Bay 12 Games Forum

D

You're getting privileges because you're supposed to be more profitable for us than letting others do it. If you can't manage that, then you don't deserve the privileges.

A

Eh, who cares. He can have his little fiefdom.

A Rowdy Bunch

Deep underground - well, okay, not that deep, it's just a large cavern chamber - underground, a group of soldiers - rebels - they're definitely soldiers, they're allowed to be both-

Listen. There's a bunch of men and women with armor and weaponry and they're congregated around a table in a cave. It's not that complicated.

Ahem. So.

It's approaching late evening - not that anybody there can see that, but they do know it because they've got hourglasses roughly keeping time - it's approaching late evening, the day shift has finally been released from training and other duties, and the soldiers are doing what any soldiers do when they get out of work and onto their break.

Drinking. And, considering their high spirits, having fun with it, rather than drowning any potential sorrows. Indeed, somebody started singing a drinking song.

"The friar once called him a blight on the world,
A vector of darkness, the evil unfurled;"

One rather... unique.

"He hasn’t said shit since the Truth has come out-
That bastard can’t crap without having to shout!"

Well, okay, the tone wasn't unique. And it's not like the church and state weren't common targets of lampooning in such music.

"He’s clammy and skinny, no meat on his bones;
Mama says to eat, but he’s nothing but groans!"

Really, it was their choice of champion. It wasn't often that undead of any variety became folk heroes.

"But drink, oh he drinks, and we drink along with him
We’ll toast and we’ll cheer for the the great Magnimian!"

Of course, most undead didn't set out on missions to make a good impression. Well, no, they frequently did, but those impressions were nearly universally of the bitten-out variety, rather than that of cultivating a reputation.
Regardless, with the opening of the chorus came the full rabble of voices joining the song.

"And deep underground will the Empire fall
As Truth rings aloud and is heard by them all!
They’ll know that the bones of the Earth truly hold
The greatest of hearts cast in glorious gold!"

One rebel, recruited from the "witches" Friar Gerus had taken, chimed in with the start of the next verse:
"The Church, how it hates him, he makes them look horrid,
The villages love him for bones by the hundred!"

And after her, another, once a member of the Leahorn Royal Guard, followed:
"The Baron despises how he cannot find him;
Our Red Fox adores him for just the same reason!"

Theatrically, at one end of the table, a rebel swept an arm out, hushing the rest of the crowd. He whispered,
"He’d know when you’re sleeping and when you’re awake-"
-before jamming his mug into the air with a wild grin, and shouting:
"If he gave a shit what we do on our break!
But he knows the Truth that the Empire hates:"

And as the group prepared for the chorus, some jumped in early.
"We’ve got our own business, get out of our face!"

Beer, wine, and other spirits were being sloshed around, the gleeful rebels caring little for the lost alcohol as they all swept into the chorus once again.

"And deep underground will the Empire fall
As Truth rings aloud and is heard by them all!
They’ll know that the bones of the Earth truly hold
The greatest of hearts cast in glorious gold!"

A blacksmith from Saunder’s Vale, there to help with equipment maintenance, chimed in:
"They call him a Lich Lord, focus on the first-
They’re shitting themselves thinking of zombie hordes!
But here is the secret they cannot abide:"

He - and half a dozen of the other revelers - taps his forehead.
"He’s scary ‘cause he is a Lord with a mind!"

Unseen by the men and women, from a tunnel nearby, the Red Fox stalks out, face stern from another day of managing a rebellion.

"So sing and be merry, let’s have us a toast
To that benefactor who trusts us the most!"

However, as he draws nearer, one after another sees him. The song starts to peter out, but some still sing...

"When down comes the Empire, we know who’ll step in:"

...until only one oblivious drinker is singing.

"Our glorious, dirt-covered Magnimian!"

The man finally notices the flickering, candle-made shadow over him, as he turns to look at the dark face of his leader. After staring at each other in tense silence for a moment that seems to stretch on forever, the Red Fox looks up, casting his baleful gaze around the table. Multiple rebels gulp, some on spirits, others on the last saliva of suddenly-dry mouths.

Then, suddenly, the Fox grabs an unattended mug of ale, downs the entire thing in one go, and then holds it out to the table, before belting out:
"And deep underground will the Empire fall
As Truth rings aloud and is heard by them all!
They’ll know that the bones of the Earth truly hold
The greatest of hearts cast in glorious gold!"

Faces aglow, the rebel leader's soldiers once again raise their voices in revelry, as the song of rebellion echoes in its cavern home.

Let’s... just keep fishing, I guess.
My ankle is fucked up, I don’t want to go move around and stuff!

