Farewell to Arms vs Nuts - Sorrel mourns Faust, fails a job
Oct 21, 2021 9:13:04 GMT
Grimes, Queen Merla, the Sun-Blessed, and 4 more like this
Post by stephena on Oct 21, 2021 9:13:04 GMT
She heard the news on her way to the Dawn Market. Faust had fallen. The Tiefling bard had been one of her first companions after arriving in Kantas. There had been others since, but his kindness and mischief had felt important to her. His songs made her feel a little more at home.
He had apparently challenged something called Langston to single combat – the details were hazy – but the creature had brutal magic and Faust’s body and soul were torn apart.
Sorrel shook her head. Faust was not equipped for the front line and yet that was where she always found him. She smiled at the thought of his elegant jacket and gentle songs, remembered him standing against the darkness in Feywild, cursing Ulorian, or facing down ghastly, soulless coats of animated armour with poems and wild magic, always taking time to pick her out in his haunting melodies and give her fresh heart when everything seemed lost. Somehow, hearing his voice inspired her to fight harder, better, longer and with greater deadly force.
She remembered the rage she had felt when he fell in the Feywild, how she had leaped to stand over his body until healing could restore him, determined that nothing would touch him unless it killed her first. She wished she had been there when he faced his hour of peril to place herself between him and his foes.
Some said it was what he wanted – that there was magic to save him, but someone waited for him on the other side and his soul was hurrying to meet her. In which case, she resolved, he deserved the warriors send off, the House’s highest honour for the fallen, and she resolved to perform the ritual when she returned.
Perhaps because her heart was heavy, the job itself was a disaster. Ka'sam, a djinn, needed a memory pearl stolen from a distant cousin Jakarth, an ifrit with a mansion on the Plane of Fire. He wanted, he said, to extract his grandmother’s recipe for souffle. Sorrel doubted this. She felt uneasy about the entire enterprise. Memories were not to be traded or stolen. Beyond her weapons, Sorrel’s memories were all she had. How would she feel if the place she kept Faust and Sana was taken by mercenaries?
But the team was good – Kavel, Varga, Levuka, who fought velociraptors alongside her in the Angelbark, and a water genasi she had never met before but came with Varga’s highest praise. Sorrel was impressed. The fighting half orc rarely spoke highly of another’s fighting skills unless that praise was well earned.
It started to go wrong almost as soon as they arrived in the City of Brass. Sorrel saw squirrels darting over the obsidian walls of Jakarth’s mansion – there were no squirrels on the Plane, so something was awry.
They made it to the mansion gate with ease, and eventually over the wall, only to find the squirrels mocking them. They were servants of the Harmonious Order, an organisation that had fought devils and strove for harmony.
Sorrel wondered if she was on the right side.
The squirrels slipped through the mansion door with some cunning lockwork, while Levuka’s conjured mastiff warned of a strange light protecting the door. As Sorrel and Sabeline examined the lock, Sorrel’s lock picks ready for work, Varga shoulder charged the door and the party found themselves in a hall covered in years of dust.
The squirrel’s tracks were easy to find, but as they began to follow them a suit of armour detached itself from the wall and attacked.
Sorrel found it hard to aim her bow as the tears pricked her eyes. Faust and the animated armour of the Runaway Library was all she could see. Her aim was true, but her arrows pinged off the metal beast which attacked Varga with cold fury, hurting her badly.
Sabeline searched the ground floor, finding nothing of value, as the party took the worst of it from these metallic monstrosities. Sorrel could not have imagined a force that could stand against Kavel’s might and Varga’s fury combined, but both barbarians were wounded and Varga slipped close to death – only her fierce passion for life keeping her from oblivion.
Then Levuka fell, and Sorrel squeezed the juice of Autumn Warmth's berries into her throat to revive her. They were losing this battle.
Sabeline made it upstairs and heard the squirrels in the master bedroom. Sorrel fired off a few more arrows, for all the good it would do, and sprang up after her, kicking down the door in time to see the rodents flee with the pearl.
The party gathered briefly as the clanking of their foes came ever closer. Kavel found a diagram of some barbarian weapon and Sabeline picked up a diamond someone had left behind. Then Kavel blew the wind chimes, and they were in Ka'sam’s caravan.
His disappointment was clear, although Sorrel felt great pride at the courage of her comrades. She suspected, however, that she was ill prepared for the fight and wondered if, in fact, it had been better they had failed.
