The_Universe
First Post
Correction made. Happy reading!
I'm already working on Prologue part III - Kaereth (The Monk's Tale)
I'm already working on Prologue part III - Kaereth (The Monk's Tale)
A Kingdom of Ashes (Zombies! Pirates! Giant Lizards! Intrigue!) UPDATED 07/01/05!!
The_Universe
First Post
Yes. The campaign that's presently being written up in story hour form is actually the legacy of the first 3E DnD campaign I ran, back when I lived in South Dakota. I like world building, so I tend to run things in homebrew, though there was some relatively silly stuff in the earlier version of the "World of Aeres."
When we moved out to the DC metro area, I got roped into a running a game, and I decided to set it in the same world. Since it was an entirely new group (except for my wife), I had the opportunity to fix a few of the things in the original version, and make a more "realistic" setting out of it (By realistic, I mean it has greater verisimilitude--realistic and D&D are pretty hard to mix.
).
So, this campaign is set approx. 900 years after the end of the previous campaign I ran. It's still heavily influenced by the major events and characters of that first campaign (as you'll see as we get a little further in the story), but I tweaked the world a bit to make it hold to itself a little bit better.
For example, the Bluestar referenced in the first post is actually a former PC, who wanted to be a Lich. I granted his request, and he now figures as a major villain in the campaign world.
The two major sects of the (monotheistic) religion are based on other PCs, particularly the Apectan Order to which Justice belongs.
Tech level is something close to the 16th century on earth, although guns are highly regulated. Using one carries a death sentence unless one happens to be a member of certain units of the royal army, or members of specific military and religious orders.
Lots of detail that I hope to make clear as the story unfolds. Of course, if there are questions, I am happy to reveal them!
When we moved out to the DC metro area, I got roped into a running a game, and I decided to set it in the same world. Since it was an entirely new group (except for my wife), I had the opportunity to fix a few of the things in the original version, and make a more "realistic" setting out of it (By realistic, I mean it has greater verisimilitude--realistic and D&D are pretty hard to mix.
). So, this campaign is set approx. 900 years after the end of the previous campaign I ran. It's still heavily influenced by the major events and characters of that first campaign (as you'll see as we get a little further in the story), but I tweaked the world a bit to make it hold to itself a little bit better.
For example, the Bluestar referenced in the first post is actually a former PC, who wanted to be a Lich. I granted his request, and he now figures as a major villain in the campaign world.
The two major sects of the (monotheistic) religion are based on other PCs, particularly the Apectan Order to which Justice belongs.
Tech level is something close to the 16th century on earth, although guns are highly regulated. Using one carries a death sentence unless one happens to be a member of certain units of the royal army, or members of specific military and religious orders.
Lots of detail that I hope to make clear as the story unfolds. Of course, if there are questions, I am happy to reveal them!
Queen_Dopplepopolis
First Post
As the only player that had the joy of playing in the World of Aeres, I have truly had an amazing time playing in the current game. (I'm The_Universe's wife and Justice the Paladin) The references to the old players--now long dead legends-- has been not only exciting but intriguing... it has added a certain depth to the game that few worlds ever experience...
Sure, any DM can write up a history for their homebrew... but, having had adventurers play in the world 900 years before has created such a rich and fulfilling history. We can look back on the world and not just know that, so many hundred years ago there was a great war, we can look back to the players that actually participated and have a link to what they were thinking, doing, and hope to follow in their footsteps to eventually become heroes of legend...
Ahhh, I do love a good heroic game!
Sure, any DM can write up a history for their homebrew... but, having had adventurers play in the world 900 years before has created such a rich and fulfilling history. We can look back on the world and not just know that, so many hundred years ago there was a great war, we can look back to the players that actually participated and have a link to what they were thinking, doing, and hope to follow in their footsteps to eventually become heroes of legend...
Ahhh, I do love a good heroic game!
The_Universe
First Post
Prologue part III
Kaereth happily bounced along the well-tread path, hopping between the rutted tracks of uncountable wagons, horses, and oxen. There was Man tracks, Orc tracks, Elf tracks, and Dwarf tracks, too. Big feet and little feet, round feet and square feet. There were even the long lines that the wagons’ feet left as the turned around and around and around. Sometimes it made Kaereth dizzy! Sometimes it made Kaereth hungry. Kaereth was hungry now.
