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The Legend
Posted: 28 Mar 2007 05:55 PM |
Standing in a ragged knot in the plaza in front of Askwith, as a couple of the conversationalists peeled away, Talion turned to Timik and inquired of the halfling casually leaning against the lamp post, “So how is your project going? Do you need help scouting any areas?”
Now Timik knew Talion was one of the most capable adventurers around, a warrior of uncompromising ability and a fledgeling mage of quickly growing aspect as well as having an equipment inventory so potent and diverse as to shame any blackmarketeer of the Port Royale Underworld. He looked down at the cobbles as he thought and considered his maps quickly trying to remember the infamous blank spaces that resulted in the quickest most unforgiving beat-downs he had so far experienced. Looking up and speaking around the pipe-stem clenched in his teeth, he said with a smile, “How bout tha cattycooms aneath Port?”
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Talion, Kalid, and Timik smashed the shade wreathed skeletons, scattering their bodies upon the decayed stone floor, the shadow dissipating from them leaving only bleached bones remaining. Kalid came along to discern the traps and crack the locks of the old doors guarding the warrens. Talion acted as guide as Timik hastily scribed diagrams of rooms and hallways upon crinkled and unwieldy sheets of parchment in the halflight.
Talion entered the next chamber admonishing the other two to remain behind for a short time. Kalid and Timik heard some clipped conversation and then Talion invited them inside. Within the chamber was an armored knight bathed in a strange luminescence standing and apparently awaiting their entrance. Timik, suffering trepidation at the unusual circumstances, asked in whispered tones, “Who is he?” Talion shrugged and Timik answered the motion with a scowl.
“Well, kin I intaview him then?”
“Go right ahead”
Timik turned but noticed Kalid moving much faster to speak to the light-embraced figure. She went up and introduced herself. The figure slowly raised his hand to lift his visor and a stream of hatred and horrible possibilities poured from the open helm into Kalid’s welcoming body. She fell limp like a sack of wet ash rats.
Timik started and even Talion seemed surprised. They advanced to her unmoving body and Timik looked down at her. “Guess he wasn pleased ta meet her. Spose weh should take her back ta git fixed up.”
Talion asked, “Well, do you want to talk to him?”
Hastily, “No, no…Weh’ve taken enough of tha man’s time. Les git goin…”
With that, Talion hoisted Kalid’s body up and carried her rag doll frame out of the room. Timik hurriedly scribed a thick dark X on the paper he had been drawing on and hastily added a note:
LEGEND
X = Not Good |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 24 Apr 2007 04:50 PM |
He started the day with quills and paper and a leisurely walk along the Buckshire Trail. He sat down against a rock and began making small sketches of plants, cliff faces and the rustic bridge crossing the splinter of river wending through the scrubby plants that marked the region. Tucking his quill and paper away, he stood up and noticed a cougar lurking in the tall bushes on the edge of his sight. Retrieving his sling and a bullet 'o Helkrisian spit' he launched the projectile to get the cat's attention. The cougar turned and raced toward him, leaping, claws extended, and Timik lowered himself and extended his platinum cutter for the beast to fall on. It was over quickly and the halfling jauntily took the creature's skin and body, wrapping them and stowing them in his pack of odds and ends. Beating his way through the bushes exploring every crevice nook and examining every fallen log, he encountered several more of the hungry cats, all falling and becoming raw ingredients of industry much like the first, he noticed his bag getting heavy again. He knew this feeling often but a trip to the leather processing centers of Port Royale would again lighten his load. While exploring along the trail, he encountered a trapper warming herself by her fire, someone unknown to him previously, who offered trade on the spot. Timik saw she sold hide treating oils and acids and was overjoyed he wouldn't have to make a side trip to the less reputable parts of Port Royale for the them (not that he disliked the rough parts of the city...he just didn't want to take the extra steps to get there). He thought, "Well, while I'm here why don't I get a stockpile for the next several hunting trips I'll be making in the future."
