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Great Man Theory (Warhammer Fantasy)
- Thread starter Minyette06
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Lanky boys, and pretty ones too The guts of the matter Brothers and Faith Incompetence, Malfeasance, and politics. (Defense of Meissen aftermath) A tide of feotid flesh (Defense of Meissen) Guesses and Assumptions (Night One) Faith, and Fanaticism (Day One Results) Skeletons to the north-east of me, Dogs to the south, and here I am stuck in a siege with brats.
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Brother's of Asavar Character Sheets System Character Sheet Gods
Faith, and Fanaticism (Day One Results)
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[X]Plan: Surviving a siege=
-[X] The walls are cracking(Herminia de Moraza on Izek order)
-[X] A time of faith in a sea of darkness
-[X] Fanatics
-[X] Organise training (militia)
Roll breakdown to be seen at the end of the chapter. Fair warning, the fanaticism one is a bit intense.
-[X] The walls are cracking(Herminia de Moraza on Izek order)
When the dead walk, it is the living's duty to politely inform them that they should stop doing that. If that fails, then one should escalate to politely using sharp, pointy, or very heavy weapons to encourage the undead to behave in a societally acceptable manner. That was a core tenet of nearly all faiths in the world and was a uniting ideal behind which nearly every race and creed could gather.
There should not, by your reckoning, be a place where the sun shone unimpeded, where a group of people could gather around a table, on the inside of a town besieged by the dead, and have anything on their mind but full and complete cooperation. Barring, of course, Nehekara… and Naggaroth, and probably the Vampire Coast you heard about once.
But the point remained that being brutally ripped apart limb by limb was a bad thing, and you should feel bad about all the times that you did it. The moment you think that the constant presence of Verena at the back of your mind grows tinged with approval. Then with mild confusion, before settling back into neutrality.
Which was strange.
Mentally you run through what you had just thought and realise what you had accidentally done with a frown before correcting yourself. The threat of being ripped apart limb by limb by undead should have been a unifying force that stripped away the friction between Meissen's 'triumvirate'.
It did not.
"Double your mercenaries' rations? They're already on double rations! Do you know how little we have to go around, you useless Tilean? Or does the train your men run on you leave you addled?" Herminia, it should be said, goes straight for the throat when she is worked up.
"You foul-mouthed slattern, what would you know about the camaraderie of men?" Egbert's voice dips deep into an Estalian accent as his hands slam into the table, rattling it harshly and sending the precariously arranged 'warmap' scattering out of position. "It is by my men's firm spirit and quick blades that this town is not a mausoleum to your tight-ass greed."
You lean away as his hand gestures grow violent enough to threaten to slap you, already glancing over to Misha, expecting his own snide comment to follow.
"The Estalian would know all about that sort of thing." The Prince's son smirks and leans back in his chair, limbs still gangly from youth coming to rest behind his head. "Perhaps we should let Estalia know their favourite missing painted lady is under threat, all your old". He leans forward as he slowly enunciates 'old'. "Clients will come running and relieve us? Yes? Just like you relieved those Old clients in Estalia, with your body. Because you're a whore."
If it should be said that Herminia goes straight for the throat, then it should also be said that Misha has no idea when he's already cut the throat and will just keep stabbing until he cuts his own wrist.
"And yet the whore Estalian was deemed better to run your inheritance than you, boy." Misha's blue eyes flash dangerously as he shoots to his feet. He glares at Egbert as the Tilean smirks back at him.
The endless cycle of these three. Each topic was just another avenue of attack until they had twisted themselves up and forgotten whatever the first had wanted. No progress was made, just a ceaseless stream of enmity towards each other until you prodded them back onto course, enduring your own string of insults for being Norscan.
It really made you long for the days when you would make everyone who annoyed you into corpses. Another twist of the presence in your mind, this time disapproving. Which you felt was slightly unfair from Verena; you were clearly joking in the private confines of your own mind and did not actually plan on using Misha as an improvised cudgel on the other two until all three stopped their incredibly annoying power plays.
This time it turned deeply unimpressed, and you are forced to sheepishly admit that maybe you were too vivid in imagining their shattered bodies and helpless screams.
"-prised that a great man like your father could produce such ill-fit stock. Perhaps in his magnanimity, he chose adoption rather than procreation?" You focus back on the argument in front of him and blink. Usually, they were not so blatant about attacking Misha's legitimacy.
Which probably meant that it was time for you to force them back onto topic.
"Izek's personal life and Misha's place in it is all very well fascinating, but bring us no closer to dealing with the undead." If there was one benefit to the other 'councillors' being convinced you were a barbarian about to kill them all, is that they were all scared enough to shut up when you started talking. "The walls surrounding Meissen won't survive another night intact; soon, the entry points the Undead have already created will turn into great entryways which they will flood through."
"What do you propose then, Norscan? That we build a shrine to some foul god to block them off?" You ignore Egbert, mostly because you are pretty sure he has never said anything sensical to anything you have ever said, and keep your eyes on Izek.
"I believe if we have Herminia organise work crews, we should be able to patch over the worst of the damage before nightfall." Izek was already drifting in and out of consciousness; the old prince was on a drifting teether to the living world. But you could see his sunken eyes slide over to you.
"Is that your idea of a joke, Norscan? Do you think you know how to spend my time better than me?" There was a temptation to say yes, you did. Because you were pretty sure you did know how to spend Herminia's time better, mostly by having her stop descending into mud-slinging matches with the other two. But you do not; instead, you meet Izek's eyes.
As the old man considers you and Herminia for a long moment, age having slowed his keen mind to a crawl.
"Maybe all the daemon worshipping has left you with delusions of your plac-"
"How's this… for a joke?" The room fell quiet when you spoke because you were a six-foot-something behemoth of muscle and once-rage. A picture-perfect frame of barbarous violence. The room fell silent when Izek spoke because he had long since tightened a leash of fear and respect around the other three's necks. "Nobody speaks… and nobody gets choked."
It is likely the old man had never been particularly fit, and his advanced age had done nothing for that. But when he sat up, and the icy blue eyes of a man who ruled a land known for changing hands dozens of times a decade until he was too old to properly breathe trailed across the room, even you felt a moment of imposition. "Asavar… is right. Herminia, you will have the walls ready, and I will have all of your useless… bickering not seen in my presence."
Immediately Herminia bowed her head, muttering of course and platitudes that the prince's wisdom was truly something to behold. Then she side-eyes you. There was a flicker of frustration in those green eyes, and in a world where Izek was not so harsh on her, you would suspect that frustration would soon find itself joined with resentment.
But that was not this world, and so she looked away, cowed by her Prince's threat.
The meeting, from then on, was thankfully much more productive.
Rewards: Herminia has immediately begun work on working on the walls. She has patched up most minor breeches and reinforced the major ones. Izek has expressed disapproval of the Triumvirates' bickering and brought them to heel (for now)
-[X] A time of faith in a sea of darkness
It really must be said that the thing that annoyed you most about the Borderlands was the lack of a unified congregation. Right behind the terrible land, the horrible danger, the racism against Norscans, and the fact it was the borderlands.
But all that aside, having to deal with a flock that worshipped such an eclectic number of gods was an exercise in frustration. Not only were you not a priest of Verena to start with, but you were also definitely not a priest of a dozen plus other gods.
However, regardless of how Verena might be the mother of innovation, necessity is the surrogate. You were once a man of rather flexible faith… and faith does not have to be a matter of booming voices in a wide cathedral informing the masses of their God.
You knelt with a small group of Taalites, silently listening to their prayers to the God of the Wilds at a more than respectable distance. Before the dead came, you had done this in a clearing not too far from Meissen. Now all you could offer them was your support in a garden you had cleared of others.
"Why do you never say the prayers?" You glance to the side as a childish voice pipes up. It was one of the Taalites daughters, maybe nine or ten.
"They're not my prayers to say." You give her a smile and feel a pang of… something when she does not flinch away like so many others do.
"Momma says that the Prayers are for all of Taal's children." She rocks forward onto her tiptoes, faces gaunt from hunger getting close to your shoulder. "Do you not know them?" She whispers.
"Elisinda!" She flinches back as an older female - Kirsten, you recall - rushes over, pushing the child - Elisinda - behind her. "Y-you shouldn't bother the Nor- Mr Asavar."
"But momma, he doesn't know the prayers! We have to teach him." You resist the urge to snort. Of course, the closest thing you got to the Taalites acknowledging you as human was a curious child trying to spread her faith.
"I know the words." You correct gently, straightening up slightly. "I listen very carefully. But Taal is not my god, so the words have no meaning from me." The girl looked confused for a moment, and you could tell Kirsten wanted to force her to get away from you.
"Who is your god, then?" You resist the urge to laugh as the panic in the mother's frame warred with exasperation as Elisinda does the exact opposite of what she wants.
"Verena, the goddess of Knowledge, Law and Justice." You feel that presence in the back of your mind shift slightly as your goddess hears her name and her domains. Elisinda, for her part, takes a long moment to consider your words.
"Isn't Verena married to Morr?" She asks, and you give her an affirmative smile, sending a flinch through the mother. "And Morr is Taal's brother… that makes you like a… uh worshipper in law!"
That sliver of Verena's attention shivers with approval, matching your own surge of approval as your smile turns from affirmative to genuinely pleased, and you let out a short laugh. "I suppose, yes, Taal would be a god-in-law of mine."
"Then saying the prayers would matter." What a fierce little debater, you think as your god's approval turns to amusement, and you feel memories of lawyers pull from your subconscious mind.
"Ah, I suppose so." She beams, hunger-gaunt face lighting up, as she rounded on her mother again. "But your ceremony is not finished, and you should worry about your own prayers first, little Elisinda. I'll learn the prayers for next time."
She seems to go to protest for a moment, but Kirsten takes the opportunity with as much vigour as possible, nearly picking up Elisinda as she beats a hasty retreat. For a moment, you just stay there, your smile touched with a deep fondness.
"You're not as subtle as you may think." You call over your shoulder after you watch Elisinda be arranged to sit with the rest of the children of the Taalites. "Stepping like that may let you avoid sticks in the wild, but all it does is scrape against the cobblestone here."
Behind you, a man - Otfried, the father - freezes where he stands a few steps behind you with a knife drawn.
"Forgive me, but…." He seemed to struggle to find the right words for a moment as fear crept up on his face.
"Children are precious." You finish for him and nod, turning back to the quiet prayer as it slowly finishes. "She was a bright one. Not many could make the connection between Taal and Verena."
"She is." The pride on his face is almost resplendent as he stares past you. Then the look darkens with worry. "But…"
"You fear for her. That no matter how bright her future could be, the darkness of today might take it." You look over to him as you voice his own worries as if you plucked them from his head. Watching as relief pours through him, even in his worst fears, being vocalised the fact someone even began to understand heartened him.
"They say you're a godly man Asavar." You arch an eyebrow as you stand up. Usually, when people talk about you and gods, it is to say you were a godly man of the wrong sort of gods. "Is it true? That the gods have left us to this fate? They must have; why else is there undead here to kill us all?"
You fall silent for a moment, knowing that question has answers so deep that it would take a scholar centuries to properly articulate them.
"The gods… the gods have finite attention. For all their power, they are pulled a thousand different ways by a thousand different followers, many with a thousand different ideas of what needs to be done." Your words were careful, and your tone low. "Things like… this do not happen because the gods have left us, but their attention is pulled away at the wrong moment. It is up to us and our faith to pull them back to where our problems need attending."
You take a risk and lay a hand on Otfried's shoulder. "The gods have not left us; they just need to be called back."
That tiny presence in the back of your mind grows for a moment, pushing against the boundary of your soul and the world before you let it spill through in a grace of divinity.
Otfried almost collapses, and you catch him with the hand you had on his shoulder.
"They hear your fears, Otfried; they share them. They won't leave you to this." The man looks up to you with glistening eyes as divine energy plays in the air between you two. "Your people share your same fears and need the same reassurance. I am not one of you. It should come from your lips."
He straightens up, his eyes filling with determination, and he nods at you, approaching the rest of his people with his head held high and fear long gone.
You smile and coax the energy back into yourself and back to Verena.
Faith does not have to be a matter of booming voices in a wide cathedral informing the masses of their God.
Rewards: Meissen's morale is now Medium. Connection with the Meissen Taalite cult was established, easier inroads to the other sects in Meissen.
Costs: 400 gold spent on gathering material for different congregations.
-[X] Organise training (militia)
A single day is not enough time to make a professional out of a novice. Nor is it enough time to turn the untrained into the trained. Learning to fight was a matter of weeks of building both muscle and its memories.
A day is not enough.
But by Verena, it's enough to cheat. You might not be able to forge these men into a sword, but you damn well could make them hot enough for a single night to ape it. Or something like that… you have to admit that was not your best metaphor.
The point was you did not have time to lay a solid foundation. Did not have the time to train the militia in a way that was going to stick with them for the rest of their lives. You would honestly be surprised if it stuck with them past next week.
But you had enough time to hammer in concepts they only needed to remember for the night. Concepts on how to use your body with your swings, how to keep your blade straight enough to cut through flesh, and how to put steel between you and death.
It was not much; you could have probably done better.
But for a single day, it was all you could manage, and all that was left to you was to hope and pray that you would have the chance tomorrow to continue the lessons.
Rewards: Meissen Militia temporarily elevated to training: Trained (-5 to combat rolls).
-[X] Fanatics
Fanaticism… one may think that was the ultimate goal of any priest, of any god. To convince someone so deeply of the righteousness of faith that they cast aside anything and everything in the goal of serving that god.
There might even be priests that agree with that. Some of those priests might have even been great.
But you disagreed. Fanaticism was a double-edged sword… no that was not quite right. You could handle a double-edged sword so that it may never cut you, even if you must always be prepared for it. Fanaticism is an unhilted blade. It cuts its wielder deeply every time it is swung.
In times of desperation, however, sometimes an unhilted blade was all that was at hand.
Your hand closes around the shaggy hair of some hapless man as you shoulder bodily through the crowd you ordered gathered not long before sunset. You feel the person you had grabbed struggle and writhe in your grip, futilely attempting to pull away.
You tear him off his feet and force him to the ground in front of the gathered Meissen villagers, staring out over their starving frames with disdain as you ignore the man in your hands.
"I bring you all here for a single purpose." There were many ways to coax the embers of faith into a raging wildfire. Some were cleaner than others, most palatable. But they took time.
You did not have time. So you fell back on a way you… were very familiar with. "I hear mutters among you that the gods have abandoned you, left you to die at the hands of the undead. I am here to tell you that they have. In disgust, they have left you to your self-wrought fate."
"Let my hair go, you Norscan bastard." The man manages to get his feet underneath him and attempts to shove you away.
"Your hair?" You snarl out, winding thick unwashed locks around your fingers, pulling the scalp taunt. "The undead bray at the gates, you whine about your hair?" You spit in his face. "No wonder the gods abandoned this place when disgusting wretches like you think your vanity has any place in this world."
A mutter spread through the crowd at that, low and desperate. You quell it all with a furious gaze, eyes wild and full of all of your own fanaticism.
"No." There was a part of you that felt deeply ill as the man's words spilled out with a potent mix of desperation and terror. You kill that part of you.
You rip the hand holding the wretch's hair up, tearing away thick clumps of hair, as your other hand slaps the wretch to the ground in a thunderous blow that echoes through the deadly silent square.
"Are you truly so godless as to not understand? Not understand what you brought upon yourself?" The wretch attempts to struggle to his feet, but your boot stomping on the creature's back puts an end to that. "What god has turned away from you in disgust, creature? Who do you claim to worship beyond your own vanity."
The creature doesn't respond for a long moment until you grind your boot into its back. "Sigmar!" It gasps out, writhing in the ground.
"A craven creature like you dares to call the Heldenhammer their god?" You seethe, not for a moment relieving pressure from his back. "It dares claim it doesn't know why the gods turned away from this place? Filthy, disgusting creature."
"I-i'm sorry." It pleads, desperately attempting to get away from your boot.
"I AM NOT WHO YOU SHOULD APOLOGISE TO." You howl and slam your foot into its side, sending him sprawling. You pull it to its knees by its hair and force its bleary eyes to meet your own maddened pair. "STUPID. WORTHLESS. CREATURE. SIGMAR DESERVES YOUR BEGGING. MAYBE THEN HE WILL TURN BACK TO THIS TOWN"
"SIGMAR! PLEASE FORGIVE ME." It screams out in wracking sobs. You rip it forward, sending it back to the ground with a crunch as its nose gives way.
"YOU THINK YOU DESERVE TO BE ON YOUR KNEES? YOU THINK YOUR WORTH THAT MUCH?" Your boot stomps on the back of his head as you stare out into the crowd as they shift and flinch. "BEG YOUR GOD. BEG SIGMAR."
"PLEASE, PLEASE, I'LL DO ANYTHING, SIGMAR!" It cries into the ground, body spasming as it tries to curl up into the foetal position.
Your dagger slams into the ground next to its face, a looming threat of steel as you leer down at it. "Can you feel that? It's nothing. Sigmar ignores your begging. Your words are as worthless as you are. You're worthless."
"I am I am I am I am, please Sigmar, forgive me, I'm worthless, please forgive me." it blubbers, staring wide-eyed at the blade inches from its face.
"There is only one way to earn forgiveness, creature. You must give up your evil. Your vanity, your worthless life to Sigmar, and he may yet turn back to you." You stomp his face back into the dirt, keeping him locked in the whirlwind of confusion and frenetic energy, not giving him a moment to deny what you were telling him to do.
A moment later, its hand closes around the knife, and it starts hacking away the hair on its head, screaming for Sigmar to forgive it. Offering its everything to Sigmar.
You turn away from the broken creature and eye the crowd as they stare at the man in a potent mixture of relief and growing disgust. Relief they were not the ones dragged in front of a hundred other men and torn to shreds. Disgust as they began believing what you said, that he was the one responsible.
"You think you're better than it." Your words were as cold as the tundra you were born in, icy and glacial. "You think that it was only it that caused the gods to turn away in disgust? No… they abandoned you all because of all of you. This creature… it at least knows that it was foul and rotten."
Your hand closes around the now bald head of the creature you had broken down, coating your hand in a thick layer of blood that poured from where he had inexpertly hacked away at his own head to remove his hair. "What would you do for Sigmar." You demand as you pull on the divine attention skirting uncomfortably at the back of your mind. "WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE?"
Verena did not approve of this sort of fanaticism, you knew. It was through her teachings you learned.
But nonetheless, that attention did not leave.
"EVERYTHING MY LIFE." It screams, and you let that divine attention seep into the world. To another priest, they would feel the touch of Verena and know exactly who it was. To the uneducated, desperate masses in front of you… all they could see was a god's work.
The divine energy pours over the man, seeping into his wounds and sealing them up, leaving his blood-soaked head clean of the wounds he had hacked into it. The divine energy attempts to spread out, your goddess's natural benevolence, her bleeding heart for the masses of the oppressed, the same benevolence that saw her take you from your darkness, attempting to do what it could for the unwashed before you.
You pull it away, twisting it, so it seems to flinch from the creatures before you.
"SIGMAR TURNS BACK TO HIM. HE HAS JUDGED THIS TOWN. ALL THE GODS HAVE JUDGED THIS DOWN AND TURNED AWAY. IT IS ONLY BY GIVING EVERYTHING, ALL THAT YOU HAVE AND YOUR LIFE, THAT YOU MIGHT HOPE TO DIE WITH YOUR GOD'S ATTENTION ONCE MORE." You build into a fiery crescendo all the charisma and terrible piety you had mustered in your bloody confusing life on full display. The crowd already whipping itself into a frenzy, begging their gods for forgiveness. "CAST ASIDE YOURSELF, YOUR PRIDE AND VANITY. YOUR GREED AND GLUTTONY. THEN CAST YOUR NEIGHBOUR'S SINS ASIDE. TEAR FROM YOURSELF AND THEM EVERYTHING THAT DISGUSTS THE GODS."
The crowd turns on itself. Tearing at their own hair or their neighbours. Terrible screaming accusations and keening begs for forgiveness.
"YOU WERE FAITHLESS. YOU WERE UNCLEAN WITH SIN. THE GODS TURNED FROM YOU AND LEFT YOU TO DIE TO THE WALKING DEAD; SUCH WAS THEIR DISGUST." You screamed over the chaos as the terrible addiction of fanaticism curled around your own heart. "GIRD YOURSELF IN FAITH, CLEANSE YOURSELF OF SIN, AND THEN MAYBE IF YOU THROW YOURSELF AGAINST THE DEAD, THE GODS WILL PROTECT YOU FROM THEIR JUDGEMENT."
The crowd screams, in terrible praying fanaticism, and you know your work, as terrible as it was…
Was done.
You resist the urge to sigh in some measure of relief as the fading light of the sun disappears under the horizon.
Rewards: One hundred militia converted into Fanatic Militia who have the same training as militia but are unable to be broken.
-
Roll breakdown
Convince Izek 1d100+13(Diplomacy)+5(One request)+5(Sensible request) = 101
50/60/80/100/123
Herminia Reaction 1d100+13(Diplomacy)+5(Sensible Request)+10 (Izek's ire) = 66
60/80/100
A time of faith in a sea of darkness 1d100+22(piety)+5(Desperate Populace = 85 (Another roll I screwed up and listed your marital instead of your piety in the roll itself)
10/50/80/100
Organise training (militia) 1d100+16(Marital)+5(Urgency) = 56
(40/60/80/100)
Verena's reaction 1d100+22(Piety) = 84 (I screwed this roll up three times trying to put it in the right campaign)
20/60/80/100
Fanaticism 1d100+22(Piety)+10(Desperate Populace)
20/80/100
A/N I will spare you the long ass Author Notes of my story. Just say I'm pretty happy with this one, and hopefully the next voting update will be done tomorrow.
-[X] The walls are cracking(Herminia de Moraza on Izek order)
-[X] A time of faith in a sea of darkness
-[X] Fanatics
-[X] Organise training (militia)
Roll breakdown to be seen at the end of the chapter. Fair warning, the fanaticism one is a bit intense.
-[X] The walls are cracking(Herminia de Moraza on Izek order)
When the dead walk, it is the living's duty to politely inform them that they should stop doing that. If that fails, then one should escalate to politely using sharp, pointy, or very heavy weapons to encourage the undead to behave in a societally acceptable manner. That was a core tenet of nearly all faiths in the world and was a uniting ideal behind which nearly every race and creed could gather.
There should not, by your reckoning, be a place where the sun shone unimpeded, where a group of people could gather around a table, on the inside of a town besieged by the dead, and have anything on their mind but full and complete cooperation. Barring, of course, Nehekara… and Naggaroth, and probably the Vampire Coast you heard about once.
But the point remained that being brutally ripped apart limb by limb was a bad thing, and you should feel bad about all the times that you did it. The moment you think that the constant presence of Verena at the back of your mind grows tinged with approval. Then with mild confusion, before settling back into neutrality.
Which was strange.
Mentally you run through what you had just thought and realise what you had accidentally done with a frown before correcting yourself. The threat of being ripped apart limb by limb by undead should have been a unifying force that stripped away the friction between Meissen's 'triumvirate'.
It did not.
"Double your mercenaries' rations? They're already on double rations! Do you know how little we have to go around, you useless Tilean? Or does the train your men run on you leave you addled?" Herminia, it should be said, goes straight for the throat when she is worked up.
"You foul-mouthed slattern, what would you know about the camaraderie of men?" Egbert's voice dips deep into an Estalian accent as his hands slam into the table, rattling it harshly and sending the precariously arranged 'warmap' scattering out of position. "It is by my men's firm spirit and quick blades that this town is not a mausoleum to your tight-ass greed."
You lean away as his hand gestures grow violent enough to threaten to slap you, already glancing over to Misha, expecting his own snide comment to follow.
"The Estalian would know all about that sort of thing." The Prince's son smirks and leans back in his chair, limbs still gangly from youth coming to rest behind his head. "Perhaps we should let Estalia know their favourite missing painted lady is under threat, all your old". He leans forward as he slowly enunciates 'old'. "Clients will come running and relieve us? Yes? Just like you relieved those Old clients in Estalia, with your body. Because you're a whore."
