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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 1418214" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Karak #1] A Death in the Family[/PLAIN]This was written by Karak's player as a way of bringing the character up-to-date. As I mentioned before, this character was from an earlier game that ended prematurely. His exploits are detailed <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19332" target="_blank"> here </a>.As you'll see, there's been a bit of trouble since then.---------------------------------------------------Karak held his brother’s head in his hands as he kneeled upon the hard flagstones of the busy market street. The knee bracers of his plate mail bit into the inner soft shell of his knees, but he cared not. The sounds or caterwaulers hawking their wares fell upon deaf ears. The cold of the flagstones began to creep up his legs, as his feet grew numb from supporting the small squat mass of his body. The dwarven war axe lay dormant by his side. The dwarven runes glittered, catching the light from nearby torches posted on the edges of the market tents. The press of bodies flowed around Karak like the stem of tide around a boulder in a stream. No one looked at the stoic dwarf, yet all saw the small frail body he held with the telltale signs of the pox. Muttering and making the sign of Flor and Shaharizod they offered their prayer to the sky, thankful they are not the ones lying cold and broken on the street.Karak’s body slumped and his shoulders shook with grief. His twin braided beard tips caressing his dead brother’s face like moths kissing his cheeks. Finally Karak could take no more and he tilted his head backward and howled into the darkening sky. The throng of people scuttled away quickly from the huddled pair, looking to the sky as if lightening would strike them all dead. Karak's voice sounded like the crack of thunder in the dead of the night. A silence filled the square; even the merchants were silent with their catcalls of ham hocks, baskets, and cloth. The sound of the dwarf’s voice carried in the wind and wailed ceaselessly with remorse. The only sound that could be heard above the dwarf’s cry was the sound of marching feet as the town’s men-at-arms came to investigate the disturbance. All were on edge due to the onset of the plague and the king's men were no less at edge, often dealing cruelly and wickedly with those that disturbed their watch. The sergeant at arms approached Karak, kneeling on the street, and poked him in the back with his pole arm. “Ye better be moving along now, stuntie. We cannot be having a disturbance in the merchant square. Take your dead now and move ye along.” Karak’s shoulders were still slumped in defeat as he cried silently upon his brother’s breast. The small squad of men at arms took a few steps back when the saw the sign of the pox on the dead dwarf’s face. The poleaxe poked again hard and rudely between the shoulder blades of the grieving dwarf. “I said, stuntie, be moving along now. Come, now go.” Karak sat like the boulder in the stream, cold, hard, and unmoving.The sergeant's men moved another step back making the sign of Flor as they retreated hoping to the Gods that they would not catch the pox. The sergeant lost for the fact that his command went unheard. Gripping his pole arm with two hands, he shoved hard with the iron capped butt end into Karak’s back. The force of the blow pushed Karak forward over his dead brother’s body and his hands splayed out to the side to catch himself from falling onto his brother. His left hand slapped the flagstones, his right hand landed on the leather wrapped hilt of his war axe. Quietly and quickly the merchant tents closest to Karak untied the straps that held the main flap in place and let them drop with a plop onto the flagstones. The merchants dipped inside and were not to be seen again that night. Suddenly where there had been a small throng of evening shoppers there were now none. All that remained in the square was a lone dwarf who stood planted with his feet square on the ground and a headless sergeant at arms with both his arms still gripping the offending pole axe. Lying next to the sergeant like petals of a flower were five of his men. Dead from grievous war axe wounds to the chest, head, back and arms. Steam rose from Karak’s body as his sweat cooled in the night air. The rage burned itself out like it often did, and Karak snapped into the present with his ears ringing and his sight blurred into focus. His muscles ached with exertion and his breath shot in gouts of steam like a bull in the cold of the pre-dawn morning. Karak looked around him and saw the faces of the throng staring at him. Some with fear, some with disgust, and a few with admiration. No one approached him. The town was silent again. Karak looked at what he had done. He had killed before, but these men were butchered, disemboweled, and lay broken in heaps upon the street. The blood pooled in the valleys of the flagstones and the steam rose in wisps. How the dead were at his feet his did not know, that they were dead by his hand he did know. The cry of “Alarum, Alarum!” rose in the distance. Karak stood still, unable to break from his stance. To leave his brother without deep interment in his mountainhold was as baseless and vile a thought as any mountain dwarf could have. And yet, Karak knew to stay meant instant death by the hand of the King’s men. Even through his grief he knew that would waste his brother’s death, Aye, waste his life. No, the plague would not take two dwarves this day. And, drawing from strength of will Karak did not know he had, he knelt by his brother’s side and kissed his forehead. “Chalak, me, Chalak. I will make this up to you,” and he stood grasping his war axe close by the haft near the head. Before he left, however, he knelt back down and pulled the silver crescent moon pendant from Malak’s tunic and with a swift tug set the necklace free from his brother’s neck. Grasping it by the chain, Karak, began to run in the slow steady run of the dwarf, the silver holy symbol flashing in the moonslight as it twisted in the wind. The next morning the sun rose and burned the mist from the streets. The sounds of Barnacus waking filled the air as thin weedy boys played in the alleyways next to the market square and mothers swept out the last days dust. Gillik stood on the wooden threshold of his small inn that served the merchant square folk visiting from neighboring towns. He leaned back and stretched backward as he pressed the backs of his hands into the small of his back. Then reaching down he grasped the large water bucket left outside the inn’s door having been emptied into the street last night and left for this morning’s cleanup. Feeling the weight of the water still in the bucket, he swore an oath to himself “If’n I told that serving wench once I told her twice, to empty the bucket at night when she leaves.”“Hilda!" he yelled inside. “Get outside here this moment. I am tired of telling you…” Hilda ran to the door with the morning’s sleep still in her eyes.“Yes, Gillik, yes I forgot…” As her eyes drifted down to the water bucket and the full realization hit her, she let out a scream that was heard for blocks.“Flor’s Behind, woman! How dares you make my heart race this early in the morning, why I have a mind to…” Gillik followed Hilda’s horrified stare to the water bucket that he grasped in his hand and was quite astonished to see that a decapitated head lie quite stuck inside his empty water bucket.</blockquote>

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