The concept of stockpiling, preparedness for the future, and regarding waste of any resource as sin was central to his way of life. He routinely scrounged apparent cast offs of all sorts of items and materials he found in the street to see 'what he could make of them' even if the product was only a single gold coin from an irritated merchant in the market being asked to purchase a greenstone Timik mangled only an hour earlier at Omiga's. But this wasn't just a personal compulsion drawn of the fear of not having, rather it was a matter of faith. "The worl will provide" was a motto he held dear that he ascribed to a philosophy he referred to as the Fortunate Findings. Gold was a tool, as much as the sewing kit, and tinkers tools, and carpentry set, and jeweler's picks, and the shovel, woodcutter's axe, armorer's hammer, pick, chisel and skinning knife he always carried with him at all times. He was gold's master; he would tell it how to shape the world, not the other way. So as he believed, he bought virtually nothing and the world provided, while his gold provided children with pies, Black Pearl mercenaries with nice calming grogs, and Jusin some help with his large family. It wasn't a glamorous or heroic existence wearing rusty armor taken from the mutilated corpse of a man disposed of in the trog midden while many of his friends and accomplices strutted about in Kiojji's silks and gleaming armor fashioned in Port Royales high class armory, or seeing every arrow shot from Josaphine strike with flaming fury while his best arrows merely poked slightly harder, but it served him well enough and he liked his simple life. The weight of his pack did not associate with any of his real demons.
So with a slight relaxation of his philosophical tenets and a small rationalization toward that end (and knowing it full well) he purchased many flasks of leather treating chemicals from the woman and crawled away. He stopped to examine the climbing rock along the trail and thought 'I wunner wha it takes ta climb...*shrug* someday I'll figger it out'
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Timik stood atop the cliff overlooking the dark sea looking down the escarpment, the strong winds blowing the blood drops from the tip of his nose and into the night. Emma tended to the huge gash in his scalp which flowed freely down his face as he proceeded to wordlessly unbuckle and remove his armor piece by piece biting his furious tongue to maintain the simpleton persona in which he dwelt. How did this happen? It happened fast.
Emma came to Timik with a request of company to the strange gnome world of Tockticken and upfront payment of two cougar skin bags for it. Overjoyed at the greater capacity the halfling warrior began to arrange his precious collection, but the journey was immediate so he haphazardly dumped all of his tools, concoctions, mildewed silk bowstrings made 6 months prior, and other gew gaws into the new bags and followed the speedy woman as quick as he could through the countryside. Kalid had declined to join them earlier as she didn't like climbing...and thinking only of successfully returning a kindness, Timik had not fully considered...
Stripped to his skin and the remainder of his extensive collection of supplies, he hurled his little body at the slope screaming, over and over, blood pouring from cuts on his limbs and face and Emma heroically staunching the blood flow only to have the poultices torn away in the next assault on the cliff. Eventually he practically slid to the base of the precipice and shook with an ingrown rage. He wanted to spew a torrent of venom upon Emma for taking him on the journey, he summoned his embarrassment to become spite, he wanted to tear the mask away and snuff out the tiny flame in her soul that allowed her to believe in anything ever again. Steam rose from his body in the chill and his heavy breath pushed out a red mist from between his teeth. And with breathing came calming, composure, and a smoothing of the facade again. When she arrived, burdened with his items, he grinned and said something likely never meant to be cared about.
He awoke the next morning on one of the couches in the Port Royale armory. Barely able to move, the entirety of his body bruised and torn, he pulled himself up slowly trying not to groan too loudly as to not potentially wake Kalid in the near room. The first composed
thought he had was, 'It has failed you. The Findings are broken. I am broken upon them'. Looking on the floor, his pack had tipped, the contents spilled out a bit. His eyes rested on a dried purplish mushroom he had collected many months prior in a place he had been back to many times again since he had learned to fight the inhabitants in that dark place. He dumped his pack out on the floor noisily (forgetting the sleeping elf nearby) and spread it out. He took it all in and began to laugh. Yes, the Findings were broken; he had broken them. With a night of bloody shame, the Fortunate Findings had been found again, fortunately. He extricated the diagram of the Buckshire Trail he had completed the previous day and near the climbing edge he'd noted, he wrote in a small script, "Sometimes you don't realize truth has slipped from your grasp until you're hanging naked from a cliff screaming." |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 24 Apr 2007 05:14 PM |
| ((Ha ha ha! I love it! I didn't really see that trip from Timik's eyes until now... *laughed out loud as I read that post*)) |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 27 Apr 2007 07:17 PM |
Alone again with his paper and quill, Timik opened the creaking door to the abandoned manse upon the hill in the Carfax Woods, a home formerly claimed by the name Mentamori. He had heard it was now abandoned and contained "interesting" relics of the former owners. As soon as he entered he was set upon by the aggressors, beings who had passed on once before, and he charged through the dilapidated structure clearing the rooms of all further threat. When he was done, he looked up as he wiped his blade clean of the ectoplasmic ichor it had collected while doing it's work and noticed he was in a dusty library. He examined the furniture and it's placement and a few other odd items in the place and he could understand a bit of its haunting. A spontaneous tear rolled down his cheek and he let it travel freely to its destination. There was a mistake here or tension of some kind was created and their conjunctive neighbor sorrow claimed the rest. There could have been a terrible evil, but what he was sensing was people living calm, studious lives and having them tipped into the darkness either suddenly or by degrees. He sat in the room sketching out the house within the heavy atmosphere feeling the sadness as he studied the details.
