A t E: Session 05 - Epilogue

General Summary

“Go ahead. Talk.”     “What for? Can’t you just use your eyeball-flaming, Ra-powered, Orb of Powersight to see what’s happened?”   ‘I can. The Eye can do much. I would rather hear you tell it.”   “Yeah but if you just watched it all, I could have an ale while you did so and we’d both be winners, eh?”   “Listen here, small one, I do not wish to be part of some ventriloquism casting! If I say I wish to hear it from you, that’s as great a gift as a god can give.”     “Really?”     “You will have granted a god a wish. How many mortals can make this claim?”     “Say, that’s right! Okay here’s how it went...”         ...Ever drown in an abandoned castle’s moat? Had your body left there to rot down with all the other rubbish that fell into it? Probably not you, eh? Quite the tenderiser, I can tell you. Picture yourself coming to your senses after you’d been down there for a few centuries. That’s what I felt like when I ‘woke up’. You might never have life restored to you. You might think it a wonderful gift. Trust me, it’s no birthday party you want to be guest of honour at. It takes quite a bit of effort to restore life, I guess. I should be grateful that my descendants had the sense to know that You, the midnight dog, might be able to resurrect me. The fact that my best armour and other belongings had been placed in a nearby shrine might have helped too. . . Can’t say I’m too pleased with the Excel folks, that my things were left under the sky, exposed to the elements for all the days from my falling to this but they’re humans. If you’re like me that pretty much explains it. . . If you’re human, you probably think it sounds noble to have yourself publicly immortalised by having your gear displayed for everyone to admire and the city birds to crap on. . . At least my stuff hadn’t been stolen. The temple guards had made it a job to watch my gear. Not much of a repayment for all I lost to keep their town and temple defended but I’ll have to be satisfied. I can’t exactly think of what would repay their debt to me anyways. Humans don’t have too much that would interest me, most of the time.     There’re a few though that interest me just by being around. There’s the ranger master. His name’s Sreigorn. Very high and mighty for a guy that always looks like he needs a shave. I like beards as you’d expect, so yeah, that’s an insult. Humans pretty much should stick to their baby face look. Suits a shorter-lived bunch I figure. Sreigorn interests me because of his craftiness. He’s a natural at plans and strategy. I’m more a tactics guy. Smash and crash and see what happens as a result. He’s more about saving the smashing ‘til the “precise moment”. Precision. There’s a thing. I guess him being a bowman, makes precision something he likes. I don’t like bows, or their effects either. Maybe that’s why we’ve often disagreed. My guys get to try their hand at crossbows and that’s it. I don’t mind a blunt bolt smacking some guy in the pouches. That’s alright. But it’s not so much about marksmanship. Let it fly, toss the crossbow after it and start swinging. That I can live with. Don’t get too fancy with your aiming and so on. Battle doesn’t come down to who’s got the best technique. Battle doesn’t allow for fancy tricks and subtle feints and hitting the centre of the target. When you’re just trying to make any kind of sense of the storm around you, you can’t be trying to time a special move. Outfight. That’s all. Get him before he gets you. Swing at the guy you’re going to fight next, not the guy your fighting now and you might survive. The ranger usually shuts up about this time, in any talk we’ve had about this. I guess I can teach a human some things.     Then there’s my friend, Ren. He doesn’t need a lesson on survival. That’s something he comes by naturally. More lives than a phoenix. I don’t even think he’s died to be honest. Not like me. I’ve been dead a while and then some it seems. Long enough dead that it took more than a necromancer to wake me up. Ren tells me he was saved from the flood that took me, by his being in the right place at the right time. Fighting head to head with the Mule will give you a chance, I guess. You wouldn’t pick it though. Ren’s been my friend a long time. I remember him when he was more like me. Ready to help himself to the better things around and worry about consequence later. Pretty quick, he started to change. Got tied to the god of vengeance and started to be considerate. Thoughtfulness personified. At least, most of the time. We had a bit of talk just us two. He told me his and I told him mine. Mine is still pretty short and his just a few days and a couple of matters longer. He told me about deciding to try and bring Excel back and the cost he will pay and how it might be better not to know the price, item by item. You don’t have to tell me about those kinds of deals. They always bite fierce like a long drop off a narrow ledge. It hurts less if you can’t see the floor coming at you.     