Transience — Roleplayer Guild

K i ‘ i r a

H e r  f l a m e s  b u r n  b r i g h t  a g a i n s t  t h e  n i g h t

The forest was ablaze with the light of Ki’ira’s fury. The trees withered under the intensity of her fire which had spread from a single infernal dome to a ravenous wildfire that sat upon the canopy, consuming all in its path. The darkened night skies filled with thick, black smoke. The air became poisoned with the smog; choking the once verdant expanse beyond Kolantis. 

From the fire, life fled. The animals that lurked in the brush scurried from their holes, the bandits prowling the forest depths screamed and took flight from the growing flames encroaching upon their hidden camps built amongst the trees and the shadows. The last of the men and women and children fleeing the slaughter at the city devolved from orderly lines of refugees to panicked groups jaunting through the trees to escape the fire. 

And yet, amidst the chaos, there was one who seemed unfazed by the fire. She ran like a wild animal, but not because of fear, but because of anger. Her screams and her cries could have been heard for miles around; a haunting chorus of true dejection and defeat. Ki’ira had set the forest aflame with good reason, for only she could really know what she had seen in the depths. What creature had she seen in the deepest of night? What had she truly seen? Did she really see the body of a goddess trampled and desecrated like any wild animal? 

She moved toward the coast of the sea that rested upon Kolantis’ dock, and she moved fast. Within minutes she had cleared the main blaze, and within only minutes more she would have noticed the trees begin to change, their density thinning, and calm returning once more. The nightbirds chirped carefree once more, and the creatures in the brush slept as though the flames were not approaching them at speed. Strangely, it seemed nearly silent; a moment of serenity amidst the chaos of the night in which a city had died, and Ki’ira’s world had been shattered.

She crested the final hill before the sea, emerging from the thinning trees to look out upon the sea stretching to the horizon and further. The moonlight glistened from its rippling surface, and the forest fire from the distance seemed to sprinkle it with ruby-red flecks of light, like a sunset-coloured gem catching the morning light. The waves crashed gently upon the shoreline, and a sea breeze brushed softly across Ki’ira’s face. But there was more to the shore than the simple pleasures of nature, for a small camp had been set upon upon the sand: a few tents, a small, extinguished campfire, several crates sealed tight, and a few planks of driftwood floating on the water, leading to a small, anchored galley that was swaying on the waves. There were two men and a younger lady, all a strange mix of looking extremely impoverished, yet undeniably suave. Swashbucklers, no doubt. 

They seemed to call to each other in an undecipherable language as they shifted crates to the galley, laughing periodically and occasionally making gruff noises as they each lifted their cargo into their ship. They were armed, too, with scimitars and crossbows. perhaps they knew how to use them. Perhaps not. 

It did not take long for them to notice Ki’ira upon the crest of the shoreline hill. Such a realisation was met with a startled cry from the lady, and the entire crew dropping the task at hand to raise their scimitars and approach, all whispering to one another in their strange, exotic language. 

Pirates.

Perhaps one with a delicate and attuned sense of hearing could have heard the young lady whisper to one of the men to not tell her about the temple.

”You! Girl!” the other man cried. ”Who is you? Answer!”

V o l k i m i r

T h e  m o u n t a i n s  h o l d  t h e  k e y

The son of Sturmkirk wandered long into the depths of the night, passing through the forest in hours. The moons shone like ghostly fire behind a thin covering of clouds. The night was cold, far colder than it had been in the prime days of his house. This was a bitter chill, despite the dull orange glow rising from the horizon behind. Despite the thick black smoke that seemed to be crawling upwards to join to clouds in their glory, the night was only getting colder. Yet there was no frost, no ice, no dew, no snow. It was just empty and silent. It was a cold afford only by the sheer emptiness of the place. It had once been so full of life, but, like Ansus, now grew inexplicably dark and lonely. There was naught but even the sound of birds here, and as Volkimir looked to the sky, there were so few stars that it seemed as though a sheet had been pulled over the world. It had once been alight with an endless cascade of starlight; one could cast their eyes skyward and see so much, so many wonderful, incredible, wholesome things. One could see every individual star twinkling in the darkness surrounding it; one could see the clouds of purple, twinkling smoke that stretched in the void, all across the sky. And now it was black, save for the occasional reprieve of a solitary star scintillating through the patchwork of holes in the cloud cover. 