Timik believed that too often people viewed evil as a no-holds-barred level of depravity or cruelty or association with beings that sought the subservience of the world and it's contents on bended knee. He considered evil to be more potent in lighter shades with access to it being a birthright of all feeling creatures. It was emotion that spawned wickedness. Inevitably, many would seek respite and solution from this within the cold shelter of law and logic, but this only answered the threat, it could never correct it. Compassion and empathy could never be made law, nor could they operate under the examination of metaphysics.
Collecting himself he traveled back to Port to barter with Telinus. In the market he had a strange yet powerful conversation with Bel. And where Bel enters public view, Emma is not distant, and so in a stranger duality shift Timik turned and engaged in conversation with the severe woman at the termination with Bel's. He began by lobbing a flacid and obvious attempt to gauge her quality which she succeeded in discerning and dealing with in an expected fashion. She then invited him to walk with her and chat, which Timik is always keen upon, regardless of the other person's motivation, though in that sense the halfling usually tried to be as frustrating as possible. As such, in this case, he was true to his intention, littering the conversation with double meanings, phenomenological spectres, and slight personal jabs.
A phrase often used by his foster parents to berate him in his youth was "You're so poor (at such and such) you can't even pay attention". Awareness was a concept taught to him as a constantly unfolding state of multi-faceted reflection. Truth could be found in a mirror but what it was depended upon its facing. Meaning shifts with each shadow, point of view, or ghost of knowledge. When he became older the lesson he was admonished by was, "Pay attention or you will do harm to yourself and others." Now, as he watched the great sea that is life undulate through the days, months, and years, he had come to the opinion that single-mindedness was careless and damaging...almost evil.
So when he brought up his prior conversation with Tristian, in an attempt to inculcate the mere whisper of a wraith of understanding to her heart; a telling of the frailty of understanding itself by referencing an event, she became distracted by a mental caricature of the man and closed the discussion with the assurance she had no time for conversation about him (interesting as a virtually identical response from Tristian prior) and questioned the value of discussing other people entirely. As Emma moved to engage a pair of stingers with closed fists...Timik fitted a bolt into his crossbow and said under his breath, "Actually I never was talking about Tristian..."
The day bore heavy upon him; he was giving it up. He went to the Black Pearl to lay out his drawings and mind with strong drink. He examined his map and thought of the house and it's sorrow. The souls dwelling restlessly there were single minded in savage intent. They would do harm; that was all. Despite pleading, agony, and terror of the innocent, their intent would not falter. In unlife they were broken; what were they in life? Maybe they weren't much different; maybe they failed to pay attention as their worlds fell apart around them, as they caused pain to those who shared life with them, as their intentions, goals, and values infected their will until when they looked into their truths they no longer saw their own reflections. Broken in life; broken in death. A question came to his mind, 'How do we detect the broken in life?'
Near the center hill in Carfax Woods, he wrote in a careful, elegant, and tiny script:
"The broken will not bear witness to the tears of children" |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 30 Apr 2007 07:32 PM |
Timik was glad Mrs. Miggins Pie Shoppe had opened for business again. The dining area was packed nearly to capacity as the waitress took countless orders in support of the brisk business they were enjoying. Granted, just out the front door was a lingering pestilential misery, the clientele were patrons of a more thuggish nature clearly paid by the pound, and packing on more job security by the slice. Normally, Timik would have felt it his civic duty to eat and go thus relinquishing his seat to another citizen, but today he had work to do on his sketches and he felt a little more than civic already having just effectively routed the sewers of vermin for the 767th time. So he stayed, large reused Carfax book pages spread out in front of him, a small plate of cookies on the table to hold his seat as a paying and dining customer.
