TokyoPewPew

Smoke and Steel

Race Human (Doelishman) Sex Male Age 51 Court Alignment Red Role Colonel (2nd Regiment of Horse—"The Firestripes") __________________________________________________________	Untitled by Andrey Shishkin

Divine Right. Despite his common origins, "Old Vic" in just a few years has proven himself a capable soldier, roughrider, and commander of men, an invaluable asset to the Inburians' peasant revolt. Equally adept in both the dragoon and the harquebusier styles of warfare, on the field he deploys with sword, carbine, and a brace of two Reiterpistolen; whereas on the street he carries a mercenary's Katzbalger—short, broad, and in all more suited to tavern brawls than proper dueling.

Ironsides. First to engage and last to withdraw, Vicquerno himself sets the 2^nd's example in battle. As composed among enemies as allies, and unflappable under fire, he does not retreat until he's received the order; and even then, not until the last of his boys has gotten out first.

Similis Simili Gaudet. Handpicked not for their individual skills and strengths, but for their devotion to "Commander, Queen, and Cause" (purportedly in that order, ascending), Vic's "Firestripes," so nicknamed for their distinctive orange sashes, have cultivated a unit cohesion not achieved elsewhere but by the very most prosperous leaders. They do not rape; nor break ranks to run down a routed foe; nor whore or gamble at quarters; nor loot the houses and baggage of human foes, regardless of allegiances. (The colonel does condone the pillage of elven property, however.) Their discipline is admirable, their personal loyalties enviable, their repute as yet unrivalled.

Demagogue. That most of the 2^nd began the war as common workmen—hunters, militia, and other decent shots, perhaps, but unskilled in battle all the same—and now command the renown they do, speaks to the methods of van der Szaalm and his serjeants. This begins not with the ruthless drilling of their bodies and horses, nor even with the communal prayers and catechisms in which all the men share between battles; but with recognizing in each man all the qualities beseeming a soldier of freedom.

Knave of Hearts. One would not expect the man who has forbidden gambling among his ranks to be so adept at games of skill, but especially cards and billiards.

Anguis in Herba. The Firestripes' personal devotion to their colonel has brought some of Ariana's councilors, and perhaps the girl herself, no small degree of anxiety in recent days. Why, for instance, this insistence on garbing the regiment in a color besides Ariana's scarlet? And why does it draft its own poems, its own songs and slogans ("We Remembre Grendell," "Be Thou of Good Couraige," "The Gunnes of Rodelkog" et al.), rather than join the other troops in their catechisms? Some cannot help wondering whether the good colonel's personal ambitions supersede his loyalty to the pretender-empresses...

Sanguinarian. Though marked by temperance and measure in most things, if one vice colors Vicquerno's decisions it is his rage. Slow to forgive and quick to avenge, it is little wonder that he's fallen in with the camp which promises the decimation, humiliation, and ultimate expulsion of the elves from Old Inbur. At times to the detriment of the war effort (inspiring those to fight to the death who would otherwise have lowered their arms and surrendered), those who have crossed the 2^nd can expect no clemency; no quarter. And the grudges their commander keeps are strong as steel.

Son and heir to a family of poorters and husbandmen, relatively modest of means, Vicquerno even from a most tender age was spared the indignity of an idle life. Expected from the start to earn his daily bread, he had a small hand in many of the family's various enterprises—a tin smithy, a heraldry office, a small paper mill, all of these situated in the levee-town of Valtrecht—but his true duties were to the estate, where with godly grace he took to pick and plough and scythe, same as the sharecroppers who worked his father's fields. When there were no troughs to till and crops to tend, especially in wintertime, Vicquerno also enlisted with the town's standing militia, walking its dams and walls and sea gates, arresting the occasional robber-knight or burglar—a privilege afforded only to the wealthy of the city, as the stadtholder, Rodon Van Ecklingen, expected the men to supply their own arms. But with such exclusivity arrived opportunity. Enough service years in the Free Watch all but guaranteed one an eventual city government position, and Vicquerno van der Szaalm had been well on his way toward one such position when the wars broke out, studying as a solicitor. Oft he wonders what his life would look like now, hadn't he answered the chance for glory and adventure when it knocked; quiet, t'would seem. Quiet and comfortable and ignobly dull.

