Yellow Sands

Everything hurts when you first wake up. You cannot see. Salt and sand fill your eyes and mouth, and the tide drags at your ankles. The wind feels painfully cold at the back of your neck. Above you, unfamiliar constellations wheel beneath the looming bulk of the gas giant and the orange glow of the setting sun. Your last memories are fragmented and in disarray. You remember a storm, splintering wood, and screaming. You slipped... or were you pushed? It hurts just to think. You are on your own now, and your fate has been placed in your own hands.

Scattered across the yellow sands are the destroyed remains of a once-mighty ship, a few bodies half-buried in the sand, and whatever cargo hasn't already been washed away. In the distance, a lone figure is already picking through some of the washed-up debris. Further, towards the inland and beyond the treeline, a thin and wispy tower of smoke rises from the horizon.

A Bloody Sacrifice

The last thing you can remember was screaming, fire, and blood. There are fragments of before, of a Kiowan warparty setting upon you and your people. It all happened so fast... You're awake again, and the first sensation you feel is that of cordage tightly binding your wrists together. Then a loud aching throb in your head, and then the tightness of being confined in a tight wooden cage. The Kiowans have set up camp here, and there are at least twenty tents beneath the trees.

"Turns out this one's alive." Comes a cruel and sauntering voice, from somewhere in front of you. Outside your cage stands a Kiowan warrior, a tall and sharp-featured wolf covered all over in dark fur. "The way your club struck this one's head, I wasn't sure they were ever gonna wake up..." There were two other wolves nearby watching over your cage, one seeming younger and one much older. The older wolf, whose fur had begun to turn gray with age, barely even looked up as he was busy fashioning new arrows. "The trick is control. You control the force with which you strike, and you aim for a glancing blow. Put all your strength into it and they'll drop dead. But just enough, and you'll stun 'em for a bit." The younger wolf chirped up, wandering over to assay the captives. "I don't get why we need to wait until sunrise. Why can't we just sacrifice and eat them now? The hunters came back empty-handed, and we're all starving! This one has some good meat on 'em, just look at those legs... Let's just-" He was cut off, yelping in pain as the first wolf kicked him in the thigh. "Foolish boy! You can survive a few damned hours of hunger! We can't piss off the spirits or the elder by doing it at the wrong time!" The first one snarled. "You remember what happened last time!?"

As the two younger wolves began to loudly argue, something or someone poked you in the side. Only now did you realise that there were more captives to your left and to your right. To your right, a Yokunan doe girl with big and fearful eyes, tied to a wooden pole. "We need to get out of here. Now. Please." She whispered, voice hoarse with stress. "They are going to kill all of us."

Her gaze then turned to something behind you, to the cage at your left. Inside was a giant Ursid man, seemingly either asleep or unconscious. Hopefully not dead, given the wounds covering his body. "They... They didn't tie his wrists." The Yokunan girl softly calls out. "Maybe he could help?"

Debt-Bound

The fire crackles between you and Queen Varshala, casting dancing shadows across her black-and-gold fur. She watches you from across the flames with those calculating amber eyes, her tail curling lazily around her haunches as she studies your face for any sign of weakness. The grand room around you is heavy with the scent of burning incense and cured leather, trophies from a hundred hunts hanging from the support poles. Beyond the wooden walls, you can hear the sounds of her life: the chatter of Su'ori nobility, the clinking of ritual ornaments, the distant lowing of pack beasts outside.

"We both know why you're here, {{user}}." Her voice carries the smooth cruelty of a cat playing with wounded prey. She gestures with one clawed hand toward a rolled hide map on the low table between you and her throne. "The Yokunan deer think themselves safe in their hidden valleys. They've grown fat on trade routes they think we don't know about. They think they can pull wool over our eyes." Her ears flick back with amusement. "But I know you've walked those eastern forests. You've seen their granaries, their temples of carved wood." A pause. "You've seen their children playing in the mist. Their sentries and their hunters, too."

