Uilliam had seen a bit of Layonara, A good portion of Mistone, even a mining trip to the Barbarian Isle region. But always he came home to Hlint, and the Seilwood Forest. Hunting had become a past time of his, the cougar, jaguar, brown bear, and others were usual game. But it was to the breeds of giant poison spider that he felt drawn to hunt.
The rules of hunting these creatures were different then the rest. You had to be very stealthy, but in a different way. With these creatures you just did not sneak up and ambush them. For they were always stalking themselves, to do so would be suicide as the other three or four in the nest ambushed you, turning the tails on the would be hunter. With these creatures you had to take your time, learn to walk amongst them with out their knowledge. And once you knew precisely where each one was, slay them with deliberate intention making no chance for them to alert the others in their nest. In short, you had to kill like they did.
Uillaim had and was still shaping his ability for stealth against these worthy opponents. And they were ruthless task masters, punishing mistakes with painful poison filled bites that sapped strength and coordination. Many times did he still fall to there ability to quickly overpower with a swarm. And he’d often find himself waking in Hlint, to have to venture back out to the wood and pray at his grave marker. But they had bettered him, he was now stealthy to the point that he could walk, crawl, and sit motionless. Even slipping through the strands of their web which warned of a trespasser to all the spiders in the nest, when the silk strand was touched like a trip wire. Now he was probably the same to them as the passing of the breeze, his movement so coordinated and quit.
While he respected the spiders, he had no love for their neighbors and allies the Ettencaps. These creatures were monstrous humanoids in his opinion. Often he had taken to observing them from the shadows. They never knew he was there, if he wanted to he could reach out and touch the back of their head. But it was what they did when alone that made him dislike their very nature. How they played with their still living food, injecting their deadly silk under a deer’s skin. Then letting the animal stagger about, retching in agony from the pain as the deer soon fell lame. It’s body convulsing on the ground, till even its lungs were affected by the poison, breathing painfully quick, then deathly slow. It was a well known fact that Ettencap poison was not what killed you, it was your heart giving out from the strain it put on your body. And just as the doomed animal was finally too exerted to move, and the twitching had stopped, before it could die the Ettencaps often bashed its head rapidly with their crude spine covered club like forearms, which often just smashed the animals head completely off in a final bit of horrific torture.
All ready Uilliam had taken to coating his throwing darts with their silk, put in a liquid poison form. A funny twist of nature had made the Ettencap not immune to their own toxin delivered in this way. And even though it did not amuse Uilliam when he saw their reaction, when the thing realized it was now feeling what its victims felt expressed by the blank terror in its multiple eyes, but the irony of it was not lost on Uilliam. How the Ettencap would stagger about, its legs wobbling, arms flailing beyond its own ability to control them, till it fell huffing on the ground. It had only gotten to that point a few times though. Usually Uilliam was quick to slash their necks, or the major arteries of their inner arms and legs, dropping the creature dead from blood loss quick and easy.
And this was how Uilliam was spending his days and nights of late. Out in the woods of Seilwood, learning to become a stalker, and silent killer from some of the best nature had yet produced. He knew it was having an effect on his mind, making him more cold and distant. But he was starting to not care about it as well. For to survive in a world like Layonara, a Halfling had to truly become as hard as a Coffin Nail.
The End.
//OCC Note: After a few trying and bad days, where Uilly has had no luck with anything from crafting to exploring. I think this is a way to start playing him different, to reflect the bitterness he would start feeling with many failures. It perhaps might even be the start toward moving him in a Neutral Evil alignment from True Neutral, I’m not sure yet though.
