June Vignette! (Easy mode)

[Yari Rafanas]

Hey Althanas! This month's vignette is up!

What is a Vignette? They're single post short stories written about a given prompt. Everyone can post their entry in this thread and at the end of the month all entries will be judged and the top three will be selected for prizes! Don’t worry about not winning a prize however, as everyone will receive exp just for posting.

Vignette Rules:

1) One submission per character. Multiple accounts by the same author are allowed though.
2) All entries must be made during the month of May. Editing your posts, even to completely change your submission, is permitted as long as all edits are made within the contest's time frame.
3) The moderator judging the monthly vignette contest will post a vignette at the end, but will not be eligible for a prize.
4) Only on-topic vignettes will be considered for the prize. The topics are meant to be broad enough that no character should be particularly limited.
5) PCs must be involved in all vignettes. How "canonical" you choose to have the events of the vignette is up to you.
6) All participants receive 5% of the EXP they need to reach the next level. The top three finishers get 100, 75 and 50 GP respectively.

Here is this month's prompt:

Let's keep it simple this month. Give us a short explanation on what your character's favorite 'something' is. What is your favorite color? Favorite late night snack? What hobby do they have on their downtime? Explore something you wouldn't typically put in a thread.

[Hallow]

I love death.

If it was not for death, I would be a considerably less mellow individual, perhaps even a normal wizard. People say there are worse things that can happen to a man than dying, but they clearly haven't worn a wizard's hat and remained distinctively average at everything they do.

Allow me to be more specific. I don't love death, that makes me sound like a monster, what I love, most of all in life, is ensuring that the dead stay dead.

Yes, there we go, now you're not looking at me in that way. I hate it when people stare like that, like I'm some sort of...necromancer.

Which, I suppose in many ways I am. I love death so much I talk to the dying and the people trapped between realms to feel alive. The colour of necromancy is black, and I wear it like a particularly fetching scarf, the latest fashion in anatomy and the extraction of bodily parts is most certainly Midnight Umbra.

I suppose you will be wanting to know why I like death so much. It is I guess a rather morbid past time, anyone that follows it for a hobby is usual buried by the weight of his fanaticism. It started when I was young, as most perversions do, when I watched a sparrow fall from a window, no more than a fledgling but so splendid for it's few short days I ran down the spiral stairs of my father's tower to it's side.

I picked it up with tentative fingers, aged eight, and willed it to live.

Magic, as anyone will tell you, especially wizardry, isn't particularly fond of specifics. A half-hearted mage to be can crack reality if he wants it enough, and when the bird's wings fluttered, and it's skeletal body rose, even if just for a few seconds before it passed well beyond the reach of even the greatest necromancer, I knew that it was what I wanted.

Death, and dealing with it, is what I have always wanted.

Getting other people to sympathise with that passion sixteen years later, in the city of the dead no less, poses a new challenge to me that I am growing weary of by the hour. The Order of Hem recognised my enthusiasm and penchant for informing spirits they were dead, for listening to the wailing arbour of the victims of the Corpse Wars, so I feel important enough doing it to continue to put up with the victimisation. A wizard, above even the need for a hat and a voice, must feel important when he is being a wizard.

The little tinkle of excitement and satisfaction I get when I listen to Lucy's tale about her lost kitten, and tell her it will be all right in the end, and the kitten, who is inexplicably always called Fluffy, will be waiting her beyond that glowing light with a ball of freshly darned socks to play with for all eternity.

I forget to tell her Fluffy is dead, and hell is not full of skipping rope.

Children can't compute being tortured for all eternity, but nobody said a man's hobby, no matter how much he loves it would always be worth while.

Of course, as much as I love death, and dying, and listening to the troubles of the recently deceased, a well respected necromancer is a myth. I put up with the scorn, the pitch forks and the occasional bout of tar and feathering because I feel needed. I feel duty bound to the College to prove that the colour of death need not be worn like midnight over the shoulders of the dastardly, the deranged, and the power hungry.

Of course, I may well be one of those already, but the voices tell me it's all okay.

I tell each of them right back, that of course it is, because after all, when death runs from you, what is there to fear, except losing your mind?

[Etheryn]

The cloudy, rain laden skies threatened overhead while Alfonse and Dan deliberated their problem. They stood before a flooded, murky creek just twenty metres north of the road between Radasanth and Nelligin – less a road, more a bumpy, rock-ridden track that gave Alfonse a ‘sore arse’ – trying to figure out the best way to retrieve the dwarf’s favourite, "one of a kind, boy-o!" whiskey flask. Dan was sure there was more than one flask in all of the world actually made of real, genuine silver.

“Boy-o, I’d sooner lick me wicked aunt’s big toe before I step foot in that creek,” Alfonse persisted. For a powerfully built blades dealer, he was a big sook about getting wet.

“Wouldn’t she be dead, Alfonse? You’re pretty old,” Dan said.

“I’d lick me wicked aunt’s dead toe before I step into that creek. I'd lick it twice.” Alfonse stared at Dan, brows narrowed and arms folded. Dan pictured him in that absurd and fought to hold back more laughs. Alfonse looked back at his flask in the mess of wood, as if about to use 'the Force' and spirit it out with thoughts alone.

