5a: Mary Owlbears

The area of wildspace above the Gray Ridge League of Armed Neutrality is called Freespace. Unlike Fedspace to the east, Firespace to the west, and Flayerspace to the north, it is not controlled or settled by a major military power. It was once part of Flayerspace, until several decades ago when the Imperial Elven Navy sent several carrier battle groups to drive the mind flayers out in a campaign of epic and titanic battles. The elves began to colonize some of eastern moons of the area, in their slow methodical way, and they patrolled for signs of mind flayer or fire giant military activity, but they made little effort to explore or settle most of it.

The Federation gladly gave the races of the League permission to operate and settle in Freespace, aside from a few significant places marked as off-limits. The elves welcomed and encouraged the development of a non-hostile spacefaring civilization, as a buffer between the other powers and a way to keep the area from becoming a haven for halfling space pirates.

This meant that, while the various moons and archipelagos had been charted and classified based on long-range vegetation scans, there were rarely any details beyond that. Space was vast, and travelers were few in the early years of League civilization. The only thing that the crew of Fortuna's Kiss knew about the Garcia-17 archipelago was that its vegetation indicated a Level 3 ecosystem, and that there was a decent chance it had the hypoallergenic wildspace turnips that they were on a mission to collect.

And so, they were on high alert as they approached. Ra fal barked out orders, not because anyone needed to be told their jobs again, but because her voice carried a subtle but powerful enchantment that would keep everyone focused, confident, and better at their tasks.

"Sofonisba and Tsinta, scan the islands for animals or creatures. We need to know what the apex predators are. Gladys, look at the vegetation and see if you can deduce the food web from that. Mary, look behind and around us to make sure nothing is flanking or following us. Mabellyne, look for anything that resembles ship movement or architecture in any direction. I will also look out for signs of civilization."

Gladys swapped out a lens on her goggles. "Scrubland, nothing larger than bushes and shrubbery. Probably supports herds of goats. Could be anything eating them."

Everyone was silent, searching and surveying with emotions ranging from confused nervousness to grim caution. After a couple minutes, Tsinta spoke quietly.

"soft silent wingspans, drifting hungrily through space: we face owlbears."

Ra fal grunted. "Good catch. Nasty, but it could be worse; they have no ranged attacks and we know what to expect now."

Mary spoke up. "I have heard of those. They were made by a mad wizard who crossed an owl and a bear to create an unnatural monstrosity."

Gladys scowled grimly. "Maybe on land. Wildspace owlbears different story. Well-evolved apex predator, perfectly suited to environment. They fly, very silently. Watch you, wait, glide down to strike you and grab you off ship. Like owl strikes mouse. You lose crew, never know what happened.

Ra fal replied. "That will not happen to us."

Sofonisba nodded. "They are territorial, so we should not have to face more than one at a time. We can lay a trap for it, knowing its behavior."

Gladys sighed. "Yes, know job. Stand alone on deck, looking weak, with chain on ankle tethering to ship. You all hide, light it up with spells and fill it with arrows as it glides in to strike."

Gladys had already donned her armor, a haphazard collection of goblin crash safety gear and castoff dwarven munition armor segments that somehow managed to work almost as well as a suit of full plate. Her helmet looked nothing like any knight's helmet that Mary had seen: it was like a large rounded bubble over her head, made of a strange alchemical substance rather than steel, and painted bright white with a flame motif. It made her look like a demon or some other unearthly thing, and no predator would think her an easy meal while we wore it.

Gladys unstrapped her helmet and replaced it with a leather skullcap, and then threw a burlap cloak over the rest of her armor, strapped a shield to her forearm, and started slouching and hobbling around. This would never fool a person, but Mary could see that it mimicked a wounded weakling in a way that would attract most predators.

Ra fal nodded. "Aye. Mary, Mabellyne, get below decks and shoot through portholes. One hit from an owlbear's claws could kill you, so you are staying safe. The rest of us will hide in the cargo netting. Hold your fire until it is 60 feet out, we do not want to scare it away too soon."

Tsinta added, "Watch all directions. Two thumps on deck is signal - we have spotted foe."

As Mary and Mabellyne quietly followed these orders, they head Ra fal say, "Spread out and set up a crossfire. Cantrips only unless there is an emergency, we will be killing a lot of these so we need to save our spell slots."

The topside crew made a couple minor adjustments to the wings, so that the ship was drifting slowly toward the islands. Mary heard armored boots moving around the deck, and then silence. They waited.

Mary knew that she would go crazy if she stood still, so she practiced loading the crossbow: Point at ground, attach bowstring to the hook on her belt, foot through stirrup, stomp down until bowstring clicks into place, remove foot, release belt hook, raise, load the bolt, look out the porthole, and aim. After looking around for a few seconds, she would remove the bolt, pull the trigger to 'fire' at something imaginary, and start again. It was weird and strange and she did not like it. It had taken a couple of days of drills under Mabellyne's patient supervision until she was able to load the bow in a couple seconds. At least, she could when nothing scary was happening.

This continued for several minutes. Then, they heard two thumps on the port side, followed by a third thump in a different place to indicate the direction the owlbear was coming from. Mary finished loading the bow, rushed over to a porthole, and looked up in the indicated direction.

She and Mabellyne both saw it, even though the owlbear's gray feathers blended well against the sky. It was silently swooping in, not flapping, its downy owl feathers making no sound at all even though it was the size of a grizzly bear and it was moving through the air faster than a broomstick could fly.

