The Day of Thunder

Otaku is concerned to make sure everyone on the potential front line of defense has a finger of jade, to the greatest extent possible. A) higher risk of corruption, B) badasses are usually scarier than normies when they break bad. Surveying our jade supplies sounds like exactly the sort of thing one...

"Hiruma-san also said to burn the beasts' bodies. He had jade on him." Otaku nods and gives Tsubame another pat on the shoulder before stepping away to wash her hands with some of the boiled water stored at the camp--so as not to get horse sweat and hairs all over the simple bandage she's about to a...

Otaku smiles in clear relief as the enchanted water mends Tsubame's wounds. The horse nickers and pulls his head away from Otaku's hands to nose curiously at the wet spots on his forelegs--intelligent enough to be surprised that he's all better so suddenly, but not quite enough to understand why or ...

"Oh, he'll stand if I hold him." Otaku gives Tai an obviously grateful look. "Thank you. I--" she opens her hands, abandoning for now the quest for first aid supplies. "My husband, Ide, is good with a needle. I would turn to him or my brother for this, usually," she admits softly but without embarra...

We broke a local temperature record from 1946 today, so that's fun. (Well, it was actually lovely except for the doom part.)

Otaku loops up Tsubame's lead rope so he won't step on it, trusting that he won't wander off. The horse does indeed stand obediently at the edge of the campsite, shifting his weight to favor his worst-injured leg but obviously well-trained to stay where he's put. Otaku crouches down to pick through ...

" I'm fine." Otaku half-shrugs this off, lifting and dropping one shoulder. "It's Tsubame. His legs need cleaning and wrapping." She tugs gently on the lead rope, clicking her tongue, and the horse limps forward, the firelight illuminating an ugly animal bite above the knee on one front leg and a mi...

A large, pale-ish shape looms up indistinctly on the edge of the light from Tai's fire... and resolves in a moment into a short woman leading an unusually tall and large gray horse. The woman is still wearing a rough cotton arming jacket, streaked with sweat and creased where armor straps pressed in...

"That is the most likely," Otaku agrees in her quiet voice. "We must track where this creature came from. If it got through the fog where we can't... or if it came here some other way." Her lips thin in a pensive frown. "We'll not get far with that in the dark. Tomorrow, then." She glances at Naraku...

"Yes," says Otaku to Genji, and then "Behave," to the horse, just in case. Tsubame lowers his heat demurely and deigns to snuffle Genji's hand. "My lady rides better than any mortal," she agrees in her soft voice. "Tsubame here was foaled out of one of her mares." She considers his question for a lo...

:o Oh no, not that dream. And then at the head of the room seated on his majestic throne was the Emperor himself, the kami Shiba looked at her with a face of barely disguised impatience "Well Yoshitsune-san? You were giving your proposal to Imperial court? The plan you called court for, we are all h...

“If the spirits of air and earth gave us speed, we should use it well.” “Tell the healer to take great care. The beast’s blood looks filthy, and it’s all over her,” Otaku issues a quiet warning and nods at Akutou. “I never saw wolves attack like that, unless they were starved,” she adds gravely. “No...

"Thank you. You've fought hard too," Otaku says softly, to the village woman, swinging out of the saddle. Her sword is already cleaned and sheathed. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she bends and begins inspecting Tsubame's injured legs, relieved to see that the bite and claw woulds look like the...

The nightmares are especially bad in content tonight. Shinjo, her face split in a terrible grin, bathed in the blood of Otaku's children and her own. Ide crushed beneath hooves of obsidian. Mother and Jin and her brothers, skeletal with starvation, all tearing one another apart with claw-like finger...

When she has time to think about it, Otaku will be surprised that the smaller, seemingly normal wolves—normal-looking, at least—didn’t flee when their pack leader went down and they found themselves outnumbered. Do they have the mad sickness? Or is this more work of Jigoku? She’ll have to ask a heal...

Yeah, dice luck has been uneven this fight. Definitely a thing that happens. But at least we've been fortunate that the unevenness is distributed sort of across the party and not all in favor of the monsters/against the PCs

Otaku sizes up the situation with a hunter's eye. The great monster is clearly badly injured--all to the good, but she mislikes that bizarre dark fluid that seems to serve it in place of healthy blood. Tsubame has open wounds on his forelegs. What will happen if she presses him to attack the disgust...

Otaku gives Tsubame gentle signal to halt as Genji bows. She listens gravely, brows raising a bit, and then bows from her saddle. "Kind words, son of Lord Hantei," she says in her quiet but sweet voice. Tsubame switches his tail and paws the turf, striking an elegant pose to show that he, at least b...

With the last villager safe, Otaku's attention turns to the fight. "They're ours now, friend," she hums to Tsubame, and her sword flashes out sharp as sunlight, mercilessly wounding the wolf. With an equine squeal of mixed rage and delight, the gray warhorse, smelling blood, rears up onto his hind l...

In a fallow bit of pasture somewhere not far from the Imperial camp, a gray and white streak of horse with a small rider perched atop has been alternately trotting and cantering in loops and figure eights for a while, working out any lingering stiffness from the long journey to this village. Otaku h...