- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
[X] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason.
Exalted: Out Of The Eater
- Thread starter TenfoldShields
- Start date
TenMoreMiles
rotating 梅长苏 in my head 24/7
- Pronouns
- It/Its
[X] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason.
[X] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason.
We going to do some neck romancing?
We going to do some neck romancing?
Variety is the spice of life. And by expanding into untapped markets of boyfriends, Tenfold is trying to manipulate the market and gain a monopoly on gay quests - he will enforce a sky-high like to post ratio, and as the only major player on the market we will be forced to comply in order to consume that content. (I expect he will include micro-like transactions for clothing for boyfriends, and DLC boyfriends for liking entirely unrelated posts).
why would you ever reference that show
god has forgotten us
mods pls ban zerban
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
no.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I think this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of Tenfold's audience, and, indeed, Tenfold himself
Prologue Part Two: On The Nature Of Daylight
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The crowd sweeps you along; a constant pushing, a continuous force. A tide you couldn't turn against even if you tried. Bodies packed in on every side, once somewhat-regimented rows jagged and sloppy and shuffled into each other as the distance and strain begins to tell. A plume of dust hangs overhead, fine grit and silicates coating the inside of your mouth, your nose, the corners of your lips. The ambient heat turns the already still, hot air up to sweltering. Pushing the temperature higher and higher until until it feels like every breath is pulled from the inside of a stone oven and you're dripping wet, soaked in sweat. Eyes stinging with the salt. Mirages ripple across the roadway, the stone seeming half-submerged before it nears. Rising from the distortion. Crumbling arteries and raised earthworks feeding in and branching out in great, lazy arcs every so many miles. The path itself arrowing to the horizon, flat and even as an anvil-top.
A collection of thoughts struggle and twitch in the back of your head, a den of stirred snakes. You're hungry and you don't know when you'll be fed. More importantly you're thirsty and you don't know when they'll let you drink. Have helots started to fall? It's only been an hour or so, the sun hasn't reached the zenith yet. There are still shadows on the ground. But soon...soon yeah soon.
It'll start soon. You remember how it goes.
There are no gods for helots but there are always masters. A hand that reaches down from on high to shape and sculpt, to organize and relocate. This many to the fields. This many to the City to work the halls and homes and villas of the citizenry. This many to the canal docks and riverine ports. This many to the lumber yards, this many to the mines.
This many to the ragged edged, open pits of sucking earth; to the abattoirs of mud and blood-spattered bodies. This many to the stakes; wrists and ankles bound and a spear piercing the chest, left displayed for the crows. This many to poisoned bread and tainted meat; white foam dripping from their lips as toxin chews them apart from the inside out. This many to the river shallows swirling with clouds of scarlet and this many to pile high on the pyre.
This many to the children. Their children.
Their children hunt you. Lookshy's youth, the dedicated and the promising and the prominent; pulled from the masses of new, raw recruits and plucked from dynastic family trees. Placed under the care of the very keenest, the very cruelest officers the Empire has to offer. Pleasing their parents with your deaths. The next generation of senior commanders and civil officials writing out their loyalty to Lookshy in your blood, because only those who were willing and able to kill for the City so young could ever be expected to lead it.
From their ranks come the very worst.
"...Do you know who the General is," you ask tentatively, your voice so soft that Jason has to tilt his head in to hear the question, "I didn't recognize the banners at the village."
His expression clouds, he grimaces. He drags his forearm across his brow as the two of you walk and takes a second to shake the moisture from his fingers before he responds. Like he's trying to figure out how to word it before giving up and saying it all in one go. "Aikaterine Sidonia, I saw her at the riverside when they were clearing out Dock Complex Zero One Three"
"Oh," you say.
Oh.
There are many things to one could say about Aikaterine Sidonia. She is of the blood of Sextes Jylis and a close cousin to the current Matriarch of her family. Her aunt once held the rank of Blessed-in-Purple Eternal: first among equals, first among the Conclave and the City it governs. She and her cousin both number among the Archontic Conclave itself, those three hundred Exalted whose decisions set the course of the Empire. She is pious, beloved of the gods and her clan wealthy beyond compare and even if everyone knows she holds her command more for her kinship than military merit none would dare question her skill; not aloud, not in private, not in the hushed silence of their own heads.
