I delayed writing up the adventure that my friend had for a while for no good reason. If I had done it sooner, it would likely would have been better.
All good plans go to shit as quickly as they meet the character, but with only one player, they can go even faster or not at all; if depends how well you know your player. My story plan went awry not because I did not anticipate the direction that he want to go, but because of his charm selection, the magical powers of Exalted, he had, but also his mundane weapons that he was using, but forgot to tell me. But really, it was my error because I did not anticipate it, because it was obvious. I chose an nemesis and gave him armour that would prolong the fight, so that it would be a contest. He chose target arrows as his arrow. There are four arrow types to chose from, the most common type are normal leaf shaped arrow head, they cause 2 lethal base damage, frog crotch arrows, designed to cut straps and such do almost no damage to armored foes, but do 4 lethal damage to unarmoured foes. Signal arrows make a sound when fired, but have a fragile head and so do very little damage, unless fitted with an oiled rag and lit. Target arrows, the kind you use for target practice, punch right through armour, halving the effectiveness of it, but only cause 1 lethal damage. This was the type of arrow that my friend chose, which meant that his foe was not as effective as he should have been.
But I get ahead of myself, when last we left off, the Nameless, was fretting because he was late to the party and the Dragon Blooded target had left already. Sucks to be late. Not a real problem for a supernatural tracker, but a real problem if you don't have those charms. In Exalted there are five sets of skills, five in each set. A solar exalt has one set of skills that he is better in than the rest, he also has an additional five skills that he is also good at spread between the other four sets. The Nameless is a Night caste, so he has all the Night skills, Athletics, Awareness, Dodge, Larceny and Stealth and five other skills, Archery, Martial Arts, War, Presence, and Investigation. A normal human would have about three skills that are easy for her to use and Dragon Blooded have eight. In Exalted, charm trees are linked to skills, so you can have Archery charms, charms that augment archery skill. And there are between five and fifteen charms in each tree, some charm trees have a lot more like Martial Arts, because these charms are linked to specific fighting styles and there are many of these.
All charms have prerequisites of skill and magical potency, you need to have both prerequisite to get the charm and any prerequisite charm in the tree. The Favoured abilities of the character are easier for him to learn, and the other skills more difficult. The corresponding charms are also easier to learn, if they are favoured too. So what this means is that the starting favoured abilities that a character chooses, have a lasting impact on the story. I bet my friend wished that he had chosen Languages as a favoured skill, because to be effective in his quest, he as set to learning five additional languages other than his own, and that will mean a long time and a lot of experience. He might also want to pick up an additional charm in language too. Each character when it is made has a limited number of skill dots and charms to select, the rest have to be gained from experience. Such is life.
Ragara Dinyacout did not begin in the Capitol of Serrat, but in the out reaches in a tertiary center and so when his opportunity to make his fortune, it was there that he had his small power base. It was also ideally placed to allow him to act without eyes of the other Dynasts on him. The Nameless did not have this information and all the other Dragon Blooded were based inside the capitol cities, so it was a logical place to start looking. He asked a few questions of the bureaucrats in Serrat, the city, and was given very general information, since no one knew any information. He was given enough information to start his investigation, Dinyacout was based in a small city in the north, but would soon be coming to live in the Capitol.
The journey to the smallest, further most town of the province was normally a three day journey on horseback, but the Nameless made it there in a day and a half on foot; he ran through the night. When he arrived in the Dinyacout's home base he discovered that he had set out for one of his most northerly latifundia, three days ago. Finding the address and starting out as fast as he could manage he made it to the location before his quarry had left. The Dynast had taken his time, doing a cursory tour of the region. When he had arrived in the Latifundia, Dinyacout was set up in a fallow field on the north side of the compound near the wall. There was a large pavilion style tent and a small group of canvas leantos nearby. The Nameless counted quickly, a fang of Legionaries (5) and a fang of slave troops, fifteen collared and chained slaves, three slave servants for the Dynast, lastly one Dynast dressed in Black Jade reinforced breastplate.
