Out of Character:
Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
5:59 AM, Day of the Iron Song, Month of Iraes Marching, 3177 of the Occultist Calendar (OY)
Picture if you will, a forest that should be green, crisp and clear. There should be animals about, some of them quite mythic simply Because, and others every bit as mundane as the deer you might see peeking at the road from a safe distance. Weeds and flowers should both be in full bloom, vines should be growing and the whole damn place should be filled with the racket of the everyday miracle that is Life in Progress.
Except it isn't.
Welcome to the deeps of the Forest of Tembrethnil, approximately one or two hundred miles southeast of Trenycë. Welcome to an area where the leaves are going grey, the animals have all gone missing or died, and there's an unnatural chill that simply should not be anywhere near a forest in the heat of Summer. Accompanying it is an equally unnatural fog; the kind that heralds Bad Things, and this one very much lives down to that archetype. We won't see them just yet, but don't(?) worry, they'll be along soon enough.
The collection of guerrilla warriors you're about to meet are actually counting on it, as a matter of fact. Along a rather old, suitably abandoned road, you'll only find three of them; the rest are hidden, but not at all far. Per the rules of the game, Bait must always be presented in the open while the hooks are hidden as cleverly as possible.
Their names are Aldinar, Vara, and Eledier. They stand out from their fellows by virtue of not being actual Rangers, and they look the part. Aldinar, the token male, stands to the left, wearing a mixture of armor and robes, holding a strange spear about as long as he is tall, his face hidden away behind a steel mask joined to an almost amusingly pointed helm. Vara, off to the right, is much the same, though her hair is long and dark blue, let out from beneath her helm in a cascade. She wields a slightly curved sword with the same odd appearance as Aldinar's spear; the blade looks like it's made from some kind of material that can't decide if it's stone, metal, liquid or glass, and its color is almost entirely blue with golden detailing.
At the center of the three is Eledier, and you can tell she's the resident Commander by virtue of the fact that she's dressed like both of them, but completely different. She wears form-fitting steel armor from the waist up, complete with a grim looking mask joined to a pointed helm, with her long red hair cascading down her back over a functional strip of cloth that's as much a banner as it is a cape. From the waist down is a battle-skirt; long enough to cover her legs down to the lower portion of each shin, with plates of armor straped and sown onto it. Beneath that are pants and boots. She carried a rather long-hilted sword, similar to her fellows except that its blade was red.
And now that you've wasted enough time examining them one way, examine them another: By what they say. If you can, try to ignore the metallic echo the masks give their voices.
"Something is coming," said Aldinar.
"Always," said Vara.
"Indeed," said Eledier. "But I do not believe it is what we are expecting."
Incidentally, this is when the fog rolled in. Heavy and dead and gray and thick; so thick you couldn't cut it with a knife. Things stirred within it and they could not be seen -- not yet, anyway. The noises were of sawing and screaming, gagging and horror. Nature itself dying a slow, wretched, indignant death, only to be dragged back into movement by a distant and terrible force of will. Where the fog crept, grass withered and died, and the trees seemed to almost tremble with a grim anticipation of what was to come.
And what came was not one ugly thing on its lonesome, but a whole bloody lot of them en masse.
First were the lowest of the hordes; dead Men telling no tales as they dragged rusted tools around, their eyes long since gone blank or having rotted out entirely. In teams of two and three and four, they took to the trees like a gang of rapists to a young girl. They spread out along each one, stripping it bare of leaves and hammering nails into its bark, then wrapping so many of the branches in barbed wire. Each and every single one bore a crude looking eye, notched into it with the clumsy tenacity of the dead.
After the first teams, there came more. They brought shovels and saws, and though their tools were primitive and their bodies weak, they had numbers and an awful drive. One by one, they uprooted their victims and rent the ground asunder as they did it.
Finally came the dead Elves, many of them ancient and many of them nowhere near it. Some still bled. A poor few still clinged to enough life that they were crying. All the same, they stepped through the tangle of roots and, using nothing but hammers and chisels, they drove in the symbol that now haunted Raiaran children's nightmares.
A six-sided diamond, inset with a single eye. The crudest form of Xem'zund's personal mark.
When they were done, the desecrated trees heaved themselves up like staggering drunks with a thousand legs each. Those that did not move were simply left to rot on the ground, the nails and wire ripped out of them in such a way that they bled sap all over the place.
It had been a slowmoving tide, but the Elves of the Farstrike Retinue were not known for any measure of impatience. For that matter, they were hardly known at all, which is exactly how they wanted it.
