Mamang wanders the oceans in darkness and silence, hunting, dreaming. The thoughts that cross its simple mind are few and without words. The instinct that guides its elder heart is sovereign and pure. It is a whale.
Life
Is Mamang a god? No. Mamang commands no divine principle and wears no sacred crown. It is a whale.
Will Mamang die? Yes. In time Mamang will die. It is a whale.
Perhaps Mamang will be reborn.
Perhaps Mamang is not one particular whale, but a Whale, whose name endures long after any one Mamang's bones lie buried in the deep silt.
Perhaps a whale swims as it pleases through the ocean of time itself, and is not bound, like man, by such things as years.
Perhaps Mamang is simply long-lived.
After all- It is a whale.
Can Mamang be slain? Yes. Be it by demon, by man or by god, Mamang can be slain. Its fate is guarded by nothing more than the strength of its body. Its death is lured by nothing less than meat fit for one thousand men. It is a whale.
Can Mamang be recruited? No. Mamang does not speak. To bargain with Mamang is a fool's errand and an insult to the dignity of both parties. It is a whale.
Can Mamang be blessed? Yes, Mamang can be blessed. It is a being of grace, ancient and innocent. It is a whale.
Can Mamang be cursed? Yes, Mamang can be cursed. It is a wild beast, fierce and without mercy. It is a whale.
From where did Mamang come? From the sea did Mamang come. It is a whale.
Unto where will Mamang go? To the sea will Mamang go. It is a whale.
Aye, it is a whale, now and for ever more.
Addenda
Mamang will continue swimming with no particular aim until it is killed. As it is not a god, it will neither gain nor spend any units of Vigour. Instead, its presence will influence the lives of nearby mortals simply by virtue of being a 150-tonne rorqual.
Only mass and bestial willpower stand between Mamang and the divine forces at work around it. Any enchantment that falls upon the whale by will or by accident will be both wielded and suffered to its greatest extent. As time passes, it may become something like a canvas reflecting the falling inkdrops of the celestial arts, or a sponge steeped in the grime of heavenly negligence.
The harbour town of Port Cruor, still called the Portus by some, has no governor. Yes, yes- the office of Governor still exists, and has existed in some form used or unused since before the fall of the Kingdom. It exists on paper, mostly, and as the gubernatorial regalia, a set of medallions and seals which have been pawned, loaned and retained as collateral nearly as much as they have been used as props for an Official Portrait of the Governor- quite the luxurious ornament to display, if you can afford to have yourself made Governor for a little while. In the same way, the office itself changes hands, originally every ten years, now every two, and in practice every handful of months, passed back and forth between the same handful of fleet-owning families as they find uses for its remaining privileges.
Nor does Cruor have an Admiral. To marshal the countless ships in its harbour under a single ensign would surely foul the mood and disturb the tangled loyalties of its veteran sailors, who do not survive long on the seas without growing the hide and temperament of a sea-lion, and are much better armed. Such a deed, attempted in earnest, would wreak more destruction than any attack on the Portus could, and be quite off-putting for any man with the cunning and ferocity to attempt it, never mind the staggering wealth.
But it does have a Commodore.
"-and may we be redeemed by our works in His sight, for against His great glory we-"
The once-seaman watched morning fog recede into the streets of the Portus. There were times and places when he would close his eyes to say his prayers, times at sea or in closed rooms. Not here.
"-until He returns to cleanse us of our iniquity and set us in-"
Still waters did not rock the hundred galleys that lay before him, three of the largest newly launched, a fourth soon to come. In some small way, his master said, he would be part of that, much like he would always be a small part of the Exalted Kingdom in Outremer, so long as he had faith.
So the priest said. Crouching on the docks before dawn, bathed in the smell of fish just as the cobbles soon would be bathed in their blood, it was easier to have faith in his earthly master, though he knew not the plans of either. He simply served.
"-that the Light may shine ever brightly, like sunbeams upon-"
As the sun rose each day on empty piers where fishermen had already rowed away to haul full nets of fish from the sea, so he would wake up each day before dawn to haul goodness out of the dark.
"-unto God, the Most Glorious, the Exalted. Amen."
Captain Rodgar of Cruor watched with no passion, his hands loosely resting at his back. He was a young man, strong, his position owed largely to his birth, sharply aware that he was only one heir among five and would lose even that privilege in an instant if he did not fight tooth and nail to expand it.
"Ask him again, Matio."
The burly ex-seaman heaved his black-eyed victim up from the cobbles and shook him. "WHERE IS THE FUCKING KEY?"
The pigment trader raised his arm and waved it in the rough direction of his mute eunuch aide, croaking something. The slave immediately turned and went into the storehouse. "Grab the box while you're there," called Rodgar after him, knowing he would be obeyed. "The real one this time."
He tapped his foot and looked around in the meanwhile. Cochineal, myrrh, cinnamon, exotic fruits. At its best, the pickings at the Portus bazaar were almost as good as its colourfully sprawling rival in the Grand Feitoria of Goldport.
But only almost. And only at its best.
The eunuch returned with a small lockbox and an iron key, which Rodgar inspected for false walls or secret compartments before he opened. The trader stared up at him with bitter violence in his eyes as he retrieved a ring of fine jade. "Don't blame anyone but yourself," said Rodgar, pulling the priceless ornament over his finger. "That could have been much easier."
Sensing that they were finished, the seaman dropped his victim directly down onto the road and wiped his knuckles on his tunic. He was uniformed, like the rest of them, in nothing more than dark leather armour and a tattoo. The sea-nettle it depicted was, by design, a much rarer and less fashionable symbol than the scorpion, but the message was the same: touch me and die.