Dragon Blooded's Magical Material is Jade. There are five different aspects of Terrestrial Exalted and in this fantasy world there are six different colours of Jade, so each aspect of Dragon Blooded has a different colour of jade as a magical material, and the others are not magical to them. This seems like a disadvantage, but it still makes it the most common magical material. Air aspect have Blue jade, Earth aspects have White jade, Fire aspects have Red jade, Water aspects have Black jade and Wood aspects have Green jade. Jade is just a special kind of rock when it comes down to it and is not very appropriate for making weapons or armour. They get around this by making a jade-steel alloy which allows them to make the jade into things. The properties of magical materials are similar but not universal, the first similarity between all magical materials is when the appropriate exalt has attuned to the artifact, it is weightless, well effectively. This allows the armour to be thicker and the weapons to be bigger and cause more damage and there is nothing more cool than dressing up in armour as thick as a tank's carrying a sword as thick as a person and six feet long with one hand!
Other exalted have different magical materials: Solars have Orichalcum, which is the essence of gold, Lunars have Moonsilver, which is the essence of silver smelted by the light of the moon, Sidereals have Star Metal, which is obviously meteor metal, but less obvious because it is really the essence of dead gods, that is super rare. In comparison, Jade is as common as dirt.
The Nameless approached along the wall so that he was hidden from view so that he could count the total numbers of his enemy. While he was watching Ragara Dinyacout exited his pavilion and started across the one of his servants. He stopped and looked over his shoulder as if aware that he was being watched. One of the charms that Dinyacout had is one that can tell him when someone is watching him. It does not tell him the direction or the location of the watcher, but it can make him paranoid. Typically Terrestrial Charms are weaker than every other type of exalt, but there is a cooperative nature to a lot of the terrestrial charms, but alas for Dinyacout he is alone. Lunar charms tend to be physical in nature, they feed off Attributes instead of Abilities. Sidereal charms are limited in scope but tend to follow a celestial story, a constellation. Solar charms tend to be about perfection and are not limited in any way.
There are three components of being a good Game Master, well actually there are a lot more than that, but the three that I am going to talk about are: knowing the capabilities and possibilities of all the characters and non player characters, knowing how to express them without make it look like they are using their powers and the last is being able to fudge what you can't remember. My friend playing the Nameless is one of those people who has the first two down pat, I mean he hass all the character abilities and charms stored in his head in his nearly photographic memory, which I do not, but I am good in the last part, faking it. I feel like the dumb one around my friends who play Exalted.
The Nameless stalked Ragara Dinyacout from a distance. Quite near the pavilion on e wall that was an unexpected opening in the holly hedge. In the opening was a door set into the wall, of relatively new construction. Tired The Nameless elected to sleep and replenish himself after his long journey.
The next morning, the pavilion and the tents were packed up and the convoy began its trip through the door in the wall. When Dinyacout strode confidently from the his pavilion, the Nameless was watching and Dinyacout looked over his shoulder looking for the person that was watching him. He then passed out of sight into the wilderness. Approaching quietly and unseen, the Solar inspected the path that had been carved through e wilderness. It had the appearance of a new path, the trees were all mature in size and the undergrowth next to the path still had not grown, but not so new that the stumps where trees were removed were still not fresh. The path had been carved straight and nearly due north. As such it was easy for him to keep pace with the convoy.
When night came, the crew passed close to a large clearing suitable for the pavilion and for tents of a group their size, cleared close to the ground and planted with wild flowers and grass. The Nameless approached the clearing to see if he could hear anything of note from any of the conversations. He spied Dinyacout and approached with all the stealth he had. In Exalted terms, the player directs how the character uses charms, but from the point of the character's view they are doing it intuitively. So the Nameless actually began to fade as my friend activated Easily Overlooked Presence and his Native Caste ability. The charm does not make people invisible, but it does make observers overlook them easily, unless they are standing out in the crowd and by that we mean he is not attacking anyone or doing anything extremely conspicuous like juggling flaming torches in a paper factory. His native ability causes shadows to lengthen and his person to fade relative to his background. The two together means that if he were in a paper factory juggling lit torches only the most actively searching person could spot him. Sneaking up behind the Dynast netted a sudden movement from him and a quick order to double the watch and to increase patrols. Dinyacout knew he was being watched, but not from where.