The other ignominies—the noxious fumes of the smithy, the drudgery of heraldry, the odoriferousness of the pulp, even the stink and the calluses of the fields—these he suffered graciously enough but not the courtroom. The courtroom drove him very nearly mad. Perhaps those ink and pounce-stained hands, unstimulated by the quill, yearned for the hoe and the hammer once more. Perhaps, given his first glimpse into Valtrecht's inner workings, it disgusted him just how much money the Doel was paying for Orrian's "protection"; how prosperous his household and his choice familial friends and his people at large could be, were they not racketeered by plumped-up horseback brigands. Then again, it may be the bills of lading, the manifests and the charterparties which so incensed him; inventories counted not in bushels or ingots, but heads. Names. Whole families and tribes branded, fettered, auctioned off to offshore mines and plantations, then squabbled over like goats and capons. Everyone knew Orrian's "Western Empire" did not exercise a chattel system—they justified their slave trading by convicting a person of a crime first (often enough a fictitious one), then calling it punishment—may be the aging Doelishman began to wonder when he would recognize a name on the list.

Regardless of the cause, his defiance started off small: first earning a few more guilders renting out the family's press to populist pamphleteers; later on penning and publicizing his own (albeit anonymously). Finding himself in their backroom beer halls, attending their speeches, their debates. Little arsons and vandalisms, especially of shipments bound for the treasurers of Orrian's court; his "tributes." The fourteen months Vicquerno spent in the Salaissant for such offenses were meant to dissuade him thereof. Instead they galvanized him all the further, giving him time aplenty to pen all manner of anti-Haltian verses and fictions, several still popular today among "Ariana's Ardents"; and making him a few lifelong friends among his fellow prisoners besides, several of whom have fought and died already for the Reds.

Only Vicquerno's time in the Free Watch saved his estate from confiscation, and himself from the very worst conditions inside the prison, cramped and packed and rife with disease—not even mentioning, besides, the aforementioned indentured servitude on some fever-ridden plantation somewhere across the sea. Of course, only God knows whether it was redemption or recidivism which laid coiled in van der Szaalm's heart of hearts when he walked free that fateful day; whether he intended to navigate the straight and narrow, or fall back into old habits. For in just a few short months the revolution had swept through Doel, and, most courteously, robbed him of the choice. Though whether they sought him out, or the inverse, is as yet lost to time, known only to the Red Empress and the man himself.

Smoke and Steel

Race Human (Doelishman) Sex Male Age 51 Court Alignment Red Role Colonel (2nd Regiment of Horse—"The Firestripes") __________________________________________________________	Untitled by Andrey Shishkin

Divine Right. Despite his common origins, "Old Vic" in just a few years has proven himself a capable soldier, roughrider, and commander of men, an invaluable asset to the Inburians' peasant revolt. Equally adept in both the dragoon and the harquebusier styles of warfare, on the field he deploys with sword, carbine, and a brace of two Reiterpistolen; whereas on the street he carries a mercenary's Katzbalger—short, broad, and in all more suited to tavern brawls than proper dueling.

Ironsides. First to engage and last to withdraw, Vicquerno himself sets the 2^nd's example in battle. As composed among enemies as allies, and unflappable under fire, he does not retreat until he's received the order; and even then, not until the last of his boys has gotten out first.

Similis Simili Gaudet. Handpicked not for their individual skills and strengths, but for their devotion to "Commander, Queen, and Cause" (purportedly in that order, ascending), Vic's "Firestripes," so nicknamed for their distinctive orange sashes, have cultivated a unit cohesion not achieved elsewhere but by the very most prosperous leaders. They do not rape; nor break ranks to run down a routed foe; nor whore or gamble at quarters; nor loot the houses and baggage of human foes, regardless of allegiances. (The colonel does condone the pillage of elven property, however.) Their discipline is admirable, their personal loyalties enviable, their repute as yet unrivalled.

Demagogue. That most of the 2^nd began the war as common workmen—hunters, militia, and other decent shots, perhaps, but unskilled in battle all the same—and now command the renown they do, speaks to the methods of van der Szaalm and his serjeants. This begins not with the ruthless drilling of their bodies and horses, nor even with the communal prayers and catechisms in which all the men share between battles; but with recognizing in each man all the qualities beseeming a soldier of freedom.

Knave of Hearts. One would not expect the man who has forbidden gambling among his ranks to be so adept at games of skill, but especially cards and billiards.