Eventually a request was made, one smothered in a rich accent, to pull up a chair and sit across from him at the small table. Timik hardly looked up from his writing (as he was in the middle of a thought) knowing full well that it was one of those foreign traders that moved their business from the Trading Post to Port Royale as the Atalan rolled over the countryside. “Beh meh gues, cap’n.”
It was uncomfortable having a stranger in such close proximity, but he realized the nature of circumstances and the Halfling was lingering a time greater than his due. Looking up quickly to appraise the man and shoot him a quick smile, he saw no reason to be concerned and continued at his task.
It was at this point the stranger reached over and grabbed one of the cookies off of Timik’s plate and began to munch it happily, even making a few nummy sounds as he crunched it up. Timik was taken aback; he began to look around as though someone else could confirm that a total stranger had just nicked one of his cookies. Then he looked back down at his pages, holding the quill as though poised to write, but writing was the furthest thing from his mind, in fact, his mind was fixed on the bold theft, ‘What should I do? Are you sure that just happened?’ *sneaks look at the cookies to count them but realizes he didn’t know how many there were in the first place* ‘Well, you can’t say anything now, the time to say anything has passed. OK, just pretend it didn’t happen… But he ate your food and it wasn’t cheap…he didn’t even ask! So you have to do something…’
Timik casually reached over and carefully, demonstrably, picked a cookie from the plate and proceeded to eat it…all the while pretending to be absorbed by his maps. He heard a slight huffed exhalation from across the table and when he pretended to look up at the waitress, Timik noticed the man looking off to the side, brows knitted. ‘Hah, that ought to fix him…”
The foreigner then cleared his throat, so as to dislodge ill-gotten cookie bits, and then inexplicably…he reached across the table and took another cookie. Timik put his hands down on the large pages and looked back and forth between the plate and the man who was now looking back at the door of the restaurant eating the cookie, clearly avoiding confrontation. He wanted to say something…but he was restrained.
Now, Timik was a world class borrower of other peoples’ things which he rationalized by supporting a philosophy that treated the whole world as one grand pot luck feast. At this point he realized the true inequality with which he espoused this ideology. Instead of owning up to the hypocrisy, he saw the affront to be the man’s obviousness in the matter. Or at least that’s what he told himself was the reason; he was feeling something else.
While the man was still looking away, he drew his platinum dagger (his favorite Dorian Alltos original) and trimmed the nib of his quill, leaving the dagger humming softly on the table when he was done shaping the feather shaft. Now with the other man facing him, Timik reached over and took another cookie…making sure the man watched the whole action…which he did, eyeing the dagger, the cookie and Halfling like he was watching somebody doing a sales pitch for pantaloons in another language. With the mastication of the last bite, the man dropped his gaze to the two remaining cookies on the plate. He stared at them for half a minute and then slowly his hand inched toward the plate. Timik swooped down with his hand and grabbed one from the plate while the other man snatched the last and they both gobbled the sweet baked goodness both staring at each other as they ate. When the foreign man finished the cookie he had taken, he stood up abruptly, looked down angrily at the armored Halfling and stormed out of the restaurant. Timik almost felt obliged to stand and put a bolt through the back of the man’s knee for his ridiculous and careless behavior, but he shook off his annoyance and refocused his attention to his maps.
Ten minutes later, Timik rolled up his maps for stowage, and beneath the mass of papers was his plate of cookies. ‘Huh, well don’t that beat all,’ he thought. The more he thought about it the lower he felt. He sighed and flopped back into the chair, staring at the cookies taunting him. The misunderstanding made him out to be an a$. And the very worst part of it was that some merchant was out there telling all of his friends about some black clad Halfling armed to the teeth who threatened him and stole his cookies right in front of his face – and he had no idea it was a mistake… Timik collected the name-besmirching stealth cookies and left the shop.