From his point of view, Dinyacout thought it was an agent of his peers seeking to find out the secret of the location to his secret Artifact cache. He thought that his unexpected promotion in the dregs of Serrat's powerful had merited him being followed and nothing more. But his Solar Stalker did not know that.
Realizing, though, that when ever he came close they were alerted to his presence, he kept his distance.
The journey north continued for a few days before the path made a fork, one path continuing north with the other heading to the east. The Nameless was curious and after finding the next resting spot on the eastward path, he doubled back to investigate the north path. It continued on for a few hours, but the forest around changed radically in that time and the summer temperatures deserted the air, after a time, he began to detect his breath in the air. The wrongness of the area extended to the every aspect of the area, the trees were sickly, the air was cold with a touch of frost, despite the cloudless day, it was gloomy. Everything was just wrong. He back tracked and caught up to the caravan with nothing further going wrong or spooky.
The journey ended after another few days at the base of a small rocky protuberance in the terrain with a small glacier at the base. The tents and the pavilion was set up.
…
And then I did not write again for another week and my memory got worse
…
Ragara Dinyacout approached the glacier on his own and from his vantage point, the Nameless, saw two alien human like beings appear almost from nowhere and talk to the Dynastic Dragon Blood. The Nameless overheard that the beings would recieve Dinyacout and his offering in one hour and that he had that time to prepare himself for the negotiations.
Hearing this and seeing the two parties part and the one going to prepare while the other two disappearing as suddenly as they appeared, the lone Solar Exalt decided to investigate the pair. Creeping closer to where the meeting occurred, the Nameless detected a faint shimmer to the air. He pressed closer to it and passed thought the shimmer. Befor him was no longer just glacier and a small mountain, but a shimmering glass Palace blue white in colour as if it were made of ice. There was a tall wall at least twenty feet in height with crenellations and arrow slits all along the top there were towers dotted along the walls just a little taller. Behind the wall was a low keep, still several stories tall with narrow towers at each corner and one slightly larger and much taller in the center, a top each tower was a blue pennant flying, snapping in the wind that appeared to come from the left. The tower seemed to dwarf the glacier and the mountain, but when he approached he found that e reverse was true and the distance between where he first saw the castle, which appeared to be miles distant, was only a few hundred paces away in truth. He entered through the main gate and secreted himself into the grand keep.
The main room was set up as a feast hall. There was a large Dias with two thrones setup with a large table before it and a samaller chair along side it near the thrones. Upon the main floor was a much larger bench piled with food of all types. Indeed both tables were piled with foods but with differences, the one before the thrones was piled with quality and the other, reflecting the size of the table was piled with quantity. There were great amounts of feast meats, fruits and cheeses. There were piles of cakes drizzled with sauces, confectionaries covered with icings and candies spilling over plates. There were small tuns of ales, casks of wines and flagons of spirits. There were fresh breads drenched in butter, fresh and steaming as if just pulled from ovens. Despite himself the smells caused him to gaze and stare, his stomach turning sommersalts with anticipation. He also noticed that there were only two possible exits besides the way he had come, a large set of curtains set behind the throne and a small disused door off to the side reinforced with tarnished bronze. It was to this door that he was drawn.
With little trouble he opened the door and entered its dark confines quietly, shutting the door behind him, but keeping it slightly ajar to speed an exit and to keep that room under surveillance. Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness within he discovered that he was not alone. Off in the corner was a detected figure, regal in stature, but laid low by circumstances. He was chained to the wall by his arms and to the floor by his legs with enough slack to allow him to sit or stand but little else. His clothes had the appearance of unrivaled finery that had seen better days and his flesh hung loosely upon his bones a sign of clear starvation. His skin was marred from wounds and beatings that seem to have been frequently delivered upon him. So great was the abuse that is was only when he spoke, that the Nameless realized that he was a she. She spoke, "Greetings Prince of the Earth, forgive my present attire and circumstances, I would bow if I could and celebrate your arrival with the appropriate feast of greetings, if I were better able to. I am called Stanza like a Summer Breeze that Harkens to the Winter to Come, but you may call me Stanza or Summer Breeze, or anything that you like, but I harken to you to help me out of my current dilemma!". Her voice was clear as a bell and rang clear as if through a cold winter day, and her voice sounded with chimes of glass. The room brightened when she spoke and seemed darker when she stopped.