He hoped he could find some food, soon. He was out of the food Master Ryoko had given him, and he had eaten Mother’s last biscuit almost an hour ago. He had rationed his food carefully, just like Master Ryoko had taught him, but he had been on the road a long time. He walked as fast as he could, but it was still slower than the horses, and even the horses got to stop to eat. So he had eaten his last biscuit, and he couldn’t even see the big town he was supposed to be going to. But biscuits always made him think of Mother, and Mother always made him think of home. He was thinking about home already.
The hulking young monk had been called a half-breed by some (mostly people passing through One Oak), but those of his parentage were becoming more and more common. Kaereth had seen more people like him on the road than he could count on his fingers and toes! He had tried to use his nose, but he couldn’t see that unless he scrunched up his face, so he decided that anything that couldn’t be counted with fingers and toes was a lot. He had seen a lot, and that was what he would tell both Mother and Master Ryoko when he got back to One Oak.
No one screamed and yelled at him while he was just walking. Nobody made fun of his big teeth (Master Ryoko called them tusks). Nobody called him “Greeny!” or “Bastard!” (whatever that was). Kaereth thought he knew why. He had heard his mother talking about how all the old tribes had settled down, banishing those who wouldn’t give up the old ways away to the Black. Whatever that was. Kaereth didn’t know. Kaereth didn’t really care to know. He knew how to run fast, how to kick hard, and how to break things with his head (neck muscles tight, think hard, BREAK!). Kaereth liked to break things (but not people—Master Ryoko always reminded him that it wasn’t okay to feel good about breaking people). Kaereth smash. Kaereth smiled.
He did know that people on the big road weren’t scared of him, or mad at him, and that was a good thing. He continued on his way, with only hunger to distract him from his purpose. Thanesport, the big town on the river. Even Master Ryoko knew Thanesport was big, and he hardly ever knew anything about anywhere, except for One Oak, and the far away place where he came from (and talked about when he was feeling sad). Kaereth was sure that there would be at least two hands and two feet worth of people in Thanesport, whenever he got there. After all, that was a lot. A lot of people had to live in such a big place. Kaereth could only imagine.
But, even as he walked north on the old road, his bare toes scraping through the dust and brown grass that formed the road, he couldn’t help thinking of home, just a little. Master Ryoko had had a bad dream, and somehow, Kaereth going to the big town on the river was going to help Master Ryoko’s bad dreams go away. Kaereth didn’t know how it would help Master Ryoko’s dreams, but in the one hand and 2 fingers of years that Master Ryoko had been in One Oak, he had never told Kaereth anything that wasn’t true. Never told him anything that didn’t make perfect sense. Even though this didn’t make sense to the hulking, grey-green brute of a young man, Kaereth knew it would eventually. If nothing else, maybe someone would want him to smash something. That would be good. That would be fun. Kaereth smash. Kaereth smiled.
Lost in his thoughts of smashing things (trees, bricks, boards, columns, wagons, churches, big rocks, small rocks, boulders….), Kaereth didn’t notice at first that the big town on the river—Thanesport—had appeared on the horizon. Kaereth stopped in his tracks, his happy humming trailing off as his breath seemed to catch in his chest. There were big walls, and tall buildings…and even from this far away, Kaereth could see more people than he had ever imagined existed milling about outside the reddish stone walls of the city. He’d need a lot more fingers and toes to count them.
He shook his head, and willed his breath out of stubborn lungs. Kaereth was Master Ryoko’s best (only, a pessimistic voice whispered in the back of his mind) student. He was better at smashing, and running, and jumping than anyone he had ever seen. But there were so many…He needed to meditate. To calm down. Or else he was going to have to smash something! It wasn’t time for smashing. The half-orc plopped down in the middle of the dusty road, gathering his thickly muscled legs beneath him. Breathe…
Master Ryoko was always somewhat reticent about his homeland, especially in the early years of his stay. Part of that was probably because he could not speak the language of One Oak, but maybe he was just quiet. Kaereth was never sure. He was strange, and different—just like Kaereth.
Even his name was strange! Once he had mastered Falcontongue enough to speak a little, Mother asked him his name. After all, he had been staying with the youthful human woman that was Kaereth’s mother, and (of course) Kaereth, in the empty room that Mother called “Father’s Study” for more days that Kaereth could count!