Anguis in Herba. The Firestripes' personal devotion to their colonel has brought some of Ariana's councilors, and perhaps the girl herself, no small degree of anxiety in recent days. Why, for instance, this insistence on garbing the regiment in a color besides Ariana's scarlet? And why does it draft its own poems, its own songs and slogans ("We Remembre Grendell," "Be Thou of Good Couraige," "The Gunnes of Rodelkog" et al.), rather than join the other troops in their catechisms? Some cannot help wondering whether the good colonel's personal ambitions supersede his loyalty to the pretender-empresses...

Sanguinarian. Though marked by temperance and measure in most things, if one vice colors Vicquerno's decisions it is his rage. Slow to forgive and quick to avenge, it is little wonder that he's fallen in with the camp which promises the decimation, humiliation, and ultimate expulsion of the elves from Old Inbur. At times to the detriment of the war effort (inspiring those to fight to the death who would otherwise have lowered their arms and surrendered), those who have crossed the 2^nd can expect no clemency; no quarter. And the grudges their commander keeps are strong as steel.

Son and heir to a family of poorters and husbandmen, relatively modest of means, Vicquerno even from a most tender age was spared the indignity of an idle life. Expected from the start to earn his daily bread, he had a small hand in many of the family's various enterprises—a tin smithy, a heraldry office, a small paper mill, all of these situated in the levee-town of Valtrecht—but his true duties were to the estate, where with godly grace he took to pick and plough and scythe, same as the sharecroppers who worked his father's fields. When there were no troughs to till and crops to tend, especially in wintertime, Vicquerno also enlisted with the town's standing militia, walking its dams and walls and sea gates, arresting the occasional robber-knight or burglar—a privilege afforded only to the wealthy of the city, as the stadtholder, Rodon Van Ecklingen, expected the men to supply their own arms. But with such exclusivity arrived opportunity. Enough service years in the Free Watch all but guaranteed one an eventual city government position, and Vicquerno van der Szaalm had been well on his way toward one such position when the wars broke out, studying as a solicitor. Oft he wonders what his life would look like now, hadn't he answered the chance for glory and adventure when it knocked; quiet, t'would seem. Quiet and comfortable and ignobly dull.

The other ignominies—the noxious fumes of the smithy, the drudgery of heraldry, the odoriferousness of the pulp, even the stink and the calluses of the fields—these he suffered graciously enough but not the courtroom. The courtroom drove him very nearly mad. Perhaps those ink and pounce-stained hands, unstimulated by the quill, yearned for the hoe and the hammer once more. Perhaps, given his first glimpse into Valtrecht's inner workings, it disgusted him just how much money the Doel was paying for Orrian's "protection"; how prosperous his household and his choice familial friends and his people at large could be, were they not racketeered by plumped-up horseback brigands. Then again, it may be the bills of lading, the manifests and the charterparties which so incensed him; inventories counted not in bushels or ingots, but heads. Names. Whole families and tribes branded, fettered, auctioned off to offshore mines and plantations, then squabbled over like goats and capons. Everyone knew Orrian's "Western Empire" did not exercise a chattel system—they justified their slave trading by convicting a person of a crime first (often enough a fictitious one), then calling it punishment—may be the aging Doelishman began to wonder when he would recognize a name on the list.

Regardless of the cause, his defiance started off small: first earning a few more guilders renting out the family's press to populist pamphleteers; later on penning and publicizing his own (albeit anonymously). Finding himself in their backroom beer halls, attending their speeches, their debates. Little arsons and vandalisms, especially of shipments bound for the treasurers of Orrian's court; his "tributes." The fourteen months Vicquerno spent in the Salaissant for such offenses were meant to dissuade him thereof. Instead they galvanized him all the further, giving him time aplenty to pen all manner of anti-Haltian verses and fictions, several still popular today among "Ariana's Ardents"; and making him a few lifelong friends among his fellow prisoners besides, several of whom have fought and died already for the Reds.

Only Vicquerno's time in the Free Watch saved his estate from confiscation, and himself from the very worst conditions inside the prison, cramped and packed and rife with disease—not even mentioning, besides, the aforementioned indentured servitude on some fever-ridden plantation somewhere across the sea. Of course, only God knows whether it was redemption or recidivism which laid coiled in van der Szaalm's heart of hearts when he walked free that fateful day; whether he intended to navigate the straight and narrow, or fall back into old habits. For in just a few short months the revolution had swept through Doel, and, most courteously, robbed him of the choice. Though whether they sought him out, or the inverse, is as yet lost to time, known only to the Red Empress and the man himself.

