[WFRP2e] The Power of One - Part 2 - "Transire Benefaciendo"

[MrAbdiel]

Bella ties off a hope about your waist and Briant secures it to Cleménce's saddle; as secure an anchor as you could hope for. Tethered, you shuffle sideways down the slope toward the hole in the turf. You stop where you feel the ground become springy and drop off; like the hard earth beneath it has fallen away, and the soil is held firm only by a vigorous unity of the grass's roots and the leverage against the adjacent ground. But you are close enough to call out...

...And you wait for a response...

And as the seconds tick away one at a time, there seems to be no response.

Spoiler: OOC:

Show

No response to your call! Your next move?

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni


Taalia peered as best she could into the dim cavern below, as if it were an enormous portrait framed by jagged, broken earth, sheets of grass and crooked earth-roots. She could feel the springboard like compression of the ground beneath her, long-buried experience wretched up to remind her of what unstable ground was like - something that was all too familiar from her time as a slave.

Pursing her lips as she heard no response, her excellent hearing not even detecting the shuffling movement of clawed feet upon freshly dug earth to reposition that might suggest a waiting ambush. The boy himself was quiet, but that was probably because he just heard someone speaking the language of the rat-men and had shut his mouth out of fear.

Making a calculated estimation that there was no Skaven present and the boy had just fallen foul of a collapsing tunnel, Taalia looked over her shoulder and back at Bella and the others. Holding the rope with one gloved hand, she signaled that she was going over and down, before looking back at that hole, stepping forward, cautiously, taking her time and using tension within the rope to 'walk' over the edge and down.


OOC:

Down we go.

[MrAbdiel]

Down, down, down into the dark. Ten feet, and your boots scrabble gently at the wall as it concaves away from you, and you are dangling from the rope into the darkness.

A flicker of intrusive thought reminds you of the desperate con-man, Blasio, trying to solicit your coverage to escape the law at Caesa di Silo; hanged and left for the birds to peck, dangling in death.

The ground has slipped in an uneven manner, when it has given way; a chunk of earth sloughing at a diagonal that then folds back the other way. Perhaps the boy, when he fell, bounced off one wall and then the other, saving him from full-force plunging the fifty feet you end up descending. But the uneven passage above means almost no light at all is diffused into the hollow below. You squint into the dark, your eyes adapting better than most. The dark spreads out all around you with velvety thickness, swallowing up the sound of your feet scuffing and finding purchase on soft, broken ground - the tumble of earth that has given way from above and made a pile here.

You squint in the dark.

No glint of steel, or glow of warpstone.

You listen carefully.

No skittering claws. No feral, rodentic utterances.

You smell the air.

Earth. Stone. The faintest wisp of blood on the air. But no musk; no rat-scent, and no breeze to hide it. The rats are not here. They could not have been in this place for years, if ever. The cavern is huge, empty and untainted. You are forced to step out of the loop of rope - you give it a single tug to let Briant above know you are removing it, and not to draw it back up until you give three tugs. It's all hands-and-feet to descend the mound of earth carefully, judging your movements by feel and sound. Finally, your feet touch something hard, and flat. And paved. Your fingertip traces the edge of one great rectangular tile before another, set into the earth here. And finally, you hear the boy.

You can hear the shiver in his breath; the desperation with which he has tried not to make any sound. He fell down this hole, then tumbled down the side of this mound of displaced earth, and then must have crawled as far as he could before trying to hide, and be silent.

And why not, you realise? He had been calling back and forth with his fellows in muddied reassurances; then they had gone silent, and the next call down the hole, yours, had been in the screeching inhuman language of the ratmen. Even now, as your eyes resolve the shape of Jean-Paul, a boy of maybe thirteen curled to himself in the darkness trying to be perfectly still, he must detect you approaching by the quiet shift and shuffle of your feet; but his eyes must see nothing at all.

What is he imagining stalks him, in this deep and forgotten place?

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni


Down, down, down into the dark depths of the Under-Empire, the haven of the ratmen and source of so much evil inflicted upon the world. The tunnel was busted, its contents hidden behind walls of shadow and darkness, but Taalia felt an odd comfort in sliding back down into those fissures, one that she had not expected. The girl had, afterall, grown up in the Skavens bleak dominion. She had only been six years old when she had disappeared beneath the earth in Norsca, only to re-emerge into the light of Tilea when she was seventeen. Taalia had been adopted into the darkness, and had not seen the light of day until she was already a woman.

But back here, descending once more into the underside of the world, Taalia oddly little real fear. A dark and peverse part of her soul even clamoured in relief at returning home.

When the shepardess touched down and could not spot the boy around her, she first tugged appropriately on the rope. Then, she pushed it down from her waist and drew the noose together so that it would fit around her foot if she needed a swift escape - one that would see her standing rather than dangling on the end of a tether like bait for a fish.

Sinking into the dim atmosphere, the light of the surface melting away into sheets of blackness, Taalia instinctively drew her shoulders together and hunched down, drawing herself closer to the ground with her arms slightly out at her side for stability and balance. Quietly, Taalia sifted through the darkness, relying on both her fantastically developed night-attuned eyes and excellent hearing - and both soon led her to the boy.

She spotted his small, huddled figure soon enough, drawn in to appear small, hiding as best he could. He had, after all, just heard the ugly language of the Skaven spoken down to him from no visible human source - so naturally he would seek to draw himself into an enclosed space where he could hide and wait out the danger.

Assuming, of course, that that was what he was trying to obsfucate himself from...and not something else.

Still crouch-walking low to the ground, Taalia would draw herself close to him and bring a hand up to her face, where she would make the 'Shh...' gesture with a gloved finger over her lips.

[MrAbdiel]

You can hear his breath hitching with terror as you approach; but the very human hush from your lips, and perhaps his eyes finally able to resolve the silver corona of your hair like the cusp of a lunar eclipse, calms him as he makes the critical determination that you are not one of them.

"My leg..." he whispers quietly, desperately, and you see what he means; the fall has battered and scratched him all over but he came down on one leg harder than the other.. He's dislocated his leg at the hip, which will not kill him but leave him with a menacing ache in later life once you get him out of here and have a chance to enlist Bella's help in repositioning it.

