First contact

Jp with Lorem, Cindy, Winteroak and Bandorchu

A few minutes later it became clear that they were rising in your direction as the plume of dust kicked up by their horses headed your way. Soon you could start making out individual details among the riders. Their ochre coloured skin, their bare chests, the bows and spears they carried. They stopped about 10 metres away from you. Observing you.

“Not charging us down or pelting us with arrows right off the bat. Good sign. Stay calm, everyone.”

Alexis gestured to the wounded Gonyaul to get into the cover of the carriages and turned to their ‘visitors’, calmly inclining her head in greeting, her stance guarded, but not threatening.

Gonyaul remembers his promise to Alexis during the preparatory briefing. There would be times she would ask things and they needed to be done. He obliged and silently moved to take cover in the carriage as best he could.

Islana stood where she was, took an internal breath and kept her outside demeanor calm. Inside her mind, the young woman was hoping their visitors were just curious or possibly friendly.

A man riding a black horse, with grey long hair spurred his horse forward, stepping away from the line of the other riders formed. Most of you had not met the Plains natives before apart from Blackwolf and you started to notice little details like the bones and pieces of cloths braided into his gray hair. He held a long shafted spear as some of his warriors. Small axes and daggers hanged from their belts. Most had aggressive expressions in their faces. One was holding a bow and had a notched arrow.

The older man approached and dismounted his horse.

"Who you?" He asked in an broken attempt to speak your language. "Where go?"

The mercenary kept her tone calm and even, though she did keep track of the man pointing his bow at them.

“We are travellers, going north.”

He looked over your group. His eyes coming to rest on Alexis. "Where north? We go north." He said banging his fist to his chest . "What you carry?"

“To the mountains, and into them if we can. We have scholars here, that wish to learn of the land, and its past.”

She pointed to the carriages, moving deliberately as to not trigger any hostile reaction.

“We carry food and tools. Want to check?”

You realise that most of what you said might have been lost to the man. "Fang? You go there?" He asked pointing to the mountain range covering most of the horizon ahead. "Danger. Bad for women." He warns.

Gonyaul continued to remain hidden in the back of the wagon. He could barely see what was taking place because he had a very limited view. He could see a man on a horse with a drawn arrow in direct view, bits of horse and man around him, and could hear them speaking but that was about it.

He was trying to gauge the tone and direction of their conversation. And he also couldn’t help but wonder, if that is how irregular he sounded to other people when he spoke upon hearing their accents and broken common tongue language.

Alexis smiled, genuinely, at this testimony that the plains people seemed to have a more favourable view on women than the Odonine.

“We know. But thank you.”

One of the younger men shouted from behind the man you assume is the leader. The old man shouted something back in their language and some of the men laughed.
"Why go?" He asked confused.

Now how to convey that halfway understandably?

“We hear there are places there, made by men long ago, but now abandoned and forgotten. We hope to learn from what we find there.”

The man didn't seem to follow much and shrugged. " You trade?" He asked.

So distracted where you with the encounter that you didn't to notice a larger convoy of people and animals coming in your direction. Seemed you were about to meet a whole tribe....

Very glad now to have been accommodating, Alexis glanced at Nicolaus and Boyce.

“Maybe. Guess here’s your first chance of exchange with the locals, gentlemen.”