“Stop stroking your flaming red beard like you’re actually a big tough dwarf”–Dan shoved at his back, edging him closer to the creek–“and get in there, Alfonse. It’s just water, not molten lava. You won’t melt,” Dan jeered. He absolutely delighted seeing his gruff companion knock knees about something so silly.

“Push me again”–Alfonse shoved back at Dan, taking two steps back–“and I’ll take yer gonads from their current bag and put ‘em in me rucksack!”

Dan burst into laugher. He just couldn’t fathom Alfonse’s phobia about something simple as stepping into a moving body of water. It was deep enough to come up to Dan’s chest, and when he thought about it Alfonse’s vertical impairment make it hard for him to keep head above water, but it wasn’t as if he could actually float away. There was a tangle of broken timber in the creek, which would stop something the size of Alfonse from getting washed downstream.

It was in that beaver’s mansion where Alfonse would need to go to retrieve his flask. Brave warrior dwarf Alfonse was giving it a rinse about twenty metres upstream while Dan filled the water gourds. A bird flew overhead, squawked and he fumbled it during the flinch. “It’s just a bird, Alfonse! Maybe you should lose those girly gloves if you’re getting jumpy. Might drop one of you're thousand swords next time and hurt yourself.”

“These gloves are designed fer punchin', which ye may soon find out if ye don't get yer shiny bald head in there and retrieve me bloody flask!”

Trying his best to submerge another round of gut busting laughter, Dan’s face was smeared in the most satisfied grin he’d worn for a long time.

“Will you go in if I make absolutely sure, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that you won’t sink? Wash away? Even drown?”

“What, ye gonna rig up a harness for me, are ye? Send me in there and let go to watch me sink like a bloody rock? I’ve never swam in me life, boy-o!”

Dan cracked up again, and walked back to the cart to retrieve a length of rope coiled beneath piles of spikey, sharp, and generally lethal stuff. Swords, knives, hooks, spears, even something that looked toothy metal jaws. If he’d pulled the rope out without caution, it probably would’ve ended without all his fingers attached, too. It would be hard to tie a bowline knot with no thumbs.

Dan slung the rope over his shoulder and walked back to Alfonse, laying it in the wet, knee length grass. Alfonse was still looking at the rushing brown creek as if the curves of its muddy banks were the curves of a giant, deadly snake slithering past him. Through his years a fisherman’s hand on a nameless trawler in Baitman’s Bay, this knot served him well.

“So, I’m gonna tie a loop in this rope, you’re gonna put it around your big fat guts” – Dan poked Alfonse right in the belly, face still plastered with a teasing grin – “if we’ve actually got enough rope for that to make it all the way around your, er, girth.” The rope was at least thirty feet long.

“Ye best savour this opportunity to poke yer fun and me guts! Ye gotta sleep sometime. Expect ants in yer sleepin’ bag. Asides, we dwarven folk are supposed to be stout,” Alfonse rebutted, watching Dan loose a section of the rope and spread it apart, gearing up for a lesson in maritime knots.

“Now listen up! What I’m gonna show you is called the king of the knots. The king of ‘em all! Easy as pie, once you know it. There is, in fact, four” – Dan held up four fingers while straightening the end of the rope – “yes, four equally viable maritime knots. The others are the clove, reef and figure eight. Come over here and watch!” Dan ushered Alfonse over with an inwards sweep of his hand.

Dan took the short, straight end of the rope. He held it up, close to Alfonse’s face, as if that was the only way to see it. “We call this part the tree.”

Dan formed an open loop, about two inches across. “This is the rabbit hole.”

Dan made a second, bigger loop, this one about six inches across. “And the rabbit runs a big circle around the hole.”

Dan pushed the loose end through the first, smaller loop. “The rabbit hops out of the hole”–Dan looked at Alfonse, making sure he was watching, and looped the loose end–“and runs around the tree.”

“I eat rabbits,” Alfonse butted in.

“Shut up and watch. The rabbit is scared of rain, just like the big bad dwarf is scared of creeks, so he jumps back in the hole. Aaand… Done!” Dan passed the loose end back through the first, smaller loop he made and tightened the knot. He held it up to show Alfonse, the secure, open hoop about thirty sizes too small to be his belt.

“Cool, right?” Dan moved the knot close to Alfonse’s face as if he couldn’t see it any other way. Alfonse didn’t move his head back. He just went cross-eyed trying to keep it in his vision, like the rope was an angry dog and if he moved he’d get mauled.

“Ye gonna make it bigger, or what?”

Dan repeated the process, making each dimension of the knot large enough so it would fit comfortably around Alfonse. Alfonse practiced it, and after a few failed attempts made a perfect bowline. They walked back to the bank, and Alfonse stared into the chocolate milk waters with apprehension. Dan snuck around behind him, and before the red bearded dwarf could protest, the bowline loop was around his belly and pulled tight. Dan gave him an almighty boot to the backside which sent him straight into the cold creek water face first, and he tumbled and rolled down to the tangle of drift wood to his flask.