The Captain wore no such leathers, of course. His tattoo was backed up by nothing more than a hat and a coat. A man of his status, assigned with his mission, could not afford to betray bodily vulnerability. It was a careful balancing act compensated for by the presence of the sea-nettles around him: To the wealthy, a refined face; to the poor, a stinging arm.
There were a great deal of poor men in the Portus.
"Cheat me again and I'll drown you in your own barrel," said the Captain before leaving. "You'll go down smelling of pepper."
The streets occupied by spice-traders and perfumers were a thin island of beauty adrift in a dark lake of violence, slavery, prostitution, and fish. Between them lay a half-sunken shore of rare, exotic beauties, precious commodities of the living kind. The iridescent birds sitting songlessly in their cages were only the beginning of what the Portus had to offer, much as the jaw-headed camel spiders tearing each other apart in their jar were only a shadow of the fighting beasts still pacing the pits of the ancient amphitheatre, or the assassins in their distant dens.
"The error has been corrected," the Captain announced to a handful of foreign guards as they approached the tent of the flesh dealer. "Let's do business."
"He gone," said the only mercenary with an appreciable grasp of the Outremer tongue. "He sell the woman."
Rodgar nodded and set off a little further away from the bright colours of the pigment trader. It amazed him a little, having undertaken voyages of many months in his time, to see just how many slaves here would surely have taken years to transport, never mind raise; eunuchs trained to do the oddest tricks and the most specific skills, who could throw their voice or sleep on nails, swallow poison or produce calligraphy. Even these males formed only a portion of the flesh dealer's domain. The rest were sold for other purposes.
A mercenary guard tapped the slaver on his shoulder and he looked up from the gold he was counting. His expression, cautiously content, soured instantly. "So soon," he said, nearly spitting. "Already the faker man comes to show me another fake."
"Not this time," said the Captain, displaying his hand.
The slaver's scowl lifted slowly into shock. "Aye- aye, ah, my ring! This is the ring great uncle gave to me! Aye-" He reached out his fat hands to grab Rodgar's, and the captain pulled away his fist. Suddenly the sea-nettles around him had grown terribly close, and the mercenary's straightsword looked terribly thin in the face of their hooks and mauls. Two young women stared out of the next room in fright, their faces as sweet and delicate as a peony in midwinter.
"There are conditions," said Rodgar, "from my friend down the street. Count those coins carefully. They'll be your last for some time."
"So!"
The room was incredibly opulent. Ivory compass, ivory statuettes, even an ivory rosary, inlaid with gold. The fixtures were amber. The furnishings were ebony and silk. The treasure-mansions of Cruor's elite displayed wealth on a scale that could not otherwise be found east of Marleon, and the gilded saints upon the rosary beads would never have approved of the deeds it took to secure it. The man who welcomed them wore a peacock feather in his bejewelled hat.
Rodgar adjusted his own cap, this one also silk, and entered with a stance of brazen confidence. A servant followed him in with huge package in a leather tube.
"You've done me quite the favour, you have, Captain. Oh, you know I hate competition, I hate it almost as much as I hate getting my hands dirty. But nothing's free, is it?" He lounged over his seat, half laughing, exerting no effort at all. "What does the Commodore want, of all men?"
"Labour," he announced with no hesitation. "The Commodore requires both skilled and grunt slaves, and in time another sum of healthy oarsmen. It concerns his project with the galleys."
The merchant kingpin grinned and still did not laugh. "More? Again? Between me and that Bendsford man, he must have an army's worth of workmen. Come on, out with it."
"If I may," said Rodgar, moving an inkwell. His courier revealed their treasure.
The scroll was huge. It filled the desk, covered it, would have trailed off the edge of any less enormous table. The designs upon it were marked down in the kind of excruciating detail that cost more than a year's wage for the seaman on its deck. The man's perennial smile dropped down to the tiniest of bemused smirks as he leaned in to stare at the parchment.
"Galleys? That, Rodgar, is a warship." Rodgar raised his eyebrows a little in a way that made it clear he would not be delivering further comment. "For what purpose under Heaven would the Commodore call on his fortune to commission such a thing? Has the man lost his mind? Who does he think he is, a crusader?"
Rodgar looked over his shoulder, and beckoned the courier and guards away with a knuckle. They did not leave the room, but stood a little further back. Rodgar leaned in. "The Commodore, for the purpose of his own information," he said, "maintains correspondence with a variety of professionals whose skills are not welcome in the Church. Since the appearance of certain- portents, he has concluded that the winds are fit for a more... military fleet."
Rodgar withdrew. The old merchant likewise returned to his chair. He wet his lips, rolling the rumour around in his mouth. The Commodore's man had given him a secret. Maybe not a true secret, but that didn't matter at all, no, that didn't matter one bit.
"See me tomorrow, at this hour," he said, inspecting the designs closely. "We can begin to negotiate this contract."
Captain Rodgar was shown into the study. The scroll recording the agreement felt heavy in his hand.
Before him sat a greying man, not at his primary desk but in a far more comfortable chair beside it, watching the fire crinkle. Some heavy book of records lay open before him. He'd spared the Captain barely a glance as he'd entered the room.
"Sir," he said, bowing. "A first copy of the contract has been drafted. I hope it is to your satisfaction."
Commodore Lano Loranze, who had held his title for twenty-three years and been named Governor for fourteen of them, unlaced one of his nettle-covered hands from the steeple in front of his mouth and reached out to accept the document. He paged over it briskly. Rodgar began to sweat.
"Thank you, Rodgar," he said. His voice was low, like timbers at sea. "That will be all."
Still not sure if I should do proper summaries here, but this is a GM post for worldbuilding reasons so there's nothing to spoil.
