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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Journeyman" data-source="post: 1576625" data-attributes="member: 9958">A Muted Conversation/ Enter Brishen            The small temple devoted to Iricsus* had been built using all of Roderick’s adventuring wealth not to mention a good bit of donations from the Heart of Fate*.  Obviously Havenview’s largest sanctuary, the holy place had been built as an outwardly simplistic two story structure made of spartan whitewashed stone. The devout cleric of Fate had then finished the design by making sure there were no harsh angles to the building, but rather commissioned it to be built with rounded walls and circular designs.  The edifice completed the structural worship of the deity of Fate with etchings inlayed throughout the eaves of the building each showing the twelve symbols of Iricsusian virtue.             This night the temple’s asymmetric stained glass windows gently vibrated in tune with the ominous thunder and cacophony outside.  As tines of light forked across the night skies two figures within broke bread and drank their mulled wine together in a stark silence.  Mulling about the latest events to grip the small village of Havenview by its throat the two Founders jumped slightly as a branch, broken off by the winds outside, slammed harmlessly off the window next to their simple table.    Roderick of Iricsus was an able bodied man in his early thirties.  He wore his adventuring days plainly on his face in the form of stress lines, leathery tanned skin, and the occasional scar.  Always found in his chainmail and Fateline*, he had discarded both this evening for the simple attire of a homespun cleric habit and simple wooden holy symbol.  This oddity clearly made his guest and longtime fellow adventurer, Eredricht, uneasy.               Blue eyes looked up from the letter he was writing and viewed the other man intently.  Roderick actually sneered.    “Bah!  This note from Kirian makes absolutely no sense to me; however, we must assume the possibilities old enemies have caught up with us, Eredricht.”    Eredricht looked positively stressed.  Rubbing a calloused hand through his auburn hair the aged fighter gave his famous and quite characteristic shrug while pulling off another piece of bread with his teeth.  He was nearly forty and this type of obfuscated plotting by obvious disparate forces made him grit his teeth.  He slowly took control of himself and forced his tired mind to think rationally through the events of the past week.    A plague was spreading throughout the local countryside.  Not just any plague.  It started as a cough and in less than five to six days the victim was dead, blood boiled dry, in contortions which made the living weep subconsciously.  The affliction’s spread had been kept a secret so far with the occurrences spread out far enough to lessen its presence.  Yet, recently there was an obvious flare up with no less than sixteen bodies being brought into the town that afternoon.  Roderick had been aghast at the possibilities of the contagious disease making its way into the homes of Havenview and immediately ordered the bodies burned.  Add to that the startling storms this evening, the grey wanderer which came through the area when the first hints of sickness arrived, moreover the damned gypsy stewing in the cells in town: Eredricht had the portents of a serious assault on the peace in his domain.    Then there was the Wyld.  The aged soldier pushed that out of his mind.    “You think these happenings are all connected?” issued the gruff reply from Eredricht’s half shaven face.    “All save the wanderer, Eredricht.  Kirian states that she was an old acquaintance of his.  A reputable member of that conclave he joined several years back.  What he goes on to state though makes me a little concerned.  He said this woman warned him that there might be possible dissention in the mages back in Cherisia.”    “And knowing Kirian,” Eredricht interjected with a flat voice, “he is hedging the facts that this dissension is the root cause of our problems here.”    Roderick leaned back into his wood chair and sighed.    “It would stand to reason that enemies of Kirian would be capable of doctoring a plague to make his life and that of his allies difficult.  But why?  Why not simply attack Kirian and be done with it?  No this plague is something all together unrelated, Eredricht.  We need to get to its source and quickly.  With your men not coming back from their assignments you are going to have to send out more to locate them.”    Eredricht looked worried.  He cared about his men.  Two soldiers had been sent out to bring in the family that suffered the first reported loss to the plague.  That was a week ago and they had yet to return.    “I have no one to spare.  I could send Gareth, but he guards the cells.”    “You have only one coherent captive, Eredricht.  Quite frankly he has been incarcerated long enough.  You cannot hope to change a gypsy.  Let him go, and get him out of town.  