EvilPorygon
Cookie Monster
- Location
- a phone
[X] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
Storming the Gates
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original
lordchaos99
(I have left SV)
[X] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
So many lost. An entire pack of faithful warhounds, battle horses and squires.
One last WAAAGH Boyz! Through the Underworld itself, then up into Olympus and the Outer Planes!
Every last soldier. Veteran, greenhorn and in between. Packs of vicious vikings, bands of fighting clans and a rising surge under the banner of THE UNDEFEATED
So many lost. An entire pack of faithful warhounds, battle horses and squires.
One last WAAAGH Boyz! Through the Underworld itself, then up into Olympus and the Outer Planes!
Every last soldier. Veteran, greenhorn and in between. Packs of vicious vikings, bands of fighting clans and a rising surge under the banner of THE UNDEFEATED
Aabcehmu
Confusion as a Natural State of Being
- Location
- Chicago, IL
- Pronouns
- Any/All
@Ekans Ekans Ekans, tagging you, since you asked to be pinged when the thread went up.
[X] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
[X] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
- Location
- Too Deep in the Midnight Sea
[X] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
Serpent? We are here for no mere Serpent. Forward, lads! Forward unto the breach! Ready your blades! Pick your foes! Slay those dead and immortal, and work up an appetite in the doing, for tonight we dine in Hell!
Serpent? We are here for no mere Serpent. Forward, lads! Forward unto the breach! Ready your blades! Pick your foes! Slay those dead and immortal, and work up an appetite in the doing, for tonight we dine in Hell!
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
[X] Was the Serpent itself!
- Location
- Brazil
[X] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
Across the Threshold
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
"Onward! Onward!" Kirl bellowed as they continued their mad rush. The Serpent was but an obstacle between them and their true objective. It was the guardian of the gates, but they merely needed to get past it, for it could not pursue them down the paths they would travel.
The cosmic monster reared up and Kirl was pleased to see that its motion was as that of natural serpents. He had fought and studied snakes and dragons and such creatures in life, and while none could compare in size or sheer durability of this creature, he knew how it would move, how it would strike, and he had made sure that the men behind him knew it too. Still, in the actual moment it was so much more than one could imagine, the creature striking forward with a sound that was equally akin to a whip cracking and a clap of thunder. Curiously Kirl almost thought that he heard the tremendous crash after he saw the serpent lunge forward, but perhaps that was just his mind playing tricks. In any case, the moment he saw the telltale quiver of a strike building the beast's body he was already diving forward into a slide, those around and behind him following suit. He had tried to keep his spear from actually connecting with the body of the beast, but it still nicked across a black iron scale and produced a shower of sparks.
Behind him some of the shouts had turned to screams as men were crushed, skewered, burned or infected with toxin. Kirl had no time to fight this though and just kept moving, refusing to turn back. Everyone had already agreed that they would not dally with Yamrunyin, and everyone knew that there would be those who would fall. All there was to it was to press forward. Still, hearing a strange laughing yell, Kirl had to glance backwards even as he charged for the Gates of the Underworld. One of the men with him, Dyran, had somehow managed to get himself wedge on the serpent's teeth such that he could not be easily dislodged even as he slammed his sword into its massive eyeball, the sharpened steel bouncing off the orb without doing damage but clearly irritating the creature such that it began to thrash. A single shake of its head was probably enough to kill Dyran, but the vexations blows threw it into a total fit. Men were crushed, but it was also badly distracted, allowing the majority - more than had been planned for - to finish their mad dash through the gates.
Passing through the pillars of stone that marked the ultimate boundary between the living and the dead, the now reduced band of elder warriors found themselves in front of a vast crowd of wispy spirits, all gathered about to be judged by the Auditors. Skeletons the size of barns draped in heavy black cloaks, the trio of dead giants was tasked with sorting through the souls that came before them, allotting those who had not died in battle to their places in the Underworld. Taking but a moment to catch their breath after having run past the Dead Serpent and to let the shock of their arrival ripple through the crowd, the hunched over Auditors all rising and drawing their tools - sickle, scissors, and pick, all larger than a two handed sword in their grasp - from the shadows.
Clashing his spear against his shield in a beat that was picked up by his men and thumping his feet on the bleak ground, Kirl pointed at the central giant and proclaimed, "Well, come on then, if you think you can take us!"
