Sojaveña Wilds Northern Badlands

[Jackie Cat]

Bounty hunting for most Wayfarers so far had mostly consisted of tagging along with established professionals as spare hands and spare eyes. There was only so much a 'mon could do in a fresh body, after all. Now, though, the offworlders had grown into themselves, and had enough strength to bring to bear against wanted 'mon in a real fight. And since just about anyone could collect on a bounty if they had the approval of loca authorities, some Wayfarers were starting to supplement or replace their incomes with hard-won payouts for taking in outlaws...

Outlaws like Hawthorne's Fiends.

The Fiends were a huge gang of Impidimp, numbering well into the dozens. Their modus operandi was to stroll into a small town, push the locals around and demand whatever caught their eye, then get lost by the time a law 'mon could show up, or a local agitator organise a vengeful posse. Most stories of them were of mundane, low-grade thuggishness and bullying, but their wanted posters accused them of murder. Whether by ill-thought-out prank or outright homicide, odds were good the gang had given some poor bastard an untimely death.

Their base – or bases – were clearly somewhere in the badlands, and common sense said that the best places for bases were in or around the 'shallows' or 'mouths' of local rifts. A mystery dungeon was the only place anyone could reliably get food in a place like this, after all, and they were favourite hiding places for anyone not looking to be found, anyway.

The plan, such as it was, was to use Betel's affinity for such rifts to narrow down the search for the Fiends in a way that native Forlasan bounty hunters could hardly hope to. That'd give the Wayfarers an edge, and allow them to catch the outlaws unaware, on their own turf, where they'd not expect to find trouble.

That didn't mean the fight wouldn't be troublesome, of course...

 

[Jackie Cat]

It seemed each Fiends camp was much like another. A different corner of Hoodoo Tangle's shallows; the same wooden lookout towers, patchy pitch-tents, and shrill squabbling from inside.

It seems you have approached another large group of pokémon, judging by the cluster of nearby souls. This may well be another of the camps you are looking for. Are you ready to begin battle, heroic spirits?​

 

[Jackie Cat]

Each mission to apprehend more Fiends got a little smoother, a little faster. Sure, plenty of Fiends escaped each time to join other camps, but that just made those camps easier to find.

There is yet another cluster of Impidimp nearby, everyone. As they consolidate into larger groups, it is becoming easier to detect them at range. I wish you great success, heroic spirits!​

 

[MintyMimix]

Much like a colony of roaches, the Fiends may have scattered in the face of force, but as soon as the coast is clear and they've caught the scent of what they want, they all pile in. They were just as persistent; several wooden lookout towers gazed over the horizon while the muffled shrills of the rowdy raiders echoed from the patchwork tents behind them. They smelled just as bad, too.

At least it was getting easier to find them each time.

 

[Jackie Cat]

The badlands were a strange place to make camp – more barren than the relatively lush Soja' deserts, under a certain sky it felt as if one were making camp on the goddamn moon, a million miles from civilisation. Even here, there were ways to live off the land, and settlements to carve out a space to make a proper living.

Cacturne Sally, Soja' bounty hunter, was scratching a crude map into the near-lunar dust of those very settlements. Points of light in a vast expanse, marked on her map by tiny succulent buds of her own making.

"Been at this a while," she rasped, in her corpse-like voice. She grinned at Bellatrix, her ghoulish mouth distending over her face.

The Zoroark would know by now that this was about as friendly and benign an expression as a Cacturne could make. It didn't necessarily help much to know this.

"How're ya holdin' up, sister? Ain't exactly the ultra-deluxe out here, I know."