"They come," Vara noted.
"Their leader is not yet seen," Aldinar replied. "We may have to strike first, and deep, in order to draw him out."
"No. He will be here," said Eledier, placatingly. "That hedge-necromancer will die for his crimes today," she added, her voice almost liltingly pleasant even with the metallic echo.
"I do not see why we must wait as the forest dies," Aldinar muttered. "This will not be reflected upon kindly at Caesai Maer."
"War has a way of justifying that which was previously unjustifiable," Vara replied. "We wait because we must. We will fight because we must. We will die, if we must."
"Speak for yourself," Aldinar ordered. "I plan on living to see the end of this."
"Then do not advocate such a rush to your own death, fellow Seer," Eledier ordered in turn. What passed for an arguement ended right then and there, give or take a sigh.
Conveniently enough, this is when the target and his ilk finally showed their wretched faces.
His name was Kholia Horren. Once upon a time, he had been a proper Wizard of moderate skill and standing. Then he turned to necromancy. Then he went in too deep. And now look at him: Haggard and old, with his Grimoire chained around his waist and his Name claimed by Xem'zund in order to insure fealty. A lieutenant promised power beyond his dreams, driven mad, and then thrown into what amounts to a menial supply job. What had been a tall, strapping Salvic man was now bent forward with the ravages of age and darkened arcana, his face and head covered from the upper lip straight up, back and to the base of the skull by metal plates that had been magically fused into place. Etched into the front of it was the same symbol as what the dead Elves had notched into the trees.
Beyond that were greying robes and a distinct lack of personal hygiene, whatever that's worth.
He was accompanied, more worryingly, by an honor guard of cavaliers mounted on giant spiders, each one bearing an arcane lance covered in wicked barbs. Unlike the lot of them though, Kholia walked, leaning on an ancient staff the whole way. At its head was a red diamond, positioned like the blade of a spear and formed around an unblinking eye.
"Do you see?" Eledier asked. "Just as planned."
"Ho-ho," mocked Aldinar.
"Shall we strike now?" Vara asked.
The answer did not come in words, simply action. As one, each Seer planted their blades into the ground before them, stepped forward and began to move. As one, each Seer began to dance through exactly the same moves, at exactly the same time and in exactly the same way. To a casual observer, it would've resembled a combination of Tai Chi with some of the hand movements of a Middle-Eastern bellydancer.
Tracing along each movement, power coalesced around them. It converged into each Seer's right hand, and for the briefest of moments it crystalized into something the size and shape of a slightly deformed marble bearing an Elven rune.
As one, the Seers ended their dance and raised their hands; fingers alternately clasping and pointing forward as each one picked out the same target.
Then, without fanfare or battlecries, they fired.
The spells rippled through the air, spiraled into one another and seperated close to their target; three of the Necromancer's Guard went down in a blaze of teal fire and song. Their spiders and much of the area around them went out in the same way. Lurching at the center, his free arm wrapped around his head to try and shield himself, Kholia went unharmed. The Seers had foreseen him coming, but they had not counted on the possibility of his defenses including a scattershot barrier.
Time is a very fluid thing, after all.
"Oh well," Eledier sighed. "I suppose we may have to try this your way after all, Aldinar."
"I'd say I told you so, but that would be incredibly rude of me, wouldn't it?"
"Very human, at that," Vara replied, though not unkindly.
"KILL THEM!" Kholia screamed, his Voice rippling in the fog and briefly turning it bloody red. He thrust a hand forward and pitch black lightning shot from his fingertips.
In one fluid motion, all three Seers pirouetted back, drew their weapons from the ground and struck up into the lightning. Blades sang in the humid morning air, and Kholia's spell broke almost impotently against them.
"KILL THEM ALL!" Kholia screamed again, and the fog once more turned red for a split second.
By the time it returned to its normal ugly grey, Men and Elves were flooding through it, their movements so vast that no measure of fog could've ever hidden them. The sheer volume of their brandished weapons caused ripples and clearings that were visible even from the two hundred yard distance. Kholia staggered forward after them, screeching profanity the whole way.
Calm before the coming storm, the Seers remained standing on the road, flourishing their weapons into ready stances with a sense of righteously doomed bravado about them.
"Tell me, Eledier," Aldinar began, "Are things still going as planned?"
"Just as planned," she repeated, then said again, "Just as planned."
The Bait waited, and the Rangers took aim...
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