There is a general rule among summoners of 'Never conjure up what you cannot put back down' that...
Dark Lord Accidental Lieutenant Quest
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User Total Academia Nut 14
Awakening
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There is a general rule among summoners of 'Never conjure up what you cannot put back down' that is less obeyed than it really should be. That you are one of two beings left in a candlelit cavern where once there were thirteen plus one speaks to that, which is especially worrisome as you were one of thirteen doing the summoning of the plus one and the other twelve had summoned you and were able to put you down.
Sort of.
Honestly, you felt like two very different rivers meeting and not quite mixing right away. While you had some vague understanding of what had happened, the 'you' you hadn't really been present, but instead locked away in an unending nightmare of pain and violation, your body made a puppet for the demon that had until a few heartbeats ago been firmly in control. So while not having your soul devoured and getting your body back was nice, you did have the issue that you were stuck in the same room as the one who had done all of that.
You were somewhat glad that the process of awakening from the nightmare fugue of demonic possession took long enough for the other living being in the room full of charred skeletons to find some clothing because the blush on your face from him being shirtless is already bad enough. Admittedly he's also terrifying, but your mind is not quite working straight, so his masterwork sculpture physique holds you in thrall to the fineness of his features while your survival instincts try to calm down enough to be able to get you to gibber in terror in the corner instead of ogling him.
His skin has a distinctly deathly pallor to it, which is strongly contrasted by his glossy black hair that spills in loose ringlets down to his shoulders and eyes of radiant copper-gold, deepening the impression of being carved from some luxurious stone like alabaster or marble. Cast in the mold of a warrior-prince of old, he possesses plenty of smoothly defined muscle and sharp edges, his cool colouration contrasting with the supernatural heat in his eyes and an oddly disarming and warm smile directed at you.
"I am most impressed by your survival," the man says in a rich, friendly tone that still somehow has an element of something that makes the mind seize up like a terrified animal. The fact that you know what he is has at least something to do with that, yet somehow not all of it.
Your brain and your tongue both trip over each other to try to respond to that before, "Thank you?" sort of stumbles out.
The smile grows broader and the man says, "I mean that your soul is still intact after your possession. That takes remarkable will, and thus I am impressed."
Embarrassment paints your cheeks and you look down at your hands to try not look at him, and you notice that the binding tattoos that had been forcibly applied to your body before the demon had been summoned and forced inside have mostly burned away, leaving an intricate network of fine scarring. You also notice that all of the piercings and other jewellery are also piles of broken and corroded slag at your feet.
Somehow it is the reminder that neither the demon nor the cult had cared to dress you with any sort of modesty is what causes your brain to really start working. While not exactly naked, there is nowhere near enough fabric covering your body for you to feel comfortable, especially not with the resurrected First Emperor, God of All Tyrants standing in front of you!
Babbling and falling back in panic while trying to cover yourself, by the time you realize that you should probably be paying more attention to the hell god than the fact that you're wearing three pieces of sheer cloth and some chains. Looking back up you see the literally devilishly handsome man looking both amused and pensive at once, and he just says, "I do apologize but the backlash left very little cloth intact, and I had a feeling that you would be more disconcerted were I to be walking around as clothed as when I was summoned, especially as these rags would at best only partially cover you. I know what has happened is very distressing for you, so let us take our leave of this place."
Calmed to numbness by his reasonable tone and the absurdity of the situation, you trail behind the First Emperor as he makes his way to the stairs that lead up and out of the underground grotto where fell deeds had been done in the service of bringing him back to the mortal realms. Along the way you begin to compulsively scratch at the scars that cover your body, and absentmindedly realize that you had walked across the scribed circle that had been used to summon the god and had been intended to serve as a binding.
A remnant of the information that they had bound the demon within her to contain floated to the surface. The binding circle was an incredibly potent construct, enough that even the demonic residue within her body could be affected. The First Emperor didn't seem to even notice the potent seal despite his obvious infernal origins.
What had those wicked fools conjured up?
As the two of you make your way up the stairs cut into the living stone, the First Emperor asks congenially, "So, this is all rather awkward, but I suppose some sort of proper introduction is in order. You can call me Az. May I know your name?"
Your brain trips over itself again at the congenial tone, although you avoid your feet following and thus taking you on a rather painful tumble back down the stairs. Mumbling a bit, you eventually get out, "I uh… I don't remember." You almost feel like wincing, you should have just made something up for the tyrant.
Nodding, 'Az' says, "That's alright. If you remember just let me know, if you don't I'm sure we can figure out something appropriate."
You mumble something else after that, before you arrive at the top of this set of stairs, which is the general prep room where the supplies for the ritual room below are stored, with a ladder and trapdoor leading to the cellars of the building the cult operates out of. Az wanders about the chamber, glancing over the various occult items and the thick iron bars that held sacrificial victims before use - now empty. Grabbing up a pair of ritual robes, he tosses one to you and you gratefully put it on as he dons his own robe.
Feeling distinctly silly over the fact that you are grateful for modest clothing and thus somehow feel at ease being in the same room as an avatar of one of the most evil beings in existence, you sort of get out, "T-thank you."
"Think nothing of it, I find having a good relationship with the people you are working with reduces the odds of problems later, and simple politeness and consideration has so little cost in comparison to war," Az states with an easy smile.
You just blink at him in confusion, and he asks, "Am I not known for my oration and charisma?"
"Uhhh… I guess? I mean, you're, you know, the First Emperor, so speeches must have been something you did, but… I don't know, the warring is more remembered," you tell the God of Tyrants.
The man sighs and mutters to himself, "Of course it is…" After a moment, he shakes his head and says properly, "Of course it is, it is the more dramatic, the more easily remembered by history. I can only assume that the passage of time has been greater than expected."
"About two thousand years," you reply, and to his credit Az is mostly unperturbed by this revelation.
"Truly my works have passed into legend then. I suppose little of what I did remains other than stories?" Az asks with a touch of sorrow at the end.
"Well, there are still kingdoms who claim to be the successors of the Empire, or… umm… successors to those who tore it down, but ah… no, no I don't think there's really anything left but stories," you explain, at once not wanting to admit the latter bit and yet fearing the consequences of not including such an important point.
Shrugging magnanimously, the Tyrant God says, "Such is the way of things. It would appear that if I wish to change the world it is necessary that I begin again." He flexes a hand and a shock almost like a static spark shoots up your spine as he just flexes the magical abilities he has. He raises an eyebrow at whatever he felt when doing that and mutters to himself, "That's going to take some set-up just to practice…"
He brightens up considerably and then says, "Still, whatever advantages I may or may not have, I'm still starting from the bottom. I've done it once and my motivations have not changed, so best get to work as quickly as possible."
His eyes focus in on you and he smiles most beatific smile and says, "Which, I suppose, brings us to you."
The pronounced gulp you give is not sufficient to cover the ominous dread you feel from that statement, but then again it is quite probably not anatomically possible to gulp that hard. You stutter out, "M-m-me?"
"Yes, you, insofar that I am wondering what role you might wish to play in all of this?" Az ask as serenely as a man with faintly glowing eyes can ask.
Your heart hammers against your chest in full on panic over the fact that history's greatest monster has his attention on you, and your next words will decide what happens. For the briefest flicker of a second you consider just rejecting him, but this is the First Emperor! The man said to have personally executed thousands who stood in his way, and that was before people started fearfully worshipping him as a god! You don't want to die, especially not after you were so recently freed from the living death of possession. Mouth dry, you finally say, "I… the cult before, they, well they, they kept me for knowledge?"
Az just leaned casually up against a stony wall and quirked his head in a 'Go on' sort of nod.
"I, I mean there's a lot of things I don't really remember, it was really the demon doing the remembering, but I remember bits and pieces, you know? And, and, and! And I remember what the situation in the city above is like! That's important, right?" You eagerly explain, trying to demonstrate that you actually have a purpose.
"That is quite a good thing to know. Would you like to explain further?" Az asked.
Nodding with manic enthusiasm, you say, "Well, first off, this is the Independent Republic of Sarna, which is in an archipelago to the west of Althia discovered a bit over a century ago. It's a hub of trade and piracy and recently its ability to generate wealth has attracted the attention of a number of the Great Powers back on Althia, and the politicking of the Merchant Princes has lead to… well, this. I don't know who the sponsor is, or who the other cults are, but more than one prince has been financing the use of forbidden magic to try to gain an edge in their factional squabbles."
"Explain the Princes please," Az prompts.
"Right, right. Okay, so I think only one or two of them could really be called 'princes' from coming from exiled royal families, but they're the voting body, based on family wealth, and there's always about a dozen of them but their numbers fluctuate depending on fortunes, and they are currently divided into four general 'blocs' over the question of whether or not we should swear fealty to one of the Althian powers rather than risk war. A majority of the princes support capitulation, but they are bitterly divided over whether to break for the Junters or the Semish - those are the two leading kingdoms with the power to enforce their demands - so everything is currently defaulting to the Independence Faction, who are mostly interested in maintaining the status quo. There is also a faction with only a single prince speaking for them but who have a vocal minority who are pushing for increased aggressiveness against the Junters and Semish to get them to back off. Ironically, while several of the princes represent pirate clans, and many of the vocal supporters of aggression are pirate captains, none of the actual pirate princes support the practice. I think at least one of the pirate princes considers himself the rightful heir of the Juntlund throne and thus has little interest in beating on their Semish rivals, nor with joining. I uh… I only really remember the broad strokes of the factions, not who is the currently a prince or not. The demon didn't really pay attention to those sorts of things and my memories from before are… not great," you admit at the end of your explanation.
"Fair enough, fair enough," Az says with a nod. "So, basically what you are saying is that this is a politically volatile situation, with groups who are ostensibly supposed to be on the same side all squabbling with each other - violence in the streets no doubt - and great powers looming on the horizon, looking to take advantage. Much of the wealth of the group comes from trading and raiding, which is no doubt part of what is causing the interest of said great powers. Ah, it seems that whoever summoned me knew slightly more about me than I expected."
At your silence, the God of Tyrants explains, "The situation you just described was basically my youth… up until I happened to it anyways. Still, you would think that someone who knew that little tidbit, which was already getting a bit obscured by the end of my lifetime, would know a bit more about me and why they shouldn't have dragged me back into this realm of existence."
"People who summon up the avatars of dark gods tend not to have that sort of sense," you say, the words falling out of your mouth before you can consider what it is that you just said.
Fortunately, Az just laughs and says, "This is unfortunately true. But in any case, you would think that someone who knew enough about me would step back and question whether or not they really want someone who survived nineteen civil wars."
Your mind sort of stops as you try to process that before you go, "How?!"
"With great tenacity and bloodshed," Az notes, his chipper airs slipping away into a darker tone more fitting the pallette his summoning painted him in. "Despite my best efforts, I was never particularly popular in what I did…"
Flopping his head back, he sighs extravagantly before his smile returns and he says, "But I always kept moving forward after every set back, no matter the cost, and thus here I am." Holding up a hand he looks at his skin for a moment before he says, "I look pretty obviously evil, don't I?"
You're not quite sure how to answer that, which Az takes as answer enough. Looking around at the items in the storeroom, he eventually finds and dusts off a hand mirror, with which he gazes at his own reflection in the candlelight. He smirks contemptuously and shakes his head, saying, "Yeah, this only vaguely looks like me when I was young. I guess everyone just remembered that image. Weird. Also, not going to be able to go out and go, 'Hey, anybody want to sign up with me to change the world' without everyone going 'Eeek! Evil! Evil!' You need a proper army at your back before you can get away with the whole world decrying you as the Spawn of Xitechtix."
At your blank look, he says, "Did I displace that god in people's minds? Weird. Well, before I was a thing, that was the name of the god of evil my people feared."
A sudden weird insight pops into your thoughts and you say automatically, "Oh, wait, I think that's just an obscure name variation for Ydriscan the Devourer, as he is known to demons."
"Interesting," Az says, appraising you once again, and you realize that while you've just demonstrated further use to him, increasing your chances of survival, you've also increased the odds of being asked again.
Flipping the hand mirror over in his hand, he offers it to you and asks, "Tell me what you think."
Hesitantly taking the mirror, you gaze into it and find… yourself, more or less. A young woman stares back at you, her head shaved bald to accommodate the tattoos and brands and piercings that had adorned you and have now been reduced to a network of fine scars, just like on the rest of your body. You look basically normal, a plain girl who was maybe in an odd accident - maybe something to do with a fishing net - but especially once your hair grows back in you don't think you would particularly stand out.
"I look like me," you reply somewhat absentmindedly, even as you notice that your eyes are leaking. Why are you crying? Why do you suddenly feel light?
Oh, you're sitting on the ground, and appear to be bawling and laughing at the same time in a mess of wet hiccups. That's rather odd…
All at once the cause for the physical response slams into you. You're you, not the thing they put behind your eyes. You have your body back, and that joy wars with the absolute terror at the thought that if it was taken from you once, it could be taken from you again.
And Az is there, standing between you and the nearest source of light, backlit ominously. He holds out a hand and asks, "Would you like some help? I'm not sure how much I can do, but I learned a lot in ninety-odd years of life, and when the whole world is bearing down at you at once, it's often nice to have someone on your side."
You look at the offered hand, and the face of the First Emperor, God of All Tyrants, and you have some inkling of how he got to that position. Some part of you wants to say no, to spurn him and suffer the consequences, but most of all you want to live, to just take the hand offered to you. And… and you're tainted, dirty anyway. Dirty in the soul. The demon might be gone, but it left its mark, and surely when you die you'll get no reward for having its essence smeared all over your spirit. Surely… surely only suffering shall be your reward for refusing to cooperate? Better to obey and live a little longer... and maybe since he's a hell god you can get a good afterlife in the end anyway?
You reach out and take his hand even as you try to wipe away the tears that won't stop coming. Through your blubbering you manage to get out, "I would like to be on your side," although you're not how coherent it actually was.
"Excellent. I hope that we can have a long and most fruitful time working together," Az says while helping you to your unsteady feet.
"First Emp-" you begin, only to be cut off.
"Please, Az," he says firmly but congenially.
"...Az."
"Thank you."
"I… I think I remember a bit more. About myself. I think… I think my name was - is - Camilla. Camilla… sounds right," you say, not quite sure about it yourself, but feeling that that scrap of memory is perhaps at least a bit of flotsam to cling to no matter what it originally meant to you.
"Excellent. Good to meet you Camilla. Do you remember anything else?"
"I think… I think I remember a bit more about what the cult had the demon for other than knowledge…" you say, unpleasant memories that aren't quite your own floating to the surface.
Select two of the following
[] Arming
[] Assassination
[] Combat
[] Communication
[] Equipment
[] Infiltration
[] Inspiration
[] Power
[] Recruitment
[] Scrying
[] Subversion
[] Teaching
[] Translation
AN: Going to try to run some more character based stuff alongside the settlement manager to work out a few ideas and see if I can get some mojo back. I hope you all find this entertaining
Sort of.
Honestly, you felt like two very different rivers meeting and not quite mixing right away. While you had some vague understanding of what had happened, the 'you' you hadn't really been present, but instead locked away in an unending nightmare of pain and violation, your body made a puppet for the demon that had until a few heartbeats ago been firmly in control. So while not having your soul devoured and getting your body back was nice, you did have the issue that you were stuck in the same room as the one who had done all of that.
You were somewhat glad that the process of awakening from the nightmare fugue of demonic possession took long enough for the other living being in the room full of charred skeletons to find some clothing because the blush on your face from him being shirtless is already bad enough. Admittedly he's also terrifying, but your mind is not quite working straight, so his masterwork sculpture physique holds you in thrall to the fineness of his features while your survival instincts try to calm down enough to be able to get you to gibber in terror in the corner instead of ogling him.
His skin has a distinctly deathly pallor to it, which is strongly contrasted by his glossy black hair that spills in loose ringlets down to his shoulders and eyes of radiant copper-gold, deepening the impression of being carved from some luxurious stone like alabaster or marble. Cast in the mold of a warrior-prince of old, he possesses plenty of smoothly defined muscle and sharp edges, his cool colouration contrasting with the supernatural heat in his eyes and an oddly disarming and warm smile directed at you.
"I am most impressed by your survival," the man says in a rich, friendly tone that still somehow has an element of something that makes the mind seize up like a terrified animal. The fact that you know what he is has at least something to do with that, yet somehow not all of it.
Your brain and your tongue both trip over each other to try to respond to that before, "Thank you?" sort of stumbles out.
The smile grows broader and the man says, "I mean that your soul is still intact after your possession. That takes remarkable will, and thus I am impressed."
Embarrassment paints your cheeks and you look down at your hands to try not look at him, and you notice that the binding tattoos that had been forcibly applied to your body before the demon had been summoned and forced inside have mostly burned away, leaving an intricate network of fine scarring. You also notice that all of the piercings and other jewellery are also piles of broken and corroded slag at your feet.
Somehow it is the reminder that neither the demon nor the cult had cared to dress you with any sort of modesty is what causes your brain to really start working. While not exactly naked, there is nowhere near enough fabric covering your body for you to feel comfortable, especially not with the resurrected First Emperor, God of All Tyrants standing in front of you!
Babbling and falling back in panic while trying to cover yourself, by the time you realize that you should probably be paying more attention to the hell god than the fact that you're wearing three pieces of sheer cloth and some chains. Looking back up you see the literally devilishly handsome man looking both amused and pensive at once, and he just says, "I do apologize but the backlash left very little cloth intact, and I had a feeling that you would be more disconcerted were I to be walking around as clothed as when I was summoned, especially as these rags would at best only partially cover you. I know what has happened is very distressing for you, so let us take our leave of this place."
Calmed to numbness by his reasonable tone and the absurdity of the situation, you trail behind the First Emperor as he makes his way to the stairs that lead up and out of the underground grotto where fell deeds had been done in the service of bringing him back to the mortal realms. Along the way you begin to compulsively scratch at the scars that cover your body, and absentmindedly realize that you had walked across the scribed circle that had been used to summon the god and had been intended to serve as a binding.
A remnant of the information that they had bound the demon within her to contain floated to the surface. The binding circle was an incredibly potent construct, enough that even the demonic residue within her body could be affected. The First Emperor didn't seem to even notice the potent seal despite his obvious infernal origins.
What had those wicked fools conjured up?
As the two of you make your way up the stairs cut into the living stone, the First Emperor asks congenially, "So, this is all rather awkward, but I suppose some sort of proper introduction is in order. You can call me Az. May I know your name?"
Your brain trips over itself again at the congenial tone, although you avoid your feet following and thus taking you on a rather painful tumble back down the stairs. Mumbling a bit, you eventually get out, "I uh… I don't remember." You almost feel like wincing, you should have just made something up for the tyrant.
Nodding, 'Az' says, "That's alright. If you remember just let me know, if you don't I'm sure we can figure out something appropriate."
You mumble something else after that, before you arrive at the top of this set of stairs, which is the general prep room where the supplies for the ritual room below are stored, with a ladder and trapdoor leading to the cellars of the building the cult operates out of. Az wanders about the chamber, glancing over the various occult items and the thick iron bars that held sacrificial victims before use - now empty. Grabbing up a pair of ritual robes, he tosses one to you and you gratefully put it on as he dons his own robe.
Feeling distinctly silly over the fact that you are grateful for modest clothing and thus somehow feel at ease being in the same room as an avatar of one of the most evil beings in existence, you sort of get out, "T-thank you."
"Think nothing of it, I find having a good relationship with the people you are working with reduces the odds of problems later, and simple politeness and consideration has so little cost in comparison to war," Az states with an easy smile.
You just blink at him in confusion, and he asks, "Am I not known for my oration and charisma?"
"Uhhh… I guess? I mean, you're, you know, the First Emperor, so speeches must have been something you did, but… I don't know, the warring is more remembered," you tell the God of Tyrants.
The man sighs and mutters to himself, "Of course it is…" After a moment, he shakes his head and says properly, "Of course it is, it is the more dramatic, the more easily remembered by history. I can only assume that the passage of time has been greater than expected."
"About two thousand years," you reply, and to his credit Az is mostly unperturbed by this revelation.
"Truly my works have passed into legend then. I suppose little of what I did remains other than stories?" Az asks with a touch of sorrow at the end.
"Well, there are still kingdoms who claim to be the successors of the Empire, or… umm… successors to those who tore it down, but ah… no, no I don't think there's really anything left but stories," you explain, at once not wanting to admit the latter bit and yet fearing the consequences of not including such an important point.
Shrugging magnanimously, the Tyrant God says, "Such is the way of things. It would appear that if I wish to change the world it is necessary that I begin again." He flexes a hand and a shock almost like a static spark shoots up your spine as he just flexes the magical abilities he has. He raises an eyebrow at whatever he felt when doing that and mutters to himself, "That's going to take some set-up just to practice…"
He brightens up considerably and then says, "Still, whatever advantages I may or may not have, I'm still starting from the bottom. I've done it once and my motivations have not changed, so best get to work as quickly as possible."
His eyes focus in on you and he smiles most beatific smile and says, "Which, I suppose, brings us to you."
The pronounced gulp you give is not sufficient to cover the ominous dread you feel from that statement, but then again it is quite probably not anatomically possible to gulp that hard. You stutter out, "M-m-me?"
"Yes, you, insofar that I am wondering what role you might wish to play in all of this?" Az ask as serenely as a man with faintly glowing eyes can ask.
Your heart hammers against your chest in full on panic over the fact that history's greatest monster has his attention on you, and your next words will decide what happens. For the briefest flicker of a second you consider just rejecting him, but this is the First Emperor! The man said to have personally executed thousands who stood in his way, and that was before people started fearfully worshipping him as a god! You don't want to die, especially not after you were so recently freed from the living death of possession. Mouth dry, you finally say, "I… the cult before, they, well they, they kept me for knowledge?"
Az just leaned casually up against a stony wall and quirked his head in a 'Go on' sort of nod.
"I, I mean there's a lot of things I don't really remember, it was really the demon doing the remembering, but I remember bits and pieces, you know? And, and, and! And I remember what the situation in the city above is like! That's important, right?" You eagerly explain, trying to demonstrate that you actually have a purpose.
