Carnifex's Story Hour (Updated January 20th, "The Union")
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Carnifex
First Post
Woah, sorry 'bout that! I've had a really busy past week, both in terms of uni work and my spare time being taken up in writing submissions for an Enkwell open call.
Oh, and gawping at the excellent art that Squidhead's been doing for Steam & Steel - I implore anyone who reads this to check the Steam & Steel link in my sig and scroll down to check out the awesome examples that have been posted up so far.
Anyways, new update to the SH coming this week, hopefully tomorrow!
Oh, and gawping at the excellent art that Squidhead's been doing for Steam & Steel - I implore anyone who reads this to check the Steam & Steel link in my sig and scroll down to check out the awesome examples that have been posted up so far.
Anyways, new update to the SH coming this week, hopefully tomorrow!
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Carnifex
First Post
There was absolute silence all around her. She heard no voice, no whisper, no impatient rustling of garments from those who stood watching. Not even the stamping of horse's hooves, or the steady hum of insects came to Wyshira's ears as she sat with bated breath and eyes closed. Either the whole world waited with her, breathlessly, to know Wolf's fate, or the augury spell wrapped her in a protective blanket of silence so that she would hear the answer when it came.
As was the manner of the spell, a simple divination that asked for some divine, but not infallible, guidance through a simple answer, it gave her a single word imprinted across her mind.
Weal
The word was an impersonal voice in her head, neither male nor female, young nor old. She let herself breath again, and the world came rushing back. She heard the creak of leather armor just above her; a nervous cough muffled behind a hand; the wind in her ears.
"It's all right!" she said, opening her eyes and looking up at Ebri with a smile of relief. "Go ahead and give him the Asgar leaf. The augury said Weal."
* * *
Mel watched Sebastion move off and felt pleased at the simplicity of her explanation of arcane potential. That must have answered his question.
For a few moments she stood idly looking around the battleground and listening to talk of Red Talons. Everyone seemed to have something important to do. She wished she had that sort of initiative. Kale was as busy as a little bee, rounding up the survivors, and she even saw him strap a sword to her saddle! He gave her exactly the look she'd been expecting: Don't run with it. How could she be mad though? She smiled back in gratitude.
But the knot of worried faces over Wolf eventually caught her attention. She peered over Wyshira's shoulder. "What's going on?" she asked anyone who had time to answer.
"Wolf doesn't look good." Oh, I hope no one heard that.
"Is there anything I can do?" Instinctively she looked for Kale. He always had a plan of action. Mel had the will, she just didn't have the plan.
* * *
With Wyshira having given the go-ahead, Ebri dosed the semi-concious form of Wolf with the substance. For a minute or two there appeared to be no effect but then it became clear that the man was slowly coming round to conciousness.
He weakly strained his neck to try and look around. "I feel like sh*t," he gurgled, attempting to prop himself up on an elbow and failing, too weak to move under his own strength and looking sickly still.
"Now ask me how you look," Kale murmured with a wry smile.
Wyshira wanted to hug Wolf, she was so relieved to hear him speak! She was worried by his extreme weakness though and wondered how things would go if the party was attacked again before she could restore his strength in the morning. There was still an archer out there somewhere with poison arrows and a grudge against Wolf.
"You say this monastery is a day's ride away?" she questioned, speaking to Angelo Dar'Averask for the first time. Turning to the others, she went on, "It might be better for us to find a defendable place to camp for the night, rather than try to make it all that way. In the morning I can prepare a few spells to help Wolf get some of his strength back."
The sudden realization hit Melisande that she no longer should be looking for direction from mercenaries; she had a Purpose now. She had to find something useful to do for herself. However, being no use as a scout or healer, it took some time for something useful to present itself. At last she homed in on Sir Angelo Dar'Averask.
"Well, Sir Angelo, I wish you'd teach my horse to come when I whistle like yours does. Look at her! Five minutes ago she was kicking with panic, and now she's eating again like nothing at all." (The irony of this observation was utterly lost on Mel.)
She took Sir Angelo's arm, mindful of the joints of his heavy, dark armor. "While we prepare our departure I'd like to hear all about your Order of Black Knights of Zhatan. I'm especially interested in knightly codes, oaths, things like that. And all the rest." She turned an earnest blue faceful of eager curiosity on him.
As was the manner of the spell, a simple divination that asked for some divine, but not infallible, guidance through a simple answer, it gave her a single word imprinted across her mind.