-We see Portus Cruor's law enforcers, who are sometimes employed as the governor's personal strong-arm men. They are identified by their sea-nettle (stinging jellyfish) tattoo and sometimes referred to as such. -There's a fair bit of Exalted religion in this city, co-existing with the evil. -We see some legitimate trading in luxury goods and exotic animals, but even these businesses cheat from time to time. -There are slaves and concubines of every description, as well as some foreign traders and their staff. -We see an extremely wealthy, powerful class of merchants and slavers, who like treasure. -Officially, the title of Governor changes hands. Most of the power is held by a mystery man named Commodore Loranze, who still needs to wheel and deal a bit to get what he wants from the merchant mafiosos. -A few years ago, Loranze seems to have been informed by omens or soothsayers that trouble is coming, and has since been converting some of his wealth into war galleys, just in case.
The statesman's shoes were soft, and they padded almost silently as he paced the chapel, speaking in a manner Sir Cahan Guthcairn had come to know he only adopted when he was personally invested in a thing: active, impassioned, measured in voice yet loud with gesticulation, and all the while making barely any eye contact, a dissertation for himself.
"There is, of course, the matter of a husband..."
"The Lady Brookwidth shows no such interests." Cahan's stolid face firmed into a rare sternness. "She is in mourning, Adomo. That is no state in which a girl like her should be betrothed."
"No? And what if a fine young noble from the wealthy estates charms her to bits- under our watchful eyes?" Adomo Manciora of Goldport had invited the knight into the chapel to join him in prayers for the soul of their deceased lord. The prayers had taken all of three minutes. There was no need to explain anything- they knew Kinna avoided this room, if only by day.
After dark, who knew?
"She's too young to remember the war, Cahan. You may not hear much of them, but there is quite the sum of forward-minded nobility in Marleon who would be quite pleased to take part in the mending of ties. She must marry eventually. There's a new family somewhere, waiting for her- she's the most precious bride any groom could ask for, or any father."
Cahan did not look up from the pew where he was resting his hand. "Kinna always spoke bitterly of politics," he said. "How can you bear to even talk about her like this? She needs time to heal, alone, without being pushed around a court in the direction of every suitable bachelor and his father." He looked up. Cloudy grey sunlight was leaking through the chapel windows. "Besides, she doesn't want to go to Marleon. She wants to see Paterdomus. Mountains. Towns other than Organon. The Houselands, where her ancestors rest."
"Some fine young Houselander, then. Don't just tell me what I already know, man- think!" Cahan placidly turned his head. "I've already arranged to keep the Brookwidth estate quiet for a few years- not profitable, but quiet. By the time she comes of age it will be her duty to put it back in order. She'll never have another chance to travel like this. Half the western peerage has taken to traveling the realms since the Templars came down on Terramis and ruined everything. She'll be in excellent company- she'll start smiling again. She wants to go!" Adomo watched his words roll off Sir Guthcairn's face like water on marble and offered a special little prayer upwards. "What are you keeping her here for, Cahan? Are you hoping that she'll marry one of your own sons? Still?"
Cahan knew that Adomo could see that he'd been struck. He took his time. "...Much as I would like to offer my protection to her in that way," he began, "Kinna shows no such interests. Leave it be, Adomo. You cannot simply distract her pain away. She must face it. One day she'll come back to the manor from your gay adventure, and the force of what she has lost will will come back and hit her like a mace."
Adomo sighed. He collapsed into the pews.
No more gestures.
"I don't like it either, friend." Sir Guthcairn put his warm hand on the statesman's shoulder. "Everyone is wounded. Losing Gilahan..."
"I know." Adomo picked himself up and wrung his hands. The light through the windows remained dim. "I just wish I could see her smile again."
Sir Guthcairn knocked exactly once before he threw the door open.
"Manciora!"
Adomo threw the scullery-maid out of his lap with such vigour that she nearly crashed into the wall. Sir Guthcairn didn't notice. His eyes were fiery, fixed on Adomo's.
"My God, man! At this hour-"
"We're going."
"...What?"
"We are to travel north at once." The words spoken, Guthcairn finally looked about the study. The candlelit papers had all been neatly stacked away for tomorrow. He locked eyes with the maid only briefly.
"North?" Adomo grabbed his hat and threw it on his head. "An invasion? Templars? If the men from Goldport are back for me, it's better-"
"No." The fire in Cahan's voice had already been spent. "It's not for our sake. We're taking Kinna on her journey. Make arrangements as soon as possible."
Adomo slowed, pulled his hat off, folded his arms. The knight watched his brain work behind his eyes. "Something's changed."
"We met a travelling party while we were falconing. Baron Tislayne, the young Lord Godefroy and his family. They're travelling from the West, like you said- visiting their cousins in Arcos and Marleon." Adomo nodded. "They're in Organon now, but they're to head north within the week," Guthcairn continued. "The Lady Brookwidth has befriended his wife, Odilie. They were talking until late in the evening. They're probably still talking now. I... couldn't bear to force her to come home."
Adomo Manciora frowned in wonder. "That's all? All that talk of enduring one's grief- nothing? You're alarming me, Cahan..."
"It's fate." Adomo had long suspected there was Seer blood in the Cale banner-knight, and recalled his suspicion now. "I don't know what the future holds, but we must ride on the wind Heaven sends us." He shook his head. The lateness of the hour was catching up to him visibly. "And I will not be the one to take this joy from her."
Earlier...
Having already sent his squires up the road to Brookwidth manor to return the falcons to their roost, Guthcairn was now attempting to palm off the Baron Tislayne's gratingly merry attention onto some nearby women, a plan which had wholly succeeded but for the fact that the nobleman kept pulling him back into conversation as though his stoic countenance and heavy Calesbail accent was the funniest thing under the sun. A table had been generously set with Organon's finest wines and cheeses, and the more refined of its merchant and artisan families invited to join the Baron's company outdoors to watch the sunset, all at his expense.