"That is quite a good thing to know. Would you like to explain further?" Az asked.
Nodding with manic enthusiasm, you say, "Well, first off, this is the Independent Republic of Sarna, which is in an archipelago to the west of Althia discovered a bit over a century ago. It's a hub of trade and piracy and recently its ability to generate wealth has attracted the attention of a number of the Great Powers back on Althia, and the politicking of the Merchant Princes has lead to… well, this. I don't know who the sponsor is, or who the other cults are, but more than one prince has been financing the use of forbidden magic to try to gain an edge in their factional squabbles."
"Explain the Princes please," Az prompts.
"Right, right. Okay, so I think only one or two of them could really be called 'princes' from coming from exiled royal families, but they're the voting body, based on family wealth, and there's always about a dozen of them but their numbers fluctuate depending on fortunes, and they are currently divided into four general 'blocs' over the question of whether or not we should swear fealty to one of the Althian powers rather than risk war. A majority of the princes support capitulation, but they are bitterly divided over whether to break for the Junters or the Semish - those are the two leading kingdoms with the power to enforce their demands - so everything is currently defaulting to the Independence Faction, who are mostly interested in maintaining the status quo. There is also a faction with only a single prince speaking for them but who have a vocal minority who are pushing for increased aggressiveness against the Junters and Semish to get them to back off. Ironically, while several of the princes represent pirate clans, and many of the vocal supporters of aggression are pirate captains, none of the actual pirate princes support the practice. I think at least one of the pirate princes considers himself the rightful heir of the Juntlund throne and thus has little interest in beating on their Semish rivals, nor with joining. I uh… I only really remember the broad strokes of the factions, not who is the currently a prince or not. The demon didn't really pay attention to those sorts of things and my memories from before are… not great," you admit at the end of your explanation.
"Fair enough, fair enough," Az says with a nod. "So, basically what you are saying is that this is a politically volatile situation, with groups who are ostensibly supposed to be on the same side all squabbling with each other - violence in the streets no doubt - and great powers looming on the horizon, looking to take advantage. Much of the wealth of the group comes from trading and raiding, which is no doubt part of what is causing the interest of said great powers. Ah, it seems that whoever summoned me knew slightly more about me than I expected."
At your silence, the God of Tyrants explains, "The situation you just described was basically my youth… up until I happened to it anyways. Still, you would think that someone who knew that little tidbit, which was already getting a bit obscured by the end of my lifetime, would know a bit more about me and why they shouldn't have dragged me back into this realm of existence."
"People who summon up the avatars of dark gods tend not to have that sort of sense," you say, the words falling out of your mouth before you can consider what it is that you just said.
Fortunately, Az just laughs and says, "This is unfortunately true. But in any case, you would think that someone who knew enough about me would step back and question whether or not they really want someone who survived nineteen civil wars."
Your mind sort of stops as you try to process that before you go, "How?!"
"With great tenacity and bloodshed," Az notes, his chipper airs slipping away into a darker tone more fitting the pallette his summoning painted him in. "Despite my best efforts, I was never particularly popular in what I did…"
Flopping his head back, he sighs extravagantly before his smile returns and he says, "But I always kept moving forward after every set back, no matter the cost, and thus here I am." Holding up a hand he looks at his skin for a moment before he says, "I look pretty obviously evil, don't I?"
You're not quite sure how to answer that, which Az takes as answer enough. Looking around at the items in the storeroom, he eventually finds and dusts off a hand mirror, with which he gazes at his own reflection in the candlelight. He smirks contemptuously and shakes his head, saying, "Yeah, this only vaguely looks like me when I was young. I guess everyone just remembered that image. Weird. Also, not going to be able to go out and go, 'Hey, anybody want to sign up with me to change the world' without everyone going 'Eeek! Evil! Evil!' You need a proper army at your back before you can get away with the whole world decrying you as the Spawn of Xitechtix."
At your blank look, he says, "Did I displace that god in people's minds? Weird. Well, before I was a thing, that was the name of the god of evil my people feared."
A sudden weird insight pops into your thoughts and you say automatically, "Oh, wait, I think that's just an obscure name variation for Ydriscan the Devourer, as he is known to demons."
"Interesting," Az says, appraising you once again, and you realize that while you've just demonstrated further use to him, increasing your chances of survival, you've also increased the odds of being asked again.
Flipping the hand mirror over in his hand, he offers it to you and asks, "Tell me what you think."
Hesitantly taking the mirror, you gaze into it and find… yourself, more or less. A young woman stares back at you, her head shaved bald to accommodate the tattoos and brands and piercings that had adorned you and have now been reduced to a network of fine scars, just like on the rest of your body. You look basically normal, a plain girl who was maybe in an odd accident - maybe something to do with a fishing net - but especially once your hair grows back in you don't think you would particularly stand out.
"I look like me," you reply somewhat absentmindedly, even as you notice that your eyes are leaking. Why are you crying? Why do you suddenly feel light?
Oh, you're sitting on the ground, and appear to be bawling and laughing at the same time in a mess of wet hiccups. That's rather odd…
All at once the cause for the physical response slams into you. You're you, not the thing they put behind your eyes. You have your body back, and that joy wars with the absolute terror at the thought that if it was taken from you once, it could be taken from you again.
And Az is there, standing between you and the nearest source of light, backlit ominously. He holds out a hand and asks, "Would you like some help? I'm not sure how much I can do, but I learned a lot in ninety-odd years of life, and when the whole world is bearing down at you at once, it's often nice to have someone on your side."
You look at the offered hand, and the face of the First Emperor, God of All Tyrants, and you have some inkling of how he got to that position. Some part of you wants to say no, to spurn him and suffer the consequences, but most of all you want to live, to just take the hand offered to you. And… and you're tainted, dirty anyway. Dirty in the soul. The demon might be gone, but it left its mark, and surely when you die you'll get no reward for having its essence smeared all over your spirit. Surely… surely only suffering shall be your reward for refusing to cooperate? Better to obey and live a little longer... and maybe since he's a hell god you can get a good afterlife in the end anyway?
You reach out and take his hand even as you try to wipe away the tears that won't stop coming. Through your blubbering you manage to get out, "I would like to be on your side," although you're not how coherent it actually was.
"Excellent. I hope that we can have a long and most fruitful time working together," Az says while helping you to your unsteady feet.
"First Emp-" you begin, only to be cut off.
"Please, Az," he says firmly but congenially.
"...Az."
"Thank you."
"I… I think I remember a bit more. About myself. I think… I think my name was - is - Camilla. Camilla… sounds right," you say, not quite sure about it yourself, but feeling that that scrap of memory is perhaps at least a bit of flotsam to cling to no matter what it originally meant to you.
"Excellent. Good to meet you Camilla. Do you remember anything else?"
"I think… I think I remember a bit more about what the cult had the demon for other than knowledge…" you say, unpleasant memories that aren't quite your own floating to the surface.
Select two of the following
[] Arming
[] Assassination
[] Combat
[] Communication
[] Equipment
[] Infiltration
[] Inspiration
[] Power
[] Recruitment
[] Scrying
[] Subversion
[] Teaching
[] Translation
AN: Going to try to run some more character based stuff alongside the settlement manager to work out a few ideas and see if I can get some mojo back. I hope you all find this entertaining
Escape
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Demon's Purpose Revealed
Primary Function: Occult Knowledge
Secondary Function: Teaching
Tertiary Functions: Recruiting and Subversion
Character Sheet Updated
Cults (Sarna): Size++, Skill++
Merchant Princes (Sarna): Anti-Hypnosis Precautions Active
The man - boy really - was three sheets to the wind when he was dragged down into the cellar by his "new friends", who sat him down on a stool where his head lolled about in drunken curiosity, not really understanding the danger he was in. His eyes perked up when you stepped into the light, obviously thinking that he has the best friends ever. His eyes are focusing on the obvious details like female flesh barely covered by tiny triangles of translucent cloth, and the exotic tattoos and piercing that draw the eye to such barely concealed features.
He's not paying attention to the glow of your eyes until you are straddling him, at which point he only vaguely registers that something isn't right when your gazes lock, but then your will slams into his inebriated mind, peeling away alcohol compromised defences to reveal the inner workings of his mind. Emotions of lust and fear are predominantly at the current forefront, but fortunately he is not particularly experienced with women, so it is easy enough to extract a strain of curiosity from the lust. Taking that, you scribe memories of occult knowledge there, whetting what little intellectual curiosity he has. As the information, and its implications, infiltrate his addled mind like strange dreams, you slam another load of information into his brain along the vector of his youthful lusts. There's already a strong association between this information and you and thus to sexual desire, but now it will be solidified in his mind to an unnatural degree.
You dangle flickers of knowledge just at the edge of his consciousness, and prompt him to give in further, to let you write more. He eagerly lowers his final defences, and you take him in a deep embrace, shoving your tongue into his mouth and towards his throat. He tastes of rum and ale and fear and within his mind you grab emotional contexts and tear. All emotional contexts towards his former friends and family are excised, and in their place is heart deep loyalty towards the cult and a yearning desire to serve the masters. You leave the memories of his former life intact, but tie those to a paranoid fear of discovery of his 'new family', and shred up the parts of his soul that are no longer necessary, drinking the energy to replenish your own reserves expended in this bit of soul scribing and pruning.
Rising contemptuously from your seat, the boy only not on the ground because the cultists behind him anticipated his collapse and caught him, you wipe away your chin. He'll be back for another session later, for further tutelage and to make sure that you had properly rearranged his loyalties. Another pawn for one of the cult's cells, another vessel eager for the knowledge you can teach.
Your knees go weak as the memory slams into you, and you feel the acrid taste of bile in your throat at the memory of your... function... within the cult. The demon was a tutor, recruiting tool, and method of subverting useful idiots to the cause, using its powers to cut up and rearrange their souls into useful forms. The memories of the violation done to others with your body repulses you, and yet some scrap of occult knowledge lets you know that the demon's feeding upon them also reduced its gnawing upon your soul, extending how long you could survive, and how much you might ultimately retain of who you were. You feel a second, lesser wave of disgust over the relief you feel at that tidbit of information.
"I... the demon... I remember having some sort of hypnotic power that I used to change people, change their minds, taking things out and putting them in. I quickly trained up a number of acolytes, dupes that could be used in larger rituals as seconds, with the promising among them becoming actual practitioners. That ritual that summoned you, it was the culmination of a series of lesser works, building up so that the most skilled members of the cult could pull it off. This is years of work by hundreds of people... and most of them are still going to be out there," you explain what parts of the memories you remember.
"Does any of that power remain within you?" Az asked curiously.
You can feel... channels you suppose, like grooves in your mind and soul that you can dump power down. You feel an empty reservoir somewhere around your heart and don't particularly want to think about how you might replenish it - although part of you knows that some of it will refill with time - and you shove a little bit of that metaphorical fluid into a channel. You feel your eyes light up, but you immediately shut the ability off because it feels draining and you immediately don't want to have this ability active in the same room as the First Emperor. Fortunately its not like he is a blazing sun of magical energy, but something deep and instinctual tells you not to gaze at his soul too carefully.
"I think I can still do some surface hypnosis and impart knowledge to a willing person, but the deeper stuff... I don't have the skill or energy to it," you say, not bringing up the fact that you really don't want to do the deeper things. Just having the memory of what the demon did makes you feel even more fundamentally stained, even if you can sort of rationalize that it wasn't you doing it. After a moment's thought, you also add on, "The Merchant Princes are somewhat aware that people can do that, so they and key staff have warding, and the cult had to be careful about that. The demon could break some... not me, not at all."
"Well, that will make making quick friends fast, if not fast friends quick," Az notes somewhat whimsically. "Of course, what you can teach is probably limited by what you know, so I suppose that means that you should start learning things that would be useful for others to know. Still, if there are others we should probably leave this place, and preferably remove any evidence that their ritual may have been successful, or that you survived."
Glancing about the storeroom, your eyes alight upon a number of casks and barrels. Going over to them you find lamp oil, and most significant of all, a small keg of black powder, among the collection. Picking up the latter, you move it over to the stairs and then unstopper it, letting some of the contents spill out to the floor. You then grab an unlit torch and use it to lay a trail of oil from the barrel to the gunpowder, and another one from the barrel to the trap door leading to the building above. Az just watches you with some interest as you carefully take a candle from its sconce and then say, "So, this should make everyone think that the ritual was a resounding failure, and hopefully also bury the evidence. We should definitely run though."
Dropping the candle into the trail of oil, you watch it slowly begin to burn its way to the barrel, which should give you enough time to make a run for it. Fortunately there isn't anyone in the cellar above, and since the location was chosen for isolation in the first place you are fairly certain that the two of you make a clean get away from the location. It was basically a warehouse for storing things going into or out of the uplands, so it was a large place that was expected to be quiet for large parts of the year and had access to a major road and trail, but it wasn't actually down on the water where things would be busier.
Actually, the cavern where Az was summoned was probably an old smuggling tunnel or something like that. Not sure how you suspected that, but you did.
After you were away into the forest and the tremendous crack of the powder going up and the dark black smudge in the sky from the whole damn thing burning down signalled that the two of you were probably in the clear, you took a moment to actually appreciate the fact that you were outside and in daylight. You have to sit down again as the sensation of simply being up and about hits you, and you take in the sights.
You're up in the rougher forested hills to the sides of Sarna, which was built into a natural crescent harbour, steeply sloping cliffs of pitiless black rock jutting out on two sides, densely forested hills on a third, and the open ocean on the fourth. In the near distance you can see the city itself, spreading like a faintly burning, crusty mould up from the docks where tall masted ships are harboured. Spires and domes mark the palaces and temples of the rich and powerful, springing up amidst the various slapped together shacks and the few more solid brickwork buildings of the city. In the middle distance, out beyond the harbour you can see the fortresses and lighthouses up upon the cliffs, looming down with threat and warning, respectively, while out beyond the city there are the trails cut into the hills and forests that lead to the highland plantations. And in the far distance... ocean, in its limitless traverse.
For his part Az seems most interested in the trees around him, and he marvels slightly at the overabundance of greenery and the various squawking animals all around. You suppose since his empire was mostly in Althia, he probably wouldn't have seen a place like this before. Still, he composes himself quickly and then asks, "Have you any idea where to next?"
"Away from here, somewhere where neither of our appearance will stand out - especially you if you don't want to announce yourself right away - and somewhere with proper clothes. Ugh, these robes are already getting too hot and heavy," you note, plucking at the excessively thick hemp cloth that maintains your dignity and hides your identity. At least its not wool.
"So, the basics first then," Az notes. "Any memories of where the cult might have such things available?"
You sort through the fragments and then say uncertainly, "Maybe? I don't know of any unattended caches, but I think I remember talk about where some of the pawns I made were sent. I might be able to track down a cult cell... but it would be risky."
"Then someone not associated with the cult then?" Az prompts.
"We could probably find someone," you say, chewing on a lip. "Between my hypnosis and your... you-ness, we could probably find someplace to find food, shelter, and proper clothing until we can figure out something more permanent."
Az beams at your assessment and then says, "I do so appreciate your vote of confidence in my powers of persuasion. Have you any thoughts of the safest place to look for said necessities of life?"
Looking around the jungle trail you're on, you say, "Well, we could probably disappear into the slums around Sarna, but, you know, people and your appearance."
"However, you know, people are how you get things done," Az points out, copying your tone to your mild annoyance.
"There's the mangrove swamps on the opposite side of the cliffs. It's really easy to disappear into there, although there are dangers..." you glance at Az and decide just from looking at him that he can probably inflict enough violence for the two of you that nothing in there should be a problem. You're not quite sure how you know that when he isn't that physically intimidating, and you didn't exactly see what he did that reduced the summoners to charred skeletons and exorcised the demon from your body, but you know that when it comes to physical violence there is just something about him. After trailing off in thought, you resume, "Eh... probably the biggest danger is drawing attention. There are people there, but not as many because of all the reefs and sandbars on that side of the island making approaching, so its mostly smugglers passing through or small family fishermen catching enough food to survive."
"And into the hills?" Az inquires.
"Plantations, mostly fruit but also some more luxurious things. The wealthiest Merchant Princes have land there, although they don't actually go there much, especially at this time of year," you detail out.
"Okay, so, we have many choices here. What do you suggest?" Az inquires, although you're not exactly sure if he's asking for advice or just testing you somehow.
Location
[] Outskirts of Sarna
[] Mangrove swamps
[] Highlands
Target
[] Cult cell
[] Someone significant
[] Someone insignificant
Primary Function: Occult Knowledge
Secondary Function: Teaching
Tertiary Functions: Recruiting and Subversion
Character Sheet Updated
Cults (Sarna): Size++, Skill++
Merchant Princes (Sarna): Anti-Hypnosis Precautions Active
The man - boy really - was three sheets to the wind when he was dragged down into the cellar by his "new friends", who sat him down on a stool where his head lolled about in drunken curiosity, not really understanding the danger he was in. His eyes perked up when you stepped into the light, obviously thinking that he has the best friends ever. His eyes are focusing on the obvious details like female flesh barely covered by tiny triangles of translucent cloth, and the exotic tattoos and piercing that draw the eye to such barely concealed features.
He's not paying attention to the glow of your eyes until you are straddling him, at which point he only vaguely registers that something isn't right when your gazes lock, but then your will slams into his inebriated mind, peeling away alcohol compromised defences to reveal the inner workings of his mind. Emotions of lust and fear are predominantly at the current forefront, but fortunately he is not particularly experienced with women, so it is easy enough to extract a strain of curiosity from the lust. Taking that, you scribe memories of occult knowledge there, whetting what little intellectual curiosity he has. As the information, and its implications, infiltrate his addled mind like strange dreams, you slam another load of information into his brain along the vector of his youthful lusts. There's already a strong association between this information and you and thus to sexual desire, but now it will be solidified in his mind to an unnatural degree.
You dangle flickers of knowledge just at the edge of his consciousness, and prompt him to give in further, to let you write more. He eagerly lowers his final defences, and you take him in a deep embrace, shoving your tongue into his mouth and towards his throat. He tastes of rum and ale and fear and within his mind you grab emotional contexts and tear. All emotional contexts towards his former friends and family are excised, and in their place is heart deep loyalty towards the cult and a yearning desire to serve the masters. You leave the memories of his former life intact, but tie those to a paranoid fear of discovery of his 'new family', and shred up the parts of his soul that are no longer necessary, drinking the energy to replenish your own reserves expended in this bit of soul scribing and pruning.
Rising contemptuously from your seat, the boy only not on the ground because the cultists behind him anticipated his collapse and caught him, you wipe away your chin. He'll be back for another session later, for further tutelage and to make sure that you had properly rearranged his loyalties. Another pawn for one of the cult's cells, another vessel eager for the knowledge you can teach.
Your knees go weak as the memory slams into you, and you feel the acrid taste of bile in your throat at the memory of your... function... within the cult. The demon was a tutor, recruiting tool, and method of subverting useful idiots to the cause, using its powers to cut up and rearrange their souls into useful forms. The memories of the violation done to others with your body repulses you, and yet some scrap of occult knowledge lets you know that the demon's feeding upon them also reduced its gnawing upon your soul, extending how long you could survive, and how much you might ultimately retain of who you were. You feel a second, lesser wave of disgust over the relief you feel at that tidbit of information.
"I... the demon... I remember having some sort of hypnotic power that I used to change people, change their minds, taking things out and putting them in. I quickly trained up a number of acolytes, dupes that could be used in larger rituals as seconds, with the promising among them becoming actual practitioners. That ritual that summoned you, it was the culmination of a series of lesser works, building up so that the most skilled members of the cult could pull it off. This is years of work by hundreds of people... and most of them are still going to be out there," you explain what parts of the memories you remember.
"Does any of that power remain within you?" Az asked curiously.
You can feel... channels you suppose, like grooves in your mind and soul that you can dump power down. You feel an empty reservoir somewhere around your heart and don't particularly want to think about how you might replenish it - although part of you knows that some of it will refill with time - and you shove a little bit of that metaphorical fluid into a channel. You feel your eyes light up, but you immediately shut the ability off because it feels draining and you immediately don't want to have this ability active in the same room as the First Emperor. Fortunately its not like he is a blazing sun of magical energy, but something deep and instinctual tells you not to gaze at his soul too carefully.
"I think I can still do some surface hypnosis and impart knowledge to a willing person, but the deeper stuff... I don't have the skill or energy to it," you say, not bringing up the fact that you really don't want to do the deeper things. Just having the memory of what the demon did makes you feel even more fundamentally stained, even if you can sort of rationalize that it wasn't you doing it. After a moment's thought, you also add on, "The Merchant Princes are somewhat aware that people can do that, so they and key staff have warding, and the cult had to be careful about that. The demon could break some... not me, not at all."
"Well, that will make making quick friends fast, if not fast friends quick," Az notes somewhat whimsically. "Of course, what you can teach is probably limited by what you know, so I suppose that means that you should start learning things that would be useful for others to know. Still, if there are others we should probably leave this place, and preferably remove any evidence that their ritual may have been successful, or that you survived."
Glancing about the storeroom, your eyes alight upon a number of casks and barrels. Going over to them you find lamp oil, and most significant of all, a small keg of black powder, among the collection. Picking up the latter, you move it over to the stairs and then unstopper it, letting some of the contents spill out to the floor. You then grab an unlit torch and use it to lay a trail of oil from the barrel to the gunpowder, and another one from the barrel to the trap door leading to the building above. Az just watches you with some interest as you carefully take a candle from its sconce and then say, "So, this should make everyone think that the ritual was a resounding failure, and hopefully also bury the evidence. We should definitely run though."
Dropping the candle into the trail of oil, you watch it slowly begin to burn its way to the barrel, which should give you enough time to make a run for it. Fortunately there isn't anyone in the cellar above, and since the location was chosen for isolation in the first place you are fairly certain that the two of you make a clean get away from the location. It was basically a warehouse for storing things going into or out of the uplands, so it was a large place that was expected to be quiet for large parts of the year and had access to a major road and trail, but it wasn't actually down on the water where things would be busier.