Moving in between blinks in puffs of smoke and shadow, the Auditors were considerably faster than Kirl had expected, but somewhat fortunately for him and his men they were only armed with tools, not proper weapons, and for all their strength and speed the awkward devices were still an impairment. They couldn't just sweep his men away all at once, and once the initial shock was over they began to fight back, stabbing out to catch the cloaks and the gaps in the bones of their foes. The first few times the giants were able to flash away before they could properly be pinned, but Kirl managed to stab his spear through the foot of one of the Auditors, pinning it in place. It swung its pick down upon him in a murderous downstroke, but one of his men threw himself between Kirl and the attack, and other another grabbed the creature's cloak and began to haul upon it. From the sounds of his barking orders Sorn had also managed to tangle up another of the Auditors. Leaving the colossal skeleton he had already pinned to be dragged down and tied up by those already around him, Kirl drew his sword and rushed to where the Auditor with the sickle - Griglu if he remembered right - was still hacking away at his warriors. Seeing its brothers being hauled down, it flashed away from the scrum where it was fighting to get some distance and assess.
A mind honed by generations of war took apart the motions of the oversized taxman, and Kirl gave a subtle gesture to one of his men as a began to run towards the giant. Taking its own account of the gnarled warrior, Griglu flashed across the battlefield, only to discover that Kirl wasn't deviating from the course he had set. Pausing in what it was doing in confusion, the creature eventually decided that it could both take the isolated old man and that Kirl obviously had some non-obvious objective that he was going over. It flashed over to the side of his path just as the warrior Kirl had signalled to stepped out from where he was, shield braced as a stepping stone. Leaping upon it as the still thickly hewed old man heaved upwards, Kirl was launched above the incoming sickle and straight into the face of the surprised Auditor. If it was a proper warrior it might have been able to flicker away before he could connect, but as it was its mind, so used to the slow grind of consideration of a soul's worth, was not up to the task of fighting the elder. Slamming his sword into its hollow eye socket, Kirl suspected that he did no damage, but he did confuse and startle the thing. Hauling himself up on its face, away from the desperately gnashing jaws while dodging the flailing of its bony hands, Kirl began to kick it in the teeth repeatedly. Around the third time he swung his steel boots something gave way. Now with a safe foothold, he jammed his foot into the gap and his shoulder into one of the eye sockets and began to push with his entire body.
It was at about that point that his warriors tackled the beast's shins as a mass, hauling it down. Adjusting his positioning as they toppled like a felled tree, Kirl held his armoured elbow against the inner side of what was to become the upper eye socket, right at the bridge of the nose. The impact was like a sack full of dice being dropped, with the notable exception of the dry wood crack of Griglu's nose being broken. Scrambling up off the giant as his men swarmed it to tie it up in the remnants of its own slashed robe like its brothers, he accepted his spear back from Sorn with a silent nod even as he lightly jogged away to assess the situation.
The Gates of the Underworld on the Underworld side were settled at the top of a great dome of black earth upon an acropolis. Beneath a dark sky with faint, alien stars great black mountains peaked in ash grey snow surrounded them, the valleys below flooded with smooth obsidian waters fog cloaked fjords. Upon many of the mountains there were bone white citadels illuminated by flickering green torches and lanterns, with great arched bridges linking many of the structures at a height no mortal hand could build at. Taking a moment to compare little details in case they might be important later, Kirl noted that there were more stars reflected in the waters down below than there were in the sky above.
He also noted that there were winged harpies furiously flapping in their direction, men dangling from their talons.
"Shield wall! Shield wall!" Kirl called out as he fell back to the lines, which rapidly evolved into a circular formation of overlapping shields and spears and swords pointed outwards. A quick estimate suggested that between the Auditors and the Dead Serpent Kirl had already lost about half of the men he had started this raid with, but that was already more than he had hoped to face the Zwerjy with.
Dropping from the sky to land with surprisingly adroitness, the spectral bodies of the honourable dead wailed out their deathly cries even as they raised their black iron two handed swords. The first such berserker to reach the shield wall was dispatched with quickness that surprised the already slain warrior, a single stab of Kirl's spear to the throat that practically floated through the man's guard. A shield bash from the man to Kirl's right knocked the warrior out of the way, and a man behind Kirl gave a second stab to the chest to ensure the kill even as Kirl ordered them all to advance and trample their enemies underfoot. They could not be bogged down here.