One more thing catches your eye; grooving in the curved face of the wall behind the boy, around a large piece of stone set into the surface like a mounted gem. It doesn't gleam like a gem with the trickle of light you can access - perhaps some kind of quartz or marble, though? But it is raised from the surface of the stone, around waist height to you standing, conspicuous and inviting touch.

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni

Taalia smiled gently when she knelt down before the lad, her tall silhouette slowly taking on her more feminine and comely appearance as she drew closer.

"My leg..." he whispers quietly, desperately, and you see what he means; the fall has battered and scratched him all over but he came down on one leg harder than the other.. He's dislocated his leg at the hip, which will not kill him but leave him with a menacing ache in later life once you get him out of here and have a chance to enlist Bella's help in repositioning it.

The shepardess nodded gently, her own smoky voice taken down to barely above a whisper and close to the boys ear so that he could hear her even through her unusual accent. "I will get you out of here, lad."

Making good on her promise, Taalia put her arms forward in a gesture, looking to him him to his feet and semi-carry him back towards the rope. Having heaved and carted about wriggling lambs, squealing pigs and uncooperative sheep, the boy, though weighty, proved a much easier burden to shift, as the shepardess half carried him over one shoulder as she quietly stepped back towards the rope. This was not the first lost lamb she had returned to the flock.

Upon returning to it, Taalia gently set the boy down on one foot and opened the noose to set it down over his shoulders and under his arms, thus taking all the weight off his injured limb. Seeing that he was fastened, she gave a smile and peck on the cheek.

"Almost home little piccolo," she stated, the word 'piccolo' being one of endearment for a boy his age. Reaching up, she gripped the rope and gave the appropriate tugs to signal the return of the rope and its cargo.

Seeing the boy steadily rise, Taalia turned about, her attention on that marble-like object. What on earth was it? Was it some kind of switch? Or device? Was it the remnant of a support beam whose time-induced erosion had caused the collapse in the first place? Uncertain, but curious, and knowing she had a few minutes until the rope returned back down for her, the shepardess would once again stick close the ground and carefully, quietly, approach the piece of set marble with an eye for curiosity and inspection.

[MrAbdiel]

The lad is drawn gently into the shaft of light in the ceiling, and soon you hear the fluttering blur of adulation from his his companions. Another soul the gods put in your path for you to save, and with your heart beating in your chest for fear of what the place might have held, you did the good thing, and now he is saved.

You think of Vittorio, hiding under Gaulfredo's cart with Rocco standing vigil, while Gaulfredo stalked off into the woods to find vengeance on the goblins that stole his horse... only to return with you, instead.

When they arrived at that cart, Nameless oddly deferred to the mans judgement. This was, after all, his realm. If he appeared scared then she would be. But when that - dog!! - arrived and he showed nought but affection, so did Nameless. But then a boy emerged - a healthy boy! Not some wasted looking, pallid little miserable wretch, but an actual boy, with a vigilant father...this is what human children were supposed to look like.

But now you're here, and with no sign of your own tormenters, you indulge your curiousity and return to that wall and seek the truth of this place in the dark. When your fingertips touch the setting of rosy stone, all is made clear, even if for a moment.

Your nostrils fill with an scent you could barely describe - something like the ozone in the air after a lightning strike, but not so acrid and stinging. And then the chamber, the whole cavern, is bathed in warm rose-gold light emanating from the polished hub of rose quarts and many like it on the walls around you. Not rough stone walls, nor crudely scupted by the hands of slaves, but lovingly cut and smoothed by tool and skill of artisans long gone.

You are standing in a tremendous tunnel the act of whose manufacture beggars belief. From the tightly interlocked pavers on the floor to the smoothed stone ceiling above there is fifty feet of clear air. Above that, you know there is another thirty feet or so of earth, which heaped up in a pile beneath the breach enough that the boy, in his fall, landed with relative gentleness on churned soil instead of plunging to a death on hard stone. The rose quartz hubs are some kind of lighting you are forced to imagine is magical in nature, and touching this one has activated it and those up and down huge underground road, wide enough to march an army down, for two hundred feet in each direction north and south before the light tapers into dark again. But no sooner do the lights come on but they begin to fade. You have triggered some kind of illumination system that must have been predicated on care and maintenance, and remaining idle and hidden here it has drawn on the last dregs of its power to show you, for about three or four seconds, the grandeur that existed once beneath the earth.

Only dwarves could have made this. Nogrom did not speak overly much of his people's past, but you have picked it up in pieces; like the elves upon whose ruins so many cities in Tilea and Bretonnia are built, the Dwarves once had a great empire that sprawled through the mountains throughout the whole continent. This road must have run south from here into into the Irrana mountains, and north toward the cluster of mountains your map of the Duchies calls 'Massif Orcal'. But more than that, you are standing at what seems to be some kind of intersection. Off the side of the main tunnel is a smaller one, only thirty feet high, that would have run west if it were not collapsed in on itself. Large bolstering columns of stone have been left either side of this passage, but the one on the left is cracked and tumbled; and in the light you can see the spidering crack that has lead from there all the way to the middle of the main tunnel's ceiling where the earth finally gave way. The side passage's interior is collapsed in and blocked up with debris manually, comprehensively obstructed in what seems more likely to have been a controlled demolition than a precise accident. And above that passage, engraved on the twenty feet of stone between the archway and the ceiling, is a grand stone image of two figures. One is a dwarf certainly by stature, with a great winged helm that seems imperious and regal. The other is humanoid, though the outlandish height and plume on his helm and the graven scales on his male suggest to you this is some kind of elven lord. Both elf and dwarf have weapon in hand, but the spear and axe respectively are held in the hand furthest from the meeting. The hand closest on each side is extended in what seems to be a friendly clasp, and any who might have proceeded in this tunnel in its heyday would have passed beneath this icon of camaraderie.

