Bound by Flame (Omuyasha)

It had been a long arduous growing season this year. We thought we did everything right by diversifying our crops this year, but this drought was way worse than the years prior. Now that I was old enough, my ailing grandfather was put to rest, and I was the one to help tend the fields. It was back breaking work plowing dry and hard soil. I had bulked up tremendously, and it may have gotten to my head seeing I had grown much larger than my father after we got to planting. The hard part was getting these damn seeds to grow without water. When the orcs showed up, I grew irritated at their stupidity going on about tributes this and tributes that. "Funny that you all come on the one day it actually rains. I find it hard to believe that you all aren't aware of the drought. You see all this work we put in? That's money planted in the soil...needs time to grow, especially that special crop" I told them before I crossed my thick meaty arms over my broad chest. "You want your damn gold now or 10% of the profits of the hobbit weed we're growing later" I told them.

Rain started falling as a tall cloaked figure approached, several days of travel tracking exactly what was going on with this last band of orcs. They were a part of a gang that had started a small bit of illicit business on the outskirts of Neverwinter, starting off with little bits hitting traveling merchants and steadily building into a racket to neighboring farming villages and settlements and forcing them to pay a tribute or be burned to the ground. The figure was now given time to find this group and deal with them as needed, considering the frequency of their activity as of recent it was going to be extermination. If there wasn't a huge power player involved in this gang, wouldn't be too much work.

In the rain, the figure approached a farm that the orcs had been taking to at this point. Under the cloak, the figure appeared to be clad in golden colored armor, a spear in his right hand and scaly skin a color a duller color than the armor that he wore. The figure crouched down still covered in brush while he examined the area, and there they were. A relatively small band of orcs, ten small time fighters likely just to press numbers to prevent the minotaurs. The were tightly clumped together clearly not expecting any crowd control measures to be taken, it wouldn't take much to remove most of them if things went too quickly.

In the band of orcs, the clearly largest and strongest of the band took center stage as he approached an older minotaur, "Oi, big guy. Your tribute's overdue, what gives?" He shook a great sword at the individual that was out, looked relatively young possibly barely getting into adulthood proper. With hope the scene wouldn't get to violence too quick, "Where's that gold the aged steak agreed to pay us? You were due a week ago." The orc probably had a few years and probably a bit more experience than the minotaur he was talking to, clearly not an even fight if the two were to get into a one on one, and it being ten on one right then it would end in the young minotaur being outright murdered.

The figure started his approach, keeping himself from being spotted too easily while the orc took to the minotaur in front of him

(wasn't sure how to get this moving. And sorry it took so long, work caught up with me. After this initial encounter, I'll see how it rolls out.)