Peaceful Rest

They all laughed as he turned around slow
They said you ain't welcome 'round here anymore
You just might as well go

The prayer chamber was desecrated, mud and shit liberally spread out all across it. The sacred tapestries were ablaze; the stained glass was shattered. And in the middle of it was a young girl, arms broken and cut open, lying atop the remains of the sacred scroll. Around her, the rioters laughed, gleefully watching the youth - just as desecrated as the rest of the building - agonizingly twisting and turning, trying to get her feet under her.

He wiped the blood from his face as he slowly came to his knees
He said, I'll be back when you least expect it
And hell's coming with me

The sounds quieted, then silenced themselves, as the girl finally managed it. Her bloodstained robes were torn to shreds; the symbol of her god, once embroidered on the left breast, had been completely ripped out, while the dress had been cut apart to allow the men to indulge their most base desires. Her arms hung limply at her sides, more like stockings with rocks in them than limbs. But despite all this, she stood.
And as she walked - slowly, painfully - out of the temple, the rioters silently - warily, disgustedly - moved to let her pass.

She did not stop until she was miles outside the city, not until she finally collapsed on the side of the road.

There is a hill at the bottom of the valley
Where all the poor souls go when they die
And if you listen real close
You can hear em' like a ghost
Saying you're never gonna make it out alive

The whispers roused her, then. They wanted the same thing she did, after all.

Revenge.

They've roused her since then, too. She couldn't die yet, after all, not if they all wanted to reach their goal. Those monsters had taken everything. For her, her religion, her home, her family, her purity. For the whispers, all that and more. Beyond even taking their lives, taking their bodies. But never their souls.

Her arms were shattered to uselessness, so they would be her hands. Others could not hear them, so she would be their voice. And together, justice would be served.

---

There is a town at the bottom of that hill
They got a secret that they keep like a slave
They got a black magic preacher (ooh)
We'd do well to let him teach her
You'll be heading up that hill to the grave

The mayor had a nice deal cut out between himself, the local businessfolk, and the priesthood of the Hand of Maugh. Workers would come for employment and the proprietors could treat them as they pleased, his police would ensure that any attempts at rebellion were swiftly quashed, and the priests would make sure that mortality was no barrier to service. Tidy as you pleased, and even though he barely had to do anything, he got a rather nice helping of the profits and a promise that he'd stay in office for the rest of his long and comfortable life.

And it is well, with my soul
You line your pockets full of money that you steal from the poor
And on your way down to hell, you hear me ring that bell
I'd pay the devil twice as much to keep your soul

Oh, sure, sometimes some wannabe hero would wander by and stir up trouble. Sometimes one church or the other would stop by, try to set up shop, give the workers "hope" or whatever - organize them, more like, and undermine the Hand. It happened every couple years. A shame, really; such events called for rather heavy-handed tactics, and he didn't much like those. It got messy when that had to happen, and he prided himself on the stability he'd cultivated. But oh well; such things were why the police were so well-equipped, after all. Worker revolts didn't exactly need that much to suppress, much less individual rebels, though it helped to put on a good show of force to discourage others from trying. Why, there hadn't even been a single attempt these past six months!

And it was upon that jolly thought that the chief of his police slammed his office door open, face red and eyes wide with rage and fear.

"All my men are dead."

There was a drifter passing through that little valley
See he had promised he was coming back to town (coming back to town)
They didn't know him by his face, or by the gun around his waist (ooh)
But he come back to burn that town to the ground

She wore a drab brown hooded cloak, clasped tight around her form. A glimpse beneath it would have shown the same bloody robes she had worn all those years ago, stretched and torn further upon her grown frame. Her arms were gone, long since cut off with the assistance of the spirits of the wronged; ghostly hands now hovered at her side, grasping a wicked-looking scythe - simple in shape, but with a blade of shadow-like metal, and whispering with the voices of a million restless souls. Not quite real, yet as grave as death's gentle touch.
Contrary to the police chief's words, his forces were not dead. There merely wished they were, as they lay in pieces around the reaping maiden. Limbs, heads, and torsos all were collected by the dead, called away from the duties assigned to them to instead do the work their souls demanded of them, spectral visages settling over long-bleached skeletons, keeping the pieces of their tormenters close enough to the one who commanded death.

First there was fire, then there was smoke
Then that preacher man was hangin' by a rope
Then they all fell to their knees and begged that drifter
Begged him please, as he raised his fist before he spoke

The priests of the Hand of Maugh attempted to resist, throwing grave champions at the woman, soldiers they had long kept to themselves, unstoppable warriors and immovable guardians.
As one, their weapons were turned against the priests, for their command of death failed in the face of one who had known in intimately, and their dead were as vengeful as the lady's laborer masses. The temple was shattered and burned, and the high priest, the Hand himself, was dragged out of his hiding place to feel the same agonizing punishment that the finally-dying police had.

