Completed [Naked & Afraid Challenge] A Stranger In A Strange Land I

Tazrae finds herself a stranger in a strange land.

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Encompassing a vast wilderness filled with flora and fauna of immense proportions, the Northern Reaches include all the Talderian Forest north of the Suvan and stretch into the vast permanent tundra and ice fields outside Avanthal.

[Naked & Afraid Challenge] A Stranger In A Strange Land I

Postby Tazrae on February 8th, 2021, 4:57 am

Timestamp: 50th of Winter, 520 A.V.


Day 1

Tazrae stretched luxuriously, still halfway in Nysel’s realm. She’d been sleeping deeply and dreaming of crickets singing in the night. Duncan was tracing a slow luxurious trail across her left thigh with his tongue and gently tickling her on her other thigh with what she assumed was his fingers. She blinked, breathed deeply, and inhaled the fresh raw scent of the forest all around her. That didn’t seem right. Syka’s warm tropical scent should be filling her senses. Opening her eyes, she realized she was sprawled out on her stomach in a bed of ferns in a night-dark forest. She could feel soil patches between the growth beneath her. Leth blazed full overhead sending tendrils of light down through the thick crown of trees above her. Half turning her head, expecting to see Duncan, she saw instead a huge slug slowly working its way up her thigh leaving a trail of slime in its wake. The slime glittered in the moonlight, emphasizing what was crawling upon her person.

Tazrae shrieked and lunged upwards, swiping at the slug on her body. The creature was flung off into the hazy green blue of the underbrush illuminated around her. Shuddering, Tazrae climbed to her feet, looking around. The other tickling was explained easily enough by the ferns gently moving in the air flow within the woods at her side. It was dark, so completely dark, that she could recognize nothing of where she was.

Her heart started to pound in her chest. Tazrae’s breathing became rapid. She half crouched, half stood, trembling as she realized how vulnerable she was. This was not home… not the place she had at least come to know as home. Scanning the area, the place looked like it was the land of giants. The trees towered over her, arching into the sky but not like the jungle denizens. These trees looked like cedar and hemlock, spruce and pine… only supersized. Even the ferns she’d been bedded down in were larger than they should be, arching over her, and partially obscuring her view.

Taldera. She had to be in the land of the giants. There was no other explanation for it. Tazrae looked around, having no true sightline in this area for her view was obscured by living walls of green that were far larger than they should have been. In the distance though, hung from what looked like a toadstool big enough to actually use as a stool, Taz spotted something that looked like it did not belong. Still scared out of her mind and afraid to admit it, the Innkeeper moved that direction. She wove between the green growing beneath the trees, grass that brushed her wrists or larger, and headed towards the pale luminous fungi in the distance.
Last edited by Tazrae on February 8th, 2021, 5:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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"A mark of an open mind is being more committed to your curiosity than your conviction.
The goal of learning is not to shield old views against new facts, but to revise old views with new facts.
Ideas are possibilities to explore, not certainties to defend."


Garden Beach Syka The Protea Inn

"Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows."
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Tazrae
Be savage, not average.
 
Posts: 1335
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Joined roleplay: May 3rd, 2020, 2:02 pm
Location: Syka
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[Naked And Afraid Challenge] A Stranger In A Strange Land I

Postby Tazrae on February 8th, 2021, 4:59 am

It was a burlap sack, sure enough, hung from the toadstool directly within her line of sight. Tazrae reached out with trembling hands and took the item, carefully pulling it from where its long strap was draped over the crown of the mushroom. Her feet were chilled by now, so too was the rest of her, though her mud caked toes from the damp earth around her were the worse. She peered into the bag and saw that it indeed held some things. Upending it, a Flint and Steel, thread-bare cotton cloak, broken metal short sword, and a leather waterskin tumbled out. A folded parchment piece lodged in the mouth of the burlap bag.