You know all this but that's not why you know her. And that's not the story that's told about her. Because there is, really, only one story to be told about Aikaterine Sidonia: The Festival of Falling Flowers.
Emancipation isn't unknown, usually after the slave's distinguished death and usually for the helot's family if they can be found. Not common, no, but it can happen. When her heritage was made manifest Aikaterine Sidonia insisted on a grand gesture, a display of goodwill for the faithful. You were a boy then, caught in the awkward years between child and teen, rubbing shackle-scraped wrists as you listened, wide eyed. Awed and envious in equal measure: five thousand to be set free. Five thousand to be liberated. Five thousand of the truly faithful, as chosen by the village Listeners to have their chains struck. To be born again by the grace of the dragons.
You remember seeing the procession as it wound past the titanic canal; men and women, young and old, crowned with flowers and flanked by soldiers. Taken on a long circuit of the Aikaterine temples: the complex to Mars Carrion Crow, Crone-Goddess of War. The shrines to the Sebastokratorissa of Cinnamon and Smoke, Green-Wood Cataphract, the Nine Ivy Handmaidens. Rejoicing, weeping, proud; something so long caged within them unbound for the first time in their lives.
Five thousand lead away to the villa of the Aikaterine, just within the seventh wall.
You wonder, sometimes, how they died in that darkness, on those ancestral grounds. What it was like hearing the chuckling of the guards, the rasp of steel as swords cleared leather sheaths; feeling the chains draw tight and the collars catch, the cell door slamming shut with your fingers inches from the threshold. You imagine those flower crowns falling as blades cut into unarmored flesh and arrows riddle soft organs; tearing those ridiculous outfits to rags. But even that's just so much speculation really, because nobody knows what happened to those five thousand, what she did, what theatricality she had to cap off the night of celebration.
All anyone knows is that not one of them were ever seen again.
Overseers were still laughing about it years later as you worked to repair the outer fortifications. Can you blame them?
What a good joke.
Your hands are trembling again, fingers curling and flexing. The scar beneath your eye aching, the memory of a gauntleted hand and the impact of metal on bone shuddering through. Someone says your name and you don't really notice. Someone says your name and you'd respond you suppose but it's suddenly so hard to breathe, like all you can get are little sips, like there's a cloth drawn tight over your nose, your mouth.
Jason cuffs your arm and you flinch so intensely you all but stumble out of place, out of position; losing your balance, almost falling in the crowd, the crush of people, and then his hand is on your elbow. Tugging you back, steadying you, gently guiding you closer to him and out of the path of the marchers just behind you. Both your eyes reflexively going to the mounted guards that ride alongside the column, waiting to see if they've noticed the little eddy, the stir in the center. Both of you relaxing, the tension ebbing from your spine as you exhale together.
"It'll be fine, I think. She's cruel but she's- enh, shit. What's the word? Where you're inconsistent and easily bored?"
"(Capricious?)," you murmur, half remembered phrases from a Listener's sermon bubbling up.
"Capricious yeah, it's not as if she'll have much attention for us."
You nod. You open your mouth to apologize, to say something grateful, "Why do you care?" falls out instead. Barely audible, almost ashamed. And despite the now long-distant dawn seeing his smile is like seeing the sun come out all over again. The first sliver just cresting the horizon to strip away mist and paint the sky in pinks and orange. The kind of expression that almost works the eyes shut, like a happy dog. Unselfconscious and something like certain, almost cocky, even if you see the matching flinch, the inward wince, as he looks away.
"I don't have anyone either you know? And you were over here, looking so sad," a shrug of those sinewy shoulders, hair like spun gold mussed up as the wind slowly stirs, "...Besides, you're kind of skinny, so I figured if worst came to worst I could probably take you hah!"
You crack a grin at that too; a snarled up, crooked thing but, well, it is true.
Music plays, the road wears on, you talk more on your plans, your strategy for survival. Talking until exhaustion squeezes your lungs and your throats feel worn and cracked. But you don't mind because for the first time in years and years you...remember what it's like. To have a friend.
