Izayiri
11-08-12, 03:38 PM
(Closed, to Lida)
Some crossroads and their associated service industries stand as permanent testaments to the tenacity of people wearing ever-deeper ruts and building ever-bigger wheels. Others move about as if horses, mules, donkeys, oxen, and particularly rude pedestrians process food into landmines. Thershirn-Upon-Stork was a harmonious synthesis of these ideas. It was always on the Stork river, at the Thernshirn Bridge. The peculiar propensity of the Stork river to change course after every spring flood resulted in the nearest hundred square miles being dotted with numerous not-quite-abandoned ghost towns imaginatively named like "Thernshirn-Upon-Stork of 1720", "Thernshire-Upon-Stork of 1721", and "Thernshire-Upon-Stork of 1699, 1715, and 1728".
The town itself appears to have been expressly built for the purpose of being abandoned. Half of the buildings were knocked together out of the light, tough wood of the blorn trees common to the area and the other half were yurts. Looming over it all was the tallest tensegrity tower in a hundred miles; the tower was also permanently on fire. This beacon of light and smoke serves to alert travellers to Thernshirn-Upon-Stork's annual location and to occasionally cause rains of roasted fowl. It also served to deter raiders through a form of mind control wherein the violent people with the pointy weapons took one look and thought, "Those people over there live in a town that is on fire and with a great big flaming tower in the middle. They must be crazy pyromaniacs. Nuts to raiding that place."
Therefore, general banditry gave Thernshirn-Upon-Stork a wide berth and instead focused on the travellers in the surrounding moorlands. Ambushes were rather easy to pull off; the moorland was almost perpetually a kaleidoscope of vivid colors from blooming flowers such that putting on a used painter's smock counts as high-quality camouflage. The rolling hills provided innumerable ways to run away in the occasions of the coach full of old man inside and luggage on top turning into a coach full of annoyed wizards setting things on fire and causing work at the local frog immigration office. Bandits smart enough to avoid wizards and flaming towns also had a small grasp on basic economics; they were usually rather polite and only asked for a toll to use whichever this year's road was. They even helpfully provided directions on the foggy days when the giant tower of flame was hidden. Return customers were valuable.
This morning, three toll collectors had very seriously considered not servicing what appeared to be half of an extremely large butternut squash on four wheels being pulled by a horse with a truly massive white plume mounted on its head. Still, there were three exquisite, well-dressed ladies in the carriage; it would certainly be a violation of some code somewhere to not take advantage of them. They had even stood their ground when a big, fluffy cloud chose to hide the sun just as the carriage rolled to a stop before them.
"Good morning! Welcome to Storksmoor. There's a toll for using this road-" It was late summer. The road had been well-traveled enough since spring that there was an actually discernable road. "-and we will assess it by inspecting you and your belongings."
"Please, for the love of everything, take me!" The carriage driver croaked out. He looked like a young, handsome man who had just spent a week being physically and mentally assailed by eldritch abominations beyond human ken. The haunted look in his eyes seemed to leak into the air. His fingers twitched with a nervousness usually found in rodents.
"Ah." The leader of the three recovered and filed this under Willing to Convert to Banditry. It was an unorthodox execution, but the meaning was quite clear. The whole business smelled unorthodox; those three ladies were engrossed in something between them and had entirely failed to notice the stopping, demanding, and treason. "Well, good. I'm, glad that you want to join us. Now, what do you have?"
During the ensuing pause, the driver's eyes widened, "Nothing! Nothing! They took everything! Everything! AAAahahahaahaaaa!" Then he leaped off of the buckboard and sprinted away into the grass, giggling to himself.
A faint alarm bell went off in three bandit heads at the same time. They've all seen an insane person before. One of the sub-leaders had been leading another collections station when he woke up a very cranky mage. Subsequently, he was promoted from 'terminally foolish' to 'bananas'. On the other hand, none of the women in the carriage fit the commonly-held criteria for being a dangerous pot of magic just waiting to overturn on someone. Only one of them wore a hat, but that was a white mob cap and not the love child of a dunce cap and a planetarium. None of them were wearing scandalously little or tight-fitting clothing; between all the gowns, blouses, vests, and skirts, those three were more over-dressed for the temperature than an asbestos turkey in an oven.
Therefore, they weren't dangerous at all.
Twelve minutes later, three extremely frightened bandits, one of whom had a huge, white plume on his head, were dragging the carriage forward. They each wore a new, tight collar around their necks. The young, greenish vine dug small thorns into their skin. In the distance back along the road, a horse with a crossbow bolt through its neck gave a pitiable whinny and then laid still.
"Much, much slower," Itera agreed after a minute at the new, human-powered pace. She idly fanned herself, not as protection against the heat but as something to do with her hands. For the heat, there was a small rift, opening to a snowy peak, hidden somewhere in the layers of her gown.
"Four is much faster than one," Isylle replied, "We can find another horse when we get to town... when did you say it was?"
When there was no reply, Isylle pursed her lips and gave a soft, unearthly whistle. The spiny collar on the leader's neck contracted fractionally. A thin trickle of blood dribbled down his torn shirt. He gave a strangled yelp, "An hour! Less! Right at the fire!"
Isylle returned to her original position, draped over the seats, "Faster."
"Yes!"
Itera peered at the frontmost of the four people attached by rope and vine to the carriage. The fourth one, Izayiri, had a somewhat different treatment from the others. She had been wrapped in a brown cloak and bound tightly about her midsection with many loops of vine. She didn't pull very hard, but her unhappy expression was the least panicked and frightened of them all.
"Why did you have to bind the Library all up like that, again?"
Isylle scoffed, "What, and let her get a chance to get a book out?"