If it should be said that Herminia goes straight for the throat, then it should also be said that Misha has no idea when he's already cut the throat and will just keep stabbing until he cuts his own wrist.
"And yet the whore Estalian was deemed better to run your inheritance than you, boy." Misha's blue eyes flash dangerously as he shoots to his feet. He glares at Egbert as the Tilean smirks back at him.
The endless cycle of these three. Each topic was just another avenue of attack until they had twisted themselves up and forgotten whatever the first had wanted. No progress was made, just a ceaseless stream of enmity towards each other until you prodded them back onto course, enduring your own string of insults for being Norscan.
It really made you long for the days when you would make everyone who annoyed you into corpses. Another twist of the presence in your mind, this time disapproving. Which you felt was slightly unfair from Verena; you were clearly joking in the private confines of your own mind and did not actually plan on using Misha as an improvised cudgel on the other two until all three stopped their incredibly annoying power plays.
This time it turned deeply unimpressed, and you are forced to sheepishly admit that maybe you were too vivid in imagining their shattered bodies and helpless screams.
"-prised that a great man like your father could produce such ill-fit stock. Perhaps in his magnanimity, he chose adoption rather than procreation?" You focus back on the argument in front of him and blink. Usually, they were not so blatant about attacking Misha's legitimacy.
Which probably meant that it was time for you to force them back onto topic.
"Izek's personal life and Misha's place in it is all very well fascinating, but bring us no closer to dealing with the undead." If there was one benefit to the other 'councillors' being convinced you were a barbarian about to kill them all, is that they were all scared enough to shut up when you started talking. "The walls surrounding Meissen won't survive another night intact; soon, the entry points the Undead have already created will turn into great entryways which they will flood through."
"What do you propose then, Norscan? That we build a shrine to some foul god to block them off?" You ignore Egbert, mostly because you are pretty sure he has never said anything sensical to anything you have ever said, and keep your eyes on Izek.
"I believe if we have Herminia organise work crews, we should be able to patch over the worst of the damage before nightfall." Izek was already drifting in and out of consciousness; the old prince was on a drifting teether to the living world. But you could see his sunken eyes slide over to you.
"Is that your idea of a joke, Norscan? Do you think you know how to spend my time better than me?" There was a temptation to say yes, you did. Because you were pretty sure you did know how to spend Herminia's time better, mostly by having her stop descending into mud-slinging matches with the other two. But you do not; instead, you meet Izek's eyes.
As the old man considers you and Herminia for a long moment, age having slowed his keen mind to a crawl.
"Maybe all the daemon worshipping has left you with delusions of your plac-"
"How's this… for a joke?" The room fell quiet when you spoke because you were a six-foot-something behemoth of muscle and once-rage. A picture-perfect frame of barbarous violence. The room fell silent when Izek spoke because he had long since tightened a leash of fear and respect around the other three's necks. "Nobody speaks… and nobody gets choked."
It is likely the old man had never been particularly fit, and his advanced age had done nothing for that. But when he sat up, and the icy blue eyes of a man who ruled a land known for changing hands dozens of times a decade until he was too old to properly breathe trailed across the room, even you felt a moment of imposition. "Asavar… is right. Herminia, you will have the walls ready, and I will have all of your useless… bickering not seen in my presence."
Immediately Herminia bowed her head, muttering of course and platitudes that the prince's wisdom was truly something to behold. Then she side-eyes you. There was a flicker of frustration in those green eyes, and in a world where Izek was not so harsh on her, you would suspect that frustration would soon find itself joined with resentment.
But that was not this world, and so she looked away, cowed by her Prince's threat.
The meeting, from then on, was thankfully much more productive.
Rewards: Herminia has immediately begun work on working on the walls. She has patched up most minor breeches and reinforced the major ones. Izek has expressed disapproval of the Triumvirates' bickering and brought them to heel (for now)
-[X] A time of faith in a sea of darkness
It really must be said that the thing that annoyed you most about the Borderlands was the lack of a unified congregation. Right behind the terrible land, the horrible danger, the racism against Norscans, and the fact it was the borderlands.
But all that aside, having to deal with a flock that worshipped such an eclectic number of gods was an exercise in frustration. Not only were you not a priest of Verena to start with, but you were also definitely not a priest of a dozen plus other gods.
However, regardless of how Verena might be the mother of innovation, necessity is the surrogate. You were once a man of rather flexible faith… and faith does not have to be a matter of booming voices in a wide cathedral informing the masses of their God.
You knelt with a small group of Taalites, silently listening to their prayers to the God of the Wilds at a more than respectable distance. Before the dead came, you had done this in a clearing not too far from Meissen. Now all you could offer them was your support in a garden you had cleared of others.
"Why do you never say the prayers?" You glance to the side as a childish voice pipes up. It was one of the Taalites daughters, maybe nine or ten.
"They're not my prayers to say." You give her a smile and feel a pang of… something when she does not flinch away like so many others do.
"Momma says that the Prayers are for all of Taal's children." She rocks forward onto her tiptoes, faces gaunt from hunger getting close to your shoulder. "Do you not know them?" She whispers.
"Elisinda!" She flinches back as an older female - Kirsten, you recall - rushes over, pushing the child - Elisinda - behind her. "Y-you shouldn't bother the Nor- Mr Asavar."
"But momma, he doesn't know the prayers! We have to teach him." You resist the urge to snort. Of course, the closest thing you got to the Taalites acknowledging you as human was a curious child trying to spread her faith.
"I know the words." You correct gently, straightening up slightly. "I listen very carefully. But Taal is not my god, so the words have no meaning from me." The girl looked confused for a moment, and you could tell Kirsten wanted to force her to get away from you.
"Who is your god, then?" You resist the urge to laugh as the panic in the mother's frame warred with exasperation as Elisinda does the exact opposite of what she wants.
"Verena, the goddess of Knowledge, Law and Justice." You feel that presence in the back of your mind shift slightly as your goddess hears her name and her domains. Elisinda, for her part, takes a long moment to consider your words.
"Isn't Verena married to Morr?" She asks, and you give her an affirmative smile, sending a flinch through the mother. "And Morr is Taal's brother… that makes you like a… uh worshipper in law!"
That sliver of Verena's attention shivers with approval, matching your own surge of approval as your smile turns from affirmative to genuinely pleased, and you let out a short laugh. "I suppose, yes, Taal would be a god-in-law of mine."
"Then saying the prayers would matter." What a fierce little debater, you think as your god's approval turns to amusement, and you feel memories of lawyers pull from your subconscious mind.
"Ah, I suppose so." She beams, hunger-gaunt face lighting up, as she rounded on her mother again. "But your ceremony is not finished, and you should worry about your own prayers first, little Elisinda. I'll learn the prayers for next time."
She seems to go to protest for a moment, but Kirsten takes the opportunity with as much vigour as possible, nearly picking up Elisinda as she beats a hasty retreat. For a moment, you just stay there, your smile touched with a deep fondness.
"You're not as subtle as you may think." You call over your shoulder after you watch Elisinda be arranged to sit with the rest of the children of the Taalites. "Stepping like that may let you avoid sticks in the wild, but all it does is scrape against the cobblestone here."
Behind you, a man - Otfried, the father - freezes where he stands a few steps behind you with a knife drawn.
"Forgive me, but…." He seemed to struggle to find the right words for a moment as fear crept up on his face.
"Children are precious." You finish for him and nod, turning back to the quiet prayer as it slowly finishes. "She was a bright one. Not many could make the connection between Taal and Verena."
"She is." The pride on his face is almost resplendent as he stares past you. Then the look darkens with worry. "But…"
"You fear for her. That no matter how bright her future could be, the darkness of today might take it." You look over to him as you voice his own worries as if you plucked them from his head. Watching as relief pours through him, even in his worst fears, being vocalised the fact someone even began to understand heartened him.
"They say you're a godly man Asavar." You arch an eyebrow as you stand up. Usually, when people talk about you and gods, it is to say you were a godly man of the wrong sort of gods. "Is it true? That the gods have left us to this fate? They must have; why else is there undead here to kill us all?"
You fall silent for a moment, knowing that question has answers so deep that it would take a scholar centuries to properly articulate them.
"The gods… the gods have finite attention. For all their power, they are pulled a thousand different ways by a thousand different followers, many with a thousand different ideas of what needs to be done." Your words were careful, and your tone low. "Things like… this do not happen because the gods have left us, but their attention is pulled away at the wrong moment. It is up to us and our faith to pull them back to where our problems need attending."
You take a risk and lay a hand on Otfried's shoulder. "The gods have not left us; they just need to be called back."
That tiny presence in the back of your mind grows for a moment, pushing against the boundary of your soul and the world before you let it spill through in a grace of divinity.
Otfried almost collapses, and you catch him with the hand you had on his shoulder.
"They hear your fears, Otfried; they share them. They won't leave you to this." The man looks up to you with glistening eyes as divine energy plays in the air between you two. "Your people share your same fears and need the same reassurance. I am not one of you. It should come from your lips."
He straightens up, his eyes filling with determination, and he nods at you, approaching the rest of his people with his head held high and fear long gone.
You smile and coax the energy back into yourself and back to Verena.
Faith does not have to be a matter of booming voices in a wide cathedral informing the masses of their God.
Rewards: Meissen's morale is now Medium. Connection with the Meissen Taalite cult was established, easier inroads to the other sects in Meissen.
Costs: 400 gold spent on gathering material for different congregations.
-[X] Organise training (militia)
A single day is not enough time to make a professional out of a novice. Nor is it enough time to turn the untrained into the trained. Learning to fight was a matter of weeks of building both muscle and its memories.
A day is not enough.
But by Verena, it's enough to cheat. You might not be able to forge these men into a sword, but you damn well could make them hot enough for a single night to ape it. Or something like that… you have to admit that was not your best metaphor.
The point was you did not have time to lay a solid foundation. Did not have the time to train the militia in a way that was going to stick with them for the rest of their lives. You would honestly be surprised if it stuck with them past next week.
But you had enough time to hammer in concepts they only needed to remember for the night. Concepts on how to use your body with your swings, how to keep your blade straight enough to cut through flesh, and how to put steel between you and death.
It was not much; you could have probably done better.
But for a single day, it was all you could manage, and all that was left to you was to hope and pray that you would have the chance tomorrow to continue the lessons.
Rewards: Meissen Militia temporarily elevated to training: Trained (-5 to combat rolls).
-[X] Fanatics
Fanaticism… one may think that was the ultimate goal of any priest, of any god. To convince someone so deeply of the righteousness of faith that they cast aside anything and everything in the goal of serving that god.
There might even be priests that agree with that. Some of those priests might have even been great.
But you disagreed. Fanaticism was a double-edged sword… no that was not quite right. You could handle a double-edged sword so that it may never cut you, even if you must always be prepared for it. Fanaticism is an unhilted blade. It cuts its wielder deeply every time it is swung.
In times of desperation, however, sometimes an unhilted blade was all that was at hand.
Your hand closes around the shaggy hair of some hapless man as you shoulder bodily through the crowd you ordered gathered not long before sunset. You feel the person you had grabbed struggle and writhe in your grip, futilely attempting to pull away.
You tear him off his feet and force him to the ground in front of the gathered Meissen villagers, staring out over their starving frames with disdain as you ignore the man in your hands.
"I bring you all here for a single purpose." There were many ways to coax the embers of faith into a raging wildfire. Some were cleaner than others, most palatable. But they took time.
You did not have time. So you fell back on a way you… were very familiar with. "I hear mutters among you that the gods have abandoned you, left you to die at the hands of the undead. I am here to tell you that they have. In disgust, they have left you to your self-wrought fate."
"Let my hair go, you Norscan bastard." The man manages to get his feet underneath him and attempts to shove you away.
"Your hair?" You snarl out, winding thick unwashed locks around your fingers, pulling the scalp taunt. "The undead bray at the gates, you whine about your hair?" You spit in his face. "No wonder the gods abandoned this place when disgusting wretches like you think your vanity has any place in this world."
A mutter spread through the crowd at that, low and desperate. You quell it all with a furious gaze, eyes wild and full of all of your own fanaticism.
"No." There was a part of you that felt deeply ill as the man's words spilled out with a potent mix of desperation and terror. You kill that part of you.
You rip the hand holding the wretch's hair up, tearing away thick clumps of hair, as your other hand slaps the wretch to the ground in a thunderous blow that echoes through the deadly silent square.
"Are you truly so godless as to not understand? Not understand what you brought upon yourself?" The wretch attempts to struggle to his feet, but your boot stomping on the creature's back puts an end to that. "What god has turned away from you in disgust, creature? Who do you claim to worship beyond your own vanity."
The creature doesn't respond for a long moment until you grind your boot into its back. "Sigmar!" It gasps out, writhing in the ground.
"A craven creature like you dares to call the Heldenhammer their god?" You seethe, not for a moment relieving pressure from his back. "It dares claim it doesn't know why the gods turned away from this place? Filthy, disgusting creature."
"I-i'm sorry." It pleads, desperately attempting to get away from your boot.
"I AM NOT WHO YOU SHOULD APOLOGISE TO." You howl and slam your foot into its side, sending him sprawling. You pull it to its knees by its hair and force its bleary eyes to meet your own maddened pair. "STUPID. WORTHLESS. CREATURE. SIGMAR DESERVES YOUR BEGGING. MAYBE THEN HE WILL TURN BACK TO THIS TOWN"
"SIGMAR! PLEASE FORGIVE ME." It screams out in wracking sobs. You rip it forward, sending it back to the ground with a crunch as its nose gives way.
"YOU THINK YOU DESERVE TO BE ON YOUR KNEES? YOU THINK YOUR WORTH THAT MUCH?" Your boot stomps on the back of his head as you stare out into the crowd as they shift and flinch. "BEG YOUR GOD. BEG SIGMAR."
"PLEASE, PLEASE, I'LL DO ANYTHING, SIGMAR!" It cries into the ground, body spasming as it tries to curl up into the foetal position.
Your dagger slams into the ground next to its face, a looming threat of steel as you leer down at it. "Can you feel that? It's nothing. Sigmar ignores your begging. Your words are as worthless as you are. You're worthless."
"I am I am I am I am, please Sigmar, forgive me, I'm worthless, please forgive me." it blubbers, staring wide-eyed at the blade inches from its face.
"There is only one way to earn forgiveness, creature. You must give up your evil. Your vanity, your worthless life to Sigmar, and he may yet turn back to you." You stomp his face back into the dirt, keeping him locked in the whirlwind of confusion and frenetic energy, not giving him a moment to deny what you were telling him to do.
A moment later, its hand closes around the knife, and it starts hacking away the hair on its head, screaming for Sigmar to forgive it. Offering its everything to Sigmar.
You turn away from the broken creature and eye the crowd as they stare at the man in a potent mixture of relief and growing disgust. Relief they were not the ones dragged in front of a hundred other men and torn to shreds. Disgust as they began believing what you said, that he was the one responsible.
"You think you're better than it." Your words were as cold as the tundra you were born in, icy and glacial. "You think that it was only it that caused the gods to turn away in disgust? No… they abandoned you all because of all of you. This creature… it at least knows that it was foul and rotten."
Your hand closes around the now bald head of the creature you had broken down, coating your hand in a thick layer of blood that poured from where he had inexpertly hacked away at his own head to remove his hair. "What would you do for Sigmar." You demand as you pull on the divine attention skirting uncomfortably at the back of your mind. "WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE?"
Verena did not approve of this sort of fanaticism, you knew. It was through her teachings you learned.
But nonetheless, that attention did not leave.
"EVERYTHING MY LIFE." It screams, and you let that divine attention seep into the world. To another priest, they would feel the touch of Verena and know exactly who it was. To the uneducated, desperate masses in front of you… all they could see was a god's work.
The divine energy pours over the man, seeping into his wounds and sealing them up, leaving his blood-soaked head clean of the wounds he had hacked into it. The divine energy attempts to spread out, your goddess's natural benevolence, her bleeding heart for the masses of the oppressed, the same benevolence that saw her take you from your darkness, attempting to do what it could for the unwashed before you.
You pull it away, twisting it, so it seems to flinch from the creatures before you.
"SIGMAR TURNS BACK TO HIM. HE HAS JUDGED THIS TOWN. ALL THE GODS HAVE JUDGED THIS DOWN AND TURNED AWAY. IT IS ONLY BY GIVING EVERYTHING, ALL THAT YOU HAVE AND YOUR LIFE, THAT YOU MIGHT HOPE TO DIE WITH YOUR GOD'S ATTENTION ONCE MORE." You build into a fiery crescendo all the charisma and terrible piety you had mustered in your bloody confusing life on full display. The crowd already whipping itself into a frenzy, begging their gods for forgiveness. "CAST ASIDE YOURSELF, YOUR PRIDE AND VANITY. YOUR GREED AND GLUTTONY. THEN CAST YOUR NEIGHBOUR'S SINS ASIDE. TEAR FROM YOURSELF AND THEM EVERYTHING THAT DISGUSTS THE GODS."
The crowd turns on itself. Tearing at their own hair or their neighbours. Terrible screaming accusations and keening begs for forgiveness.
"YOU WERE FAITHLESS. YOU WERE UNCLEAN WITH SIN. THE GODS TURNED FROM YOU AND LEFT YOU TO DIE TO THE WALKING DEAD; SUCH WAS THEIR DISGUST." You screamed over the chaos as the terrible addiction of fanaticism curled around your own heart. "GIRD YOURSELF IN FAITH, CLEANSE YOURSELF OF SIN, AND THEN MAYBE IF YOU THROW YOURSELF AGAINST THE DEAD, THE GODS WILL PROTECT YOU FROM THEIR JUDGEMENT."
The crowd screams, in terrible praying fanaticism, and you know your work, as terrible as it was…
Was done.
You resist the urge to sigh in some measure of relief as the fading light of the sun disappears under the horizon.
Rewards: One hundred militia converted into Fanatic Militia who have the same training as militia but are unable to be broken.
-
Roll breakdown
Convince Izek 1d100+13(Diplomacy)+5(One request)+5(Sensible request) = 101
50/60/80/100/123
Herminia Reaction 1d100+13(Diplomacy)+5(Sensible Request)+10 (Izek's ire) = 66
60/80/100
A time of faith in a sea of darkness 1d100+22(piety)+5(Desperate Populace = 85 (Another roll I screwed up and listed your marital instead of your piety in the roll itself)
10/50/80/100
Organise training (militia) 1d100+16(Marital)+5(Urgency) = 56
(40/60/80/100)
Verena's reaction 1d100+22(Piety) = 84 (I screwed this roll up three times trying to put it in the right campaign)
20/60/80/100
Fanaticism 1d100+22(Piety)+10(Desperate Populace)
20/80/100
A/N I will spare you the long ass Author Notes of my story. Just say I'm pretty happy with this one, and hopefully the next voting update will be done tomorrow.
Guesses and Assumptions (Night One)
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Forces:
Rosmalen Swordsmen (49): The remnants of Rosmalen's once mercenary company that settled down when their captain took on a permanent contract with Prince Izek. Prior to the siege, they acted as guards and police for Meissen. Training: Professional (+10 to combat rolls) Morale: Broken-Routing-Panicking-Wary-Steady-Stalwart-Dauntless-Unbreakable Loyalty: Rosmalen. Equipment: Chainmail, Standard Quality Estoc.
Messien Militia (332): Conscripted, able-bodied adults. Though Messien lacked the weapons to equip its people fully, there was enough ramshackle equipment to put together a small army. Shame that it's up against a large army. Training: Untrained (-5 to combat rolls). Morale: Broken-Routing-Panicking-Wary-Steady-Stalwart-Dauntless-Unbreakable. Loyalty: Themselves. Equipment: Makeshift weapons
Messien Fanatic Militia (100): Conscripted able-bodied adults. Though Messien lacked the weapons to equip its people fully, there was enough ramshackle equipment to put together a small army. Shame that it's up against a large army. You have personally incited a deep fanaticism in these troops, breaking down their personalities until they stopped fearing death and only feared disappointing the gods. Training: Untrained (-5 to combat rolls). Morale: Broken (Fanatic)-Routing-Panicking-Wary-Steady-Stalwart-Dauntless-Unbreakable. Loyalty: The Gods. Equipment: Makeshift weapons
Messien Hunters (31): Though Messien has sustained itself on the vast fields of farmland around it, many hunters still exist in and around the town. Both dealing with pest animals ruining crops and for their own sustenance. Training: Untrained (-10 to combat rolls) Morale: Broken-Routing-Panicking-Wary-Steady-Stalwart-Dauntless-Unbreakable Loyalty: Themselves. Equipment: Assortment of various quality Bows
Known Enemy Forces:
Southern Dead-Dogs (200+): While they had nothing on the hulking beasts you grew up around, these packs of mangy dead were deadly enough to rip a man apart in seconds, and fast enough to rip apart any riders that you had sent out for help. Currently they rove about in the southern fields using the unharvested crops as cover.
Roving Beast: For the past three nights a massive creature has rattled the wall with terribly powerful blows. Each night it grew closer and closer to breaking down the wall, however it would always flee long before the first light of dawn. Unfortunately no one had laid eyes on it yet, so you had no idea what you were dealing with, and all you could do was hope it was only one creature, and not many.
Rattlers (700+): The rattlers form the core of the sieging forces, often nothing more than decrepit bones with thin strips of leathery skin still hanging off of them. The rattlers were hardier than they looked, often requiring their bones to be fully snapped before whatever was animating them gave up.
Rotters (1000+): The meat, ha, of the sieging forces. The rotters in a very real way, meatshields for the rest of the enemies forces. Slow and clumsy sure, but able to take a distressing amount of punishment. While a single Militiaman could deal with one of the creatures, they usually found themselves faltering under the sheer number, or worse leaving themselves open to the faster rattlers.
-
"The rattlers have been probing at our northeastern walls, and the dead-dogs have pushed up to the very edge of the south fields." You watch as Egbert adjusts the war map, an upside-down teacup representing the bulk of the undead forces, a fork representing the rattlers at the walls, and a spoon representing the dead-dogs. "The main bulk of the undead has yet to commit to any action, but I expect they are planning to press us in both the east and west."
"A potential attack on all fronts," Misha mutters as he gathers up more cutlery to represent the split horde.
"Simple but effective. It means they will not be able to create a single point to smash through but pressure us on every point to find a weak spot." Egbert glances over to Herminia, then flicks his eye to where Izek sits, only half aware. Whatever he was about to say stills awkwardly in his mouth. "How… went the repairs?"
"All of the smaller breaches have been patched over no tha-..." She pauses and takes a deep breath. "and major breaches have been… reinforced, and we've done everything we can for the gate." The sheer exertion it took for Herminia to get through her entire sentence without insulting Egbert seemed to be beyond mortal ken. You were honestly worried that something important in her head was about to pop.
"Then we fight with the appearance of walls. Just like Mironia then." The Tilean mutters for a moment, his eyes growing distant as he imagines some battle he fought in Tilea years ago.
"Appearance of walls? Yo-" Izek stirs slightly, and Herminia curbs her tongue. "I can assure you that I oversaw good work."
"You could have a legion of dwarfs, and a day's patchwork will only be the appearance of a wall. But war can be fought on appearances." He leans forward over the map, eyes scanning along the map. "But what will they take from that appearance… What do they want."
"They want to make us hopeless." Two sets of eyes flick to you as Egbert just slowly nods. "The fields in the south, what do the dead have use for them? Burn them all away and free up your dogs to overwhelm a position or punch straight past our defences. They keep the fields out there, teeming with their dogs, because it is a mockery. Our own good harvest turned into a field of death."
"Then they will try to instil fear in us.." Egbert finishes for you, and you give the Tilean his own nod. "If we spread out along the walls, it will be like an ocean of rot clawing at us."
"And if we concentrate our forces, they will try to crush them in one single battle of annihilation." Imperial tactics, twisted for fear rather than efficiency, but Imperial nonetheless. If you had two boats and two crews with bellies full of fire and slaughter, you would pull the leader of the dead in a thousand different directions until he tore himself apart. If you had two dozen horsemen and enough grog to get a giant drunk, you would run rings around him, taunting him with his own goals.
