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Fiction Herald Of The Old Ones
- Thread starter Mr.Crocodile
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Temple Guard
Mr.Crocodile
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Thanks Bowser! I think it's really important to make use of multiple POVs and interlocking storylines to properly tell a story as large-scale as this one, so it makes me very happy to know you think I'm doing a good job
Temple Guard
Mr.Crocodile
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Slann
Killer Angel
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this is easily among my favorites. So rich of details, so deeply entwined in lustrian background, with so many things going on.
The good (and bad) part is that, with each new installment, to fully appreciate the story, i must go back and re-read it in its entirety.
The good (and bad) part is that, with each new installment, to fully appreciate the story, i must go back and re-read it in its entirety.
Temple Guard
Mr.Crocodile
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You have no idea how much of a compliment that is
Slann
Killer Angel
Prophet of the Stars
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Temple Guard
Mr.Crocodile
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The Gifts of Kara - Part V: Of Fathers
The Spawn or Spawning Elder is the closest equivalent Lizardman society to a parental or caregiver figure. Lizardmen -irregardless of caste- are collectively cared for by teams of highly trained Skinks in their larval stage, before they leave the spawning pool. This combined with the asexual reproduction of lizardmen and their lack of sentience prior to leaving the Spawning Pool means that a bond like that of a mother and her child in other sentients simply does not ocur.
As such, it is instead the Spawn Elder who has the closest role to that of a father. Lizardmen leave the Spawning pool in a state of physical adolescence, grow quickly and possess a fully formed brain at this point of their lives. But what they do not possess is training or life experience of any kind. This is when the Spawning Elder comes in. In its most basic form, the Spawning Elder is an old and experienced lizardman, generally of the same caste as the spawlings, who trains, educates and guides these youngsters.
For example, the Spawn Elder of a spawning of Saurus might be an experienced veteran or an accomplished warrior unable to actively serve, crippled in combat but still very much capable of imparting his experience. A Spawning Elder of a cadre of young Skinks might be a well regarded master craftslizard of the specific profession or skill the Skinks were born to be adept at. Meanwhile a Kroxigor Spawn Elder tends to simply be a specially old or intelligent individual, and sometimes Kroxigors will even be mentored by Skinks, if their profession to be is one strongly tied to collaboration with their much smaller cousins. It is believed Slann spawnings, if they ever even happen, would not need this kind of mentorship due to their innate traits and psychic connection to the rest of their kin.
As such, it would be appropriate to compare the emotional, societal and educational role of the Spawn Elder to that of a father, uncle or beloved teacher. This is the closest analogue to a familial relationship the lizardmen exhibit after the brotherly relationships lizardmen of the same spawning have.
-Excerpt of The Roaring Ones, autobiography memoirs by Nasser Al-fil
Stefan had never entered the Felldowns, any time he had come to the place before, it had been to watch the sign from the safety of the streets and rooftops of the nearby slums.
And to be honest, entering wasn’t the best way to describe arriving at the place. The Felldowns were located on the Southwestern third of the estuary island the core of Port Reaver had grown out of and were really just a massive open area in which dozens of warehouses and hundreds of hulls and ships in different states of repair (and disrepair) were scattered. Beaten paths of sandy soil snakes their way around them like termite paths. And much like in a termite infested log, the air here was congested with sawdust.
Hundreds of people moved to and fro, carrying lumber of all sizes, some pieces big enough that they were pulled by donkeys. Boxes and boxes of many-sized nails and iron bolts clinked and clanked this and that way. And rope, a lot of rope, so many bundles and spools as to encircle the city trice over. There were men pounding old cloth and rags into cracks and sides of half-put together ships, standing on top of massive stilts, and then slathering and covering the area with black tar. The sound of axes hitting wood, sawing, hammering and men straining under the weight of pulleys created a cacophony that made it easy for him to be ignored.
On his way to the biggest warehouse, he walked before a large foundry on the front of which a pyramid of iron balls laid, each bigger than his head. And men were carefully carrying large sheets of copper out of the place too every few minutes, it was so searing of a place as to make the usual blaze of the morning sun feel calming on his skin. Another warehouse seemed to be empty of the ship-making activity of most of the others, instead carts of water barrels and crates of food left it constantly, salted meats hung from hooks some ways inside of the place.
The biggest warehouse was just by the actual shore, overlooking the wide ramps used to pull ships in need of repair out of the water. Strangely it saw the least activity, with mostly very serious older men walking in and out every few minutes. It was the workshop of the mastershipwrich, and as such it was also the central office from which said shipwright kept tabs on and managed the entire area under the auspices of the King. Although it was hard for Stefan to accept the idea that the Felldowsn were in any way shape or form “controlled,” much less by a single individual.
But Stefan had asked around, and the shipwright was the person who you were supposed to ask for if you needed a job. Most people didn’t really look for a job on the Felldowns apparently. The shipbuilders were always looking for new hands to put to work and usually grabbed what able men they could find themselves. Be it stranded pirates, indebted sailors or the vagabonds the King’s guard had started collecting and kicking in the general direction of the yards.
Stefan had even heard that king Borġ had taken to selling the prisoners in the Ċittadella to the shipyards whenever the dungeons became too crowded.
As such, if you were in a rare enough situation that you “wanted” to work on the shipyard and weren’t already, you were either the rare kind of person the master shipwright would have to personally take a look at, or you were such a sad scrap of a human that you would not even survive the walk from your rat infested hovel to the Felldowns.
Partially out of demand, it was clear even to Stefan’s uneducated gaze that every ship that could possibly be built in the area available was being built indeed. And if the screaming of the man he had passed by, with his arm crushed under a log half-dangling from a broken rope, was an indicator to go by, grunts for the more heavy-lifting kind of work were in high demand
He could only hope that apprentices for the more skilled variety of tasks were in equally high demand too.
He waited for a while before the building, not wanting to attempt to enter when unwelcome and ruining his chances to find a job, and he also didn’t want to look as desperate as he was. Some part of him even wanted to chicken out and return to the pickpocket life, make use of his hidden wealth now that he could and then go beg to whoever had replaced Jhonny’s Benterar as the slavedriver of the city’s “little thieves”.
But every time that thought or a similar one reared its head, kit was soon followed by the image of piercing blue-gold eyes and the hissing of snakes in his ears. “Why? Why do you steal?” The snakes hissed.
“You there boy,” A man, suat and with a bald head and thick beard, noticed him. “What’re you doing standing there, don’tchu have anything to do?”
Stefan jumped in his place, awkwardly looking up and the barely taller but much bigger man, “Uhhh, I need to talk with the master?”
“The master?”
At that Stefan simply pointed at the warehouse.
“Oh, you mean Azzarello? I thought you was a slaveboy for a second!” The man laughed. “You a courier?”
“Uhhhh… N-Yes-No! I’m sorry Kirsa told me it would be fine if I just asked to talk with Master Azzarello!” Stefan nervously attempted to explain himself.
“And who the fuck’s Kirsa…? Never mind, just go in and tell them Morris let you in if they ask, not like they can’t kick you out themselves if you start wasting their time.
So Stefan entered Master Shipwright Azzarello’s warehouse-offices with the bored blessing of Morris then proceeding to snoop around the place, ignored by the men and few women working on this and that around the place, most seemed to be very focused on their workbenches, where the drew and wrote on large sheets of parchment and paper with triangular and perfectly semicircular pieces of wood guiding their strokes. It was a strange combination of drawing and writing, he had done a lot of the first one with chalk or sticks in the ground, but not much of the second.
One of the kinder women had once taught him how to write his name at the orphanage; she hadn’t lasted very long.
In hindsight, it would have probably been a good idea to ask for extra details about the man in charge of the Felldowns beyond where and how to find him, because right now he was just scurrying around the well lit warehouse like a rat in a clean room.
“Spirits of the sky, water and earth, who are you little jackal and what are you doing here?!” Shouted a female voice behind him.
He hadn’t heard nor seen her sneak behind him, catching him even more off guard than Morris.
“Well? I’m waiting for an answer before I have my men flay you for sneaking where you do not belong.” The woman threatened.
She was of very dark skin, dark enough to mark her as having Arabyan ancestry. Stefan didn’t know much about Araby beyond it being the place from which a good chunk of Port Reaver’s pirates hailed from. Apparently it was much more to the south than the rest of the places people claimed to come from, and that was the reason why they were always much more tan.
But she didn’t speak with the melody-like accent the Arabyan men he had stolen from had shouted at him with, so she was probably like him, born to Port Reaver.
She was also old, maybe in her early sixties, and she carried herself with the same air of confidence Martha did. A woman who had reached the top of her profession and was not stepping down from the throne. The wrinkles on her face and the gray hairs peppered through her otherwise long night-black hair didn’t make her ugly to Stefan, not like the really old vagabonds who shared the streets and alleys with pickpockets like him. People didn’t really get old the good way in Port Reaver most of the time, no one “retired” in the city. If you were successful and no longer young you just moved back to wherever you came from.
But this woman was clearly not past her prime, considering her demeanor.
Instead she looked important, like she had always been meant to be the old woman staring daggers at him at that moment.
A woman who was still looking at him with her hazel eyes in a way that froze him on the spot. And she was still waiting for her answer.
“I… Uhhh… I need to talk with the Master Shipwright!” He stuttered.
“Well then, what are you waiting for?” She tsked and rested her hand on her waist, taping her foot on the floor.
“Wait, but…? Master Azzarello?”
“Yes boy, Master Yasmeen Azzarello of the Felldowns, do I need to show you my seat in the council in order for you to stop wasting my time?” She growled.
“If this isn’t a good start…” Stefan thought to himself. “I… I was told to come to you because I need work!” He finally shouted, blushing red and with his eyes closing, awaiting the slap to come.
Instead, her slightly wrinkled and well manicured hand grabbed his chin and forced him to look up at her.
“Let me get this straight boy, you sneaked your way into my workshop and spends Djinns know how long scurrying inside of it without permission because you wanted me to give you a job?”
“Uhhh… Morris told me it was ok?” He ofrecido.
At that the woman let go of him covering her face with her hands and sighting in exasperation. “Of course he did, that brute could meet a man holding a saber with my name engraved on it and invite him in here if it meant half an extra minute of time to drink himself to death.”
Then she looked at him again. “Give me your hands.” She ordered.
“What?”
“Your hands child, show them to me or I’ll have them cut off.”
At that prompt, he happily offered his two hands up for inspection. She took hold of them, running hers over his and muttering to herself. A few moments later she let go and looked him in the face again.
“What is your name boy?”
“Stefan.”
“You are a thief.” She stated.
“What? No I’m-” He tried to defend himself.
“You fool no one, you have the kind of hands only bards and thieves have, and you don’t look like a bard.” She explained, pointing at his now clean but clearly old, ill-fitting and ragged clothes.
“O-Ok but I promise I’m not here to steal, I promise!” He cried.
“Oh I know that, no one would stupid enough to use you and you are not clever enough to think of doing it on your own.” Once more she took hold of his face and made him look up.
His face was still bruised, his black eye still present.
“Why look for work here? Guilds all over the city need apprentices.”
“They wouldn’t take me in, I’m an orphan, they think I’ll steal from them!”
“Idiots.” She grunted. “At least we agree on that.” He thought.
“Do you even know what we-I do here?” She asked him.
Stefan was a mess, looking at her gave him some clues, her dress was full of pockets and her large apron had all sorts of stuff hanging from it, from stencils to a strange metal instrument made of two pointy arms connected by a hinge.
“You… Make ships? You draw ships?” He could barely answer. Her response was an haughty harump.
She ordered him to stay put and left, having one of the people who had been drawing and writing guard him.
A few minutes later she returned with a fat man dressed in gaudy colors.
“This is the boy.” She told him, not even looking at Stefan.
“Are you sure?” The man asked with an Estalian accent.
“He’s of good stock, I vouch for him, what else do you need Curiel? Or is it that you don’t trust my judgment any longer?”
“No! Of course not my Lady Azzarello!” The man quickly defended.
“Good.” Then she turned to Stefan. “Stefan, this is Augurio de Curiel, the man I told you about, he has agreed to employ you in the ship chandlers here, you remember asking me about them on your way here? The building with all the supplies and goods constantly leaving.”
“Wh-yes! Yes!” He badly lied on instinct.
She however, had not slipped even once in her half a dozen lies during the exchange.
“Excellent, you start working tomorrow, I expect nothing but compliments about you from Mister De Curiel you understand?” She sternly ordered.
“Yes! I promise I will do my best mister!” Stefen enthusiastically promised.
And with that, he had somehow been hired as an errand boy in the Felldown’s ship chandlers.
A few minutes later, once the Estalian merchant had left with the young brunette boy following him like a duckling, Yasmeen was approached by one of her apprentices, Orlanda, the same who had guarded the boy while she fetched Curial.
“If you don’t mind me asking boss… Did you just lie to the fat Curiel to his face just to get a random boy a job?”
“I never mind your questions girl, that’s why you are even here in the first place… Did you see his face?” Yasmeen brought up.
“Of course I did.”
“Think, a thief orphan shows up here of all places crying for a job with a broken face? Shaking and jittery and a mess of nerves? Whatever left him with that face has taken the thief out of him. And a thief who can’t steal is a finless fish.”
“Aww, you took pity on the little scoundrel.” Her apprentice cooed. “I knew there was still some good in you!”
“Shut up or I’ll use him as your replacement.” She responded to the apprentice's quip and took her leave, returning to her office.
The King would want to know soon about the progress of his order, especially with what had just happened to one of his other projects. Literally went up in flames. She joked to herself.
The boy, on the other hand, would make for an interesting new project for herself.
Brorsan had done especially well today compared to his siblings during training, so Torfi felt the pup deserved some extra pampering now that they were done with the obedience training.
It was very important that the hounds learned obedience first and foremost. It didn’t matter how ferocious or good at tracking a dog was if it was incapable of consistently following orders. It would take a few more weeks of focusing on that before Torfi and his father, Houndsmaster Ornolf, could move on to the more specific parts of training the bay dogs.
Once Brorsan was satisfied, Torfi got up and left the kennel room, closing it by the simple lock-less bolt on the side of the wooden door.
The kennels were basically a glorified walled patio, built on Skeggi’s outermost area to make use of the stockade as one of its wood walls. Beyond that there was the simple wooden structure were all the individual and group kennel cages were built, with a couple trunks built into it off the ground to keep what they contained (leashes, muzzles, the likes…) at a safe height from both the dogs and the humidity of the ground.
The kennel patio was relatively spacious with how few dogs were in it right now, with the dozen hounds free to roam and nap at their leisure, go to the water trough or fight over scraps, just that very moment Bamse and Troll were fighting over a large leg bone. Only the bitches and the pups who weren’t ready for hunting yet were kept in the cages for most of the day.
The first to avoid them getting pregnant when pups weren’t needed, the second to keep them calm, safe and separate before they were fully trained.
Torfi didn’t really have much else to do for the rest of the morning now that hound training was done. The dogs wouldn’t be eating until after lunch, when the scraps of Skeggi would be distributed between them and the pigs. There was no point in cleaning the kennels either since he was supposed to do that late in the afternoon.
Usually on days like this he, his father and a couple of his siblings would be going out hunting or tracking. But all his siblings had yet to return and his father was out with the large hunting party who had left the day before to prepare for the festival.
Ragnarblot would be coming in a few days, those norscan who hadn’t been born to Skeggi like Torfi always complained about how strange it was to celebrate the midwinter in the opposite time of the year or how bizarre it was to do so in such a blisteringly warm and humid place, but that was the only way to celebrate the Longest Night the Skeggi knew of.
So the Jarl had called for a great hunt, to honor the Gods and collect both offerings and plenty of food for themselves. Obviously his father had gone as houndmaster and one of the best trackers in Lyssa Bay, taking two thirds of their Sarlsih Elkhounds with him. Torfi had to stay, the hunt would take days and he was the best trained to manage the kennels in the meantime. Torfi’s siblings would have been greatly bothered by having to miss the great hunt had they been in his place. But he in turn was proud his father would entrust the family's duty to him.
Then Torfi heard a commotion, not the “my job is taking care of dozens of hunting dogs” kind of commotion. The “something big is happening” kind of commotion. And since he had nothing to do, Torf felt free to go snoop around. So he left the kennels, leaving the door closed but with none of the well-trained hounds attempting to escape before he did.
The commotion came from one of the main gates in the Great Stockade, like all the rest it was open at this time of the day, but many were gathered around this one in particular, even the outsiders.
Very few outsiders lived inside the great walled settlement of the Losteriksson Clan, but many happily used it as a trading port, more more recruited or sold their services too.
Torfi pushed his way through the masses and saw what had created such interest.
The hunting party, or more accurately a chunk of it, was returning.
The men and women carried great deals of game slung on their backs and hanging from logs between teams. Some of it was small game, jungle deer, lustrian hares or the rat-toothed capibarincho’s. There was also midsize game like some pack-beats and tapirs, even a couple of truly large items like a long-headed lustrian hog or a large quartered pack beast.
But no sight of Torfi’s father or any of their hounds, that made sense, if this was only a team returning woth what had been hunted so far of course his father and the hounds would still be out helping-
“Ornolfsson! Good to see you here boy! You make my life much easier!” A loud voice called him.
Torfi turned around, and recognized the source.
Andor Reidarson of the Reidarson Clan.
A bastard, in all senses of the word.
Torfi almost started shouting at the man about how he was not a boy, hadn’t been for years now that he was sixteen winters. But the cruel smile in Andor’s gave him pause.
“I should congratulate you!” The large-gutted blonde boasted.
“For what?” Torfi crossed his arms.
“Well your father’s entry into the Hall of the Gods of course!” The man laughed, readjusting the weight of the tapir hanging from his back.
…
“...What?” Torfi asked, confused by the strange phrase.
“Torfi,” Andor’s smile became mounstruly wide with a smile for the next few words he uttered. “Your dear old dogfucking father died yesterday, he and his hounds were baying a hydrodon bull together with a few dozen hunters, bad move if you ask me, he stepped in too close and got kicked, you should have seen the splatter he left on the tree the thing smashed him against, really fucking sputid move, he eraned what he got if you ask me. Really funny, dogs scattered afterwards, can’t blame ‘em.” The man laughed at his own joke.
Father… Dead?
Father is… Dead?
No, no that has to be a joke, Andor is a bastard he’s just messing with me.
A day later the rest of the hunting parties returned, one carried what had been salvaged from his father’s corpse in a rucksack smelling of dry blood.
His mother wailed, Torfi was called to Einar's Hall that very same night to be declared the new kennelmaster by Jarl Inga Sigrunsdott, Torfi went and left in a catatonic state, barely hearing someone’s, probably a Reidarson’s, comment about how he hoped they still had enough bitches to replace the dozens of hounds lost.
Father is dead.
There were no dead rites, his father had died a warrior’s death but none had bothered to collect his body, half the stuff that should have at least been in the bloody rucksack wasn’t even there.
Father is dead.
Bloody Sven comforted the family as Gothi, even probably went to Torfu to explain how fitting he believed the young man to be the new houndmaster in a settlement consecrated to the Red Hound himself.
Father is dead.
Another day later a warrior from an errant band, one of the many who used Skeggi as the launching point for their raids, tried to claim Torfi’s mother as his bride, another of the same band tried to claim one of his sisters. They were both dead now, but one of Torfi’s brothers had lost two fingers killing the first widow-stealer, the other was killed, but too late.
Father is dead.
Torfi saw one of his father’s pendants hanging from the wrist of a girl being courted by a Reidarson boy his age, he did nothing.
Father is dead.
Torfi spent the night of the Ragnarblot huddled in the kennels with his hounds, they cried for their beloved master just like how he cried for his.
Father is dead.
Some said it could be weird to make the transition from walking in the irregular and landscape of the jungles and the perfectly flat and polished slabs of stone that made up the great causeways and roads of Lustria. “Jungle Feet” against “Temple-City Feet” they called it.
Roland could attest to it, after a few winai in the jungles, with the damp soil on his soles and the mud up to his ankles and every few steps requiring for him to climb or jump over an obstacle. Spending days on the even roads felt strange after that, even the warmblood cities had an unevenness to them, no road in their cramped cities was as well made as those of the Lizardmen, most weren’t even paved, just mud and dung in vaguely liner shapes.
Even Sudburg, the healthiest warmblood city Roland had ever visited, wasn’t like this. Sure, much of it was actually paved with bricks, but the hill-city’s roads were bumpy, the bricks irregularly spaced or sized at times.
There was nothing like that in the wide path which led towards one of Pahuax’s main entrances. Made of massive slabs of stone as it was, each long and wide enough for a saurus cohort to stand in it without a single shield or tail touching. The massive stones were also perfectly level with each other, and smoothed due to thousands of years of lizardmen and their mounts walking them. Their only uneven features were the grooves each had running down their lengths, needed to quickly remove the water of the frequent rains.
The returning party had not done so in formation, unnecessary considering how they had officially completed their mission days ago when a Skink courier had reached them confirming that their own advanced party had reached Pahuax safely carrying the Gifts of Kara.
The gifts were safe, they had triumphed.
Because of that, the war party had been informally disbanded, half of their skinks had slowly meandered off the path towards Pahuax on the return trip, keen to return to their camps, temples and settlements, similarly a third of the saurus had also gone off to their posting prior to being called to the war party.
Roland was behind the group now, walking at his leisure even the stegadon Wajgrani and the skinks using him as commodity transportation had left him behind. He would have to remember to find him on the corrals later today to grab him equipment.
Roland didn’t mind, it was a good day under the sun, just warm enough not to be bothersome in the open hair of the roads without having protective foliage, and he was satisfied. The artifacts were safe, and he had been key to ensuring that.
Memories of dying men surfaced, he had executed one and killed seven more, it was a good number, he liked keeping it low. It felt like a testament to his skill as his lord’s diplomat.
Roland could start to see the tips of the great gray pyramids and the tall walls ahead, even the light dusting of sand and dirt covering the rock slabs started to become greyer and greyer with ash. The Gate of Ezcocotli. Pahuax’s great northeastern gate lay ahead, and beyond the City of Ash awaited.
The wide road was split down the middle, half for those headed towards the city, half for those leaving, from Kroxigots sent for lumber and stone and great baskets of clay, tlo hunting parties of skinks, to patrols.
And then the slowly meandering river that was the road parted, letting one through as his rank demanded.
It was a knight, his mount a reddish and specially large cold one Roland knew well.
The animal was a Horned One, a rare breed of cold one found in the deepest jungles of Lustria and lustria alone. It would have towered over its horned brethren had it not stood alone, a rust-red predator with large patches of golden scales along its back. Decorated as it was with a large golden shaffron upon its head and a collar of thick medallions from which hung the vaguely human skull of an ungor like a bell, the animal cut an imposing figure strengthened by the many feathers that decorated it, ashen gray and fiery orange and red, the colors of the City of Ash.
The rider was no ordinary knight either, for he bore the markings, scars and sheer size of one of the elite amongst the Saurus. He was of a deep blue scaling which gradually darkened into a dense green along his back and massive crest. A crest which was decorated with the sivable effigy of a golden hissing serpent and a clunking braid of brass blocks.On his sides, hanging from his mount’s saddle, were a massive lance and a great macuahuitl, also decorated with feathers of the city’s same markings
Scar Veteran Nakor, riding Huitecoc the Horned One
It was Scar Veteran Nakor, perhaps Lord Tleconexquiza`s best Saurus knight.
He was also Roland Nakor-Welser of Itzil’s Spawn Elder.
Once the massive cold one finished trotting up to Roland, the young human greeted the predator by rubbing the hardened scales on Huitecoc’s muzzle under the animal’s helm, taking special care to scratch behind the the left-back side of the animal's lower jaw. Earning a low rumble of satisfaction.
“I missed you too girl…” Roland cooed in the language of the scaled hunters.
Then the massive saurus dismounted, dwarfing Roland by a good two heads, a difference only exacerbated by his decorated crest and Roland’s respectul lowering of his head.
Then said massive crested forehead gently but forcefully pushed against Roland’s, which he reported by in turn also pushing his head and rubbing it against his elder’s. Hardened scales against hairless skin, it could have been uncomfortable had it not been for how common it was for them to so effusively greet each other.
“I have heard you fulfilled your duty well, the Lord Tleconexquiza will be pleased, as I am, spawnling.” The veteran warrior rumbled.
“It brings me great joy to hear that Spawn Elder, it truly does.” Roland preened.
“I crossed paths with Warrior Ottagar on my way here, he reluctantly praised your plan to stalk into the warmblood city, it gives me great pleasure.”
Roland bashfully tried to downplay his own role compared to the skills of the Skinks who had entered the city with him, but his Spawn Elder refused to hear any of it.
When they fully separated, Roland’s face was red for more than one reason, a timid smile on his lips.
“It is praise well earned, one of your party's prisoners will be sacrificed today and Priest Tialtaqhuic has agreed to allow you to take the blade to one of them.” The Scar Veteran gave him the good news. “And your spawn-brothers and sisters will want to hear of your newest visit to the warmblood cities, especially Elma. So come, the city awaits it’s latest successful war party.” The Saurus lovingly smashed the side of his head against the human’s.
And with that, as spawnling relayed his personal account of the mission to his spawn elder, the two walked together back into Pahuax.
Few minutes later, a dark-haired blurr smashed into Roland’s back and threw them both into the ash-covered ground of the burned city.
“Roland!” His big sister Elma shouted while hugging him. “You made me so worried, little man.”
He was the taller of the two, she still managed to keep him pinned to the ground while she scolded him for way too many things.
Somewhere overhead, he could tell his stupid bird was laughing.
The Spawn or Spawning Elder is the closest equivalent Lizardman society to a parental or caregiver figure. Lizardmen -irregardless of caste- are collectively cared for by teams of highly trained Skinks in their larval stage, before they leave the spawning pool. This combined with the asexual reproduction of lizardmen and their lack of sentience prior to leaving the Spawning Pool means that a bond like that of a mother and her child in other sentients simply does not ocur.
As such, it is instead the Spawn Elder who has the closest role to that of a father. Lizardmen leave the Spawning pool in a state of physical adolescence, grow quickly and possess a fully formed brain at this point of their lives. But what they do not possess is training or life experience of any kind. This is when the Spawning Elder comes in. In its most basic form, the Spawning Elder is an old and experienced lizardman, generally of the same caste as the spawlings, who trains, educates and guides these youngsters.
For example, the Spawn Elder of a spawning of Saurus might be an experienced veteran or an accomplished warrior unable to actively serve, crippled in combat but still very much capable of imparting his experience. A Spawning Elder of a cadre of young Skinks might be a well regarded master craftslizard of the specific profession or skill the Skinks were born to be adept at. Meanwhile a Kroxigor Spawn Elder tends to simply be a specially old or intelligent individual, and sometimes Kroxigors will even be mentored by Skinks, if their profession to be is one strongly tied to collaboration with their much smaller cousins. It is believed Slann spawnings, if they ever even happen, would not need this kind of mentorship due to their innate traits and psychic connection to the rest of their kin.
As such, it would be appropriate to compare the emotional, societal and educational role of the Spawn Elder to that of a father, uncle or beloved teacher. This is the closest analogue to a familial relationship the lizardmen exhibit after the brotherly relationships lizardmen of the same spawning have.
-Excerpt of The Roaring Ones, autobiography memoirs by Nasser Al-fil
The Felldowns, Port Reaver, Isthmus of Lustria
23rd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.6 4 Kimi 19 Sotz’
23rd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.6 4 Kimi 19 Sotz’
Stefan had never entered the Felldowns, any time he had come to the place before, it had been to watch the sign from the safety of the streets and rooftops of the nearby slums.
And to be honest, entering wasn’t the best way to describe arriving at the place. The Felldowns were located on the Southwestern third of the estuary island the core of Port Reaver had grown out of and were really just a massive open area in which dozens of warehouses and hundreds of hulls and ships in different states of repair (and disrepair) were scattered. Beaten paths of sandy soil snakes their way around them like termite paths. And much like in a termite infested log, the air here was congested with sawdust.
Hundreds of people moved to and fro, carrying lumber of all sizes, some pieces big enough that they were pulled by donkeys. Boxes and boxes of many-sized nails and iron bolts clinked and clanked this and that way. And rope, a lot of rope, so many bundles and spools as to encircle the city trice over. There were men pounding old cloth and rags into cracks and sides of half-put together ships, standing on top of massive stilts, and then slathering and covering the area with black tar. The sound of axes hitting wood, sawing, hammering and men straining under the weight of pulleys created a cacophony that made it easy for him to be ignored.
On his way to the biggest warehouse, he walked before a large foundry on the front of which a pyramid of iron balls laid, each bigger than his head. And men were carefully carrying large sheets of copper out of the place too every few minutes, it was so searing of a place as to make the usual blaze of the morning sun feel calming on his skin. Another warehouse seemed to be empty of the ship-making activity of most of the others, instead carts of water barrels and crates of food left it constantly, salted meats hung from hooks some ways inside of the place.
The biggest warehouse was just by the actual shore, overlooking the wide ramps used to pull ships in need of repair out of the water. Strangely it saw the least activity, with mostly very serious older men walking in and out every few minutes. It was the workshop of the mastershipwrich, and as such it was also the central office from which said shipwright kept tabs on and managed the entire area under the auspices of the King. Although it was hard for Stefan to accept the idea that the Felldowsn were in any way shape or form “controlled,” much less by a single individual.
But Stefan had asked around, and the shipwright was the person who you were supposed to ask for if you needed a job. Most people didn’t really look for a job on the Felldowns apparently. The shipbuilders were always looking for new hands to put to work and usually grabbed what able men they could find themselves. Be it stranded pirates, indebted sailors or the vagabonds the King’s guard had started collecting and kicking in the general direction of the yards.
Stefan had even heard that king Borġ had taken to selling the prisoners in the Ċittadella to the shipyards whenever the dungeons became too crowded.
As such, if you were in a rare enough situation that you “wanted” to work on the shipyard and weren’t already, you were either the rare kind of person the master shipwright would have to personally take a look at, or you were such a sad scrap of a human that you would not even survive the walk from your rat infested hovel to the Felldowns.
