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Mothers and Fathers
Posted: 08 Feb 2005 07:40 PM |
Cold is perhaps Vrodo’s earliest memory. This comes before even his memory of a mother, and long before he lived like Tukar himself among men, and took the surname of Joud.
He was so young he didn’t cover himself with clothes, just a short hip-length tunic made of soft hide, fur turned towards the inside against the cold. For this day the shaman had wrapped his feet in hides as well, and bound them tightly to keep out the snow. The half-orc child, skin black like soot and small for his age, was left comfortably naked from knees to knackers, underneath the skin of some great white beast that was wrapped around him like a cowl.
He will never forget that cold, the cutting wind, drifts of snow blown up against the hills that seemed to him like the sea. He trudged weeping behind the shaman, who plowed ahead of him, pushing through along a trail well known to him. It was a spirit trail, one of many known to his clan. Vrodo’s people were called Tests-Against-Beasts by those at M’Gok Tukar. His memory begins on that trail. Vrodo never learned why he was chosen by the shaman, or even who the shaman was.
The shaman led him to a crevice, free of snow and warmed by the breath and body of a woolly beast. Further in the thing lay on its side, and its stiff fur parted where a clutch of young ones suckled and grappled. “Poor mother,” said the shaman. She had rolled onto one of her young, smothering it flat. It left one teat exposed, and Vrodo was pushed to it. He resisted, doubtful, but the shaman was firm. The milk was fatty and sour, a strange infantile pleasure he had barely known at all when he was himself an infant. Entranced, he mimicked the others, kneading with his fists in time with his breath and her breath. “There mother,” said the shaman, who picked lice from her ears and pacified her.
They slept there and returned home on a clear, dazzlingly bright day, among funnels of blowing ice crystals and those that blew along the ground like serpents. “You will never tell of this,” the shaman said to Vrodo along their journey. “And you will never face the beasts, like the others.” The shaman did not explain further. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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"What about the spirits of our fathers?"
Posted: 13 Feb 2005 08:53 PM |
Many are aware of the practice of ancestor-worship among half-orcs. Though some crassly consider them to be a superstitious race, in fact their spiritual life is textured and animistic. Animism refers to the belief that our physical reality exists simultaneously with a reality made up of vital forces or spirits detachable from physical things, but just as real as the world experienced through our other senses. The spirits of the ancestors continue to inhabit the world, going into rocks, sky, streams and rivers, and growing things like trees and animals, existing there as a part of nature. In a future state the souls that inhabit a boulder or a lake might exist apart from anything material, and might even be called to “animate” and give breath to a person or thing newly born.
Thus the half-orc experiences the world as a sacred reality, and either chooses to honor it or to despise it. Reality can provide unfathomable inspiration, articulated to each clan through myth and ritual by the shaman, or an endless catalog of hate-objects and purely destructive acts.
These two poles are reflected in the mixed parentage of every half-orc. Among Vrodo’s clan, the opposition of [mother : father] gave structure to these considerations, and guided a particular shamanic tradition originating aeons before the race of half-orcs settled at the craggy place called M’Gok Tukar, in fact before the tainted orcblood was mixed with that of man. Vrodo was instructed in these things. “The spirits of our mothers live in these beasts,” he was told with solemnity by the shaman. “Our mothers will bring us no harm. They will defend us with their dying breath. They want this. Our people have lived like this before the fathers came from the terrible lands, and gave you this skin,” rapping his arm with a walking stick, “and this face.”
“But what about the spirits of our fathers?” Vrodo asked. For nine years Vrodo had suckled from many mothers in the wild places, first with guidance from one of the shaman men among his people, then striking out on his own, finding the nourishment he needed to become a well-grown man. Vrodo was practically an adult among half-orcs at age twelve, and old enough to start a family of his own.
“You will see this in time,” the shaman replied. “But mark my words well, Vrodo. You must never, ever father a child by any woman. The day you become a father is the day our mothers will forsake you.”
“Am I a shaman?” he asked in response.
“You are not,” returned the shaman. “But you will be different from the others. You will never become an adult among males. Like the shaman you will remain a child and be given suck for all of your days. The mother will love you and guard you.”
Vrodo was excused from the ritual the led young men among his clan into adulthood. He would become a necessary part of its completion, however. He would dominate the father, and show his fellows that they, too, could defeat and destroy him. One boy was selected from each cohort to bring forth the father – for our fathers continued to inhabit the world, just like our mothers – in the form of savage beasts to struggle with unto death. Some dire beast would be brought to a canyon, vale or hollow. There the boys of the clan would take up weapons and throw themselves against it until it was slain. Their blood was spilt by the beast, limbs maimed and lost, and some lives extinguished. No matter, for the souls of young boys bring harm to no one. The contest did not end until the beast, weakened by a hundred cuts, fell dead and was devoured raw and steaming by the victors.
So Vrodo took this role within the clan: to go out into the wild places and return with the father’s spirit, which the boys in the clan fought to overcome and in doing so become adults. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Sword Slung in the Gladden Hills
Posted: 26 Feb 2005 10:28 AM |
Vrodo camped in the woods that lay between the elf-lands of Ferein and the places of men to the south. A small cooking fire glowed beneath a clay pot of black brewing chicory, a drink he made whenever he found this wild-growing composite with its light purple flowers. Roasted and ground, the meal of chicory root traveled well but it never tasted as bitter when taken off its native soil.
At dusk, the red glow of the fire reflected in his eyes black like small dark opals and gave a velvety luster to his skin. The color of coal dust, Vrodo’s thick skin was marked by scarification that raised a pattern of welts and ridges across his arms, chest and thighs; this pattern was overlain by the wounds of a short life spent in wild places. He palmed a gourd ladle, from which he scooped and drank the chicory brew and contemplated the task ahead of him. A sheaf of long bows--eight in number and well made--was packed on top of his gear, all of them unstrung and measuring just over six feet in length. They would be an awkward burden. In addition, there was one very finely crafted bow that he was very proud of. It was joined of excellent mahogany and oaken wood that he had taken unmolested from Elven lands, glued and bound with sinew and reinforced across its front with deer bone. It resembled no bow that an elf would make.
Half-orcs made bows such as these for dropping mighty beasts, and short ones for use from horseback or in stealth, so strong and flexible they were practically bent double when drawn, and could put an arrow through the skull of a dire boar. He would sell these bows in the places of men, perhaps Icy Vale, Midor if he could find one to buy from him, or he would sail to Port Royale where a half-orc was not so much hated. Perhaps the one called Jessup would buy them to sell in his outfitters’, or the merchants in Buckshire’s trading post. It would be a long trail before he could find a fair price from anyone, unaccustomed as he was to bartering and appraising.
To the south lay the Gladden Hills. He had been there before, in fact to battle the trolls that congregated hideously among the crags and caves. His eyes flashed as he remembered the Soldier, who had led him and an elven ranger against the worst of them. He had not seen him since that expedition. Deep in the caves beneath Gladden Hills, the Soldier had ensured the survival of all three through his use of tactics and firm command. Vrodo would not forget the way he described two War Trolls. “They are trained,” the Soldier said, “Trained like me, trained and disciplined.”
The Soldier took such punishment in those caves that Vrodo could scarcely bear to witness it. But he was disciplined. He held his ground and never fell, nor lowered his shield, nor his weapon. Vrodo suffered as well, as the wicked creatures rent his armor and carved into his flesh.
…
He thought later, routed and resting in the Ferein, of the beast-god called Gruin. It was clear to him that this god moved the trolls against all intruders and gave power to their shaman. The Beast took pleasure in destruction and expressions of might and power. Perhaps he moved Vrodo too, as he swung his two-hander overhand and cut the trolls to pieces as they lay struggling on the ground, not killed by any cut he could deliver.