The Baron's wife had slid away with almost no remark at all.
Kinna stared up at her. Odilie of Tislayne stared back down. Kinna failed to keep herself from frowning. Odilie's face revealed nothing.
"Shall we take a little walk? My husband tends to be quite the loud voice, you see."
"Yes," said Kinna, mirroring the lady-talk and lady-smile with high-born ease. "Let's."
Soon they were in the shade of a walnut (another tree among many that Kinna was dimly aware she now owned), and Odilie once more led the conversation, her smile fading from underneath her veiled hat. "You're different."
"Yes."
"I've never seen such signs in someone quite so young."
Kinna scowled. "What signs?"
"The same signs you saw in me. Something different."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, that's the spirit." Odilie leant against the walnut with her elbow. "It sounds like you've never met anyone who's seen the dark before."
Kinna flinched, looked over her shoulder. Odilie laughed a soft, sad little laugh in the quiet. "Be brave. It's more common than you think, at least among the peerage. At least in Arcos."
"Who are you?"
"No one," said Odilie. "Not in the way you think. I'm a baron's wife, which is a pleasant enough thing to be. I was never anything- but I was friends with a woman who was." Her eyes bored into Kinna. "I started noticing things. That's all it took."
Kinna's hands rested primly on her stomach. "You were with Lucion, weren't you? You're running from the Templars."
Odilie smiled, rubbed her forehead, couldn't muster a laugh. "I never met Lucion. My friend was... swept up in his affairs, and I never saw her again. The Templars couldn't find anything on me. I'm no one, I did nothing." Kinna noticed that she was sweating, despite the brisk spring wind.
"But you're still running. Why did you run?"
"They were suspicious. I never knew much, but I knew some things. They sensed it. They could smell it. All it takes is to notice..." It was Odilie's turn to look over her shoulder. "By the time lightning struck that damned-" (Kinna inhaled at her language.) "-house, I knew it was time to leave. My husband is easy to distract, but not so easy to manoeuvre. It took too long for him start moving. Now when I come back, there will be people watching me." She sighed, shifted her weight on the tree, got bark on the shoulder of her dress. "If only that stupid wench Kalitra hadn't gone and died..."
Kinna said nothing. She was not brave.
"But now, you," said Odilie, and Kinna bit her tongue inside her mouth. "You're not like me- no one ever showed you the dark, did they? Somehow you found it all by yourself. You're very different."
"I don't know what it is." Kinna was whispering now. "I was born with it. They say my mother was like me, a little, but it wasn't the same. Sometimes people notice, mostly they don't. They never know what they notice. I don't either. I don't know. Five years ago, it looked like someone was about to work it out, but... Since then, I've been making myself normal." Her hands squeezed each other.
"Clever girl. Even the ones who go deep always stay normal. As normal as you can imagine. That, or they hide in the mountains, or run to the bogs. There's no other way." She looked up. "I'm hungry. Let's go back to the picnic and be normal together for a while. Stay by my side," she instructed. "Make yourself close with me. If I don't show you how to notice things, you'll run into them yourself, and..."
Odilie looked out, out over the town of Organon and the house of Brookwidth Manor, out to where the sun was setting, far in the west.
"Heaven knows what strife that has caused me."
Are we still doing the summary tradition?
-Adomo Manciora and Sir Cahan Guthcairn debate allowing Kinna to tour northwards to distract her from the loss of her parents. -Baron Tislayne, a West Arcos noble, stops nearby on a tour of his own. -Kinna meets Lady Odilie of Tislayne, a woman on the periphery of the secret world of heresy. -The tour is approved, with the Tislayne and Brookwidth houses travelling together. -Odilie of Tislayne joins Kinna's retinue.
Sir Galn Erbius of Paterdomus, Knight of the Hare and leader of 'this merry little jaunt of an expedition', pushed a cobble around the rubble with his foot as he inspected what remained of the granary. Whatever hopes he had of discerning from the little ruin a culprit for its destruction had been carried away with the grain, which had for the most part survived and been recovered by the villagers with much excavation and heaping-up of the simple mortar and masonry. Their greatest concern now was rats- rats infesting the sacks of oats and barley they had moved to bury in a makeshift storage pit while they rebuilt the grainhouse.
Their second greatest concern, of course, was the ogre.
Sir Hasse Lomar of Paterdomus, also a Knight of the Hare and more easily bored than Sir Erbius, saw nothing worth noting in the rubble and had already questioned the villagers at length (that is, for about five or six minutes). "The beast was especially large, you say?"
"Aye, m'lord," said the nearest farmer. "Ain't none of us seen it, o' course, but they do say an ogre ain't meant to be bigger'n twelve feet at the crown. And they see 'em too, sometimes, stealin' sheep. Well, this one had footprints bigger'n I am tall, so..."
Sir Lomar frowned. "Are any of these footsteps extant?" Beat. "Are any of them still around."
The man raised his eyebrows and pulled a half-shrug. "Been a fair few days, m'lord, but you can still see the dent o' them, aye..."
That became the closest thing they had to any hard evidence of the beast: a string of muddy ditches shoved into the soft earth of a fallow field in a rough pattern of a man's gait. None of them looked particularly like footprints, nor were they so large as the man had said ("Well, they've filled in a bit, sir..."), and Sir Lomar suspected it would not take especially long to produce the very same thing with two men and a shovel.
"I suppose we'll have to investigate the plateau," said Sir Erbius over dinner, a generous and simple offering of chicken, carrot and bread. His squire was chasing village maidens outside, and the longer he spent eating the less he had to care about untangling the mess that was no doubt about to be made.
