Fiction Herald Of The Old Ones

Chapter 16: On The Prowl

“Stop looking at that treeline for even a second and you will be dead you fucking idiots! It’ll be so fast that we won’t even be able to loot your corpses you bastards! That’s how fast those things will pull you in!
Sigmar-fucking-dammit if I get woken up in the middle of the night by one of you idiots contorting in the ground with his guts out or venomed-up enough to breathe blood I’ll just kill the sod then and there to stop the fucking noise. You are sentries! DO YOUR JOB!”

-Quote by Captain Thijmen Rehn. Recorded during his failed expedition in search for Chaqua, the City of Gold.

Outskirts of Swamp Town, Settlers’ Cove
14th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.8 1 Lamat 1 Mol​

The town, if it can be called such a thing, is so much worse for Roland’s senses once he enters it. He had hoped for such a thing to be impossible as he had washed his paints off of his naked skin.

The smells worsen, they worsen so much. He hadn’t even considered such a thing to be possible. There’s the rot, a rot which is alien when compared to that of decomposing plant life or a carcass, both common in the jungle. It’s a worse rot than what he’s smelled when walking the streets of Sudburg or even during his dalliance in Port Reaver. It’s not just the piles of waste humans are so careless about, he can handle that. It’s that here, seemingly, there’s even less of an effort to push them away.

Sudburg, even if its inhabitants have the horrible tendency to just throw bucketfuls of their refuse out their windows and into the streets, is at the end of the day still built upon a coastal mount. Copious rain and the sheer force of gravity makes it so that, with the exception of the thick of the dry season, eventually the slop will make it downwards and outwards.

Port Reaver is worse, of course. But at least Port Reaver hugs the shoreline and exists framed between two estuaries. If nothing else that allows an ease of access to wastage removal consistent enough for some of its inhabitants to at least try.

Swamp Town? Swamp Town is “built” upon coastal marshland, and mostly surrounded by mangroves. Mangroves which act as a tidal barrier. The water gets in with the high tide, but the waves do not, not pushing or pulling any of the filth. The water leaves with the low tide, the filth gets stuck. Swamp Town is a bowl of rotting construction material and warmblood feces that gets inundated and desiccated twice every day. Roland cannot decide which of the two “modes” disgusts him the most. Desiccated it currently winning the debate, however, as it is the situation he’s currently dealing with.

That all combines with further smells. The smells of dirty humans and their sweat, the smells of unclean alcohols and dubious meals. The smell of singed black powder and misery. What’s worse? He can smell and feel it all clinging to his skin, like a lather of nauseating ointments. He’d give one of his arms in sacrifice in exchange of the ability to shed his skin as his fellows do, because otherwise the only way he can imagine he’ll get the putrid smell out will be to simply scrub the entirety of himself raw.

And the smell is far from the only assault to the senses. The noise is almost as bad. One could be mistaken for assuming the droning buzz to be that of rain. It is not. There’s no clouds above him, at least none made of mist.

Flies.

By the millions, and he’s probably underestimating. In some areas, above the worst sources of noxious leachates, they form such thick swarms as to act like smokestacks and heat distortions. Enough of them to feed an entire cohort, if only there were skinks careless enough to poison themselves like that. He wouldn’t feed one of those insects, fried or otherwise, to even the worst of reavers.

The buzzing is truly nerve wracking, and that’s without getting into the sensory assault that is constantly feeling hundreds of the things land on him. He’s stood over week-old hydrodon carcasses with smaller accumulations on the things. And while anywhere else such a situation would have quickly turned into a banquet for flycatcher birds, bats and amphibians, here those animals only thread at night. So he is constantly forced to shake and swat himself free of them. The cohort are most likely still spying him from the treeline, chittering and laughing about how he looks like brain fluke has rotted the inside of his skull with how spasmodic his movement has become.

Some small voice in the back of his mind curses his blessing and how it likely is responsible for how much more attention he’s getting from the insects when compared to the few other warmbloods walking the “streets” under the high noon. It’s a traitorous voice, one he’s happy the flies trying to get into his nostrils and ears are “helping” him ignore.

The fly clouds' pungent sound and horrid tactile sensation somewhat abate as he climbs up the ladder leading into one of the larger stilt-built structures of Swamp Town. The refuse under and around it indicates to him that it’s likely a tavern. The kind of place he’s hoping will give him a good lead. The rungs are slimy and sticky to his touch, but he perseveres.

But the sensorial respite isn’t long. Some of the problems are simply replaced. The smell of combined waste is replaced by the smell of humanity at its worst: Sweat, sickly secretions, unwashed skin, matted and lice-infested hair, alcohol, vomits…

His skin is greatly freed from the flies’ assaults by the heavy and ratty curtain that guards the entrance, but only to be replaced by the stagnant humidity and warmth of too-many warmbloods confined in a badly ventilated hut made from rotting material.

The soundscape… It's not better, it’s less worse. Much less overwhelming buzzing. A lot more hushed talking, the occasional grunt and moan, or phlegmatic cough. But on what his auditory sense gives him a relative break on, sight makes up for.

Not a single one of the warmbloods, and there must be more than twenty of them, looks happy or healthy. Or even just content and hanging on. Males or females, older or younger. They all look too thin or too fattened. Too weak or unhealthily bulky. Scars resemble less the badges he’s accustomed to and more like the obvious points at which an object has been overused. Blemishes and pockmarks from dozens of diseases and ailments he can’t even name are visible wherever skin is in view. He has never been the best judge for what actual attractiveness entails for his race of birth, and he hopes none of those canons fit what he’s seeing right now.

The warmbloods of Sudburg are like working ants, any missing antennae or leg little more than a sign of their hard-working nature and the fact that they are doing what they are meant to: Work hard. The warmbloods of Port Reaver are more varied, some as decorated and groomed as songbirds, others are just like their kin in Sudburg, others look like seasoned predators. Even the thieves of the hated parties which march into Lustria can be physically admired to a degree: Their horrid task makes their hunting desirable, but it’s a hard task they are committed to nonetheless, one that leaves their bodies ready to at least face Lustria. In that way, they are akin to beasts of burden.

The warmbloods of Swamp Town…? If Roland is to keep to the zoological analogies he’s created within his mind, he’d describe them as the sickly animals at the back of the pack. The kind that the herd simply needs to abandon for its own collective good. The kind that tries to look intimidating as it foams at the mouth because of exhaustion. The kind that is skittish enough to run at the snap of a twig in a clearing, but doesn’t have the energy to actually volt.

Their faces look like they’ve been wallowing in carnosaur dung all day long, which isn’t too far from the truth. Some look terrified, as if they expect something or someone to lunge at them at any movement. Others look the opposite, ready to lunge and bite a nose off at the least of gestures.

Roland knows he looks out of place. He’s as “clean” and healthy, too much so by the standards of those of the fourth race skulking and drinking inside the tavern-hut. He’s also larger than almost all of them, but that’s common enough that he almost doesn’t factor it in. He approaches the tavern’s keeper with as little aggression as he can, which is hard considering the discomforting context of the settlement.

“Hello.” He greets in reikspiel. It’s not the native tongue spoken by the majority of warmbloods in Lustria, interestingly enough, but it is their common trade language and one he’s as fluent as he can be in.

“Uh… I guess you are looking for someone, no way one of your kind is looking for a drink at my fine establishment.” The man behind the counter, portly and missing a chunk of his nose, answers. “You’ll have to get one anyways, otherwise you can leave.”

The man’s initial comment, blunt as it is, draws Roland’s interest. “One of my kind?” What could “kind” mean in such a context? The xho’za’khanx of Pahuax do not visit Swamp Town, and even if they did, he may look queer but he does not look like his usual self to begin with.

“You look like a trader’s loose-panted son. I hope daddy knows his son is visiting the fine businesses of Swamp Town.” The man laughs as he serves Roland a mug of thick ale he didn’t ask for, it doesn’t even look cold. “If you are hoping to get your dick wet before you get dragged back to ship, try the next place over. My girl doesn’t work the day shift.”

“My… father knows well where I am. And ahhh , no, I’m not looking for female company. I’m looking for a man-”

“Then I still recommend the next place over, they bought a new slaveboy recently, Kislevite, pale as snow.”

“I didn’t mean that. I’m looking for a man. For information on him, to be precise” Roland’s hand tentatively moves to grip the keg, even if just to hide the rising tension in his body.

“Ohhhhhh right, should have said that from the start. Well, I’m sure that if you spend long enough here you will be able to jog someone’s memory, specially if you pay a couple of rounds. You look like you can afford it.”

“I’m looking for a faster route around. The man is a redhead, wears a very clean white-”

“Barra.” The barkeep coughs.

“Excuse me?”

“You are looking for Barra, Barra the Exile. Little cunt is unmistakable. Why you looking for him? I haven’t seen him since I had to ban him from here.”

“Why was that?” Roland inquiries.

“He tried to get dodgy with me multiple times, I had to get a friend to shake him down and made it clear he’s no longer welcome. Same thing in most of the town, he’s a consistent toothache, that ginger rat. What did he do to you? He usually works as a guide for parties inland. And you don’t look like you’d survive two days without boiled water.”

“He… He allegedly did something that greatly interests a friend of mine. I’m doing said friend a favor.”

“Allegedly? Nah, I’m sure he did whatever bothered your friend.”

“Good, that means I’m not wasting time. So, where could I find this Barra the Exile?”

“Well, I’m not sure actually, he is in the town, but most of us like seeing him so little we pretty much block him from our minds. Once again, a few rounds here will probably jog someone’s memories…”

Roland sighs. Of course. He braces for a new assault to the senses, specifically his tongue, as he raises the keg to his lips. Meanwhile his free hand goes for one of the pouches tied to the belt he is using. He ends up fumbling and not getting anything out, that’s how bad the shock of the drink’s taste is.

It’s crest-curlingly sour, and tasted similar to the fermented leaves he remembers having taken at Nicolete’s kitchen during his mission in Port Reaver. Except that had been a good sourness, an intended one. He doesn’t think anything in this beverage was intended. It’s the aberration of drinkstuffs. He can’t avoid swearing in saurian as he swallows the last few gulps down, and hopes the man will simply assume him to be speaking an unfamiliar warm-blood tongue.

“Strong stuff aye? Got it from a guy in Skeggi last month, still have half a barrel of it on- Oh.” The barkeep’s gloating is interrupted by a greedy reaction, as Roland manages to fight off the horrid sensation and slams a few coins into the counter. They are worn and shine-less, the kind found when inspecting captives.

“I don’t have the time to get these people drunk on your behalf.” Roland dryly remarks. “Just help me find him.”

The tavernkeep inspects the coins, unamused. The man had probably hoped to get much more out of an inebriated Roland. Said facial expression changes as he actually counts the value of the coins. Warmblood currency, Roland has found, seems to not devalue no matter how bad the state in which it is found is. Meaning that what to him are just grime and brown-blood covered little pieces of unusable metal, are quite attractive to the overgrown figure behind the wood-worm infested piece of furniture.

“He lives in a tent-covered rowboat in the outskirts up northwest, only way to sleep dry around here if you can’t find a stilt house. It’s not that easy to find among the trees unless you are looking for it, the carp is as gray and lichen-infested as the trees it’s tied to. Otherwise, look for him at The Rotting Tongue tavern. Guido, the owner, is the only one around here who doesn’t hate his guts.” The man gruffly explains as a tapping of his finger implies to Roland that he wants a few more coins, which he gives without much comment.