Not long after he attained adulthood among his people, called Tests-Against-Beasts by those clans dwelling at M’Gok Tukar, a shaman of the old ways was clubbed to death by a disciple of the Beast God. The killing was performed in daylight and resembled an execution. The shaman was made to rest his head upon a round cobble weighing more than 500 pounds, rolled and grooved thousands of years ago by the movement of a glacier. Gruin’s disciple wielded a war-club of iron, wrought from a black pig of this foreign metal in a forge consecrated with blood. Four savage blows were struck before a stunned and frightened crowd, and the head of the shaman was nearly severed.
Gruin tried to end an age-old practice among these people. As a younger boy Vrodo could remember the symbol of the New God, a pike with a two-bladed sword across it, anointed at its middle with blood. In his youth there were two factions that struggled for spiritual control of his clan, one following the shamanic tradition descending from untold ages and the other the cultic horrors of Gruin, the Great Beast. It was rightly recognized that mother-worship, and the contests in which wild animals were slain and defeated time and again, this tradition that had emerged from dark prehistory, a ritual that articulated the opposition of mother and father was heresy against the Great Beast.
So it was that Vrodo had been chased out of his clan. All but the strongest of those leading his clan through the old rituals were, and the rift that grew between followers of the new and the old never was healed. But that is another story.
…
Vrodo had been to the Gladden Hills, but more importantly he knew how to pass through by stealth and reach the farmlands further south in safety. He had done this before, and was confident in his ability to conceal himself even from the watchfulness of these monstrous humanoids.
A few more draughts of coffee and he poured the contents of the pot onto the fire and extinguished it with dirt and urine.
Then he chased away the she-wolf that was his companion. “Go, mother!” he shouted, stomping in the leaves. “Find your own way! Hyaaa!” He knew that the trolls would discover her and eat her, a thing he could not bear. She fled about a hundred yards into the wood, turned, and watched him from that distance.
Vrodo shouldered his load with some effort, his usual gear and weapons, the bows, and also staves enough of the poached Ferein wood to make ten more like them. Approaching the grotto that led to Gladden Hills, he invoked nature around him to conceal him, becoming one with the scene and one with the land. Then he passed through the gateway into that wasteland.
A dozen of them, in all sizes soon appeared before him. There was the opening to the caves that spread out below. His route would take him up, over, and through.
His burden was noisy, and ultimately his plan proved reckless. First a small troll followed his scent trail, gibbering quietly and wafting its palms towards its face excitedly to bring in more of the smell. Creosote from the fire clung to the half-orc ranger, and the rich bitter aroma of chicory was on his breath.
A great red berserker, marked all over with tattoos and ochre, soon took note and following the smaller troll was able to pick up the scent.
Picking up his pace, aware of this threat, Vrodo caught the attention of three more trolls that stood ahead at the side of his path.
Stiff hairs raised from the base of his spine, across his shoulders and up the back of his neck. Even his sideburns seemed to fluff out in anxiety. He was caught.
Sword slung, he bolted reaching the downside slope at full-on run and almost tumbling head first from the weight that was high across his shoulders. Loose shale slabs slipping under his feet, tumbling noisily in a shower of sharp stones he began to pant and grunt in fear, behind him the noise of a half-dozen pursuers.
His knees and elbows were gashed by the rocks as he tumbled with nearly a two-hundred pound load off the southern slope of the Gladden Hills, and then he was on his feet again running with a hatchet in one hand and a long curved knife in the other.
In the end, he led two berserk troll warriors and five more besides into the Gladden Farmlands. He ran into that settlement at top speed, plunging down into a stream that ran through the settlement.
As his blood ran into the water, he watched in horror as the trolls slaughtered and devoured the militia assembled to defend the town. It took seconds, but they were agonizing seconds of blood splashing, screams, limbs rent from their sockets, all followed by silence.
His black-opal eyes, glossy above the waterline watching. He in a crouch, his buoyant load bobbing behind him.
Gruin, how I hate you.
Sated, the trolls returned to the Gladden Hills. Vrodo crept from the stream and arrived soaking and frozen at the Icy Vale further south.
As we know, he is no stranger to cold. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Sword Slung in the Gladden Hills
Posted: 26 Feb 2005 10:40 AM |
| ((Excellent!)) |
Purpose in life: finding better ways of allowing players to kill themselves. Repeatedly.
--
"...Cause he mixes it with love
And makes the world taste good."
--
<@James42> Lawful good isn't in your vocabulary, it's on your menu.
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Fathers and Mothers
Posted: 05 Jul 2005 12:39 AM |
The journey to the temple where Nu’men worshiped had ended in failure. The final shard of Elbereth’s Tear, the thing that would return hope to the Ferein lands, had been lost. Moreover, that tragedy was capped by an abomination. A party of heroes assigned blame to the weakest among them. It was a baffling turn of events, though only a few saw how nonsensical it was.
*****
In what seemed like the final chapter and the final sacrifice, hurt and rage split that band of heroes who did the work of the Mother or claimed they did. They who had been welded into a potent force to face the worst Vives had to offer were scattered in sorrow. And maybe the world was better off to see the Ferein lands left without consolation. If this was what it was all for! Condemnation and castigation? Crippling, cowardly punishments inflicted summarily by those who should have sheltered this boy of a bard, named Tyailin?
In Vrodo’s world there are no men and women, but only fathers and mothers. And then there were some, like Vrodo, who would always be sons, always be daughters, loved by the mother throughout their lives. Vrodo understood the hate-filled rages of Balthor. Wrath is what we expect from our fathers; it is their power. However, the mother should give succor. Instead, there in the place where Elbereth’s tears fell bitter and flowed, Calia Qu’ Estrael took the boy’s eyes, and Elvalia herself damned him for an outcast. Vrodo, the orcblood who wandered the wild places and was given suck by many, many mothers, knew this to be wrong.
But Vrodo’s perspective on these events was that of a boy, and a boy is especially sensitive to what is fair and what is unfair. Perhaps if he knew the full story of that place and why Elbereth shed her tears to begin with, he would have felt differently. She too knew rage, wrath and fury.
Then, it is vanity in the modern age of Vives that makes gods and goddesses into the likenesses of men and women, sporting every mortal weakness. This is not the way of prehistory. In the time of his youth, time-a-distance that barely registers for the longer lived races, Vrodo’s band of orcbloods lived with a spirituality that was ancient and nearly forgotten. But within Vrodo’s short lifetime their animistic mother-worship was overthrown by the worship of the new god, the Beast God called Gruin. The Cult of the Beast gradually usurped control over that band of half-orcs living at the edge of the Sea of Ice, replacing the shamanic leadership of the band, bringing with them iron weapons that Vrodo’s people did not know.
Vrodo was forced to flee, rather than take up in the cultic worship of the Beast. Still he follows the ancient way of his fathers and mothers and sees not an impoverished pantheon of personalities locked in struggles but a world filled with spirits. There is not Elbereth, but many mothers. Every mother. Living on the icy wastes, his people did not know Helkris as a singularity. Instead each drift of snow, each gust of wind, the warming sun and the sky-mantle, and every beast contained a spirit that was not unlike his own. Then, some spirits existed apart from these things and would one day live in a stone or a frozen lake, just as surely as Vrodo’s ageless, immortal spirit would one day be free from his body. The beautiful Queen of Ice was taken for a manifestation of any number of other powerful spirits. And who is to say that she is not?
