Sworded Tales

The woman’s assessment had been swift and feral, head to hands and arms to eyebrows to groin and back again.  Gerard ladled stew as the inspection took place, grateful that her shriek was brief and guttural.  With luck, their presence would be overlooked for normal nocturnal activity of the local fauna.  Still, he thought it best to mention the danger.

“There are considerable predators in this region,” he spoke in even tones, “I would recommend keeping the outbursts to a minimum.” Continue reading

On a rain swept hillock, a lone, stunted figure, enshrouded in a sodden ochre cloak ambled toward the western bank of the winding river, an undulating swath of silver-gray. With every dozen paces, a puff of smoke rose and trailed behind him. He paused, turning at his wide waist to look behind him, and narrowed his stone gray eyes to watch the windblown wisps coil, ever thinner, into infinity. He stroked his red beard and pensively tugged on an intricate plait as he studied the patterns in the dissipating tobacco smoke. His lower eyelids twitched and his gaze grew distant, as if watching more than a billow of smoke in the rain, but rather the very fabric of the universe unraveling before him and tantalizing him with tenuous tendrils of unfathomed secrets.

His upper lip curled with a slow drag on his pipe, and his eyes rolled to one side, as he awakened from a deep, if momentary, trance. Rôhn Roughbuckle turned back toward the river bank, and plodded over the crest of the hill, bringing the splinted anatomy of the bridge works into view. Continue reading

The black trailer was a tomb.

We had walked by it hundreds of times.  Him on four legs, me on two.  Had passed by the matte black finish and the decaying tires, the spider crack windows and the rusted siege engine of a hitch, had drifted on by without sensing the hollow heart of it, without ever offering it a second glance.  Until today.

Today, in the crisp loins of winter, the tomb whispered to us. Continue reading

Sharing lineage with ancient lemurs was never in the long range plans for Tanner Shyft.  Sailing, ship craft, exploration and ultimately settling with a brood of children, yes.  Were these not the nobler pursuits sought by the craftsmen in the coastal town of Baronesse?  His life journey had been cruising along with the graceful ease of the tidal flows.  Sailing was in his blood, and he had done so since he could walk.  He had already aided in the creation of several ships and had been designing his own sleeker reef vessels for navigating the precarious outcroppings which abutted the southern end of the continent.

All was well and good, until he undertook the exploring facet of his future self.  That was where he encountered the island.  That was where he became a werelemur. Continue reading

Blood Wound

Mark of the beast, carved in red
Red as a wagon, my blood was shed
Our eyes have met, and I still live
But next time the wounds are mine to give
The blood you spilled, against you will turn
And grant me the luck I painfully earned Continue reading

“Well, thank the gods for that,” replied the naked woman, relinquishing her threatening stance, “I thought you were going to curl up in a ball there for a minute.”

The woman shivered and turned her back on Gerard, retrieving the meager length of crumpled blanket.  Wrapping the fabric around her robust frame, she barely succeeded in securing it upon itself under one armpit.  “This is the best you could do for clothing?” she quipped over her shoulder as she returned to the fire and tossed a pair of logs onto the dwindling warmth. Continue reading

Marcus nodded thanks to Erellia and left her to go and stand next to Borlak and Katarina.  Marcus then waited for Kurn to prepare the animals, obviously thinking about what they might need. Once Kurn brought over the beasts, Marcus slung his chest on one of the horses, tying it down securely and locking it with a small key.

Borlak and Katarina joined Marcus without further preamble.  “Whenever Kurn is set to hand over the mule and tack I will be ready to go,” the barbarian offered. Continue reading

This weekend was my first time venturing into the conflict ridden world of Risk Legacy.  I have seen it played, have watched the sporadic explosions of tactics and emotion which come about in the accelerated endgame.  I was pleased.  I am even more pleased, tickled even, at the evolution of the game experience.  Stickers, and choices, and missiles, and pathways from which there is no return.  Burn the world, and you must survive in the ashes.  Awesome.

What I’m really interested in watching though, is the legacy development of the folks who are playing the game with me.  How will they change based on previous encounters?  How will the game play differently based on the history of this particular Risk Legacy universe?

<Hank Hill>  I tell you what.  </Hank Hill> Continue reading

Abernathy Thriss was a tax collector in the city of Alik’s birth, and Cerine Thriss taught literacy privately.  Alik was the third oldest of seven siblings, two brothers and five sisters, with one older brother and sister and a younger sister who perished from the Scarlet Rage at the age of three.

During his youth, Alik worked as an assistant in the literary repository known as Darfin Halls Chapterhouse.  He signed on for the rather studious task at a relatively young age and primarily due to the presence of an attractive Halfling named Cedrine Berrydew.  The maternal nomenclature similarities were lost upon no one, save Alik.  Enamored with the diminutive woman, the aspiring academic took the position to spend more time near the considerably older bookkeeper. Continue reading

Trinket Hunt

The sissy, Miss Prissy, is hiding so much.
She once handled this crayon with her delicate touch.
Draw me the trinket, the treasure she keeps,
Something to link her to the train track creeps.

It’s up in her room, in that cute little place.
Where she thinks it is safe from our little rat race.
But the time has come for the truth to be spilled.
About van Harkens, and Kathy, and the chyld who was killed.

So spin and whirl and skip and dance,
And show me the memory that gives us a chance,
To unite us toward our common goal
While helping put to rest this tortured soul. Continue reading