Partially out of demand, it was clear even to Stefan’s uneducated gaze that every ship that could possibly be built in the area available was being built indeed. And if the screaming of the man he had passed by, with his arm crushed under a log half-dangling from a broken rope, was an indicator to go by, grunts for the more heavy-lifting kind of work were in high demand
He could only hope that apprentices for the more skilled variety of tasks were in equally high demand too.
He waited for a while before the building, not wanting to attempt to enter when unwelcome and ruining his chances to find a job, and he also didn’t want to look as desperate as he was. Some part of him even wanted to chicken out and return to the pickpocket life, make use of his hidden wealth now that he could and then go beg to whoever had replaced Jhonny’s Benterar as the slavedriver of the city’s “little thieves”.
But every time that thought or a similar one reared its head, kit was soon followed by the image of piercing blue-gold eyes and the hissing of snakes in his ears. “Why? Why do you steal?” The snakes hissed.
“You there boy,” A man, suat and with a bald head and thick beard, noticed him. “What’re you doing standing there, don’tchu have anything to do?”
Stefan jumped in his place, awkwardly looking up and the barely taller but much bigger man, “Uhhh, I need to talk with the master?”
“The master?”
At that Stefan simply pointed at the warehouse.
“Oh, you mean Azzarello? I thought you was a slaveboy for a second!” The man laughed. “You a courier?”
“Uhhhh… N-Yes-No! I’m sorry Kirsa told me it would be fine if I just asked to talk with Master Azzarello!” Stefan nervously attempted to explain himself.
“And who the fuck’s Kirsa…? Never mind, just go in and tell them Morris let you in if they ask, not like they can’t kick you out themselves if you start wasting their time.
So Stefan entered Master Shipwright Azzarello’s warehouse-offices with the bored blessing of Morris then proceeding to snoop around the place, ignored by the men and few women working on this and that around the place, most seemed to be very focused on their workbenches, where the drew and wrote on large sheets of parchment and paper with triangular and perfectly semicircular pieces of wood guiding their strokes. It was a strange combination of drawing and writing, he had done a lot of the first one with chalk or sticks in the ground, but not much of the second.
One of the kinder women had once taught him how to write his name at the orphanage; she hadn’t lasted very long.
In hindsight, it would have probably been a good idea to ask for extra details about the man in charge of the Felldowns beyond where and how to find him, because right now he was just scurrying around the well lit warehouse like a rat in a clean room.
“Spirits of the sky, water and earth, who are you little jackal and what are you doing here?!” Shouted a female voice behind him.
He hadn’t heard nor seen her sneak behind him, catching him even more off guard than Morris.
“Well? I’m waiting for an answer before I have my men flay you for sneaking where you do not belong.” The woman threatened.
She was of very dark skin, dark enough to mark her as having Arabyan ancestry. Stefan didn’t know much about Araby beyond it being the place from which a good chunk of Port Reaver’s pirates hailed from. Apparently it was much more to the south than the rest of the places people claimed to come from, and that was the reason why they were always much more tan.
But she didn’t speak with the melody-like accent the Arabyan men he had stolen from had shouted at him with, so she was probably like him, born to Port Reaver.
She was also old, maybe in her early sixties, and she carried herself with the same air of confidence Martha did. A woman who had reached the top of her profession and was not stepping down from the throne. The wrinkles on her face and the gray hairs peppered through her otherwise long night-black hair didn’t make her ugly to Stefan, not like the really old vagabonds who shared the streets and alleys with pickpockets like him. People didn’t really get old the good way in Port Reaver most of the time, no one “retired” in the city. If you were successful and no longer young you just moved back to wherever you came from.
But this woman was clearly not past her prime, considering her demeanor.
Instead she looked important, like she had always been meant to be the old woman staring daggers at him at that moment.
A woman who was still looking at him with her hazel eyes in a way that froze him on the spot. And she was still waiting for her answer.
“I… Uhhh… I need to talk with the Master Shipwright!” He stuttered.
“Well then, what are you waiting for?” She tsked and rested her hand on her waist, taping her foot on the floor.
“Wait, but…? Master Azzarello?”
“Yes boy, Master Yasmeen Azzarello of the Felldowns, do I need to show you my seat in the council in order for you to stop wasting my time?” She growled.
“If this isn’t a good start…” Stefan thought to himself. “I… I was told to come to you because I need work!” He finally shouted, blushing red and with his eyes closing, awaiting the slap to come.
Instead, her slightly wrinkled and well manicured hand grabbed his chin and forced him to look up at her.
“Let me get this straight boy, you sneaked your way into my workshop and spends Djinns know how long scurrying inside of it without permission because you wanted me to give you a job?”
“Uhhh… Morris told me it was ok?” He ofrecido.
At that the woman let go of him covering her face with her hands and sighting in exasperation. “Of course he did, that brute could meet a man holding a saber with my name engraved on it and invite him in here if it meant half an extra minute of time to drink himself to death.”
Then she looked at him again. “Give me your hands.” She ordered.
“What?”
“Your hands child, show them to me or I’ll have them cut off.”
At that prompt, he happily offered his two hands up for inspection. She took hold of them, running hers over his and muttering to herself. A few moments later she let go and looked him in the face again.
“What is your name boy?”
“Stefan.”
“You are a thief.” She stated.
“What? No I’m-” He tried to defend himself.
“You fool no one, you have the kind of hands only bards and thieves have, and you don’t look like a bard.” She explained, pointing at his now clean but clearly old, ill-fitting and ragged clothes.
“O-Ok but I promise I’m not here to steal, I promise!” He cried.
“Oh I know that, no one would stupid enough to use you and you are not clever enough to think of doing it on your own.” Once more she took hold of his face and made him look up.
His face was still bruised, his black eye still present.
“Why look for work here? Guilds all over the city need apprentices.”
“They wouldn’t take me in, I’m an orphan, they think I’ll steal from them!”
“Idiots.” She grunted. “At least we agree on that.” He thought.
“Do you even know what we-I do here?” She asked him.
Stefan was a mess, looking at her gave him some clues, her dress was full of pockets and her large apron had all sorts of stuff hanging from it, from stencils to a strange metal instrument made of two pointy arms connected by a hinge.
“You… Make ships? You draw ships?” He could barely answer. Her response was an haughty harump.
She ordered him to stay put and left, having one of the people who had been drawing and writing guard him.
A few minutes later she returned with a fat man dressed in gaudy colors.
“This is the boy.” She told him, not even looking at Stefan.
“Are you sure?” The man asked with an Estalian accent.
“He’s of good stock, I vouch for him, what else do you need Curiel? Or is it that you don’t trust my judgment any longer?”
“No! Of course not my Lady Azzarello!” The man quickly defended.
“Good.” Then she turned to Stefan. “Stefan, this is Augurio de Curiel, the man I told you about, he has agreed to employ you in the ship chandlers here, you remember asking me about them on your way here? The building with all the supplies and goods constantly leaving.”
“Wh-yes! Yes!” He badly lied on instinct.
She however, had not slipped even once in her half a dozen lies during the exchange.
“Excellent, you start working tomorrow, I expect nothing but compliments about you from Mister De Curiel you understand?” She sternly ordered.
“Yes! I promise I will do my best mister!” Stefen enthusiastically promised.
And with that, he had somehow been hired as an errand boy in the Felldown’s ship chandlers.
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A few minutes later, once the Estalian merchant had left with the young brunette boy following him like a duckling, Yasmeen was approached by one of her apprentices, Orlanda, the same who had guarded the boy while she fetched Curial.
“If you don’t mind me asking boss… Did you just lie to the fat Curiel to his face just to get a random boy a job?”
“I never mind your questions girl, that’s why you are even here in the first place… Did you see his face?” Yasmeen brought up.
“Of course I did.”
“Think, a thief orphan shows up here of all places crying for a job with a broken face? Shaking and jittery and a mess of nerves? Whatever left him with that face has taken the thief out of him. And a thief who can’t steal is a finless fish.”
“Aww, you took pity on the little scoundrel.” Her apprentice cooed. “I knew there was still some good in you!”
“Shut up or I’ll use him as your replacement.” She responded to the apprentice's quip and took her leave, returning to her office.
The King would want to know soon about the progress of his order, especially with what had just happened to one of his other projects. Literally went up in flames. She joked to herself.
The boy, on the other hand, would make for an interesting new project for herself.
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The Kennels, Skeggi, Isthmus of Lustria
25th of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.8 8 Lamat 1 Tzek/12th of Skerpla, 2538 CC
“Who is a good boy? Who is a good boy? You! Yes you are! Yes you are you big fur ball!” Torfi continued to pamper and scratch Brorsan‘s head as the dog’s tail swatted.25th of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.8 8 Lamat 1 Tzek/12th of Skerpla, 2538 CC
Brorsan had done especially well today compared to his siblings during training, so Torfi felt the pup deserved some extra pampering now that they were done with the obedience training.
It was very important that the hounds learned obedience first and foremost. It didn’t matter how ferocious or good at tracking a dog was if it was incapable of consistently following orders. It would take a few more weeks of focusing on that before Torfi and his father, Houndsmaster Ornolf, could move on to the more specific parts of training the bay dogs.
Once Brorsan was satisfied, Torfi got up and left the kennel room, closing it by the simple lock-less bolt on the side of the wooden door.
The kennels were basically a glorified walled patio, built on Skeggi’s outermost area to make use of the stockade as one of its wood walls. Beyond that there was the simple wooden structure were all the individual and group kennel cages were built, with a couple trunks built into it off the ground to keep what they contained (leashes, muzzles, the likes…) at a safe height from both the dogs and the humidity of the ground.
The kennel patio was relatively spacious with how few dogs were in it right now, with the dozen hounds free to roam and nap at their leisure, go to the water trough or fight over scraps, just that very moment Bamse and Troll were fighting over a large leg bone. Only the bitches and the pups who weren’t ready for hunting yet were kept in the cages for most of the day.
The first to avoid them getting pregnant when pups weren’t needed, the second to keep them calm, safe and separate before they were fully trained.
Torfi didn’t really have much else to do for the rest of the morning now that hound training was done. The dogs wouldn’t be eating until after lunch, when the scraps of Skeggi would be distributed between them and the pigs. There was no point in cleaning the kennels either since he was supposed to do that late in the afternoon.
Usually on days like this he, his father and a couple of his siblings would be going out hunting or tracking. But all his siblings had yet to return and his father was out with the large hunting party who had left the day before to prepare for the festival.
Ragnarblot would be coming in a few days, those norscan who hadn’t been born to Skeggi like Torfi always complained about how strange it was to celebrate the midwinter in the opposite time of the year or how bizarre it was to do so in such a blisteringly warm and humid place, but that was the only way to celebrate the Longest Night the Skeggi knew of.
So the Jarl had called for a great hunt, to honor the Gods and collect both offerings and plenty of food for themselves. Obviously his father had gone as houndmaster and one of the best trackers in Lyssa Bay, taking two thirds of their Sarlsih Elkhounds with him. Torfi had to stay, the hunt would take days and he was the best trained to manage the kennels in the meantime. Torfi’s siblings would have been greatly bothered by having to miss the great hunt had they been in his place. But he in turn was proud his father would entrust the family's duty to him.
Then Torfi heard a commotion, not the “my job is taking care of dozens of hunting dogs” kind of commotion. The “something big is happening” kind of commotion. And since he had nothing to do, Torf felt free to go snoop around. So he left the kennels, leaving the door closed but with none of the well-trained hounds attempting to escape before he did.
The commotion came from one of the main gates in the Great Stockade, like all the rest it was open at this time of the day, but many were gathered around this one in particular, even the outsiders.
Very few outsiders lived inside the great walled settlement of the Losteriksson Clan, but many happily used it as a trading port, more more recruited or sold their services too.
Torfi pushed his way through the masses and saw what had created such interest.
The hunting party, or more accurately a chunk of it, was returning.
The men and women carried great deals of game slung on their backs and hanging from logs between teams. Some of it was small game, jungle deer, lustrian hares or the rat-toothed capibarincho’s. There was also midsize game like some pack-beats and tapirs, even a couple of truly large items like a long-headed lustrian hog or a large quartered pack beast.
But no sight of Torfi’s father or any of their hounds, that made sense, if this was only a team returning woth what had been hunted so far of course his father and the hounds would still be out helping-
“Ornolfsson! Good to see you here boy! You make my life much easier!” A loud voice called him.
Torfi turned around, and recognized the source.
Andor Reidarson of the Reidarson Clan.
A bastard, in all senses of the word.
Torfi almost started shouting at the man about how he was not a boy, hadn’t been for years now that he was sixteen winters. But the cruel smile in Andor’s gave him pause.
“I should congratulate you!” The large-gutted blonde boasted.
“For what?” Torfi crossed his arms.
“Well your father’s entry into the Hall of the Gods of course!” The man laughed, readjusting the weight of the tapir hanging from his back.
…
“...What?” Torfi asked, confused by the strange phrase.
“Torfi,” Andor’s smile became mounstruly wide with a smile for the next few words he uttered. “Your dear old dogfucking father died yesterday, he and his hounds were baying a hydrodon bull together with a few dozen hunters, bad move if you ask me, he stepped in too close and got kicked, you should have seen the splatter he left on the tree the thing smashed him against, really fucking sputid move, he eraned what he got if you ask me. Really funny, dogs scattered afterwards, can’t blame ‘em.” The man laughed at his own joke.
Father… Dead?
Father is… Dead?
No, no that has to be a joke, Andor is a bastard he’s just messing with me.
A day later the rest of the hunting parties returned, one carried what had been salvaged from his father’s corpse in a rucksack smelling of dry blood.
His mother wailed, Torfi was called to Einar's Hall that very same night to be declared the new kennelmaster by Jarl Inga Sigrunsdott, Torfi went and left in a catatonic state, barely hearing someone’s, probably a Reidarson’s, comment about how he hoped they still had enough bitches to replace the dozens of hounds lost.
Father is dead.
There were no dead rites, his father had died a warrior’s death but none had bothered to collect his body, half the stuff that should have at least been in the bloody rucksack wasn’t even there.
Father is dead.
Bloody Sven comforted the family as Gothi, even probably went to Torfu to explain how fitting he believed the young man to be the new houndmaster in a settlement consecrated to the Red Hound himself.
Father is dead.
Another day later a warrior from an errant band, one of the many who used Skeggi as the launching point for their raids, tried to claim Torfi’s mother as his bride, another of the same band tried to claim one of his sisters. They were both dead now, but one of Torfi’s brothers had lost two fingers killing the first widow-stealer, the other was killed, but too late.
Father is dead.
Torfi saw one of his father’s pendants hanging from the wrist of a girl being courted by a Reidarson boy his age, he did nothing.
Father is dead.
Torfi spent the night of the Ragnarblot huddled in the kennels with his hounds, they cried for their beloved master just like how he cried for his.
Father is dead.
Torfi Ornolfsson, young Kennelmaster of Skeggi.
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Ezcocotli Gate, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
31st of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.14 12 Ix 7 Tzek
31st of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.14 12 Ix 7 Tzek
Some said it could be weird to make the transition from walking in the irregular and landscape of the jungles and the perfectly flat and polished slabs of stone that made up the great causeways and roads of Lustria. “Jungle Feet” against “Temple-City Feet” they called it.
Roland could attest to it, after a few winai in the jungles, with the damp soil on his soles and the mud up to his ankles and every few steps requiring for him to climb or jump over an obstacle. Spending days on the even roads felt strange after that, even the warmblood cities had an unevenness to them, no road in their cramped cities was as well made as those of the Lizardmen, most weren’t even paved, just mud and dung in vaguely liner shapes.
Even Sudburg, the healthiest warmblood city Roland had ever visited, wasn’t like this. Sure, much of it was actually paved with bricks, but the hill-city’s roads were bumpy, the bricks irregularly spaced or sized at times.
There was nothing like that in the wide path which led towards one of Pahuax’s main entrances. Made of massive slabs of stone as it was, each long and wide enough for a saurus cohort to stand in it without a single shield or tail touching. The massive stones were also perfectly level with each other, and smoothed due to thousands of years of lizardmen and their mounts walking them. Their only uneven features were the grooves each had running down their lengths, needed to quickly remove the water of the frequent rains.
The returning party had not done so in formation, unnecessary considering how they had officially completed their mission days ago when a Skink courier had reached them confirming that their own advanced party had reached Pahuax safely carrying the Gifts of Kara.
The gifts were safe, they had triumphed.
Because of that, the war party had been informally disbanded, half of their skinks had slowly meandered off the path towards Pahuax on the return trip, keen to return to their camps, temples and settlements, similarly a third of the saurus had also gone off to their posting prior to being called to the war party.
Roland was behind the group now, walking at his leisure even the stegadon Wajgrani and the skinks using him as commodity transportation had left him behind. He would have to remember to find him on the corrals later today to grab him equipment.
Roland didn’t mind, it was a good day under the sun, just warm enough not to be bothersome in the open hair of the roads without having protective foliage, and he was satisfied. The artifacts were safe, and he had been key to ensuring that.
Memories of dying men surfaced, he had executed one and killed seven more, it was a good number, he liked keeping it low. It felt like a testament to his skill as his lord’s diplomat.
Roland could start to see the tips of the great gray pyramids and the tall walls ahead, even the light dusting of sand and dirt covering the rock slabs started to become greyer and greyer with ash. The Gate of Ezcocotli. Pahuax’s great northeastern gate lay ahead, and beyond the City of Ash awaited.
The wide road was split down the middle, half for those headed towards the city, half for those leaving, from Kroxigots sent for lumber and stone and great baskets of clay, tlo hunting parties of skinks, to patrols.
And then the slowly meandering river that was the road parted, letting one through as his rank demanded.
It was a knight, his mount a reddish and specially large cold one Roland knew well.
The animal was a Horned One, a rare breed of cold one found in the deepest jungles of Lustria and lustria alone. It would have towered over its horned brethren had it not stood alone, a rust-red predator with large patches of golden scales along its back. Decorated as it was with a large golden shaffron upon its head and a collar of thick medallions from which hung the vaguely human skull of an ungor like a bell, the animal cut an imposing figure strengthened by the many feathers that decorated it, ashen gray and fiery orange and red, the colors of the City of Ash.
The rider was no ordinary knight either, for he bore the markings, scars and sheer size of one of the elite amongst the Saurus. He was of a deep blue scaling which gradually darkened into a dense green along his back and massive crest. A crest which was decorated with the sivable effigy of a golden hissing serpent and a clunking braid of brass blocks.On his sides, hanging from his mount’s saddle, were a massive lance and a great macuahuitl, also decorated with feathers of the city’s same markings
Scar Veteran Nakor, riding Huitecoc the Horned One
It was Scar Veteran Nakor, perhaps Lord Tleconexquiza`s best Saurus knight.
He was also Roland Nakor-Welser of Itzil’s Spawn Elder.
Once the massive cold one finished trotting up to Roland, the young human greeted the predator by rubbing the hardened scales on Huitecoc’s muzzle under the animal’s helm, taking special care to scratch behind the the left-back side of the animal's lower jaw. Earning a low rumble of satisfaction.
“I missed you too girl…” Roland cooed in the language of the scaled hunters.
Then the massive saurus dismounted, dwarfing Roland by a good two heads, a difference only exacerbated by his decorated crest and Roland’s respectul lowering of his head.
Then said massive crested forehead gently but forcefully pushed against Roland’s, which he reported by in turn also pushing his head and rubbing it against his elder’s. Hardened scales against hairless skin, it could have been uncomfortable had it not been for how common it was for them to so effusively greet each other.
“I have heard you fulfilled your duty well, the Lord Tleconexquiza will be pleased, as I am, spawnling.” The veteran warrior rumbled.
“It brings me great joy to hear that Spawn Elder, it truly does.” Roland preened.
“I crossed paths with Warrior Ottagar on my way here, he reluctantly praised your plan to stalk into the warmblood city, it gives me great pleasure.”
Roland bashfully tried to downplay his own role compared to the skills of the Skinks who had entered the city with him, but his Spawn Elder refused to hear any of it.
When they fully separated, Roland’s face was red for more than one reason, a timid smile on his lips.
“It is praise well earned, one of your party's prisoners will be sacrificed today and Priest Tialtaqhuic has agreed to allow you to take the blade to one of them.” The Scar Veteran gave him the good news. “And your spawn-brothers and sisters will want to hear of your newest visit to the warmblood cities, especially Elma. So come, the city awaits it’s latest successful war party.” The Saurus lovingly smashed the side of his head against the human’s.
And with that, as spawnling relayed his personal account of the mission to his spawn elder, the two walked together back into Pahuax.
Few minutes later, a dark-haired blurr smashed into Roland’s back and threw them both into the ash-covered ground of the burned city.
“Roland!” His big sister Elma shouted while hugging him. “You made me so worried, little man.”
He was the taller of the two, she still managed to keep him pinned to the ground while she scolded him for way too many things.
Somewhere overhead, he could tell his stupid bird was laughing.
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Temple Guard
Mr.Crocodile
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I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I honestly appreciate all and any comments or reactions you may be gracious enough to gift me!
As an aside, it would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site (where by the way chapters of this story will be posted a day early).
P.s. Thanks to my friend Flying Scanian for the miniature of Nakor & Huitecoc. Also thanks to the amazing artist Leanna for the art of Torfi. (If you are reading this chapter at the time just after me posting it, it's just a wip, but the art piece will soon be finished!)
As an aside, it would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site (where by the way chapters of this story will be posted a day early).
P.s. Thanks to my friend Flying Scanian for the miniature of Nakor & Huitecoc. Also thanks to the amazing artist Leanna for the art of Torfi. (If you are reading this chapter at the time just after me posting it, it's just a wip, but the art piece will soon be finished!)
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Mr.Crocodile
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- 93
The Gifts of Kara - Part VI: Conference
In technical terms the conflict between the Amazonian Empire and the Lizardmen is the single oldest conflict between the peoples of the Ordetide, orders of magnitude more ancient than even the War of the Beard. Notice that I carefully chose my words: Conflict, not war.
The reason for this is a complex one. First is the fact that the Lizardmen do not have a concept of war or peace like most other races. As far as they are concerned, “war” is simply one of their tasks and “peace” is just a period during which that task is unnecessary. To them wars are not fought against an enemy, they are done with a purpose within the Great Plan. Under this nebulous definition, any or none of the military actions carried out by the Lizardmen could be “War” or something completely different.
And their many scrapes against the Sisterhood certainly do not constitute a war as the layman would see it. For this conflict, even though it can be dated back to an animosity which already existed in the times of the Dawn of Creation and High Age of Lustria, has never reached the tipping point of total war.
Instead, what records and testimonies show us is a large collection of individual small-scale conflicts. Most fueled by nebulous racial slights and personal grievances. Hundreds of raids, executions and revenge plots stretched out over more than ten thousand years of shared, violent, history.
Examples are aplenty: From territorial conflicts over the ruins of ancient temples or battles over artifacts both sides claimed to individual and mythologized tales of unseemingly brutality and disproportionate revenge. From the deeply emotional and personal story of the Sage of Lilies to the well-recorded Gorol Massacres in the Sotek’s Vault mountains.
Of course, it would be unforgivable to talk of this, the oldest conflict in history, without also mentioning its end. While the end of this “Lustrian Bloodshed” can be as nebulous as it origins, many (myself included) consider one of its most important steps the personal friendship between Princess Azura and Herald Welser-Nakor, perhaps even more pivotal, however, could be the relationship between the aforementioned “Xho’za’khanx” and his…
-Excerpt of Wars of the World, by Noémie Armbruster.
The stone he was reclining on was warm and slightly slanted in a way that made it comfortable to nap on. The sun high up was just warming enough that he felt perfectly comfortable basking under it. It could have been a perfect afternoon nap after his longest task so far. Had it not been for- “Roland! I know you are listening to me! Rooolaaaaand!”
He, unwillingly and under duress of torture, opened his bleary eyes. Gavrie was right there, covering his entire field of vision in the way only younglings, with their distaste for personal space and disdain for the sacred nap, could.
Gavrie was amongst their youngest, with a face full of freckles and a near constant sun-burned skin.
“Yes,” He growled. “I did go to Sudburg. What of it?” He sat up and went for the leather cord and pin he used to keep his hair under control in a large bun. Much less fancy and practical than his braids, but much easier to take off and put on quickly for sleeping or napping or generally resting in the city.
So he did, gathering his hair up, shaking off what particles of ash it had gathered, and loosely bundling and securing it with the brass pin.
“Tell me about it! Everyone says I’ll be going next time so I want to know all about it to do a great job!” Gavrie clapped.
“I didn’t go for our usual tasks. I went to Herald.” Roland explained.
“But don’t you always Herald Lord Tleconexquiza?” The sunburnt youth gave off a small yelp as Roland grabbed both of his underarms and hauled him towards one of the many tented patios in the favela.
“I am always Herald, yes, but I have spent this last winal working on a specific task as Herald.” He explained. Letting his warmblood-shaped package down carefully at first, and then letting Gavrie jump down the rest of the way.
“But you did go to the Sud-Burg yes?”
“Yes, but only a night and a morning, when you get to go next time you’ll be spending more time in Sudburg.” He enunciated the name of the city clearly, so the youngling could mimic him. He went looking for a pot as he explained, and soon found it. Filled to the brim with ash mud.
“Can I do herald like you?” The youngling asked.
It took Roland a few seconds to answer. “I… Maybe… We’ll talk about it.” He hoped it would suffice.
“Okay!”
He carried the pot closer and sat down, beckoning for Gavrie to sit beside him. As far as he knew normal mud was the more common version used. But in a city like Pahuax? If you could use ash for something you damn well used the ash like the Old Ones themselves had ordered it.
So he grabbed a big fistful of it and sloped it onto the back of the uncomplaining young, used to this treatment by now.
Long ago their caretakers learned that the skins of certain warmbloods were cursed, sensitive to Chotec’s embrace in a similar way to those who carried the Blessings of the Old Ones. But whereas those who carried the blessing of white or gray scales simply preferred the dark dampness of the caverns to direct sunlight, certain warmbloods sensitive to light tended to irritate their skins as if caressed by poisonous plants when they spent too long basking. First becoming reddish and sensitive, and then shedding their skins too slowly, risking the chance of infection in the worst cases.
Just like how the extensive waterworks and easy to find mud baths helped Lizardmen cool down in the hottest days, a slathering of mud onto scalded skin helped it heal faster and more cleanly.
Gavrie had one of the most cursed skins, Elma had claimed that it was probably because his fourth race progenitors had come from a more septentrional region than most others. He was even capable of growing red even during the rainy season! So the boy had grown very accustomed to getting mud baths.
“So what was your herald task? Did you only go to Sudburg?” His good pronunciation makes Roland smile.
“Well, it all starts with a foolish warmblood man from Estalia thinking the theft of a great artifact could go unpunished.” He commenced. Noticing that a few other Xho’za’khanxs and Skinks had arisen from their own baskings and naps, listening to their conversation in distinctively accented Saurian.
“Oh! I love stories that start like that! Did you hunt him?” Excitedly inquired the sunburnt boy.
Roland was far from a great storyteller, but for this audience? He’d manage.
The pyramids of Pahuax cast striking shadows in the waning hours of the late afternoon. Great clouds were on the horizon, tinged with the sunset colors of jungle birds. It would rain tonight, copiously and suddenly, as was befitting of the wet season. Even on these last few days of it. He only hoped that it would happen early enough in the night, before the ash came back, so they wouldn’t have to deal with a city caked on wet ash in the morning.
It was great for the skin. For an entire city? Not so much.
As a youngling, long ago, all the ziggurats had looked the same to him, so much so that in those days getting a helpful Skink to guide him had been a must. But he had learned to find his directions soon enough, to understand the organization of the city with time. And then came reading the glyphs and understanding the symbols.
And now he could bet he’d recognize the purpose of a pyramid he’d never seen even at a glance.
Pahuax’s Temple of Revivification had many tiered gardens growing upon the levels of the pyramid that made up its main body. Medicinal plants of course, great leafy ferns, patches of colorful moses and rows upon rows of healing herbs. The walls outside were decorated with even more plants, with rows of glyphs around them, making the wisdom of the healers viewable to all. They were there too once he entered the ground level, accompanied by images of lizards regrowing their tails and shedding skins. Of snakes with their fangs unsheathed and dripping venom onto ceramic vases held by Kroxigors, giving a sense of the proportional massive sizes of the carbed healing serpents. Efigies of Potec, he who warded from corrupted and foul magics, were in every common room and central hall he walked through. Covered in offerings.
Those and many of the other carvings were made in part with delicately shaped crystals, which gave off a calming blue glow, casting the insides of this blessed place in their light.
Revivification crystals, shards too small or impure to be used the way those mounted in the backs of bastiladons were, let alone like those in the healing pools at the protected core of this temple. They had little magical power, but did give off a calming thrum just by resonating into the walls.
The Temple wasn’t the largest on Pahuax by far, but was bigger than average in account of it’s utility, it took Roland a good while to find the room in which Tek’Qila rested, now with a proper and clean bandage around his leg.
“How will it heal? Does it hurt much?” He asked the Skink after their greetings.
“Not anymore. The healers say it could have been much worse, the blade was unclean and stabbed deep, into the thigh’s main vein. But you brought me out of the city into camp fast. And the Skinks there did a good job.” Happily chirped the stalker.
“I am glad to hear we could aid you so. It would have rested heavily upon me if he had lost you. Especially just after our victory and your commendable part in it.” He commenced.
“It was only my duty as provisional cohort leader.” Tek’Quila defended.
“That’s mahrlect and you know it.” He untied the gourd hanging from his belt. “Duty doesn’t make effort less respectable.” He offered the octli-filled container to his friend. Who chose to drink the alcoholic beverage rather than answer, but couldn’t hide his preening in the way his crest rose.
“As much as I wanted to say hi, I came to ask something else.” He sat down next to the Skink.
“What is it then Herald? I should warn you I hope to settle my debt before you embark us into a new task.”