*****
The loss of the final shard…
An elven youth who was mutilated, his eyes that were taken…
Mothers who acted like fathers…
From beneath, in a grotto carved out by flowing water—Elbereth’s Tears—Vrodo could still hear them squabbling and fighting. They sounded like such horrid things, elves, dwarves, humans and halflings, and he could stand no more. To the outskirts of Midor he fled, and then north across the Great Plains to the woodland and beyond, the craggy place called Heaven’s Spine where he might find a hollow to shelter himself. He had run the entire distance, stopping only to drink water from a stream in the foothills surrounding the ruins of Mirghul.
Coal black skin on his body, ashy on his scarred knees, his elbows, the palms of his hands and the soles of his bare feet that kicked up behind him as he ran, toes gouging a deep and easy-to-follow track like a coursing hound at hunt. Long black legs pumped, thickly muscled and spattered with mud.
Salt on his face marked the tracks where tears of his own had run and dried.
Vrodo clambered and scrambled among rocks not far from the realm where hill giants prowled hungrily and gnolls paced in boredom. Finding a crevasse that would admit his passage, he flattened his body and slid into it using only his hands to creep along into the darkness. The crack opened into a larger chamber strewn with bones, the one-time lair of great dire carnivores. There he crawled around three times to clear a spot of sharp rocks and debris, huddled into himself, and slept miserably.
He awoke at the musky smell of a feline, a massive Crag Cat that was pulling itself into the crevasse, claws scratching upon rock, pupils round and black in her pale blue eyes.
He lay impassively on his side and she approached alongside of him, blocking out the grayish misty daylight and casting him into shadow. His blurry eyes went to a different spectrum, and the cave was suddenly revealed in greater detail. It was a midden of gnawed bones and scat, but not her lair. Not anybody’s lair, not for several winters.
The cat turned from the crevasse to face him, and Vrodo felt her hot breath in his face, did not flinch as the stink of blood washed over him from her last kill. His hands remained still as she drank his tears, rasping at his face with a rough tongue. She plunged it into his nostrils and bit gently on his nose while freeing his airway. His red hair was plastered back behind his ear when she moved on to cleanse his body. He gave himself over to this pleasure, and soiled himself. The cat carried his feces outside and discarded of them, and returned to examine him one more time.
She found him clean.
He looked into her face. It was broad, with great boney cheeks covered in silver fur, a wide strong jaw that was missing a tooth behind the lower left canine. She opened and closed her plum-sized eyes and he did the same. She wanted him to sleep, but instead he reached out a black hand and buried it in her fur, moving from the loose skin under her jaw to her shoulder and then down the length of her body.
The sag under her belly told him that she had a litter somewhere, cubs that were endangered by her absence. He turned away from her, blinking and squinting and then shutting his eyes completely. Wishing. Hoping.
The great cat made her decision. Over several hours she brought her bristly cubs to pile about Vrodo in that chamber. They were brought in one by one, hanging sightless and limp from their necks and positioned very carefully. When five cubs were placed in their new home, the cat went about cleaning detritus from the cave. It was a good home, and safe from the larger beasts that roamed the Spine. Vrodo would help to keep it safe, while the great cat would keep watch over him and suckle him as one of her cubs. It would be his only sustainance, for as long as she would allow it.
Vrodo decided that he would not open his eyes until the last of these cubs opened theirs. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fathers and Mothers
Posted: 18 Feb 2007 12:45 PM |
Vrodo's reemergence.
The ranger vanished from the country and forgot about men and elves, after the journey to Nethar'u that had been tragically betrayed. He could not understand the retribution paid to one of their own party or fully reckon the cost of their failure, and so fled to the comfort of his mother's breast.
Then with the sickening of the world more than a year ago, he emerged from the wilds briefly to talk with a druid of the Ferein circle, Gwyneira Frost, whom he called the White Rabbit. She helped him to understand what was happening, but he would have no role in healing the land. For a time it was like his mother had rejected him. He fled from the beasts that had nurtured him all his life.
For months on end he saw no thinking creature that he did not wish to kill or rob. Vrodo became a bandit, preying upon the goblins and orcs that lived in the mountain. He harassed the kobolds who worked to devise stronger and more devious traps against him. He raided the gnoll settlement repeatedly. His seasonal raids overlapped with the patrols of men and women that he took to be Midoran, but he avoided these and all other adventurers he came across in the wilds. His armor made from lion skins grew tattered. The greatsword given to him by Vurbag Usko, mightiest Orclun seen anywhere in the country until Ophelia rose to be even stronger, was left where it cleaved the skull of one of the Skullcrusher warriors. He fought with the the short broken blades of scavenged swords and arrows of his own devising, hurled from an elven bow given to him for the journey into Nethar'u.
He appeared infrequently in the cold lands doing occasional work as a guide or managing the pack-beasts of a party of adventurers. He helped to open up a trade route to the Aecini, with whom he was familiar. He worked with others to map the snowy tracks beyond the Sea of Ice and he ventured into the Divider Chain with group after group searching for the pass that would lead down again to the Mirghul Forest.
Through this work he met strong fighters and acquired new weapons. From Ophelia came a helmet made from thin light metal, and a new sword and two curved knives that were always close to him. Another gave him an Elven cloak and boots, which complemented his natural gifts for stealth. He fought alongside many more. Gradually, he reemerged and again sought the company of other adventurers.
* * * * *
Wartime.
The Midoran encampment upon the Great Plains and the self-imposed blockade of Ferein created a predicament for those in the cold lands. There were few ways to reach the Mirghul Forest and the rest of the country. One was forced to pay the gnome and hazard flight, or cross the Divider Chain under the noses of giants, dragons and still worse threats.
Midor had effectively placed the cold lands and all who lived to west of the Great Plains under embargo. Perhaps all suffered for an embargo that was actually directed at Ferein. The army of Midor cut down trees on the margin of the Plains and built palisades enclosing their territory.
For weeks Vrodo and a few others searched for a track that would allow passage from west to east. The lady Emma was certainly among them, she and Vrodo had exchanged what they knew in a hushed conversation at Skarfell Lodge. Rosen Vimes had searched as well, as had Tristian Vike. They walked the shores of the Great River, traversed Hardknott and the Wasteland and walked the Mirghul Forest. Sable Lake and its environs were explored, and Vrodo himself climbed to the Standing Edge and skirted around its tarns looking for this elusive route.
These explorations were unanimously fruitless. One could reach Paws and the Midoran coastline from the Mirghul Forest, but Midor and its stockade effectively cut off southwestern Vives from the rest of the country.
* * * * *
Mineath Caverns.
Exploring alone, Vrodo had found a narrow passage that led from the north of Sunix Woods into the abandoned mine that was a highway from the Great Plains into Whipsnade Pass, and then to Icy Vale. Though Midor did not hold the Mineath Caverns proper, they had blockaded its eastern end leaving the cavern itself to bandits and stirges.
Earlier Vrodo and the one he called Vike had explored the southern Mirghul looking for likely places to cut a trail. This trail would go over the rock that Mineath Cavern winds through, and connect either to Whipsnade Pass or the Sunix Wood. The western Mirghul was closed in by sheer rock faces on its southern boundary, but further on down the Mirghul trail, at the northernmost end of the Great Plains, there were rocks that appeared to be passable. Vrodo and Vike blazed the trees with knife cuts so the spot could be relocated and agreed that they had found the eastern end of the trail leading west.
Now Vrodo found a break in the rock high up above Sunix Wood that allowed passage from the Sunix into the blockaded cavern. This gained him little more than a circle trail that started in Whipsnade Pass and returned there via Hardknott Fort and the Wasteland. However, exploring the cavern further he located breaks in the rock far to the north where air kissed is face in the blackness. He returned to the cavern with Vike later the same day to show him, and the two of them worked to loosen the stone and open up a passage, to no avail.
Neither of these had any experience tunneling through rock. They required further expertise in these matters, and sought it out immediately.