He went to the slums and distributed the sweets to a small group of children gathered there. Remembering the nagging from his foster parents, he passed the information on to the children, truly he was reprimanding himself, “Now lissen kids, r’memba, even if ya don have nah jingle in ya pockit, ya kin allays afford ta pay attention…It’ll save ya lotta humiliation…an worse.”
((So as not to be beaten by the plagiarism stick I need to say that this is an adaptation of a Douglas Adams story. Hope you enjoyed its deliciousness)) |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 08 May 2007 05:59 PM |
| ((Adaptation or not, that's friggin' hilarious! Threatening a man over his own cookies! I'm still laughing!)) |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 09 May 2007 03:48 PM |
Timik sat on the log amongst the bustle of the Artio camp surrepticiously making notes on scraps of paper as the sun slowly set behind the tall cliffs. The slowly darkening day was growing crisp, smoke hung in the air wavering to the reverberations of drums accompanied by the sound of rushing water and a chirping chorus of crickets. The people moved about him curious or concerned, but he worked quickly and regarded them only with smiles and gestures of appreciation for their simple lifestyle.
He had been near here before, never really got to know the region. He had passed by on the Buckshire Trail numerous times, but never taken the time to go and meet the wild folk of the Tanglewood. Secrets and understandings so close it was amazing they had been ignored for so long; sometimes the near can be so far. A drum has diameter in length and width and it has a depth, but not until you strike it do you understand why any of those matter. The rhythmic thumping bounced in his head as the darkness created the reflection of fire in his eyes.
*****************************************************************************
The rhythmic thumping of blood pounded in his head as his heart demanded obeisance and his body collapsed under the weight of the spiritual trauma he had just undergone. When he opened his eyes he remembered the fight and scrambled to his feet, his face a bloody mess. He guzzled some healing draughts and returned to the conflict, the warmth coming back to him and slowly embracing the chill at his core. The unseen in Talion had struck. Ten times the menace Timik could ever be, he and the champions he sometimes considered friends were all in peril...and so was the attack and defense against the Atalan elves. Another diversion... He spat blood upon the ground and leveled his blade and his intent at Talion. 'This needs to be done with soon.'
In the receiving room of the Seven Sisters' Hospice the dimly living and formerly dead convened to discuss what had just occurred that evening. Many possibilities were dripped upon the matter, striking with tympanic resonance to mingle with the echoes of his memories; drawing them together to make a hollow song of people and places. Listening quietly he heard... *Inner smile*
He excused himself from the group feebly promising to attend to Talion's condition. He didn't expect they heard it...most likely not really paying attention. He was though...and after the last lesson...he paid it in full. |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 05 Jun 2007 06:00 PM |
Ever since he learned to master his flaming blade, Timik found himself in places he was warned against, places with denizens that had in the past laid him flat in mere seconds, and he was generally succeeding. He hunted bears in the wilds, displacer beasts and lions in the desert, leechwalkers and monstrous arachnids in the Blackstone. He finally felt capable to wander the lands alone with care and judgment by his side to determine the best time to leave as well.
The experience of death in the Bregodim assault left him cold. At a time when finally he might act with force and effect he was losing the will to care. The peace he sought had been denied him; he was simmering quietly in anger. He pushed all of his rage into a focused effort, put quill to page and had steadily sketched out the much of the marsh and ruined Buckshire regions.
When the day came, Timik marched to the rickety gate at the end of the green with a shovel leaning across his shoulder, opened it with a creak and looked out upon the quiet harshness of the desert. Gazing out over a land he had always thought contained a haunting and threatening beauty, he thought, ‘Yes, this is a threshold. Maybe it is the right time…’ Alone, he scouted the region, bested every threat and charted his course. Stopping before a sand well, the halfling stripped off his armor and his shirt, tired eyes set back into his grim expression, he hefted the shovel and set to task digging up the sand with the sentiments of his master elevating his efforts:
When The Slow Sorrow grips you, it is time to go under…and get to work |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 02 Jul 2007 12:46 PM |
All he knew is that it had been a while since he had gone under...been less available...less visible. Focusing his efforts toward a defined goal, he was able to ignore the interminable waiting for the move against the Atalan and banish the agonizing ennui that clung to him like one of those tremendous dog sized leeches from the marshes.