All the while Dan was holding on to the rope, laughing wildly, feeding it into the water as if he was fly-fishing and Alfonse was an oversized lure. An oversized, too-round lure that barked insults and oaths about Dan’s penchant for kissing farm animals, and how his face would soon look even more like a dropped meat pie after he finished breaking it.

The bowline knot may not have been before, but was now surely Dan's most favourite of all. In this priceless moment, there wasn't any other that would've let him float an angry red dwarf head-over-heels in a creek.

This set into my character's canon! This set right after the end of What a drunken mongrel...

[Lillith]

Without thinking, Lillith did what she enjoyed most.

Lillith played.

All at once, the customers of the tea room in downtown Dao-Lang became enthralled with her, dropping their conversations off cliffs and spires like deadweight. It was a sudden focus; fame bound irony, a perfect, conscious moment of encapsulating hearts.

No daughter of the Kazumi had plucked a samisen’s string in Capitol City for three centuries. Even now, if the authorities and agents of the democratic government that had risen from the ashes of change caught wind of her true name, she would be dead within an hour at worst; locked in the dark depths of Corone at plausible best.

The danger was worth it and the risk was immense, which is why Lillith Kazumi played with a mask tied to her Scara Braen face. The crowd did not see a young girl, pallid in complexion and alien to these lands; they saw a porcelain fox, red stripes spiralling over its smile and the taint of kami legend keeping its pert ears aloft as she rocked back and forth to the movement of her music.

She had travelled through storms, wars and civil unrest to be seated where she was sat now, piled on cushions of imported furs from Salvar, which had been carried over permafrost as white as her mask to keep her comfortable. She had witnessed the spirits of Akashima’s continental heart rise up to warn her of the perils that awaited her in her homeland, and danced with them in a duet of words and riddles until the sun had risen and the Kitsune had bowed before her.

Most important of all, she had watched her brother die again, and brought him back to life with his own dagger, his own life spark, his own stubborn spirit which simply refused to die until they had fulfilled their purpose and reason for coming to these alien but familiar shores after so long.

“<Oh beauty bound in blossom so>,” the geisha sat next to her began her part in their performance with elegance and confirmed beauty. Her painted face and jade green kimono, which stood in stark contrast to the bed of leather and tan beneath her appropriately arranged legs, drew as much attention as Lillith’s music.

“<From the heart, an eternity,” at the zenith of a flourish of intricate notes, the geisha began to move the fans she had rested on her lap in concentric patterns before her chest.

Through the gauze of the black muslin that covered her face, so as not to give away the shade of her skin or the colour of her eyes from behind her mask Lillith paid close attention to the patrons of the tea room. One in particular had caught her attention, seated in the middle of the large square room at a table next to the central pillar that held the circular roof aloft. He brandished a long, aged expression and a moustache that hanged below the chin in two draconic whiskers.

The Minister for Trade and Agriculture was the mirror image of the etching she and Blank had discovered in the civic library, with all the blustering character of a fattened politician desperately clinging to the vestiges of his rapidly diminishing youth. Drawing up the courage to move from the melodic section of Asuka, Lillith tensed her fingers and let the last echoes of her note drawl into silence. She counted the seconds down as the geisha stood and readied herself for the next part of her display. The tinkle of the golden trinkets adorning her hair drifted over the tables and rattled in the delicate porcelain cups.

With masculine poise, the geisha bowed, and brought the fans together above her head in the shape of a rising sun. The delicate gold weaves flashed against the light of the evening sun, and bedazzled the audience into further compliance. They shared consciousness with nothing more than the need to move their cups to their mouths and sip the jasmine infusion served across the city during the hours of dusk and set the cups back onto the simple wooden trestle tables.

Lillith took a deep breath and returned her fingers to the shamisen’s neck. For this performance, she had allowed herself the luxury of playing on a real instrument, not one conjured from The Aria by her own shaky volition. It was perhaps as old as the tea room itself was and worth more than most of the buildings and establishments on the long winding and cluttered street outside. They had passed tall and densely packed buildings so ramshackle and clustered on top of one another she doubted that anything in these slums had seen better days.

“<Summer palls like rain in winter, said the snow>” the geisha continued, a sudden sharp intake of breath breaking the silence and empowering her charisma so that hands moved from customer pockets to the circling silver trays in the hands of the attentive waiters. The fan dance continued along with the donations, and Lillith’s instinct to perform, tempered by a long season of constant performance allowed her to slip seamlessly back into the musical arrangement of Akashima’s principle operatic theme without even a flutter or break of concentration on the true goal.

They had chosen the tea house over the palace for several reasons. The first, as Blank had been considered enough to highlight was the simplicity of their mission. They were unhindered by difficult escape here, as the circle dome of the tea room imposed no restriction on departure into the network of maze like streets and alleyways cluttered with decay beyond asides a network of red pillars inscribed with kanji of traditional tea rituals and verses.

They had chosen this tea house because their contacts in the city had tracked the Minister to the same part of the city each day for nearly a week. He would be here, and without a shadow of a doubt, he would be here exactly when the streets would be busiest and swollen with crowds attending the Sakura ritual in the city gardens.

