MP Game - Yarnspinners

[CuriousCat]

Machaka Turn 26:

Karo's loyalties were not really in question. He had fought beside his King. He had observed the King's prowess and strength. He had also quite grateful to the King for finding further use for him after his wounding. Karo pondered these issues as he waited for the audience with the Voice of the Lord. He had been summoned at first light. Karo had been torn about what to do with the Clam. He had to get it to the King's magicians. However, he had to get it to them in secrecy. Karo was afraid to leave the Clam unprotected since it was obviously of immense value. However, he was more afraid of bringing it with him to the interview with the Voice of the Lord. Who knows what sort of powers the man had? Of course he wasn't as powerful as the King, but Karo did not want to test the Voice's powers of perception by bringing a powerful magical item into his presence.

Cetewayo could sense an echo of Karo's anxiety. He was fairly certain of its cause as well. He knew that it was about time for the wounded to have reached Balakavo. Karo was no doubt nervous about his upcoming encounter with the priesthood. Cetewayo was pleased with the past month's events. His forces had conquered another mountain province. The past few months had gone as well as could be expected, however the army had suffered small losses at every battle. Cetewayo decided that he must wait for reinforcements to arrive. The respite would give him time to search the rugged territory for magic sites. Before he began the ceremonies to sensitise himself to the magical emanations of such sites, he would attempt to strengthen his connection to his agent Karo. He had prepared Karo for the upcoming encounter with the priesthood, but perhaps there was more that he could do.

Karo continued to get more nervous as he waited. He was almost certain he had made the right decision, leaving the Clam with his kit from the road. He was still concerned that the Voice of the Lord would ask him questions that could cause him problems. Finally, he was told that the Voice of the Lord was ready to see him. He was escorted into a large, luxuriously appointed office. The Voice of the Lord, the most powerful man in the kingdom was sitting at his desk. The Voice dismissed the young priest who had escorted Karo into the office. He then rose from his desk and locked the door. Karo felt that his heart was about to explode out of his chest. Why had he locked the door?!? Surely the high priest would not torture here in his office?! The Voice of the Lord walked over to the wall and did something that Karo did not see clearly. Suddenly a panel swung open and a dark figure stepped out. The High priest turned, smiled a cold self satisfied smile, and uttered the first words spoken since Karo had entered the room, "Now we can begin your 'interview'".

[puffyn]

---- Arcoscephale, Turn 28 ----

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


"They came for our holy girls," said the woman of Tolk. "We wept, for their sacrifice would be in vain, but we hid a few away so that our priestesses would not face Ma'era empty handed."
"They enslaved the spirits of warriors who perished defending our lands, a dozen tree-lives ago, and caused them to turn on us, and chase us out of our homes, until the land was populated only by ghosts," said the old man of Vorgun.
"First they took all the girls, holy or not, and killed those who were not useful, except a few of us who hid," said the young maiden from Horslund. "Then they came back and took anyone who could work, leaving the old and sick to die because there is no-one left to till the fields or chop the wood or churn the butter."

And Pandokos of the impressive range of facial colors grew very stern..."


There is a holy marsh here, where the corpses of people killed in battles do not decay, but float beneath the surface, unable to leave the swamps even in death. The people light candles here, which burn for months, whenever there are new corpses. There are a lot of lit candles, and there would be many more if there were anyone left to light them. If I were in better humor, I would find it amusing that the first time I have left the marshes for a year and a half would find me returning again and again to this one patch of swamp, in what is otherwise a fine land of tall oaks and and evergreens.

I am not amused.

When Balachandra came to me Last week, with another ragged band of half-starved refugees, his eyes could have melted stone. These people, though they seemed more dead than alive to me, were from the north, where they had lived peaceably on the edge of the forest and the swamp before the raiding party wiped out their entire village of thousands. This is the third group this week, raged the inferno in the eyes of my oldest friend in these lands. This has gone too far, rumbled the avalanche. Balachandra is always such a mild, reasonable man. We must act now, roared the tempest. I wonder how Amshula would have implored me? I wondered, idly, before giving the orders to march. We left by nightfall.