“Ryoko. Ryoko good name. Ryoko sacrifice for me. Ryoko be me. I dead. I be Ryoko, now,” he had forced out, each word unsure. Just like Kaereth. Maybe he was a half-breed, too? Kaereth didn’t know what half-breed meant at the time. Too bad. Kaereth wanted to be like Ryoko. In the end, he would get at least part of his wish.
In the drifting, dreaming of his meditation, Kaereth knew that Master Ryoko would be able to talk better than him, eventually. But then, in this happy memory, he sounded just like Kaereth. Kaereth liked him. He liked Kaereth. It was good. Kaereth smash. Kaereth smile.
Kaereth’s memory was clear, if not always understanding. The young half-orc seemed an oddity to the stranger--so strong compared the other children his age, and so clearly not completely human. This seemed to puzzle him for a time, but after learning that Mother was Kaereth’s mother, he became even more accepting of the overgrown lout of a boy.
He smiled differently at her, Kaereth noticed. He didn’t know how or why it was different, but Kaereth was still good at noticing things. Undertsanding was what was hard.
Over the next few years, Kaereth remembered, freely drifting on a sea of hazy pictures, he had become a personal project for the strange Master Ryoko. Yet, it was almost as if the strange wanderer was learning as much from Kaereth as Kaereth was from him. Kaereth needed a teacher if he was ever going to be anything other than a good smasher, and Master Ryoko seemed to desperately want a student. “A match made in the Light’s Heaven!” his mother had often laughed, as they came in from under the Oak.
Master Ryoko was not old. He probably had about as many hands and feet of years when he came to One Oak as Kaereth did now. But his eyes—his eyes were ancient. They were always weighed down with something. It looked like it hurt. Kaereth didn’t like it when anybody hurt. But this looked like it hurt on the inside. Like sick, but worse. He saw, like he almost always saw, but he couldn’t quite make himself understand.
Yet, when he was with Kaereth and Mother, he smiled. He smiled big, and happy, and long! It seemed to Kaerath that he was having fun whenever he helped to teach the young half-orc. Kaereth didn’t know why it always seemed like such a big deal when Master Ryoko smiled. The little lines on his face just seemed to say that smiling had been a rare commodity wherever he came from. Kaereth was glad to help. And he was learning to smash even better than before, and run even faster. Kaereth was happy to learn. Books were too hard to learn, speeches too hard to memorize, but nothing was too hard to smash.
Part of it was that Ryoko didn't need words to teach Kaereth. Kaereth simply followed the way he moved, using his own incomplete grasp of language to express confusion, or anger, or whatever he was feeling when the lessons moved too fast. Even though Master Ryoko sometimes had trouble talking, it didn’t matter--Kaereth could talk to him at the same level he could talk to Kaereth. They learned to talk with silence.
As Kaereth learned, following ever-closer in Ryoko’s footsteps, Ryoko learned One Oak's ways, as well. It took a lot of sunrises before Master Ryoko was even as accepted as Kaereth was, but he was accepted, eventually. Eventually, he even became a protector of the town, of sorts. His wisdom (and by extension, Kaereth’s) became almost famous in the area around One Oak. Understanding it always seemed hard, though. Kaereth didn’t know how people could fail to understand Master Ryoko. Master Ryoko seemed to know everything. He acted as an informal judge at times, and at others he was more like a sheriff. He seemed to laugh at mortal danger.
A handful of sunrises before Kaereth left, he told the young monk, “Nothing here is dangerous, Kaereth-chan. It is only the groanings of the dragon beneath us...nothing unnatural here. It is the unnatural, only, that we must fear. When the unbreathing walk...fear. When the winged serpents, masquerading as gods, come to you, fear. But never before that, my big green friend.”
Kaereth remembered looking confused, but Master Ryoko just shook his head, smiled, and then continued with the day’s lesson. “Gather the air around you. Make it surround your fists...channel it. And then break the tree, releasing all that you have gathered, Kaereth-chan.”
“Kaereth smash?” the young orc had asked, smiling.
The strange man nodded, smiling back. “Kaereth smash!”
Kaereth smashed. Kaereth smiled.
As Kaereth got older, it became more and more apparent that Master Ryoko was not from anywhere near One Oak. Not from the mountains, not from across the lake. Travellers would come along the road, in strange clothing, with strange accents, but none as strange as Master Ryoko (who had stumbled into One Oak bruised, battered, bleeding, wearing what looked like a royal-purple dress).