A starless night was nearly upon them. 

Yet despite the harrowing truth of the world, he continued onward in search of one who could decipher the rune. If there was a human within a hundred miles of Kolantis who could provide appropriate answers to Volkimir’s questions, that person almost certainly had died in the slaughter. He would have to search in more obscure ways and places to find one capable of imparting the knowledge he sought. 

The forest came to an end some hours into his journey. The treeline gave way to the mountains north of Kolantis; they stood tall and immobile, looming over the city in the distance. Snow capped them at their peaks, and a thin layer of dusty vegetation struggled to grow at their base. Rock never served as nutritional to the plants of Ansus, but the hardy flora still tried to climb the mountain just like men had done thousands of years prior. It was documented as near impossible to scale the Koltic mountains from their southern face, but over the course of many millennia, pioneering individuals had carved out a footpath that wound along the lowest incline and into the high reaches of the mountains. It was a path in which blizzards raged near constantly, and many pilgrims had met their end along its holy path. The wayshrines built along it were older than many dared to remember, yet they had survived the elements with surprising tenacity; their gleaming, marble surfaces depicting the legend of the Great Journey with incredible detail. 
The pilgrims of times past called it the Second Journey, and it was said that any who could complete the journey and leave an offering at each of the one hundred and four way shrines would receive the blessing of Andurias and be glorified forevermore. 

Volkimir stood before the beginning of the path, the night still strong and the moons still high in the darkened skies. It was even colder upon the mountain trail than it had been in the forest, but it bothered not the Dark Prince, whose spirit was stronger than near any mortal man’s. He waded through the mountainous wind, pushing against the force that seemed to be so desperate to veer him from the path, but he did not falter. He seemed determined… resolute. 
It was upon the mountain that the ice had formed under the cold of the world where nothing could grow. It was there that the true extent of the darkness swallowing Ansus had become apparent. From the cliffside one could see far; one could see the forest of twisted, dying trees. One could see Kolantis with all the lights extinguished. One could see the Sea stretching far, glinting with firelight. One could see the valleys stretching far and wide in every other direction and be overcome with the overriding sense that the land was a skeleton of its former self. Winds howled, stars went dark, and humanity faltered, just like the Great Flames within the Bastion of Light, which, as seen from the mountains, was also dark and cold, almost indistinguishable from the shaded range that it, too, rose from. 

Things lurked on the path. Things that feasted upon the frozen remains of devout pilgrims. Creatures not of Ansus. Creatures of the Merkstave. They stalked the remaining night, silently traversing the path. They gibbered from the night, making hollow noises from the shadows. Hungry eyes followed the only truly alive man walking the path; their tastes preferring instead those whose blood still pumped to the rock-hard flesh of ages-old men who succumbed to the ferocity of the mountain. 

Yet Volkimir showed no signs of fear. It was almost as if such creatures were his own prey. He knew that the beasts of the Starless Void made their home amongst the desecrated remains of once-holy places. Perhaps the minions of the adversary itself would know more about the strange rune than any man would be able to say. 