If if if…
But instead of having two boats, or two dozen horsemen, you had shy of four hundred men and one hundred once-men.
"If we had pike and shot, we could bleed from them a dozen bodies a street." The Tilean openly laments, hand briefly tracing over the empty gun holster by his side. "If we had the wood, I could set up firetraps… I should have ripped the outer houses apart. I'm a damned fool, and we're out of time."
The scowl that twists his face is hot and hateful; for once, it was not pointed at the other councillors.
"Then burn the houses," Misha speaks up, and you give him a surprised side-eye. You had thought his fathers' condemnation had set him permanently mute. "Collapse the houses onto the streets and douse them in oil. Or just set them alight out right."
"Messien might not take that. The outer residential districts are where most of the town resides, and you don't have time." Herminia warns, her mouth pressed into a thin line as she scans the map. "This battle of annihilation… it would draw most of the dead, right?"
"You want them to give them what they want?" Rosmalen's voice is thoughtful as he rubs at his chin. "They would take such a battle because they would believe they would win it."
"Then we prepare the battlefield so they can't." You trace a finger across the map of Meissen before it finishes on the large north gate of the town. The first part of the wall that fell, and it has been a constant pain point since. "Misha is right; if we collapse the houses, we can use them for traps or if that fails, then section off the undead with walls of fire. But Herminia is also right; we do not have the time or the goodwill to do the entire outer districts."
"The rest of the walls will need to be held, they might want fear, but no man will give up a chance to stroll past an enemy's defences uncontested." Rosmalen reached towards the gold pieces that were meant to roughly represent your own forces before pausing and glancing up at you. "Your…"
He hesitates on the word, and you do not rush to give it to him. You were sure the other three were well aware of what you had done, and you were also sure they realised what it meant.
Fanatics were a staple everywhere in the old world, and there was no doubt that you held their leash.
Your eyes turn to the map as you consider what should be done with them. There was a part of you that thought just throwing them where the battle was the thickest would be the most effective measure. You knew the maddened heights of fanaticism that gripped them and knew that they would struggle endlessly against the undead to expel their shame and self-hate with no regard for if they would survive the night.
But… that might not be the hand you needed here, and knowing that the walls would not break and leave your forces encircled…
[] Deploy the Fanatic Militia to the North Gate, where you hoped to draw the undead into a decisive battle. (150 normal militia is deployed to defend the rest of the walls)
[] Have the Fanatic Militia deployed elsewhere, holding the wall against attempts to breach the walls elsewhere from the battle of annihilation.
[] Have the Fanatic Militia held in reserves, to be unleashed whenever they are needed (Note that unless you stay in the backlines, you will not have control over when they are unleashed.)
The Tilean quickly moves on. "My men will be held in reserve. They'll set up the traps when the undead force has overcommitted or elsewhere falters, then I'll have them move to give the militia space to pull back behind the traps." Your lips twitch downwards at that; that would leave the untrained militia to deal with the brunt of a fighting retreat. But it was difficult to argue that you could risk Rosmalen's swordsmen, especially since they would only listen to the man himself.
"Herminia coordinates with the non-combatants to ensure the hunters are resupplied through the night. They'll have plenty of targets once the undead commits, and even shoddy arrows will find a target." The woman nods, watching as the Tilean places two silver pieces near the north gate. "Misha, your father, paid for healer lessons; by the end of this, we'll have a great many wounded. Prepare to deal with them."
The gangly teen glances towards his father, who looks like he is moments away from slipping back into one of his deep sleeps, and then nods. He orders one of the guards to follow him and disappears deeper into the manor.
"Now Norscan…" He trails off for a moment. "Now Asavar." He tries instead, and you arch an eyebrow at him. That might be the first time he has ever used your name. "You're as capable a commander as they come, but…." You're also a six-foot-something behemoth of muscle and brutal warfare he leaves unsaid.
[] You would stay here and coordinate the battlefield alongside the Tilean, the plan was not the most complex in the world, but it paid to have two pair of eyes watching it
[] You would head out to the North Gate, someone had to put steel in the militia's spine.
[] You would patrol the walls, and deal with any attempts to flank around and outmanoeuvre the battle
I have adjusted the Morale tags for more clarity.
Rosmalen Swordsmen (49): The remnants of Rosmalen's once mercenary company that settled down when their captain took on a permanent contract with Prince Izek. Prior to the siege, they acted as guards and police for Meissen. Training: Professional (+10 to combat rolls) Morale: Broken-Routing-Panicking-Wary-Steady-Stalwart-Dauntless-Unbreakable Loyalty: Rosmalen. Equipment: Chainmail, Standard Quality Estoc.
Messien Militia (332): Conscripted, able-bodied adults. Though Messien lacked the weapons to equip its people fully, there was enough ramshackle equipment to put together a small army. Shame that it's up against a large army. Training: Untrained (-5 to combat rolls). Morale: Broken-Routing-Panicking-Wary-Steady-Stalwart-Dauntless-Unbreakable. Loyalty: Themselves. Equipment: Makeshift weapons
Messien Fanatic Militia (100): Conscripted able-bodied adults. Though Messien lacked the weapons to equip its people fully, there was enough ramshackle equipment to put together a small army. Shame that it's up against a large army. You have personally incited a deep fanaticism in these troops, breaking down their personalities until they stopped fearing death and only feared disappointing the gods. Training: Untrained (-5 to combat rolls). Morale: Broken (Fanatic)-Routing-Panicking-Wary-Steady-Stalwart-Dauntless-Unbreakable. Loyalty: The Gods. Equipment: Makeshift weapons
Messien Hunters (31): Though Messien has sustained itself on the vast fields of farmland around it, many hunters still exist in and around the town. Both dealing with pest animals ruining crops and for their own sustenance. Training: Untrained (-10 to combat rolls) Morale: Broken-Routing-Panicking-Wary-Steady-Stalwart-Dauntless-Unbreakable Loyalty: Themselves. Equipment: Assortment of various quality Bows
Known Enemy Forces:
Southern Dead-Dogs (200+): While they had nothing on the hulking beasts you grew up around, these packs of mangy dead were deadly enough to rip a man apart in seconds, and fast enough to rip apart any riders that you had sent out for help. Currently they rove about in the southern fields using the unharvested crops as cover.
Roving Beast: For the past three nights a massive creature has rattled the wall with terribly powerful blows. Each night it grew closer and closer to breaking down the wall, however it would always flee long before the first light of dawn. Unfortunately no one had laid eyes on it yet, so you had no idea what you were dealing with, and all you could do was hope it was only one creature, and not many.
Rattlers (700+): The rattlers form the core of the sieging forces, often nothing more than decrepit bones with thin strips of leathery skin still hanging off of them. The rattlers were hardier than they looked, often requiring their bones to be fully snapped before whatever was animating them gave up.
Rotters (1000+): The meat, ha, of the sieging forces. The rotters in a very real way, meatshields for the rest of the enemies forces. Slow and clumsy sure, but able to take a distressing amount of punishment. While a single Militiaman could deal with one of the creatures, they usually found themselves faltering under the sheer number, or worse leaving themselves open to the faster rattlers.
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"The rattlers have been probing at our northeastern walls, and the dead-dogs have pushed up to the very edge of the south fields." You watch as Egbert adjusts the war map, an upside-down teacup representing the bulk of the undead forces, a fork representing the rattlers at the walls, and a spoon representing the dead-dogs. "The main bulk of the undead has yet to commit to any action, but I expect they are planning to press us in both the east and west."
"A potential attack on all fronts," Misha mutters as he gathers up more cutlery to represent the split horde.
"Simple but effective. It means they will not be able to create a single point to smash through but pressure us on every point to find a weak spot." Egbert glances over to Herminia, then flicks his eye to where Izek sits, only half aware. Whatever he was about to say stills awkwardly in his mouth. "How… went the repairs?"
"All of the smaller breaches have been patched over no tha-..." She pauses and takes a deep breath. "and major breaches have been… reinforced, and we've done everything we can for the gate." The sheer exertion it took for Herminia to get through her entire sentence without insulting Egbert seemed to be beyond mortal ken. You were honestly worried that something important in her head was about to pop.
"Then we fight with the appearance of walls. Just like Mironia then." The Tilean mutters for a moment, his eyes growing distant as he imagines some battle he fought in Tilea years ago.
"Appearance of walls? Yo-" Izek stirs slightly, and Herminia curbs her tongue. "I can assure you that I oversaw good work."
"You could have a legion of dwarfs, and a day's patchwork will only be the appearance of a wall. But war can be fought on appearances." He leans forward over the map, eyes scanning along the map. "But what will they take from that appearance… What do they want."
"They want to make us hopeless." Two sets of eyes flick to you as Egbert just slowly nods. "The fields in the south, what do the dead have use for them? Burn them all away and free up your dogs to overwhelm a position or punch straight past our defences. They keep the fields out there, teeming with their dogs, because it is a mockery. Our own good harvest turned into a field of death."
"Then they will try to instil fear in us.." Egbert finishes for you, and you give the Tilean his own nod. "If we spread out along the walls, it will be like an ocean of rot clawing at us."
"And if we concentrate our forces, they will try to crush them in one single battle of annihilation." Imperial tactics, twisted for fear rather than efficiency, but Imperial nonetheless. If you had two boats and two crews with bellies full of fire and slaughter, you would pull the leader of the dead in a thousand different directions until he tore himself apart. If you had two dozen horsemen and enough grog to get a giant drunk, you would run rings around him, taunting him with his own goals.
If if if…
But instead of having two boats, or two dozen horsemen, you had shy of four hundred men and one hundred once-men.
"If we had pike and shot, we could bleed from them a dozen bodies a street." The Tilean openly laments, hand briefly tracing over the empty gun holster by his side. "If we had the wood, I could set up firetraps… I should have ripped the outer houses apart. I'm a damned fool, and we're out of time."
The scowl that twists his face is hot and hateful; for once, it was not pointed at the other councillors.
"Then burn the houses," Misha speaks up, and you give him a surprised side-eye. You had thought his fathers' condemnation had set him permanently mute. "Collapse the houses onto the streets and douse them in oil. Or just set them alight out right."
"Messien might not take that. The outer residential districts are where most of the town resides, and you don't have time." Herminia warns, her mouth pressed into a thin line as she scans the map. "This battle of annihilation… it would draw most of the dead, right?"
"You want them to give them what they want?" Rosmalen's voice is thoughtful as he rubs at his chin. "They would take such a battle because they would believe they would win it."
"Then we prepare the battlefield so they can't." You trace a finger across the map of Meissen before it finishes on the large north gate of the town. The first part of the wall that fell, and it has been a constant pain point since. "Misha is right; if we collapse the houses, we can use them for traps or if that fails, then section off the undead with walls of fire. But Herminia is also right; we do not have the time or the goodwill to do the entire outer districts."
"The rest of the walls will need to be held, they might want fear, but no man will give up a chance to stroll past an enemy's defences uncontested." Rosmalen reached towards the gold pieces that were meant to roughly represent your own forces before pausing and glancing up at you. "Your…"
He hesitates on the word, and you do not rush to give it to him. You were sure the other three were well aware of what you had done, and you were also sure they realised what it meant.
Fanatics were a staple everywhere in the old world, and there was no doubt that you held their leash.
Your eyes turn to the map as you consider what should be done with them. There was a part of you that thought just throwing them where the battle was the thickest would be the most effective measure. You knew the maddened heights of fanaticism that gripped them and knew that they would struggle endlessly against the undead to expel their shame and self-hate with no regard for if they would survive the night.
But… that might not be the hand you needed here, and knowing that the walls would not break and leave your forces encircled…
[] Deploy the Fanatic Militia to the North Gate, where you hoped to draw the undead into a decisive battle. (150 normal militia is deployed to defend the rest of the walls)
[] Have the Fanatic Militia deployed elsewhere, holding the wall against attempts to breach the walls elsewhere from the battle of annihilation.
[] Have the Fanatic Militia held in reserves, to be unleashed whenever they are needed (Note that unless you stay in the backlines, you will not have control over when they are unleashed.)
The Tilean quickly moves on. "My men will be held in reserve. They'll set up the traps when the undead force has overcommitted or elsewhere falters, then I'll have them move to give the militia space to pull back behind the traps." Your lips twitch downwards at that; that would leave the untrained militia to deal with the brunt of a fighting retreat. But it was difficult to argue that you could risk Rosmalen's swordsmen, especially since they would only listen to the man himself.
"Herminia coordinates with the non-combatants to ensure the hunters are resupplied through the night. They'll have plenty of targets once the undead commits, and even shoddy arrows will find a target." The woman nods, watching as the Tilean places two silver pieces near the north gate. "Misha, your father, paid for healer lessons; by the end of this, we'll have a great many wounded. Prepare to deal with them."
The gangly teen glances towards his father, who looks like he is moments away from slipping back into one of his deep sleeps, and then nods. He orders one of the guards to follow him and disappears deeper into the manor.
"Now Norscan…" He trails off for a moment. "Now Asavar." He tries instead, and you arch an eyebrow at him. That might be the first time he has ever used your name. "You're as capable a commander as they come, but…." You're also a six-foot-something behemoth of muscle and brutal warfare he leaves unsaid.
[] You would stay here and coordinate the battlefield alongside the Tilean, the plan was not the most complex in the world, but it paid to have two pair of eyes watching it
[] You would head out to the North Gate, someone had to put steel in the militia's spine.
[] You would patrol the walls, and deal with any attempts to flank around and outmanoeuvre the battle
I have adjusted the Morale tags for more clarity.
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Vote closed
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Truly a contested, and hot vote.
Scheduled vote count started by Minyette06 on Dec 2, 2022 at 4:53 AM, finished with 19 posts and 11 votes.
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[X] Plan: To the Gate!
-[X] Deploy the Fanatic Militia to the North Gate, where you hoped to draw the undead into a decisive battle.
-[X] You would head out to the North Gate, someone had to put steel in the militia's spine.
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A tide of feotid flesh (Defense of Meissen)
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Corralling fanatics was an art both subtle and ungraceful. Words alone struggled to find purchase in a mind broken down to nothing more than a desperate need for the gods' absolution and reasoning…
If the fanatics had reason left in their body, then you had failed in your task.
Roughhousing and bellowing orders would only go so far; you had taken a hundred men to the brink of sentience and forced them to dangle on the edge. Cracked and shattered their sense of self, and replaced it with an all-consuming feeling of the gods' disgust and bound it all together in an almost communal self-hatred. Each and every fanatic looking for an outlet for the tumult inside them.
So you played to that; even the slightest mistake in constructing the barricades along the wide cobbled streets of Messien's main road was an affront to their god. Every moment of delay was a sign of them rejecting their god's second chance, and they threatened the redemption of all of them.
It took exhausting measures of control over the fanatics to manage, but under the self-flagellation of the existence you wrought for them, the defences rose quickly. Makeshift blockades and stakes stabbed into the ground formed wood stitches through the burnt-out and broken ruins left behind by the last weeks of assaults.
Organising the less faith-mad militia was a far easier task. They had not had the stakes of the matter stripped away for them and replaced with a desperate need for redemption. Even if they were not gripped by the same frenetic energy that drove each fanatic to do the work of four men, they were precise in a way that the Fanatics were not.
And you were mostly sure they were not about to drink the oil in some insane attempt to curry the god's favour through deathly dedication. Or worse, set themselves on fire like some of the old stories of Magnus the Pious.
It was not the most outstanding work; even the Norscan in you scoffed at the workmanship. Ramshackle was too kind a word for what it was. But for hours of work with unskilled hands, it would be enough.
So it became a waiting game, one you were very familiar with. Once upon a time, it was waiting on the deck of a ship, watching some hamlet - or village if your captain was feeling particularly daring - grow closer as your longboat cut through waves. Later it was watching treelines as a cart rattled underneath you, the electric touch of expectation on your tongue even if you could not see the bandits you were hired to cast aside.
Now it was watching the inky black beyond the once ostentatious gate of Meissen, listening to the rattle of bones and the sloughed noises of rotten flesh moving in that impenetrable dark.
Soon they would grow close enough that even the weakly flickering torches would cast them in light, and they would clamber over the ruined remains of the gate. Then the dead would pour into the main streets of Meissen, contained only by the untrained crude iron of its militia.
The dead will outnumber the living, and there was a part of you that was unsure if that would be different even if you repelled this assault.
A single form, with skin like leather and arms twisted by decay, stumbles through the broken remnants of Meissen's gate, grey skin so marred with rot and grave dirt you could almost smell it from where you stood. Glassy eyes half eaten by maggots trail across the assembled militia, waiting in makeshift barricades with weapons clutched in hands, both fearful and faithful.
"Hold." You did not need to yell to hear in that still night, your voice carrying over even the din of horrors shambling towards the gate.
Its eyes snapped to you, followed first by its body, then by its head. For a moment, you stared down the walking dead, seeing in those eyes a swirl of something far fouler than the shamble of undeath.
It surges forward, death-softened feet awkwardly pattering at the cobblestone as it runs through the empty space you left for its ilk to fill. You watch with a vague feeling of contempt as it moves faster than its ungainly shamble would imply, very nearly at the same tilt as a living man.
What a miserable creature.
One of the militiamen by your side stepped forward as he thrust out a crude spear, stabbing the dead through the stomach and running it through. The dead, rather than doing anything so helpful as re-dying from what would be a fatal blow, simply pressed onwards, spearing itself further until it was nearly halfway up the makeshift weapon.
Your own weapon flashed in the torchlight, crude iron cleaving its fully exposed throat and the weakened bone of its neck.
"That's one for us." The spearman mutters as he steps forward and boots the rotter from his spear, sending it sprawling backwards with a moist thud. "Only what? A few hundred to go? If they're all as easy as that, the leftovers will still be warm when I get home."
"It's not one walking dead that men need to worry about." Your voice rumbled out, and as if summoned by your words, more undead clambered through the remains of the gate, first as a slow trickle. Then as a mighty flood, a tangled tide of putrescent limbs climbed over themselves as they surged to fill the ground you left open to them. "Get back behind the barricades, and make them pay for every inch."
The battle began.
The tide of dead crashed upon the makeshift defences of Meissen and found its defenders unready for the unnatural vigour that animated their dead limbs. They were too fast for their shambling gait, too strong for their withered muscles. Even if you struggled against the sudden onslaught, you might be able to cleave the dead in twain, but when they were pressed so tightly together as they squirmed forward, there was just too much flesh.
In another time, where you were just doing what you could to hold onto Meissen's walls with men unsure how to stick the pointy bit into flesh, the crash of dead would have swung the fight immediately. The dead would have ripped them from the walls and torn them apart with weapons as rotten as them.
"HOLD!" Your voice tears across the battlefield, warring with the din of battle and finding it wanting as your blade splits a rattler's skull apart moments before it would have carved out a man's throat. "KEEP YOUR WEAPONS UP; PUT YOUR WEIGHT INTO EVERY STRIKE!"
On a night before tonight, that initial surge of the malignant dead would have sealed Meissen's fate.
"YOUR GODS ARE WATCHING; WILL THEY FIND YOU WANTING? WILL THEY FIND THIS IS ALL YOUR MEASURE?" Your left hand leaves your hilt, lashing out to catch the back of the remnants of a rotter's funeral garb, bodily pulling it off a frothing-mouthed fanatic and dragging it in front of you as a rotten human shield.
"IF THEY'RE FASTER THAN THEY LOOK, THEN STRIKE EARLIER." You pull away from the melee for a moment, half a dozen men stepping forward in your place. Your eye flick across the barricades, a mind cursed for bloodshed, noting where and how the defenders buckled.
"IF YOU CAN NOT OVERPOWER THEM, THEN GIVE THEM NO CHANCE TO USE THEIR STRENGTH BEFORE YOU CUT THEM DOWN." You crash into the next flashpoint with all the force of a sledgehammer, moments before the dead would have burst through the faltering militia, the desperate fanatics following you descending on the dead alongside you with howls of piety.
"IF YOU CAN NOT KILL YOUR FOE, THEN KILL THE FOE OF THE MAN NEXT TO YOU." You took your own advice, a blade slamming through the neck of a rotter, distracted by one of the militiamen. A favour a man next to you repaid, driving his rusted sickle through the foetid eye of a dead moments away from swiping at you.
"DO NOT LET THEM STEP AN INCH THROUGH THE BARRICADES; IF THEY ARE CRAWLING OVER THEMSELVES TO DIE, OBLIGE THEM!" Through sheer physical might, you began slowly forcing the dead back, every swing of your blade reaping scores of dead as you hacked through rotten flesh. A weak, pock-marked skull crushes into splinters under your boot as you begin climbing over the dozens of dead already choking the gap of the barricade.
As you loomed above the battlefield, atop a mound of corpses, you saw your men strike back. Given a moment's heart and the taste of battle, they had begun to thrive, and for one tempting moment, as the gothic pulchritude of bloodshed sung in your heart and blood, you wondered if you even needed Rosmalen's men. Or if you would turn aside the horrors of the night here before his order would come in minutes.
You forced yourself forward, clearing the barricades with all the terrible strength and fury of a Norscan warrior, tempered and aimed by a mind sharpened by Verena's grace. To be within your reach was to return to Morr's grace, and as age-rotten blood dribbled down your face, the undead buckled in your wake.
Behind you, the militia followed, swept up by the hot blood of battle as all true warriors were, and you exulted in the familiarity of your youth before it was confused by reason and morality. A simpler time that you loathed and deeply longed to feel once again.
The dead buckled under the surge of the living. By your side, men driven mad by the toxic promise of redemption screamed as they threw themselves at the irredeemable dark. In the sky, arrows thudded down like rain, and makeshift spears lanced out to reap a splendid toll.
It was a moment of glory and grit and a terrible mistake.
The Meissen militia had staved off the dead through one simple fact. The dead could not truly leverage the insane numbers advantage they had over the living while they were hidden behind their barricades.
No matter if they tried to shamble over those barricades or shove their way through with unnatural strength, they were forced to fight piecemeal against the militia.
You were forced to watch, with your blood hot in your veins, as the militia who had surged out to meet the dead by your own example were taught why they needed those barricades.
With all the desperate strength and hard-bitten skill you held with the blade, it was all you could manage to spare those closest to you from the unstoppable advantage of numbers.
Those distant from you though… they who left behind their most significant advantage, they were descended upon by a hungry swarm. Brutalised screams filled the battlefield as Meissen was taught to fear the rotten grasp of the shambling dead once more, that there was a reason they had spent weeks huddled in their beds, flinching at every noise.
"PULL BACK TO THE BARRICADES; HOLD THE BARRICADES." You howl, feeling in your bones as your lines crumbled around you, and you were left with the terrible knowledge that soon you would be left alone in a tide of dead. "ROSMALEN WILL BE HERE SOON; HOLD THE BARRICADES UNTIL HIS ORDER."
You carve your way back to the barricades yourself, backing up over corpses as you are pressed in on all sides, your back only kept safe by the very fanatics you broke into fearlessness.
Perhaps if it was just that, you could have pulled together Messien's defenders. Stitched the defenders together into a shaken but fighting defence.
Then, a low rumbling growl dripped across the battlefield, and across the field of corpses, you saw something truly horrible. Towering above the dead was a hulking form of leathery hide and bulging musculature. Mutant bone juts out of the creature, jagged and brutal.
Monstrous yellow eyes, meet your own. Its maw opened, offal and drool dripping from thin, rotten teeth as it roared at you.
For a single awful moment, all you could see was the writhing form of twisted limbs and cancerous growth.
You watch, atop that mound of corpses, where you had once felt like you were teetering on the edge of utter victory as that victory was crushed into helpless defeat. The sight of such a terrible beast was the final mark to break the militia of Messien, a hundred and change men almost as one broke and ran.
All that was left behind were men too enamoured by their blood-drenched forgiveness to care that they were surrounded by only the dead, eager and choked by a terrible desire to become one of those corpses in a self-destructive need for the god's favour.
