Subj:	 [ffml] [MW] When the Cat's away...
Date:	00-08-01 10:42:35 EDT
From:	larathia@mcs.net (Larathia)
Reply-to:	ffml@egroups.com
To:	ffml@egroups.com

Thurin ruffled the feathers of his brown wings in annoyance. He was one of
a very few avariel trained in the use of the longbow as well as the
crossbow, and this had earned him the distinction of being one of his
Captain's uber-flight leaders. But the two flight-captains that would
travel with him on patrol weren't at all pleased with his greater-than-thou
attitude.

He wondered for a moment how humans handled this sort of thing. It was
evident that humans slotted themselves into position like eggs in a basket,
always the same eggs in each basket, answering to the same leader. How did
they choose which leader suited them? It was baffling. Almost as baffling
as his very independent-minded Captain bowing to their wishes. Well. The
Captain had made it quite plain that anyone who tried to pre-empt her would
end up very permanently in her bad books, so he'd leave it at that. He knew
he was good - but he also knew he was nowhere near *that* good. And that
none of the other seven uber-captains were that good, either.

He'd got his own position purely on widely recognized merit; he wasn't at
all well-liked, but no one denied his skill with bow and crossbow. That was
how rank should be determined; you got to be good enough that everyone knew
it, and nobody objected. In his private heart of hearts, he believed that
he would lead the Guard back home if he had stayed. His own flight followed
him because they agreed with him; he was - not the best. But right next to
it. The other two flights had linked up with him because he had a taste for
wild and reckless battle, and they were getting bored. Tomorrow, perhaps,
there would be two different flights flying with him, depending on how much
excitement transpired today.

The other two captains finally approached to stand behind him, one on
either side. This was the signal that they were ready to fly. He launched
himself skyward, and the flights followed him.

He turned to his flight-captains. "I think we will take the Spiralling
Clover attack," he said to them. "We are given the plains to hunt today, so
they will see us coming. Stay high until I signal to strike."

The other two nodded, flashing smiles to each other in the way of women the
universe over. One, Sh'ria, had joined him because she hated his guts and
was looking for evidence of incompetence to report to the Captain. The
other, Liire, had followed him out of a strong desire to persuade him to
visit her bed. Somehow, their disagreement over him didn't preclude their
being friends, but women had ever been a mystery to him.

Since the first battle, there were only twenty mages, and the Captain had
spread them as evenly as possible across the attack squads. Today, he had
two. He sought out their green wings, and signaled them to fly over.

"Your will, flight-captain Thurin?" said one.

"The moogles must see us coming," he said. "How strong a whirlwind can you
summon?"

The two mages discussed this back and forth for a few minutes, then one
said, "We think...sixty miles an hour, sir. But not for very long, and we
would not be able to do anything else."

Great. Two mages, basically magelings. But it was enough. "Do that," he
said to them. "As soon as we are in range, summon your whirlwhind at the
very center of their camp. Leave the rest to us. When you see us enter
Clover formation, if you are still holding the wind, let it go."

The mages nodded, looking a bit unhappy; the spell would take all their
concentration and leave them vulnerable if others got caught up in the
battle. They flew back to their respective positions.

There! A camp of moogles, in their usual number of fifty. They had a
perimiter watch, and he could see that at least a few of them had thought
to watch the skies also, for there were crossbolts in the air. Not that any
could reach as high as a cruising flight of avariel. As the moogles cried
their alarm, the flights began to descend to battle-height, and the two
mages began their spell.

In the center of the camp, a dust devil arose. Quickly it gained strength,
its calm center widening out to a diameter of ten feet, centered around a
jutting rock. In a short time, a very narrow tornado column arose, pulling
the moogles' shots awry, sucking in the closer tents, and even a dozen
moogles who had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The
wind-column whirled everything about, pushing its payload to near the top
of the column.