That night you sleep side by side on the cold earth. Wrapped up in your padded jackets, shivering as you try to preserve what few scraps of heat you have; husband them between you. His arms, larger and stronger, around your lean chest. Your back against his breast. All around you the miserable masses of humanity, bedded down like beasts in faint depressions and small grassy hollows by the side of the road.
The tents of Lookshyan soldiers a few hundred paces away in neat, perfect rows of white canvas. Firelight flickering, casting shadows down the temporary streets. A man tries to run in the night, two more helots are kicked awake to deal with his body. You watch as they vanish into the dark, spades over their shoulders.
They march you out of the heartland. The rising sun searing your eyes, the setting sun roasting your neck each and every day. They march you until the walls of the City are just a memory. Until you see mountains rear up in the distance, white-capped even in the heart of Summer, flanks thickly forested and riven with deep valleys. Until Jason frowns and says he thinks you're only a few days travel from the Yanaze.
Messathalene is to the North but across the river, Thorns and the Marukani are straight South. Port Calin is back the way you came. Are they just going to march you all the way to Nexus?
You find out as the exhausted column descends upon the middling-sized Mining Outpost One Five Two: Ivory Bones of Immaculate Earth. A bare bones, military-planned settlement surrounded by tier-etched foothills and chalk-white quarries; milky, clouded blue creeks trickling through sheer ravines. Blocks of limestone sitting at the depot, waiting to be carried to the river and sailed down to the City proper. Left sitting because the Yanaze, Lookshy's leash on the throats of the Scavenger Lands is compromised.
Xauma has seized the riverine ports on the North shore. Three days before you arrived the Wolf-King crossed the waters and took the towns of the Triadic River Ministry by storm.
Within the week he'll be here.
Ivory Bones of Immaculate Earth is meant to house a small military garrison and a steadily replenished force of helot laborers, the town's population has never risen above two and a half thousand souls since it was first built. It is currently hosting more than twice that in legionaries and auxiliaries from the Aikaterine theme alone. To say nothing of you.
It's already seething with activity as your escorts herd you like so many sheep down the rocky, gravel-laced trail and into the town square. The sun poised at the start of its long, gradual descent below the horizon. Its light the color of molten copper, drowning the world in an angry, sullen glow. Jason looks to you, questioning. They're starting to carve out sloppy chunks of the helot forces, strong backs and limbs for the thousand things that need doing. You look down the slope to the town center, unease stirring in your gut as you see the governor's home draped in rich, green-threaded banners. Surrounded by guards in green-tinged jadesteel.
She's here.
And you have options and opportunities.
[ ] Slip in with one of the work groups starting on the earthworks and fortifications. It'll be hard labor but you can see that they're being fed and watered first and you've barely had any of either all day. Hunger and thirst chew on you.
[ ] Slip in with one of the work groups being sent to help set up the army's camp. Soldiers can be dangerous if the mood takes them, but you can see the heaped supply wagons by the first tents. Maybe you can get actual blankets.
[ ] Slip in with one of the work groups being stabled in the town itself. The public square is right beside the municipal magistrate's manor but they seem like they're getting a chance to actually rest before they're rotated on.
[ ] Slip in with one of the work groups being attached to the scouting parties. It'll be more traveling, at speed too even, and with soldiers. But you and Jason will be able to overhear what they share, maybe even learn more.
A collection of thoughts struggle and twitch in the back of your head, a den of stirred snakes. You're hungry and you don't know when you'll be fed. More importantly you're thirsty and you don't know when they'll let you drink. Have helots started to fall? It's only been an hour or so, the sun hasn't reached the zenith yet. There are still shadows on the ground. But soon...soon yeah soon.
It'll start soon. You remember how it goes.
There are no gods for helots but there are always masters. A hand that reaches down from on high to shape and sculpt, to organize and relocate. This many to the fields. This many to the City to work the halls and homes and villas of the citizenry. This many to the canal docks and riverine ports. This many to the lumber yards, this many to the mines.
This many to the ragged edged, open pits of sucking earth; to the abattoirs of mud and blood-spattered bodies. This many to the stakes; wrists and ankles bound and a spear piercing the chest, left displayed for the crows. This many to poisoned bread and tainted meat; white foam dripping from their lips as toxin chews them apart from the inside out. This many to the river shallows swirling with clouds of scarlet and this many to pile high on the pyre.
