- Messages
- 74
- Race
- Jin'Norai
- Profession
- Student
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- The Ur'Duun
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- Character Sheet
Summer 1st, 124
The Lord's Council
The timekeeper whirlygig clacked at noon, and the great shimmering sound of a gong rang out through Blackhall. Thumping, sloshing beings shambled to temple mount through the commons, with intention.
Lord Rhyme sat perched atop a sacrificial altar, watching the Black Council arrive with his red eyes.
First there was Knight Rahui, gibbering mass flexing as he squatted down before the pews with a silent stare. Then Deepwarden Tahloc, who stood off to the side, a shambling stone-like mix of stone and flesh. Prince Tenoch stalked forward and took his place beside Rhyme, and then Atzli emerged from a shadowy alcove, long wet fingers clasped together. Quetzal was the last to arrive, the Dracolych's tired, bestial gaze looming down from above, floating by its Natare.
"So begins the first council of the season of tonallan," Lord Rhyme spoke first. "Tahloc, Rahui; the bodies?"
Tahloc's voice crackled. "THERE WERE SEVEN ROTTEN VOKHAI EXCAVATED FROM A CAVE-IN-"
-Rahui interjected. "We recovered seven bodies. They seemed to have fallen prey to a Dragon, or perhaps one of the Deep Wurms. We have deposited them within the laboratory, Lord Rhyme."
"Good," said Rhyme. "Atzli, the forges?"
Atzli spoke in a groaning chime. "They have been restored. The cauldron-chains move again. Rock has begun to churn through the slag pits, and Alkahest slowly flows agayn."
Rhyme's Talons folded together, a brief thought holding the attention of all in the room.
Quetzal interrupted joyously. "Eaten have I a pair of Goblinken from the Deeproads! They attacked Quetzal when he cornered them!"
Rhyme's slime-brow creased in irritation. "You cornered them, Quetzal?"
"Yes!"
Groaning, Rhyme shrugged back onto the alter. "Do not corner sapients who have not attacked you first, Quetzal. I forbade killing out of self defense, but I will not permit coercion like this- we will invite the Vokhai upon our doors if we kill too many travelers of the Deeproads," he both demanded and explained.
Quetzal was bound to Rhyme's orders, though Rhyme could see the Dragon of Devouring's wet jaw quiver in defiance.
"-We will build new flesh-beings for the mines, exhume the rest of our slain brethren from the crypts. They will be put to work," Rhyme said. "Geomenite-Aligned tools will be produced..." His mind's eye briefly saw through Deadsight how his workers lacked sufficient tools or light, smashing rocks to rocks beneath their sheer, endless vitality.
Blinking, Rhyme fixated on Atzli. "This will be your job."
"Very well, they shall be brought to the laboratories," said Atzli.
"Tahloc, sieve the Alkahest with your Terra throughout the season. Rahui, keep guard. Quetzal... with Rahui. Tenoch will dig in the mines."
"OKAY."
"Affirmative."
"Yes, Lord Rhyme."
"So it shall be..."
"Then you have your tasks, the meeting is adjourned," Rhyme said.
. . .
Note: The following may not be an entirely accurate fable regarding Malediction, as I am still exploring how to write it. I may come back and edit this.
Several hours later, Rhyme now stood in the labs with his Familiar, Necalli, presiding over dozens of gurneys and crosses affixed with cadavers of several races. Humming to themselves, they rolled several of the tables together to make a twenty foot platform by which he could manipulate a fifteen foot tall creature. Locking it all together, he shunted the table onto the pulley, and lifted it to an angle.
Reaching out to the corpses around him, Rhyme Tethered to roughly a dozen of the two-score or so, bading them to climb the platform and lock their own bodies into position.
Exuding a Brionic Vessel from his beak upon one Tendril, and a Shaper's Torch from the other, he canted Saol to grow, and began connecting the criss-crossing bodies through his Tethers, ordering them to lock and fold their spines into joints which he then set his torch upon and burned together. Necalli mirrored this from the other side, following his counterpart's methods with a slight delay. Layer by layer, they reinforced with further connective tissues, building a rotten husk of a giant strip by strip. The Rite of Growth gave rise to sinew and muscle fibers, hot red and gross in every sickly way, and these were further sculpted down into the anatomies, spines and limbs bent together into supporting structures.