She carefully retrieved the parchment and unfolded it to reveal a map. It was a crude thing, as if a child drew it. It had a small x where she assumed, she was since there was a toadstool with the bag sketched on it. Then further away, to the south and east, was another larger X. A major body of water was off to one side southwardly and a river was inked in. A huge lake was to the west. A Y-shaped peninsula flowed from the southeast border of the lake out into the larger blue portion of the map perhaps indicating the Suvan Sea. Along the way showed a series of streams and several things that looked like cougars, bears, and a bird of prey. They all looked overly large in terms of the scale of the map. The map had her traveling the eastern edge of the lake and out onto the tip of the peninsula near what looked like a river exiting the lake. It had to be one of the world's shortest rivers, sluggish and connecting the lake to the Inland Sea. Caves were sketched into the map at the X. Her knowledge of Mizahar geography was limited to what she’d learned in her schooling as a child… but if she had to hazard a guess, she was somewhere along the northern portion of the Suvan Sea near Karjin.

But if she was right, Karjin might as well have been millions of miles away. Wilderness and a stretch of lake water separated her from an easy hike to the city. It would take a season to hike around the huge lake and to where she thought the city should lie.

“What in the world is going on?” She asked herself quietly. Tazrae had no memory of getting to this place. She had no idea where she was. The only thing she had to go on was the rumors she’d heard of a land of giants from the travelers in both her own Inn and the Inn her parents used to run in Riverfall. The stories were of a fantastical land in Taldera where Talderian creatures came from…. a word synonymous with huge and thus a place of giant trees and overly large animals.

But this bag… this bag meant someone was around. This bag meant she wasn’t here by chance. Taz took another look into it. It had no food in it and her stomach grumbled. She frowned and took a moment to find a sapling large enough for a good walking stick. She cut it with the broken short sword, hacking it off at the ground using the weapon like an ax. It wasn’t the neatest cut, but travel was going to wear the staff down. Then, on the thick side, she carefully split the end by putting a + across the shorn off end in a series of two cuts that crossed themselves. Then she sharpened the four blunt ends. Placing the broken short sword back into the burlap bag, she added the map, waterskin, and flint, and steel. The threadbare cloak she wrapped around herself. Then she began to hike.
Image
"A mark of an open mind is being more committed to your curiosity than your conviction.
The goal of learning is not to shield old views against new facts, but to revise old views with new facts.
Ideas are possibilities to explore, not certainties to defend."


Garden Beach Syka The Protea Inn

"Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows."
User avatar
Tazrae
Be savage, not average.
 
Posts: 1335
Words: 1916653
Joined roleplay: May 3rd, 2020, 2:02 pm
Location: Syka
Race: Human
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[Naked And Afraid Challenge] A Stranger In A Strange Land I

Postby Tazrae on February 8th, 2021, 5:00 am

She roughly followed the direction she thought the map indicated by tracking Leth’s light through the sky. At breaks in the canopy, she studied the sky for familiar patterns and found the north star after some spinning and staring. She moved away from it, southwards, a direction she could more easily go during the day when Syna was out and tracking across the sky. It was troubling that a lot of the stars were unfamiliar to her. Tazrae knew Mizahar was a big place, but how in the world had she gotten so far from home?

Bare feet treaded lightly thorough the soft duft of the underbrush. She stepped on green plants that were fragrant when she bruised and broke them with the exposed soles of her feet. The going wasn’t easy and drew more treacherous as she ran into scatterings of cobbles on the ground indicating a stream. She paused, wondering if she should fill her waterskin, but opted not too because the stream while flowing nicely, was big enough that it could be coming from the lake or some other contaminated source of water. Instead, she began looking for things she could use to survive the trip to the big X along her way.

The staff was a start.

But she needed a weapon more than anything. So, she found a cobble that fit her needs, plucked from the edge of a stream, and she used the short sword to pry open the four prongs of the staff end she’d sharpened. She drove the cobble into the shaft to spread the prongs and secured it by using the hilt of the broken short sword to bang it in deep. The tines were then spread wide, giving Tazrae not only a suitable weapon for defense but also a nice spear to try for some fish if she got the opportunity.

She really needed to wrap the tines to secure the stone within the spread tines. To do that she needed some cordage. Taz had only a small lesson in cordage… but Randal had told her about cordage in other places. The jungle was full of vines. It was draped with vines of all shapes and sizes. Here, there was a difference. But she remembered the advice. Look for dead wood, a standing tree or a poplar that would provide long fibrous strands she could weave together to make cord out of. Taz kept walking, following the stream, but also kept scanning looking for food and something dead. What in the world was going on? The phrase kept repeating in her head over and over. She missed the jungle, missed the salt air, and felt tiny and isolated in this strange land.

