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Post by Mairi Ciarach on Dec 29, 2016 4:44:53 GMT
The world was vast and, at times, infinite. Woodlands bordered mountain chains, deserts lay beside vast oceans. Everywhere one went all was tied to all and in the endless, timeless games of the world even nothing was tied to everything. It was just as much a question of where one was from as to where one was going and, with the various realms recovering as they were, or weren't in some cases, it was necessary to understand where all stood in the grand scheme of things. For the Deamhan Fhole it was hardly a necessary item to know, but many clans at least kept an eye on their neighbors, human and vampire alike. For Mairi, however, the aspirations were greater and more profound. Power was ever at the edge of grasp, dancing on the fingertips of those who sought it. For Mairi, it was less a question of reaching out to take it, for anyone could simply take power. Rip it away like an apple from a tree to hold aloft as a trophy of their accomplishments. For Mairi it was more a problem of how to take the entire tree. For while the apply may give power temporarily to whomever may take it, whoever held the tree, the root of that power... It meant control. Control over her clan, her people, and more. Possibly much, much more. And so she found herself here, among the dreary mortal realms. They bored her, if she were to be honest. Always thinking in the short term, always aiming for a quick goal or victory. None played the long game, though some tried. Dynasties rose up, their goal ingrained among their descendants, but all eventually would fall. A chain was only as strong as the weakest link and without guidance it was a matter of time, not probability, that the chain would break. A drunken son, an ambitious daughter, a controlling parent, a murderous uncle... time, not possibility. It was the way of things, even among vampires, but for vampires things like revenge took centuries where humans took mere years to plot and plan. She'd decided long ago that the only path to power, the path she carved for herself, was to understand the realms. The lands that she would one day aspire to take by force and control as her own. The dwarves and the elves and the humans and much, much more needed to be understood, to an extent. Studied until their tendencies and idiosyncrasies were second nature. Whether it took a century or an eon she knew that her path started now, here, in Ashdell. She flicked a slender finger against the wineglass upon the table, her fingernail eliciting a musical tone from the crystal and garnering the barmaid's attention at the noise. With a hesitant smile, the woman came and refilled her glass to the brim, the wine bottle barely half full in her hands. "Will that be all, Lady Klassen?" the young woman asked, though Mairi was hardly one to judge age. Short of the old crones and tottering old men they all looked alike to her. For all she knew, the woman could be anywhere from in her teens to a middle aged mother. "Yes," she stated distractedly, only flipping a page upon the book laying upon the table. Thankfully this particular tavern had plentiful lighting where she needed only a single candle for lighting. Not that she needed it, her eyesight being supernaturally enhanced, but it was important to appear as a mortal in order to properly study such creatures. "... Shall I fetch you anything to eat, Milady?" the woman asked again, mild nervousness in her voice. "No, that will be all."The girl nodded once and left, her skirts whipping about her ankles so that only the astute could spot the haste in her step. The bright colors of her clothing caught Mairi's eye briefly and she glanced down at her own garb. Leathers and exotic furs, it was the garb of someone from the far north. Granted, she'd shed most of the outer layers, keeping the bare minimum as any mortal would have probably perished from the heat of the clothing, but it sufficed for her purposes. Pale skin matched clothing of the coldest realms where the people saw little sun. It disguised her well enough, most thought she was who she said she was, though she knew that most were nervous around her. That was something she couldn't fix, or at least something she knew not how to alter. It was natural, she supposed. Sheep were always skittish around the wolf, sheep's clothing or not... Stormwall
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Post by Stormwall on Dec 29, 2016 5:54:54 GMT
Three days his scouting crew had been back from the mountains of the Bund, and Stormwall still couldn't get the chill out of his bones. He sat by the fireplace, dominated it really, four legs tucked under him to put his flank by the blaze. The proprietor had to reach over him to add more wood; Stormwall apologized each time. Each apology called up memories of the Bund's lethal politesse. When he glimpsed other faces here, he saw the pale vampires and halfbloods in their black armor and finery. That woman in furs, reading a book - she could have been one of them easily. So could the pale silversmith who'd just come in for a drink like he did every night.