* * * * *
The Ikarian Bay.
Vike and Vrodo escaped the Midoran blockade as most did, taking flight on a gnomish flying machine. Vrodo had to be dragged like a dog is dragged to its bath.
Alo's ferry still travelled from Brandibuck's coast to the the shore near Paws, east of the City of Midor. From here the two travelled north along the Midoran coast until the mountains closed in and then fell away to the endless sea.
They scrambled down to the Dwarven encampment, where the refugees struggled and kept watch. Vrodo searched for a face that he knew, a man named Connavar who spoke the Dwarven tongue and was accepted among them. The condition of the dwarves and the sparseness of their number was staggering. They sought just one or two sappers, who could guide them in tunneling outward from Mineath Cavern, or better still a crew of diggers who could carry out this task. However it seemed to them unlikely that any such talent could be spared for this purpose.
They left the bay feeling uncertain about this encounter, but were encouraged by the progress that had been made. With work the stone would give way. A new track across the land would be cut. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fathers and Mothers
Posted: 10 Aug 2007 05:01 PM |
It started at the gate to Coldheart Canyon. The way had been left open. Two tracks went in, and they did not come back out. They were perhaps two hours old and filled part-way with fresh drifting snow.
Saying nothing to the Icy Vale militiaman, Vrodo headed off after they who had left these tracks, which grew fresher and fresher as he went. He traced this track until it went beyond the places where he - who was not giant-kin, or a cold spirit - could not go in safety.
* * * * *
"I needs ta finds someones dat'll takes dis heads from me... I'ms gonna haves too much funs wid its..." The dwarf had said it, just as Vrodo entered the cabin of the Ischlak hermit. By now he knew that he was following the track of Ophelia, which he knew well, and the heavily burdened dwarf, which he did not. He saw them together when he entered the cabin, and the dwarf had the fifty-pound head slung over her back. Later on the dwarf dropped the head unceremoniously into the snows of Coldheart Canyon with a sigh, saying "Bye, mister heads." In the end, the trophy was not worth so much to her.
Vrodo followed them as they headed back towards Icy Vale, along with Tristian who had come across Vrodo on the Sea of Ice. Vrodo had words with them before they left Coldheart Canyon. He demanded the Frost Giant King's head, which he would take as proof of their trespass. The dwarf - later Vrodo learned her name was Telli - said she dropped it back where they killed the snow orcs. And so the warden of the tundra and the mountains and the drifting snow left them, tracing back the way the dwarven woman had come, and recovered the giant's head.
The air over Spirit Lake was clear and silent as he worked his way around it, bearing this burden. The figures in the Crystal Cavern wore a look of woe. Nearer to the back of the cavern, the last few that he saw had glossy faces as though a spring melt were upon them.
Vrodo deposited the weighty trophy at the Ice Palace, kneeling before Aurora as was his custom.
He did not know what else to do with it. The other kills he had come across on the Wastes of Ischlak would be fed upon by scavengers - first bears; then the winter wolves, who would eat their fill and drag away meat to feed their kits; finally the little wyrmlings and small white foxes who would delight in gnawing on the freeze-dried, stringy carcasses - but this giant's head he could not leave to be defaced and devoured.
The head was wrapped in his winter cape. Now he removed this shroud to display the face of the one that Helkris had chosen to lead the Frost Giants of the Halls of Ischlak.
On seeing the expression that came across Aurora's face, Vrodo realized that the ice sculptures that kept watch in the Crystal Caverns were filled with sorrow for him, the bearer of this hideous thing, and not for the giant king who had been slain. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fathers and Mothers
Posted: 05 Sep 2007 06:30 PM |
It was weeks ago... but every word was crisp and clear as if spoken over his bowed head only moments ago...
* * * * *
"We have seen the dead in her lands, this day," Vrodo said. His voice was unfamiliar to those among his traveling companions who were present. There was uncertainty in his voice, and his usual pride and courage were replaced by a worshipfulness befitting a child gripping at his mothers apron. He knelt before Helkris' priestess, Aurora, positioned ten paces from her.
"Yes," came Aurora's simple reply, carrying across the silent chill chamber. A slight frown came across her otherwise still face.
"They speak of a thing in the Gladden Hills," Vrodo continued, "called the Cold Stone."
Aurora's icy blue eyes shimmered as she nodded slowly. "The key to the last Legionnaire," she said.
"I know it," she said.
"These dead will take it from where it is kept," Vrodo replied simply. "We will stop them, if it is her wish."
Aurora stroked a winter wolf that kept her company in the Palace of Ice, running slender fingers through luxuriant thick white fur.
"I see a question in your heart, Vrodo," she said to the ranger and warden. "You wish to know why these undead roam freely do you not?"
"If he were stronger..." Vrodo offered, "...he would wipe them out."
"There are things in the world that only a small handful can comprehend. One of those things, is why the gods do as they do."
"These undead do roam unpestered here. That is true. There is a treaty with them. For actions long ago, before the coming of the Second Ice, there was a treaty. One that gave them passage here within these lands..." Aurora lingered on this last consonant, drawing it out before continuing. "To an extent. There are... limits."
"I cannot aid you directly in defeating them," she said, shaking her head slowly. "However... Should you happen to retrieve the Coldstone... And bring it here..."
Vrodo glanced up at her.
"Once in the house of the Queen, it is hers." A soft smile grew on her lips. "As it is hers to do with however she pleases. Do you understand?"
Vrodo's companions did. Tristian and Timik both knew that she opened up a loop hole for them to exploit, a way for Helkris to aid them without appearing to aid them. But Vrodo did not, and he said so. "...He does not know what is the Legionnaire. He is too stupid. But... this Vike, he says there is a weapon that he needs."
Tristian shifted uncomfortably.
"There are balances to all things," Aurora explained.
"Fire to ice..."
"Good to evil..."
"Life to death?" Vrodo interjected.
Aurora nodded patiently.
"The Avatar of War cannot be stopped by mortal means... It is the very being of war. It was created for that. It is perfection at its craft. However..." The priestess took a different tone. "...As I said, all things need balance."
"The Legion rose to be that balance," Aurora intoned.
"As did the one who can stop him. One that is not mortal. One that fell within the very tomb of Desthedes. One that still waits... to be called upon... To do what he was created to do..."
"Fight back," the priestess concluded. "It is the only way that that Avatar can be stopped, Vrodo child of ice. The Lion of the Kobai. He waits. He waits for those gates to open once more..."
"...To see his foe and do the thing he was placed there to do."
"It is you and your friends who must carry out this act," Aurora commanded. "You must open the gates. You must draw the Avatar to those gates..."
"There... it will end."
"We will!!" Vrodo responded, immediately and impetuously.
"And we will, mistress," responded Tristian Vike as well.
Aurora nodded. "We shall see."
"Failure... is something that is unthinkable. For it will only be a matter of time before the Avatar gains enough power to encroach on the cold lands in full force, treaty or no. So this is your task... it has come clear, at last." Aurora looked at the ranger. "You must understand Vrodo..."
"That once you have that stone..."
"The forces of the Avatar will come to you."
"It is with the greatest urgency that you make it to the palace. For once within, they cannot harm you."
"Outside however..." Aurora trailed off shaking her head from side to side like a slow stroking metronome.
"So now you have what you have come for."
* * * * *
So the path that these few would walk was made clearer. The Coldstone would give them entry to the place where the last of Reginald Sanner's legionnaires was hidden. The legionnaire held the talisman or the secret to bring forth Reginald Sanner, the Lion of the Kobai, to battle the Avatar of War.
