[2007/04] Strange Sightings

[Sun_al-Mage]

[turbine]

Event Page at Turbine

Quoted Fiction at Turbine

Ardry opened the front door of his Uncle Aliester's cottage. The smell of brewing tea greeted him as he stepped inside. Sighing in satisfaction, he grabbed a seat by his uncle's desk and set down a pack full of oddities and trinkets he'd acquired in his last scouting expedition. Moments later, Aliester the Loquacious, pre-eminent sage of Dereth, shuffled into the study bearing a tray with two steaming mugs of green tea.

"Ardry, my boy! Just in time! Come, have a cup of this fine tea that Ben Ten sent me, and we can discuss your latest trove. Big things are afoot in the realm, I can smell it in the air."

Ardry snorted and pulled a sheaf of musty cloth from his pack. "You must be smelling this, Uncle."

The old man's bushy eyebrows shot upward and his eyes widened when he saw the scraps. He took them from Ardry and wrinkled his nose. "Yes, I can see what you mean about the smell... Though it is a familiar smell. Reminds me of my more adventuresome days, when I used to accompany you on your forays into the Sho lands..."

"That's the smell of Drudges, Uncle. Cragstone is swarming with the beasts and some of them were carrying these bits of cloth. Eventually I collected enough of them to realize they were all parts of the same larger picture. I think I have a complete set here. I had to kill a lot of Drudges to get them." He paused and looked his uncle in the eye. "I mean a lot of Drudges."

Aliester let out a high-pitched noise of excitement that sounded suspiciously to Ardry like a girlish squeal of delight. Before he could comment on it, his uncle shoved the pile of cloth back at him. "Drudges are assaulting Cragstone? We must waste no more time, then, my boy! Please, assemble the pieces into their proper order!"

Ardry looked over the clutter that packed every available inch of Aliester's desk, and decided to assemble the pieces on the floor. He got up from the chair and sat on the floor, arranging the scraps until he'd re-assembled the whole picture. It was a crudely drawn, brightly colored rendition of Drudges creating havoc around a human settlement, and the depiction of a flaming windmill identified the town as Cragstone.

Hitching up the bottom of his robe, Aliester got up from his own chair and squatted on the floor in front of the picture. He sipped his tea while his eyes roved over the entire piece, tracing significant parts of the image with the index finger of his free hand. Ardry spent more time watching his uncle's eyes, bright with excitement and intrigue, than he did looking at the picture that he'd already examined several times.

When he was done with his inspection, Aliester sat back on his haunches and looked at Ardry. "Well, what do you make of this?" He sipped at his tea as he waited for his nephew's reply.

Ardry shrugged. "Not very useful. It clearly spells out a plan to raid Cragstone. Aside from an unusual degree of coordination and planning among Drudges, I'm not sure what this tells us. They've been the pawns of bigger and smarter creatures for as long as we've known them, so I don't see how this –"

"Ah, but there is something different here, my boy!" A little tea sloshed out of Aliester's cup as he gesticulated wildly, and it spilled onto Ardry's lap. Ignoring the spill, he pointed at one part of the image.

"Look here, Ardry, in the upper left corner. See the lines of purple light coming off this Drudge here? He's clearly some kind of leader among their kind. The purple light must denote some kind of magical power. There is no suggestion of the normal Banderling or Virindi overlords who are usually behind Drudge agitation. A powerful, magic-wielding warlord has risen among the Drudges, it seems."

Ardry shuddered. Drudges were not the most powerful of the humanoid creatures that plagued Dereth, but they were remarkably hard to stamp out and were capable of mustering great numbers when sufficiently motivated. If some warlord was uniting the Drudges of Osteth, they could be a major nuisance to the Aluvian capital city. At the very least, an infestation of Drudges could steal everything that wasn't nailed down, and they'd probably be able to make off with a lot of things that were nailed down, too.

As he considered the possibilities, his uncle spoke again. "It was well you brought this to me when you did, Ardry. You see, the council of sages has recently received reports of unrest among Mosswarts and Banderlings too, in other parts of the realm..."

"Let me guess. You need me to check it out because all the other scouts are too busy."

"In fact, they are. A great number of them are cooperating to investigate new activity at this graveyard in the Direlands."

"So I'm the only one left to get my skull pounded in by Banderling and Mosswart warlords. Got it."

