Ginjo, Sukh, together with Irak, Shek, and Vanilla Rainbow ventured out to observe the “jackalhead” ceremony. The other bakemono were required to stay in Ronkan and Phru and Saw protecting them. Following the directions of their hosts, the party found the ruins of a temple, reduced nearly to its foundations. Weaving around the half-columns and around a circular fire pit, a dozen fox-headed creatures chanted in a low drone, taking turns shouting out ecstatic phrases in a language that Ginjo barely recognized as bakemono though he identified only a few individual words.
Sukh cautiously walked down the slope and onto the floor of temples, holding out his open hands.
One of the fox-headed people stopped abruptly and raised up her own hands, and shouted out, “Behold, they have come!” The other chanters fell silent and all looked to the speaker, a tall and slender being, wearing robes trimmed with silver.
Sukh murmured a bakemono greeting and Ginjo came down the slope to join them.
The silver-robed bakemono uttered a series of friendly but unintelligible sentences.
After a few minutes of awkward pleasantries, the party determined that the speaker was trying to speak to them in Pasari, though her pronunciation was very strange. Ginjo asked how she had come to know his language.
“Your language? My ancestors taught your people how to speak. And sing and dance. We helped you develop laws, planned your cities and roads. All the systems you traverse.”
Her name was Kfadz and she listened eagerly as Ginjo told her about his family, about the caves of discord and about the carpet by which they had found their way to the bakemono homeland.
Kfadz and the others explained that they were the Hatukaan, and they were indeed ensnared in a war against the ungrateful Traldar. “As you have no doubt seen, they are brutish people. They refused to learn anything and rather than apply their animal strength to useful labor, demand to make their own way, destroying the beautiful things by which we once hoped to bring them up to a better way of being.”
Sukh expressed his hope that a peace could be negotiated. He declined the initiation to accompany the hatukaan back to their own settlement of Byxata, explaining that they had friends back in Ronkan. “But we will find a way to get out and come to Byxata.”
The party returned to Ronkan and reported that they had witnessed the ceremony and that it did not involve the summoning of undead monsters. Ben-Kraal sneered that they had been tricked by the jackalheads. The party began discussing how they would escape. They stayed up all night to watch the guard changes. In the middle of tne night they heard a scream coming from one of the houses. Ginjo broke down the door and found a Traldar teenager in the coils of a slimy green tentacle that was pulling her toward a dark hole in the floor. While her family clung to her desperately, Ginjo drew his katana and leaped into action. The tentacle was thick and tough, barely yielding to the katana’s edge while another tentacle burst through the floor and smacked Ginjo to the floor. Phru entered the house, pulled Ginjo to his feet and together they chopped at the tentacles until freed the girl. They fled the house and watched from outside as the tentacles thrashed about before finally withdrawing into the floor.
The Traldar complimented Ginjo on his valiance. After some reluctance, they admitted that the tentacled monster made appearance on almost a weekly basis, and attributed its attacks to the jackalhead magic.
The party spent a few more days in Ronkan, giving Ginjo a chance to recover from his fight with the monster. A fw days later, a strange flying woman appeared above the village. The Traldar instinctively raised the spears to hurl at her, but as she descended, she began to sing and they dropped their spears to stare at her stupidly. Sukh, shaking off the charm of her song, raised his bow and begin shooting arrows at her, driving her away. He recommended that the wall guards should begin plugging their ears with wax to avoid being deceived by any future attacks. Furthermore, he recommended that one of the “vocals”—whose voice could easily be heard from anywhere in the village and drown out any other noise—join the guards and pay special attention to any threats form the sky. Ben-Kraal was impressed by these suggestions and ordered that they should be done.