This many to the children. Their children.
Their children hunt you. Lookshy's youth, the dedicated and the promising and the prominent; pulled from the masses of new, raw recruits and plucked from dynastic family trees. Placed under the care of the very keenest, the very cruelest officers the Empire has to offer. Pleasing their parents with your deaths. The next generation of senior commanders and civil officials writing out their loyalty to Lookshy in your blood, because only those who were willing and able to kill for the City so young could ever be expected to lead it.
From their ranks come the very worst.
"...Do you know who the General is," you ask tentatively, your voice so soft that Jason has to tilt his head in to hear the question, "I didn't recognize the banners at the village."
His expression clouds, he grimaces. He drags his forearm across his brow as the two of you walk and takes a second to shake the moisture from his fingers before he responds. Like he's trying to figure out how to word it before giving up and saying it all in one go. "Aikaterine Sidonia, I saw her at the riverside when they were clearing out Dock Complex Zero One Three"
"Oh," you say.
Oh.
There are many things to one could say about Aikaterine Sidonia. She is of the blood of Sextes Jylis and a close cousin to the current Matriarch of her family. Her aunt once held the rank of Blessed-in-Purple Eternal: first among equals, first among the Conclave and the City it governs. She and her cousin both number among the Archontic Conclave itself, those three hundred Exalted whose decisions set the course of the Empire. She is pious, beloved of the gods and her clan wealthy beyond compare and even if everyone knows she holds her command more for her kinship than military merit none would dare question her skill; not aloud, not in private, not in the hushed silence of their own heads.
You know all this but that's not why you know her. And that's not the story that's told about her. Because there is, really, only one story to be told about Aikaterine Sidonia: The Festival of Falling Flowers.
Emancipation isn't unknown, usually after the slave's distinguished death and usually for the helot's family if they can be found. Not common, no, but it can happen. When her heritage was made manifest Aikaterine Sidonia insisted on a grand gesture, a display of goodwill for the faithful. You were a boy then, caught in the awkward years between child and teen, rubbing shackle-scraped wrists as you listened, wide eyed. Awed and envious in equal measure: five thousand to be set free. Five thousand to be liberated. Five thousand of the truly faithful, as chosen by the village Listeners to have their chains struck. To be born again by the grace of the dragons.
You remember seeing the procession as it wound past the titanic canal; men and women, young and old, crowned with flowers and flanked by soldiers. Taken on a long circuit of the Aikaterine temples: the complex to Mars Carrion Crow, Crone-Goddess of War. The shrines to the Sebastokratorissa of Cinnamon and Smoke, Green-Wood Cataphract, the Nine Ivy Handmaidens. Rejoicing, weeping, proud; something so long caged within them unbound for the first time in their lives.
Five thousand lead away to the villa of the Aikaterine, just within the seventh wall.
You wonder, sometimes, how they died in that darkness, on those ancestral grounds. What it was like hearing the chuckling of the guards, the rasp of steel as swords cleared leather sheaths; feeling the chains draw tight and the collars catch, the cell door slamming shut with your fingers inches from the threshold. You imagine those flower crowns falling as blades cut into unarmored flesh and arrows riddle soft organs; tearing those ridiculous outfits to rags. But even that's just so much speculation really, because nobody knows what happened to those five thousand, what she did, what theatricality she had to cap off the night of celebration.
All anyone knows is that not one of them were ever seen again.
Overseers were still laughing about it years later as you worked to repair the outer fortifications. Can you blame them?
What a good joke.
Your hands are trembling again, fingers curling and flexing. The scar beneath your eye aching, the memory of a gauntleted hand and the impact of metal on bone shuddering through. Someone says your name and you don't really notice. Someone says your name and you'd respond you suppose but it's suddenly so hard to breathe, like all you can get are little sips, like there's a cloth drawn tight over your nose, your mouth.
Jason cuffs your arm and you flinch so intensely you all but stumble out of place, out of position; losing your balance, almost falling in the crowd, the crush of people, and then his hand is on your elbow. Tugging you back, steadying you, gently guiding you closer to him and out of the path of the marchers just behind you. Both your eyes reflexively going to the mounted guards that ride alongside the column, waiting to see if they've noticed the little eddy, the stir in the center. Both of you relaxing, the tension ebbing from your spine as you exhale together.
