Chapter 85: Book 1: Chapter 30 (Part 1 of 3)

By the time we got the children settled down, it was approaching midday.

They’d not been very welcoming of the news that we were about to sail back to the location of the Capronids and all the adults would be leaving them alone on the ship. I’d expected them to be a bit more hopeful at the news. That we were off to seek out and rescue their parents if they were still alive. The subtext I picked up from their reaction was most of them either knew for certain their parents were dead or strongly suspected they were. The only exception was Sarah.

Anastasia solved the predicament when she used her powers to golemise several action figure toys. The mixture of entertainment and company calmed the nervier of the youngsters enough that we extricated ourselves post haste. We had to lock them in, but if worse came to worst Anastasia would be able to let them out when she returned to the dungeon.

Shana had managed to glean enough information from the kids about what they saw during their flight from the Capronids that with the help of the hand-drawn map we’d found in the school we pinpointed where the shrine and the Capronids would likely be located.

There was a second large inland lake on the island, Lake Geneserath, which the kids had to circumnavigate as they ran towards the eastern shoreline. About a mile west of the lake there was a patch of scrubbier land where the earth was rutted and cracked and less hospitable to vegetative growth. We thought this was where Dougie had established his blood shrine.

Quixbix explained that Capronids weren’t the most forward-thinking of spawned tool-using monsters and they thrived on devastation. A patch of ruined land would synergise best with their shrines and where Dougie would have been directed to build it.

We sailed Marena’s Mercy down the coastline and moored up on a sandbar that ran parallel with the southern tip of Geneserath Lake.

We debarked from the ship in full battle gear and made our way up onto the road. The road would lead us around to the bottom end of the lake before it ended in a cul-de-sac to a very nice home on the shore. The building was mostly intact, though it had clearly been ransacked.

We had about a mile and a half of wooded land to travel through, and we took our time, being as silent as we could be. We didn’t have any golems armed with assault rifles to assist us this time. Anastasia had continued to drain our prisoners of their Hit Points but with only two, one of whom we only just got back, it was a slow process. Which was beside the point, we didn’t have any suitable vessels to transform in that manner.

Quixbix had assured me that we were unlikely to meet any mobs other than the Capronid herd in the area. Apparently, the Hooved Horde were notoriously territorial and would likely have exterminated anything on the southern half of the island that had spawned so far.

This was one of the reasons why their spawning crystals were typically clustered together. To prevent the mobs from slaughtering too many of one another. The Framework obviously felt it was more sporting to let them do that to the people instead.

This married up with the description of what had happened to the kid’s families. Spawned mobs snuffled around the houses for the first few days but were either killed or went into hiding once the herd had shown up.

Roughly forty-five minutes after we set out, we crouched down behind some shrubbery as the treeline thinned and keenly observed what was happening in the patch of barren land beyond.

The blood shrine was a gruesome sight and difficult to miss. It was in the centre of the dell in front of where the land had been scarred by something in the past. Possibly an explosion or some mining accident. The hand drawn map we were working from noted the scarring but didn’t have an explanation.

The grisly edifice stood twenty feet tall, the base was made from rocks that had been gathered from nearby and they surrounded what looked like a thick rusted girder with half a dozen jagged and equally rusted metallic crossbeams. On top of the girder was mounted a large antlered effigy made from driftwood and detritus that had been gathered from the surrounding area. There was a barbed spike protruding from the tip of the effigy adding a further two feet to the totem’s height.

Hanging from the girders were a variety of bloody body parts and bones, some of which seemed to be freshly placed if the still wet blood that dribbled down from the grisly ornaments was any measure.

 

Carnaxian Blood Shrine (Tier 1)

A blood shrine to the god Carnax the Cloven-Hoofed. Blood Pool points can be used to summon Carnax’s devotees or create a portal between blood shrines.

Owner: Beaver Island Cult of Carnax (Douglas Vickers)

Blood Pool: 40

Cult Strength: level 2 (three sacrifices per day permitted.)

Durability: 100/100 (Special: Impervious as long as local cult members live.)

 

There were at least twenty Capronids in the clearing, most of them surrounded the shrine and were lowing in harsh guttural voices. Desmond’s description didn’t really do them justice.

