The Sullen Crew were categorized as an army. With their weapons and tactics it was an easy mistake to make. Their numbers alone were mercurial, but they would usually draw even with their enemy despite facing the defenses of landlocked realms. It seemed a macabre happenstance that their copper-green armor with their magenta lights between their plates always had enough when they needed it; blades, fire-powder, magic. Either the lands that they visited were cursed, or The Sullen Crew was blessed.<br/><br/>But they were not a military force by convention. Once absorbed there were no real rules to follow, only the memory in your country or city or town that they'd been there, like an uninvited, forceful and absolute lover. Similar to if a king should visit a farmer's house, when his wife and daughters were home. Marauders would have been closer, the way they pillaged and reveled. But you would have been correct, rather, if you identified them as a Hunting Party.<br/><br/>At their proportions, there was a skill and mind for any terrain and warfare. It seemed ludicrous that they'd follow you down your caves, or pull your dragons from the sky, but perhaps it should have been further inconceivable by now to think that The Sullen Crew had a match in the world, no matter the battlefield. When taken up, boys and daughters became different, changed until their mothers called them strangers. It seemed the craft that bound the hunters together was stronger than even early tied heartstrings.<br/><br/>And in the middle of all the murdering ghosts sat a calamity. The tool using-race, of cowards born, and by weak hands raised. Nobody expects much from man, but man had always believed enough in themselves. He wore the pretty of the elves on his skin, which made him exceptional - bloodline of his mother, they said, because he did look like a whore, pleasing to the eye and the cock - but he had knives in his cheekbones and at the corners of his eyes that made his a very threatening welcome. His fractal colored irises told the story of the best tool yet. Magic. No doubt was he connected to the source of all this unholy help, somehow.<br/><br/>And he endowed himself with artifacts even if they cost the life of entire echo systems. His long hair was pinned up with little gems, like rainbow stars in the black night of his strands, refracting as much of the spectrum as his eyes did. His armor was knitted in chains and exposed his sectioned abdomen, and his boots were made of scales from some unfortunate beast, hard-to-fell, likely. The beast he rode did not mind, it seemed, with its hulking shoulders protecting him and its short neck low for his vision while four legs would take him as fast as he wanted. Frungling, a leader, but without its pack. Seemed he'd tamed it to think The Sullen was its family.<br/><br/>Today he was hunting smaller fare through the Arton Woods with its stone and iron trees among the living ones. The beginning of these woods were popular for the stones found on the stone branches, but the beastiary grew too lush deeper in. Many half breeds made this their refuge, since they spoke well with the dangerous animals, but armies tended to stay away. Today he'd been running after a failing band, and was looking forward to see what their hearts contained, given their tightly knit camaraderie.<br/><br/>Rysalt of the humans, King of Crew, liked to try the more delicious things in the world, and he'd always had a palled for larger scale misery when he got to direct it. It seemed this bunch were meant to be heroes, and so it would be sweeter to interrupt their mythos. The best history is unwritten.<br/><br/>He had brought a larger party than needed, and his Frungling was the fastest among the available mounts. It was a good idea for the band to run from them, and they might have forever, if Rysalt hadn't already navigated these woods, and knew things would get bad, as in thorny, further ahead. It wasn't impossible to surmount, but it would cost them. He was interested to see what their leader would decide - she'd seemed their beacon - in this trial.<br/><br/>The forest was already too dense for any path that would host the hunting party, and their axes had to find the few wooden trunks to make way. As the men brushed against the metal trees they sang, and the sound was sad and ominous. Rysalt smiled to himself and looked around at the iron-cut-through greenery, and wondered how far even the very motivated band would go in this terrain. He had a surprise for them, when they met.