The Nameless urged her to make it quick, as he was concerned not for her plight but only a way to free the slaves that were being sent here. Stanza quickly saw that this was her chance to escape her predicament and put forward a possible alliance that might serve both their desires and goals. She quickly told the Solar that about a century ago, as he knows time, she was journeying from Court to her Summer Palace, this very place, when her servants took her at unawares and imprisoned her here. She told the Nameless hero, that is he could free her from her confinement, she would gladly punish and take her servants back and to punish them for their crimes to herself and to the mortals. She also bargained that she would help him defeat his foes as well. More precisely she stated that if she needed her help, he would owe her a favour to be collected upon in the future and if she needed his help, she would owe him another favour, besides the help that she would render him, that of ending the ravaging of the mortal souls here in this place forever.
The Nameless needed some explanation of things and she provided it an a brief and succinct manner that he desired, given the limited time he felt he had. She told him that he had more time than he thought as there was a lot of ritual involved in negotiations and a lot of tempting of the Terrestrial Exalted into braking the covenant of the First Age. Of which she did not give many details other than her former servants were trying to tempt Dinyacout into eating the food in the dining hall, all people who do so have forfeited their freedom forever. As such, negotiations would continue for atleast two days. She related to the Nameless that The Rakasha, as that is what they name themselves, find it difficult to find sustenance outside of the un formed Wyld and need something else to sustain themselves and to this end they are able to feed off the emotions of mortals. The act of feeding renders them utterly emotionless and without drive or desires, essentially empty husks.
Appalled at this revelation, the Nameless agrees to help this Rakasha, if she will vacate this area and never come back, or in the least never engage in this practice on the slaves from these territories. Stanza agrees to this condition and she begins to tell her new ally how to free her from captivity. She tells him that at the center of this freehold there is ana object that anchors it to the land, called a Bonefire, it allows the Rakasha that control the Freehold to shape it as they desire and because they control it, they hold her prisoner and will be formidable opponents, but his he could extinguish this Bonefire, the Freehold would collapse and so would her servant's power over her. He asks how he is sopposed to do that? She continued that there is a pump near by that will provide water that will put out the metaphorical anchor.
Through the portal, the Nameless sees, Dinyacout and the slaves have arrived during the conversation with with Stanza. The Realm soldiers are not present, but the slave soldiers are feasting on the banquet, unaware that they have just signed away their souls for the food; the slaves are chained off to the side and the Dynast is negotiating with his hosts, the traitorous Rakasha servants. Activating Easily Overlooked Precesnce and his Caste powers he slips thought the door and seeks past the heated discussions, his presence and the presence of his Orichalcum Powerbow unnoticed.
Beyond the curtains he encounters a set of wide bronze doors with a large ring set within it. He reaches up to pull the door open. Upon yanking on it, two eyes open with sudden surprise and a large mouth opens below and shrieks of pain and surprise. The surprise is twofold, needless to say, when both recover and introduce themselves to each other and a conversation starts about the politeness of pulling on someone's nose, especially a sleeping person's nose. The humourous conversation continues until the door is convinced that he should open, if not for him, then for it's original Mistress, who undoubtedly took much better care of her doors than the present interlopers.
The first encounter of the mission sets the tone for the remainder as many of the features of the vast ballroom appear sentient in one way or another. Past the doors, that the Nameless promised would be better oiled on his return, he finds himself in a magnificent Ballroom far larger than the castle could have suggested it might have contained. The large black and white checkerboard pattern on e floor seems to stretch the width of the floor, but it is not a bare floor, for towards the fore part of the dance floor there is a monumental pile of broken furniture of all types, beds and tables, chairs and candelabras. Any fixture or furnishing that one might imagine is piled up here on the floor in broken shambles nearly thirty feet high, not quite as tall as the first balcony, of which there are three, each tall and grander than the one below it. The light beyond the pile comes from great multi-tiered chandeliers filled with hundreds if not thousands of candles on each tier, but before the pile is a quaint place setting of two chairs set on one side of a marry crackling fire quite near to a small pond, fed from a stream on the opposite side from a stream coming from an overflow of a pump. The Nameless feels that he has found the Pump and Bonefire. He takes the bucket that Stanza provided him with, her slop pail within her cell, and fills it at the pump and brings it toward the fire. He dumps it upon the fire to put it out, but it seemed too easy a task and indeed it was. The Campfire screamed and dodged to the side at the last moment, narrowly avoiding certain death. Realizing that this task was not to be so easy he rushed back and re-filled his magazine and brought it back to the Fire. He cunningly feigned to the left of the fire and dumped the water on the right completely extinguishing the Fire. To which the two chairs angrily inquired wht he had against their friend. Whereupon he discovered that he had infact assaulted and murdered a complete innocent, that the Bonefire was on the other side of the pile of broken furniture.