"PULL BACK! TO THE FIRE TRAPS." The bulk of your troops had broken, and what was left was maddened men more concerned with killing as many dead as the gods thought their soul was worth than the defence of their home. "THE GODS DEMAND YOU MAKE THEM PAY FOR YOUR LIVES DEARLY, BACK TO THE FIRE TRAPS!"
You were not sure if it was a miracle your words were heeded or a cruel trick by bitter dark gods. The fanatical that had offered not one step when the others broke and ran pulled away not under the ceaseless tide but by your command. In doing so, they found themselves suffering under the same horror that had broken their once brothers-in-arms. With no man holding the barricades, the dead flowed through it like a foetid tide.
Dozens of men were cut down like vermin, ripped apart by cold bone. The fanatics had already borne the brunt of the battle, and as they retreated in the wake of a force that outnumbered them tenfold, the toll grew heavier.
Where there was once a century of men you had broken and moulded into something already too damaged to break, there were mere dozens. Long past decimation, the fanatics approached annihilation.
And with them dead, the militia broken, Verena only knowing what happened to the men on the walls, and Rosmalen's men still not in position, Meissen would be entirely open to the dead.
The sound of clash shattering rang above the deafening screams of dying fanatics.
Liquid splashed upon the barricades and, between one moment and the next, erupted in a great fire.
You twist around in a panic, caught off guard and unsure, and see the grimly determined countenance of Otfried, the Taalite you had talked to this very afternoon, one of the few dozen hunters still with a bow fit for purpose. That bow was slung over his shoulder next to a quiver that was damningly empty.
But he did not seem to have let the lack of arrows keep him down, taking a proffered glass bottle from someone else and lighting cloth stuffed into its neck.
You, for a moment, had to acknowledge there must be some level of irony in a reformed Norscan raider forgetting entirely that he had archers. To be fair to you, their effect on the battle, with such a terrible glut of flesh to chew through and arrows ineffective at best to put down rattlers, had been more in the abstract than in the important real. Their contributions had been well-placed salvo's of some effect, but little beyond that, until now.
As the father threw the glass filled with clear liquid, and it shattered against the encroaching horde that was teetering moments from claiming a victory that would break Meissen, he and his men became the single most pivotal aspect of the defence of Meissen.
More fire blossomed, the terrible stench of rotten flesh burning like a sweet rose to your nose, and the dead found their momentum ripped from them once more.
Your lips split into a grin, both thankful and full of teeth, and the young father simply nodded at you before gesturing for another bottle.
"KEEP MOVING TO THE FIRE WALLS. DO NOT GIVE THEM TIME TO RECOVER." What few fanatics that had managed to survive thus far limped back to the second and final defensive lines. Stumbling over torn-down houses in a manner so very similar to the very dead they fought.
You, however, stayed behind, backing up only as the hunters moved beyond the wall, imposing yourself between the burning dead as they attempted to rush at Otfried's men. Thinned by fire and the bulk kept at bay for the moment by fire, it was child's play for a man of your skill to hold the dead back for men who so gloriously averted disaster. Clearing away the few rattlers that had survived the conflagration.
As they crossed through to the other side of the 'walls' that would soon be engulfed in a more permanent flame, you yourself began carving your way to that relative safety as you distantly heard Rosmalen ordering his men into position.
They were late. But that was something you would have to deal with later.
Then before you could cross the threshold, joining the thin line of wild-eyed fanatics whose remnants hardly numbered half a dozen, a roar hits the air once more.
The roving beast that tightly muscled horror stepped through the fading fire of the first barricades, the smouldering embers hardly even bothering the yellowed hide that made up its skin. Around it, more dead stumbled through, crawling over the husks of the barriers and shambling forward.
But your eyes were locked with that creature. That terrible spark of not quite intelligence, or worse, a remnant of what was once intelligence in those monstrous yellow eyes.
Then, so very akin to the first of the dead that had charged your barricades alone, it surged forward.
But this time, there was no vague feeling of contempt. Its limbs flexed and moved with a gut-churning similarity to the flesh of man. Unlike the first rotter, which was fast despite its ungainly nature, this creature was all smooth movements and natural strides. Graceful in a way that was both disturbing and deeply uncanny.
Knowing what little you knew of the dead, it was like the difference between an amateur puppeteer and a master.
And perhaps the most terrible of all, unlike the rotter, it was not alone. All around it was the press of rotten dead, numbering in hundreds still.
You widen your feet, your stance lowering as you hold your blade in front of you. The horror was taller than you, towering nearly twofold above the dead, and its hulking musculature promised that it was stronger than you too.
This was going to take a little more than just brute force to deal with.
Luckily, you were far from the boy of ten and three earning the title "The Brute" with knuckles slick with warrior priest blood. You roll your shoulders and glance to your side where the few remnants of fanatics stand, vibrating with all the repressed energy of someone who had fallen in love with their own death.
To your sides, the fire walls Rosmalen had spent so very long were finally lit, leaving what you knew would only be a few entrances the dead could be funnelled through.
Rosmalen had yet to send swordsmen to this entrance. It seemed Izek's warning would only stretch so far. First late, and now leaving you to hold an entire chokepoint near enough on your own.
"If you die, make sure you die well." They stared up at you, and for a moment, you thought that the dehumanisation and battle had torn their comprehension of language from them. "Your gods are watching." You pull upon Verena's attention, feeling divine grace flood your limbs and lick at the few wounds that had torn through your chainmail. Then it spilt out into the world itself, pouring into the fanatics, and for a moment, you could almost swear it was not just Verena's attention pulled to the world. "Give them a good death to watch."
You grin at them, wide and wild, and they grin back.
Six men broken by your actions, and you broken by your own life. In that very moment, all your guilt towards them burnt away, and all you could feel was a brotherhood.
Then the dead arrived, and the seven of you became death. Left alone to hold this, you tore through the dead like the scythe of your goddess's husband. Hateful anger and brutality descended upon you as you lost yourself in the relentless, sick bloodlust.
All the while, your eyes kept on the approaching horror. No… to be more accurate, all the while, you approached it too. How else were you going to drive your sword through its skull? How else but approaching it as it approached you were you going to feel the glorious feeling of its blood painting you red?
The six survivors pressed into the wake of space you formed; the weak had been slaughtered from the fanatics, leaving behind only the mad capable of surviving a night of horrors unturned. They created a bulwark of maddened faith and, in that moment, left bereft of impurities by the crucible of their trial this night, the dead shattered.
You paid no mind to that as the horror crashed into you. In a moment, you were proven right, as the creature's insane strength, matching its disgusting musculature, threatened to batter you aside like paper in a storm. But you had survived a Mōteatall, one of the terrible storms that rocked the sea of claws, your longboat cleaving through the water as it seemed the gods themselves thundered in displeasure.
You knew how to weather what should be unweatherable. You let the force of the blow push you back rather than shove you down, your blade slipping underneath its guard as its powerful blow found nothing to catch upon. Your feet twist as you follow your blade, throwing as much force as you can manage in the distance you had. The crude iron of your chipped sword cuts across thickly muscled abs, from waist to pectoral.
Against a human foe, it would have split them in half. Against the creature's unnaturally stiff hide and thickly wound muscles, all your sword did was split open flesh to let rotten blood dribble forth.
You slide underneath the next blow, tricky feet ceding space and distance with all the reckless abandon of a man sure he knew what he was doing. Your footwork impeccable, even with the way the dead twisted and crunched underneath every step, slipping around the crush of the brute's swings with almost sinuous grace.
The two of you, almost by chance, found yourselves in an almost arena of sorts, as the six fanatics left standing kept the salivating dead at bay with faith and fury. They did not for a moment concern themselves with what you were doing, and in that maddened moment, that feeling of brotherhood and trust lost to you so long ago burnt even brighter.
And you drove that feeling of brotherhood into the crucible of the bloodlust thundering through your veins and forced yourself to greater heights. You skittered around blows so quick that they cracked in the air as your blade lashed out once twice, thrice against the creature, tearing into flesh and muscle.
But they were just cosmetic for a creature like this. Its blood was so thick that it hardly flowed, its skin and muscles so tightly wound that no matter what you cleaved apart it, there would still be strength enough to punch through steel.
You needed something slightly more… definitive to put the creature down. As the two of you meet once more in a flurry of blows, rather than bothering with the preamble, you twist past it as it lashes out at you. Your boot stomped on the back of its knee, just underneath the thickly corded muscle of its thigh.
Thankfully, rather than deciding that undeath and the mockery of animation that suffused its body meant it was immune to the basic biology of a knee bending, it crumbled forward. It was, in truth, little more than an annoyance; in moments, it was back on its feet, whirling around to face you.
But a few moments was more than enough time to make space. Space that the creature quickly threw itself forward in a charge to chew through quickly became a yellowed near blur of terrible undead motion, half a ton or more of charging brutality, a sight more terrible and final than even the charge of the finest of Bretonnian knights.
And just what you had wanted to see.
The timing was as tight as you had ever risked your life to slide under a blow fuelled by a charge that blurred to your eyes rather than step away or desperately throw yourself aside.
Thick hide and tight muscle cleaved apart as you used its own momentum against it, driving crude steel near to the hilt. Then, your battlemad grin widens as you twist your legs underneath you, your entire body turning with the momentum of the creature as you use the blade you had just driven deep into its sternum as a lever. Your muscles strained and screamed as you lifted the horror up, dragging it over yourself.
In moments you felt the crude iron of your blade - give - the terrible sound of iron rending apart underneath insane weight. Your right-hand leaves the hilt, snapping up to slam into a hold on the creature's neck, using both through your pivots to bodily crush the creature to the ground with a terrible crack of bone.
You stomp a boot into its face as its muscles writhe around a shattered skeletal structure. It tries to strike at you with its left arm, struggling to even move. You rip the blade from its sternum and drive into its shoulder. Pinning its last usable limb to the ground.
For a moment, you stand there, staring into monstrous eyes as it failed to keep up with the brutality you had inflicted upon it. It snarled, its muscles twisting and writhing, and all you could see was leathery skin and mutated flesh, and rage took you.
Your fist crashed into its face, over and over, as the burning hatred consumed you. In a moment, you were in two times, and the black hate - once powerless and impotent - boiled over into frothing fury. Your knuckles split upon hardened bone and then split hardened bone in turn. Teeth chipped and cut at your flesh, but you just kept smashing and breaking until the creature's face was shattered and broken.
You drove your left hand into the toothless maw of the creature, gripping its lower jaw, as your right dug through the mush of its eyes.
Then with all the might you could muster, you pull the two apart until bone split from bone and you were left with three-thirds of a monster's skull.
You straighten up, eyes wide, as you hold your trophy up and scream in victory. The display of brutal victory unmistakable.
As you stand there, full of hate and rage, you feel something inside you shift and move. The cool touch of law and justice. Of science and advancement, poured through you, like a gentle drink. It softly, almost tenderly, threaded away your anger, leaving you with nothing but Verena's grace filling you.
Your eyes carefully close as you bask in the calm of being a civilised mind. Of being human as your goddess extricated you from the terrible destruction that was wrought in your blood.
Then you open them as the warm touch of dawn creeps up your face. Before you, where there had once been a teaming mass of endless undead, there were now only corpses. The six fanatics - men - that had followed you and survived until the end basked in their victory, and as they celebrated, you let the full force of that divinity so comfortably in your bones pull out into the world.
This time, there was no mistaking that it was not just Verena's energy that filled the dawnlight, and the men broke down sobbing as they were offered the salvation and attention from their god that you had broken them to need.
It was over.
-
Meissen lives to see another day.
There were 58 rolls for this battle, some of them I cut off because the Zombies had been mauled enough that they could not actually do any more damage, they just had that big beefy health pool. Which might imply I should er refine the system. It did produce some pretty cool ups and downs in the fight, most notables is Herminia failing all attempts to resupply the hunters, yet the hunters for a while just kept rolling higher, until they got the first 100 of the quest.
Maybe it was a slight overreaction for them to invent molotovs, but I thought it was fitting that they improvised.
Another note is the fanatics rolling pretty poorly until there was literally none of them left, and then just rolling like a god with six of them remaining. Also special shout out to the wall militia rolling like gigachads and kicking the flanking undead teeth in by round two.
The next voting post should be sometime later this week. I hope you enjoyed the fight, and that it was as gripping reading as it felt writing.
If the fanatics had reason left in their body, then you had failed in your task.
Roughhousing and bellowing orders would only go so far; you had taken a hundred men to the brink of sentience and forced them to dangle on the edge. Cracked and shattered their sense of self, and replaced it with an all-consuming feeling of the gods' disgust and bound it all together in an almost communal self-hatred. Each and every fanatic looking for an outlet for the tumult inside them.
So you played to that; even the slightest mistake in constructing the barricades along the wide cobbled streets of Messien's main road was an affront to their god. Every moment of delay was a sign of them rejecting their god's second chance, and they threatened the redemption of all of them.
It took exhausting measures of control over the fanatics to manage, but under the self-flagellation of the existence you wrought for them, the defences rose quickly. Makeshift blockades and stakes stabbed into the ground formed wood stitches through the burnt-out and broken ruins left behind by the last weeks of assaults.
Organising the less faith-mad militia was a far easier task. They had not had the stakes of the matter stripped away for them and replaced with a desperate need for redemption. Even if they were not gripped by the same frenetic energy that drove each fanatic to do the work of four men, they were precise in a way that the Fanatics were not.
And you were mostly sure they were not about to drink the oil in some insane attempt to curry the god's favour through deathly dedication. Or worse, set themselves on fire like some of the old stories of Magnus the Pious.
It was not the most outstanding work; even the Norscan in you scoffed at the workmanship. Ramshackle was too kind a word for what it was. But for hours of work with unskilled hands, it would be enough.
So it became a waiting game, one you were very familiar with. Once upon a time, it was waiting on the deck of a ship, watching some hamlet - or village if your captain was feeling particularly daring - grow closer as your longboat cut through waves. Later it was watching treelines as a cart rattled underneath you, the electric touch of expectation on your tongue even if you could not see the bandits you were hired to cast aside.
Now it was watching the inky black beyond the once ostentatious gate of Meissen, listening to the rattle of bones and the sloughed noises of rotten flesh moving in that impenetrable dark.
Soon they would grow close enough that even the weakly flickering torches would cast them in light, and they would clamber over the ruined remains of the gate. Then the dead would pour into the main streets of Meissen, contained only by the untrained crude iron of its militia.
The dead will outnumber the living, and there was a part of you that was unsure if that would be different even if you repelled this assault.
A single form, with skin like leather and arms twisted by decay, stumbles through the broken remnants of Meissen's gate, grey skin so marred with rot and grave dirt you could almost smell it from where you stood. Glassy eyes half eaten by maggots trail across the assembled militia, waiting in makeshift barricades with weapons clutched in hands, both fearful and faithful.
"Hold." You did not need to yell to hear in that still night, your voice carrying over even the din of horrors shambling towards the gate.
Its eyes snapped to you, followed first by its body, then by its head. For a moment, you stared down the walking dead, seeing in those eyes a swirl of something far fouler than the shamble of undeath.
It surges forward, death-softened feet awkwardly pattering at the cobblestone as it runs through the empty space you left for its ilk to fill. You watch with a vague feeling of contempt as it moves faster than its ungainly shamble would imply, very nearly at the same tilt as a living man.
What a miserable creature.
One of the militiamen by your side stepped forward as he thrust out a crude spear, stabbing the dead through the stomach and running it through. The dead, rather than doing anything so helpful as re-dying from what would be a fatal blow, simply pressed onwards, spearing itself further until it was nearly halfway up the makeshift weapon.
Your own weapon flashed in the torchlight, crude iron cleaving its fully exposed throat and the weakened bone of its neck.
"That's one for us." The spearman mutters as he steps forward and boots the rotter from his spear, sending it sprawling backwards with a moist thud. "Only what? A few hundred to go? If they're all as easy as that, the leftovers will still be warm when I get home."
"It's not one walking dead that men need to worry about." Your voice rumbled out, and as if summoned by your words, more undead clambered through the remains of the gate, first as a slow trickle. Then as a mighty flood, a tangled tide of putrescent limbs climbed over themselves as they surged to fill the ground you left open to them. "Get back behind the barricades, and make them pay for every inch."
The battle began.
The tide of dead crashed upon the makeshift defences of Meissen and found its defenders unready for the unnatural vigour that animated their dead limbs. They were too fast for their shambling gait, too strong for their withered muscles. Even if you struggled against the sudden onslaught, you might be able to cleave the dead in twain, but when they were pressed so tightly together as they squirmed forward, there was just too much flesh.
In another time, where you were just doing what you could to hold onto Meissen's walls with men unsure how to stick the pointy bit into flesh, the crash of dead would have swung the fight immediately. The dead would have ripped them from the walls and torn them apart with weapons as rotten as them.
"HOLD!" Your voice tears across the battlefield, warring with the din of battle and finding it wanting as your blade splits a rattler's skull apart moments before it would have carved out a man's throat. "KEEP YOUR WEAPONS UP; PUT YOUR WEIGHT INTO EVERY STRIKE!"
On a night before tonight, that initial surge of the malignant dead would have sealed Meissen's fate.
"YOUR GODS ARE WATCHING; WILL THEY FIND YOU WANTING? WILL THEY FIND THIS IS ALL YOUR MEASURE?" Your left hand leaves your hilt, lashing out to catch the back of the remnants of a rotter's funeral garb, bodily pulling it off a frothing-mouthed fanatic and dragging it in front of you as a rotten human shield.
"IF THEY'RE FASTER THAN THEY LOOK, THEN STRIKE EARLIER." You pull away from the melee for a moment, half a dozen men stepping forward in your place. Your eye flick across the barricades, a mind cursed for bloodshed, noting where and how the defenders buckled.
"IF YOU CAN NOT OVERPOWER THEM, THEN GIVE THEM NO CHANCE TO USE THEIR STRENGTH BEFORE YOU CUT THEM DOWN." You crash into the next flashpoint with all the force of a sledgehammer, moments before the dead would have burst through the faltering militia, the desperate fanatics following you descending on the dead alongside you with howls of piety.
"IF YOU CAN NOT KILL YOUR FOE, THEN KILL THE FOE OF THE MAN NEXT TO YOU." You took your own advice, a blade slamming through the neck of a rotter, distracted by one of the militiamen. A favour a man next to you repaid, driving his rusted sickle through the foetid eye of a dead moments away from swiping at you.
"DO NOT LET THEM STEP AN INCH THROUGH THE BARRICADES; IF THEY ARE CRAWLING OVER THEMSELVES TO DIE, OBLIGE THEM!" Through sheer physical might, you began slowly forcing the dead back, every swing of your blade reaping scores of dead as you hacked through rotten flesh. A weak, pock-marked skull crushes into splinters under your boot as you begin climbing over the dozens of dead already choking the gap of the barricade.
As you loomed above the battlefield, atop a mound of corpses, you saw your men strike back. Given a moment's heart and the taste of battle, they had begun to thrive, and for one tempting moment, as the gothic pulchritude of bloodshed sung in your heart and blood, you wondered if you even needed Rosmalen's men. Or if you would turn aside the horrors of the night here before his order would come in minutes.
You forced yourself forward, clearing the barricades with all the terrible strength and fury of a Norscan warrior, tempered and aimed by a mind sharpened by Verena's grace. To be within your reach was to return to Morr's grace, and as age-rotten blood dribbled down your face, the undead buckled in your wake.
Behind you, the militia followed, swept up by the hot blood of battle as all true warriors were, and you exulted in the familiarity of your youth before it was confused by reason and morality. A simpler time that you loathed and deeply longed to feel once again.
The dead buckled under the surge of the living. By your side, men driven mad by the toxic promise of redemption screamed as they threw themselves at the irredeemable dark. In the sky, arrows thudded down like rain, and makeshift spears lanced out to reap a splendid toll.
It was a moment of glory and grit and a terrible mistake.
The Meissen militia had staved off the dead through one simple fact. The dead could not truly leverage the insane numbers advantage they had over the living while they were hidden behind their barricades.
No matter if they tried to shamble over those barricades or shove their way through with unnatural strength, they were forced to fight piecemeal against the militia.
You were forced to watch, with your blood hot in your veins, as the militia who had surged out to meet the dead by your own example were taught why they needed those barricades.
With all the desperate strength and hard-bitten skill you held with the blade, it was all you could manage to spare those closest to you from the unstoppable advantage of numbers.
Those distant from you though… they who left behind their most significant advantage, they were descended upon by a hungry swarm. Brutalised screams filled the battlefield as Meissen was taught to fear the rotten grasp of the shambling dead once more, that there was a reason they had spent weeks huddled in their beds, flinching at every noise.
"PULL BACK TO THE BARRICADES; HOLD THE BARRICADES." You howl, feeling in your bones as your lines crumbled around you, and you were left with the terrible knowledge that soon you would be left alone in a tide of dead. "ROSMALEN WILL BE HERE SOON; HOLD THE BARRICADES UNTIL HIS ORDER."
You carve your way back to the barricades yourself, backing up over corpses as you are pressed in on all sides, your back only kept safe by the very fanatics you broke into fearlessness.
Perhaps if it was just that, you could have pulled together Messien's defenders. Stitched the defenders together into a shaken but fighting defence.
Then, a low rumbling growl dripped across the battlefield, and across the field of corpses, you saw something truly horrible. Towering above the dead was a hulking form of leathery hide and bulging musculature. Mutant bone juts out of the creature, jagged and brutal.
Monstrous yellow eyes, meet your own. Its maw opened, offal and drool dripping from thin, rotten teeth as it roared at you.
For a single awful moment, all you could see was the writhing form of twisted limbs and cancerous growth.
You watch, atop that mound of corpses, where you had once felt like you were teetering on the edge of utter victory as that victory was crushed into helpless defeat. The sight of such a terrible beast was the final mark to break the militia of Messien, a hundred and change men almost as one broke and ran.
All that was left behind were men too enamoured by their blood-drenched forgiveness to care that they were surrounded by only the dead, eager and choked by a terrible desire to become one of those corpses in a self-destructive need for the god's favour.
"PULL BACK! TO THE FIRE TRAPS." The bulk of your troops had broken, and what was left was maddened men more concerned with killing as many dead as the gods thought their soul was worth than the defence of their home. "THE GODS DEMAND YOU MAKE THEM PAY FOR YOUR LIVES DEARLY, BACK TO THE FIRE TRAPS!"
You were not sure if it was a miracle your words were heeded or a cruel trick by bitter dark gods. The fanatical that had offered not one step when the others broke and ran pulled away not under the ceaseless tide but by your command. In doing so, they found themselves suffering under the same horror that had broken their once brothers-in-arms. With no man holding the barricades, the dead flowed through it like a foetid tide.
Dozens of men were cut down like vermin, ripped apart by cold bone. The fanatics had already borne the brunt of the battle, and as they retreated in the wake of a force that outnumbered them tenfold, the toll grew heavier.
Where there was once a century of men you had broken and moulded into something already too damaged to break, there were mere dozens. Long past decimation, the fanatics approached annihilation.
And with them dead, the militia broken, Verena only knowing what happened to the men on the walls, and Rosmalen's men still not in position, Meissen would be entirely open to the dead.
The sound of clash shattering rang above the deafening screams of dying fanatics.
Liquid splashed upon the barricades and, between one moment and the next, erupted in a great fire.
You twist around in a panic, caught off guard and unsure, and see the grimly determined countenance of Otfried, the Taalite you had talked to this very afternoon, one of the few dozen hunters still with a bow fit for purpose. That bow was slung over his shoulder next to a quiver that was damningly empty.
But he did not seem to have let the lack of arrows keep him down, taking a proffered glass bottle from someone else and lighting cloth stuffed into its neck.
You, for a moment, had to acknowledge there must be some level of irony in a reformed Norscan raider forgetting entirely that he had archers. To be fair to you, their effect on the battle, with such a terrible glut of flesh to chew through and arrows ineffective at best to put down rattlers, had been more in the abstract than in the important real. Their contributions had been well-placed salvo's of some effect, but little beyond that, until now.