Actually, the cavern where Az was summoned was probably an old smuggling tunnel or something like that. Not sure how you suspected that, but you did.
After you were away into the forest and the tremendous crack of the powder going up and the dark black smudge in the sky from the whole damn thing burning down signalled that the two of you were probably in the clear, you took a moment to actually appreciate the fact that you were outside and in daylight. You have to sit down again as the sensation of simply being up and about hits you, and you take in the sights.
You're up in the rougher forested hills to the sides of Sarna, which was built into a natural crescent harbour, steeply sloping cliffs of pitiless black rock jutting out on two sides, densely forested hills on a third, and the open ocean on the fourth. In the near distance you can see the city itself, spreading like a faintly burning, crusty mould up from the docks where tall masted ships are harboured. Spires and domes mark the palaces and temples of the rich and powerful, springing up amidst the various slapped together shacks and the few more solid brickwork buildings of the city. In the middle distance, out beyond the harbour you can see the fortresses and lighthouses up upon the cliffs, looming down with threat and warning, respectively, while out beyond the city there are the trails cut into the hills and forests that lead to the highland plantations. And in the far distance... ocean, in its limitless traverse.
For his part Az seems most interested in the trees around him, and he marvels slightly at the overabundance of greenery and the various squawking animals all around. You suppose since his empire was mostly in Althia, he probably wouldn't have seen a place like this before. Still, he composes himself quickly and then asks, "Have you any idea where to next?"
"Away from here, somewhere where neither of our appearance will stand out - especially you if you don't want to announce yourself right away - and somewhere with proper clothes. Ugh, these robes are already getting too hot and heavy," you note, plucking at the excessively thick hemp cloth that maintains your dignity and hides your identity. At least its not wool.
"So, the basics first then," Az notes. "Any memories of where the cult might have such things available?"
You sort through the fragments and then say uncertainly, "Maybe? I don't know of any unattended caches, but I think I remember talk about where some of the pawns I made were sent. I might be able to track down a cult cell... but it would be risky."
"Then someone not associated with the cult then?" Az prompts.
"We could probably find someone," you say, chewing on a lip. "Between my hypnosis and your... you-ness, we could probably find someplace to find food, shelter, and proper clothing until we can figure out something more permanent."
Az beams at your assessment and then says, "I do so appreciate your vote of confidence in my powers of persuasion. Have you any thoughts of the safest place to look for said necessities of life?"
Looking around the jungle trail you're on, you say, "Well, we could probably disappear into the slums around Sarna, but, you know, people and your appearance."
"However, you know, people are how you get things done," Az points out, copying your tone to your mild annoyance.
"There's the mangrove swamps on the opposite side of the cliffs. It's really easy to disappear into there, although there are dangers..." you glance at Az and decide just from looking at him that he can probably inflict enough violence for the two of you that nothing in there should be a problem. You're not quite sure how you know that when he isn't that physically intimidating, and you didn't exactly see what he did that reduced the summoners to charred skeletons and exorcised the demon from your body, but you know that when it comes to physical violence there is just something about him. After trailing off in thought, you resume, "Eh... probably the biggest danger is drawing attention. There are people there, but not as many because of all the reefs and sandbars on that side of the island making approaching, so its mostly smugglers passing through or small family fishermen catching enough food to survive."
"And into the hills?" Az inquires.
"Plantations, mostly fruit but also some more luxurious things. The wealthiest Merchant Princes have land there, although they don't actually go there much, especially at this time of year," you detail out.
"Okay, so, we have many choices here. What do you suggest?" Az inquires, although you're not exactly sure if he's asking for advice or just testing you somehow.
Location
[] Outskirts of Sarna
[] Mangrove swamps
[] Highlands
Target
[] Cult cell
[] Someone significant
[] Someone insignificant
Finding a home
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"I think... I think if we head up into the highlands and find someone of little consequence, a yeoman or peasant or the like, we can quietly convince them to let us camp out in the forest near their home without being bothered, while we figure out our first steps," you state, detailing out your thoughts.
Az considers this for a moment, before he says, "Hmmm... I agree that we should avoid the cult and anyone important to begin with, but I think you are being too cautious. I choose the closer wilderness over the further. If you choose to join me, that would be most 'appreciated', but if you choose not to join me do know that I will remember that."
You have no real answer to that, and so instead you just nod and say, "Mangrove swamp it is."
The journey across the rough terrain that protects the city proper of Sarna takes the whole remainder of the day, and you aren't down the opposite side of the slope to the swamps and shores proper by the time you stop to make camp for the night. You are ravenously hungry, sweaty, exhausted, and all around beat down by the time you collapse to the rocky but leaf covered ground in the twilight, but you have to admit that at least the view of the sun setting behind the horizon on the ocean is another little joy you didn't realize you had missed. Az sits down across from you, rolling a stone around in his hand, and notes, "You're quite good at navigating the forest."
You nod quietly, too tired to offer much commentary. You had found some edible berries and shoots, but those weren't particularly filling, although you do note that he is correct. The actions feel... familiar. While these trails are unknown to you, you never got turned around in the dense, tangled forest, and you knew to pass by a number of toxic plants. Hugging your knees up to your chest, you look down at your feet and wiggle your toes, which are thoroughly caked in mud and have been rather battered by walking bare across the rough terrain, although at least they aren't bleeding.
"I'm not sure that I need to sleep, so rest if you are tired. I will wake you if I need it," Az says, noting your demeanour.
You nod and let your head rest on your arms, which are cross across your raised knees. Maybe you'll just rest for a bit before...
You can't find the trail. You have something to do, someone to see, but you can't find the trail and you're lost and everyone is depending on you to get home and...
Green, green in every direction, no distinction to tell fair from foul, so you can't get back to where...
It's just around this bend, people need you to find it...
Shivering abruptly forces you from sleep, your body seizing up with a sharp inhalation of air and a jerk of your frame. Cold sweat covers you, chilling you in the cool humidity of the night, and you shudder uncontrollably. Az is still sitting across from you, but he has obtained a stick from somewhere and is using broken rock chips to sharpen one end into a point, apparently working by feel and starlight and possibly the faint glow of his own eyes... which might permit him some sort of hellish acuity of sight in the darkness, now that you think about it. He glances at you and notes your open eyes before saying, "I was starting to wonder if you would wake up on your own before morning."
You begin to rub half numb fingers against half numb legs, trying to heat everything up a bit. You're not sure what to say for a moment, your tongue dry from not enough water while sweating profusely, but eventually you croak out, "I... I might have been from the highlands. I think, I think the demon tormented me with nightmares of being lost in the jungle. When it had me, it was like that non-stop, and I just... I just couldn't wake up."
"You're awake now, and the demon isn't," Az offers while devoting the majority of his attention to his little project. You're not quite certain what to say to that, but caution steals the possibility of questioning him from you.
After a time of just watching him while you try to warm up, you eventually ask, "What are your plans in the swamps?" You probably could have asked this during the day, but you were too busy navigating and being wary of the avatar of tyranny to also ask about his plans, and he had not been forthcoming at the time.
"Oh, probably locate some smugglers, make contact with them to begin worming into the underbelly of Sarna and the pirate groups who work with the smugglers, accumulating various forms of power. I'm currently not planning too much beyond that horizon because something will inevitably come along to upend any medium or long term planning and require modification of my plans on the fly. If I weren't certain of something like a major political upheaval, plague of ghosts, or major natural disaster I might posit trying to usurp - overtly or covertly - the position of a Merchant Prince and then attempt to take over all of Sarna. If nothing interrupts I'll probably even go for that, but I've had such plans made pointless too many times in the past to not keep my options open when doing this sort of thing," Az notes while intently peeling away slivers of wood that do not fit into his vision of the spear he is making.
You nod at that, feeling oddly ill at ease by his at ease attitude. He doesn't feel nearly as imperious as you feel he should be.
"It is the nature of the world to make a mockery of the works of men, so I long ago learned to take advantage of the unexpected rather than gnash my teeth and wail that I did not get my way. I would have been dragged under by disappointment by twenty if I learned any other lesson," Az says, before holding his spear horizontal and resting it upon the nail of his littlest finger near its midpoint. After watching it start to slowly tip in one direction, he nodded in approval before he stuck it in a gouge he had made in a flat piece of bark and began to vigorously twirl.
Your brain slowly turns over what he said, and after a moment you are glad that your chills cover for the fact that you let out a little shudder. You suddenly wonder if he sees you in a similar manner to that branch; needing to be tended and sculpted into a useful shape instead of simply using it as a club as is, but still ultimately a tool and ultimately disposable, no matter how much prior work was put into it. You watch him intently for a time, before your eyes flicker shut once again.
While the rising of sun in the morning rouses you, you cannot say that your dreams were particularly more pleasant for the rest of the night.
Tiredly you get to your feet, noting that Az has completed another pair of spears, their tips a shiny dark from where he apparently friction charred them, so that the wood would better hold a point. There is obvious experience in his skills despite the absolute lack of materials or tools, and yet somehow seeing him with weapons in hand is both right and proper and yet also faintly terrifying. It was like he had been born armed and even these crude weapons were merely returning him to his natural state.
The sun is perhaps only two diameters above the horizon when you are reaching the sandy tangle where the jungle hills give way to the mangrove swamps, and you get to see your instincts proven right. There is a boar rooting about along your path, and when it hears you coming, it almost immediately takes exception to your existence. Possibly literally, since now that you think about it there are stories of animals being driven mad by the unseen presence of evil spirits, which both of you probably qualify for. You don't have time to really process what to do next before Az is suddenly upon the charging boar. It's all over with so quickly, and even though you don't really trust your recollection, you don't feel as if the First Emperor was displaying the strength or speed of a hell god, the moment of violence is still completed with bored ease. One spear casually slips into the boar's right eye socket, the creature's own charge providing the energy to drive it to the back of the skull. The second spear is planted with a bit of force in the boar's neck as it stumbles past Az's adroit sidestep along its blindside, while once the boar actually hits the ground he drives his final spear into its chest and assuredly where its heart would be.
You think you actually start breathing again a second after the boar exhales its final shudder, the poor beast probably never even aware that it was doomed, the whole thing was over so fast.
The fact that Az frowns and says with disappointment, "Iron weaponry just moved up on the list," only makes the whole scene even more surreal.
Something giddy bubbles up within you and you ask, "What, so you could do it in one blow?"
The look you get in return silences your giggles, and you just hang your head in embarrassment and fear and say, "Right, dumb question."
The rest of the morning is spent in butchering the boar and getting a proper fire going to cook it, which you figure you can risk without drawing too much attention that you might otherwise wish to avoid now that you are solidly away from the scene of yesterday's crimes.
Of course, just because you avoided the sort of attention you wanted to avoid didn't mean that you avoided all attention, and as morning melts away towards midday and you are chewing on a hunk of fat mixed with some berries, your reverie is interrupted by a voice suddenly chiming up, "Hey! Who are you two?"
Your head whips to the side to see a man in the late afternoon of his life. While his stringy hair has faded to a mostly solid steel grey interspersed with wisps of black and white and his muscles are sagging, he still clearly has a labourer's strength about him, and his back is not yet particularly stooped. By his appearance, he is probably one of the local fishermen who ply the shallows of the swamp and reefs, barely scrapping by except for the payments he might receive from smugglers to guide their boats across the treacherous waters.
You just stare at him and panic, grasping for a solution. In response, you feel energy flow from your chest to your eyes, and for a moment the man's mind expands outwards towards you. Hostility and suspicion are at the forefront of the complex flower, but there are elements of curiosity and friendliness that you tug on. Just as quickly as you activated the power you drop it in fear and horror over its application, as well as simply feeling exhausted after such a minor exertion. Still, in that brief application, the suspicion drains from his eyes and he softens his tone to ask, "Wait... do I know you?"
Az takes this opening as if he expected it to be there and he sweeps out a deep bow, saying, "I do not think so good sir, we are simply humble religious folk, and we did not mean to intrude upon your home."
The man seems confused for a second, but the alteration you made to his mood causes him to interpret the situation in the most generous way possible. You are both wearing heavy robes, Az has been keeping his hood up despite the heart, and you suppose your shaved head could be interpreted religiously too. He does ask, "Religious folk?"
Sliding his pale hands out from his sleeves while keeping his head down, Az says, "I am afflicted with a condition that shall lead to my ending, and I have chosen retreat from others to be in peace, only my relative Camilla to assist me these days, bless her soul."
It takes you a moment to realize that not only had Az only lied a little, under some interpretations of what he said he might not have lied at all, despite the fact that there was a definite gulf between what he said and how the fisherman would interpret things. The older man took some time to process this, before he pointed at the smoky fire and the boar roasting away upon the crude implements, and asked, "What is all this then?"
Gesturing to the boar, Az says, "This animal appears to have confronted something stronger than it that did not drag it away from here after the kill, and not wanting to waste such a bounty, we took it upon ourselves to make good use of the meat. I can assure you that we were not hunting and this find was entirely accidental, and intensely apologize if we poached on your territory. You are of course entitled to it."
The fisherman looks away and mumbles something, almost certainly "Not my territory..." before he shakes his head and says, "No, no, I know what its like to not want to waste food. I don't care, so long as you don't bring trouble by making a habit of it." After a moment he asks, "You two have a place to stay yet?"
Shaking his head, Az replies, "As of yet, no. I had hoped that I would be able to find some place isolated where I might establish myself, away from others. Camilla agreed to accompany and help me build, for the time being."
Running a thumb and index finger across the grey stubble upon his chin, the fisherman considers for a moment before he shrugs and says, "There's more pig than you can deal with there, so if you're willing to let me have a cut, old Adam here might have an old fishing shack that you can bunk in to be out of the rain while you 'get established'. Might even have some chores I can trade for fish with you two for."
"That is most kind," Az says magnanimously from beneath his hood, and you just nod along.
Flash of Memory
Use of Skills
Character Sheet Updated
Choose an action
[] Aid Adam
[] Hunt/gather in the swamp
[] Learn from Adam
[] Learn from Az
[] Learn the terrain
[] Meditate on memories
[] Practice magic
[] Relax
[] Seek out others
[] Speak with Az
Az considers this for a moment, before he says, "Hmmm... I agree that we should avoid the cult and anyone important to begin with, but I think you are being too cautious. I choose the closer wilderness over the further. If you choose to join me, that would be most 'appreciated', but if you choose not to join me do know that I will remember that."
You have no real answer to that, and so instead you just nod and say, "Mangrove swamp it is."
The journey across the rough terrain that protects the city proper of Sarna takes the whole remainder of the day, and you aren't down the opposite side of the slope to the swamps and shores proper by the time you stop to make camp for the night. You are ravenously hungry, sweaty, exhausted, and all around beat down by the time you collapse to the rocky but leaf covered ground in the twilight, but you have to admit that at least the view of the sun setting behind the horizon on the ocean is another little joy you didn't realize you had missed. Az sits down across from you, rolling a stone around in his hand, and notes, "You're quite good at navigating the forest."
You nod quietly, too tired to offer much commentary. You had found some edible berries and shoots, but those weren't particularly filling, although you do note that he is correct. The actions feel... familiar. While these trails are unknown to you, you never got turned around in the dense, tangled forest, and you knew to pass by a number of toxic plants. Hugging your knees up to your chest, you look down at your feet and wiggle your toes, which are thoroughly caked in mud and have been rather battered by walking bare across the rough terrain, although at least they aren't bleeding.
"I'm not sure that I need to sleep, so rest if you are tired. I will wake you if I need it," Az says, noting your demeanour.
You nod and let your head rest on your arms, which are cross across your raised knees. Maybe you'll just rest for a bit before...
You can't find the trail. You have something to do, someone to see, but you can't find the trail and you're lost and everyone is depending on you to get home and...
Green, green in every direction, no distinction to tell fair from foul, so you can't get back to where...
It's just around this bend, people need you to find it...
Shivering abruptly forces you from sleep, your body seizing up with a sharp inhalation of air and a jerk of your frame. Cold sweat covers you, chilling you in the cool humidity of the night, and you shudder uncontrollably. Az is still sitting across from you, but he has obtained a stick from somewhere and is using broken rock chips to sharpen one end into a point, apparently working by feel and starlight and possibly the faint glow of his own eyes... which might permit him some sort of hellish acuity of sight in the darkness, now that you think about it. He glances at you and notes your open eyes before saying, "I was starting to wonder if you would wake up on your own before morning."
You begin to rub half numb fingers against half numb legs, trying to heat everything up a bit. You're not sure what to say for a moment, your tongue dry from not enough water while sweating profusely, but eventually you croak out, "I... I might have been from the highlands. I think, I think the demon tormented me with nightmares of being lost in the jungle. When it had me, it was like that non-stop, and I just... I just couldn't wake up."
"You're awake now, and the demon isn't," Az offers while devoting the majority of his attention to his little project. You're not quite certain what to say to that, but caution steals the possibility of questioning him from you.
After a time of just watching him while you try to warm up, you eventually ask, "What are your plans in the swamps?" You probably could have asked this during the day, but you were too busy navigating and being wary of the avatar of tyranny to also ask about his plans, and he had not been forthcoming at the time.
"Oh, probably locate some smugglers, make contact with them to begin worming into the underbelly of Sarna and the pirate groups who work with the smugglers, accumulating various forms of power. I'm currently not planning too much beyond that horizon because something will inevitably come along to upend any medium or long term planning and require modification of my plans on the fly. If I weren't certain of something like a major political upheaval, plague of ghosts, or major natural disaster I might posit trying to usurp - overtly or covertly - the position of a Merchant Prince and then attempt to take over all of Sarna. If nothing interrupts I'll probably even go for that, but I've had such plans made pointless too many times in the past to not keep my options open when doing this sort of thing," Az notes while intently peeling away slivers of wood that do not fit into his vision of the spear he is making.
You nod at that, feeling oddly ill at ease by his at ease attitude. He doesn't feel nearly as imperious as you feel he should be.
"It is the nature of the world to make a mockery of the works of men, so I long ago learned to take advantage of the unexpected rather than gnash my teeth and wail that I did not get my way. I would have been dragged under by disappointment by twenty if I learned any other lesson," Az says, before holding his spear horizontal and resting it upon the nail of his littlest finger near its midpoint. After watching it start to slowly tip in one direction, he nodded in approval before he stuck it in a gouge he had made in a flat piece of bark and began to vigorously twirl.
Your brain slowly turns over what he said, and after a moment you are glad that your chills cover for the fact that you let out a little shudder. You suddenly wonder if he sees you in a similar manner to that branch; needing to be tended and sculpted into a useful shape instead of simply using it as a club as is, but still ultimately a tool and ultimately disposable, no matter how much prior work was put into it. You watch him intently for a time, before your eyes flicker shut once again.
While the rising of sun in the morning rouses you, you cannot say that your dreams were particularly more pleasant for the rest of the night.
Tiredly you get to your feet, noting that Az has completed another pair of spears, their tips a shiny dark from where he apparently friction charred them, so that the wood would better hold a point. There is obvious experience in his skills despite the absolute lack of materials or tools, and yet somehow seeing him with weapons in hand is both right and proper and yet also faintly terrifying. It was like he had been born armed and even these crude weapons were merely returning him to his natural state.
The sun is perhaps only two diameters above the horizon when you are reaching the sandy tangle where the jungle hills give way to the mangrove swamps, and you get to see your instincts proven right. There is a boar rooting about along your path, and when it hears you coming, it almost immediately takes exception to your existence. Possibly literally, since now that you think about it there are stories of animals being driven mad by the unseen presence of evil spirits, which both of you probably qualify for. You don't have time to really process what to do next before Az is suddenly upon the charging boar. It's all over with so quickly, and even though you don't really trust your recollection, you don't feel as if the First Emperor was displaying the strength or speed of a hell god, the moment of violence is still completed with bored ease. One spear casually slips into the boar's right eye socket, the creature's own charge providing the energy to drive it to the back of the skull. The second spear is planted with a bit of force in the boar's neck as it stumbles past Az's adroit sidestep along its blindside, while once the boar actually hits the ground he drives his final spear into its chest and assuredly where its heart would be.
You think you actually start breathing again a second after the boar exhales its final shudder, the poor beast probably never even aware that it was doomed, the whole thing was over so fast.
The fact that Az frowns and says with disappointment, "Iron weaponry just moved up on the list," only makes the whole scene even more surreal.
Something giddy bubbles up within you and you ask, "What, so you could do it in one blow?"
The look you get in return silences your giggles, and you just hang your head in embarrassment and fear and say, "Right, dumb question."
The rest of the morning is spent in butchering the boar and getting a proper fire going to cook it, which you figure you can risk without drawing too much attention that you might otherwise wish to avoid now that you are solidly away from the scene of yesterday's crimes.
Of course, just because you avoided the sort of attention you wanted to avoid didn't mean that you avoided all attention, and as morning melts away towards midday and you are chewing on a hunk of fat mixed with some berries, your reverie is interrupted by a voice suddenly chiming up, "Hey! Who are you two?"
Your head whips to the side to see a man in the late afternoon of his life. While his stringy hair has faded to a mostly solid steel grey interspersed with wisps of black and white and his muscles are sagging, he still clearly has a labourer's strength about him, and his back is not yet particularly stooped. By his appearance, he is probably one of the local fishermen who ply the shallows of the swamp and reefs, barely scrapping by except for the payments he might receive from smugglers to guide their boats across the treacherous waters.
You just stare at him and panic, grasping for a solution. In response, you feel energy flow from your chest to your eyes, and for a moment the man's mind expands outwards towards you. Hostility and suspicion are at the forefront of the complex flower, but there are elements of curiosity and friendliness that you tug on. Just as quickly as you activated the power you drop it in fear and horror over its application, as well as simply feeling exhausted after such a minor exertion. Still, in that brief application, the suspicion drains from his eyes and he softens his tone to ask, "Wait... do I know you?"
Az takes this opening as if he expected it to be there and he sweeps out a deep bow, saying, "I do not think so good sir, we are simply humble religious folk, and we did not mean to intrude upon your home."