There are no mountains west of Carcassone. Where did this tunnel go, or even intend to go if it was never completed? Did it veer away further west? Did it terminate in some underground dwarven hold closer to the coast? Did it, as the imagery seems to suggest, dare to strike out west and west, and further west, beneath the coast and beneath the great ocean and far into the fabled homeland of the elves that is supposed to lie beyond the waves? Would it even be possible? You have known your share of tunnels, and the rats keep well clear of the coast for fear of breaching the sea. The idea of a tunnel that delves so far beneath the ground it goes under the ocean is mindbending. No one can say what lies at the bottom of the sea, let alone beneath that.

Whatever success or failure this tunnel ever had, it has been sealed, and this greater thoroughfare has been abandoned. Likely, it is sealed off far enough north and south too, for it seems to have seen no use at all for... many, many years. For a few seconds, this tunnel under the earth, the product of labor and care of those dwarven artisans and engineers long gone, is showcased in the warm light of the stones, before that remnant magic bleeds away and darkness swallows it all up again.

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni

The Shepardess could only marvel at the remnants of a deceased civilization stretching for before her into the depths of the earth. Vast, expansive and enameled in the labour of master craftsman and celebrating the friendship between two peoples Taalia's young race felt as ancient elders, the girl beheld a time capsule from another era, a bygone time whose world-shifting currents no longer ran through the land, but whose wake had shaped it all the same.

She smiled. She laughed.

"Haha!"

Though no particularly funny joke had been spoken, the idea that she'd end up underground again, only this time in a forgotten tunnel of the two prior dominant races of the world, having restored a prior elven shrine, was so improbable it had to be some joke from the gods above, a joke to which the shepardess chuckled in the dark.

Without a torch, the girl relied on the pillar of light poking through the hole in the earth some forty yards above and behind her, the residue of its illumination granting her sharp eyes the base motes of sun required to penetrate the darkness and pick out the details of the dwarven highway ruins. Even then, knowing that her perception of the totality of the beautifully crafted corridors was limited as it was, only made the Taalia feel smaller as she stood at the optimum of safety and curiosity. The girl had not even been on this earth for twenty years, having come into being only eighteen or nineteen years ago. Though her trials had been a sinkhole of misery from which she had only miraculously clawed her way up from, to stand here, now, in the edifices of prior civilisations that had stood proud and strong thousands of years ago...it gave one perspective. For all the hurdles she had overcome, her eighteen years seemed paltry and insignificant next to the generations linked together through thousands of years of labour and craftsmanship. The skill that had gone into crafting this highway during its construction had been a studious expertise and commitment, but also one of love, Taalia surmised. For only workers who truly loved their creations could foster such timeless beauty that could remain here, thousands of years without maintenance, yet still carry the undimmed glory of their original visages for this girl-human to see.

Swallowing as she beheld it all, Taalia wondered quietly to herself whether she would contribute to anything that would be happened upon millennia from now, as the workmen who fashioned these statues and roadways had. Would she ply some trade or assist with some production that generations in the future would look upon with awe?

She hoped so.

Inhaling a lungful of stale air, Taalia swallowed and ran her hand over the crafted edifices and bas-reliefs of the forgotten highway. She took the time to notice any pattern that she could, and acquire and proof that was available of the subterranean path. A worked bit of stone that had gone loose, a piece of the highway or statue - anything that she could use to present to a dwarf or, Verena willing, an elf, whom would recognise the craftsmanship of their people and believe the tall tale she now had to tell.

By the time Taalia returned to that column of light from above, the shepardess had a storm of thoughts rolling around in her head. Looking up at the others who were doubtless concerned about the laughter before her disappearance, the girl waved up to her fellows and drew the noose of the rope around her foot and held it with her spare hand so that she could be elevated back up to the surface.

She took careful note of this tunnels location, its position, so that it could be found by those armed with such coordinates.

[MrAbdiel]

By touch and by gloom, you explore the ruined intersection. The fact that it is starting to buckle here and now is testimony to dwarven engineering - that spidering crack from the demolished tunnel west suggests that unmaking is the cause of the weakness, and even that has taken a great age to manifest. You find a shard of pale stone in the rubble that suits your purpose: it seems to be from high up on the archway, shaken loose with the jolt of the ancient collapse. A smoothly fractured isosceletic wedge of stone that is almost a blade in shape, and its edge would abrade flesh instead of drawing blood. A corner of some intricate border mural of the greater carving is here; most of a dwarf and the shins of an elf back to back in the midst of some deed of glory. The detail on them is remarkable for the medium, and the very corner which corresponded to the corner of the block it once belonged to features an irregular shape you think is a dwarven numeral or character. You remember the dwarven banker and his apprentice, marking out their complex deals with hammered runic punches. A maker's mark? A signature? A graffito? Perhaps you will know, some day.

Back on the surface, you collaborate with Bella to pop the boy's hip back into place before the swelling can get any worse. He lets out a monstrous howl at the pain of it, but it's better now than later and he's fortunate to have a band of friends and family here to help him home. Poor though they are, with the boy thought lost returned to their number battered but not maimed or dead, they are in rich spirits indeed.

"Oh, Taalia!" Bella exclaims in alarm out of the blue, having noticed just now what you notice a moment after looking down at yourself. Your front is smeared and marred with charcoal black from handling the boy. Charcoal stains are treacherous, and you aren't afforded a chance to do much about them on the road. Where it's rubbed on your armor, you'll get most of it out with effort when you stop to camp. Where it has rubbed to your collar and the places where your gambeson and cloth are exposed... Well, you won't soon forget your journey through northern Carcassonne.

Jean-Paul's uncle, Jean-Michel, is profuse with his thanks to you directly while Briant confers with another of the burners and writes a letter for them to give to their lord about the location of the sinkhole, and suggestion to fence it off. Jean-Michel's praise comes in such a rapid fire Breton patter, curled with his local dialect, that it strains your fledgling grasp of the language.

"Que les dieux vous bénissent, madame, que les dieux vous bénissent, vous et votre belle amie, le seigneur et son cheval, bénédictions à vous tous. Taal embrasse tes têtes, Taal embrasse tes mains ! Comme nous pleurerions de perdre Jean-Paul - il est si intelligent, si intelligent - et comme sa mère me tuerait sûrement s'il mourait sous mes soins!"

