That is not typical person off the street, that is typical Numanorian in their area of interest and expertise, just because 20s are far more in reach for the Dunedain does not mean Beren the baker is walking around with 25 martial, he has no use for it, that is what one can expect of a military commander.
Of Winding Ways and Cunning Devices
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy Alt. History
That is not typical person off the street, that is typical Numanorian in their area of interest and expertise, just because 20s are far more in reach for the Dunedain does not mean Beren the baker is walking around with 25 martial, he has no use for it, that is what one can expect of a military commander.
The entire ship is getting zapped!?
I think getting a friend at every vote would have been worth lesser stats.
[X] Go into the lands of Middle Earth with only a few companions and seek the elves for their wisdom, most of them may be cowed lackeys of the of the Valar, but you refuse to believe that in any land there are no people of ambition who by the trading of one power might elevate themselves in another (Unlocked by Friendship of Ular; Novice Guldur; Gain 1d6 Learning; 1d3 diplomacy)
No one does haughty like the elves.
Welp this looks as settled as it gets. This is going to be fun.
- Location
- kfc
[X] Go into the lands of Middle Earth with only a few companions and seek the elves for their wisdom, most of them may be cowed lackeys of the of the Valar, but you refuse to believe that in any land there are no people of ambition who by the trading of one power might elevate themselves in another (Unlocked by Friendship of Ular; Novice Guldur; Gain 1d6 Learning; 1d3 diplomacy)
[X] Catch the eye of a noble lady of far higher rank than you with a taste for... dangerous men (Unlocked by Lustful; Silver Tongued; Gain 1d6 Diplomacy 1d3 intrigue)
[X] Catch the eye of a noble lady of far higher rank than you with a taste for... dangerous men (Unlocked by Lustful; Silver Tongued; Gain 1d6 Diplomacy 1d3 intrigue)
Winning Vote
Arc 0 Part 7: The Merchant and the Exile
The Merchant and the Exile
When you had proposed trading with Lindon to to Sargent Abrazân called you mad, but not for nothing is he called steadfast, you had handled the 'small problem' of the misplaced fodder costs that would have bankrupted a smallholder like him, perhaps even to the point of enslavement for him and his family so after calling you a foam-eared boy in private he set about finding others of your company who were minded to follow along, mostly young soldiers looking for adventure... and Ular of course who is not so young. Odds are good he hopes the elves will cure you of your 'infatuation with the darkness' and you are not minded to argue too strongly on the matter since you are going to need his help if your plan is to have any hope of success.
Elves might live forever beyond the grasp of earthly sickness honing their crafts and arts down through the long ages... but that does not mean they are above trade in rare and precious things. In fact if one were to look at the vast bazaars of Numenor filled with the wealth and the wonder of the earth, new spice and incense, rare perfumes and fruit that must be packed in ice from the deepest south you would guess that the elves have more of an appetite for the finer things in life, from all the time they must have had to grow bored of those less fine. As it happens you might travel to ports far in the south of Middle Earth where the ships of the elves to not go and the Faithful only sparingly, for fear of ruinous taxes or far worse.
And so the Daring Wanderer is put to sea, a galley quite small by the standards of the vast tribute fleets that cross the seas each spring and fall, but good enough for your purposes. Low value cargo is the answer.
***
At least so you had hoped, you had almost gone bankrupt that first year because you did not know the secret hand waves that marked the traders of Andúnië which left you with a pile of varied spices, pottery, incense, weapons forged in the manner of the south-lands, even wine and beer made from all manner of strange plants. Thankfully among the sheer strangeness of the cargo are a pair of black opals shot through with crimson that had been counted 'flawed' when you got hem, but which caught the eye of one of the king's mistresses, at least according to the majordomo who paid an obscene amount of silver to take them off your hands. You were not about to argue with the man.