“Then you’ll settle this ‘debt’ by fulfilling a fancy of mine.”
“What fancy? I warn you hunting is off the limits for me until my leg heals. Even if it does properly the healers have warned me it might remain slightly weaker than the other.” He took another swing.
“Mmmh, that saddens me to hear, doubly so as I was going to request that you be one of my aides in the sacrifices on the day of the Night of Huanchi.” He rubbed his shoulder against Tek’s, the cot the skink laid on making up for their difference in size.
“You were chosen to sacrifice?” The Skink cut him off before he could speak. “Don’t you dare call yourself undeserving after your little speech you mud brain! You have conducted the season’s most important raid!” He admonished. Roland did indeed remain silent but got a hold of their shared drink for a swig. “Ask Ra'kaka, his quick thinking saved my leg from a worse fate. Or maybe one of your younger spawn-siblings, I bet a few of them would be elated to join you…”
“Lord Herald!'' Came a shrill voice from the open doorway into one of the many rooms in the temple where they were conversing.
It was a Messenger caste Skink. “Lord Tleconexquiza: Be ready and in the Grand Plaza as soon as you can be! Your presence is necessary to the good undertaking of the exchange with the children of Kalith.” From the tiny reptile’s frame came a deep guttural voice, vaguely resembling that of their Ashen Mage Lord whenever he deigned speech necessary.
Roland rose instantly, the words of a messenger were one and the same to the direct words of the sender. He threw back the gourd to Tek’Quile as he bit his fellow a good night and fast recuperation.
Hopefully Elma would already be back at the barrio, she was still fastest at readying his braids.
But having to do it across a distance longer than Port Reaver was wide? To deliver a single wax-sealed piece of parchment? No, Stefan did not include that within the types of running he enjoyed.
He had galloped his way along the entire length of Dead Man’s Way, passing hundreds of rows of cotton bushes and tobacco plants and what few foodstuff Port Reaver’s “farmers” - slaves or luckless retired pirates for the most part - grew on the liminal spaces between the city walls and the jungles, cleared slowly over decades, each hectare of arable land worth it’s size in blood.
He finally stopped when he reached the immediacy of the first shacks of the Braveman’s Quarter. Resting by sitting on the edge of a large watering trough. Once he no longer felt like his legs were burning, he turned around and pushed himself over the lip of the stone through, his feet slightly in the air and his head fully underwater. If it was good enough for the explorer’s horses it was good enough for him!
He kept his balance for a few seconds as his head cooled off, repositioning when he almost let the message he had carried slip into the water.
The Braveman Quarter, he’d never been there before(not a good place for pickpocketing), but it looked exactly like everyone had described it. A loose collection of shacks and modest wooden buildings, most with crude wooden or hay roofs.
It was a wonder they existed at all. The farthest inland sliver of human settlement in the entire Isthmus. Everyone else, including Stefan himself, preferred the safety in numbers of the city itself. The walls might have been useless, but a city filled to the brim with pirates and adventures was still an assurance if anything that wasn’t another reaver came a-knocking.
He was to find a man called Eustorgio, Eustorgio Fabrizi. So he got to asking, worst case there were few enough sacks around him that he could just ask about him in each.
…
He ended up having to go through every single one, because it turned out the “bravemen” and “bravewomen” were a bunch paranoid enough as to not even answer the questions of a courier.
Everyone said that the place had its name because you had to be really brave, or really stupid, to live there. Stefen would remember to add “incapable of trusting their own shadows” to the least of reason to live there next time he heard the place being brought up.
Fabrizi’s shack turned out to be the last one, but at least he was not as his neighbors were and opened his door to Stefan once he explained that he was Master Curiel’s new courier. The man, a peg-legged Tilean, even offered Stefan a stool to sit in while he went through the letter.
Stefan was not privy to the contents of the parchment, but guessed that it was some contract, or confirmation of a contract or something jargon-jargon like it. He was there to give the message and return with the answer, if there was one. He didn’t particularly care as long as his new master, a healthy improvement over Johnny, kept to his promise of a cot for him in the chandlers by the beginning of next month.
“Here kid, give this to him.” Returned the man, the piece of parchment was the same, with the wax seal still there but with new scribbles on the other side of it. He was probably not worried about Stefan reading it. Not only did he work for the man it was to be returned to but he probably didn’t know how to read.
He was correct. Stefan didn’t care, and he also had no way to snoop into the thing even if he cared.
“Thank you sir.” Stefan went as the man accompanied him outside.
Once out, Stefan started wondering whether he should run all the way back. On the one hand he had run here in the first place because the sooner he was done, the sonner he’d be able to get something to eat. On the other hand, he did want to eat before returning to the Felldowns, so what would be the point of running back if he was going to stop to grab a bite at the Maiden anyways?
While he thought to himself, he aimlessly turned around, to look at the treeline, thinking of the tales. But a big gray shape caught his attention.
It was half-obscured by around nine or ten trees, since it was just on the gradual edge of the massive clearring Port Reaver was nestled within. But the higher levels of gray stone were still visible towering over them.
At first it reminded him of the wall towers of the city. But it was in too good shape, free of creeping vines or green mossy rot, unlike those of the Old Wall. And it was clearly a complete structure, unlike most of the half-dozen unfinished ones in the New Wall. It was “better” like those of the Ċittadella. But the towers in the Ċittadella where cylindrical, and those in the walls were “shaped” at all would be a compliment.
It was also quite tall on top of having four sides. And that reminded him of the lighthouses on the harbor. But those were simply elongated rectangles with… Lights -he didn’t actually know how they made their light- on top of them. Whereas this tower was made up of a wide and stocky rectangle on top of which a much taller one had been constructed. And there was no light coming from it. Obviously it was the middle of the day, but Stefan wanted to imagine that if it was a lighthouse he would have seen it at night before at some point in his life.
But those details were ultimately meaningless, a tower could be whatever shape and height its builder wanted it to be. No, his mind kept going back to how clean it was. It was in the edge of the jungles and yet there was no bird poo caking any of it, unlike any building in the city. There was no mold or creeping vines covering it. No missing bits or wood hanging from the wooden hinges of an old window.
As a matter of fact, where there was clearly a doorway, a tall arch of stone. The shape of it was filled in with even more mortared rock.
Why would anyone care to keep that tower, unusable as it was without an entrance, clean? Cleaner than anything else on Port Reaver, and in the middle of nowhere.
He turned to ask the man, Fabrizi, about the nature of it, but the man was already gone. Inside his wooden shack. And Stefan dared not bother him now that his actual job was done.
So Stefan walked the Dead Man’s Way, mulling over the logic behind the well-kept abandoned tower on the edge of the jungle.
The rain had caught them during the boat ride to the Council Rock. His coat was drenched. But that was why he had brought it.
The island fort was… It had always made him uneasy, even before he had technically come to own it. And as he walked down the gangplank and set foot in it, looking for and finding the ships of his current fellow Six Lords. He knew what the island was, its function.
First, to supposedly be a neutral ground for those in the Council. Unmanned when the city was unthreatened and overflowing with men loyal to their respective captains when the council was in session. It made grand schemes theoretically impossible, for no pirate lord could kill within without drawing the gunpowder of all the others. Even if a few of his predecessors had reached the throne by scheming their way through the council. Only one had ever sat on the throne by spilling blood. And what had been of Green O’Byern? He had been blockaded inside the Rock for 3 years, starving to death. The only Pirate King of Port Reaver to never actually set foot in the city as its ruler.
Second, it was a fortification, ancient and well designed. Taken care of by all those after Soprania including himself. One of the few features of the free city to receive such care. But that was all a ruse was it not? The city’s defenses were his own Ċittadella and the blockhouses, even those blasted walls if he could ever finish them! This fortress upon a rock was unbreakable, but it was also useless as a defense for the city, too far from the shoreline and too far to the west in a city protected by a cove with an eastern entrance.
Sure, there was blasted Sudburg now to think of. But the Council Rock had been constructed in a time before Sudburg. And even then what usefulness would it have? If the imperials wanted to burn Port Reaver they could simply sail around it! Or even ignore it completely as it was manned only twelve days of the year!
As he walked the ancient halls of the Council Rock, the meaning of it thrummed in his ears. But those were philosophical concerns. As he had the doors to the thrones’ room opened, more audible concerns made themselves known.
“That’s it! I will have your fucking eyes!” Roared Pirate Lord Salhi Hamidou.
“Bold words coming from a milkboy like you!” Laughed Lord Dubosc, calmy reclined in his upholstered throne.
Every pirate king got to bring their own throne. There were seven here today, the same pieces as the last time. Meaning that none of his fellows had gotten usurped. And no new Pirate Lords were in Port Reaver. That was always good news, no rocking of boats to worry about or new personalities to learn to deal with. How did a Pirate Lord gain a throne in the Council Rock of Port Reaver?
It was simple really, one simply needed to be lord of a pirate fleet (meaning two loyal ships), dock in Port Reaver, announce their plans to dock their flagship in the council rock during the next congress and survive to actually do it.
To his reckoning there probably were at least eleven Lords in his harbor tonight. Only six with the brain or brawn to be on the table.
He was not introduced nor did they acknowledge him. That would have been a sign of hubris on his side. Or worse, a sign of respect from them. So he simply sat down and allowed the Southerner and Arabyan to keep arguing. One of them would probably try to kill the other soon enough. If Bastjan was lucky they would both die and their combined sixteen ships would scatter to the winds. He was never that lucky. Grails be damned.
Eventually, as the argument died down he was finally addressed.
“I think, my fellow gentlemen,” Lord Favieres laughed with his thick Bretonnian accent. “That it is only fair that we address the big issue in the room, yes? The burning of our king’s precious project, yes?” He snidely commented.
The rest of the men, and single woman, gathered muttered to themselves. Bastjan knows they don’t actually care. They are on the council to represent themselves and the economic and logistical concerns of their corsair fleets up and down Lustria. They have to ask about his failings, they have to prod him and acost him to constantly test their king, looking for weaknesses. But in truth they would never care. As long as there was a port with rum, whores and business offers the Pirate Lords, from slavers like Hamidou to gold plunderers like Favieres, would be happy to rake the coals in the name of “tradition”.
But it is an eight voice who speaks. The one who King Borġ detests, perhaps dreads, the most. “The burning of the Grails was certainly a tragedy to this our city, especially knowing the efforts made by our gracious king to establish that commercial endeavor. It certainly weakens his stance on Port Teaver’s nature as a safe port for the endeavors of the Fronisch Company in this great city.” The voice was thickly accented, rough, harsh, loud and sharp around the edges with derisiveness. The voice of a man who was as well mannered as he was a spineless cunt.
Hermann Fronisch was allowed into the council, even if he was no pirate and had no throne. Because he represented the Fronisch Company commanded by his older brother from Marienburg. And they were the only traders who exported goods to Port Reaver. Without them, the city would be starved of food and resources. Some time ago that would not have been the case. Before Sudburg had been founded Port Reaver had been the single safe harbor in the isthmus, as Skeggi was still the chaos whose ripper den it had always been.
But now Sudburg was there, which meant everyone traded there now. The memories of those years of change were still a fresh wound in his side. So now Bastjan had to deal with the Marienburger company of merchants if he wanted to survive, a company which was better armed than any of the lords in his table and only in Port Reaver for a simple reason: Bastjan didn’t tax them.
Hermann Fronisch wasn’t a pirate, a pirate had the decency of just killing you to get your coin. Fronisch was much worse, a merchant, and he would squeeze as much as he could until you were a dried up husk and would then complain about the end of a profit venue.
But he didn’t have one thing the King did.
“I seem to recall you were one of the most vehemently against the Grails weren’t you? Should we not wonder why so suddenly you complain about the burning?”
Bastjan Borġ was a pirate, and he didn’t give a fuck about the beiled speches and maneuverings of merchants. If Hermann wanted to feign sadness at the fiery end of his competition, Bastjan would call him out as the rat bastard he was. Exactly the kind to get an entire quarter set on fire in the name of a spreadsheet.
Port Reaver would languish without the Fronisch, but the Fronish needed a trade haven from which to smuggle all the way down to the Great Jungles and Sudenburg across the sea.
“My Lord that is a most serious accus-”
“If you don’t want me to make more than accusations, you better shut the fuck up.” He growled. All his enemies in that room, and somehow the most powerful one was the only one he could get away with simply ordering to fuck off.
“Now, Lady Serena, I recall that in our last congress you spoke off problems with the Estalian Armada down south in the Cactus Coast, any updates on the matter?”
And so went the actual conversation, Pirate Lords sharing what little information they all knew needed to be shared, with each other and with the man who made sure they still had a safe haven on this side of the Great Ocean to return to.
Just as he had arrived last, he stayed the longest, well after all the other seven had left, with only one ship, his own Razorback, still mooren to the rock and only his men pullulating the island fortress. The rain was still going at it and he was inclined to let it be. So it was him alone in the thrones’s room. Seven thrones and a “seat.”
His own wasn’t much, large and carved from a single piece of wood, but undecorated. What showed his status was that it was at the head of the table, and that it was the only one allowed to let its banner hang in the council rock.
Any pirate captain or lord could fly their jack in their ships and properties as was their right. The harbor was full of Jolly Roger. But only one banner hung in the Fortresses of Port Reaver. His own by right of blood shed.
The laughing boar, a black skull with mighty tusks upon a golden coin, surrounded by the white and red stripes of his father’s old homeland, a small border principality Bastjan didn't even know the name of.
The one here was the original, the one he had flown on the Razorback the day he became captain.
It hung from no simple metal rod.
It hung from the hog rod. It had been a fun name for a weapon owned by a young pirate whose friends called him Pig. Now it just felt childish.
But now he was the Boar. And maybe the Boar King of Port Reaver truly deserved a symbol of power that was as stupid when you thought about it as his city’s symbol of power.
The Council Rock was a coward’s fortress, built so its master could always flee to it and survive a siege or assault his city would not.
He could not wait for the rain to subside. He could not stand there a minute longer.
Grand Plaza, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
32nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.15 13 Men 8 Tzek
The Grand Plaza stretched out in front of Melandra and her warband as they walked into the Temple-City. If anything else that calmed her. If her hosts wanted to kill her they simply would have closed the gates behind them and gotten started with the slaughter. The saurians were predictably pragmatic like that, which was why a good half of her women were still outside, hidden just in case.
But this meant that her instincts had been right. The Lizardmen truly did not have enough cunning in them to even lie badly.
It was.. Strange to simply walk into the monumental square. She had visited many lizardmen settlements in her life both abandoned and inhabited alike. She had earned her reputation and wealth amongst the Sisterhood in Genaina as their generation’s greatest adventurer. She was yet to find an abandoned precinct she couldn’t plunder or a commune she couldn’t fool.
She had walked into derelict Tlanxla and Spektazuma and left both weighted by gold and artifacts like a recently fed constrictor. And yet she had never set foot in any of the inhabited Temple-Cities, and her refusal to do so until now felt vindicated by her surroundings.
The dusting of ash covering it made her footsteps completely silent, so it did for her warriors and jungle stalkers. Which only made the eerie silence of the city much more noticable.
The square was flanked on all three sides by a collection of statutes as tall as trees and the entrances and starways into massive pyramids.
And they were all crawling with coldbloods. By the thousand. perched upon their megaliths and ziggurat levels like wall lizards and birds of play, standing on the roads that branched from the Plaza like an inhuman parody of the crowds who gathered in Amazon Island to behold the great Carnavals.
The only thing keeping her from bolting were her loyalty to her queen’s command and her self-respect. And she wasn’t sure either would last much longer.
But soon she came to stand before her greeting party. And her orders and experience superseded any instinct at her heart.
She could have taken notice of the multiple standard bearers, with their great shafts of geometric serpents and geometric patterns or colorful cloths as long as a woman was tall. Adorned with ivory and enamel and gems. Good prices that reminded her of past endeavors.
She could have taken notice of the wizened Skinks, made even more diminutive by their crooked backs and the massive feathery coats covering them. Or of the armed Saurus standing guard.
But then she saw it standing in the shadow of the massive black-and-yellow Saurus, covered from claw to crest in golden battlements, who stood in command.
It was something she had not seen for a long time. One of the many misshapen parodies of Kalith’s Daughters who every now and then ambled into the jungles.
Breastless and large, an abomination of broad shoulders and wide bones.
“I see.” She spat. “Not only does your toad lord not even have the decency of showing himself to a conclave he asked for himself. But you affront our eyes with the sight of one of your man-thing slaves?” Her voice echoed across the silent square.
One of the Skinks, unarmed and decorated, spoke in chirped warbles to his master. And as said saurus answered her in his tongue of grunts and roars, translated in kind for her.
“Old-Blood Kowaal greets you in the name of our great Mage Lord Tleconexquiza! He Who Is Risen From Ashes and supreme ruler of Pahuax!” The creature spoke. “Our great master has given unto us the honor of greeting you in his absence. He wishes to know to whom he is to make right of the agreement made between Mage Lord Adohi-Tehga and your kind!”
“You speak to The Hawkeye, Commander Melandra the Hawkeye, I am very much interested in the fulfilling of this agreement. So give unto us what is ours by right as Rigg’s Children.” They wanted to be formal? She could be formal, anything in the name of dealing with this “business.”
The Skink translated, and the Scar-veteran gave an order to his own, as it was untranslated.
A chest was brought forward by another armored warrior who walked towards her until her women started drawing weapons. She did not order them to stand down. He opened it for her to see.
Had she not known that there was a man-thing there she would have burst with emotion. Something she could not afford with that vermin to tattle on her to his masters.
But she wanted to, just as much as she knew her fellows wanted to.
The gifts of Kara First-Daughter, the Daughter Bracelets. To be returned to their home. Their pink amethysts tinkling in the afternoon sun. She felt the ghost of a feeling in her wrists, youth brought to the forefront of the mind.
“Leave them there. And you’ll-” She started to gesture for Despina, who had the plaque the lizards desired in her pack.
“Wait.” Spoke the translator Skink, interrupting her orders to the saurus porter. Who much to the audible anger of herself and her troops closed the stone chest and started to recreate. She made to unseathe her curved blade.
“Lord Tleconexquiza has commanded that, in commemoration of shared success and collaboration between our kinds against the warm-blooded blight, you are welcome to celebrate the Equinox in Grandiose Pahuax as his guests! Once this is done, we will carry out the exchange!”
“That…! That's outrageous!” One of her warriors shouted.
But Melandra did command her to be silent.
The Lizardmen didn’t want them there, but their master did, that was clear even on their scaly faces. Being invited into a Temple-City under the protection of its frog lord? She could use that. She could play with that.
If she didn’t take that chance, was she really Melandra Hawkeye?
“We accept!” She shouted to the confusion of her own. That was fine, there would be time to explain later. One day to be exact. One day to set up her best escapade yet.
“Our Lord will be pleased. The Herald will guide you to your lodgings.” The Skink translated one last time. And with that the cold-blooded host started to retire.
And the man-thing stepped forward, bowing.
She wanted to barf. The things she did in the name of her Queen…
In technical terms the conflict between the Amazonian Empire and the Lizardmen is the single oldest conflict between the peoples of the Ordetide, orders of magnitude more ancient than even the War of the Beard. Notice that I carefully chose my words: Conflict, not war.
The reason for this is a complex one. First is the fact that the Lizardmen do not have a concept of war or peace like most other races. As far as they are concerned, “war” is simply one of their tasks and “peace” is just a period during which that task is unnecessary. To them wars are not fought against an enemy, they are done with a purpose within the Great Plan. Under this nebulous definition, any or none of the military actions carried out by the Lizardmen could be “War” or something completely different.
And their many scrapes against the Sisterhood certainly do not constitute a war as the layman would see it. For this conflict, even though it can be dated back to an animosity which already existed in the times of the Dawn of Creation and High Age of Lustria, has never reached the tipping point of total war.
Instead, what records and testimonies show us is a large collection of individual small-scale conflicts. Most fueled by nebulous racial slights and personal grievances. Hundreds of raids, executions and revenge plots stretched out over more than ten thousand years of shared, violent, history.
Examples are aplenty: From territorial conflicts over the ruins of ancient temples or battles over artifacts both sides claimed to individual and mythologized tales of unseemingly brutality and disproportionate revenge. From the deeply emotional and personal story of the Sage of Lilies to the well-recorded Gorol Massacres in the Sotek’s Vault mountains.
Of course, it would be unforgivable to talk of this, the oldest conflict in history, without also mentioning its end. While the end of this “Lustrian Bloodshed” can be as nebulous as it origins, many (myself included) consider one of its most important steps the personal friendship between Princess Azura and Herald Welser-Nakor, perhaps even more pivotal, however, could be the relationship between the aforementioned “Xho’za’khanx” and his…
-Excerpt of Wars of the World, by Noémie Armbruster.
Xho’za’khanx Favela, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
32nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.15 13 Men 8 Tzek
“Did you visit the South City?!” Excitedly asked a voice to his side.32nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.15 13 Men 8 Tzek
The stone he was reclining on was warm and slightly slanted in a way that made it comfortable to nap on. The sun high up was just warming enough that he felt perfectly comfortable basking under it. It could have been a perfect afternoon nap after his longest task so far. Had it not been for- “Roland! I know you are listening to me! Rooolaaaaand!”
He, unwillingly and under duress of torture, opened his bleary eyes. Gavrie was right there, covering his entire field of vision in the way only younglings, with their distaste for personal space and disdain for the sacred nap, could.
Gavrie was amongst their youngest, with a face full of freckles and a near constant sun-burned skin.
“Yes,” He growled. “I did go to Sudburg. What of it?” He sat up and went for the leather cord and pin he used to keep his hair under control in a large bun. Much less fancy and practical than his braids, but much easier to take off and put on quickly for sleeping or napping or generally resting in the city.
So he did, gathering his hair up, shaking off what particles of ash it had gathered, and loosely bundling and securing it with the brass pin.
“Tell me about it! Everyone says I’ll be going next time so I want to know all about it to do a great job!” Gavrie clapped.
“I didn’t go for our usual tasks. I went to Herald.” Roland explained.
“But don’t you always Herald Lord Tleconexquiza?” The sunburnt youth gave off a small yelp as Roland grabbed both of his underarms and hauled him towards one of the many tented patios in the favela.
“I am always Herald, yes, but I have spent this last winal working on a specific task as Herald.” He explained. Letting his warmblood-shaped package down carefully at first, and then letting Gavrie jump down the rest of the way.
“But you did go to the Sud-Burg yes?”
“Yes, but only a night and a morning, when you get to go next time you’ll be spending more time in Sudburg.” He enunciated the name of the city clearly, so the youngling could mimic him. He went looking for a pot as he explained, and soon found it. Filled to the brim with ash mud.
“Can I do herald like you?” The youngling asked.
It took Roland a few seconds to answer. “I… Maybe… We’ll talk about it.” He hoped it would suffice.
“Okay!”
He carried the pot closer and sat down, beckoning for Gavrie to sit beside him. As far as he knew normal mud was the more common version used. But in a city like Pahuax? If you could use ash for something you damn well used the ash like the Old Ones themselves had ordered it.
So he grabbed a big fistful of it and sloped it onto the back of the uncomplaining young, used to this treatment by now.
Long ago their caretakers learned that the skins of certain warmbloods were cursed, sensitive to Chotec’s embrace in a similar way to those who carried the Blessings of the Old Ones. But whereas those who carried the blessing of white or gray scales simply preferred the dark dampness of the caverns to direct sunlight, certain warmbloods sensitive to light tended to irritate their skins as if caressed by poisonous plants when they spent too long basking. First becoming reddish and sensitive, and then shedding their skins too slowly, risking the chance of infection in the worst cases.
Just like how the extensive waterworks and easy to find mud baths helped Lizardmen cool down in the hottest days, a slathering of mud onto scalded skin helped it heal faster and more cleanly.
Gavrie had one of the most cursed skins, Elma had claimed that it was probably because his fourth race progenitors had come from a more septentrional region than most others. He was even capable of growing red even during the rainy season! So the boy had grown very accustomed to getting mud baths.
“So what was your herald task? Did you only go to Sudburg?” His good pronunciation makes Roland smile.
“Well, it all starts with a foolish warmblood man from Estalia thinking the theft of a great artifact could go unpunished.” He commenced. Noticing that a few other Xho’za’khanxs and Skinks had arisen from their own baskings and naps, listening to their conversation in distinctively accented Saurian.
“Oh! I love stories that start like that! Did you hunt him?” Excitedly inquired the sunburnt boy.
Roland was far from a great storyteller, but for this audience? He’d manage.
Temple of Revivification, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
The pyramids of Pahuax cast striking shadows in the waning hours of the late afternoon. Great clouds were on the horizon, tinged with the sunset colors of jungle birds. It would rain tonight, copiously and suddenly, as was befitting of the wet season. Even on these last few days of it. He only hoped that it would happen early enough in the night, before the ash came back, so they wouldn’t have to deal with a city caked on wet ash in the morning.
It was great for the skin. For an entire city? Not so much.
As a youngling, long ago, all the ziggurats had looked the same to him, so much so that in those days getting a helpful Skink to guide him had been a must. But he had learned to find his directions soon enough, to understand the organization of the city with time. And then came reading the glyphs and understanding the symbols.
And now he could bet he’d recognize the purpose of a pyramid he’d never seen even at a glance.
Pahuax’s Temple of Revivification had many tiered gardens growing upon the levels of the pyramid that made up its main body. Medicinal plants of course, great leafy ferns, patches of colorful moses and rows upon rows of healing herbs. The walls outside were decorated with even more plants, with rows of glyphs around them, making the wisdom of the healers viewable to all. They were there too once he entered the ground level, accompanied by images of lizards regrowing their tails and shedding skins. Of snakes with their fangs unsheathed and dripping venom onto ceramic vases held by Kroxigors, giving a sense of the proportional massive sizes of the carbed healing serpents. Efigies of Potec, he who warded from corrupted and foul magics, were in every common room and central hall he walked through. Covered in offerings.
Those and many of the other carvings were made in part with delicately shaped crystals, which gave off a calming blue glow, casting the insides of this blessed place in their light.
Revivification crystals, shards too small or impure to be used the way those mounted in the backs of bastiladons were, let alone like those in the healing pools at the protected core of this temple. They had little magical power, but did give off a calming thrum just by resonating into the walls.
The Temple wasn’t the largest on Pahuax by far, but was bigger than average in account of it’s utility, it took Roland a good while to find the room in which Tek’Qila rested, now with a proper and clean bandage around his leg.
“How will it heal? Does it hurt much?” He asked the Skink after their greetings.
“Not anymore. The healers say it could have been much worse, the blade was unclean and stabbed deep, into the thigh’s main vein. But you brought me out of the city into camp fast. And the Skinks there did a good job.” Happily chirped the stalker.
“I am glad to hear we could aid you so. It would have rested heavily upon me if he had lost you. Especially just after our victory and your commendable part in it.” He commenced.
“It was only my duty as provisional cohort leader.” Tek’Quila defended.
“That’s mahrlect and you know it.” He untied the gourd hanging from his belt. “Duty doesn’t make effort less respectable.” He offered the octli-filled container to his friend. Who chose to drink the alcoholic beverage rather than answer, but couldn’t hide his preening in the way his crest rose.
“As much as I wanted to say hi, I came to ask something else.” He sat down next to the Skink.
“What is it then Herald? I should warn you I hope to settle my debt before you embark us into a new task.”
“Then you’ll settle this ‘debt’ by fulfilling a fancy of mine.”
“What fancy? I warn you hunting is off the limits for me until my leg heals. Even if it does properly the healers have warned me it might remain slightly weaker than the other.” He took another swing.
“Mmmh, that saddens me to hear, doubly so as I was going to request that you be one of my aides in the sacrifices on the day of the Night of Huanchi.” He rubbed his shoulder against Tek’s, the cot the skink laid on making up for their difference in size.
“You were chosen to sacrifice?” The Skink cut him off before he could speak. “Don’t you dare call yourself undeserving after your little speech you mud brain! You have conducted the season’s most important raid!” He admonished. Roland did indeed remain silent but got a hold of their shared drink for a swig. “Ask Ra'kaka, his quick thinking saved my leg from a worse fate. Or maybe one of your younger spawn-siblings, I bet a few of them would be elated to join you…”
“Lord Herald!'' Came a shrill voice from the open doorway into one of the many rooms in the temple where they were conversing.
It was a Messenger caste Skink. “Lord Tleconexquiza: Be ready and in the Grand Plaza as soon as you can be! Your presence is necessary to the good undertaking of the exchange with the children of Kalith.” From the tiny reptile’s frame came a deep guttural voice, vaguely resembling that of their Ashen Mage Lord whenever he deigned speech necessary.
Roland rose instantly, the words of a messenger were one and the same to the direct words of the sender. He threw back the gourd to Tek’Quile as he bit his fellow a good night and fast recuperation.
Hopefully Elma would already be back at the barrio, she was still fastest at readying his braids.
Braveman Quarter, Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove
32nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.15 13 Men 8 Tzek
He was good at running, he even enjoyed it. Casually competing with friends on races with made-up start and finish lines? Doing it to get away from a sailor with half the man’s coin in his closed fist? Those had both been athletic tasks he had enjoyed for years.32nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.15 13 Men 8 Tzek
But having to do it across a distance longer than Port Reaver was wide? To deliver a single wax-sealed piece of parchment? No, Stefan did not include that within the types of running he enjoyed.
He had galloped his way along the entire length of Dead Man’s Way, passing hundreds of rows of cotton bushes and tobacco plants and what few foodstuff Port Reaver’s “farmers” - slaves or luckless retired pirates for the most part - grew on the liminal spaces between the city walls and the jungles, cleared slowly over decades, each hectare of arable land worth it’s size in blood.
He finally stopped when he reached the immediacy of the first shacks of the Braveman’s Quarter. Resting by sitting on the edge of a large watering trough. Once he no longer felt like his legs were burning, he turned around and pushed himself over the lip of the stone through, his feet slightly in the air and his head fully underwater. If it was good enough for the explorer’s horses it was good enough for him!