As the father threw the glass filled with clear liquid, and it shattered against the encroaching horde that was teetering moments from claiming a victory that would break Meissen, he and his men became the single most pivotal aspect of the defence of Meissen.
More fire blossomed, the terrible stench of rotten flesh burning like a sweet rose to your nose, and the dead found their momentum ripped from them once more.
Your lips split into a grin, both thankful and full of teeth, and the young father simply nodded at you before gesturing for another bottle.
"KEEP MOVING TO THE FIRE WALLS. DO NOT GIVE THEM TIME TO RECOVER." What few fanatics that had managed to survive thus far limped back to the second and final defensive lines. Stumbling over torn-down houses in a manner so very similar to the very dead they fought.
You, however, stayed behind, backing up only as the hunters moved beyond the wall, imposing yourself between the burning dead as they attempted to rush at Otfried's men. Thinned by fire and the bulk kept at bay for the moment by fire, it was child's play for a man of your skill to hold the dead back for men who so gloriously averted disaster. Clearing away the few rattlers that had survived the conflagration.
As they crossed through to the other side of the 'walls' that would soon be engulfed in a more permanent flame, you yourself began carving your way to that relative safety as you distantly heard Rosmalen ordering his men into position.
They were late. But that was something you would have to deal with later.
Then before you could cross the threshold, joining the thin line of wild-eyed fanatics whose remnants hardly numbered half a dozen, a roar hits the air once more.
The roving beast that tightly muscled horror stepped through the fading fire of the first barricades, the smouldering embers hardly even bothering the yellowed hide that made up its skin. Around it, more dead stumbled through, crawling over the husks of the barriers and shambling forward.
But your eyes were locked with that creature. That terrible spark of not quite intelligence, or worse, a remnant of what was once intelligence in those monstrous yellow eyes.
Then, so very akin to the first of the dead that had charged your barricades alone, it surged forward.
But this time, there was no vague feeling of contempt. Its limbs flexed and moved with a gut-churning similarity to the flesh of man. Unlike the first rotter, which was fast despite its ungainly nature, this creature was all smooth movements and natural strides. Graceful in a way that was both disturbing and deeply uncanny.
Knowing what little you knew of the dead, it was like the difference between an amateur puppeteer and a master.
And perhaps the most terrible of all, unlike the rotter, it was not alone. All around it was the press of rotten dead, numbering in hundreds still.
You widen your feet, your stance lowering as you hold your blade in front of you. The horror was taller than you, towering nearly twofold above the dead, and its hulking musculature promised that it was stronger than you too.
This was going to take a little more than just brute force to deal with.
Luckily, you were far from the boy of ten and three earning the title "The Brute" with knuckles slick with warrior priest blood. You roll your shoulders and glance to your side where the few remnants of fanatics stand, vibrating with all the repressed energy of someone who had fallen in love with their own death.
To your sides, the fire walls Rosmalen had spent so very long were finally lit, leaving what you knew would only be a few entrances the dead could be funnelled through.
Rosmalen had yet to send swordsmen to this entrance. It seemed Izek's warning would only stretch so far. First late, and now leaving you to hold an entire chokepoint near enough on your own.
"If you die, make sure you die well." They stared up at you, and for a moment, you thought that the dehumanisation and battle had torn their comprehension of language from them. "Your gods are watching." You pull upon Verena's attention, feeling divine grace flood your limbs and lick at the few wounds that had torn through your chainmail. Then it spilt out into the world itself, pouring into the fanatics, and for a moment, you could almost swear it was not just Verena's attention pulled to the world. "Give them a good death to watch."
You grin at them, wide and wild, and they grin back.
Six men broken by your actions, and you broken by your own life. In that very moment, all your guilt towards them burnt away, and all you could feel was a brotherhood.
Then the dead arrived, and the seven of you became death. Left alone to hold this, you tore through the dead like the scythe of your goddess's husband. Hateful anger and brutality descended upon you as you lost yourself in the relentless, sick bloodlust.
All the while, your eyes kept on the approaching horror. No… to be more accurate, all the while, you approached it too. How else were you going to drive your sword through its skull? How else but approaching it as it approached you were you going to feel the glorious feeling of its blood painting you red?
The six survivors pressed into the wake of space you formed; the weak had been slaughtered from the fanatics, leaving behind only the mad capable of surviving a night of horrors unturned. They created a bulwark of maddened faith and, in that moment, left bereft of impurities by the crucible of their trial this night, the dead shattered.
You paid no mind to that as the horror crashed into you. In a moment, you were proven right, as the creature's insane strength, matching its disgusting musculature, threatened to batter you aside like paper in a storm. But you had survived a Mōteatall, one of the terrible storms that rocked the sea of claws, your longboat cleaving through the water as it seemed the gods themselves thundered in displeasure.
You knew how to weather what should be unweatherable. You let the force of the blow push you back rather than shove you down, your blade slipping underneath its guard as its powerful blow found nothing to catch upon. Your feet twist as you follow your blade, throwing as much force as you can manage in the distance you had. The crude iron of your chipped sword cuts across thickly muscled abs, from waist to pectoral.
Against a human foe, it would have split them in half. Against the creature's unnaturally stiff hide and thickly wound muscles, all your sword did was split open flesh to let rotten blood dribble forth.
You slide underneath the next blow, tricky feet ceding space and distance with all the reckless abandon of a man sure he knew what he was doing. Your footwork impeccable, even with the way the dead twisted and crunched underneath every step, slipping around the crush of the brute's swings with almost sinuous grace.
The two of you, almost by chance, found yourselves in an almost arena of sorts, as the six fanatics left standing kept the salivating dead at bay with faith and fury. They did not for a moment concern themselves with what you were doing, and in that maddened moment, that feeling of brotherhood and trust lost to you so long ago burnt even brighter.
And you drove that feeling of brotherhood into the crucible of the bloodlust thundering through your veins and forced yourself to greater heights. You skittered around blows so quick that they cracked in the air as your blade lashed out once twice, thrice against the creature, tearing into flesh and muscle.
But they were just cosmetic for a creature like this. Its blood was so thick that it hardly flowed, its skin and muscles so tightly wound that no matter what you cleaved apart it, there would still be strength enough to punch through steel.
You needed something slightly more… definitive to put the creature down. As the two of you meet once more in a flurry of blows, rather than bothering with the preamble, you twist past it as it lashes out at you. Your boot stomped on the back of its knee, just underneath the thickly corded muscle of its thigh.
Thankfully, rather than deciding that undeath and the mockery of animation that suffused its body meant it was immune to the basic biology of a knee bending, it crumbled forward. It was, in truth, little more than an annoyance; in moments, it was back on its feet, whirling around to face you.
But a few moments was more than enough time to make space. Space that the creature quickly threw itself forward in a charge to chew through quickly became a yellowed near blur of terrible undead motion, half a ton or more of charging brutality, a sight more terrible and final than even the charge of the finest of Bretonnian knights.
And just what you had wanted to see.
The timing was as tight as you had ever risked your life to slide under a blow fuelled by a charge that blurred to your eyes rather than step away or desperately throw yourself aside.
Thick hide and tight muscle cleaved apart as you used its own momentum against it, driving crude steel near to the hilt. Then, your battlemad grin widens as you twist your legs underneath you, your entire body turning with the momentum of the creature as you use the blade you had just driven deep into its sternum as a lever. Your muscles strained and screamed as you lifted the horror up, dragging it over yourself.
In moments you felt the crude iron of your blade - give - the terrible sound of iron rending apart underneath insane weight. Your right-hand leaves the hilt, snapping up to slam into a hold on the creature's neck, using both through your pivots to bodily crush the creature to the ground with a terrible crack of bone.
You stomp a boot into its face as its muscles writhe around a shattered skeletal structure. It tries to strike at you with its left arm, struggling to even move. You rip the blade from its sternum and drive into its shoulder. Pinning its last usable limb to the ground.
For a moment, you stand there, staring into monstrous eyes as it failed to keep up with the brutality you had inflicted upon it. It snarled, its muscles twisting and writhing, and all you could see was leathery skin and mutated flesh, and rage took you.
Your fist crashed into its face, over and over, as the burning hatred consumed you. In a moment, you were in two times, and the black hate - once powerless and impotent - boiled over into frothing fury. Your knuckles split upon hardened bone and then split hardened bone in turn. Teeth chipped and cut at your flesh, but you just kept smashing and breaking until the creature's face was shattered and broken.
You drove your left hand into the toothless maw of the creature, gripping its lower jaw, as your right dug through the mush of its eyes.
Then with all the might you could muster, you pull the two apart until bone split from bone and you were left with three-thirds of a monster's skull.
You straighten up, eyes wide, as you hold your trophy up and scream in victory. The display of brutal victory unmistakable.
As you stand there, full of hate and rage, you feel something inside you shift and move. The cool touch of law and justice. Of science and advancement, poured through you, like a gentle drink. It softly, almost tenderly, threaded away your anger, leaving you with nothing but Verena's grace filling you.
Your eyes carefully close as you bask in the calm of being a civilised mind. Of being human as your goddess extricated you from the terrible destruction that was wrought in your blood.
Then you open them as the warm touch of dawn creeps up your face. Before you, where there had once been a teaming mass of endless undead, there were now only corpses. The six fanatics - men - that had followed you and survived until the end basked in their victory, and as they celebrated, you let the full force of that divinity so comfortably in your bones pull out into the world.
This time, there was no mistaking that it was not just Verena's energy that filled the dawnlight, and the men broke down sobbing as they were offered the salvation and attention from their god that you had broken them to need.
It was over.
-
Militia - 62 dead. 55 injured. 65 alive.
Fanatics - 94 dead. 6 wounded.
Swordsmen - 49 alive.
Meissen hunters- 31 alive.
Wall garrison Militia - 10 dead. 140 alive.
Fanatics - 94 dead. 6 wounded.
Swordsmen - 49 alive.
Meissen hunters- 31 alive.
Wall garrison Militia - 10 dead. 140 alive.
Front gate rotters - 985 dead
Front gate rattlers - 553 dead
Flanking rotters - 300 dead
Flanking rattlers - 200 dead
Roving beast - dead.
Front gate rattlers - 553 dead
Flanking rotters - 300 dead
Flanking rattlers - 200 dead
Roving beast - dead.
Meissen lives to see another day.
Asavar first round: 57
Fanatics first round: 68
Militia first Round: 65
Zombies first round: 76
Skeleton first round:74
Hunters first round:35
Militia Wall Garrison: 70
Flanking Zombies:9
Flanking Skeletons:55
Asavar second round: 91
Fanatics second round:68
Militia second round: 112
Zombies second round: 68
Skeleton second round:36
Hunters second round: 47
Militia Wall Garrison second round: 113
Flanking Zombies second round:82
Flanking Skeletons second round:-2
Asavar Third round:94
Fanatics Third round:27
Militia Third round: 21
Zombies Third round: 59
Skeleton Third round:77
Hunters Third round: 81
Militia Morale roll #1 (Health threshold 35): 16 (Morale drops to routing)
Militia Morale roll #2 (Health threshold 30): 23 (Morale drops to Broken)
Asavar Pulling his forces back: 91
Asavar Fourth round:106
Fanatics Fourth round:23
Zombies Fourth round: 51
Skeleton Fourth round:60
Hunters Fourth round: 85
Rosamalen's Swordsmen First Round: 54
Horror first round:88
Asavar Fifth round:95
Fanatics fourth round: 121
Zombies fourth round:86
Hunters fifth round:3
Rosamalen's Swordsmen second round: 102
Horror second round:52
Fanatics first round: 68
Militia first Round: 65
Zombies first round: 76
Skeleton first round:74
Hunters first round:35
Militia Wall Garrison: 70
Flanking Zombies:9
Flanking Skeletons:55
Asavar second round: 91
Fanatics second round:68
Militia second round: 112
Zombies second round: 68
Skeleton second round:36
Hunters second round: 47
Militia Wall Garrison second round: 113
Flanking Zombies second round:82
Flanking Skeletons second round:-2
Asavar Third round:94
Fanatics Third round:27
Militia Third round: 21
Zombies Third round: 59
Skeleton Third round:77
Hunters Third round: 81
Militia Morale roll #1 (Health threshold 35): 16 (Morale drops to routing)
Militia Morale roll #2 (Health threshold 30): 23 (Morale drops to Broken)
Asavar Pulling his forces back: 91
Asavar Fourth round:106
Fanatics Fourth round:23
Zombies Fourth round: 51
Skeleton Fourth round:60
Hunters Fourth round: 85
Rosamalen's Swordsmen First Round: 54
Horror first round:88
Asavar Fifth round:95
Fanatics fourth round: 121
Zombies fourth round:86
Hunters fifth round:3
Rosamalen's Swordsmen second round: 102
Horror second round:52
There were 58 rolls for this battle, some of them I cut off because the Zombies had been mauled enough that they could not actually do any more damage, they just had that big beefy health pool. Which might imply I should er refine the system. It did produce some pretty cool ups and downs in the fight, most notables is Herminia failing all attempts to resupply the hunters, yet the hunters for a while just kept rolling higher, until they got the first 100 of the quest.
Maybe it was a slight overreaction for them to invent molotovs, but I thought it was fitting that they improvised.
Another note is the fanatics rolling pretty poorly until there was literally none of them left, and then just rolling like a god with six of them remaining. Also special shout out to the wall militia rolling like gigachads and kicking the flanking undead teeth in by round two.
The next voting post should be sometime later this week. I hope you enjoyed the fight, and that it was as gripping reading as it felt writing.
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Incompetence, Malfeasance, and politics. (Defense of Meissen aftermath)
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If there was one thing that you had learnt and knew was worth keeping from a time of long-lost brotherhood, was that the mood in the aftermath is just as important, if not more important than the mood prior to any event. When limbs ached with the pleasing pain of satisfied exhaustion and orifices dripped with sweat and other bodily fluids, came a time to whisper sweet nothings and assurances. To let your men know you were satisfied and what they did well.
Aftercare, you believe it was called. It bound men together tighter together than any bodily exertion you cared to name.
And when you put it like that, it sounded like you had fucked your men rather than fought alongside them, and in the terrible twilight of a battle, where even the most potent warrior must watch the wounded suffer and die impotently, it was essential to keep your own morale up with filthy jokes.
At least, you thought it was essential.
You roll your shoulders, muscles stiff from hours of slaughter, and glance around the remnants of the fanatics. All bar none were silent as they attempted to process what had happened, the brutal mulch of emotions you had forced onto them, warring with their sense of self-reasserting itself and the burgeoning trauma of a vicious battle against the dead.
It was disorientating for them, you knew. As they realised they had been so very keen for death and had been denied it before finding that denial twisting around the emerging realisation that they did not, in fact, really want to die and the lingering collar of the need to please the god. A war of two disparate fronts that would take even the strongest mind days to muddle through.
You knew because that was not necessarily a flaw with the crude methodology of dehumanisation. But a feature, if not a benefit. The disorientation meant that it was easy to trap even the victorious in an endless spiral of self-destructive faith.
It would be easy for you to do. To thread them along a chain of logic that demanded them to repeat their feats, that the favour they gained could only be kept by constant bloody maintenance. Binding them to you with heavy shackles of faith that would see them only leave your side through Morr's embrace.
Just as it would be easy to do the opposite. To untangle the confusing thread of conflicting emotions that broiled within them. To coax them back into a sensible, fully formed human and let them bask in the forgiveness that you forced them to crave above their own life. Let your influence unravel and let the people that they were take control of their lives once more.
You look up for a moment, eyes drifting between six figures that you don't even know the names of. Six… six brothers that had stood alongside you in glorious combat and filled a void you had spent years suffering under.
There was a want in you that you could not ignore. A want to twist their minds until they cannot think of leaving you and basking in a facsimile of your youth. One that might grow to be something greater in time. But just because you could not ignore it did not mean you could not deny it.
Nor did it mean you could not try to teeter on the mad edge of having your cake and eating it too.
You were not just a man of pious fate, but also a leader of men, and in battle forged bonds you could… you could extricate from them, maybe? Pull them to you, not with the toxic lever of weaponised faith, but something more… personal. Both unravel the destructive mess you made of their minds and… and keep that bond of brotherhood formed in the dark of night.
[] You sharpened your tools
This was a matter deeply familiar to you, and you could already hear iterations of the words you would speak echo in your ear. These six had survived the night and done something truly glorious, and you would set them to doing again and again until they broke. (Low DC piety roll)
[] Pull the thread taunt until it all unravelled.
Less familiar, but what you had done produced thoughts so very predictable. Thoughts you yourself have grappled with, and you knew what was needed to coax someone away from them. To step back into what made them… a person, not a weapon. (Low DC piety roll)
[] Have your cake, and eat it too.
Where would you even begin with this… greedy proposition? To both lead these six through pulling themselves together and not snap their minds further? To keep them in your sway not as fanatics but as people with their own thoughts beyond the gods' mercy? It was so very deeply selfish, the compromise of someone who refused to give up anything. (High DC diplomacy/piety roll)
[] Let what would take its course take its course.
Yesterday you had ripped autonomy through these people in a wild and frenetic show of dehumanisation and blame. This morning, you should step away and let them claim autonomy in finding their own way in the confusion and disorientation.
-
"My men never got a resupply of arrows." You glance over your shoulder to see Otfrieds thin form leaning against one of the burnt-out houses that had been sacrificed in the fighting.
"Your men?" Dealing with the Hunters had always been an exercise in frustration. They were independent before the siege had begun, hardly linked to Meissen in truth, and lacking any real connection between each other beyond having bows and maybe a religious link. Even calling them 'the Hunters' implied a sense of unity that was functionally not there.
"My men." It seemed that Otfied had changed that. Or at least was of the opinion he had. Which, if you were being honest, worked for you.
"How many resupplies were missed?" Fletching arrows was a job that fell by the wayside most days, there was simply too much to be done, and it had long fallen to Herminia to organise a steady stream of at least functional arrows. They were not much, often little more than sharpened sticks or sharp flint tied to a stick with reed, but it kept the hunters at least functional through the night.
It was a fragile system, and if you were being honest, you were entirely unsurprised that it failed throughout the intense assault.
"All of them." It takes a moment for you to register the words, and as the implications set in, your lips press into a thin line.
It could have been incompetence. This was the borderlands; it was far from a place that cultivated incredible talent. It could have been Herminia bucking against Rosmalen's orders, it could have been her attempts were waylaid…
"The… fire bottles?" You question absently as you mull over the potential reasons.
"We ran out of arrows by the second hour, ran out of heavy enough rocks to throw not long after that." The man shrugs against the wall he is leaning against, and despite his apparent nonchalance, he fiddles with the knife at his waist incessantly.
You, or something about this situation, were making him nervous.
"We found the bottles at the base of the walls Rosmalen's thugs set up, and there was no one around to tell us not to take them." As he spoke, his facade slowly broke, his voice rising in pitch and the cadence of his words quickening. "So I had an idea if the oil makes it easier for wood to burn if we splashed the undead with it somehow, and it was set on fire."
It was almost like you were being given excuses by a small child. There had to be some irony in that, considering your first real interaction was because of a small precocious child.
"I see where Elisinda gets her smarts from, then. It was a good idea." You gave him a wiry grin and were satisfied when he only slightly flinched at the sight. You would have never thought to use the oil bottles as any sort of projectile and doubted you would have thought of using a cloth-like some kind of matchlock wick. Shaking yourself out of the thought of whatever it was he had invented in the heat of necessity, you focus back on Otfried to find the father himself disconnected from the conversation.
His brow was furrowed, his mucky green eyes glinting with what you would almost call a revelation. They flick up to meet yours, "We're alive, aren't we?" His tone was not quite disbelieving, but it was clear that despite your words to him yesterday, he had expected to die tonight.
For a moment, you were not sure how to respond. There was a temptation there to reinforce faith or attempt to find a common pride to build a more personal rapport. A passing thought would have you warn that it was not over, that there were still threats beyond the walls and perhaps more dangerously inside them too. Play and imply on the suspicions he had brought to you not fully vocalised.
"Yes, we are." But long ago, you learned the value of not shoving your foot in your mouth and keeping it simple. At least, sometimes.
He hesitates again before his hand clutches at something hanging off his left wrist. "I-I felt it. You were right yesterday that Taal hadn't abandoned us, that we just needed to call him back… I-I felt him."
"In a single act, you ripped the battle from the jaws of defeat and gave Meissen a fighting chance. You saved my life and the lives of dozens of others." You bow your head slightly… well further than you already had to, to look the other man in the eyes. "Taal would never look over such bravery. No god worth the name would."
He flushes, red stretching across his face and up his ears. Then as if to change the subject, he opens his mouth again. "There's no good reason for the seneschal to not have delivered our arrows, right?"
There was something exceptional about saying so little and then being given near everything you wanted despite it. Not putting in any of the effort to think of something properly, leading, and getting all the reward as if you had.
You do not say that, of course. Mostly because it would make you look insane, so you keep it simple and just nod.
"I know a few men that were in the wall patrols. I think you should speak to them." You raise an eyebrow at him, and he jerks his head slightly. "You should hear it from them; I think… the words would be better from the right source."
Was that an attempt to mimic the same logic you gave him yesterday? What is this warm sensation in your heart? For a moment, you feel Verena stir deep inside you, the twist of energy and attention turning vaguely amused and… vindicated?
But it slips away into the simple existence before you can examine it more, and you are left with a warm feeling in your chest you struggle to place and confusion in your head.
Sometimes having a god's personal attention was just not the best.
"Nor-... Asavar?" You startle slightly and find Otfried giving you a strange look. "You spaced out there for a moment. I heard head injuries did that. Do we need to take you to the brat?"
You shake your head slightly. "No, just thinking. Take me to your friend; if you think I should get it from them, I'll trust you on it."
"Thinking about Herminia?" He pries as he pushes off the wall and begins walking towards the centre of Meissen.
"Yeahhh." You probably rightfully think that even if you explained that you were trying to figure out strange foreign emotions swirling inside you - and that at least some of those emotions came from your goddess - that Otfried would be very put off.
Honestly, even just explaining it like that in your head puts you off. So, like all good and well-adjusted men, you bottle away all those thoughts and ignore them as you turn to something less confusing to think about as you follow Otfried.
Namely, what the hell were you going to do about Herminia utterly failing her contribution to the defence of Meissen.
[] Confront her in front of the rest of the council.
Incompetence, malfeasance or some insane attempt to drive home her position on the iron, you could not let Meissen's ability to defend itself be compromised like that again.
[] Confront her privately.
You would get nothing out of her in front of the other two; she would simply go on the offensive to preserve herself. But maybe if you talked privately you could find out what happened.
[] Investigate further, some other day.
Getting answers from her would be like pulling teeth from a… thing that did not want its teeth pulled… just ask around the people who were meant to produce the arrows and the people meant to deliver them and get your answers from them.
[] Drop it.
While the hunters proved an integral part of the defence, it was only when they had to improvise without their bows that they made a truly pivotal contribution. You were not in a position to get answers, and the hunters were capable of finding other ways to contribute.
-
"Got three of the rattlers, basically fell over right in front of me."
There were… a great number of potential explanations for why Rosmalen did not order the militia defending the forward barricades to retreat to the second line of defences earlier. The simplest explanation you hoped for was the walls were teetering on defeat, and prudence dictated caution in deploying away from them.
"There were attacks just as night fell, but once we dealt with them, it was a quiet night."
As Otfried introduced you to men who had patrolled those walls, it became clear that that explanation would either require Rosmalen to be a man of caution that had long pushed past indecisiveness. Or that he had not held the swordsmen in reserve for fear of the walls falling.
"Didn't even get stragglers past midnight."
Either option left any reasonable explanation for Rosmalen not giving the order to retreat to the fire walls and deploying his swordsmen… unsatisfying.
"Heard some of the boys sent runners to Rosmalen to keep him updated; dunno why they bothered, nothing to say when we dealt with the first lot."
Because they all involved either incompetence or a malicious cleaving to political maneuvering over the lives of Meissen's populace.
