Saturday, January 12, 2019

D6x6 Feral Tribes

It’s not so uncommon for a child to be lost in the wild, by accident or deliberate action. It is less common though for that child to live, to learn to survive without fire and salt and iron. Less common still for that surviving child to find others like them, to band together rather than tear the other’s throat out for the sweet meat and rich marrow. Rarest of all for this to continue, for the pair to become a pack, and then a tribe, and then a menace only spoken of in whispers by the folk who once lost them.




Tried a slightly different format this time, pretty happy with how it turned out and how much fucking faster it is to just make 36 entries instead of 100.

D6They speak
1in the howls of wolves.
2with hooting, like apes.
3with the birds in their own songs, and hear in turn of what the birds have seen from above.
4with the sibilant syllables of serpents, a never-ending hissing din punctuated by tongues tasting the dust.
5in grunts accentuated with conceptually dense and subtle gestures.
6in tongues, true glossolalia, understood by all.
D6They kill
1with sharpened bones worn along their nails and teeth.
2with sling-stones hurled from strips of hide.
3without hesitation or remorse. They are the only real people.
4alongside mangy, long-clawed dogs.
5hurling venomous animals in leafy bundles.
6with traps that blend in to the dirt and vegetation.
D6They eat
1their old and their weak.
2only what they’ve personally killed.
3nerves to take in the muscle memory, livers to cleanse sickness from the body.
4the meat and milk of tree-climbing goats they took from passing shepherds.
5strips of dry meat and skin, tough enough to be chewed apart over hours.
6like tigers do, mouths driven into ribcages to gobble viscera, faces crusted with dried gore and flies.
D6They sleep
1in the soft loam.
2in a cave that goes deeper than they care to find out.
3in bundled sheets and aprons that remind them of a home all but forgotten.
4piled against one another, sharing warmth.
5clutching sharp shards of rock.
6propped up against a tree or stone, eyes wide open.
D6They know
1the hungers of the thing that shares their hunting ground.
2words that will cause even the most seasoned ranger they’re whispered to to lose their way.
3things that civilized sorts have forgotten.
4never to step foot in the ruins that attract so many from afar.
5how to appease the spirits with offered blood.
6how to mix stinking unguents that attract and aggravate stinging insects.
D6When you enter their territory they will
1seek to test their mettle against your metal.
2watch and wait for weakness, their eyes shining at the edge of torchlight in the night.
3steal what is yours and make it theirs, kleptomaniac consumption.
4laugh at the clumsiness of your marching, throw rotting fruit at the back of your head, always remain just out of reach.
5try to raise you as one of their own, punish you cruelly for disobedience and failure.
6give you to their god.

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