[puffyn]

I'm all for finishing soon (says I, not having played my turn yet)... it would be nice to have a little bit of a pause before starting Yarnspinners 3 on Dominions 3: When version numbers collide (?).

Um, here's my yarn for Turn 54:

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The army paused to wait for dawn. Pots clanged with the hasty evening meals, and lizards shouted to each other to erect the tents and sharpen their falchions one last time. The whetstone ground well into the night. Off in the distance, tall white spires rose from a battered looking castle; some of the damage was clearly years old, while the rest had a more recent origin. There were few lizards to mark the sunset, however, since most were curled up against the cold, dreaming of vengeance, and perhaps of an end of all this fighting.

Pythium was to fall again in the morn.

Laph squinted at the last stack of papers, with barely a centimeter left in her candle. She had hastily drafted her speech for tomorrow, to be given from one of the spires in the distance, and she hadn't even bothered to write a contingency speech in case things went differently. Was she getting lazy in her old age, she wondered? Or was it that foregone a conclusion that it just didn't matter anymore?

She smiled when she picked up the next letter. It was in a bright red envelope, with some bizarrely mystical line drawings on it, and was addressed: "To the yarnspinner. Super-duper-secrett. DONT OPPEN THIS!"

Inside, Fela wrote:

"Dear Mom, Uncle Ruli said I should always inkripped things I send you, and he gave me this super cool secrett paper to write on, in case this is stolened by the enemy. (PUT IT DOWN, YOU DUMB MARINON SPY!) Tari says they're too stupid to be able to read it, but I said Tari was dumb for thinking that. Anyhow, I have been very dillijint and have watched Man's border every day for the last week, and there are no strange cloud creatures or anything, and it really looks quite peaceful, so they're probably not going to attack us sneakily like you were worried. Also, Shem stole my baby scales, and won't give them back, make him stop. Love, Fela."

The next letter was very curt. "CONFIRMED. Engagements between Vanheim, Marignon continue; Vethru seems committed to our fight after all. T'ien Ch'i mobilizing to south, moving on former dead lands. Campaigns progressing well." It was signed by the new Head of the Guild of Empoisonners, who was leading the southern campaign. Laph didn't bother trying to remember his name; there was little point.

Cole wrote a very long and erudite letter, and Laph reflected that his long convalescence was doing wonders for his handwriting. She puzzled for a while over his last paragraph.

"... and I almost pity the few remaining archbishops in charge these days of a crumbling empire, abandoned by their divine ruler. I have some VERY IMPORTANT plans on that matter, but mustn't reveal my secrets before the time is ripe. Let me just say I plan on fighting fire with fire, as it were.... such a pity I cannot join them myself for a good knight roast."

Laph blew out her candle and went to sleep.


Aceline came from a long line of lizard-handlers, and even after the practice had been all but abandoned on order of the new lizard overlords, someone had (wisely) stopped and thought that, perhaps, a trained handler was actually a good thing when it came to bog beasts.

Aceline had two main qualifications for the job. The first was that she was a combat veteran, from the AYE war. The second was that she could count, which was a particularly useful skill in making sure none of the bog beasts wandered into the main camp and accidentally poisoned everyone to death.

".. three of them, come on lads, that's easy!" came the voice of the distant knight, rallying his band in a charge that was aimed more or less directly toward Aceline. She caught a glimpse of a bright shiny shield, and was momentarily disoriented.

"... five, sir..." she heard dimly, but things were moving fast now, and she had signaled the bog beasts to engage in battle formation seventeen. To the lay observer, all bog beast battle formations looked suspiciously like the giant reptiles just sitting there until their attackers fell over gasping from the poison, but that was why a specialist such as Aceline was necessary.

Besides, this time she was attempting a new flanking maneuver, and as the knights rushed past her hiding spot at the edge of the woods she motioned the largest of the bog beasts, who had been hiding with her, toward the unprotected flanks of the knights.

There were, as a matter of fact, six bog beasts. She noted idly where the innumerate knight commander fell, so that she could return for his shield, in a week or two, after the fumes had dissipated.