When serving a client whose motives you doubt, the love you feel for those beside you is all you can fight for.
And so it was, later that evening, she made her way to the edge of Bloody Creek and the river that ran from the Angelbark. She cut down branches and emptied the sack of expensive, unseasonal roses she had bought in the Dawn Market.
When the empty bier was ready, she considered it carefully. It was proper in these circumstances to send some symbol of the departed in place of the missing body. She touched her hand to her throat and to Autumn’s Warmth, the healing necklace that she had earned with Faust in the Feywild. This, she hoped, he would allow her to keep. More fitting, perhaps, was her other enchanted item, the cloak of many fashions. Imbued with the arcane, it could be made to resemble any style, colour, and quality.
With a word, she felt it form into an expensively tailored jacket that came as close to Faust’s as she could remember. She folded it four times in the House tradition, folded like the four winds – for valour, for honour, for service and for loyalty – then laid it on the raft of willow and roses and pushed it out into the river where it was caught in an eddy and turned briefly, waiting for the current to catch it.
They had many songs for the fallen in the House, but only one came to mind. She sang it softly as the river flowed by, carrying the best tribute she could pay her once and future comrade into the shadow. (Roughly to the tune of Danny Boy)
He died in service, so bury him in satin
Lay him down on a bed of rose and thorn
Sing to him the words of love songs
As the sun breaks through a joyless dawn
Carve his name in stone to remember
Gather up your thoughts, keep him safe in mind
Then sink him deep down in the river
For every soul must have its time.
As the river passes through the mountains
Let him come to rest under a blood red flower.
Those who pass will say here lies the hero
Who fell without fear in his finest hour.
A time to mourn and to stand together
Put on your best, boys, and sing his name
For those who serve without fear or favour
War and peace, these masters serve the same.
Then she shouldered her pack, and walked off into the dusk. She would have no sleep tonight. The dreams would come again, the pain and sweating, the nausea and the trembling. If she was in a city she would drink and fight and see faces that were not there. Each time she lost a comrade these nights were a little worse. Sometimes she would hurt those around her, and she didn’t want Toothy or Lucan to see her this way. She would walk for a few days, she decided, and carry the thoughts of the fallen with her.
She sang one more song as the darkness closed around her.
Mama take this sword from me
I can't use it anymore
It's getting dark too dark to see
Feels like I'm knockin' on heaven's door
Mama put my arrows in the ground
I can't shoot them anymore
That cold black cloud is comin' down
Feels like I'm knockin' on heaven's door
He had apparently challenged something called Langston to single combat – the details were hazy – but the creature had brutal magic and Faust’s body and soul were torn apart.
Sorrel shook her head. Faust was not equipped for the front line and yet that was where she always found him. She smiled at the thought of his elegant jacket and gentle songs, remembered him standing against the darkness in Feywild, cursing Ulorian, or facing down ghastly, soulless coats of animated armour with poems and wild magic, always taking time to pick her out in his haunting melodies and give her fresh heart when everything seemed lost. Somehow, hearing his voice inspired her to fight harder, better, longer and with greater deadly force.
She remembered the rage she had felt when he fell in the Feywild, how she had leaped to stand over his body until healing could restore him, determined that nothing would touch him unless it killed her first. She wished she had been there when he faced his hour of peril to place herself between him and his foes.
Some said it was what he wanted – that there was magic to save him, but someone waited for him on the other side and his soul was hurrying to meet her. In which case, she resolved, he deserved the warriors send off, the House’s highest honour for the fallen, and she resolved to perform the ritual when she returned.
Perhaps because her heart was heavy, the job itself was a disaster. Ka'sam, a djinn, needed a memory pearl stolen from a distant cousin Jakarth, an ifrit with a mansion on the Plane of Fire. He wanted, he said, to extract his grandmother’s recipe for souffle. Sorrel doubted this. She felt uneasy about the entire enterprise. Memories were not to be traded or stolen. Beyond her weapons, Sorrel’s memories were all she had. How would she feel if the place she kept Faust and Sana was taken by mercenaries?
But the team was good – Kavel, Varga, Levuka, who fought velociraptors alongside her in the Angelbark, and a water genasi she had never met before but came with Varga’s highest praise. Sorrel was impressed. The fighting half orc rarely spoke highly of another’s fighting skills unless that praise was well earned.
It started to go wrong almost as soon as they arrived in the City of Brass. Sorrel saw squirrels darting over the obsidian walls of Jakarth’s mansion – there were no squirrels on the Plane, so something was awry.