The goal: Polishing all of the rough cut stones he had acquired in his travels since he had first arrived in Port a year ago (he knew there was a reason he was holding on to them). He processed them from the very basest materials to the end product of a fine jewel starting with bags of sand and animal fat. Head down, he marched through dangerous regions, collected materials, fashioned them into common items and by and by the project was being completed.
Without even realizing it he became physically stronger, his skill in blowing glass, mixing oils and cutting precious stones became much better, his inner determination to push through background distractions and direct his mind became sharper, and through his repeated encounters with the hobgoblin witchdoctors of Lynaeum (for which he often borrowed the use of their chemical mixing table) he became better adapted to fight unseen foes. He wore a trail through the underbrush of the Buckshire scrublands and could be seen walking to and from Buckshire, Trading Post, and Port Royale burdened with sacks leaking animal fluids, granules of sand and shimmering green dust, while the everpresent clink of glass matched the cadence of his heavy footsteps. He was constantly dirty, covered in grit, animal blood, soot, his own blood, and occasionally he would be coated from his ribs down in a dark-greenish mud, wet in Buckshire and dry by the time he reached the Trading Post. His hands were yellowed by tanning acid (as he regularly cured hides he collected in harvesting the tallow) and yet made supple by the regular application of polishing oil to the targets of his mania. Despite the outward crust...he seemed to contain a kind of quiet vitality he had not previously owned...he would say to others in passing that he was tired (if anything at all), but they could detect that his body was disobeying his feelings as his body moved with a bounce and spring that betrayed his previous sluggardly disposition.
Through all of this routine there was the liberation of M'Gok Tukar, for which he was present; it passed quietly through him seeming like a single short paragraph read in a much larger history text. The whole time he participated, he was considering the large clutch of topazes and garnets he had collected and how long it would take to process all of those stones; a mind wandering to other things as the words meandered across his vision.
Eventually one day, he dumped the rough greenstones into his 'Sell to Telinus' bag, carefully swept the dust into another pouch, considered its weight in his hand for a moment and decided to take a peek at the remaining stones in his unpolished collection. He gauged it would require one more trip through the region gathering it's resources after he finished boiling down the meat he currently carried. Unsmiling, he nodded to himself and pressed on.
Later that day, on his way to Omiga's from the Northern Highway he was mentally preparing to shine up another dozen stones when he happened upon a neatly arranged selection of bottles in the middle of the road. He looked up and around; he saw nobody. He paced around them once as though if he saw them from a different angle they might actually be something else, but their state persisted. He looked around again.
Now, if you ask him (or even if you don't), Timik will tell you about his belief in the Fortunate Findings, which basically holds that the world will provide enough to the simple traveler if you are willing to take what it offers and so money saved in buying goods is to be spent on services or charities that don't have the luxury or flexible ethics of a wily and freebooting halfling. He often says it's a "Phillysophy of the road". He looked at the bottles arranged in the middle of the track again. He never meant the term quite this literally before. He knelt and examined the labels: about a dozen bottles of dwarven ale, another dozen of sailor's grog, the same amount of polishing oil all arranged neatly on a set of nightclothes. Now usually when something is Fortunately Found it is an ordinary weapon, a flawed jewel, an unwanted cloth pattern or spool of thread...casually discarded by someone having no use for such a thing, a common situation, a sensible one. He analyzed this particular drop to consider how it happened. 'We have a whole bunch of intoxicating liquids, polishing oil -- actually looks like enough to complete my goal, and a clothes with which to sleep in. Other than the fact that I've hardly slept since I started my gem crafting, the person who dropped this...' He stood up and looked around more and even looked up in the sky. He stared at the items on the road like they were mocking him. 'Huh, looks like if I took this Finding, I'd be done with my work, ready to relax a bit with copious amounts of tasty drinkables, and then pass out for a week. I've never had Fortune be so...perfect.' He quickly threw everything into an empty bag and then hurried away to Port.
And, of course, helpless to its appeal, Timik did as Fortune commanded.
((BTW if my taking those items inconvenienced anyone, contact me and you can have them back)) |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 06 Jul 2007 11:36 AM |
Several rolls of parchment tucked away (for dryness sake) for the purpose of the trek, Timik slogged through the muck of the Blackstone Swamp intending to confront the denizens of the caves bearing the same name. He had become an old hand at crossing the mire; it's indigenous fauna no longer held the same threat as he had learned how to fight them, though the process of learning was often quite painful...and venomy.
