"So we're low on supplies. What have we got by way of gear?"
FINCHER: "What, weapons-like? We lost a lot of gear in the crash, but we've made some, er, recent acquisitions."
"Oh yeah?"
FINCHER: "Yeah, between spears and longaxes we have enough weapons for everyone. Helmets for most, too."
"Well, I could use some weapons and armour. Anything you can spare?"
Fincher whistles sharply and gestures behind her. After a few moments, Toothsome pulls up beside you, leading his impromptu pack horse.
TOOTHSOME: "Alright, Talon? How's our hero of the day?"
FINCHER: "Needing some gear, sharpish. You've got all the best stuff there."
TOOTHSOME: "Yeah, fair is fair."
He looks you up and down, sizeing you up.
TOOTHSOME: "Yeah, I reckon we can get you fitted, lady, so long as you don't mind wearing no dead man's hauberk."
He pulls back a covering on the packs over the horse's back. The horse bucks its head in response, and he pats its mane to calm it.
TOOTHSOME: "Take your pick. We're a little short on spears, but we can manage that if you need. Plenty of those big cavalry swords and throwing axes."
You pull your horse alongside his and look over his selection of recently looted weapons.
[ ] Pack light. Just a hatchet and padded jacket, no other armour. It worked for you before.
[ ] Compromise. Take the jacket, hauberk, gauntlets, hatchet, buckler and saber.
[ ] Full gear. Full harness, brace of hatchets, lance, saber and targe.
Fincher calls a halt to the column so you pick over the looted weapons. The legionaries, already exhausted before the march started, take the opportunity to sit in groups by the dirt road and share out rations.
Before you sits a prince's ransom in loot. Many of the arms are finely decorated with engravings and metalic leaf, and even semi-precious stones. The panoplies of warrior-aristocrats, cut down in their glorious prime.
Your first choice is a familiar-looking hatchet, either the very one you used in combat or its matched twin. Its ivory haft is carved with waves down its length, and with a rougher surface of saw-toothed scales at its grip. The silvered head gleams in the late afternoon sun like a full moon. It whispers of its loyalty to your cause. You regard it as a traitor, useful but on no account to be trusted.
Next you select one of the longswords. These are apparently unpopular among the legion, unsuited as they are to formation fighting. It is a gently curved, single edged blade almost two thirds of your arm span, weighted towards the middle and gently tapering towards the tip. Its curved grip and hawks-head pommel feel awkward in your grasp, but the weight of the sword itself is strangely familiar.
INTEGRITY: DIFFICULT
CHECK: SUCCESS
INTEGRITY: Your training with a sword goes beyond anything a mind has the power to forget. The stances are notched indelibly into your core muscles. The ones coiled around your bones, the ones that won't wither away until you are rotting in the ground or burning on a pyre.
THOUGHT GAINED: The Opening Gate
The quilted jacket is dun-yellow cotton, wax-printed with white five-leaf flowers. It smells of the sweat of its dead owner, with an undercurrent of something that is similar to but is not wine. The hauberk that fits over it is composed of overlapping leaf-shaped steel scales, each painstakingly etched with wave-like scrollwork, with larger, palm-sized matching plates covering the vitals and paudrons. You feel richer just being near it.
You round out your new acquisitions with brass-plated gauntlets and matching buckler, a head-sized rounded plate designed to deflect incoming stabs and swings. It's heavier than most implements of its size, and spotted with a pattern of beveled studs designed to trap and guide incautiously swung edged weapons. The gloves are a little tight across the knuckles, but they fit surprisingly well for items that are usually custom made. Fincher supplies a spare bit of twine so you can tie the gauntlet finger covering your missing finger together with your middle, to avoid it hanging loose.
Fincher and Toothsome make sure you are properly fitted before standing back to admire their work.
FINCHER: "You look right fierce, boss. Can't wait to see what you can do when you're not running into battle with fists and rags."
"Hopefully I won't have to do that again, I think I still have a bit of spear lodged in me."
FINCHER: "That reminds me, I'll need to give you a once over when we finally get to a safe camp. Medically, I mean. Just to check everything's working fit-like."
Toothsome is about to say something but you both know from his weirdly suggestive eyebrows what it is before he says it.