They stood about six and a half feet tall, matching my height, and wore nothing below the waist. Their legs were covered in thick, dark, matted fur, ending in their cloven hooves. It was difficult to tell if their upper bodies were similarly hirsute as they wore chain mail armour stained with blood. Their heads were incredibly goat-like. Many of them had rotting viscera clinging to their horns and their sharp teeth-filled maws.

They were armed with a variety of different melee weapons, though they seemed to favour maces or wide-bladed cleavers. Which like the rest of their ensemble was none too clean.

 

Capronid x22

Grade: S Level: 3

HP: 400

Loot Value: Low

Threat: Moderate

XP Value: 1760

Information: Capronids or Goat-folk are a monster species that live and move in herds. They are dedicated to the god Carnax the Cloven-Hoofed. Their herds typically merge when they meet and when they encounter other cloven-hoofed monster species. These mass gatherings are referred to as the Hooved Horde. The destruction wrought by the Horde is devastating and will continue until either the Horde is comprehensively defeated and scattered to the winds or there is nothing left for them to destroy and consume.

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Unlike the animals whose likeness they bear, Capronids are exclusively carnivorous, consuming the flesh of those they slay and offer in sacrifice to their ever-hungry God.

This herd has been separated from the Horde and is currently understrength.

 

There were six survivors on the right-hand side of the clearing, all collared, which was the only ‘clothing’ they wore. Their hands were tied to a crude frame that was just high enough to make it impossible to sit or kneel without hanging from their wrists and forced them to stand. They were filthy, gaunt, exhausted, and some wept openly and whimpered.

Interestingly, all six of the remaining prisoners were women, their nudity making that plain. I wondered if that was a conscious choice from the teenaged Dougie or if the Capronids had preferred to sacrifice the larger males for that little extra blood. If things went as planned, we’d likely never know.

The reason for the prisoner’s distress was easy to spot in the centre of the barren landscape before the foul edifice that had been erected.

Placed in front of the blood shrine was a flat stone acting as a simplistic altar. Splayed across the altar and screaming blue murder in a mixture of bravado and sheer panic was a buck-naked Marco. He was being held down by a Capronid on either end. Between the altar and the shrine was a third of the goat-headed creatures and he wielded a serrated blade about a foot long, which was already coated in gore.

Cast off to the side of the altar were the mutilated bodies of two of the imprisoned holidaymakers, one male, one female. Their throats had been savagely rent wide open, presumably with that blade, and they had been gutted from their groins to the base of their sternums.

Strewn around the area were the remains of the earlier sacrifices, but there was not much left to identify. The bones that lay close enough to us that we could see them clearly had been gnawed upon, cracked, and the marrow sucked from within.

Corpses of spawned monsters would dissipate after a few hours unless they were converted by someone with an appropriate skill or ability; this was what remained of their earlier human victims.

A bit further away from the perverted religious act, closer to where we hid, were two shivering people who prostrated themselves on the barren dirt. They were naked, apart from a filthy loincloth that I was fairly sure was made from recently cured human skin, and slave collars. Their upper bodies had been caked in what smelt like a mixture of blood and goat shit.

 

Florence Hiskins (Goatblood Human)

Cultist (W) 1

Character Aptitude: Low

Loot Value: Very Low

Threat: Very Low

XP Value: 240

Current Affiliation: Cult of Carnax (Beaver Island Sect)

Faith: Weak

Fertile Receptivity: 0/102

 

Mark Tompkins (Goatblood Human)

Cultist (W) 1

Character Aptitude: Low

Loot Value: Very Low

Threat: Very Low

XP Value: 240

Current Affiliation: Cult of Carnax (Beaver Island Sect)

Faith: Weak

 

Quixbix had been right, they had managed to coerce a couple of the weaker willed or fearful slaves into converting to the worship of Carnax and strengthened the cult. Their lack of faith suggested these were relatively recent religious conversions. Made out of expediency rather than any genuine devotion.

Also, unless there was some special circumstance joining a cult gave you, they must have been Civilians that hit one thousand experience and used their second chance at character creation to take that new race and class. That could not be forced, not even for those who been collared.

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