"Most exciting thing that happened was some of Rosmalen's men carrying the wounded back to where Izek's brat set up his tents. Didn't even see the dogs move tonight."
But the truly, genuinely frustrating thing was incompetence or intentional action; it had left Rosmalen in a position of political dominance over Meissen. He held the loyalty of not just the most trained force in Meissen but the most intact force after the casualties of tonight.
Before tonight, Herminia or even yourself could have mustered up enough of the militia to make any attempt to impose his will through force unviable.
Now… you were not so sure.
[] Confront him in front of the rest of the council.
Rosmalen has attempted to let the defenders of Meissen get slaughtered enmass to remove his political opponents, namely you. Pull him to task in front of Izek, and if that fails… deal with him.
[] Confront Rosmalen yourself.
He tried to get you killed; that was obvious to anyone with knowledge of battle and the full picture. You… did not appreciate that.
[] Stay your tongue
As frustrating as it was, this was a masterstroke, and without your own power base or breaking Rosmalen, there was nothing you could do. Or, more accurately, nothing you could do right now.
-
Izek does not wake easily. The border prince is old, and his body and mind are failing him. In an ideal world, the council would have already met and discussed the state of Meissen after the assault.
As it was, you would have hours yet before he would wake up and a meeting could be had.
Which meant you had time to prepare.
Choose 2 actions from the below.
[] Collect the corpse of your kill
The horror was a hulking beast, strong enough to trivialise your own strength and a worthy trophy of any killer. It would be a statement to have it dragged to Izek's manor. Both to Meissen of their victory and to your political opponents
[] Talk to Misha.
Herminia and Rosmalen exposed themselves as either too incompetent to be trusted or too enamoured with accumulating power to be allowed near it. Misha, despite his many failings, had yet to do that. If you could find common ground, you could maybe bring the other two to task.
[] Find a new weapon.
Your iron blade had snapped when you used it to lift the horror and was little more than an ungainly club. You needed another weapon, and whatever you find now might not be much, but it would be something.
[] Do what you could for the dead.
You were not a priest of Morr, as you had to reiterate dozens of times. But there comes a time in someone's life when they had to step into the shoes that should be filled by a priest of Morr. Do what you can to prepare funerary rights.
[] Gather the militia that broke
You lacked a power base, but that did not mean that you could not find leverage on one. Gather what you could of the militia that broke, and use the shame of running and leaving their home to be destroyed and the implication of Rosmalen's abandonment to influence them into something resembling a support base. They would not be able to truly fight Rosmalen's swordsmen, but you could make it unappealing.
[] Gather the militia that broke and break them further.
You lacked a power base, but that did not mean that you could not find leverage on one. Gather what you could of the militia that broke, and use the shame of running and leaving their home to be destroyed to twist them into the same fanatical shame you inflicted upon the hundred from yesterday; all but six now lay dead in the main street of Meissen.
Aftercare, you believe it was called. It bound men together tighter together than any bodily exertion you cared to name.
And when you put it like that, it sounded like you had fucked your men rather than fought alongside them, and in the terrible twilight of a battle, where even the most potent warrior must watch the wounded suffer and die impotently, it was essential to keep your own morale up with filthy jokes.
At least, you thought it was essential.
You roll your shoulders, muscles stiff from hours of slaughter, and glance around the remnants of the fanatics. All bar none were silent as they attempted to process what had happened, the brutal mulch of emotions you had forced onto them, warring with their sense of self-reasserting itself and the burgeoning trauma of a vicious battle against the dead.
It was disorientating for them, you knew. As they realised they had been so very keen for death and had been denied it before finding that denial twisting around the emerging realisation that they did not, in fact, really want to die and the lingering collar of the need to please the god. A war of two disparate fronts that would take even the strongest mind days to muddle through.
You knew because that was not necessarily a flaw with the crude methodology of dehumanisation. But a feature, if not a benefit. The disorientation meant that it was easy to trap even the victorious in an endless spiral of self-destructive faith.
It would be easy for you to do. To thread them along a chain of logic that demanded them to repeat their feats, that the favour they gained could only be kept by constant bloody maintenance. Binding them to you with heavy shackles of faith that would see them only leave your side through Morr's embrace.
Just as it would be easy to do the opposite. To untangle the confusing thread of conflicting emotions that broiled within them. To coax them back into a sensible, fully formed human and let them bask in the forgiveness that you forced them to crave above their own life. Let your influence unravel and let the people that they were take control of their lives once more.
You look up for a moment, eyes drifting between six figures that you don't even know the names of. Six… six brothers that had stood alongside you in glorious combat and filled a void you had spent years suffering under.
There was a want in you that you could not ignore. A want to twist their minds until they cannot think of leaving you and basking in a facsimile of your youth. One that might grow to be something greater in time. But just because you could not ignore it did not mean you could not deny it.
Nor did it mean you could not try to teeter on the mad edge of having your cake and eating it too.
You were not just a man of pious fate, but also a leader of men, and in battle forged bonds you could… you could extricate from them, maybe? Pull them to you, not with the toxic lever of weaponised faith, but something more… personal. Both unravel the destructive mess you made of their minds and… and keep that bond of brotherhood formed in the dark of night.
[] You sharpened your tools
This was a matter deeply familiar to you, and you could already hear iterations of the words you would speak echo in your ear. These six had survived the night and done something truly glorious, and you would set them to doing again and again until they broke. (Low DC piety roll)
[] Pull the thread taunt until it all unravelled.
Less familiar, but what you had done produced thoughts so very predictable. Thoughts you yourself have grappled with, and you knew what was needed to coax someone away from them. To step back into what made them… a person, not a weapon. (Low DC piety roll)
[] Have your cake, and eat it too.
Where would you even begin with this… greedy proposition? To both lead these six through pulling themselves together and not snap their minds further? To keep them in your sway not as fanatics but as people with their own thoughts beyond the gods' mercy? It was so very deeply selfish, the compromise of someone who refused to give up anything. (High DC diplomacy/piety roll)
[] Let what would take its course take its course.
Yesterday you had ripped autonomy through these people in a wild and frenetic show of dehumanisation and blame. This morning, you should step away and let them claim autonomy in finding their own way in the confusion and disorientation.
-
"My men never got a resupply of arrows." You glance over your shoulder to see Otfrieds thin form leaning against one of the burnt-out houses that had been sacrificed in the fighting.
"Your men?" Dealing with the Hunters had always been an exercise in frustration. They were independent before the siege had begun, hardly linked to Meissen in truth, and lacking any real connection between each other beyond having bows and maybe a religious link. Even calling them 'the Hunters' implied a sense of unity that was functionally not there.
"My men." It seemed that Otfied had changed that. Or at least was of the opinion he had. Which, if you were being honest, worked for you.
"How many resupplies were missed?" Fletching arrows was a job that fell by the wayside most days, there was simply too much to be done, and it had long fallen to Herminia to organise a steady stream of at least functional arrows. They were not much, often little more than sharpened sticks or sharp flint tied to a stick with reed, but it kept the hunters at least functional through the night.
It was a fragile system, and if you were being honest, you were entirely unsurprised that it failed throughout the intense assault.
"All of them." It takes a moment for you to register the words, and as the implications set in, your lips press into a thin line.
It could have been incompetence. This was the borderlands; it was far from a place that cultivated incredible talent. It could have been Herminia bucking against Rosmalen's orders, it could have been her attempts were waylaid…
"The… fire bottles?" You question absently as you mull over the potential reasons.
"We ran out of arrows by the second hour, ran out of heavy enough rocks to throw not long after that." The man shrugs against the wall he is leaning against, and despite his apparent nonchalance, he fiddles with the knife at his waist incessantly.
You, or something about this situation, were making him nervous.
"We found the bottles at the base of the walls Rosmalen's thugs set up, and there was no one around to tell us not to take them." As he spoke, his facade slowly broke, his voice rising in pitch and the cadence of his words quickening. "So I had an idea if the oil makes it easier for wood to burn if we splashed the undead with it somehow, and it was set on fire."
It was almost like you were being given excuses by a small child. There had to be some irony in that, considering your first real interaction was because of a small precocious child.
"I see where Elisinda gets her smarts from, then. It was a good idea." You gave him a wiry grin and were satisfied when he only slightly flinched at the sight. You would have never thought to use the oil bottles as any sort of projectile and doubted you would have thought of using a cloth-like some kind of matchlock wick. Shaking yourself out of the thought of whatever it was he had invented in the heat of necessity, you focus back on Otfried to find the father himself disconnected from the conversation.
His brow was furrowed, his mucky green eyes glinting with what you would almost call a revelation. They flick up to meet yours, "We're alive, aren't we?" His tone was not quite disbelieving, but it was clear that despite your words to him yesterday, he had expected to die tonight.
For a moment, you were not sure how to respond. There was a temptation there to reinforce faith or attempt to find a common pride to build a more personal rapport. A passing thought would have you warn that it was not over, that there were still threats beyond the walls and perhaps more dangerously inside them too. Play and imply on the suspicions he had brought to you not fully vocalised.
"Yes, we are." But long ago, you learned the value of not shoving your foot in your mouth and keeping it simple. At least, sometimes.
He hesitates again before his hand clutches at something hanging off his left wrist. "I-I felt it. You were right yesterday that Taal hadn't abandoned us, that we just needed to call him back… I-I felt him."
"In a single act, you ripped the battle from the jaws of defeat and gave Meissen a fighting chance. You saved my life and the lives of dozens of others." You bow your head slightly… well further than you already had to, to look the other man in the eyes. "Taal would never look over such bravery. No god worth the name would."
He flushes, red stretching across his face and up his ears. Then as if to change the subject, he opens his mouth again. "There's no good reason for the seneschal to not have delivered our arrows, right?"
There was something exceptional about saying so little and then being given near everything you wanted despite it. Not putting in any of the effort to think of something properly, leading, and getting all the reward as if you had.
You do not say that, of course. Mostly because it would make you look insane, so you keep it simple and just nod.
"I know a few men that were in the wall patrols. I think you should speak to them." You raise an eyebrow at him, and he jerks his head slightly. "You should hear it from them; I think… the words would be better from the right source."
Was that an attempt to mimic the same logic you gave him yesterday? What is this warm sensation in your heart? For a moment, you feel Verena stir deep inside you, the twist of energy and attention turning vaguely amused and… vindicated?
But it slips away into the simple existence before you can examine it more, and you are left with a warm feeling in your chest you struggle to place and confusion in your head.
Sometimes having a god's personal attention was just not the best.
"Nor-... Asavar?" You startle slightly and find Otfried giving you a strange look. "You spaced out there for a moment. I heard head injuries did that. Do we need to take you to the brat?"
You shake your head slightly. "No, just thinking. Take me to your friend; if you think I should get it from them, I'll trust you on it."
"Thinking about Herminia?" He pries as he pushes off the wall and begins walking towards the centre of Meissen.
"Yeahhh." You probably rightfully think that even if you explained that you were trying to figure out strange foreign emotions swirling inside you - and that at least some of those emotions came from your goddess - that Otfried would be very put off.
Honestly, even just explaining it like that in your head puts you off. So, like all good and well-adjusted men, you bottle away all those thoughts and ignore them as you turn to something less confusing to think about as you follow Otfried.
Namely, what the hell were you going to do about Herminia utterly failing her contribution to the defence of Meissen.
[] Confront her in front of the rest of the council.
Incompetence, malfeasance or some insane attempt to drive home her position on the iron, you could not let Meissen's ability to defend itself be compromised like that again.
[] Confront her privately.
You would get nothing out of her in front of the other two; she would simply go on the offensive to preserve herself. But maybe if you talked privately you could find out what happened.
[] Investigate further, some other day.
Getting answers from her would be like pulling teeth from a… thing that did not want its teeth pulled… just ask around the people who were meant to produce the arrows and the people meant to deliver them and get your answers from them.
[] Drop it.
While the hunters proved an integral part of the defence, it was only when they had to improvise without their bows that they made a truly pivotal contribution. You were not in a position to get answers, and the hunters were capable of finding other ways to contribute.
-
"Got three of the rattlers, basically fell over right in front of me."
There were… a great number of potential explanations for why Rosmalen did not order the militia defending the forward barricades to retreat to the second line of defences earlier. The simplest explanation you hoped for was the walls were teetering on defeat, and prudence dictated caution in deploying away from them.
"There were attacks just as night fell, but once we dealt with them, it was a quiet night."
As Otfried introduced you to men who had patrolled those walls, it became clear that that explanation would either require Rosmalen to be a man of caution that had long pushed past indecisiveness. Or that he had not held the swordsmen in reserve for fear of the walls falling.
"Didn't even get stragglers past midnight."
Either option left any reasonable explanation for Rosmalen not giving the order to retreat to the fire walls and deploying his swordsmen… unsatisfying.
"Heard some of the boys sent runners to Rosmalen to keep him updated; dunno why they bothered, nothing to say when we dealt with the first lot."
Because they all involved either incompetence or a malicious cleaving to political maneuvering over the lives of Meissen's populace.
"Most exciting thing that happened was some of Rosmalen's men carrying the wounded back to where Izek's brat set up his tents. Didn't even see the dogs move tonight."
But the truly, genuinely frustrating thing was incompetence or intentional action; it had left Rosmalen in a position of political dominance over Meissen. He held the loyalty of not just the most trained force in Meissen but the most intact force after the casualties of tonight.
Before tonight, Herminia or even yourself could have mustered up enough of the militia to make any attempt to impose his will through force unviable.
Now… you were not so sure.
[] Confront him in front of the rest of the council.
Rosmalen has attempted to let the defenders of Meissen get slaughtered enmass to remove his political opponents, namely you. Pull him to task in front of Izek, and if that fails… deal with him.
[] Confront Rosmalen yourself.
He tried to get you killed; that was obvious to anyone with knowledge of battle and the full picture. You… did not appreciate that.
[] Stay your tongue
As frustrating as it was, this was a masterstroke, and without your own power base or breaking Rosmalen, there was nothing you could do. Or, more accurately, nothing you could do right now.
-
Izek does not wake easily. The border prince is old, and his body and mind are failing him. In an ideal world, the council would have already met and discussed the state of Meissen after the assault.
As it was, you would have hours yet before he would wake up and a meeting could be had.
Which meant you had time to prepare.
Choose 2 actions from the below.
[] Collect the corpse of your kill
The horror was a hulking beast, strong enough to trivialise your own strength and a worthy trophy of any killer. It would be a statement to have it dragged to Izek's manor. Both to Meissen of their victory and to your political opponents
[] Talk to Misha.
Herminia and Rosmalen exposed themselves as either too incompetent to be trusted or too enamoured with accumulating power to be allowed near it. Misha, despite his many failings, had yet to do that. If you could find common ground, you could maybe bring the other two to task.
[] Find a new weapon.
Your iron blade had snapped when you used it to lift the horror and was little more than an ungainly club. You needed another weapon, and whatever you find now might not be much, but it would be something.
[] Do what you could for the dead.
You were not a priest of Morr, as you had to reiterate dozens of times. But there comes a time in someone's life when they had to step into the shoes that should be filled by a priest of Morr. Do what you can to prepare funerary rights.
[] Gather the militia that broke
You lacked a power base, but that did not mean that you could not find leverage on one. Gather what you could of the militia that broke, and use the shame of running and leaving their home to be destroyed and the implication of Rosmalen's abandonment to influence them into something resembling a support base. They would not be able to truly fight Rosmalen's swordsmen, but you could make it unappealing.
[] Gather the militia that broke and break them further.
You lacked a power base, but that did not mean that you could not find leverage on one. Gather what you could of the militia that broke, and use the shame of running and leaving their home to be destroyed to twist them into the same fanatical shame you inflicted upon the hundred from yesterday; all but six now lay dead in the main street of Meissen.
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Scheduled vote count started by Minyette06 on Dec 8, 2022 at 1:59 AM, finished with 62 posts and 29 votes.
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[X] Plan Politics
-[X] Have your cake, and eat it too.
-[X] Confront her privately.
-[X] Confront him in front of the rest of the council.
-[X] Gather the militia that broke
-[X] Talk to Misha. {Write in} "Highlight the dangers of Herminia's and Rosmalen's advantages and immediate threat using their treachery during the battle as evidence and offer to make a pact against them"
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[X] Plan: A Question of Honour.
-[X] Let what would take its course take its course.
-[X] Herminia
--[X] Confront her privately
---[X] WRITE-IN. Rosmalen plots to make himself the master of Meissen, and the only winners will be his own men. Secure her support against him and have her help to get the militia into the Council's chamber. We'll figure out the rest after the ambitious mercenary is no longer a threat.
-[X] Rosmalen
--[X] Confront him in front of the rest of the council
--[X] Collect the corpse of your kill
--[X] Gather the militia that broke
---[X] WRITE-IN. Challenge Rosmalen to a duel in a way that he cannot refuse. Reveal Rosmalen's treachery to rally the militia against the mercenaries: the supplies that never came, the reinforcements that never arrived, all their dead and wounded. All the fault of Rosmalen's betrayal. Lead them to the Council to air their grievances, throw the Horror at the council's feet, and shout our challenge at the mercenary: "Rosmalen! I name you COWARD!"
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Brothers and Faith
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[X] Plan Politics
-[X] Have your cake, and eat it too.
As you stand in the aftermath of the brutal battle, an island in a sea of bone and gravel, burnt out houses and torn apart streets all around you, you consider not just the fanatics, but yourself.
Throughout the years, there have been many things that Asavar - you - have embodied. Some of those things you have been proud of, others you have come to regret, and even more, you can only find yourself unsure of.
But there are two, maybe three, things that were so profoundly you that you are not sure they would ever not be an integral part of yourself.
Greed was one of those things. You were such a terribly greedy man, it was deeply rooted in everything you did. You wanted more incessantly, wanted greater and greater in a way that even the world being offered to you was not enough.
Asavar the Brute was a man of greed that outstripped even chaos.
When told to pick between temperance and shallow self-interest. To choose between what was selfish and what was selfless, and what was beyond even both…
There really was only one choice for you.
"Yesterday, I took one hundred of the unclean and unfaithful and crafted them into warriors of the gods." Your voice came from low in your chest, a deep rumble that almost seemed to shake the air itself, the same voice you always used to address congregations. You pause, a heavy uncertainty curling around your throat. You knew how one went almost by heart, knew the other by absence.
You watch six figures stir at the sound of your voice and do little else. An ancient, fundamental part of their brain drives them to respond to another human speaking, but you had ripped out a piece that told them what to do, and in this confusing aftermath, that absent void between mind and man became all the more evident.
You remember that feeling so very well, and it just made the question of what words could possibly pull this off all the starker.
"To be more accurate, I broke them into being such. I twisted them, and I turned them into slaves to the gods. Ripped from them their personhood and replaced it with fanaticism, with false claims of the gods' will." For a single moment, you almost did not register that it was your voice and almost looked for the source. Then you realise what you said, and that terrible weight of uncertainty burgeoned into a whirl of anxiety and realisation as what you had said - out loud - hit you.
You had just ousted what you had done outright, told them in plain terms that you had manipulated them and a hundred others into frothing death. Your heart sinks as you realise there would only ever be one reaction to that and that you would have to choose between your desperate ambitions for the future and the lives of six embryonic brothers.
Then… the six fanatics react differently. One flinched as if struck, one stared at you, one glanced at the other five, one's hand fell to the sickle by his side, one let his eyes close and shoulder slump, and the last's hands tightened into a ball.
Ah.
That was how you were going to do this.
This was going to be… very rough.
"Meissen was teetering on the edge of destruction, and I weighed the lives and sentience of a hundred men against the thousand others within the walls." You stare down at the ground between the seven of you as you let the confession just flow, the timbre that shook the air in your voice long since gone. "The very fact it was teetering on that edge made it easy; when humans are faced with death, so many of the differences between them are stripped away. The buttons to press, the words and the actions and the frenetic press of energy become almost a rote matter."
"Why are you telling us this?" The voice was weak, choked with hardly restrained anger and awful realisation. "Why tell us it was a lie?"
"Not a lie, just put in words to get a certain result." You mutter, half to yourself, words spoken to you so very long ago. Words that took you a long time to learn how awful they were. You wet your lips and slowly breathe in, then with a weight that was so hard to ignore, you look up to meet the man who spoke.
He had his hand on the handle of his sickle, the weapon rattling terribly as he shook.
"It hurts so very much, doesn't it? Like a knife carving strips through your heart and mind. The revelation feels like it's attacking your very soul. The realisation that all those feelings, hopes, and terrors were deliberate manipulations. There because I brought them there." He had blue eyes, and his face was as gaunt as everyone who had gone through this siege, but you could see traces of the babyface of someone barely twenty.
"You're mocking us, Norscan. Answer his question." You flinch at Norscan, a tiny imperceptible thing, but there. Noticeable. You gather yourself again and look to the next speaker. Deep lines carved down his face, a long life of stress and work, and the remnants of facial hair he had torn out were still there.
"Because… because this is an explanation I desperately needed." For a moment, it was all you wanted to do to look away, to not have to physically look him in his face as suspicion and hate blossomed across his face.
You keep your eyes locked on the man. "Because when I was first in your position, ten and three, the slick blood of a warrior priest still drying between my fingers, and I came to confront the awful understanding that I did not die for my gods. I…" Words fail you for a moment, mouth moving without sound. You swallow. "I was torn right back into the personless fanaticism. My only reward for doing the impossible was to be ripped apart further and left to languish in the maddened need for manufactured salvation."
"Because when I was last in your position, ten and seven, and I was finally left adrift, the way I put myself back together was wrong, was wrong for a long, long time." There was a flicker of something across that old man's face, and before you could truly register, the need to look away overwhelmed you.
"This could be another trick, another manipulation." A third voice and it was only because deep in that corner of your mind that Verena had marked her own, you felt a press of just the slightest bit more attention, that you found the strength to meet his eyes. Green eyes framed by still weeping claw marks stared at you, so cold that it would make ice shiver. "Well? Is it? More words that give you exactly the response you want? Any moment are we about to start tearing each other apart again?"
"You would not ask that question if it was." Your lips twist into that mockery of a grin that terrified everyone you ever flashed it to, all teeth and grim savagery. Or it would be if it was not so occluded by the ravages of shame and uncertainty. "You wouldn't answer any question if it was; it would have been as easy as breathing to force you back into the mire of toxic redemption. Twisting you until you broke again in the haze of uncertainty of being alive. I could have done it forever, over and over, keeping you trapped in a prison of self-hate I inflicted on you."
"Then why didn't you." Grey eyes, sharp in a way that felt like it was pressing into your neck, set in a sullen, pale face atop a tall, lanky body.
"Last night, I took a hundred men, and with their own desperation, I broke them. As of today, not even twenty-four hours later. Six of them are still alive, and ninety-four lay dead in the streets. The shame of that should be the reason." But you were so terribly broken in so many different ways. But you ignore that, to gesture at the streets around you, still lined with dead, and for a single moment, you want to leave it as that, the altruistic idea that you brought yourself to care for the people that died at your twisting. But you had long since torn their personhood apart in your mind, and in that moment, you could not lie. "But it is not because whatever shame I should feel is burnt on the pyre of my greed."
"Because in the deepest witching hour, I stood alongside six men, and I felt something I had lost long ago." You stare into those grey eyes, your own eyes filled with enough avarice to shame a dragon. "Brotherhood. A bond that for a night transcended words and forged into an unbroken chain of trust."
"You think you can… you can tell us you did all this to us; you think you can do this to us and call us brother?" The fifth man was shorter than the others and still had patches of blonde shocks left on his head, not properly ripped out in some atrocious mimicry of what you forced that first fanatic to do.
"No." You breathe out, and the weight on your neck falls off as shame bubbles up in you, the emotion both cloying and freeing. "I am telling you all this because in that moment, you became my brothers in arms, and I have to contend with the fact I made you lesser. Six men who in a tide of dead flesh stood beside me as brothers, and I did not know their… your names."
"And after last night, my greed will allow me to do nothing less than fix what I had done, but I don't know how. Please, tell me what I need to say?" Five sets of eyes stared at you with incredulity, the sheer temerity of what you were asking striking them still.