"Right."
Some crossroads and their associated service industries stand as permanent testaments to the tenacity of people wearing ever-deeper ruts and building ever-bigger wheels. Others move about as if horses, mules, donkeys, oxen, and particularly rude pedestrians process food into landmines. Thershirn-Upon-Stork was a harmonious synthesis of these ideas. It was always on the Stork river, at the Thernshirn Bridge. The peculiar propensity of the Stork river to change course after every spring flood resulted in the nearest hundred square miles being dotted with numerous not-quite-abandoned ghost towns imaginatively named like "Thernshirn-Upon-Stork of 1720", "Thernshire-Upon-Stork of 1721", and "Thernshire-Upon-Stork of 1699, 1715, and 1728".
The town itself appears to have been expressly built for the purpose of being abandoned. Half of the buildings were knocked together out of the light, tough wood of the blorn trees common to the area and the other half were yurts. Looming over it all was the tallest tensegrity tower in a hundred miles; the tower was also permanently on fire. This beacon of light and smoke serves to alert travellers to Thernshirn-Upon-Stork's annual location and to occasionally cause rains of roasted fowl. It also served to deter raiders through a form of mind control wherein the violent people with the pointy weapons took one look and thought, "Those people over there live in a town that is on fire and with a great big flaming tower in the middle. They must be crazy pyromaniacs. Nuts to raiding that place."
Therefore, general banditry gave Thernshirn-Upon-Stork a wide berth and instead focused on the travellers in the surrounding moorlands. Ambushes were rather easy to pull off; the moorland was almost perpetually a kaleidoscope of vivid colors from blooming flowers such that putting on a used painter's smock counts as high-quality camouflage. The rolling hills provided innumerable ways to run away in the occasions of the coach full of old man inside and luggage on top turning into a coach full of annoyed wizards setting things on fire and causing work at the local frog immigration office. Bandits smart enough to avoid wizards and flaming towns also had a small grasp on basic economics; they were usually rather polite and only asked for a toll to use whichever this year's road was. They even helpfully provided directions on the foggy days when the giant tower of flame was hidden. Return customers were valuable.
This morning, three toll collectors had very seriously considered not servicing what appeared to be half of an extremely large butternut squash on four wheels being pulled by a horse with a truly massive white plume mounted on its head. Still, there were three exquisite, well-dressed ladies in the carriage; it would certainly be a violation of some code somewhere to not take advantage of them. They had even stood their ground when a big, fluffy cloud chose to hide the sun just as the carriage rolled to a stop before them.
"Good morning! Welcome to Storksmoor. There's a toll for using this road-" It was late summer. The road had been well-traveled enough since spring that there was an actually discernable road. "-and we will assess it by inspecting you and your belongings."
"Please, for the love of everything, take me!" The carriage driver croaked out. He looked like a young, handsome man who had just spent a week being physically and mentally assailed by eldritch abominations beyond human ken. The haunted look in his eyes seemed to leak into the air. His fingers twitched with a nervousness usually found in rodents.
"Ah." The leader of the three recovered and filed this under Willing to Convert to Banditry. It was an unorthodox execution, but the meaning was quite clear. The whole business smelled unorthodox; those three ladies were engrossed in something between them and had entirely failed to notice the stopping, demanding, and treason. "Well, good. I'm, glad that you want to join us. Now, what do you have?"
During the ensuing pause, the driver's eyes widened, "Nothing! Nothing! They took everything! Everything! AAAahahahaahaaaa!" Then he leaped off of the buckboard and sprinted away into the grass, giggling to himself.
A faint alarm bell went off in three bandit heads at the same time. They've all seen an insane person before. One of the sub-leaders had been leading another collections station when he woke up a very cranky mage. Subsequently, he was promoted from 'terminally foolish' to 'bananas'. On the other hand, none of the women in the carriage fit the commonly-held criteria for being a dangerous pot of magic just waiting to overturn on someone. Only one of them wore a hat, but that was a white mob cap and not the love child of a dunce cap and a planetarium. None of them were wearing scandalously little or tight-fitting clothing; between all the gowns, blouses, vests, and skirts, those three were more over-dressed for the temperature than an asbestos turkey in an oven.
Therefore, they weren't dangerous at all.
Twelve minutes later, three extremely frightened bandits, one of whom had a huge, white plume on his head, were dragging the carriage forward. They each wore a new, tight collar around their necks. The young, greenish vine dug small thorns into their skin. In the distance back along the road, a horse with a crossbow bolt through its neck gave a pitiable whinny and then laid still.
"Much, much slower," Itera agreed after a minute at the new, human-powered pace. She idly fanned herself, not as protection against the heat but as something to do with her hands. For the heat, there was a small rift, opening to a snowy peak, hidden somewhere in the layers of her gown.
"Four is much faster than one," Isylle replied, "We can find another horse when we get to town... when did you say it was?"
When there was no reply, Isylle pursed her lips and gave a soft, unearthly whistle. The spiny collar on the leader's neck contracted fractionally. A thin trickle of blood dribbled down his torn shirt. He gave a strangled yelp, "An hour! Less! Right at the fire!"
Isylle returned to her original position, draped over the seats, "Faster."
"Yes!"
Itera peered at the frontmost of the four people attached by rope and vine to the carriage. The fourth one, Izayiri, had a somewhat different treatment from the others. She had been wrapped in a brown cloak and bound tightly about her midsection with many loops of vine. She didn't pull very hard, but her unhappy expression was the least panicked and frightened of them all.
"Why did you have to bind the Library all up like that, again?"
Isylle scoffed, "What, and let her get a chance to get a book out?"
"Right."