"My dear nephew, your work is a noble service to the realm! And even if other scouts were available, I would have asked you anyway. Who else would have been conscientious enough to gather all the extant pieces of their map? Only you, Ardry, first among the council's scouts. This is why you get the most difficult and unpleasant assignments. Because you are the one we can trust to do the job right!"

Ardry could see his uncle's smile was innocent and guileless and that his praise was sincere. He sighed and stood up. "That's a comfort, I suppose. Very well, Uncle, just tell me where the Banderlings and Mosswarts are, and I'll do what you ask."

Aliester clapped his hands together in satisfaction. "Ardry, your dedication should be a lesson to us all."

Ardry snorted. "Yeah, and that lesson is that no good deed goes unpunished."

[Ziv]

[turbine]

Quoted Rollout Article at Turbine

Captain Tharnoch crouched over the shattered corpse of an undead sorcerer, picking through the skeletal remains for anything noteworthy or useful. It was night in Dereth, but moonlight provided enough illumination for an experienced guerilla like Tharnoch to make his way through this ancient and recently re-surfaced graveyard.

"Who were you people and why have you awakened from your long sleep?" Tharnoch muttered to the corpse as he rifled its belongings. It was obviously a futile question, as the corpse had been unlikely to answer even when it was still animated. But Tharnoch had gotten into the habit of talking, to himself or to anything else, in the years in the wilderness when he and his small band of Aluvian soldiers had been living on the run from King Varicci's monstrous army. The sound of a human voice was a small defense against the madness that had threatened to engulf them all during those long, bleak years.

The question also came of frustration. He'd spent three days and three nights scouting the graveyard, killing as many of the wandering undead as he dared, searching for some clue that would explain what had brought this graveyard and its buried souls to the surface after thousands of years under the shifting sands of the Direlands.

Just as much of a mystery was the identity of the graveyard's denizens. Earlier scouts had discovered pages from an ancient journal, recollections that named the undead of this area as victims of some great campaign by Lord Rytheran, one of the most powerful of the Dericostian undead who still lingered in Dereth millennia after the crumbling of their empire. These unfortunate souls had once been the nobles and retainers of a house that fled the court of Dericost in the earliest days of the court's undead corruption. Rytheran had hunted down the disloyal house and subjected them to the very perversion of undeath that they had tried to escape.

"It's a terrible thing, to take away the prospect of a good death," Tharnoch mused to himself, reflecting again on the strange lifestone-bound undeath that was common to all denizens of Dereth. "I hope this isn't me in a few thousand years..."

Finally, under a pile of tattered cloth and leather, Tharnoch's keen eyes detected a glint of metal. Pushing aside the scraps, he turned up a small, charred metal disc. As he brushed away the grave dust, the features of the disc became more evident. It looked like some kind of coin, bearing a mark unfamiliar to his eyes. It put him in mind of other insignia he'd seen in texts about the ancient noble houses of the vanished Empyrean kingdoms. Pleased with his find, and certain that it would help the Council unravel the mystery of the graveyard, he put the coin in his belt pouch.

He intended, at that point, to return to the Council and show them the coin. He got as far as reaching into another belt pouch to withdraw the proper portal gem when he stopped. He felt a chill creeping over him, and the intuition he'd come to rely on during his time as a guerilla leader served him well. He glanced behind him and saw five ghostly figures drifting among the gravestones, headed in his direction. He turned to face them, keeping to a low crouching stance, and readied his sword and shield. They didn't seem to have noticed him yet, but they would if they moved much closer, and he was sure they'd notice him if he tried to run for it.

As Tharnoch waited for the inevitable confrontation, he took the time to study these five ghosts. The figure in the center looked like the leader. It was taller and dressed in a finer cut of robes than its companions. Its ravaged face was too withered to reveal anything about its identity or even its gender, but somehow he formed the impression that it was a female. He tried to memorize as many details as he could, in case he was defeated in this fight and had to give a report without being able to inspect the remains.

The ghosts finally came close enough to take notice of him. As one, five wraithlike heads turned to face him, and the air somehow grew colder. The leader stood back and waved her arms. The other four advanced, hissing, with fell magic crackling from their spectral hands. Tharnoch straightened up, spat on the ground, and braced himself for the fight. "Come on, then!" he growled, waving his sword. "See if you fare any better against me than you did against Rytheran!"

At the mention of that name, the leader of the ghosts fixed her empty eyes on him and let out a shriek of pure, keening rage. Tharnoch roared a war cry and charged forward into the ghostly gauntlet.

[Ziv]

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[Ziv]

Complete!