"Was it… was it all fake? I felt…" Another of them spoke up, his face set into a hard line, his eyes so dark as to be black, but they shone with fervent desperation.
Slowly your eyes close and tug on that little place in your mind claimed by a fraction of a fraction of Verena's attention. Divine energy seeps into the air, settling heavily over the seven of you. "This is Verena. My Goddess. I'm not a priest, but the differences are deeply blurred."
You let the energy linger in the air, the same energy that you had used to drive home your inflicted disgust.
"It's different?" Underneath the thread of confusion colouring the man's tone was a low note of hope, and you leapt on it.
"Because it is just Verena." You meet dark eyes, and as you let the attention of Verena sputter away, you gesture around you. "But what we achieved in the darkest moments of dawn, seven against the uncountable, there was no god that would ignore that. No matter how it started, what we achieved was still judged worthy."
Silence descended between the seven for a long moment as a worried weight lifted from the six men's shoulders. Just cutting-edge of worry and paranoia that it was all deceptions and lies, that they could be deceived even to the point of being fooled to their gods' touch… leaving them.
Your gaze falls to the ground again, as in turn, the weight of what you had done heavies on your shoulders.
"My name is Sigric Silber." You snap up to meet Sigric's dark eyes as the hard lines of his face soften. You were not the only one; the other five also watched Sigric carefully. The man does not wilt under their stares, his back straightening. "Don't make me regret this, Norscan."
Struck still for words, you simply nod as relief warred with avarice inside you, desperate to reign it as it drove you to push this further.
"No one comes to the Meissen without reason; no one comes to the borderlands without reason. Why are you here, Norscan?" The suspicious stare of the shortest of the six carved through you, and in that moment, it felt like he towered over you.
"Greed… ambition." Despite the cutting stare, you straighten up. No matter what shame you felt, there was nothing that would mortify you in the face of your drive. "The great Libraries of Verena are not a place of glory and great men. Even before anything else, I would suffocate there."
"The borderlands aren't a place for great men either." He shot back, sharp-tongued.
"Then I will make it one." Your words burned into the world with all the fierce passion that they had carried since your earliest youth, and no loss or tragedy had ever changed that. It was different to the passion that drove your piety, a part of yourself untouched by any kind of divine. The fact that Verena was willing to let you keep it, allow it to remain yours, was perhaps one of the only reasons she managed to get through to you. The short man seemed stunned by the fervent burn in your voice before a fierce grin split his face.
"Now that… that I can understand. My name is Anders Matthias. If you keep that fire, Norscan, then maybe there's hope for you." Ander's grin widens, and yet more weight falls off your shoulders. That was two.
There was a feeling of momentum behind you now, a confidence that had been lacking as you waded through the treacherous confusion of this… whatever you would call this.
"No Norscan tribe worships Verena, I've heard the stories, but I have to know. Who did you worship before Verena?" The question rips that momentum from you entirely. The first man spoke, his hand still tight on the sickle by his side.
A grip that only tightens as the question strikes you silent. You did not flinch away from who you were in your own mind, but putting it into words… you always struggled with it. Partly because if said to the wrong person - who most people were - it would see you in a fight for your life.
But mostly because you knew as well as anyone that words had power, and the admission of what you were before Verena worked away at you… always felt like it was giving just that little more power back over.
Yet under the stares of men you dared to long to call your brothers-in-arms, you forced the words from your throat.
"All of them, at one point in my life. But… the…" You pull into yourself, your mind occupying that ever so slightly strange headspace of not aware but not quite there, as you pull on Verena's attention like a blasted child tugging on his mother's dress. You feel the energy spill through your body, a comforting warmth you drank in like a desiccated man. "But I always came back to the Hound."
"You worshipped Chaos." Slowly he pulled the sickle at his side up, something conflicted darkening his face. "That taint is not… give me a reason why I should not cut you down. Do us all a favour."
"I was born to the Aeslinger, a Sveit in the far north of Norsca. The first man who did not worship the four I met was a Khanite slave. The second was a Solkan Witch Hunter who called me an abomination and told me to drown myself at the age of four." You pull yourself out of the comforting warmth to meet the man's blue eyes without the crux of your goddess's grace. "All I ever knew, all I ever could know was them. Yet, in the end, I looked at them, and I saw they were not good enough for me. That I was beyond them. I did that despite it being all I knew."
His grip was white-knuckled tight as the conflict on his face grew until he let out a deep sigh and let it fall back to his waist. "My name is Gutwin Unberogen, and I will be watching you."
Your chest rises and falls in heavy movements, and you feel Verena's touch continuing to spread through your body as you try to calm yourself.
"You said you killed a Warrior priest to death at thirteen. Was that your first?" But the grey-eyed man did not give you a moment to collect yourself, and as he straightened up from his sullen slouch, he rivals you for height, if not weight.
"I beat the warrior priest to death at one and three." You correct, almost gently, before exhaling through your nose. "But in the Aeslinger tribe, you are strong enough to kill, or you are dead. Even when you're young, you would be thrown into arenas and wouldn't be allowed to leave until the other was forced to break. I was eight the first time that my opponent did not break until his body did."
It was a boy from another Sveit, bigger than you but so thin that when you wrapped your hand around his neck, you could thread your fingers and tighten your grip until it collapsed.
"Did you enjoy it?" There was a moment when you boggle at the question and the implicit sociopathy in it. But under the heavy weight of the sharp grey stare, for some strange reason, you could not bring yourself to believe that it came from someplace of sick enjoyment. For some reason, you could barely see it as coming from a place of judgement.
You hesitate for a moment, knowing the truth is something deeply terrible. But you also knew that you could not shy away from this. "Yes. At the time, it was a moment of brilliant glory. Unquestionable dominance and right in all ways that could matter."
"And now?" Now it was his turn for his words to be spoken gently, and this time your pause was thought rather than hesitation. Thinking back on your first kill invoked a thousand different feelings in you, a thousand different ideas and a thousand viewpoints. There was a time in the days you were first adrift from your once gods and before you had come to fully embrace Verena, where you had poured over that kill. Perhaps rightfully thinking it was as pivotal a moment to you as the kill that christened you with your epithet. Death was common in those pits, but at eight, you were expected to be years away from needing to claim your first skull. It was what had first drawn the attention of your first captain, and later of the Slaves of the Hound, to your first brothers and later the freedom of tragedy.
But in all your thoughts, you never truly came to decide whether that death was something you regretted or if it was simply just a part of you.
"I'm… I'm alive." You answer slowly, and despite how lacking it was in depth, as you look into those sharp grey eyes, you have a feeling it satisfied him.
"We are all alive. I am Manfredo Di Muzio." He gives you a sharp nod before slumping back down, losing inches of height as he does so.
That just left two.
The man whose face was still - worryingly - dripping with blood, and the old man.
"What's your name?" The question from the old man takes a moment to register; after the last two digging at your past, it had not been what you expected. "Well, come on, boy, I'm too old to waste time."
That ripped a snort of disbelief from you, despite the thin that a siege's starvation had forced onto his frame, and despite the age on his face, the old man looked like he had decades left in him.
"Asavar. My name is Asavar the Brute." You knew that each of these men already knew that; no one in Meissen did not know who you were. Izek's pet Norscan priest had been bandied around for weeks, and your name was often a source of contention. A Norscan named after an Everchosen could only have one connotation.
But at this moment, it was not about them knowing your name. It was them knowing you, and as your name settled in the air, you felt like they did know you.
"If they call you a brute, I can only imagine who they call the thinker." The old man scoffs to himself and rolls his shoulders. "Call me Hildenmund, Asavar."
A wide, boyish grin crossed your face at that as the fifth name slid into your mind, and you carved it into your thoughts. Leaving just one, with a strange synchronicity, the six of you look towards the seventh, the green-eyed man with blood still weeping from his cheek.
The man looked halfway thoughtful for a moment as he slowly examined you. "Asavar…" He tastes the word before his head tilts the other way, and he strokes his cheek, blood accumulating in a thick sheen. "I am Rule, and I suppose I could learn to call you brother."
He holds his hand out, slick with blood. You rush to take it, eager and energetic and find a tight grip that strains your bones. But you ignored that to sweep him up in a tight hug, pulling him entirely off the ground.
"Asavar! Put me down! By Ulric, I will beat you within an inch of your life with my shoe." He immediately begins struggling, trying to wiggle out of your tight bear hug and knee you in the side.
You simply laugh.
https://orokos.com/roll/962407 78 (Piety)
https://orokos.com/roll/962408 98 (Diplomacy)
A/N There's a part of me that struggled deeply with this update. Partly because it's so early on and it's emotional thrust feels... not unearned, but unwitnessed. A culmination of an arc that Asavar himself was apart of, but not the quest. The foibles of trying to get everyone in the right mindset of barely prepared by dropping you right into the action I suppose. Added onto that the emotional state I needed to pull together to write it being ruined by learning about the Judge Rotenberg Centre, and it's slightly later than I wanted.
I hope everyone enjoys, and that the other parts of this update come slightly easier to me.
-[X] Have your cake, and eat it too.
As you stand in the aftermath of the brutal battle, an island in a sea of bone and gravel, burnt out houses and torn apart streets all around you, you consider not just the fanatics, but yourself.
Throughout the years, there have been many things that Asavar - you - have embodied. Some of those things you have been proud of, others you have come to regret, and even more, you can only find yourself unsure of.
But there are two, maybe three, things that were so profoundly you that you are not sure they would ever not be an integral part of yourself.
Greed was one of those things. You were such a terribly greedy man, it was deeply rooted in everything you did. You wanted more incessantly, wanted greater and greater in a way that even the world being offered to you was not enough.
Asavar the Brute was a man of greed that outstripped even chaos.
When told to pick between temperance and shallow self-interest. To choose between what was selfish and what was selfless, and what was beyond even both…
There really was only one choice for you.
"Yesterday, I took one hundred of the unclean and unfaithful and crafted them into warriors of the gods." Your voice came from low in your chest, a deep rumble that almost seemed to shake the air itself, the same voice you always used to address congregations. You pause, a heavy uncertainty curling around your throat. You knew how one went almost by heart, knew the other by absence.
You watch six figures stir at the sound of your voice and do little else. An ancient, fundamental part of their brain drives them to respond to another human speaking, but you had ripped out a piece that told them what to do, and in this confusing aftermath, that absent void between mind and man became all the more evident.
You remember that feeling so very well, and it just made the question of what words could possibly pull this off all the starker.
"To be more accurate, I broke them into being such. I twisted them, and I turned them into slaves to the gods. Ripped from them their personhood and replaced it with fanaticism, with false claims of the gods' will." For a single moment, you almost did not register that it was your voice and almost looked for the source. Then you realise what you said, and that terrible weight of uncertainty burgeoned into a whirl of anxiety and realisation as what you had said - out loud - hit you.
You had just ousted what you had done outright, told them in plain terms that you had manipulated them and a hundred others into frothing death. Your heart sinks as you realise there would only ever be one reaction to that and that you would have to choose between your desperate ambitions for the future and the lives of six embryonic brothers.
Then… the six fanatics react differently. One flinched as if struck, one stared at you, one glanced at the other five, one's hand fell to the sickle by his side, one let his eyes close and shoulder slump, and the last's hands tightened into a ball.
Ah.
That was how you were going to do this.
This was going to be… very rough.
"Meissen was teetering on the edge of destruction, and I weighed the lives and sentience of a hundred men against the thousand others within the walls." You stare down at the ground between the seven of you as you let the confession just flow, the timbre that shook the air in your voice long since gone. "The very fact it was teetering on that edge made it easy; when humans are faced with death, so many of the differences between them are stripped away. The buttons to press, the words and the actions and the frenetic press of energy become almost a rote matter."
"Why are you telling us this?" The voice was weak, choked with hardly restrained anger and awful realisation. "Why tell us it was a lie?"
"Not a lie, just put in words to get a certain result." You mutter, half to yourself, words spoken to you so very long ago. Words that took you a long time to learn how awful they were. You wet your lips and slowly breathe in, then with a weight that was so hard to ignore, you look up to meet the man who spoke.
He had his hand on the handle of his sickle, the weapon rattling terribly as he shook.
"It hurts so very much, doesn't it? Like a knife carving strips through your heart and mind. The revelation feels like it's attacking your very soul. The realisation that all those feelings, hopes, and terrors were deliberate manipulations. There because I brought them there." He had blue eyes, and his face was as gaunt as everyone who had gone through this siege, but you could see traces of the babyface of someone barely twenty.
"You're mocking us, Norscan. Answer his question." You flinch at Norscan, a tiny imperceptible thing, but there. Noticeable. You gather yourself again and look to the next speaker. Deep lines carved down his face, a long life of stress and work, and the remnants of facial hair he had torn out were still there.
"Because… because this is an explanation I desperately needed." For a moment, it was all you wanted to do to look away, to not have to physically look him in his face as suspicion and hate blossomed across his face.
You keep your eyes locked on the man. "Because when I was first in your position, ten and three, the slick blood of a warrior priest still drying between my fingers, and I came to confront the awful understanding that I did not die for my gods. I…" Words fail you for a moment, mouth moving without sound. You swallow. "I was torn right back into the personless fanaticism. My only reward for doing the impossible was to be ripped apart further and left to languish in the maddened need for manufactured salvation."
"Because when I was last in your position, ten and seven, and I was finally left adrift, the way I put myself back together was wrong, was wrong for a long, long time." There was a flicker of something across that old man's face, and before you could truly register, the need to look away overwhelmed you.
"This could be another trick, another manipulation." A third voice and it was only because deep in that corner of your mind that Verena had marked her own, you felt a press of just the slightest bit more attention, that you found the strength to meet his eyes. Green eyes framed by still weeping claw marks stared at you, so cold that it would make ice shiver. "Well? Is it? More words that give you exactly the response you want? Any moment are we about to start tearing each other apart again?"
"You would not ask that question if it was." Your lips twist into that mockery of a grin that terrified everyone you ever flashed it to, all teeth and grim savagery. Or it would be if it was not so occluded by the ravages of shame and uncertainty. "You wouldn't answer any question if it was; it would have been as easy as breathing to force you back into the mire of toxic redemption. Twisting you until you broke again in the haze of uncertainty of being alive. I could have done it forever, over and over, keeping you trapped in a prison of self-hate I inflicted on you."
"Then why didn't you." Grey eyes, sharp in a way that felt like it was pressing into your neck, set in a sullen, pale face atop a tall, lanky body.
"Last night, I took a hundred men, and with their own desperation, I broke them. As of today, not even twenty-four hours later. Six of them are still alive, and ninety-four lay dead in the streets. The shame of that should be the reason." But you were so terribly broken in so many different ways. But you ignore that, to gesture at the streets around you, still lined with dead, and for a single moment, you want to leave it as that, the altruistic idea that you brought yourself to care for the people that died at your twisting. But you had long since torn their personhood apart in your mind, and in that moment, you could not lie. "But it is not because whatever shame I should feel is burnt on the pyre of my greed."
"Because in the deepest witching hour, I stood alongside six men, and I felt something I had lost long ago." You stare into those grey eyes, your own eyes filled with enough avarice to shame a dragon. "Brotherhood. A bond that for a night transcended words and forged into an unbroken chain of trust."
"You think you can… you can tell us you did all this to us; you think you can do this to us and call us brother?" The fifth man was shorter than the others and still had patches of blonde shocks left on his head, not properly ripped out in some atrocious mimicry of what you forced that first fanatic to do.
"No." You breathe out, and the weight on your neck falls off as shame bubbles up in you, the emotion both cloying and freeing. "I am telling you all this because in that moment, you became my brothers in arms, and I have to contend with the fact I made you lesser. Six men who in a tide of dead flesh stood beside me as brothers, and I did not know their… your names."
"And after last night, my greed will allow me to do nothing less than fix what I had done, but I don't know how. Please, tell me what I need to say?" Five sets of eyes stared at you with incredulity, the sheer temerity of what you were asking striking them still.
"Was it… was it all fake? I felt…" Another of them spoke up, his face set into a hard line, his eyes so dark as to be black, but they shone with fervent desperation.
Slowly your eyes close and tug on that little place in your mind claimed by a fraction of a fraction of Verena's attention. Divine energy seeps into the air, settling heavily over the seven of you. "This is Verena. My Goddess. I'm not a priest, but the differences are deeply blurred."
You let the energy linger in the air, the same energy that you had used to drive home your inflicted disgust.
"It's different?" Underneath the thread of confusion colouring the man's tone was a low note of hope, and you leapt on it.
"Because it is just Verena." You meet dark eyes, and as you let the attention of Verena sputter away, you gesture around you. "But what we achieved in the darkest moments of dawn, seven against the uncountable, there was no god that would ignore that. No matter how it started, what we achieved was still judged worthy."
Silence descended between the seven for a long moment as a worried weight lifted from the six men's shoulders. Just cutting-edge of worry and paranoia that it was all deceptions and lies, that they could be deceived even to the point of being fooled to their gods' touch… leaving them.
Your gaze falls to the ground again, as in turn, the weight of what you had done heavies on your shoulders.
"My name is Sigric Silber." You snap up to meet Sigric's dark eyes as the hard lines of his face soften. You were not the only one; the other five also watched Sigric carefully. The man does not wilt under their stares, his back straightening. "Don't make me regret this, Norscan."
Struck still for words, you simply nod as relief warred with avarice inside you, desperate to reign it as it drove you to push this further.
"No one comes to the Meissen without reason; no one comes to the borderlands without reason. Why are you here, Norscan?" The suspicious stare of the shortest of the six carved through you, and in that moment, it felt like he towered over you.
"Greed… ambition." Despite the cutting stare, you straighten up. No matter what shame you felt, there was nothing that would mortify you in the face of your drive. "The great Libraries of Verena are not a place of glory and great men. Even before anything else, I would suffocate there."
"The borderlands aren't a place for great men either." He shot back, sharp-tongued.
"Then I will make it one." Your words burned into the world with all the fierce passion that they had carried since your earliest youth, and no loss or tragedy had ever changed that. It was different to the passion that drove your piety, a part of yourself untouched by any kind of divine. The fact that Verena was willing to let you keep it, allow it to remain yours, was perhaps one of the only reasons she managed to get through to you. The short man seemed stunned by the fervent burn in your voice before a fierce grin split his face.
"Now that… that I can understand. My name is Anders Matthias. If you keep that fire, Norscan, then maybe there's hope for you." Ander's grin widens, and yet more weight falls off your shoulders. That was two.
There was a feeling of momentum behind you now, a confidence that had been lacking as you waded through the treacherous confusion of this… whatever you would call this.
"No Norscan tribe worships Verena, I've heard the stories, but I have to know. Who did you worship before Verena?" The question rips that momentum from you entirely. The first man spoke, his hand still tight on the sickle by his side.
A grip that only tightens as the question strikes you silent. You did not flinch away from who you were in your own mind, but putting it into words… you always struggled with it. Partly because if said to the wrong person - who most people were - it would see you in a fight for your life.
But mostly because you knew as well as anyone that words had power, and the admission of what you were before Verena worked away at you… always felt like it was giving just that little more power back over.
Yet under the stares of men you dared to long to call your brothers-in-arms, you forced the words from your throat.
"All of them, at one point in my life. But… the…" You pull into yourself, your mind occupying that ever so slightly strange headspace of not aware but not quite there, as you pull on Verena's attention like a blasted child tugging on his mother's dress. You feel the energy spill through your body, a comforting warmth you drank in like a desiccated man. "But I always came back to the Hound."
"You worshipped Chaos." Slowly he pulled the sickle at his side up, something conflicted darkening his face. "That taint is not… give me a reason why I should not cut you down. Do us all a favour."
"I was born to the Aeslinger, a Sveit in the far north of Norsca. The first man who did not worship the four I met was a Khanite slave. The second was a Solkan Witch Hunter who called me an abomination and told me to drown myself at the age of four." You pull yourself out of the comforting warmth to meet the man's blue eyes without the crux of your goddess's grace. "All I ever knew, all I ever could know was them. Yet, in the end, I looked at them, and I saw they were not good enough for me. That I was beyond them. I did that despite it being all I knew."
His grip was white-knuckled tight as the conflict on his face grew until he let out a deep sigh and let it fall back to his waist. "My name is Gutwin Unberogen, and I will be watching you."
Your chest rises and falls in heavy movements, and you feel Verena's touch continuing to spread through your body as you try to calm yourself.
"You said you killed a Warrior priest to death at thirteen. Was that your first?" But the grey-eyed man did not give you a moment to collect yourself, and as he straightened up from his sullen slouch, he rivals you for height, if not weight.
"I beat the warrior priest to death at one and three." You correct, almost gently, before exhaling through your nose. "But in the Aeslinger tribe, you are strong enough to kill, or you are dead. Even when you're young, you would be thrown into arenas and wouldn't be allowed to leave until the other was forced to break. I was eight the first time that my opponent did not break until his body did."
It was a boy from another Sveit, bigger than you but so thin that when you wrapped your hand around his neck, you could thread your fingers and tighten your grip until it collapsed.
"Did you enjoy it?" There was a moment when you boggle at the question and the implicit sociopathy in it. But under the heavy weight of the sharp grey stare, for some strange reason, you could not bring yourself to believe that it came from someplace of sick enjoyment. For some reason, you could barely see it as coming from a place of judgement.
You hesitate for a moment, knowing the truth is something deeply terrible. But you also knew that you could not shy away from this. "Yes. At the time, it was a moment of brilliant glory. Unquestionable dominance and right in all ways that could matter."
"And now?" Now it was his turn for his words to be spoken gently, and this time your pause was thought rather than hesitation. Thinking back on your first kill invoked a thousand different feelings in you, a thousand different ideas and a thousand viewpoints. There was a time in the days you were first adrift from your once gods and before you had come to fully embrace Verena, where you had poured over that kill. Perhaps rightfully thinking it was as pivotal a moment to you as the kill that christened you with your epithet. Death was common in those pits, but at eight, you were expected to be years away from needing to claim your first skull. It was what had first drawn the attention of your first captain, and later of the Slaves of the Hound, to your first brothers and later the freedom of tragedy.
But in all your thoughts, you never truly came to decide whether that death was something you regretted or if it was simply just a part of you.
"I'm… I'm alive." You answer slowly, and despite how lacking it was in depth, as you look into those sharp grey eyes, you have a feeling it satisfied him.
"We are all alive. I am Manfredo Di Muzio." He gives you a sharp nod before slumping back down, losing inches of height as he does so.
That just left two.
The man whose face was still - worryingly - dripping with blood, and the old man.
"What's your name?" The question from the old man takes a moment to register; after the last two digging at your past, it had not been what you expected. "Well, come on, boy, I'm too old to waste time."
That ripped a snort of disbelief from you, despite the thin that a siege's starvation had forced onto his frame, and despite the age on his face, the old man looked like he had decades left in him.
"Asavar. My name is Asavar the Brute." You knew that each of these men already knew that; no one in Meissen did not know who you were. Izek's pet Norscan priest had been bandied around for weeks, and your name was often a source of contention. A Norscan named after an Everchosen could only have one connotation.
But at this moment, it was not about them knowing your name. It was them knowing you, and as your name settled in the air, you felt like they did know you.
"If they call you a brute, I can only imagine who they call the thinker." The old man scoffs to himself and rolls his shoulders. "Call me Hildenmund, Asavar."
A wide, boyish grin crossed your face at that as the fifth name slid into your mind, and you carved it into your thoughts. Leaving just one, with a strange synchronicity, the six of you look towards the seventh, the green-eyed man with blood still weeping from his cheek.
The man looked halfway thoughtful for a moment as he slowly examined you. "Asavar…" He tastes the word before his head tilts the other way, and he strokes his cheek, blood accumulating in a thick sheen. "I am Rule, and I suppose I could learn to call you brother."
He holds his hand out, slick with blood. You rush to take it, eager and energetic and find a tight grip that strains your bones. But you ignored that to sweep him up in a tight hug, pulling him entirely off the ground.