If vampires had wanted to infiltrate Coalhurst, Ashfall's capital would have afforded them all sorts of opportunity. Daylight was a luxury here, thanks to latitude, cloud cover, and ever-present smoke. Stormwall let similar worries play out as a mental game of sorts, trying to come to terms with how thoroughly the Dead Princes had spooked him. He could keep his fears in their proper place. There was no reason for paranoia and many good reasons argued against it.
Even if the woman with the book could have passed for one of the Dead Princes with ease
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Post by Mairi Ciarach on Dec 30, 2016 21:12:29 GMT
The wine was decent, as far as wine went. Which was to say that it didn't grate upon her palette as she drank it. It didn't necessarily sustain her, but she'd fed a little over a week ago along the road to Coalhurst. She wouldn't need to feed again for, perhaps, a few more days. Perhaps longer if she needed to. That was the advantage of being Deamhan Fhole, she felt. Unlike her foppish cousins in their vaulted castles and high towers she needed to feed only occasionally where they fed nigh daily. Whether from choice or by necessity, she didn't care, for it made them weak in the end regardless of the reasoning. She glanced up from the book upon the table, a tome she'd purchased a few days before on the relatively dull history of the region. It was dry and dusty and occasionally spewed political dogma in one direction or another. Less a definitive work of fact and more a tabloid in some ways, but the nuggets of truthful information were useful for the most part. It was just a nuisance to dig them out of the pages one by one. For once, she wished she'd brought a thrall to do the dirty work, but that would have brought on unnecessary attention. Attention she felt all too keenly already. Amid the hustle and bustle of the tavern she felt the occasional eye upon her. She was used to the furtive glances and hidden gazes on occasion, usually from the young men of the area and her usual source for feeding. This, however, was different. A mixture of curiosity and, perhaps, suspicion... perhaps more, perhaps something else. She began to wonder if she was becoming paranoid when she caught the movement of a turned head from the corner of her eye. A figure towards the fire, it appeared. One who smelled neither of horses nor humans and yet heavily of both. Her brow furrowed slightly as her mind applied word to collective scent. "Can I help you, Centaur?" she called to the figure at the fire. Stormwall
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Post by Stormwall on Dec 31, 2016 3:53:00 GMT
Mairi Ciarach"I wasn't staring," Stormwall rumbled. One flank warm and the other cold, he stood and turned a hundred eighty degrees, then sat down again. His tail knocked a chair aside; it barely kept its feet. Now that he'd adjusted himself rotisserie style, he refocused on the pale woman in her furs. "You just reminded me of someone I met recently is all. I was wondering if you were related. Fine lady, lives far up north. I've just been from there. Powerful thirst those people have." That was about as far as he could go on the subject, at the moment. For all his experience, the Vampire Counts of the Bund had unsettled him in a serious way.
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Post by Mairi Ciarach on Dec 31, 2016 4:33:00 GMT
She let a careful, subdued smile come to her face. The centaur could have meant truly anything, but perhaps he had meant something fairly specific. She figured he was guessing or, perhaps, fishing for information. Answers, perhaps, but nothing more. If he knew something, he'd have certainly reacted by now. Even the most peaceful of the living were quick to action when confronted with vampires. "Oh, I'm sure," she stated blandly, speaking vaguely in turn. "Most from the north are rather... deprived, I've found. Most things that satiate the palette can be found in more abundance here, further south. Music, wine..."
A slender finger flicked out, striking nail against crystal. As the barmaid came to refill the glass, Mairi fixed the centaur with a quizzical, though cold gaze. "... Company. All in far greater supply in the southlands, I've found. The north has very little to give in comparison," she took a sip of the fresh glass before continuing. "That said, most of the folk here tend to regard those of us in the north as 'all looking alike', I believe the term is? What, pray tell, takes you into the northern wastes, centaur?"Stormwall
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 2, 2017 1:20:32 GMT
Mairi Ciarach"A frostbitten woodsman came in with a tale of mountain castles and the smoke of forges, farther north than Ashdell's people tend to go. The Sovereign Guilds asked me to take a party of scouts and find out if there was any truth to it." Hr shrugged. "Or maybe it was the cold talking. The frost had gotten into his blood. "So we went up the way he'd come. We saw the castles in the peaks and the smoking valleys. We saw a city in a volcano's heart. Dead knights in black armour. Pale lords and ladies with names we couldn't pronounce. If you asked me to write the name of their kingdom, I wouldn't have a prayer."