He kept his balance for a few seconds as his head cooled off, repositioning when he almost let the message he had carried slip into the water.
The Braveman Quarter, he’d never been there before(not a good place for pickpocketing), but it looked exactly like everyone had described it. A loose collection of shacks and modest wooden buildings, most with crude wooden or hay roofs.
It was a wonder they existed at all. The farthest inland sliver of human settlement in the entire Isthmus. Everyone else, including Stefan himself, preferred the safety in numbers of the city itself. The walls might have been useless, but a city filled to the brim with pirates and adventures was still an assurance if anything that wasn’t another reaver came a-knocking.
Outskirts of Port Reaver: 10.Von Daling’s Tower; 13. Huntsmen Cottage; 16. Braveman Quarter; 17. Logging Yard; 18. Exhile's Swamp.
He was to find a man called Eustorgio, Eustorgio Fabrizi. So he got to asking, worst case there were few enough sacks around him that he could just ask about him in each.
…
He ended up having to go through every single one, because it turned out the “bravemen” and “bravewomen” were a bunch paranoid enough as to not even answer the questions of a courier.
Everyone said that the place had its name because you had to be really brave, or really stupid, to live there. Stefen would remember to add “incapable of trusting their own shadows” to the least of reason to live there next time he heard the place being brought up.
Fabrizi’s shack turned out to be the last one, but at least he was not as his neighbors were and opened his door to Stefan once he explained that he was Master Curiel’s new courier. The man, a peg-legged Tilean, even offered Stefan a stool to sit in while he went through the letter.
Stefan was not privy to the contents of the parchment, but guessed that it was some contract, or confirmation of a contract or something jargon-jargon like it. He was there to give the message and return with the answer, if there was one. He didn’t particularly care as long as his new master, a healthy improvement over Johnny, kept to his promise of a cot for him in the chandlers by the beginning of next month.
“Here kid, give this to him.” Returned the man, the piece of parchment was the same, with the wax seal still there but with new scribbles on the other side of it. He was probably not worried about Stefan reading it. Not only did he work for the man it was to be returned to but he probably didn’t know how to read.
He was correct. Stefan didn’t care, and he also had no way to snoop into the thing even if he cared.
“Thank you sir.” Stefan went as the man accompanied him outside.
Once out, Stefan started wondering whether he should run all the way back. On the one hand he had run here in the first place because the sooner he was done, the sonner he’d be able to get something to eat. On the other hand, he did want to eat before returning to the Felldowns, so what would be the point of running back if he was going to stop to grab a bite at the Maiden anyways?
While he thought to himself, he aimlessly turned around, to look at the treeline, thinking of the tales. But a big gray shape caught his attention.
It was half-obscured by around nine or ten trees, since it was just on the gradual edge of the massive clearring Port Reaver was nestled within. But the higher levels of gray stone were still visible towering over them.
At first it reminded him of the wall towers of the city. But it was in too good shape, free of creeping vines or green mossy rot, unlike those of the Old Wall. And it was clearly a complete structure, unlike most of the half-dozen unfinished ones in the New Wall. It was “better” like those of the Ċittadella. But the towers in the Ċittadella where cylindrical, and those in the walls were “shaped” at all would be a compliment.
It was also quite tall on top of having four sides. And that reminded him of the lighthouses on the harbor. But those were simply elongated rectangles with… Lights -he didn’t actually know how they made their light- on top of them. Whereas this tower was made up of a wide and stocky rectangle on top of which a much taller one had been constructed. And there was no light coming from it. Obviously it was the middle of the day, but Stefan wanted to imagine that if it was a lighthouse he would have seen it at night before at some point in his life.
But those details were ultimately meaningless, a tower could be whatever shape and height its builder wanted it to be. No, his mind kept going back to how clean it was. It was in the edge of the jungles and yet there was no bird poo caking any of it, unlike any building in the city. There was no mold or creeping vines covering it. No missing bits or wood hanging from the wooden hinges of an old window.
As a matter of fact, where there was clearly a doorway, a tall arch of stone. The shape of it was filled in with even more mortared rock.
Why would anyone care to keep that tower, unusable as it was without an entrance, clean? Cleaner than anything else on Port Reaver, and in the middle of nowhere.
He turned to ask the man, Fabrizi, about the nature of it, but the man was already gone. Inside his wooden shack. And Stefan dared not bother him now that his actual job was done.
So Stefan walked the Dead Man’s Way, mulling over the logic behind the well-kept abandoned tower on the edge of the jungle.
Council Rock, Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove
32nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.15 13 Men 8 Tzek
32nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.15 13 Men 8 Tzek
The rain had caught them during the boat ride to the Council Rock. His coat was drenched. But that was why he had brought it.
The island fort was… It had always made him uneasy, even before he had technically come to own it. And as he walked down the gangplank and set foot in it, looking for and finding the ships of his current fellow Six Lords. He knew what the island was, its function.
First, to supposedly be a neutral ground for those in the Council. Unmanned when the city was unthreatened and overflowing with men loyal to their respective captains when the council was in session. It made grand schemes theoretically impossible, for no pirate lord could kill within without drawing the gunpowder of all the others. Even if a few of his predecessors had reached the throne by scheming their way through the council. Only one had ever sat on the throne by spilling blood. And what had been of Green O’Byern? He had been blockaded inside the Rock for 3 years, starving to death. The only Pirate King of Port Reaver to never actually set foot in the city as its ruler.
Second, it was a fortification, ancient and well designed. Taken care of by all those after Soprania including himself. One of the few features of the free city to receive such care. But that was all a ruse was it not? The city’s defenses were his own Ċittadella and the blockhouses, even those blasted walls if he could ever finish them! This fortress upon a rock was unbreakable, but it was also useless as a defense for the city, too far from the shoreline and too far to the west in a city protected by a cove with an eastern entrance.
Sure, there was blasted Sudburg now to think of. But the Council Rock had been constructed in a time before Sudburg. And even then what usefulness would it have? If the imperials wanted to burn Port Reaver they could simply sail around it! Or even ignore it completely as it was manned only twelve days of the year!
As he walked the ancient halls of the Council Rock, the meaning of it thrummed in his ears. But those were philosophical concerns. As he had the doors to the thrones’ room opened, more audible concerns made themselves known.
“That’s it! I will have your fucking eyes!” Roared Pirate Lord Salhi Hamidou.
“Bold words coming from a milkboy like you!” Laughed Lord Dubosc, calmy reclined in his upholstered throne.
Every pirate king got to bring their own throne. There were seven here today, the same pieces as the last time. Meaning that none of his fellows had gotten usurped. And no new Pirate Lords were in Port Reaver. That was always good news, no rocking of boats to worry about or new personalities to learn to deal with. How did a Pirate Lord gain a throne in the Council Rock of Port Reaver?
It was simple really, one simply needed to be lord of a pirate fleet (meaning two loyal ships), dock in Port Reaver, announce their plans to dock their flagship in the council rock during the next congress and survive to actually do it.
To his reckoning there probably were at least eleven Lords in his harbor tonight. Only six with the brain or brawn to be on the table.
He was not introduced nor did they acknowledge him. That would have been a sign of hubris on his side. Or worse, a sign of respect from them. So he simply sat down and allowed the Southerner and Arabyan to keep arguing. One of them would probably try to kill the other soon enough. If Bastjan was lucky they would both die and their combined sixteen ships would scatter to the winds. He was never that lucky. Grails be damned.
Eventually, as the argument died down he was finally addressed.
“I think, my fellow gentlemen,” Lord Favieres laughed with his thick Bretonnian accent. “That it is only fair that we address the big issue in the room, yes? The burning of our king’s precious project, yes?” He snidely commented.
The rest of the men, and single woman, gathered muttered to themselves. Bastjan knows they don’t actually care. They are on the council to represent themselves and the economic and logistical concerns of their corsair fleets up and down Lustria. They have to ask about his failings, they have to prod him and acost him to constantly test their king, looking for weaknesses. But in truth they would never care. As long as there was a port with rum, whores and business offers the Pirate Lords, from slavers like Hamidou to gold plunderers like Favieres, would be happy to rake the coals in the name of “tradition”.
But it is an eight voice who speaks. The one who King Borġ detests, perhaps dreads, the most. “The burning of the Grails was certainly a tragedy to this our city, especially knowing the efforts made by our gracious king to establish that commercial endeavor. It certainly weakens his stance on Port Teaver’s nature as a safe port for the endeavors of the Fronisch Company in this great city.” The voice was thickly accented, rough, harsh, loud and sharp around the edges with derisiveness. The voice of a man who was as well mannered as he was a spineless cunt.
Hermann Fronisch was allowed into the council, even if he was no pirate and had no throne. Because he represented the Fronisch Company commanded by his older brother from Marienburg. And they were the only traders who exported goods to Port Reaver. Without them, the city would be starved of food and resources. Some time ago that would not have been the case. Before Sudburg had been founded Port Reaver had been the single safe harbor in the isthmus, as Skeggi was still the chaos whose ripper den it had always been.
But now Sudburg was there, which meant everyone traded there now. The memories of those years of change were still a fresh wound in his side. So now Bastjan had to deal with the Marienburger company of merchants if he wanted to survive, a company which was better armed than any of the lords in his table and only in Port Reaver for a simple reason: Bastjan didn’t tax them.
Hermann Fronisch wasn’t a pirate, a pirate had the decency of just killing you to get your coin. Fronisch was much worse, a merchant, and he would squeeze as much as he could until you were a dried up husk and would then complain about the end of a profit venue.
But he didn’t have one thing the King did.
“I seem to recall you were one of the most vehemently against the Grails weren’t you? Should we not wonder why so suddenly you complain about the burning?”
Bastjan Borġ was a pirate, and he didn’t give a fuck about the beiled speches and maneuverings of merchants. If Hermann wanted to feign sadness at the fiery end of his competition, Bastjan would call him out as the rat bastard he was. Exactly the kind to get an entire quarter set on fire in the name of a spreadsheet.
Port Reaver would languish without the Fronisch, but the Fronish needed a trade haven from which to smuggle all the way down to the Great Jungles and Sudenburg across the sea.
“My Lord that is a most serious accus-”
“If you don’t want me to make more than accusations, you better shut the fuck up.” He growled. All his enemies in that room, and somehow the most powerful one was the only one he could get away with simply ordering to fuck off.
“Now, Lady Serena, I recall that in our last congress you spoke off problems with the Estalian Armada down south in the Cactus Coast, any updates on the matter?”
And so went the actual conversation, Pirate Lords sharing what little information they all knew needed to be shared, with each other and with the man who made sure they still had a safe haven on this side of the Great Ocean to return to.
Just as he had arrived last, he stayed the longest, well after all the other seven had left, with only one ship, his own Razorback, still mooren to the rock and only his men pullulating the island fortress. The rain was still going at it and he was inclined to let it be. So it was him alone in the thrones’s room. Seven thrones and a “seat.”
His own wasn’t much, large and carved from a single piece of wood, but undecorated. What showed his status was that it was at the head of the table, and that it was the only one allowed to let its banner hang in the council rock.
Any pirate captain or lord could fly their jack in their ships and properties as was their right. The harbor was full of Jolly Roger. But only one banner hung in the Fortresses of Port Reaver. His own by right of blood shed.
The laughing boar, a black skull with mighty tusks upon a golden coin, surrounded by the white and red stripes of his father’s old homeland, a small border principality Bastjan didn't even know the name of.
Coat of arms of Pirate King Borġ and the Pirate City of Port Reaver. “The laughing Boar.”
The one here was the original, the one he had flown on the Razorback the day he became captain.
It hung from no simple metal rod.
It hung from the hog rod. It had been a fun name for a weapon owned by a young pirate whose friends called him Pig. Now it just felt childish.
But now he was the Boar. And maybe the Boar King of Port Reaver truly deserved a symbol of power that was as stupid when you thought about it as his city’s symbol of power.
The Council Rock was a coward’s fortress, built so its master could always flee to it and survive a siege or assault his city would not.
He could not wait for the rain to subside. He could not stand there a minute longer.
Grand Plaza, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
32nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC/40.0.9.10.15 13 Men 8 Tzek
The Grand Plaza stretched out in front of Melandra and her warband as they walked into the Temple-City. If anything else that calmed her. If her hosts wanted to kill her they simply would have closed the gates behind them and gotten started with the slaughter. The saurians were predictably pragmatic like that, which was why a good half of her women were still outside, hidden just in case.
But this meant that her instincts had been right. The Lizardmen truly did not have enough cunning in them to even lie badly.
It was.. Strange to simply walk into the monumental square. She had visited many lizardmen settlements in her life both abandoned and inhabited alike. She had earned her reputation and wealth amongst the Sisterhood in Genaina as their generation’s greatest adventurer. She was yet to find an abandoned precinct she couldn’t plunder or a commune she couldn’t fool.
She had walked into derelict Tlanxla and Spektazuma and left both weighted by gold and artifacts like a recently fed constrictor. And yet she had never set foot in any of the inhabited Temple-Cities, and her refusal to do so until now felt vindicated by her surroundings.
The dusting of ash covering it made her footsteps completely silent, so it did for her warriors and jungle stalkers. Which only made the eerie silence of the city much more noticable.
The square was flanked on all three sides by a collection of statutes as tall as trees and the entrances and starways into massive pyramids.
And they were all crawling with coldbloods. By the thousand. perched upon their megaliths and ziggurat levels like wall lizards and birds of play, standing on the roads that branched from the Plaza like an inhuman parody of the crowds who gathered in Amazon Island to behold the great Carnavals.
The only thing keeping her from bolting were her loyalty to her queen’s command and her self-respect. And she wasn’t sure either would last much longer.
But soon she came to stand before her greeting party. And her orders and experience superseded any instinct at her heart.
She could have taken notice of the multiple standard bearers, with their great shafts of geometric serpents and geometric patterns or colorful cloths as long as a woman was tall. Adorned with ivory and enamel and gems. Good prices that reminded her of past endeavors.
She could have taken notice of the wizened Skinks, made even more diminutive by their crooked backs and the massive feathery coats covering them. Or of the armed Saurus standing guard.
But then she saw it standing in the shadow of the massive black-and-yellow Saurus, covered from claw to crest in golden battlements, who stood in command.
It was something she had not seen for a long time. One of the many misshapen parodies of Kalith’s Daughters who every now and then ambled into the jungles.
Breastless and large, an abomination of broad shoulders and wide bones.
“I see.” She spat. “Not only does your toad lord not even have the decency of showing himself to a conclave he asked for himself. But you affront our eyes with the sight of one of your man-thing slaves?” Her voice echoed across the silent square.
One of the Skinks, unarmed and decorated, spoke in chirped warbles to his master. And as said saurus answered her in his tongue of grunts and roars, translated in kind for her.
“Old-Blood Kowaal greets you in the name of our great Mage Lord Tleconexquiza! He Who Is Risen From Ashes and supreme ruler of Pahuax!” The creature spoke. “Our great master has given unto us the honor of greeting you in his absence. He wishes to know to whom he is to make right of the agreement made between Mage Lord Adohi-Tehga and your kind!”
“You speak to The Hawkeye, Commander Melandra the Hawkeye, I am very much interested in the fulfilling of this agreement. So give unto us what is ours by right as Rigg’s Children.” They wanted to be formal? She could be formal, anything in the name of dealing with this “business.”
The Skink translated, and the Scar-veteran gave an order to his own, as it was untranslated.
A chest was brought forward by another armored warrior who walked towards her until her women started drawing weapons. She did not order them to stand down. He opened it for her to see.
Had she not known that there was a man-thing there she would have burst with emotion. Something she could not afford with that vermin to tattle on her to his masters.
But she wanted to, just as much as she knew her fellows wanted to.
The gifts of Kara First-Daughter, the Daughter Bracelets. To be returned to their home. Their pink amethysts tinkling in the afternoon sun. She felt the ghost of a feeling in her wrists, youth brought to the forefront of the mind.
“Leave them there. And you’ll-” She started to gesture for Despina, who had the plaque the lizards desired in her pack.
“Wait.” Spoke the translator Skink, interrupting her orders to the saurus porter. Who much to the audible anger of herself and her troops closed the stone chest and started to recreate. She made to unseathe her curved blade.
“Lord Tleconexquiza has commanded that, in commemoration of shared success and collaboration between our kinds against the warm-blooded blight, you are welcome to celebrate the Equinox in Grandiose Pahuax as his guests! Once this is done, we will carry out the exchange!”
“That…! That's outrageous!” One of her warriors shouted.
But Melandra did command her to be silent.
The Lizardmen didn’t want them there, but their master did, that was clear even on their scaly faces. Being invited into a Temple-City under the protection of its frog lord? She could use that. She could play with that.
If she didn’t take that chance, was she really Melandra Hawkeye?
“We accept!” She shouted to the confusion of her own. That was fine, there would be time to explain later. One day to be exact. One day to set up her best escapade yet.
“Our Lord will be pleased. The Herald will guide you to your lodgings.” The Skink translated one last time. And with that the cold-blooded host started to retire.
And the man-thing stepped forward, bowing.
She wanted to barf. The things she did in the name of her Queen…
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Temple Guard
Mr.Crocodile
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I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I honestly appreciate all and any comments or reactions you may be gracious enough to gift me!
As an aside, it would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site (where by the way chapters of this story will be posted a day early).
P.s. Thanks to my friend Janus for his great work in mapping out Port Reaver and creating a new coat of arms for the city!
As an aside, it would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site (where by the way chapters of this story will be posted a day early).
P.s. Thanks to my friend Janus for his great work in mapping out Port Reaver and creating a new coat of arms for the city!
Slann
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Temple Guard
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Hey man, it's ok, I'm just happy you like the story this much :]alas, not before a couple of days. The job is filling a lot of my time...
Slann
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The last installments add many interesting things.
firstly, we have the introduction of new characters that (ATM) have no place in our current story (Torfi) so it's clear that the narration is going to become wider, ala GoT. (on a related note, i would gladly see the burning of Skeggi. what a pisshole).
Secondly, we now know that Roland is not the only human living with the lizardmen. That's a surprise, it kinda diluites the "uniqueness" of the figure of the Herald, but it expands the bg.
Thirdly, the politics and the power balance in Port Reavers are developing... there's a promise for interesting news.
Fourthly, i like Stefan's arc, so it's satisfying to see such an interesting development.
and finally, the big plot: the amazons and their strong "rivalry" with the lizardmen. i'm really curious to see how you will roll on with them.
All in all, the story is interesting and your style is solid, the place we're moving in is vivid and living, you really gave the sensation of a true world.
I just hope there won't be too many things going on for the goodness of the main plot.
But it's too soon to tell.
firstly, we have the introduction of new characters that (ATM) have no place in our current story (Torfi) so it's clear that the narration is going to become wider, ala GoT. (on a related note, i would gladly see the burning of Skeggi. what a pisshole).
Secondly, we now know that Roland is not the only human living with the lizardmen. That's a surprise, it kinda diluites the "uniqueness" of the figure of the Herald, but it expands the bg.
Thirdly, the politics and the power balance in Port Reavers are developing... there's a promise for interesting news.
Fourthly, i like Stefan's arc, so it's satisfying to see such an interesting development.
and finally, the big plot: the amazons and their strong "rivalry" with the lizardmen. i'm really curious to see how you will roll on with them.
All in all, the story is interesting and your style is solid, the place we're moving in is vivid and living, you really gave the sensation of a true world.
I just hope there won't be too many things going on for the goodness of the main plot.
But it's too soon to tell.
Temple Guard
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Thank you so much for the kind words, this arc focusing on the Amazon/Lizardmen tension around this "Collab" will end in a couple chapters.The last installments add many interesting things.
firstly, we have the introduction of new characters that (ATM) have no place in our current story (Torfi) so it's clear that the narration is going to become wider, ala GoT. (on a related note, i would gladly see the burning of Skeggi. what a pisshole).
Secondly, we now know that Roland is not the only human living with the lizardmen. That's a surprise, it kinda diluites the "uniqueness" of the figure of the Herald, but it expands the bg.
Thirdly, the politics and the power balance in Port Reavers are developing... there's a promise for interesting news.
Fourthly, i like Stefan's arc, so it's satisfying to see such an interesting development.
and finally, the big plot: the amazons and their strong "rivalry" with the lizardmen. i'm really curious to see how you will roll on with them.
All in all, the story is interesting and your style is solid, the place we're moving in is vivid and living, you really gave the sensation of a true world.
I just hope there won't be too many things going on for the goodness of the main plot.
But it's too soon to tell.
But the through line of it (as in the exploration of how these races interact) will be picked up again in future story arcs.
Very happy you are enjoying Torfi's and Stefan's sideplots, they make the project much more varied to work in!
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The Gifts of Kara - Part VII: Winter Solstice
The Winter Solstice, commonly known in Reikspiel as the Midwinter Throng, defined as the longest night of the year, is caused by the axial tilt of the world due to the massive release of energy caused by the collapse of the First Polar Gates in the ancient past. Just like its opposite, the Summer Solstice, it is a time of the year during which the Winds of Magic flow through the world with heightened force. This combines with the marking of the passing of seasons, making the night universally sacred or celebrated across the Old and New Worlds.
King’s Sleep in Bretonnian culture, is a holiday that commemorates the life and deeds of civilizational founder Gilles le Breton.
Death Night, as celebrated by the Druchii, is a once a year occurrence, where the Witch Elves descend on the streets of their cities in unbridled celebration of their bloody lord Khaine, killing untold amounts of their brethren.
Mondstille, also known as World Still, is celebrated everywhere where the cult of Ulric has made itself home, from Kislev to the Empire and beyond as it and its many traditions have been enshrined into the cults of both Sigmar (who partook in the holiday during his living days) and Verana, as followers of the Goddess of Justice see the solstice as a symbolic barrier between the old year and the new, the past and the future, the known and the unknown. Many are the traditions of Mondstille: The lighting of bonfires or the keeping of the Taal-Log, the giving of gifts or gathering of families and (in wild borderlands) the raising of wolf pelts on stick as both a sign of respect to Wolf-God Ulric and a warning to his children.
There’s many more of course. Festivals of Lights are as common during the autumn equinox as they are during the winter throng in Imperial Cities. Ancient rituals of the Nehekharans have been found in tumultuary recordings. And both Albionese and Norscans see the night as a great battle, although the former see it as one that should be won by light (as hoped for in the Yule festivities) and the later as one to be hopefully won by Chaos’ darkness (The Ragnarblot or Ragnarok Night).
The lands beyond the World's Edge Mountains have similarly ancient traditions. Cathay’s great Dumpling Banquets, Ind’s Bonfire and Dancing Festivals (reminiscent of those of Mondstille) or yet other mysterious rituals as far as Elithis or Khuresh which make use of the strongly beating pulse of the winds. And of course no Ogre would waste a chance to celebrate a feast!
In the New World and Southlands too do they have midwinter celebrations. First are obviously those of the Naggarothi Dark Elves or the New World Chaos worshippers or clean savages.
Although on the southern continents, with the two(dry and rainy) reversed seasons of Lustria and the Southlands, not only does this day occur at the opposite end of the year, but also ignores the issues of cold or snow and gives much more weight to the ending of heavy rains or the symbolic minutiae of the long night’s duration. The Lizardmen dedicate this night to one of their many gods, Huanchi, who is honored through honoring Jaguars, his symbol. And while the people of Araby and their eternally blazing sun give this time of the year no attention, Amazons, Apemen (Gorols) and Deep Southlanders all celebrate the coming of milder weather and the ending of torrential rains in a myriad of colorful carnivals and tribal rituals.
-Excerpt of The Holiest Days, by Border Prince Scholar Bari of Nicolas.
Taming Pens, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
33nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.16 1 K’ib’ 9 Tzek
The city of Pahuax wakes slowly with the rays of the morning sun. Saurus lean on walls and roofs as they stretch themselves, Kroxigors yawn, opening massive jaws like gates and let forth content rumbles and Skinks already begin their work.
But others wake even earlier: Both the local warmbloods, the Xho’za’khanx, “Untamed ones”, and foreigner warmbloods, the Amazons, do not require for much more than the first rays of light hitting their closed eyes to get on their way.
Doubly so the Amazons, Roland notices, as he walks across the Grand Plaza, passing before the Temple of Uxmac, home to travelers. The majority of them look restless or nervous, with a few even acting as guards to the entrance to the temple he had guided them to the night before. Roland can’t spot their leader, the Melandra, as he continues going along his way. This doesn’t bother him. It is not his duty to watch over them (thankfully) and it’s not as if there’s much they can do under the gaze of the entire city. Better here than in a camp hidden in the jungle, as Old-Blood Kowaal had explained.
Still, Roland knows they notice him, not only had they seen him closely the previous day, but even from a distance he is the largest Warmblood of Pahuax. And he notices their gazes. Disgusted and baleful. Often mocking or deriding, but ultimately meaningless to him.
He speaks enough Amazonian to fulfill his duties, taught to him by long spent prisoners many vague years ago. But what he doesn’t know he can guess. They have many words for what he is, man-thing and aberration are the ones he understands the meaning of.
They were unique warmbloods,the Amazons, thanklessly touched by the Old Ones as to be stronger than any others. All of the same sex, independent from the processes both animals and other warm-bloods depended upon to continue themselves.
As such, Amazons saw bull humans like him as an unnecessary feature of lesser warmbloods and treated him accordingly, like a useless extra digit. He couldn’t judge them much, as he and his fellows could not judge harshly what were, at the end of the day, misled and foolish warmbloods who saw themselves as being above what they truly were, their past loyalty abandoned in the pursuit of favor from a lesser Godling.
And of course, it would be uncouth of the Ashen Lord’s Herald to react to such petty insults. His lack of response had led to the Amazons commenting on his apparent puddle-brainedness, but he had done his master justice.
So just as he had ignored them the day before, he ignores them today, simply noting that they, like his fellows Xho’za’khanxs, wake early. But while his younger kinaid Skinks in their duties, the Amazons remain in their guarded space.
And the skinks are indeed hard at work, for this morning (like all others) has seen Pahuax covered in a fine dusting of the gray ashes and charcoal flakes of the ancient fire that gave the city its epithet.
The Ashen City had burned greatly long ago, sacrificing itself during the great catastrophe in a loyal conflagration, and every night the preternatural return of its ashes reminded those who had rebuilt the Temple-City of the duty they had inherited.
And so Skinks by the hundreds, mostly but not only those of the builder and cleaner castes, sweep and blow away the ashes, taking pots upon pots of it to where it could be made use of or disposed via the many canals and aqueducts carved into the city’s stone, running with milky water stained by much of the unused ash, all of which will join the Tosquitl’s tributaries and later the sea soon enough.
Of course the Skinks don’t do all of the work, especially when a great festival is soon to come. The Xho’za’khanx and Kroxigors sweep and clean their own districts, and the younger Saurus are made to dust off the barracks and walls of the city as befitting their rank.
But as he leaves the Temple of Itzil, having honored his patron as one ought to do, it is again Skinks who dominate the city’s southwestern quarter.
As this is the place of beasts. His home.
He walks amongst massive pits and pens dug onto the ground and reinforced with stone walls as the animals below wake with the morning, just like their rearers and handlers do. The corrals and pens have already been cleaned before the animals are let out of their nighttime pens and longhouses. Otherwise the process would be much more difficult, and this way both the magically occurring ash and naturally occurring waste are taken care of together, more efficiently.
Roland watches as teams of Skinks carry large baskets or wheelbarrows filled with dung of many kinds away, to the insect-breeding hoy houses, the tiered gardens or the fields and jungles outside the city.
Many greet him, and he greets them in return. This area of the city feels like home to him and Tlahui, who flies overhead. He has spent much of his early life honing his connection to the creatures here. To the point that Priest Amet'alox, who had taught him most of his formal duties as Herald, had moved his classes here from the Ashen Ziggurat to incentivise and strengthen his blessings.
And blessings indeed, for he is surrounded by the cacophony of the many tongues of beasts, he hears the Stegadons and Hydrodonts call each other, the cranky grumbles of young male bastiladons hoping to find mates among the females in the arena. The content hissing of salamanders in their dark and damp enclosures as they finish their meals of whole cuyus, fat and tailless rodents.
Roland’s heart sings to be in the wildest corner of his home, and it sings harder as Tlahui lands on his shoulder, with a stolen cuyu in his beak.
“Good morning.” He greets, having by now forgotten of the two encounter’s worth of disgusted stares.
Tlahui does not answer, instead flying off to a nearby post, meant for terradon riders to saddle their mounts, to tear apart his furry meal, but leaving him with a soundless goodbye in the feathered-one’s language.
“Roland!” A voice calls him. “Good to see you here, did the warmbloods from last night give you much trouble?” Asks a blue skink sporting an elaborate head crest of vibrant hues that moves in greeting.
The crest, uncommonly colorful, marks the skink as a Blessed of Itzl like Roland.
Of course Roland has no crest (as much as his sister's help and years of effort in decorating his mane tries to emulate one) but they still have always known each other.
Akro is the chief Beast Caste Skink of the city, as he is the spawning leader of Pahuax’s only Itzl-blessed Spawning. And Roland is the only human touched by the Old One patron of beats.
Their kinship is built into their flesh, and as the Skink and he converge, they rub against each other and preen like excited hatchlings.
“Not much, they seem to have stayed at the Temple of Uxmac for the most part, and the guards say that those who wandered off have not caused much trouble.” He answers the question.
“Good, good!” The Skink comments as he begins wandering off. Roland follows, he knows wherever they are going it will be worth going there.
“Anything brings you here? Anything more than the usual?”
“Not really, wanted to give a look at the Stegadon we took on our mission, pamper it some.”
“Wajgrani?”
“Wajgrani.”
“We left him on one of the pastures outside the city.” The Skink offers helpfully. “He deserved it, I think.”
“Agreed, thanks for the heads-up, I would have wasted the morning asking around.”
They continue making small talk as they walk towards Akro’s planned destination, whatever it is, commenting on or talking about the different beasts they pass by. About cranky razordons in the middle of a molt or news about a nearby herd of lesser thunderlizards. Tlahui returns to Roland’s side and leaves once more as soon as Akro offers a treat, a piece of dried meat, for the carrion bird to take off with again.
