[IC] As We Knew It

[Dinh AaronMk]

Grand Traverse county

The waters of Lake Michigan had been rendered slate gray as frozen north winds tore south. Waves that were once magnificent as they were often stormy in autumn flattened and died. What not stretched clear into the horizon now was a wasteland of ice. Ice so thick and hard it did not take the sun. Where the snow had not drifted into great white dunes the ice of the lake lay like a coat of armor across the surface of the lake. Impenetrable. Wrought of steel. Gone were the days epic ships passed through the winter waters to break it. Now were the days it grew thick. Now were the days it would not break till spring.

High atop a hill over looking the wasteland expanse stood a monument to a man. Planks of drift wood, sheets of steel, and columns of brick and bundle of rebar formed a wide irregular circle. The stands bound and kept as one by thick bare vines with the still-hanging shriveled grapes that they bore.

The vines twisted and turned across the ground - which had been cleared of snow – to a central nexus. An alter. A sarcophagus. Wrapped around the pile of brick and stacked cement that it was twirled the vines, deadened for the winter. They gripped the sides and rose up, the coarse woody arms raising to the sky, supported by each other as if they were a bonfire.

“What are you waiting for, you said you would do it!” jeered a distraught boy at the base of the alter. He looked to be a youth of eleven, his fair skin beat cheery-red against the biting, driving coldness of the winter air. A red knit cap was pulled over his long blonde hair. His blue eyes stared out excited, anxious, expectantly. His heavy coat flapped and fluttered against his side and arm, several sizes too big anyways.

Standing next to him was a young girl of equal age. An ungloved hand rested on the frozen surface of the alter-piece alongside the offerings and left-behinds of pilgrims past: bloodied rags, jars of air, even a foreskin or two sat clustered in the empty space created in the vines. Little things left behind by the gulls and the crows when they descended on the frozen sanctuary, or simply not eaten yet.

Raised above her outstretched hand hovered a quivering knife. Jagged, and hardly clean it loomed over her waiting fingers as her companion continued to pressure for the offering.

Long auburn hair flew in the wind. Whipping up into her face as a sudden hard blast of frantic lake-wind tore across her face, singing the exposed skin even redder. The young girl recoiled against the biting wind and she bit on her lips.

“I'm scarred!” she blurted out. She squinted her green eyes as the wind continued to blow. As they teared up against the dry wind they dripped down her face, freezing. It only made the cold worse and it irritated her. Her heart raced as she hovered her father's knife over her hand.

“But you promised!” the boy said excitedly. He felt a feeling of dread as he realized that perhaps the sacrifice would not be made today. Nor would he get the chance to make his bid for fortune.

“They say great things happen when you give!” the boy said again, “Like, that's what everyone says about this. We'll all have to at some point.”

“Yes Theo, but I'm scared now!” the girl screamed back, sobbing under the pressure, “I know what I said God damn it. But now I don't know!”

“What, you're chicken!?” Theo taunted. Theo, of the house of Pierce. His family – like the girl's – was one of the prominent ones. One of the ones on the Council. He didn't know what they did, or why they were important. All he knew is that he'd be on it someday for sure. And all men on the council were great men. Some having made great offerings to Joshua.

“Well maybe I am, what are you going to do about it?” the girl snapped back. Angela Rythmann. Some said he family was wealthier than the House of Pierce, but Theo didn't know why. The Pierces owned the most vineyards in all of Grand Traverse! How could they not?

But, some say they weren't, no matter how many slaves they owned. Once more, he never knew what the Rythmann's had such a strange, silly horse as a sigil.

But Angela was right, what could he do about it? Keep going. “You have to!” he yelled.

“Why!?” Angela replied.

“Because, well. You just do!” the response came, “You'll have great things happen. You'll have to!”

“I don't care what happens, but I'm not cutting off my finger!” Angela roared. Her voice was like a clap of thunder going off alongside one's head. Or the roar of a powder rifle against the ears.

