Sworded Tales

The young Falleen boy sighed with contentment.  Looking down over the rim of the plateau on which he was perched permitted him the dazzling and disorienting view of the sun cracked plains below.  The cool night air raced up the cliff face and whipped his thin scalp lock out behind him in an erratic dance.  How he loved the Arkadian Steppes and the serenity they induced.  He often dreamed of leaving behind his heritage and running free amidst the outcroppings and wildlife of the arid Steppes.

“They are moving away,” came a firm voice from directly behind the boy.  The timbre of those words carried authority and confidence, and well they should.  This rugged Falleen man was S’Ranas Issquau, teacher and protector to the young charge crouching before him.  Lowering the binoculars from his face, the pale orange eyes of S’Ranas fell upon the young countenance as it turned to face him, and the man marveled at the peace this place brought to such a troubled mind.

“I thought you said we wouldn’t see another soul tonight,” mocked the boy mildly. Continue reading

A fifty foot climb awaited them before they would achieve the top of the cliff face, and although each individual had reservations about making the climb, all objections went unspoken when placed in contrast to descending toward the day’s previous noises.  The group began their ascent with minor encouragements offered at opportune moments.

As the last of the party crested the top of the clogged ridge, a Shredder burst forth from a nearby thicket, taking each of the travelers by surprise.  The engrained reflexes of the Ranger were all that postponed the female Halfling’s grisly fate.  As it was, the Shredder catapulted into the small clearing, arms, limbs, saws and gears flailing, and with a wicked sweep of its arced momentum, the Human was no more.  More precisely, the top half of the poor man went plummeting back over the precipice, cleanly severed about mid torso.  The rest of the freshly sectioned corpse collapsed in a wet heap, with slow disjointed movements and splashes of crimson ichor to mark the soul’s passing. Continue reading

“I cannot die,” Gilgallon said to him, her words tinged with pleading.  One of the girl’s delicate hands slid up the unyielding stone nearby, her chill grip seeking to ground her belief by latching on to something familiar.  For a few desolate moments, nothingness was all she encountered.  Then their bony fingers met, hands joining comfortably as their thumbs wrapped around each other in an affectionate embrace.

“I know, my dear,” the man known as Valentine whispered delicately into her mind.  The skeletal mask which gazed down upon the recumbent heroine conveyed no sympathy, no love, only the eternal rictus which was etched into its flesh from millennia past.  How anyone could find solace in the grim spectacle was truly a mystery, but Valentine’s presence seemed to put Gilgallon at ease, if only for the moment.

“Why must I sleep here?” she asked, each word puffing from her lips in a dense plume of fog.  The heat had long been sucked from the surrounding area, and the corresponding energy swirled violently in the cobalt blue of Gilgallon’s eyes.  Eyes that momentarily glistened with a thin sheen of moisture.  In an instant, those pools glazed over into frozen lenses. Continue reading

Liam “Tray” Traymoore aka Operative Grimm

Memory’s a funny thing.  Slippery and veiled one minute, crystal and haunting the next.

I have perfect recollection of my hands on the detonator just before the explosion shredded them into extinction.  Seventeen months ago that was.  This morning, I couldn’t remember what coffee was called.  Chopper I called it.  “Give me a cup of mother crackin’ CHOPPER!”  I screamed at the Sullustan behind the counter for the fourth time.  It didn’t elicit any improved recollection from the misfiring brain cells or a better response from the paling java jockey.

Memory.  It dances a tango of its own free will when you experience a detonite explosion at ground zero and survive. Continue reading

Sharrock

“Our primal instincts are what has allowed us to survive this far.  Suppress them long enough, and you will evolve into extinction.”

Sharrock struggles against civilized suffocation as she wreaks her own special brand of havoc across Paragon City.  Her strong moral compass guides her in her hunt against the seditious predators which abound, but her ferocity often paints her in a poor light in the public eye.

Every dawn brings with it new challenges for this warrior who sees herself as the next step in the evolutionary ladder.