“Anything else?”

“Well, I’ll give you a piece of advice, free of charge. Whatever you plan on doing when you catch him? Don’t bother searching him, he’s in the habit of wasting his money fast. And if you don’t manage? Don’t follow him into the jungle.”

“Why?”

“There’s a reason he tends to return alone and with equipment to bargain to newcomers.”

“Ah, that does explain things I already knew. I will heed your warnings.” Roland begins to turn as the man continues counting coins, happy about his quick and easy pay being coupled with the possible removal of who Roland is quickly learning is not just suspicious in the eyes of Oxyi-Cho'a.

A hand, however, suddenly pressed against his chest, stops him. It’s sweaty, large by warmblood standards and sports some worryingly ingrown nails. It’s connected to a fitting body.

“Hey pretty boy… Hear you were looking for Barra…?” A man with a leech’s smile intercepts him. “Sorry, but you are going to have to fuck off, I’m first in line and it’s not a short one.”

“How so?”

“I found him last night sleeping in the wrong bed, mine. I was just talking with a couple friends about paying him a visit tonight. And while we’d be ok with you tagging along, you’ll have to be happy with the scraps.” The man does indeed point at a small gathering in the corner of the room. They remind him of the men he was forced to fight during his visit to Port Reaver to recover the stolen game pieces he had taken for haggling. Unkept, of lazy and yet nervous eyes, covered in tattoos and with belts fat with knives.

“That is not something I can agree to.”

“Sad to hear, then I guess you will have to pay up.”

“Pay up? For what exactly?”

“For being a clean-shaven pretty-boy who thinks he can walk in here, jingle his coinage, and get what he wants.”

“Ah.”

Roland is frustrated, tired and greatly bothered by the mere thought of having to even walk the threshold between horrible inside and tortuous outside again. The idea of a brawl does not appeal to him in the slightest.

Next thing he knows, the both of them are falling through the open hair, the fly-containing rope curtain behind them raised by the sudden shove. Roland thinks little, but his body makes sure he lands on top, with the man bearing the brunt of the two and a half meter long fall between the groundlevel of the stilted tavern and the peatbog below.

The splat of the impact is as lacking as the baking heat would imply, but there’s still some give to the thick mud and filth mixture. Enough that when Roland gets up and brutally plants his booted foot on the man’s face, he is able to break the surface tension and mostly submerge it.

It doesn’t take even a minute for the flailing and the painful grip of the man’s hands on Roland’s oppressive ankle to falter, and the man’s fellows never actually poke their heads out to even discern the fate of their spokesman.

Such things, it seems, are common enough in the Swamp Town.




When Barra is woken up by a shift in the light, his blurry eyes meet a long shape blocking the sun and as such casting itself in relative darkness.

“Barra the Exile?” It asks in reikspiel, it sounds tired and frustrated, but relatively young. Even in his still sleepy mind, such details sing sweetly to him.

“Barra the Entrepreneur.” He corrects on instinct. “Who do I have the pleasure of talking with?”

“Roland Welser-Nakor.”

“Well meet sir Welser-Nakor. What brings you to my-” Barra’s arms open wide, gesturing to his rowboat of a home. “-Humble abode?”

“I want to talk with you about your business.”

“Oh, a proposal, perhaps?”

“Perhaps.”

“And why should I listen to it? You have interrupted my nap, after all.”

“I just drowned a man who publicly professed an intent to assault you and likely murder you.” The sun-shadowed figure grunts.

“…”

“In mud and feces.” Roland ads.

“ Oh. ”

Reaver’s Last Henge, Port Reaver’s Western Outskirts, Settlers’ Cove
15th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.9 2 Muluk 2 Mol​

It is all too fast, just like the kid taken while playing by the water in what feels but really isn't such a long time ago.

He had simply been running messages once more. Sure, now it was between the different workstations across the large and slowly forming clearing of the Henge instead of across Port Reaver. But that just meant more and shorter sprints.

Then the explosion of sound. It's not a roar. Predators don't roar when they hunt, not the normal ones at least. The only thing that precedes the rending screams is the low rumbling rustle of something large and heavy rushing and crushing its way through the foliage to get to the poor slave who had simply happened to be piling bundles of removed vines in the wrong area.

The sudden shock makes Stefan stumble and stop, makes him forget where to or why he had been running. All he can see is the mass of scales and spikes falling upon a defenseless man.

It’s a good ways longer than most men are tall, something that’s easy to see despite the way its frill and speed confound the animal’s actual silhouette. But it’s not one of the three long horns anchored on said frill that end the man’s life. It’s a beaked mouth armed with teeth and protruding serrations, there’s no finesse about such weapons, they simply clamp around the man’s shoulder and reach all the way to the middle of the chest with their length. Bones crack, blood splatters. But the man continues to scream.

The Trypadon is a medium to large-sized ambush predator, known for its distinctive frilled head, sharp beak and skill as a burrower. ​

It’s not a mortal wound, at least not instantaneously. But it’s a wound that will make the man incapable of fighting back.

The people closer to the actual catastrophe, because Stefan is damn near to the center of the henge’s plaza while the kill is occurring in the periphery, react in two very different kinds of ways. Some try to help, brandishing their tools, their axes, sickles and other Stephan can’t actually name, and try to threaten it. They are largely unsuccessful. None of the ones wielding shorter tools even dare get close enough to grace the animal’s spike adorned rump and tail, much less the head. And those few with longer tools? The animal stomps and bucks, its claws dig furrows into the already upturned soil and are used to crack and bend the ends of pitchforks and spades.

Most people, though, tools or no tools, simply flee towards the quickly accumulating and loud crowds further from the jungle’s edge.

The scene reminds Stefan of a street dog with something the other mongrels wanted in its mouth. The constant turning and instinctive kicking, the growling, the shaking and slobbering. Only that none of the other “mongrels” had even the slightest chance of stealing the “food.” And that the winning dog is a spiked reptilian predator large enough for Stefan to honestly say it’s the heaviest-seeming living thing he’s ever seen.

Soon enough, once it’s sure none of the people surrounding it pose a real and immediate threat, the animal starts backing up slowly. Then, with another brusk motion, it runs off into the jungle.

This time, he’s not sent for aid to the city or the guard, there’s no scrambling to hunt the beast down or secure the area. People, once they feel certain that the animal will not return for seconds, slowly get back to their work. Most do so much more cautiously, jumping at the flight of birds or crawling away of lizards and insects perturbed by their working of the soil. Eventually even Stephan realizes for how long he’s just been standing there and remembers he has more messages to deliver.

And so the day marches on. There’s no mysterious figure who saves the day or king who organizes a sweep. At least not until the dawn comes, and with it the end of the workday for the slaves and freemen workers.

A few men, perhaps a little more than a dozen, gather around one of the fires with more weapon-like implements, debating what direction they should take or how to organize themselves. They are not loud enough for Stefan to clearly follow the conversation from the inside of the structure that has become his and his master’s camp. But it’s better entertainment than just staring into the bonfire until he’s tired enough to override his own nerves.

“It’ll be pointless unless they catch it before it reaches its burrow. And it probably did so less than an hour after it left, maybe just minutes.” Von Danling points out, making Stefan jump. He had assumed the bark-skinned man to be asleep.

“What? Why?! If they find its burrow, won’t it just be trapped?” He answers with a question, as he’s slowly realizing his masters like him to do.

“A trypadon? No, not in the slightest. When they find it, it’ll have used that frill and all those horns to wedge itself face out in the burrow’s entrance. Whichever unlucky sod tries to approach it by that point will have to fight a wall with teeth on it. The only real option would be digging the entire warren out, and that’s a whole other mess. It all makes them a nightmare to deal with. So much so that the coldbloods see it as a symbol of protection, their guards sometimes even wear their skulls as helms to embody the obstinate things.”

“So they can be killed!” Stefan tries to reason. On the back of his mind, he files in the name of the beast. There’s so many monsters in the Lustrian jungles that he’s not surprised he had never heard of it before.

“What a lizardman the size of an orc can do is not the same as a man.”

“Ohhh…” Stefan mutters,

“You act like you’ve never seen one lad.”

“That’s because I… Haven’t, sir? I’ve heard all the stories but I’m happy that I’ve never corroborated them.” Stefan explains, confused.

That, for once, actually gives the wizard pause. The ancient man turns slightly to look at something over Stefan’s shoulder. When the boy turns to follow the man’s gaze, he finds himself confused. There’s nothing special about that bit of wall.

“Truly?” Von Danling asks, much more interested now. “You have never met one of them? Even in passing, maybe during an unwise visit to the jungle’s edge back before you were a runner for the city?”

“Uuuuh. I don’t think I’d be alive if that were the case.”

The wizard keeps looking at him and the nothingness over his shoulder for a few more minutes. Making Stefan more and more uncomfortable. Returning to their prior topic of conversation ends up being his way out.

“So… If they can’t really scare it off or kill it…?” He raises his elbow to point at the gathering of men.

“It will be back, whenever today’s catch runs out and it gets hungry again. It now knows there’s easy prey in hand here.” The wizard combs his beard with his thin-fingered hand.

“Can’t you help them, sir?”

“I would, but my skills are better spent in more subtle ways. Beasts are not the only thing to deter from entering our henge here.”

“Oh.” Stefan looks down, a cold shudder runs through him. “Shouldn’t we tell the king, then?” The answer he receives a moment later will not help him sleep any sooner tonight.

“I planned on bringing the incident up in our next meeting. But I doubt he’ll do much. After all, seventeen dead men so far is entirely within expectations of a project like the one he is allowing me to carry out.”

The Hound’s Skull, Skeggi, Lyssa Bay, Jungles of Pahualaxa
16th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.10 3 Ok 3 Mol​

Often, when Torfi is tired and has nothing left on his to-do list to carry out, he will simply laze around with the hounds in the kennels. Today that is not an option, between his mother’s and a couple other hunting parties under the king’s auspices, the kennels have been practically emptied of everything but the pregnant bitches and the pups who have not yet been fully trained. A coincidence in plans Torfi is not happy about.

Usually he, as the new kennelmaster, should have left with one of the hunting parties. The largest one, that’s who his father would have gone with. That’s what he had done the day he did not return. But that’s not the reason why Torfi has stayed behind.

The reasons Torfi has stayed behind are Haimiaz and Eistla. Because with a household of now only four, and the killers of his father still reaping the glory, there’s no telling what might happen to the thirteen and three years old if left alone for too long. And he can’t expect his mother to do so all the time, not without any thralls to help.

So he is staying the day in Skeggi. Not necessarily the entirety of it in the longhouse-by-the-kennels, he would go stir crazy. But he is using the sudden emptiness of his usual place of work to do other tasks that require doing. Such as his current one.

Hounds need collars, leads and chains and all shorts of other knick knacks his father had always taken care of. Both in fixing old ones and buying new ones. Torfi knows all the basics, all the small fixes that don’t take a tradesman to do. Those had been the first skills taught to him by his father.

But kennelmasters and hunters are not leatherworkers. And leather workers are in high demand in a place like Skeggi. So his current task? Waiting until one isn’t so he can make an order.