FINCHER: "Toothsome, get back in rank."
He shrugs an sidles off, taking his horse with him.
FINCHER: "Sorry about that. I just meant for, you know, checking your identity. And your health. Never know what we might turn up."
[ ] I trust you to be a professional.
[ ] If I'm getting naked then sex is happening, that's just how it works.
[ ] I'd rather keep the mysteries of my body to myself.
"It's almost dark, we'll be at Ashglass soon, right?"
FINCHER: "Yeah boss, shouldn't be more than a few miles. I can smell the sea again, and city."
You're downwind from your destination. You sniff the air.
AWARENESS: LEGENDARY
CHECK: SUCCESS
AWARENESS: There it is, so distant you almost missed it. Flax rots in bundles in the mud. Vinegar and shit, salt and tar, scared animals, stale groundwater and human misery. You haven't smelled this city before, but you have smelled every city before.
"Good nose."
FINCHER: "Not going to do me any favours where we're going."
"Twenty thousand, you said?"
FINCHER: "I think that was what we got on the census, yeah. Could be higher, what with the siege packing everyone in there."
"Or lower."
She nods, grimly.
"So... it's a port city?"
FINCHER: "Oh, yeah. Keep forgetting you don't know nothing, boss."
"Thanks, Fincher."
FINCHER: "Right, so Ashglass is a fortified port city, satrap's seat, biggest settlement on the island. Part of the old Fajadi trade circuit. Home of, uh, a cadet house, I forget the name. Primary exports are fabrics, some kind of oil, I think?"
"Anything about local politics?"
She shrugs.
"Ok, what about the sea approach? Why didn't the navy just smash their way through and enter the city that way?"
FINCHER: "Yeah, apparently the navy didn't want to commit the forces for a sea battle. Thinking was this should be a legion show, so that's why we made landfall on the coast. Or were supposed to, anyway."
Something twitches obliquely at your memory. Something about a landfall. An inconsistency.
INTEGRITY: EXTRAORDINARY
CHECK: FAILED
It fades, you cannot focus on it.
FINCHER: "You okay, there?"
"Yeah, I'm fine, just thinking. We'll figure out an approach when we get closer."
FINCHER: "We will?"
You frown. "What do you mean?"
FINCHER: "I only mean I'm the legion officer here. I know I'm meant to escort you and all, but I think I should be the one making the plans. Even if you outrank me somehow, you can't remember it, and you're compromised for definite even if you do."
[ ] I can take charge. If everything goes south you can say I lied about outranking you.
[ ] I think my skills are still sharp. At least let me advise you, we'll work better together.
[ ] That's a relief, I hate all that strategy stuff. Lead on, talon.
"I think my skills are still sharp. At least let me advise you, we'll work better together."
She gives you a dubious look.
FINCHER: "Alright boss, we'll play it like that. Tell me if you've got any suggstions or such, but don't contradict my orders. Ask don't tell, right?"
"Alright. Let's take a look at what we're dealing with."
FINCHER: "Scouts should be reporting back any time, boss."
"Scouts?"
FINCHER: "Yeah. Tulip and Wheeler are up ahead, Dunland and Gannet behind, half a mile each. They've got good eyes and they can ride."
WAR: It is sound. We don't want to get ambushed by a superior force again.
You travel in silence for a while. Vocal silence, at least. The hoofbeats of your horse seem to grow incrementally louder with every step. A truly incredible headache is building in your brain. The sensation feels exactly as though something thin and rough-textured is being shoved directly into your skull. You decide that it is a sculptor's carving file. Each impact of the hooves drives this delicate tool a little further into your left orbital just above your eyeball, like the tap of a tiny hammer.
Finally, blessedly, you see Fincher's scouts return, and have something else to focus on. The riders pull up beside their talonlord.
Wheeler is a tall and somewhat goggle-eyed young man. Tulip is a heavyset woman with a dashing scar across her cheek. They both have identical straight dark hair and snub noses. Maybe they are related.
Tulip nods respectfully to you before addressing Fincher.
TULIP: "Lady, it's bad. There's more of them than we expected, a lot more. We approached from the hill, like you said. I counted five thousand in the forward camp." She nods to Wheeler.