“I have no idea how I manage to keep that bird in shape, any day he’s going to pack in an extra bit of rotting herdbeast and he’s just going to lose all capacity to fly.”
“I think it’s the extra work.” Akro offers as they walk down and into one of the fully subterranean enclosures. “Most ryloks just don’t have to move around and scout and work as much, they are content finding a body once in a while, gorging themselves and resting until they get hungry again.”
“I suppose, but don’t let that bird hear I agree with you.”
“I would never.” Akro laughs.
They stop before a set of cells in full darkness, spacious but blocked off with massive wooden stocks that only a Kroxigor could easily move to release what’s inside.
“Ah, I had a tadpole of an idea that this is what you wanted me to look at. Are they stressed?”
“Indeed, and you are quite a bit better than the rest of us at the cat tongues, especially the ones that…”
“That aren’t just living in the city and eating vermin?”
“Yep! I have some more work to do, more preparations for the sacrifices and celebrations tomorrow, so I’ll leave you at it?”
“Of course, don’t let me waste your time.”
“Never!” Akro admonishes him with a friendly chirp as they bid each other goodbye, Roland lowering himself so they can rub decorated braids against colorful crest.
Moments later Akro is gone, and while a few other Skinks mill around, feeding cages in a connected section to this one, Roland walks closer.
Carefully, until the wooden cell-gate he is moving towards shakes, struck by a great force, and a massive furred limb strikes out through one of the many spaces between the trunks.
It is pitch black and as the paw completes the arch, missing Roland’s chest by not much, the five claws dig into the wood, hooking into it and leaving considerable grooves.
The hunting bands had captured a black jaguar, a sign of great blessing to come.
The animal, an iridescent black feline, desists of its attempt to claw at Roland and starts pacing the space it has been given. Not much for such a wild spirit but by no means a constrictive space.
Jaguars were Huanchi’s emissaries, one could not celebrate the Predator God’s night without them.
But that doesn’t make the predators themselves willing participants, as befitting of their nature. So these animals, twenty in total in cages around him, are constantly agitated, growling and pacing.
So Roland sits down and talks to them in their tongue-
They don’t trust or like him, they know what ape meat tastes like and they like it, and it’s not too dissimilar from warm-blood flesh. So they see him the same way they see the Ozomatli and the bands of thieving men, like easy prey.
But he keeps talking, of what is going to happen, one cannot lie in the feline tongues. And the animals… Don’t exactly relax, but anticipation replaces stress. Hunger replaces anger.
In a day's time you are to feast. He speaks without words. Honor the Old One of the Predator Night, honor the Jaguar and the Stealth.
And they don’t understand the words, too complex even when spoken in the language of stalking cats, but they understand what they mean.
“Had I known we would have a chance to enter this city, I would have asked Mistress Arethusa for her wisdom.”
“Who?” Alcippe asks as she continues to inspect the massive basin before them.
“Mistress Arethusa, one of my mentors, I was part of a few of her warbands before I started working on my own. I vividly remember her telling me of the time she explored this city long ago.” Melandra explains. “Obviously back then the city was a ruin, only the walls and temples stood according to her. But it would have been informative nonetheless.”
“Was it really fully abandoned in living memory? The place looks…” Alcioppe looks around, pointing at a group of diminutive lizardmen crossing the water reservoir in a barge. “Quite lived-in right now.”
“It was, she couldn’t have visited this place more than two centuries ago. All she found - lizardmen I mean - were a few bands of notably stealthy Skinks guarding a couple of the ziggurats, and not much else.” Melandra remembers the long expeditions across the Spine with the now retired explorer, who happily recounted her stories of pillage and exploration to the next generation Melandra represented.
“They are like ants.” Despina grumbles. “They can build up a nest as fast as a night.”
“I know how quickly they can set up, I have helped root out a few of their camps on the Amaxon Delta… But rebuilding an entire city?” Alcippe looks around them, a sprawl of boxy and flat roofed building of all shapes and sizes as far as the city’s walls, the monotony broken by the massive tiered pyramids the Lizardmen loved so much and an aqueduct which biseteced the area, leading to the reservoir they had chosen as the place to stop in their exploration of the city.
“Is that envy girl?” Melandra Smirks.
“N-no mistress.” Alcioppe, who is the youngest, blushes. “There’s nothing the coldbloods can build to even equal the beauty of Genaina. But you have to admit we could never have built a city like Genaina as fast!” She stammers out, earning Despina’s laughter.
“I’ll give them that, building something this big must be easy when there’s three large brains and a million bodies behind the project. They can work until they die of exhaustion and just pop out a new batch of equally servile lizards. It’s why the Old Ones made them: Practical and easy to replace.” Melandra comments.
That’s what the Lizardmen are after all, construction machinery and weapons which have lost their purpose with the loss of the lesser Old Ones. Rigg still guided her daughters, but the Lizardmen were rider-less mounts and craftswoman-less tools, running on forgotten commands and antiquated directives and plans.
Around her they rebuild their city, for Melandra is more perceptive than her younger warrior and notices the too-new buildings, the empty spots where something should be, the old monuments ravaged by time and still not repaired, but what for?
The Lizardmen can rebuild ruin, but no matter how brimming with cold-blooded and slave life it is, they are still dying off, the breaths of an Old One’s body.
“So… Melandra…” Despina gets up from the stone she’s been sitting on. “What’s the plan now?” She pats her stachel pack.
The plaque the Lizardmen so covet isn’t there anymore, replaced by a few rocks. Instead it is guarded by the bulk of her sisterly warband back in the barracks they have been provided. But it pays to employ some subterfuge for the ever staring eyes of the lizardmen. And Despina’s message is clear.
“We will give them the plaque once they are done ‘entertaining us’, to keep the queen’s word if nothing else, and in the meantime we’ll grab whatever we can, they won’t notice or realize we are stealing the gold and precious stones as long as we don’t take any of the artifacts they really care about.”
“How will we know which ones those are?” Alcioppe asks, who unlike her has never raided an inhabited temple-city.
“We are not going to risk entering the guarded temples, so if you end up somehow grabbing one it’ll either be Goddesses's luck or a curse, depending on how many of us make it out.” The Hawkeye laughs.
“You two better get going, tell Antibrote to change up the guard and let the rest wander a bit, start finding good places for once the lizards start losing vigilance with their celebrations, and to find where the girl-slaves are. Let’s see how many we can sneak out or if they have their own plans or routes, to talk with the more reluctant ones. But groups of three, no less.” She instructs.
The other two warband members look at eachother, consternation. “What about you?” Despina finally asks. “Won’t you be coming?”
“Nah,” Melandra boasts. “I always do my best work alone, and I have a hunch I might find something good today.”
Both women know better than to dismiss their warband leader’s reputation, so they follow as commanded and return to the Grand Plaza of Pahuax, where they will soon dutifully relay the orders as given.
“You can step out now.” She speaks to no one, especially not the skinks filling water jars in a shallow pool connected to the reservoir nearby.
And from the massive pool’s lower steps, not visible from where she sits on the upper rim, walks a young woman.
She dresses similarly to the man-thing “herald” of yesterday, her body painted and covered in jewels, many tools and pockets hang from the belts and pockets in her long skirt and only her breasts are covered by a simple loop of bound cloth, letting Melandra see the toned body of a worker, but not a warrior.
“I hope you won’t take offense to me listening to your conversation, my name is Elma.” She bows as she speaks, in perfect unaccented Amazonian.
“You… No I don’t, I would cling to any chance in your situation. Don’t worry, we can help you leave,” Melandra offers.
“Cling? My situation? Ah, Lady Hawkeye, you misunderstand. I am no slave and neither are my spawn sisters. Nor bruders, though I suspect you don’t care much for them.” The girl walks closer, her sandals making splatters on a puddle.
She is tall, not the tallest Amazon -Woman, not an Amazon- Melandra has ever met but certainly taller than herself, and her long dark hair is braided with feathers the colors of a bonfire.
“Spawn-sisters…? Never mind, we will help you, I don’t care how much they have broken you to the yoke.”
“There is no yoke, we are not slaves, we are orphans, forgotten children of the warmbloods, taken from them by gone horrors the First Children have long dealt with.”
Melandra knows there’s no friendship in the smile this Elma gives her. She knows not to draw her curved blade yet, but keeps tabs on exactly how many skinks are working around them.
“Who are you?” She asks.
“I already told you!” The younger woman answers with a creepy smile. “Elma, Elma Welser-Nakor, I lead the First Xho’za’khanx Host.” She offers her hand and wrist in greeting the way an amazon, not a lizardman, would. And when Melandra takes hold, both clasping each other's wrists, Elma gets closer too fast.
She whispers into Melandra’s ears, despite the fact that none of the lizardmen in the area could feasibly understand her words.
“And let me make something clear, honored guest. Those girls you plan on liberating are my girls. As much younger sisters are, they are daughters to me. I have cared for them with the help of those so-called dimwitted reptiles for as long as I have been able to, they are happy and healthy here, allowed to leave at any time if they so happen to find a better life amongst the warmbloods. So do not dare to assume taking them from us who are of Pahualaxa will do you any good.”
“Because my bruder -I so wish your language had more words for men- is Herald because he is gifted for speaking and for the blade. And his duties keep him from answering your slights. But I am matriarch, Spawn-Elder, and Caretaker. I take care of people and I take care of things. And I swear that if you dare offend that ‘aberration’ or one of the many `man-things’ I have raised? Or if you leave this Temple-City with a single girl who didn’t first tell me of her intention to join the Daughters of Rigg as is her right? Then the least of your worries will be how much gold or warriors you leave this city with, thief.”
The girl separates herself from Melandra, whose free hand has subconsciously moved to her blade’s handle. And she starts walking on.
“It’s been a long time since our kinds have so peacefully delved together.” The girl laughs as if they have been sharing jokes while she starts walking off. “I hope it is a sign of good things to come.” She smiles.
Melandra still stands by the side of the reservoir long after the… The Lizardmen-loyal girl is gone.
Threats don’t bother her, many a time have the saurus and their ilk talked of devouring her in battle or after finding hours too late that she has already escaped their grasp.
She is Melandra Hawkeye, she can get out of anything.
It’s the honesty that irks her. Because both statements, the one of baleful wariness and the one of welcoming warmth had been spoken with the same conviction.
Melandra knew then that she was welcome to ”recruit” amongst these strange orphans, and that her thieving would not be called out but her fellow woman. But much like in a thousand previous incursions, she would have to be careful where to step…
Lest she trigger a trap.
On one side stood a massive Crimson of Sotek, first and only temple built in Pahuax since its refounding and as such the youngest of them. This was a given, as the sacrifice of Pahuax during the Great Catastrophe had predated the Age of Sotek by some three thousand years.
The building was, befitting its patron, covered in massive carvings of snarling serpents and utterly drenched in a coat of brown, dried blood. Although on days like today, the new blood being spilt gave it a new sheen, reflecting the afternoon sun like a pulsing heart of ruby.
A long line of some one hundred sacrifices waits just before the main steps of the ziggurat, waiting their turn, the “signal” for them to start slowly ascending the steps of the pyramid. It’s methodical, they know when to talk forward, when two things happen.
First, due to what’s happening above, the roaring and jeering of their captors becomes louder. Chants in a language none of them understand making themselves loudest above the cacophony. The same three “words” repeated with rhythmic fervor.
“KRO-SOTEK-KHA!”
And as that happens, a new body, beheaded and with its chest open, messily tumbles down the steps whereupon it’s taken away by a team of Skinks.
“KHA-SOTEK-KRO!”
And that signifies that it’s time for the first prisoner in line to start ascending, because the previous one has just been sacrificed to the Serpent God, and the next man is to take his place.
”KRO-KHA-SOTEK!”
As he, a Tilean mercenary, climbs up, he loses his footing, slipping on fresh blood and almost falling backwards, which surely would have broken his neck upon the rock slabs. But a Saurus, his personal escort, grabs hold of him and continues hauling him up, almost dragging him. He is unlucky, It would have been a fast death.
“SOTEK-KRO-KHA!”
Upon reaching the top he is met by six skinks, all of them decorated with massive feather coats and headdresses. They chant too, but theirs are complete phrases, much more complex litanies and incantation.
“SOTEK-KHA-KRO!”
They push him, throwing him on his back to lie upon a flat stone. He is too tired to fight back. He is broken. So they don’t bother tying him down with the golden chains embedded onto the floor of the uppermost level of the temple-pyramid.
“KHA-KRO-SOTEK!”
Five of the Skinks hold him down, the hands of the one holding his head should be reptilian-cold but are lukewarm due to the constant contact with spilt blood and human skin. Obviously he screams and gurgles for a few seconds as his chest is opened, ribs broken and heart is cut out with an extremely sharp obsidian knife.
“SOTEK-SOTEK-SOTEK-SOTEK!”
His bloody heart is offered to an image of Sotek the Deliverer, placed inside of the fanged maw of the stone statue of the serpent that the mighty god often takes the form of. The heart combusts on its own, with no fire under it, and the ashes are carried to the heavens by the winds. Sotek has accepted this offering too, the Lizardmen rejoice.
The man’s body, already tumbling down the steps, will be butchered. His skull will be displayed in a tzompantli, a skull rack, one of the many such palisades all around the city. It will be displayed alongside many more skulls, decades’ worth in fact.
His flesh, alongside that of the other warmblood sacrifices, will be given onto the Lizardmen’s many tamed beasts to feast.
On the other side, sacrifices are also carried out, although these are of a different variety.
Here lies another plaza, although a smaller one, upon which many sacrificial altars and blood shrines have been built. Built not too long after the temple they prostrate before, even less ancient but valued nonetheless.
Here the common lizardmen, uninitiated in the mysteries of the Cult of Sotek or other Old Ones, carry out their own humble sacrifices. Many sacrifice animals, not warmbloods, either bought or caught by themselves with this purpose in the recent past.
The truth is that the sacrifice of “men” is rare, reserved for great days and celebrations such as tonight’s. It must be that for every imperial, asur or dawi they sacrifice a hundred animals, often as small as ozomatli or simple fowl. The Lizardmen often go for seasons without bloodletting of today’s caliber.
And it is upon one of these altars that the Herald stands, flanked by one of his fellow warmbloods, the young Yves, and a skink of his recently successful and disbanded operation: Ra'kaka.
The two of them hold a warmblood, one of the few not reserved for the priesthood’s offering for Sotek or, later on, Huanchi.
It is exactly because of their raid that they are allowed this.
Of the sacrifices around them, many as humble as burnings of food, around a third are being dedicated to Sotek, mostly by skinks. Another third go to Hunachi, whose altars are marked with beautiful jaguar pelts.
And the last third, such as the one upon which the boy and the skink hold a male of the Second Race, which are consecrated to the many other Old Ones. Who might not be the focus of the day, but certainly deserve and demand the gifts of their children.
Roland has been afforded this great honor of sacrificing an Itz’xa’khanx, a “High Elf,” along sides the rare Dro’ka’khanx that Alpha Talon Ottagar has already sacrificed himself. They both share in this honor as they have carried out the most successful and important undertaking of the rainy season, as deemed so by the city’s high priests.
Ottagar and Roland weren’t the only ones of course. The most successful hunters, the most hardworking Kroxigors, the winners of different competitions and duels among the Saurus, the winners of pokolpok tournaments…
But of course. Roland is there surrounded by many of Akro’s spawning and his own Xho’za’khanx kin for what he is. Many of the lizardmen who had gone to the Salamander Cove with him can be recognized in the crowd, even if the majority of them are spread out with the celebrations going on all over the city.
Ottagar had chosen an altar of Huanchi, as they had fought at night and marched using stealth.
Roland honors his patron. He stands alongside his sacrifice and aids upon an altar consecrated to Itzl, the three-horned ruler of coldblooded beasts, decorated with the carvings and skulls of snarling jungle dwellers and a massive hanging plate of brass ready to be swung at by a skink. The Asur is tied to the rock altar by his neck, but he still flails and bucks trying to get both skink and young human off himself to no avail.
The elven male screams and shouts in fury, cursing them all in the name of lesser spirits he takes for gods, Roland is the only one who understands his last words, and pays the thief no mind.
He hefts his halberd high up, the gold and obsinite of the blade glinting under the blazing sun of the coming dry season.
And he swings down, leveraging his height and the weight of the weapon itself to make the strike sure and strong, decapitating the sacrifice with a single cut. The head rolls down the altar but is caught by a helpful saurus. The crowd cheers as one as the gong in sounded, giving the signal and clearing the way for Tlahui and many more vultures, invited by the bird at Roland’s request, to swoop down and dig into the still warm and bleeding body.
Roland takes the head as it’s thrown back at him by the saurus and passes it down to Yves, who he knows hopes to join the priesthood in the future. He grabs the lad and hefts him up, so he can stand on Roland’s shoulders and leave the head inside of the open maw of Itzl’s effigy, making it seem as if the Old One ripped it off himself and is devouring it.
Blood from the neck stump drips over both humans as the crowd turns to another ongoing sacrifice nearby, the burning of a finely made coat of feathers to be given onto the inscrutable Quetzalcoatl.
Soon Roland joins the crowd, milling around from altar to altar or admiring the intricate offerings yet to be given up. He does not notice he is smiling and laughing the way humans do. His sister does, giving him a hug once she catches up to him.
Ragnarblot started as soon as the sun went down. Started by the blessings given by Gothi Sven Bloðugr and vitki Gustaf around the massive pyre burning at the foot of the Great Hound Cairn at the center of Skeggi, everyone sits and mills around, enthralled by their tales of the Ragnarok to come, the End Times and their glory, the death of the weak southern gods at the hands of the Raenir and the four Dark Ones. The return of heroes and daemons of renown to lead their legions in the greatest and endless raid. They do this with the help of the many skalds in Skeggi.
Gustaf and Sven mention many gods, many more than those Torfi is familiar with. The reason for that is an old one. Each tribe and each clan of the Norscans venerated their own version of the Raenir, their own daemons and spirits and their own ancestral heroes. Tribe to tribe and village to village they vary often and wildly. Skeggi has its own, spirits of the deep jungles Norscans have never felt anywhere else, or the legends of heroes like Founder Losteriksson or Gunnar the Treefeller. But Skeggi is home to one Skeggialing for every ten Norscans staying only for a season.
And so, in order to avoid unwanted slights, the shamans of Skeggi must honor as many gods as they have ever heard of, lest they offend any of the warbands they are hosts to.
Torfi knows Bloody Sven dislikes that, that he has complained for years about bending to other tribes not of Lyssa Bay. That any who are offended should die defending their honor as good Norscans. But long have Clanhead Inga and her loyal vitki kept him under leash on this issue.
He would usually sit with his family, but none of them had come tonight, they had all stayed back home. No interest in it with father’s death -murder- so fresh in their minds.
But Torfi, being the one with a position in the family, had to show up lest he disrespect the chieftain.
And once they had moved into Einar’s hall, Clan Losteriksson’s great longhouse, the place was packed like a pigsty and many men and women were already well into their drunkness. The celebration of Ragnarblot would last all night, under the hopes that at some point before the sunrise the End Times would indeed come, a vigil in theory, a wild ravelry in practice. He had entertained himself by eating, rather than have to participate in the drunken cheerness of all others, including his father’s murderers.
The Reidarsons.
He knew it had been them, directly or indirectly, in some way. And the practical totality of them were there tonight, filling themselves with beer, mead and wine. Growing fat on meat.
Game meat.
Torfi got up, leaving his food mostly untouched.
Game meat. Hunted meat.
The food his father and their hounds had helped him hunt. Torfi had been eating the food his father had helped them gain
He wanted to retch, but contained himself for the sake of his family’s standing and respect for Lady Inga. He started moving through the mass of bodies, most complete unknowns, seasonal raiders and fishermen.
But one did recognize him, and when Sven’s hand grabbed onto Torfi’s shoulder, he only received a snarl for a greeting. Torfi attempted to keep making his way out but the shaman held him tight until he finally looked up.
There was something in the priest’s eyes. Recognition? Empathy? Commiseration?
All he gave Torfi was a nod before letting him go. Maybe it was a form of permission to leave. Maybe it was something else.
He managed to stumble all the way to the kennels, still too empty.
His father had not returned, neither had the dogs he had left with. It would be long before the kennels were filled again, and maybe they would never feel full again.
“AAAAAHRG!” He screams, and while his outburst frightens and shoos off the hounds back to their cages, his shouting is ignored by the Skeggi-wide celebrations. The sounds of singing, eating, shouting, killing and fucking permeates the expanse of fetid swampland the outpost had been built on top of.
He punches and kicks at the kennel walls.
“FUCKING BASTARDS, CURSED CUNTS MAY YOU DIE OLD AND SICKLY YOU CUNTS!”
“I HATE YOU, MURDERERS, CRAVENS, COWFUCKERS!”
At some point he just flails and stumbles onto the dogshit-stained ground, where grief and the exploitation of others has kept the family from properly cleaning up for days.
His knuckles bleed, and he is pretty sure he’s broken a toe by constantly kicking the palisade. His hounds come back and nuzzle him, they shove their snouts into any nook he leaves open. They lick his blood and tears, they lay down next to him.
By the time he wakes up next morning, he’s not alone, the pile of loyal hounds is further surrounded by his family.
They have all drifted towards the kennels, father’s greatest pride, throughout the night. Called by the same instinct and grief ingrained into their memories. His younger and older siblings are all there, resting against the palisade or hugging on loyal pups. But his mother Stina, with her scarred face and gentle smile, has made her way through. Cradling him in her arms as tight as tether as if he were still a boy scared of tropical thunderstorms.
“Avenge him.” She whispers throughout the night. “Feed them to the hounds.”
And what had that gotten him? Few days after leaving Port Reaver via the Dead Man’s Way -really he should have taken the fucking hint- accompanied by his dwarven band and a few dozen freshly recruited men they had gotten ambushed in the middle of the night.
His body was still sore from his conversation with the Lizardmen “translator” who had spent hours pressing him for even the most pointless information on the whereabouts of the pirate port. Something Sava had done his best at, despite having spent less than a week in the city proper.
He had seen very little of the rest of his expedition after they had been captured, the rest had been carried off while tied up with rope by their hands and legs. Forced to walk in a line into the green dark jungles.
Once the naked translator man had been done pressing him in Reikspiel, the only foreign language Sava was fluent on other than common slavonic, he had been unceremoniously bashed in the head into unconsciousness and taken off.
His next memories had been of dazedly being carried deep into the jungles, for days the reptiles had kept him barely alive with scant water and a diet of grubs and their raw leftovers. But eventually he had been marched into a road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere and leading south.
They had walked him through massive gates of stone sculpted like the open maw of a fanged amphibian, his feet burning -boots long gone- with blisters that thanked the relative flatness of the ash and sand dusted rocks of the city.
And then they had thrown him on what must have been one of many damp cells, simple pits carved into the floors and sides of underground chambers, blocked off with palisades tied onto carved nooks. He had spent days… Weeks? There, still being fed the same diet of clear leftovers and a pail of water, trapped alongside men he could do nothing more than play charades with as none spoke the same tongues.
But today was different. Early with the few rays of morning sunlight that could sneak into the underground prison many men -and women, as rare as they were- had been dragged off by their massive reptilian captors. Many had resisted, receiving blows from maces and prods from spears until they submitted. But many had also made no attempt, following like docile goats to the slaughter. None had returned and the place had grown empty and quiet, occasionally broken by the sobs or prayers of a few.
The place had continued to empty over the hours of the day until Sava’s turn, well into the sunset, had come.
He had not resisted. Being walked by a blue-scaled goliath clad in pauldrons and braces of solid gold.
He had been walked towards a massive structure illuminated by massive torches, but once more he had been taken underneath. Into some kind of service tunnel network.
He could feel the vibrations and noise of the raucous event overhead, so loud and stuffed with Lizardmen as to make the entire building hum.
The saurus eventually made him stand in a room, surrounded by many more prisoners, around three dozen men, who were all milling around much like himself. He recognized one of the dwarves of his party among the crowd of much taller humans.
His beard was extremely asymmetrical, as if the reptiles had dragged him in by it like a man tugging a leash. In some parts it was completely gone, hair ripped from the roots. He had a smoldering stare, Sava made no attempt to talk to him.
Then the ruckus above became louder, and as if following silent command the reptiles harried them into standing in lines and rows. Sava was in the middle of it.
That did not help him. Soon an elder lizard-man, moving slowly with the help of a cane, entered the room, covered in a massive mottled pelt of gold and black. The jailors bowed before it, giving it ample space to walk around and into the rows of captives.
The dwarf, of similar stature to the reptilian, jumped for it as soon as it neared him. He managed to tackle the frail thing to the ground, but had his head bashed in before he could strangle the thing, shouting garbled curses until his brains became splatters on the men in his row.
Sava did nothing, silently staring as the warriors helped their master up and returned his cane. The ancient shaman seemed unperturbed, continuing to inspect the rows.
He came to a stop before Sava. With a single chirp as his only forewarning he was suddenly seized by the claws of one of the warriors.
Only then, finally dawning upon him his situation, did the human from the southern principalities start thrashing and pleading.
But he was too weak, so they dragged him into a corridor with an upwards ramp, prodding him to walk forward and upwards as the sounds of the crowds became louder, and louder.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
And suddenly he was outside, under the moonlit sky. On a massive semicircular arena that reminded him of a Tilean amphitheater his father was taking him to once.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
But this arena was much more massive, surrounded by massive rows upon rows of tiered rock sitting space.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
He was in the middle of a lizardman arena, a spectacle to the masses.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
He turned around, seeing how he was surrounded on all sides, until his eyes landed on a gated tunnel not too different from the one he had been kicked out of seconds ago.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
This one was opening. Out of it, lit by the massive torches and the clear night sky, was led a beast.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
It reminded him of a cat, although it was closer in size to a bear. It made him think of the fabled southlander lions or the sabered cats who people claimed dwelled in the Worlds Edge and Black mountains that surrounded his homeland.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
“HUAN-BOQ!”
But he had never seen either of those, and he was very much seeing this beast. It was massive, much longer than he was tall. With a hauntingly beautiful fur coat, like the one he had seen on the Lizardman, of yellow, with a whitish underside and covered in black rosettes. It’s snarling mouth sporting two massive fangs.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
It leapt forward, towards him, with strong limbs and claws that dug into the arena sand. Instantly breaking into a run.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
It was a Jaguar, one of the hundreds of Lustrian monsters he had been warned off. Beasts with a taste for ape and man flesh alike.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
Sava ran, with all the strength he had in his atrophied and tired legs.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
The outstretched claws of the leaping great cat reached him first, digging into his back, hooking on and throwing and pinning him to the ground.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
Then the saber-like teeth clamped around his skull.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
Melandra stands atop the structure of the massive temple. The Lizardmen have dedicated this one to Uxmac. An Old God of messengers and travelers. As such much of the space within the elongated temple-pyramid itself was dedicated to housing such lizardmen, or Amazons, for these few strange days.
In the distance, loud and alight with thousands of torches and brassiers, she sees the Sacred Arena of Pahuax. Its use is not too dissimilar from the stadium of Genaina. A massive open-air building fit for hosting anything from competitions, the training of warriors and dancers, the hosting of great ceremonies…
Although all in all she has seen how much more the savage lizardmen love their blood sports compared to the daughters of Kalith. She harbors no love for the man-things the saurians were feeding to their great cats, even if the animals remind her of her beloved huntress back home. But the concept of sitting around and cheering as the different animals are released, feed on the defenseless man-things and then released back into the jungle through a massive corridor of palisades, makes her uneasy.
Men should be disposed of with the cleanliness one disposes of sickly cattle. Not in massive bloodthirsty spectacles.
“I figured I might find you here, are you satisfied with your haul?” A voice speaks behind her. Once more Melandra has chosen not to call out the “xho’za’khanx’s” attemp to sneak behind her.
The younger woman has pointed at the bulging sack resting against Melandra’s thigh as she stands taking in the city.
She alone has stolen a year’s worth of valuables from her distracted hosts. Items from the vaults of multiple temples, disregarding her advice to her own warriors. She knows what she’s capable of.
“I am, it’s been a long time since I had to battle such well maintained and updated traps. Very fulfilling.”
The girl comes to a stop by her side, Melandra scoots over so they can sit side by side. Elma leaves a chest by her side as she accepts the offer.
Melandra recognizes it, as she recognizes the clinking of the bracelets it surely contains.
They are the stolen Gifts of Kara. Elma has brought them to her.
“A show of good faith, for heeding my advice. A few of my girls say they want to leave with you come tomorrow, your women painted an interesting picture.” Elma looks at the arena too, neither looks at the other as they continue to talk.
“Amazonia is a home to all women, from repentant worshipers of the Anathema to lost shipwrecked souls or even women as strange as yours.”
“That warms my heart, that even if you aren’t as all-welcoming as Pahuax, there’s still other places of refuge for the lost of Lustria.”
“All welcoming? One of my women described to me of your… Bruder bathing in the blood of a beheaded prisoner.”
“Welcoming to those with no ill will of course, like your kind.” Elma smiles.
“My kind don’t bloodlet and sacrifice like yours does.” Melandra defends.
“Maybe not, but a dead trespasser is a dead trespasser right?”
“True enough.”
Melandra finally looks down at the chest, rubbing its polished surface with the memories of a little girl receiving her own gift. “Why?” She asks “Why go against your beloved master's command and give this to me?”
“I broke no orders, I simply proposed we make the exchange now, early in the Night of Huanchi so he might look down on us proudly. My Lord Tleconexquiza was agreeable to the plan.”
“You spoke to your Slann Mage-Lord about this?”
“No, but he knows of my plans and moves not a finger to alter them. You can leave as soon as you want as long as the Plaque stays with me.”
“And you are sure this is just an act of kindness?” Melandra prods.
“Oh no, not at all. I said I’m a caretaker did I not? I simply took care to avoid another confrontation and make sure you can leave with little ruckus.”