"It'll be fine, I think. She's cruel but she's- enh, shit. What's the word? Where you're inconsistent and easily bored?"
"(Capricious?)," you murmur, half remembered phrases from a Listener's sermon bubbling up.
"Capricious yeah, it's not as if she'll have much attention for us."
You nod. You open your mouth to apologize, to say something grateful, "Why do you care?" falls out instead. Barely audible, almost ashamed. And despite the now long-distant dawn seeing his smile is like seeing the sun come out all over again. The first sliver just cresting the horizon to strip away mist and paint the sky in pinks and orange. The kind of expression that almost works the eyes shut, like a happy dog. Unselfconscious and something like certain, almost cocky, even if you see the matching flinch, the inward wince, as he looks away.
"I don't have anyone either you know? And you were over here, looking so sad," a shrug of those sinewy shoulders, hair like spun gold mussed up as the wind slowly stirs, "...Besides, you're kind of skinny, so I figured if worst came to worst I could probably take you hah!"
You crack a grin at that too; a snarled up, crooked thing but, well, it is true.
Music plays, the road wears on, you talk more on your plans, your strategy for survival. Talking until exhaustion squeezes your lungs and your throats feel worn and cracked. But you don't mind because for the first time in years and years you...remember what it's like. To have a friend.
That night you sleep side by side on the cold earth. Wrapped up in your padded jackets, shivering as you try to preserve what few scraps of heat you have; husband them between you. His arms, larger and stronger, around your lean chest. Your back against his breast. All around you the miserable masses of humanity, bedded down like beasts in faint depressions and small grassy hollows by the side of the road.
The tents of Lookshyan soldiers a few hundred paces away in neat, perfect rows of white canvas. Firelight flickering, casting shadows down the temporary streets. A man tries to run in the night, two more helots are kicked awake to deal with his body. You watch as they vanish into the dark, spades over their shoulders.
They march you out of the heartland. The rising sun searing your eyes, the setting sun roasting your neck each and every day. They march you until the walls of the City are just a memory. Until you see mountains rear up in the distance, white-capped even in the heart of Summer, flanks thickly forested and riven with deep valleys. Until Jason frowns and says he thinks you're only a few days travel from the Yanaze.
Messathalene is to the North but across the river, Thorns and the Marukani are straight South. Port Calin is back the way you came. Are they just going to march you all the way to Nexus?
You find out as the exhausted column descends upon the middling-sized Mining Outpost One Five Two: Ivory Bones of Immaculate Earth. A bare bones, military-planned settlement surrounded by tier-etched foothills and chalk-white quarries; milky, clouded blue creeks trickling through sheer ravines. Blocks of limestone sitting at the depot, waiting to be carried to the river and sailed down to the City proper. Left sitting because the Yanaze, Lookshy's leash on the throats of the Scavenger Lands is compromised.
Xauma has seized the riverine ports on the North shore. Three days before you arrived the Wolf-King crossed the waters and took the towns of the Triadic River Ministry by storm.
Within the week he'll be here.
Ivory Bones of Immaculate Earth is meant to house a small military garrison and a steadily replenished force of helot laborers, the town's population has never risen above two and a half thousand souls since it was first built. It is currently hosting more than twice that in legionaries and auxiliaries from the Aikaterine theme alone. To say nothing of you.
It's already seething with activity as your escorts herd you like so many sheep down the rocky, gravel-laced trail and into the town square. The sun poised at the start of its long, gradual descent below the horizon. Its light the color of molten copper, drowning the world in an angry, sullen glow. Jason looks to you, questioning. They're starting to carve out sloppy chunks of the helot forces, strong backs and limbs for the thousand things that need doing. You look down the slope to the town center, unease stirring in your gut as you see the governor's home draped in rich, green-threaded banners. Surrounded by guards in green-tinged jadesteel.
She's here.
And you have options and opportunities.
[ ] Slip in with one of the work groups starting on the earthworks and fortifications. It'll be hard labor but you can see that they're being fed and watered first and you've barely had any of either all day. Hunger and thirst chew on you.