On the other side he saw his mistake at once, the Bonefire was obvious, a bright irradecent bloom that feasted hungrily on large bones of some monstrous beast. Not too far away ere was a small rusted pump with a large chain covering it and surrounded by a wall covered with sharp metal spikes. Having learned from previous mistakes, he made a general inquiry if that was indeed the Bonefire and that that was the pump that pumped the means to quench it, to which suspiciously everyone present agreed, tables and chairs and ottomans, oh my! When he finally managed to dowse the Bonefire the Freehold began to change much more rapidly than one would have guessed.
One moment there was a room as described before and the next he was out on the open standing on a glacial scree, a few dozen paces away from, and not hundreds of meters, Dinyacout, the two rebellious servants, five astonished slave soldiers and fifteen dazed and terrorized slaves, the many servants, the food and the walls all gone. A dozen feet to the side stood Stanza resplendent in glass armour with a fell sword of the thinnest glass, standing a tall seven feet, hale in appearance and form. She nodded her thanks to her savoir and raised her blade in challenge. The Nameless fitted three arrows to his bow and drew back its string, three target arrows, and let them loose. Three soldiers dropped a second later and the rest scattered in fear. The next arrow skewered one of the rebels deep in its eye, killing it instantly as Stanza engaged the second in a duel of blades. Dinyacout rushed forward drawing his blade intent on killing his foe, who obviously was the one who he knew was drooling his steps unseen for the past week. The arrow was drawn, hand to ear and arrow tip touching the bow stave, fingers let go and arrow blooming with golden essence now speeding to target.
But arrows take seconds to kill things that take years to build, but sometimes it is important to see what those things are, since they are sometimes no different from you or me. the Nameless has no incite to these things but certainly Dinyacout does.
…
Dynast Ragara Dinyacout. Born into a lesser patrician household within the Realm, product of a brief affair between one young Dynastic youth, Dragon Blooded and a married patrician woman. The affair, which was one sided, something that happens all to frequently in the Realm, but at least it was not rape, was always something of a sore point with his father, but that was that. He was raised with love of both parents, the affair that troubled his father, was treated like a bad storm that had happened in the past, after all, you can't oppose Dragon Blooded, they are like the weather, something you just have to learn to live with.
Esteguard Island is nominally part of the Eagle Prefecture. There are no towns of note upon it and there is nothing of real note in the area other than a small grotto containing a few statues of First Age origin. The grotto itself is off limits to the inhabitants and there is a commenorative statue to when the Empress once stood here nearly six hundred years previously. The taxes are paid seasonally when one small boat arrives from the mainland on its circuit of the lesser islands on the coast. Nothing ever happens here, well not since the Empress was last here. In fact the only notable thing that has happened here is that nothing has ever happened here at all.
The island is about five standard miles across and almost eight long there is a small wood that has been been left to grow near the grotto, mostly to make the area more uninviting. There are a few stands of bamboo that is used in home construction on the island, but this close to the main part of the Realm there are very few storms stronger than a gale. The offshore fishing fleet consists of a couple boats and they catch all the fish that the seas can provide; the pickings are quite slim. There are a few independent farms, but most of the food production is through the one large Patrician run farm complex. The year round pleasant weather means that there is almost always a crop in the fields.
There is a shrine to the Immaculate Order, but there is no full time priest. It also serves as court for small disputes. In addition to the Partician compound with common housing and field workers, there are four small freeholds, the descendants of Realm soldiers who served their time in the Legions years ago, but whose descendants had not lost the land because of its isolation.