So that is the business you are in for the next five years, buying odd and exotic things from art to ivory carvings to, in one memorable year, live birds in the hope that something would tempt an elf only to end up selling most of your cargo in one of the ports of the Great Land. All the while you keep your skill at arms sharp by training colonial militias and occasionally riding out with them to cut some overly proud local clan chief to the sword. The colonial governors love you because you have no interest to claim a power base and you do your job at least well as any mercenary they could have hired to the task.
It is one once of these patrols that the son of the now dead chief decides to bribe you with, the contents of a temple they had just sacked, a temple of goblin-men they claimed and judging from the sheer malice you can feel wafting off many of the offerings like smoke off a bonfire you can well believe them. Those you drop into the sea without a second thought. But among all of that is one piece that is clearly not orc-work, nor the work of any sort of folk who would deal with the orc, an eight inches tall figure of a woman carved in some kind of pale wood.
You had spent enough time staring at every piece of elven craft you could get in sight of in hope for some insight into the song of the world to recognize the similarity. That year when you come to the Grey Heavens you show the piece off and explain as has by now become habit that you wish to trade for the work of the elves and learn of their wisdom and wonder of wonders you are allowed to pass.
An elf actually thanks you... thanks you for bringing that here and the Daring Wanderer is given a limited trading pass in the realms of Gil Galad. Later, much later, you discover that the small statuette is ancient, a work of a tribe of elves that was lost on the long journey west and this the only mark of their passage. Given where you had found it theirs had probably not been a happy tale.
***
Three years more you trade with the elves with no mention of sorcery, you learn their ways and customs, listening more than you speak, a lesson you had learned well in the royal army until at last one pleasant summer eve you are invited to listen to a singing of elven song in the woods in cedar woods near by the ever sighing sea. You comb your heard and place fair silver circlet of silver upon your brow, simple tunic and plain cloak as is the custom of your hopeful host, one of the Sindarin.
Thus do you Ular and Abrazân step under the fragrant shadow of the trees, silvery notes mingling with the rustling of the leaves until the ear is befuddled as to what is voice of olvar, or kelvar or quendi. The world seems lighter all around you as the shadow in the House of Sauron had been heavy in the absence of its master. Though of course I did not come here in the company of a conquering host looking to loot its treasures, you tell yourself wryly.
"What do you seek here, sapthan?" an elf who had slipped behind you like the shadow of a falling leaf asks in your own tongue and when that surprise fades you realize what he had called you sapthan... wizard. The term if more polite than if he had used the elven tongue at least.
"I come to learn," you shrug, keenly aware of just how easily it would be for the elves to make you vanish in this place, you are no favorite of the king or the Lord of Andúnië.
"Is it not a saying among your people that you aught to judge one by their enemies as much as their friends? Much do you know of the Enemy."
"So why then am I nor wary of... the thing you named me for?" You offer your best winning smile "It is a poor merchant who strikes a bargain before he has even set the scales, though I am willing to be sold on the matter."
The elf, fair of face and golden haired, of manner more refined than the most well groomed courtiers in the halls of the king, does something you do not expect, he laughs a full throated sound in which you can just barely hear the shadow of old, old bitterness.
"You remind me of ones I have lost Dunadan and while there may be much bitterness in those memories, bitterness is not all that is. Come I will speak to you and answer some of your questions. Those who once dwelt in the Guarded Realm would not show as much patience." From the tone you guess the better word might be clemency, but you swallow your pride and follow.
***
That is how you meet Vorindo, once of the household of Maglor the Minstrel and for that not much lived by other elves of the the Grey Heavens, though you never can draw from his lips the precise reason for it, old wars, old feuds is the best you can get out of him. Regardless there are many more interesting things to speak of:
So you speak over the long winter evenings in port.
"Behold you have seen the orcs and the servants of Morgoth in all their wretchedness before which the very soul rebels. What more proof do you need to of the evil of his works? Ruin is in all he touches and ugliness that rots the world "
"If one side is to be wretched must the other be without flaw? I am but a simple merchant and yet young in years, but it seems to me that upon finding a barrel of apples and discovering that all the ones on the surface are rotten it does not follow that the apples at the bottom must all be fresh and fair. Perhaps in all the barrel there are only a few apples that are mostly good to eat and it stands to us to pull out the worms..."