He had found that the creatures of the Blackstone tended to live in harmonious family groups clearly joined for the survival of the unit. Fighting the whole cluster of beasties was extremely challenging; the trick was to get them apart.
He spotted his enemies ahead in the mist...looked like three spiderfolk, three large spiders (including one of the really big ones that Timik preferred confronting alone if at all) and one leechwalker. He took out his sling, got a bead on the biggest arachnid and let fly with a bullet...which scudded off of one of the monster's chitinous legs and struck the ettercap behind it in the shin. The creature looked up and pointed, emitting a horrible screech which alerted the whole family to Timik's presence hunkered down in the slime holding a strip of leather.
'Aww crap!! That's going to cost me!' he thought as 24 hairy, armored legs descended upon him with the leechwalker a couple paces behind. Timik worked his sling frantically at the huge spider as his feet were glued to the ground by the ettercaps' webbing. For the next few minutes he fought wildly for his life as each opponent fell in turn.
Collapsing into the wet near dead, having lost much blood and that remaining thick with poison, he took a couple gasps of humid air in a victorious, and panicked relief, and then hurriedly began searching through his pack for healing. He quickly drank 500gp, another 200gp, and then slapped 200gp on the weeping bite marks on his arms and legs. Realizing he was alive and well, he was still shaken from the event, his hands trembling, his hair still on end...he reached in his pocket for his pipe. It was gone.
He thought for a moment, 'Huh, must have left it on the table in the Pearl during my last binge...probably when I had to blow chow in the meeting room (nobody ever uses it anyway) and passed out.' This wasn't the first time he had to fix the damage caused by his intoxication...this was relatively minor and only inconvenienced himself. 'Nothing to do but get another...bet Johe has one in all of that clutter he has in his shop.' He sighed. 'Why do I make things so hard on myself?....I guess if I did them any other way, I wouldn't have much fun."
And then he chewed on his fingernails |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 04 Mar 2008 11:36 AM |
Timik sat at HIS table at the Pearl, feet propped up, tilting back with a large tome and a jug in his lap. The table was littered with many drained tankards and bottles and one singular tall stack of heavy books gleaned from the heart of the Carfax library, altogether four texts on scrying and divination and one treatise on various humanoid anatomies (information gained possibly from morally questionable practices).
He seemed relaxed, but his mind hunted the pages of the open book, the drink steadied his nerves to focus while the back of his thoughts maintained the near constant recollection of the writhing and flopping. For the past weeks he staggered about frantically biding his time either stumbling drunk or on the verge of a mental breakdown. A couple weeks prior he thought a visit to Gladden Mines would ease his frayed nerves, but when the carnage was done nothing was changed but that his armor was painted in ogre effluvia. That which sweat and rain did not cleanse remained as gory streaks in the joints and seams of his plate mixing with the remnants of the dried mud from his last journey to the Buckshire Marsh.
He had considered his options. He didn't think any single individual could alter his fate, except possibly Emma, who he assumed was now sequestered in some quiet place pondering the inappropriateness of darkness. Or if he could gather a diverse selection of companions, maybe one could tip the scale...Kalid, Rosen, Fennigan...Talion, Salt, Ophelia...or even Johe or Alton...any of the myriad of personalities he's known throughout the years might be the key. He looked around the tavern common room. Alone. He scowled and steeled his nerve. He'll have to do it himself...or even go through with it in the end.
With his head up he spotted through his squinting bleary eyes the storyteller fellow from the Buckshire Fair. He told the story of the cave cows, that's how he knew him. The man was approaching him from the bar and he was bringing gifts. 'Who was he working for?' His mind scrambled and tripped. 'Everybody's working for someone'. As the rustic man approached, Timik smiled a crooked welcoming smile, hiding a fractured soul, as his hand inched to the softly humming, platinum Dorian Alltoss special he carried at his belt, fingertips caressing the pommel. 'Let's hear what story he's telling now.' |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 17 Mar 2008 09:27 PM |
Gore bespattered, his buckler bristling with many orcish shafts, Timik made his way to Brandibuck. A slight exploratory sidetrek found him in the midst of a cadre of goblins and orcs in the mountains, and the carnage was enough to lighten his step a touch more than it had been as of late as he made his way to the town. He also found something in the mines; something he couldn't use directly but something he very much wanted used.
