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Campaign Prose

Return to Lossefion's Campaign Notes

Here follows some scene setting work, mostly used in-character to thoroughly confuse some of the players. Included are some personal prose written by players to help flesh out their characters. It's organised roughly in chronological order. - Lossefion

Hitorii Danshin, The Man Alone

(Developed by Lossefion and Stark)

Hitorii Danshin, or The Man Alone, is a figure of modern myth in the Aluvian heartlands, and a man suspected to be alive today.

Ten years ago, the Bitter Forest shook with the sound of hunting Anathema. Demons strode triumphant, and a foolish sorcerer who drank deep of lake lit only by moonlight, also drank evil that hollowed her from within. The demon in her sought to bring others of her ilk into the forest of her host's birth - turning it into a very adjunct of hell pleasing to her masters. Lions were sent out into the world, deer stalked their hunters, and the rivers ran with the salted tears of crying women. The sorcerer was tricked and led astray, enslaved by the mastery she sought. She was tricked into a mockery of life, flesh moulding to the demon's whim. She made Widows, orphans and widowers, until he came.

From the north came soldiers, hardened to the battle. Prey did the Anathema seek among them. Hunters all, they hunted each other in turn. Days and then weeks were spent beating the brush. Two score and ten men, with armoured skin an inch thick, sought to no avail. Instead, the horror of flesh found them.

Through the trees, from the very rain it struck, knifing ten down where they stood. Their comrades were struck dumbfounded, and hastened in their retreat. Five more were lost in the muster. Their captain sounded alarum.

In the gathering chaos amid torrential rain, they fled through gully and tree. In the midst of them flew the Chimaera, striking deftly, as each made pass by tree, by root, by stem. Each man felled, uprooted, torn. Seperating the wheat from the chaff, did the Chimaera thresh the battalion, each talon cutting a life in its prime short. Each life’s story lost amidst blood in the soil.

Two score dead in the first fatal minutes. Ten good, worthy men left to stand against the monster. By a stand of ash trees, did their captain sound a rally. Against the green wood, did their spears shine bright. The Chimaera flew at them in fury, but could not dislodge them or their captain from their foundation. Blades flashed, points struck, and the beast was wounded.

It howled in anger, and folded in on itself, and then exploded outwards in a sea of ichor and teeth. Its limbs tore two men in half, and its claws disembowelled another. The good captain could not stand to see his men suffer so, and throwing his signifer down behind him, hewing his faithful hatchet at the sea of limbs as if hewing a tree. His order to flee did not go unheard. Tall he was, grand he was, Tragic he was, for he died beneath the onslaught.

A dragon fang, the last of the litter of wolves, and a mere cub left of the pack that day. Five men, and a boy. A den they need, to lick their wounds and gather their courage. To this end, they continue on up and up the hillside, darting through the rocky outcrops seeking best point of vantage.

Nature gifted them with a foundation, a rocky bowl of some strength with ramparts of living wood and stone. The way was narrow, the ground unsure. The men schemed and set the most fleet as bait to lure the terrible hound at their heels to this place of death.

The stripling set forth to catch his hunter’s eye. From every shadow was extinction, to every movement was his head turned. The fiend, deep in its cruelty, sought to savour this morsel as slowly as it dared. It revealed itself to him, step by infernal step, seeking to invoke fear in his heart. The heart of the stripling did not quail, and he tore weapons from the bosom of the earth itself, calling the monster pale coward, and defying it with his very voice.

The demon roared losing its interest in the play, and heading straight for the kill. The boy proved his fleetness, and stormed from the clearing stopping for naught, steering for the place of execution. He passed the gate, his comrades in wait in strong and hidden places. The gully ended with a cliff barring any escape. He entered stood, and faced his pursuer across the broken, mossy ground.

His weapons in a heap at the cliff base, he drew his own sword, poor weapon against such hate. His defiance gave the monster no pause, but drew it forward for the old wolves of the pack to tear into its flanks. Their arrows flew true, striking the belly of the beast. It howled in pain, but gave no quarter. Another volley missed, and it turned its attention to those nipping at its heels. To the hunters’ horror its face was that of their captain, screaming obscenities. Faces of their brothers bubbled in its flanks as they wordlessly prayed for a release never to come.