[ ] Slip in with one of the work groups being sent to help set up the army's camp. Soldiers can be dangerous if the mood takes them, but you can see the heaped supply wagons by the first tents. Maybe you can get actual blankets.
[ ] Slip in with one of the work groups being stabled in the town itself. The public square is right beside the municipal magistrate's manor but they seem like they're getting a chance to actually rest before they're rotated on.
[ ] Slip in with one of the work groups being attached to the scouting parties. It'll be more traveling, at speed too even, and with soldiers. But you and Jason will be able to overhear what they share, maybe even learn more.
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- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups starting on the earthworks and fortifications. It'll be hard but you can see that they're being fed and watered first and you've barely had any of either all day. Hunger and thirst chew on you.
Hunger and thirst are powerful motivators.
Hunger and thirst are powerful motivators.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
A-bup-bup-bup stop.
My murderboner can only get so erect.
Giving me more reasons to want every non-helot in Lookshy slaughtered is just spoiling me at this point! Also I really wanted to link the AC: Syndicate Miracle of Sound song but that's about the industrial revolution and the working underclass rather than actual slaves so it's just a hair too advanced to be applicable
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups being attached to the scouting parties. It'll be more traveling, at speed too even, and with soldiers. But you and Jason will be able to overhear what they share, maybe even learn more.
I'll admit this is being a filthy metagamer, but if overhearing the soldiers chattering has even like a one-percent chance of revealing something useful to know for later, that beats out letting Alexius... y'know, eat. Or rest. And I suppose from a more in-character standpoint, keeping a sharp ear out for what the guards are thinking about seems useful from a survival standpoint when you can be killed for pretty much literally no reason.
YOU MIGHT BE DEAD SOON ANYWAY, PLENTY OF TIME TO REST WHEN YOU'RE DEAD BOI
My murderboner can only get so erect.
Giving me more reasons to want every non-helot in Lookshy slaughtered is just spoiling me at this point! Also I really wanted to link the AC: Syndicate Miracle of Sound song but that's about the industrial revolution and the working underclass rather than actual slaves so it's just a hair too advanced to be applicable
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups being attached to the scouting parties. It'll be more traveling, at speed too even, and with soldiers. But you and Jason will be able to overhear what they share, maybe even learn more.
I'll admit this is being a filthy metagamer, but if overhearing the soldiers chattering has even like a one-percent chance of revealing something useful to know for later, that beats out letting Alexius... y'know, eat. Or rest. And I suppose from a more in-character standpoint, keeping a sharp ear out for what the guards are thinking about seems useful from a survival standpoint when you can be killed for pretty much literally no reason.
YOU MIGHT BE DEAD SOON ANYWAY, PLENTY OF TIME TO REST WHEN YOU'RE DEAD BOI
paradoxdragon
Immersed in Dreams
- Location
- Someplace or another
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups starting on the earthworks and fortifications. It'll be hard but you can see that they're being fed and watered first and you've barely had any of either all day. Hunger and thirst chew on you.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups being attached to the scouting parties. It'll be more traveling, at speed too even, and with soldiers. But you and Jason will be able to overhear what they share, maybe even learn more.
it's 6am i have no clever comment zerban good
it's 6am i have no clever comment zerban good
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups being stabled in the town itself. The public square is right beside the municipal magistrate's manor but they seem like they're getting a chance to actually rest before they're rotated on.
I don't really believe we're getting any rest here, I just figured if anything happens, the town center is where it'll happen, so might as well be close to see it. Though IC, finding some time to rest seems safer than stealing blankets, and we'll get fed eventually. If we're hungry and tired, going on a hike with soldiers just for the chance of hearing interesting info seems far from our immidiet interests.
I don't really believe we're getting any rest here, I just figured if anything happens, the town center is where it'll happen, so might as well be close to see it. Though IC, finding some time to rest seems safer than stealing blankets, and we'll get fed eventually. If we're hungry and tired, going on a hike with soldiers just for the chance of hearing interesting info seems far from our immidiet interests.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
Okay so I get why the 5,000 were chosen from the back-country; things would get all... messy if you grabbed any of the ruling class's Mothakes-style domestic servants, milk-brothers, and/or impoverished once-neighbors, but it feels like just like the lowest fucking bar in terms of self-preservation instincts to just barely not commit the mass murder equivalent of shitting where you sleep? With measures like the Encrypted Ones treating their best scions like they're the child soldiers of a gang that needs to bind them with shared psychopathy and assault, I'm getting massive *incompetent flailing death-spasms* vibes here. Like so the regime is barely grounded in any sort of reality at all vibes.