The adventurers gathered and agreed to recover the Coldstone before the servants of Desthedes could put their dry dead hands to it. They would enter the tomb in Gladden Hills and unlock its secrets. Failure, as Aurora put it, was unthinkable. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fathers and Mothers
Posted: 09 Oct 2007 04:37 PM |
"Vrodo, I had a little run in with the one you fought in Cold Canyon." It was Amon who spoke. The two of them sat at the hearth where the Sunbringers kept a fire burning for their own comfort, and for those infrequent travelers passing through the cavern wrested away from the servants of Syn.
They had just finished laying in wood - just as much as the two of them together could carry - in the Halls of Bregodim. They cut the wood from aged oaks at the foot of Mount Gru'gashk, trees marred where wicked panthers sharpened their claws, and they carried it bundled high upon their shoulders. Vrodo's load was fixed by a tump line pulled across his forehead. It was wood for the pyre, and they stacked it out of sight in that reeking darkness.
"The man?" Vrodo asked Amon seeking more details. "With the great sword?"
"Yes," Amon said. "Fia, of the Artio clan was witness to this event."
"Tell this to Vrodo," the ranger growled.
"I only meant to speak with him on what had occurred, but he took great offense at my honesty. I told him of you, and called you friend, and even suggested that he could have avoided conflict with those orcs if he had but used a simple spell he was clearly able to manage."
"...Thinks that this Vrodo is one of the snow orcs..."
"But he would not hear it," Amon continued, "and he became angry, before I could speak more on it he caused me to become angry as well."
Amon said, "He dared to claim that I was behaving like a Midoran."
"They fight?" Vrodo asked.
"No," Amon replied, "he fled before it came to blows."
Vrodo could not help but chuckle at the slander against his druid friend: "...the man is tell Amon he is Midor!" and he snorted and choked back his laughter.
"Yes," Amon continued, "and I responded to it rather brashly. I told him that was an insult that would not go unanswered twice. Then he hid himself with magic, and fled."
"So he does, with this Vrodo. He is hid from his eyes when he is killing the orcs of Cold Canyon..."
* * * * *
Vrodo had confronted this individual less than two weeks ago, first crossing his track on the Sea of Ice. He followed his prints across the snow, remarking to himself that the pack of hoar hounds that stalked the Fengduin Forest had not been attacked, nor had they seen anyone pass that way.
The tracks of this person led to the temple that was dedicated to Helkris, the ranger's Cold Mother. This was a place where even he was forbidden to go. Surely, this man, this intruder was doomed. The cold spirits protecting the way to the temple would destroy him with punishing cold, and inflict the greatest of miseries upon him before he expired.
But as Vrodo circled around the clearing in Fengduin Forest, he saw that one of the guardian spirits pursued a man across the clearing towards a two-story homestead, long abandoned. The man reached the safety of the homestead and Vrodo withdrew to the line where sea ice met the land, not wanting to incur upon himself the wrath that the intruder had incited. The Ice Weird was furious and blew a wide rut across the snow-covered clearing as it went, like a roc swooping too close to the ground. Vrodo wondered why only the one had followed after the man who was so bold in his trespasses.
Vrodo watched the edge of Fengduin Forest, waiting for the man to reappear, no doubt fortified and ready to escape from the Cold Lands having learned a hard lesson. He would not prevent the man from escaping, only follow his movements and see that he did no harm to these creatures that were his kin. Eventually the man did exit the forest, but instead of fleeing he took up a position near the bridge leading to the Realm of Ischlak, and began to fire arrows into the furious Ice Weird.
Vrodo crept up on the man, who he could see clearly now as well as hear him and smell him. He was helmeted, rendering his face the only feature that the ranger would not recognize. Vrodo was at his side when first he spoke, commanding the human to stop attacking the cold spirit that was the guardian of Helkris' temple. Baffled at first, the human denied Vrodo's authority and cloaked himself with magical invisibility, fleeing further into the Cold Lands.
The Ischlak Realm was known to Vrodo, and it was populated with the offspring of Frez'zt from whom neither of them could hide. The man's tracks headed directly south. Vrodo circled around towards the lodge of the hermit who dwelled in that land, and sure enough, there at its door were two of the white wyrmlings. They had cornered the human and waited for him to emerge from the lodge, perhaps unwilling to pursue him into the Ischlak hermit's abode. Vrodo did pursue him, but the hermit, a powerful witch whom Vrodo could not fathom, kept the peace. The warden of the Cold Lands could only speak a warning to his quarry, bidding him to leave and never return.
With that, Vrodo headed back across the Sea of Ice and took up a position among the snow orcs of Cold Canyon, nocking an ice arrow and preparing again for the man to reveal himself by attacking. He did return and passed through the canyon, killing snow orcs as he went... but he did not reveal himself. His magic concealed him such that the orcs barely resisted. Only Vrodo's arrows landed, guided by his ears to pierce the man's armor.
The human climbed the slope and slew those snow orcs that were arranged in firing positions alongside Vrodo. The ranger sent two more arrows sailing through the man's armor, revealing his position to stop this onslaught.
The man shimmered just five paces away, partially concealed by his magics, helmed and armed with a greatsword that was bathed in holy fire.
"HE DOES NOT HEAR?!!" Vrodo demanded, bow in hand.
And then the unthinkable happened. Unperturbed, the human said, half to himself, "Oh. You're one of them." With that he closed. Vrodo dropped his bow as the man landed his first blow, the sword cutting to the quick with a blistering, purifying heat. Vrodo's curved knives carved tracks across the man's trunk but he returned two blows that reduced the half-orc to near helplessness, and then he followed with an efficient thrust that laid Vrodo out on the snow. Only that chill drift prevented him from bleeding out and sending his spirit into the Cold Land to dwell there with his ancestors.
The man stepped over Vrodo's fallen form and descended to the canyon floor, finishing what he had started before heading back to Icy Vale. It had been a successful adventure, if not a profitable one. Like many before him, this man had thrown himself against the Cold Lands and survived their tests.
* * * * *
Gingerly, Amon stepped onto that ground. "You have to understand Vrodo, not all view your Cold Mother as you do."
Vrodo drew away from his recollections and looked towards Amon, sitting across the fire in Syn's Cavern.
"Even I do not agree with all she does in her domain," the druid said, "but you are my friend, and you are guardian of that land. This is why I do not venture far into the cold lands. And when I do, I go hidden and only to trade with the hermit woman... or with the Aecini."
Vrodo nodded, confident enough to admit that he did not always treat these lands with reverence. "He remember... before he knew these orclun for his brothers, he kills them too. He is set the bears and beasts on them in their camp..."
"It is more than that," Amon interrupted.
"More?"
"Some of her servants, they are unnatural."
"They are cold sperrits," Vrodo replied. "No?"
"The small flying men of blue, the mephits..." Amon elaborated.
"Like Grotto," said Vrodo, naming his messenger.
"Not dissimilar... to demonic creatures."
Vrodo shook his head. "These are not demons... They are cold sperrits, that serve his Mother."
"But what of the witches, secluded deep in the cold land?" Amon asked. "They hide in a cave, and practice dark arts. They do indeed summon demons. I have seen it with my own eyes, before you came to serve Her."
The half-orc looked into the fire at their camp, and then looked away from it. "All of this land is not open to him, Vrodo. His Mother keep her secrets..."
Amon drove his point home. "Yes, she seems to."
"Raise up demons... what else?"
"Many undead walk freely in the cold, not only do they live there, they are of the cold themselves."
He had Vrodo's attention.
"Made up of ice and snow," Amon said.
"Seen them, these frostfell... They are not his kin. He sees them and he kills them, Vrodo!"
"Then they are not servants of Heklris?"
"Dead things that walk again?"
"Yes, that is what I speak of."
