The World of Layonara
Character Development => Development Journals and Discussion => Topic started by: lonnarin on September 19, 2007, 02:49:15 AM
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Day One....
So strange are these people of Mistone. I have been here in the city of Hempsteed for a week now. Originally my ship was booked for Vehl, but I found the amnesties offered there... quite unappealing. Rather than afford tenants the necessities of such things as chamber pots (apparently in Vehl, those tend to get stolen from the hotel, so they no longer offer them) and the run down nature of the city's architecture as a whole, the entire city just felt... substandard. And the constant caterwailing howls of the concubines and the gigalos in the streets offering their "services". BAH! As if I should need nor desire such petty attentions, and why should I pay them if my genetic stock is so utterly superior? If anything, they should pay me and treat me as a king in their lands, these low-brow uneducated dullards. Am I not the descendant of Dread Basim and Malik before him? Gah... the indignity of coexistence. At lest now here in Hempsteed I won't be awakened in the night by shrieking and muttering drunkards tipping the oxen at 4 in the morning.
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Day 2
I must say I am impressed with the architectural designs of Hempsteed. It features the best of imperialist designs with its sharp hewn stone dadaist minimalism and luxurious marble. It betrays a sense of spartan utilitarianism minced with a capitalist's obsession with fine raw materials, and its many war memorials litter the landscape, betraying the Hempsteedian's tendency towards militant authoritarianism. Indeed, the guards would not let me bring my prized Baatorian Mastiff past the gates, so I have to keep him stored on his plane while in town. Then, to add insult to injury, I witnessed two others today summoning dire bears and tigers in the central fountain... the one which feeds the drinking water! Much to my dismay, the communal libations ever since have the sickening taste of bear and tiger grime, for they liberally soaked their mangy, disease ridden hides all over every inch of that drinking water! I alerted the guard, but he was too busy pacing to heed notice. Such is the heavy burned of the taxpayer's coin in the hands of a state which excells at mediocrity.
It was at this time that a rather well-dressed man with slick backed hair entered the town, and the people at the fountain started glaring at him... as if his mere presence were more obstructive than the circus of degenerate spellcasters and woodsmen. I did detect a good amount of fear in them though... I shall have to be wary of this Count Czukay.
Note to self: feeding avians willowisp essence can alter their growth. I suspect high alchemical value in transmutation.
I have managed to find some very amiable help in the days recent. First among them was the bear warrior Barek. From his almost totemic association with bear-kind, I suspect him to be some form of naturalist, though his fighting style seems more focused on exploiting the weak points of his foe after bopwling them over with a heavy legsweep... a very cunning tactic. This one seems to have the heart of a predator in him.
After him I met a very large barbarian by the name of Colo... he is a strange one. When I first noticed him was when I was in Hlint, resting in the tavern after my meeting with the Lady of Sielwood. I was just refilling my canteen when he ran through the streets, panting and hulking frantically. I tried to make small talk, mentioned "hey, I thought everybody was already asleep" and he just stared at me. Creeped both me and the Town crier out. The crier tried said hello, and the barbarian lared at us both, then ran off into the night with axe in hand and murderous intent. It wasn't until several nights later that I met him in Hempsteed where he was more talkative. He turned out to be a lot more coherent this time, and very useful in combat tactics, with a decent sense of humor. I still wonder though, who he killed that night in Hlint... and fear he may attempt to murder me in my sleep should he suspect that I saw any more than I did. He isn't one to cross.
Cassius is one I can identify with. He is an older man, easily in his early 60s, yet he defies his mortality and runs around in full plate, daring the hoardes of foes to come and die before him. He led us throught he swamps of lizardfolk to the alchemist witch, dealt with them quite handily. Then we made the mistake of exploring the caves outside Hlint... Those shamans stripped our souls from us with but a look. I NEED to find their spellbooks!
*a rough diagram of a dissected goblin's brain showing phrenological centers and chakras representing mind energy*
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Day 3
I've finally mustered enough gold for a crafter's license, 500. How this society manages to flourish is beyond me, they seem to be taxing the working class into starvation! To save up for this great luxury of being able to work for a decent living, one must somehow manage to accrue enough gold to field a whole fleet of oxen! No wonder with such disparity between the noble and working class there is such resentment towards the crown and this legion of so-called "adventurers". More like state-sponsored robber barons, extortionists and brigands are these heroes! Even their grandmothers are taxed this fee should they choose to cook anything more complex than fish fillet or crude barbecue. Imagine the hefty ego of the state; to go so far as to regulate the complexity of one's own kitchen under such fees and racketeering!
I've seen their effects on Hlint, their previous boomtown capital. Once the central hub of production, this quiet hovel has degenerated into a ghost-town slum. The one-flourishing local economy is now in shambles, their old prized crafthall and merchant center condemned for lack of upkeep. Such is what happens when adventurers come to a land, fill it with gold, then pull the red carpet out from under the peasantry. I can only imagine that Vehl suffered the same fate long ago, hence its deplorable conditions.