With a fiery fit the young girl picked up the knife and threw it against the ground.

Theo looked down at it stunned. This, this was almost an offense! He was shocked, like someone had the audacity to call him a dick.

“You what!?” he bellowed.

“Dammit Pierce, I'm not!” Angela said, stomping her boots onto the frozen ground, “And if you want me to do it, you do it first!”

“That wasn't the deal!” Theo squeeled, throwing his arms up.

“Well I'm changing the deal!”

“No! That's impossible. You never change the deal!”

“Not unless it's on paper!”

Theo bit back his sourness as he reeled back, eyes wide. His pride hurt like his cheeks in the cold wind. Or maybe they were just that numb. For whatever the case, he lunged for the ground, picking up the knife as he pushed Angela aside.

“Theo no don't do it!” Angela yelled as he threw his hand onto the table, raising the knife above it. He tensed his fingers, and readied his arm. He made ready for the down stroke, clenching his teeth and holding back his tongue as his eyes shut tight. What was his older brother's saying? Tighter than a Catholic girl's legs?

But the stoke never came. He froze in the position. No amount of strength on his part could trump his own will to not cut off his finger. But still he held his breath. But willing himself to cut it off, and to not. His pride had been hurt, he had to maintain image. He had to fix it. He had to do better!

Instead of cutting downward, he peeked an eye open as he slowly lowered the quivering blade to his hand. He saw the jagged, sharp edge of the blade quiver in his own fingers as it came lower onto his hand. He moved it slowly, carefully. It touched sharply on the back of his knuckle where he could go no further.

“Children!” a man's voice sang out, shaking both of the kids from their trance on the knife and alter. With a start both jumped to the source of the harsh stern voice. Standing at the edge of the circle of trash stood a tall hooded figure in a thick wollen, fur robe. His stern cold stare latched onto them, and did more to send chills down their spine than the depths of winter could. Shivering they stared into his sunken bearded face before turning with a start and running off.

Not realizing it, Theo dropped the knife atop the cement of the alter as they fled from the Shrine of Joshua, leaving behind their dare and mission to make a personal sacrifice.

[EncryptedCrunchwrap]

Marquette Commonwealth
City of Marquette
Morning

Isaac gritted his teeth as the wind howled outside, rattling the windows of his office. The marching soldiers outside caused the pen on his desk to move about, rolling across it's aged surface. It was funny to think that the desk had endured for so long. The Great Collapse tore down nations centuries old, yet this humble desk had made it. Prone to letting his mind wander, Isaac sifted through the papers on his desk. Dull material, to say the least. The Department of Security functions and acts on the labor of six men and women. The burden was immense, but with so few people, the doubts were cast aside. Today's report indicated an increase in merchant activity throughout the northeastern shores. Political relations with neighboring communities have been warm, but increasing shortages cause more to look elsewhere for their material needs.

Isaac turned the page, looking at the segment dedicated to the western expanses. It didn't take long for him to sigh. He skimmed the lines, the news hadn't changed much.

Scouting parties......abandoned camp.....tattered remains....bandits likely culpable.....do not recommend further travel.....

He stopped, unwilling to read more. Winter was always brutal to those in the peninsula, but nowhere was it worse than the west. Banditry and lawlessness created a toxic environment. What few communities that manage to survive hang on by the tiniest of threads, hoping for the next seasonal raiding party to pass by without a second glance. The military still remembered the stories about the battle at Iron River. Slaying bandits was always a popular move, but the logistics typically prevented most expeditions. Bounty hunters and others of martial repute often received contracts to hunt them, but it never solved the problem.

Despite all the problems the Commonwealth faced, it never hurt to take relief in what it accomplished. Isaac frequented the nearby library, home to thousands of salvaged and preserved books. The preservation of knowledge is one of the key goals of the government, leading to merchants from afar traveling to exchange rare or valuable texts. Isaac particularly enjoyed works concerned with onomastics and linguistics. In a time when things are easily forgotten, names are usually the first to go. Nothing stays the same, but often one questions whether the new changes are positive or negative. That lack of control is what frightens so many. That their lives are put on a path with walls and forbidden gates.