Vrodo gripped his head. "...he is told that there is a truce... From long ago, his Mother makes peace with death. For the help, that death gives to Her."
"Peace with death is one thing," Amon suggested firmly, "Peace with undeath is another."
"Maybe... maybe this is what they are Amon. Not her servants... but the powers of the dead moving free over the cold land... Or... Or... Maybe they are the sperrits, of his people. They are there still... he knows this. Still there, the sperrits, in the orclun, and in the ice and the snows..." Vrodo made motions scrubbing his arms and his chest with his hands, "Maybe the sperrits gather the ice and cold to themselves, so they can walk around again..."
"Perhaps that is so," Amon responded. "If it is, do you not wish to see them to their rest?"
And here, Amon and Vrodo came to a basic disagreement.
"No end to the sperrits..." Vrodo said, "...no rest. And this Vrodo will not rest. Ask the Saana. She knows."
"There is a cycle to life Vrodo, and when one reaches death, they must move on, to hold to this world is unnatural, the balance is a delicate thing. You know this, yes?"
Vrodo differed gently. "...the cycle, yus..."
"...a sperrit stays in this world. Go into the beasts. Go into the trees. Go into the winds and the water. Stones of the earth... or become nothing, and the sperrit is free..."
"...and when it is time, the sperrit come back. Or the sperrit is stay in the land, the wind, the water..."
"...This world is the only world, and the sperrits never die Amon..." Vrodo finished, narrating all the while with his hands as he spoke.
"No, but they do move on, " Amon stated. "There is a place for all after this life Vrodo, the Mother's arms welcome all who come to her."
Vrodo smiled in confusion but was paying close attention.
"Let me share a lesson with you," Amon offered, "one that was taught to me when I was very young, by a woman who was very wise."
"We must go elsewhere," Amon said. And so Vrodo followed him, out of the cavern that once belonged to Syn and into the Mirghul Forest, out onto the forest path and off it again, until they found a place in the foothills that was forested with tough, low-growing trees.
"Here," Amon said, placing his hand upon a large tree with a scarred, barrel-shaped trunk, wounded a thousand times by passers-by cutting across the foothills towards Swiftdale or heading west into the uplands.
"Look at this tree, Vrodo. It is strong... resilient. Healthy."
"Got a strong sperrit, yus."
Amon's lithe fingers sifted through the leaf litter and brought out a dead leaf fallen half a season ago. "But look at this leaf," he said, "fallen from the tree above, dead and dried. Why did this leaf fall from the tree?"
Vrodo wriggled his fingers at either side of his head. "New leaves must grow."
"And what would become of this tree Vrodo, if when this one died, it was not shed from the branches?" Amon twirled the leaf in his fingers.
"There are no more leaves," Vrodo replied.
"And without leaves, what becomes of the tree?"
"The tree is sick and the sperrit will leave it."
"Such is the cycle, Vrodo."
The half-orc agreed, thus far.
"This world, it is our tree. And we are the leaves. We grow, we die, and if we are not shed from this world, it will whither and die as well."
Vrodo's eyes glimmered. He said resolutely, "This Vrodo is the tree. Got a strong sperrit in him. He gets sick, he dies... His sperrit is free, like the tree."
"We are not the tree, Vrodo, we are but a part of a world bigger than ourselves."
Vrodo nodded. "Big world, full of sperrits! This is what hold him to the Cold Lands. These are the sperrits of his people. He has always know this. But... he did not know his mother... was a Cold Mother."
"Until she calls on him," the half-orc intoned sanctimoniously.
Amon sighed slightly. A sad smile crossed his face. "Did you not once feel the same bond with Elbereth?"
Amon had been there, high up on the Fiirkrag on the night when Vrodo was consecrated to Helkris' service, receiving her mark like a brand across his face. When her priestess called the half-orc to her service, Vrodo had not hesitated. While never losing faith in Vrodo, Amon had never been able to forgive the ranger for abandoning Elbereth's service so readily.
Vrodo nodded wordlessly. Then he said, "...he has many mothers, Vrodo. But the Cold Lands are his place."
"Do you still believe in the cycle, and the balance between life and death in our world?"
"Cycle, yus. Balance..." Vrodo hesitated some. He pouted his lips. "He is not always mad for blood, this Vrodo. He is forgetting what it is to be gentle. Like he forgot, for some time, how to speak his words. Roam on the mountain, like a beast."
Amon listened quietly.
"He remembers he is not a beast... This is why he is not like other orclun. Hate the Beast, this Vrodo. His mothers protect him from the Beast. Hmm?" He looked inquisitively at the druid.
"I want you to think, Vrodo. Perhaps the cold is your home, but is the cold truly your mother?"
"The sperrits of his people are in that place. All of his mothers... they are in that place, they are. Nurse him and protect him, all his life."
And this was true. It was true from the time when he was very young, when the last shaman of his people chose him and took him bare-assed into the snowy places and showed him how that mother would always know him. From his earliest memories to his hardest nights alone on in the Divider Chain, he had nursed from innumerable mothers.
Sometimes it was the thin milk of a winter wolf bitch that nourished him without imparting any warmth.
Sometimes it was the sweet thick milk from a crag cat, denned up with her bleating kittens in a gap in the rocks.
He would dig through four feet of pack ice with his bare hands for just a few sips stolen from a seal-sow's young pups, when times were lean and the season was wrong to take fish or fowl, or lichen from the rocks.
So it was that when Vrodo's band moved off the Sea of Ice - overtaken by Gruin's worship and settled at M'Gok Tukar - Vrodo himself remained in the wild and lived apart from his people. He alone remembered the ancestor spirits, and a time before the arrival of Gruin's disciples.
"I do not ask you to change yourself, Vrodo. All I ask is that you think on what I have told you, think of the tree, our world, the leaves, all of its people."
"Think on how you came to the cold mother," Amon concluded," and think on Elbereth."
"He is wise, this Amon, and Vrodo will listen. He is all the time, show him much."
"You complement me much, but I had a good teacher."
The half-orc rubbed his broad jaw, listening as Amon finished.
"I have tried to model myself after her, to hold with me what she taught me. She did more than just speak words and expect me to remember, she showed me how to think and reason."
"He is lucky Amon," Vrodo said smiling.
"Yes, in that regard I count myself very lucky."
"All the elves are lucky, to have so much. So he is glad to know them."
"I can't speak for the rest of my kin, but I am glad to know you as well."
Vrodo nodded with some finality. "...Now he goes, to walk his track."
"I wish you well on your track," Amon said in farewell, "May the Mother watch over you."
Vrodo nodded and said somewhat ambiguously, "She watch him always!" And with that, he trotted off towards the southwest.
* * * * *
This was before Vrodo had joined Amon and the others, to cleanse the Halls of Bregodim of the many dead that made those halls a tomb.
It was good work, like the work that Vrodo and Amon had once done at Saana's behest, gathering the dead at Haven to the consecrated Aristi burial ground. There, Amon called forth divine fire to incinerate dead men and women of the Novus Aristi, and also those corpses of the Durzagon and Atalan that had been killed by the powerful wards placed around Haven to defend that place. Those wards had been designed to protect Haven from the armies of Midoran, but they had performed well enough to bring down the mountain on those other attackers.
Saana knew how important this work had been for Vrodo. For a time he had been nothing but a bandit roaming the Hardknott region robbing and slaying those tribes who followed Gruin's cultic worship. Caring for the dead, this work helped him remember who he was. Saana was affectionate towards him, because he had grown right before her eyes.
Amon and Saana guided the ranger back to a decent life, and Vrodo continued to rely on their guidance. He trusted them like he trusted his brother, and he trusted just a few others. The work of caring for the dead at the Halls of Bregodim coupled with Amon's earlier advice in a powerful way.
