The Savage Realm
The Marches
Prologue
The sounds of the village outside were at first all the real company the man had after sitting in his prison for several days on end. It was not the guards who kept him company, rather the sound of freedom just outside the walls. The odd tradesman or merchant, followed by women and their young children all kept the day lively down the short ways into the heart of the community as it was only their indistinct voices and the sound of their business that could reach the half blood man's ears. Little here happened in the cell as it were, as the guardsman, when he was present, did little more than ensure their captive was provided the most basic of food and drink, and then was off again to leave the lone soul in isolation; leaving him to sit with his charge of vagrancy.
Between the bowl of water and stale, tough slices of bread, there was little else to do outside practice his art and moreover, meditate and pray. This had been the nature of things, the ritual, all up until the old stone prison became less solitary. A reclusive man had been brought in and casually cast into a cell down the way with the same disregard they did the man-orc, left to surely rot until they could figure out what to do with him at all. So he had been told, the reason for this was that his own trial would be delayed until the people of the village would provide testimony and witness for him - they would not. This left him in a purgatory, one resolved only by the local magistrate and justice, both of whom had better things to do than worry about one vagrant orc and now one lone man. It was clear, however, to Gorosk what this man's charges were as the militia who dragged him announced his charges.
"Vagrancy, drunkenness, traveling without the permission of their lord", all things that could be believed and from the sound of it, the man was not even conscious or coherent enough to resist in little more than word. Probably content to sleep off the rest of his alcohol and by spying him through the most extreme angles of the narrow cell, this too was confirmed as he slept haphazardly with his back to the wall. At least now the follower of perfection's ways was not alone. If he wished conversation he probably would well have it when the man came to and he did, although the man was not forthcoming. He called himself "Renault" and did not dispute what he was charged with although he spoke little on it, seemingly content to instead remain in withdrawal from the situation.
For whatever reason it was, the sole two prisoners of the entire village were far more introverts than they were extroverts, huddling around their core sense of identity and either doing battle with it or using it to sustain themselves in this time of waiting; with much waiting to be done still.
What came next over the passing days was different from their circumstances, for when the militia returned, this time they came late and loudly. The sound of horse and cart outside alerted the two men to their return, as did the urgency it arrived and the roar of their torches which cast a great orange glow into the barred windows. They dismounted and drew out another man, whom they berated for the militia's misfortune of needing to travel at this hour as the Marches were the lone inhabited land with such a legendary background for nightfall's threats. Were it any later past the hour of twilight, it was quite possible none of them would have arrived at all both Gorosk and Renault knew, so the anger they redirected toward their captive was hardly surprising. They cast him in, carelessly this time, with Renault, hurling him in after having kept him aloft by the arms and shoulders.
They bothered not to even charge him formally, shutting behind him and before the cell's former single occupant the wrought iron bars and securing the lock and its bolt. Like the man from Andallia, the newest addition was very human, whereas Gorosk's identity was not quite clear to the other. Perhaps for the better, for the time being, as even the half orc knew that his heritage was at least a major subject of his imprisonment; if an orc wished not to be seen as a slavering, bloodthirsty warmonger bent on pillaging everything in reach, it would take no shortage of concession and kindness to the mundane folk to persuade them otherwise - too, too many years of old wars and raids long past made it impossible otherwise and the village of Redbarrow was no exception in any sense. But for both Renault and the newcomer in "de Brey", specifically Quentin, the night was spent having to rely on the fact that neither of them might kill the other during it. Fortunate enough for them both, the two were amicable enough to not resort to conflict and would rather nurse their respective wounds to pride than fight over what little space they had.
Come the next evening, just as the sun had begun its slow crawl toward the horizon, the warmth of the day fading in this spring season, the militia returned again. The rattle of their flimsy, poorly kept chain, the creak of their open wagon and hoof fall of their horse gave them away, but this time they were not alone. More horses and more men on foot too, with the latter being obvious through the narrow hole to the outside world that the prison's first member could see; a mob of five men, all wearing armor and armed with spears, shields, barring one with a crossbow. They looked as raggedy and disorganized as Gorosk remembered the rest to be, not professional soldiers and certainly only the peasants wearing the mantle laid upon them. But what filled his emerald eyes with surprise, most likely, was that their captive was a woman. A tall, robust woman, one that dwarfed them all in much the way they made say, a man made a halfling seem insignificant.
She was not just shackled but kept in chains, bolted to the wagon itself and only unlocked by one man and his set of keys as they followed her in, letting her bonds scrape along the stone floor as she shuffled on. While she seemed to be a human, her shade of flesh in its pale slate tone and odd markings was anything but human, and as she passed by her new company in this forsaken little holding place, spears leveled at her, she was put into a hold of her own. The men, as they stood in the hall between the cells, were clearly quite tense until she was locked in, her chains removed, and her shackles taken off. It was likely they had spent hours, if not a few days keeping her under arrest, and when one of the men announced her charges it was clear why beyond just appearances; "unlawful hunting, disturbing cursed ground, and conspiring with beasts".
For all listening, these types of accusations were not light in the Marches, and any one of them was a serious charge. The type of charge that would surely merit an actual sentence than just being kept captive until the purveyors of the law in this land could come around to carry out whatever sense of justice they deemed fit. Likewise, it was overwhelmingly clear why they came with so many men and arms, as the woman was more than just intimidating through her presumed physical power, it was evident she had a friend in nature. Nature, that very thing that devoured the unwitting, tore them asunder, and left only grim evidence of their once being here in this land, was in some way her ally. Was she a witch? Had she made some pact that had twisted her so like this? Or was she some sort of poor, unfortunate being with the luck to be this way on her own?
Whatever the case was, the resident guard cast out the rations while the rest stowed their equipment, preparing to leave. Once he had finished, the sound of the entrance's door being secured for the night, they all had been left with one another for the first time...
@BangoSkank@Ghost Shadow@Hellion@TyrannosaursRex