You could send Gary easily enough, and I’ll have Trevor accompany him.  He has been my acolyte long enough.”    “Done.  Although it’s going to add to my problems having a gypsy loose. I already wrestle with storms raging, rumors about a wandering witch, and now my last man gone out to bring home the missing.  You know best though.  I’ll send him tonight.”    “Fine, I’m going to send Trevor out to Kirian’s inn to let him know what’s going on and respond to this disturbing letter of his.  Get some sleep, for I think you’ll be doing rounds now that your men have all been assigned.  Oh, and really, Eredricht, you need to get that wizard to open up quicker.”    “Yeah, and while I’m at it I’ll ask the Hells to cool off for a while too.”               With that Eredricht threw his still damp cloak over his frame while walking out through the temple’s double oak doors into the storm beyond.    Roderick watched him go, and turning to seal the letter he had just finished while Eredricht bemoaned life he smiled slightly.    “Come out Trevor.  No need to continue to spy.”**********************************************************             Jolting Brishen from an already restless sleep a predominant burst of thunder shattered the silence of his dreams.      The young nomad held his ears in startled pain as the clap’s sudden reverberations echoed in the tight stone space before giving way to sounds of the rain falling outside.      Blue-white luminosity of unremitting tines of lightning made the torch lit shadows around him dance and flicker while Brishen slowly began sitting up, nursing the various kinks in his legs and back.  Reminding him further of his location, the moist smell of mildewed straw filled his nostrils and convinced the young man to scuttle closer to the fresh humidity flowing in through his cell’s high window.             Stone was not the kindest of surfaces to sleep on, and the mound of collected straw serving as his resting place did nothing to stave off the cold, damp nature of the floor beneath his impromptu bed.  Cursing, he displaced an annoying piece of straw lodged in his tawny hair.  A hacking noise, not unlike the gagging of a man poisoned, greeted Brishen’s waking senses upon his stretching by the window refuge.  Looking across the prison’s hallway the Tuathinkin again took notice of the three occupants in the cell across from his.  Another hacking cough arose out of one as he fitfully turned over on the ground moaning in whispers.             Brishen’s three fellow inmates had also awoke to the boisterous nature of the storm outside, yet their minds obviously remained locked in a fever-induced fog.  Even from the distance of the hallway and bars separating them Brishen could tell they were seriously ill and getting worse by the day.  The nomad had seen much of disease in his travels and knew a problem illness when he witnessed one.  The malady these three men wrestled with represented the type that killed a man all the while spreading to infect others.  Brishen replaced the rag tied around his face with another stripped off piece of cloak.  At least his captors left him that.             Hours crept past and the three ailing victims continued to cough and hack at each other even while sleeping.   Their noise creating more of an annoyance than the thrown curses and jibes aimed at his person throughout the past week had ever been. Those verbal barbs had ceased flying across the barred hallway some three nights ago, and soon dwindled into startled feverish cries punctuated by that ever-present cough.  Without the verbal stimulation of a good argument concerning ethics and stereotypes Brishen grew bored, and had withdrawn again to his near past.            The sixteen-year-old Tuathinkin began to think again of what brought him to this state.  He forced himself to remember the chain of events leading to his incarceration, his body’s pains, and to the possibility of contracting the illness ravaging the three across from him.  Green eyes screwed shut as he felt the pains of betrayal flow through his mind, and his hands clenched the fading, grime covered colors of his clothing.      To know a solution to a problem one must travel the web of its cause said the old Tuathinkin teaching.  Hands began to relax and eyes opened to stare at nothing.               The gypsy flowed through his memories yet again.    Brishen’s people, the Tuathinkin, used horses to fuel their nomadic tendencies, and his particular band was no exception.  The large and garish wagons of his distant cousins and bands other than his own were much too cumbersome to negotiate the many hills and terrains of Rothloria, and so his band, The Roses, resorted to pure equestrian travel.         However, just two and a half fortnights prior his incarceration his family had been attacked by orcs.  The pigmen’s assault forced the nomads into the unfortunate position of sending band members into a civilized town for supplies and new horses to replace those that fell.  The opportunity became the perfect time for Brishen to test his ability to dazzle the mundane men and women of cultured society.  