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Post by Mairi Ciarach on Jan 2, 2017 1:43:00 GMT
An eyebrow raised, her forehead wrinkling if only slightly. She wasn't hugely certain of some city in a volcano, though she hadn't exactly looked into things in that locality in quite a while, but the rest sounded more or less exactly like her kin in their own little kingdom. Or was it an empire? She wasn't entirely certain nor did she ultimately care. "Let me guess: some kind of guttural language?" she asked, a hand gesturing dismissively in the air. "Licktenfroyd or some other such nonsense? Lots of armor plate, formality, and strict rules set by, as you said, pale lords and ladies that the sun couldn't touch if it tried?"She took a sip of her wine and slid a small marker into the book upon the table before shutting it. The conversation at hand has become far more interesting for the moment. "If I'm right on where you were, you're very lucky you didn't wander further west."Stormwall
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 2, 2017 2:22:47 GMT
Stormwall snorted. "And every one of them with their own set of laws, aye, those are the folks I met."
Knowledge of the Leichenfurstenbund was supposed to be secret, more or less. The Guilds didn't want to incite panic, especially given the size of the force that had ridden into Silverclaw Valley not long ago. But this woman didn't seem to be the panicky type, and he had every hope of learning something useful from her. Both he and the Guilds could use all the intelligence they could get. For example...
"Why's that? What's west of them, apart from Mystmarch far off at the coast?"
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Post by Mairi Ciarach on Jan 2, 2017 2:38:56 GMT
"Their cousins," she stated simply with a shrug. "They're a little less... structured, so to speak. More clannish than lords and ladies. More bestial, I hear, and hostile to outsiders."Figuring that at the root of every story was a kernel of truth, she decided that perhaps a little hyperbole would be in order. It was, after all, useful to ensure others feared her people and, perhaps more importantly, herself in the long run. A little misinformation was key to crippling morale at a key point. For her, and her future plans, a little fear-mongering might pay off eventually. "They're a bit more... thirsty than their kinsmen you've met. I hear they take slaves who are never seen again and can vanish into the forest as if they were never there. Some of the folk that live near there have stories of figures watching from the trees or the sounds of ghostly drums in the distance. Some even say they can feel a beating heart from a mile away and track a man by the sound of his blood in his veins alone. I've seen this land from a distance in my travels but went no closer than a nearby mountain range. Rumor has it they occasionally raid outwards into nearby villages and towns with no survivors, but I figure someone must survive else we wouldn't have the stories. The locals call them Deamhan Fhole."Stormwall
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 2, 2017 2:53:17 GMT
Mild dread settled over Stormwall. He hunkered close to the fire again.
"Just my luck. No doubt it'll be me that the Guilds send to look into that." For a moment, he considered simply not telling them, but given the Bund's force projection capabilities, the Guildmasters needed as much of the big picture as possible.
"Not my first choice of errand, I'll admit, but someone's got to do it. And better me than some two-legs who can't outrun blooddrinkers." He grimaced. "I'd be obliged if you could tell me anything else about them or their cousins to the east. They just rode into Silverclaw Valley, see, a couple thousand of them."