Randal’s words washed over her from one of their training sessions out in the jungle. Half the battle of survival was mental. She thought not at all about it by his side. He had given her confidence and security just by his presence. Tazrae hadn’t really understood what he meant by the physiology of survival in anything but theory. Out here, it was in full practice. She had to keep herself busy. Cordage. Cordage would keep her busy. Because she had to eat and in order to eat she had to catch some food and to do that she needed to set get some cordage made. And luckily it was something she could do as she walked.
Image
"A mark of an open mind is being more committed to your curiosity than your conviction.
The goal of learning is not to shield old views against new facts, but to revise old views with new facts.
Ideas are possibilities to explore, not certainties to defend."


Garden Beach Syka The Protea Inn

"Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows."
User avatar
Tazrae
Be savage, not average.
 
Posts: 1335
Words: 1916653
Joined roleplay: May 3rd, 2020, 2:02 pm
Location: Syka
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
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Medals: 5
Mizahar Grader (1) Overlored (1)
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Syka Seasonal Challenge (1)

[Naked And Afraid Challenge] A Stranger In A Strange Land I

Postby Tazrae on February 8th, 2021, 5:01 am

Walking was far better than sitting still and doing nothing. At least with a map and a big X to head too, she had some sort of goal. And with a goal she had something to fill her day with. Food, water, and shelter were her priorities. And with some of that she would need cordage. So, she walked, following water downstream and walked with her bare feet. The walk was nothing close to pleasant. It was dark and the forest was filled with fog. She had only Leth’s light to walk by and a general idea of where she was going. Her feet hurt, bruises forming and cuts nicking her skin. The going wasn’t easy and the thread bare cloak offered her no protection. It wasn’t remotely warm. And the worse part was that she couldn’t actually see any dead trees. In the dark, all the trees looked the same.

So she walked until exhaustion struck her and she found a sheltered spot just as the sky was lightening. As luck would have it, the snag she decided to lean against was a poplar with dried bark already peeling. Putting her back to the tree that looked to be lightening struck, she leaned there thankful it wasn’t raining and rested a bit. Shivering under the cloak, she closed her eyes and tried to get some rest against the shelter of the dead tree. She wrapped the thread bare fabric around herself more tightly and then layered the burlap bag over it to create extra thickness. Then she leaned back and closed her eyes hopeful that nothing would eat her if she did indeed manage to sleep.

It seemed like just a moment, but it was far longer. When Tazrae blinked her eyes open, sunlight streamed around her. A dragonfly as big as a sparrow perched on a bit of log sticking out of the stream. Tazrae widened those same eyes at the huge iridescent wings that gently fanned the air as the creature arched its tail and deposited what Tazrae assumed was an egg on the underside of that same log. Nature was everywhere here, but not in the way it was in the jungle. It was thinned out, tamer, seemingly with more room than the jungle had. In the jungle, there was life everywhere, but here, there was room to breath and space to walk. Beneath the trees away from the stream there was open air where herds of deer and elk passed through. Tazrae could tell they existed and came through regularly. There were trails through the trees, almost roads, full of hoof prints that churned up the soft soil and turned the ground into wide muddy trails of hoof prints that Tazrae assumed lead from water source to water source.

But taking her attention now was the deadfall she was leaned against. It was a snag tree, not yet having rotted to the point where the tree fell. Instead, it was still standing with the bark well dried. Tazrae was more than able to grasp the bark and peel upwards, pulling at it and taking it off the dried trunk in big strips. The young Innkeeper recognized the gift she was given and took time to strip the tree all the way around from stump to arching branches. In the end she had a large pile of curled bark that she knew could be cordage. It wasn’t so much the bark itself she wanted, but the fibrous strips inside the bark.
Image
"A mark of an open mind is being more committed to your curiosity than your conviction.
The goal of learning is not to shield old views against new facts, but to revise old views with new facts.
Ideas are possibilities to explore, not certainties to defend."


Garden Beach Syka The Protea Inn

"Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows."
User avatar
Tazrae
Be savage, not average.
 