He has little wealth to offer in reward even if you would take it, and charcoal is no particular use to you on the road. But he wants to give you something precious to him, all the same - a little wooden carving of a man, bearded and crowned with antlers, holding a bow close to himself. Most depictions of Karnos you saw back in Tilea had him with bow and spear, and this idol has only a bow held to his chest, but there is no doubt that this is a talisman devoted to that god, known in the lands north of the mountains as Taal. The idol was once pale ash wood, but is now well blackened by the grip of its owner. The face and hands on the idol are brighter, and more smoothed by the attention of the nervous thumb in nervous times.

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni

The Shepardess showed little concern for the blackened smudge of charcoal across her collar, the rims of the white blouse beneath her armor poking out and framing her jaw and neck rather nicely. The accumulation of dirt and grim was not uncommon, and with Taalia's history being dominated by filth and deprivation up until only a couple of years ago, she looked at Bella's concern with a grateful but amused little smile and a shrug.

"It just adds character!" she insisted, pecking her friend on the cheek before producing the crumbled pieces of stone that she had acquired from the tunnel, eager to share with her companion the significance of her find and the reason she had been down there for seemingly so long.

When she was approached by Jean-Michel, his excited gratitude instantly grabbing her attention, Taalia humbly waved off the mans insistances and praises. Though he was speaking too quickly for her to fully understand, she caught enough words and observed his behavior to tell that he was lathering on her a praise she did not feel worthy enough to receive.

"Que les dieux vous bénissent, madame, que les dieux vous bénissent, vous et votre belle amie, le seigneur et son cheval, bénédictions à vous tous. Taal embrasse tes têtes, Taal embrasse tes mains ! Comme nous pleurerions de perdre Jean-Paul - il est si intelligent, si intelligent - et comme sa mère me tuerait sûrement s'il mourait sous mes soins!"

"Non, non, vraiment, aucun éloge n'est nécessaire. J'ai fait ce que toute personne capable de le faire aurait fait. S'il vous plaît, veillez à ce que le garçon se repose et enlève le poids de sa jambe pendant un moment. Il est très jeune et devrait récupérez, mais remettez-vous à marcher, n'essayez pas d'un seul coup, sinon il pourrait prolonger sa blessure."

Her words came with the oh-you-shouldn't-have-thank-you-so-much-you're-wonderful-too humility and praise dance she had imbibed from the Tileans, her hands drawn up almost as if she were to pray, sometimes pressing one gloved palm on the mans shoulder, other times drawing herself inwards and bowing her gently bowing her head. The effect was the same: she had been more than happy to help, and she was relieved and thankful to Taal and the gods that little Jean-Paul was preserved against the evil that lurked deep in the ground.

When he hands over the little trinket however, Taalia's eyes widen a bit and her mouth archs in a thankful smile.

"Oh, you shouldn't have! No, I cannot, please, no reward is necessary!" she said in her coming-along-Bretonnian, her words now carrying an accent that was different than Bella's, whose native language was Tilean...because that wasn't the first complete language with which Taalia had become proficient. However, she was beginning to see the venn diagram of overlap between Bretonnian and Tilean culture and customs. Though the internal players of both regions would insist on a vast demarcation, to an outsider like Taalia she was slowly observing the intersections, particularly in the expression of emotion. Perhaps an installed mechanism from the slave pits within the girl had instructed her, with deathly sincerity, to never show emotions to fellow slaves, and especially not to the hated ratmen. Emotions were keys to the mind that one gave to others, that was how Taalia saw it. But such an atmosphere of anxious paranoia did not exist within the surface human lands. Well, perhaps it did in certain circles, but it was not the natural state of nation. She recalled fondly the way Gaulfredo would wear his heart on his sleeve, as demonstrated by the argument he engaged in with Adolpho during her first week in their company. Taalia had thought the two would come to blows! But no, that was just how their social rivers flowed. The more she explored of Bretonnia, she saw the cultural familiarity.

Was where she came from like that?

"Merci Monsieur! Merci pour votre gentillesse!" Taalia would finally accept the trinket after the little insistence/refusal game.

When Briant began writing a letter and crafting a small map that denoted the tunnels entrance, so that it could be fenced off, Taalia retrieved her own writing kit and parchment and copied his example. She only knew two dwarves in her life: Nogram and Eustace Goldbrick of Karag-Dar. She thought sending them a sample each and description of what she had found would be appreciated. At least the human pup is making herself useful! she smirked in imagination at one of them uttering after reading such a letter and observing the proof contained alongside it.

Another piece she would keep. The final piece would be packaged with her next letter home to Vittorio, Ariana and Gaulfreddo.

[MrAbdiel]

The charcoal burners gather their humble burdens, perform their last thanks, and make their way back to the road at a pace that poor limping Jean-Paul can manage with assistance. As their party goes, you notice another detail about them - all of the men carry smallswords on their backs in scabbards. Such armament is a little less improvised than you might expect of peasants, though Sir Briant provides some explanation as you continue toward on the road toward the river. "For orcs. From the mountains, as you've seen. It is not deeply uncommon for them to break through in numbers that require the peasants to fend for themselves, and all the mountain duchies tend to take their militia drills seriously. Carcassonne from the Iranna mountains, overwhich you flew; over the river, Quenelles too, from Massif Orcal, in the middle of the nation." Spears strike you as difficult to carry if you are already hauling charcoal; and while clubs and hammers might be fine weapons for battering men, the orcs you saw as you blitzed by on the flying machine seemed as thick and brawny a foe as one could want. Better to stab and pierce than batter and break, when forced to fight.

Later, as a lonely fort on a hill looms as evening draws in, you and your companions are encouraged by the cooling wind to camp.

"Can we not impress upon those in the fort for shelter, Sir Briant? Which lord dwells there? Do you know him, also?", Bella asks. You begin imagining the answer before Briant can give it - your keen eyes can see even from this distance that the fort is a ruin. Its outer walls appear to be in tact from this side, but they must be breached or open on another face. The citadel in the centre is thick and jagged at the middle, suggesting a history in which it had a tower or towers which have now collapsed.

