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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Von Ether" data-source="post: 2073304" data-attributes="member: 15582">Any comments on my style -- what you hated, what you loved -- is appreciated. If you have any guess why my style isn't Ebberonian enough, feel free to add.The work sample only is below [sblock]Chapter 2The ale tasted bitter, but Kavon swallowed it down, determined to not let it get the best of him. The drink hit his empty stomach like warm mud. He delayed from taking the last dregs in the tankard by rubbing his unshaven cheeks and feeling his whiskers scrape against his rough hands as his loose, rumpled sleeve fell down to his elbow.  His eyes closed for a second just as a bar wench giggled hysterically in the common room of the Empty Skull. The giggle sounded like Catherine’s and his eyes widened as he looked around, the room slightly spinning in his head.    His eyes lit on every face in the crowded inn. He saw far too many uniforms, but that was to be expected in Vulyar, a Karrnathian town. He couldn’t find a woman’s face; but he did find one with no nose, a hinged jaw for the mouth, and two small obsidian flecks for eyes. A warforged. The sight of the metal man gave Kavon another bitter tang in his mouth. He chased it with the dregs from his tankard, one bad taste following another. He slammed the tankard down, but the laughing and boisterous yelling around him drowned out the hollow “thunk” of the mug.Four years and Catherine’s voice still came from every strange woman’s lips and her dark curls rode down the street on some other lass’s head. Kavon didn’t dare close his eyes again, for fear of seeing her face behind his eyelids in the darkness. Looking around, his gaze settled on the warforged again. Kavon felt a rage build inside him, as he remembered how many of those blasted enchanted warriors he’d fought in the Last War. The real irony was that he shouldn’t have fought them at all. His homeland, Cyre, was the birthplace of the forges that crafted most of these metal men who didn’t feel fatigue, hunger or disloyalty. Cyre and the guild-nobles of House Cannith exported Warforged across the continent during the Last War as fearless warriors to be stacked like cordwood until needed. Kavon lost many good men learning how to defeat the handiwork of his own kinsmen. The more he thought of his hate for warforged, the less he had to think of Catherine.  Things seemed clearer, despite all the ale he’d drunk before.His hand unwisely reached for his saber - not the best choice for such an opponent. Kavon knew that bitter fact personally; he’d have to aim at the joints, avoiding the metal plates that covered the Warforged like plate mail skin. With luck, the sword would hack into the mystical wood cords bundled inside, like cutting a tendon. As if possessed, Kavon’s saber cleared his scabbard and spun into a wild, drunken arc.  A lady of the night screamed.    The entire room went tomb quiet. Everyone focused on Kavon. He swayed from the ale racing through his blood. He felt his face flush, realizing everyone thought he was a dangerous drunk. Kavon looked at the warforged.    “You! You walking wedge of firewood!” Kavon said. “Face me!”  The warforged creature faced him. Kavon focused on the metal helmet it wore for a face. The gems it used for eyes, as small as peas, gave him no clue to where the warforged was actually looking. Its iron brow didn’t sweat, so Kavon didn’t know if the metal man was nervous. It simply stared his way as a man might look out a window to see the weather. Kavon’s rage boiled in him as he reached under his table. With a dizzying heave, he flipped it over. “Stand up, damn it!” The warforged stood up and kept going up.    It was built to be a bruiser, no doubt. The warforged seemed wider than an ox-cart. Kavon eyes widened and he barely stopped himself from taking a step back, mostly because of the wall behind him. The thing’s hinged jaw opened to speak. “I do not know you,” it said. “Please sit down, I do not want any trouble.” The words came out perfectly despite the metal man’s lack of lips and tongue. The voice sounded deep and resonant, as if from a large man, not a collection of bolted wood and steel. There wasn’t any hesitation or quiver to its words.Kavon looked at the two large brass rings bolted to the side of the warforged’s head in imitation of hoop earrings. He ignored the fine filigree that sprawled across the construct’s chest, broad oak leaves intertwined to frame a scene where warforged fought each other on an open plain. Broadswords and battleaxes replaced hands, hacking into wood muscles and dented steel shoulder plates. The losing side consisted of various makes of the warforged stumbling over themselves in a hasty retreat to the might of constructs resembling the one Kavon had foolishly challenged.    “Stop talking kettle head and draw your weapon!”     “Please do not do this; you are drunk,” it said. “There is no honor in this fight.”    “What do your kind know of honor? You were s-s-sold to the highest bidder and … and you fight for the highest bidder, even against the ones who made you!” Kavon spit on the floor. Every eye in the place settled on the warforged while every mouth stayed silent.     “I will honor your request to live in the past,” it said as it reached behind and pulled a broadsword out of slot in its back with a strange jingling sound that came from nine loose rings running through the back of the blade.  