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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paka" data-source="post: 1262447" data-attributes="member: 100">The Korred, a squat Fey creature, beholden to standing stones as the stones are beholden to him welcomed the human into his circle.  The human was typical of his race, dirty, frightened and desperate.  He gave a password that none could willingly give to a minion of Shadow without breaking a glamour as ferocious as a thunderstorm.The Fey welcomed the dirty human into his ring, a broken ring of stones that one stood tall and majestic, marking off solstice for holy folk and collecting offerings of beer and milk from the local peasants who wanted nothing more than good crops and no enmity from the good neighbors.Once they had respect, the Korred thought, as a tendril of his prehensile hair held his pipe and tapped it on the bottom of his boot, shaking out old tobacco.  Now they only know fear."I'm, I'm in between your standing stones, Fairy.  What is this tale of the Northerner with Iron in his blood?" the mortal asked greedily, as if the tale were food.The Korred stood in the circle and his beard moved like red serpents of tangled hair hanging down from his face.Stories are power, he thought.  Want a story, dirty human?  Here's a story for you and yours.  "Word was sent out. Somehow this Iron Blooded Dornishman sent out missives among the dryads.  His tale of revenge was written on oak leaves from one side of the Eredane to the other.     "Sameal or as we call him, The Eel had offended someone greater than himself.  The Prince of the Bastion District had burned a gift from the Shadow in the North, a Black Oak ported down by Oruk on a cart the size of a small keep with a twisted Dryad creature, born in the North under the hateful gaze of the only remaining God.   "When she spurned his advances he took oil to her oak and watched them burn.  Her screams even disturbed the blood-soaked dreams of the surrounding Orc.  Sameal left the charred stump in the courtyard, a reminder that he would burn those who refused him to cause fear in his enemies."It did not have the desired effect."Some say the Iron Blood was sent by the very Oruk who brought the Shadow's gift to Sameal, others say it was a conspiracy of Shadow women-folk called the Courtesans of Izrador.  Others say it was the Shadow himself and others go the other route and proclaim a Dwarven Prince from the east who has set up court a broken keep in the Fortress Wall."The human interrupted and hissed, "Which is it?""None know.  It is not in my wyrd to tell you what a stunted little Fey of the stones thinks.  I only know what I met him."He was a bear of a Northman with scars and eyes that took in every details.  He had spilled blood, of that you can be sure.  I could smell it on him just as I could smell the iron in his veins.  He hid any family crests or maybe he was a lost bastard, raised by some beast in the northern wastes.  He was a hunter, a creature that could track an Orc through the bottom of the Pellurian Sea."Among his soldiers were a Satyr who had pretended to be a Demon.  He had made his living play-acting as a minion of Hell for bumpkin Legates far from the educated climes of Theros Obsidia.  He was a ragged old goat, sly as a fox."No less than three centaurs answered the call.  They walked proudly with wooden lances at their side and short bows on their backs.  They were majestic creatures who had once ruled the plains.  It was their ancestors who had welcomed the Halflings to the plains, showed them how to be nomads and live under the stars.Almost none are left now, and after this business done here, fewer still.A Snow Elf girl with no ears aided him.  She was silent as a drift on the wind and deadly as a winter's night.  She cut off her own ears in order to pass as a human maiden.  Her filthy hair, hides her heritage and her knifework makes short work of those who see through her ruse."A raggedy human, filthy as you, human, but who had made his life in honing his body into a weapon against the Shadow.  He taught those who would learn his skills as a Defender and fought Orc and Troll with naught but his fists and sharpened stones.  Noble or stupid, hard to say."Together they did terrible damage to the Shadow's folk here in Bastion.  They terrorized the chiefs of the tribes with dreams of fire and hunger.  They kidnapped a Sameal's son and heir, sold him into slavery.  None know where Sameal's heir is now.  "Finally, when they could wait for the Folk to gather no more they struck."Fires lit all over the district.  Orc poured out of the Holy Fortress and Fort Westerness and Fort Easterling.  Ogres were used like beasts of burden to bring in grain from local graineries.  Much grain was saved.  But not enough."Sameal knows that his days are numbered.  He has taken a retinue south to find his son, who turned up at Port Esben somehow, held hostage there by Vildar himself.  The Eel knows that when the grain doesn't come he will hang or worse for allowing the fires of a fortnight ago to rage through the fields that were his only responsibility."In the coming months the Shadow will have to make a choice.  They will have to feed one front this winter or feed the other.  Which will it be, I wonder.  Will they feed the frightened fools who make their way into the Whispering Woods of the Witch Queen or will they send grain and gruel to the miserable bastards who spill a hundred Orc's blood for every inch won in the Dwarven tunnels to the east?"The human listened to the story as if his life depended on it and then asked, "Where did the leader go?  Where did the Iron Hunter go?""I heard he lived and ventured south.  They say he had unfinished business among the cities of the Pellurian Sea.  Perhaps he will hunt the Pirate Princes or find his masters at the dark tower of Theros Obsidia or hunt pret for the likes of Vildar Esben.  Impossible to say.""South?" the human confirmed."South," the Korred nodded, hair putting the unlit pipe into his mouth.The human scurried away as if he had been given a loaf of bread and made his way back to the city of Bastion.The Korred poked at the ground with his staff, looking over the broken circle stones that were his home, pointing out of the ground like teeth in a hag's mouth.The pixies came out from their hiding places and addressed their Korred host, "Did he believe you?"He nodded, "Yes, he will go back and tell his Legate masters all that I've said of that you can be sure."  The Korred lit his pipe, not caring who saw the fire of his smoking now.  "The Orc will come soon, to rip my stones out of the ground and take pieces of my beard from my corpse."The pixies looked at their old friend and asked, "What can we do?"The Korred shrugged.  "Leave this place and live.  Make sure no odd animals are following your trail.  I told myself I would live to see Sameal die and he shall die soon enough.  When he does die, if you could be so kind as to find his grave and put this stone on it.  "When Sameal was crowned the Prince of Bastion, crowned by Izrador himself in the first decades of the Last Age, he carved his name into one of my stone circles.  Such hubris could not be suffered to live.  Put this stone on his grave or his tossed aside corpse so that his spirit will know how his fate came, who was the architect of his wyrd."The pixies took the small polished stone and left.The Korred looked at hthe distant castle in the city of Bastion and smoked his pipe and said to his friends, "They are coming, my friends.  We'll stand to the last together, as we always knew we would.  When humans to come hear of where this circle once, let them know it to be haunted by the restless spirits of the Shadow's minions who wrongly thought they had easy prey.Let's paint the earth with their blood and teach them stone lessons."EpilogueKarhoun Esben left burning fields and spinning wheels of Shadow and death in his wake as he trekked northward, towards the Fortress Wall.  The wall isn't literally a wall but a string of keeps that were built in ages past by strong Northerners to hold back the Shadow.  They had never held much interest to him but there is one keep that caught his attention when it was described to him.There is a keep that no Shadow creature has held for long.  It is silent and deserted, a relic of ages past.  Most keeps now hold the Shadow's armies but not this one.Turning his back on the bloodshed behind him, Karhoun made his way north to Karhoun Keep, sun at his back, his shadow pointing northward.To Be Continued in a New Story Hour Thread:  The Riddle of Midnight</blockquote>

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