T h e  G r e e n  K n i g h t

T h e  c a s t l e  b e c k o n s

They travelled for hours in a grave state of mind. The tree of Kamish spoke of ill news. It spoke of terrible days ahead, and the horror that had befallen both the world and the Gods. All around, they would notice the exact things that had been warned of: the death of the world; the dying forest, the lost people, the lack of the Gods. The trees had turned from majestic totems of nature, complete with bountiful bushes of leaves, to withered, dead, rotting, lifeless skeletons that looked as though they sought to reach up and claw at the sky with fingers of grey and white. The forest that The Green Knight and Harald wandered through was no longer a forest, but a boney graveyard for things once alive. It was no longer recognisable as a place of respite. 
The ground was solid, as though frozen. It seemed to push upwards the roots of the dead trees, creating a tangle of spiny limbs breaking free from the dirt in morbid loops and twists. They seemed to resemble actual limbs reaching from the ground, always trying to grasp and grip the two men who sauntered cautiously through its depths. Harald struggled to work his way through the tangle, stepping cautiously over fallen branches and risen roots, trying not to catch himself on one of the sinister limbs that would undoubtedly bring him to the ground. The Green Knight struggled less with moving through the morbid imitation of what the forest once was, stepping through the roots without hinderance. They snapped and turned to dust as he moved through them, as though they were giving way to a superior force. There was no hint of green left save for him and his ferocious armour. 

But in the far distance, deep within the obscuring fog that had collected upon the horizon loomed something which both Harald and The Green Knight had not recalled being present. A castle lay there, pushing its way through the tangle of roots. It was tall and sturdy looking, as though built by the finest of artisans and designed by the greatest of engineers. Even peering at it through the colourless fog it was evident that this was no construct of men: the stones were gleaming and polished, and the great arches and parapets showed no signs of decay from ages of standing. All logical signs pointed to the castle being newly built, but Harald could not recall any new castle projects in Ansus for many years. Since the unification of the land, he was unsure if a single one had even been built. 

He made sure to tell his monstrous companion of such a fact. 

The castle felt unsettling. The pair approached the opened gates with a fair degree of caution and saw confirmation that the fortress was either built in secret, or not of Ansus entirely. The stones were a material that neither present could identify; a metallic, iron-like smell emanated from beyond the gate and dried out mote. Silence seemed to reach from the great maw of the castle like a hungering tongue: lapping and searching for something to consume. 

Harald looked to the giant of a man who had dragged him so far into the wilderness to such a place. he said nothing but his eyes begged to turn back and find the world comforts of a tavern or city, so that he might live out his last days on Ansus with worldly comforts around him. 

”We shouldn’t go inside,” he said softly, hoping the tenderness would urge The Green knight to heed his distress and turn back. 

D a e n

U n r a v e l l i n g  t h e  m y s t e r y

The tomb was tall and empty. It seemed to reach forever into the blackness that feigned to be the ceiling. It was as if the place was almost hollow; lacking in some way. The walls were cold and crumbling, and the floor was no different. Pieces of the ancient brick would break off at the touch and turn to dust with such little effort that a determined individual could have caved themselves in without a struggle. 
Daen stood at the center of the room, unsure what to make of his current predicament. He was shocked to have been alive once more. The measure of his rapid breathing was proof of that, and his previous scream that still seemed to be echoing through the antechamber was an even greater testament to the shock of pumping blood and flickering eyes. 

Upon further investigation, it was not a simple, sealed off room that Daen had found himself in. It was rather a smaller tomb connected to a much larger mausoleum. His own chamber was connected via a small, very obscure passageway that was undoubtedly once showered with light from the rotted, burned out torches lining the walls. It seemed that this place had been looted years ago. All the worldly treasures that would have rested here were gone, replaced with spiderwebs and dust; there was no visible entrance to the tomb that Daen could see: no breeze rolling in through hidden doors, but there was a single shaft of blueish moonlight dissipating through the place. He could see it come down from a small circular hole upon the roof of the main chamber. Beyond the hole was simple darkness punctuated with glinting hints of the silvery moons overhead. But there were no stars to speak of in the world above. It was a sky of black and moons, nothing more. 

The main chamber was little different to the smaller one he had awoken in. It took barely a minute to walk the passageway between the two, though the walk was in nearly complete darkness save for the dim moonlight that illuminated simple turns and walls with a faint silver lining. 

