Description
The kid looks sick. Like he's on something.
His head is shaved and his sorta-pointy ears
make an otherwise handsome face look devilish.
He is very pale, with deep circles under his
haunted blue eyes. Eyes the azure blue of the
summer sky they are, peering out of his sunken
face. When was the last time he ate?
Skinny. Too skinny. Scary skinny. Scared he
might bite you skinny. Poor thing, he looks a
fright, but the way he carries himself is a bit
arrogant, a spring in his step that shouldn't
be there in so pathetic a creature.
He's tall, and long limbs hide beneath his
secondhand fineries. His things are worn,
but were once quite nice. He reeks of manor life.
Role
Blood on the Dancefloor
Added Tue Nov 20 07:47:19 2018 at level 5:
She birthed the shameful thing in the middle of the
ballroom. It seemed she was trying to get to the woods.
To help? To waiting elves? We may never know.
She wouldn't talk afterwards and afterwards afterwards
she hanged herself in the closet. The servants claim she
did it with the umbilicus but they are a foul lot of mouth
breathers. The house magician, who went by L'lall'antholos
the Magnificent, but was really just a hedge wizard from
Arendyl was, of course, fired. Master Drood wanted to cut
off his cock and send him bleeding back to the Vale, but
that was of course not done. Instead his passport was
made with a small satchel of silver and a threat on his
tongue should he ever mention this to the Elves.
The child was a servant's boy. Knocked up during
a drunken night of loneliness for them both. The
child was certainly not heir to the Drood fortune.
For all anyone cared, Auggie the halfbreed was nothing
more than a minor embarassment.
The lady was harder to explain, but enough to
say that the Master wanted to tell the people that
she was fucked to death by a horse. This was of course
not done. It was said that she had fallen down the stairs
after too much wine and broken her neck.
Oh. One more thing about the child. It was born with a mark.
Were you to see it from some distance you would swear
it had three eyes, this child. Two in the natural place
and one in the middle of its forehead. Truth be told you'd
be forgiven for mistaking it for a half-cyclops not a half-elf
for the eye you spotted before the ears.
Oh, what a vibrant child. I jest of course, a more
sullen creature you've never met. Given to fits. Wild
ideas put into its head for as soon as the mark was seen,
and how could one miss it, it was rushed off to the local
medicine woman whose pecker powder's efficacy I can
attest to, but I swear the soul of a Scarabite hides
beneath the smell of gingerbread.
"The child will have the second sight," she swore. "Leave
it in the wheat, for it's a cursed life. Be done with it." But
this was of course not done. She was paid with a barrel of wine that
was not-quite-stolen from the cellars and the child was
raised for a time as Auggie the servant boy.
Recurring Dream 1.0
Added Tue Nov 20 10:28:07 2018 at level 6:
Concertina wire fills the blasted landscape as far
as the eye can see, stretching towards the mile-high
towers of Galadon on the horizon. Imperial Drones
patrol, but there is no life here. The wind carries us
towards the city.
Huge screens dominate the cityscape. The Emperor's
Image is literally everywhere. All Hail Gentleman Jim,
Undead Emperor of Thera! Everywhere one looked
Jim's grinning skull visage was to be seen. Thank him
for this prosperity. Thank him for ending the war. Thank
him for the war they were currently winning. All Therans
owed their lives to him.
Every citizen was a bloodoath at least. Every
citizen trained with Imperial Issued phased plasma
rifles by the time they came of age. The war was over.
The war was constant. Darkness and Order. Darkness and
Order. Do your duty.
The Eastern gates opened and the most recent of
the wounded were ferried in on hovercarriers. The
streets of Galadon were, naturally, spotless,
but the Eastern road was a mess since the Outlanders
had taken Hamsah.
Jim was said to be holding the Palace on his own,
an army of zombie former Wardens, Sentinels, and
Reavers standing by The Vanquisher, whose cannons
watched over the siege. By his wisdom and grace we
would prevail, especially as the sects marched on the
invaders from the south after fighting hard through the
woods and the now overgrown Imperial Lands.
But there was food. Yes, it came from the Elemental
Plane of Food and the quality was terrible, but it was
better than the days of eating rats. Times were good.
The Arcane Sect's conjurers made sure of that.
And there were no more gnomes. No more gnomes of any
sort. No more Glippitydork peck you in your ass gnomes.
No more dirt gnomes. No more stone gnomes. No more
riddle gnomes. No more rhyming gnome priests. The last
one fell to Jim during a huge ceremony that was viewed
by everyone in the Civilized cities a thousand years earlier.
"Die!" said Jim while pointing at it and its heart just
exploded. No more gnomes. You'd have thought that
such a wise group would have seen this coming. "The
Luck of the Gnomes" had come to mean "the worst luck
possible" and calling someone a svirfniblin was enough
to draw blasters in some quarters.
The people are fat and sick, doughy and sweaty. The
sky burns odd colors at odd times, clouded with pollution
sent spewing forth from near and far. Everyone coughs,
except those with cybernetic respirators. Nearly every
man out of his teens has at least one robotic limb.
At night one can stand anywhere in Galadon and
hear the shrieks of the tortured in their sleep.
I shriek myself awake.
Recurring Dream 2.0
Added Tue Nov 20 14:29:49 2018 at level 11:
There are nothing but trees as far as the eye
can see until we float higher, then we see the
mountains rising out of the distance and desert
off in another direction with a winding river running
through it, scouring a gorge in the face of the rock.
Ideas of North and South seem different here.
There is a magnetic pull in one direction, and
adjusting our wings we soar towards it. Soon the
air grows cold for we are moving faster than one
should. Below us we have seen the elk and the ox and
the otyugh and the fox but where are the men?
Where are the giants? We adjust and soar some more.
Where are the cities? Where are the roads? Deer
paths wind through the woods below, but even our
avian eyes can detect no hint of man or his things. Is
this even Thera? Eventually we spot a great tree growing
out of the center of a dark wood. No, not a tree. A Tree.
The Tree. It thrums with the power of the ancients who
slumber now at its roots.
And here are the men, naked, bestial. They have
become animals again, though perhaps that's all they
ever were anyway. There is no art, there is no magic,
there are no stories. There is only grazing and eating
raw meat and rutting, endless rutting. Dirty things.
I point myself towards the sun and awaken.
The Thing About the Dreams
Added Wed Nov 21 10:25:45 2018 at level 12:
The thing about the dreams is that they're inescapable.
They're with me all the time. I look around Galadon and
see the possibilities, none of them good. I look at my
fellow man and see them either animals or robots.
What is a robot? What is concertina wire? How do I
know these things?
I shouldn't know what a phased plasma rifle or an
alarm clock or a resume or a NukeTekk Bunker Buster,
but I do. I see Thera's many futures. I cannot escape them.
So I do drugs.