“Clever.”
“Thank you, I must say you have impressed me too. You handled yourself and your warband very carefully.”
“When my fellow Amazons say I can get out of anything unscathed, I think they tend to just look at body -I believe my legs in particular are at the center of attention- and guess it’s a literal thing, that there’s no trap I can’t climb out of or no fight I won’t be able to win.” The comment about her own legs makes the taller woman laugh demurely. “But they forget the best way to escape an ambush is not to fall into one, or that the best way for a deal to go smoothly is to make sure the other side has no incentives to backstab you.”
Elma nods but says nothing.
“Come,” She gets up. “I’ll show you where my warriors keep the plaque so you can give it to your Mage-Lord yourself.”
“Thank you.” Elma follows. “The sooner I get back the sooner I can start helping those rebellious few start packing up, I have heard some of my girls are planning a long journey.”
And with that, both orphan and thief walk into the Temple of the God of Travelers.
And fortuitous encounters.
The Winter Solstice, commonly known in Reikspiel as the Midwinter Throng, defined as the longest night of the year, is caused by the axial tilt of the world due to the massive release of energy caused by the collapse of the First Polar Gates in the ancient past. Just like its opposite, the Summer Solstice, it is a time of the year during which the Winds of Magic flow through the world with heightened force. This combines with the marking of the passing of seasons, making the night universally sacred or celebrated across the Old and New Worlds.
King’s Sleep in Bretonnian culture, is a holiday that commemorates the life and deeds of civilizational founder Gilles le Breton.
Death Night, as celebrated by the Druchii, is a once a year occurrence, where the Witch Elves descend on the streets of their cities in unbridled celebration of their bloody lord Khaine, killing untold amounts of their brethren.
Mondstille, also known as World Still, is celebrated everywhere where the cult of Ulric has made itself home, from Kislev to the Empire and beyond as it and its many traditions have been enshrined into the cults of both Sigmar (who partook in the holiday during his living days) and Verana, as followers of the Goddess of Justice see the solstice as a symbolic barrier between the old year and the new, the past and the future, the known and the unknown. Many are the traditions of Mondstille: The lighting of bonfires or the keeping of the Taal-Log, the giving of gifts or gathering of families and (in wild borderlands) the raising of wolf pelts on stick as both a sign of respect to Wolf-God Ulric and a warning to his children.
There’s many more of course. Festivals of Lights are as common during the autumn equinox as they are during the winter throng in Imperial Cities. Ancient rituals of the Nehekharans have been found in tumultuary recordings. And both Albionese and Norscans see the night as a great battle, although the former see it as one that should be won by light (as hoped for in the Yule festivities) and the later as one to be hopefully won by Chaos’ darkness (The Ragnarblot or Ragnarok Night).
The lands beyond the World's Edge Mountains have similarly ancient traditions. Cathay’s great Dumpling Banquets, Ind’s Bonfire and Dancing Festivals (reminiscent of those of Mondstille) or yet other mysterious rituals as far as Elithis or Khuresh which make use of the strongly beating pulse of the winds. And of course no Ogre would waste a chance to celebrate a feast!
In the New World and Southlands too do they have midwinter celebrations. First are obviously those of the Naggarothi Dark Elves or the New World Chaos worshippers or clean savages.
Although on the southern continents, with the two(dry and rainy) reversed seasons of Lustria and the Southlands, not only does this day occur at the opposite end of the year, but also ignores the issues of cold or snow and gives much more weight to the ending of heavy rains or the symbolic minutiae of the long night’s duration. The Lizardmen dedicate this night to one of their many gods, Huanchi, who is honored through honoring Jaguars, his symbol. And while the people of Araby and their eternally blazing sun give this time of the year no attention, Amazons, Apemen (Gorols) and Deep Southlanders all celebrate the coming of milder weather and the ending of torrential rains in a myriad of colorful carnivals and tribal rituals.
-Excerpt of The Holiest Days, by Border Prince Scholar Bari of Nicolas.
Taming Pens, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
33nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.16 1 K’ib’ 9 Tzek
The city of Pahuax wakes slowly with the rays of the morning sun. Saurus lean on walls and roofs as they stretch themselves, Kroxigors yawn, opening massive jaws like gates and let forth content rumbles and Skinks already begin their work.
But others wake even earlier: Both the local warmbloods, the Xho’za’khanx, “Untamed ones”, and foreigner warmbloods, the Amazons, do not require for much more than the first rays of light hitting their closed eyes to get on their way.
Doubly so the Amazons, Roland notices, as he walks across the Grand Plaza, passing before the Temple of Uxmac, home to travelers. The majority of them look restless or nervous, with a few even acting as guards to the entrance to the temple he had guided them to the night before. Roland can’t spot their leader, the Melandra, as he continues going along his way. This doesn’t bother him. It is not his duty to watch over them (thankfully) and it’s not as if there’s much they can do under the gaze of the entire city. Better here than in a camp hidden in the jungle, as Old-Blood Kowaal had explained.
Still, Roland knows they notice him, not only had they seen him closely the previous day, but even from a distance he is the largest Warmblood of Pahuax. And he notices their gazes. Disgusted and baleful. Often mocking or deriding, but ultimately meaningless to him.
He speaks enough Amazonian to fulfill his duties, taught to him by long spent prisoners many vague years ago. But what he doesn’t know he can guess. They have many words for what he is, man-thing and aberration are the ones he understands the meaning of.
They were unique warmbloods,the Amazons, thanklessly touched by the Old Ones as to be stronger than any others. All of the same sex, independent from the processes both animals and other warm-bloods depended upon to continue themselves.
As such, Amazons saw bull humans like him as an unnecessary feature of lesser warmbloods and treated him accordingly, like a useless extra digit. He couldn’t judge them much, as he and his fellows could not judge harshly what were, at the end of the day, misled and foolish warmbloods who saw themselves as being above what they truly were, their past loyalty abandoned in the pursuit of favor from a lesser Godling.
And of course, it would be uncouth of the Ashen Lord’s Herald to react to such petty insults. His lack of response had led to the Amazons commenting on his apparent puddle-brainedness, but he had done his master justice.
So just as he had ignored them the day before, he ignores them today, simply noting that they, like his fellows Xho’za’khanxs, wake early. But while his younger kinaid Skinks in their duties, the Amazons remain in their guarded space.
And the skinks are indeed hard at work, for this morning (like all others) has seen Pahuax covered in a fine dusting of the gray ashes and charcoal flakes of the ancient fire that gave the city its epithet.
The Ashen City had burned greatly long ago, sacrificing itself during the great catastrophe in a loyal conflagration, and every night the preternatural return of its ashes reminded those who had rebuilt the Temple-City of the duty they had inherited.
And so Skinks by the hundreds, mostly but not only those of the builder and cleaner castes, sweep and blow away the ashes, taking pots upon pots of it to where it could be made use of or disposed via the many canals and aqueducts carved into the city’s stone, running with milky water stained by much of the unused ash, all of which will join the Tosquitl’s tributaries and later the sea soon enough.
Of course the Skinks don’t do all of the work, especially when a great festival is soon to come. The Xho’za’khanx and Kroxigors sweep and clean their own districts, and the younger Saurus are made to dust off the barracks and walls of the city as befitting their rank.
But as he leaves the Temple of Itzil, having honored his patron as one ought to do, it is again Skinks who dominate the city’s southwestern quarter.
As this is the place of beasts. His home.
He walks amongst massive pits and pens dug onto the ground and reinforced with stone walls as the animals below wake with the morning, just like their rearers and handlers do. The corrals and pens have already been cleaned before the animals are let out of their nighttime pens and longhouses. Otherwise the process would be much more difficult, and this way both the magically occurring ash and naturally occurring waste are taken care of together, more efficiently.
Roland watches as teams of Skinks carry large baskets or wheelbarrows filled with dung of many kinds away, to the insect-breeding hoy houses, the tiered gardens or the fields and jungles outside the city.
Many greet him, and he greets them in return. This area of the city feels like home to him and Tlahui, who flies overhead. He has spent much of his early life honing his connection to the creatures here. To the point that Priest Amet'alox, who had taught him most of his formal duties as Herald, had moved his classes here from the Ashen Ziggurat to incentivise and strengthen his blessings.
And blessings indeed, for he is surrounded by the cacophony of the many tongues of beasts, he hears the Stegadons and Hydrodonts call each other, the cranky grumbles of young male bastiladons hoping to find mates among the females in the arena. The content hissing of salamanders in their dark and damp enclosures as they finish their meals of whole cuyus, fat and tailless rodents.
Roland’s heart sings to be in the wildest corner of his home, and it sings harder as Tlahui lands on his shoulder, with a stolen cuyu in his beak.
“Good morning.” He greets, having by now forgotten of the two encounter’s worth of disgusted stares.
Tlahui does not answer, instead flying off to a nearby post, meant for terradon riders to saddle their mounts, to tear apart his furry meal, but leaving him with a soundless goodbye in the feathered-one’s language.
“Roland!” A voice calls him. “Good to see you here, did the warmbloods from last night give you much trouble?” Asks a blue skink sporting an elaborate head crest of vibrant hues that moves in greeting.
The crest, uncommonly colorful, marks the skink as a Blessed of Itzl like Roland.
Of course Roland has no crest (as much as his sister's help and years of effort in decorating his mane tries to emulate one) but they still have always known each other.
Akro is the chief Beast Caste Skink of the city, as he is the spawning leader of Pahuax’s only Itzl-blessed Spawning. And Roland is the only human touched by the Old One patron of beats.
Their kinship is built into their flesh, and as the Skink and he converge, they rub against each other and preen like excited hatchlings.
“Not much, they seem to have stayed at the Temple of Uxmac for the most part, and the guards say that those who wandered off have not caused much trouble.” He answers the question.
“Good, good!” The Skink comments as he begins wandering off. Roland follows, he knows wherever they are going it will be worth going there.
“Anything brings you here? Anything more than the usual?”
“Not really, wanted to give a look at the Stegadon we took on our mission, pamper it some.”
“Wajgrani?”
“Wajgrani.”
“We left him on one of the pastures outside the city.” The Skink offers helpfully. “He deserved it, I think.”
“Agreed, thanks for the heads-up, I would have wasted the morning asking around.”
They continue making small talk as they walk towards Akro’s planned destination, whatever it is, commenting on or talking about the different beasts they pass by. About cranky razordons in the middle of a molt or news about a nearby herd of lesser thunderlizards. Tlahui returns to Roland’s side and leaves once more as soon as Akro offers a treat, a piece of dried meat, for the carrion bird to take off with again.
“I have no idea how I manage to keep that bird in shape, any day he’s going to pack in an extra bit of rotting herdbeast and he’s just going to lose all capacity to fly.”
“I think it’s the extra work.” Akro offers as they walk down and into one of the fully subterranean enclosures. “Most ryloks just don’t have to move around and scout and work as much, they are content finding a body once in a while, gorging themselves and resting until they get hungry again.”
“I suppose, but don’t let that bird hear I agree with you.”
“I would never.” Akro laughs.
They stop before a set of cells in full darkness, spacious but blocked off with massive wooden stocks that only a Kroxigor could easily move to release what’s inside.
“Ah, I had a tadpole of an idea that this is what you wanted me to look at. Are they stressed?”
“Indeed, and you are quite a bit better than the rest of us at the cat tongues, especially the ones that…”
“That aren’t just living in the city and eating vermin?”
“Yep! I have some more work to do, more preparations for the sacrifices and celebrations tomorrow, so I’ll leave you at it?”
“Of course, don’t let me waste your time.”
“Never!” Akro admonishes him with a friendly chirp as they bid each other goodbye, Roland lowering himself so they can rub decorated braids against colorful crest.
Moments later Akro is gone, and while a few other Skinks mill around, feeding cages in a connected section to this one, Roland walks closer.
Carefully, until the wooden cell-gate he is moving towards shakes, struck by a great force, and a massive furred limb strikes out through one of the many spaces between the trunks.
It is pitch black and as the paw completes the arch, missing Roland’s chest by not much, the five claws dig into the wood, hooking into it and leaving considerable grooves.
The hunting bands had captured a black jaguar, a sign of great blessing to come.
The animal, an iridescent black feline, desists of its attempt to claw at Roland and starts pacing the space it has been given. Not much for such a wild spirit but by no means a constrictive space.
Jaguars were Huanchi’s emissaries, one could not celebrate the Predator God’s night without them.
But that doesn’t make the predators themselves willing participants, as befitting of their nature. So these animals, twenty in total in cages around him, are constantly agitated, growling and pacing.
So Roland sits down and talks to them in their tongue-
They don’t trust or like him, they know what ape meat tastes like and they like it, and it’s not too dissimilar from warm-blood flesh. So they see him the same way they see the Ozomatli and the bands of thieving men, like easy prey.
But he keeps talking, of what is going to happen, one cannot lie in the feline tongues. And the animals… Don’t exactly relax, but anticipation replaces stress. Hunger replaces anger.
In a day's time you are to feast. He speaks without words. Honor the Old One of the Predator Night, honor the Jaguar and the Stealth.
And they don’t understand the words, too complex even when spoken in the language of stalking cats, but they understand what they mean.
Main Reservoir, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
33nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.16 1 K’ib’ 9 Tzek
33nd of Sommerzeit, 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.16 1 K’ib’ 9 Tzek
“Had I known we would have a chance to enter this city, I would have asked Mistress Arethusa for her wisdom.”
“Who?” Alcippe asks as she continues to inspect the massive basin before them.
“Mistress Arethusa, one of my mentors, I was part of a few of her warbands before I started working on my own. I vividly remember her telling me of the time she explored this city long ago.” Melandra explains. “Obviously back then the city was a ruin, only the walls and temples stood according to her. But it would have been informative nonetheless.”
“Was it really fully abandoned in living memory? The place looks…” Alcioppe looks around, pointing at a group of diminutive lizardmen crossing the water reservoir in a barge. “Quite lived-in right now.”
“It was, she couldn’t have visited this place more than two centuries ago. All she found - lizardmen I mean - were a few bands of notably stealthy Skinks guarding a couple of the ziggurats, and not much else.” Melandra remembers the long expeditions across the Spine with the now retired explorer, who happily recounted her stories of pillage and exploration to the next generation Melandra represented.
“They are like ants.” Despina grumbles. “They can build up a nest as fast as a night.”
“I know how quickly they can set up, I have helped root out a few of their camps on the Amaxon Delta… But rebuilding an entire city?” Alcippe looks around them, a sprawl of boxy and flat roofed building of all shapes and sizes as far as the city’s walls, the monotony broken by the massive tiered pyramids the Lizardmen loved so much and an aqueduct which biseteced the area, leading to the reservoir they had chosen as the place to stop in their exploration of the city.
“Is that envy girl?” Melandra Smirks.
“N-no mistress.” Alcioppe, who is the youngest, blushes. “There’s nothing the coldbloods can build to even equal the beauty of Genaina. But you have to admit we could never have built a city like Genaina as fast!” She stammers out, earning Despina’s laughter.
“I’ll give them that, building something this big must be easy when there’s three large brains and a million bodies behind the project. They can work until they die of exhaustion and just pop out a new batch of equally servile lizards. It’s why the Old Ones made them: Practical and easy to replace.” Melandra comments.
That’s what the Lizardmen are after all, construction machinery and weapons which have lost their purpose with the loss of the lesser Old Ones. Rigg still guided her daughters, but the Lizardmen were rider-less mounts and craftswoman-less tools, running on forgotten commands and antiquated directives and plans.
Around her they rebuild their city, for Melandra is more perceptive than her younger warrior and notices the too-new buildings, the empty spots where something should be, the old monuments ravaged by time and still not repaired, but what for?
The Lizardmen can rebuild ruin, but no matter how brimming with cold-blooded and slave life it is, they are still dying off, the breaths of an Old One’s body.
“So… Melandra…” Despina gets up from the stone she’s been sitting on. “What’s the plan now?” She pats her stachel pack.
The plaque the Lizardmen so covet isn’t there anymore, replaced by a few rocks. Instead it is guarded by the bulk of her sisterly warband back in the barracks they have been provided. But it pays to employ some subterfuge for the ever staring eyes of the lizardmen. And Despina’s message is clear.
“We will give them the plaque once they are done ‘entertaining us’, to keep the queen’s word if nothing else, and in the meantime we’ll grab whatever we can, they won’t notice or realize we are stealing the gold and precious stones as long as we don’t take any of the artifacts they really care about.”
“How will we know which ones those are?” Alcioppe asks, who unlike her has never raided an inhabited temple-city.
“We are not going to risk entering the guarded temples, so if you end up somehow grabbing one it’ll either be Goddesses's luck or a curse, depending on how many of us make it out.” The Hawkeye laughs.
“You two better get going, tell Antibrote to change up the guard and let the rest wander a bit, start finding good places for once the lizards start losing vigilance with their celebrations, and to find where the girl-slaves are. Let’s see how many we can sneak out or if they have their own plans or routes, to talk with the more reluctant ones. But groups of three, no less.” She instructs.
The other two warband members look at eachother, consternation. “What about you?” Despina finally asks. “Won’t you be coming?”
“Nah,” Melandra boasts. “I always do my best work alone, and I have a hunch I might find something good today.”
Both women know better than to dismiss their warband leader’s reputation, so they follow as commanded and return to the Grand Plaza of Pahuax, where they will soon dutifully relay the orders as given.
“You can step out now.” She speaks to no one, especially not the skinks filling water jars in a shallow pool connected to the reservoir nearby.
And from the massive pool’s lower steps, not visible from where she sits on the upper rim, walks a young woman.
She dresses similarly to the man-thing “herald” of yesterday, her body painted and covered in jewels, many tools and pockets hang from the belts and pockets in her long skirt and only her breasts are covered by a simple loop of bound cloth, letting Melandra see the toned body of a worker, but not a warrior.
“I hope you won’t take offense to me listening to your conversation, my name is Elma.” She bows as she speaks, in perfect unaccented Amazonian.
“You… No I don’t, I would cling to any chance in your situation. Don’t worry, we can help you leave,” Melandra offers.
“Cling? My situation? Ah, Lady Hawkeye, you misunderstand. I am no slave and neither are my spawn sisters. Nor bruders, though I suspect you don’t care much for them.” The girl walks closer, her sandals making splatters on a puddle.
She is tall, not the tallest Amazon -Woman, not an Amazon- Melandra has ever met but certainly taller than herself, and her long dark hair is braided with feathers the colors of a bonfire.
“Spawn-sisters…? Never mind, we will help you, I don’t care how much they have broken you to the yoke.”
“There is no yoke, we are not slaves, we are orphans, forgotten children of the warmbloods, taken from them by gone horrors the First Children have long dealt with.”
Melandra knows there’s no friendship in the smile this Elma gives her. She knows not to draw her curved blade yet, but keeps tabs on exactly how many skinks are working around them.
“Who are you?” She asks.
“I already told you!” The younger woman answers with a creepy smile. “Elma, Elma Welser-Nakor, I lead the First Xho’za’khanx Host.” She offers her hand and wrist in greeting the way an amazon, not a lizardman, would. And when Melandra takes hold, both clasping each other's wrists, Elma gets closer too fast.
She whispers into Melandra’s ears, despite the fact that none of the lizardmen in the area could feasibly understand her words.
“And let me make something clear, honored guest. Those girls you plan on liberating are my girls. As much younger sisters are, they are daughters to me. I have cared for them with the help of those so-called dimwitted reptiles for as long as I have been able to, they are happy and healthy here, allowed to leave at any time if they so happen to find a better life amongst the warmbloods. So do not dare to assume taking them from us who are of Pahualaxa will do you any good.”
“Because my bruder -I so wish your language had more words for men- is Herald because he is gifted for speaking and for the blade. And his duties keep him from answering your slights. But I am matriarch, Spawn-Elder, and Caretaker. I take care of people and I take care of things. And I swear that if you dare offend that ‘aberration’ or one of the many `man-things’ I have raised? Or if you leave this Temple-City with a single girl who didn’t first tell me of her intention to join the Daughters of Rigg as is her right? Then the least of your worries will be how much gold or warriors you leave this city with, thief.”
The girl separates herself from Melandra, whose free hand has subconsciously moved to her blade’s handle. And she starts walking on.
“It’s been a long time since our kinds have so peacefully delved together.” The girl laughs as if they have been sharing jokes while she starts walking off. “I hope it is a sign of good things to come.” She smiles.
Melandra still stands by the side of the reservoir long after the… The Lizardmen-loyal girl is gone.
Threats don’t bother her, many a time have the saurus and their ilk talked of devouring her in battle or after finding hours too late that she has already escaped their grasp.
She is Melandra Hawkeye, she can get out of anything.
It’s the honesty that irks her. Because both statements, the one of baleful wariness and the one of welcoming warmth had been spoken with the same conviction.
Melandra knew then that she was welcome to ”recruit” amongst these strange orphans, and that her thieving would not be called out but her fellow woman. But much like in a thousand previous incursions, she would have to be careful where to step…
Lest she trigger a trap.
Blood Road, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
Midsummer Throng [Southern Hemisphere Midwinter Solstice], 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.17 2 Kab’an 10 Tzek
On the interior side of the Ezcocotli Gate, flanking both sides of the Northeastern road that leads straight to the Grand Plaza, there were gathered thousands of Lizardmen.Midsummer Throng [Southern Hemisphere Midwinter Solstice], 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.17 2 Kab’an 10 Tzek
On one side stood a massive Crimson of Sotek, first and only temple built in Pahuax since its refounding and as such the youngest of them. This was a given, as the sacrifice of Pahuax during the Great Catastrophe had predated the Age of Sotek by some three thousand years.
The building was, befitting its patron, covered in massive carvings of snarling serpents and utterly drenched in a coat of brown, dried blood. Although on days like today, the new blood being spilt gave it a new sheen, reflecting the afternoon sun like a pulsing heart of ruby.
A long line of some one hundred sacrifices waits just before the main steps of the ziggurat, waiting their turn, the “signal” for them to start slowly ascending the steps of the pyramid. It’s methodical, they know when to talk forward, when two things happen.
First, due to what’s happening above, the roaring and jeering of their captors becomes louder. Chants in a language none of them understand making themselves loudest above the cacophony. The same three “words” repeated with rhythmic fervor.
“KRO-SOTEK-KHA!”
And as that happens, a new body, beheaded and with its chest open, messily tumbles down the steps whereupon it’s taken away by a team of Skinks.
“KHA-SOTEK-KRO!”
And that signifies that it’s time for the first prisoner in line to start ascending, because the previous one has just been sacrificed to the Serpent God, and the next man is to take his place.
”KRO-KHA-SOTEK!”
As he, a Tilean mercenary, climbs up, he loses his footing, slipping on fresh blood and almost falling backwards, which surely would have broken his neck upon the rock slabs. But a Saurus, his personal escort, grabs hold of him and continues hauling him up, almost dragging him. He is unlucky, It would have been a fast death.
“SOTEK-KRO-KHA!”
Upon reaching the top he is met by six skinks, all of them decorated with massive feather coats and headdresses. They chant too, but theirs are complete phrases, much more complex litanies and incantation.
“SOTEK-KHA-KRO!”
They push him, throwing him on his back to lie upon a flat stone. He is too tired to fight back. He is broken. So they don’t bother tying him down with the golden chains embedded onto the floor of the uppermost level of the temple-pyramid.
“KHA-KRO-SOTEK!”
Five of the Skinks hold him down, the hands of the one holding his head should be reptilian-cold but are lukewarm due to the constant contact with spilt blood and human skin. Obviously he screams and gurgles for a few seconds as his chest is opened, ribs broken and heart is cut out with an extremely sharp obsidian knife.
“SOTEK-SOTEK-SOTEK-SOTEK!”
His bloody heart is offered to an image of Sotek the Deliverer, placed inside of the fanged maw of the stone statue of the serpent that the mighty god often takes the form of. The heart combusts on its own, with no fire under it, and the ashes are carried to the heavens by the winds. Sotek has accepted this offering too, the Lizardmen rejoice.
The man’s body, already tumbling down the steps, will be butchered. His skull will be displayed in a tzompantli, a skull rack, one of the many such palisades all around the city. It will be displayed alongside many more skulls, decades’ worth in fact.
His flesh, alongside that of the other warmblood sacrifices, will be given onto the Lizardmen’s many tamed beasts to feast.
On the other side, sacrifices are also carried out, although these are of a different variety.
Here lies another plaza, although a smaller one, upon which many sacrificial altars and blood shrines have been built. Built not too long after the temple they prostrate before, even less ancient but valued nonetheless.
Here the common lizardmen, uninitiated in the mysteries of the Cult of Sotek or other Old Ones, carry out their own humble sacrifices. Many sacrifice animals, not warmbloods, either bought or caught by themselves with this purpose in the recent past.
The truth is that the sacrifice of “men” is rare, reserved for great days and celebrations such as tonight’s. It must be that for every imperial, asur or dawi they sacrifice a hundred animals, often as small as ozomatli or simple fowl. The Lizardmen often go for seasons without bloodletting of today’s caliber.
And it is upon one of these altars that the Herald stands, flanked by one of his fellow warmbloods, the young Yves, and a skink of his recently successful and disbanded operation: Ra'kaka.
The two of them hold a warmblood, one of the few not reserved for the priesthood’s offering for Sotek or, later on, Huanchi.
It is exactly because of their raid that they are allowed this.
Of the sacrifices around them, many as humble as burnings of food, around a third are being dedicated to Sotek, mostly by skinks. Another third go to Hunachi, whose altars are marked with beautiful jaguar pelts.
And the last third, such as the one upon which the boy and the skink hold a male of the Second Race, which are consecrated to the many other Old Ones. Who might not be the focus of the day, but certainly deserve and demand the gifts of their children.
Roland has been afforded this great honor of sacrificing an Itz’xa’khanx, a “High Elf,” along sides the rare Dro’ka’khanx that Alpha Talon Ottagar has already sacrificed himself. They both share in this honor as they have carried out the most successful and important undertaking of the rainy season, as deemed so by the city’s high priests.
Ottagar and Roland weren’t the only ones of course. The most successful hunters, the most hardworking Kroxigors, the winners of different competitions and duels among the Saurus, the winners of pokolpok tournaments…
But of course. Roland is there surrounded by many of Akro’s spawning and his own Xho’za’khanx kin for what he is. Many of the lizardmen who had gone to the Salamander Cove with him can be recognized in the crowd, even if the majority of them are spread out with the celebrations going on all over the city.
Ottagar had chosen an altar of Huanchi, as they had fought at night and marched using stealth.
Roland honors his patron. He stands alongside his sacrifice and aids upon an altar consecrated to Itzl, the three-horned ruler of coldblooded beasts, decorated with the carvings and skulls of snarling jungle dwellers and a massive hanging plate of brass ready to be swung at by a skink. The Asur is tied to the rock altar by his neck, but he still flails and bucks trying to get both skink and young human off himself to no avail.
The elven male screams and shouts in fury, cursing them all in the name of lesser spirits he takes for gods, Roland is the only one who understands his last words, and pays the thief no mind.
He hefts his halberd high up, the gold and obsinite of the blade glinting under the blazing sun of the coming dry season.
And he swings down, leveraging his height and the weight of the weapon itself to make the strike sure and strong, decapitating the sacrifice with a single cut. The head rolls down the altar but is caught by a helpful saurus. The crowd cheers as one as the gong in sounded, giving the signal and clearing the way for Tlahui and many more vultures, invited by the bird at Roland’s request, to swoop down and dig into the still warm and bleeding body.
Roland takes the head as it’s thrown back at him by the saurus and passes it down to Yves, who he knows hopes to join the priesthood in the future. He grabs the lad and hefts him up, so he can stand on Roland’s shoulders and leave the head inside of the open maw of Itzl’s effigy, making it seem as if the Old One ripped it off himself and is devouring it.
Blood from the neck stump drips over both humans as the crowd turns to another ongoing sacrifice nearby, the burning of a finely made coat of feathers to be given onto the inscrutable Quetzalcoatl.
Soon Roland joins the crowd, milling around from altar to altar or admiring the intricate offerings yet to be given up. He does not notice he is smiling and laughing the way humans do. His sister does, giving him a hug once she catches up to him.
Einar's Hall, Skeggi, Lyssa Bay, Jungles of Pahualaxa
Midsummer Throng [Southern Hemisphere Midwinter Solstice], 2538 IC /Night of Huanchi 40.0.9.10.17 2 Kab’an 10 Tzek/ Night of Ragnarblot, 2538 CC
Midsummer Throng [Southern Hemisphere Midwinter Solstice], 2538 IC /Night of Huanchi 40.0.9.10.17 2 Kab’an 10 Tzek/ Night of Ragnarblot, 2538 CC
Ragnarblot started as soon as the sun went down. Started by the blessings given by Gothi Sven Bloðugr and vitki Gustaf around the massive pyre burning at the foot of the Great Hound Cairn at the center of Skeggi, everyone sits and mills around, enthralled by their tales of the Ragnarok to come, the End Times and their glory, the death of the weak southern gods at the hands of the Raenir and the four Dark Ones. The return of heroes and daemons of renown to lead their legions in the greatest and endless raid. They do this with the help of the many skalds in Skeggi.
Gustaf and Sven mention many gods, many more than those Torfi is familiar with. The reason for that is an old one. Each tribe and each clan of the Norscans venerated their own version of the Raenir, their own daemons and spirits and their own ancestral heroes. Tribe to tribe and village to village they vary often and wildly. Skeggi has its own, spirits of the deep jungles Norscans have never felt anywhere else, or the legends of heroes like Founder Losteriksson or Gunnar the Treefeller. But Skeggi is home to one Skeggialing for every ten Norscans staying only for a season.
And so, in order to avoid unwanted slights, the shamans of Skeggi must honor as many gods as they have ever heard of, lest they offend any of the warbands they are hosts to.
Torfi knows Bloody Sven dislikes that, that he has complained for years about bending to other tribes not of Lyssa Bay. That any who are offended should die defending their honor as good Norscans. But long have Clanhead Inga and her loyal vitki kept him under leash on this issue.