Seeing Elbereth's avatar bestowing the token of that goddess upon his friend Amon - a stave of oaken wood that he and Amon had cut for the pyre, blessed and imbued with the goddesses power - had a profound affect on the shaggy, black-skinned half-orc. He found himself thinking over frail memories from as far back as his recollections reached. He wanted to drink from warm springs. He wanted to push and paw and nurse alongside his blind newborn kin. He thought of these things, sitting at camp above Icy Vale on the slopes of the Divider Chain, and sucked instead a soft quid of aromatic pine shoots, staring into a hearth fire that had nearly gone out. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fathers and Mothers
Posted: 01 Sep 2008 11:18 AM |
Vrodo stood facing into the sun, stock-still.
Around him, hungry bears lay flat on the ice floes, black eyes and black noses searching out the sign of blood.
The black-skinned half-orc had been stalking over the pack-ice for hours, and he drew in the curious bears. The white-furred creatures would not molest the Child of Ice, the Warden, but once the first seal came up out of the ice they could not be turned away. They ringed Vrodo and followed him each time he moved, not so close as to spoil his hunt, but close enough to have an even chance at scavenging with the other bears.
Beyond the bears, small white foxes darted about, also watching. If they were clever, if they were quick, they might steal something fresh and hot out from under the massive paws of the bears. Wherever there were men or bears hunting on the ice, there were the fluffy foxes, lean and half-starved.
Vrodo squeezed his eyes shut against the glare. He held a stout bow level with the pack-ice, a long arrow with a barbed bone tip just above the drifting snow. His nose told him everything he needed to know. He crept forward, sniffing out a seal stretched out on a ledge above the water, concealed in its den in the ice. The inelegant bears would stomp through the ice and try to catch the seal before it slipped into the water, but Vrodo had a surer method.
He committed, drew back the arrow and let it sink into the ice, trailing a braided line of sinew behind it.
Quickly he took the braided line in his teeth and set the bow aside, digging through the pack-ice with his bare hands. The seal was pinned in its den, the barbed arrow through its neck severing its spine. Blood gurgled out of the wound. Vrodo dragged out the seal and dressed it quickly, retaining most of the organs and sewing them up inside the animal. He looped a cord around its hind flippers and dragged it behind him as he continued to hunt.
The animal would still be steaming hot inside when he brought it to the orcs.
* * * * *
Vrodo slid three of these behind him as he moved off the pack-ice and into Coldheart Canyon.
He was not yet aware of the child-killings in Icy Vale, but the Snow Orcs' assaults at the gates of the settlement were troubling. He suspected the raids were in retaliation, following an attack on their own village by one or more adventurers seeking to test themselves in the Cold Mother's lands.
Today they attacked the snow orcs. Tomorrow they would move further in, assault the Ice Trolls and steal their sapphires, violate Helkris' most sacred places, slay the wyrmling kin of Frez'zt, or harry the great dragon itself.
He had not forgotten the slaughter of the Frost Folk further north, on the slopes of the Divider Chain beneath the great glacial home of the giants. It was perhaps a year ago, and still the track of the raider was fresh in his memory.
He would learn the cause of the Snow Orc raids, and prevent things from going further, perhaps prevent the extermination of these cold folk when retaliation led to retaliation.
Vrodo waited some distance from the gate to the Snow-Orc settlement, until the sharp-eyed sentries saw him. With their short bows trained on him, he approached empty-handed. They had words, and then the sentries threw open the gates and allowed their brother to pass through, dragging his offering of food, hide and blubber behind him. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fathers and Mothers
Posted: 14 Oct 2009 10:40 AM |
Vrodo was visiting Latonei Forest when he heard the drums.
He had arrived at the Asashi Coast, and then made his way inland to the battle-scarred terrain where elves met elves more than thirty moons ago, in the Battle of the Stairs. Walking with the companionship of an affectionate wolf, Vrodo found the Oakhouse. It was familiar, yet unfamiliar, and lifeless.
The entire wood was virtually lifeless, its timber burned out in the battle not so long ago. Mist clung to the ground. A dim memory came to the ranger.
A lifetime ago - a long time for others, but not so long for an orclun - running shirtless, barefooted through this wood. Latonei was full of valuable timber, managed and fostered by the rangers of the Oakhouse. Vrodo walked carefree about the wood, thinning out the brush and felling trees that he selected with care. A she-wolf was at his side then, too, but a different companion, with an orcish name.
Some of the sweetest times of his brief life. Tending the forest with Strand and the others, occasionally stealing into Ferein to poach some ancient elven wood. The strong taste of Strand's chickory coffee. Journeying to the cities of men to sell the bows he made at the Oakhouse. He would tie twenty bow staves into a bundle, throw them over his wide shoulder and slip past the trolls infesting the Gladden Hills, run all the way to the shores of Lake Ladriel and then sail into Port Royale to trade.
He remembered the first Tarikian arrow that bit his black flesh. Before he learned to hate the Atalan and Durzagon, he had hated the Tarikians for taking his wolven mother from him. And even more than this, he hated the trolls of Gladden Hills.
The troll tribe of Gladden Hills was like a plague, upon Latonei, upon the orclun at M'Gok Tukar, and most of all upon the human farmers who lived nearby. Then they were joined by other breeds, ogres and even mercenaries from the Skullcrusher Clan of the Divider Chain.
It was ogre drums that Vrodo heard echoing down from the Gladden Hills. War drums, so low that the rocks throbbed with the rhythm.
They drew him out of the miserable misty ruin that Latonei Forest had become, and up into the craggy hills. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fathers and Mothers
Posted: 15 Oct 2009 09:12 AM |
Sometimes paths last longer than roads. This truism can be witnessed all over Vives. The track that cuts across the Gladden Hills is like an abandoned highway that leads to the exhausted mines and quarries. Only trolls roam the hills, and the loose rock is rife with signs.
An ogre's sign stands out. The scent of an ogre is greasier than the sour breath of these trolls. Their scat is different from trollslime. Some of them make sandals for their flattened feet. Here Vrodo could see that a war party had passed, heading east towards the farmlands. Here was the mark where a broad tower shield struck the ground as one of the Skullcrushers dragged his bulk up the way.
The wolf that followed Vrodo now sped in circles, nose to the ground, and finally dove into the loose rocks and rolled to cover herself in the scent. She sat up frantic and excited, ears alert, and located three berserk ogres coming up behind them, the tail end of the column heading for the Gladden farmlands.
The grey wolf charged running low to the ground as the first of Vrodo's arrows sailed into his targets. One slapped into an ogre's shoulder with a sickening shot of cold that spread outward from the injury and crippled his arm, just as the wolf leapt, got hold, and spun it gurgling to the ground.
Vrodo poured arrows into his targets, and the wolf convinced them that they were dead.
Now Vrodo ran east wasting no time and the grey wolf followed, passed him by and lead him to a lookout, where they could see the whole column. There were more than a dozen ogres with five of the Skullcrushers with their broad shields, driving them on.
The column had piled up at the gates to the Gladden farmlands, where orcs now turned the earth. The wind carried their battle cries up into the hills, and Vrodo knew they would make a good fight.
Then there was arctic silence. A different wind had come up, from the west, from their backs, blowing away the sounds of the ogres battering down the stout wooden gates.
The wolf's breath caught, blood turning to frost on her muzzle.
Vrodo could see a tremor move through her, a snarl opening up her jaws, eyes growing wild. He was witnessing possession, he knew. He had never seen it happen before, but he knew of spirits, and a cold spirit had come into his companion. This gave him courage.