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Manifest Destiny
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There are no gods of fate but the feet of man which choose the path. No kings or generals but swords and blood which draw a border. No mandate from the heavens, but mindless cattle roused by faith to stampede and stomp out reason. It is by will and will alone that we set such things in motion, by the sweat of our brow that all things come to fruitation. To whom does the sweat of our brow belong to... the capitalist, the royalist, the devout? I say that which is ours remain firmly in our grasp... immolate all who say different.
Cast off these false gods of tribute, throw down their prayer books and raze their temples. Good, evil, righteous, brigandeer, all gods of war and tyranny given the right opportunity. What is the nature of a god, this thing of immortal adoration, so powerful and yet so insecure that it should seek the groveling of mortal peasantry? No god, say I, who acts as such be worthy of such adoration, let alone worship.
It is my theory that these so-called gods are little more than any other false demon prince or celestial trickster. What do the immortal and supremely powerful need our affections for? They poison the minds of the working man with their false prophets, pass around the collection plate to starving farmers as they sit comfortably in their ivory towers and glass cathedrals. These saints and sinners of faith, whether Corath or Toran, Lucinda or Grannoch, Dorand and Grand... all squabbling little children on a playground infinite. We are toy soldiers, left forgotten to rot in the sand. We are the criminals, executed by grubby haphazard fingers with fireworks for their fleeting amusement. Warriors, soldiers, poets we... all treated worse than dogs at the hands of the divine.
Cast off their ways, stab at the hand that beats. Even if gods such as these really existed, it would be our moral obligation to abolish them. Spare not the mutant, the preacher, the heretic. Burn his tomes and crumble his temples so that he may prey no more.
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Day 4
I have taken it upon myself to instruct Berak and Colo in a multitude of academic persuits. Good allies they be, but so much more effective if only they would open their minds to the plethora of knowledge about them! We decided to book passage on a field trip to Rilara to study the tower of Eon. Little did we know the adventure that would await us...
First, we were beset by a grubby little captain with a lip on him... he had the nerve to insult us to our faces and deny us passage based upon out looks! Hi tune would change soon however, when I ignited my torch and made it clear to him that I would pitch it down into his gunpower room if he did not close his wretched little mouth and sail! He was far from the onoly obstacle however. In his incompetence, he allowed pirates of the dark waters to catch up to our ship, and we had to fend them off ourselves, with our own blood spilled! The fight was close, but we were victorious... and as if by some miracle of chance of punishment of fate, the captain was among our casualties. Yet, our excitement at the prospect of owning our own ship was assaulted by the sheer clarion reality that none of us had the training to guide it! Relying upon the ship's compass and my geographical studies of the world, we deduced that Mariner's Hold was west and made a traight bee-line for it... into a series of barrier reefs. Our newly found fortune sunk beneatht he waves as we clutched to debris, paddling our way to the shore.
At least we managed to arrive to our destination in one peace, and the weather was amiable for historical tower seeing.
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Day 5
It seems that the Azattans of my home Saudria have little influence in these western lands here. Viewing the laws of Hempsteed, "evil" races such as giantkin, orcs, half-orcs, wemics, underdark dwellers and the like are stricken from the city gates under penalty of death. As if that were enough, it seems as though some people feel such boundaries must extend well beyond the gates... for we have seen the smoldering remains of a drow in the cotton fields, an obvious sign of violent racial discrimination.
The body showed no other signs of tampering, simply immolated and left to burn. Sadly, these western peasants have little mind for forensics, as they walked all about littering the crime scene with their footprints and haphazardly poking the corpse with sticks with their slack-jawed puzzled expressions. As such, ALL are now suspected of this crime.
Beside the body was a burning dark stone statue, simply made with little attention to feautures like a face, ears, or anything other than a meager outline of a man. This tells me that it was chipped in haste, and so heavy it is, that it must have been hewn from stone found nearby the crime scene, likely between the time of the murder and the body's deiscovery. Only two races could be so quick with stonecutting on such short notice; gnomes and dwarves... and gnomes hardly have the malice in them for such a crime. Therefore it is a simple conclusion that dwarves must be the source of these crimes. I shall keep my eye on them and study their xenophabic hate. What utter fools they are, racial strife is but a red herring compared to the ills wrought from the injustices and oppression of their feudalistic, theocratic government. "evil" is not inherent to any race... such moral constructs are merely fostered by the tyrannical governments in order to lull the populace into a nationalistic fervor, lacking all other qualities of freedom one may take pride in. The very fact this administration assumes a moral imperative on such nonissues as race exposes its vile underbelly for the bloated and exploitative debauchery it is!
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Day 6
Colo seems to have a penchant for getting himself into trouble. Apparantly he had unkind words between he and a woodsman known as Kuhren, a friend to Berak. Challenged him to the arena he did, but the short term memory of Colo is not very stabel. He was distracted by the offer of an iron greataxe and forgot all about the challenge he made to the man entirely! Berak, stout of will took up the challenge however, and fought the woodsman to a tie of one against one. They appeared to have mutual respect for one another, and patted eachother or the shoulder after the bout. Such comrodery from bloodshed makes little sense... in Saudria when one is defeated, we boast over their cripple form and make them understand their inferiority.