The are a few children in the area and because of the isolation and because there are so few here on this island, or low ranking patrician family and three other families with citizenship and children, they have hired a tutor to teach a few of the children. Dinyacout has a couple siblings who are younger than him and there are three other children close to his age, that provide sparring companions and a bit of competition.
RY696
Age 6 Eiji grandson of a citizen warrior smart, but not that smart. His future will have a role in the bureaucracy of The Realm.
Age 10 Waku son of a non-citizen farmer of the village. Smart and charismatic, the leader of the troop, a real free thinker. has questioned the order of things openly with the tutor and has been rebuked. Smart enough not to know not to do that again. But still actively questions everything, when alone and with the troop. His future is bleak. He is destined to pick up with his father an indentured farm worker for the Ragara Plantation, when he is old enough he enlists in the Realm Legions, is quickly promoted to Fang leader and then to Scale lord within a year, but dies in a senseless Dynast training manoever.
Age 8 Fukiko daughter of a citizen warrior. More the moral counterpart and opposite of Waku she believes deeply in the Immaculate Order of things and that people are born into the station that is best for them. She receives extra tutoring from her father in the texts and is destined to initiate in the Immaculate Order where she will reach second coil after many years and a total lack of political connections.
Age 8 Born Ragara Ukita in RY688 to low level Patrician family, no exalted member in well over three hundred years. The family has been administering this land or lands like it, on the periphery of society for two centuries and there is little likelihood that this will ever change. All his peers know that he is going to be the Patrician one day and that this will never change. They address him with proper titles when expected and treat him with deference, but when alone treat him as just one of them, which he really likes.
Due to an incident when the tutor first arrived to teach the young Patrician where he took the largest portion of a meal for all, because of his station, Waku called him "din ya cowt" which in the local dialect means Greedy, but could mean "din ya coot" in High Realm as Lion's Share. Ukita took the meaning as was intended, as a rebuke from an older boy. That was two years ago and the entire group are friends for the two hours after common lessons ends and before private lessons in the afternoon.
In the mornings, the four students train in a martial art (that instills discipline), read the histories of the Realm and do sums and learn more advanced maths. After all their morning activities, if the weather is nice they go out to explore, the weather has to be really bad for them to want not to do this. Exploration, on this little island consists of mostly investigating on how things work in the community and noticing the little nuisances of the island.
In the classroom, Ukita is the leader. The private instruction and the increased expectations have shaped him to be better than the rest and truthfully, the others are there on his father's sufferance. Waku, being the most common stock of all of them, knows that especially here, if he wants to continue attend classes, he must walk a fine line of aptitude and excellence; he does not want to appear to be better than Ukita and lose his chance to learn new things.
But, in the free time between morning class and afternoons, this is not so. Loose in the fields and the forests Waku is the leader. He is a natural leader, charismatic and wise beyond his years, with insight into how things work. His afternoons are spent working in the fields alongside his family and the other labourer families, so this is his only time to shine.
Fukiko and Eiji both receive additional instruction from their families in the afternoons. Fukiko pours over the texts of the Immaculate Order, because her father believes that closely following a pious life allowed him to be favoured with a long career in the Legions, where many others had died. Eiji is being groomed along with his older cousins and siblings for a life the opposite of his life, because of its many dangers and his own children's ineptitude with other things like managing his farm and the civil service.
The story picks up with my friend playing the role of Ragara Ukita, soon to be Ragara Dinyacout. Class has just ended and the weather is pleasant, so the troop has decided to go out and explore. The most popular destination is the forest and the Grotto therein facing out towards the Pole of Water and the deep ocean. Waku, who at any other place or time would have been destined for a career where his sharp mind would have been put to better use, except that he had been born a virtual slave, posed a question to the group. Why were the much older statues of the Anathema completely unblemished and looking just finished and the much younger Statue of the Empress was pitted and cracked. He pointed out that the statue of the Empress was cared for while the anathema statues were not and had nearly constant deep water waves crashing against them.
