zhakata himself has not abandoned me!" Petchko insisted proudly.
The man who had awakened Petchko had the strangest look upon his face. It was like gazing into a strange mix of pity, pain, and anger, oh yes anger was unquestionably the predominant emotion.
The man promptly stood up, walked over to an alley wall, balled his right hand into a fist and beat it against the wall several times over.
More proof of Zhukar's decrepit state was provided to Petchko when it turned out the man's blows left a noticeable dent in the stone. Then he turned back to Petchko, his emotions hidden behind a mask of icy politeness.
"I see. Anyway, forgive me for not introducing myself earlier, I'm Alexander Diamondclaw." The green eyed man explained.
"Petchko, son of Callian, follower of Zhakata the Devourer." Petchko did likewise.
"I am still a stranger to Zhukar, but I take it that those who Yagno has altered are not especially welcome in the city?" Alexander pressed.
Petchko bent his head in mournful agreement.
"Yes. It is a sentence akin to exile. None of this city's people will show me kindness now, for the High Priest only transforms those whose crime are seen as an affront to Zhakata himself. It is said that groups of those so punished wander the desert that lays beyond these walls." Petchko explained.
"You don't need to start wandering just yet. Come with me to the guesting house I'm staying at." Alexander insisted.
"But if the owner of such an establishment catches sight of me..." Petchko began to argue, worried that Alexander's kindness would only end up bringing him unnecessary suffering.
Alexander was not in the mood for Petchko's pleas to be left alone however; he simply took the transformed priest by his wrist, and hauled him to his feet before dragging him out of the alley.
XXX XXX XXX
Alexander Diamondclaw had neither great affection or interest in the vast majority of Callan Wrights trinkets. Even his specialized rifle only peeked Alexander's interest to the extent that it made the alchemist more useful in battle.
There were one or two though that were simply too useful for him to ignore. Not in everyday situations of course, but there were a few rare edge cases where a tool was simply necessary.
Now was one such time, and he had just the right tool.
As Alexander and Petchko stood in an alley beside the guesting house he was staying in, the silver haired man reached into a pocket of his black outfit and from it pulled a small wooden whistle.
"Put your hands over your hears, tight." Alexander warned the transformed priest.
Petchko looked at him questioningly, but when Alexander carefully slipped the whistle between his lips and held it there with his teeth so that his hands were free to cover his own ears, Petchko uncertainly did likewise.
Then Alexander blew into the whistle.
Petchko's heard a piercing high pitched sound that made his head ring even with his ears covered. Except that while Petchko heard it, it seemed that no one else did. No one came running out of any of the nearby buildings to protest Alexander making such a horrible racket.
Nothing at all worth talking about took place. Alexander seemed utterly content to simply stand there waiting, waiting for some unknown event to take place.
"Is that some form of magic whistle?" Petchko eventually brought himself to ask.
If it was, then using it inside Zhukar was most assuredly illegal, for it would be the same as casting arcane magic.
"There's nothing magical about the whistle, it is just well crafted. You can even use whatever divine powers you might still retain to assure yourself of that. Come along, Petchko it is time I show you to my room." Alexander insisted, refusing to elaborate on why he'd wanted to blow the whistle or why he'd waited after blowing it.
After enough time had passed to suit Alexander, he and Petchko finally entered the guesting house, and sure enough Leon paid them not the slightest bit of attention.
He was much too busy focusing on a pair of crimson eyes belonging to Mirri Catwarrior.
She was currently leaning across the desk he normally positioned himself behind, with a wide smile on his face.
"I'm the most beautiful woman in the world..." She cooed in a slow calm voice.
"You're the most beautiful woman in the world." Leon agreed all too eagerly.
"One of my friends ran into someone down on their luck and wants him to spend the night with us. So long as we pay you a little extra that won't be a problem, will it?" Mirri pressed with a playful tilt of her head.
"Not a problem in the least, for you..." Leon agreed dreamily.
"That looks a great deal like..." Petchko began, but Alexander slid a black gloved hand over his mouth to silence him.
Only after they'd completed the journey up the stairs and into the room where they would be out of Leon's sight and earshot (using his other hand to shut the door tightly) did he relax his grip.
"That wasn't magic either. My female companion has simply spent a great deal of time mastering the art of hypnotic mesmerism as practiced in the land of Nova Vaasa. It is tremendously useful for helping calm the mentally unbalanced, but can be used to not too dissimilar effect on those of a more sound mind as well." Alexander explained.
Petchko did not press the issue, Nova Vassa had been a long way from G'henna even when the later was still part of the Core.
"By the way, are you hungry?" Alexander abruptly added, quickly changing the conversation with what he decided would be his default ice breaker in Zhukar.
It was really amazing that despite how animalistic Petchko's face had become, it could still do such a wonderful job conveying the emotion of utter desperate starvation.
"Yes..." He whimpered, clutching his hands to his stomach.
Alexander reached under his pillow and produced a rather squished but entirely edible loaf of bread.
"Help yourself, if it isn't one of your three fast days." He gladly remarked.