Well, he succeeds in getting the old town relocated and with a Chaerin in tow enters the place and soon enough is back on terms with the people. You’d know what they see in him but that they see it seems certain. Then he meets Kade and a new set-up is made on the spot. Ren’s has a soft spot for humans that have this techo stuff, since as far back as Assurbanipal’s ships sailed into view, that I can remember. no shock there. As he goes on to detail their actions together, I get a sense that they make a good pairing but more in the contrast than the likeness. You can’t play cards without four suits and you can’t roll dice with only one side. I tell him to remember that we’ve had our challenges to see eye to eye as well and maybe that’s how this Kade will be too. Ren doesn’t seem too worried. Destiny rules this Kade, Ren says. . . We both agree that freewill is a better thing — in service to our God of course. . .     Before we get to all this tale spinning we had to meet for the first time. I think he more than half knew I’d be around. He didn’t seem surprised or particularly happy to see me. I wasn’t different with him either. It was always this way. An easy teaming up with the knowing the other had things to deal with. His newest venture is to restore the pantheon and if not able, then as much as may be. My more tasking job is to restore my people. Empires and Gods are easy. Lives are not.   We met and proceeded quickly to engage with this seafaring bunch. I had already met a particular sailor fool an hour before but was willing to meet him again to see if Ren could get any more gladness out of him than me. He seems slightly less stupid the second time. Large, barbaric warriors have their basic uses and affecting people’s manners is one of them. Speaking of which, Ren is shorter than I remember. He’s probably six and half foot now. If he keeps this up he’ll be a respectable stature in two or three more incarnations.   Turns out the seafarer, who prefers to be called a lake man, tells us that the female captain of the ship is having a drink in town at the ‘Ghost’. Ren is happy enough to go to see her. I’m happy she’s sensible enough to have chosen an inn that I have free drinks arranged at. I tell the owners of these places the drinks are for my peoples’ service to their home. Most are happy to let it stand and drinks are given free and freely and I am content. Some, like Speartooth at the Flying Crown say they haven’t heard of such an agreement. Luckily, I had thought this might happen. My best follower, Wolfslain, had been busy the night before, carving words to that effect, on the underside of a drawer in his tavern. All the taverns, actually. Just in case, justice needed serving. Might not be justice how they or others might judge it but it’s me who’s the judge, eh? These townsfolk don’t know more than a tenth of the hardship my kind went through to keep their home secured against the destroyers that laid waste to the rest of the Imperial Overlord’s Empire. Most of my forces fell at the largest battle. This was at Termaenol. There my elite guard and all my drummers were sent into affray. All were lost even as we held the city against the Felldread Shangs. How they learned to fly is something I’d like to know. . Hmm. . . I need a drink. . . and they tell me that free drinks for life for those of us left is unjust. Not fair to make them give over their ales, lagers and bitter for free. . . Excel could be asked for far more from me, believe me.     Ren talks to the captain of the lakeship. She’s a thin thing and humanly attractive I figure. Ren seems happy to chat to her about political matters and other things and then we are joined by young Kade. She makes more of a fuss over him than Ren. Partly because I think, she’s too smart to try stuff on Ren. He’s older than Kade, as I take it, is she. Human women play this game a fair bit. Ren can be coaxed into a hand or two but that was before his family rearing days. I think those days might be behind him. -- Which makes me remember his half dwarf sons. I could use their blood now in this new world. A shame he lost track of them in the flood.     Kade is eager to speak with the captain and soon she has his sword in her hands. . . His actual sword that is. . . It’s odd. She fondles his pommel and he screws it off with her watching. She tells him that she’s not seen one quite so broken before but he doesn’t seem to mind as long as she’s giving it a thorough going over. . . I can bear to watch no more. Humans have this strong attachment to their swords, eh? The more kingly, the bigger the sword! It’s kinda strange. . . In my haste to be away, I leave my own blade behind. It can’t be sheathed. I never made a sheathe for it. Symbolism, eh? Unsheathed, save in the guts of my enemies. I made it with my good friend, Scatta Stockgott. As good a smith at a forge and fire as you could meet. We had a grand time making the suit and the blade. Best few months of my latter time. It was my ‘human’ suit. Made to honour Ren’s memory. It also got made to make his followers cheer up at the sight of me. My thinking was to use their likeness on the suit and a sword to reflect their leader’s choices. By giving them this, I thought to boost them to win through at crucial moments. I would appear and the battle would be rejoined in fury unbridled and our enemies would be thrown from the fields, forests and hills, into the seas. Morale. It’s important. My efforts seem to have paid off. Even in peace, my armoured arrival is greeted with smiles by all humans of Excel. . .     