There are very few people here, at least who dare to show themselves, though I suspect there are many more hidden in dark, forgotten corners of the woods. Far too many villages are entirely empty, food left half-eaten on dinner plates, here and there a pool of dried blood, a charred corpse. In more than one burnt shell of a house, there are whole families clustered together around the fireplace, with no signs of violence, sometimes holding hands. In a low voice, Andromache explained that it is better to die quickly with the ones you love. She alone walks through the villages without a look of dazed horror on her face, as if she had seen this sort of thing many times before. She probably has.

At Last we came to a village where the corpses were still warm to the touch, and found what we were looking for, scuttling down the road to the north. We quickly slew the band of slavers, and rescued half a dozen villagers, most of whom were too dazed to be able to give a coherent story. But one man told me that I should go see the old woman who never left the sacred grove. Outsiders are not permitted to enter, he said, especially not military men who lack respect for life. But she would talk to me.

And indeed, though I had never seen her before, she greeted me as if picking up a conversation we had left off the Last evening. "I was waiting for you, Pandokos."

---

[Sedna]

Turn 27, R'lyeh

The hammer falls...

After eating all the tender bits off the casualties, I was dozing behind a giant rock when I chanced to hear two of my generals:

"So, didn't we offer the Atlantians friendship?"

"Indeed we did. Just Last night we were working on plans to attack the coastal provinces in these parts, and then He showed up."

"Oh, did he give any reason for the change in plans?"

"None at all. He just ate the bodyguards, waved his tentacle 'round the conference room and then spoke into our heads, saying, 'South. Ugh'."

"Huh, I hear he fancies himself a poet, or at least a writer of some repute."

"Yeah, I'd heard that too, but in the flesh he's not very loquacious."

"Ah.... I can't believe what we've started here today. Granted, the Atlantians are weak, but what if they have friends?"

"I know, I know; it keeps me up at night. We have a huge long border with Abysia, Ermor is always capable of attacking our underwater provinces, and there are a number of other empires who could cause us a world of trouble, but did old tentacle face contact any of our neighbors about this attack? Even ask them what they would feel about turning the entire Atlantian race into fish sauce?"

"I take it, from your rhetoric, that the answer is no."

"It's his new magical items, that's what it is. He feels all powerful just because he has stuff to strap on prior to battle."

"I knew it was a bad idea to let the spawns back in the lab make that stuff for him. Overnight he's gone from a useful asset, quickly expanding our empire on land, to a liability, dragging us into this foolishly under-prepared war."

"There are others who feel the same way as us. Remember when he ordered that nutso Mr. Flibbles to attack that basically undefended Man province? And then acted all put-upon afterwards? Well, I was talking with X... (squelch)"

I know, I know I should have listened just a little bit more to discover the names of these other traitors, but talking about Mr. Flibbles that way just made me so angry. Mmmm... and their brains were tasty. That's what comes of thinkin' so much an' plottin' agin me — ya get et.

[Sedna]

Turn 28, R'lyeh

And behold I saw under the stars that the race was not to the swift, nor the strong, but to me! And, actually, I am both swift and strong. Although not as strong as I could be, mutter mutter, stupid k-nig-it mutter. The straits and the angry sea are now mine. The kracken hides in his little cottage, afraid to come forth onto the sea floor and challenge me for supremacy — and thus I wipe out the provincial defense. While some keep an eye upon the forsaken grotto, the rest of my forces fan out to collect taxes from the Atlantians who have not made it into the castle. Some may die, but you can't make a fish taco without their dead bodies.

My other force, executing the second piece of a classic pinchers attack, rolled through with nary a resistor (at least nary a one that mattered. Less than an ohm anyway...) I hear that my researchers are getting along quite well, working on the secrets of summoning magical creatures to swell my armies. I shall be glad of it. These meteorite guards are so weak and pitiful and slow. I could really go for adding a few of those coral guards to my army. Their poison-spikey armor is neat! But, they seem to all be pretty loyal, worse luck.)

And the coral guards eat so much too. Not as much as the bloody useless tritons, but still...

The rest of the world seems to remain quiet, undisturbed by my... kindness in putting these fishies to sleep. The empires of Man and Vanheim have being bragging about summoning the air to help them fight. Hah. Fat lotta good that'll do them under the waves. Under the sea... da di di dee.