Smoke and Steel

I'll be able to start working on this character sheet on Friday, finish it through the weekend. Glad to see the other factions are getting some love!! Should make for an enticing opening board.

Smoke and Steel (A pike and shot era RP concept)

The Reds were a conspiracy that's been brewing for a while made up of human burghers and military officers. When the civil war kicks off they've started rallying peasants, burning manors etc. and then defeated the Imperial field army sent to put them down (through weight of numbers). They are in the open at the moment to rally the peasants but they have the potential to go underground again or retreat into that impassable woodland area on the map.

@Dyelli Beybi

Perfect. I'm taking heavy inspiration from Maximilien Robespierre and Guy Fawkes as well, but the working backstory is straight out of Oliver Cromwell: a wealthy-ish commoner with a surprising acumen for cavalry command, furthering a righteous cause while also exploiting the turmoil to ruthlessly seize power. The more brutal the methods (the more ethically ambiguous the character's legacy) the better.

Smoke and Steel (A pike and shot era RP concept)

Character drafting (if, of course, there is room for newcomers—I'm sure you're giving priority seating to people already playing in Circled Sea games). Do any of these factions operate from a position of secrecy, or are all the major claimants declared and accounted for in the coming conflict? And what phase has the fighting reached, if at all?

Smoke and Steel (A pike and shot era RP concept)

Amidst the chaos, two sisters, Andronika, the heir to the old Empire and her younger sister Ariana, have also raised ancient Inburian Wyvern banners and many flock to them, tired of elven oppression. While the sisters are firm friends, they have quite different ideas about what a free human Kingdom might look like. Andronika, the 'White Wyvern' is in favour of cooperating with the elven populations in human majority lands while Ariana is in favour of complete displacement. The chances of their forces coming to blows is very real.

@Dyelli Beybi

👀 The English Civil War except instead of filthy royalists we're decapitating filthy knife ear apologists?

Regalia

Somewhere inside that skin-and-metal exoskeleton, that body which she wore the way others wore clothes and armor, Beth still wondered what it all meant. The 'Red Stars.' And what they had portended, clawing up the beach like a living tsunami, their chitinous knees clicking with greed, their mandibles yawning ravenously. Whether that enemy up there was the enemy—the one Ultima had warned them about all those years ago, the one which had made the girl's recovery, her training, her painstaking grooming all so very necessary.

So many questions. Yet among all those uncertainties had one thing remained clear, a lighthouse standing strong amid the squalls: it was not her destiny to fell this monster. She was not these people's savior. She would, however, aid that person. That much she had known from the beginning—even if she'd thought it would be Cassiel, her craven brother, who rose first and paramount to Landow's aid...

Still, before someone could deal the coup de grâce, someone had to bring low that obscene creature. And before someone could cut it down, someone had to fight her way to it. Fight over the blood-slick sand, through the roiling surf; through the roach-dogs and their hordes uncountable, their bodies even then weighing down her own, hooked and latched about her ankles, her throat, like so many writhing shackles, heavy and still gorging. Glutting. Beth impaled them until her hands were too heavy with their carcasses to hoist, sliced them and hacked them until the blades of her fingers were clogged with their thick, pulpy innards, hiked over the mountains of their dead, and still they came, two arriving to replace each one felled. And through it all, through the futility and the struggle, only one direction remained: past them. Through them.

Wresting her hand from the last thorax she'd plunged it through, she kept pushing. Kept clawing. A stalemate slipping from their fingers stroke by stroke.

Until that changed.

It began with a kind of sandstorm: a flurry of detritus kicking up from a single focal point, shearing pebbles from salient concrete, uncovering and uplifting beach-buried river stones. Steadied, aimed, controlled, this biting wind liquefied the lesser creatures inside their organic armors, shredded the chitinous shells. Another storm also focalized, this one encrusted with a million diamonds of ice, glittering on the gusts, glittering on every surface where grew its stiff, brittle hoars. Where the first sandpaper squall had reclaimed sections of beach, this ice storm calcified over the squirming dead, gave pause to the scuttlings of those yet unharmed. Born from bugs and insects, the roach-things feared the cold most of all. It compelled them to dig. Hibernate. Flee winter's desolation down, down into the heats and slimes of the earth. Still, even this afforded the Inevitable One, and all the other Dominants, but a few feet's reprieve. Only a moment to refresh.

