Moose, Xing

neither beast is easily trifled with

 d10 Random Encounters while driving through the mountains of North America

1. The whole group has a shared 2-second waking nightmare (omen?) of 1d4: the forest burning down/their fingers freezing off/an avalanche/the Xing.
2. You pass through a tunnel. Your radio scrambles, stigmata manifest on your 1d4: hands/neck/eyelids/nape of the neck. They are easily rubbed off, as ash.
3. Your eyes stray from the road, and when you look back, a crow is on your windshield. It pecks a cryptic sequence and awaits your response. Its eyes are 1d4: cat’s eyes/dark holes/burning coals/nonexistent.
4. A bull moose in the middle of the road, shedding its velvet prematurely. The antlers are red and raw. It chews casually on the leftovers and eyes your fragile windshield.
5. Engine sputters to a stop without warning or cause. Trees glitter with glass-and-bone trinkets. An appropriate offering starts the car. A disrespectful offering angers Blackbone (6+ HD, giant bone owl)
6. A pile of roadkill too wide not to swerve around. Closer inspection reveals multiple animals in the pile, including moose and bear. All bones broken, seemingly untouched by scavengers, fresh.
7. A silver-lined human falls from a cloud. When it lands, it is on the road, with a sound like glass, reduced instantly to fine glittering sand. If you step out and wait, a second will fall; catch it, and you’ll see an empty man-shaped cocoon, split like cicada skin.
8. A dull grey pickup passes you in the opposite direction, then stops, turns, and starts chasing. It has no driver.
9. A car, same make and model as yours, impaled against all odds on a 20 foot pine. A pair of snowy owls is nesting here. All the eggs are black crow’s eggs.
10. You drive past a car wreck; no bodies, just crumpled metal. A few minutes later, The silence breaks. The Xing walks on fingers and toes, its spinal column breaking the underbrush like a shark’s fin. Swiftest in a straight line, sounds like a tree trunk splintering forever.