The weight of your debt presses down on you like stones piled on your chest. It had been five years of servitude, five years of following her war parties across the western drylands, tracking, scouting, using your skills to ensure her ambushes succeed. She had promised you freedom if you delivered this last prize: the location of the secret Yokunan settlement called Mist-Hollow. A place of healers and weavers, of old deer who tend ancestor shrines and collect offerings. A place with no warriors to speak of.

"The rains come in three days," Queen Varshala continues, leaning forward to trace a claw along the map's dry edge. "The Yokunan sentries and hunters will take shelter. There will be a window for us to move, however narrow it may be." She smiles, and her fangs catch the firelight. "Lead my warband through the valley pass before the next full moon, and your debt to me will be cleared in its entirety. You can walk anywhere you please. Back to your village, back to your family, back to whatever hole you crawled out from before my hunters first found you in that coastal village so many years ago. You will be free."

She waits, her tail stilling, her gaze unblinking. "What say you, {{user}}?"

The Marked One

"Get out! Leave this place! What you did is beyond forgiving, {{user}}! Never show your face here again! If you ever come back, we will kill you!" The people you had grown up with, the people who you once called family, they had thrown you out. Your possessions were burned, and you were forced out from your home. The memories are still fresh in your mind, just like the pattern that was carved into the flesh of your arm by the shaman. Where blood still weeps, the gnarled lines and shapes all come together to form a symbol most horrible to witness. It is a distinctive brand that forever signifies you as someone outcast by their own people. You are someone not to be trusted, markings like these are well-understood all across the continent and they are never given lightly.

What you had actually done to deserve being exiled... well, what's done is done. The plains stand open and free ahead of you, grasses rolling in the breeze like waves in coastal waters. In the distance, the terrain gives way to rolling hills and snow-capped peaks. Some found this level of isolation to be worse than death. Others saw it to be freedom.

The Masks we Wear

"You have been sent to us by the spirits, pilgrim. They have been watching out for you, and ensuring your safe arrival. We are immensely grateful.” Spoke the old crow, allowing the words hang between you like smoke. The old Innu male who speaks them is impossibly aged, his black thinning and greying with the passage of decades, his beak chipped and scarred by things that surely predated your own existence. He stands before you in the torchlit hollow of the cliff-city's central cavern chamber, where the walls drip with mineral-rich water that has been seeping through the stone since before the first people fell. Ancient stalactites hang from the ceiling.

It has been three days of pretending to be a pilgrim. Three long, exhausting days of crossing swaying rope-bridges and partaking in rituals you did not fully understand. Etu's Pride was built on the face of a massive cliff and it was a popular place for this sort of thing. But what brought you here in particular were rumours of a cache of treasure, hidden somewhere within this very cave system. But this old man stands between you and the cavern depths, and he unfortunately seems to have taken special notice of you.

Behind the elder, a woven curtain conceals an alcove. From within comes the sound of ragged breathing. “My youngest daughter.” The old crow says, his voice cracking just slightly. “She was bitten by a rock viper... The flesh is blackening, and the shaman warns of her imminent death. It has been deeply troubling for my family and I.”

His ancient eyes meet yours. They are not quite pleading. Something else. Weighing? Observing? Waiting?...

“It is my understanding you are more familiar with what lays beyond the veil of this world. Or that is what I've heard from the others.” He tilts his head, a distinctly avian gesture. “I ask you to perform the death rites for her. To help guide her soul into the sky, before her body fails entirely.”

The chamber falls silent except for that labored breathing.

A Dealer in Secrets

The oil lamp sputters, casting dancing shadows across the clay tablets and birch-bark scrolls that fill the shelves of the Kiowan royal archives. Outside, the night air carries the distant howls of wolves, a sound that still makes the fine hairs along your arms bristle even after all of these months among them. Your masters in the Zamanic south taught you well, and the Kiowans have found your skills especially invaluable. A scribe who can read the old tongues, who can cross-reference the marked feathers with the written word. Such a rarity commands respect, even among those who view your very being with suspicion.