And so do you argue history to the sound of elven harps:
"Let us say that I allow that the Valar are as mighty as you name then, one with power over the sky, another over the sea and so forth. If indeed all who defy then are accursed, how do you know it is the work of some great creator, just as he is mighty and not just them making use of those same powers to enforce their will?"
"And what oh of Eriol Sapthan would be the distinction in your own terms between one case and the other. If the power and the wisdom of the Valar is their own and not another's..."
"If it were absolute they would not have needed the fiction of Iluvatar as the skull moth wears the mark of eyes upon its wings to seem a greater being. That is the weakness of your position compared to mine, you must show that the Valar have ever been wise and benevolent, I need to show but one exception..."
***
Season upon season, year upon year you speak to Vorindo great and small. You suspect that at the start he had meant to sway you into surrendering your ambition, or at least that is what he told himself. In truth he is lonely, both yearning for the sea and fearing it. For that last reason you cannot bring yourself to resent that he has passage to the undying realms. The first song he sings for you is mournful of friends fallen and lands that were drowned. Between its notes you see like in a waking dream fair cities of the elves cast to fire and ruin, you see the forges dark when even embers die and you see rivers of blood that have quenched the ambitions of the Noldorin.
The loudest and most leal of the King's Men say that the elves would snatch dominion of Middle Earth from you if they could, but you suspect that if they are like Vorindo than the fires of conquest is already out of them.
Gained Trait Novice Guldur (Goetia): Can invoke powerful if simple negative emotions in others by song. It takes a strong will not to get caught up in the very emotion you invoked
Your fortune never grows more than merely respectable for the king, leaning his ear ever closer to the lips of Sauron grows distrustful of any who would have dealings with elves and the taxes grow with it. It helps of course that unlike the Faithful you are willing to admit the might of Melkor and show your understanding of him with more than hollow words. To your mind much as a prudent governor prefers the king distracted and far away so is it better to accept the dominion of a Vala chained beyond the world than ones who might freely act for their own reasons.
As the stormclouds gather as the shadows lengthen where is the Daring Wanderer?
[] Returning from Lindon mostly empty save for a few smuggled elven goods
[] Sailing out from the ports of Harad, the hold bursting with fine wares
OOC: Welp this was a big one. Hope I did Eriol justice in this part since it covered a lot more time than any other single update.
Last edited:
- Location
- Germany
[X] Returning from Lindon mostly empty save for a few smuggled elven goods
Time to go through water and shadow and resurface in a strange world.
Time to go through water and shadow and resurface in a strange world.
Have the stats been rolled for @DragonParadox?
Not yet. I am thinking 1d6 stewardship and 1d4 learning for your last stat up of the prologue.
EDIT: Now they have been rolled 1 and 3
Last edited:
@DragonParadox what about meeting the children of Aule?
@DragonParadox could we get a physical description of Eriol?
Varder
Tired Cultist
- Location
- Hell
@DragonParadox can you pin the scale of stats in Informational? I remember you made a post with it, but can't find it.
Basically we're the equivalent of a skilled numenorean military officer, a decent numenorean scholar and about as good or better as a competent human noble at everything else.
- Location
- Over the next hill.
[X] Returning from Lindon mostly empty save for a few smuggled elven goods
Eriol : "If it were absolute they would not have needed the fiction of Iluvatar as the skull moth wears the mark of eyes upon its wings to seem a greater being.
Eru Iluvatar : I AM ABOUT TO PULL WHAT IS CALLED A PRO GAMER MOVE.
*Smites Numenor out of existence*
Eriol : "If it were absolute they would not have needed the fiction of Iluvatar as the skull moth wears the mark of eyes upon its wings to seem a greater being.
Eru Iluvatar : I AM ABOUT TO PULL WHAT IS CALLED A PRO GAMER MOVE.
*Smites Numenor out of existence*