"Alas, Bella dame, we cannot. But we may camp here, in the sight of it, and feel safe enough. Here; let us see what we might make of the food given by Margot and Donallo, and I will tell you a tale of these lands - for this is called Carcassonne now, but was was not always so. In the old days, the dark days, this was the duchy of Glanborielle..."

As you dine on soup, bread and cheese and the clouds begins dusting the landscape with snow, Sir Briant tells you and Bella about the old days, the dark days. You have a sense of Tilean history - the ancient Reman Empire, the first kingdom of men in the world, which stood for a thousand years before collapsing into its bickering princedoms that, over time, became the city states like your adoptive Verezzo. Briant's account of Bretonnia's 'old days' does not seem to stretch back that far. Indeed, as he tells it, the ancient Bretonni were once twenty tribes of horsemen who travelled from the west, over the grey mountains, and over centuries of gruelling warfare drove the orcs into the mountains and wild places. They fought one another for land, but bound together when the greenskins created peril. They learned of the fay-haunted forest of Loren, and not to trouble that woodland realm for their own sake. But it was the orcs that proved the true enemy of man. Four of the original twenty tribes were battered into remnants and myth, absorbed by the others, and the sixteen settled and built mighty forts and castles in the duchies as they are broadly known today. But there are fourteen duchies, not sixteen, now.

"Much of the eastern part of Carcassonne was once the duchy of Glanborielle, and across the river Brienne where we shall go soon is now all Quenelles when much of it was Cuileux. The decades before Gilles the Uniter delivered the land were a dark age, where our knights were merely horsemen, and we knew not the Grail. And in those days, orcs pouring from Massif Orcal massacred the people of Cuileux, and those rampaging up from the Irannas wiped away the folk of Glanborielle. Eventually, Gilles and his companions would unite the land and punish the greenskins so completely that most of the land could flourish in peace; but the spirits of those who once reigned in these places are sometimes restless, and we give their fallen places... respectful distance."

Given the turmoil you went through the last time you went to a haunted place, respectful distance strikes Bella as just fine - even if the ruined fort in the distant seems more melancholy than unsettling.

* * * * *

That night, you are expecting Bella to wake you to take watch, but you wake around the right time by your own instinct. Just as well - peeking into the open flap of Briant's tent, you find the brunette curled up and dozing in Briant's arms; both clothed and seemingly unrumpled by unchaste pursuits, but resting close and comfortable all the same. It seems your friend snuck in to spend the latter minutes of her watch in the knight's embrace, but found the arrangement so peaceful and to her liking that she drifted off entirely. But no ill has come of it; the embers of the fire just need an extra stir to bring them back to life, only briefly unattended. The snow has come down and covered the ground in a few inches of white powder all around, and it crunches pleasantly under your booted heels. But just as you are settling into your watch, you find you are lacking your watchmate - Milo has slipped away from you. This is deeply uncharacteristic of the kitten, who is now old enough to be springy and playful and swift but is deeply possessive of you and something of a fraidy cat. Bella speculates he was traumatized by the crash of the flying machine, but he seems to have found his courage as you can see his very obvious trail in the snow as he has bounced and plopped his way through the powder away from the camp in the direction of the fort. He can't have gotten that far - he was with you not long ago, after all - and he's likely to return to you swiftly on his own, but the thought that he might get snagged or buried in hidden dip in the snow and freeze, well... Perhaps it's best to seek him out right away.

Spoiler: OOC:

Show

A couple of decisions here. Tracking Milo is easy enough, but:

1 - Does Taalia want to go looking for the cat right away, or trust him to make his way back in due moments?

2 - If she does go following his tracks to find him, does she disturb Bella and Briant, or let them have their lovebird snooze? To all of Taalia's senses, the campsite seems safe; the land is clear, and her night eyes and keen nose detect nothing troubling.

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni

Taalia had listened to the tale of past tragedy and heroics, a moment of self-reflection understanding that one day, in the distant future, her life would be a similar little tale. It was easy to lose oneself to self-pity and to think that all the world's bad fortune was arrayed against them, but when one considered the historical ebb and flow of calamity and windfall, they could gain strength knowing that out there, somewhere past or present, were those who had it worse and yet endured and perservered.

It also presented a new threat to her attention: orcs.

Taalia had never really had many dealings with the greenskins, though she was not unfamiliar with them. There had been a fair share of the brutes toiling beneath the whips of the Skaven, where their fortitude and simplemindedness made them good workers, but their irresistible thirst for a fight often saw them leading short-lived, but brutally violent revolts. Likewise, in Tilea, they had not been a particularly noticeable threat, at least in her region of the land where pirates, mutants and brigands were the main culprits of menace and destitution. However, she had heard tales from those regions closer and more adjacent to the mountains, beautiful little vestiges that had to be tough and hardy against the occassional orcish raid spearing out from the jagged tops of the snow-capped crags where the greenskins built their ramshackle homes. The shepardess didn't want to think of the anxiety such a constant menace would pose to her mental well-being, for after escaping slavery she had found enough to worry about in the rearing of her sheep and pigs and shielding that which she held dear from trolls and pirates. But orcs too?

Hmmm. She recalled the passing moment when they sailed over the mountains that separated Tilea from Bretonnia, where they had first seen Sir Briant in his desperate moments, and Taalia had put a lead shot right through the forehead of a particularly sizeable orc that had been threatening the knight. That is how one confronted such beasts; with heart, faith, steel and gunpowder. She had demonstrated as such once again during the skirmish with the goblin wolfriders, the image of the blunderbuss raking their ranks still fresh in her mind.

And so, with the founding tales of the land still fresh in her mind, Taalia took first watch among the lightly wooded forest that surrounded the bleak and empty castle ruins perched above them like some silent icon of a bygone age. She still remembered the last derelict home besides which she had camped, or at least one that had seemed empty at the time. The weapon the spirit had dropped was still in her possession, and as a precaution to their current proximity to another potential hotspot of spirits the shepardess had seen fit to add its scabbard to her belt in the unlikely event that its use was necessary. Better to have and not need, than need and not have, after all.