Patrons bolted for the door. The bartender bellowed for the City Watch, which made the staunchest among the remaining patrons bolt as well; no one wanted to meet the undead city guards of Vulyar. The skeletal creatures had a reputation for including bystanders as accomplices in their sweeps. This would have been a cue for a more sober man to leave.Kavon aimed another wild swing at the warforged. The metal man parried the reckless attack and waited; standing with his feet slightly out. Kavon gave an overhead chop with a fierce yell.     The warforged easily blocked the obvious attack with the back of its blade, near the tip. With a forward motion it slid the blade down Kavon’s as a few rings slipped over the saber. With blades linked, the warforged twisted its thick wrist and wrenched Kavon’s sword from Kavon’s hands. His eyes tracked his blade across the deserted common room. Then Kavon turned around just in time to see a thick steel fist fill his field of vision. An explosion of bright light gave away darkness. Only then, Kavon realized this was a stupid way to die.* * *Kavon woke to the sincere wish that he had died. The left side of his face throbbed in time with his heart. An everbright lantern, high on wall, hurt his eyes. As something pressed up to his lips, he tried to refuse it, pushing it groggily push it away as the pain throbbed harder.“Drink this, it’s too late to stop your drinking binge anyway,” his first mate, Tiche, said. “It’s a healing potion. Gods knows why I’m bothering after you snuck off board to pick a fight with a warforged. What’s a crew with a suicidal captain, I ask?”  Kavon opened his mouth, allowing the too-familiar taste to slide down his throat. It wasn’t so much a taste as a sensation of liquid air filling his body, like breathing with his mouth to discover his lungs reached to his toes. The pain faded a little as Kavon felt swollen skin shrink down. The potion left him with a throbbing headache and a black left eye. Kavon sat up to find himself in a small inn room made smaller by the four bodies crammed into it. Tiche sat next to Kavon on a pallet as the lantern light made the first mate’s sunken eyes look even darker. Towards the door stood two other figures.A younger blond man looked straight into Kavon’s eyes. He sported a paunch and a long coat that looked like they both had been with him for a long time. The other, much larger, figure was the warforged from the tavern. Kavon reached for his saber and discovered it gone.“It’s all right,” Tiche said. “This man told me that walking bucket lugged you out of the Empty Skull after it stopped you from making a fool of yourself.”“The firewood has a name,” the warforged said. “It’s Clunk.” Kavon didn’t have the strength to laugh. The young man in the worn long coat kneeled down by the pallet with surprising grace.     “My name is Alestier Naven,” he said. “I see that you’re still smarting from Clunk’s blow.”    “What was your first clue?” Kavon moaned. “My smarting eye or the dents in my face from its fist?” Alestier shifted his eyes back at the door, towards Clunk.    “I think everything is fine now,” Alestier said as he quickly stood up.  “Let me escort you downstairs.” He looked back at Kavon, “I’ll be back momentarily.” Tiche and Kavon watched the two leave the room, waiting for the door to close. Kavon noticed his first mate was uncharacteristically clean-shaven and well dressed.    “Nothing is fine,” Tiche said. “I was having a great time at Lilly’s and then this Alestier fellow barges in and drags me here to find you like this, and now we’ve got both a captain and a first mate sitting in a stranger’s room and the crew hasn’t got an idea of where we are.”“You think we’re in trouble?” Kavon said. “I think we got lucky. I could be in jail with a bunch of walking dead men watching me sitting on the floor right about now.”“Lucky?” Tiche said. “It’s bad luck to have us both off the ship at the same time, I tell ya. Doesn’t matter if a ship is on the sea or in the air, a sailor shouldn’t tempt fate.”“That’s an old superstition, it’s just was unfortunate this all this happened tonight.”“Wasn’t that my point?” Tiche said. Kavon looked at him for a second and then both men smiled. “Aye, we need to get to the Wind’s Blade and head up. We’ll thank Alestier on our way out.” Tiche started talking again as he got an arm under Kavon’s shoulders.“Next time if you’re going to try to kill yourself, find another way to do it,” Tiche said. “From what I heard that warforged didn’t seem to eager to get on with finishing the job even though it’s built for killing. If it was a man, I’d say you owe him.”“Owe a warforged? Don’t let that picture stay in my mind.” Kavon started to get up, but his headache exploded and the room began to spin. “Ohhh, set me back down.” Tiche slowly laid Kavon back down.Kavon had barely caught his breath when Aliester returned. He looked at Kavon and Tiche for a moment longer than expected. “You tried to leave, didn’t you?”  It sounded more like a statement than a guess.“Yes,” Kavon said looking a little surprised. “I simply noticed the details. Your friend’s sleeve is more wrinkled than it was before, and my blanket is bunched up under your thighs,” Alestier said with a slight smile. “Besides, you look much paler than when I left. I take it that was only a minor healing potion and you still have some recovery ahead of you. You should be fine in a few days, I gather, unless you have more healing elixirs on your ship.”“I do.”“Good, you can rest here while I send word to your crew,” Aliester said. “I need to check on something anyway. I’ll be back shortly.”“I’ll be staying with the captain then,” Tiche said. “I thought you might. I shouldn’t be long either way, and I might have need of your services.”