There seemed to be no way out. 

The main chamber was even taller than the smaller antechamber Daen had awoken in. There was no structure to climb to reach the small moon door that let in the light from above. It was a place of the dead that none should trespass within. He waited for some time in quiet contemplation, looking around him and exploring this strange place he had awoken in. What dark purpose could have substantiated his return? What task lay ahead? Why had Saevus disappeared? Was it true that the Gods were gone? That the Starless Night was nigh? Daen had no answers, and there seemed to be nobody to provide them. Not a single soul. 

It seemed lonely there. Perhaps a mistake that he awoke in a place in which he could not escape? Was he doomed to die a second time from the pangs of mortality gone unanswered? 

The God of Truth, however, seemed not to be a liar. The truth that his chosen would once more walk the land of Ansus was indeed a truth, and not a farce. Daen could hear voices in the distance, followed by three men poking their heads over the moon door, their crania blocking the moonlight tmporarily, plunging the greater chamber in and out of darkness as they swayed and surveyed what was below. The shadow of their heads played a great spectral dance through the beam of light: every light motion translating into a mystical, arcane display of transient shadows performing pirouettes through the air. 

”Hey!” shouted one of the voices. ”I totally think that we can loot this place!” his voice echoed. There was a momentary silence before a second and third voice agreed with the first. They retracted their heads and a rope ladder fell from above in their place. The three men climbed down slowly, lighting torches as they landed on the crumbling stone floor. 

The light would have hurt Daen’s eye at first, but in seconds he would have gotten used to unexpected brightness. With this new source of light he could make out the party before him: a trio of adventurers, one clad in a few old pieces of plate and chainmail with a dull iron sword, one in leather and wielding a bow, and the last in a simple cloak with no visible weapons. 

But it was not only Daen who saw them. Almost immediately after lighting their torches they saw him and turned immediately to face him, drawing their various weapons as they went. 

’Who the ‘ell are you?” the Swordsman demanded, shaking his blade angrily at Daen.

”He’s missin’ an eye. What the ‘eck?” the bowman exclaimed rather heartily; though he was visibly shocked by the physical abnormality of the man that stood before them. 

”How much do ya’ reckon we can get for his clothes?” the last man spoke softly, smiling ominously and standing some distance behind the other two men. ”Plus, we can’t have anyone knowin’ we were ‘ere, eh boys?”

E l o w e n

T h e  d e p t h s  o f  N o v i s s a h ' s  w i s d o m  b e c k o n

Novissah’s libraries were a wonder to speak of; scholars from all across Ansus and perhaps beyond had all dreamt of touring its hallowed halls in search of whatever knowledge they desired. It had been a marvel to behold from within and without in its prime, but now it was little more than a seemingly dilapidated temple of no particular value. Only those knowing of its true purpose would have found such a reverence for it; its true location being lost in the annals of time and the entropy of stories told from father to son. 
Elowen arrived in the dead of night, walking along the humble beaten pathway to the ajar stone doors that once protected a veritable wealth of knowledge. It was even said once that the Libraries of Novissah were a repository of every single piece of information ever recorded by Humanity, and that any answer could be found amidst its winding passages should one put in enough time to find the answers they sought. Such was never proven, nor was it disproven, but if it had at all been true in the past, then that truth had surely been a memory: as she slipped through the temple doors, it was obvious to Elowen that the temple had been pillaged and plundered, just like everywhere else in the dying realm of Ansus. 

It was not immediately obvious whom had saw it fit to ruin the great archives of the Omniscient God, for all was quiet within. The faint moonlight filtering through the crack in the temple doors was the only source of light to speak of; the fires of Novissah had been quenched long ago and his great library had been plunged into perpetual darkness. Elowen set down a straight path, stepping over broken shelves and treading on trodden and sodden pages that were filed with nonsensical scrawlings in a faded ink that had since bled into the parchment from untold years of stillness in the inexplicable damp of the temple floor. Her footsteps were loud like thunder and echoed from the high stone structures, the sound of every footfall bouncing from wall to wall, surrounding her like a torrent of wind reaching high into the sky. 