Speaking of necessities...

Taalia smirked to herself when she caught a glimpse of Briant and Bella through a brief moment of visibility through the entrance to the tent. The shepardess had received the secret words from her friend, uttered in hushed and excited whispers one might expect from a giggly school-girl, as her Tilean companion ad spoken so highly of their knightly escort. He was so handsome. He was so brave. He had a beating, warm hearth beneath the muscle of his body and the steel of his armor. His gallantry and skill must be exceptional, for he had fought off the two remaining orcs, slain them and scaled down the mountain, after all. Taalia pondered briefly on the twists and turns life took, and it made her smile thinking that perhaps Bella's rotten luck with her parents, only to meet her and travel through Bretonnia, could possibly lead to her hand in hand with a famed knight of the realm.

But she still didn't care for that thin moustache. Grow a neat beard or go clean-shaven, Taalia thought.

Turing back to peer at the soft fall of snow curtaining through the sparse woods in which they camped, Taalia exhaled a plume of vapor in the chilly night air, but nevertheless found herself warm and content. Until, that is, she noticed Milo's absence.

Wishing to draw her cat up onto her lap and absentmindedly pet him, the shepardess pivoted her head about, worry soon gnawing at her nerves as the feline's vacancy grew more apparent. Standing up, peering about, it didn't take Taalia long to find the little catpaw tracks leading...towards the derelict ruins.

"Damnit Milo!" Taalia hissed under her breath.

Looking back at the end, a pang of guilt knotting up in her about needing to briefly lead or disrupt the budding affection, Taalia knew that she had to do the latter, even minimally. She was on post as lookout - she couldn't abandon it without warning. What if something came wandering through the woods at such an opportune time, however unlikely?

Exhaling, leaning forward a little as if her physical movements would soften her intrusion, Taalia spoke gently towards the tend, her tone clearly sculpted as if to believe only Briant would be awake and that Bella would be asleep.

"Sir Briant - Milo had just gotten lost, but I see his tracks; I will return in a few minutes once I retrieve him!"

There. That was enough. She'd done her part.

Turning back and looking at the trail before her, Taalia inhaled and trudged forward, her boots pressing into the snow as she went after her cat.

[MrAbdiel]

Briant murmurs awake and absorbs your warning with blinking confusion, but you are satisfied that he has heard you sufficiently that over the following two minutes he will shake out your meaning in his short term memory and keep aware of his surrounds. And then you're off, chasing the scuffy kitten craters in the snow that lance out toward the ruin, then veer and curl and meander like he's found something to chase, zagging and swooping toward the ruin. After a few minutes of pursuit, you come across the little orange puff springing about, changing directions as he pursues some unseen quarry giving you just the right moment to snatch him up mid pounce. He yowls with ingratitude and bites your hand, only to lick it a second after once he has re-examined his position.

At that time, the snowclouds cluttering the sky choose a moment to split in such a way a slice of the night sky is visible. A jagged black star-studded slash spills tainted moonlight over the snow, with half of the the face of a sickly moon verging past the grey cover, bathes the snow around you in strange radiance. You saw well enough even with the moonlight barely penetrating the clouds and the flicker of the distant campfire poked back into life, but now you see more. Because there is more. Notably, the ruin ahead of you remains ruined, but the tower that has crumbled into its centre is erect again in pale, translucent green; a glassy spectre of ancient glory haunting the place it once stood. Atop that tower shines something - some kind of torch or beacon - glowing with mysterious witchlight that cannot possibly be natural given its location. And glancing back the way you came, you see something more - something in the path carved in the snow, in the gouges where Milo landed and leapt and the shadows cast now by the tower's glow, a message:

P A R L E

A word, or most of one, terminating where you snatched the rogue kitten up from his play. Has he been used to write this? Is he... compromised, like he was with the spirit in lady Margot? But even with the strange light of the wicked moon, you do not detect, with that sense you can best describe as second scent, anything like those daemon magics. Whatever is in the air is... purer. Not twisted. The scent of running water, from a river that does not flow anymore.

Milo makes a bid to leap from your arms to keep going toward the tower. He seems to want to investigate, at least. But your record with spirits, and this blasted moon, is less than positive.

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni


Taalia could do little but stare at the scene before her, as even her instinctual fear towards the supernatural was serenely demoted by the placid nature of what she saw. It was easy to be frightened, terrified even, as recollections of her time within that isolated country manor and its ghoulish interior rushed back into her mind to warn the girl against messing around with spirits again, lest she not be so lucky this time to find a way out.

And yet, no fear resonated within her, no bleak apprehension sought to squash her curiosity and turn her around to walk back to the camp with her little cat in arms.

Swallowing, biting her bottom lip, Taalia looked down at the message written across the snow by Milo's unwitting movements. In her basic Bretonnian, she knew it was 'speak', because it was the same word in Tilean.

Looking back up at that lonely ruin, then back at the words, Taalia knelt down to gently let Milo from her hands so that he could resume his guided work...

[MrAbdiel]

P A R L E R

The remaining R appears to be the extent of the message, and Milo is happy enough to frollick in the snow to complete it. He peers up at you from the new graven character in the snow, offers a compelling and playful little mrew before bounding off toward the ruin again. Cautiously, you follow to the foot of the old fort and through the long doorless archway within. The heaping ruin of stone of the collapsed tower occupies most of the floor, but Milo navigates over it with aplomb to the back of the room, to a wall whose old masonry ceases along a jagged line to be stone and begins anew as a spectral echo of its former glory. Along that wall is the glassy, ghostly shape of a wooden interior staircase - some of its lower steps protruding into the rubble below. On to the next step above the rubble, Milo leaps - but instead of slipping through the ghostly stuff as he has every reason to do, he settles on it, pivots to look at you, and mrews a second time.