Isaac stared at his desk, absent of a concluding thought. The Commonwealth teaches everyone that purpose is invincible. Without it one withers, but to embrace it is to defy the confines of "destiny".

Feeling a realization hit him, Isaac shuffled the reports away into his cabinet.

"Perhaps purpose is all that remains from the sweeping tide of change. Where our wants and needs change, purpose has been the eternal tool to motivate one. All great feats are eventually forgotten, but purpose emerges to fulfill the eternal list of needs society and the individual requires."

Frederick came inside from the front entrance, weary and clearly sleep deprived. He looked at Isaac with some amusement, noticing the grin on his face.

"Why the good mood?"

Isaac chuckled for a moment.

"I found purpose in purpose." he remarked.

.

[Vilageidiotx]

Bad-Town, Illinois

(Pertinent Action Tiem)

In poetry water is often described as crystal. Homer had his wine-dark sea and the Harlequin romantic Rain Summers had compared the waters near her bayou loveshack to her sculpted gardener's eyes. Sadly, for Louis LaGrunge, the only words that could describe the Mississipi river that churned beneath him was "Shit-clogged toiler water."

It was an embarrassment to beauty, as much of the world was in these times. He longed for painted palaces he had never seen, and dreamed of fountains he hardly understood. Art was a distant memory for civilization, and he wanted it. He could imagine ancient French philosophers wriggling their feet in soft shag carpet, writing sonnets and discussing astronomy with their neighbors. That was what the world used to be, before they burned it all and replaced it with the dung-heap tribes of the new world. He watched a fire-singed sofa bob in the oil stained river and sighed before going back into his room.

Even the decor of this steamboat reminded him how depressed the world had become. Sure, it was a steamboat, running on coal and civilization. From afar, the image of its magnificent paddle filled a person full of wonder and awe. Once inside, however, you could see how sad it truly was. Guards patrolled the halls, looking out thin windows designed like the arrow slits of a mighty French fortress in the days of old, except using plywood and junk-metal instead of proud European stone. They were armed with muskets and crossbows, but they did not have the noble look of the ancient musketeers. These were shifty men who were as happy to be paid in methamphetamine as they were honor or cash. There were no knights or heroes anymore. Louis could feel their stares as they inspected what a real gentleman presented himself as.

Louis wore a curly black wig that jutted one foot above his head like a fountain of luscious imperialism. It warmed his head and reminded him how sophisticated his people, the Frankish blood of old France, truly were. He had managed to find and old bathrobe which wore over the leather clothes of his profession. His robe was resplendent, decorated with small bits of jewelry he had found and sewn into the wool, alongside a dozen manners of stars. Some stars were metal and some were plastic, while others glowed a strange ghastly green in the dark. Over his back, he had a crossbow with a mechanism that held a dozen bolts and popped them into place as he loaded and fired. It was an elegant weapon, and it kept him safe through horrific times.

He could feel the boat rock and hear the hum of the motor and splosh of water against the hull as he found his way to his quarters. It was at the end of the hall, in a room that had once been numbered "201" as was told by the shadow left against the paint where the brass numbers had once stood. Now in its place was a picture of a chicken and a second picture of a corncob. Room Chicken Corn. It was the depressing result of a world that had lost so much of its literacy. There were on the chicken level. Below, there was a cow level, and directly beneath them was the room Cow Corn.

He entered the less-than-prestigious trappings and was greeted with the smell of rotting wood and the site of his newest lady love spread out across the bed like a human prune. She was seventy, somehow, and she still had some vague memories in the back of her mind of a world where civilization still existed. Memories of the failing of old world architecture and art. She was like a museum, though that thought was now embittered by how many times imbecilic new-worlders had said his lady loves belonged in a museum. He hung his robe from a peg as delicately as it deserved and unstrapped the leather traveling armor he had worn across so many long roads. In his state of overtly human nudity, he climbed into bed.