The man seems confused for a second, but the alteration you made to his mood causes him to interpret the situation in the most generous way possible. You are both wearing heavy robes, Az has been keeping his hood up despite the heart, and you suppose your shaved head could be interpreted religiously too. He does ask, "Religious folk?"
Sliding his pale hands out from his sleeves while keeping his head down, Az says, "I am afflicted with a condition that shall lead to my ending, and I have chosen retreat from others to be in peace, only my relative Camilla to assist me these days, bless her soul."
It takes you a moment to realize that not only had Az only lied a little, under some interpretations of what he said he might not have lied at all, despite the fact that there was a definite gulf between what he said and how the fisherman would interpret things. The older man took some time to process this, before he pointed at the smoky fire and the boar roasting away upon the crude implements, and asked, "What is all this then?"
Gesturing to the boar, Az says, "This animal appears to have confronted something stronger than it that did not drag it away from here after the kill, and not wanting to waste such a bounty, we took it upon ourselves to make good use of the meat. I can assure you that we were not hunting and this find was entirely accidental, and intensely apologize if we poached on your territory. You are of course entitled to it."
The fisherman looks away and mumbles something, almost certainly "Not my territory..." before he shakes his head and says, "No, no, I know what its like to not want to waste food. I don't care, so long as you don't bring trouble by making a habit of it." After a moment he asks, "You two have a place to stay yet?"
Shaking his head, Az replies, "As of yet, no. I had hoped that I would be able to find some place isolated where I might establish myself, away from others. Camilla agreed to accompany and help me build, for the time being."
Running a thumb and index finger across the grey stubble upon his chin, the fisherman considers for a moment before he shrugs and says, "There's more pig than you can deal with there, so if you're willing to let me have a cut, old Adam here might have an old fishing shack that you can bunk in to be out of the rain while you 'get established'. Might even have some chores I can trade for fish with you two for."
"That is most kind," Az says magnanimously from beneath his hood, and you just nod along.
Flash of Memory
Use of Skills
Character Sheet Updated
Choose an action
[] Aid Adam
[] Hunt/gather in the swamp
[] Learn from Adam
[] Learn from Az
[] Learn the terrain
[] Meditate on memories
[] Practice magic
[] Relax
[] Seek out others
[] Speak with Az
Memories
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You, Az, and Adam spend much of the rest of the day finishing butchering and preparing the boar, then transporting the meat and bones to Adam's home - a shack on stilts within a high point of the swamp where trails can be maintained and aren't frequently washed away. From there you start to smoking the meat and stripping down the hide for latter tanning, and Adam shares some of his fish with you. You do notice with some interest and distaste that Az's story about having some nondescript disease also gets him out of a significant amount of work as Adam doesn't wanting him touching most things. Clever way to avoid doing things.
The next few days are spent doing all sorts of little tasks as Adam leads you to a literal shack along the beach where you can stay out of the rain. You occasionally see other people, but those are mostly other fishermen out among the sandbars and reefs in the distance, and the story seems to have already spread from Adam and thus people keep their distance. Az spends much of his time either working with wood and stone to make increasingly sophisticated weapons, testing them via spearfishing or hunting - the fact that he brought down a crocodile on his own with only such weaponry is rather disturbing -, processing his kills, or sitting quietly. You mostly do everything else that needs to get done and suffer from nightmare filled nights.
Eventually though you realize that unless you get your head in order, to try to organize the jumble of pieces of memory, you're never going to sleep well. You need to just sit and relax in the shade, with only the sound of the waves lapping up on shore to be heard. Just let the memories float to the surface and try to understand them...
Not quite sure where you figured that might be a good idea, but you have a lot of stuff like that to go through.
When Az next finds you, you are emptying the contents of your stomach upon the beach. He looks down at you with some concern and asks, "What happened?"
Trying to explain just causes you to remember the unpleasant memories you found that were the first thing floating just beneath the surface. How many people had you painfully killed by shredding their souls and slurping up the remains for nourishment. The memory of taking apart that boy's mind was just the top of the reef at high tide, there were just so many more, and worse yet all the examples of tearing people apart completely for energy. And you can feel the spiritual 'organs' still within you, the channels within your soul that lets you break down emotions and memories for magical fuel, a way to replenish your own magical reserves. You were a monster, a demon, a thing born only to hurt others...
"I'm a demon," you manage to mutter out pathetically.
Az just sighs and reaches down to grab you by the neck, forcibly hauling you to your feet, looking painfully deep into your eyes. You had hints of his infernal divinity before, but now you truly know it with the way he is able to stare straight through your eyes and into what rest beyond. He then drops you and says dismissively, "Nope, same as last time I checked: no demon in there."
"But... but I remember..." you state while rubbing your throat, which while he didn't exactly grab directly still had uncomfortable pressure applied to it.
"Do you think an actual demon would be upset by such memories? Seriously, I've dealt with them before, and its not typically an issue with that group," Az notes contemptuously. "So that's proof enough that you're not a demon. So you've inherited the memories of the thing stuffed inside of you, that's unfortunate, but you already had bad memories that were upsetting you, so nothing has really changed. So if you need to sort it out, get back to sorting it out instead of letting bad memories drag you down. I would prefer it if you were functional, after all."
Wandering back off, you wonder if that was really his idea of helping, since it really didn't help... but then again you suppose he has a point. Those memories are terrible, the still existent abilities within you too horrible to contemplate using, and your mind is still a disorganized mass of random and unpleasant snippets... but you aren't a demon, and you think that actually helps in a way. You can sort memories into 'demon' and 'not-demon' piles and you feel... better. Not good, but better.
You're unfortunately still not sleeping well come the next night, when you are woken by a hand wrapping around your mouth. This causes almost immediate panic, but it is mitigated by Az whispering into your ear, "Stay quiet, something's near."
While something having Az spooked is its own concern, you almost immediately relax, and Az relaxes his steel grip on you to keep you from making noise. Slithering away from his too close contact with you, he points out a light in the distance, although it takes you a moment to actually place where its coming from.
The light comes from...
[] Out at sea
[] Down the beach
[] From within the swamp
AN: To change things up a bit, I'm going to occasionally ask for the vote to be on what sort of external factors will be faced
The next few days are spent doing all sorts of little tasks as Adam leads you to a literal shack along the beach where you can stay out of the rain. You occasionally see other people, but those are mostly other fishermen out among the sandbars and reefs in the distance, and the story seems to have already spread from Adam and thus people keep their distance. Az spends much of his time either working with wood and stone to make increasingly sophisticated weapons, testing them via spearfishing or hunting - the fact that he brought down a crocodile on his own with only such weaponry is rather disturbing -, processing his kills, or sitting quietly. You mostly do everything else that needs to get done and suffer from nightmare filled nights.
Eventually though you realize that unless you get your head in order, to try to organize the jumble of pieces of memory, you're never going to sleep well. You need to just sit and relax in the shade, with only the sound of the waves lapping up on shore to be heard. Just let the memories float to the surface and try to understand them...
Not quite sure where you figured that might be a good idea, but you have a lot of stuff like that to go through.
When Az next finds you, you are emptying the contents of your stomach upon the beach. He looks down at you with some concern and asks, "What happened?"
Trying to explain just causes you to remember the unpleasant memories you found that were the first thing floating just beneath the surface. How many people had you painfully killed by shredding their souls and slurping up the remains for nourishment. The memory of taking apart that boy's mind was just the top of the reef at high tide, there were just so many more, and worse yet all the examples of tearing people apart completely for energy. And you can feel the spiritual 'organs' still within you, the channels within your soul that lets you break down emotions and memories for magical fuel, a way to replenish your own magical reserves. You were a monster, a demon, a thing born only to hurt others...
"I'm a demon," you manage to mutter out pathetically.
Az just sighs and reaches down to grab you by the neck, forcibly hauling you to your feet, looking painfully deep into your eyes. You had hints of his infernal divinity before, but now you truly know it with the way he is able to stare straight through your eyes and into what rest beyond. He then drops you and says dismissively, "Nope, same as last time I checked: no demon in there."
"But... but I remember..." you state while rubbing your throat, which while he didn't exactly grab directly still had uncomfortable pressure applied to it.
"Do you think an actual demon would be upset by such memories? Seriously, I've dealt with them before, and its not typically an issue with that group," Az notes contemptuously. "So that's proof enough that you're not a demon. So you've inherited the memories of the thing stuffed inside of you, that's unfortunate, but you already had bad memories that were upsetting you, so nothing has really changed. So if you need to sort it out, get back to sorting it out instead of letting bad memories drag you down. I would prefer it if you were functional, after all."
Wandering back off, you wonder if that was really his idea of helping, since it really didn't help... but then again you suppose he has a point. Those memories are terrible, the still existent abilities within you too horrible to contemplate using, and your mind is still a disorganized mass of random and unpleasant snippets... but you aren't a demon, and you think that actually helps in a way. You can sort memories into 'demon' and 'not-demon' piles and you feel... better. Not good, but better.
You're unfortunately still not sleeping well come the next night, when you are woken by a hand wrapping around your mouth. This causes almost immediate panic, but it is mitigated by Az whispering into your ear, "Stay quiet, something's near."
While something having Az spooked is its own concern, you almost immediately relax, and Az relaxes his steel grip on you to keep you from making noise. Slithering away from his too close contact with you, he points out a light in the distance, although it takes you a moment to actually place where its coming from.
The light comes from...
[] Out at sea
[] Down the beach
[] From within the swamp
AN: To change things up a bit, I'm going to occasionally ask for the vote to be on what sort of external factors will be faced
Midnight Crossfire
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It takes a moment because you realize that the light is coming from multiple directions. Out on the sea there are little yellow lights bobbing up and down - lanterns on boats no doubt - but from further inland, within the tangled confines of the swamp there are eerie, pale blue lights flickering among the trees.
Given the rather more unsettling nature of the swamp lights, you wrack your brain for what those might be. It takes you a moment before you realize that this must come from the Reef Witch, the infamous spirit that haunts the mangrove swamps and uneven shores. Mysterious and dangerous, all that is well known is that she has a major feud with the Merchant Princes for some reason and actively attacks their assets attempting to work within her territory, and that everyone else is mostly safe from her except on the night of the new moon, and even then her attacks are mostly out on the water rather than within the swamps or on shore.
It is not the new moon.
So that leaves the lights out on the water somehow attracting the Reef Witch's attention. Agents of the Merchant Princes? Maybe they found you? No... no wait, the Merchant Princes wouldn't launch an attack into the mangrove swamps at night, even taking dangerous spirits out of the situation that was a stupid idea. Only smugglers dared the unstable waters at night. But if the lights on the water are smugglers...
There are three general reasons to smuggle into Sarna. The first is taxes, but the Merchant Princes keep the taxes and fees on anything worth smuggling to just below what smugglers would charge for their troubles, canny fellows they are. The second is if the cargo isn't welcome in Sarna, which is a relative rarity although the big illegal trade there is in occult items, along with a number of other miscellaneous unpleasant things. The third is if the ship and/or crew carrying things from the wider world isn't welcome in Sarna. The second and third reasons did somewhat tend to go hand in hand with considerable frequency.
"We should slip away," Az whispers, and you nod. If anyone checks they'll see that the shack has been occupied recently, but smugglers are unlikely to look very hard. Crawling along the leaf covered sand, deeper into the swamp but away from the pale lights of the Reef Witch, you try to avoid drawing attention to yourself.
This is both rather easy in that it becomes obvious quite quickly that neither set of lights is particularly interested in looking for you, and also something of a problem as you're now apparently stuck in the middle of a fight. There is a remarkably loud, gurgling scream from within the swamp and then suddenly balls of blue fire are arcing out of the woods into the sea, to splash down amidst the lights coming ashore. Whoever is on the boats answers with gunfire.
Lots of gunfire.
Like, every man on the landing party must have several muskets lots. And the bullets seemed especially unpleasant, their passage through the air a series of hideous shrieks rather than the angry buzz you somehow expected. Limbs were taken off trees with alarming frequency, and between the crack of fire and the shriek of passage, there was also the subtler sound of bark raining throughout the swamp. How the hell-
Your mind stops as you remember the tidbit of knowledge, the one individual that both the Merchant Princes and the Reef Witch despise, who also has the means to produce such strange, rapid-fire volleys of fire.
"Captain Deadwood," you hiss in fear. Quite possibly the most feared pirate ever, the fact that his forces were here honestly put him at least at the same threat level as Az, if only because Deadwood had a crew and Az had pointy sticks. Getting caught in a feud between him and the Reef Witch was probably the worst possible outcome. Were you just cursed?
"Fearsome fellow I take it," Az asked as quietly as he could to get above the cacophony, having picked up on your exclamation.
"Cursed sailor, as good as unkillable, and he has all sorts of weird magic that he uses on his crew," you explain tersely, running down the list of generally known information, which admittedly isn't much because the odds of ever running into the infamous man and his ship were low simply because it was a damn big ocean.
Further conversation was cut short by a creature of the Reef Witch rushing out of the swamp. The thing was a bear sized conglomeration of several men, boars, and at least one crocodile and shark crudely stitched together with mangrove roots and sharp coral into a roughly crab like shape. What mad principles went into the badly designed looking thing you have no idea, for it conforms to none of the occult logic you know of, but one arm seems almost like a giant flute with mouths for holes, and filled with blue swamp fire, and the other is like a serrated sword made out of bone, tusks, and shark teeth, so despite its bizarre composition it is certainly both horrifying and dangerous. Az stabbing out both of its eyes just as it is recognizing that you are there also seems to just piss it off.
Everything is exploding around you as give up all pretenses of stealth and just start running. Despite the sea now being consumed with flame, some of the boats have reached the shore - such as it is next to the swamps - and the men are pushing ashore. Amidst the lanterns and the sparking of gunpowder, you catch glimpses of the sailors, and the ghostly lights flickering around them and their strange muskets. You're not sure how exactly it all works, but it's said that Deadwood somehow knows how to bind the souls of the dead to his service. The stories aren't exactly clear on whether or not his crew is alive or not, but whatever contact they've had with the dread captain doesn't seem to have been particularly healthy for them, from what little you can see.
Something abruptly grabs you and shoves you to the side and ground, and it takes you a moment to realize that Az has hauled you out of the way of being shot to pieces by a sailor aiming at the headless monstrosity rampaging around almost drunkenly. You note that Az has what appears to be a crocodile head and is swinging it around as an impromptu club before he hurls it at a man, bashing him in the head and knocking him to the ground. Hauling you back to your feet once the opportunity presents itself, he asks in an almost bored tone, "So, just checking here, but any preferences on who we should talk to?"
"Neither!" You scream out.
"Oh come on now, I'm in need of supporters, and both of these groups seem both powerful and morally flexible. I would prefer to devote my efforts to dealing with one group, either diplomatically or militarily," Az explains while he uses the sword arm of another abomination to saw it in half, despite its obvious attempts to prevent him from doing such a thing.
Focus on...
[] Captain Deadwood
[] Reef Witch
[] Both
[] Just run!
Method...
[] Violence
[] Diplomacy
-[] Honestly
-[] Backstab
Given the rather more unsettling nature of the swamp lights, you wrack your brain for what those might be. It takes you a moment before you realize that this must come from the Reef Witch, the infamous spirit that haunts the mangrove swamps and uneven shores. Mysterious and dangerous, all that is well known is that she has a major feud with the Merchant Princes for some reason and actively attacks their assets attempting to work within her territory, and that everyone else is mostly safe from her except on the night of the new moon, and even then her attacks are mostly out on the water rather than within the swamps or on shore.
It is not the new moon.
So that leaves the lights out on the water somehow attracting the Reef Witch's attention. Agents of the Merchant Princes? Maybe they found you? No... no wait, the Merchant Princes wouldn't launch an attack into the mangrove swamps at night, even taking dangerous spirits out of the situation that was a stupid idea. Only smugglers dared the unstable waters at night. But if the lights on the water are smugglers...
There are three general reasons to smuggle into Sarna. The first is taxes, but the Merchant Princes keep the taxes and fees on anything worth smuggling to just below what smugglers would charge for their troubles, canny fellows they are. The second is if the cargo isn't welcome in Sarna, which is a relative rarity although the big illegal trade there is in occult items, along with a number of other miscellaneous unpleasant things. The third is if the ship and/or crew carrying things from the wider world isn't welcome in Sarna. The second and third reasons did somewhat tend to go hand in hand with considerable frequency.
"We should slip away," Az whispers, and you nod. If anyone checks they'll see that the shack has been occupied recently, but smugglers are unlikely to look very hard. Crawling along the leaf covered sand, deeper into the swamp but away from the pale lights of the Reef Witch, you try to avoid drawing attention to yourself.
This is both rather easy in that it becomes obvious quite quickly that neither set of lights is particularly interested in looking for you, and also something of a problem as you're now apparently stuck in the middle of a fight. There is a remarkably loud, gurgling scream from within the swamp and then suddenly balls of blue fire are arcing out of the woods into the sea, to splash down amidst the lights coming ashore. Whoever is on the boats answers with gunfire.
Lots of gunfire.
Like, every man on the landing party must have several muskets lots. And the bullets seemed especially unpleasant, their passage through the air a series of hideous shrieks rather than the angry buzz you somehow expected. Limbs were taken off trees with alarming frequency, and between the crack of fire and the shriek of passage, there was also the subtler sound of bark raining throughout the swamp. How the hell-
Your mind stops as you remember the tidbit of knowledge, the one individual that both the Merchant Princes and the Reef Witch despise, who also has the means to produce such strange, rapid-fire volleys of fire.
"Captain Deadwood," you hiss in fear. Quite possibly the most feared pirate ever, the fact that his forces were here honestly put him at least at the same threat level as Az, if only because Deadwood had a crew and Az had pointy sticks. Getting caught in a feud between him and the Reef Witch was probably the worst possible outcome. Were you just cursed?
"Fearsome fellow I take it," Az asked as quietly as he could to get above the cacophony, having picked up on your exclamation.
"Cursed sailor, as good as unkillable, and he has all sorts of weird magic that he uses on his crew," you explain tersely, running down the list of generally known information, which admittedly isn't much because the odds of ever running into the infamous man and his ship were low simply because it was a damn big ocean.
Further conversation was cut short by a creature of the Reef Witch rushing out of the swamp. The thing was a bear sized conglomeration of several men, boars, and at least one crocodile and shark crudely stitched together with mangrove roots and sharp coral into a roughly crab like shape. What mad principles went into the badly designed looking thing you have no idea, for it conforms to none of the occult logic you know of, but one arm seems almost like a giant flute with mouths for holes, and filled with blue swamp fire, and the other is like a serrated sword made out of bone, tusks, and shark teeth, so despite its bizarre composition it is certainly both horrifying and dangerous. Az stabbing out both of its eyes just as it is recognizing that you are there also seems to just piss it off.
Everything is exploding around you as give up all pretenses of stealth and just start running. Despite the sea now being consumed with flame, some of the boats have reached the shore - such as it is next to the swamps - and the men are pushing ashore. Amidst the lanterns and the sparking of gunpowder, you catch glimpses of the sailors, and the ghostly lights flickering around them and their strange muskets. You're not sure how exactly it all works, but it's said that Deadwood somehow knows how to bind the souls of the dead to his service. The stories aren't exactly clear on whether or not his crew is alive or not, but whatever contact they've had with the dread captain doesn't seem to have been particularly healthy for them, from what little you can see.
Something abruptly grabs you and shoves you to the side and ground, and it takes you a moment to realize that Az has hauled you out of the way of being shot to pieces by a sailor aiming at the headless monstrosity rampaging around almost drunkenly. You note that Az has what appears to be a crocodile head and is swinging it around as an impromptu club before he hurls it at a man, bashing him in the head and knocking him to the ground. Hauling you back to your feet once the opportunity presents itself, he asks in an almost bored tone, "So, just checking here, but any preferences on who we should talk to?"
"Neither!" You scream out.
"Oh come on now, I'm in need of supporters, and both of these groups seem both powerful and morally flexible. I would prefer to devote my efforts to dealing with one group, either diplomatically or militarily," Az explains while he uses the sword arm of another abomination to saw it in half, despite its obvious attempts to prevent him from doing such a thing.
Focus on...
[] Captain Deadwood
[] Reef Witch
[] Both
[] Just run!
Method...
[] Violence
[] Diplomacy
-[] Honestly
-[] Backstab
Gunboat Diplomacy
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You struggle to come up with an answer for a time before you let out a confused, terrified, and exasperated, "The pirate? Maybe? I don't even know if the witch can be bartered with!"
Az nods at that, turning what could have been a decapitating blow from a stolen cutlass into probably not lethal pommel strike to one of the sailors and says, "You make a good point, this lot seems more intelligent and organized than the monsters. Right then..."
In a display of casual mastery of violence, Az throws down one of Deadwood's sailors, plants a foot on the man's throat, and then announces, "We wish to parley!"
If it were not for the supernatural battle raging along the beach, there probably would have been a moment of stunned silence, but as it is several of the sailors all pause in shock and confusion. One of the witch's monstrosities tries to take advantage of this, but soon finds itself being systematically hacked to pieces by a very cross Az, who admonishes the creature as he slices it apart with a, "Excuse me, but I am trying to negotiate over here when you most rudely interrupted me."
There is another pause before one of the sailors lets out a dry, reedy, inhuman sound along the lines of, "You want to talk?"
"Yes, preferably with your captain, but obviously if there is a chain of command protocol to follow I will start where I must and work my way up," Az responds cheerfully.
A deep and yet oddly musical horn blares out across the beach, and the pirates all begin to fall back, the ones close enough to you to glancing at each other in confusion before one of them shrugged and said, "Fine."