Eventually, Kaereth had asked him what his home was like, fully realizing that home for Ryoko must have been a long way away. "Not too different, before. Older, I think. The mountains to the east here would tower over the tallest in my homeland. But these mountains are still. Ours shake with the dragon beneath them...he always stirs. It is his blood that flows through my veins, you know! Hot, burning blood that turns to stone when it cools, bled from the dragon-beneath. You have no dragon mountains, here.
“Our trees are different, but we do have trees, grass, and people—people like me, but none like you, Kaereth-chan! Never would I have thought I would see green people! Amazing!” He laughed, and continued with Kaereth lessons, clearly pleased to have changed the subject.
Still later, he told Kaereth, “My lost homeland is smaller than this place. Everything is closer...you have been blessed with breathing room, Kaereth-chan. Our hills and forests are nearly on top of each other, without the wide plains and giant lakes to separate them.”
He never talked about his people, though. That seemed only to amplify the pain in his almond shaped eyes. The night Kaereth left, he told him what he had dreamed about. “They are lost to me, and I to them. When he came, I could not stand against him. The dragon throne now belongs to a monster in the form of a man, a dark dragon-god. Speak of it no further, Kaereth-chan. It reminds me only of the weakness of youth. Beware the serpentblood, Kaereth-chan. They are to be feared...they take trust, they take men, they take everything, and twist, until it is a grim parody of what it was meant to be...they are unnatural…I dreamed of them. It is time for you to go. They call to me from the shadows of memory—the West stirs.”
Kaereth slowly opened his eyes, revealing a red, mustachioed, screaming face. Gradually, sounds returned to him, as well. As he expected—screaming. “What in the durned Hell are ya doin’ plopped right down thar in the middle a’ the durned road, ya stupid orc-varmint!?”
He looked mad about something, but he was talking so fast that Kaereth had a hard time figuring out what he meant. He looked over his shoulder then. Wagons. People. Horses. Oxen. Lots of them. Lots of them, lined up farther than Kaereth could see behind him. They must be waiting for something. Kaereth didn't know what that had to do with him.
The important thing, no matter what, was to make the angry man happier (Kaereth knew that). So, Kaereth smiled at him, revealing two small, curved tusks and a row of crooked, ivory teeth. The smiling didn’t seem to be helping. Kaereth needed to say something. Happily, he said, “Kaereth meditate. Kaereth calm down, breathe happy air. You look like you need breathe happy air. Suck it!” To demonstrate, Kaereth pursed his lips, and started to loudly inhale.
Kaereth wasn’t sure why, but this seemed to enrage the man further. He shook his head, his sincere smile fading. Sometimes smart people were so dumb. Kaereth didn’t want to have to smash something. Smashing should be reserved for later. But if the little man didn’t stop yelling at Kaereth, Kaereth might have to smash something and he wasn’t sure that he could stop himself from smashing the closest thing. The man. Kaereth knew he wasn’t supposed to smash people. Kaereth tried to breathe more happy air. Someone had to.
He noticed his enormous fists were clenched. Whoops! He took the happy air, and directed it to his still-clenched, gigantic hands. No smashing!
The man was still screaming at him. Kaereth needed to leave. He had to get to the big town, anyway. He could still see it, and it was still scary, even from up here on the hill. But meditating had helped, a little. He had to go there. He hoped the people were nicer there than they were on the road.
Ignoring the barrage of insults and threats, Kaereth started walking. Happy thoughts, happy memories, happy air. Thanesport was a new place. Maybe he would meet some new friends! He smiled again. Maybe, there’d be something to smash!
Kaereth
(The Monk’s Tale)
Kaereth happily bounced along the well-tread path, hopping between the rutted tracks of uncountable wagons, horses, and oxen. There was Man tracks, Orc tracks, Elf tracks, and Dwarf tracks, too. Big feet and little feet, round feet and square feet. There were even the long lines that the wagons’ feet left as the turned around and around and around. Sometimes it made Kaereth dizzy! Sometimes it made Kaereth hungry. Kaereth was hungry now.
He hoped he could find some food, soon. He was out of the food Master Ryoko had given him, and he had eaten Mother’s last biscuit almost an hour ago. He had rationed his food carefully, just like Master Ryoko had taught him, but he had been on the road a long time. He walked as fast as he could, but it was still slower than the horses, and even the horses got to stop to eat. So he had eaten his last biscuit, and he couldn’t even see the big town he was supposed to be going to. But biscuits always made him think of Mother, and Mother always made him think of home. He was thinking about home already.