"Priests don't actually have to fast, our connection with Zhakata is strong enough that such rudimentary means of interacting with the Beast God are not required." Petchko explained taking before taking as large a bite as his misshapen mouth could manage.
"Priests don't have to fast. Priests don't have to fast? Oh but of course, priests don't have to fast! What else should one expect from men of god?" Alexander muttered dourly as he turned away from his guest so that Petchko couldn't see the expression on his face.
After Petchko managed to consume his first mouthful, he suddenly stopped eating and held the loaf of bread out at arms length as if it was poisonous.
"You… you did not hide this from Zhakata's taking, nor buy it?" He demanded to know in surprisingly affronted terms.
Alexander crossed his arms and fixed Petchko with a disapproving glare.
"No on both counts. I brought this bread into the city with me after buying it from some unremarkable baker back in the Core. I haven't been contributing to Zhakata's Taking since I have no interest in receiving his Dole, and because I am a foreigner who does not believe in Zhakata, that is permissible. Likewise, before you even ask, I am not selling this loaf of bread to you, and you are not buying it, I am simply giving it to you." The silver haired man insisted.
"You may not believe in Zhakata, but you are worthy of his blessings..." Petchko murmured, before going back to consuming the loaf of bread with great gusto.
"Who or what is Zhakata the Provider?" Alexander added after as his guest was about half finished with the bread.
Petchko nearly choked, and Alexander was worried enough to give him a few slaps on the back just to be on the safe side.
When the transformed priest recovered himself enough to speak he began babbled at once.
"Zhakata the Provider? I must tell you truly, from my very first days of training to be an acolyte of the Beast God, I have been told that Zhakata has only one aspect, that of the Devourer. That is the bitter irony of the unjust sentence Yagno Petrovna was mislead into placing upon me, I know nothing at all about the heresy of which I was accused." Petchko insisted.
Given that he was safe (as much as anywhere in Zhukar would be "safe' for him) from harm and how far the transformed priest had already fallen that day, Alexander didn't think Petchko was playing dumb.
So he decided another strategy might be necessary to get the information he wanted. He gently leaned forward and wrapped an arm around Petchko's shoulders.
"Look, as I've said before, I am a newcomer to Zhukar.
Some things however are universal to both the Core and the lands beyond. One of them is that when evil men get hold of power, they inevitably use it to persecute others for the vices and failings they themselves posses.
If there is some great evil afoot in Zhukar, some nefarious actor so malevolent that even Yagno Petrovna eye's are clouded by them, then it doubtlessly has something to do with Zhakata the Provider. Even if the name itself means nothing to you, do you have any idea where we might be able to find some information?" Alexander suggested gently.
"The Avenue of the False Gods." Petchko answered at once.
"Before Yagno insisted that no gods were to be worshiped in Zhukar other than Zhakata, it was the city's religious center. There is nothing there now but desecrated shrines of unworshiped deities, but if information about Zhakata the Provider could be found anywhere, it would be there." He insisted.
"Then I think I know exactly what part of Zhukar we need to visit next." Alexander declared as he gave Petchko a congratulatory pat on the shoulder.
XXX XXX XXX
The Avenue of the False Gods was the most dilapidated part of Zhukar.
That was not an easy "prize" for it to win, but its right to the title could not be denied. Most of the city looked run down and falling apart from the stress of being lived in by so many people who cared so little about it.
The Avenue of the False Gods looked as if no one in the city had even bothered to visit it in decades. Not even if a wall been erected around it to keep honest citizens out, could the place have looked more deserted.
The pressure of wind, rain, and time alone were responsible for the avenue's run down appearance. Looking around at its empty streets made Alexander glad that he'd brought all five of his companions (and of course Petchko) along with him, who knew what kind of creatures (or people) might be hiding within these desolate and desecrated shrines.
Alexander opened the first door he could find within the Avenue of the False Gods, and promptly had it slip free of its hinges in his hands. Inside the crumbling building was a run down room centered around a large and badly weathered statue of a bipedal beast. To Alexander's eye this large statue looked little different (other than its state of disrepair) than the icons sold openly in Zhukar's market.
"Yagno doesn't leave much wiggle room for how to worship Zhakata does he?" Cal needled Petchko.
The transformed priest however refused to have his faith in either Zhakata or his High Priest shaken.
"He is strict because he must be, Zhakata places great burdens upon our shoulders, and in so doing makes us stronger as we grow accustomed to the weight." He insisted even as he struggled to preform some manner of sacred gesture with his misshapen hands.
"Why did you decide to become a priest of Zhakata in the first place? You weren't even born in G'Henna..." Florence inquired in vastly a less condescending manner.
"The first time I heard Yagno Petrovna speak: the fire in his eyes, the conviction in his voice, the strength of his faith, I knew that I wanted to be like him. I wished to be something more than just one more wanderer who was destined to be forgotten scant moments after his departure." Petchko answered, standing up as straight as his twisted body would allow.