"Asavar! Put me down! By Ulric, I will beat you within an inch of your life with my shoe." He immediately begins struggling, trying to wiggle out of your tight bear hug and knee you in the side.
You simply laugh.
https://orokos.com/roll/962407 78 (Piety)
https://orokos.com/roll/962408 98 (Diplomacy)
A/N There's a part of me that struggled deeply with this update. Partly because it's so early on and it's emotional thrust feels... not unearned, but unwitnessed. A culmination of an arc that Asavar himself was apart of, but not the quest. The foibles of trying to get everyone in the right mindset of barely prepared by dropping you right into the action I suppose. Added onto that the emotional state I needed to pull together to write it being ruined by learning about the Judge Rotenberg Centre, and it's slightly later than I wanted.
I hope everyone enjoys, and that the other parts of this update come slightly easier to me.
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-[X] Talk to Misha. {Write in} "Highlight the dangers of Herminia's and Rosmalen's advantages and immediate threat using their treachery during the battle as evidence and offer to make a pact against them"
After the… issues the other two had with contributing their part to the siege, you half expected that when you arrived at Misha's field hospital, for it to be a glut of disease and men dying from the simplest of wounds and there to be some burgeoning conspiracy that he was doing it on purpose.
At the very least, you expected the place to be as ramshackle as everything else in Meissen.
So it was to a great deal of pleased surprise that as you approached the large plaza that Izek's manor overlooked, it was not a hovel of disease and disorder but a strictly ordered camp. Six large tents - far larger than you would have expected to be found in Meissen, sat in two triplet pairs facing one of the larger houses of Meissen, the once ostentatious structure stripped down to provide as much room as possible.
From the outside, you could see men being carried or directed to the tents by both Rosmalen's uninjured swordsmen and by the men and women that avoided the conscription due to a distinct lack of weaponry that plagues Meissen.
Though after last night, there would be a great deal of at least serviceable weapons to go around.
The double doors of the house had been wrenched open and nailed into the wall, which you supposed was one way to save on door stoppers. The entry room was packed, the hallway lined with at least twenty men sitting on pilfered furniture. Two women and a man carefully examine each man in turn, usually to the man's evident frustration. But the stern eyes of one of Rosmalen's men, with his blade drawn, standing in the far doorway likely kept them in line.
You watch for a moment as the group of what you could only assume were assistants that Misha has conscripted confer for a moment before they instruct a man cradling his arm tight to his chest to head deeper into the converted 'house' and 'out to the right.'
One of the women spots you - it would be difficult not to, considering you nearly blocked the sun from the doorway entirely - you try to give her a smile, but like always, for some reason, that only makes her flinch.
As the woman whispers to her compatriots and points you out, Rosmalen's swordsman steps forward. Which was just perfect; of course, Rosmalen's men were not going to trust you around the wounded. Deescalating this, so you did not end up fighting in the middle of a hospital was going to be like pulling teeth, but you should be able to manage it. "Why are you here Nor-."
"Shut the fuck up, Angelo; your dick's small, and no one likes you." Rule, it seemed, had other plans as he shouldered past you and made a dismissive wanking gesture at Angelo.
"My dick was enough for your sister." The Tilean man steps forward and squares up with Rule with a snarl. But despite that, his sword lowers back to his side, tilted towards the ground.
"A piece of straw nailed to the wall is enough for her, and somehow you still didn't touch the sides." There was a moment where the two men just stared at each other, before the swordsman snorts and tosses his head as Rule chortles.
"I will tell her that and will enjoy watching her beat your head in." The smile that stretches across Rule's face reopens the thick wound curling around his face, sending a glut of blood seeping from his face.
"Good, I'll tell her that you don't actually like her vulture stew." Angelo's eyes widen as his face goes pale. "Now fuck off and let us in; we have a message for the Prince's brat."
"Rule, brother-in-law of mine, dear uncle to my daughters. Surely you'd never be so cruel as to leave your sweet nieces fatherless?" The Tilean babbles, his accent growing thicker as Rule simply raises an eyebrow and flicks a glance at the door. He slumps slightly. "It is not my call. Talk to them. They tell people where to go. I just hold the door."
He gestures at the group of three, and when you glance at them, you catch one of them mouthing 'Tilean prick' before nervously straightening up under your stare. You give a reassuring smile, which as always, just makes it worse. "I need to speak to Misha; where is he?"
If you were being honest, you sort of expected them to tell you immediately. Misha, it must be reiterated, is kind of a prick, and you personally would throw him under a cart if someone the size of a door asked after him.
But they shared another shockingly in-sync glance, and when they looked back at you, there was a stubborn defiance in their eyes.
"Bochkarer is busy, and we have an admissions process. Please take a seat and wait to be examined." You blink slightly; between this and whatever that interaction between Rule and Angelo was, you were thoroughly lost.
And that slight moment of hesitance was taken as an opening yet again by one of the six men that had accompanied you. "We're not going to take long, just a quick in-and-out visit" Sigric's gaunt face showed all the signs of his youth as he gave one of the women a charming grin.
She blushes slightly and glances at her other two partners. "Well… if you promise to be quick and be vigilant…."
"We won't let Asavar out of sight." Well, that was slightly presumptive of him: she did not even say your name. For all he knew, she could be talking about the man who walked in yelling about small penises.
The fact she gave a relieved smile as he gestured at you might have indicated he was right that she was solely worried about you, but that was just a lucky guess.
"He's in the surgery tent, the middle left one." She clarifies as a moment of confusion spreads among you. You nod and then glance at the rest of your… posse? Crew? Gang?
Calling them your men all the time was weird, but this was probably not the time for this. Especially as the fact you were in what amounted to a hospital in these parts registered, along with the fact the other six had just come out the other end of a meat grinder, and Rule's cheek wound was likely far from the only injury.
"Good, I'll go see him; the six of you wait here and get examined." Immediately both Sigric and the woman - who had been making eyes at Sigric - whirled on you.
"I made a promise"/" I only told you where Bochkarer was because I thought he would be watching you." They stumble over each other, Sigric cutting himself off as he realises what is happening.
"You." You point at the woman. "Should have thought about that before telling me then." She fumes wordlessly for a moment, giving you an honestly very intimidating glare, and you are very thankful to have the excuse of looking at Sigric to look away from it. "And you just came out the better side of an undead horde. A dozen to one isn't the odds you walk away from uninjured."
"You.. you just came from the same place." He protests to a roll of your eyes.
"Yes, but I, One: am built different, and Two: don't have a six-foot-something Norscan telling me what to do." You straighten up to your full height, staring down the six men that had tentatively given you a chance to call brother. "All of you will be examined - now - and I wil-"
Rule's empty boot slamming into the side of your face and snapping your head sideways cuts you off. You pause for a moment, tasting the shock of blood from where your teeth had split your lip, before glancing slowly over to him as he unlaced his other boot.
"You're going to make this difficult on me, aren't you." He glances up at you, green eyes glittering, as he does not pause for a moment unlacing his shoe. You glance over to the rest of them and arch an eyebrow. Hildenmund scoffs, and Manfredo slumps against the doorway, watching. But Gutwin and Sigric step forward.
You give a longer look at Anders, and the man gives you a so-so gesture that just fills you with confidence.
You sigh; going from fanatical half-men to brothers… might have left them with a need for discipline. You bend down, and pick up Rule's boot, testing its weight in your hand.
Then you roll your shoulders, eye the three men, and let a grin spread across your face.
-
With your unruly brothers-in-arms dealt with, you stride into the middle left tent and are greeted by the thick scent of blood and guts. Which was like shit but had more of an inside smell which made it infinitely worse.
Inside, you immediately see Misha buried up to his elbow in some poor bastard's stomach, the barely more than a teen's mouth twisted into an unpleasant frown as he fiddled around inside the man.
"And as if the smell of shit could not get any worse. Whatever frozen hellhole you were raised in yet to discover toilet paper, Norscan?" He does not look up from where he is working on the man, and he blindly fumbles for something behind him as he keeps careful watch. "Stop being useless and hand me the clamp."
You shrug and walk over. You eye the table he had blindly gestured to, filled with what you could only describe as torture implements. "Which one…?"
"The one with the spring stop between the handles." You pick it up, examining the almost scissor-like tool, if not for the metal not being sharpened and the slight curve to it. You hand it over to him.
"You know, usually when you can smell someone's guts, it's a lost cause." He takes the tool and ignores you as he starts shuffling around to find the right angle. Just when you were convinced he was going to just ignore you full stop, he started speaking.
"Usually, a perforated intestine is normally death for whatever idiot gets stabbed in the gut; if the wrong shit mixes with blood, you're gone, but.." He trails off, and for the first time, he glances up at you. More specifically, your hands. "Get over here."
Maybe on another day, when you were not approaching Misha for something, you would tell him to fuck off. As it was, you carefully approached the much smaller boy. You eye the insides of the unconscious man as they become visible to you, a squishy mess of flesh and not-quite flesh that makes you shiver to look at. "Carefully reach into there, and hold exactly where I'm holding. Not too tight; if it starts moving, you're fucking up."
You reach in and slowly close your hand around the tube he had been holding, and immediately something sick bubbles up in your throat, and you feel your face go green. You knew what intestines felt like, and these felt like they were wrapped around something disturbingly solid. "Is that…"
"His actual faeces wrapped in his intestine? Yes. I've spent the last ten minutes physically squeezing it away from the wound. Poor fuck's guts are never going to be the same, so congratulations, you're most likely holding that man's last solid shit. Now hold it right there while I stitch this back up." He sets about working with quick, precise movements, and considering it was the only thing distracting you from what you were holding, you scrutinised him.
There was almost a sense of ease as Misha went to work that the teenager was usually lacking, the harsh livewire edge he usually teetered on relaxing away underneath the simple motions behind what seemed to be an overall very complex procedure. As he finishes off his stitching, tying it into a tight bow, he glances you up and down. "Now, shitholder, you can let go of the shit and tell me why the fuck you're here."
"Maybe it's for your lovely company." You withdraw your hand from the inside of the man, grimacing at the strange fluids and muck coating it. Misha, for his part, just gives you an unimpressed look. "Maybe I was really curious where you got all these nice tents."
"They're father's merchant tents. He was always a fan of the idea of `if a village doesn't have a market square, bring one'" He walks over to a pot standing at the side of the tent, picks up a kettle and pours steaming water over his hands with barely a grunt. "Now tell me the actual reason, or fuck off. I still have another half a dozen surgeries, and a dozen more still in critical condition, and I won't have my first death be because some Norscan fuck-wit bothering me."
You pause for a moment, the sheer outpouring of emotion and care at odds with what you knew of the bratty Bochkarer son. You honestly expected to come here to find the boy complaining about people having the temerity to die near him and only doing the bare minimum.
An almost fiercely territorial bent towards the lives of his patients was practically the opposite of that.
[] Rosmalen and Herminia nearly put the existence of the entire town at risk.
If it was not for luck, the huntsmen's scavenging, and you, the town would have had the Undead spill uncontained into the streets. That was not acceptable. You wanted his support in bringing the other two to task.
[] Rosmalen tried to kill you, and let dozens more men die than needed to die.
Herminia's failure could be incompetence, but Rosmalen's actions struck you as actively putting political aims above the existence of Meissen. Maybe between the two of you, you could bring Rosmalen down without the town devolving into a bloody civil war.
[] Rosmalen may have put the town at risk, but for now he is near unassailable. Herminia, not so much.
Rosmalen's position as the leader of the only professional force in the town meant that any plan of dislodging him had forty nine problems with it. Herminia's position however, has already been weakened by the lack of trade moving through the town, and the courts being suspended. Bringing her down, and trying to centralise her powers under the two of you could provide a base to work away at Rosmalen with.
[] The triad that the three of them had going on was not tenable. Try and get Misha in on a longer term partnership that would break up the current power dynamic entirely.
Getting Misha to help you bring one, or two of the others to task was all well and good, but unless Izek was feeling particularly murderous when he woke up, the political situation of Meissen would just rebalance itself between the three of them. Shaking that up long term, would require a long term understanding between you and Misha.
A/N Much easier update, less emotions all round if a bit foul mouthed. Getting in Misha's head just sort of puts me in that headframe. I strongly recommend considering what this vote will mean for the future vote dealing with Herminia and later Rosmalen coming up. If you tell Misha you want to do something here, and bait and switch him with other votes, then it is very unlikely he will just roll with it. But even that might be something you could take advantage of. Maybe.
Lets call it an hour and a half moratorium.
After the… issues the other two had with contributing their part to the siege, you half expected that when you arrived at Misha's field hospital, for it to be a glut of disease and men dying from the simplest of wounds and there to be some burgeoning conspiracy that he was doing it on purpose.
At the very least, you expected the place to be as ramshackle as everything else in Meissen.
So it was to a great deal of pleased surprise that as you approached the large plaza that Izek's manor overlooked, it was not a hovel of disease and disorder but a strictly ordered camp. Six large tents - far larger than you would have expected to be found in Meissen, sat in two triplet pairs facing one of the larger houses of Meissen, the once ostentatious structure stripped down to provide as much room as possible.
From the outside, you could see men being carried or directed to the tents by both Rosmalen's uninjured swordsmen and by the men and women that avoided the conscription due to a distinct lack of weaponry that plagues Meissen.
Though after last night, there would be a great deal of at least serviceable weapons to go around.
The double doors of the house had been wrenched open and nailed into the wall, which you supposed was one way to save on door stoppers. The entry room was packed, the hallway lined with at least twenty men sitting on pilfered furniture. Two women and a man carefully examine each man in turn, usually to the man's evident frustration. But the stern eyes of one of Rosmalen's men, with his blade drawn, standing in the far doorway likely kept them in line.
You watch for a moment as the group of what you could only assume were assistants that Misha has conscripted confer for a moment before they instruct a man cradling his arm tight to his chest to head deeper into the converted 'house' and 'out to the right.'
One of the women spots you - it would be difficult not to, considering you nearly blocked the sun from the doorway entirely - you try to give her a smile, but like always, for some reason, that only makes her flinch.
As the woman whispers to her compatriots and points you out, Rosmalen's swordsman steps forward. Which was just perfect; of course, Rosmalen's men were not going to trust you around the wounded. Deescalating this, so you did not end up fighting in the middle of a hospital was going to be like pulling teeth, but you should be able to manage it. "Why are you here Nor-."
"Shut the fuck up, Angelo; your dick's small, and no one likes you." Rule, it seemed, had other plans as he shouldered past you and made a dismissive wanking gesture at Angelo.
"My dick was enough for your sister." The Tilean man steps forward and squares up with Rule with a snarl. But despite that, his sword lowers back to his side, tilted towards the ground.
"A piece of straw nailed to the wall is enough for her, and somehow you still didn't touch the sides." There was a moment where the two men just stared at each other, before the swordsman snorts and tosses his head as Rule chortles.
"I will tell her that and will enjoy watching her beat your head in." The smile that stretches across Rule's face reopens the thick wound curling around his face, sending a glut of blood seeping from his face.
"Good, I'll tell her that you don't actually like her vulture stew." Angelo's eyes widen as his face goes pale. "Now fuck off and let us in; we have a message for the Prince's brat."
"Rule, brother-in-law of mine, dear uncle to my daughters. Surely you'd never be so cruel as to leave your sweet nieces fatherless?" The Tilean babbles, his accent growing thicker as Rule simply raises an eyebrow and flicks a glance at the door. He slumps slightly. "It is not my call. Talk to them. They tell people where to go. I just hold the door."
He gestures at the group of three, and when you glance at them, you catch one of them mouthing 'Tilean prick' before nervously straightening up under your stare. You give a reassuring smile, which as always, just makes it worse. "I need to speak to Misha; where is he?"
If you were being honest, you sort of expected them to tell you immediately. Misha, it must be reiterated, is kind of a prick, and you personally would throw him under a cart if someone the size of a door asked after him.
But they shared another shockingly in-sync glance, and when they looked back at you, there was a stubborn defiance in their eyes.
"Bochkarer is busy, and we have an admissions process. Please take a seat and wait to be examined." You blink slightly; between this and whatever that interaction between Rule and Angelo was, you were thoroughly lost.
And that slight moment of hesitance was taken as an opening yet again by one of the six men that had accompanied you. "We're not going to take long, just a quick in-and-out visit" Sigric's gaunt face showed all the signs of his youth as he gave one of the women a charming grin.
She blushes slightly and glances at her other two partners. "Well… if you promise to be quick and be vigilant…."
"We won't let Asavar out of sight." Well, that was slightly presumptive of him: she did not even say your name. For all he knew, she could be talking about the man who walked in yelling about small penises.
The fact she gave a relieved smile as he gestured at you might have indicated he was right that she was solely worried about you, but that was just a lucky guess.
"He's in the surgery tent, the middle left one." She clarifies as a moment of confusion spreads among you. You nod and then glance at the rest of your… posse? Crew? Gang?
Calling them your men all the time was weird, but this was probably not the time for this. Especially as the fact you were in what amounted to a hospital in these parts registered, along with the fact the other six had just come out the other end of a meat grinder, and Rule's cheek wound was likely far from the only injury.
"Good, I'll go see him; the six of you wait here and get examined." Immediately both Sigric and the woman - who had been making eyes at Sigric - whirled on you.
"I made a promise"/" I only told you where Bochkarer was because I thought he would be watching you." They stumble over each other, Sigric cutting himself off as he realises what is happening.
"You." You point at the woman. "Should have thought about that before telling me then." She fumes wordlessly for a moment, giving you an honestly very intimidating glare, and you are very thankful to have the excuse of looking at Sigric to look away from it. "And you just came out the better side of an undead horde. A dozen to one isn't the odds you walk away from uninjured."
"You.. you just came from the same place." He protests to a roll of your eyes.
"Yes, but I, One: am built different, and Two: don't have a six-foot-something Norscan telling me what to do." You straighten up to your full height, staring down the six men that had tentatively given you a chance to call brother. "All of you will be examined - now - and I wil-"
Rule's empty boot slamming into the side of your face and snapping your head sideways cuts you off. You pause for a moment, tasting the shock of blood from where your teeth had split your lip, before glancing slowly over to him as he unlaced his other boot.
"You're going to make this difficult on me, aren't you." He glances up at you, green eyes glittering, as he does not pause for a moment unlacing his shoe. You glance over to the rest of them and arch an eyebrow. Hildenmund scoffs, and Manfredo slumps against the doorway, watching. But Gutwin and Sigric step forward.
You give a longer look at Anders, and the man gives you a so-so gesture that just fills you with confidence.
You sigh; going from fanatical half-men to brothers… might have left them with a need for discipline. You bend down, and pick up Rule's boot, testing its weight in your hand.
Then you roll your shoulders, eye the three men, and let a grin spread across your face.
-
With your unruly brothers-in-arms dealt with, you stride into the middle left tent and are greeted by the thick scent of blood and guts. Which was like shit but had more of an inside smell which made it infinitely worse.
Inside, you immediately see Misha buried up to his elbow in some poor bastard's stomach, the barely more than a teen's mouth twisted into an unpleasant frown as he fiddled around inside the man.
"And as if the smell of shit could not get any worse. Whatever frozen hellhole you were raised in yet to discover toilet paper, Norscan?" He does not look up from where he is working on the man, and he blindly fumbles for something behind him as he keeps careful watch. "Stop being useless and hand me the clamp."
You shrug and walk over. You eye the table he had blindly gestured to, filled with what you could only describe as torture implements. "Which one…?"
"The one with the spring stop between the handles." You pick it up, examining the almost scissor-like tool, if not for the metal not being sharpened and the slight curve to it. You hand it over to him.
"You know, usually when you can smell someone's guts, it's a lost cause." He takes the tool and ignores you as he starts shuffling around to find the right angle. Just when you were convinced he was going to just ignore you full stop, he started speaking.
"Usually, a perforated intestine is normally death for whatever idiot gets stabbed in the gut; if the wrong shit mixes with blood, you're gone, but.." He trails off, and for the first time, he glances up at you. More specifically, your hands. "Get over here."
Maybe on another day, when you were not approaching Misha for something, you would tell him to fuck off. As it was, you carefully approached the much smaller boy. You eye the insides of the unconscious man as they become visible to you, a squishy mess of flesh and not-quite flesh that makes you shiver to look at. "Carefully reach into there, and hold exactly where I'm holding. Not too tight; if it starts moving, you're fucking up."
You reach in and slowly close your hand around the tube he had been holding, and immediately something sick bubbles up in your throat, and you feel your face go green. You knew what intestines felt like, and these felt like they were wrapped around something disturbingly solid. "Is that…"
"His actual faeces wrapped in his intestine? Yes. I've spent the last ten minutes physically squeezing it away from the wound. Poor fuck's guts are never going to be the same, so congratulations, you're most likely holding that man's last solid shit. Now hold it right there while I stitch this back up." He sets about working with quick, precise movements, and considering it was the only thing distracting you from what you were holding, you scrutinised him.
There was almost a sense of ease as Misha went to work that the teenager was usually lacking, the harsh livewire edge he usually teetered on relaxing away underneath the simple motions behind what seemed to be an overall very complex procedure. As he finishes off his stitching, tying it into a tight bow, he glances you up and down. "Now, shitholder, you can let go of the shit and tell me why the fuck you're here."
"Maybe it's for your lovely company." You withdraw your hand from the inside of the man, grimacing at the strange fluids and muck coating it. Misha, for his part, just gives you an unimpressed look. "Maybe I was really curious where you got all these nice tents."
"They're father's merchant tents. He was always a fan of the idea of `if a village doesn't have a market square, bring one'" He walks over to a pot standing at the side of the tent, picks up a kettle and pours steaming water over his hands with barely a grunt. "Now tell me the actual reason, or fuck off. I still have another half a dozen surgeries, and a dozen more still in critical condition, and I won't have my first death be because some Norscan fuck-wit bothering me."
You pause for a moment, the sheer outpouring of emotion and care at odds with what you knew of the bratty Bochkarer son. You honestly expected to come here to find the boy complaining about people having the temerity to die near him and only doing the bare minimum.
An almost fiercely territorial bent towards the lives of his patients was practically the opposite of that.
[] Rosmalen and Herminia nearly put the existence of the entire town at risk.
If it was not for luck, the huntsmen's scavenging, and you, the town would have had the Undead spill uncontained into the streets. That was not acceptable. You wanted his support in bringing the other two to task.
[] Rosmalen tried to kill you, and let dozens more men die than needed to die.
Herminia's failure could be incompetence, but Rosmalen's actions struck you as actively putting political aims above the existence of Meissen. Maybe between the two of you, you could bring Rosmalen down without the town devolving into a bloody civil war.
[] Rosmalen may have put the town at risk, but for now he is near unassailable. Herminia, not so much.
Rosmalen's position as the leader of the only professional force in the town meant that any plan of dislodging him had forty nine problems with it. Herminia's position however, has already been weakened by the lack of trade moving through the town, and the courts being suspended. Bringing her down, and trying to centralise her powers under the two of you could provide a base to work away at Rosmalen with.
[] The triad that the three of them had going on was not tenable. Try and get Misha in on a longer term partnership that would break up the current power dynamic entirely.
Getting Misha to help you bring one, or two of the others to task was all well and good, but unless Izek was feeling particularly murderous when he woke up, the political situation of Meissen would just rebalance itself between the three of them. Shaking that up long term, would require a long term understanding between you and Misha.
A/N Much easier update, less emotions all round if a bit foul mouthed. Getting in Misha's head just sort of puts me in that headframe. I strongly recommend considering what this vote will mean for the future vote dealing with Herminia and later Rosmalen coming up. If you tell Misha you want to do something here, and bait and switch him with other votes, then it is very unlikely he will just roll with it. But even that might be something you could take advantage of. Maybe.
Lets call it an hour and a half moratorium.
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Lanky boys, and pretty ones too The guts of the matter Brothers and Faith Incompetence, Malfeasance, and politics. (Defense of Meissen aftermath) A tide of feotid flesh (Defense of Meissen) Guesses and Assumptions (Night One) Faith, and Fanaticism (Day One Results) Skeletons to the north-east of me, Dogs to the south, and here I am stuck in a siege with brats.
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