And as the temple burned behind her, the woman turned back toward the city, toward the hordes of townsfolk - some terrified, others hopeful. Finally, her spectral hands grasped her hood and pushed it back, revealing her face - darkened, thinner, but ultimately, much the same as it had been all those years ago.

Behind her, in the flames, a symbol rose up, much the same as that one long ago shattered in a ravaged church. And so she spoke:

I am the righteous hand of God
And I am the devil that you forgot
And I told you one day you will see
That I'll be back I guarantee
And that hell's coming with me



-The burning and rededication of Maugh's End by Jemaia, bishop of the Church of Vetremiel and founder of the subsect the Order of Peaceful Rest.

Rude. We shall be nobody's right hand, much less in their right hand, and I quite assure you, our bones are rather unpalatable.

I see a few main options. We could Miracle up a Stygian Wind to potentially just kill everything here (3d10 damage on everybody in a 90-foot cone? That'd hurt like fuck). We could also Miracle up Suffocating Terror (same cost, so we're clear, an Effort dedicated for the day) to take out the entourage (3 automatic mental damage will probably disable all the Lesser Foes around) nonlethally and then attempt to negotiate from a position of more power. We could also start with Illimitable Darkness and then doing one of the other two, or whatever else. And we could probably also dump a bunch of rocks in the water just as an extra freebie.

I'm not particularly interested in humoring these guys.

The Knights of the Parchment

The overwhelming majority of knightly orders are inaugurated with a name, driving purpose, 'theme' already considered and selected. After all, who would dedicate themselves to an order that hasn't even dedicated itself to anything yet (don't let any Solstice Knights hear that kind of talk, though). Of course, more deeply, one can see that this means that most knightly orders only begin to exist after an image has been carefully crafted for them to fill. Most knightly orders are younger than their names.

Not all are. And those strangely-called orders are, to a significant degree, the ones to most watch out for.

Let us take the Knights of the Parchment as an example. An order with a history so long, that they are named for its remnants.

---

Nobody knows when the Knights of the Parchment were founded. They were not named that then, of course, but nobody knows what they were called when they were founded, either. It's not even clear if the Knights of the Parchment began as a formal knightly order, or if it merely eventually adopted the structure due to convenience, necessity, or what-have-you. The weight of history has pressed any trace of the path their trod flat, yet they have carried it far beyond their starting point.

What is known is that once, long ago, the Knights of the Parchment had a holy book, from which the whole of their history was written, and their divine purpose was extolled. Within this book lay the law of the order, both that which lay upon themselves and that which must be enforced upon the land. The book separated Right from Wrong, showing the way in all things. Under their rule - under the rule of the book - life was peaceful, if standardized, and prosperous, if uniformly so. Crime and monsters were dealt with promptly and efficiently, and their demesne was the envy of all lords. So the legends go, at least.

The last part, at least, must have been true. Why else would their neighbors have taken up arms to invade? They were not provoked; indeed, they had been granted entrance to the chivalrous domain, under the pretext that they desired to organize a crusade to strike at distant foes, beyond the reach of any one realm. And then, as one, they turned on their hosts in a grand slaughter, escaping with what treasures they could and leaving flames in their wake.

In the aftermath, but a single, tattered page of knights' precious holy text remained. Torn in places, burned in others, much was wholly illegible. But what could be read was thus:

                  BE NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK
  IT WILL TEST YOU AND TRY YOU TO TEACH YOU TO GROW

           NO GLORY WAITS FOR THOSE WHO DEFY THE DARKNESS
HER EMBRACE SOOTHES THE GLARE OF THE SUN, WHO STANDS APART FROM THE WORLD


    YOU MUST BE EVER-VIGILANT AGAINST DEATH OF THE SHADOWS WHO GUARD YOU
            YOU SHALL BE AS ONE BASTION FOR YOUR PEOPLE


     KNOW YOUR PART IN THE BALANCE OF LIGHT AND DARK
    A SHADOW AT NOON SHINES AS GREATLY AS A CANDLE AT MIDNIGHT

They could no loner be who they were before, bereft of their charges and betrayed by their fellows. Yet they took to heart the message of the parchment - the flames had tested and tried them, and in them they would be reborn, reforged. They would defy the darkness and burn it away, from themselves and from those who needed it. They would be vigilant, always ready wheresoever the shade might creep in, and the corruption and death it wrought would never be permitted to remain. Even at the darkest hour, they would shine, a candle in the night.

This they swore, and so rose the Knights of the Parchment, perhaps the greatest knights of the realm.