It seems this tower's former glory is made real - or real enough - in the light of the witching moon to be climbed to its top. The gap in the snow clouds remains open and the wind runs along the seam, so it should last a little longer - but you speculate, with your fledgling understanding of magic, that standing at the top of a ghost tower that fell hundreds of years prior is only possible in that moonlight. Through the transparent layers of the tower, you see the foggy form of a man - a soldier, a watchman, perhaps a knight - standing by the ghostfire beacon and gazing out over the river beyond. If there is anyone here to whom you are expected to parler, it must be this figure - if you dare trust the unwholesome structure's invitation at all.

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni

Taalia proceeded cautiously into the moonlit ruins of that crested the hill with its dilapidated, lonely image. Though singular atop its heap, the small fort was oddly serene, the silvery light of Luna almost blanketing it the way a mother would an only child. Milo's formations in the snow had calmed the shepardess, who had originally considered little more than more wicked specter's and spirits at play, but as she entered through the decaying archways she looked upon the transparent stairs with wide-eyed astonishment.

Nothing felt wrong. That was the weirdest thing. Having grown up as a slave to the Skaven, Taalia had a particularly well-developed and attuned antennae for danger and the sinister, yet it seemed inactive in this place. There was no instinctual caution, no shivering warning or deep-seated concern that she was moving into the embrace of something wicked and malicious. Instead, she felt oddly at peace, a sincere and genuine tranquility.

Reaching down to pick up her cat, Taalia looked up the circular stairwell, as she was able to spot the adjacent battlements through the semi-see through moonlight construct that filled in the stairway and made it passable. Swallowing, biting her bottom lip, but once again feeling no fear or apprehension, the shepardess took her first step onto the silvery step before her, marveling at how it held up her weight as if it were a permanent fixture. Then another step. And another. Gaining confidence, the girl ascended the stairway, one hand holding her pet close and her other ready to grab at any outcropping should the spectre's trap be exposed and the ground give away beneath her...

[MrAbdiel]

Milo returns to his agreeable, pliable self when you scoop him up again; happy to ride in your arms or cling to your shoulder as you go up the spectral stairs. To him, at least, this seems unalarming; perhaps that is a small comfort.

The stairs do not give way, and their phantom ascend leads to a phantom turret at the top of the tower, where a phantom signal fire casts its eerie glow over the snows below, the river beyond... and you see now, toward a matching light upon a similarly destroyed and mystically reimagined tower on the other side of the river, in Quenelles.

You share this vista with a single sentinel; a ghost of a mountain of a man who must be seven feet tall. Cool, stoic stillness fills his features as he gazes out over the river and beyond. The ancient Bretonnian, or perhaps Bretonni, seems to take no notice of you for a minute or so before finally his ghostly gaze sweeps your person. He strikes you as sad; a little tired, even. Without explaining himself, he unlimbers a scabbarded blade with its shoulderstrap from his person, and offers it to you. Or... the ghost of it, anyway; the scabbard and simple hilt of the longblade shimmering like hazy turquoise glass.

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni


Taalia ascended the ghostly stairs with a cat in one arm and a hand on the pommel of her sword. Milo's relaxed mood does much to set the former slave at ease for she believed the animals had a way about them, a perception, a sense that detected the harms in the world before humans could discern them. Flighty and timid creatures who were only roused to fight when it was against a rival for territory, the feline mind avoided conflict and danger as much as it could, so that fact that her white-and-orange furball rested peacefully in her arm went far to draw Taalia into a sense of trust.

Not that she could really trust those stairscases, however. Her engineering-based mind boggled at the lack of visible substance, the mathematics at the back of her head, pondered over in Queekish, refused to accept the impossibility within the natural world that was clearly being invaded by the supernatural. Nevertheless, Taalia ascended, the rampart coming to surround her as she could peer through the decayed crenelles into the snow-blanketed Bretonnian countryside below. She was even able to spot the white-brown sheets of their tent through the branches, the small light within burning with a gentle warmth that the girl could picture Briant and Belle huddled about. It made her smile.

But, she was not alone up here.

You share this vista with a single sentinel; a ghost of a mountain of a man who must be seven feet tall. Cool, stoic stillness fills his features as he gazes out over the river and beyond. The ancient Bretonnian, or perhaps Bretonni, seems to take no notice of you for a minute or so before finally his ghostly gaze sweeps your person. He strikes you as sad; a little tired, even. Without explaining himself, he unlimbers a scabbarded blade with its shoulder strap from his person, and offers it to you. Or... the ghost of it, anyway; the scabbard and simple hilt of the longblade shimmering like hazy turquoise glass.

It took a lot to scare Taalia these days, and this was no exception. After her upbringing in the pits where she bore witness to mortal horrors of flesh and bone, to the lonely manor on the mountain pass between Tilea and Bretonnian and the forlorn spirit that used to reside there, ghosts and specters no longer frightened her. But in this case, she believed it didn't want to. There was something to the figure's gait, his resigned mien that offered no hostility or danger to the girl, his presence only a reminder that there was something more than the physical world around them, a spirit, a soul that lived on once the bodily functions had ceased.

Is that what this apparition wanted? When the specter in the lonely estate had born witness to the fate of his family, his grip upon the material world had slipped and it had passed on to whatever fate awaited them all in the next life. There had been an anchor, a physical deposit that tethered them to this world and kept them locked within like some type of prison from which they went mad trying to escape. Was that the intent of this spirit? Was that the purpose of its offering?

Remembering the manners imparted upon her by the nobles of Bretonnia, Taalia put Milo down and then curtsied in respect, before slightly bowing her hand and holding both hands aloft, palms facing upwards, to receive what was offered.

[MrAbdiel]

The ghostblade is cold to the touch when its scabbaded weight settles in your hands, as if it had just been dug out of a snowdrift. Ethereal smoke with that clean otherworldly non-smell wisps up from where your skin presses against the echo of ancient leather wrapped about wood. The spectre offers no communication to you as regards his expectation with this. He merely gazes ambigiously at you, then through you, then turns to gaze back idly across the river as if you weren't there at all anymore.

Then come the orcs.

"WaaAAAAaaghhh!"