Strange is the way of westerners.
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Day 7
The mouth of Colo has caught up to him at last, the woodsman Kuhren found him again today and made fun of his seeming cowardess in not showing up at the arena yesterday. So the match was rescheduled for today and the two met in action. The woodsman covered himself with bark and polymorphed into some great cat form to face him, utterly destroying Colo with nary a scratch levied upon him with his protective magics. And then came Cassius...
With naught a single spell cast upon himself, the one-eyed tempest stormed the arena in fury and rended the woodman a new one in a contest nearly as one-sided as the one before with colo! Defensive were they, a long pitched battle with many glancing blows, but the advantage was clearly Cassius'. Without any magic and simply a defensive crouch, he sustained only one blow while the other dropped to the floor after 4 or 5 such swings... Cassius standing over him victorious. The woodsman gathered himself back to his feet to try and explain to him that it was Colo who started the bad blood, but Cassius seemed not to care... only that he was to finish it! Again and again, as the woodsman tried to make excuses, Cassius struck him down, screaming "This is what happens when you bully my friends!" Even when Berak came between them to explain the whole thing, he relented little, baiting Kurhen to come back to the arena and die again. Lucky are we to have this madman on our side! Even if there was misunderstanding, I doubt any explaination could temper the fury of his rage. Perhaps this Cassius was born for the arena.
I prefer to stay out of such petty conflicts and merely observe. Besides, the food services at the arena are wonderful! They should seriously consider demolishing that backwater tavern and hold all drinking and festivities in the arena... so much better is the entetainment.
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A Good Month or Two Later
I have been lax in my studies, only because I have been hungry for profit. The new business at hand seems to be in collecting nuts, for they are light enough not to brek my back, yet expensive enough to charge 2000 a bag for. Still, I must start setting limits for my customers. Tegan and Godim have taken orders from me which I have filled, yet finding them is very difficult. I shall soon send them reminders that they are to pick up their nuts soon, else I am to have little room in my pack left for other potential customers!
Meanwhile, Cassius and Berak train hard in smelting the gold ore we have been mining. Having shown them the gold mines, I have introduced a new price goal for smelting. They are both very unskilled at it yet, and have only managed to salvage a handful of ingots... yet once they master it they will be very rich indeed.
I need to make certain that they do not get too liberal in who they ask to assist us. Already I have encountered two very detestable poeple known as Lance and Randi, who seemed intent at the very first moment of our meeting to continually insult and disobey me on my own mining venture which I was leading! Needless to say, they will not be involved in any future ventures that I run, I will not stand by and grin stupidly as they insult me and profit off of my efforts! Any moron who thinks that insulting the person leading an expedition is a good idea deserves to be abandoned in the wild and ravenously devoured by wild boars.
Berak and I encountered another strange figure who seems to be having problems with a mercantile guild and some strange Red Witch. Apparantly she has laid claim to his efforts to the sum of 55% of his fortune. Such blatant use of the law for her own thievery is disgustingly cowardly. At the very least she should perform the thievery herself instead of hiding behind merchant regulators and torts! I will look into this, and such corruptable person who uses the government to impose hardship for profit is surely a tyrannical and unjust ruler.
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We must be careful of the giants of Rilara, for some of their leaders seem quite adept at magic and show far more cunning than their phrenologically neandertalic skull formations indicate. One one such venture, we found what appeared to be a survivor of the giants... a small human girl. It seemed her parents were dead and she needed a new home... possibly with me. I had to explain to her exactly what I do and what training a necromancer from childhood entails... she realized it was not her path by the time I mentioned the weeklong vigil with passive zombies locked in a ungeon as my father did for me. So squeamish are their bellies of death.... Cassius wished her to be his squire, which may have sufficed... yet then she reverted into her natural form... a 10 foot tall giant shaman. Enraged at having toyed with our heartstrings, we slaughtered him immediately.
Even more confusing was later that week when we found another little girl. We chose to bind her on sight and drag her forcibly to the rangers, where one among them who was searching for a lost necklace happened to be her father. The fool didn't seem to understand that we weren't paladins, and that we desired some form of reimbursement, and finally after much prodding, he paid us a thousand gold. His objections and angry comments were uncalled for... we did not save her for profit... if we had we would have sold her into slavery. All we were asking was repayment for the necklace. Truly, he is lucky were weren't "good" as the best thing that we should have done would be to execute him publicly in front of the rangers as a lesson as to what happens when you are an incompetent oaf who loses his child to rangers. Alas, we took a hand-off apporach and allowed her to go back into his custody... and still he growled at us! What a poor father to value gold so much that it takes precidence over his little girl's life... any other "enlightened" woodsman would realize that gold is worthless in the wilds with nowhere to spend it, especially when one's profession entails hunting ones own dinner and making ones own shelter.
In retrospect, we really should have kept the girl and offered her a better life, even that of a necromancer. A week in the dungeons with rotting dead is far less scarring than a simpleton father who allows his children to wander into the woods unchecked and complains when they are returned safely out of sheer luck.