He’s not just waiting bored out of his mind, of course. The Hound’s Skull isn’t also known as “Chain Rock” for no reason.

He’s not far from Eriksson’s Tower, which is easily visible over the roofs of surrounding buildings. The ancient cairn built by the port’s founder hundreds of years ago, and around which has grown into the default city square of Skeggi, is an excellent tool for finding the slightly less relevant node of streets at the center of which Torfi’s causal entertainment is.

The Hound's Skull is a huge stone lump stolen from the ancient standing monoliths south of Skeggi across Lysa Bay, crudely carved into the shape of a snarling hound's skull by the first priest to set foot on the settlement. It’s no wonder it has long been a place meaningful to his family line.

Stories say that a king once had a great metal loop hammered into the stone, with chains attached to it. All items are there, that’s obvious. Torfi isn’t so sure about the alleged thousand-year old nature of them. Metal rusts fast in Lustria.

But anyways, said chains have manacles attached on the end. Most days, there are one or two citizens with the manacles around their necks, feet, or hands, fighting off other prisoners or folks from the crowd, or dodging any detritus being thrown their way. Today it’s two women.

Sometimes this is a punishment, today certainly is. Passerbys have informed Torfi of the two girls’ status as Imperial thralls who had attempted to kill their master and escape Skeggi. Escape to where Torfi doesn’t know or understand. There’s nothing but a deadly jungle around. But then again that’s the kind of stupidity he’d except from any thrall who tried to betray their master to begin with.

But punishment isn’t all that the Hound’s Skull is about. Sometimes Norse men will chain themselves up to prove their strength. Sometimes the crowd or some jakkers, landlords with too much free time like his older brothers used to be, will free a prisoner who fights well. Or at least throw them food to keep them alive. Sometimes a captive grows thin enough to slip their shackles, or turns mad and mauls their fellow prisoners. There are no rules governing how a captive should be chained or freed — only a show which passes the time. It runs all night, too, with torches to illuminate the participants, even if Torfi never tends to stick around that long.

The two girls, compared to some shows he’s enjoyed, are really not much. Just two scared little things that squirms, beg and cower whenever someone with specially good aim finds a nice rock. It’s something his unexpected but not unwelcome spectating companion is vocally not happy about.

“It is an insult to the Hound, and nothing less. To give unto him such paltry gifts who will not fight.” Growls Gothi Bloðugr from under his boar-pelt rug of a coat. Truly, Torfi cannot understand how the ancient man can wear something like that under the sweltering morning heat. It’s probably part of the man’s blessings.

“Well, most of the outsiders don’t even know it as anything other than Chain Rock. Most just think it’s a funny thing we arrange to entertain them.”

“The seasonals I understand.” The shaman accepts. “Their very profession honors the hounds for me to overlook. But they didn’t chain those dregs up. Skeggialings did.” He follows up with.

“You could get rid of them. You are Gothi. I certainly wouldn’t stop you.”

“None of them would try -which is also part of the problem but that’s for another day, pup- The problem is that there’d be replacements as soon as I left.”

“I guess…” Torfi uncomfortably squirms against the tent post he’s leaning on. He never likes talking faith. It goes over his head. Maybe not the best thing when one’s father once was the city’s Gothi’s closest friend. Sometimes Torfi feels that even that, his father’s allies, like Bloody Sven, is just another responsibility he doesn’t know he can shoulder. But Bloðugr is still a man who has stood by him.

“Look at them, what would happen if you released one of your pups on them?” The gothi conities mulling.

“Mh? It wouldn’t be the easiest, but it’d probably rip at least one of them apart. But then the betters would come in and try to kill it for ruining their game and that’s not something I want to try.”

“That’s the problem.” The shaman goes on. “Bets and entertainment. No time for proper offerings and worthy duels and fights. They all understand the basics, even the dumbest of your dogs do. Blood for the blood god. Glory on the field of death. Offer so you may not be offering yourself. Sacrifice, or else. All things children know. But then you tell them that the blood of a starved slave is less valuable than that of the battle-slain foe and suddenly they look like they’ve never attended a ritual in their lives, truly a-”

“Gothi Bloðugr?” A voice interrupts. It’s an easy one to recognize. As time goes on, Torfi feels like he hears it more and more often. “If I could steal you from your audience?”

Adella of the Graelings is an up and coming jakker. One Torfi has never had trouble or aid from. But everyone seems to speak of her, so he’s happy to just bow his head in deference as the one-hoofed shaman bides him goodbye and leaves with the equally cloaked woman, the both of them flanked by Adella’s men.

Torfi doesn’t know what to think of Adella beyond the fact that he’s pretty sure she is not involved with the Reidarsons, which already puts her above half of Skeggi but still. Her eyes are really pretty, he guesses, although he can never really figure out what exact color they are.

But soon enough that’s forgotten as he returns to watching the chained-up girls begging for water. If he had the coin to spare he’d bet on the black-haired one dropping before tomorrow’s sunrise.

 

Roland has comitted another muder!
And ya'll got to see what "normality" is like for Lustrian settlers/slaves and for norscans. I really enjoy writing these kinds of scenes.<br />
Big thanks to my friend Matkoc for his art for the trypadon, a creature inspired by those carnivorous ceratopsian skulls the saurus are so fond of wearing!

For those interested, work on the Lustrian Bestiary continues steadily! It would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site. I'm really happy to annouce that the story has reached 100 kudos as of me posting this chapter, which I will celebrate with an extra short story later this month!

 

Thanks so much for the compliments on the descriptions, it's nice to see people like them this much!

 

Chapter 16: Worthwhileness

When they finally understood what we were trying to negotiate they went from confused and interested to showing as much bewilderment and confusion as their cold-running brains could make their long faces emote.

They understood trade as this strange thing the warmbloods did. They didn’t do it themselves. Any lizardman who wants something will just grab it because they are all in service of a single intellect. I wouldn’t expect the ants of a colony to trade each other grain for specs of clay. We did get through to them eventually. I think what helped the most was explaining that while we might be part of this plan of theirs, we are not bound to serving it. Much like how they understand our faith in Myrmidia, but do not kneel before her themselves.

Through that (And a dozen other analogies and metaphors that our scribes and priests pulled their own hairs out to produce) the elder who they put in charge of the negotiation grasped that we were not offering our services for the sake of simply being capable of offering them, but that we wanted something in exchange. Likewise, they understood we were asking for their goods just for the sake of asking (the swindling and ripping off wouldn’t start until much later, once my men and I felt sure of footing around and surrounded by them).

If getting them to believe we were looking for gold as payment was hard, and believe me, it was. To them payment in gold would have been like asking for nails to pay a mercenary company back here. If getting them to grasp we wanted gold was hard, convincing them of how much we wanted was harder. They could pay us as much gold as we asked for. And we asked for as much as we could carry. And then the trouble began. In a couple months each of my men had more gold than the emperor’s treasury. And yet it was worthless. Why?

Because, again, to them it is worthless like trying to use firewood or clay as currency. They didn’t even have currency to begin with. As soon as our food reserves ran dry and we realized the risks of hunting and foraging ourselves, we had to negotiate payments in provisions and material supplies. And by then, they had learned enough to cut our pay in gold to keep the fares “fair.” Damned beasts…

What else could we have done? Back then there were even less settlements in Lustria, all too far from the Temple City we served to travel to reliably. Some tried. I hear a few met their fates in the quicksand thanks to their heavy packs. Some others I continued to see for years, trapped under that hellish lake Xuhua.

Then there was the logistics. Any man traveling back to the Old World fat with gold will be killed. It is not about chance. Anyone would kill for that wealth. They would need to succeed only once. We would need to see them fail every time for the rest of our natural lives. I myself was forced to leave hundreds of chests-worth of gold and gems back there, dozens hidden throughout Lustria.

The end result? All of the men who survived those years in Lustria returned home as wealthy as kings. And yet, by how the world works, they spent half their lives gathering that gold where it was worthless rubble and the other half leaving most of it behind to survive life where it would have counted for anything.

-Death and Riches: Memories of Estalian mercenary Captain Fernando Pirazzo.

Waldeswacht Fortress, Sudburg, Settler’s Cove​

18th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.12 5 Eb’ 5 Mol​

The morning comes with a searing heat. He had forgotten to shutter his windows the night before, it seems. Siegmund is not a mysterious thing, he’s an old man ravaged by a life of military service and poor self care. The last thing he needs is getting woken by the nape of his neck beginning to burn. Especially not after a windless night of sweating and turning on a bed made with life in the empire in mind. Thankfully, whenever he gets around to getting a new one, he’ll be able to buy from carpenters and seamstresses who have suffered the same lack of foresight as himself and learned accordingly.

The first thing he does as he begins to rise is to desperately hobble towards the door and call for one of the servants to set him up a bath. The sole luxury he affords himself nowadays. And only because it’s one no one treats as a luxury any more in Lustria. In Sudburg, even beggars try to find themselves a pail of cold water every morning.

And so he does, although for him it’s a proper wooden bathing tub with truly cold water courtesy of the fortress’ wells. The cold water feels like a blessing of Shallya as it helps him calm his irritated skin and draws off the sweat of the night.

But alas, it’s only a simple bath, it can’t last forever. Siegmund starts drying himself with the help of the -now more bearable-sun, and has his clothing delivered to him. Which means dressing himself, carefully as always, with the help of his mirror. And that, as every day, forces him back into the reality of the day that awaits him. Like most other days, he hopes it’ll be bearable.

Why?

Because Governor-General of Sudburg -Siegmund Armbruster’s title and position- in and of themselves, represent a failure. It is not his failure that they represent, but a failure he is reminded of every morning as he readies himself for another working day. “All days are working days,” his bones complain.

General, the second key component of the title. And not one meant to be boastful. Were he back in the homeland, in muddy Ostland, he’d likely be in command of a fort and the forces manning it. Guarding Wolfenburg from the foes without and within. Or maybe he’d be retired. An old, decorated and retired general living his days on some piece of land gifted for his service for him to develop on account of being a second son. He’d certainly like doing so. Living the rest of his days taking care of a good piece of land for his daughter to inherit and for loyal and honest farmers and craftsmen to work in.

Under such a long-dreamed life, he’d even gladly picked up arms again at the order of his emperor or his grand prince to defend it one last time from the ruinous foes. Instead, now as he lives in the real, material world? Every morning’s work of putting on his armored uniform feels like the combination of a self-inflicted punishment and a self-deprecating joke.

What is Siegmund Armbruster the general of? A few hundred men, most of whom are fools too loyal to know not to take an offer for a post in Lustria, such as himself. The rest? Turncoats and cowards, cripples and the mentally challenged… The kind of men Sudburg is a convenient dump for. Not horsemen, which would have been useless. But also no artillery. Just a few archers, crossbowmen and foot men armed with anything available. The city’s militia? Too busy barely managing to keep the population under control, a task too daily and draining to count them as a force to draw from.

The worst part is that he understands the logic. No elector count’s military staff would ever consider sending its best men to a foothold carved into the green hells. Much less those well trained or well equipped. Good men are wasted in Lustria. Horses much more so.

No matter how successful Sudburg may be economically or strategically. No matter the flow of immigrants and settlers, no matter the trade routes. No matter the opportunities and unexplored venues for commerce and new raw goods. No matter the constantly expanding docks, workshops and slums. No imperial colony in Lustria ever survives for long.