The Zwerjy fought as bears do, bundles of muscle and fury without heed for injury or death that would disappear with the morning. Every one of them was a warrior slain in honourable combat who had been sharpened by unknowable years of battle against each other. Fast, strong, heedless of any damage that could not fell them, and brutal in their screaming frenzy, they still bounced off the shield wall like rain upon a plate harness.
Unlike the Zwerjy, every man in the formation could claim that he had never fallen in battle.
Still, if one left plate out in the rain, it would be worn away, and the flow of eternally reborn warriors was more akin to submerging them in a river. Spears and shields shattered when the pressure became too great for the shield wall to kill before a swing could connect, and when that happened strength count for more than skill. Kirl's banner spear was damaged, and while he managed to retract it before his banner could be lost in the swirl of bodies, he was still forced to draw his sword in the second time during the battle. A massive sword stroke came in out of the swirl of the confused melee and Kirl barely managed to deflect it off to the side with his own blade, the scraping impact shooting off a hailstorm of hot sparks from the clash. Even as his arms shook with the blow, he let his left hand strike out to catch a Zwerjy warrior in the throat with the edge of his shield. The grin that the man had even as Kirl stabbed his sword up underneath the sternum and into the heart suggested that he should go seek out the warrior on another day and ask him to share an ale in the evening.
If he died here, he knew he would be happy, and from the way a warrior's drinking song seemed to have spontaneously sprung up among all the combatants, he knew that every man who had followed him into battle felt the same. To fall here, past the Gates of the Underworld and its guardian, the Auditors subdued, and against overwhelming numbers of the Zwerjy who had already fallen in greater numbers, this wasn't dying.
This was kicking in Death's Door while he was at supper and demanding to know why he hadn't picked a fight with you yet!
The thought proved prophetic when the air suddenly took on a strange stillness, as if before a storm, and the Zwerjy abruptly scrambled to get away from the remaining bundle of battered old men they had been fighting with. Dropping from the sky with eye searing and ear breaking force, a great thunderbolt landed before the raiders, before Kirl, and once the spots faded from his vision, revealed just the person he had been looking for.
Standing a head taller than any man in Kirl's force - in their primes at that! - and nearly as broad, the being before them was mostly concealed behind a polished obsidian helmet in the shape of an eagle's skull and a cloak of raven black eagle feathers. He did however hold an enormous spear of yew and shining silver that crackled with residual lightning.
Wyr, the Black Eagle, the Keeper of Lost Things, the Rider in the Storm, the Warlord of the Dead, the Father of Kings, and - most importantly - the Lord of the Underworld.
Kirl's smile was beaming.
He then revealed his purpose by proclaiming...
[] "I challenge you to a duel!"
[] "I am a mercenary here to sell his services!"
"Onward! Onward!" Kirl bellowed as they continued their mad rush. The Serpent was but an obstacle between them and their true objective. It was the guardian of the gates, but they merely needed to get past it, for it could not pursue them down the paths they would travel.
The cosmic monster reared up and Kirl was pleased to see that its motion was as that of natural serpents. He had fought and studied snakes and dragons and such creatures in life, and while none could compare in size or sheer durability of this creature, he knew how it would move, how it would strike, and he had made sure that the men behind him knew it too. Still, in the actual moment it was so much more than one could imagine, the creature striking forward with a sound that was equally akin to a whip cracking and a clap of thunder. Curiously Kirl almost thought that he heard the tremendous crash after he saw the serpent lunge forward, but perhaps that was just his mind playing tricks. In any case, the moment he saw the telltale quiver of a strike building the beast's body he was already diving forward into a slide, those around and behind him following suit. He had tried to keep his spear from actually connecting with the body of the beast, but it still nicked across a black iron scale and produced a shower of sparks.
Behind him some of the shouts had turned to screams as men were crushed, skewered, burned or infected with toxin. Kirl had no time to fight this though and just kept moving, refusing to turn back. Everyone had already agreed that they would not dally with Yamrunyin, and everyone knew that there would be those who would fall. All there was to it was to press forward. Still, hearing a strange laughing yell, Kirl had to glance backwards even as he charged for the Gates of the Underworld. One of the men with him, Dyran, had somehow managed to get himself wedge on the serpent's teeth such that he could not be easily dislodged even as he slammed his sword into its massive eyeball, the sharpened steel bouncing off the orb without doing damage but clearly irritating the creature such that it began to thrash. A single shake of its head was probably enough to kill Dyran, but the vexations blows threw it into a total fit. Men were crushed, but it was also badly distracted, allowing the majority - more than had been planned for - to finish their mad dash through the gates.