WHEELER: "I got six."
FINCHER: "Six!? That can't be right. You counted the whole camp, do they have dependants?"
TULIP: "The five or six is just under arms, lady. Closer to ten in the full camp."
WHEELER: "There's more, lady. They've got ships blockading the harbor. We couldn't get a good look with the towers in the way, but there's a lot."
FINCHER: "What about the city?"
TULIP: "Looks intact. Lights on the walls, cooking fires. Going to be hell to get in, though."
FINCHER: "Well, it's something. Anything else?"
WHEELER: "Figured that was enough, lady. We rode back as soon as we could."
FINCHER: "It's enough alright." she sighs. "Okay, get into rank. Turner has some stew left. I'll figure out our next move."
They bow their heads and ride past you.
TULIP: "Glad to see you're awake, lady."
You're not so glad about that yourself.
Fincher looks expectantly at you. Time to offer your advice.
[ ] Suggest the two of you approach the hill and double check the scout's report.
[ ] Suggest the two of you disguise yourselves in armor and enter the camp.
[ ] Suggest you move the talon to the hill and begin preparations for your attack.
[ ] Suggest you move the talon down the coast and look for the opportunity to steal a ship.
[ ] Suggest you look for some kind of long term shelter outside the city until you can figure out a better strategy.
[ ] Shrug and say she's on her own.
"We should check it out, don't you think? We don't have enough to go on to organize an approach."
FINCHER: "Yeah..." she stubs out her pipe with her thumb. "Yeah, you're right. Okay, let's scout it ourselves."
She turns to her group.
FINCHER: "Okay, Orison's in charge. Get off the road and set up a day camp, we'll be back in less than an hour. Wheeler, give me the glass."
Wheeler tosses a waxpaper scroll tube to her, she catches it easily.
CRAFT: AVERAGE
CHECK SUCCESS
CRAFT: Not a scroll, too heavy. Balanced towards the tip, well packed. Probably a spyglass.
Thanks, Craft.
Fincher mounts her own horse, an off-white gelding a hand shorter than your bay. She nods to you and takes off at a canter.
The headache is getting worse. Your intestines feel like they are shrivelling.
INTEGRITY: EASY
CHECK SUCCESS
You haven't actually eaten or drunk anything since you washed up starved and dehydrated on the shore this morning.
"Hey Fincher, have you got anything to drink?"
FINCHER: "Oh shit, sorry boss, I didn't even think about that." She draws up alongside you. "Uh, did you mean water or something stronger? I've got some wine."
INTEGRITY: VERY DIFFICULT
CHECK SUCCESS
You badly want that wine. Sweet, heady wine. Your body needs it, physiologically, as much as it needs air. You might be suffering from some kind of withdrawal, and there is a medical case to be made that it would be healthier to drink it.
But people are relying on you right now, and that is very much not a good idea if you want to be reliable.
Thoughts can be equipped in your Thought Cabinet. These represent the ideas you are currently chewing away on in the toothy depths of your psyche. They might be slivers of your past you are trying to remember, conundrums you are trying to resolve or harebrained schemes you are trying to reconcile with reality.
Each thought offers a set of penalties and/or bonuses while you are thinking about it. You cannot unequip thoughts during this time. After thinking about it for the allotted time, you will recieve some kind of information about the results of your thought, along with a different set of bonuses and/or penalties, and possibly other benefits or modifiers. You can unequip and equip completed thoughts whenever you rest.
You currently have two slots in your thought cabinet. You can acquire more later.
Diamond and Thunderbolt
The highest calling of any Dragon-Blood is to fight the Anathema. They are some of the few adversaries in the world who can outmatch you in single combat, and a material and spiritual threat to the order of the world. Those who have slain one of these terrible creatures have a unique place of respect anywhere the Realm or the relicts of the Dragon-Blooded Shogunate hold sway. Could you be one of these heroes? Is your secret mission to slay the human demons that haunt this island?
War -1 (Personal deeds only)
24 hours.