The hulking young monk had been called a half-breed by some (mostly people passing through One Oak), but those of his parentage were becoming more and more common. Kaereth had seen more people like him on the road than he could count on his fingers and toes! He had tried to use his nose, but he couldn’t see that unless he scrunched up his face, so he decided that anything that couldn’t be counted with fingers and toes was a lot. He had seen a lot, and that was what he would tell both Mother and Master Ryoko when he got back to One Oak.
No one screamed and yelled at him while he was just walking. Nobody made fun of his big teeth (Master Ryoko called them tusks). Nobody called him “Greeny!” or “Bastard!” (whatever that was). Kaereth thought he knew why. He had heard his mother talking about how all the old tribes had settled down, banishing those who wouldn’t give up the old ways away to the Black. Whatever that was. Kaereth didn’t know. Kaereth didn’t really care to know. He knew how to run fast, how to kick hard, and how to break things with his head (neck muscles tight, think hard, BREAK!). Kaereth liked to break things (but not people—Master Ryoko always reminded him that it wasn’t okay to feel good about breaking people). Kaereth smash. Kaereth smiled.
He did know that people on the big road weren’t scared of him, or mad at him, and that was a good thing. He continued on his way, with only hunger to distract him from his purpose. Thanesport, the big town on the river. Even Master Ryoko knew Thanesport was big, and he hardly ever knew anything about anywhere, except for One Oak, and the far away place where he came from (and talked about when he was feeling sad). Kaereth was sure that there would be at least two hands and two feet worth of people in Thanesport, whenever he got there. After all, that was a lot. A lot of people had to live in such a big place. Kaereth could only imagine.
But, even as he walked north on the old road, his bare toes scraping through the dust and brown grass that formed the road, he couldn’t help thinking of home, just a little. Master Ryoko had had a bad dream, and somehow, Kaereth going to the big town on the river was going to help Master Ryoko’s bad dreams go away. Kaereth didn’t know how it would help Master Ryoko’s dreams, but in the one hand and 2 fingers of years that Master Ryoko had been in One Oak, he had never told Kaereth anything that wasn’t true. Never told him anything that didn’t make perfect sense. Even though this didn’t make sense to the hulking, grey-green brute of a young man, Kaereth knew it would eventually. If nothing else, maybe someone would want him to smash something. That would be good. That would be fun. Kaereth smash. Kaereth smiled.
Lost in his thoughts of smashing things (trees, bricks, boards, columns, wagons, churches, big rocks, small rocks, boulders….), Kaereth didn’t notice at first that the big town on the river—Thanesport—had appeared on the horizon. Kaereth stopped in his tracks, his happy humming trailing off as his breath seemed to catch in his chest. There were big walls, and tall buildings…and even from this far away, Kaereth could see more people than he had ever imagined existed milling about outside the reddish stone walls of the city. He’d need a lot more fingers and toes to count them.
He shook his head, and willed his breath out of stubborn lungs. Kaereth was Master Ryoko’s best (only, a pessimistic voice whispered in the back of his mind) student. He was better at smashing, and running, and jumping than anyone he had ever seen. But there were so many…He needed to meditate. To calm down. Or else he was going to have to smash something! It wasn’t time for smashing. The half-orc plopped down in the middle of the dusty road, gathering his thickly muscled legs beneath him. Breathe…
* * *
Master Ryoko was always somewhat reticent about his homeland, especially in the early years of his stay. Part of that was probably because he could not speak the language of One Oak, but maybe he was just quiet. Kaereth was never sure. He was strange, and different—just like Kaereth.
Even his name was strange! Once he had mastered Falcontongue enough to speak a little, Mother asked him his name. After all, he had been staying with the youthful human woman that was Kaereth’s mother, and (of course) Kaereth, in the empty room that Mother called “Father’s Study” for more days that Kaereth could count!
“Ryoko. Ryoko good name. Ryoko sacrifice for me. Ryoko be me. I dead. I be Ryoko, now,” he had forced out, each word unsure. Just like Kaereth. Maybe he was a half-breed, too? Kaereth didn’t know what half-breed meant at the time. Too bad. Kaereth wanted to be like Ryoko. In the end, he would get at least part of his wish.