Kade later returned this sword to me. He is clearly of the opinion that I shouldn’t leave it lying around. I brush off his worry. If not safe here, then where? I ask him what he thinks of my blade. He says it’s probably alright. I grow almost into a rage until he explains he knows too little about weapons to know what to offer as his opinion. I calm myself. He is a techo AND a human too. . . I confide to him that I’m not really that happy with a sword in hand, even one as great as this. I prefer hammers. He laughs and says his weapon of choice also uses a hammer. I don’t see one of any serviceable size on him and say so. He points out the cutest, miniature hammer on his gonne. . . Assurbanipal, long ago introduced me and mine to similar weapons. Dangerous and deadly. To Kade I only say, that his hammer is too small and I would be making a gonne with a proper sized hammer and that that would be a proper weapon. He explains that this hammer, small as it is, is plenty strong. In my patient way, this goes back and forth for a full twenty minutes. I finally get through to him that a bigger hammer means a louder bang and crash and all that goes along with that. I indicate I’m talking about a gonne with a real hammer, scale-wise. . . He seems about to explain it all again but then as humans do, he finally understands my deep wisdom on matters of smithing and agrees he’d like to see such a weapon and then goes on to say he’d like ten such! Humans -- in denial in one breath, then sprinting off with the next.     I take this Kade to be a lawyer or at the least, a lawman. He’s much about the niceties of people and how he has had to serve the law in a place called the Sparingtons. It’s on this same land but to the north. “Where the Vastness call it home and kingdom”. He says it like it’s important stuff. As we share beer as he says it, I’m willing to believe him. These Vast are a race of giants, to hear him tell it. I’m not sure how to feel about this. If they are meant to be my own kind’s replacement, it’s a cruel type of jest. There’s Cleftyck Veers too he tells me. Another non-human race. These sound far too much like Synarden for my liking, but again I will wait to meet them myself.     As we drink, his human limits are tested. He opens up a little about Ren and the trouble at the village. I have to remind him I wasn’t there and he explains how they went in to deal with a man and his wife and daughter’s ill treatment of several people who had done little to them. Once these were confronted, with talk of killing other races to eat them, and this family’s women admitting they had done so for reasons not just of hunger, Ren hauls off and kills the mother on the spot. Kade seems troubled by this saying that she should have been given over to a trial, led by those who lost relations. I have been a king. I tell him, “A king makes judgements. It’s what they do in lots of lands. Ren is a king in a manner of saying. It’s always been his way to dispense judgements, though usually the judged is more capable of putting up a fight than this woman seemed to. That fact, does not make her more deserving of a different judgement though.” He sees my point but still defers to his own. I make an off-hand comment that when he has seen more of kings and kingship, he may learn. . . Then Kade says very oddly, “I sure hope you’re wrong about that. Might be a king myself someday.” I laugh at his jest but then realise he’s actually serious. When I apologise and ask, he tells me of a bit of his destiny. He is the ‘Generational’. He and his contingent parts form a human paragon. He mentions a few names that are all “Praetorians” and destined to join him in this fate. I am reminded of the Champion and those I liked better who were never far from the Champion’s side. I keep this to myself for now. I wonder should these Praetorians meet with those Eternal ones, what would occur? I mention to him too, that I was a king, Ren is likely one now and it sounds like Kade will be one in the future. I'm not sure if three kings coming out of the east has ever happened before, but it's bound to be stellar. . .     Tomorrow, I will be assisting Ren and Kade in getting the place back into proper business. There’s much to do below the town and I mean to get things started.     “That’s all you’ve managed?”   “Well, it’s a start. You wished to hear it remember.”   “I can see now why wishes are rarely granted. . . . .”

Character(s) interacted with

Renaissance   Kade   Hamfist   Jankens -- Captain of the 'Darkwave'   Kalkeace -- Herald of E. Tighan