Thursday, March 24, 2011

Tales of the Bard 003

50/1st/???

Rebirth

Have you ever woken up to a nightmare? The hero's of Ostwick certainly have. Its hard to imagine your life torn away from you, everything and everyone you knew lay within the realm of the unknown. Your very being has been altered, its hard to put on those shoes and keep walking. It takes a special breed to face that kind of insanity and survive. Many didn't that day, however the gods smiled upon 4 of our hero's.

Dex roused first to the hazy sight and sounds of a battle as a newborn might. A hulking giant of a man stand before him, arm missing and dozens of trinkets adorning a network of steely chains bound about his ornately crafted black plate armour. His other arm is making up for the missing one however as he holds a soon dead man aloft in his contrasting silver armour glinting in a ray of light somehow. Silver thrusts a dagger deep into Black's chest knocking loose a trinket that Dex feels compelled to snatch up. Aranel reels as he takes in the gruesome scene. Black and green tendrils slither ever slightly all along the ground, and Aranel, as the others do, eerily feels comfort in ghastly roots known as Blight Creep. Dozens of terrible men and women and children lay nearby convoulting in the fits of realization. Some of these poor are screaming, some chewing through their own limbs, some are simply beating themselves to death. Beams of light pierce the shroud of green fog mist which our hero's can see through perfectly somehow now. The sounds of terrible thunder cracks and the clashing of hundreds if not thousands of weapons rings throughout this day. Jaspyr feels burning in his chest as he awakens. Looking down there is a longsword that has drunk his blood, does he even have blood anymore? The argent blade is pulled from his heart and he feels relief. Seig and Dex clamour up a crest of a hill to spy what sort of madness they have befallen. As they look down into a valley of life, death and undeath they stare into war. Thousands strong on both sides, men in silver charging on horseback against a monstrous foe whom the hero's feel a strange kinship with now. Massive beings, 2 storeys high sway their mighty tentacles back and forth drawing a wave of the blight creep behind them. Men with propped up metal casks lit with fire, and exploding with the sound of thunder dropping the charging masses before them. And fire, there is fire everywhere, divine and holy in nature, imbued with the light of the sun itself.

A Calculated Withdrawl

Aranel has had enough, this scene is too much and he wants answers. Approaching Black, Aranel demands to know what is going on. Black screams a terrible sound and smites Aranel with Silver's dying husk. The others quickly gather up Aranel, Seig deciding to carry his burden, they make haste for the dying wood that lay to the south of the battle. They run for hours as the sounds of battle wage on and grow fainter until finally they are gone.

The Hunger

As the party travels, they are having strange cravings. It starts as a twinge in the back of their minds, but soon enough it begins to dominate their thoughts. Blood, Bone, Flesh and Organ is what they crave, each with their own brand of horrible taste. Each of them are not without new “gifts” though. Aranel is reborn with retractable tusk like fangs perfectly suited to quench his vampiric thirst. Dex's very skin is bulked up with scales of bone and an overdeveloped jaw with immense biting strength. Seig's claws are fashioned into efficient piercing knives as his steely gaze now can see more of a man than he ever could before. And Jaspyr's legs are teaming with new found strength and spring as well as flaying claws adorning his fingertips. They all have the blackgreen tendrils writhing over their skin jutting out concentrically from their core.

Fendis Ren

As the party heads further south the blight creep is letting up. Seig decides to bask in sunlight and get out of this green fog. He is immediately dropped to his knees by the shock of it how can the sun itself bring about pain?

Along the road south they come acrossed to weary blight touched wandering aimlessly. They seem to have no interest in our hero's though. Seig decides he wants to put these poor beings out of their torment and proceeds to dismember and decapitate one of them. The other is dropped to the ground by Aranel and Jaspyr as Dex watches with indifference. After grabbing some of their salvageable clothes one of the blight touched gets back up completely regenerated and walks away, the others head lays their biting at the air.

The road completely clears of blight creep and the moon is out as the party approaches Fendis Ren. They are met at the gate by an old man, who has been cast out today on his birthday. He spins them a tale of how the town has made arrangements with the cursed to put out the old and sick in exchange for keeping their town safe from this awful war. He gladly pays this price so that his grandchildren or their children, or their children can see an end to this madness. Covering up their blight veins, the party seeks shelter within the town. The guardsman, half drunk, half asleep at his post likely doesn't check them over fully and allows them passage. After all, most bligt touched don't ask politely for entrance into their town.

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