Alexander turned his head away from Petchko then rolled his eyes. He had no desire to waste his time arguing with a zealot, even one who was useful to him at the moment.
Instead he drew closer to the statue, and looked at the engraving at its base. It read "Zhakata The..." but the rest of it had been defaced to the point of illegibility.
With nothing further to be gained from this particular building the group began to explore others.
Inside the seemingly countless abandoned shrines the group found more images of Zhakata that were no longer worthy of worship, and depictions of other gods and goddesses as well.
James Firecat insisted on spending a good solid five minutes with a wet cloth in the futile task of trying to reshine a statue of a woman with the head of a cat.
Likewise Mirri could not help but be momentarily captivated by a statue of a woman whose statue had seemed to have been carved out of some sort of blue stone.
She even went so far as to roll up her right sleeve, revealing that she beneath her white jacket she wore a wristband festooned with several small ornate skulls. She rubbed it against the statue and offered it a quick bow of supplication before being ready to move on.
"Gods..." Sighed Alexander, careful to make sure that he was doing so out of earshot of Petchko at the time.
"If they aren't complete nonsense it is only because of magic and that they're so immaterial a concept no one can properly prove they don't exist." Callan Wright agreed. The alchemist like most of his people was distinctly skeptical on the concept of divine beings, doubly so on ones who directly interfered in the lives of mortals.
"Gods exist, it is just that they have never done anything to make them worthy of worship." Alexander countered.
Cal simply held up his hands appeasingly and shrugged his shoulders, the time he had spent in Alexander's company had lead him to see far too many far too strange things for him to argue that particular point.
The group explored one fallen shrine after another, none of them providing any explanation for who or what "Zhakata the Provider" might be, and none of them managing to shake Alexander's generally dismissive attitude towards the whole affair.
None of them…. Until one suddenly did.
The building was in utter disrepair just like all of the others, and from the outside there was nothing to set it apart from any of the others. Yet the dilapidated building's contents gave Alexander a shock greater than discovering the source of Zhukar's "ivory" surplus.
"This… this isn't real. This wasn't crafted by any human hand, it must have been made by the Mists. I can't, I won't believe that the people of Zhukar ever actually worshiped here..." Alexander insisted in a voice that was unsteady and trembling as he laid eyes upon the statue.
It was a wolf who might have been painted or even coated with silver once, but the passage of time (and possibly some of Zhakata's more zealous adherents) had stripped it to the bare iron beneath save for a few small patches.
Alexander go down on his hands and knees before the wolf statue and stared into its lifeless eyes.
"This, this shouldn't be here. It is a trick, not an illusion, but a fakery all the same. No one ever really cared about this wolf." He insisted, sounding as if he was more interested in convincing himself than any of the others.
Then he slowly reached under his black outfit and pulled out a simple wooden figurine that he wore around his neck on a string.
It was as near as could be imagined a perfect copy of the statue before him, except for three things. It
was carved of wood, smaller in size, and Alexander's figurine had the inscription "Mac Tíre Cáiliúil" engraved upon it.
"Alex… do you… should we leave?" James awkwardly fumbled his way through the sentence, as he struggled to find the right words.
"No, I'm, I'm fine." Alexander Diamondclaw insisted as he slowly got to his feet.
He began to pace around the small shrine, there were other depictions of the wolf there on the walls, primarily either hunting, feasting on slain animals, or in battle with a one eyed soldier, but his attention was drawn by one thing in particular...
It was an emblem that someone had painted on the wall of the shrine, and looked slightly fresher than the rest of the building. It was a simple circle containing an eclipsed sun.
"This, this doesn't belong here. This doesn't belong to the wolf." The silver haired man insisted.
Then he suddenly turned to face Petchko while tapping a black gloved hand against the strange symbol.
"Do you have any idea what this is supposed to be?" He inquired of the priest.
Petchko shook his head mournfully.
"All right, fine. If nothing else, we've at least got one more piece of this particular puzzle. I want you five to keep your eyes open, and if you see any more examples of this symbol anywhere in Zhukar, let me know." Alexander insisted.
Then he turned his back on the wolf statue and walked out of the shrine without another word.
End Chapter.
AN: Blood Bowl 2 delays (Nurgle is out, come to hear your opponent rage about Tentacles and Foul Apperance, stay to hear your opponents rage about Clawpomb!) and also Plants Versus Zombies Heroes strike again.
Anyway, I think of all the PCs that the group has found themselves needing to worry about, Petchko may be the most… Petchkoist for lack of a better term.
Also, Alex's comment about the statue being made by the Mists isn't as "crazy" as it sounds, since in some domains (Richemulot, Falkovnia, Darkon, Sithicus are some main examples) it is questionably if they ever existed as real places before the Dark Powers brought them to Ravenloft, and so the Dark Powers just created a land/people out of whole cloth and gave them the necessary memories of having been alive for however long is needed. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the alternative of ripping lands out of wherever they used to be and forcing their people to be subject to a Darklord who they had nothing at all to do with...
Other than that, I'm just gonna let this chapter sorta speak for itself at the moment.