He would usually sit with his family, but none of them had come tonight, they had all stayed back home. No interest in it with father’s death -murder- so fresh in their minds.
But Torfi, being the one with a position in the family, had to show up lest he disrespect the chieftain.
And once they had moved into Einar’s hall, Clan Losteriksson’s great longhouse, the place was packed like a pigsty and many men and women were already well into their drunkness. The celebration of Ragnarblot would last all night, under the hopes that at some point before the sunrise the End Times would indeed come, a vigil in theory, a wild ravelry in practice. He had entertained himself by eating, rather than have to participate in the drunken cheerness of all others, including his father’s murderers.
The Reidarsons.
He knew it had been them, directly or indirectly, in some way. And the practical totality of them were there tonight, filling themselves with beer, mead and wine. Growing fat on meat.
Game meat.
Torfi got up, leaving his food mostly untouched.
Game meat. Hunted meat.
The food his father and their hounds had helped him hunt. Torfi had been eating the food his father had helped them gain
He wanted to retch, but contained himself for the sake of his family’s standing and respect for Lady Inga. He started moving through the mass of bodies, most complete unknowns, seasonal raiders and fishermen.
But one did recognize him, and when Sven’s hand grabbed onto Torfi’s shoulder, he only received a snarl for a greeting. Torfi attempted to keep making his way out but the shaman held him tight until he finally looked up.
There was something in the priest’s eyes. Recognition? Empathy? Commiseration?
All he gave Torfi was a nod before letting him go. Maybe it was a form of permission to leave. Maybe it was something else.
He managed to stumble all the way to the kennels, still too empty.
His father had not returned, neither had the dogs he had left with. It would be long before the kennels were filled again, and maybe they would never feel full again.
“AAAAAHRG!” He screams, and while his outburst frightens and shoos off the hounds back to their cages, his shouting is ignored by the Skeggi-wide celebrations. The sounds of singing, eating, shouting, killing and fucking permeates the expanse of fetid swampland the outpost had been built on top of.
He punches and kicks at the kennel walls.
“FUCKING BASTARDS, CURSED CUNTS MAY YOU DIE OLD AND SICKLY YOU CUNTS!”
“I HATE YOU, MURDERERS, CRAVENS, COWFUCKERS!”
At some point he just flails and stumbles onto the dogshit-stained ground, where grief and the exploitation of others has kept the family from properly cleaning up for days.
His knuckles bleed, and he is pretty sure he’s broken a toe by constantly kicking the palisade. His hounds come back and nuzzle him, they shove their snouts into any nook he leaves open. They lick his blood and tears, they lay down next to him.
By the time he wakes up next morning, he’s not alone, the pile of loyal hounds is further surrounded by his family.
They have all drifted towards the kennels, father’s greatest pride, throughout the night. Called by the same instinct and grief ingrained into their memories. His younger and older siblings are all there, resting against the palisade or hugging on loyal pups. But his mother Stina, with her scarred face and gentle smile, has made her way through. Cradling him in her arms as tight as tether as if he were still a boy scared of tropical thunderstorms.
“Avenge him.” She whispers throughout the night. “Feed them to the hounds.”
Sacred Arena, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
Midsummer Throng [Southern Hemisphere Midwinter Solstice], 2538 IC /Night of Huanchi 40.0.9.10.17 2 Kab’an 10 Tzek
Sava had come to Lustria under Sartosan promises of wealth without comparison. He had done it with his father’s wealth, thinking their merchant family's backing would be more than enough. And he had done his best, he had bought a map that would later prove itself fatally accurate, and the loyalty of a good-sized band of dwarven mercenaries before even making the voyage across the sea.Midsummer Throng [Southern Hemisphere Midwinter Solstice], 2538 IC /Night of Huanchi 40.0.9.10.17 2 Kab’an 10 Tzek
And what had that gotten him? Few days after leaving Port Reaver via the Dead Man’s Way -really he should have taken the fucking hint- accompanied by his dwarven band and a few dozen freshly recruited men they had gotten ambushed in the middle of the night.
His body was still sore from his conversation with the Lizardmen “translator” who had spent hours pressing him for even the most pointless information on the whereabouts of the pirate port. Something Sava had done his best at, despite having spent less than a week in the city proper.
He had seen very little of the rest of his expedition after they had been captured, the rest had been carried off while tied up with rope by their hands and legs. Forced to walk in a line into the green dark jungles.
Once the naked translator man had been done pressing him in Reikspiel, the only foreign language Sava was fluent on other than common slavonic, he had been unceremoniously bashed in the head into unconsciousness and taken off.
His next memories had been of dazedly being carried deep into the jungles, for days the reptiles had kept him barely alive with scant water and a diet of grubs and their raw leftovers. But eventually he had been marched into a road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere and leading south.
They had walked him through massive gates of stone sculpted like the open maw of a fanged amphibian, his feet burning -boots long gone- with blisters that thanked the relative flatness of the ash and sand dusted rocks of the city.
And then they had thrown him on what must have been one of many damp cells, simple pits carved into the floors and sides of underground chambers, blocked off with palisades tied onto carved nooks. He had spent days… Weeks? There, still being fed the same diet of clear leftovers and a pail of water, trapped alongside men he could do nothing more than play charades with as none spoke the same tongues.
But today was different. Early with the few rays of morning sunlight that could sneak into the underground prison many men -and women, as rare as they were- had been dragged off by their massive reptilian captors. Many had resisted, receiving blows from maces and prods from spears until they submitted. But many had also made no attempt, following like docile goats to the slaughter. None had returned and the place had grown empty and quiet, occasionally broken by the sobs or prayers of a few.
The place had continued to empty over the hours of the day until Sava’s turn, well into the sunset, had come.
He had not resisted. Being walked by a blue-scaled goliath clad in pauldrons and braces of solid gold.
He had been walked towards a massive structure illuminated by massive torches, but once more he had been taken underneath. Into some kind of service tunnel network.
He could feel the vibrations and noise of the raucous event overhead, so loud and stuffed with Lizardmen as to make the entire building hum.
The saurus eventually made him stand in a room, surrounded by many more prisoners, around three dozen men, who were all milling around much like himself. He recognized one of the dwarves of his party among the crowd of much taller humans.
His beard was extremely asymmetrical, as if the reptiles had dragged him in by it like a man tugging a leash. In some parts it was completely gone, hair ripped from the roots. He had a smoldering stare, Sava made no attempt to talk to him.
Then the ruckus above became louder, and as if following silent command the reptiles harried them into standing in lines and rows. Sava was in the middle of it.
That did not help him. Soon an elder lizard-man, moving slowly with the help of a cane, entered the room, covered in a massive mottled pelt of gold and black. The jailors bowed before it, giving it ample space to walk around and into the rows of captives.
The dwarf, of similar stature to the reptilian, jumped for it as soon as it neared him. He managed to tackle the frail thing to the ground, but had his head bashed in before he could strangle the thing, shouting garbled curses until his brains became splatters on the men in his row.
Sava did nothing, silently staring as the warriors helped their master up and returned his cane. The ancient shaman seemed unperturbed, continuing to inspect the rows.
He came to a stop before Sava. With a single chirp as his only forewarning he was suddenly seized by the claws of one of the warriors.
Only then, finally dawning upon him his situation, did the human from the southern principalities start thrashing and pleading.
But he was too weak, so they dragged him into a corridor with an upwards ramp, prodding him to walk forward and upwards as the sounds of the crowds became louder, and louder.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
And suddenly he was outside, under the moonlit sky. On a massive semicircular arena that reminded him of a Tilean amphitheater his father was taking him to once.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
But this arena was much more massive, surrounded by massive rows upon rows of tiered rock sitting space.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
He was in the middle of a lizardman arena, a spectacle to the masses.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
He turned around, seeing how he was surrounded on all sides, until his eyes landed on a gated tunnel not too different from the one he had been kicked out of seconds ago.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
This one was opening. Out of it, lit by the massive torches and the clear night sky, was led a beast.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
It reminded him of a cat, although it was closer in size to a bear. It made him think of the fabled southlander lions or the sabered cats who people claimed dwelled in the Worlds Edge and Black mountains that surrounded his homeland.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
The Lustrian Jaguar, or Sabertooth, the largest warmblooded predator in the continent.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
But he had never seen either of those, and he was very much seeing this beast. It was massive, much longer than he was tall. With a hauntingly beautiful fur coat, like the one he had seen on the Lizardman, of yellow, with a whitish underside and covered in black rosettes. It’s snarling mouth sporting two massive fangs.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
It leapt forward, towards him, with strong limbs and claws that dug into the arena sand. Instantly breaking into a run.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
It was a Jaguar, one of the hundreds of Lustrian monsters he had been warned off. Beasts with a taste for ape and man flesh alike.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
Sava ran, with all the strength he had in his atrophied and tired legs.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
The outstretched claws of the leaping great cat reached him first, digging into his back, hooking on and throwing and pinning him to the ground.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
Then the saber-like teeth clamped around his skull.
“HUAN-BOQ!”
Temple of Uxmac, Pahuax, Isthmus of Lustria
Midsummer Throng [Southern Hemeisphere Midwinter Solstice], 2538 IC /Night of Huanchi 40.0.9.10.17 2 Kab’an 10 Tzek
Midsummer Throng [Southern Hemeisphere Midwinter Solstice], 2538 IC /Night of Huanchi 40.0.9.10.17 2 Kab’an 10 Tzek
Melandra stands atop the structure of the massive temple. The Lizardmen have dedicated this one to Uxmac. An Old God of messengers and travelers. As such much of the space within the elongated temple-pyramid itself was dedicated to housing such lizardmen, or Amazons, for these few strange days.
In the distance, loud and alight with thousands of torches and brassiers, she sees the Sacred Arena of Pahuax. Its use is not too dissimilar from the stadium of Genaina. A massive open-air building fit for hosting anything from competitions, the training of warriors and dancers, the hosting of great ceremonies…
Although all in all she has seen how much more the savage lizardmen love their blood sports compared to the daughters of Kalith. She harbors no love for the man-things the saurians were feeding to their great cats, even if the animals remind her of her beloved huntress back home. But the concept of sitting around and cheering as the different animals are released, feed on the defenseless man-things and then released back into the jungle through a massive corridor of palisades, makes her uneasy.
Men should be disposed of with the cleanliness one disposes of sickly cattle. Not in massive bloodthirsty spectacles.
“I figured I might find you here, are you satisfied with your haul?” A voice speaks behind her. Once more Melandra has chosen not to call out the “xho’za’khanx’s” attemp to sneak behind her.
The younger woman has pointed at the bulging sack resting against Melandra’s thigh as she stands taking in the city.
She alone has stolen a year’s worth of valuables from her distracted hosts. Items from the vaults of multiple temples, disregarding her advice to her own warriors. She knows what she’s capable of.
“I am, it’s been a long time since I had to battle such well maintained and updated traps. Very fulfilling.”
The girl comes to a stop by her side, Melandra scoots over so they can sit side by side. Elma leaves a chest by her side as she accepts the offer.
Melandra recognizes it, as she recognizes the clinking of the bracelets it surely contains.
They are the stolen Gifts of Kara. Elma has brought them to her.
“A show of good faith, for heeding my advice. A few of my girls say they want to leave with you come tomorrow, your women painted an interesting picture.” Elma looks at the arena too, neither looks at the other as they continue to talk.
“Amazonia is a home to all women, from repentant worshipers of the Anathema to lost shipwrecked souls or even women as strange as yours.”
“That warms my heart, that even if you aren’t as all-welcoming as Pahuax, there’s still other places of refuge for the lost of Lustria.”
“All welcoming? One of my women described to me of your… Bruder bathing in the blood of a beheaded prisoner.”
“Welcoming to those with no ill will of course, like your kind.” Elma smiles.
“My kind don’t bloodlet and sacrifice like yours does.” Melandra defends.
“Maybe not, but a dead trespasser is a dead trespasser right?”
“True enough.”
Melandra finally looks down at the chest, rubbing its polished surface with the memories of a little girl receiving her own gift. “Why?” She asks “Why go against your beloved master's command and give this to me?”
“I broke no orders, I simply proposed we make the exchange now, early in the Night of Huanchi so he might look down on us proudly. My Lord Tleconexquiza was agreeable to the plan.”
“You spoke to your Slann Mage-Lord about this?”
“No, but he knows of my plans and moves not a finger to alter them. You can leave as soon as you want as long as the Plaque stays with me.”
“And you are sure this is just an act of kindness?” Melandra prods.
“Oh no, not at all. I said I’m a caretaker did I not? I simply took care to avoid another confrontation and make sure you can leave with little ruckus.”
“Clever.”
“Thank you, I must say you have impressed me too. You handled yourself and your warband very carefully.”
“When my fellow Amazons say I can get out of anything unscathed, I think they tend to just look at body -I believe my legs in particular are at the center of attention- and guess it’s a literal thing, that there’s no trap I can’t climb out of or no fight I won’t be able to win.” The comment about her own legs makes the taller woman laugh demurely. “But they forget the best way to escape an ambush is not to fall into one, or that the best way for a deal to go smoothly is to make sure the other side has no incentives to backstab you.”
Elma nods but says nothing.
“Come,” She gets up. “I’ll show you where my warriors keep the plaque so you can give it to your Mage-Lord yourself.”
“Thank you.” Elma follows. “The sooner I get back the sooner I can start helping those rebellious few start packing up, I have heard some of my girls are planning a long journey.”
And with that, both orphan and thief walk into the Temple of the God of Travelers.
And fortuitous encounters.
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Temple Guard
Mr.Crocodile
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I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I honestly appreciate all and any comments or reactions you may be gracious enough to gift me!
As an aside, it would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site (where by the way chapters of this story will be posted a day early).
P.s. Thanks to my friend Matkoc for his great work in the Lustrian Jaguar.
As an aside, it would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site (where by the way chapters of this story will be posted a day early).
P.s. Thanks to my friend Matkoc for his great work in the Lustrian Jaguar.
Slann
Killer Angel
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Great depiction of the various celebrations.
Nothing big happened, but there are interesting developments and the interactions of "adopted" humans with the lizardmen society show a variegated culture. Much more intriguing than a lone human blessed by the Old Ones. Really good stuff.
Nothing big happened, but there are interesting developments and the interactions of "adopted" humans with the lizardmen society show a variegated culture. Much more intriguing than a lone human blessed by the Old Ones. Really good stuff.
Temple Guard
Mr.Crocodile
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Artwork of this story's main character, Herald Roland Welser-Nakor of Pahuax, has been created by my amazing friend Occasional Art and added to this story's first chapter!
Temple Guard
Mr.Crocodile
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The Gifts of Kara - Part VIII: Valediction
The Isthmus of Lustria is a region understood as the narrow strip of land with sea on either side that connects Naggaroth from the Gray Guardians in the North to Lustria from the Creeping Jungle in the South.
As such, the Isthmus has long played a key role as the New World's great crossroad. Most obviously, connecting the New World’s two continents by land, although both lizardmen and Druchii prefer the underway or maritime travel over braving the Gray Guardians and either the Titan Peaks or Creeping Jungle (depending on one’s direction and where they started their route). Because of this, little more than Black Arks and Corsair fleets on the side of the Dark Elves or punitive expeditions on the side of the Lizardmen make this journey. Especially considering that no trade exists between the species.
Much more common is trade and movement between the isthmus itself and mainland Lustria. These routes crossing the jungles are however almost exclusively used by the Lizardmen and those they give explicit permission to. These well maintained massive causeways of straight-angled stone connect the massive Temple City of Hexoatl with it’s surrounding Lizardmen settlements as far as the Fallen Gates or Tomb of Gold and, through the expanses of the Creeping Jungle, to the rest of Lizardmen civilization. This massive road network has allowed the distant saurian holds to stave off isolation.
And of course, there's the web of settlements which has grown along the Eastern coast of the Isthmus. These are the true trade centers of human-inhabited Lustria, as the Isthmus represents the closest arrival point from the Old World, making travel as safe and efficient as possible, with most ships arriving or leaving here as a trade node. Hugging the coastline is the preferred method of travel in the cases of the thousands who then sail on South, both in the case of explorers seeking unplundered lands and traders looking for commerce with the Estalian, Bretonnian and Tilean colonial holdouts down south or even Amazonia.
All this means that the Isthmus is the most “safe” route to travel Southwards or Northwards -for the Lizardmen that is- or to arrive at from the Northeast (for us warmbloods) and sail the Sea of Serpents. Meanwhile the routes using the Sea of Squalls, Gulf of Lustria, or Far Ocean to travel southwards from western Naggaroth are only used by Elven pirates or chaos-worshiping raiders, making themselves undesirable.
And there are also, of course, those fools who abandon the maps and the hugging of the coastline and move inland, crossing the Aymara Swamps and braving the Jaguar Jungles in a foolhardy attempt to make it across a fabled East-West route.
-Excerpt from the Collected Lectures on Lustria by Gottlieb Ochsner. Volume III: Trade and Commerce in the New World.
It’s well past midnight by the time the fifty-strong band of Amazons have all gathered up and are ready to depart their temporary lodgings at the otherwise empty Temple of Uxmac, they carry much more than what they arrived with, their packs and satchels distended with gold and other fineries.
Despite this, there is little to no clinking of metal to give them away as they slowly walk the deserted streets of Pahuax. Behind them the still ongoing festivities in the Grand Plaza and Arena are so loud as to drown out anything else going on in the city. It’s well past midnight and Melandra expects them to continue until sunrise. It’s not the first time she uses the depraved carnivals the Lizardmen carry out to sneak in (or out) of their strongholds.
But even accounting for that her warriors are still silent, they don’t speak and as she has instructed them that the bags they carry their prizes in are to also be stuffed with cloths and green plants they have also taken from their hosts, muffling the sound of golden slips and trinkets.
Their route is also one she has planned carefully. No matter how blunt “Spawn Elder” Elma had been on her explanation that they would have safe passage outside, Melandra wasn’t going to take any more risks.
So they made their way through the side streets and squares parallel to the city’s western road. They could have gone for the southeastern road, pretty much a straight line in the direction they would take to return to Amazonia.
But not only did that road go straight through the Arena and, as such the celebrations, but it was simply a longer route. And a longer route meant risks. Not the kind of risks she usually enjoyed taking, even less with both the Gifts in her possession and her warriors at her command.
Now they were posted within eyesight of the massive Gate of Huanchi, which was most importantly open although guarded by a group of Saurus.
“Do you think they are distracted by not getting to participate on their holiday?” Tirgatao mutters beside her.
“I don’t think they have brains big enough for distraction to fit inside of them.” Despine jokes with a quiet bark to her other side.
“Heh, maybe, but it still means no distraction.” Melandra agrees.
“So, what are we going for?” Tirgatao asks her leader while unsubtly pointing at the bow hanging at her back.
“Not yet, be ready.”
“Why?” Asks Despina. “We got them two to one, and they are expecting an attack from outside, not inside.”
“Oh, I’m not doubting we can cut our way through them, especially if those we left posted outside react fast enough and we surround them, I’m just saying it’s not our best option or the preferable one.”
“Yeah, the cold-bloods will probably rescind their hospitality if we bloody them now, and I don’t think Melandra wants them following us all the way back.” Tirgatao accepts.
“That, and I would also just rather avoid the small chance of me or one of the women carrying the rest of the gifts getting killed. Imagine having to fight to get to them in the chaos, or worse retreating and having to come back for them with the city on high alert?” Melandra complements.
“Kill you, mistress?!” Alcippe mutters worriedly from her nearby stop.
“Well obviously not.” Melandra’s eyes roll at the younger woman’s emotional burst. “But I am not taking even the most improbable risks now that the Gifts are in our possession.”
She then turns to her Warrior Adept Tirgatao, second in command. “Take half and look for the best point to scale the wall nearby, you go up with a few and make sure it’s safe, the rest of us wait down by the spot. ”
“Yes mistress.” She bows and sneaks away.
“Despina, you and the rest stay with me.”
“What are we trying Mistress?” The scar-bound woman asks.
“We are giving her a chance.” She whispers.
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it. Get me the new girls.” Despina clearly wants to ask again, but thinks better of ignoring orders and gets a hold of the three young women.
They, much like the older two she had interacted with, are dressed in a queer combination of human garb and lizardmen “clothes.” None looked worried or confused, Melandra could guess that they didn’t even understand why they would have to sneak out of what they somehow saw as their home.
But still, as much of a liability as they were, they had shown honest interest in the Amazon’s ways and even a certainly promising discomfort with their scaly masters in the case of two of them.
“It doesn’t matter how much they trick and fool them.” Melandra had thought. “They still know in their hearts that the place of the woman is among her sisters and not under the clawed foot.”
The girls, Ingrid, Mezot and Hiltrud, come to her. She explains quickly that they, who speak saurian fluidly, are to accompany her to talk with the guards directly.
But before she can give the command, what sounds like orders from a barking saurus-speaking voice earns the attention of the guards. The sound comes from farther in the main road, Melandra sneaks around a corner and behind a large stack of baskets filled with vine-like plants, seeing that the order comes from an arriving group of Saurus.
Her first thought is that it is a change of the guard, followed by a consideration that it could be reinforcements, and that the reptiles have revoked hospitality and are readying to tighten the noose. If that is the case she will have to get a hold of the Gifts and trust that Tirgatao has done her job for the rest. Her hand is tight around her pendant, ready to be used.
But then she sees who stands by the saurus roaring commands, and her hand moves from pendant to blade handle.
It’s the Herald, dressed in its “warrior” garb and walking side by side with the leading reptile. She turns to look to her kin and uses a single silent command. The rest draw their weapons.
If they have to kill their way out because of the man-thing, then she knows its head will be given to the priesthood alongside the gifts upon her return.
Part of her feels disappointed that, despite the woman’s ferocious defense of the males under her charge, Elam’s word shall be broken by her bruder’s -whatever the damned word meant- slavish loyalty to the Lizardmen.
She stares, ready to spring up and carve necks, as the Lizardmen reorganize themselves. Strangely, instead of climbing and manning the walls and the gate, carved like a -for now- open snarling head, they organize themselves in two rows on the inside and two on the outside, flanking the gate’s structure.
“We await you!” Screams the man-thing in rudimentary Amazonian. Melandra’s hand snaps to Despina’s shoulder. “Take everyone and look for Tirgatao, get out of here.” She seethes.
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry, I just have to cut open a throat before slipping away, I’ll distract them for as long as I can.
Melandra can see the warrior’s desire to stand with her but she nods and slinks away, one by one the Amazons hidden and posted along the side streets and rooftops disengage and follow,
Then he says something else in Saurian. And the three girls get up and start running.
Towards it.
“Wait!” She tries to warn, revealing her location and taking after them. Curved blade drawn. If the girls want to sacrifice themselves so be it, but Melandra will make the Lizardmen pay for their treachery.
Then the Lizardmen do nothing as the young women weave by and through their ranks and launch themselves at the Herald.
They aren’t small children, all are old enough to be considered full women had they been Amazons able to go through the appropriate rituals.
Still he holds the weight of all three of them as they hug him, muttering words Melandra has no time to decipher. But his eyes, cold blue ringed by gold, did not look down at them even once as he comforted them. His words are inaudible from where she stands, but reading lips allows her to tell they are not Amazonian words with which he softly comforts.
The Saurus makes no move towards her and her drawn curved blade, stoically standing until a few minutes later the young women disengage. There’s tears in their eyes as he-it rubs his forehead against theirs and pushes them towards the two lines of Saurus.
As one the entity of the two lines turn, making a corridor across the gate for them. They don’t salute, don’t even look down at the humans, their shields and spears held rigidly.
Once the three young women are gone, disappearing into the darkness of the night outside of the city, the Herald turns around.
“Commander Hawkeye.” He salutes “Have the rest of your warriors left?”
“Yes.”
“My sincerest apologies then.” He bows.
“Apologies, for what?”
“It is my duty, as Herald, to officially accompany you and bid you farewell in the name of Lord Tleconexquiza. And to express his hopes that you have found our hospitality and accommodations worthy. My behavior reflects poorly upon my Lord, my excitement for the celebrations and… My incompetent inability to foresee any change of itineraires such as tonight’s is all my fault, and the reason for me taking so long to set up this hasty and unworthy farewell formalities.”
She bites her tongue instead, knowing she could vocally agree on his inherent lowliness and unworthiness. Both as a man-thing and as a claw-licker. The words of his sister echo through her head.
He bows deeply, she could just walk closer and behead him then and there, even surrounded by his honor guard she knows she can. She knows she could weave her way out.
“Tell your lord that they have been sufficient, and that we are grateful for the efforts at the very least. My queen will know of these efforts and not of the shortcomings of one lowly servant such as yourself.” She says instead
“I shall.”
She walks into the rows of Lizardmen, none of them moving. “Then I, by the authority given to me by He Who Is Risen From The Ashes, Lord of Pahuax, bid you goodbye and safe travel back to the domain of Kalim, Melandra Hawkeye, Daughter of Kalith.” He bows again, this time, so do the Lizardmen, they kneel, they massive shields striking the road like chisels.”
She doesn’t answer with any of the pleasantries she could have. She simply walks across, blade and pendant both ready. None of them move, not even as she brushes past the… Male.
She continues walking, beyond the gate and the second set of Lizardmen making a corridor. Before her stretches a massive field of pens and workfields animals mill around in the night and no reptiles work. She sees the treeline.
“Please.” A voice calls. She doesn’t turn around.
For the first time there’s emotion in said voice, pleading, groveling, fearful. But not in the way men ought to fear Amazons.
“They know not of your ways, not truly,” It continues. “They are not envoys nor spies. They merely seek their place in the Great Plan among your ranks.”
“Please, protect them, take care of them.” It -he- finishes.
She doesn’t look back, she doesn’t respond or make promises.
She simply walks away, to where she knows to rendezvous with her loyal warband.
Her first action once there will be to confirm all the Gifts are safe.
Her second will be to do the same for the Herald and Caretaker’s sisters.
Third, she finally leaves this damned place for Amazonia.
Torfi thinks that’s absolute bullshit. There simply has to be, by chance alone, at least a single beach in the entirety of the Isthmus that makes for a better natural harbor than a semicircle made in its entirety from brackish mud.
For the sake of Mermedus, the ships “dry”docked for repairs had to be dug out of the sinking mud once a week in order to keep working on them. Torfi’s family had been tearing down their own longhouse and building a new one every two years since before he had been born. The other option being to let it sink and using the old house as a barely more stable foundation for the new one.
The thought of which -the house rebuilding, that is, not the sinking- felt like a stab at Torfi’s heart. Rebuilding the longhouse and kennel had been how his father had taught him much.
And he wouldn’t be there to finish teaching him so he and the rest of the family could do it on their own.
Not like it mattered, it looked like the current iteration of the kennel master's longhouse would be the last. The reason also being why he was even standing on one of the landing’s rickety jetties.
His family was leaving, or at least a heartbreakingly large chunk of it.
There was his sister Groa, whose bride price had been reluctantly paid by the family of her now dead despoiler at the intervention of the lady Jarl, but she had nonetheless chosen to take up the blade as a shieldmaiden to regain her honor and rid herself of his filth. And with there being no such band in Skeggi, she had elected to leave for the frozen homeland to join one.
And there were also the bulk of the family’s workforce, twins Swarta and Tuni, who were leaving with the dry season to become part of one of the many Skeggi-based reaver fleets.
That left his mother Stina, himself and his two younger siblings: Haimiaz and Eistla the toddler. Far from enough to maintain their longhouse, his mother was already in talks with what allies she still had to barter it away and find them newer lodging.
It made Torfi feel despondent, like his father’s death had been an ax to a rotting tree trunk now collapsing under its own weight and he and his mother were the fools trying to keep it standing.
He cannot fault his sister’s choice, nothing more worthy than giving oneself up to cleansing through blood, which was why he was there that day waiting with her on the landing. He doesn’t think he will do the same once his brothers leave.
“Disloyal mutts!” He had spat at them when they had revealed their plans not too long ago. They were hunters, trained by their father, able to make a living feeding Skeggi without going reaving. But no, “the call of glory” they had called it. “Disgrace!” he had spat, stopped by his mother from taking things too far.
So there he stood, entertaining himself with the sights to avoid thinking of what soon would be his new normalcy.
The Landing is crammed with ships, one can walk the length of the entire bay by jumping from deck to deck without once stepping on the mud. He knows this well, having tested the saying as a child many times.
Most of them are the skeids and snekkjur, longships of different sizes, of thirty and twenty rowing benches respectively. Most are also in dire need of repairs, which are ongoing, after a wet season of little use. Some, abandoned by land expeditions which had never returned or simply of careless owners, are even overgrown by vines of purple flowers or mosses. Most of those will be leaving soon with the vikingr and replaced by new longships arriving from Norsca to plunder more and more. Some are even being built from scratch, the horrible conditions for building them being proof of how on demand they are.
And there are also the knarrs, wider and deeper, better suited for the allegedly long and grueling trip across the sea, carriers of the bulk of shipless reavers, outgoing plunder or incoming trade. It’s one of these, loading up on ivory as it is, that is taking his sister to Vargaland, wherever that is.
And even more faerings, smaller boats used for fishing and movement across Lyssa Bay (few would risk leaving the relatively safe cove with only the resources and force that fit in a four-oar vessel) dot the waters and “shore.”
Even today, the morning after the Ragnarblot, the landing bustles with activity, if not as much by account of the dozens dead and hundreds drunk to a stupor. Men come and go, working on fixing almost rotten wood or loading and unloading whatever they find profit in.
His sister is soon called, forcing her to finish her hushed and, judging by red eyes, emotional conversation with their mother, they exchange a hug with little Esitla in the middle of it, who blessedly doesn’t understand what’s going on and cheerfully accepts a kiss to the noggin and the dog-teeth pendant Groa puts around her neck.
His sister moves through the rest of “Ornolf’s Pack” slowly, starting with crying Haimiaz and bundling up with her hunter brothers for a moment as well. The captain taking Groa with him on the trip east complains loudly, but silences himself after some very meaningful stares from said pack
Last comes his turn, Båtsman sits by his side, the hound awaits command dutifully while napping on the wooden plank.