But the moogles had magic, too. As the flights entered into a wide,
spiralling pattern somewhat wider than the wind-column but centered on it,
three moogles ran out some hundred feet from the tornado, and started
dancing. Aiming their dance at the column, they managed to disrupt the
mages' spell. The tornado vanished, sending its contents off at high speed
in random directions. The mages, their spell broken, fell out of formation,
clutching their heads in pain.

Thurin stared in astonishment. The moogles had magic! "Clover attack!" he
cried. "Healers to the mages!" Immediately, half a dozen blue-winged
avariel broke rank and assisted the mages, who were losing height fast in
their pain.

The remaining avariel split into groups of seven, Thurin standing apart.
They each flanked one side of the moogle camp, and as soon as they got into
position, Sh'ria and her group swooped down on the moogles, firing as they
dove. Seven down, but the attack was imperfect; the avariel had not
sufficiently spooked their foes, and one took a crossbolt clean through the
wing. That one stayed down, able to make a pretty good landing from the low
height, and proceeded to defend himself with his glassteel sword.

"Defend the fallen!" cried Thurin, as Liire's flight dove. They heard him;
all seven of the next bunch dropped were right by the wounded avariel. This
time, with the confusion the fallen one made, none were caught by returned
fire, and the whole flight made it back to the sky for reloading. Thurin
himself used his bow to keep the moogles, now mostly centered on the one
downed avariel, from succeeding in doing any real harm. In doing so he
managed to fatally wound three more.

The timing was now perfect, and the avariel had the measure of the range
and accuracy of the moogle crossbows. At any given moment, seven avariel
were firing and diving, and the other seven were ascending and reloading.
Thurin managed to keep the moogles from focusing too long on any one group
by using his arrows as well-placed diversions. It wasn't long before the
battle was over, and the six healers had added the now quite wounded and
exhausted lone casualty to their care.

Thurin turned to Sh'ria and Liire. "We must find the corpses of those
dancing moogles," he said. "They were able to disrupt the whirlwind spell,
which should not have been possible. If there is any way to identify the
difference from a distance, it will be invaluable information to the
Captain." The two flight-captains nodded and headed off, as the rest of the
avariel began the by-now customary skinning and ritual mutilation of the
corpses, for other patrols to find later.

One injury, well three if you counted the mages, whose headaches wouldn't
leave them good for much magic for a bit. Not that bad, of course, but he
couldn't help thinking there was something about the moogle attacks he was
missing. Something that his Captain, perhaps, would not miss. Even given
the fact that surprise had not been possible, the moogles had managed to
hold their own longer than a typical foe. He hoped his Captain would not
attribute that to his own incompetence, but the best way to dispel that
notion would be to have proof of what it *was* caused by. He started
hunting the wind-damaged tents for signs of order-packets, then realized
that the likely command center was where he'd ordered the mages to place
the whirlwind. He groaned as he realized that *his* fun, for the rest of
the day, would be combing the fields for miles around looking for scraps of
paper the whirlwind would have tossed in all directions.

All in all, not the outcome he had been hoping for.


Subj:	 [ffml] [MW] Winds of Change
Date:	00-08-03 12:22:28 EDT
From:	larathia@mcs.net (Larathia)
Reply-to:	ffml@egroups.com
To:	ffml@egroups.com

Ie fumed.

He had been faced down in the last council, when he and the other captains
had demanded the death of *that idiot*, Lord Tim. Ie had served in the
Guard for centuries, and never once had he been subjected to the indignity
of taking orders from a human, or even been required to care about what
they thought. He had served with honors; he had been in patrols that felled
dragons and destroyed armies. When the Captain had called for volunteers to
destroy a new threat, he had jumped at the chance to increase his glory.

She had been silent on the matter of fighting *alongside* humans and
dragons, or he would have stayed home.

Ie was a throwback, so it was said; in ancient days, it had been told that
when elves felt a thing, they felt it totally, with their whole being. In
the following millenia, the race had mellowed somewhat, but there were
still occasionally those who simply had no brakes on their feelings.