The children discussed this fact in length to the conclusion that the Anathema must have used their demonic powers to make the statues imperishable, except as Waku pointed then pointed out that the Dynasts could tame demons too, leading their thoughts that maybe the Anathema were better at mundane things like making statues, maybe all things were better once too. The entire conversation bordered on Heresy, that the time before was better, but the thought was still there. Only Waku, the one that with the least prospects in life, thoughts went there.
…
The arrow launched unerringly towards Ragara Dinyacout and did not deviate. The arrow pierced his armour and flared as bright as the Sun puncturing his chest and heart. Summer Breeze that Harkens to the Winter to Come stepped in before Dinyacout could die and revived him, saying that this was an appropriate trophy for him to remember The Nameless' deeds and to show his fellows the remarkable alliance that she had forged with this nameless exalt. The nameless devested the Dragon Blooded of his artifact sword
There was a brief clean-up the routed soldiers and the camp guards were killed to make the disappearance of the slaves, guards and Dynast complete. But after that the journey that remained was the difficult one: getting just under a score of drug addled slaves away and back to his home base a journey of about a thousand kilometers. The slaves themselves were grateful, the negotiations with the Fair Folk and Dinyacout was made in their presence and although none of them understood the actual words in the discussion, the intent was clear.
The path back was initially easy, but when it turned south back into the Realm controlled lands, the Nameless decided that they would head cross country and make for home directly. This was more difficult than expected. After a few days of travel the land turned from light northern forest in to boggy heath and from there into true northern marsh, what trees that existed were sickly and mis-shapen. Whether he knew it or not he had slowly stumbled into a large Shadowland. Normal Shadowlands, places where the Underworld and the living world become one place, are populated by many ghosts during the night, but this one was more sinister and even the ghost feared to tread in its bounds.
Luckily they encountered an artifact from the First Age traveling westward. It was the Legendary Holy Road from Wallport to Whitewall. The road cut the Shadowland in half and it's route was firmly in creation. The road is lit at night and warm throughout the winter and its stone surface is never in need of repair since its completion over two thousand years ago. The danger with leaving Shadowlands is that exiting destinations are dependent on the time of day, leaving by day one enters Creation, entering at night leaves you in the Underworld. None of them knew their peril, none of them found out; they left during the day.
The days were getting colder and the last few days were completed in the marsh so everyone was wet and suffering from exposure. The warm stones though hard served as a better bed than any had had in years. Their cloths dried and they were warm. They traveled south from here to the city of Wallport on the coast.
The Nameless contacted the Guild there and sought to sell the Artifact sword. He did not know its true value, but he did know that a sword would not feed and clothe the slaves though the cold winter months to come. The Guild gave the Nameless a talent of silver and four promissory notes for the same amount as well as clothing and supplies and transportation to the secret and already scouted out landing location nearest his home. He also bought their silence with the promise of more artifacts to come.
…
The Nameless brought his charges to a base camp that he had scouted out in hopes of bringing in supplies and building future for his people. He contacted Yemurdral in hopes that he had forfilled his part of the bargain, to contract some help to build a start for his dream to overthrow the Realm in the Slave States. Yemurdral did not let him down. He told the Nameless that there was a ship load of supplies with some expertise waiting for his return. There was a ship with supplies, (axes, saws, winter clothing, winter provisions and more) along with a captain and ten oarsmen to bring the craft along the coast and inland as far as they could go.
Elated by this development he had the boat moved to where he had stashed the freed slaves, at the camp that he established his first rescue, Egoj. The nineteen freed slaves himself and the eleven hired hands headed to the area of the coast where the expedition was to start inland.
A deep bay was discovered that ended in a small river. The river was small, it was little more than a creek and most of the people had to disembark and pull the boat up e river. Not far up the river valley the the tidal creek ended at a mound of rock haphazardly piled across the valley floor, a small trickle of water spilled over the top. This seemed to be the start of the overland journey, but upon reaching the top of the pile, a large deep lake was found on the other side; the rubble was a ruined dam that must have been built thousands of years ago.
The boat was unpacked and hoisted over the rubble and into the lake. The boat was reloaded and the group set off. The lake was narrow and long, it filled up a large river valley. Days later they finally ran around far to the north of the coast and in close proximity to where the Nameless wished to set up the camp. The freed slaves, the ship captain and the ten labourers set off into the wilds with the lone Exalted leading the way.