Following mutely as Az followed the pirates, the mad emperor returning the sword he had pilfered to a considerably worse for wear sailor, you find yourself loading onto a longboat with the survivors and casting off back out to sea, surrounded by the sputtering swamp fires that were still upon the surface of the sea but that had not yet died out. By those lights and the lights of the lanterns they had, you could better see the sailors, and what Deadwood's magic had done to them. They all looked like their flesh was slowly turning to wood while their skin remained were it was, like waterlogged leather being stretched over bundles of gnarled roots and knolls. You figure that service in his crew is marked out by just how transformed they are, with one man looking almost entirely human, except for uncanny flashes where his skin and the material beneath it do not move right, while another had a face that looked almost like someone had stretch a monkey hide over a coconut. Eerily, all of the men were also surrounded by flickering lights the colour of the sea at night that occasionally gave the impression of hands or faces.
You resist any curious urges to examine these beings with the senses you have for altering the minds and souls of others. You know that you won't like what you see.
While it takes quite some time for your boat to make the journey across the treacherous night waters to the ship lurking in deeper and clearer waters, the journey is not nearly as long as you might have liked considering how soon you are alongside the Spritely Sinner, the oddly named ship that terrorizes all known seas. You are rather glad that it is so dark out that you can only make out the barest details, because while up close it seems mostly normal, there are elements of the profile that are distinctly unsettling. Still, soon enough you find yourself standing uncomfortably next to Az on the lightly swaying deck of the dread ship, a welcoming party having already been informed of your requested audience with the captain. You are somewhat surprised when a pair of burly and heavily transformed sailors carry a man on a bosun's chair to you, dead legs dangling limply beneath him. By the lantern light you can't make him out fully, but he seems transformed, but not like his crew. Where the crew are like things of living wood and dead leather, this man seems more... nautical. The core of the man is a gentleman knight from the Abberales of the sort who is rarely seen in Sarna but oft-imitated by those pirates from those lands with pretensions of class, but everything is off. His hair is definitely meant to be well kept, but it has the colour and texture of old, frayed rope mixed with bits of seaweed, his arms are bordering on comically over-vigorous in comparison to his dead, atrophied legs, and much of the front of his jacket is crusted with barnacles, of all things.
"So these are the visitors," the man asks in a curious, clipped sort of pronunciation that you cannot place the origin of. He takes a look at both of you and then says, "I see it is as they say, the strange attracts the strange. Mr. Anderson, please see to it that we make way, I shall attend to this matter."
One of the most grotesquely transformed men nods and begins to bark inscrutable orders to the sailors, who all begin to jump to work doing the things that need to be done on a ship to catch the wind and get it moving. The air also seems to come alive with glowing flickers all around.
"Introductions are in order then," the man who could only be Captain Deadwood says. "I thus greet you as Captain Nathaniel Dagwood of the Spritely Sinner. Who might you be?"
"I am Az, and this is my companion Camilla. And since I take it you prefer to be called Dagwood rather than what my lieutenant here initially called you, I would ask you in the same sense of propriety to not refer to her as my 'companion' either. Good help is so hard to find," Az says cheerfully, and you just sort of look at him aghast for his sidetrack.
Somehow the dread pirate just bursts out laughing at that, and its actually a nice sounding laugh, not one full of ominous implications or scorn. After a moment the cursed pirate asks in good humour, "Are you quite mad, Sir Az?"
"Not a sir, not a sir, but I suppose I have had enough people calling me 'mad' that it would be unfair to not consider the possibility. It's never particularly got in my way before though, so..." Az lets his thought finish with a casual shrug.
Dagwood considers this for a moment, before sliding out of his chair to walk up to you, all trace of his frailty gone as he walks easily across a deck starting to roll with motion. Getting up closer, you note that his exhalations stink of sea rotted timber, salt, gunpowder, and rum quite strongly, although from the striking clarity of his almost stained glass eyes you think this is another aspect of his transformation than a sign of drunkenness. He scrutinizes both of you up and down and gives out several long "Hmmmmm"s before he finally announces, "I have sought a solution to my condition for many years now, and thus I have learned many things in my travels and dealings with those knowledgeable of the things I need them to be knowledgeable in, and I can smell the supernatural upon both of you. So tell me, what are you?"
"The product of occultists playing around with things they do not understand, unfairly bound and then set free by the consequences of their hubris," Az explains.
"What spirits be you bound to this flesh?" Dagwood inquires, a hint of threat in his voice that he wants an honest answer.
"Human," Az replies, and when Dagwood's stare becomes uncomfortable you break down and say, "Mostly." You then append on hastily, "Mostly! I had a demon in me, but its gone now, but some is left behind, I think."
At that Az shrugs and admits, "I feel all human, but I think there were some extra bits shoved in along the way. Don't know what those extras really are, so I mostly ignore them."
The captain gives a long "Hmmmmm" at that before he nods and says, "Very well. I accept this story, even though I know there is more. What were you summoned back for, 'Az'?" Dagwood demands.
"I expect that the summoners wished to tap me for martial and political prowess. I had some success at such things in the past, but you wouldn't know the details. Honestly rather silly of them, my knowledge of battle is from before you developed these lovely new weapons and I have quite a bit of catching up to do," Az explains, doing that peculiar way of telling the truth without telling the truth that he does.
Dagwood laughs, this time a harsh, barking sound and he says, "A king or would-be king then? Was that 'not a sir' because such things are inadequate, 'your majesty'?"
Holding up his hands placatingly, Az says, "Now now, none of that, I'm not a king. Besides, what's a king without a kingdom?"
While you try to keep your feelings off your face, you also note in your mind that he's not a king because he's an emperor.
Captain Dagwood strokes his chin a few times in contemplation before he says, "One of two things: a fool with dreams unfitting his position, or still a king."
The smile on Az's face turns ever so slightly, from one of mirth to one of knowing malice, and he asks, "Which do you think I am?"
A palpable tension can be felt in the air as two very powerful men stare each other down, before, surprisingly, it is the cursed pirate who nods his head and says, "I don't know what you are, besides dangerous and clever. Care not let the latter turn the former upon you. Still, I take it that you came here because you sensed a fellow dangerous and clever fellow."
"Yes, I have some ambitions towards the situation in Sarna, and I figured that given the opportunity the simplest way of seeing those through would be to become a pirate lord, buy my way into being a Merchant Prince, and go from there. Of course, I would need a crew and a ship to start with, hence why I would seek out another pirate with whom an alliance could be hammered out to get me started," Az explained.
Dagwood looks at him somewhat incredulously before he asks slowly and carefully, "You wish an alliance with me so that I might secure for you a ship so that you might reave the seas for riches and catapult yourself into the ranks of the Merchant Princes of Sarna? And presumably you would use this position to aid me in my own endeavours?"
"Precisely," Az answers.
Dagwood nods and says, "Right then, this whole mess happened because my last set of allies went to the bottom, so it seems that Providence provides, even as it also takes away."
"Yes? That's it?" You ask incredulously.
Gesturing to himself and his ship, Dagwood says, "You don't often see the good Captain Deadwood in port now do you? And yet I have need of things on land, so obviously when I need to trade for them I find someone else to do it for me. Ambitious madmen tends to fit the group, so this arrangement works for me."
"Ah, if only more people would talk things out, the world would be so much easier, now wouldn't it?" Az says congenially while you just gape in awe at the insanity of the world.
Passing time on the ship, you...
[] Meditate
[] Practice magic
[] Relax
[] Study the crew
[] Study the ship
[] Study the weapons
[] Study with Az
[] Talk with Az
[] Talk with Dagwood
[] Watch sailors
Az nods at that, turning what could have been a decapitating blow from a stolen cutlass into probably not lethal pommel strike to one of the sailors and says, "You make a good point, this lot seems more intelligent and organized than the monsters. Right then..."
In a display of casual mastery of violence, Az throws down one of Deadwood's sailors, plants a foot on the man's throat, and then announces, "We wish to parley!"
If it were not for the supernatural battle raging along the beach, there probably would have been a moment of stunned silence, but as it is several of the sailors all pause in shock and confusion. One of the witch's monstrosities tries to take advantage of this, but soon finds itself being systematically hacked to pieces by a very cross Az, who admonishes the creature as he slices it apart with a, "Excuse me, but I am trying to negotiate over here when you most rudely interrupted me."
There is another pause before one of the sailors lets out a dry, reedy, inhuman sound along the lines of, "You want to talk?"
"Yes, preferably with your captain, but obviously if there is a chain of command protocol to follow I will start where I must and work my way up," Az responds cheerfully.
A deep and yet oddly musical horn blares out across the beach, and the pirates all begin to fall back, the ones close enough to you to glancing at each other in confusion before one of them shrugged and said, "Fine."
Following mutely as Az followed the pirates, the mad emperor returning the sword he had pilfered to a considerably worse for wear sailor, you find yourself loading onto a longboat with the survivors and casting off back out to sea, surrounded by the sputtering swamp fires that were still upon the surface of the sea but that had not yet died out. By those lights and the lights of the lanterns they had, you could better see the sailors, and what Deadwood's magic had done to them. They all looked like their flesh was slowly turning to wood while their skin remained were it was, like waterlogged leather being stretched over bundles of gnarled roots and knolls. You figure that service in his crew is marked out by just how transformed they are, with one man looking almost entirely human, except for uncanny flashes where his skin and the material beneath it do not move right, while another had a face that looked almost like someone had stretch a monkey hide over a coconut. Eerily, all of the men were also surrounded by flickering lights the colour of the sea at night that occasionally gave the impression of hands or faces.
You resist any curious urges to examine these beings with the senses you have for altering the minds and souls of others. You know that you won't like what you see.
While it takes quite some time for your boat to make the journey across the treacherous night waters to the ship lurking in deeper and clearer waters, the journey is not nearly as long as you might have liked considering how soon you are alongside the Spritely Sinner, the oddly named ship that terrorizes all known seas. You are rather glad that it is so dark out that you can only make out the barest details, because while up close it seems mostly normal, there are elements of the profile that are distinctly unsettling. Still, soon enough you find yourself standing uncomfortably next to Az on the lightly swaying deck of the dread ship, a welcoming party having already been informed of your requested audience with the captain. You are somewhat surprised when a pair of burly and heavily transformed sailors carry a man on a bosun's chair to you, dead legs dangling limply beneath him. By the lantern light you can't make him out fully, but he seems transformed, but not like his crew. Where the crew are like things of living wood and dead leather, this man seems more... nautical. The core of the man is a gentleman knight from the Abberales of the sort who is rarely seen in Sarna but oft-imitated by those pirates from those lands with pretensions of class, but everything is off. His hair is definitely meant to be well kept, but it has the colour and texture of old, frayed rope mixed with bits of seaweed, his arms are bordering on comically over-vigorous in comparison to his dead, atrophied legs, and much of the front of his jacket is crusted with barnacles, of all things.
"So these are the visitors," the man asks in a curious, clipped sort of pronunciation that you cannot place the origin of. He takes a look at both of you and then says, "I see it is as they say, the strange attracts the strange. Mr. Anderson, please see to it that we make way, I shall attend to this matter."
One of the most grotesquely transformed men nods and begins to bark inscrutable orders to the sailors, who all begin to jump to work doing the things that need to be done on a ship to catch the wind and get it moving. The air also seems to come alive with glowing flickers all around.
"Introductions are in order then," the man who could only be Captain Deadwood says. "I thus greet you as Captain Nathaniel Dagwood of the Spritely Sinner. Who might you be?"
"I am Az, and this is my companion Camilla. And since I take it you prefer to be called Dagwood rather than what my lieutenant here initially called you, I would ask you in the same sense of propriety to not refer to her as my 'companion' either. Good help is so hard to find," Az says cheerfully, and you just sort of look at him aghast for his sidetrack.
Somehow the dread pirate just bursts out laughing at that, and its actually a nice sounding laugh, not one full of ominous implications or scorn. After a moment the cursed pirate asks in good humour, "Are you quite mad, Sir Az?"
"Not a sir, not a sir, but I suppose I have had enough people calling me 'mad' that it would be unfair to not consider the possibility. It's never particularly got in my way before though, so..." Az lets his thought finish with a casual shrug.
Dagwood considers this for a moment, before sliding out of his chair to walk up to you, all trace of his frailty gone as he walks easily across a deck starting to roll with motion. Getting up closer, you note that his exhalations stink of sea rotted timber, salt, gunpowder, and rum quite strongly, although from the striking clarity of his almost stained glass eyes you think this is another aspect of his transformation than a sign of drunkenness. He scrutinizes both of you up and down and gives out several long "Hmmmmm"s before he finally announces, "I have sought a solution to my condition for many years now, and thus I have learned many things in my travels and dealings with those knowledgeable of the things I need them to be knowledgeable in, and I can smell the supernatural upon both of you. So tell me, what are you?"
"The product of occultists playing around with things they do not understand, unfairly bound and then set free by the consequences of their hubris," Az explains.
"What spirits be you bound to this flesh?" Dagwood inquires, a hint of threat in his voice that he wants an honest answer.
"Human," Az replies, and when Dagwood's stare becomes uncomfortable you break down and say, "Mostly." You then append on hastily, "Mostly! I had a demon in me, but its gone now, but some is left behind, I think."
At that Az shrugs and admits, "I feel all human, but I think there were some extra bits shoved in along the way. Don't know what those extras really are, so I mostly ignore them."
The captain gives a long "Hmmmmm" at that before he nods and says, "Very well. I accept this story, even though I know there is more. What were you summoned back for, 'Az'?" Dagwood demands.
"I expect that the summoners wished to tap me for martial and political prowess. I had some success at such things in the past, but you wouldn't know the details. Honestly rather silly of them, my knowledge of battle is from before you developed these lovely new weapons and I have quite a bit of catching up to do," Az explains, doing that peculiar way of telling the truth without telling the truth that he does.
Dagwood laughs, this time a harsh, barking sound and he says, "A king or would-be king then? Was that 'not a sir' because such things are inadequate, 'your majesty'?"
Holding up his hands placatingly, Az says, "Now now, none of that, I'm not a king. Besides, what's a king without a kingdom?"
While you try to keep your feelings off your face, you also note in your mind that he's not a king because he's an emperor.
Captain Dagwood strokes his chin a few times in contemplation before he says, "One of two things: a fool with dreams unfitting his position, or still a king."
The smile on Az's face turns ever so slightly, from one of mirth to one of knowing malice, and he asks, "Which do you think I am?"
A palpable tension can be felt in the air as two very powerful men stare each other down, before, surprisingly, it is the cursed pirate who nods his head and says, "I don't know what you are, besides dangerous and clever. Care not let the latter turn the former upon you. Still, I take it that you came here because you sensed a fellow dangerous and clever fellow."
"Yes, I have some ambitions towards the situation in Sarna, and I figured that given the opportunity the simplest way of seeing those through would be to become a pirate lord, buy my way into being a Merchant Prince, and go from there. Of course, I would need a crew and a ship to start with, hence why I would seek out another pirate with whom an alliance could be hammered out to get me started," Az explained.
Dagwood looks at him somewhat incredulously before he asks slowly and carefully, "You wish an alliance with me so that I might secure for you a ship so that you might reave the seas for riches and catapult yourself into the ranks of the Merchant Princes of Sarna? And presumably you would use this position to aid me in my own endeavours?"
"Precisely," Az answers.
Dagwood nods and says, "Right then, this whole mess happened because my last set of allies went to the bottom, so it seems that Providence provides, even as it also takes away."
"Yes? That's it?" You ask incredulously.
Gesturing to himself and his ship, Dagwood says, "You don't often see the good Captain Deadwood in port now do you? And yet I have need of things on land, so obviously when I need to trade for them I find someone else to do it for me. Ambitious madmen tends to fit the group, so this arrangement works for me."
"Ah, if only more people would talk things out, the world would be so much easier, now wouldn't it?" Az says congenially while you just gape in awe at the insanity of the world.
Passing time on the ship, you...
[] Meditate
[] Practice magic
[] Relax
[] Study the crew
[] Study the ship
[] Study the weapons
[] Study with Az
[] Talk with Az
[] Talk with Dagwood
[] Watch sailors
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Extra - Significant Seafaring West Althian Nations
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Significant West Althian Seafaring Nations
The Most Noble and Pious Imperial Confederacy of Semish States and Colonies
AKA The Semish, Semish Empire, Semitland
Depending on who you ask, the Semish are either the oldest of the major western Althian kingdoms, or the youngest, as while there is a line of succession that can trace its way all the way back to the first group of Semish people to overthrow their imperial masters after the death of the First Emperor, the confederacy of city states has also gone through numerous civil wars and periods of no control since then. As it is, the most recent period of stability is less than a century old, and has been mostly fuelled by the Semish exporting troublemakers across the ocean to their colonies and importing the wealth from said colonies to pay for their conflicts with Juntlund in the north and the Autin Empire in the east, which has kept internal conflicts done.
The homeland of the Semish Empire is the sunny, well watered mountains and valleys of Semyarbin (Old Semish for 'Dragon's Tail Mountains'), which is distinctly difficult terrain to conquer but also a pain to rule. The last time the Semish were ruled as one by outsiders was when the First Emperor used longstanding tribal animosities and his absurd military prowess to isolate the old tribes and conquer them one by one. The founding myth thus goes that after the death of the First Emperor the Semish tribes - now organized around several dozen large towns and cities - banded together in a united confederacy and threw the foreigners out. While the strength of that confederacy has waxed and waned over the past two millennia, the Semish are one of the few fractious, squabbling groups able to actually put their differences aside when outsiders come knocking. While foreign powers have ruled areas considered part of the Semish homeland over the centuries, the combination of culture and geography has made holding the terrain long term an impossibility.
Culturally, the Semish are noted for a deep sense of tradition, immense pride in their heritage that often becomes arrogance, and a hair trigger sense of honour. The tales of feuds between clans and houses are the stuff of legend, and the stories almost inevitably end with the destruction of one or both houses in vendetta with each other. So much so that it is said that the favoured past time of Semish nobles is the cultivation of enemies, to the point where there are stories of blood enemies openly weeping over the early death of a rival at the hand of another. The degree of truth to this cultural mould varies significantly among actual Semish individuals, but it is to be noted that young men with little to lose and something to prove seem excessively eager to live up to the archetype.
Politically, the Semish are ruled by an elected king advised by a council of high ranking nobles, although the exact composition and election mechanism has changed throughout the centuries with various civil wars, and in recent decades the title has been changed from 'king' to 'emperor' for reasons of political rivalry with Juntlund and the Autin and Korvan empires to the east. In its current incarnation, the emperor is elected from one of a number of prominent families by seven electors. While in theory the electable families are all descendants from the ruling families of the twelve most prominent cities from the original confederation, in practice conflict, intermarriage, and extinction has resulted in only three lineages actually existing and having a chance at winning. One of the older families that form a hereditary lineage of Merchant Princes of Sarna claims to be a fourth house eligible for the Semish crown, and while not recognized the family flip-flops on whether they want revenge on the Semish Empire or to turn Sarna into a new province.
Glorious Solar Kingdom of Juntlund
AKA Juntlund, the Solar Kingdom, the Divine Mandate
Born of the migration of Junr peoples into the dying remnants of the Golden Empire nearly a thousand years ago, the Kingdom of Juntlund has expanded to cover the entirety of the plains and woods north of the Semyarbin and Semvona mountains, excluding the recent rebellious provinces of Fleirlunt in the west. While considered an upstart band of barbarians by the Semish and Autin, Juntlund itself has seen a rapid rise in prominence over the past six centuries, going from a petty kingdom in a confederacy of Junr tribes to an economic and military powerhouse with the sort of central authority that makes emperors jealous. Blending secular power and spiritual authority, the Sun Kings rarely have to divert their attentions to deal with squabbling nobles or peasant rebellions, allowing for enormous royal projects to be completed with relative ease, growing the power of the crown further with each iteration.
While many parts of Juntlund are heavily forested and watered by winding rivers, the Old Junr peoples had little issue with riding in from the north-east, nor the conquering hordes of the First Emperor a thousand years before them, and thus it has been that the kingdom has found itself on aggressive attack for the past centuries. "Barriers not of water and stone, but of faith and steel" is a common refrain for their attitudes, although for the past century they have run to the limits of what they can conquer in Althia and cannot expand past a number of natural barriers, although colonization of the recently discovered lands to the west has taken up the slack in that regard. The combination of vast tracks of well-managed fertile land, enormous population, and colonial wealth has made it so that their rivals occasionally admit that the mountains are probably protecting them from Juntlund rather than the other way around. The only neighbour lacking a direct natural barrier, the Korvan Empire, makes up for it with vast tracks of steppe and their people being regarded as even more fanatically devoted to making the lives of invaders miserable than the Semish, and even then Juntlund expansion has mostly been stalled in the east by the Korvan Emperors coordinating with the Semish, and more rarely the Autin, to keep the Juntlunders from being able to focus on one group to the exclusion of all others.
Culturally the Juntlunders are a diverse lot, although in recent decades the Sun Throne has been working to even out differences through aggressive standardization of language and spelling. To the more flamboyant Semish they seem dour but reliable, while to the rowdier Abbereen they are seen as having subdued passions but more willing to hold grudges once their tempers have been roused. The primary unifying factor is the Church of Solar Glory, worshippers of Tellim, the Divine Ignition, above all other gods and spirits, with a powerful and aggressive clergy ensuring that no spirits take advantage of anyone. While the worshippers of other gods can find their practices oppressive, it is to be noted that stories of formerly helpful spirits demanding human sacrifices are incredibly rare within Juntlund in comparison to less centrally organized societies. Rumours of Tellim being a new face for the worship of the First Emperor as the God of Tyrants, thus empowering the ruling family to better control their subjects, are noted as being heresy of the highest order and inquisitors are known to hunt people spreading such stories even outside the borders of Juntlund.
The Sun King is the divinely appointed monarch, who enjoys both absolute secular power and serves as the ultimate arbiter of all matters spiritual within Juntlund. While there are a number of noble families, their power is strongly curtailed in Juntlund in comparison to other kingdoms, especially for the past century as the Solar Crown has sought to ensure that all conflicts are directed outwards. The last three Sun Kings have invested massively in fields both practical and esoteric, from the obvious expansions of the military, funding of colonial ventures, construction of new farms and mines, raising of cathedrals and monuments, to the more cerebral funding of natural philosophers, theologians, and thinkers of all stripes. While the beneficiaries of this magnanimous patronage have all been quite enthusiastic in their praise, there are more sober voices that have been raised concerns about how long the Crown can continue to spend like this. The recent breakaway of the western provinces to form the Fleirlunt and subsequent inability to retake the region has been taken as a sign that some of the Sun King's habits are causing problems already.