Weal
The word was an impersonal voice in her head, neither male nor female, young nor old. She let herself breath again, and the world came rushing back. She heard the creak of leather armor just above her; a nervous cough muffled behind a hand; the wind in her ears.
"It's all right!" she said, opening her eyes and looking up at Ebri with a smile of relief. "Go ahead and give him the Asgar leaf. The augury said Weal."
* * *
Mel watched Sebastion move off and felt pleased at the simplicity of her explanation of arcane potential. That must have answered his question.
For a few moments she stood idly looking around the battleground and listening to talk of Red Talons. Everyone seemed to have something important to do. She wished she had that sort of initiative. Kale was as busy as a little bee, rounding up the survivors, and she even saw him strap a sword to her saddle! He gave her exactly the look she'd been expecting: Don't run with it. How could she be mad though? She smiled back in gratitude.
But the knot of worried faces over Wolf eventually caught her attention. She peered over Wyshira's shoulder. "What's going on?" she asked anyone who had time to answer.
"Wolf doesn't look good." Oh, I hope no one heard that.
"Is there anything I can do?" Instinctively she looked for Kale. He always had a plan of action. Mel had the will, she just didn't have the plan.
* * *
With Wyshira having given the go-ahead, Ebri dosed the semi-concious form of Wolf with the substance. For a minute or two there appeared to be no effect but then it became clear that the man was slowly coming round to conciousness.
He weakly strained his neck to try and look around. "I feel like sh*t," he gurgled, attempting to prop himself up on an elbow and failing, too weak to move under his own strength and looking sickly still.
"Now ask me how you look," Kale murmured with a wry smile.
Wyshira wanted to hug Wolf, she was so relieved to hear him speak! She was worried by his extreme weakness though and wondered how things would go if the party was attacked again before she could restore his strength in the morning. There was still an archer out there somewhere with poison arrows and a grudge against Wolf.
"You say this monastery is a day's ride away?" she questioned, speaking to Angelo Dar'Averask for the first time. Turning to the others, she went on, "It might be better for us to find a defendable place to camp for the night, rather than try to make it all that way. In the morning I can prepare a few spells to help Wolf get some of his strength back."
The sudden realization hit Melisande that she no longer should be looking for direction from mercenaries; she had a Purpose now. She had to find something useful to do for herself. However, being no use as a scout or healer, it took some time for something useful to present itself. At last she homed in on Sir Angelo Dar'Averask.
"Well, Sir Angelo, I wish you'd teach my horse to come when I whistle like yours does. Look at her! Five minutes ago she was kicking with panic, and now she's eating again like nothing at all." (The irony of this observation was utterly lost on Mel.)
She took Sir Angelo's arm, mindful of the joints of his heavy, dark armor. "While we prepare our departure I'd like to hear all about your Order of Black Knights of Zhatan. I'm especially interested in knightly codes, oaths, things like that. And all the rest." She turned an earnest blue faceful of eager curiosity on him.
Carnifex
First Post
And here it is, the introduction of Cazamir Jan'Zhat 
When Cazamir had first been released from the strictures of the monastery, that cluster of sandstone structures deep in the southern Myrmecian Protectorate of Huron, he certainly hadn't foreseen that the path that lay ahead of him in life would result, at any point or in any place, in being faced with the spectacle before him now. Two old, bearded men, aged scholars and respected arcanists, arguing like little children to the point that they were actually pushing each other around. If they weren't his employers it would have been tempting to laugh out loud.
Erebius Montague, Arcanist-Majoris of the Drakkath Guild of Arcane Practitioners and expert in the field of pre-War Drakkath civilisations, gave Ullman Condrick, respected Professor of Evocation and renowned for his sizeable library of ancient lore that he had accumulated, a hard shove.
"Hah! You wouldn't know a pre-Arakan umbra-accumulator if an ancient Drakkathian hit you with it! That piece of junk you dug out of the Poranu swamp in the south had barely an ounce of actual machinery in it, and even my dog could tell it wasn't an umbra-accumulator. We know from the Cavanis dig that accumulators look totally different!"
"Always the close-minded one, Montague! Tacarus's treaties on the Cavanis dig was wrong on so many points I wouldn't be surprised if what he thought was an accumulator was just some Umbral privy. And you never realised that Kuruundis was an Umbral deepdig, you claimed it was just kobold warrens. Hah! When myself and the esteemed Geuregus proved it's function as a military facility..."
"The esteemed! Geuregus was thrown out of the Guild of Arcane Practitioners not long after that! Ye gods, if I..."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen..."