Perhaps she would have pondered where to begin on her search for answers. She already deciphered that the gods had been felled by some force that was evidently insurmountable, and she knew that the world grew cold and dark as a result of their defeat and destruction, but she knew not the specifics of the foe she was to face, nor how she would face it. The library had always contained mundane knowledge at the entrance and esoteric and forbidden knowledge deeper within the labyrinth. Knowing this, she pressed on without hesitation. 
The simple stone faded to dull marble after a time, yet Elowen continued to walk unabated through the apparently endless hallway, searching for something, anything that could provide answers to her endless questions. The hallway seemed to stretch and lengthen in impossible, frightening ways; it was unnatural yet strangely beautiful. The darkness seemed to recede, and the archives were illuminated by a sourceless light that seemed ambient and all encompassing. The true extent of the ruthless pillaging of the temple had become apparent with the onset of the strange ambient light: shelves had been torn to pieces, some burned. Books were strewn across the floor in great piles, piles that contained more books than any single person could read in a lifetime. The walls were ravaged and marred by claw marks and the unmistakable markings of swords being flung against the stone. But there were no bodies in sight - not a single one. It was empty. Had there been fighting previously? If so, was it so long prior that the remains had all decomposed? It seemed unlikely, but it was apparent that whatever had happened was more than simple pillaging.

As Elowen delved further down the hallway and the destruction became more prominent, it became somewhat apparent that perhaps there was no fighting here at all; perhaps somebody, too, was searching for something. It was a grave thought indeed, and one that Elowen would have undoubtedly wanted to shift from her mind. For if she was not the first, then who was…? 

Her thought process would have come to a complete halt, as the silence was broken by the gentle tolling of ethereal, heavenly ringing. It seemed sourceless for a few moments just like the ambient light that pervaded the hallway, until the source of the sound came melting into view from the obscure distance. A pedestal of tarnished gold sat atop a small raised platform with stairs on all sides, and atop the pedestal was a book that was like no other: It seemed to be the source of the sound, and as it glowed faintly with the hue of rusted amber, the light glinting from its embossed metallic surface, it immediately marked itself as an item of importance. 

As Elowen approached, words upon the pedestal faded into view, though they were obscure and hard to read through the distracting glow that seemed to be growing in intensity. With some struggle and a tight squint, they blame legible to some degree: 

N o v i s s a h   g u i d e s   a n d    a i d s   t h o s e   w h o   r e q u i r e   i t

A n d   c u r s e s   t h e   u n w o r t h y  w i t h   i g n o r a n c e

Elowen approached the book, and placed a hand upon its unusually warm cover…  

Contact me for EPIC BOOK CONTENT REVEAL.

Z a h a r a

T o  s e e  t h e  s t a r s  d i e  i s  t o  w i t n e s s  t h e  e n d  o f  t h e  w o r l d

The grasslands were no different the the Northern Deserts; there was only a withered expanse of dried grass to differentiate the two. The cold winds of the South were just like the freezing nights upon the desert sands, and the sky was empty all throughout the lands. Hills rose on either side of the horizon in gentle rolling waves, rocks jutting from their flattest faces like spikes protruding from soft flesh. Zahara had left the desert, but for what purpose? The rumours of others like her were undeniably true, but in what capacity was she to find them and find the truth of the end of times? Questions plagued her mind like a swarm of locusts, but her advance was unhindered by the unsettling storm within her mind. Minutes turned to hours, and hours to days as she travelled; the grassy expanse moving underfoot to give way to simply more withered grass. As days passed and nights fell upon the land she could count fewer and fewer stars in the sky with each cycle of the suns, and with each one extinguishing the land around her began to fade. By the end of her first lonely week upon the southbound road, the grass had all died, leaving the plains an endless field of grey and ashen waste that stretched from one horizon to the next. The only respite from such a bleak, fearful reality was the hills that had begun to appear on her path. The plains were giving way to rougher terrain, to mountainous areas and hopefully lush marshlands and fertile fields. 