Passing through the pillars of stone that marked the ultimate boundary between the living and the dead, the now reduced band of elder warriors found themselves in front of a vast crowd of wispy spirits, all gathered about to be judged by the Auditors. Skeletons the size of barns draped in heavy black cloaks, the trio of dead giants was tasked with sorting through the souls that came before them, allotting those who had not died in battle to their places in the Underworld. Taking but a moment to catch their breath after having run past the Dead Serpent and to let the shock of their arrival ripple through the crowd, the hunched over Auditors all rising and drawing their tools - sickle, scissors, and pick, all larger than a two handed sword in their grasp - from the shadows.
Clashing his spear against his shield in a beat that was picked up by his men and thumping his feet on the bleak ground, Kirl pointed at the central giant and proclaimed, "Well, come on then, if you think you can take us!"
Moving in between blinks in puffs of smoke and shadow, the Auditors were considerably faster than Kirl had expected, but somewhat fortunately for him and his men they were only armed with tools, not proper weapons, and for all their strength and speed the awkward devices were still an impairment. They couldn't just sweep his men away all at once, and once the initial shock was over they began to fight back, stabbing out to catch the cloaks and the gaps in the bones of their foes. The first few times the giants were able to flash away before they could properly be pinned, but Kirl managed to stab his spear through the foot of one of the Auditors, pinning it in place. It swung its pick down upon him in a murderous downstroke, but one of his men threw himself between Kirl and the attack, and other another grabbed the creature's cloak and began to haul upon it. From the sounds of his barking orders Sorn had also managed to tangle up another of the Auditors. Leaving the colossal skeleton he had already pinned to be dragged down and tied up by those already around him, Kirl drew his sword and rushed to where the Auditor with the sickle - Griglu if he remembered right - was still hacking away at his warriors. Seeing its brothers being hauled down, it flashed away from the scrum where it was fighting to get some distance and assess.
A mind honed by generations of war took apart the motions of the oversized taxman, and Kirl gave a subtle gesture to one of his men as a began to run towards the giant. Taking its own account of the gnarled warrior, Griglu flashed across the battlefield, only to discover that Kirl wasn't deviating from the course he had set. Pausing in what it was doing in confusion, the creature eventually decided that it could both take the isolated old man and that Kirl obviously had some non-obvious objective that he was going over. It flashed over to the side of his path just as the warrior Kirl had signalled to stepped out from where he was, shield braced as a stepping stone. Leaping upon it as the still thickly hewed old man heaved upwards, Kirl was launched above the incoming sickle and straight into the face of the surprised Auditor. If it was a proper warrior it might have been able to flicker away before he could connect, but as it was its mind, so used to the slow grind of consideration of a soul's worth, was not up to the task of fighting the elder. Slamming his sword into its hollow eye socket, Kirl suspected that he did no damage, but he did confuse and startle the thing. Hauling himself up on its face, away from the desperately gnashing jaws while dodging the flailing of its bony hands, Kirl began to kick it in the teeth repeatedly. Around the third time he swung his steel boots something gave way. Now with a safe foothold, he jammed his foot into the gap and his shoulder into one of the eye sockets and began to push with his entire body.
It was at about that point that his warriors tackled the beast's shins as a mass, hauling it down. Adjusting his positioning as they toppled like a felled tree, Kirl held his armoured elbow against the inner side of what was to become the upper eye socket, right at the bridge of the nose. The impact was like a sack full of dice being dropped, with the notable exception of the dry wood crack of Griglu's nose being broken. Scrambling up off the giant as his men swarmed it to tie it up in the remnants of its own slashed robe like its brothers, he accepted his spear back from Sorn with a silent nod even as he lightly jogged away to assess the situation.
The Gates of the Underworld on the Underworld side were settled at the top of a great dome of black earth upon an acropolis. Beneath a dark sky with faint, alien stars great black mountains peaked in ash grey snow surrounded them, the valleys below flooded with smooth obsidian waters fog cloaked fjords. Upon many of the mountains there were bone white citadels illuminated by flickering green torches and lanterns, with great arched bridges linking many of the structures at a height no mortal hand could build at. Taking a moment to compare little details in case they might be important later, Kirl noted that there were more stars reflected in the waters down below than there were in the sky above.