Each year, when the blossoms grew to their brightest hue and began to fall in the spring winds and dawn of autumn, people from all across Akashima, and much further than the borders too came to see the spectacle. It was a befitting time to watch a man fall, a befitting time to see a rebirth begin its long process of growth into something woefully more worthwhile and healthy for the Capitol’s citizens.

Right between dusk and nightfall, lanterns would rise from every open window and vacant temple step. For hours afterwards, stars would shine that had a will and love of their own, each lantern possessing the wishes for the coming year and some small part of the family’s spirit that had set it to the winds.
Every neck in Akashima would be craned upwards, and every Akashiman would be unsuspecting of what the daughter of the southlands had come to do.

At the end of her song, the geisha bowed, and Lillith released her fingers from the instrument and set it eschew to one side. It rested in the bowl of her crossed legs and she instantly felt a relief as the strain of concentration and ritualistic breathing ended. She too bowed, though she realised that most of the attention, as was custom, was on the geisha.

“<Arigato>,” the geisha said, as she turned on a heel to leave the stage and disappear behind the counter into the only enclosed space of the tea room.

Chairs scraped backwards and customers, men, women and children and sages alike stood in applause. The sound of claps followed the geisha until she was long gone, and the patrons downed the last of their tea with a ritual cheer, slamming the cups onto the tables to cast away the last of the doubt in their minds.

Lillith smiled, and watched as every soul apart from hers vacated the dome and stepped out onto the circular platform that surrounded the tea room. On the cracked and worn steps, well-trodden for decades they all looked upwards, lovers cradling one another, families joyous and enemies departing from their enmities even if just for a few brief moments.

The Kitsune slipped from the stage silently, legs bowed and arms scythed outwards to lift her dead weight from the balls of her feet so that she remained non-existent to their distracted minds and senses. She tip toed to the table where the Minister had been sat and looked upwards with mirth well hidden behind the painted porcelain. Her simple black attire flashed malice from beneath the long white kimono she wore, which was devoid of anything other than deep red trim, so as not to upstage the geisha in her performance like a brash and jealous meiko.

She nodded to the shadow in the rafters, which moved with a flash of blue ribbons from one long length of ageing wood to another with the guile of a panther stalking the tree canopy. Lillith watched her brother flitter to the very limits of the dome, and flip with great agility over the rim of the building onto the roof. He emerged on the east side, knowing full well that the citizens of Akashima would be fixated to the west, and he clambered along the tiles and onto the adjacent building to the waiting embrace of freedom and success.

Lillith calmly looked over her shoulder at the edges of the crowd, and picked out the bright violet sash that declared the Minister’s allegiance and part in the government’s hierarchy to every down trodden slave to the mills and unwilling naginata bearer in the citizen levy that dared to forget. She keened her gaze like a well-aimed dagger into the side of his fat neck, and twitched, as if she had placed her tanto to his flesh and needed the jolt to do the deed.

Lillith, however, was too late.

As she had played her song, the patrons of the tea room had been too oblivious and enthralled by the perfection of the geisha’s divine movements and the fibrous, almost physical atmosphere created by the shamisen’s erratic and haunting and uplifting melody. It’s tart strings had succeeded where more subtle attempts had failed, and as Blank had watched with great pride from above as his sister did her dues, he had unfurled a long, almost invisible length of hair from the shadows.

The act of dripping poison along the skeins liver, as it was called by Scourge operatives of Scara Brae was an old Akashiman method to assassinate without detection. It required little effort, except patience beyond virtue, and could deliver the end to a man that drank; which included everyone living and even some of the dead who were no longer welcomed by well-paying employers. With his legs wrapped around the rafters, Blank had waited almost five minutes before the first drop of poison he had set to the string had landed without making a ripple into the Minister’s tea cup.

He glanced over his shoulder and looked down from his wind swept perch into the crowd. His eyes darted a dagger at the man’s neck too, and as Lillith Kazumi and Arden Janelle, who had defied a rivalry centuries old to start the long road to freedom in the Akashima they now despised, the Minister for Trade and Agriculture opened his mouth with a splutter as the poison reached his heart.

Someone in the crowd screamed in shock and pointed, and the eyes of the patrons fell from the rising swarm of lanterns to witness the first of many political upheavals that would befall the government if it did not pay attention to the bigger threat. Rebellion after all did not come from within; from the willing anarchy daggers of change, but from the people’s need to be heard.

Lillith slipped out of the tea room with a swagger in her step, her mask pulled up and her cheeky smile beaming. She heard the thud of a body falling softly to the floor and imagined with a satisfying glee the image of a bald head cracking against a hard, justified end.

“They certainly heard that,” she said with a sarcastic drawl, before she kicked into a run and vanished into the infinite expanse of her new battleground.

[Duffy]

Duffy twirled his daggers in his sweaty palms, and as the light reflected like moonlight from their blades, he remembered.

What he remembered, he was sure, were memories not of this life, but of one of the many lives he had lead since his birth. They, like the numerous tomes of plays and poems on the shelves in his study, were too many to count, and too many to remember, but they clung to the vestiges of his mind like unwanted gifts from the solstice, or cobwebs in the rafters you couldn’t quite reach.