Posts: 1335
Words: 1916653
Joined roleplay: May 3rd, 2020, 2:02 pm
Location: Syka
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
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Medals: 5
Mizahar Grader (1) Overlored (1)
One Thousand Posts! (1) One Million Words! (1)
Syka Seasonal Challenge (1)

[Naked And Afraid Challenge] A Stranger In A Strange Land I

Postby Tazrae on February 8th, 2021, 5:03 am

Hunger gnawed at her stomach and Tazrae was thirsty as well. The water in the stream was tempting, but she knew she needed to hold off until she could get safer water and fill the empty waterskin she had. Cordage would help with that and skipping a meal or two wouldn’t be amiss since Taz’s body had some soft spots that she could afford to smooth out. So she ignored the rumbling of her stomach and began working on the strips of bark. It took little effort to break the hard part of the bark off the long sinuous fibrous strips located inside the bark. All she needed to do was lightly crumble the bark between her finger tips and the hard parts flaked off leaving long strips she could then weave into cordage.

The long fiber strips were easy to deal with. She simply spun them into long strands by twisting them between her finger and thumb in a continuous motion where she added shorter bits of the strips to the bits she was twisting, making a thick solid strand of thin cord. When she had enough of the thin cord, she doubled it up and wove two cords together, making a more solid thicker cord. It was a good way to pass the time, and she got really decent cordage out of it. The poplar was a good choice. By the time she had a triple strand of the cordage woven together, she had decent rope. And the first thing she did was use the cordage to secure the stone in her spear by weaving it around the prongs she had created with her + cut to more securely keep the stone wedged within the wood.

Tazrae kept braiding cordage until the sun fell from the sky and moonlight coated the stream and the old dead tree. She had quite the collection of it as the darkness fell. Owls began to hoot and the night song of frogs and crickets filled the air. It wasn’t the familiar jungle sounds.

The young woman’s stomach was screaming for food and her throat was parched by the time the sun dropped, so she knew what her priorities were for the next day. The task… the act of making cordage had calmed her though. And walking while looking for the perfect tree for cordage had calmed her and occupied her mind. Now that she was through the pile of bark strips and had turned all the inner cambion material into cords, Taz had empty hands and an idle mind. It hit her all at once that she was alone, out in the wilds, and had no idea how or why it had happened. She missed the Inn and wondered what her residents were doing at the moment and even what she would be making for dinner.

Word Count: 2734
Image
"A mark of an open mind is being more committed to your curiosity than your conviction.
The goal of learning is not to shield old views against new facts, but to revise old views with new facts.
Ideas are possibilities to explore, not certainties to defend."


Garden Beach Syka The Protea Inn

"Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows."
User avatar
Tazrae
Be savage, not average.
 
Posts: 1335
Words: 1916653
Joined roleplay: May 3rd, 2020, 2:02 pm
Location: Syka
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes
Medals: 5
Mizahar Grader (1) Overlored (1)
One Thousand Posts! (1) One Million Words! (1)
Syka Seasonal Challenge (1)

[Naked & Afraid Challenge] A Stranger In A Strange Land I

Postby Tazrae on May 29th, 2021, 2:25 am

Grading


Logic +1, Observation +5, Investigation +2, Land Navigation +3, Cartography +1, Psychology +2, Wilderness Survival +5, Endurance +5, Construction +1

Logic: Determining One’s Location Based On Observation, Land Navigation: Telling The Direction By The Stars, WS: Making Cordage, WS: Making A Staff, WS: Making A Weapon, WS: Staying Calm, WS: Giving Oneself Tasks, WS: Making Food, Water & Shelter Her Priorities, Observation: Contrasting Environments, Endurance: Hiking Through Unfamiliar Woods, Endurance: Ignoring Hunger/Thirst,
Image
"A mark of an open mind is being more committed to your curiosity than your conviction.
The goal of learning is not to shield old views against new facts, but to revise old views with new facts.
Ideas are possibilities to explore, not certainties to defend."


Garden Beach Syka The Protea Inn

"Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows."
User avatar
Tazrae
Be savage, not average.
 
Posts: 1335
Words: 1916653
Joined roleplay: May 3rd, 2020, 2:02 pm
Location: Syka
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes
Medals: 5
Mizahar Grader (1) Overlored (1)
One Thousand Posts! (1) One Million Words! (1)
Syka Seasonal Challenge (1)


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