Hmmm... I thought war would be more interesting. More death and destruction. More world ending in a bang and skies torn apart and moon splattered red with the blood of mine enemies. Sieging couldn't be more dull, especially since my useless troops don't seem to be able to get their fishy fingers through the cracks in that kelp fortress. Maybe if I eat a few of their tasty fingers (lightly breaded, with a delicate tomato-vinaigrette sauce) the rest of them will be motivated to siege a little faster...

[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.

---

[puffyn]

---- Arcoscephale, Turn 30 ----

The locals call them the Steel Ovens. In the side of the mountains there are natural crevices where magna bubbles day in and day out. The hills have an abundance of iron ore nearby, and smiths there have outfitted the natural oven with all the tools necessary to make armor and weapons. Freed from the yoke of the blood-hunters, the smiths volunteered to work with us. One of Balachandra's kin wasted no time in immediately constructing a laboratory at the base of this mountain, so that the mystics and smiths could confer more easily about matters alchemical.

I have spent the past month wandering this province, and the fair city which is perched on high cliffs overlooking a fast flowing river. It is sad to think that this clear stream from the mountains is destined to become a brackish, muddy mess in the swamps to our south. The people here have been less terrorized by the blood hunters, or rather, less willing to put up with random virgins being dragged into the night to satisfy the twisted logic of some dark god. While they were nominally loyal to the blood suckers, their city gate developed an annoying tendency to become badly stuck whenever the collection agents came around. My message of freedom and hope for a better future unburdened by such foul superstitions fell on welcome ears, although they have replaced it with some bizarre ritual in which they spread butter on themselves.

As I was training a token local defense squadron in case the blood-fiends return after we have sallied forth, I came across Amshula, Sadhana, and some other mystic (whose name I do not know). They looked tired and dirty. Amshula in particular looked worse for wear. Her hair was singed and wind-blown, her limp more pronounced than ever, and her fancy purple clock was ripped in many locations. They confessed that their foray into the wild parts of this province in search of sites of magical power had been entirely unfruitful. I suppressed a smile, offered my insincere condolences, and escorted them back to the city.

There we found Balachandra in the city arena showing off his muscles to a crowd of bored hypaspists and an almost-swooning Andromache. The young lad has become supremely strong lately, and was besting all comers in wrestling. I challenged him, and after some hesitation, he agreed. Perhaps he felt that I was too much like his mentor. Perhaps he felt I was too old. In the first round, he was clearly not trying his hardest, and I had him quickly on the ground before he knew what was happening. I heard Andromache's silver laughter at the sight of Balachandra lying on the ground. And the next round was very different. The lad was super-humanly strong. I could easily avoid his grasps, or twist out of his grip, but my own attempts to get him off balance came to little. I simply could not move him against his will. After several minutes of this, I feigned tiredness. I let him grab me, and as he shifted to throw me to the ground, I slipped out of his grip, gave a little shove, and allowed his own motion to carry him to the ground.

Andromache approached, carrying Balanchandra's cloak, which she tossed him with a look of amusement in her eyes. I went off to a well-deserved meal of fresh river clams drenched in butter.
---

[magnate]

Happy New Year folks! Hope you're all well. Still only three spinning yarns, but they're excellent. I'm on tenterhooks waiting for the outcome of Karo's interview ...

Turn 25: Arco 2, Machaka 2, R'lyeh 2
Turn 26: Arco 2, Machaka 2, R'lyeh 2
Turn 27: Arco 3, R'lyeh 2

Totals after turn 27:
Abysia 14
Arco 58
Atlantis 2
Caelum 6
Ermor 20
Machaka 46
Man 17
Mictlan 6
R'lyeh 43
Vanheim 4

All the best,

Chris
P.S. I presume nobody has any problems with me awarding points once a week now ...

[Sedna]

Turn 29, R'lyeh

The siege continues.

Word comes that there is to be a competition of heros in some distant arena. The prize is cursed, and injury is certain for anyone sent, but Farol has been moping around the northern provinces for too long. I'll confess that, honestly, I'm just a little tired of the guy.