Sudburg will not, they assume, make it much longer.

Dalmark Town had failed. Mysteriously so, but failed for all to see. The how didn’t matter as much as the reality that it had.

Port Heldenhammer had failed. It had failed and drowned in blood. There was no mistake as to how it had been destroyed or by what hands. An insurmountable challenge. And not of the kind fools love tackling

Sudburg will fail like all others. Why would Sudburg, set up with the help of foreign merchants and birthed with the slaughter of its first ever caravan of settlers, fare any better?

What is the seat of power of Governor-General Siegmund Armbruster? All officers have their centers of command, from as humble as a tarp-tent at the warzone to the imperial palace. What is his, then?

Waldeswacht Fortress. A perfectly constructed fortress, yes. Designed by imperial engineers, paid for by some of the city-projects most well-connected sponsors. But one constantly fighting to survive. Many things can be a fort’s folly, often they come in the shape of -or connected to- a siege. But Waldeswacht is not losing to siegers. At least no conventional ones.

No, his under-manned fortress’ main foe is simply the ravages of time and nature. Lustria hates anything not built by those who worship its blood-drinking gods. Without enough people to take care of it Waldeswacht will fall even if Sudburg survives it. Much needs to be done. The growth of the weeds and mosses only slows down -becoming a fire hazard- in the dry season, the need for their removal is constant. There’s not enough men, lumber and ore to take care of the rotting woods and rusting metal works that make the fortress a livable place and not just a husk of stone. Cobwebs, infested food stores and all manner of small issues that compound into making the young construction ever-closer in health to the man who is supposed to command it.

A much smaller fortification would have served the city much better. But Siegmund hadn’t even known about the city’s existence when those decisions had been made. It had been little but a dream in a few men’s heads at the time. Men who are now all either dead or have returned to the Old World, letting their subordinates do business in the city they helped build to begin with and reaping the benefits with little care for their long-term chances.

At least, with the dry season the ravaging of humidity, on both his bones and those of the fortress, lessens visibly. The leakages form smaller puddles, easier to avoid them as he leaves his room. The windows let in more light thanks to the dried out husks of vines. The drier air is cleaner on the lungs. The food stores last longer and rot less commonly.

“Sir!” One of his men approaches him as he walks the bend towards his office. It is Bernart, a young Wissenlander. One of the few both intelligent and trustworthy enough for the General-Governor to trust their only repeater-gun with from time to time.

“Yes?” He growls in response.

“Sir, the skin traders-”

“If it’s about the taxes again, tell them that Justus decides on what the taxes are on anything that leaves the harbor. Not me. And that if they try to hire a sellsword to kill him again I will recruit them all into public service. I’ve heard the seafront stores need a new caulking.”

“No sir. It’s not about that… This time:” The blonde lad amends. “They say that the trappers have found…”

“Tracks?” Siegmund asks. “Surely not…” He wonders, too soon. Although, perhaps his… Allies had not taken into account the latest meeting due to the circumstances. A pity, he had hoped the Herald would have advised for that.

“Yes sir, a freshly trampled footpath.”

“Sigmar damnit… How long?”

“Three days, four if the weather decides to act up.”

“It won’t, it never does when it inconveniences them…” Siegmund grumbles as he plays with his large ring of keys as they come to a stop before his office’s door. “Call in the covenant, tell them it's urgent. They’ll guess themselves. And get me Hasso, I want to know how ready the men are before I decide on your orders.”

“Yes sir!”

“And for the sake of Sigmar’s hairy nose don’t you dare let my Noemie catch a whiff of-”

“Catch a whiff of what, father? Oh, good morning Bernart, I hadn’t seen you there!” Speaks that dreaded feminine voice from the doorway Siegmund has his back turned to.

“Oh Sigmar, what did I do to deserve this?” Siegmund sighs as he stares out the window into the timid and yet beautiful city he is cursed to serve.

Outskirts of Swamp Town, Settlers’ Cove​

19th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.13 6 B’en 6 Mol​

It is early in the morning, first light, in fact. It is not something Barra is used to seeing while in Swamp Town. He is far from a natural early riser and that mixes with the heat and frequent hangovers to make sure he rarely wakes up before the afternoon’s mangrove shade makes being alive bearable. Oh, he’ll gladly change things up whenever he is out there with a client. No one wants to be caught oversleeping by anything out there in the Lustrian wilderness.

But still. As used as he is to the extreme switch between being a crepuscular animal , and adapting to whatever insane schedule and pace the people who buy Gunter’s maps demand -thinking they have found the precept methodology- he is very much not used to what he is having to do today.

Then again, nothing is usual about his current situation.

Walking through the jungle so early that it almost feels tranquil gives Barra nothing if not the aftershock of the chilling persecution he’s only recently shrugged off. Another source of trouble is how tiring keeping up with his new friend is. Not only is the queer fellow a long-legged giant. Able to bound over obstacles Barra has to carefully clamber over or to simply ignore the sandy pools of brackish water the mangrove forest is filled with at this hour of low tide. Meanwhile, Barra is forced to carefully navigate the barely perceptible foot path, little more than areas where the most obnoxiously fast-growing trees keep getting their branches chopped off.

His new friend Roland “of the Ashen One” Welser-Nakor also looks way too comfortable traversing the brackish environment. Barra is not stupid, not when it concerns his survival chances. Roland must be a seasoned explorer himself. Or considering his age, likely the child of one, or otherwise involved from youth with the business of dying in uncharted places.

“Well, not always dying, I suppose…” Barra thinks to himself as Roland fully climbs a tree just to jump over a brackish lagoon. “He-hey! Wait up?!” Barra jogs after Roland, doing his best to emulate the movement while also barely managing not to scream as, in the process of clambering across the crooked trunk, he looks up and finds a monkey’s massive-eyed stare looking at him upside-down as the long-tailed furry thing hangs upside down from an even higher vine. “U-Uah!”

“Uh? Any problems?” The blue-eyed man turns to look back at him. The worst part for Barra is the fact that either the man is great at masking the fact that he’s mocking Barra, or the fact that he may be asking out of honest reasons.

“No-nothing, just a monkey, far from the worst thing to encounter on a tree around these parts, hehe…”

“Very true.” Roland agrees and starts walking again… Giving no indication as to whether he actually cares about Barra’s ability to continue following along without breaking his neck.

That really is -weirdly enough- the kind of strange gesture that has made him agree on this mysterious meeting far from prying eyes Roland has invited him to. Barra is not trusting. He makes a living swindling armed men into their demise and lives in a port full of criminals who think he’s a cunt. Under such conditions anything and everything is suspicious of having ”wants to kill me” disease.

And then there’s Mr.Welser-Nakor, murdering one of the many people Barra has to avoid and hide from on the daily purely out of convenience and inviting him to a meeting. Welser-Nakor can kill him, objectively. And yet the fact that the man doesn’t even seem bothered by the idea of Barra getting snatched up on the way to a meeting tells him that whatever the tan imperial is planning, Barra is neither the victim or the focus of it. He is just an expendable opportunity.

Barra likes himself being expendable and non-essential. For good or bad, it makes getting out of the dog’s biting range much easier when you aren’t the first person it wants to bite.

“What kind of surname is Welser-Nakor, anyways?” He asks in a vain attempt to at least get his companion to slow down. Regardless of everything else he refuses to be left alone out here in the mangrove forestry.

The man stops for a second, exactly as Barra wanted, to think on the question. Enough so that Barra fully has time to catch up. And then it gets really weird as he just… Stays still, slowly turning his head to look down and straight into Barra’s eyes. Above them, the rustling of leaves and calls of birds becomes ever so slightly more noticeable. Suddenly Barra is uncomfortably aware of just how much life -irregardles of how harmless most it is- surrounds them.

“It is my surname, it denotes my lineage. Is there anything strange about it?” Roland begins walking anew. Barra makes an effort to keep pace this time. They can’t be very far, anyways. No one who sets up camp near Swamp Town does so too far, how else would they get back to the drinks and old ugly prostitutes?

“Uuuuuh… I-Sorry. Welser sounds very imperial, there’s a lot of imperials everywhere I go. But I’ve never heard Nakor . It sounds very different from anything I’ve heard since leaving Albion and there’s all sorts of people here.”

“That’s because it’s not a warmblood surname.”

“Ohhh right-” Barra freezes the moment the words actually reach his brain. “Not a… What?”

“Not a warm-blooded name, Barra the Entrepreneur. Is anything wrong?”

“What does…? That even mean…?”

CRACK

“It’s just a branch breaking somewhere nearby.” He tries to convince himself.

He fails.

The feeling is back.

“Ah, they are here. Barra the Entrepreneur. Stalker Oxyi-Cho'a. I believe you are already acquainted with each other?” Roland makes a strange series of sounds as he looks up above them into the canopy, like single-syllable words mixed with growls and screeches.

Barra dares look up, following the gaze of what no longer is just a strange fellow.

At first there's nothing, just branches full of leaves gently swaying in the morning breeze. There’s still an unusually large and visible amount of animals in them. Colorful birds, monkeys and other climbing animals, even a few snakes coiled on branches, looking down with eyes of no intelligence. Even farther up, barely visible through the green, a shadow, a raptor bird, nothing unique.

And then the branches simmer, and he catches bits here and there which just look… Wrong.

That branch, coiling with a curve just slightly too smooth.

That knot on another, with a bark texture just a tone too dark.

That section of trunk, barely too wide when compared to the sections under and above it.

Then he sees the two eyes, moving seemingly at random and each on their own volition.

Until they focus, that is, like a gun’s sight.

On him.

Canard Bleu, Bretonnian Quarter, Sudburg, Settler’s Cove​

19th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.13 6 B’en 6 Mol​

Common sense would tell Albert that closing down the Canard Bleu this early today would just be bad business. And he is not a bad businessman. He owns Sudburg’s most popular and safest tavern. Then again, there’s a notable relationship between his success and the fact that he knows exactly when to close his tavern down for all but the most exclusive crew.

The first man to arrive at Albert’s establishment is, as always, the Governor-General. Who else would it be but the man who wears unlocked chains around himself and yet refuses to shrug them off. Oh well, good business is good business. And there’s little he can think of that is more beneficial than being good friends with the most powerful man in the colony with no supervision to speak of. An unwilling despot, in a way, as the empire seems to care so little for its colonial holdings that it doesn’t even spare the man the money to pay the expenses for many of the myriad positions he should in theory have in his government. No almoner -although that may just be a position unique to his homeland of Bretonnia, he has never inquired- or master of the coin, treasurer, quartermaster, steward, chancellor… All positions the old soldier covers himself as best as he can.

They greet each other with a friendly handshake, even if a tired one from his guest’s side. The man wears his armor as he always does. Strapped to his chestplate and pauldron, on a large buckle resting above his collarbone, is the heraldic shield of Sudburg. An eagle with the empire’s own shield grasped on its chest above a two-towered fortress. Where the third tower would be, a red sigmarite cross fills the void. And newest addition -even if it’s a couple years old by now- a salamander wrapped in flames. A nod to their mutual friend’s masters, the Saurian namesake of the land where they eek out a living.

​

Civic Heraldry of the Autonomous Imperial Colony of Sudburg: Per fess yellow-ochre and vert, in first quarter a eagle sable, in second quarter a salamander or in fires gule, in third quarter a tower double towered cendree, in sinister flank a crosslet formy gules.​

By his side, the ever smiling Noemie, wearing what passes for fine scholarly garments in these parts.