Groa crushes him with a hug. “Forgive them.” She whispers, “Those two think they are doing what’s best.” She explains about his older brothers.
“I know.” He swallows.
“You…” She looks him in the eye. “You are father’s best,” She says, he tries to interrupt but she crushes his hand in shaky grasp. “You are, you took best to his lessons, if the dogs followed you any more loyally you’d be a wolfkin. You being kennelmaster keeps him alive. So be the kennelmaster, succeed so when… If I return I will do so to dead Reidarsons and a Beastmaster Ornolfsson. Promise me?” She smiles sadly.
“I-” He chokes. “I do.”
“Good, now say goodbye to the pup, he’ll miss you, and I know you will him.”
He will, Båtsman is one of his favorites, and the best trained in remaining calm aboard ships, as trained by their father. Which is why he will be going across the sea with Groa. He hugs the pup after a second rib-cracking hug with his sister. The dog knows something is wrong and whimpers and begs, but loyal to the end follows his sister at Torfi’s command, jumping above the knarr’s lip.
Good chance is he will never see either of them ever again. So he burns the image of his shieldmaiden sister and seagoing hound into his mind as they disappear beyond a horizon of mangroves and warm waters.
Hopefully, they will lend him strength.
Sleep had eluded him very much, there was only so much shuteye one could get in a room in the middle of a brothel owned by a grieving mother… Yeah, the muffling effect of the cushions was something he wishes he had learned about on the first night.
But the bed itself, warm and dry, had felt so strange in his skin. They had given him comfort during the biggest nightmares about the tall stranger. And he just felt… Usually a full day of stealing left him exhausted enough that he would just have barely enough energy to have dinner (if there was any at the orphanage, or he had stolen something) and now, despite not eating much more often or in much larger amount than before, he could go through an entire day of moving messages and running the streets and still feel like he could do stuff whenever he wasn’t catching his breath.
“Is it all because of the bed?” He thinks. Who knows, maybe someday working for the chandler’s would earn him enough to get his own bed.
For now, he’s getting fed, a cot in the barracks attached to the warehouse and a copper shrapnel per week. Meaning that what remains of his literal blood money (the pouch was still darkened by his own old and dry blood) is now accompanied by his first earned copper penny.
He has no idea how much a bed costs or where he would put it, but at least he can think of having one now. Because before every coin he grabbed made its way up to the bigger Bentears one way or another with all he got being extra meals and new shoes for running once.
He still wore them.
“Stefan?” He is interrupted from his coingazing by a voice from the door, he twists around in his surprise, but maneuvers his hands to keep them and the purse hidden behind his back, hoping the girl whose voice he recognizes has not noticed.
“Hi!” He greets Kirsa with a nervous smile. Hers is warm in kind. Only damaged by the large bruise on the side of her head.
“Hi Stefan, Madam Martha asked me to make sure everything was fine, and to extend an offer to stay here longer, as long as you can still give her more ‘dice` that is, whatever that means.” She jokingly comments, grabbing a loose strand of her hair and moving it aside. To the side where the purple welt is, specifically.
Stefan’s first instinct is to ask his older friend about it. But shyness gets the best of him. “Thanks but no, I don’t think I can find more of those dice.”
The dice in question had been a very small, the size of a pea really, gold cube with crystals ingrained into its sides. It had paid for his entire stay and a dozen meals. It had been the smallest piece in the pouch and he was not willing to risk letting anyone know that fact.
“In any case, she wants to talk with you,”
Kirsa proceeds to then offer her help in tidying up the room, explaining that he shouldn’t have done so in the first place as it is their job. But the lessons of what happens to kids who don’t clean up are rooted deep in him. So they finish together once the bag he uses for his belongings is tied closed.
She accompanies him outside, to the Blushing Maiden’s main lobby, guiding him towards her madam before bidding him goodbye and asking that he come around to visit often. He promises he will, he very much wants to keep that promise. Kirsa is his only friend outside of the bentears or Sissy’s… And he isn’t keen on returning to either place. The memories of beating and the tall stranger flash by. He does hope that by now the collapse of the Stragglers and Bentears at the hands of the tall stranger had died down enough for him to show his face anywhere again.
“Last night got rowdy, big Old World holidays you see?” Madam Martha jokingly offers her hand for him to kiss. Something he is extremely uncomfortable doing. But when he processes her comment and looks at her confused, she points at Kirsa as her shape disappears behind a door he’s never crossed.
Ah.
“Oh, I’m… Sorry to hear that…” He mumbles.
“Don’t be, I’m in good standing with the current guard, they took care of it, you might even meet the mutt once he’s fixed up and sent to the felldowns.”
Stefan doesn’t understand what fixing means in this context, he doesn’t feel like he wants to.
“In any case,” the woman continued. “It saddens me to see you leave, my girls really like you, but I don’t run a charity and you aren’t looking for one, none of my… My boy’s friends were, were you? A bunch of precocious little fighters, the lot of you.” She says with a sad smile.
Stefan is not dumb enough to explain to her the kind of group her son ran, or who they ran under, or what they did. The dead goon’s memory is what made her so willingly to give up an entire room to him in the first place.
So he thanks her one last time, accepts the offer of a freely given last breakfast before he leaves as the woman reminisces more about her drug peddling brute of a son while he stays quiet and nods whenever it feels like he should reassure her of her false impressions of their close friendship. Meanwhile his thoughts are occupied by the possible costs of new shoes or how comfortable the coot at the warehouse will be.
“Reporting success. Greatly pleased” Speaks across the orderly streams of magic a voice of shifting ash and dying coals.
“Congratulations.” Answers the sound of tectonic plates scraping against each other and mountain ranges rising from the World Pond.
“Were both inquiries, hypothesis and test, confirmed to be true and completed successfully respectively?” Inquires the very future movements of the constellations.
“Indeed. First, test: Will those of the Fourth Race raised within the environs and purview of the First exhibit loyalty when opposing those of their kind who work against the Great Plan? Yes. The Hornless Three-Horned One performed as intended and completed all directives promulgated.”
“Then,” Speaks the song of cooling mists. “The order to restart collection of rearable individuals shall be given.”
“It shall be.” Speaks a chorus of a thousand thousand voices, all in absolute agreement.
“Second, hypothesis: Will the presence of loyal Fourth Race females allow for easier conflict resolution regarding the presence of the Daughters of Rigg and their role in the Great Plan? It will. We believe prolonged exposure will only further mend undesirable rifts.”
“Then it is imperative that as many hosts as possible have at least a few such females among their ranks. This can be arranged by the aforementioned gaining of more Fourth Race females and the strategic relocation of those already demonstrably loyal.” Millions marching in unison plans ahead.
“Agreed.” The chorus convenes a second time.
“Then,” The undying will summarizes. “The next face begins at once.”
The Isthmus of Lustria is a region understood as the narrow strip of land with sea on either side that connects Naggaroth from the Gray Guardians in the North to Lustria from the Creeping Jungle in the South.
As such, the Isthmus has long played a key role as the New World's great crossroad. Most obviously, connecting the New World’s two continents by land, although both lizardmen and Druchii prefer the underway or maritime travel over braving the Gray Guardians and either the Titan Peaks or Creeping Jungle (depending on one’s direction and where they started their route). Because of this, little more than Black Arks and Corsair fleets on the side of the Dark Elves or punitive expeditions on the side of the Lizardmen make this journey. Especially considering that no trade exists between the species.
Much more common is trade and movement between the isthmus itself and mainland Lustria. These routes crossing the jungles are however almost exclusively used by the Lizardmen and those they give explicit permission to. These well maintained massive causeways of straight-angled stone connect the massive Temple City of Hexoatl with it’s surrounding Lizardmen settlements as far as the Fallen Gates or Tomb of Gold and, through the expanses of the Creeping Jungle, to the rest of Lizardmen civilization. This massive road network has allowed the distant saurian holds to stave off isolation.
And of course, there's the web of settlements which has grown along the Eastern coast of the Isthmus. These are the true trade centers of human-inhabited Lustria, as the Isthmus represents the closest arrival point from the Old World, making travel as safe and efficient as possible, with most ships arriving or leaving here as a trade node. Hugging the coastline is the preferred method of travel in the cases of the thousands who then sail on South, both in the case of explorers seeking unplundered lands and traders looking for commerce with the Estalian, Bretonnian and Tilean colonial holdouts down south or even Amazonia.
All this means that the Isthmus is the most “safe” route to travel Southwards or Northwards -for the Lizardmen that is- or to arrive at from the Northeast (for us warmbloods) and sail the Sea of Serpents. Meanwhile the routes using the Sea of Squalls, Gulf of Lustria, or Far Ocean to travel southwards from western Naggaroth are only used by Elven pirates or chaos-worshiping raiders, making themselves undesirable.
And there are also, of course, those fools who abandon the maps and the hugging of the coastline and move inland, crossing the Aymara Swamps and braving the Jaguar Jungles in a foolhardy attempt to make it across a fabled East-West route.
-Excerpt from the Collected Lectures on Lustria by Gottlieb Ochsner. Volume III: Trade and Commerce in the New World.
Near Huanchi’s Gate, Pahuax, Jungles of Pahualaxa
1st of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.18 1 3 Etz'nab' 11 Tzek
1st of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.18 1 3 Etz'nab' 11 Tzek
It’s well past midnight by the time the fifty-strong band of Amazons have all gathered up and are ready to depart their temporary lodgings at the otherwise empty Temple of Uxmac, they carry much more than what they arrived with, their packs and satchels distended with gold and other fineries.
Despite this, there is little to no clinking of metal to give them away as they slowly walk the deserted streets of Pahuax. Behind them the still ongoing festivities in the Grand Plaza and Arena are so loud as to drown out anything else going on in the city. It’s well past midnight and Melandra expects them to continue until sunrise. It’s not the first time she uses the depraved carnivals the Lizardmen carry out to sneak in (or out) of their strongholds.
But even accounting for that her warriors are still silent, they don’t speak and as she has instructed them that the bags they carry their prizes in are to also be stuffed with cloths and green plants they have also taken from their hosts, muffling the sound of golden slips and trinkets.
Their route is also one she has planned carefully. No matter how blunt “Spawn Elder” Elma had been on her explanation that they would have safe passage outside, Melandra wasn’t going to take any more risks.
So they made their way through the side streets and squares parallel to the city’s western road. They could have gone for the southeastern road, pretty much a straight line in the direction they would take to return to Amazonia.
But not only did that road go straight through the Arena and, as such the celebrations, but it was simply a longer route. And a longer route meant risks. Not the kind of risks she usually enjoyed taking, even less with both the Gifts in her possession and her warriors at her command.
Now they were posted within eyesight of the massive Gate of Huanchi, which was most importantly open although guarded by a group of Saurus.
“Do you think they are distracted by not getting to participate on their holiday?” Tirgatao mutters beside her.
“I don’t think they have brains big enough for distraction to fit inside of them.” Despine jokes with a quiet bark to her other side.
“Heh, maybe, but it still means no distraction.” Melandra agrees.
“So, what are we going for?” Tirgatao asks her leader while unsubtly pointing at the bow hanging at her back.
“Not yet, be ready.”
“Why?” Asks Despina. “We got them two to one, and they are expecting an attack from outside, not inside.”
“Oh, I’m not doubting we can cut our way through them, especially if those we left posted outside react fast enough and we surround them, I’m just saying it’s not our best option or the preferable one.”
“Yeah, the cold-bloods will probably rescind their hospitality if we bloody them now, and I don’t think Melandra wants them following us all the way back.” Tirgatao accepts.
“That, and I would also just rather avoid the small chance of me or one of the women carrying the rest of the gifts getting killed. Imagine having to fight to get to them in the chaos, or worse retreating and having to come back for them with the city on high alert?” Melandra complements.
“Kill you, mistress?!” Alcippe mutters worriedly from her nearby stop.
“Well obviously not.” Melandra’s eyes roll at the younger woman’s emotional burst. “But I am not taking even the most improbable risks now that the Gifts are in our possession.”
She then turns to her Warrior Adept Tirgatao, second in command. “Take half and look for the best point to scale the wall nearby, you go up with a few and make sure it’s safe, the rest of us wait down by the spot. ”
“Yes mistress.” She bows and sneaks away.
“Despina, you and the rest stay with me.”
“What are we trying Mistress?” The scar-bound woman asks.
“We are giving her a chance.” She whispers.
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it. Get me the new girls.” Despina clearly wants to ask again, but thinks better of ignoring orders and gets a hold of the three young women.
They, much like the older two she had interacted with, are dressed in a queer combination of human garb and lizardmen “clothes.” None looked worried or confused, Melandra could guess that they didn’t even understand why they would have to sneak out of what they somehow saw as their home.
But still, as much of a liability as they were, they had shown honest interest in the Amazon’s ways and even a certainly promising discomfort with their scaly masters in the case of two of them.
“It doesn’t matter how much they trick and fool them.” Melandra had thought. “They still know in their hearts that the place of the woman is among her sisters and not under the clawed foot.”
The girls, Ingrid, Mezot and Hiltrud, come to her. She explains quickly that they, who speak saurian fluidly, are to accompany her to talk with the guards directly.
But before she can give the command, what sounds like orders from a barking saurus-speaking voice earns the attention of the guards. The sound comes from farther in the main road, Melandra sneaks around a corner and behind a large stack of baskets filled with vine-like plants, seeing that the order comes from an arriving group of Saurus.
Her first thought is that it is a change of the guard, followed by a consideration that it could be reinforcements, and that the reptiles have revoked hospitality and are readying to tighten the noose. If that is the case she will have to get a hold of the Gifts and trust that Tirgatao has done her job for the rest. Her hand is tight around her pendant, ready to be used.
But then she sees who stands by the saurus roaring commands, and her hand moves from pendant to blade handle.
It’s the Herald, dressed in its “warrior” garb and walking side by side with the leading reptile. She turns to look to her kin and uses a single silent command. The rest draw their weapons.
If they have to kill their way out because of the man-thing, then she knows its head will be given to the priesthood alongside the gifts upon her return.
Part of her feels disappointed that, despite the woman’s ferocious defense of the males under her charge, Elam’s word shall be broken by her bruder’s -whatever the damned word meant- slavish loyalty to the Lizardmen.
She stares, ready to spring up and carve necks, as the Lizardmen reorganize themselves. Strangely, instead of climbing and manning the walls and the gate, carved like a -for now- open snarling head, they organize themselves in two rows on the inside and two on the outside, flanking the gate’s structure.
“We await you!” Screams the man-thing in rudimentary Amazonian. Melandra’s hand snaps to Despina’s shoulder. “Take everyone and look for Tirgatao, get out of here.” She seethes.
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry, I just have to cut open a throat before slipping away, I’ll distract them for as long as I can.
Melandra can see the warrior’s desire to stand with her but she nods and slinks away, one by one the Amazons hidden and posted along the side streets and rooftops disengage and follow,
Then he says something else in Saurian. And the three girls get up and start running.
Towards it.
“Wait!” She tries to warn, revealing her location and taking after them. Curved blade drawn. If the girls want to sacrifice themselves so be it, but Melandra will make the Lizardmen pay for their treachery.
Then the Lizardmen do nothing as the young women weave by and through their ranks and launch themselves at the Herald.
They aren’t small children, all are old enough to be considered full women had they been Amazons able to go through the appropriate rituals.
Still he holds the weight of all three of them as they hug him, muttering words Melandra has no time to decipher. But his eyes, cold blue ringed by gold, did not look down at them even once as he comforted them. His words are inaudible from where she stands, but reading lips allows her to tell they are not Amazonian words with which he softly comforts.
The Saurus makes no move towards her and her drawn curved blade, stoically standing until a few minutes later the young women disengage. There’s tears in their eyes as he-it rubs his forehead against theirs and pushes them towards the two lines of Saurus.
As one the entity of the two lines turn, making a corridor across the gate for them. They don’t salute, don’t even look down at the humans, their shields and spears held rigidly.
Once the three young women are gone, disappearing into the darkness of the night outside of the city, the Herald turns around.
“Commander Hawkeye.” He salutes “Have the rest of your warriors left?”
“Yes.”
“My sincerest apologies then.” He bows.
“Apologies, for what?”
“It is my duty, as Herald, to officially accompany you and bid you farewell in the name of Lord Tleconexquiza. And to express his hopes that you have found our hospitality and accommodations worthy. My behavior reflects poorly upon my Lord, my excitement for the celebrations and… My incompetent inability to foresee any change of itineraires such as tonight’s is all my fault, and the reason for me taking so long to set up this hasty and unworthy farewell formalities.”
She bites her tongue instead, knowing she could vocally agree on his inherent lowliness and unworthiness. Both as a man-thing and as a claw-licker. The words of his sister echo through her head.
He bows deeply, she could just walk closer and behead him then and there, even surrounded by his honor guard she knows she can. She knows she could weave her way out.
“Tell your lord that they have been sufficient, and that we are grateful for the efforts at the very least. My queen will know of these efforts and not of the shortcomings of one lowly servant such as yourself.” She says instead
“I shall.”
She walks into the rows of Lizardmen, none of them moving. “Then I, by the authority given to me by He Who Is Risen From The Ashes, Lord of Pahuax, bid you goodbye and safe travel back to the domain of Kalim, Melandra Hawkeye, Daughter of Kalith.” He bows again, this time, so do the Lizardmen, they kneel, they massive shields striking the road like chisels.”
She doesn’t answer with any of the pleasantries she could have. She simply walks across, blade and pendant both ready. None of them move, not even as she brushes past the… Male.
She continues walking, beyond the gate and the second set of Lizardmen making a corridor. Before her stretches a massive field of pens and workfields animals mill around in the night and no reptiles work. She sees the treeline.
“Please.” A voice calls. She doesn’t turn around.
For the first time there’s emotion in said voice, pleading, groveling, fearful. But not in the way men ought to fear Amazons.
“They know not of your ways, not truly,” It continues. “They are not envoys nor spies. They merely seek their place in the Great Plan among your ranks.”
“Please, protect them, take care of them.” It -he- finishes.
She doesn’t look back, she doesn’t respond or make promises.
She simply walks away, to where she knows to rendezvous with her loyal warband.
Her first action once there will be to confirm all the Gifts are safe.
Her second will be to do the same for the Herald and Caretaker’s sisters.
Third, she finally leaves this damned place for Amazonia.
Drakkar Landing, Skeggi, Jungles of Pahualaxa
1st of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.18 1 Etz'nab' 11 Tzek
They say Losterikkson sailed a great lap around Lustria, and found no place more suitable for his outpost than Lyssa Bay.1st of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.18 1 Etz'nab' 11 Tzek
Torfi thinks that’s absolute bullshit. There simply has to be, by chance alone, at least a single beach in the entirety of the Isthmus that makes for a better natural harbor than a semicircle made in its entirety from brackish mud.
For the sake of Mermedus, the ships “dry”docked for repairs had to be dug out of the sinking mud once a week in order to keep working on them. Torfi’s family had been tearing down their own longhouse and building a new one every two years since before he had been born. The other option being to let it sink and using the old house as a barely more stable foundation for the new one.
The thought of which -the house rebuilding, that is, not the sinking- felt like a stab at Torfi’s heart. Rebuilding the longhouse and kennel had been how his father had taught him much.
And he wouldn’t be there to finish teaching him so he and the rest of the family could do it on their own.
Not like it mattered, it looked like the current iteration of the kennel master's longhouse would be the last. The reason also being why he was even standing on one of the landing’s rickety jetties.
His family was leaving, or at least a heartbreakingly large chunk of it.
There was his sister Groa, whose bride price had been reluctantly paid by the family of her now dead despoiler at the intervention of the lady Jarl, but she had nonetheless chosen to take up the blade as a shieldmaiden to regain her honor and rid herself of his filth. And with there being no such band in Skeggi, she had elected to leave for the frozen homeland to join one.
And there were also the bulk of the family’s workforce, twins Swarta and Tuni, who were leaving with the dry season to become part of one of the many Skeggi-based reaver fleets.
That left his mother Stina, himself and his two younger siblings: Haimiaz and Eistla the toddler. Far from enough to maintain their longhouse, his mother was already in talks with what allies she still had to barter it away and find them newer lodging.
It made Torfi feel despondent, like his father’s death had been an ax to a rotting tree trunk now collapsing under its own weight and he and his mother were the fools trying to keep it standing.
He cannot fault his sister’s choice, nothing more worthy than giving oneself up to cleansing through blood, which was why he was there that day waiting with her on the landing. He doesn’t think he will do the same once his brothers leave.
“Disloyal mutts!” He had spat at them when they had revealed their plans not too long ago. They were hunters, trained by their father, able to make a living feeding Skeggi without going reaving. But no, “the call of glory” they had called it. “Disgrace!” he had spat, stopped by his mother from taking things too far.
So there he stood, entertaining himself with the sights to avoid thinking of what soon would be his new normalcy.
The Landing is crammed with ships, one can walk the length of the entire bay by jumping from deck to deck without once stepping on the mud. He knows this well, having tested the saying as a child many times.
Most of them are the skeids and snekkjur, longships of different sizes, of thirty and twenty rowing benches respectively. Most are also in dire need of repairs, which are ongoing, after a wet season of little use. Some, abandoned by land expeditions which had never returned or simply of careless owners, are even overgrown by vines of purple flowers or mosses. Most of those will be leaving soon with the vikingr and replaced by new longships arriving from Norsca to plunder more and more. Some are even being built from scratch, the horrible conditions for building them being proof of how on demand they are.
And there are also the knarrs, wider and deeper, better suited for the allegedly long and grueling trip across the sea, carriers of the bulk of shipless reavers, outgoing plunder or incoming trade. It’s one of these, loading up on ivory as it is, that is taking his sister to Vargaland, wherever that is.
And even more faerings, smaller boats used for fishing and movement across Lyssa Bay (few would risk leaving the relatively safe cove with only the resources and force that fit in a four-oar vessel) dot the waters and “shore.”
Even today, the morning after the Ragnarblot, the landing bustles with activity, if not as much by account of the dozens dead and hundreds drunk to a stupor. Men come and go, working on fixing almost rotten wood or loading and unloading whatever they find profit in.
His sister is soon called, forcing her to finish her hushed and, judging by red eyes, emotional conversation with their mother, they exchange a hug with little Esitla in the middle of it, who blessedly doesn’t understand what’s going on and cheerfully accepts a kiss to the noggin and the dog-teeth pendant Groa puts around her neck.
His sister moves through the rest of “Ornolf’s Pack” slowly, starting with crying Haimiaz and bundling up with her hunter brothers for a moment as well. The captain taking Groa with him on the trip east complains loudly, but silences himself after some very meaningful stares from said pack
Last comes his turn, Båtsman sits by his side, the hound awaits command dutifully while napping on the wooden plank.
Groa crushes him with a hug. “Forgive them.” She whispers, “Those two think they are doing what’s best.” She explains about his older brothers.
“I know.” He swallows.
“You…” She looks him in the eye. “You are father’s best,” She says, he tries to interrupt but she crushes his hand in shaky grasp. “You are, you took best to his lessons, if the dogs followed you any more loyally you’d be a wolfkin. You being kennelmaster keeps him alive. So be the kennelmaster, succeed so when… If I return I will do so to dead Reidarsons and a Beastmaster Ornolfsson. Promise me?” She smiles sadly.
“I-” He chokes. “I do.”
“Good, now say goodbye to the pup, he’ll miss you, and I know you will him.”
He will, Båtsman is one of his favorites, and the best trained in remaining calm aboard ships, as trained by their father. Which is why he will be going across the sea with Groa. He hugs the pup after a second rib-cracking hug with his sister. The dog knows something is wrong and whimpers and begs, but loyal to the end follows his sister at Torfi’s command, jumping above the knarr’s lip.
Good chance is he will never see either of them ever again. So he burns the image of his shieldmaiden sister and seagoing hound into his mind as they disappear beyond a horizon of mangroves and warm waters.
Hopefully, they will lend him strength.
The Blushing Maiden, Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove
1st of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.18 1 Etz'nab' 11 Tzek
The room had only been his for a week and a few extra days. Yet as he retrieves his small pouch of wealth from in between the frames of its bed he can’t help but feel sad. The nights spent here since he had fully abandoned Saint Sissy’s orphanage had been the most comfortable of his life.1st of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.10.18 1 Etz'nab' 11 Tzek
Sleep had eluded him very much, there was only so much shuteye one could get in a room in the middle of a brothel owned by a grieving mother… Yeah, the muffling effect of the cushions was something he wishes he had learned about on the first night.
But the bed itself, warm and dry, had felt so strange in his skin. They had given him comfort during the biggest nightmares about the tall stranger. And he just felt… Usually a full day of stealing left him exhausted enough that he would just have barely enough energy to have dinner (if there was any at the orphanage, or he had stolen something) and now, despite not eating much more often or in much larger amount than before, he could go through an entire day of moving messages and running the streets and still feel like he could do stuff whenever he wasn’t catching his breath.
“Is it all because of the bed?” He thinks. Who knows, maybe someday working for the chandler’s would earn him enough to get his own bed.
For now, he’s getting fed, a cot in the barracks attached to the warehouse and a copper shrapnel per week. Meaning that what remains of his literal blood money (the pouch was still darkened by his own old and dry blood) is now accompanied by his first earned copper penny.
He has no idea how much a bed costs or where he would put it, but at least he can think of having one now. Because before every coin he grabbed made its way up to the bigger Bentears one way or another with all he got being extra meals and new shoes for running once.
He still wore them.
“Stefan?” He is interrupted from his coingazing by a voice from the door, he twists around in his surprise, but maneuvers his hands to keep them and the purse hidden behind his back, hoping the girl whose voice he recognizes has not noticed.
“Hi!” He greets Kirsa with a nervous smile. Hers is warm in kind. Only damaged by the large bruise on the side of her head.
“Hi Stefan, Madam Martha asked me to make sure everything was fine, and to extend an offer to stay here longer, as long as you can still give her more ‘dice` that is, whatever that means.” She jokingly comments, grabbing a loose strand of her hair and moving it aside. To the side where the purple welt is, specifically.
Stefan’s first instinct is to ask his older friend about it. But shyness gets the best of him. “Thanks but no, I don’t think I can find more of those dice.”
The dice in question had been a very small, the size of a pea really, gold cube with crystals ingrained into its sides. It had paid for his entire stay and a dozen meals. It had been the smallest piece in the pouch and he was not willing to risk letting anyone know that fact.
“In any case, she wants to talk with you,”
Kirsa proceeds to then offer her help in tidying up the room, explaining that he shouldn’t have done so in the first place as it is their job. But the lessons of what happens to kids who don’t clean up are rooted deep in him. So they finish together once the bag he uses for his belongings is tied closed.
She accompanies him outside, to the Blushing Maiden’s main lobby, guiding him towards her madam before bidding him goodbye and asking that he come around to visit often. He promises he will, he very much wants to keep that promise. Kirsa is his only friend outside of the bentears or Sissy’s… And he isn’t keen on returning to either place. The memories of beating and the tall stranger flash by. He does hope that by now the collapse of the Stragglers and Bentears at the hands of the tall stranger had died down enough for him to show his face anywhere again.
“Last night got rowdy, big Old World holidays you see?” Madam Martha jokingly offers her hand for him to kiss. Something he is extremely uncomfortable doing. But when he processes her comment and looks at her confused, she points at Kirsa as her shape disappears behind a door he’s never crossed.
Ah.
“Oh, I’m… Sorry to hear that…” He mumbles.
“Don’t be, I’m in good standing with the current guard, they took care of it, you might even meet the mutt once he’s fixed up and sent to the felldowns.”
Stefan doesn’t understand what fixing means in this context, he doesn’t feel like he wants to.
“In any case,” the woman continued. “It saddens me to see you leave, my girls really like you, but I don’t run a charity and you aren’t looking for one, none of my… My boy’s friends were, were you? A bunch of precocious little fighters, the lot of you.” She says with a sad smile.
Stefan is not dumb enough to explain to her the kind of group her son ran, or who they ran under, or what they did. The dead goon’s memory is what made her so willingly to give up an entire room to him in the first place.
So he thanks her one last time, accepts the offer of a freely given last breakfast before he leaves as the woman reminisces more about her drug peddling brute of a son while he stays quiet and nods whenever it feels like he should reassure her of her false impressions of their close friendship. Meanwhile his thoughts are occupied by the possible costs of new shoes or how comfortable the coot at the warehouse will be.
The Geomantic Web, Everywhere and Nowhere at Once
40.0.9.10.18 1 Etz'nab' 11 Tzek
40.0.9.10.18 1 Etz'nab' 11 Tzek
“Reporting success. Greatly pleased” Speaks across the orderly streams of magic a voice of shifting ash and dying coals.
“Congratulations.” Answers the sound of tectonic plates scraping against each other and mountain ranges rising from the World Pond.
“Were both inquiries, hypothesis and test, confirmed to be true and completed successfully respectively?” Inquires the very future movements of the constellations.
“Indeed. First, test: Will those of the Fourth Race raised within the environs and purview of the First exhibit loyalty when opposing those of their kind who work against the Great Plan? Yes. The Hornless Three-Horned One performed as intended and completed all directives promulgated.”
“Then,” Speaks the song of cooling mists. “The order to restart collection of rearable individuals shall be given.”
“It shall be.” Speaks a chorus of a thousand thousand voices, all in absolute agreement.
“Second, hypothesis: Will the presence of loyal Fourth Race females allow for easier conflict resolution regarding the presence of the Daughters of Rigg and their role in the Great Plan? It will. We believe prolonged exposure will only further mend undesirable rifts.”
“Then it is imperative that as many hosts as possible have at least a few such females among their ranks. This can be arranged by the aforementioned gaining of more Fourth Race females and the strategic relocation of those already demonstrably loyal.” Millions marching in unison plans ahead.
“Agreed.” The chorus convenes a second time.
“Then,” The undying will summarizes. “The next face begins at once.”
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