Her skin was like rubber loosened by sunlight, though he could easily feel her bones beneath. "Where is this?" she asked weakly, sounding as confused as she usually did. Such a long life in such a horrible atmosphere was starting to affect her.

"We're arriving in Bad-Town soon." Louis replied. He pushed his body against hers and reveled in her clammy skin.

[Dinh AaronMk]

Hall of the Peninsula, Traverse County

The building was by no means a fortress. It was by no means a mansion. Far excluded far outside of the city of Traverse proper, it was a marvel the building was anything of use. Let alone anything of importance. But wrapped by drifting dunes of snow that piled up to window's height outside of its warm walls, the lone metal-sided building stood a test against time and elements. Defying the nature of abandonment or misuse.

Three faces to the front stood out against the road and the barren parking lot. The middle most face holding panels of old glass that had become covered with dry maroon sheets as curtains. An outbuilding just to the side. This building purpose too had been lost. By the evolution of time and society the long boarded white-building had been turned to a new use in this time. Broken up on one face, it was a stable. The warm amber glow of soft fires inside provided warmth and light within as heavily coated guards stood by with long pikes of metal pipe and wood.

As the wind kicked their coats fluttered in the cold revealing armor made of mismatching sets of metal. Ancient road signs and car-door siding made patchwork armor, like a quilt of aluminum of steel. Dents and scars in the metal provided the evidence needed to point out their use. Clearly marked dents suggested their pummeling by vicious native clubs or more makeshift weapons the old world over.

The guards men leaned casually and bitter against the wall. Keeping carefully to stay outside to fulfill their duty, but so much inside they caught the warm embrace of the fires inside. The smell of horse and hay lapped out into the breeze and tore off on the winds as a heavily coated man tore out from inside.

The guards didn't need to stop to see who was under the hood as they stood at attention as he tore by in the cold. Arms wrapped around to hug the coat tightly across his torso as he ran through the drifted snow for the building across the old torn drive. Heavily booted feet tore across the icy path beaten and shoveled from the icy drifts of snow. He ran on to the middle face, and into its glass maw without an acknowledgment for the men that stood at watch outside.

***

The door closed with a howl as the Councilor stepped in. Wind pushed against the aging hydraulic piston at its top, threatening to freeze an already arthritic mechanism. It took an effort against the wind and the stiffened joint above to close the glass door with a satisfying puff of cold air. But not without blowing deeper into the skin, and whisking in a few more white flakes of snow after the man. But as it shut, the air again grew silent.

The hall wasn't magnificent, and was little more than a small room in an already smaller building. Carpeting that had not aged well had become as hard as stone, and as brittle as dry grass. Decay and improper maintenance had just as well eaten at the fiber's, turning what could have been blue – or even green – a dark, putrid gray. Like an old tombstone, complete with its own moss as clumps of miscellaneous trash had come to pile up in the corners.

Turning about inside, the newcomer stepped to the side, to one of several burning barrels that provided heat and lighting in the old chambers. A rough cage sat over top, trapping the fires inside and holding rogue embers at bay as the man stood and warmed himself. Rubbing his hands together he muttered under his breath, complaining about the cold. His hands were beaten white from the ride, and even despite having worn gloves his knuckles throbbed a dark red, as did the tips of his long-nailed fingers.

Looking over the room, it would be hard for anyone in the new world to figure what the Old had used it for. Like many still-standing structures that had lost its purpose the years were beginning to peel into it. The ceiling – not maybe nine feet over head – sagged and dropped oddly at the corners. Panels had dropped cleanly through in time showing off the empty space that lay beyond. Some holes had been patched with sheets of wood. But for the entire frame-work, there were more open spaces that patched, and more water-stained panels than not. The only certainty about its previous life was that it was not a home, the man could not recount an old world home that had such ceilings or even such lifeless décor as here. But it worked for the purpose the Council inherited it as: a room to argue and debate outside the city itself. A quiet place to scheme as a whole.