Beyond the labs and before in the foundry workshop, Rhyme had his Tethered Thralls fashioning riveted metal plates and screws. Their hammers clanged faintly, a sound every Dvergar loved to hear. Tenoch lumbered in with a cart piled high with every kind of plate, which were then plucked and plopped down around the joints, stitched around as a sort of scaffold whilst preserving the general dynamism of the body.
Every desiccated organ was repurposed, veins threaded from head to toe as he worked, assembling even a massive heart ventricle by ventricle to further heighten its ability to circulate ichor. Though unnecessary, it would help give the monster a bit more strength.
Rhyme and Necalli shaped for each of these giant, bone claws, screwing the steel plates to them for added support and ceaselessly and making sure each joint properly articulated whilst testing with his Tethers. Once the broad shoulders convened into a pointed, predatory skull with jaws big enough to swallow a man, Rhyme set about building further, finer detail into the disgustingly morbid creation.
Once he had finished the skull, Rhyme gave the creature goat-like horns and further reinforced its spine until the gigantic abomination looked truly gruesome. To solve the flaws of its facade, Rhyme and Necalli both began to shear heaps of flesh from their masses down onto the creation, spreading that glossy black mess down over the muscle before using their command over it to make neat, taut muscles weaving down into the patchwork of metal plates and flesh.
Black and wet to the touch, these tall giants took shape. Sticking a Tendril into a fleshy sphincter upon its exposed heart, Rhyme filled its veins with liquid Null-flesh, and then sealed up the incision. By the end of this, three days had passed.
Undoing his Tethers, Rhyme began to Cant the void, whispering of nothings as he Tethered the fifteen-foot-tall monster with so very many threads. A tapestry of invisible wires puppeted it naturally like a living body, and it twitched. When the sticky monster did not spontaneously explode under its own quivering mass, he and Necalli undid the shackles and chains holding it to the table.
Bending forward, the being shuddered with a strange bubbling, its slime-laden, beating insides adjusting to a new state of existence. Rhyme watched with pride as the monstrous beast shambled off towards the mines at his behest, where it threw itself at breaking rock with tremendous blows of strength.
Having need of another, and possessing more bodies to work, Rhyme continued and hummed all the while with his Familiar for three more days, assembling another Goliath just like that one.
. . .
Four weeks into Summer, Rhyme felt he had enough Geomenite Dust to fashion something truly remarkable; the Atlatl-Axe, a traditional Geomenite-Aligned Tool of the Dvergish people which amplified the swing of its wielder through the natural kinematics of digging.
Rhyme began by summoning Atzli and Tahloc. Together they drew up the rough design, and Rhyme made the base. Dismissing his two loyal subjects, the Lord of Blackhall revalled fifty of his Thralls to the forge-halls with a wave of his talons.
There were eighty-three grams of Dust available. That meant he would be able to fashion eighty-three Atlatl-Axes.
First the Thralls were divided into two teams of twenty. One group was assigned at fashioning the pulley mechanism for rolling the blade forward during a swing. Another made the requisite blade and haft. The remaining ten Thralls shambled around, tending the furnaces.
The smell of burning iron filled the air, and Rhyme presided from a catwalk above, peering down at the throngs of living dead toiling within the forges. He watched them pour iron ore, and then flux from the mines into the furnace. Serviceable steel was soon manufactured, and from this each team got to work.
The pommel of each shaft was made with a slot for the Geomenite Nexus. This shaft was affixed to a mechanism which carried a curved, pick-like blade that, when swung, amplified the force of the wielder together with contributing force from the Artificed Nodes of Diction expanded across its surface.
Two larger ones were made for the Goliaths. A pair of hand-axes were made for Rhyme and his Familiar, and then the remaining seventy-nine were made in a standard size, mass produced and engraved with traditional Dvergish symbols, and the symbol of Blackhall, as well as the name of Necalli.
Once the axes were made, Rhyme recalled everyone from his retinue and passed them out to the last Thrall, ensuring that the mines of Blackhall would reach capacity again. He watched as his minions tore through the rock at a truly foul speed, new tunnels winding into the depths as old ones were marked and backfilled to make way for the vast operation.
----
1,515 Words = 10 XP
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