As usual, one of the other greybearded sages on the expedition stepped in and split up the argument. It had been like this all the way. Always one scholar making disparaging remarks about another, or snidely sniping about some past mistake. And then they started shoving each other around when they got really heated.
It was worrying that these people were the ones who knew so much ancient lore. It was even more worrying to think they were all wizards, and thus quite possibly could hurl fireballs at each other if they got really wound up.
* * *
Cazamir had found his employment in Urkan, an unpleasant-sounding name for a hardly much more pleasant town in the southern Drakkath. The monk had been travelling north from Huron, passing east of thick forests that bordered Carthagia and were said to be the territory of gnolls, and west of swamplands that lay across some of Huron's northern border. Urkan was a little independent mining town to the south-east of the tail-end Sarokean mountains, and it was there that Montague and his half-dozen scholarly companions had offered him a basically mercenary task.
The greybeards were all old, respected members of the Drakkath Guild of Arcane Practitioners, their origins split amongst Adbar, Killanon and Corinthia. They were mounting an expedition to a particular site which was reputed to hold a pre-War structure of what they called 'Umbral' origin, an area in which these archaeologists had great interest (and all had their own theories and hypotheses to advance, of course). Despite the fact they all had at least a little arcane skill as wizards, their focus on histories and lore meant that they were hardly the most mighty of battle-mages, and they were willing to pay a decent amount of gold to hire some muscle to protect them. The Huronese had a reputation for being good warriors and Cazamir looked tough enough to fit their needs, so they'd taken him on for a bit of protection. They were giving him the pretty solid fee of five pieces of gold per week, better than military pay for even superior troops, with a bonus if they all got out of there in one piece and back home to the Middle Kingdoms.
Unfortunately it did, of course, mean he had to put up with their bickering. It seemed that once they hit a certain age, the learned men of the Guild of Arcane Practitioners seemed to believe that it became their right to act immaturely, as if the usual rules of society stopped applying to them. Not that they were anything other than polite to Cazamir, of course, but they argued with each other incessently. Each seemed to have written at least one book which all the others vehemently disagreed with.
* * *
"Look here," Johan said, stabbing his finger down at a point on the unrolled parchment of the map. Tall and stern-looking, Cazamir had tagged Johan as the authority of the band, the one with the most common sense. That much was apparent from the fact that Johan spent most of his time quietly in thought rather than debating the finer points of whether Carlus Mahenun's treatise on percieved Umbral traditions were rubbish or not. "A temple to Grumand, and an attached monastic chapter. We can get there by the end of tomorrow if we make good pace. Then it's only a day to the tower itself."
The others gathered round eagerly to examine the map, nodding and making sagely noises occasionally.
Cazamir sighed, watching the greybeards argue among themselves. It was nice to be the hired help and not have to be involved in their squabbles. He could picture his reaction if one of these older men were to shove him and curse to his face. He would leave the man moaning on the dust-strewn ground, and then he would have to face the accusations of the others. No, it was much nicer to stay quiet, invisible, and well paid.
The money these archaeologists offered had been the true selling point of his employment. Cazamir would have loved to claim loftier goals such as a great interest in the ruins these men sought, but there was no one to lie to save himself. When they began to rattle on about ‘umbral-this’ and ‘bio-that’, his eyes would glaze over. He was down to his last few coins, and this was one of few opportunities he could seize.
The Grumand monastery that Johan referenced caught his attention. He wondered what differences would be found in a place that worshipped the god of earth and strength. He was not as fast as some of the Urazelite warriors, but he could best many in feats of endurance and prolonged conflict. Perhaps he would be fortunate enough to test his skills against one of the Grumand initiates.
If I can keep these fools from killing themselves first, he thought, watching two of the archaeologists begin to argue over the map.
When Cazamir had first been released from the strictures of the monastery, that cluster of sandstone structures deep in the southern Myrmecian Protectorate of Huron, he certainly hadn't foreseen that the path that lay ahead of him in life would result, at any point or in any place, in being faced with the spectacle before him now. Two old, bearded men, aged scholars and respected arcanists, arguing like little children to the point that they were actually pushing each other around. If they weren't his employers it would have been tempting to laugh out loud.
Erebius Montague, Arcanist-Majoris of the Drakkath Guild of Arcane Practitioners and expert in the field of pre-War Drakkath civilisations, gave Ullman Condrick, respected Professor of Evocation and renowned for his sizeable library of ancient lore that he had accumulated, a hard shove.