And the voices of such scheming were already echoing out in the halls. Distant ghosts shouting out names and bellowing over one another catcalled, threatened, and boomed with laughter. Poetic – or often unpoetic – remarks concerning one's mother drifted down through the halls as the man pulled back his hood, removing his heavy winter coat.

From the side room a tiny spit of a man hobbled out from a darkened closet, reaching out with eager silent hands for the coat the man shed. The coated visitor stood at an imposing height, nearly tall enough to have to crouch under the sagging frames of the doors. His face a strong nordic tone and his head crowned by a muddied brass head of hair. And though he was merely forty, he looked like a man fifteen years his senior with an impressive nest of wrinkles on his face already.

The man who came to his assistance was nearly less than half his height. An imp by all rules and definitions and far less clean, and far more his age. A filthy mop of long silver hair fell from his bulbous light-bulb shaped head . Turkey beards of skin flapped at his chin. A long crooked nose looked like something from a fairy tail, or long enough to hang the coat he cradled in his long skinny arms.

He did his chores and duty in dutiful silence. Like a monk collecting the materials and rushing them inside the darkened room he sat in. The giant of a man could not blame the impish old creature for being silent, the means for him to speak had been cut from his mouth with a hot knife. He had seen it happen from afar when he was purchased off the caravans as a slave. They said he had come from the poisoned lands on the south shore of the lake, and had not been born with the rocks and tree of a proper man for being unfortunate enough to be born there. The slaver said he had come self-nutered.

The imp came bolting out from the side room with a new coat in his spindly hands. Stopping at the feat of his master he held up the bolt of off-white cloth to him. “Thank you.” he said in a low booming voice, taking the sheets from his hands.

The slave responded with a silent bow, stepping back on quiet feet to his dark quarters as the giant threw the sheets over his shoulder. Tying it over his shoulder and around his waist like a toga. Tightening the ends and tucking them into the belt that wrapped around his shirt of mismatched animal skins he pursued the voices. Called to them as a moth would be summoned to a flame.

“If every meeting means we're going to have to put up with your feud's bullshit, Graham,” shouted a angry voice as the giant bent down into the room council room, “then we would get nothing done!”

“Get things done? Is this now how the world went anyways!?” yelled another man from the corner of the table. The council chamber was a large empty room, made only bigger by the clear signs of old walls having been knocked out to house the large spacious table that took it up, clearly built and assembled in the room given its enormous size and weight in the red-stained wood. Small metal cans lay scattered over the wood, capped in metal plates struck with wicks. The tongues of flame that burned off of them helped illuminate the room in a dim glow as the winter sun weakly crept in through the windows, snow drifting up at the lower fringes.

“And look where it got that world!” cackled another man. There were six present in all. All generally old, perhaps having been sired into the world shortly after it went dark, or even just before. None though, no matter how long the beard could claim wisdom to the days that weren't. There was no gray that could validate memories, though these men existed for sure, they were just few and far between.

And each man wore some toga. Some manner of off-colored sheets that they wrapped around their bodies in homage to the Man That Was. Many were torn, many had been used a thousand times only. And many were patterned or single colored in such a way that suggested they were different in another era. The flowers, birds, fish, boats, and what not that covered them did not exist to depict house. But rather that long ago they were bedsheets. Now they had been torn from the mattresses and clothed the backs of old men as they sat in a cold room yelling at one another. Though it being winter did not provide the means to wear them as they would traditionally be worn, now more often over top light coats each wore to stay warm.

“It doesn't matter much anymore,” said another councilman, “The boy's here.”

“Erwin Solnburg, nice of you to arrive. How is your father?” asked one of the seated six. He was a large person. His chins blurring the definitive feature between head and body. His hair had thinned considerably to only a few rare strands. He wore glasses as well, though not nearly effective by how hard he squinted. But he was a man who would have been a more terrifying person in his youth.