It too became the ideal occasion for Brishen’s Kali, Alsien, to rid himself of an unwanted suitor courting his daughter, Meisha.    The now incarcerated gypsy grudgingly gave Alsien credit for the bringing him into the fold of Eredricht’s prison.  He never saw it coming.  The object of his desire obfuscated the politics behind her heart’s capture, and so it was he found himself the fall man in a horse trade gone very wrong.  It was not his fault the coin used to pay Havenview’s stablemaster had been gold-coated copper pieces.  It certainly was not Brishen’s fault his saddle had been cut landing him bruised and embarrassed in the middle of the street watching his fellow family members riding away.               He certainly tried to look inconspicuous when their pursuers caught up with him in Havenview’s square trying desperately to get the recently purchased horse to allow him to ride bareback.  Surrounded by the distrust of the peasant mentality concerning the Tuathinkin, and the realization that a good number of said peasants were surrounding his colorfully clothed personage caused Brishen to begin talking very quickly.    Still naïve and trusting of his own bandmates’ motives, Brishen stalled the horse trader’s lackeys long enough for his family to get away with their accused stolen horses and for Eredricht to arrive on the scene.  The thought now occurred to Brishen that the Knight Protector possessed an uncanny skill to arrive as if summoned psychically to potential trouble occurring on his streets.  Many a recent arrival to the cells surrounding him spoke as much, and as they left after serving smaller amounts of time for “lesser” crimes they spoke of evenness in the knight’s justice.    Eredricht had forestalled the mob beating that surely would have occurred with his absence, and hauled the contrite and suppliant gypsy back to the Knight’s Hold.  Why Havenview insisted on calling their prison a Knight’s Hold made Brishen chuckle at peasant attempts to cover harshness in the midst of a nurtured simple state.  When the stablemaster arrived and shocked Brishen by producing the false gold pieces as evidence of his betrayal, Eredricht wasted no time in throwing the Tuathinkin into his current cell and riding out in search of the accused thieves.      The knight protector, of course, never located them, but found the borrowed horses tied to a farmer’s rail two days south of Havenview.  After long hours of negotiation with the stablemaster Eredricht ordered all of Brishen’s possessions to be stolen and given to the more than willing arms of the horse trader.  As if the robbery were not enough Eredricht also placed poor Brishen into forced incarceration for two months.       Furthermore, as a final insult to injury, the knight protector insisted on returning every night to ask Brishen about the possible whereabouts of his kin.    “Tuathinkin never leave their own behind.  If you rats possess anything virtuous about you it is your loyalty to each other,” had been Eredricht’s frustrated reply to Brishen’s attempt to make him see that he was Ronin, and an aggravated counter to the gypsy’s attempt at making the knight understand that he was well and truly alone.    That exchange occurred the night before, and had been the fifty-ninth grueling proof of Eredricht’s thick skull.     “Tonight is a new night!” Brishen’s heavy accented voice of optimism competed against the noise of the soaking rainstorm outside.    “Tonight he shall listen to reason, and the simple man will let Brishen go, and then I can make my way in the world with or without misguided family.”        Hours passed.  Brishen again checked his surroundings.  Worry is a rare emotion in a Tuathinkin, but it began to worm its corruption into Brishen’s thoughts.  Eredricht did not show at his appointed time causing the gypsy to pace to and fro in his small hold.  Brishen began thinking of ways by which the knight could find loopholes in his own sentencing of the gypsy.    Brishen called upon his extensive vaults of trivial knowledge gained from a life of wandering throughout different lands, hamlets, towns, and cities throughout Rothloria.  His canny knack of holding a memory for the mundane and unique alike made Brishen a potent source for information.  More so, a potent negotiator when a loophole in most situations needed to be found.  It was a trait making Brishen one of the more potent Bards his former band of Tuathinkin possessed, that and his talent for the fiddle and song.    He felt a tune rising in his mind while he forced himself to concentrate on the matter at hand.  Eredricht was late.  The knight intended to leave him in this hole of a room longer than anticipated.    Brishen began to know worry.* The Heart of Fate is the seat of the Iricsusian faith located in the distant, northern nation of Moi* A Fateline is a necklace worn about the neck of a cleric of Iricsus.  It is considered one of their more potent holy symbols.</blockquote>

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