"Bollocks to the plateau. I'm not taking my horse round those cliffs without even a single eyewitness to tell us what we're looking for. It's bad country, Galn, this is the Ashmonts; there could be orcs up there, or worse- Cales."
Sir Erbius raised both eyebrows. "We won't make a whole quest out of it. I'm just saying that if there really is an ogre, and it comes back, and we hadn't even bothered to look for bones or such around its nest-"
"Shut up, I know." Sir Lomar sighed and drained his mug of beer in two long gulps. "I'm just cross about it. Let's go first thing tomorrow."
So they did.
"My arse hurts."
"Your arse would hurt worse if you'd been my squire and I had caught you cavorting with a peasant lass." Sir Lomar's own squire flinched at his words. "She wasn't even pretty."
"I thought she was pretty."
"Shut up."
Sir Erbius held his face away so neither of them could see him laughing. Eventually Sir Lomar's squire piped up.
"Sirs, I'm not sure we can make it up this valley by horse..."
"If we can lead them over this rockfall, we'll be alright." Sir Erbius anticipated the question and followed, "Squire, climb to the top and tell us how bad it is on the other side." His squire nodded, dismounted painfully, and began to clamber.
Sir Lomar smacked his squire around the shoulder. "Well, you heard him. Go!" -Barely a minute passed before Sir Lomar himself sighed, dismounted, and began to lead the horses over the easier parts of the slope.
A shadow passed over the sun.
Sir Erbius's steed panicked with such suddenness and terror that the horseman was immediately thrown, hurled from his saddle and beaten across eight feet of mountain stone before his foot slipped out of the stirrup. The earth quaked. Horses screamed and men screamed with them. He heard the sound of a great mass of gravel sliding.
Through bloodied weeping eyes, the knight watched a shape like a man bend its oak-thick legs and leap up the valley wall, out of sight. Ungodly laughter echoed and was gone.
"So, to be quite clear on the matter... no one was killed, in this attack?"
Sir Hasse nodded. His colleague, still in bandages, had been firmly advised by the physicians not to move his neck overmuch. "No, my liege. None of the villagers were injured."
"None of them saw the ogre?"
"Only its footprints."
"It... stole horses? Other livestock?"
"Three of our horses, yes. The fourth bolted. We found it later."
"Cattle?"
"Sheep, sometimes. The, uh, the villagers suspect that may have been a different ogre."
"And the grain? Lost along with the granary?"
"...No, my liege. Under the debris most of it was quite unharmed."
"I see." The Count laced and unlaced his fingers. "I see no reason to investigate further. Perhaps such assignments should be left for... others of your order."
Sir Lomar gripped the arms of his chair, nearly rising from his seat. "My liege, we are ready to swear-"
"Sit down, Hasse. I know you are." The Count smiled warmly. "I will have it marked by the cartographers that the plateau has an ogre presence- of course, I believe most of them note this already. In the meanwhile, I wouldn't want any giant to turn into a waste of my best knights, would I?" He laughed a fatherly little politician's laugh. "Dismissed."
The knights looked at each other, bowed and departed. Bastard idiots, thought the Count, and called his mistress back into the room.
"Wake up. Sheng! Wake up! We need to light the fires!" Yorgh kicked the fur-laden mass of his brother's sleeping form until it twisted violently into wakefulness. "Get your tinderbox. Light the bonfire!"
The big orange orc eyes scowled at him, then flew wide. Sheng scrabbled from his bed. "What's she got?"
Yorgh turned back and squinted into the dark. "Horses. Three of them." Sheng swore a lurid orcish curse. His brother turned to the other orc, already roused by the commotion.
"Peks is here."
She too flew into action.
So great were the lungs of the beast that approached them that her laughter was almost too deep for orcen ears to hear, but so powerful was her mirth that they heard it clearly anyway. Weak flames began to lick the piles of tinder under the great heap of mountain-pine they had already prepared as she threw down the fresh carcasses she had claimed and seated herself on the barren earth of the plateau. Her lips smacked across teeth set in a skull twice the size of the largest in the archives of Paterdomus, and easily four times its weight.
"Make fire!" The six orcs flinched under the force of her voice. "Fire for Peks!"
"Fire for Peks," yelled Yorgh in reply. He knew that you should always trick an ogre, as his grandfather taught him, and never obey it, but one's wits have a way of departing when faced with a giant who eats two warhorses in a single sitting. If it wasn't for her willingness to share meat, the six of them would have fled this accursed plateau long ago.
"Fire! Meat! Meat for Peks, and fire!"
"Yorgh..." Sheng pointed to the horse his wives had dragged into the firelight to butcher with crude hatchets. The hooves were the first to go, horseshoes being a precious boon of iron if the ogre didn't eat them. "This isn't even horse country. Where in Hell's name did she find these? These look like warhorses..."
Yorgh grimaced and turned away. Peks laughed until the mountains rang with her voice as dawn trickled over the horizon.
Summer light warmed the leaves and flowers of the gardens at Brookwidth manor. Those days were happy, the happiest of Kinna's life, days her father would spend indulging her when he was not so busy navigating the legal puzzles of presiding over land in three different realms, days her mother's illness did not seem so grave. In those days she was happy to live the life of a child, even attending her lessons with a smile, and the whole of the manor would keep a watchful eye over her, such that no room or lawn of her father's residence would ever be unsafe.
Kinna laughed as she reached her hand into the rushes. The stream trickled almost silently beyond; somewhere a bird was warbling. "Come out! Come on, pleeaase... Oh, don't be like that. You wouldn't do anything."
