MP Game - Yarnspinners

[puffyn]

---- Arcoscephale, Turn 29 ----

(From The Collected Sayings of Pandokos the Prophet: In his first incarnation)

And Navnit, while wandering, met the holy woman in the woods. This was early in the days of the Days of Blood when there were still many villages, but parents were beginning to weep for missing daughters. And Navnit, on seeing that nobody stood up for the villagers, spoke of Pandokos of the men with very long pointy sticks and the pleasantly affordable rates of hire.

"I do not hold with deathbringers," said the old woman. "I know that there is no life without death," she continued, pouring a cup of warm fragrant herbal beverage for the wanderer. "But each death is still a loss."

"Yes," said Navnit, idly staring through her cup as she swirled her warm fragrant herbal leaves. "But sometimes what is lost is even the certainty of death."



The old woman nodded at me again. "I thought you would be here sooner," she said. "And now that you are here, I see that you are in a hurry to be gone. Good. I do not like deathbringers in my woods."

As greetings go, this ranked highly among the oddest. I stated such, and discretely insinuated that the old woman should cut back on her herbal beverages.

"Leave this place, oh favored-of-Hermes. Travel into the dying sun, and free the people there, for Navnit's sake."

Oddly enough, the only portion of that sentence I really understood was Navnit, which I have learnt is the local word for butter. Well, that, and "Leave this place", which seemed like good advice, since the woods were exceedingly creepy.

We journeyed to the open ground west of the wood, and by the side of the river there we encountered a large force of blood-hunters. Most of their army were shrivelled husks of men, clad in rags, and armed with little more than sticks. They were clearly unwilling conscripts, and I gave orders that any which attempted to surrender should be given quarter. None did.

The battle was short and dramatic. The mystics clustered around Balachandra and his nephew and sort of joined hands. The two men in the center seemed to draw strength from those clustered around them, and conjured up many strange sights, the strangest of all was when large flaming rocks fell from the sky and crashed into the ranks of the enemy. The blood-hunters broke and ran almost before my men reached their lines, and so we suffered no casualties, although I did notice Amshula limping afterwards, and most of that family seemed more lethargic than normal after the battle.

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