The archive is cool, the air thick with dust and the musty smell of aged parchment. You had been tasked with cataloguing the lineage records, a tedious but important duty. The god-king's ancestry must be perfectly preserved, after all. The Kiowans believe their rulers are divinely blessed, descendants of the gods themselves. Lineage is everything, and their family trees span back to the beginning of time itself.

But tonight, your hands tremble as you hold a particular piece of parchment. It is one that should not exist. It was one that had been hidden, tucked away behind an old crate in the deepest section of the archives. Perhaps it had been a misplaced record detailing taxes or tribute, but what you find instead makes your blood run cold.

The symbol at the top of the page is unmistakable. The royal seal of divine office, but the text beneath tells a different story than the one everyone knows. It describes a child, sickly and weak, born to the previous ruler's concubine. A child who did not survive its first winter. A replacement was procured. A common whelp plucked from some poor corn-farm town to the east. The dates align. The descriptions match.

The current God-King, King Mawat of the KIowans, the divine ruler whose word is law, whose blood is said to carry the blessing of the gods themselves, is nothing more than an ordinary mortal man.

You stare at the symbols until your eyes burn. Your hands tremble as you hold the evidence. This knowledge could unravel the entire Kiowan power structure. It could start wars. End lineages. End lives. Change the fate of Missee itself.

The sun rises over the Great Longhouse. Horns blare, drums pound, and the court assembles. The god-king Mawat takes his seat upon a throne of wood, his wolfish features now seeming much less spectacular to you than ever before. Before him, petitioners kneel, warriors present trophies, and priests intone blessings. Soon, you will be called to present the daily records.

A Good Day to Hunt

The morning sun filters through the dense canopy in thin, golden shafts, illuminating the dust that your party kicks up as you move through the undergrowth. The forest here is older than any living memory. Great trunks rise around you like the pillars of some vast, forgotten hall, their bark thick with moss and creeping lichen. The air smells of damp earth and pine, and the only sounds are the crunch of leaves beneath your feet and the distant call of unseen birds.

Sera, a Yokunan doe with auburn fur and a scar across her muzzle, pauses ahead. She raises a hand, and the group halts. Her ears swivel, catching something beyond the range of your own senses. Beside her, old Borak leans on his spear, his grey-flecked muzzle creased with concentration. He's been hunting these woods since before most of your party was born, and if he's troubled, you should be too.

"The elk tracks lead this way," Sera says, her voice low. She gestures toward a break in the trees where the ground gives way to a gentle slope. "But there's something else. See how the earth is raised here? This isn't natural."

You step forward, and indeed, the terrain shifts beneath your feet. What seemed like a mossy hillock reveals itself to be something else entirely—a ridge of worked stone, barely visible beneath centuries of overgrowth. Borak crouches, running his clawed fingers along its surface. His eyes narrow.

"This is cut," he murmurs. "Chiseled. This is no work of nature. This place isn't mentioned on any maps I've seen before."

The party exchanges uneasy glances. The Yokunan know these woods, or they thought they did. And yet here, in the heart of familiar hunting grounds, the earth has given up a secret. As you push forward through the thicket, the undergrowth thins, and the trees pull back to reveal a sight that steals the breath from your lungs.

A structure rises before you. Massive, angular, and utterly alien. Grey stone blocks, perfectly straight, covered in crawling ivy and moss. Vines hang from its ledges like curtains. The entrance gapes open like a mouth, dark and waiting. No map you've ever seen marks this place. No song or story speaks of it.

Sera grips her bow tighter. "What is this place?"

In the distance, an engraved sign that's been weathered through a few centuries or even millenia of rain reads "Southern Missee Logistics LLC, Red River Storage Site". But of course, it's written in an ancient language that eludes the understanding of Missee's present-day inhabitants.

Old Borak scratches his chin, grunting in thought. "I've no idea. I'd guess it's a temple of some kind. Or perhaps a monument..."

[Free space. Write whatever you want here, or prompt the LLM to do something for you.]