He also noted that there were winged harpies furiously flapping in their direction, men dangling from their talons.
"Shield wall! Shield wall!" Kirl called out as he fell back to the lines, which rapidly evolved into a circular formation of overlapping shields and spears and swords pointed outwards. A quick estimate suggested that between the Auditors and the Dead Serpent Kirl had already lost about half of the men he had started this raid with, but that was already more than he had hoped to face the Zwerjy with.
Dropping from the sky to land with surprisingly adroitness, the spectral bodies of the honourable dead wailed out their deathly cries even as they raised their black iron two handed swords. The first such berserker to reach the shield wall was dispatched with quickness that surprised the already slain warrior, a single stab of Kirl's spear to the throat that practically floated through the man's guard. A shield bash from the man to Kirl's right knocked the warrior out of the way, and a man behind Kirl gave a second stab to the chest to ensure the kill even as Kirl ordered them all to advance and trample their enemies underfoot. They could not be bogged down here.
The Zwerjy fought as bears do, bundles of muscle and fury without heed for injury or death that would disappear with the morning. Every one of them was a warrior slain in honourable combat who had been sharpened by unknowable years of battle against each other. Fast, strong, heedless of any damage that could not fell them, and brutal in their screaming frenzy, they still bounced off the shield wall like rain upon a plate harness.
Unlike the Zwerjy, every man in the formation could claim that he had never fallen in battle.
Still, if one left plate out in the rain, it would be worn away, and the flow of eternally reborn warriors was more akin to submerging them in a river. Spears and shields shattered when the pressure became too great for the shield wall to kill before a swing could connect, and when that happened strength count for more than skill. Kirl's banner spear was damaged, and while he managed to retract it before his banner could be lost in the swirl of bodies, he was still forced to draw his sword in the second time during the battle. A massive sword stroke came in out of the swirl of the confused melee and Kirl barely managed to deflect it off to the side with his own blade, the scraping impact shooting off a hailstorm of hot sparks from the clash. Even as his arms shook with the blow, he let his left hand strike out to catch a Zwerjy warrior in the throat with the edge of his shield. The grin that the man had even as Kirl stabbed his sword up underneath the sternum and into the heart suggested that he should go seek out the warrior on another day and ask him to share an ale in the evening.
If he died here, he knew he would be happy, and from the way a warrior's drinking song seemed to have spontaneously sprung up among all the combatants, he knew that every man who had followed him into battle felt the same. To fall here, past the Gates of the Underworld and its guardian, the Auditors subdued, and against overwhelming numbers of the Zwerjy who had already fallen in greater numbers, this wasn't dying.
This was kicking in Death's Door while he was at supper and demanding to know why he hadn't picked a fight with you yet!
The thought proved prophetic when the air suddenly took on a strange stillness, as if before a storm, and the Zwerjy abruptly scrambled to get away from the remaining bundle of battered old men they had been fighting with. Dropping from the sky with eye searing and ear breaking force, a great thunderbolt landed before the raiders, before Kirl, and once the spots faded from his vision, revealed just the person he had been looking for.
Standing a head taller than any man in Kirl's force - in their primes at that! - and nearly as broad, the being before them was mostly concealed behind a polished obsidian helmet in the shape of an eagle's skull and a cloak of raven black eagle feathers. He did however hold an enormous spear of yew and shining silver that crackled with residual lightning.
Wyr, the Black Eagle, the Keeper of Lost Things, the Rider in the Storm, the Warlord of the Dead, the Father of Kings, and - most importantly - the Lord of the Underworld.
Kirl's smile was beaming.
He then revealed his purpose by proclaiming...
[] "I challenge you to a duel!"
[] "I am a mercenary here to sell his services!"
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Duel is kinda straightforward.
[X] "I am a mercenary here to sell his services!"
this, meawhile, sounds hilarious and awesome.
[X] "I am a mercenary here to sell his services!"
this, meawhile, sounds hilarious and awesome.
redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
Hmm.
I want to say duel, but I don't know where the quest would go from there.
Mercenary sounds like a solid foundation to build up a larger quest on, and it's hilariously unexpected.
Still, duel feels more fitting.
[X] "I challenge you to a duel!"
I want to say duel, but I don't know where the quest would go from there.
Mercenary sounds like a solid foundation to build up a larger quest on, and it's hilariously unexpected.
Still, duel feels more fitting.
[X] "I challenge you to a duel!"