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RedV
Refuelling
- Location
- Right here
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups being sent to help set up the army's camp. Soldiers can be dangerous if the mood takes them, but you can see the heaped supply wagons by the first tents. Maybe you can get actual blankets.
Blankets are important. I don't want to die of frostbite or whatever. Hunger can be endured for a day or so, but if we get an illness like dysentery or whatever we're fucked.
Blankets are important. I don't want to die of frostbite or whatever. Hunger can be endured for a day or so, but if we get an illness like dysentery or whatever we're fucked.
Well, it is based on something that actually happened in historical Sparta. Given Lookshy was always "suppsedly" based on Sparta (though the rewrite used for this quest heavily draws upon the Byzantine Empire in its twilight), this fits pretty well: Sparta was pretty much the ancient Greek world's North Korea. It had to invest so many resources in preventing slave rebellions to maintain their society that the paranoia against slave rebellions got them to do ever more depraved shit. As they kept getting into battles, you would see that their numbers keep getting smaller and smaller as the citizen population was less able to recover, and more oppressive measures were taken against the Helots as their relative % of the population kept growing.
Their paranoia and insistence on a retarded social structure ended up with their continued decline until they got annexed as a footnote in someone else's story.
In other words, yes, this is indeed the death-spasms of a polity that will never return to the heights it used to have.
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups being stabled in the town itself. The public square is right beside the municipal magistrate's manor but they seem like they're getting a chance to actually rest before they're rotated on.
I'd like to see what the town is like. Also resting is a great time for gossiping and rumors.
I'd like to see what the town is like. Also resting is a great time for gossiping and rumors.
Spear
Sun-In-Rags
- Location
- North Macedonia
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups starting on the earthworks and fortifications. It'll be hard but you can see that they're being fed and watered first and you've barely had any of either all day. Hunger and thirst chew on you.
Oh god, Wolf Boye is coming soon! Eeeeeeeeh!
Go Go Wolfy Swamp Bois!
Oh god, Wolf Boye is coming soon! Eeeeeeeeh!
Go Go Wolfy Swamp Bois!
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Speaking of the historical inspiration and living fascist cartoon that is the city-state of Lacaedamon, iirc at at least one time of writing the ratio of helots to genuine Spartan citizens was seven-to-one.
Manus' Lookshy writeup puts its citizen count at one million.
With seven million dollarydoos of slaves running around, massacres would be absolute drops in the proverbial charnel bucket. Even swinging it dramatically towards a more conservative estimate, five-or-six-million helots are the kind of insane disposable workforce you practically can't get rid of quick enough.
Romv
A Memory of TREES
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups starting on the earthworks and fortifications. It'll be hard labor but you can see that they're being fed and watered first and you've barely had any of either all day. Hunger and thirst chew on you.
Is there some way we could just unmoor the entire country and have it drop straight into Oblivion? Even the resulting massive shadowland would be an improvement, really.
Is there some way we could just unmoor the entire country and have it drop straight into Oblivion? Even the resulting massive shadowland would be an improvement, really.
- Location
- On the coast of Portugal
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hmm, we really living in shit. Hunted, massacred, only able to huddle in the dark for those scraps of warmth. This prologue is hitting all the right notes. Now to the vote.
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups starting on the earthworks and fortifications. It'll be hard labor but you can see that they're being fed and watered first and you've barely had any of either all day. Hunger and thirst chew on you.
While I like @ZerbanDaGreat suggestion, I do believe this would be more in character, so I'm picking it.
Dybbukpossesed
Falling Somewhere
- Location
- California
[X] Slip in with one of the work groups starting on the earthworks and fortifications. It'll be hard labor but you can see that they're being fed and watered first and you've barely had any of either all day. Hunger and thirst chew on you.