"Hah! You wouldn't know a pre-Arakan umbra-accumulator if an ancient Drakkathian hit you with it! That piece of junk you dug out of the Poranu swamp in the south had barely an ounce of actual machinery in it, and even my dog could tell it wasn't an umbra-accumulator. We know from the Cavanis dig that accumulators look totally different!"
"Always the close-minded one, Montague! Tacarus's treaties on the Cavanis dig was wrong on so many points I wouldn't be surprised if what he thought was an accumulator was just some Umbral privy. And you never realised that Kuruundis was an Umbral deepdig, you claimed it was just kobold warrens. Hah! When myself and the esteemed Geuregus proved it's function as a military facility..."
"The esteemed! Geuregus was thrown out of the Guild of Arcane Practitioners not long after that! Ye gods, if I..."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen..."
As usual, one of the other greybearded sages on the expedition stepped in and split up the argument. It had been like this all the way. Always one scholar making disparaging remarks about another, or snidely sniping about some past mistake. And then they started shoving each other around when they got really heated.
It was worrying that these people were the ones who knew so much ancient lore. It was even more worrying to think they were all wizards, and thus quite possibly could hurl fireballs at each other if they got really wound up.
* * *
Cazamir had found his employment in Urkan, an unpleasant-sounding name for a hardly much more pleasant town in the southern Drakkath. The monk had been travelling north from Huron, passing east of thick forests that bordered Carthagia and were said to be the territory of gnolls, and west of swamplands that lay across some of Huron's northern border. Urkan was a little independent mining town to the south-east of the tail-end Sarokean mountains, and it was there that Montague and his half-dozen scholarly companions had offered him a basically mercenary task.
The greybeards were all old, respected members of the Drakkath Guild of Arcane Practitioners, their origins split amongst Adbar, Killanon and Corinthia. They were mounting an expedition to a particular site which was reputed to hold a pre-War structure of what they called 'Umbral' origin, an area in which these archaeologists had great interest (and all had their own theories and hypotheses to advance, of course). Despite the fact they all had at least a little arcane skill as wizards, their focus on histories and lore meant that they were hardly the most mighty of battle-mages, and they were willing to pay a decent amount of gold to hire some muscle to protect them. The Huronese had a reputation for being good warriors and Cazamir looked tough enough to fit their needs, so they'd taken him on for a bit of protection. They were giving him the pretty solid fee of five pieces of gold per week, better than military pay for even superior troops, with a bonus if they all got out of there in one piece and back home to the Middle Kingdoms.
Unfortunately it did, of course, mean he had to put up with their bickering. It seemed that once they hit a certain age, the learned men of the Guild of Arcane Practitioners seemed to believe that it became their right to act immaturely, as if the usual rules of society stopped applying to them. Not that they were anything other than polite to Cazamir, of course, but they argued with each other incessently. Each seemed to have written at least one book which all the others vehemently disagreed with.
* * *
"Look here," Johan said, stabbing his finger down at a point on the unrolled parchment of the map. Tall and stern-looking, Cazamir had tagged Johan as the authority of the band, the one with the most common sense. That much was apparent from the fact that Johan spent most of his time quietly in thought rather than debating the finer points of whether Carlus Mahenun's treatise on percieved Umbral traditions were rubbish or not. "A temple to Grumand, and an attached monastic chapter. We can get there by the end of tomorrow if we make good pace. Then it's only a day to the tower itself."
The others gathered round eagerly to examine the map, nodding and making sagely noises occasionally.
Cazamir sighed, watching the greybeards argue among themselves. It was nice to be the hired help and not have to be involved in their squabbles. He could picture his reaction if one of these older men were to shove him and curse to his face. He would leave the man moaning on the dust-strewn ground, and then he would have to face the accusations of the others. No, it was much nicer to stay quiet, invisible, and well paid.
The money these archaeologists offered had been the true selling point of his employment. Cazamir would have loved to claim loftier goals such as a great interest in the ruins these men sought, but there was no one to lie to save himself. When they began to rattle on about ‘umbral-this’ and ‘bio-that’, his eyes would glaze over. He was down to his last few coins, and this was one of few opportunities he could seize.
The Grumand monastery that Johan referenced caught his attention. He wondered what differences would be found in a place that worshipped the god of earth and strength. He was not as fast as some of the Urazelite warriors, but he could best many in feats of endurance and prolonged conflict. Perhaps he would be fortunate enough to test his skills against one of the Grumand initiates.
If I can keep these fools from killing themselves first, he thought, watching two of the archaeologists begin to argue over the map.
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