In the drifting, dreaming of his meditation, Kaereth knew that Master Ryoko would be able to talk better than him, eventually. But then, in this happy memory, he sounded just like Kaereth. Kaereth liked him. He liked Kaereth. It was good. Kaereth smash. Kaereth smile.
Kaereth’s memory was clear, if not always understanding. The young half-orc seemed an oddity to the stranger--so strong compared the other children his age, and so clearly not completely human. This seemed to puzzle him for a time, but after learning that Mother was Kaereth’s mother, he became even more accepting of the overgrown lout of a boy.
He smiled differently at her, Kaereth noticed. He didn’t know how or why it was different, but Kaereth was still good at noticing things. Undertsanding was what was hard.
Over the next few years, Kaereth remembered, freely drifting on a sea of hazy pictures, he had become a personal project for the strange Master Ryoko. Yet, it was almost as if the strange wanderer was learning as much from Kaereth as Kaereth was from him. Kaereth needed a teacher if he was ever going to be anything other than a good smasher, and Master Ryoko seemed to desperately want a student. “A match made in the Light’s Heaven!” his mother had often laughed, as they came in from under the Oak.
Master Ryoko was not old. He probably had about as many hands and feet of years when he came to One Oak as Kaereth did now. But his eyes—his eyes were ancient. They were always weighed down with something. It looked like it hurt. Kaereth didn’t like it when anybody hurt. But this looked like it hurt on the inside. Like sick, but worse. He saw, like he almost always saw, but he couldn’t quite make himself understand.
Yet, when he was with Kaereth and Mother, he smiled. He smiled big, and happy, and long! It seemed to Kaerath that he was having fun whenever he helped to teach the young half-orc. Kaereth didn’t know why it always seemed like such a big deal when Master Ryoko smiled. The little lines on his face just seemed to say that smiling had been a rare commodity wherever he came from. Kaereth was glad to help. And he was learning to smash even better than before, and run even faster. Kaereth was happy to learn. Books were too hard to learn, speeches too hard to memorize, but nothing was too hard to smash.
Part of it was that Ryoko didn't need words to teach Kaereth. Kaereth simply followed the way he moved, using his own incomplete grasp of language to express confusion, or anger, or whatever he was feeling when the lessons moved too fast. Even though Master Ryoko sometimes had trouble talking, it didn’t matter--Kaereth could talk to him at the same level he could talk to Kaereth. They learned to talk with silence.
As Kaereth learned, following ever-closer in Ryoko’s footsteps, Ryoko learned One Oak's ways, as well. It took a lot of sunrises before Master Ryoko was even as accepted as Kaereth was, but he was accepted, eventually. Eventually, he even became a protector of the town, of sorts. His wisdom (and by extension, Kaereth’s) became almost famous in the area around One Oak. Understanding it always seemed hard, though. Kaereth didn’t know how people could fail to understand Master Ryoko. Master Ryoko seemed to know everything. He acted as an informal judge at times, and at others he was more like a sheriff. He seemed to laugh at mortal danger.
A handful of sunrises before Kaereth left, he told the young monk, “Nothing here is dangerous, Kaereth-chan. It is only the groanings of the dragon beneath us...nothing unnatural here. It is the unnatural, only, that we must fear. When the unbreathing walk...fear. When the winged serpents, masquerading as gods, come to you, fear. But never before that, my big green friend.”
Kaereth remembered looking confused, but Master Ryoko just shook his head, smiled, and then continued with the day’s lesson. “Gather the air around you. Make it surround your fists...channel it. And then break the tree, releasing all that you have gathered, Kaereth-chan.”
“Kaereth smash?” the young orc had asked, smiling.
The strange man nodded, smiling back. “Kaereth smash!”
Kaereth smashed. Kaereth smiled.
As Kaereth got older, it became more and more apparent that Master Ryoko was not from anywhere near One Oak. Not from the mountains, not from across the lake. Travellers would come along the road, in strange clothing, with strange accents, but none as strange as Master Ryoko (who had stumbled into One Oak bruised, battered, bleeding, wearing what looked like a royal-purple dress).
Eventually, Kaereth had asked him what his home was like, fully realizing that home for Ryoko must have been a long way away. "Not too different, before. Older, I think. The mountains to the east here would tower over the tallest in my homeland. But these mountains are still. Ours shake with the dragon beneath them...he always stirs. It is his blood that flows through my veins, you know! Hot, burning blood that turns to stone when it cools, bled from the dragon-beneath. You have no dragon mountains, here.