Pushing open the gates, he strolled into Brandibuck. He nodded firmly with a wicked grin toward the gate guard who blanched at the armored halfling as he passed by. Normally, Brandibuck and everything about it annoyed Timik...all the rosy cheeks and the flowing milk and honey...just too sweet and clap-clap happy. Just outside of town was an offal pit like any other place people lived; he always enjoyed reminding people that it was there.
He veered off the path to a clutch of standing barrels. He removed a piece of parchment from his pack, ascertained that it was the one to be delivered to the Magister's cave, and layed it flat, exposing it's back to the sky. Retrieving his grimy bedraggled feather quill from the depths of his bag, he stopped to take a moment to examine it. It had been a while since he employed his tickly little friend to chart his course. He more or less lately had been stumbling into areas blindly and leaving without noting anything but his memories for a return trip. He sighed and felt the breeze as it rustled the page. He thought, 'Return trips don't seem too likely now.' And then he put quill to page.
Magister,
I hope this correspondence finds you well, but most importantly I hope it finds you. The other side of this leaf bears a mighty incantation. We travel together so often, I was hoping you would hold it specifically for me and a time of most dire circumstances...not of your choosing but mine. I am positive it will come in quite useful in the coming days with the travails before us. I am sure I am the laST ONE you would choose to bear this enchantment... but trust me... in some of the places we may go, I could be the best option. Your honorable servant,
Timik the Mistake |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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Re: The Legend
Posted: 26 Sep 2009 10:01 PM |
Timik returned from his adventures below Port exhausted and filthy…as usual.
Gaffa had welcomed him back, taking his cloak, helm, and ruck. He shed his boots at the door to his room. On the first step he left his greaves behind. A few more steps up he cast off his polyns and by the time he reached the top of the staircase he was removing his left cuisse. At the door the tassets came off.
When he entered the room, he unstrapped his pauldrons and threw them across the room with a clatter. Staggering to his bed, he tossed his gauntlets and bracers upon the bedspread and dropped the vambraces on the floor beside it. Then he snapped the breastplate open and let it fall with a crash to the stone floor.
He walked slowly to the basin as he shed his padding and undergarments on the way. He noticed Gaffa had set up a stack of clean towels upon the bar right next to a row of recently poured ales. This made him smile.
He unbound his hair and dunked it in the basin, scrubbing at his face while it was submerged. Moving slowly he washed away the remaining grime on his limbs and torso and quickly dried off with one of the towels provided.
His time in Asashi had changed him. He still believed much of what he did before and he still reveled in the filth and intoxication of living hard, but now he had synthesized rituals of calmness, cleansing and healing into his life.
Unconcerned with his total nakedness, he walked behind the bar to his cabinet and from it collected a pipe and a rolled fabric package. On the way to the mirror fastened to the wall, he bent and picked up his flame blade in its sheath. When he was in front of the mirror, he set the items on the bed, unrolled the fabric and began examining the various salves contained therein. Facing the mirror, he located all of his cuts and treated them with some gray grease from a jar; bruises were splashed with a warming oil and carefully massaged. He looked to his hand, curled and raw from his bowstring, and kneaded the pain from each finger in turn. Upon his chest was a great whitish hand print; that was the one that did it. The undead touch could disharmonize a living body in ways that lingered if left untreated. From the jars he preselected, he opened one that contained a reddish gel and slathered a handful across his chest covering the white hand mark. Then starting with his head and neck, he flexed each muscle over his whole body one by one, noting the tension and blood flow, and while looking in the mirror, pressed, rubbed or outlined each trouble spot with a dab of red from his fingers. Slow, careful and precise; he put himself back together.
Finally, he grabbed his pipe, stuck the stem in his mouth, unsheathed the flame blade and lit the leaf. As he inhaled, he looked into his own eyes, he looked past his eyes, he looked past the reflection to what was beyond. A clever smile wrapped around the pipe clenched in his teeth. And then he exhaled a large cloud of smoke right through the mirror. |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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