By the time a second behemoth had scraped the heavens with its scaly back, blotting the sky with the stretching of its titanic wings, those down on the beach knew not whether to elate or to shiver. Behind them, from among the huddled refugees had it appeared, but as another defender? If not, then one who had infiltrated—the second of two pincers—one driving their prey into the hunter's jaws, one preventing all escape while the other wreaked hell and havoc.

Much to the relief of the dwarfed onlookers, the invader from the sea appeared rather incensed by the sudden arrival and presence of this second entity (an entity Beth, and all around her, did not recognize; not by name or visage). Their attention drawn, their ire stoked, thus began an exchange of blows which shook the earth, and sent shockwaves pulsing through the spray. Like twenty-inch artillery guns were their swipes and strikes, and yet like those found on two warring battleships were their defenses—leviathan hides and razor-quick claws and the gnashings of skyscraper teeth. Every minute, every second further pulverized poor Landowtown beneath their primordial feet that their stalemate continued, iron striking iron. Even when the commandeered, brainwashed roach-things had scaled the massive back, and reached their destination, and for a moment distracted their erstwhile master with their chewing, even then the second titan could not pierce. Could not penetrate. Even when the first shrieked in pain, and, agitated, began to swipe and scratch at its own feeler-organs, the second could not maneuver its huge claws and fangs to meet soft underbelly, vulnerable throat.

Enraged, it unhinged its jaw, and opened wide its cavernous gullet, wherefrom emerged a growing light. Whitish, pure, the distilled essence of a dying star; the fury in its belly going supernova.

Down on the beach, the smartest were already turned to flee, unsure what hellfire would issue from the portal of this behemoth's mouth except for that it would glass the sands, scour the rest to ash. The survivors ran, and they were easy prey for the roach-things not caught in the radii of Titan's shredding sandstorm, Shiva's banshee-winds. They ran and so too did the things which devoured them, sensing devastation, yet unable to overcome their unnatural instincts, their hijacked programming.

Beth, of course, had never been one to flee, least of all when cladded in Odin's metallic embrace. The chill which permeated the armor seemed as well each time to seep into her very heart, imbuing it with an alien, detached acceptance. Perhaps the scrawny five-foot-something would have feared, stripped naked of such effects; standing there exposed among the horrors; but not then, peering out through His visor, flexing His gauntleted fingers. Not then...

A few necrotic blasts cleared the way, scattering the roach-things in a linear path, curled and dead before they hit the ground. Sand became shallows became foaming surf, until she waded waist-high among the mutant bugs; live ones teeming and swimming and gnashing about her legs, dead ones bobbing and buoyant. Ere long she waded too among other things; things which towered over her the way she towered over its dutiful legions; the pylons of its legs, its sinews corded like guy wires. She was microscopic compared to these. Small enough to go unnoticed past the massive spur of its metapodia, small enough that there would not even be enough of her left to ooze up between its toes when she was crushed beneath this dance of giants. Even still, Beth did not fear.

She had, after all, reached her target.

The bugs still latching to her armored limbs, the shallows still dragging her this way and that, the behemoths' every step a tsunami, their every exchange a tidal wave, she spent her every drop of strength not being dragged to sea and drowned. Yet still she pushed. Drew. Invoked. Fought and fought with every blow and every plodding, trudging step. Until finally, finally, there she stood amidst the crashing spray, mere feet away from having been mashed, and with a single massive stroke, all her power and will strained behind it, fed into it ...

One moment the monstrous leviathan, born from the hostile sea, ripped and tore into the dragon-Dominant, eager—desperate—to gouge out its breath before the second could unleash Its hellfiery wrath. Lashing and snapping and scouring at its superheated throat. The next, the creature somehow lost its footing. Staggered forward, crumpled with a writhing, a shriek. The blackish ichor coursing from its digitigrade ankle, polluting the pinkish waters, told the story: somehow, by something (someone) too minuscule to see, someone swept away in the churning chaos of the water and the bugs and the bodies, had hamstrung the being; sliced clean through its heelcord, hobbling it.

There was a hurry, then, to capitalize on this vulnerability. Perhaps more sand and stone peppered the felled creature, aiming for the jellies of its eyes, and soft whites beneath its jaw. Perhaps another of Shiva's flurries aimed to blind and frostbite the monster. A hail of bullets and gunpulses clattered across its armored cheeks, its neck. But its killer already stood there, upon its plated brow.