“I see you have failed again, old friend.” He laughs, earning an eye roll from the imperial. “Hello dear Noemie,” He embraces her with a kiss on the cheek. “You should visit us more often. I understand that without Nicolete here there’s much less boy-gossiping to go around. But you know my Nesot misses you.”

“Dropping the name of your wife to make me feel guilty, Albert? Best be careful. There's only one boy she gossips about, and she is not one to mince her words.” The girl responds with that quick wit of hers, hearing his delighted laugh as he accompanies them to the long table he has prepared. There’s no seat on it for her, but with all naturality she instead goes to one of his window sills and leans by it, opening one of her colossal notebooks.

“Oh, hello Albert. May the Twin-tailed comet’s light illuminate your nights.” Greets the second arrival. An old gentleman just on the side of portly wearing his distinctive monastic robes, with the ever present tome that is the Deus Sigmar chained to his belt.

Second to arrive is Oswald of the Order of the Torch, the highest ranking sigmarite cultist in… Well probably all of Lustria, but telling that to the man would likely cause him a heart attack. Oswald is the best kind of priest by Albert’s history of dealing with sigmarite clergy: Cloistered and given to their posting. None of that pesky warmongering of warrior-priests or the politics of lectors. Just a man who thinks any and every shadow might hide the ruin of his flock. In Lustria that is accurate. Always pays off to have an overly cautious man in such a place.

“Ah! Albert, you land-locked rat! After this, you and I need to have a talk, you have been putting strange ideas into my sailors about the city being in need of men willing to learn the trades of builders. I respect your entrepreneurship. But ‘et’s agree not to steal from each other hey? Or do you want me filling the minds of this city’s young boys with dreams of adventure across the high seas?”

By contrast the Manannite Sailor-Priest Jeroen Seacurl, who arrives just after and carries with him the unremovable scent of a barnacle-covered galleon, is anything but timid or cautious. His blue-green robes, trimmed with the patterns of waves, and his five-tined amulet to his sea god heavily contrasting with the modest sigmarite as they take seats side by side. The man speaks loudly. “Like waves crashing against the shoreline” he likes describing himself. Albert himself thinks he’s just using theology to excuse his big-mouthed nature.

“Albert. The backroom?” Albert returns the barebones question on the following arrival with a barebones answer. After all, little other than money will get an emotional reaction out of Justus Brocco.

Justus Brocco, a Tilean with an imperial mother who had very much not been his father’s wife. But much more important than his lineage, quite a meaningless thing in the New World, is his standing. Justus is the youngest in their midst -if one chooses not to count Noemie- and in truth little more than the eyes and ears of a large and powerful coalition of men. The House of Sudburgian Investments, the central bureaucracy through which every single of the long list of investors in the city get their money back and reinvest it at their leisure. Justus controls little of how much enters or leaves his highly guarded offices. But what he controls is what those powerful figures who’ve long left Lustria hear about their pet projects through his quarterly letters.

“Tavernkeep.” Growls the only voice more tired and gruff than Siegmund’s on the New World.

“Sir.” He responds with just a bit of extra deference. Best be on the best graves of the man with the jail’s only set of keys.

Sheriff Roger König is the only man apart from the Governor-General who has men at arms at his beck and call. Sure, they might be less than a fifth the size of the militia. But they beat the lady-given light out of any drunk or rowdy person they can find to make sure their quota of penal workers stays up. So best be careful and respectful. A free lager never hurt anyone.

The last guest… Well, the last and second youngest guest simply enters with his head down and not much to say. “Nice seeing you here, Martin.”

“Yeah… Yeah.” The ever-defeated wizard-journeyman responds. He means no disrespect. It is simply -and visibly- hard to care about decorum or manners when one’s daily life can be summarized into “broke his own back studying at the Golden Order. Got sent to the worst place known to the Empire on his journeyman period because he wasn’t anyone important’s son.”

“Oh, hello Martin!” He hears Noemie’s voice pep up above the general rumbling of all the others making small talk while Albert closes and secures the door. Soon enough, the Bretonnian tavernkeep takes his seat as well. Everyone has already been served by his wife, of course. She gives him a wink as she leaves the backroom meant only for the best clients and such meetings. None have touched their drinks yet.

“We all know why we are here.” Starts Siegmond. stars

“Oh no…” Comiserates Oswald.

“Ohhh yes.” Reacts, mockingly, Justus.

“The trappers found a trail two day’s marching distance from Sudburg.”

“Are we sure it is the coldbloods’ slaves?” Asks Roger brusquely.

“We are.” Noemie interrupts her own father. “Unless you know someone other than our friends who leaves stegadon tracks alongside those of bare human feet? Do you know about any such people, Sheriff?”

The man simply grunts, bothered by the barbed answer but unwilling to fight back. They all know how arguing with the girl ends.

“I’ve already started making arrangements. But we all know what the following weeks will mean for all of us, so…” Siegmund raises his large keg of beer. "In the mud, with the blood and the beer!" He shouts the traditional words of his land. “I declare this meeting of the Council of the Southern City has commenced. To the emperor!”

“To the emperor!” Follows the sheriff with just a tad too much spit as he raises his own beer.

“To the emperor.” Follow much less enthusiastically Martin and Justus. The former, with just plain water, because there’s few things that can get him to be upbeat about anything. The later, with his expensive citrous liquor, because there’s no belief behind the words.

“To Sigmar! May he bless us, his humble children.”

“To Manann. May we all drown after a night with a mermaid!”

“To Sudburg.” Albert mutters himself. Gladly catching Noemie mouthing the same two words in return with playful eyes.

If their cheers aren’t a sample of Sudburg’s ailments, Albert doesn’t know any better ones. He’ll ask the Herald, perhaps.

That monster always has a unique way with words.

Reaver’s Last Henge, Port Reaver’s Western Outskirts, Settlers’ Cove​

20th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.14 7 Ix 7 Mol​

There have been sick men. Stefan has simply avoided those. Relatively easy, the ones likely to survive have been sent back to the city. The ones unlikely to survive have been given to the jungle.

“The trick with blindwyrms is rolling with the hit,” Had explained master Tuni, a dwarf and Port Reaver-based adventurer hired by the king to inspect the old stone structures. “And not letting them burrow inside you. Once they deposit their young under the skin, they reproduce so fast they’ll be flooding your internal organs. You see that happen to a friend, make sure to keep your distance, lest they explode and shower you in -look, you asked, alright? Not my fault you’d just had your breakfast!”

That had not been an easy morning for anyone involved, except for Tuni himself. Although Stefan is sure that as sick as he felt, it had been no way near how the victim whose fate had sparked the conversation in the first place.

There have been injuries too. Some natural: People getting cut or bruised while mowing the overgrown greenery and chopping down trees. Sam for the men and slaves constantly working to keep the beaten-earth path between the henge and the bridge wide and safe. And even more from the slaves carrying in all the supplies necessary for all of that.

A bruise is a bruise. The workers complain about them for a bit and go back to work. The slaves just go back to work. A cut isn’t just a cut, however. A cut, Stefan has learned, can be a death sentence even if it’s nothing more than a nick from a serrated blade of grass or a splinter that leaves a red spot slightly too large when pulled can mean… Well…

“I think it was choking lungblight. I saw him stumble onto the puddle while he was trying to get the rash bandaged up. Last night he was coughing and weezing his lungs out.” One man had argued while eating nearby Stefan’s spot.

“You have to breathe it in to catch that, you idiot. It was yellow skull fever, didn’t you see how much he was shaking?” Another one asks irately, as if it’s the hundredth time they’ve had the argument.

“You think everything is yellow skull fever!”

The man had died a few hours later, his body dumped into the Freddo by an outgoing group of slaves.

And then there are the attacks. Like the once Stefan is currently screaming about.

“KILL IT! KILL IT!”

“DO YOU THINK I’M TRYING TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH IT?! HELP. ME.” Shouts back his master as he continues trying to fend off a centipede twice longer than he is tall with the shaft of a broken pitchfork. The tool’s splintered pole and missing head courtesy of the previous failed attempts to fend the animal off.

​

Huntipedes are large, carnivorous centipedes with large mandibles and poisonous fangs. Huntipedes hunt in the jungle’s detritus among downed trees and fallen leaves.​

“Aren’t you a wizard? Kill it!” Stefan keeps his back pressed to the wall as his feet keep pushing him back and scraping the structure’s stone floor, barely managing not to cause himself to fall. All around them he can hear the sounds of the entire camp fighting the swarm of huntipedes. The armored insects attacking them being of all sizes from “basically a normal centipede” to “holy manann I’m going to die” and sporting a terrifyingly varied amount of configurations on their mandibles. Snatchers, shearers, grabbers, cutters, serrated, hooked, interlocking…

“SHUT UP AND HELP!”

Stefan’s body carries him without his brain’s permission as he grabs for the only thing his hand finds, the handle of the large pot they had been boiling drinking water in. He’s not thinking clearly, which is why instead of just throwing the boiling water at the animal, he throws the entire thing, which its shape making it so the rounded bottom slams just by the animal, completely missing its crushable body and just lightly splashing it.

But it’s still an animal, so it’s still barely enough to make it recoil and give them breathing room. Breathing room his master uses to land a hit on its head. He doesn’t spear it, or break it. He is a frail old man kept alive by his strange nature and little else.

But it is just a bug looking for an easy meal, so with what Stefan swears sounds like a frustrated chittering, it skitters off with its dozens of legs to find something else.

Stefan and Cryston follow suit, and once they pass the threshold of their “home” of square rock, they behold the scale of the swarm. There must be hundreds of the things. Huntipedes cover the ground with their segmented and alien bodies snaking their way around, over and under anything that is in their way to whatever their senses deem as “food.” Some are piled up in tangled and twisting messes of dozens over what is no longer visible, but can be guessed to be, the bodies of less lucky men. Stefan counts eight such piles within his field of view, he’s sure there’s many more.

The entire camp is a battle zone. Men, alone or in tight rings, fend off the insects with whatever they have. Torches, tools, their own bare arms and feet. The last group are the least fortunate.

Stefan sees a man, a slave of coal-black skin, try to stomp down on one of the insects only for it to contort its length to meet the foot mandibles-first. The limb is trapped at the arch. The man screams a blood-curdling curse in a language Stefan doesn’t know as he falls, still trying to kick the animal away with his other foot. Said foot does little but cut it’s sole against the jagged armor.

Soon enough, there’s nine piles of huntipedes within Stefan’s sight.

What the two of them do after that is less of a joining of the fight and more of a fleeing in the direction of the largest ring of workers defending themselves. They are allowed in, not out of loyalty, but simply because more people means more arms trying to fight the things off.

At some point the swarms stop attacking, maybe content with what they already have snagged, and simply focus on tearing men apart and screeching at any who approach.

“Stefan. To Port Reaver, now. Directly to the King, tell him what happened. On your way back with whatever many men he sends, stop at the felldowns and inform them. They’ll need to cover our losses. We are too close to fail now.” Von Danling pants as the two of them slowly realize they are no longer about to be eaten by bugs.