“Father has been as he was,” Erwin bowed as he took his seat, “we fear the worse at this point. The physicians say his health fails all the more. And they can't come to a single diagnoses. We fear a cancer.”

“Then the last choice may be a show of strength.” patrician Pierce said in a half-comforting tone of voice. He rose a hand from the table. He was missing a finger, “Or as some might say, one of faith.”

“If we're here to discuss one of our own's timing, let it be to comfort him off in his last moments.” energetically growled a thin figure opposite of the lord Pierce. A thin trailing beard fell from his up-side down pear head. “But if we're here, we must speak.” he said rapping on the tables with boney white knuckles.

“Concurred.” said a third. A larger man, not in girth but in muscle. Lord Councilor Marcus of the house Rythmann . He was an imposing figure, even to Erwin who stood above him. Age had chose not to draw back his physique. At the age of fifty-eight he still wore the body of a figure half his age and toned to the fields. His hair was still a vibrant amber, his eyes a sharp crystalline green. “And I won't tolerate the continuing bickering at my table past this point. If we're to chew at each other I expect to see it between your idiot sons on the streets. Not in any of our chambers.

“But as we agreed to in our last session we'll move aside from our port taxes to foreign vessels. Mr. Solnburg, I believe you raised a point that's of immediate concern. I'll grant you your time.” Marcus leaned forward out of his adorned chair – something of a jealousy of others, permitted by his position - resting his muscled physique on his elbows as he waited.

The chair seemed to wait as well, mounted with a fanning array of antlers, and crowned with a deer skull. Erwin nodded, standing from the seat he had just claimed moment previous, “I am unsure if any of us have noticed the rising issues related to our food stocks, and the refugee squalor building up on the south-side of Grand Traverse. But the growing population of trapped caravans and displaced communities who sought out Grand Traverse as being an opportunity for personal safety is of course sapping city reserves from autumn crops.

“Grapes being a private asset in our community, there is little concern I'm sure. But referring to the Committee of Provisions for the Traverse Area has informed me that our stocks may not hardly run a year for those unable to use resources to acquisition food from land or lake caravans.”

“People our hungry, that is a fact of the world master Erwin, and I see little need to change this.” the wispy wraith of a man argued, “It is unfortunate that it must happen, I know. But for all over the world there is simply too many mouths and too little farming that can be done. Even in fishing and hunting, we must travel too far to ever expect sustained returns. The caravans are simply the best hope for the people, if they can not subsist on their own means then there's no room for them.

“So let them die.”

“This might be true lord Hollaender, but there's more that concerns me than suffering.” Erwin countered rather harshly, “I fear that we let this problem persist we may be looking at discontent from desperation. The squatter ghettos are unsustainable in the long-term and is becoming swiftly a growing den of murder against themselves and our own citizens.

“Now, we can do several things to fix this. We may purge the ghetto clean from our landscape and cauterize it in the short term. But lord Hollaender, there are many people in the world and they'll return. And I am afraid of what they might do when your son inherits your seat.”

“Are you implying I am old!?” the spindly man said, raising from his seat. He leaned over the table, arching his back like a rabid gargoyle, “Because I will remind you that I have more venom than any snake that slithers!”

“Marshal Hollaender you will sit and desist!” the Lord Counciler shouted.

The old skeleton spat and sputtered as he lowered himself down to his chair. Erwin bowed thankfully to Marcus, who impatiently dismissed the point. The giant continued: “We may attempt some number of long-term solutions to the matter. One might be to see out merely subsidizing the cost of basic necessities to allow many families to eat more than once every two days. The alternative, and what I feel would be the best option on the table would be to cease additional land by force, and cultivate it as we would here to furnish our people's tables.”

“And where might we go? Kalkaska?” Pierce asked.

“It would be a valid place to march.” Erwin nodded, “As any other would be. I do not feel that we would be eager on lowering the foreign docking fees any time soon, unless we have better options.”