((Care to join in? We're open! Share your plots, thoughts, and characters
here!))
In the midst of a temperate summer of splendor
before thought of war came mockingly deemed civil,
the common folk would blissfully carry on their candor
and scholars merrily droned on in their dogged drivel.
But not all was as it should in Connlaoth's Uthlyn
as any born a mage would eagerly tell you anyway!
A wretched creature spied upon it with a lipless grin,
its greedy visage hungrily deemed the tower its prey. Somewhere beneath the abandoned, ruined temple of Alainoth; a goddess long forgotten
Angsar's Day"What are you doing?!" exlaimed the poor farmer, when the nightmare of an ogre came to release the bronze chains from their fastening to the wall, yet still bound the young man. The ogre said nothing, as it had since the past day when he was taken from his family's farm outside Uthlyn's walls. Never had Relt seen such a horrid thing. It was ogre, he surely knew that, but the beast had so many...
things poking out of it, metal fixtures that would replace bits of flesh, and even one of it's hands seemed to meld into a wicked assortment of brown blades, and Relt had only been grateful in his trial here that they have not been used against his person. Still, that had not shook him from this nightmare, this alien place he found himself. The strange arches, the markings on the walls, none of it made any sense to the simple farmer. Even the metals he saw were strange, nothing iron, nothing familiar. Copper maybe? Relt's thoughts became chaotic as the High Winds while he was dragged down a corridor by this horrible creature. He caught a glimpse of it's face, the ogre looked upon him often. It said nothing, but gave a gurgling moan as if it was all it could to communicate. It was hard to tell; the ogre's face had been plated with metal from the nose down to the base of it's neck, with only that damnable, circular grating over where the mouth would be that allowed the chilling moans escape.
Many more thoughts raced through Relt's mind. His wife, his three sons, but mostly what on Earth was going on. Was this some Serenian dungeon? Serenity has never had too great of relations with Connlaoth, and oddities and the unnatural were known to be the specialties of the northern kingdom. The questions built on, but it wasn't until he saw this new figure that he only thought one thing:
"I am going to die...""Smiles!" A screeching rasp wailed from the lipless mouth of the lich, Dhalekar, magical in origin, the skeleton with the thinnest weave of softer flesh coating it did not have the organs to provide speech, and so arcane means made a designed voice boom from it's coil. "Place him there!" A finger of bone and hints of sinew gestured to a corner with a table supporting a globular, claw-footed cage set before it - within it; a portly rat. The ogre did so, and with less resistance expected from the captured man, who seemed to have lost hope in either the sight of the lich, or the bone-biting cold that seemed to emanate from it. Dhalekar moved to another table, also full of scattered and various ancient machinae, and twisted a few knobs and other things. "Hair of two shades black, one of sand, skin of two quarters sun and approximate eighth of moon... Eyes of the forester..."
Relt had nearly gone mad at this point. The skeletal figure before him who's mere presence weakened him in body began uttering loud strings of words in a language that sounded both familiar and alien, yet nothing he could understand. He thought, for one moment of clarity, of rushing himself and his chains to the archway nearby in this room full of glass and metal, but the ogre loomed over, and the reality of his situation proved too heavy for him to lift. He could barely look upon the skeleton-thing, only catching a glimpse of it holding a strange, flat fork of only two prongs. A chime was heard, and Relt could only look upon the rat in the cage-sphere. How it recoiled in pain, toppled over again and again in what could only be pain, before the skin along its back split, and a bizarre cage of layered rings were pushed up out of its flesh, and began spinning. A sound came from it, it raised in pitch, and Relt began to feel his body quiver. It wasn't until the last
cacophany of sounds did Relt knew that his thoughts now were his last.
'Imel, Garron, I love-' And then there was nothing.
Uthlyn Commons
The morning after Angsar's DayJobias stared at his razor as he angled the blade upon the small whetstone on the counter in his shop. A gift from the smith woman down on Applewich Lane, and a fine one at that. He could not for the life of him remember what he said to her at her apprentice's, her daughter's, funeral, but he could hardly imagine it was anything that would warrant such a well worked piece of iron. Clearly her grieving had not effected her work; a testament to the resolve of the people of Connlaoth, Jobias thought.
"Ya think it may be sharp enough there, Mister Redding? I may not have the fairest of hair but in Angsar's name, ya'd think you were about to shave a troll!"
Jobias snapped out of his stupor, of course the blade was sharp enough. "Now now, Mister Shanke, there's virtue in good preparation, ask your dear wife before thanking her on my behalf for the beef shoulder she provided for the reading the other night, she'll tell you." He took a note on the man's remark, as he has never been the impatient sort, though admittedly Jobias was working that razor for a scratch too long. William Shanke, the butcher, or really, the husband of the butcher. A retired soldier who finds to make do with time working at the shop Mrs. Shanke established out of their home while William was off standing guard at Connlaoth's borders. A bored man, really, and according to a confession from his wife, Enri, useless with a cleaver, for all that soldiering. If there was something making the man impatient, it was lost upon Jobias.
"Aye, tell her yerself, she's not to part a sodding word ta me since that incident with the hare."
"Hare
is expensive, Mister Shanke." Jobias had slipped the oak-backed razor into the pocket of his apron and took his badger-hair brush, mixing it in a small clay dish of ass fat from the miller and some sunflower oil he had wished to experiment with when he came across it in the foreign market. A bargain, he had hoped.
William scoffed and looked out the open door from his chair, a touch of contrition spreading into countenance. "She said I 'butchered' it, Jobias,
butchered it! Isn't that what we're supposed ta do? Pah! That harpy is only worried that I'm taking a hand in the business, I tell ya Joby. You know, a
man coming into the work!"
'Joby?' Jobias thought to himself. William has never called him that before. Nor has anyone really. He approached William with brush and dish in hand, looking over the man's face in the light from the window and the open door. "That might be true to a certain extent, Mister Shanke, but I am sure Enri is only frustrated in not having full control of her routine anymore. It's been, how long were you garrisoned near Serenity; six years? It takes time to adjust to changes- same shave as before?"
William went on about certain intimate moments of discontent between he and his wife as Jobias began to work on his beard, careful to only inquire into his actions as result to his feelings, suspect that the man's unusual behavior might lead to confession of adultery. Using a towel, wet from the basin still holding yesterday's water, would clean the fat and oil and shaved hairs from the butcher's neck. William was proud of his wide bears, and only required little cleaning of the edges of his hair growth. Jobias soon armed himself with shears. "Your hair?"
"Aye, not just a trim today, see wot ya can do ta make me look like that bastard of Lord Wynn's; if that fop can look that tough without e'er working a day in his life, I think I could at least look the part! Haw!"
'Another change' Jobias thought. "I never took you for a man of style, Mister Shanke, no offense of course... I think I may know what you have in mind." There was definitely something on the man's mind. Jobias simply went to work as he mulled over how he could pry it from his neighbor and friend.