Time would only tell if Duffy would live again, wherever this was his last in a long line of opportunities. Like the sawn wood handle of the doors of the Prima Vista, he only had to be pulled in a direction to open up to the potential of what lay beyond.

“Do you think we’ll live again?” He asked nobody in particular, setting down Tooth and Nail onto the wine stained stage. There were other blots besides merlot and Chianti, but he didn’t dwell on what for too long. It was nearly dark, so he couldn’t have made them out even if he tried.

The soft light of the dying sun fell down in gentle rays through the stained glass dome of the Tantalum’s home. It was long the centre piece of their empire, but it was longer still a relic of a bygone age. Duffy looked up with a crane neck from his dusty throne atop the infamous red carpet where famous footsteps had twirled the fandango and recited lines from all the many legendary plays of Althanas for five centuries. Even as he watched the cumulous clouds drift by, he felt history in the making in every little breath, in every little heartbeat.

Soft merriment couldn’t lift the burden from Duffy’s shoulders. He had been in a slump that was as dark and dreary as the far corners of the stage room and more silent and weary than the long empty bedrooms in the catacomb like expanse of the building’s ground floor. Rock, dirt, bedlam, they were his company now, and no matter what he did to try and bring gladness back into the costume rails and the kitchen’s still burgeoning cupboards, without them, it wasn’t the same.

“No, I don’t suppose we will…” he continued, dropping his gaze to the silver tray by his side which had replaced Ruby’s wit and Arden and Lillith’s stoicism when they had departed for distant shores. He took a deep breath, and fondly remembered their scent, their sound, the echo of their footsteps over the cracked floorboards and the cobble stones of Market Square.

Ruby’s scent was almond and lavender, a combination borne from her perfume and her afternoon gin habit. It mingled with the leather of her dress and the soft satin finish of freshly laundered silk she wore around her neck to keep away the bitter chill of the Scara Brae shade. Her noxious fumes had been a comfort to him in their long years under one roof, and a constant source of amusement to riffle their banter with flourishes of meaning, soul and purpose.

He wouldn’t see her again for months, but the smell lived on, a bond to the past and the potency that rested in the laurels of the future.

“Ruby Winchester, Mistress of the Tantalum and Regal Sister of the Scarabrian Nobility.” He picked up the cut crystal glass from the tray and held it up to the last of the light. With a gentle turn of the wrist he watched the prismatic eruption touch every corner of his narrow world.

Lillith Kazumi was another menagerie of impacts on the senses altogether. From the very first day she had arrived in the city, she was not sure if she was a daughter of Akashima, or an orphan of her new island home. Jasmine and green tea were what she bathed in, but iron and steam and sweat were what she wore like armour on the mean city streets. Between her castrating presence, stern and short tempered sense of humour and swirling mist effect she had on a room, Duffy had been entirely sure where had stood with her.

He slumped, and pulled the stopper from the Tantalus and set it on the tray with a soft ring.

“Lillith Kazumi, Spirit Warder, Mistress of the Night, and the sharpest dagger in the dark asides me,” he chuckled at his own joke, allowing the comforting sound of gin pouring into his glass with a spiralling ring to settle his nerves before the hard liquor did the rest of the work. It was his third, but as a veteran of wasting away the days doing nothing in particular, it may have well been a normal, respectable man’s first.

Arden Janelle was something a little more discernable. He smelt of fear, that strange tinge of death in the nostrils that you couldn’t quite place. His hair, auburn and striking and his eternally flaxen musculature always entered the room before people realised he was there, and with the scent, came the surprise. Duffy smiled, and held the full glass up to the evening sky in salute to the Thayne that had given him so much, yet held the pinnacle of perfection just beyond their reach.

“To Tantalus,” he said cheerfully, the last remnants of his memories blazing brightly and burning to ash along with the day. He lowered the glass to his nostrils and took a draft of the almond aroma of Ruby’s supposedly ‘secret’ Amaranth supply and without thinking, downed it.

The swell of pleasure that rose up from his gullet was equalled in ecstasy only by the immediate swirling sensation that knocked him for six and sent him heavily backwards. The crack of his skull on the dusty red carpet blurred costume rail, dusty brick work and the leather texture of the curtain support that acted as a stage and mood lighting end all together into one maelstrom of vomit. His black scarf fell lose, and his fringe parted with a bounce. He laughed, and deftly kept the glass level, spilling only a trifle amount to add to the collection in the carpet’s tog.

“Oh Duffy,” he mocked, squinting and writhing to get a good feel for the strange yet familiar position of being drunk on the floor of his home once again.

Alone, jealous and stoned on the euphoria of life, the Tantalum couldn’t quite work out what it was he wanted. With night, came the doubt in the heart. With the merriment, came the twilight between ignorance of the world’s troubles, and ignorance of your own values. With the Prima Vista, came the strange duality of being utterly safe and impervious, yet unable to interact with the world you had fought, and died to save.