By Zahara’s second week on the southbound road, she could count only a single star in the night sky. It twinkled defiantly against the swallowing darkness of the void around it, but it would surely not last forever. She crested a hill the following day and found herself upon the end of the plains; before her instead were the heartlands which one would remember as a verdant county of life and plenty. It was not entirely ashen grey and dead like the plains that came before, but the colour had seemed to wash from the scene, as though a thick fog covered the heartlands like a blanket that sapped the saturate from the scene. Everything was quiet. There were no birds, and since her encounter with the Lion some weeks before, she had not seen a single animal roaming free. Maybe they had all fled, or decided to hide. That would have been the wise move. Perhaps they had all died alongside the rapidly diminishing land. Maybe they had just given up. 

Three days into the second week of her journey on the southbound road, Zahara had stopped for the night within a small cave carved from the foot of a peculiar hill by ferocious winds of prehistoric Ansus. It faced away from the ravaging, freezing wind now, which made it the perfect spot to set up camp for yet another lonely night. It took her little time to start a fire and warm the bitter cave and fill it with fiery light, but it took her a long while to warm up once more. She was used to the blazing heat of the desert, but the Heartlands felt more like they had been plunged into the depths of the Far Eastern mountains now. If there would have been any clouds in the sky, it would have certainly snowed, and it likely would not have stopped for days. The air was thin and deathly cold; enough to end a man in his tracks should he not seek fire and shelter by nightfall. 

Once Zahara had warmed herself as much as she could, she stepped from the mouth of the cave and once more in to the biting winds that raged just beyond her respite. She cast her eyes skyward to look upon her final star. But she could not find it. Perhaps her bearing were off? She turned and stretched her neck to see into the sky beyond the hill. She could not see her final star. It was nowhere to be seen. She turned and turned and searched but could not find it. It had been extinguished, just like all the others. It was a small star in comparison to some of its brothers and sisters, far less luminous and prominent, but it endured until the last night, the end of days. 

A starless night was upon Ansus. 

And upon that frightening realisation, as her stomach dropped and her heart skipped a beat, her roaring fire went out. The winds all but stopped. Silence pervaded the world. She could hear her own heartbeat. She could feel the world constricting, pushing, squeezing. Something was wrong.

Something was very, very wrong.

Panic set in, her heart began to race despite there being no reason for such a fear. She could not work out why, but she was sweating, her heart pumped harder and faster, her hairs stood on end. She felt fear for a brief moment as she felt the soul of the world slip from its loose resting place and fall into the abyss. What was happening? And why? 

Her frightful trance was broken by a voice coming from behind, coming from the depths of the cave. A man stepped out from the shadows, but there was nobody there before? Could she have missed someone being there all that time? Was it possible? 

The man paid no regard to her inevitable confusion and worry. He walked slowly forward with open arms, as though moving into an embrace. ”Zahara,” he said. 

”Fear not that I know you by name. I have been watching you for some time. I have followed you for a long time. Perhaps longer than I care to admit. I am sure you have noticed the sky, how the stars are now lacking, and how the darkness has swallowed all. You have many questions, I am sure.”

The man lowered his arms, and swiftly came to stand in front of Zahara; faster than he should have been capable of. ”There is a certain beauty in the prospect of a starless night, is there not? We are free from the Gods. Free from obligation and worship. Maybe this a new dawn for us? A world without stars.”

The man looked at Zahara. He was hooded, his entire face obscured beside a fiendish smile that peeked out from the shadow cast by his cowl. ”You seek answers. You seek to lead your people to freedom. I must ask that you accompany me to the capital and I will provide all the answers you desire. There is something you need to see.” [/center]
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