They made it to the mansion gate with ease, and eventually over the wall, only to find the squirrels mocking them. They were servants of the Harmonious Order, an organisation that had fought devils and strove for harmony.
Sorrel wondered if she was on the right side.
The squirrels slipped through the mansion door with some cunning lockwork, while Levuka’s conjured mastiff warned of a strange light protecting the door. As Sorrel and Sabeline examined the lock, Sorrel’s lock picks ready for work, Varga shoulder charged the door and the party found themselves in a hall covered in years of dust.
The squirrel’s tracks were easy to find, but as they began to follow them a suit of armour detached itself from the wall and attacked.
Sorrel found it hard to aim her bow as the tears pricked her eyes. Faust and the animated armour of the Runaway Library was all she could see. Her aim was true, but her arrows pinged off the metal beast which attacked Varga with cold fury, hurting her badly.
Sabeline searched the ground floor, finding nothing of value, as the party took the worst of it from these metallic monstrosities. Sorrel could not have imagined a force that could stand against Kavel’s might and Varga’s fury combined, but both barbarians were wounded and Varga slipped close to death – only her fierce passion for life keeping her from oblivion.
Then Levuka fell, and Sorrel squeezed the juice of Autumn Warmth's berries into her throat to revive her. They were losing this battle.
Sabeline made it upstairs and heard the squirrels in the master bedroom. Sorrel fired off a few more arrows, for all the good it would do, and sprang up after her, kicking down the door in time to see the rodents flee with the pearl.
The party gathered briefly as the clanking of their foes came ever closer. Kavel found a diagram of some barbarian weapon and Sabeline picked up a diamond someone had left behind. Then Kavel blew the wind chimes, and they were in Ka'sam’s caravan.
His disappointment was clear, although Sorrel felt great pride at the courage of her comrades. She suspected, however, that she was ill prepared for the fight and wondered if, in fact, it had been better they had failed.
When serving a client whose motives you doubt, the love you feel for those beside you is all you can fight for.
And so it was, later that evening, she made her way to the edge of Bloody Creek and the river that ran from the Angelbark. She cut down branches and emptied the sack of expensive, unseasonal roses she had bought in the Dawn Market.
When the empty bier was ready, she considered it carefully. It was proper in these circumstances to send some symbol of the departed in place of the missing body. She touched her hand to her throat and to Autumn’s Warmth, the healing necklace that she had earned with Faust in the Feywild. This, she hoped, he would allow her to keep. More fitting, perhaps, was her other enchanted item, the cloak of many fashions. Imbued with the arcane, it could be made to resemble any style, colour, and quality.
With a word, she felt it form into an expensively tailored jacket that came as close to Faust’s as she could remember. She folded it four times in the House tradition, folded like the four winds – for valour, for honour, for service and for loyalty – then laid it on the raft of willow and roses and pushed it out into the river where it was caught in an eddy and turned briefly, waiting for the current to catch it.
They had many songs for the fallen in the House, but only one came to mind. She sang it softly as the river flowed by, carrying the best tribute she could pay her once and future comrade into the shadow. (Roughly to the tune of Danny Boy)
He died in service, so bury him in satin
Lay him down on a bed of rose and thorn
Sing to him the words of love songs
As the sun breaks through a joyless dawn
Carve his name in stone to remember
Gather up your thoughts, keep him safe in mind
Then sink him deep down in the river
For every soul must have its time.
As the river passes through the mountains
Let him come to rest under a blood red flower.
Those who pass will say here lies the hero
Who fell without fear in his finest hour.
A time to mourn and to stand together
Put on your best, boys, and sing his name
For those who serve without fear or favour
War and peace, these masters serve the same.
Then she shouldered her pack, and walked off into the dusk. She would have no sleep tonight. The dreams would come again, the pain and sweating, the nausea and the trembling. If she was in a city she would drink and fight and see faces that were not there. Each time she lost a comrade these nights were a little worse. Sometimes she would hurt those around her, and she didn’t want Toothy or Lucan to see her this way. She would walk for a few days, she decided, and carry the thoughts of the fallen with her.
She sang one more song as the darkness closed around her.
Mama take this sword from me
I can't use it anymore
It's getting dark too dark to see
Feels like I'm knockin' on heaven's door
Mama put my arrows in the ground
I can't shoot them anymore
That cold black cloud is comin' down
Feels like I'm knockin' on heaven's door
