| 3 |
| Huise Shanmai | |||
| Random Encounter |
Seeing as the road follows the direction you are headed in, you figure that you might as well use it for now. After all, you doubt that many dangers lurk this close to town.
And so you begin to travel sunward, slowly weaving between bamboo-covered mountains, as the cacophony of a thousand birds and bugs drowns out your hoofbeats. The humid air stills, barely swaying the canopy's highest leaves.
As the twin moons align with the sun to indicate midday, your mind begins to drift toward lunch. But before that thought can so much as reach your stomach, something else catches your attention: on the side of the road, a small glowing rabbit-like creature lies flattened in the grass.
Tsu-Ko: "A moonhopper? It must've gotten lost."
Moonflower: "It's not lookin' too good."
The moonhopper regards you with resignation through heavy-lidded eyes. It appears too exhausted to move at all.
Tsu-Ko: "That's not surprising; these creatures feed on arcane motes that are only found on Hidari and Migi. It should've gone back when it had the chance."
Honourshine: "Could we feed it some of our own magic, somehow?"
Tsu-Ko: "No. And even if you could, it needs unbound arcane, or else the magic would simply return to you."
As per Horn's Law, you recall. Still, you would feel bad leaving this poor creature to its fate.
Enter a comment
If it's indeed a moonhopper try to use the Yggdrasil Seed as a way to create unbound arcane for it to feed on. Maybe casting a simple spell while holding the Seed will do the trick?
There's a small amount of additional information in 2019-02-11. I skimmed all of Ratatosk's dialogue (e.g. 2020-08-10), but I didn't see "Ratatosk's warning". I may have missed it.
The only example I can think of isfrom 2019-04-15.
If we want to get closer to neutral, this might be a useful opportunity. There are a bunch of problems in real life that come with being strictly good, like sometimes one must be cruel to be kind, or to avoid being taken advantage of. But I don't recall this story presenting that kind of "trolley problem" dilemma.
kill the moonhopperput the moonhopper out of its misery 😈. I think it might be "cute aggression". That may be more horrific in this universe if most animals are sapient creatures.So I would say the pros are:
- Moonhopper no longer suffers.
- We don't have to waste a bunch of time flying it back to the trigon and then up to the moon (assuming we can fly there).
- We get to see if it drops something useful on death.
Cons are:
- Party members may not be ok with this.
- Trailblazer probably feels guilty if he doesn't rationalize it to himself successfully.
If all else fails, we can send a message to Twilight Sparkle asking what we can do about it, or even visit Lexicon Anathema again.
If it's too costly… consider putting the creature out of its misery or moving on.
Hmm—trying to problem solve here…
- We have nothing like palliative care drugs to ease the pain.
- We could carry it with us so it at least doesn't get eaten by a wild animal. Maybe at nighttime we can fly it closer to the sky so it can go home?
- It being a magical creature, I believe we could put it out of its misery with Dispel Strike 😈!
- We have no meat eaters in the party who would want to eat it.
- Maybe if we take the bell out and ring it, it would give off some magic that the moonhopper could eat? But if it's not subject to horn's law, that may deplete the magic in the bell. And since it's the only known source of Light magic in the world…
- We could fly back to the trigon and take it to one of the towns where it's night. That will waste time, but maybe we can split from the party and do it ourselves.
We could also try to ask Lexi if she knows a way to help this creature. I'm not a fan of only visiting her to ask for help with a problem but if a creature's live is at stake it may be justifiable.
Otherwise bringing it to a town where it's night and fly as close to a moon as possible sounds like the best plan.