Her hand emerged. A thrice-coiled adder lay wrapped around her wrist, her hand gripping its tail. A small snake, to be sure; but this was one of the largest of that kind, as long as the girl's arm and then some. Its earth-red eye fixed upon her as it rested its head on her arm, its skin cool, smooth, and enticing as its coils clenched and shifted around Kinna's hand.
The little girl smiled. "You wouldn't do anything."
Indeed, though its grip tightened nervously around the girl as she stood up and marched to the manor, the serpent clung on with a certain sense of calm, visibly aware of the strangeness of its circumstances yet unable to perceive any kind of threat.
"Kinna!" The cry was sharp from the senior laundrymaid. "Kinna, oh- oh, you mustn't play with such a thing! You mustn't!"
Kinna laughed, and the washerwomen began to laugh with her, a little more shrilly. It was one thing for the curious young lady to be brave, but their lives were at stake if she was bitten, and they were right to be anxious. Kinna raised the heavy serpent to her lips and kissed its dappled forehead. One of the maids looked rather faint.
"She's my friend," she declared. "She would never bite me."
There was a moment of quiet. The senior maid smiled, sighing a deep and tired sigh. "Very well, young lady. If your father approves... But put that thing back in the mud soon, won't you? You'll frighten the girls."
Kinna's laugh was as loud and clear as the call of a wren. Her father approved everything.
"I'm going to show it to the whole manor!"
The gathering erupted in impotent protest as Kinna ran away, echoed by a thump that was either a basket or a laundrymaid collapsing. In a moment she was gone.
The Brookwidth manor grounds were not so large, and Kinna came rather close to her stated goal. The maids in the kitchen screamed and giggled through the window. The squires in the exercise yard feigned terror and laughed and pointed dull swords at the thing. The gardener sighed, and waved the girl away with a smile; Kinna's unusual games in the garden were only frightening the first six or so times. Even Adomo Manciora, her father's chief secretary, who quite preferred to set his desk in the sunlight, looked up from his letters and gently chastised her for disturbing him so (and only for that).
The master of horse did not impede her, for all his frowns, and nor did the banner-knight dismounting beside him: Sir Guthcairn, oldest friend of Lord Brookwidth, a man who moved like a stork yet was built like a bull. It was the stablehand, scarred from hard labour, lean and sharp in the eye as only young men can be, that brought an end to her reverie.
"Sire!" The outburst was sudden and aghast, his eyes flashing from the snake to the banner-knight who watched it with unsurprised interest. "Sire- how long has she been touching that thing? It's unclean, sire- for God's sake- it's a serpent!"
"Steady, lad," said his uneasy master, glancing up at the enormous frame of the unflinching knight. "Our lady is Lord Brookwidth's only child. He knows what's best for her..."
"Look at her! By God, man, look at her! No Lord in his right mind would let his daughter carry on like this. Haven't you heard the stories? She wanders alone in the night, she never gets sick, her whole household spares her the rod- now she catches vipers in her bare hands! What next? What happens when she becomes a woman?"
Stunned silence from the stable master. From the banner-knight, nothing.
"Can't you see that she's- stricken? She needs a priest. She needs a priest and the Abbess herself to come and watch over her for a while- no, she needs to go and spend a year in the Abbey with the nuns, that's it. A lady like her needs to be set straight early, or else we'll be left with no less than witchcr-"
Sir Guthcairn stepped forward so calmly that the stablehand did not even pause his tirade, and struck him with his fist.
The man's head snapped backwards with the force of the blow and he toppled instantly, tumbled and crashed into the hard timber walls of the stable. Blood streamed from his nose and his lip, neither of which still held their proper shape. Guthcairn bent over as if picking up a dropped trinket and lifted him by his shirt against the wall, back-handed him savagely, and threw him into the hard dirt outside.
No one moved. The stable master only watched wide-eyed. The snake flicked its tongue. Not even the horses showed signs of unease.
"Master Wilrey, see that you acquire a new stablehand," Sir Guthcairn said softly. He laid a hand on Kinna's back and turned her away from the concussed and drooling man. "Come, my dear. I'm sorry for disturbing you like that. I just can't abide such a foul accusation against you. It would not be right."
Kinna's watery gaze did not rise from the floor, and he stroked her hair as gently as he would his own daughter's.
"I like your snake."
She sniffed. She smiled a little.
During the nadir of the world, when men were weak and darkness strong, the beast Chernobog brought forth spirits of carnal desire to divide his foes and control his underlings. These supernatural parasites would possess the daughters of mankind, and empower their bodies to inflame the base lusts of those around them. For decades such powers could reside invisible within the bodies of humanfolk, breeding as they bred, emerging at the dark god's signal as if from nightmare. In this way Chernobog preyed upon the weakness of mortals to tempt men into betrayal, set tribe against tribe, poison the minds of the wise and enthrall the fragile will of his infantry.
But the Chernobog's conquest did not endure and his forces were finally scattered. Under the reign of the Exalted One, succubi were exorcised and killed by the dozen. The exalted Church fostered marriage and holy chastity among its faithful, and strong traditions of love and purity left no corner of Outremer for a succubus to hide.
No corner- for any ordinary succubus.
Kinna Brookwidth was born already possessed by a ghost of the primordial days, as was her mother, and her mother's mother one hundred generations before her. A twist of fate ensured that her birth was auspicious for the amassing darkness in other ways- beautiful down to the last pore, she is the last heir of a small but deeply loved house of northern Arcos, the senior statesmen and officers of her father already loyal to her by the grace of his dying wish.
Culled for millenia by the churches of Outremer, the spirit within her no longer bears the power to change her form, nor call up magic, nor even to defend herself with inhuman teeth and claws. Even the simple ability to move from one body to another has been lost for lack of use, and if the spirit tried to escape from Kinna's body for more than a few seconds, it would surely die. What little remains of the Chernobog's ancient creation is a few words of that god's foul speech, and a trace of the old blood, with which some cruel sorcerer may one day resurrect the true succubi of old.