“Our trees are different, but we do have trees, grass, and people—people like me, but none like you, Kaereth-chan! Never would I have thought I would see green people! Amazing!” He laughed, and continued with Kaereth lessons, clearly pleased to have changed the subject.
Still later, he told Kaereth, “My lost homeland is smaller than this place. Everything is closer...you have been blessed with breathing room, Kaereth-chan. Our hills and forests are nearly on top of each other, without the wide plains and giant lakes to separate them.”
He never talked about his people, though. That seemed only to amplify the pain in his almond shaped eyes. The night Kaereth left, he told him what he had dreamed about. “They are lost to me, and I to them. When he came, I could not stand against him. The dragon throne now belongs to a monster in the form of a man, a dark dragon-god. Speak of it no further, Kaereth-chan. It reminds me only of the weakness of youth. Beware the serpentblood, Kaereth-chan. They are to be feared...they take trust, they take men, they take everything, and twist, until it is a grim parody of what it was meant to be...they are unnatural…I dreamed of them. It is time for you to go. They call to me from the shadows of memory—the West stirs.”
* * *
Kaereth slowly opened his eyes, revealing a red, mustachioed, screaming face. Gradually, sounds returned to him, as well. As he expected—screaming. “What in the durned Hell are ya doin’ plopped right down thar in the middle a’ the durned road, ya stupid orc-varmint!?”
He looked mad about something, but he was talking so fast that Kaereth had a hard time figuring out what he meant. He looked over his shoulder then. Wagons. People. Horses. Oxen. Lots of them. Lots of them, lined up farther than Kaereth could see behind him. They must be waiting for something. Kaereth didn't know what that had to do with him.
The important thing, no matter what, was to make the angry man happier (Kaereth knew that). So, Kaereth smiled at him, revealing two small, curved tusks and a row of crooked, ivory teeth. The smiling didn’t seem to be helping. Kaereth needed to say something. Happily, he said, “Kaereth meditate. Kaereth calm down, breathe happy air. You look like you need breathe happy air. Suck it!” To demonstrate, Kaereth pursed his lips, and started to loudly inhale.
Kaereth wasn’t sure why, but this seemed to enrage the man further. He shook his head, his sincere smile fading. Sometimes smart people were so dumb. Kaereth didn’t want to have to smash something. Smashing should be reserved for later. But if the little man didn’t stop yelling at Kaereth, Kaereth might have to smash something and he wasn’t sure that he could stop himself from smashing the closest thing. The man. Kaereth knew he wasn’t supposed to smash people. Kaereth tried to breathe more happy air. Someone had to.
He noticed his enormous fists were clenched. Whoops! He took the happy air, and directed it to his still-clenched, gigantic hands. No smashing!
The man was still screaming at him. Kaereth needed to leave. He had to get to the big town, anyway. He could still see it, and it was still scary, even from up here on the hill. But meditating had helped, a little. He had to go there. He hoped the people were nicer there than they were on the road.
Ignoring the barrage of insults and threats, Kaereth started walking. Happy thoughts, happy memories, happy air. Thanesport was a new place. Maybe he would meet some new friends! He smiled again. Maybe, there’d be something to smash!
Last edited:
threshel
First Post
Excellent post. You should be carefull, I'm beginning to expect good things.
Homebrew worlds are my favorite to read about, and I'm glad this story hour is shaping up so well. I look forward to finding out more about your world as the story progresses.
J
PS There is a local gameday being organized by/for the ENWorlders in the DC metro area. If ya'll are interested, the link is in my sig.
Homebrew worlds are my favorite to read about, and I'm glad this story hour is shaping up so well. I look forward to finding out more about your world as the story progresses.
J
PS There is a local gameday being organized by/for the ENWorlders in the DC metro area. If ya'll are interested, the link is in my sig.
The_Universe
First Post
Barring disaster, we should be up there for the gameday. Xath (the UMD connection) is one of the players in this very campaign, in fact. Hopefully, we can do a meetup of some sort then.
As for the story, I am extraordinarily glad that you're enjoying it. I just hope I can eventually pull a few more readers than yourself and my players. Only time will tell, though!
As for the story, I am extraordinarily glad that you're enjoying it. I just hope I can eventually pull a few more readers than yourself and my players.
Only time will tell, though!
The_Universe
First Post
The next part will be Arfin: The Mercenary's Tale. Expect it sometime soon!