It had only been four years, but their war with their past had taken them to the very heights of depravity. It had taken their souls, their hearts, and their friendships. Duffy lolled his head to the stairway that lead down into the heart of the playhouse and sighed. Lucian’s tower was toppled, his life entombed in the Necromancer’s Heart beneath Scara Brae, and his Reliquary, the shrine to his former life sat proudly amidst a permanent epitaph of incense and candles which burnt all hours, without fail.

Duffy lolled his head back, and set his sights onto the red silk he had used to bind the blade and artefacts of their former master. The swirling mist spiralled up into the rafters, and it took him a while to compose himself enough through the spinning sensation to push himself upright. He felt sick in the mouth, but like the sturdy banister of the upper balcony floor, he remained upright and strong, if only a little crooked.

“What do you do when life resumes?”

His words struck a nerve, and he set his glassless hand back onto the carpet to steady himself. He puckered his lips and drew another sip from the crystal, the last dregs of the last dash of gin, savouring it as if it were the last on Scara Brae, the last hope, the last succulent tipple.

Allegories flooded his mind, and he heard The Aria sing its answer loud and clear and with all the radiant splendour of flaring mercury. He chuckled.

“Yes, I guess that’s about the measure of it.”

He would do whatever he did when the curtain fell on one Act.

He would stride out and embrace the thing he loved without question.

He would continue to write, and step back out onto the boardwalk of the universe for Act Two; this time, Wainwright Jones would not write his lines.

Duffy Bracken would.

[blackdog1]

Someone once said that not all who wander are lost. I for one believe this is a true statement, because I love to wander, but hate to ever be lost. There is no need to go very far, any time you leave your front door you can wander as far or as near as you choose.

I am Milo Elkheart, nobody special in the grand scheme of things and for all intents and purposes a professional slacker and time waster.

For most of my adult life I have wandered about the great forest of Concordia and surrounding lands with never much more than a simple camp to call home for a short time. What a wonderful life it can be to not have any reason to be or to stay in any one particular place for any longer than it suits you. It is not for everyone, most folks prefer some type of stability and security.

Constant change, self-sufficiency, and the endless opportunity for discovery of things great and small are the high points of the freedom of wandering. In the course of one day you can share a crust of bread with a beggar and be part of a rich mans hunting party, or watch the sun rise and set in completely different landscapes.

Discoveries are an everyday occurence if you keep your eyes open for the little things that can happen to turn up just about anywhere. Feathers the colors of the rainbow, mushrooms of all shapes and sizes, debris from past travelers and even the occasional pretty rock are all worth while discoveries. All of the little things that you can find when you are not looking for anything can make any wander a pleasure.

There is still the hope of making a large and important discovery like a lost temple full of art and treasure that would be valued by the rest of the world or a hidden civilization deep in the forest. Maybe this is why I still wander, the hope of finding something grander than a pretty rock or a rare flower. The good thing about the little discoveries is that you can enjoy them for what they are and then leave them behind for someone else to enjoy. Some how I feel that you could not do that with a larger find.

Being responsible for yourself physically and mentally without the aid of civilization is an aspect of being a full-time wander that most do not always enjoy. Hunting and camping are no longer just leisure pursuits, they are a job that needs to be done almost everyday. Taken as part of the day to day routine of the wanderer the job becomes part and parcel of your life. I like to have food and shelter every night, with a bit a planning I usually do. If I do not there is no one to blame but myself. Some may call this drudgery and hard work, some times I do too, but at least it is work that I enjoy doing.


I can not say that wandering somewhat aimlessly through the world has made me rich or famous, because it has not. If it has made me anything it is poor and unknown, but that is fine with me. The pleasure of the freedom and the lack of worries more than make up for what others think I may have lost. If they only knew what I have found, they would be jealous.

[Jasmine]

Jasmine walked slowly down the main hallway of Matrino Manor, the mansion her parents had left her years ago. It had been a long time since she roamed these halls. Various paintings decorated the walls at regular intervals and the large windows on her right looked out over the front yard of the mansion. The floor beneath her slippered feet was made of wood with a dark blue, narrow carpet running down the center, so that there was a bit of wood visible on either side up to the walls. Officially, this was no longer Matrino Manor, but Dracosius Manor. That had changed when she married Zerith Dracosius. The thought of the brown-haired, blue-eyed man brought a smile to her lips. She concentrated for a moment on the bond they shared, and was soon able to pinpoint where he was. A floor above her, he was busily playing a rather rowdy game with their twin boys, Zevernus Josiah and Aidan James. Doubtless, their daughter, Siela Marie was watching the boys, if for no other reason than to be near her daddy. The little girl simply adored her father. Smiling to herself, Jasmine eased off her concentration. It was not often that she got a little bit of time to herself to relax. Having three children and Zerith for a husband tended to take up a lot of her time.

She turned a corner and let out a small gasp. She’d forgotten about this room. It was not a huge room. It had floor to ceiling windows on two walls and a small balcony with glass doors on the longer of the two. Blue drapes hung at the windows, pulled back to let in the late August sunshine. However, this was not what took Jasmine’s breath away. That honor went to the full-sized, concert piano that stood in the center of the room. The folds of her long cream-colored gown brushed softly against the soft carpet of the room as she approached the piano.