The power to inflame the hearts of men, too, is gone from Kinna. What the church has bred into her in its stead is exactly what it always sought to foster: an untouchable, radiant soul of purity and innocence. This soul has slept within her bloodline for a thousand years, with no spirit ever able to call it up. Now that darkness has once again awakened in the world, this soul has become active, and the spirit within her has long since lost the power to put it down.
Only the will of the strongest is resistant to Kinna's gentleness. Men who see her pledge their lives to ensuring her safety from all evil. Her false light is like the sun to them, the last and only source of hope in a cruel and darkening world. Those who do not love her are blind or degenerate. Those who hate her hate all that is pure and clean and beautiful. They will be cleared from her path, and purged from her sight. Churches will burn for the sake of Kinna's innocence; kings will be thrown down, armies raised, fields salted; if this fragile ray of perfection cannot be made to last, then the world does not deserve to live at all.
Kinna's existence is a grim laugh from Chernobog's many graves. As his other servants foster chaos and bloodshed, her beauty becomes all the more alluring, and the numbers of the desperate swell to follow the meaningless hope she provides. Men once faithful to the true light of the Exalted One will fight alongside orcs and trolls chasing some salvation that she cannot offer, and die in the mud still believing that they are protecting the holiness they have ground to dust beneath their heels.
These loyal disciples form the Lady Brookwidth's staff and the chief arm of her power.
Sir Cahan Guthcairn, banner-knight of the Order of the Ram, a formidable Cale warrior who 'moves like a stork yet was built like a bull'. Though he did not strictly owe fealty to the late Lord Brookwidth, he was nonetheless his closest confidant and swore to guard Kinna with his life when he died.
Adomo Manciora, an administrator-diplomat from Goldport whose cheer and cheek complements his extensive shrewdness. Having fled his home city over 'complicated mercantile difficulties', he embedded himself deeply in the Lord Brookwidth's affairs and became a privileged adviser, deeply grateful for a second chance at a noble life.
Kinna's relevance to the plot is basically this:
-Wherever she goes, she rapidly acquires an elite following. -She baits the forces of Light like nothing else can. She's a decoy. -It's very hard to convince anyone that she's a threat.
Narrative intro takes place when Kinna's ~9-10, roleplay starts when she's ~14-15.
The lore is a bit over-the-top, though it's too late to go in and rewrite it all now. I tend to make my characters sound like monsters when they just want to live. Kinna's not particularly evil, nor are her followers. It takes a while for her charm to set in fully and some people are randomly immune. They can be made monstrous by being put on the defensive, like a brooding animal.
Summer light warmed the leaves and flowers of the gardens at Brookwidth manor. Those days were happy, the happiest of Kinna's life, days her father would spend indulging her when he was not so busy navigating the legal puzzles of presiding over land in three different realms, days her mother's illness did not seem so grave. In those days she was happy to live the life of a child, even attending her lessons with a smile, and the whole of the manor would keep a watchful eye over her, such that no room or lawn of her father's residence would ever be unsafe.
Kinna laughed as she reached her hand into the rushes. The stream trickled almost silently beyond; somewhere a bird was warbling. "Come out! Come on, pleeaase... Oh, don't be like that. You wouldn't do anything."
Her hand emerged. A thrice-coiled adder lay wrapped around her wrist, her hand gripping its tail. A small snake, to be sure; but this was one of the largest of that kind, as long as the girl's arm and then some. Its earth-red eye fixed upon her as it rested its head on her arm, its skin cool, smooth, and enticing as its coils clenched and shifted around Kinna's hand.
The little girl smiled. "You wouldn't do anything."
Indeed, though its grip tightened nervously around the girl as she stood up and marched to the manor, the serpent clung on with a certain sense of calm, visibly aware of the strangeness of its circumstances yet unable to perceive any kind of threat.
"Kinna!" The cry was sharp from the senior laundrymaid. "Kinna, oh- oh, you mustn't play with such a thing! You mustn't!"
Kinna laughed, and the washerwomen began to laugh with her, a little more shrilly. It was one thing for the curious young lady to be brave, but their lives were at stake if she was bitten, and they were right to be anxious. Kinna raised the heavy serpent to her lips and kissed its dappled forehead. One of the maids looked rather faint.
"She's my friend," she declared. "She would never bite me."
There was a moment of quiet. The senior maid smiled, sighing a deep and tired sigh. "Very well, young lady. If your father approves... But put that thing back in the mud soon, won't you? You'll frighten the girls."
Kinna's laugh was as loud and clear as the call of a wren. Her father approved everything.
"I'm going to show it to the whole manor!"
The gathering erupted in impotent protest as Kinna ran away, echoed by a thump that was either a basket or a laundrymaid collapsing. In a moment she was gone.
The Brookwidth manor grounds were not so large, and Kinna came rather close to her stated goal. The maids in the kitchen screamed and giggled through the window. The squires in the exercise yard feigned terror and laughed and pointed dull swords at the thing. The gardener sighed, and waved the girl away with a smile; Kinna's unusual games in the garden were only frightening the first six or so times. Even Adomo Manciora, her father's chief secretary, who quite preferred to set his desk in the sunlight, looked up from his letters and gently chastised her for disturbing him so (and only for that).
The master of horse did not impede her, for all his frowns, and nor did the banner-knight dismounting beside him: Sir Guthcairn, oldest friend of Lord Brookwidth, a man who moved like a stork yet was built like a bull. It was the stablehand, scarred from hard labour, lean and sharp in the eye as only young men can be, that brought an end to her reverie.
