🟩 The Green Flag, Garment, and Talisman
🌾 Opening Scene — Open Field
The smell arrives before the sound.
Crushed grass. Wet earth. Dried blood that no longer burns… but pulls.
The light is white, harsh, filtered through high clouds. The sky does not threaten. That is what’s unsettling.
They don’t remember the final blow. Only the fall. The moment when the body decided it couldn’t go on anymore.
The field stretches out around you: overturned carts, broken spears, signs of a hurried retreat. There are no enemies in sight. No allies left standing either.
Only you. On the ground.
And then—
—“No no no no, please, please, keep breathing…”
A small shadow cuts against the light.
Canine ears trembling. A tunic stained with mud. Little bells chiming far too loudly for the silence of the field.
A HouHou.
She kneels among you, unable to decide whom to tend to first. Her hands shake as she tries to pull bandages from an overstuffed satchel.
—“This wasn’t in the report— no, yes it was, it was, but not like this—”
She desperately drives a small green flag into the ground. The cloth flutters in the wind.
—“Listen… listen… if you can hear me, that already counts as being alive.”
She presses on a wound. Murmurs a poorly pronounced sutra. She apologizes to the body, not to you.
—“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know it hurts, I know I shouldn’t touch you like this but if you slip— if you slip now—”
Her eyes are full of tears that do not fall. Not from sadness. From urgency.
—“Don’t leave me alone with this.”
Another HouHou comes running through the tall grass. Then another. Green flags begin to sprout around the field like twisted flowers.
The field, which moments ago was a place of death, slowly becomes a place of containment.
Small hands lift your shoulders. Turn you carefully. Speak to you even when you don’t respond.
—“Breathe.” —“Here.” —“Not yet.”
The first HouHou leans over you, almost crying now, almost laughing.
—“That’s it… that’s it… good. Well done. You held on. You really did.”
She clenches her teeth. Wipes her face with her dirty sleeve.
—“Now— now yes—”
She looks at you. For the first time, directly.
—“Now we’re leaving.”
🎲 The Campaign Begins Here
You wake up alive on a stretcher in a field camp.
The HouHou did not win the battle. But they prevented something worse.
And in the Empire of Sha’ul, that means someone is going to ask questions.
Welcome to the role.