Mary was tense, and fidgety. She tracked the owlbear with the crossbow, leading it as Mabellyne had taught her, keeping her finger alongside the stock instead of inside the trigger guard, so she would not accidentally pull it. She did not trust her ability to judge distances. When should she fire?

Mabellyne whispered, "Just wait for the elves to cast their spells, and fire when you see the magic flash."

Soon after, Mary saw two streaks of light racing toward the owlbear: an arrow glowing with the blue-white light of winter sun shining through icicles, and a beam of greenish light that reminded her of the summer sun shining through the forest. Mary and Mabellyne both fired, as they heard Ra Fal yell "Goatsucking freak!"

The green beam and Mabellyne's bolt missed, but the ice arrow hit, bursting with a crackle and coating the owlbear with a frost that coated its wings. Mary's bolt hit as well. The beast responded with a monstrous sound, a cross between an owl's shriek and a bear's roar.

Mabellyne had finished reloading her crossbow while the first shot was still sailing through the air, and launched another shot, which hit. But before Mary or anybody else could fire again, the owlbear finished its swoop, passing over the deck and out of their sight.

They heard the scraping of talons on metal, and then the ship shook as the beast slammed into the deck. There was a twang of a bowstring, a thunk of an arrow hitting flesh, and then the booming of Ra fal rushing across the deck in her massive boots, and then two sickening crunches, then a few seconds of silence, and then regular rhythmic squishy thumping.

They heard Sofonisba's slightly exasperated voice saying, "Ra fal already killed it."

Gladys replied grumpily, "Whetstones cheap. Healing expensive. Making sure it is dead."

After a bit more of this, Ra fal called out to the people belowdecks. "You can come up now. Bring a mop and bucket of water."

"And sample collection kit," Gladys added.

Mary saw that Mabellyne was starting to look sick, so she waved the goblin over to her bunk, collected the requested items, and climbed up to the deck.

Ra fal was cleaning blood and brains off of the paddle of her favorite oar, the one that had been with her so long that it had become a magical weapon. Gladys was cleaning her sword, and the elves were scanning the sky for any more threats.

Gladys looked at Mary. "You wanted to learn medicine?"

"Oh, are you hurt?"

"No, not a scratch. Operating on owlbear."

Mary looked down at the mangled remains of the owlbear. Its head had been smashed open, and then severed from its body. "Um, okay?"

"Their gallbladders make good healing potions. Going to cut the beast open, hope bladder did not get ruined by arrow, and collect it. While inside, demonstrate basic anatomy."

Thus began a messy but informative lesson. As Gladys peeled away layers of skin and flesh with her knives and surgical tools, she pointed out the anatomy of the creature, and showed where the crossbow bolts and magic spells had hit and what damage they caused as a result.

When Gladys got to the stomach and guts, she started peeling things away very carefully, noting their names and function to Mary as she did so. After she lifted away the liver, she stuck her face inside the body cavity and inhaled deeply.

"Woah, awesome! This thing is super potent! Smell that beautiful taurocholic acid!"

Ra fal asked, "What does that mean for us?"

"It means that I can make a Keoghtom's Ointment instead of just a healing potion."

Mary's face brightened in excitement. "Oh! Is that the healing thing we wanted to get but could not afford?"

"Yes. Very good tactical reserve. Ra fal now not only only source of magical healing, and can be healed if down. Significant reduction in risk of disaster. Hopefully never need it, sell for profit."

Ra fal nodded in agreement, but grumbled a cautious warning. "Only if you get it extracted and prepared right. Don't count your treasure before it's looted." Her voice changed slightly, in a way that Mary was starting to recognize as having the subtle addition of magical power. "But I have complete confidence that you will succeed in this task. All of your biology training and your field experience will combine to guide you to do your best work."

Gladys nodded, and turned to Mary. "Now, back to lesson. Give scalpel. Watch closely. Will focus on surgery. No talking."

Mary did so, and watched breathlessly. Her presence, tense and quivering with suppressed excitement, was far more distracting than if she had been breathing normally, but Gladys did not mind. The goblin was a hardened veteran, and had, several times in her career, performed battlefield surgery on wounded comrades, or chopped valuable fast-degrading bits out of dead monsters, while a battle was actually raging around her. Long before Mary ran out of breath, Gladys had flawlessly extracted the gallbladder, tied up the tubes to prevent any loss of the vital magical fluid, placed it in a sample jar with alchemical preservatives, and sealed the jar.

After that, everyone relaxed. Gladys resumed the dissection and anatomy lesson. She was very knowledgeable, and clearly cared about the subject matter, but delivered the knowledge with a fast monologue and never stopped to check if her audience was actually understanding anything. It didn't matter. Mary absorbed everything with rapt attention.

Soon, the owlbear had been reduced to a completely disconnected pile of bones and tissue scattered across all available deck space, and in some cases hung over railings. This was more Mary's doing than Gladys's. Gladys would have simply chucked things over the railing, to drift away endlessly in zero gravity, after talking about them. But Mary insisted on placing them in a kind of exploded diagram, to try to see see how they would have all connected to each other in a living being. Everyone else tolerated this with a kind of stunned fascination, and an unwillingness to take a fun toy away from an excited child.

However, after it was all done, and Mary was confident that she knew how everything worked and fit together, and they had tossed everything overboard, Ra fal glared at Mary sternly and pointed at the mop and bucket.

It took her hours to clean everything off the deck and railings, until there was no longer any sight or scent that might scare off the next owlbear they planned to lure, but she did not seem to care. As she worked tirelessly, replaying the lesson in her mind, the rest of the crew sailed to the next island to repeat the process, with the goal of exterminating all of the owlbears in the archipelago.

Next (Tsinta)