The ogres were so maddened and thirsty for blood that the advantage of surprise did not last long. The grey wolf scrambled down into another mob of ogres and Vrodo leapt after her, dropping his bow and unsheathing his long heavy knives. They passed by the berserkers they slashed not waiting for them to fall down dead, and crashed into a group of the Skullcrushers.
Vrodo climbed up the front of a tower shield and buried his frost blade into a thick skull with a WHOOP, as the wolf pulled the sergeant's belly open.
They fought their way to the gates and reached the Gladden farmlands as the last of the orclun defenders were routed. Orclun and cattle were driven ahead of the charging ogres, but the giant-kin did not pillage the farmlands. They did not move on M'Gok Tukar. Vrodo pursued the last of the Skullcrushers toward the hot springs. Icy Vale seemed to be their objective.
The ranger noticed something else. His companion was no longer beside him.
Rather, the cold spirit, the elemental spirit that had gone into his wolfen mother had come out. This could only mean that the wolf was dead. Two spirits were free, then. This cold spirit, and the spirit of his ancestor, who inhabited the wolf.
Vrodo slipped a light round Aecini shield off his back, and prepared to confront the last of the Skullcrushers. He met with another one of the sergeants near the hot springs in a brief duel, shield-on-shield. His short stout blade slipped behind the ogre's broad shield, which did much more to protect Vrodo from the cast-iron head of its flail. The fight ended when the ogre had no more blood in his veins.
Vrodo knelt in exhaustion. His fingers were frozen to the frost blade in his hand, called Aurora's Claw. He raised the knife and thanked the cold spirit, which had vanished.
He thanked the ancestor spirit who had inhabited the wolf, and hoped for its return.
Then he moved on to learn what he could about this strange, sudden attack. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fathers and Mothers
Posted: 25 Oct 2009 03:44 PM |
Another day, and another fight.
When this fight was over the snow was splashed with blood. Vrodo was left lying on his back. His shield, still strapped to his arm, stood up on its edge in the snow beside his body like a round gravestone.
The human's blood was dribbled onto the snow as well, marking the heels of his boot prints as he reentered the Icy Vale Inn. After the fight he had returned rather casually to the warmth inside.
Vrodo learned the name of this human: it was Wilhelm. There was more to it than that, quite a long name actually, but the half-orc would remember only this.
Of course, he would also remember the unusual weapon, and the way that the human wielded it. Vrodo had never seen anything like it. Wilhelm fought with great skill. The fight had been costly, a duel to the death. Wilhelm finished it with a dispassionate thrust into his lung, after the half-orc had been subdued.
But Wilhelm left the ranger lying the the snow, and the cold staunched his bleeding and saved his life.
The ranger roused to the voice of a woman, named Ana. She was brought to the scene of the fight by a small white wyrmling, who had been attracted to the commotion or the smell of blood.
Ana let Vrodo bind his own wounds. He collected his gear and then sat to rest near the entrance to the Icy Vale Inn. "If he is here, then he is not out on the snow..." he said to Ana.
She shrugged.
"Better he stay inside. Rest. Maybe after he is not so angry."
Ana chuckled. Based on what she knew of Wilhelm, she said, "Doubtful..."
The wyrmling was at Vrodo's ear, hissing for his attention. "You fail!" it said. "Say to him: leave the cold, or the cold will go into him!"
Just in that moment the door to the Icy Vale Inn opened, and Wilhelm stepped out.
The cold intensified around them as Vrodo conveyed the wyrmling's warning. It was Helkris' warning, the same one he had delivered to the elven woman Ruby, where magma flowed out of Naruth's volcano.
Snow fell more heavily on Icy Vale, blowing off the Divider Chain. When their words were finished, Vrodo left the town and climbed up into the Divider Chain, to ponder the words of the wyrmling: You fail!
The slopes above Icy Vale are thick with grizzlies. Vrodo was very close to his old campsite overlooking the town when one of the bears challenged him.
The old male was thin. His well-sprung ribs showed through, and the skin hung from his neck in folds like toweling. A patch of fur was missing from the top of his head, creating the effect of a balding man. His teeth were still strong though, yellow as they were when the grizzly howled at the trespassing orclun.
Vrodo had not used this camp in some time. To his eye his signs were all around it, the spot where he built many small smoldering fires, a bit of dry wood still stashed between two trees, the pattern of growth to the trampled alpine plants. But the old grizzly's signs were there too, where the bear had rubbed against trees, or cut the bark to ribbons with his hooked nails.
Vrodo had given up this camp, and the lone old bear had moved in.
This challenge was a bad omen. Vrodo stepped away from the bear as it moved slowly towards him. He had never been able to form bonds with territorial males, though an older one like this could sometimes be backed down. Instead this one sprinted towards him on stiff limbs.
Vrodo batted away the paws of the swatting bear, but he was forced backwards. Then as he set has foot firmly behind him the bear caught him above the eye and tore open his brow, yanking his head around and tumbling him into the snow.
The ranger returned to his feet in a spray of soft powder and squared off with the old grizzly, still backing away from the aggressor. Blood ran down into his eyes. He sacrificed his weak arm to protect his body. The bear's nails found purchase in his skin, but Vrodo did not allow the grizzly to draw him in towards its jaws.
Its breath stank of infection. Its small eyes were single-minded.
Are you determined to die? The ranger's hand froze to the hilt of his curving blade, and he drew it into the air: the badge of his station.
The bear came in again hunched low, swiping sideways at Vrodo's belly. How like a hand, Vrodo thought of the bear's massive paw as the nails slipped past him.
Vrodo brought down his knife, the blow stroking down the bear's long neck. He cut through the thick sagging skin, and the arteries beneath it.
His other knife was in his hand, and this blade was drawn upwards on the opposite side. Unlike the first cut made with the icy blade, this one rained red. Vrodo warded away blows until the old grizzly collapsed into the snow, its blood exhausted.
He sat and listened to its last labored breaths. The grizzly looked at him while it was dying, chin on the snow. Then his small eyes lost focus.
But they stayed open.
A bad omen.
The ranger left the old grizzly to freeze and be gnawed by scavengers. He left the pelt, the stringy meat, the claws and other trophies.
He walked off a ways and removed his thick winter cloak, unbuckled his fur-lined armor, lifting the cuirass over his head. He wore almost nothing underneath that second skin. He pulled off his boots and his bracers, and stood nearly naked and barefoot in the snow amidst the pines.
His sweat froze on his skin, and his hair. Again, his blood stopped flowing from his wounds. He went to his knees in the snow, bowed his head, and tried to clear his mind. Listen to the land.
Why did he fight this human in Icy Vale?
True, it was calculated to take away his appetite for killing the denizens of the cold lands. But was it also pride? Lust for human blood?
It was.
Vrodo loved fighting, and he could not deny his own appetite for blood.
He had always been this way. Before he answered the Ice Queen's call and remembered where he came from, combat had been a great pleasure. He roamed the Divider Chain and the Hardknott like a bandit, sweeping through the strongholds of orcs, goblins and giant-kin, plaguing them and then vanishing, trackless, into the hollows with their treasures.
The love of his mother was always there. Whenever he was badly beaten or frightened by the deaders, he could den up with his mother until his bones knitted or his boyish boldness returned. Sometimes it was a crag cat that allowed him to join her litter. Sometimes it was a wolf's den, or that of some great dire bear. Vrodo had many mothers, or so it seemed. Then he learned better, of his kinship to all things in the Cold Lands.
Snow was falling in great flat flakes. It piled on his head, and on his broad black back. The peaks of the Divider Chain were silent. But the pines seemed to snore quietly around him.
Was it wrong for him to sport and fight with this human?
Every omen indicated that it was. This is what the land was telling him, as clearly and as loudly as the little white wyrmling that reminded him of his duty. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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