Ie was one of those. And what he felt, right now, was rage. He welcomed
battle today; he would not be calm until he had torn a sufficient number of
moogles limb from limb; he would not be happy until the source of his
discontent, Lord Tim, had been dismembered and disemboweled.

He didn't think he'd be happy for a while yet, but there was always the
chance a moogle would manage to kill Tim before he, Ie, killed the moogle.

Two other captains had chosen to follow him today, he remembered. Both were
older captains, who remembered the wars the Guard had fought against humans
in centuries past, and who had - at least initially - supported his views
before the Captain. Jora and Devian were not quite as adept as he with the
sword, but they felt things less intensely than did Ie, and were quite
content just to shoot the moogles. Once they signaled readiness, the
uber-flight took to the air.

Ie relayed his plan to the other two. "My flight has practiced the
hand-to-hand and sword skills the Captain taught, and we have watched the
humans and the moogles. We are in agreement; we will take the patrol on
their own terms, and you two will support us from the air."

Jora's eyebrows shot up in surprise; to surrender the advantage of flight
was a significant change. But Devian nodded, and said "We are ready."

"Drop hell on them as we descend," said Ie. He wanted to kill moogles so
badly he could almost taste it. The concentration it took even to relay
such a simple plan was nearly beyond his self-control at this point. As
soon as the moogle patrol was spotted, Ie's flight dipped down and skimmed
low; as Jora and Devian's flights kept moogle eyes skyward, they drew their
swords and prepared to fight.

The unusual tactic, coupled with the fact that Ie's bunch were gliding and
therefore made no noise, resulted in a wind-powered tackle that cleanly
beheaded ten moogles, and knocked a second ten to the ground beneath the
weight of a landing avariel.

The airborne flights of Jora and Devian contributed to the confusion by
felling the nearest ten with crossbow fire, leaving those tackled to fend
for themselves, and kept up a continuous volley of ten bolts each.

Ie was thrilled. Just one little moogle, and the world would be a happier
place. He knew the flights could handle the moogles; the numbers were
pretty much equal once the tackle had taken place.

He'd gotten a smart moogle.

It didn't try to use its spear to block his glassteel sword; instead, it
tried to keep him off balance by using quick random jabs that caused him to
back up and parry. Ie was beyond rational thought; he clapped his wings
into the moogle from either side. This had the result of both stunning the
creature and lifting it momentarily off the ground. In the moment of
disorientation, Ie grabbed its spear-holding arm with one hand, and chopped
it free of the body with his sword-wielding other hand. It screamed, but
was cut short as Ie beat it with its arm, that he held - then beheaded it.
Ie gave vent to his frustration by stomping on the corpse...until one of
his captains came over to him with a look of almost-fear on his face.

"Captain Ie, the battle is over," said Devian. "We won. The moogles are all
dead."

It took a few moments for this to get through Ie's rage, but when it did he
managed to control himself again. He was no less angry, or not appreciably
so; one moogle had not been enough. But he could cap his rage, bottle it
until it could be safely released. "No injuries?" he managed to ask.

"Minor, sir," said Devian. "All your flight; the healers are attending them."

Ie bristled at the implied criticism of his leadership. "Let's get the
orders and get out of here, then," he said. "Possibly we'll find another
group on the way home."

Devian frowned. "Don't think so sir," he said. "Reports show it's getting
harder to find these groups. We will search if it does not deviate from the
flight path; the Captain was quite emphatic that she recieve copies of all
order-packets."

The Captain, the Captain. Ie resented the fact that Nighthawk should be
captain; by rights she should be wingless and without memory, wandering the
world as a groundling. But even in his anger, Ie knew better than to
challenge her. She'd won her rank the hard way - by emphatically defeating
every challenger that came along, in any arena they cared to name. That, he
could face...but this human idiot couldn't possibly be that good, and why
one should take *orders* from a definite inferior...it set his blood boiling.

"Very well, then," he growled. "Let's get back to The Captain and make our
report."

Devian nodded. His own report would include the opinion that Ie was losing
the battle with sanity, but he wisely kept his mouth closed, and ordered
the flights into the air.