Unbroken Rushes
Let's face it, the Realm sucks. It's all very glorious if you are at the top of the mountain, living in palaces built out of tribute and stocked with stolen treasure, reclining on beds made out of the prostrate bodies of subjugated slaves, but it's objectively terrible for everyone else. You feel for the blood and immiseration that follows in empire's wake, and it fills you with an undefinable rage. Try to remember where it comes from. Try to find rebellion in your past.
Embassy -2 (Fuck your manners)
Craft +1 (We built the world)
12 hours.
The New Black Jade
This island was the last known location of the infamous sorcerer-warlord Yonris and her armies. She was Dragon-Blooded, like you. You don't know who you are. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that you might be one and the same... but it does take an idiot to seriously entertain the idea. Have a good long think about Yonris and try to figure out if there's any good reason to think you're not her.
Sagacity -2 (Objectively preposterous)
Presence +1 (Appeal to vanity)
8 hours.
The Opening Gate
You have knowledge of an esoteric school of swordsmanship developed by the outcaste swordmaster Hidur. It emphasizes swordsmanship as a solved game, an algorithmic process by which any attack and defense can be calculated from the starting point of a single stance, the eponymous Opening Gate. How and why did you learn this art? Did you learn Hidur's legendary secret technique, buried in the rigidly defined stances of his teachings? Ponder these questions and more.
Integrity +1 for self (Deep introspection)
Integrity -1 for others (Deep introspection)
48 hours.
FINCHER: "Didn't mean nothing by it, boss. You just look a little shaky, is all."
Fincher passes you a brass water flask. The water is cold, and you feel the chill all the way down to your stomach. You do not feel refreshed, but almost immediately you feel the raw edge of the headache subsiding.
You see script scratched into the flask, and brace yourself against the movement of the horse so you can read it.
FLASK: Blessed water runs in your veins now that you are pure.
The familiarity of the phrase is haunting, like a half-remembered tune that comes to mind unbidden.
"Hey Fincher, what does this mean?"
FINCHER: "What? Oh, that. It's, uh, the water mantra. Immaculate stuff." She seems embarassed.
FLASK: Ask her why she wrote it on me.
"Why'd you write it on the flask?"
FINCHER: "Uh..." she looks away. "I can't remember."
FLASK: She's lying.
"The flask says you're lying."
FINCHER: "What are you on about, boss? Look, give me back the flask."
She snatches it off you.
FINCHER: "We can talk about it later, we're almost at the hill."
The road leads over a ring of grassy hilltops. The sea breeze blows from beyond. You leave the horses and approach the edge on foot, and crawl to the edge to look down into the valley.
Your first thought of Ashglass is of twin ant hives. The pale gold of sunset lights the city from the west in fire, illuminating the mountainous paired fortresses around which the city grows like mold. Seabirds flock around the megastructures, flies around the carcassses of great beasts, nesting in the arches above hundred-span buttresses sprouting from the rock faces of the cliffs.
Fincher lets out an impressed whistle.
Between the fortresses you can see the gleam of blue-dyed sails, warships clustered in the bay. On the near side are the camps. You see instantly that the scout estimates are accurate, or even undervaluing the threat. A riot of many-coloured banners marks tents in the valey bellow. You see musters of horse being led between camps, soldiers flocking around evening meals, workers digging trenches and dragging freshly cut trees from the orchards that speckle the coast.
AWARENESS: VERY DIFFICULT
CHECK SUCCESS
AWARENESS: I estimate eleven thousand in total.
"I make eleven thousand, half under arms."
FINCHER: "I don't understand it. Reports said twenty thousand total population in the highlands. Even if they somehow got all the fighting folk from Slatewater to work with them, there's no way they should have this many. They just don't have enough people to support an army this big. Did they land mercenaries somehow?"
AWARENESS: Some of them are moving wrong.
"Wrong how?"
FINCHER: "You what?"
"Not you."
AWARENESS: The group of infantry at the periphery, up towards the wall. They're just holding formation, standing still. Why? There's no attack.
"There's something weird going on with that group at the front."
FINCHER: "There's something weird going on with you."
"I'm serious, look."
She stares where you are pointing. She gets out her spyglass and looks closer.
FINCHER: "Huh."
"Can I get a shot of that spyglass?"
She shrugs and hands it to you.