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Post by Mairi Ciarach on Jan 2, 2017 3:10:58 GMT
"I don't know much about the lands east of them, outside of the basic mannerisms and seeing one or two in passing," she lied. She'd met quite a few up close and personal, both on and off the battlefield. They were foppish and had too many rules for her liking, but that was neither here nor there for the current task at hand. "The only other thing I can think of that might be beneficial is that you're better off going there during the day, but that's only marginally less dangerous than going at night."Mairi leaned back in her chair a bit, secretly enjoying the spinning of tales for what she felt was some poorly educated sap some guild or another was trying to regularly get killed for whatever reason. She figured this was probably why old timers liked telling stories the world over, though she doubted it was for the same reasons. "I've heard they don't fear the sunlight and can walk about during the day as they please," she stated, pausing only to take a sip of wine. "Normally I'd put that sort of thing down the hearsay and tales, but some of these rumors about villages being raided... well, some were found because of the plumes of smoke from what I've heard. From what I understand, someone has to be around to light the fires in the daytime for that to happen. It could be bandits, but even if you consider that most of them could be bandits, there's the small number left that you can't explain. Thankfully, even then from what I understand if all this were true, you'd think they'd have conquered the region by now. But enough of tall tales. What's your name, Centaur? And what's this about some sovereign's guild? Do you work for some king?"Stormwall
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 7, 2017 15:35:11 GMT
Mairi CiarachWorrisome stories, true enough. No question, he'd have to pass it along to the Guilds, and their reaction -- in the context of the recent Leichenfurstenbund expedition's discoveries -- would be to send him. At least he wouldn't have to worry about vampiric cavalry. Ideas spiraled across his mind, unbidden. If the space north of Ashdell's enchanted forests was dominated by two very different cadres of vampires, some kind of magic might be in order. He'd seen the gryphon Velaeri and the Dwarven paladin Aldaecer repel the undead en masse, at a whim. Perhaps something ritualized, larger, permanent -- a fence of sorts. If their magic could do it, maybe the Council of Magi down by Pakellan could do it, or the Runic Circle of Mystmarch, or the Foard of Maesters in Elbion. Those three were probably the most accomplished and reputable magical institutions on the continent. Surely someone knew how to build a barrier that would keep out vampires and allow everything else to pass. The largest obstacle might turn out to be the forest itself, the danger of placing remote markers or ritual sites or whatever might be required. "I'm Stormwall," he said with a smile. "Here in Ashdell, even right here in Coalhurst, the King is ceremonial. The Guilds rule. Mainly the bigger ones: woodworkers, blacksmiths, pewterers, furriers, and so forth. I work for them, fairly often."
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Post by Mairi Ciarach on Jan 7, 2017 18:21:53 GMT
"I wasn't aware that the guilds here were that organized," she stated blandly. She was, admittedly, mildly impressed. Most of the clans couldn't figure out who the next chieftain was, much less organize similar jobs into one organization. She had to give the mortals some credit, she supposed. As much as they were cattle, they were rather industrious cattle. "Which guild sent you up to meet the pale folk?" she asked after a moment. Now curious on why various guilds would want to expand into foreign regions, much less dangerous ones run by her distant kin. "I wasn't aware there was any interest in that region, much less around it."She fixed the centaur with a mild look, mainly out of curiosity than anything else. "And why would some guild send you to Deamhan Fhole territory? That's almost certainly a death sentence. No one comes out of those highlands alive."Stormwall
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 8, 2017 0:15:27 GMT
"The Sovereign Guilds' leaders, in council, handle most of Ashdell's relationships with the outside world. When they send me somewhere, they usually do it together. So for example, when a nation is discovered on the other side of the forest, some guilds worry about armed threat. Others worry about competition. All of them wonder what kind of market the scouts will discover. Now apply those priorities to the Deamhan Fhole. The Guilds will want to know what kind of risk they face. Vampires are currently conquering Silverclaw Valley, after all: they're a serious issue. And I guarantee some of the guilds will look at those scattered towns and villages, and wonder what they could barter for timber, woodworking, tools, pewterware, coal, furs, and so forth. That's part of the threat they'll want assessed: the added risk of provoking the wrong kind of interest by sending trade caravans to those remote towns." Stormwall raised an eyebrow. "I don't suppose you could speak to that."
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Post by Mairi Ciarach on Jan 8, 2017 0:47:38 GMT
"I'm not entirely sure what those regions have to offer, but for some reason the peasants seem to continue to settle there," the woman stated with a slight shrug. "I do know that no lord or lady holds the territory, at least officially. It might be that the possibility of a Deamhan Fhole raid is preferable to taxes and levies, though."This was, for the most part, true. Most villages and towns were made up of those who sought to escape the eastern vampire kingdom or their descendants. Some emigrated south or further west, but most remained in place. For most, it was a matter of finances. For others, it was a matter of pride of their homeland, but for a select few it was more a matter of practicality: their chances of survival on the road or within a hamlet were the same, so why not enjoy a warm bed and a hot meal under solid shelter. "Your guilds would have to have someone who can navigate the northern roads," she stated nonchalantly as she sipped from her wine. It was running low again, but she refrained from refreshing the glass. Alcohol didn't affect her as it did mortals, but it had begun to grate on her palette, albeit only mildly. "They would also need someone at least passably familiar with the region, primarily because what few roads the region possesses are few and far between, at best. Very few travelers and even fewer trade caravans, you see. What trade is done in the region is kept within a day's wagon-ride. No one wants to be caught out after dark and I can't say that I blame them..." Stormwall
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