He reached down, and plunged his twin swords from the back of its neck. He looked across the way, where stood Laura Genevieve among the terrified, huddled masses. He bowed.

"Farewell for now, miss," he said, and with a flourish, and a bow, and a sheathing of his swords, a flame erupted at his feet. A flame which crawled quickly up his legs, and dusted him inch by inch into a fine ash, which scattered on the southward breeze.

Cards {15/15}

Come die Patrick Stark

Sup @Srpv? Welcome back

Regalia

Hurrying. Pursuing. Closing. Launching. Latching. Dragging. Incising. Cutting. Quiet now. Not moving. Good. Master will be pleased. Moving. Searching. Detecting. Smelling. There. Another. Hurrying. Pursuing. Closing. Launching. Dragging. Incising. Cutting. Quiet now. Not moving. Good. Hmm. Larger than the others. Still fresh. Clutch. Pierce. Throb. Inseminate. Lay. Eggs will stay warm here. Little ones need lots of meat.

Twitch. Rise. Tasted something. On the air. Hemolymph. Death pheromones. Sisters. Distress. Need us. Find them. Twitch. Hurry. Hurry. Twitch. There. Enemy soldier. Protecting the worker drones. Hive must be close. Go. Swarm. Swarm. Please the master. Destroy the master's enemies. Surround it. Gnaw! Crush! Dismember! Devour—


..............Destroy the antennae. Destroy the antennae. Destroy the antennae. Destroy the..............

The girl was cannibalized, and in her place stood the thing which feasted on her: flesh, blood, bones, and essence all. An obscene sacrifice to an obscene god. A dark savior. A savior who, for the time, stood the beach alone against the hordes; and in another few moments would be overrun. Sawn limb from limb and swallowed in pieces.

For the time Its armor held. Try as they may, the bugs rasped and chewed at the creature's exoskeleton, a carapace resembling steel in its glitter, but broke their fangs upon its breastplate, snapped their mandibles upon Its many movements and protests. It swatted and stabbed at the beasts for a time, impaling cladded fingers, ended in wickedly long metal points, through their juicy midsections, feeling them squirm and writhe upon Its saluted arm, shook them loose again to make easy work of the next. But with the behemoth's own massive hands pawing down upon the beach, the knight had no other choice but to yield some ground in deflection. And where It yielded, there were the endless lines of roach-dogs, filling in, conquering, staking the beach, foot by scuttling foot. They crawled over a legion of their rent and bursted dead to have at the few defenders. They crawled over each other to move up the armored legs, up the plackart, drag down this interloper by their sheer weight and scissor through its metal shell. But when the knight stood fast to stymie the swarm, It was easier prey for the colossus. One's advance always made way for the other. A hammer and a hundred thousand anvils.

When the ichor and putrid blood-drenched knight ceased dodging, ceased blinking from dune to dune kicking up sweeps of sand in its wake shifting faster than the human eye could track, onlookers believed It to have finally spent the last of Its vigor; exhausted Its wavering strength; made itself easy prey to the onslaught, whereon the swarms would suck it dry, feast on Its residue, and then advance up the beach faster than two legs and two feet could flee, slaking an eerie, bottomless hunger. The roach-dogs clamored over each other to have at the entity first. They even nipped and snapped at each other, jealously claiming choice parts for themselves and their clutch-sisters. A low, throaty chanting spilled from beneath the clicking, squelching mound of insatiable bugs, uttered in a dead language; a primordial one.

Then, all at once, the knight was elsewhere. Eastward, judging from the glittering gust which surged in Its wake. And the creatures paused in the dozens. Breaking free of some kind of confusion—a stupor more potent than the tufts of residue could alone create, as the Dominant of Death escaped an early judgment—they about-faced, and seemed to return to the sea in a general retreat. Until they emerged again at the waterline, upon the behemoth's legs, scrabbling over the swells of its knees, across the plains of its leathery thighs, ascending the crags of its back, up, up toward its defenseless feeler-organs.

What Odin says to those in Godtime is only known to Him, and to them. Them who are to become His next memento. But whatever it was, the animals, so terrified in their mortality, had chosen to betray. To serve someone else despite the imminent wrath looming just behind them. All its hulking bones and muscles and sinew, for whatever reason, no longer frightened them.

Cards {15/15}