"Sire!" The outburst was sudden and aghast, his eyes flashing from the snake to the banner-knight who watched it with unsurprised interest. "Sire- how long has she been touching that thing? It's unclean, sire- for God's sake- it's a serpent!"
"Steady, lad," said his uneasy master, glancing up at the enormous frame of the unflinching knight. "Our lady is Lord Brookwidth's only child. He knows what's best for her..."
"Look at her! By God, man, look at her! No Lord in his right mind would let his daughter carry on like this. Haven't you heard the stories? She wanders alone in the night, she never gets sick, her whole household spares her the rod- now she catches vipers in her bare hands! What next? What happens when she becomes a woman?"
Stunned silence from the stable master. From the banner-knight, nothing.
"Can't you see that she's- stricken? She needs a priest. She needs a priest and the Abbess herself to come and watch over her for a while- no, she needs to go and spend a year in the Abbey with the nuns, that's it. A lady like her needs to be set straight early, or else we'll be left with no less than witchcr-"
Sir Guthcairn stepped forward so calmly that the stablehand did not even pause his tirade, and struck him with his fist.
The man's head snapped backwards with the force of the blow and he toppled instantly, tumbled and crashed into the hard timber walls of the stable. Blood streamed from his nose and his lip, neither of which still held their proper shape. Guthcairn bent over as if picking up a dropped trinket and lifted him by his shirt against the wall, back-handed him savagely, and threw him into the hard dirt outside.
No one moved. The stable master only watched wide-eyed. The snake flicked its tongue. Not even the horses showed signs of unease.
"Master Wilrey, see that you acquire a new stablehand," Sir Guthcairn said softly. He laid a hand on Kinna's back and turned her away from the concussed and drooling man. "Come, my dear. I'm sorry for disturbing you like that. I just can't abide such a foul accusation against you. It would not be right."
Kinna's watery gaze did not rise from the floor, and he stroked her hair as gently as he would his own daughter's.
Alright, for real this time. Here's a character concept I'm messing around with.
Nice to be here again!
Kinna Brookwidth
Rogue Being
During the nadir of the world, when men were weak and darkness strong, the beast Chernobog brought forth spirits of carnal desire to divide his foes and control his underlings. These supernatural parasites would possess the daughters of mankind, and empower their bodies to inflame the base lusts of those around them. For decades such powers could reside invisible within the bodies of humanfolk, breeding as they bred, emerging at the dark god's signal as if from nightmare. In this way Chernobog preyed upon the weakness of mortals to tempt men into betrayal, set tribe against tribe, poison the minds of the wise and enthrall the fragile will of his infantry.
But the Chernobog's conquest did not endure and his forces were finally scattered. Under the reign of the Exalted One, succubi were exorcised and killed by the dozen. The exalted Church fostered marriage and holy chastity among its faithful, and strong traditions of love and purity left no corner of Outremer for a succubus to hide.
No corner- for any ordinary succubus.
Kinna Brookwidth was born already possessed by a ghost of the primordial days, as was her mother, and her mother's mother one hundred generations before her. A twist of fate ensured that her birth was auspicious for the amassing darkness in other ways- beautiful down to the last pore, she is the last heir of a small but deeply loved house of northern Arcos, the senior statesmen and officers of her father already loyal to her by the grace of his dying wish.
Culled for millenia by the churches of Outremer, the spirit within her no longer bears the power to change her form, nor call up magic, nor even to defend herself with inhuman teeth and claws. Even the simple ability to move from one body to another has been lost for lack of use, and if the spirit tried to escape from Kinna's body for more than a few seconds, it would surely die. What little remains of the Chernobog's ancient creation is a few words of that god's foul speech, and a trace of the old blood, with which some cruel sorcerer may one day resurrect the true succubi of old.
The power to inflame the hearts of men, too, is gone from Kinna. What the church has bred into her in its stead is exactly what it always sought to foster: an untouchable, radiant soul of purity and innocence. This soul has slept within her bloodline for a thousand years, with no spirit ever able to call it up. Now that darkness has once again awakened in the world, this soul has become active, and the spirit within her has long since lost the power to put it down.
Only the will of the strongest is resistant to Kinna's gentleness. Men who see her pledge their lives to ensuring her safety from all evil. Her false light is like the sun to them, the last and only source of hope in a cruel and darkening world. Those who do not love her are blind or degenerate. Those who hate her hate all that is pure and clean and beautiful. They will be cleared from her path, and purged from her sight. Churches will burn for the sake of Kinna's innocence; kings will be thrown down, armies raised, fields salted; if this fragile ray of perfection cannot be made to last, then the world does not deserve to live at all.
Kinna's existence is a grim laugh from Chernobog's many graves. As his other servants foster chaos and bloodshed, her beauty becomes all the more alluring, and the numbers of the desperate swell to follow the meaningless hope she provides. Men once faithful to the true light of the Exalted One will fight alongside orcs and trolls chasing some salvation that she cannot offer, and die in the mud still believing that they are protecting the holiness they have ground to dust beneath their heels.
Still settling on art for this char, this one by Alex Chow makes her look a little too evil.
Myth: In the world of Outremer, strange beings that harken back to the shadowed days of old are not always restricted to the woods or to the mountains. The cities of man may, in their hungrier and crueller parts, offer shelter to terrible spirits that lurk in the corners of eye and alley. The lust, wrath, and gluttony of man provides a feeding ground for beings of darkness, and none have gorged themselves upon such vices as the Bartering Lady has gorged on Avarice.
For centuries, perhaps since the days when Outremer was unified and its glory great, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Powers: Dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis.
Consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed.
Smod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Realm: Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed. Ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate.
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