Gently, she let her fingers glide over the smooth, highly polished wood. She could very nearly see her reflection in it. At the keys, she lifted the cover and lightly ran her fingers over the keys, pressing just softly enough to elicit a full scale. She paused for a moment, letting the notes reverberate in the air for a moment before taking a seat. She could not resist now. Her fingers danced over the ivory keys as she played music she had memorized long before. In the places where she could not remember the music, she improvised, reveling in the perfect tone of the piano.

Upstairs, the beautiful music drifted through the walls. Siela, now five years old with hair and eyes to match her mother, cocked her head to one side, listening intently.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Siela?” Zerith asked, breathing hard as he wrestled with her brothers, ZJ and AJ.

“What’s that noise?”

“What noise, Sweetie? Ooof, just a moment, boys, Daddy needs a short break.”

“Listen!” she commanded, holding a stuffed, pink monkey dubbed “Boo” in one hand. “There, that noise.”

“That’s… piano music? Come on, let’s go find out who’s playing the piano.”

Zerith already had a pretty good idea who was playing, but he wanted to sneak up on her, so he very carefully kept his thoughts as much to himself as possible.

A couple of minutes later, Jasmine abruptly stopped playing as a tiny gasp from near her elbow reached her ears. Startled, she looked down and smiled. All three children stood there, having been watching their mother’s fingers for a full minute. Jasmine had been so entranced with playing that she had not seen or heard them come in.

“Mommy can play?”

Siela’s voice was barely above a whisper as she asked her question. The idea that her mother might play a musical instrument had never occurred to the child. Of course, it had been many years since Jasmine had the opportunity to play, and certainly not in front of her children. Jasmine nodded, scooted over and helped Siela up to the seat beside her. She looked at her sons and smiled.

“Would you two like to come up and try, too?”

AJ spoke up first, “No, that’s for girls. I wanna go play soldier.” He turned on his heel and went back over to Zerith, “Can we play soldier, Daddy, please?”

Jasmine chuckled softly to herself as ZJ joined him. Between the two boys, they soon had Zerith convinced to abandon the idea of listening to piano music in favor of “soldier”. As the three left, Jasmine began playing again, softer this time as Siela hit random keys. The little girl giggled each time, quite pleased at the sound it made.

“Mommy, do you like this?”

“The piano? Yes, it’s my favorite instrument.”

“Why?”

“Why? I’m not really sure, Sweetie, I just do. Kind of like how we have favorite colors, dresses and animals.”

“Do you have a fav’rit amimal, Mommy? I like Boo, he’s the bestest.”

Jasmine laughed, her fingers moving of their own accord as they made up their own melody. “Yes, I’m quite fond of cats and horses. Monkeys are quite cute too.”

“How ‘bout color?”

“Blue, without a doubt. Just like your eyes.” It was very clear what color Siela liked. She wore a knee-length dress of pink. Everything had to be pink, just like Boo the Monkey.

“Hmmm, does Daddy have a fav’rit inst’ument?” she asked, plunking her small fingers down on the black and white keys randomly.

“Well, Daddy plays guitar. Though not very often. And before you ask, if you want to know about what any of Daddy’s favorite things are, why don’t you ask him?”

“Okay!” She climbed down off the bench immediately and went in search of her Daddy.

Jasmine smiled as she watched her go. Yes, Jasmine had many favorite things: a color, an instrument, dress, meal and many others, but her most favorite things in the world, were her children and husband. She played for a few more minutes then closed the piano. She left the room and went searching for Zerith and her children, she’d spent enough time for one day by herself and now she wanted to spend the rest of it with her favorite things.

[orphans]

“And then the dragon reached down and snatched up the hero!” The tattered cape of the man fluttered about in the glow of a nearby torch as he made a haphazard motion of grasping the air before the young children. Some of them jumped at the shadows evoked by the gesture while others gasped and held onto each other.

“What happened next?” A small voice piped out. Others joined the chorus, both demanding and afraid of the answer.

“Mmm, well…” he began and then slowly trailed off with a stroke of his wizened beard. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out the familiar shape of an aged woman by a pine tree, waiting patiently. “I’ll have to continue later. Your den mother is fiercer than any dragon, and she’d have my head if I kept you all late again.”

Disapproving whines rose from the crowd of children as they looked about for the brown and graying mane of their caretaker. A laugh from the woman guided them to her and soon, the small roving forms lined themselves up to follow her. “How come Azza doesn’t have to come with us?” another voice asked, a hint of jealousy.

Grinning apologetically to her young friends, Azza poked her index fingers together as she rocked about on her soles of her sandaled feet. “Someone from the Ixian castle is coming soon. They said they’ll meet me here at town square.”

It was evident that those words had caused more damage than good as a choir of protests arose from the children. But the old woman had her tricks and with a hand on her hip, her tone commanding and without nonsense simply said, “Last one in bed get’s no dessert tomorrow.” Panic spread through the children like wildfire as they scrambled past one another and the old woman, every one of them making an all out dash towards the place they called home.