[ ] Look around the camps.
[ ] Look at the ships.
[ ] Look at the walls.
[ ] Look at the city.
[ ] Look at Fincher.
[ ] Look at the sky.
You started thinking about Unbroken Rushes (12 hours) and The Opening Gate (48 hours).
You put the spyglass to your eye and take a detailed look over the camp.
It will be impossible to tell without hours of careful observation just how many of the people down there are authentically real, properly moving people, but you assess that there are still quite a lot of them.
There are three large white pavillion tents, spaced throughout the camp. Something's odd about them. They are heavily guarded, but nobody's going in or out. Prisons? Treasuries? Reclusive leaders?
You freeze as you see several of the same sort of dun-yellow banners that were carried by the cavalry on the beach, with the same five-petal flower pattern you bear on your jacket.
"Say Fincher, how many of those riders got away after I blacked out?"
FINCHER: "Oh, most of them. I'd say a good hundred fifty. No way we could outpace them on foot. We lost some loose horses, too."
"So they'll probably have returned to their camp by now."
FINCHER: "Uh... yeah. Shit."
WAR: AVERAGE CHECK: PASSED
WAR: Depending on how organized they were, they might have been there for up an hour already. They'll have reported what happened at the beach, which will probably mean they are getting ready to dispatch a larger force. Probably in this direction. We should make a withdrawal. Sound stategy.
AWARENESS: But there's more to see here. We just need a little longer.
[ ] We should head back immediately.
[ ] We need to look at some more things here. Stay with me for a bit.
[ ] I need to look at some more things here. You should get back to the talon.
"We should split up. I check out what's going on here before dark, you need to get back to your talon."
Fincher looks at you dubiously.
FINCHER: "So long as you don't do anything mad like charging into the camp on your own, alright? Got enough trouble. Remember I'm supposed to be escorting you."
"I remember."
FINCHER: "I'm taking your horse back with me. They'll spot him on the road, you're better off going across the fields on foot in the dark. Camp'll be a half mile coastward from where we departed the talon. We'll move off at dawn, whether you're back or not. Keep the spyglass."
"Thanks for your help, Fincher, really."
She stands and turns to go, then pauses and looks back.
FINCHER: "Don't listen to any voices you hear, alright? And here, take this, it's yours."
She tosses you the water flask. It lands beside you, wobbling back and forth with the motion of the remaining water within.
"I can't take your water flask."
FINCHER: "It's not mine. Like I said, it's yours. Take care of yourself, boss."
Before you can ask her for a further explanation she's gone, sprinting down the hill towards the road.
Something to ponder at later. For now you have to make use of what light remains. The sun is almost down.
You take up Fincher's spyglass again.
[ ] Check out the strange-looking group at the front of the camp, towards the walls.
[ ] Try to figure out what's going on with the big tents that nobody enters.
[ ] Look for any forces gathering that might be coming this way.
[ ] Examine the city for ways you might enter.
[ ] Look over the ships for anything you might make use of.
[ ] Survey the walls to assess the strength of the defenders.
[ ] Reconsider and run to catch up with Fincher.
You speed-count the formation in tens. Six hundred and twenty. Their armor consists of a heavy laced-plate hauberk over a padded yellow jacket like yours, and a bronzed helm with a white crest.
CRAFT: AVERAGE
CHECK: SUCCESS
CRAFT: The equipment is plainly real. Even if those are blunt practice weapons, there is no mistaking genuine steel and bronze.
And yet they aren't moving. At least you can't catch them moving as you are looking. Why would someone equip dummies with real weapons? Or put them on the front ranks, where the defenders would be able to see through the ruse easily?
AWARENESS: DIFFICULT CHECK: FAILED
You spend a precious couple of minutes looking over the strange unit, but learn nothing further. The sun is dipping over the horizon, painting the camp in deep red. Time to move on.
[ ] Try to figure out what's going on with the big tents that nobody enters.
[ ] Look for any forces gathering that might be coming this way.
[ ] Examine the city for ways you might enter.
[ ] Look over the ships for anything you might make use of.
[ ] Survey the walls to assess the strength of the defenders.
[ ] Head back to Fincher's camp.