“The Wind’s Edge doesn’t take passengers,” Kavon said with the sinking feeling that Alestier was the type of man who didn’t take no for an answer. Despite the worn coat and small room, Kavon sensed the man had a noble air about him, someone used to getting his way.“I am familiar with your privateer employment for House Lydnnar,” Alestier said. “I think you might change your mind for this passenger, it was a lucky break that we met tonight.”  The young, pot-bellied man turned around and left without a lingering farewell. “He’s a chatty one, isn’t he?” Kavon mumbled. Tiche moved off the pallet and onto the floor. “This ain’t like your quarters on the Wind.”“I haven’t slept on a pallet in ages, I’d trade this in for a crew hammock in a heartbeat,” Kavon lied. He let the Wind’s crew believe he came up as through the ranks as a commoner. Until today, his worst lodging was his captain’s hammock, but now he couldn’t imagine sleeping anywhere else. The two men started talking about what supplies they still needed for the Wind, unspoken between them was that Tiche would stay the night. Neither trusted Alestier’s altruism to be true. Then there was a knock at the door.“Captain? Tiche? Is that you?” Kavon recognized the voice, it sounded like one of the crew, San. “Come in.” The door opened and San’s head peeked in. He stared at Kavon and Tiche as he’d couldn’t believe what he saw and then walked in with a puzzled look on his face and a satchel on his side. Something large loomed in the hallway. “That was fast,” Kavon said.“You won’t believe who told us you’d be here,” San said.“A blond man, pot bellied?”“No, this helmet head, here.” San thumbed back at Clunk.  The metal man started to squeeze back into the room. San walked towards Kavon to give the warforged room.“How are you feeling?” Clunk said.“Good.” Kavon lied. His arms and legs felt stuffed with cotton.“You have an air ship,” Clunk said.“Yes, I do.”“It is a beautiful craft,” Clunk said. “It should be, it’s Cyrean – last of her kind.” Kavon said looking hard at Clunk.“I understand,” the metal man said. “I understand you will need rest. I will go now.” Tiche spoke up as Clunk turned to fit himself back through the door.“One thing, how’d you know how to find the Wind?”“It wasn’t hard to find the only air ship in Vulyar,” Clunk said. “But it was Alestier who told me it belonged to you.”“She,” Kavon said.“What?”“She, a ship is a she.”“You name a boat like a female?”“Yes.”“And many humans call me an ‘it.’” Clunk said and then shook his head. He angled his way out into the hallway and then left with softer footfalls than one expected from such a large metal creature. When Kavon thought the warforged was out of earshot he looked to San and Tiche.“That’s because you can depend on a ship,” Kavon said. Then he leaned towards to Tiche. “She depends on us, though. Tiche, go back to the ship and make sure nothing else strange happened tonight. San, what’s in the bag?”“The firewood told me to bring you a couple of healing potions.”“Give them here and let’s go,” Kavon said. “I want to be in my own hammock tonight.”“Good, then I’ll be back at Lilly’s before the morning,” Tiche said with a smile. “Maybe I’ll sample the new redhead, eh?”Suddenly, Alestier rushed into the room. “In the morning, I need to book round-trip passage for myself and then one-way trips for my friends on the returning leg.”“I told you that we’re not a passenger ship,” Kavon said. “I know, but you’ll change your mind for me.”“Really? Why?” “Catherine will be one of the returning passengers – if we reach her in time. I am afraid she’s in danger.”  “You know where she is?” Kavon said as his heart began race. The headache grew, throbbing deeper in his skull, he’d need the healing potions soon, but he didn’t care. Out of the corner of his eye, Tiche’s jaw dropped.  “Our benefactor employed her to get a artifact deep in the Blade Desert,” Aliester said. “I was to stay here and wait for a Sending spell to alert me of their success and give a report, but the Sending I just received requested help instead.”“What did it say?” “Not much, I am afraid,” Alestier said. “She only said she couldn’t get the artifact without assistance and to send someone.”  Immediately, Kavon remembered a time when a fireball spell rocked the Wind and Catherine was flipped overboard, hundreds of feet in the air. Her fingers dug in the edge of the railing as she tried to pull herself up. Kavon offered a hand, but she ignored it until another fireball struck the hull. His heart stopped when he saw her lose her grip on the railing – to catch it again on Kavon’s sleeve. Later she admitted to needing a little help when she went overboard.“She’s in deep trouble,” Kavon said as he felt beads of sweat form on his forehead. “We need to leave now.”“Ah, you do know her well,” Alestier said. “I blame her elven blood, she never asks for a hand until she‘s past needing a whole body.”  Kavon nodded.“San, give me those potions. We have to get to the Wind airborne tonight.”“Are you sure? It takes a fortnight to cross the Talenta Plains, do you have enough supplies?”“Not really, but we can eat some threehorn steaks on the way. Tiche has a good eye with his bow. We’ll ration water.”    “I agree that we need to leave as quickly as possible, but it would be crazy to leave in the middle of the night without provisions.”    “Then she never warned you about me, did she?” Kavon said as a small smirk crept on his face.    “On the contrary, she did. But I didn’t believe her.”[/sblock]</blockquote>

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