“The-the city? But I would have to-”

“If you are going to complain about having to cross half an hour’s worth of road through the jungle to get back into the city after what we just went through here… So help me boy I’m going to make a tree grow out your ass while you sleep tonight. Get us help. His help And get it fast.”

“Understood…” The cowed boy answers with a gulp, his heart still pounding in his chest.

Stefan leaves nothing but a faint trail of dust and bug-insides as he disappears.

 

I hope none of you have a phobia of centipedes.
(art for the coat of arms by me, huntipede art from an official WFRP book)

For those interested, work on the Lustrian Bestiary continues steadily! It would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site.

 

Chapter 17: I Offer You… A Deal?

“What is the worth of a man? I’ll tell you once we get to port. I hear there are a lot of expeditions being planned so a good healthy specimen like yourself might have fetched me a healthy horse’s worth. Damn shame you are a guest…”

- Pirate Lord and slave trader Panos Dubosc

Outskists of Sudburg, Settlers’ Cove​

21th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.15 8 Men 8 Mol​

Whichever god arranged the seasons of Lustria. Siegmund thinks as he wordlessly demands a waterskin from one of his men, must have been the mortal enemy of whichever one planted all the trees. He feels truly thankful towards the inanimate mass of wood and leaves currently giving him a respite from the beating sun.

He is surrounded by those few actually qualified to deal with what is soon to happen. A few dozen men of the city guard. Always the same ones with the exception of rookies in need of testing. If they can’t keep a cold mind during what is about to happen, Siegmund knows they are better off at the walls or drilling. They are not a sizable force, having to go without the militiamen, with only a few of Sheriff König’s own to add some weight. And even that is an exaggeration, as the sheriff’s men are really nothing more than an especially loathsome sub-grouping of his own.

​

The Sudburg guard, while irregularly equipped, does attempt to maintain cohesion by dressing in the greens and yellows of the city’s armorial. ​

Then there’s the usual faces. Brocco, ready for the only part of his work Siegmund actually cares for. The two priests, ready to throw out their usual spiel towards the lizard-worshippers. And Justus, who for once seems slightly more energetic than a dead frog.

They are early. Not out of a sense of respect for guests who have not yet arrived, but simply because -if business is carried out with haste- it’ll save them all the high noon heat. At least.

In any case, they hear the caravan long before they see it. It’s one of the reasons why they use a clearing so distant from Sudburg itself. Otherwise the sound, combined with the visibility provided by the city’s hill-built nature, might provide the general populace with direct sensory confirmation of what they’ve already heard from the slurs of drunk guards and officials.

After all, there’s a great difference between hearing of some pact that keeps the regional reptilian beastmen from being a threat to your home and seeing a caravan from a temple-city staffed by both lizardmen and humans reach your city. It could give settlers the wrong ideas about their relationship, the last thing the Governor-general needs on his plate.

But indeed, the caravan foretells itself with the telltale shaking of trees and slowly growing sounds of footsteps over the foliage. Well, Siegmund thinks of footsteps, but it’d be more accurate to describe it all as a combination of footsteps, the crackling and rustling of reptilian claws finding purchase with every step, and the trundling steps of beasts of burden far larger than any ox.

Eventually the treeline simply breaks. It’s not a crude break as if one were using a cleaver to open the path. No, because the “break,” like in every previous visit, occurs always in the same spot. A spot that while always covered in greenery Siegmund has long gotten used to never having old growth trees. With every visit it opens like a gate into the jungles, and with every end to these diplomatic missions the “door” closes with rapid growth like a gate. It’s not been even three months since his last encounter with the Herald and the untrained eye might not have noticed it at all.

Well, the greenish, frilled and horned reptile which opens the gate this time, its beaked maw full of a bale’s worth of ferns, leaves it very much open this time. His men don’t do anything drastic, they’ve been hearing the sounds of arrival just like him. They have been receiving these visits, the ones who've survived at least, for as long as he has.

And yet, he is surprised. Because amongst the beasts of burden, the children turned into servants, the scurrying skinks and their massive frilled guards, he sees something that does surprise him.

Or better said, he doesn’t see something.

He doesn’t see the towering, paint-skinned cultist he’s come to -to a moderate degree- have a working relationship with. Roland, the Herald, usually at the forefront of any caravan from the Lizardmen of Pahualaxa to act as mediator, translator and main spokesman… Is missing.

Does Siegmund worry at that moment? Yes, of course he does. The last time he saw the young man he had been playfully joking after choking a man -no, a pirate- to death with a single bare hand. And now the polearm-wielding Herald is simply not there? That does not bode well, not at all.

May he finally have run his cold-blooded master’s patience or interest dry? Likely, although unexpected. Siegmund raises his eyes to the sky as he commands his men to abandon the treeline and meet their visitors. He hopes to see that bastard’s massive carrion bird, a sign that he may be simply hiding or already trying to meddle with Sudburg.

Nothing.

Well, not nothing, but none of what he sees patrolling the skies on leathrey or feathery wings resembles the looming and colorful form of Roland’s corpse-eater.

And then Siegmund lowers his sight again, mainly to avoid tripping on any of the clearing’s hidden rocks and divots. He finds half of his men walking along -as intended- while the sigmarite priest and the accountant follow a few paces behind. The manannite and the wizard? They stay behind at the treeline on excuses of not being rushed, and needing distance to cast in case of an emergency, respectively.

Cowards… He envies them.

Siegmund comes to a stop. Not at a random distance. Just close enough that he can get an accurate shot in if he has to flee. His gaze, as always, falls on the children and young lads and lasses. As always, he wonders if he knows their mother and fathers, for not all families traveled together that day long ago. But he doesn’t mull for long on it. There’s little he can do for them, realistically.

At least they all look healthy, some better fed than the ones in his city. But that helps little because the reason why he can notice their healthiness from afar is that -like in everything else- they emulate their owners in dress.

And in the middle of it all, he realizes why his “friend” might be nowhere to be seen.

“Lady Welser-Nakor.” He takes his feathered hat off in greeting. “It’s been long since you last graced us with your presence.” Behind himself he hears a gulp from Oswald.

“A year, I believe, Governor-General.” Speaks the raven-haired cultist with perfect reikspiel diction. She never did lose her accent, did she?

Elma Welser-Nakor, the childless matriarch, walks forth to physically greet Siegmund. Every bit of decorum should demand nothing less than taking a knee and kissing her hand. But he knows better. Instead, he copies the tall young woman’s lean forward and allows for them to rub each other’s sweat-stained temples.

Siegmund thanks his old age and committed heart for the fact that he avoids looking down and on the barely covered woman’s bust. That way lies body-paint and madness. Instead he maintains eye contact, his eyes of common brown meeting hers.

Like her brother's, cold blue ringed by that unnatural gold.

“To what do we owe your visit, Elma?”

“To the same thing we always come for.” The lass turns slightly to offer a nod at Justus. Who looks at her back like a salivating dog. What’s worse is that Siegmund can’t tell if the drooling is focused on her body or the metals decorating it.

“Master Justus.” She greets and follows with a few clicks of the saurian language, at which one of the skinks walks towards her, a long rope from which dozens of knotted strings hang from its outstretched arms. The cold-blood’s strange number-keeping system, one he knows his daughter to be obsessed with deciphering. “We have much to discuss!” She finishes before turning to address the last of the three of them.

“And Oswald, as always you are invited to dine with me and the rest of the Xho’za’khanx… I have dearly missed our debates!”

“Sigmar protect you.” The man tries to greet.

“ No . I don’t think he does.” Her smile doesn’t waver.

Behind herself, the caravan starts stretching and unloading across their half of the clearing. Siegmund can’t wait to start actually talking about supplies and payments and trading, it’s the only thing the translators do not make him uncomfortable with. And he can see plenty of gold and fresh foods slung from pouches and satchels, as he can see smaller, medicinal, bags he has a personal investment in.

And yet, he knows he must ask.

“Lady Welser-Nakor,” He starts to regret before he finishes. “While I’ve always loved your visits.. Forgive me, but I must ask for the whereabouts of your Herald.” Always Herald, never address him as brother, he remembers. “His last visit was quite hasty, leaving much to discuss.”

“Oh, my apologies.” Elma answers as she begins tying the knot-system’s main rope around her neck for commodity. “The Herald has been diverted, pressing work needs to be done and our Ashen Lord has deemed him worthy of carrying out a small piece of the Great Plan once more.”

Siegmund does not know whether to be thankful or worried.

Outskirts of Swamp Town, Salamander’s Cove​

21th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.15 8 Men 8 Mol​

“What you are asking of me-” Barra mutters as he unwillingly shares his dinner with the lizardmen’s thrall. “I-” He tries to say, as he picks a crawfish from the pile of steam between them. Careful not to stain his white shirt

“Is it any different from what you already do?” The madman cuttingly asks, stopping his methodical slurping of crayfish innard to do so. “You kill the thieves for a living, correct? Scavenging their remains. How is this different?”

“I-” Barra groans, grabbing at his face, with little appetite of his own. “I don’t kill them, I help them in killing themselves. It’s different. Anyone stupid enough to march into the jungles with the kind of lies my friends feed them is just going to get themselves killed. Me expediting the process? It’s a foregone conclusion.”

“I -crunch- see…” Roland bits the lower legs off his next crayfish. “But, if I understand you correctly… Aren’t the people in this place doing the same thing?”

“Uh?” Barra isn’t so hungry anymore.

“Disease is rampant, so are your warm-blooded crimes of which you are a great example, no children are born, most of those healthy or resourceful are just passing by. From what I have learned this place is little more than a stopover or a hiding place for almost all. Would you disagree that the Swamp Town is any different from a party like the ones you aid?”

Barra’s inability to disagree is enough of a response for himself.

“What-what is your plan? I understand what you want me to do, I just don’t get how that translates to-”

“Do you know what our name for this settler’s cove of yours is?”

“Our?”

“In saurian.”

“ Oh … No, I-I don’t know.”

“ Salamander's Cove.”

“Oh. Oh ancestors no you-!”

“It’s breeding season, Barra the entrepreneur. All part of the Great Plan.”

“What about-?”

“I have already sent messengers out.” Roland picks another crawfish up. “Focus on your task, we will not skirt in payments.”

This one he eats whole.

Reaver’s Last Henge, Port Reaver’s Western Outskirts, Settlers’ Cove​

22th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.16 9 K’ib’ 9 Mol​

“Two more day.” Growls the king as he inspects the perimeter of the almost fully cleared out henge. “You are asking for me to allow this mockery of all my efforts to go on for two more days. For the chance to perhaps be able to communicate with your man-eating friends?”

“I have seen you deal with ogres.” Answers Cryston.

“Ogre mercenaries looking for work in my city don’t cost me dozens of laborers every day.”

“They kill plenty of people.”

“They don’t kill slaves I have to buy and laborers under my employ.”

“I’m not killing no one, Bastjan. And I am pretty sure most of those men work on the Fell-”

“YOU VERY WELL KNOW WHAT I MEAN, DRUID!!” Explodes the Laughing Hog. “After the utter nightmare that was the Grails I CANNOT afford another failure! I WILL NOT.” The king turns and stares down on the frail-looking jade wizard.

“This will not be a failure. I have not failed yet, and work is so near completion that stopping me now would be the real failure.”

