[center][b]The Thousand Lakes[/b]
[i]Voganid Country[/i][/center]

A sage old manbjork trekked through the woods alone with a trusty walking stick in hand, humming nonchalantly to himself. This was a beautiful clime, and it was good to stretch his legs every once in a while; he holed himself up in his burrow more than was healthy. It’d be good to set aside time for excursions like this one more often.

It was just about dusk now; that was mayhaps for the better, as there’d be less of the locals bumbling about to get in his way, or try to see if he smelt right. Still, it was remarkable what they’d done here! The elderly bjork found himself astride a great river now, and upstream he saw the magnificent Dam Voga. Clay, timber, and even stone all brilliantly brought together into one cohesive whole… what a marvel! That Yaroslaw Boulderbite was a blessed fellow, indeed. To toil that diligently was admirable, but to dream so large, to conjure up such grand plans, that was even more impressive!

The shuffling of footsteps announced that his oldest friend had met him there at their arranged place. Taking care to be quiet and stealthy, his favorite compatriot whispered, “They’re out there, alright.”

The former bjork could only chuckle at that; it was almost like Susanoo had expected something to go awry. “Well then, my dear friend, now our day’s labors are about to finally bear fruit. You’ll see that chewing down all those trees in that wood and bringing out here was worth it, aha-ha-ho! Now Susanoo, take up your place!”

The other bjork quickly swam across the river and then scurried off to a high hill that had been stripped bare the industriousness of the local Voganid Clan; that dam had seen nigh every good tree in a long ways chewed down. Still, it hadn’t proven too much of a nuisance to bring the materials here; he’d mostly just needed some sticks and plant fiber, anyhow. Some tallow rendered from the leavings of the shamans helped too, of course.

Night had totally fallen now, and this was a most umbral one. A great eagle soared overhead in the distance, searching for prey, but that was not the most dangerous predator out here in the cold dark. In the moonlight, spearbjorks patrolled the distant dam’s heights with torches in hand, to ward off vertans, corpse-demons, and beasts just as much as to ward off the air’s chilly bite and the moonless night’s gloom.

Drawn to Susanoo’s warmth, darkened silhouettes began making their way toward that hill. Susanoo’s vision was not quite as good, but even he would no doubt hear them; the beasts were overconfident, as they were wont to be after having had such easy picking for so long, living on the periphery of civilization’s stink and picking off the slow, the fat, the foolish who strayed too far or otherwise made themselves vulnerable.

Unfortunately for the bloodsuckers, they were the fools that night. The old manbjork giggled with glee as his discerning eyes witnessed two revolting vertans – one of the mosquito and one of the tick variety – make their way up the most obvious approach to the hilltop. Right where they were supposed to be! They didn’t even have time to so much as cry out before they stepped on the trap, falling through a few flimsy sticks covered in a thin layer of dirt and leaves, right into a pit full of sharpened sticks that had been coated in all sorts of nasty things. Oh, but there were more than two beasts in the night!

Another one, a stealthy leech-sort, had been creeping towards the bait (and it turned out that Susanoo was getting good at being bait – why, he wasn’t even crying out for help or trying to run away!) with a small line of saplings as its cover. That was a cautious one, hiding by the trees even when it was this dark outside. Unfortunately, the oversized worm was too dumb or too blind in that monster form to see the tripwire, so it crawled right over it and got skewered by a giant sharpened log that swung down from above, attached to a practical spiderweb of ropes that had run through all the trees.

The bjork was cackling louder now. “Ahoo-aha, ha-ha-ho!” his maddened voice echoed through the night. The soft sound of beating wings heralded a bat as it swooped down toward him, claws outstretched. But he was even better at being bait than Susanoo was. He didn’t even flinch as he used his trusty stick to thwack a switch at the last second, triggering a net to fly out from where he’d hidden it and entangle the bat. The thing fell into a disgraced heap and broke a wing. Its mewling stopped only after he thacked its head with his stick a dozen times. Mumbling something incoherently, he washed the blood off his stick in the river, then held it up to his eye. The thing became a spyglass, but damn! He’d missed the chance to witness the next trap go off on the far side of the river. 

By now this clan of vertans had finally realized something horrible was amiss, and grown wise to these traps. Eh, he figured they’d start running and regroup over in that one clearing over there, which was why he and Susanoo had drenched it all in that animal fat from the shaman, with a bit of oil mixed in for good measure. This was all just too easy! Mortals were so predictable. His spyglass suddenly was a bow, and the god likewise procured an arrow from where he’d set it down. This arrow was tipped with a greasy rag, and with a few curses and murmurs, he used magic to set it alight. Then he fired the burning arrow clean across the river, into that clearing, and laughed as the whole thing was almost immediately transformed into an inferno. No less than a half dozen vertans were caught in the blaze; that was probably another whole clan of the pests wiped out.

Maybe those goofy bjorks would even see the show from atop their dam! The thought made Shen laugh so hard that he almost dropped his lunchbag, but that’d be no good! He reached into it and claimed a meal, his reward for this day’s hard work: a single grain of rice. He didn’t work well on a full stomach, so he was on a diet. A bit of hunger kept his ideas fresher anyhow!

Susanoo shifted back into his draconic shape and flew from that hill over the river and back to his master. “All according to plan!” the two guffawed together in unison.

[hider=Summary]This is my Yesaris week contribution.

In Voganid territory, a strange old bjork and his pal are wandering around at night; they’re not locals, and they’re also not worried about getting grabbed by any beasts or anything. They’re quite impressed by the giant dam!

After dusk, a clan of vertans emerges to hunt; it seems they’ve been stalking the edges of bjork civilization, ekeing out a living by preying upon any that stray too far from their dams or their clanmembers. Unfortunately, this clan of vampires get absolutely VIET-CONG’D by a pit trap with punji sticks, a field soaked in oil that gets set on fire, and a few other traps that are even more absurd. Yeah, the two bjorks were Shen and his faithful dragon companion Susanoo, and everything that night went according to The Plan™![/hider]