Olug and his band of thugs have begun their push down the southern fjord while the greater part of the southern force has come to join me at the siege. Food could become scarce for the besiegers. Those sharks eat a lot when there are no enemies to crunch.

Up north, the Alvarik force has regrouped for another push against the barbarians. It's such a lot of both, but rumor has it that the caves contain great magical power, and the lives of humans are worthless to me.

I got the cutest postcard the other day from the spawnlings at my coastal fortress. There are almost a full score of them now. Each unique and precious like a delicate snowflake. They've been keeping a close watch on Sammy, who grows more invaluable every day. Thanks to his tireless efforts to probe the arcane world for a way to escape my grasp (and lead to freedom some of the lady sages he's been... collecting), the mighty empire of R'lyeh is no longer picked on in school for being the stupidest kid in the class. My propaganda department has come up with the slogan "We're not quite as utterly pathetic as Mictlan" (tm), and I've ordered that the new fall wardrobe for all my troops bear this symbol.

That should help with... that thing... you know... like good v. evil. Rocky and Bullwinkle. Morals! That's it. Moray eels? Whatever. When the revolution comes, they'll be first against the wall - those treacherous little- whoevers with their, whats-cha-me-callots. Shallots?

[Sedna]

Turn 30, R'lyeh

The siege continues.

I am hungry every night now. My troops continue to be well fed. Well, sand and seaweed fills stomachs anyway and stops em from complaining for a while. The sharks don't seem to like it so much, and have definitely been eyeing up their riders. But I! I am the supreme ruler of this land. I need fresh blood! I need sacrifice and pain, or...

The walls are everywhere. Stretching high and tall, impenetrable, impregnable, impervious. There is no where to hide. Just one victory before the thousand googly eyes. One fight on the blood stained sand, and he could be exalted, praise, lauded, treasured. When he died, preserved, not eaten. But the obsidian sword knocked aside his shield, and drew blood, and he knew fear. He gazed into the eyes of his foe, a young lad, for whom this contest would mean so much. While for him, returning to slavery, as a lower being in the new world order. And when the black sword came again he welcomed it.

A motley force, a few brave arrows, and thundering over the plain, a score of madmen with blades as long as your leg. They threw themselves over the spear, over the tridents, and swords. They wrenched crossbow bolts from whence they lodged themselves in their limbs and hacked until the pieces were too small to get back up, covering the grass in slippery red.

There once was a race of tall men, who built towers on the shores of the sea.
And they dwelt in these towers, over the sea, and watched for the death that would come.
But the men in their towers grew lazy and rich, and abandoned their watch on the sea.
And the storm when it came, on little cats paws, buried their world 'neath the waves.

[Sedna]

Turn 31, R'lyeh

The siege continues.

There is some good news though. For the first time, a foray by the tritons tore off a piece of the kelp wall large enough that the defenders inside cannot repair it without being exposed to attack. A first chink in their armor, into which I shall insert my tentacle and pull their world apart. Furthermore, the generals back home have sent up a magic item they believe will hasten the siege. This "Wall Shaker" is the result of some trade with the bird people to our south. My mind, which had been planning on a nice vacation somewhere southern–probably with palm trees and coral reefs and little brightly colored fishies–has apparently decided to postpone this trip in the hope that the battle at the castle will be interesting.

Once I destroy the Atlantians I will allow the catfish to take over the ruins of the castle. Their spawn will play by seaweed hedges in the inner keep, while the old catfish will lounge in the outer courts, sunning and cleaning themselves.

Olug has finished his march down the southern fjord, which is now clear of all Atlantian influence. Reconstruction will probably be a bear. He returns, ever so slowly. The slaves have seen the weekly defended shores of birds and men and long to tear their best-laid plans astray. But I tell them, "One war at a time." Also, "MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS SLAVE OR I WILL TAKE PLEASURE IN GUTTING YOU!!"

Cthugul writes from the void:
Attacked by Thing that Should not Be. Stop. Safely home thnx to pearls and returning spell. Stop. Send love to Sammy for that. Stop. Acashic Record found sites magic power. Stop. Mages take all clams. Stop. No Linguine. Stop.