“Explain that to the merchants whose wares I’m requisitioning. To the gangs whose men I’m sending here to die instead of accepting their bail payments. To Yasmeen, who wants to drive ship-nails through my eyes for what your project is taking from her yards. To the pirate lords gnawing at my legs like starving mutts. Tell them that this waste of my treasury is a soon-to-materialize success. Tell the few allies I still have that this mess will benefit them and see them start planning your death as well.”

“ Two days Bastjan. Two days.”

“I wouldn’t give a shit if it were a day or half a morning, wizard. Pack up, grab your omen boy, and return to your tower.”

“So is our deal over, then?”

The king takes a few seconds to think. “Yes. I’d rather not have your boons upon the fields than continue this madness.”

The two men stare each other down for an uncomfortably long period of silence as they start walking back towards the ringed camp at the center of henge.

“Gone?” Asks the king out of nowhere.

“Unless human spies have a way to hide their existence from the plants they touch.” The jade wizard smiles. “Yes, they are gone, all three of them. The first one spooked the moment you started to shout.”

“Do you think they bought it?” Whispers the king as he takes a swig of lukewarm wine from his waterskin.

“If they didn’t-” Answers the wizard as he follows the contours of the ancient carved rock they are walking by with his calloused hands. “I’ll tell Stefan that he can spend the night in the city if he tells a couple stories in the right places.”

“Will people trust the boy?”

“No, but they’ll trust their respective spying orphans.” The comment from the druid earns a laugh from the king.

“Who do you think it was?”

“One of Fronisch’s men, most likely. You’ll have confirmation when he tries to offer you a deal for continuing to bless the farms.”

“Good, the tower needs more repairs.”

“So, is everything going as intended?” The king whispers once more, waving a hand at one of his guards to imply they should stay put.

“Yes, if you leave with all the freemen tonight and we don’t have any surprises tonight -which your men’s sweep should be enough to avoid- I can keep them working from dawn to sunrise. Then it’s just a matter of the details I can deal with personally. If not, I’ll keep them working on the excuse that they can’t be dispatched until their owners send someone to grab them, that would give me some breathing room.”

“Room to breathe, in Lustria? Don’t be a jester. I don’t have that kind of court.”

The two men continue talking as they walk deeper into the camp. One spies the other’s elusive servant boy, this time it takes him noticeably longer. He doesn’t know whether to be happy that “his wizards” would-be spy is becoming better at his job as the weeks go by.

The other looks at the only marginally mood-lifting sight in the worksite. As expected, the previous night’s surprise is being taken care of.

The pitzotl, one of the few and rare large native warmblooded animals of Lustria, had wandered into their camp well past midnight. Likely attracted by the piles of inedible -to humans- refuse being dumped downwind from the work.

The Pitzotl, often nicknamed or confused for a “Lustrian Hog” is a large tusked omnivore which does have a lifestyle similar to that of Old World wild boars and is often seen living alongside the more common and less dangerous peccaries. ​

Of course, an animal that size is hard to deter when it decides that the hairless monkeys near it may be trying to muscle in on their pile of garbage. Something five gored men, whose bodies are no longer on the camp, can attest to. The animal’s attack had left sudden, he had been reading the glyphs of one of the most recently vine-freed walls with Stefan holding an oil lamp for him, and a moment later he had been turning around to see a tusk-mouthed beast charging against a slave with enough force to snap the chains at the man’s ankles. And the man's ankles too, and much of one of his legs. And his skull upon hitting the ground down from the impact.

Not the kind of sight one likes seeing before going to sleep. “At least this one came alone.”

But in no small part thanks to the king’s guardsmen and their crossbows, that will not be a problem anymore. The animal has already been skinned, which Von Danling will be keeping as a memento. He has chosen to order the camp’s cooks, a couple of halflings, to stew the entire animal for rations as a “parting” gift for the men who do not know more work awaits.

“I want the skull.”

“Wouldn’t that be a bit too on the nose?”

“If it gives me another fake story to tell people who ask me why they call me Laughing Boar, it’s worthwhile. Now. If you excuse me, I didn't become king to stay in the jungles. And Von Danling?”

“Yes, my king?”

“The shouting match might have been false. The arguments were not. There will be no second chance at this.”

“I won’t need one.”

Foreign Town, Skeggi, Lyssa Bay, Jungles of Pahualaxa​

22th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.16 9 K’ib’ 9 Mol​

Torfi doesn’t especially enjoy visiting the Foreign Town. The set of stilt-built houses and shops, off in the south-westernmost corner of Skeggi and boxed between the palisade and the sea, stands out even to the untried eye. How could it not. Every single structure in Skeggi is of Norscan thought, adapted to the climate and sinking land that Skeggi’s location offers. Except, of course, those of Foreign Town, which are confusingly varied in their approaches to remaining above the waterline. From barges used as foundations for boxy establishments to low-lying structures bound to be unmade come the next rainy season.

It’s a messy place, full of strange folk who speak any and every language except Norscan. They move to and from, excited about what he knows will mostly just be unremembered deaths. They just look stupid, he thinks, dressing in clothes too fancy or too thick to traverse Pahualaxa or any other place they might be heading to. Some, often the leaders surrounded by gaggles of what he can only assume are their people’s equivalent to huscarls, dress so weirdly Torfi has to make an effort to contain his laugh.

His companion, however, has the luxury of not bothering to. Why? Because even if the source of entertainment became insulted enough to assault the laughing old man, he’d be met with the axe heads of Skeggi’s most superstitious. Who also happen to be most bloodthirsty,

Soren Hoarder, Not Soren the Hoarder, is currently losing his mind at a man dresses in plates of steel from toe to head, with the most gaudy unicorn-statue grafted helmet and a brightly colorful cape (the lower two third of which are completely covered in mud). The man, a Breton, is currently having to pull his feet out of the mud with both hands one step at a time. Each time, his leg leaves the silt with a bucket’s worth of briny mud attached to it.

It is extremely funny, enough so that Torfi has decided to rest his pile of furs -the sole reason why he is here, to sell them to the fur traders of Foreign Town- on the stall of an appalled imperial and join the watch party. Thankfully, Troll and Sisu are there, flanking him, to keep the gold-exchanger from complaining.

If there’s one good thing about Foreign town, it’s that the ones who live there all year long know their place. Not so much from the Old Worlder parties, such as the one the plated and sinking man is likely part of.

Soren’s sack of totems and gift, the result of a life spent receiving such things in exchange of insights and blessings, lays on the mud by Torfi’s Sisu.

“Steemed Vikti.” Torfi speaks while they both keep looking at the hilarious sight. “They say your hoard has gotten so big you now insist on being gifted things you can eat instead. I would have thought the idea stupid but…” Torfi looks down on the man’s belly. Which has indeed grown since he last visited the man. Torfi doesn’t focus on how said memory also involves his father being there to ask about the season’s hunting luck.

Soren Hoarder, Skeggi’s most approachable Vikti. ​

“Hehehehe…” The old man spits out a laugh between his few remaining teeth. “A Vikti is a servant to his community. And I can’t keep serving if I starve out. Can I, kennelmaster?”

“You? Starve? I’d assume if you ever foretold hunger for yourself you’d just invite yourself into the next feast. Why didn’t I see you during the last one, anyways?”

“The Jákupssons were having a new brat, and the Eklanders too. And Viveka’s marauders were heading out early the day after and wanted a read too.”

“Do you never take a break?”

“What do you think this is?!” The old man smiles as he gets comfortable leaning on his gnarled wood staff.

“So, what did you foretell for them?”

“The baby boy will die of a cough within the month. If he doesn’t, he’ll be killed by his mother to spare him from a worse fate. The Eklander also had a boy, but that one will get bitten by a viper and likely die if he makes it to ten, but will most probably be kidnapped within the year by enemies.”

“What about Viveka’s men?”

“Sixteen -no- fifteen are coming back, average haul.”

“Gods, you could lie to them every now and then you know?”

“Then I’d get less food.”

And that is why Torfi may like Skeggi’s most sought after future-seer Vikti, but he will never make a serious offering worth an important prediction.

“So… Anything actually interesting going on?”

“Yes.” Soren turns to look down on Torfi’s hounds and drops one of his bird-skull bracelets. Before Torfi can do anything the ever useful Sisu has picked it up and sat up to give back the tiny gift to its owner.

“Soren!” Torfi realizes. But it's too late.

“Payment enough.” The Vikti looks Torfi in the eye, his flatulent breath making the young hunter forget all about idiotic knights. The jolly madness in his yellow and wrinkled covered face is nowhere to be seen, replaced by the stare of what is nothing less than unstoppable destiny parsed through an old man’s addled brains.

“You are going to be Death's Herald for those who strangle mutts. The hound’s skull will split and the heart of the beast of too-many tongues will be speared.”

After all, there’s no law that says what Soren can consider worthwhile payment for whatever kind of prediction he wishes to make.

 

Things are heating up...

Thanks to Matkoc for the art of the "Lustrian Hog" and to Scanian for his models for the Sudburg guard.

For those interested, work on the Lustrian Bestiary continues steadily! It would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site.

 

Chapter 18: Firewood

Obviously you’ll need fuel. No fire without fuel. But in Lustria that’s not an easy task. Back here you can just walk out into the woods and gather fallen branches on the thicker side, or if you have an ax you simply get your men to set up a chopping block and put to task whoever is least tired or most punishment-worthy after the day’s march.

In Lustria? In Lustria you can’t just grab branches off the jungle floor. Even on the dry season the shade of the trees will have trapped enough humidity to keep any large branch or trunk rotting and humid. You’ll have to exclusively rely on very recently snapped and fallen branches or on cutting down your own green wood. And even then there’s risks attached. You never know what might be hiding under a log or large branch on the jungle floor -snakes and scorpions are very far from being your lone concerns- and you never know what kind of danger’s nest or hide you might disturb when you start felling a tree.

​

Uakaris, commonly known as Red Mist Monkeys due to how they handle prey, are some of the most deceptive of Lustria’s Jungle Swarms. ​

A specific example comes to mind. A man of mine started chopping at the trunk of a tree of interlocking branches at the edge of the clearing when we all suddenly heard a commotion. A troop of Red Mist Monkeys had been sleeping on the tree’s branches. All we saw were dozens of hairy arms grabbing at him and hauling him away. His screams stopped in a few minutes but their eating -messy, combative and just beyond sight- kept us up for hours. And the morning after they pelted us with his armor, equipment and shards of bone as we left the area.

Even the trees themselves can be a hazard. Some have sap so thick and sticky that they might simply refuse to let go of your axehead after a few swings. Others? Nightmares covered in poisonous or exploding thorns. But at least those advertise how much you should stay far away from them. Some produce smoke that makes you drowsy or outright unconscious when you burn them, or they make you sick to your stomach and throat. Some blasted vines fight back! And all of those you need to know by sight, or have a naturalist who does on your party and make sure they stay alive, or keep an almanac or herbal guide with you while keeping it from rotting or getting eaten by moths.

But if you want a less disheartening piece of advice on firewood? If you are using palm tree wood, always mix it with something else, works better that way. And always chop at the edges of the clearing or site you are working on, always keep them within sight, never go into or send men into the jungle for wood. They will not return.

-Death and Riches: Memories of Estalian mercenary Captain Fernando Pirazzo.