The old wolves' jaws dropped at that, and their hesitation cost them dear. Their doom was upon them, in hellfury, tendon and tentacle. Thick ropes of gut and gristle wrenched from the belly of the beast, tearing one asunder, and dragging a second screaming within its entrails to be slowly digested from inside. The third had his face dissolved by a vomit of bile from the open maw. The fourth, his mind blasted by the sight gave himself gibbering to the tide of flesh, screaming mindlessly even as it engulfed him. The last, the oldest wolf pressed, pressed in deep laying open its throat again and again, even to have it seal behind the trail of his axe.

The boy, now forgotten sees now. There is now way past, no way round. There is only through. Shaken arm, pale sword at the ready, he lunges, past the threshing limbs, over the dead flesh, into the centre of the beast…and lands a telling blow. Its scream is high, pained. It is not a scream heard before now. This heartens the boy, brightens the boy, enrages the man. He grabs the hilt with both hands, begins wrenching it backwards and forwards within the flesh, a lever against the tide, the strength of two dragons in his limbs. His captain turns to him, eyes mad with pain. The maw opens impossibly wide, and yet he keeps cutting, wrenching at the beast, leaving wounds impossible – enough to kill any man thrice over, this beast is not even dead once. The ground shakes and trembles with the fury of battle, the sky reddens with the mist of blood. The very spirits of the storm in their tumble, give pause to the storm below. One must give, one must yield, one must surely die.

And one does.

And it is not the boy. It is not the boy at all. For he is a man. The man Alone.

Dividing The Spoils

A lengthy piece derived from correspondence between the circle.

A dream on the journey home...

The steady thrum of the waves overtakes you as the Reachfar speeds towards home, and the motion rocks you to sleep in the spartan though not uncomfortable cabins you berth in....

She stands at the prow, weeping, weeping.

There is nothing you can do to console her, you know. You watch the flickering mocking light of the city burning and dancing behind you, waving an insulting goodbye.

In the shadow, in silence she is weeping, weeping.

All that you have ever known is gone to ashes, gone to dust. You have taken ship and fled East, the siren song of your ancient souls' home. There are those among you that have driven armies before them, that have taken task with gods, monsters, and yet it is your fellow men and women that have cast you forth. There is a risen a pall of smoke cast across the heavens, and the stars are obscured. Touche, you think, for your ancient advisors are nowhere to be found. Your faithful, faithless retainers and majordomos, some whom you have raised since birth have cast off their oaths of loyalty and duty, and made their own play for the reins of authority. Some yet stood with you, dragons' blood being spilled on both sides. The dance was done 'ere the feast was yet over.

In the moonlight, over the waves, she is weeping, weeping.

The end of the five day feast was not yet come, but you had declined to partake in the City, choosing instead to renew older, more personal ties. There it was that you were caught in the echoes of screaming, that the sound caught you before the treachery did. You could not bear to face them, your fellows, it was not your way to war against those whom you had fought alongside - others played those games, not you. And so, you all fled...

Her salt tears stain the seas, her cheeks wet from weeping, weeping.

The gateway to the East perhaps yet stands open, Deheleshen and her towers, her might and her strength old friends. You join her at the prow to comfort her, putting a hand around her shoulders and squeezing lightly. It will be alright you say, hollow though the words sound. It is easy to think that there you may yet return, though it may be your last stand will be in the nexus of your own strength. You dismiss the dark thought with an angry toss of your head. You have allies that others do not, and therein lies your strength.

Even so, there will be pain, and blood, and death 'ere the end. You know this, and you see the fires that lick the underside of the skies ahead and behind, and know there will be

Weeping, weeping...

...and with the tears staining your cheeks, you waken, as though your heart should break.

Letters Home, Never To Arrive

Stark's letters to his family.

Arrival

A piece, composed by Enkou, describing Max's welcome home.

The Tomb at Erdinghast

An exercise detailing what lies beneath a broken manse.