Kingdom of the Abberales
AKA The Abberales, the Green Isles, the Shipwreck Isles
Situated in the Fog Sea south of the Semvona mountains and southeast of the Semyarbin, the Abberales are a rocky, rainy archipelago centred around two main islands. With warm waters coming in from the southwest and cold winds rolling off the mountains to the north, the entire kingdom is infamous for its thick fogs surrounding moss covered, ship smashing cliffs. While long considered a backwater and significant only for the fact that they were the only part of Althia never conquered by the First Emperor, the discovery of land to the west thrust the kingdom into prominence due to the fact that the return current Semish treasure fleets follow takes them into the fogs of the Abberales, and while other seafaring nations push forward the designs of ships, the Abberales still produce the best sailors, and the kingdom grows rich off of mercenary work, piracy, and salvage, investing it into their own colonial and mercantile endeavours.
Despite being worse terrain to centralize than Semitland, the Abberales have had a single king for the longest period of any western Althian nation, although the king's power has traditionally been strongly curtailed by the dukes and counts, who were often able to act nearly independently, although the introduction of cannon started a reordering of this state of affairs. While the furthest south of the Althian kingdoms, the frigid glacial winds off the Semvona and nigh perpetual cloud cover over the islands has a profound effect on the climate, and visitors from Juntlund often liken the effect to 'eternal spring', with the weather only fluctuating between 'chill damp', 'warm damp', and 'squall'. The lands themselves are like broken off mountains half sunk into the sea, somewhat smoothed by smothering moss and ivy, and where the rains cannot escape bogs form easily. Despite the general inhospitable weather and land, the areas that are suitable to farming are intensely cultivated, the seas positively swarm with fish, and the stones themselves easily yield thick veins of copper and iron.
While often considered to be as damp and gloomy as their homeland, those who have actually encountered the Abber people find them a riotous bunch, prone to drunkenness and fighting for ill defined reasons, followed by conciliatory partying. Paradoxically, their nobility is highly regarded as exemplifying the ideal behaviours of a knight, although some speculate that this is because the upper classes are expected to be the sober ones herding a kingdom of drunken maniacs and not get beat up for their trouble. Part of the gloomy reputation also stems from the fact that the inhabitants of the Abberales long ago gave up on bright dyes and paints that quickly break down and fade away in the wet air, leading to a national colour palette of undyed textiles and art being mostly sculpture or musical in nature. The island is also home to many alchemists who get their start as distillers, liquor being preferred to ale or wine due to the higher alcohol content aging better in the environment.
While the king was long something of a puppet for the lower nobles, a way of presenting a united front to the various aggressive empires that have sprung up on the mainland, the growth over the past century of shipbuilding and cannon making has changed that. Once baronial castles dotted the land like pox sores, but with the king the only one who could barely afford the expensive new siege weapons at first, that started to change. While in many ways not as strong as the northern kingdoms, the Crown has been able to more effectively tax and control the wealth flowing in, and has extensively invested in ways to keep that money flowing in. The past several kings have also found that old powers delegated to the cities and guilds can be re-purposed into various forms of ways of threatening the nobility with the lower classes, the Common Assembly of the Abberales being the strongest such body in Althia, having accidentally gained de facto shared responsibility with the king to set the effective tax rate. "The price of nails in the Abberales" has become a saying for an inconsequential thing you forgot about coming back to biteyou later.
United Free Cities of the Fleirlunt
AKA Fleirlunt, the Free Cities, the Guilded Kingdom
The most recent nation to emerge, the Fleirlunt were part of Juntlund up until fifty years ago when several of the westernmost cities simultaneously broke out into open rebellion and proved impossible to crush by the Solar Crown, thanks mostly to interference by every other major kingdom in the region. While the intent was to cripple Juntlund shipbuilding industry and colonial efforts - and to a large degree this succeeded - the Fleirlunt have emerged as their own problem for the other major seafaring powers, and in particular have begun to directly threaten Semish control over the western seas and Autin trade in their eastern seas.
The Fleirlunt are along the northwestern edge of Althia, in the lowland marshes, floodplains, and deltas of Juntlund. While brought under the Solar Throne relatively early in the expansion of the Kingdom of Juntlund, the people there always maintained a degree of cultural distance and political autonomy due to various necessities for maintaining the dikes and polders that makes large scale settlement possible. Because of several important rivers emptying into the region, it also became a natural centre of trade and then shipbuilding and banking. While possessing little in the way of natural resources, the Fleirlunt were and are regarded as being the premier source of skilled human labour. It is thus widely regarded that the rebellion broke out when the Sun King of the time began linguistic and cultural reforms that began to threaten the autonomy of the Fleirlunt burghers, with the added bonus of the guilds and banks feeling overly pinched by royal taxes. While the wars of rebellion took quite the infrastructural toll, the cities survived and retained their hugely productive and lucrative industries.
While culturally quite close to Juntlund - spoken Fleirlunt being mostly intelligible with other Junr dialects and the written form being the same aside from retaining a number of archaic styles recently eliminate by the Solar Academy - there were a number of differences that were then exacerbated by the rebellion and a desire to develop a unique identity, separate from their former overlords. The most notable is that the Fleirlunt have an almost manic obsession with personal excellence. It matters not so much what a person does, so much as they do it with the utmost arete, although certain skills are considered harder to master and thus an expert glass blower is more highly regarded than the fastest and most efficient dung hauler. Because of being badly outnumbered during the rebellion, being skilled at war was considered something that should be universally promoted, and thus ever peasant likes to carry themself as a knight, much to the aggravation of the nobility of other lands. The obsession with skill also demands public practice and showing off, so every town has a square where men come to drill with their weaponry, hold limited duels, and perform public recitals of poetry, religious passages, philosophy, or music, with larger cities also having public painting and sculpting sessions.
While theoretically every man has representation in the various ruling councils, in practice actual power belongs to the guilds, which are controlled by a small number of families, which in turn devolve down to two broad coalitions. It is often said that the Fleirlunt traded one Sun King for two Patricians. While the House Gules and House Vair generally get along, everyone knows that the primary fracture point in the new society exists along those lines, and the stability of the Free Cities depends on how well the patriarchs of those two merchant clans get along with each other. Of the two, House Gules is the more warlike, seeking to keep Juntlund from returning by carving out a buffer zone and supporting the military ambitions of the Sun King's rivals, while House Vair seeks to colonize distant territories to create fallback areas in the event Fleirlunt proper is overrun. These goals sometimes synergize and sometimes clash, but overall Fleirlunt in general has aggressively pursued both, the latter much more to the concern of their former supporters.
AN: Well, this got away from me. I figured that I should give some info that Camilla would know about the major nations who have a presence in the seas. Proper update in the morning
The Most Noble and Pious Imperial Confederacy of Semish States and Colonies
AKA The Semish, Semish Empire, Semitland
Depending on who you ask, the Semish are either the oldest of the major western Althian kingdoms, or the youngest, as while there is a line of succession that can trace its way all the way back to the first group of Semish people to overthrow their imperial masters after the death of the First Emperor, the confederacy of city states has also gone through numerous civil wars and periods of no control since then. As it is, the most recent period of stability is less than a century old, and has been mostly fuelled by the Semish exporting troublemakers across the ocean to their colonies and importing the wealth from said colonies to pay for their conflicts with Juntlund in the north and the Autin Empire in the east, which has kept internal conflicts done.
The homeland of the Semish Empire is the sunny, well watered mountains and valleys of Semyarbin (Old Semish for 'Dragon's Tail Mountains'), which is distinctly difficult terrain to conquer but also a pain to rule. The last time the Semish were ruled as one by outsiders was when the First Emperor used longstanding tribal animosities and his absurd military prowess to isolate the old tribes and conquer them one by one. The founding myth thus goes that after the death of the First Emperor the Semish tribes - now organized around several dozen large towns and cities - banded together in a united confederacy and threw the foreigners out. While the strength of that confederacy has waxed and waned over the past two millennia, the Semish are one of the few fractious, squabbling groups able to actually put their differences aside when outsiders come knocking. While foreign powers have ruled areas considered part of the Semish homeland over the centuries, the combination of culture and geography has made holding the terrain long term an impossibility.
Culturally, the Semish are noted for a deep sense of tradition, immense pride in their heritage that often becomes arrogance, and a hair trigger sense of honour. The tales of feuds between clans and houses are the stuff of legend, and the stories almost inevitably end with the destruction of one or both houses in vendetta with each other. So much so that it is said that the favoured past time of Semish nobles is the cultivation of enemies, to the point where there are stories of blood enemies openly weeping over the early death of a rival at the hand of another. The degree of truth to this cultural mould varies significantly among actual Semish individuals, but it is to be noted that young men with little to lose and something to prove seem excessively eager to live up to the archetype.
Politically, the Semish are ruled by an elected king advised by a council of high ranking nobles, although the exact composition and election mechanism has changed throughout the centuries with various civil wars, and in recent decades the title has been changed from 'king' to 'emperor' for reasons of political rivalry with Juntlund and the Autin and Korvan empires to the east. In its current incarnation, the emperor is elected from one of a number of prominent families by seven electors. While in theory the electable families are all descendants from the ruling families of the twelve most prominent cities from the original confederation, in practice conflict, intermarriage, and extinction has resulted in only three lineages actually existing and having a chance at winning. One of the older families that form a hereditary lineage of Merchant Princes of Sarna claims to be a fourth house eligible for the Semish crown, and while not recognized the family flip-flops on whether they want revenge on the Semish Empire or to turn Sarna into a new province.
Glorious Solar Kingdom of Juntlund
AKA Juntlund, the Solar Kingdom, the Divine Mandate
Born of the migration of Junr peoples into the dying remnants of the Golden Empire nearly a thousand years ago, the Kingdom of Juntlund has expanded to cover the entirety of the plains and woods north of the Semyarbin and Semvona mountains, excluding the recent rebellious provinces of Fleirlunt in the west. While considered an upstart band of barbarians by the Semish and Autin, Juntlund itself has seen a rapid rise in prominence over the past six centuries, going from a petty kingdom in a confederacy of Junr tribes to an economic and military powerhouse with the sort of central authority that makes emperors jealous. Blending secular power and spiritual authority, the Sun Kings rarely have to divert their attentions to deal with squabbling nobles or peasant rebellions, allowing for enormous royal projects to be completed with relative ease, growing the power of the crown further with each iteration.
While many parts of Juntlund are heavily forested and watered by winding rivers, the Old Junr peoples had little issue with riding in from the north-east, nor the conquering hordes of the First Emperor a thousand years before them, and thus it has been that the kingdom has found itself on aggressive attack for the past centuries. "Barriers not of water and stone, but of faith and steel" is a common refrain for their attitudes, although for the past century they have run to the limits of what they can conquer in Althia and cannot expand past a number of natural barriers, although colonization of the recently discovered lands to the west has taken up the slack in that regard. The combination of vast tracks of well-managed fertile land, enormous population, and colonial wealth has made it so that their rivals occasionally admit that the mountains are probably protecting them from Juntlund rather than the other way around. The only neighbour lacking a direct natural barrier, the Korvan Empire, makes up for it with vast tracks of steppe and their people being regarded as even more fanatically devoted to making the lives of invaders miserable than the Semish, and even then Juntlund expansion has mostly been stalled in the east by the Korvan Emperors coordinating with the Semish, and more rarely the Autin, to keep the Juntlunders from being able to focus on one group to the exclusion of all others.
Culturally the Juntlunders are a diverse lot, although in recent decades the Sun Throne has been working to even out differences through aggressive standardization of language and spelling. To the more flamboyant Semish they seem dour but reliable, while to the rowdier Abbereen they are seen as having subdued passions but more willing to hold grudges once their tempers have been roused. The primary unifying factor is the Church of Solar Glory, worshippers of Tellim, the Divine Ignition, above all other gods and spirits, with a powerful and aggressive clergy ensuring that no spirits take advantage of anyone. While the worshippers of other gods can find their practices oppressive, it is to be noted that stories of formerly helpful spirits demanding human sacrifices are incredibly rare within Juntlund in comparison to less centrally organized societies. Rumours of Tellim being a new face for the worship of the First Emperor as the God of Tyrants, thus empowering the ruling family to better control their subjects, are noted as being heresy of the highest order and inquisitors are known to hunt people spreading such stories even outside the borders of Juntlund.
The Sun King is the divinely appointed monarch, who enjoys both absolute secular power and serves as the ultimate arbiter of all matters spiritual within Juntlund. While there are a number of noble families, their power is strongly curtailed in Juntlund in comparison to other kingdoms, especially for the past century as the Solar Crown has sought to ensure that all conflicts are directed outwards. The last three Sun Kings have invested massively in fields both practical and esoteric, from the obvious expansions of the military, funding of colonial ventures, construction of new farms and mines, raising of cathedrals and monuments, to the more cerebral funding of natural philosophers, theologians, and thinkers of all stripes. While the beneficiaries of this magnanimous patronage have all been quite enthusiastic in their praise, there are more sober voices that have been raised concerns about how long the Crown can continue to spend like this. The recent breakaway of the western provinces to form the Fleirlunt and subsequent inability to retake the region has been taken as a sign that some of the Sun King's habits are causing problems already.
Kingdom of the Abberales
AKA The Abberales, the Green Isles, the Shipwreck Isles
Situated in the Fog Sea south of the Semvona mountains and southeast of the Semyarbin, the Abberales are a rocky, rainy archipelago centred around two main islands. With warm waters coming in from the southwest and cold winds rolling off the mountains to the north, the entire kingdom is infamous for its thick fogs surrounding moss covered, ship smashing cliffs. While long considered a backwater and significant only for the fact that they were the only part of Althia never conquered by the First Emperor, the discovery of land to the west thrust the kingdom into prominence due to the fact that the return current Semish treasure fleets follow takes them into the fogs of the Abberales, and while other seafaring nations push forward the designs of ships, the Abberales still produce the best sailors, and the kingdom grows rich off of mercenary work, piracy, and salvage, investing it into their own colonial and mercantile endeavours.
Despite being worse terrain to centralize than Semitland, the Abberales have had a single king for the longest period of any western Althian nation, although the king's power has traditionally been strongly curtailed by the dukes and counts, who were often able to act nearly independently, although the introduction of cannon started a reordering of this state of affairs. While the furthest south of the Althian kingdoms, the frigid glacial winds off the Semvona and nigh perpetual cloud cover over the islands has a profound effect on the climate, and visitors from Juntlund often liken the effect to 'eternal spring', with the weather only fluctuating between 'chill damp', 'warm damp', and 'squall'. The lands themselves are like broken off mountains half sunk into the sea, somewhat smoothed by smothering moss and ivy, and where the rains cannot escape bogs form easily. Despite the general inhospitable weather and land, the areas that are suitable to farming are intensely cultivated, the seas positively swarm with fish, and the stones themselves easily yield thick veins of copper and iron.
While often considered to be as damp and gloomy as their homeland, those who have actually encountered the Abber people find them a riotous bunch, prone to drunkenness and fighting for ill defined reasons, followed by conciliatory partying. Paradoxically, their nobility is highly regarded as exemplifying the ideal behaviours of a knight, although some speculate that this is because the upper classes are expected to be the sober ones herding a kingdom of drunken maniacs and not get beat up for their trouble. Part of the gloomy reputation also stems from the fact that the inhabitants of the Abberales long ago gave up on bright dyes and paints that quickly break down and fade away in the wet air, leading to a national colour palette of undyed textiles and art being mostly sculpture or musical in nature. The island is also home to many alchemists who get their start as distillers, liquor being preferred to ale or wine due to the higher alcohol content aging better in the environment.
While the king was long something of a puppet for the lower nobles, a way of presenting a united front to the various aggressive empires that have sprung up on the mainland, the growth over the past century of shipbuilding and cannon making has changed that. Once baronial castles dotted the land like pox sores, but with the king the only one who could barely afford the expensive new siege weapons at first, that started to change. While in many ways not as strong as the northern kingdoms, the Crown has been able to more effectively tax and control the wealth flowing in, and has extensively invested in ways to keep that money flowing in. The past several kings have also found that old powers delegated to the cities and guilds can be re-purposed into various forms of ways of threatening the nobility with the lower classes, the Common Assembly of the Abberales being the strongest such body in Althia, having accidentally gained de facto shared responsibility with the king to set the effective tax rate. "The price of nails in the Abberales" has become a saying for an inconsequential thing you forgot about coming back to biteyou later.
United Free Cities of the Fleirlunt
AKA Fleirlunt, the Free Cities, the Guilded Kingdom
The most recent nation to emerge, the Fleirlunt were part of Juntlund up until fifty years ago when several of the westernmost cities simultaneously broke out into open rebellion and proved impossible to crush by the Solar Crown, thanks mostly to interference by every other major kingdom in the region. While the intent was to cripple Juntlund shipbuilding industry and colonial efforts - and to a large degree this succeeded - the Fleirlunt have emerged as their own problem for the other major seafaring powers, and in particular have begun to directly threaten Semish control over the western seas and Autin trade in their eastern seas.
The Fleirlunt are along the northwestern edge of Althia, in the lowland marshes, floodplains, and deltas of Juntlund. While brought under the Solar Throne relatively early in the expansion of the Kingdom of Juntlund, the people there always maintained a degree of cultural distance and political autonomy due to various necessities for maintaining the dikes and polders that makes large scale settlement possible. Because of several important rivers emptying into the region, it also became a natural centre of trade and then shipbuilding and banking. While possessing little in the way of natural resources, the Fleirlunt were and are regarded as being the premier source of skilled human labour. It is thus widely regarded that the rebellion broke out when the Sun King of the time began linguistic and cultural reforms that began to threaten the autonomy of the Fleirlunt burghers, with the added bonus of the guilds and banks feeling overly pinched by royal taxes. While the wars of rebellion took quite the infrastructural toll, the cities survived and retained their hugely productive and lucrative industries.
While culturally quite close to Juntlund - spoken Fleirlunt being mostly intelligible with other Junr dialects and the written form being the same aside from retaining a number of archaic styles recently eliminate by the Solar Academy - there were a number of differences that were then exacerbated by the rebellion and a desire to develop a unique identity, separate from their former overlords. The most notable is that the Fleirlunt have an almost manic obsession with personal excellence. It matters not so much what a person does, so much as they do it with the utmost arete, although certain skills are considered harder to master and thus an expert glass blower is more highly regarded than the fastest and most efficient dung hauler. Because of being badly outnumbered during the rebellion, being skilled at war was considered something that should be universally promoted, and thus ever peasant likes to carry themself as a knight, much to the aggravation of the nobility of other lands. The obsession with skill also demands public practice and showing off, so every town has a square where men come to drill with their weaponry, hold limited duels, and perform public recitals of poetry, religious passages, philosophy, or music, with larger cities also having public painting and sculpting sessions.
While theoretically every man has representation in the various ruling councils, in practice actual power belongs to the guilds, which are controlled by a small number of families, which in turn devolve down to two broad coalitions. It is often said that the Fleirlunt traded one Sun King for two Patricians. While the House Gules and House Vair generally get along, everyone knows that the primary fracture point in the new society exists along those lines, and the stability of the Free Cities depends on how well the patriarchs of those two merchant clans get along with each other. Of the two, House Gules is the more warlike, seeking to keep Juntlund from returning by carving out a buffer zone and supporting the military ambitions of the Sun King's rivals, while House Vair seeks to colonize distant territories to create fallback areas in the event Fleirlunt proper is overrun. These goals sometimes synergize and sometimes clash, but overall Fleirlunt in general has aggressively pursued both, the latter much more to the concern of their former supporters.
AN: Well, this got away from me. I figured that I should give some info that Camilla would know about the major nations who have a presence in the seas. Proper update in the morning
Dagwood's Tale
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Morning comes uncomfortably soon, and with the Spritely Sinner is revealed in all of its terrible glory. Despite being a pirate ship, the Sinner is actually a dedicated warship, a two-decker with over sixty cannon that allowed it to actually fight Semish treasure fleets directly with some success, although the unsettling way that the ship seemed alive probably also had something to do with it. The rigging and sails seemed grown rather than woven, and the wooden planks blend into each other with fibrous growths. You desperately try to ignore the obvious supernatural elements and the subtle stench of decay that is all around.
However, as time goes on you find that the unsettling atmosphere around you is starting to wear you down. The crew, the ship... its all too much and your attempts not to look with your other senses begin to crumble. It's like staring at the sun with your eyes closed in that you cannot fail to feel the light. Finally you let your guard slip and look at the crew with your supernatural senses, and what you find is both horrifying and strangely enthralling.
The ship is choked with ghosts, hundreds of them, bound to the ship, to the weapons, and the crew themselves. The bodies are almost like puppets shared by the ghosts, with the most grotesquely mutated ones having the most spirits associated with them. And yet, to your senses, everything is tied together, and all leads back to one individual.
Captain Dagwood sees you staring at him, and he asks, "What do your eyes see, Lady Camilla?"
You splutter for a moment before you finally ask, "I... what happened?"
Hopping down from the quarterdeck to come closer to her, the dread pirate assesses you himself for a time before he asks, "Do you wish to share your own story?"
You glance at your own hands nervously, looking at the network of patterned scars upon them before you tighten your hands into fists and nod. "I... I don't really know who I was before, but I was abducted by a cult in Sarna and they bound a demon within me, tightly and with other enhancements. I'm not sure how long I was possessed, but it was longer than most hosts last, although I probably retain more of who I was than I should. The cult summoned forth Az and something went wrong. The demon was ejected and I survived and no, I'm not going to tell you what they were trying to summon when they got Az because if he doesn't want to tell you I'm not going to cross him like that. That was... a week ago? I feel like I've only been alive for about that long."