When the correct valley was reached, following a stream from the river valley, the Nameless enquirer with the ship captain, Eiri Draq. Eiri Draq was not always a ships captain, more precisely he was never actually a captain, but a Guild Caravan Master, someone familiar with the entire North and an expert of surviving winters in much harsher climates than where the Valley was, but since he did have these expertises, he would be able to help this small group and hopefully allow them to survive.
When they arrived, Eiri stated that the group had only a short while before Winter would set in and there was a lot of work to do. Set up a habitation, set up latrines, setup work houses. The Nameless had bigger plans, he wished to setup a society, but the village and the Winter would have to come first. The work had to begin right away with no rest.
As it was Winter came earlier than expected, but the first Longhouse had just been completed, although the insulation was not complete and there were lots of holes that needed to be filled to make the room cozy. The walls were woven, smaller trees and branches woven through posts set into the ground, the weave hammered tightly in place. Eiri would have preferred a double wall, but given the time, he set a goal of a single wall and hoped it would be enough. The walls met at the top where there was an opening for smoke. A second barrier was created when the outside of the wall was covered with the canvas from the tents. A large pit was built so that during the winter, so loggers might saw boards and cut wood from trees felled through the cold months. "Logging is easier to perform," Eiri explained, "as it is easier to move large logs along snow and ice than along the ground." Winter did see a lot of construction materials get built for the warmer seasons.
The Nameless took this time to try to get to know the people that he saved, who they were and what they did prior to 'joining' his merry band. There were nineteen in all:
Shuìjiào, a native from An Teng, was not a typical slave from the Slave states; she was an import, a bed slave. Actually she was more of a proffessional Courtesian than a slave, an owned one. She had been raised to serve Dragon Blooded and knew of no other profession, but she was quick witted and was blessed with high potential. Trained in esoteric arts like e Tea Ceremony, massage, penmanship, poetry and in the arts of the pillow, she was many things. She was also a cunning linguist, speaking her native Firespeak., Realm common and Riverspeak. In addition to her bridled wit, demure beauty, she was trained in seduction and seduced the hardened Solar Exalt.
Pǎo, also an An Teng native, was Dinyacout's personal chef, a role that he continued with the crew.
Xueyou assisted Dinyacout with dressing armour and acted as his servant he was an indentured slave from the Realm proper. He was pleased that he was freed and wished to serve the Nameless however he wished him to. There was more than a suggestion that Dinyacout used him as a bed slave too.
Nukkua was a blacksmith in his old life, but only speaks Woodspeak.
Jäger was an ex slave soldier who tried to run when he was given a chance. Seeing his training and discipline and being a person who chose to try to run, even though he was given a position of power over other slaves, the Nameless promoted him to Sherif when he himself would be absent in the future. He only spoke Riverspeak.
Bhāgō was a woodworker before she was sent along with Dinyacout. She only speaks Firespeak, but was given prominence because she could direct people on how to work wood.
Coenhelm was a man whose profession was of little use in the wild, a paper maker. He spoke only Realm Common.
Takara spoke Riverspeak and like many from this group, he was a bureaucrat.
Yoshimochi was a runner messanger when she was a slave, she spoke only Woodspeak.
Dhu'āmeh spoke Firespeak and she too was a runner messenger.
Chīfàn spoke Firespeak and she worked refining the purity of drugs as a slave.
As did Leofstan, but he only spoke Woodspeak.
And Apik who spoke Waterspeak to make it by in her life.
Aethelfrith was a bureaucrat who only spoke Realm Common, in his former life.
As was Guotin but only spoke Realm Common.
Machi spoke Waterspeak and he smelted iron for work.
There were some hidden treasures in the lot though, Venandi a man who spoke Riverspeak, Realm Common, Firespeak and Waterspeak.
And Intuthu a woman who spoke Waterspeak, Realm Common, Woodspeak and Riverspeak. Both were responsible for translating disparate reports into Realm Common for filing to the Realm.
…
After getting to know them a little bit he decided that the bunch of them needed a few laws to govern there actions, so that they knew they could not do anything that they wanted. The most basic of laws that they do not do harm to one another, and he hoped that that would be enough.