You hear the growling, whooping chorus of them; echoing hollow through the air as they charge. Gazing from the balcony down, you see them coming - not from the river where the sentinent mutely gazes, but from the south; from behind, from the southern mountains, from the way you came. And not orcs, either; but shades thereof in the same smoky, glassy guise as the spectral tower and the knight and the sword. Orcs that rampaged once across this land rampaging in recursion now, folding together out of fog rising from the snow and barreling north toward the tower, and the river.. and before either of those, toward your camp. You can see Briant and Bella scrambling from rest for the saddle and a chance to flee. Even from here, you can see Bella struggling in her waking confusion to find you and make sure you are safe. Briant, wakeful since your warning, throws her over his shoulder rather than negotiate with her in that condition. It may be just as well that he does, with the spectral orcs rapidly closing on the camp.

The ghost-knight gives no indication that he notices this, or intends to help, or could possibly do so. His interaction with you seems to be all the deviation from his vigil that he can muster.

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni


It fascinated the former slave to stand this close to an apparently non-hostile specter, a ghostly apparition that allowed her to inspect its image without casting any judgement, scorn or violence. For Taalia's number-loving mind, having grown her own business and learned the precise art of forging firearms, what stood before her should not be. It was an outgrowth of the supernatural, an entity with no physical manifestation in the real world yet capable of interacting with every bit of it should it desire when the conditions were conducive enough. Thus, the blade came gently into Taalia's waiting palms, the cool, ethereal steel kissing her skin with little wisps of turquoise vapor that disappeared into the atmosphere almost as quickly as they were generated.

Then there was that noise.

Turning her head about to discern the source of that ungodly racket, Taalia stepped towards the ramparts and stood between the crenels, hands to either side as she peered out across the light snow draped about the wood, scanning the interior. It did not take long for her excellent eyesight to detect the anomalous movement. The same otherworldly light emanating from the specter at her side was seemingly carried within a gaggle of lumbering, ape-like beasts shoving their way through the forest. Taalia's eyes widened in recognition: orcs!

Those hideous, green beasts she had the misfortune of witnessing during their passage through the mountains!

She shot a look back at the ghost beside her, but his impassive disinterest told her immediately that he would be of little use in this situation.

What if the orcs weren't real, what if they were ju -

The sword.

The specter had offered her the sword to fight off the ghostly orcs. Had she triggered their arrival by accepting its weapon? She had thought perhaps the specter desired her to lay it to rest in some nearby location, one it could not reach but desperately wanted to deposit its final connection to the physical realm so that it could pass into welcome eternal rest. But not so apparently - it was all a trap!

Then her heart froze - Belle and Briant! Thankfully she had warned Briant before this...foolish distraction, but she felt guilt tug through her body anyway as she beckoned towards their tent.

"Briant! Bella! Up here!" she waved her arms about desperately in their direction.

She already had a sword on her hip from the haunted villa. That should prove capable of damaging any ghostly entity. The one in her hand was also of a similar breed, albeit more spirit-y in appearance. If Briant and her could hold the orcs at bay at a bottleneck, they should be able to withstand whatever examinator trap she had unwittingly sprung...

[MrAbdiel]

Your voice is competing with the howl of the phantom greenskins, but you are a dark and distinct shape at the top of the glassy tower of baleful moonlight. You hear Bella cry out in recognition and point your way. She becomes more cooperative with Briant immediately and they scramble into Cleménce's saddle and get to hoof toward the tower. It's an oblique approach against the angle of the orcs' charge; and as you race down the smoking stairs and out into the snow. But they're too far, and you're too slow, and the orcs seem not only not impeded by the snow but somehow supernaturally accelerated sufficient to threaten the horse finding its stride. A smoking, ethereal axe of stone scythes overhead and cracks into Briant's shield just shy of finding Bella's back, and you grope for the ghostblade as spears thrust out toward the horse's flanks, and darkness engulfs the battlefield.

Your night eyes kick in a moment later in the dreadful silence that follows. The clouds have swallowed up the wicked moon and its profane light, and just like that the orcs are gone leaving only their smashed path of their footprints in the snow. Behind you, the the tower is just a ruin now; bereft of that strange echo. And on your hip, the given blade is gone entirely as if it had never been there.

"Taalia!" Bella almost launches herself from the horse to lay hands on you and be assured of your safety, and only then is she able to begin to settle down. Briant stands up in the saddle and scans about for some source of the trick.

"...Tricks of Morr's moon," he speculates with a sigh. "...Though deadly enough. Are you alright, Taalia? What did you see, up there?"

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni

Words caught in Taalia's throat, her eyes wide as she had withdrawn the ghostly weapon in preparation to sell her life as best she could to allow Bella and Briant the chance to escape. She knew that deep down, the Bretonnian Knight would not allow a woman, a foreign woman of all things, to make the sacrifice for him. No no, his codes of chivalry demanded that he lay himself across the bed of nails so that the two ladies may escape. In a biological estimation, it made sense. Taalia and Bella could go on to sire 5-8 children each, while should the former slavish perish, that potential number of future people was cut in half.

But Taalia was not obeying current arithmetic. She drew the ghostly weapon, brought up her free hand to smack the horse sternly on the rump to expediate its flight only for....the orcs to vanish into the ether, from whence they came.

Left open eyed, poised to strike and ready to sell herself, the white-haired shepardess darted a look to and fro as her surroundings had been filled with spectral menace, to the gentle blanket of a peaceful nights snow. The breath in her lungs was cold while her skin was warm from sudden exhilaration, but as the shepardess lowered her weapon, she turned see that she actually held nothing in that appendage: the spirits were gone. She looked back up at the battlements of the fort, blinking and hoping to spot that lone figure, whether in his full, teal glory and as little more than a shadow whose presence was pale imitation of its former self, but nothing. No evidence was present of her interaction or tale to tell, if such a thing had even existed at all.

Turning back to Briant and hearing his question, his mixture of astonishment and curiosity almost equalling hers, Taalia looked back one more time to those ramparts to ensure that the apparition truly had moved on, before returning her gaze to him.

Swallowing, confused, "let's go back..." she gestured towards their tent.

"I'll tell you all about it."

And that's exactly what she did, with no detail spared.


OOC:
Btw, your PM box is full.