Dagwood nods sombrely at that and then says with unconcealed contempt, "Yes, that sounds like something that the foolishly power hungry would do, and I truly understand. Here, come with me."
Moving briskly across the deck up to the forecastle, Dagwood leans out over one of the railings to point to something on the front of the ship, and proclaims, "Witness here, the great monument to the sins of the Sun Kings."
Leaning out at his prompting, you find a figurehead there, but the wooden carving is a terrible thing that you cannot conceive of why anyone would make. It is of an achingly beautiful woman, naked except for the ropes binding her to the bow, her head lolling to one side in death from the deep cut in her throat. Your breath hitches at such an abominable carving, and then you look at Nathaniel in horror.
"She was a dryad, a spirit of the woods. I don't think I'll ever know what she did to offend the Solar Crown, if anything, but they took her tree and spliced the living wood into the planks of the ship they were building. They bound her, and made the ship something between a living and dead thing, a torture beyond imaging," Dagwood says with intimate knowledge of what he speaks. "Thirty years ago Juntlund and the Abberales were at war, and as a young captain I was most pleased to have outfought the savage monster of their navy, until I boarded it and learned the truth of its creation when someone noticed her gagged up there." He pauses, his breath hitching in remembered agony, and then says, "I asked her how to end it, and she told me to cut her throat to release her. I don't know if she didn't know what would happen or if she didn't care, but when I did so, my own soul was drawn into the void left by her departure... only it wasn't enough, and everyone aboard had their own souls ripped out to power it all."
A melancholy pause, and then Nathaniel says, "Those without supernatural protection are eventually absorbed by the ship if they stay too long, and anyone killed by our weapons also becomes part of the bodiless crew. For all of that the ship is alive, it heals its wounds given time, including extruding new bodies for the crew to manipulate the workings of the ship, and ultimately I am the Spritely Sinner, hence why my arms are as the cannons, my legs the sails, and my belly the hold. I kill the Juntlunders for vengeance, my fellows from the Abberales for spite for abandoning me in my condition, and everyone else for funds to research to undo this damned state." After another pause he shrugs and says, "The Reef Witch is another sort of tree spirit and I think she takes exception to my existence and the items I was attempting to procure from a seller in Sarna for my current line of research."
Occult knowledge filters up to the forefront of your mind and you whisper, "Another captured dryad?"
"Part of a dead one actually. I didn't actually order it, but I suppose I provide a market for such things," Dagwood says with a shrug that casually encompasses an indifference to atrocity. "Also, I'm not sure if its a dryad proper since it was from the New World, but it was definitely a related type of spirit."
An uncomfortable, unpleasant silence grows between you before Nathaniel offhandedly says, "I think that whatever awaits me for my actions in life, it will be decidedly more pleasant than my current existence."
You look at him with your supernatural senses and all you can see are thorny bindings of magic that you don't want to touch around a black ball of conflicting and unpleasant emotions. You don't think you could influence him in any way if you tried, but you wonder a bit at if there is anything you could do. Is there any way to use the awful abilities shoved into you for anything good?
You...
[] Mention your abilities
[] Change the subject
[] Let Dagwood change the subject
However, as time goes on you find that the unsettling atmosphere around you is starting to wear you down. The crew, the ship... its all too much and your attempts not to look with your other senses begin to crumble. It's like staring at the sun with your eyes closed in that you cannot fail to feel the light. Finally you let your guard slip and look at the crew with your supernatural senses, and what you find is both horrifying and strangely enthralling.
The ship is choked with ghosts, hundreds of them, bound to the ship, to the weapons, and the crew themselves. The bodies are almost like puppets shared by the ghosts, with the most grotesquely mutated ones having the most spirits associated with them. And yet, to your senses, everything is tied together, and all leads back to one individual.
Captain Dagwood sees you staring at him, and he asks, "What do your eyes see, Lady Camilla?"
You splutter for a moment before you finally ask, "I... what happened?"
Hopping down from the quarterdeck to come closer to her, the dread pirate assesses you himself for a time before he asks, "Do you wish to share your own story?"
You glance at your own hands nervously, looking at the network of patterned scars upon them before you tighten your hands into fists and nod. "I... I don't really know who I was before, but I was abducted by a cult in Sarna and they bound a demon within me, tightly and with other enhancements. I'm not sure how long I was possessed, but it was longer than most hosts last, although I probably retain more of who I was than I should. The cult summoned forth Az and something went wrong. The demon was ejected and I survived and no, I'm not going to tell you what they were trying to summon when they got Az because if he doesn't want to tell you I'm not going to cross him like that. That was... a week ago? I feel like I've only been alive for about that long."
Dagwood nods sombrely at that and then says with unconcealed contempt, "Yes, that sounds like something that the foolishly power hungry would do, and I truly understand. Here, come with me."
Moving briskly across the deck up to the forecastle, Dagwood leans out over one of the railings to point to something on the front of the ship, and proclaims, "Witness here, the great monument to the sins of the Sun Kings."
Leaning out at his prompting, you find a figurehead there, but the wooden carving is a terrible thing that you cannot conceive of why anyone would make. It is of an achingly beautiful woman, naked except for the ropes binding her to the bow, her head lolling to one side in death from the deep cut in her throat. Your breath hitches at such an abominable carving, and then you look at Nathaniel in horror.
"She was a dryad, a spirit of the woods. I don't think I'll ever know what she did to offend the Solar Crown, if anything, but they took her tree and spliced the living wood into the planks of the ship they were building. They bound her, and made the ship something between a living and dead thing, a torture beyond imaging," Dagwood says with intimate knowledge of what he speaks. "Thirty years ago Juntlund and the Abberales were at war, and as a young captain I was most pleased to have outfought the savage monster of their navy, until I boarded it and learned the truth of its creation when someone noticed her gagged up there." He pauses, his breath hitching in remembered agony, and then says, "I asked her how to end it, and she told me to cut her throat to release her. I don't know if she didn't know what would happen or if she didn't care, but when I did so, my own soul was drawn into the void left by her departure... only it wasn't enough, and everyone aboard had their own souls ripped out to power it all."
A melancholy pause, and then Nathaniel says, "Those without supernatural protection are eventually absorbed by the ship if they stay too long, and anyone killed by our weapons also becomes part of the bodiless crew. For all of that the ship is alive, it heals its wounds given time, including extruding new bodies for the crew to manipulate the workings of the ship, and ultimately I am the Spritely Sinner, hence why my arms are as the cannons, my legs the sails, and my belly the hold. I kill the Juntlunders for vengeance, my fellows from the Abberales for spite for abandoning me in my condition, and everyone else for funds to research to undo this damned state." After another pause he shrugs and says, "The Reef Witch is another sort of tree spirit and I think she takes exception to my existence and the items I was attempting to procure from a seller in Sarna for my current line of research."
Occult knowledge filters up to the forefront of your mind and you whisper, "Another captured dryad?"
"Part of a dead one actually. I didn't actually order it, but I suppose I provide a market for such things," Dagwood says with a shrug that casually encompasses an indifference to atrocity. "Also, I'm not sure if its a dryad proper since it was from the New World, but it was definitely a related type of spirit."
An uncomfortable, unpleasant silence grows between you before Nathaniel offhandedly says, "I think that whatever awaits me for my actions in life, it will be decidedly more pleasant than my current existence."
You look at him with your supernatural senses and all you can see are thorny bindings of magic that you don't want to touch around a black ball of conflicting and unpleasant emotions. You don't think you could influence him in any way if you tried, but you wonder a bit at if there is anything you could do. Is there any way to use the awful abilities shoved into you for anything good?
You...
[] Mention your abilities
[] Change the subject
[] Let Dagwood change the subject
Beginner soul surgery
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You consider what to say for a long moment before you haltingly say, "The demon, the one that was bound within me, it was... it was some sort of beguiler. It could alter people's minds and memories and emotions, and at its worst it could cut away pieces of soul to eat. Some of that has remained within me, I don't know how much help, but maybe...?"
Nathaniel blinks at this and the consideration he gives it is rather deep, before he shakes his head sadly and says, "While I know of such powers I have never even attempted to have them used on me or my crew for lack of trust of those that could do it. While not exactly tempting, it is certainly interesting..."
Upon further thought the captain barks out, "Someone find me Marcus and have him brought here!"
Looking at Dagwood, he says, "Marcus is... well, the soul binding process is imperfect, and every time a body is destroyed it causes trauma. We rotate duties and multiple souls are attached to each body these days to ease the strain, but in the early days we didn't really understand what was happening. Marcus was too fierce in his loyalty and came back too often, until one day he just... broke. Perhaps you can have a look at him?"
You gulp but nod and say, "I don't know if I can do anything, but I'll take a look."
The sailors haul forward a limp, shrivelled up man who looks to be made from a small bush, his body is so consumed by the curse. Swallowing down your fear, you open up your supernatural senses to peer at the man, and what you find is at once both disgusting and fascinating. While the same bindings as upon the other crew, the ship, and Dagwood are also present, his mind is like a diseased mass of black coral, with unsightly lumps of confused emotion and painful memories growing upon and consuming each other. Somewhat interestingly, you don't think that you can really do significant damage to his mind and soul as the binding magic shields many of the core elements. Emptying your magical reserves, you form a knife in your mind and apply it to the most distant element of the cancerous growths, attempting to cut it away.
the bullet shattered the arm
The sudden bolt of memory that erupts from the process nearly causes you to fumble what you are doing, but the memory is so fragmented and the emotional context to it so blunted that it is hard to truly feel it. You take it that was among poor Marcus' last 'deaths', by that point the degeneration having left him simple and numb to it all. Still, as you go over the pieces of the memory, you find your own mind processing it into something more real and more unpleasant. Clamping down with your mind, you crush the unpleasantness, grinding it away until it is just energy circulating within you. That memory and the emotions attached to it weren't things either of you should hang onto. You feel your energy reserves replenish somewhat, but not entirely and the mental knife you formed is fading away. Deciding to make the most of it, you scrape away more of those unpleasant, tumorous things and grind them away.
Your mental construct dissolves before you have refilled your reserves, and you slump over once you turn your attention back to the outside world, a small headache pressing against your forehead from the inside, but you look at the expectant crew and say, "I think I made it a little better. Going to need more time at it though before he might show some improvement, this is exhausting."
Dagwood assesses his insensate crewman before he says, "I'll keep an eye on you, make sure you're not hurting poor Marcus, but you have little else to do and he can contribute little, so have at him then."
You nod at that, and spend the rest of the day cutting and scraping at his soul, an exceedingly difficult task that soon brings with it considerable pain as the agony of his condition and deaths starts to become clearer. While the outer surface of his soul is naught but bleakness and apathy towards his many deaths and long suffering as a bound soul, once you have dismantled that outer husk you start encountering more complex memories and emotions, things that require care and attention. For a moment you consider just cutting and ripping these out too, because handling them properly is the mental equivalent of reaching into an oil tangle of thorny vines, hauling some out to disentangle a few strands, then only once they are straight do you actual flense away the thorns. It's slow and painful, but you realize that you owe it to this man to do it properly. Your life was ruined because of the malicious indifference to your suffering, you're not going to pass it along.
By the time you find yourself resting a hammock, belly somewhat more full from the fish and hardtack that Nathaniel carried in case of 'guests' you are exhausted and feel like you have died a dozen times, but the fact that Marcus is now actually able to stand under his own power and can walk if guided by another is celebrated among the crew, and Dagwood seems immensely pleased.
Swinging from a hammock near yours and doing some remarkably intricate scrimshaw work, Az asks you, "Busy day?"
You let out a pained moan for a moment before you manage to gather the effort to say properly, "Yes."
"Good, glad to see that you're keeping busy," Az says. Musing to himself, "I am fascinated by the cannons. Remarkable weapons, wish I had their like back in my day, would have made sieges so much easier."
You consider asking more but decide that you don't particularly care to know. The legends tell of the First Emperor sacking and obliterating many great cities in his day and you aren't particularly interested in either the details or his plans for the future. For a moment you feel bad for helping to introduce him to cannon, but then you figure that he would have found out eventually anyway.
"So, how far are you going to take this project of yours?" Az asks, curious.
You are silent for a time, both thinking and marshalling the energy to think and speak. Az seems content to let you remain silent. You should probably at least get Marcus functional again, which you think is entirely within your capacity, but you also feel like it was getting a bit easier as you went along, even as the process got more complicated. You are better able to understand the patterns at play, and there are certain things that repeat and thus you can use the same methods without having to tackle the problem from scratch. You're also finding more tricks as you go along, like how to splice tangled memories into a more coherent whole, which then seems to allow the mind to heal on its own. Thus far those sorts of actions were rare with Marcus, but you can feel that as you go deeper they will become more common, even as the complexity of the task rises.
And, if you can really fix Marcus, you can probably also start working on the rest of the crew, who you're now really starting to understand didn't deserve any of this as they were pretty much all victims of something the Juntlunders did, although obviously they were also all at least somewhat complicit in perpetuating their pain upon others. Removing the surface damage of the more damaged but functional crew should be relatively easy if exhausting, but there was the distinct possibility that you could really work at things and undo the profound damage you could feel all around you. Also, now that you think about it, about the only being you know of who could possibly restrain Az was Dagwood, who would probably feel a profound debt towards you for helping his crew, and see you as an asset towards his salvation in your own right rather than just an associate of Az. The only problem being that aside from definitely being exhausting, the process would take weeks if not months, and Dagwood promised to get a ship for Az before then, which could lead to complications.
Level of commitment...
[] Get Marcus functional
[] Fix Marcus to the best of your ability
[] Surface repair the worst off of the crew
[] Go over the entire crew as best you can
Nathaniel blinks at this and the consideration he gives it is rather deep, before he shakes his head sadly and says, "While I know of such powers I have never even attempted to have them used on me or my crew for lack of trust of those that could do it. While not exactly tempting, it is certainly interesting..."
Upon further thought the captain barks out, "Someone find me Marcus and have him brought here!"
Looking at Dagwood, he says, "Marcus is... well, the soul binding process is imperfect, and every time a body is destroyed it causes trauma. We rotate duties and multiple souls are attached to each body these days to ease the strain, but in the early days we didn't really understand what was happening. Marcus was too fierce in his loyalty and came back too often, until one day he just... broke. Perhaps you can have a look at him?"
You gulp but nod and say, "I don't know if I can do anything, but I'll take a look."
The sailors haul forward a limp, shrivelled up man who looks to be made from a small bush, his body is so consumed by the curse. Swallowing down your fear, you open up your supernatural senses to peer at the man, and what you find is at once both disgusting and fascinating. While the same bindings as upon the other crew, the ship, and Dagwood are also present, his mind is like a diseased mass of black coral, with unsightly lumps of confused emotion and painful memories growing upon and consuming each other. Somewhat interestingly, you don't think that you can really do significant damage to his mind and soul as the binding magic shields many of the core elements. Emptying your magical reserves, you form a knife in your mind and apply it to the most distant element of the cancerous growths, attempting to cut it away.
the bullet shattered the arm
The sudden bolt of memory that erupts from the process nearly causes you to fumble what you are doing, but the memory is so fragmented and the emotional context to it so blunted that it is hard to truly feel it. You take it that was among poor Marcus' last 'deaths', by that point the degeneration having left him simple and numb to it all. Still, as you go over the pieces of the memory, you find your own mind processing it into something more real and more unpleasant. Clamping down with your mind, you crush the unpleasantness, grinding it away until it is just energy circulating within you. That memory and the emotions attached to it weren't things either of you should hang onto. You feel your energy reserves replenish somewhat, but not entirely and the mental knife you formed is fading away. Deciding to make the most of it, you scrape away more of those unpleasant, tumorous things and grind them away.
Your mental construct dissolves before you have refilled your reserves, and you slump over once you turn your attention back to the outside world, a small headache pressing against your forehead from the inside, but you look at the expectant crew and say, "I think I made it a little better. Going to need more time at it though before he might show some improvement, this is exhausting."
Dagwood assesses his insensate crewman before he says, "I'll keep an eye on you, make sure you're not hurting poor Marcus, but you have little else to do and he can contribute little, so have at him then."
You nod at that, and spend the rest of the day cutting and scraping at his soul, an exceedingly difficult task that soon brings with it considerable pain as the agony of his condition and deaths starts to become clearer. While the outer surface of his soul is naught but bleakness and apathy towards his many deaths and long suffering as a bound soul, once you have dismantled that outer husk you start encountering more complex memories and emotions, things that require care and attention. For a moment you consider just cutting and ripping these out too, because handling them properly is the mental equivalent of reaching into an oil tangle of thorny vines, hauling some out to disentangle a few strands, then only once they are straight do you actual flense away the thorns. It's slow and painful, but you realize that you owe it to this man to do it properly. Your life was ruined because of the malicious indifference to your suffering, you're not going to pass it along.
By the time you find yourself resting a hammock, belly somewhat more full from the fish and hardtack that Nathaniel carried in case of 'guests' you are exhausted and feel like you have died a dozen times, but the fact that Marcus is now actually able to stand under his own power and can walk if guided by another is celebrated among the crew, and Dagwood seems immensely pleased.
Swinging from a hammock near yours and doing some remarkably intricate scrimshaw work, Az asks you, "Busy day?"
You let out a pained moan for a moment before you manage to gather the effort to say properly, "Yes."
"Good, glad to see that you're keeping busy," Az says. Musing to himself, "I am fascinated by the cannons. Remarkable weapons, wish I had their like back in my day, would have made sieges so much easier."
You consider asking more but decide that you don't particularly care to know. The legends tell of the First Emperor sacking and obliterating many great cities in his day and you aren't particularly interested in either the details or his plans for the future. For a moment you feel bad for helping to introduce him to cannon, but then you figure that he would have found out eventually anyway.
"So, how far are you going to take this project of yours?" Az asks, curious.
You are silent for a time, both thinking and marshalling the energy to think and speak. Az seems content to let you remain silent. You should probably at least get Marcus functional again, which you think is entirely within your capacity, but you also feel like it was getting a bit easier as you went along, even as the process got more complicated. You are better able to understand the patterns at play, and there are certain things that repeat and thus you can use the same methods without having to tackle the problem from scratch. You're also finding more tricks as you go along, like how to splice tangled memories into a more coherent whole, which then seems to allow the mind to heal on its own. Thus far those sorts of actions were rare with Marcus, but you can feel that as you go deeper they will become more common, even as the complexity of the task rises.
And, if you can really fix Marcus, you can probably also start working on the rest of the crew, who you're now really starting to understand didn't deserve any of this as they were pretty much all victims of something the Juntlunders did, although obviously they were also all at least somewhat complicit in perpetuating their pain upon others. Removing the surface damage of the more damaged but functional crew should be relatively easy if exhausting, but there was the distinct possibility that you could really work at things and undo the profound damage you could feel all around you. Also, now that you think about it, about the only being you know of who could possibly restrain Az was Dagwood, who would probably feel a profound debt towards you for helping his crew, and see you as an asset towards his salvation in your own right rather than just an associate of Az. The only problem being that aside from definitely being exhausting, the process would take weeks if not months, and Dagwood promised to get a ship for Az before then, which could lead to complications.
Level of commitment...
[] Get Marcus functional
[] Fix Marcus to the best of your ability
[] Surface repair the worst off of the crew
[] Go over the entire crew as best you can
Efforts and rewards
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You consider what to do over the night, before you come to the conclusion that you should do as much as you possibly can for as many people as you can, within the time you have before parting from the Spritely Sinner to stick with Az. You get the distinct feeling that you don't want him to think that you are trying to work against him, since while Dagwood definitely has a chance of dealing with the Tyrant God, you don't think it is a good enough chance to gamble on it. Still, in the time you have, you'll do what you can.
Of course, before you get to the better off crew, you're going to finish up with Marcus, which remains a long and complicated job that consumes several days in of itself. You note with some interest and annoyance that the cancerous sections grow back several times before you realize that they are only in part caused by supernatural means. Deep roots of malaise from the trauma remain, and until you deal with those your work can be undone. Eventually you think that you realize that some sections of growth are best thought of as scabs that turn to scar tissue: the mind trying to heal itself but creating a new problem. You have to dive in deeper to try to find the root issues, and to avoid just tearing Marcus' mind apart that means that it is slow and exhausting. Multiple times your magic runs out while you are trying to do something, and you have to just lay on the deck for an hour or so to refill your reserves before starting over again. Sometimes you find an odious memory or emotional pattern that you feel confident that you can simply excise and consume for energy, but a lot of time the more damaging parts of the mind are interwoven with deep parts integral to Marcus' identity.
The shame of failure to his captain from falling in battle can't really be excised without removing the entire memory or the feeling of loyalty to said captain, and unfortunately you are learning that memories aren't nice neat packages. They intertwine with each other and are tied to multiple emotional contexts and the whole thing is just hard. You are somewhat frightened by the combination of pure skill and brutal, callus disregard for the sanctity of others the demon had to have had to do its job so quickly and efficiently.
Still, after a solid four days not only is Marcus able to function on his own like some of the more damaged members of the crew, but there is a definite spark in his eyes and he actually starts to take initiative in things.
By the fifth day he is looking at Nathaniel curiously and asks, "Captain?"
It's quite the thing to see the dread pirate Captain Deadwood break down into sobbing tears, clutching at the shirt of one of his crew and profusely apologizing while the God of All Tyrants pats him on the back, their little sparring session interrupted by the question.
By the sixth day Marcus is holding conversations, and while its obvious that a lot of his personality isn't what it was thirty or so years, the fact that he has a personality and it isn't something that you stuck there is a massive boon to morale, such as it is. You're not sure how much more you can actually do for him, but the effort you have already put in has taxed you greatly, and as much as you have learned you don't think any further effort will be of benefit. You'll probably do more damage than you can undo at this point.
And then you start in on the rest of the crew. You make it definite that you don't know how much you can do, but that you will try to help the worst off members and get them functional, and start working your way from case to case from the bottom up, and that you will honestly probably run out of time before you can get to everyone. This still definitely buys you significant benefit, and much to your surprise when the Spritely Sinner moves into the Main Stream area and it sails right past the sort of sloop that the average pirate crew would favour, only for the Captain to mention to Az, "Not good enough."