Prismatic Hugh

“The rainbow is the real treasure.  There is no pot of gold.”  –Prismatic Hugh Continue reading

The smell of death is singularly memorable.  We’re not talking the pungent after waft of roadkill happened upon some days gone by.  Nor are we deluding ourselves with fresh spilt blood uncorked from behind the crosshairs of a rifle.  Even the specific reek of cancer devouring from within doesn’t truly hit the mark.  No, I’m referring to death that stalks, the kind that has teeth and that isn’t afraid to use them.  I would go so far as to say that encountering that particular stench is scarring and haunting in the extreme.

For all the naysayers of the world, I invite you to work the chute for a few days, and then see if you can ever sleep in the open air again. Continue reading

Upon reaching the logging station, Gerard found himself confronted with a Human, a Dwarf and one of the most beautiful Halflings he had ever had the curse of laying eyes upon.  A band of adventurers by claim, the trio needed to make haste across the north ridge of the sallow wastes toward the Goblin kingdoms to the east.  Important business awaited them amidst the green skins, and Gerard was none too concerned with what those affairs were.  He was a simple lad, and clear cut in his ways and means to achieving the soul satisfaction which allowed him his freeborn beliefs.

The journey began as harmless as any would.  Several steps onto a well worn path, followed by several more along a less traveled way until they found themselves deep within the unforgiving thickets of the bayberry brush barrens.  The two Halflings had passed the time in their native tongue, Gerard relishing the opportunity to again hear the buoyant cadence of his birth people.  They discussed matters of no real import, content in the simple shared heritage and bloodline that bound them closer than either would openly admit to.  She professed some talents with the arcane arts and although never really having been exposed to any of the finer conjurations of magic, Gerard was enthralled enough to ask a few poignant questions and to make some relative observations with regards to his own understanding of things magical or mundane.  The first several days of their journey passed with blinding ferocity, and Gerard was beginning to dread the remorse he would experience when they’re time together would come to an end. Continue reading

Brin Stolsom was born to a seafaring family along the western coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars in the year DR 1750.  Raised in a salty, transient household with little paternal influence, Brin looked to her two older brothers as the strong father figures needed to develop a healthy identity. Brin’s father, Caleb Stolsom, spent a great deal of his time at sea, and her mother, Alina, had her hands amply full caring for the six Stolsom children during Caleb’s absences.

Brin’s older brothers, Caleb and Ethen, were influenced away from the mariner’s life by their mother, but managed to assuage their seafaring genes by working for a merchant shipping business that ran regular transports across the sea.  In time, they were beckoned by the lucrative call of the adventurer’s life found in Raven’s Bluff.  It was only a few short months after their first wayward adventurers that the brothers disappeared while questing near the Dragon Falls.

The entire Stolsom family shattered.  Continue reading

A snorting chuckle followed from Cyric’s throat.  Head lolling back and forth, he shook with the indignity of his current imprisonment.  Thinking his rage had vanished some unknown number of days earlier, Cyric was pleasantly surprised to sense the return of the reddest of his emotions.  The rage blossomed in him anew, reborn through simple utterance of his now fruitless cause.

The feminine enigma above him leaned a few inches closer, nostrils flaring as she inhaled and released the breath with a delicious hum.  The purring vibration in her gullet gathered the humid moisture collected between her breasts and caused a single drop to roll down her rich flesh.  The crystalline liquid fell from her inverted form and splashed on Cyric’s cheek and chin.  He recoiled from the searing touch of the droplet with a shocked, feral grunt, as though acid had been dripped onto his already feverish skin.  The pain which was invoked shattered the illusion of her insubstantiality.

“What are you?” Cyric whispered through clenched teeth.

“I am your deliverer,” the woman replied smoothly, with no hint of sympathy. Continue reading

Lillian Djorn was born in the frosty coastal town of Neverwinter along the Sword Coast of Faerun to a moderately wealthy wizard and his mistress.  Her father, Halmodar Zorath, was an arcane researcher for a small faction of a rather large wizard’s guild based in Waterdeep, who was enthralled with his work to an almost unhealthy level.  Jidae Djorn, Lillian’s mother, was a simple farm girl from a local family who had been sent to serve as a house maid to the group of researchers.  Were it not for the domestic ministrations of Jidae, Halmodar would have likely starved himself into unconsciousness with his work.  Their years of shared proximity and time eventually developed into a symbiotic form of love that would occasionally include sharing of the flesh when Halmodar was able to tear himself away from his studies. Continue reading