The man chuckled before taking a quick sip from his gourd strapped to his waist. “Glad to see that Holly can still give orders.” Those words, even mumbled, made Holly raise a brow before daggers flashed from her eyes; the friendliest warning she could muster before she followed her small flock. When he was certain Holly was out of earshot, the performer sat down and whispered quickly to Azza, “Dangerous as ever.”

It was a strange comment, but one that both lured a giggle and the curious nature from Azza. As the growing girl took a seat by the man and ruffled her wings, silence settled between them and aside from the occasional sound of drinking from Jared, nothing was said as the two gazed up at the half moon drifting in the sky.

“Jared? What was Holly like? When she was younger I mean.” The sudden question caught the man off guard as he sputtered his drink and coughed up the rest.

“You ask that every time I visit. Why do you want to know?”

There was a moment’s pause as Azza brushed a few strands of loose hair behind her horns and away from her face. “I like stories.”

Jared scoffed as he scratched his beard briskly. “Nosy, more like it.”

“Please?”

A long exasperated and overly exaggerated sigh left the man as he threw his hands up in mock defeat. “Well, alright. When Holly was younger, she didn’t have so many wrinkles and liked to travel. There.”

It was Azza’s turn to frown as the answer failed to sate her interest. It was clear though that she would get no more than that, as it was with every night she talked to him, and the night before that, and the night before that as well.

Jared’s lack of interest in conversation about the past was fine though. Azza appreciated the company of a night owl. Staying up late was one of her favorite things to do and company, even cynical company, made it more enjoyable.

“Hey Jared?”

“Hm?”

“Can you tell me the story about the girl who sailed across the sea, again?”

This time a smile short of a few mirrors gleamed from behind the tangled beard as Jared brought a hand to fix the ratty hat atop his head. “Long ago, before the stars learned to cry…”

[Knave]

Autumn came, bringing showers at dawn to slick auburn trees and soak the soil into mud. It was a signal for the farmer’s to take up their pitch forks and scythes in the crucial harvest. But just as the farmer’s new to collect their bounty, the bandits new that those fields not yet plucked of their fruit.

It had been an hour since they had heard field master’s songs or the bark of dog and bay of sheep, or as much as Oleander could tell the passage time under a dark, pregnant sky. Still, when the world had been dark, they had joined together for this adventure, stout of courage and strong of body, ready to drink the lands dry and flee with their ill-gotten gains.

“Are we there yet?” Elthas called, the largest boy among them, eager to fill the air with more than the chatter of teeth and patter of rain, even if that meant earning the juvenile contempt of his peers. He was at the back their less than merry crew.

“We’re walking because of you.” Liere, shouted back at him, hunched beneath broad brim hat, arms safely withdrawn from the cold into the lumpy brown coat she had borrowed from her father. A boy by honorary means, and Elthas’ friend since time immemorial, five or six years, they had long moved past the point where he idolized her, and she thought he was a silly, frilly.


“You’re the one who’s gonna stuff himself most, the least you could do is run for it.” Tuoulous’ had neglected to bring a jacket in his hurry, the smallest of them, he had been the first under the gnarled elm tree they gathered under, a shirtless harlequin form whose black hair had matted perfectly over his pointed ears. Everyone’s parents said he wasn’t right, but not simple either, they only said he was excitable; his own father said he was the sort to start a bon fire if he thought he was cold, sometimes laughing, sometimes not. “And look at you; you’ve got more pockets on you than you know how to stuff!” The vow of silence had been lifted; there was no reason for him to contain his manic energies.

“Leave him at the back; can’t eat if he can’t climb anyway.” Malvolio said through the scarf tied about his neck and stuffed into “V’ of his jacket. He was the sneering bane to all things good and their leader by size alone, even if he was stringy. The snickers soon followed, even as Elthas stepped up pace to a brisk sidle, suspicious that some unspoken plot had been founded among his cohorts to deprive him of his share in their bastard gains.

“Pity’s the price a good man pays when he’s taxed by the weak.” Oleander said, falling with his head high, tone officious even as he slung an arm around his new friend, having only recently arrived to town in the previous weeks, he was weird, but when he wasn’t using words to sound like an ass he could slowly talk others into anything, like stealing into the early morning for a breakfast of formerly overpriced fruit. “And here we are!”

“Finally!”
“Last one there’s a fairy’s fool!”

What would Elthas love for the rest of his days? Good company and reasonable friends.
What would Malvolio chase in the years to come? Fame, fortune, and all the vicious ends of men.
What would Tuoulous spend his time upon? A flitting wonder with the world.
Liere? Oleander couldn’t tell. Even as young as she was, she was not something he could really predict.

And Oleander himself? Nothing. Because Oleander was just another lie, and the shapeshifter, Lawrence Spades loved his lies. He loved to escape, and when you get down to it, who wouldn’t want to be eleven again?

[Knave]

Game over! Everyone wins, here are your prizes...

Lillith 100gp and 26 exp
Duffy 75gp and 33 exp
Etheryn 50gp and 50xp
Hallow 10 exp
Black 36.5 exp
Jasmin 85 exp
Orphans 211 exp

Enjoy.