You've apparently impressed Dagwood with your efforts and he intends to pay you back for that by putting more effort into this alliance himself. The look from Az is... impressive. Honestly, you feel your heart flutter a bit at that earnest look of gratitude and pride at your work, although you do have to ask what exactly he's been doing while you've been hard at work.
The enigmatic look he gives sort of makes you wonder why you asked.
As the second week at sea turns into the third and Nathaniel has passed up several small, isolated ships, he finally seems to have found what he wants. Handing his telescope over to Az one day, he gestures to the horizon. After scanning for a few heartbeats Az whistles and says, "That's a lot of ships."
Taking back the spyglass, Dagwood nods and says while scanning the distant formation once more, "Semish treasure fleet. They don't let their galleons loaded with luxuries from their colonies go unguarded and the Main Stream is fast enough that they can wait to bunch up and sail all at once and still get their goods to market in good time. We're obviously not going directly for that flock... ah! Perfect."
"Are you going after a galleon?" You ask incredulously. Your memory is spotty, but even you know enough pirate lore to know that while catching a treasure ship out of formation is the ultimate prize, both for the goods in its hold and for the fact that the huge ships were built to have swap out cargo space for guns and can outfight almost everything smaller than them.
"Nope. Frigate escort," Dagwood replies nonchalantly.
Your brain freezes as you roll over the fact that the 'almost everything smaller than them' in your last thought excludes the few ships custom built and always rigged for war, like the frigates that prowl among the treasure fleets to add speed and firepower to numbers for the cargo rigged galleons. The Sinner was a custom built warship to be sure, and had supernatural advantages besides, but going after a frigate of all things was a bit much. If nothing else the rest of the fleet would be able to pound them into retreat while the struggled with the warship.
"Mr. Beckworth, please adjust our heading three degrees to starboard. Mr. Grigor, full sail please," Dagwood orders, and the two men named immediately begin issuing their own orders on carrying out the task.
As the crew jumps to motion and the ship itself changes how it moves across the sea, Az comments, "I can't help but notice we're turning away from the target."
"Of course. We need to get in front of them without them seeing that we're getting in front of them," Dagwood answers.
Despite the chase being on, it actually takes days for it to occur, Dagwood carefully judging the distances involved frequently, and you find that you have no idea when things will happen. Sometimes you think that everything is going to happen and you hold onto your magical energies just in case you will need them only for the day to end, while other times you drain yourself in your work only to briefly feel like you have timed it incorrectly as there is a flurry of activity. You ask Nathaniel a few times and he says that he can't predict when the moment will come, just that it will.
As such, you're more than a little perturbed when the moment comes late in the day on a day when nothing seems like it will be happening. You are resting in your hammock, utterly exhausted, when suddenly someone starts calling out, "All hands, prepare to flood! All hands, prepare to flood!"
Scrambling out of the hammock with what energy is left to you, you head up to deck to find Dagwood sitting on a stool with several buckets of seawater being held by sailors before him, assisting him in chugging them down to great discomfort, the ship lowering perilously in the water as he fills up. Rather curiously you also note that his arms are tightly wrapped in oilcloth and there are two sailors on each arm frantically working to apply oil and fan them dry. Scraps of memory that are neither your own nor the demon's suggest that the resonance between Nathaniel and the ship goes both ways, so this all serves some greater purpose.
"Our target has broken away from the main group, our sails having finally caught their attention in just the right way. They'll see us low in the water shortly after sunset, and assume that we're either much smaller than we are, or are in distress. Either way, easy prey for a frigate thinking that they're seeing a pirate nipping at the edges and hoping that bad weather blows something expensive away from the flock," Nathaniel explains between gulping water and judging the sinking of the ship.
The sun is indeed down below the horizon when the lights on the horizon move closer to the tiny pools of light cast by the intentionally few lanterns strung up on the Sinner, and you're only partially recovered from your work during the day. Az has disappeared, dispersed among a number of longboats scattered about the surrounding waters, ready to swarm about the target ship in the dark. You feel incredibly tense at the way the ship is so dangerously low in the water and all but one of its sails is neatly packed away, the one actually out fluttering listlessly from its intentional ill trim. You feel like a sitting duck, the approaching warship all too capable of finishing off the job you've already started, but from the easy way that Nathaniel is sitting on his stool with ropes tied around his swollen gut and a dozen sailors ready to pull and squeeze, you get the feeling that they've done this before.
Before the plan can actually be implemented, the tense silence of the night is broken by the Az's voice booming across the mostly still sea, a cannon loud but whipcrack clear announcement of, "HALT! Prepare to stand to for boarding and inspection!"
The line is both unexpected by you and Nathaniel, and draws everyone's attention towards Az standing out in the darkness, barely illuminated by a lantern he holds aloft. You just sort of stare at him in utterly confusion for a time before someone from the frigate fires at him, the results on Az unknown in the darkness, but the results on the frigate obvious as crossbow bolts whistle in from the darkness, striking true more often than not and picking off sailors and marines while not revealing where in the dark the shots are coming from. Realizing that they are surrounded by pirates, the frigate crew begins to shutter their own lanterns so that they are not providing easy targets. Nathaniel orders something similar for their own lanterns even as he orders his crew to begin tightening the ropes around his belly, causing him to vomit up seawater, which fountains out of the flooded hold in sympathy.
Guns and cannons go off on the frigate and there is the sounds of confusion and battle as the Spritely Sinner rises from the waves in the dark, and somehow moves almost like an oared ship using some sort of supernatural method, coming quietly alongside the embattled frigate even as the conflict on the decks comes to a close. A lantern is unshuttered and Az can be seen standing almost alone on the deck surrounded by the dead and wounded, the mannequin sailors of the Spritely Sinner quietly retreating from the light to give Az sole prominence. Long gone are the rags and cultist robe from weeks ago, replaced by proper attire for the environment, although Az has supplemented it with a luridly carved mask that you hadn't realized he had been making. While not exactly ostentatious, there was something distinctly sinister about the design that definitely drew the eyes towards the face concealing design above everything else.
"Right then, that was entirely unnecessary, now wasn't it?" Az chides as if talking to children. "As a legal representative of the Xoiharl Confederacy I have the authority to conduct the inspection of trade vessels within our territory and the territory of allied groups, claimed territorial waters included. Now, who is in charge here?"
The cowed sailors, realizing that enemy reinforcements have arrived to assist the madman in their midst, all point to a man in plate lying in a heap on the deck at Az's feet. Leaning over, Az inspects him and asks, "Right then, he won't be up for a while. Next in line?"
There is a murmuring from the crew before a woman's voice chides them all in a Semish accent, "Right then, if none of you have the balls to step up! Madman, I am Kattarin d'Jauney del Torros, daughter of Representative d'Jauney, whom you stand victorious over."
"Very well then, then I find this ship in violation of the Treaty of Thirteen Cities and shall seize it and all of its contents for attacking a lawful inspection under that treaty. A representative may join me to petition the Council of Confederacies over the return of the ship after the payment of an appropriate penalty, while the rest of the crew shall be left with adequate supplies to return to their nearest confederates, which in this case shall mean longboats with food and water and some means of signalling the rest of your fleet. As the one who has assumed responsibility, I ask that you provide a ship's manifest so that a receipt for seizure of goods may be provided, and nominate a representative to be taken to answer to the Council," Az explains in detail, much to the dumbfounded confusion of all in attendance.
Blinking repeatedly, Kattarin looks at Az for a long, pregnant moment before she asks, "You're... seizing the ship... under some law and treaty I have never heard of... and you want to write us a receipt?"
"Yes, of course, I would be in violation of the agreement between our governments if I did anything less, and a treaty violation is why we are speaking here, so that would be right hypocritical of me if I didn't do things properly, now wouldn't it," Az responds seriously.
Kattarin seems to want to say something but keeps aborting what she might want to say until finally she says, "Right then. And you want someone to go with you to answer for this."
"Yes, that was what I said," Az replies with a solemn nod.
The woman looks around at the ship and the undoubtedly dark figures lurking aboard the silhouette of the Spritely Sinner and then straightens up, obviously deciding to play along as she booms out, "I demand a guarantee of safety for the representative, and their safe return after discussion is concluded."
"Absolutely! It would be a grave offence should the representative be brought to harm, and even attack by an outside element -including an ally- would bring shame should the representative not be protected," Az proclaims.
"Then I nominate myself as representative, the receipt to be given to my father, who shall remain to command his crew once his faculties return," Kattarin declares.
Nodding, Az says, "Most excellent. I ask the surviving crew to attend to those caught up in the fighting and to prepare adequate supplies to be set adrift while I converse with my allies on the preparation of a prize crew. Lady del Torros, if you might prepare the records for my examination after, that will greatly smooth things over."
Everyone just sort of mills around in shock for a moment before Kattarin barks at them all to get moving before the maniac in their midst starts killing again, at which point they begin the process of evacuation with remarkable alacrity. Strolling across a gangplank extended between the now roped together ships, Az comes up to you and says in all seriousness, "I'm glad this is a Semish ship or I would have had to have jumped through a lot more hoops to justify that."
You and Dagwood just look at him dumbfounded before it dawns on you that the Semish claim political continuity to the time of the First Emperor. An appalled look crosses your face as you realize that you have no idea how the First Empire was actually arranged, and that there is the distinct possibility of everything he just said being technically true!
"You're... you're evil, you know that," you accuse the God of All Tyrants.
Az nods and says, "I get that a lot, yes." He then runs his thumb and forefinger thoughtfully across his chin and asks, "What do you think of the Lady del Torros there?"
"What do I think? I think she's an upper class Semish noble," you reply, summing up everything you in fact know about here.
"Well Councillor, you should form an opinion before we reach a suitable port," Az says, leaning in close enough that you can see him wink behind his mask.
For the return trip you spend most of your time with...
[] Kattarin
[] Az
[] The crew
Of course, before you get to the better off crew, you're going to finish up with Marcus, which remains a long and complicated job that consumes several days in of itself. You note with some interest and annoyance that the cancerous sections grow back several times before you realize that they are only in part caused by supernatural means. Deep roots of malaise from the trauma remain, and until you deal with those your work can be undone. Eventually you think that you realize that some sections of growth are best thought of as scabs that turn to scar tissue: the mind trying to heal itself but creating a new problem. You have to dive in deeper to try to find the root issues, and to avoid just tearing Marcus' mind apart that means that it is slow and exhausting. Multiple times your magic runs out while you are trying to do something, and you have to just lay on the deck for an hour or so to refill your reserves before starting over again. Sometimes you find an odious memory or emotional pattern that you feel confident that you can simply excise and consume for energy, but a lot of time the more damaging parts of the mind are interwoven with deep parts integral to Marcus' identity.
The shame of failure to his captain from falling in battle can't really be excised without removing the entire memory or the feeling of loyalty to said captain, and unfortunately you are learning that memories aren't nice neat packages. They intertwine with each other and are tied to multiple emotional contexts and the whole thing is just hard. You are somewhat frightened by the combination of pure skill and brutal, callus disregard for the sanctity of others the demon had to have had to do its job so quickly and efficiently.
Still, after a solid four days not only is Marcus able to function on his own like some of the more damaged members of the crew, but there is a definite spark in his eyes and he actually starts to take initiative in things.
By the fifth day he is looking at Nathaniel curiously and asks, "Captain?"
It's quite the thing to see the dread pirate Captain Deadwood break down into sobbing tears, clutching at the shirt of one of his crew and profusely apologizing while the God of All Tyrants pats him on the back, their little sparring session interrupted by the question.
By the sixth day Marcus is holding conversations, and while its obvious that a lot of his personality isn't what it was thirty or so years, the fact that he has a personality and it isn't something that you stuck there is a massive boon to morale, such as it is. You're not sure how much more you can actually do for him, but the effort you have already put in has taxed you greatly, and as much as you have learned you don't think any further effort will be of benefit. You'll probably do more damage than you can undo at this point.
And then you start in on the rest of the crew. You make it definite that you don't know how much you can do, but that you will try to help the worst off members and get them functional, and start working your way from case to case from the bottom up, and that you will honestly probably run out of time before you can get to everyone. This still definitely buys you significant benefit, and much to your surprise when the Spritely Sinner moves into the Main Stream area and it sails right past the sort of sloop that the average pirate crew would favour, only for the Captain to mention to Az, "Not good enough."
You've apparently impressed Dagwood with your efforts and he intends to pay you back for that by putting more effort into this alliance himself. The look from Az is... impressive. Honestly, you feel your heart flutter a bit at that earnest look of gratitude and pride at your work, although you do have to ask what exactly he's been doing while you've been hard at work.
The enigmatic look he gives sort of makes you wonder why you asked.
As the second week at sea turns into the third and Nathaniel has passed up several small, isolated ships, he finally seems to have found what he wants. Handing his telescope over to Az one day, he gestures to the horizon. After scanning for a few heartbeats Az whistles and says, "That's a lot of ships."
Taking back the spyglass, Dagwood nods and says while scanning the distant formation once more, "Semish treasure fleet. They don't let their galleons loaded with luxuries from their colonies go unguarded and the Main Stream is fast enough that they can wait to bunch up and sail all at once and still get their goods to market in good time. We're obviously not going directly for that flock... ah! Perfect."
"Are you going after a galleon?" You ask incredulously. Your memory is spotty, but even you know enough pirate lore to know that while catching a treasure ship out of formation is the ultimate prize, both for the goods in its hold and for the fact that the huge ships were built to have swap out cargo space for guns and can outfight almost everything smaller than them.
"Nope. Frigate escort," Dagwood replies nonchalantly.
Your brain freezes as you roll over the fact that the 'almost everything smaller than them' in your last thought excludes the few ships custom built and always rigged for war, like the frigates that prowl among the treasure fleets to add speed and firepower to numbers for the cargo rigged galleons. The Sinner was a custom built warship to be sure, and had supernatural advantages besides, but going after a frigate of all things was a bit much. If nothing else the rest of the fleet would be able to pound them into retreat while the struggled with the warship.
"Mr. Beckworth, please adjust our heading three degrees to starboard. Mr. Grigor, full sail please," Dagwood orders, and the two men named immediately begin issuing their own orders on carrying out the task.
As the crew jumps to motion and the ship itself changes how it moves across the sea, Az comments, "I can't help but notice we're turning away from the target."
"Of course. We need to get in front of them without them seeing that we're getting in front of them," Dagwood answers.
Despite the chase being on, it actually takes days for it to occur, Dagwood carefully judging the distances involved frequently, and you find that you have no idea when things will happen. Sometimes you think that everything is going to happen and you hold onto your magical energies just in case you will need them only for the day to end, while other times you drain yourself in your work only to briefly feel like you have timed it incorrectly as there is a flurry of activity. You ask Nathaniel a few times and he says that he can't predict when the moment will come, just that it will.
As such, you're more than a little perturbed when the moment comes late in the day on a day when nothing seems like it will be happening. You are resting in your hammock, utterly exhausted, when suddenly someone starts calling out, "All hands, prepare to flood! All hands, prepare to flood!"
Scrambling out of the hammock with what energy is left to you, you head up to deck to find Dagwood sitting on a stool with several buckets of seawater being held by sailors before him, assisting him in chugging them down to great discomfort, the ship lowering perilously in the water as he fills up. Rather curiously you also note that his arms are tightly wrapped in oilcloth and there are two sailors on each arm frantically working to apply oil and fan them dry. Scraps of memory that are neither your own nor the demon's suggest that the resonance between Nathaniel and the ship goes both ways, so this all serves some greater purpose.
"Our target has broken away from the main group, our sails having finally caught their attention in just the right way. They'll see us low in the water shortly after sunset, and assume that we're either much smaller than we are, or are in distress. Either way, easy prey for a frigate thinking that they're seeing a pirate nipping at the edges and hoping that bad weather blows something expensive away from the flock," Nathaniel explains between gulping water and judging the sinking of the ship.
The sun is indeed down below the horizon when the lights on the horizon move closer to the tiny pools of light cast by the intentionally few lanterns strung up on the Sinner, and you're only partially recovered from your work during the day. Az has disappeared, dispersed among a number of longboats scattered about the surrounding waters, ready to swarm about the target ship in the dark. You feel incredibly tense at the way the ship is so dangerously low in the water and all but one of its sails is neatly packed away, the one actually out fluttering listlessly from its intentional ill trim. You feel like a sitting duck, the approaching warship all too capable of finishing off the job you've already started, but from the easy way that Nathaniel is sitting on his stool with ropes tied around his swollen gut and a dozen sailors ready to pull and squeeze, you get the feeling that they've done this before.
Before the plan can actually be implemented, the tense silence of the night is broken by the Az's voice booming across the mostly still sea, a cannon loud but whipcrack clear announcement of, "HALT! Prepare to stand to for boarding and inspection!"
The line is both unexpected by you and Nathaniel, and draws everyone's attention towards Az standing out in the darkness, barely illuminated by a lantern he holds aloft. You just sort of stare at him in utterly confusion for a time before someone from the frigate fires at him, the results on Az unknown in the darkness, but the results on the frigate obvious as crossbow bolts whistle in from the darkness, striking true more often than not and picking off sailors and marines while not revealing where in the dark the shots are coming from. Realizing that they are surrounded by pirates, the frigate crew begins to shutter their own lanterns so that they are not providing easy targets. Nathaniel orders something similar for their own lanterns even as he orders his crew to begin tightening the ropes around his belly, causing him to vomit up seawater, which fountains out of the flooded hold in sympathy.
Guns and cannons go off on the frigate and there is the sounds of confusion and battle as the Spritely Sinner rises from the waves in the dark, and somehow moves almost like an oared ship using some sort of supernatural method, coming quietly alongside the embattled frigate even as the conflict on the decks comes to a close. A lantern is unshuttered and Az can be seen standing almost alone on the deck surrounded by the dead and wounded, the mannequin sailors of the Spritely Sinner quietly retreating from the light to give Az sole prominence. Long gone are the rags and cultist robe from weeks ago, replaced by proper attire for the environment, although Az has supplemented it with a luridly carved mask that you hadn't realized he had been making. While not exactly ostentatious, there was something distinctly sinister about the design that definitely drew the eyes towards the face concealing design above everything else.
"Right then, that was entirely unnecessary, now wasn't it?" Az chides as if talking to children. "As a legal representative of the Xoiharl Confederacy I have the authority to conduct the inspection of trade vessels within our territory and the territory of allied groups, claimed territorial waters included. Now, who is in charge here?"
The cowed sailors, realizing that enemy reinforcements have arrived to assist the madman in their midst, all point to a man in plate lying in a heap on the deck at Az's feet. Leaning over, Az inspects him and asks, "Right then, he won't be up for a while. Next in line?"
There is a murmuring from the crew before a woman's voice chides them all in a Semish accent, "Right then, if none of you have the balls to step up! Madman, I am Kattarin d'Jauney del Torros, daughter of Representative d'Jauney, whom you stand victorious over."
"Very well then, then I find this ship in violation of the Treaty of Thirteen Cities and shall seize it and all of its contents for attacking a lawful inspection under that treaty. A representative may join me to petition the Council of Confederacies over the return of the ship after the payment of an appropriate penalty, while the rest of the crew shall be left with adequate supplies to return to their nearest confederates, which in this case shall mean longboats with food and water and some means of signalling the rest of your fleet. As the one who has assumed responsibility, I ask that you provide a ship's manifest so that a receipt for seizure of goods may be provided, and nominate a representative to be taken to answer to the Council," Az explains in detail, much to the dumbfounded confusion of all in attendance.
Blinking repeatedly, Kattarin looks at Az for a long, pregnant moment before she asks, "You're... seizing the ship... under some law and treaty I have never heard of... and you want to write us a receipt?"
"Yes, of course, I would be in violation of the agreement between our governments if I did anything less, and a treaty violation is why we are speaking here, so that would be right hypocritical of me if I didn't do things properly, now wouldn't it," Az responds seriously.
Kattarin seems to want to say something but keeps aborting what she might want to say until finally she says, "Right then. And you want someone to go with you to answer for this."
"Yes, that was what I said," Az replies with a solemn nod.
The woman looks around at the ship and the undoubtedly dark figures lurking aboard the silhouette of the Spritely Sinner and then straightens up, obviously deciding to play along as she booms out, "I demand a guarantee of safety for the representative, and their safe return after discussion is concluded."
"Absolutely! It would be a grave offence should the representative be brought to harm, and even attack by an outside element -including an ally- would bring shame should the representative not be protected," Az proclaims.
"Then I nominate myself as representative, the receipt to be given to my father, who shall remain to command his crew once his faculties return," Kattarin declares.
Nodding, Az says, "Most excellent. I ask the surviving crew to attend to those caught up in the fighting and to prepare adequate supplies to be set adrift while I converse with my allies on the preparation of a prize crew. Lady del Torros, if you might prepare the records for my examination after, that will greatly smooth things over."
Everyone just sort of mills around in shock for a moment before Kattarin barks at them all to get moving before the maniac in their midst starts killing again, at which point they begin the process of evacuation with remarkable alacrity. Strolling across a gangplank extended between the now roped together ships, Az comes up to you and says in all seriousness, "I'm glad this is a Semish ship or I would have had to have jumped through a lot more hoops to justify that."
You and Dagwood just look at him dumbfounded before it dawns on you that the Semish claim political continuity to the time of the First Emperor. An appalled look crosses your face as you realize that you have no idea how the First Empire was actually arranged, and that there is the distinct possibility of everything he just said being technically true!
"You're... you're evil, you know that," you accuse the God of All Tyrants.
Az nods and says, "I get that a lot, yes." He then runs his thumb and forefinger thoughtfully across his chin and asks, "What do you think of the Lady del Torros there?"
"What do I think? I think she's an upper class Semish noble," you reply, summing up everything you in fact know about here.
"Well Councillor, you should form an opinion before we reach a suitable port," Az says, leaning in close enough that you can see him wink behind his mask.
For the return trip you spend most of your time with...
[] Kattarin
[] Az
[] The crew