Bartering Caravan Camp, Outskists of Sudburg, Settlers’ Cove​

22th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.16 9 K’ib’ 9 Mol​

“Ah… Yes, I think I see where you made the mistake.” Elma’s ringed index finger taps on one of the chart’s rows, closer to the bottom than to the top. “This chart clearly lists the Tzolkʼin . But where the glyph for Chikchan , the fifth day should be, the original maker instead drew Kʼayabʼ . Which is the seventeenth month of the Haabʼ . Where there should be a cosmological snake, the original author drew the turtle glyph. An understandable mistake, all things considered.”

“Have?” Noémie mutters as she bends further down to closely look at the page, her brow scrunched.

“ Haabʼ .” Elma corrects, stressing the pronunciation.

“A second calendar system? I had never heard of it!”

“Unsurprisingly. Each is used in different contexts and you are not the kind to encounter those where the later is used.”

“How so?” Noémie quickly goes for one of her overstuffed notebooks in another corner of their tent. Outside, dozens of Skinks mill about, excitedly moving wares as confused and exhausted guardsmen and people of the HSI do their best to keep track. Mostly it’s things the city can’t import due to prices or obtain itself due to the risks attached. Medical ingredients from the deep jungles, precious metals and stones, and the like… Meanwhile the lizardmen load their large sacks and harnesses mainly with scrap iron, but also with wares they can’t replicate, like exotic pigments in diminutive bags or herbs which do not grow under local weather conditions.

But a few moments later Noémie is back, sitting cross-legged with the open notebook between her legs and a charcoal pen in hand. “A second calendar, you said?”

“Yes,” Elma smiles as she leans back to grab the lip of a bowl filled with charred termites, a favored snack of hers. “Tzolkʼin you already know how to read. It is the system we use in our daily lives and in communication. A cycle of twenty named days with a further cycle of thirteen numbers, giving us a year of two hundred and sixty days. Each with a unique numero-verbal denominator. Although I suppose I’ve never explained the reasoning behind this system. It is tied to the two moons’ cycles and to the seasonal patterns. Which makes it most suited for tracking time for practical, day-to-day activities or season-tied needs.” She stops to pinch a few termites with her thumb and ring finger, enjoying the crunch as she sticks them to her tongue and rolls them towards her molars.

“And ‘Hab’ operates differently? What do you use it for?” Noémie asks the double question as she juts down her words.

“The Haabʼ,” She smiles as she enunciates again. “Is closer to your own, as each year is also tied to a complete revolution of the sphere at four hundred days. The real difference is in subdivisions. Twenty months of twenty days each.”

“No weeks?”

“No weeks. In Haabʼ only the months have their own names and associated glyphs, while as said before Tzolkʼin has unique names for all days. It is used on a larger scale, our historical, logistical and clerical records, temple scripts and such recording leadership are kept in this way.”

“So if I were to inspect a ruin’s wall, that’s what I’d find?”

“Depends on the ruins. A temple? Most assuredly yes. A meat storage hall?”

“That would use Tzolkʼin!”

“Correct.” Another pinch of termites.

“Would you say, then, that the style of calendar used is a good indicator of a structure’s nature?”

“Most assuredly! One’s preferred option can even be an indicator of personality, nature or mannerism.”

“How so?”

“A skink will use one or the other in common parlance depending on their trade. Kroxigors only use Tzolkʼin. Our lords and the saurus only use Haabʼ”

“ Oooooh… Yeah, that makes a lot of sense!” Elma smiles mischievously. “Let me guess… Roland uses Haabʼ.”

Elma shares in the mischief, answering with a playful nod. “Of course, did you have any doubts?”

“No, none at all!” Noémie smiles, but then quickly moves to get a fresh piece of thick paper. “Could you write down the Haabʼ structure for me? With the correct glyphs.” She winks.

“Of course!” Elma gets to work, leaning down to use an untraded silver tablet as writing support while her free hand continues snacking on termites. “So,” She small-talks. “How are things going with that male?”

“Martin? He continues to be a melancholic shut-in. I swear I hadn’t seen him out in the sun before yesterday for a month straight.”

“So he still refuses to court you?”

“At this point I have half a mind to ask you to kidnap him off into the jungles for a few weeks, may do his fortitude and guts some good.”

“Not so sure about that, we may not return him.” Elma gives a coy smile.

“Absolutely not. If he must die he will do so trying to convince my father that he’s worthy of my hand, like a proper imperial.”

“ Awwww … I adore warmblood courtship. It is so…”

“Idiotic?”

“Needlessly complicated.”

“We’ll see if you think the same once you meet a man who doesn’t ick you out.”

“Unlikely, but I am not categorically against-”

A very loud beating of wings interrupts the Xho’za’khanx. One she knows very well.

Tlahui, her brother’s pesterous carrion-eating companion, lands on the clearing’s open ground with a thud. The skinks steer clear of the blessed rylok, recognizing it. And the warmbloods pick up on the cue.

The bird finds her quickly by way of its swiveling and half-naked long neck, It gives a grating squawk and begins to hop towards the tent she’s sharing with a now extremely amused Noémie.

And she does mean hop, as the bird begins scampering towards her with a skipping gait. Its long wings are not fully closed, making it look like a bluish rock with bird legs and full of bad ideas.

“Seems like your brother has need of you.”

“So it seems.” Elam huffs and puffs, getting up to meet the majestically feathered yet clown-like behaving vulture half-way.

There, indeed, is a message to be delivered. A piece of bark, long and only slightly curved. A message which the bird refuses to give up until Elma shouts for a skink to grab the worst-looking cut of dry meat out of their “pantry” deeper under the forestry’s shade.

The message is clearly written by carving with a claw into the soft bark. Very clearly written and concise. Undoubtedly dictated by her dear brother.

“Noémie?” She calls as she reads the lines of information a fifth time, making sure she’s not missed any subtextual details.

“Yes?”

“I need you to do me a favor.”

“There’s texts I need you to translate, so consider it an advancement.”

“How fast can you arrange a meeting with your father…? A private one.”

“How urgent are things?”

“Full moon night-kind of urgent.”

“I’ll make sure he knows to stay up late tonight.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, you and your brother’s dealings are the only things that make his blood pump these days.”

Butcher Street, Port Reaver, Setter’s Cove​

22th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.16 9 K’ib’ 9 Mol​

Ripface answers Stefan’s request by tackling him out of an alley's shadows and into the dirt road’s dust. All in all, not fun.

“You azzhole!” The deformed boy screams with snot clogging his nose and globular tears running down his smudged cheeks. “IU LEAVE UZ BEHIND TO WORK FOR DAD CREEPY GUY AND NOW WANNA WORK WIZ IU AGAIN?!” Clumsy fists continue to rain down on Stefan’s chest as he tries to get the thinner boy off him.

Surprising himself, he does manage to push Ripface off himself. The wonders of being able to eat a full meal at least once a day, go figure.

“Hey!” Stefan moves back with a few clumsy kicks until his back hits the alley’s wall. He knows not to turn his back on someone angry unless he plans on running for it. And he isn’t doing that with Ripface of all people. “All I did was look for a job and got lucky. No one says you can’t do it too you idiot!”

“NO I CAN’T!” Ripface gasps. Butcher street’s stream of people remains unchanged and unconcerned with the two ruffians fighting off in a corner. If they want to bet on a child-fight there’s proper locales where one can do so, after all. “Athter you lefffft, zhe Ztragglerz got a lot more ztingy because of that brute who beat them! Now zhey keep tabz on all of uz at Zaint Zizzy’z!” Spittle flies from the boy’s face as he tries to say the challenging -for him at least- phrase.

“That’s not my fault!”

“IT IZ!”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Zuh-uh!”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Zuh-uh!”

“How is it my fault? I just ran for it! You could have done that too!”

“U abandoned uz!”

“I don’t owe you ANYTHING Ripface!” He shouts back. “And for all it matters, don’t worry about me being better off for much longer!” Stefan belts out. “Everyone knows what a shitshow that bridge and jungle expansion project is being. Who do you think will get kicked out first when the king gets tired of the wizard?”

“ Oh. ” Ripface frowns. “Are zhey gonna get rith of iu?”

“I don’t see anyone lower on the chain, Ripface. Sure, I get food and good shoes. But he doesn't care much more for me than he does for one of his pots. He’s not better than the stragglers or Jhonny, he just has a bigger pantry.”

“Oh… I guezz… I guezz I’ll tell zhe ozerz not to mezz wiz you… Will you help uz pay zhe ztragglerz onze iu get kicked out? We are havin’ trouble making endz meet and everyone zays you get paid.”

“Ta-Da.” Stefan thinks. “The mage wanted me to spread rumors? Doesn’t get better than this.”

“Sure…” He lies. “Just-Just let me enjoy it for what time I have left, every day the king gets more fed up with the wizard.” He explains.

“Ok…”

Salamander’s Cove​

23th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.17 10 Kab'an 10 Mol​

The mangrove forests are an eerie place in the early hours of the still-sunless morning. It is such a time that light has started filtering through the oceanic horizon, and yet the mace-like structure of the aerial roots keeps the place shrouded in the darkness of midnight.

Sound is ever encompassing, the lapping of the rising tide at the tree-trunks and the movements of brackish-water fish below. The flying of insects, nocturnal birds and bats above. The mangroves are quiet, yet there’s nothing silent to them. A soothing white noise of life and natural cycles. Even the smell, after days in that maggot of a settlement, is welcome, the saltiness of the mangrove accented with just an ever-present hint of smoke and charcoal.

Roland loves it. He does not particularly love having to plant his soles on the arching aerial roots to avoid getting caught in the mellowed but silt-heavy tidal water. But he very much loves everything else about the night’s mission.

All missives and messengers have been sent out, all according to plan.

All but one. Arguably the most important one of them all. The one he is to make.

It is not hard to find them, even without Tlahui to act as his eye in the sky Roland can still use the telltale signs. A clawmark here, a deep groove on the soil there, a scorch mark on that trunk, a snapped tooth on this other one… And even if that weren’t enough? Every now and then a shrill roar or a lightning-like gout of orange flame gives him an even more refined sense of where to head towards.

They would have noticed him earlier in most situations. Not only is he upwind to creatures of a much greater sense of smell than his. He is also making no effort to stay quiet either. He doesn’t need to, they are too busy with a higher natural priority. One that even trumps his connection to Itzil’s uncountable hosts.

A Salamander is a giant, predatory reptile that stalks the swamplands and estuaries of the Lustrian jungles. ​

The salamanders in the clearing -which is more like an area where the mangroves have simply been burned into a crip or toppled and cracked aside- are two massive males. Ancient salamanders, more than twice the usual size for their brethren. Animals at the peak of their kind, the only two who live in this entire territory. Unwilling to share with other males most of the time, even more so with each other during breeding season.

They fight in a crude yet efficient manner, rising to their hind legs belly to belly as they claw at each other's torso and attempt to bite at each other's neck to subdue the opponent. Often one will snap at the other's membranous fan-like crest, eliciting pained and furious shrieks before a vigorous shake from one or the other breaks the bout. They circle each other, using both tail-whips and streams of vocal jelly-fueled flame to control distance until one thinks itself to have a good striking position and the process starts again with another violent hug. The animals’ great bodies and stomping movements create rippling disturbances in the continuously rising waterline.

Neither will back out, Roland is sure, as long as they can feasibly keep fighting without mortal injury. Doing so would mean giving up on all the fertile females in the region.

In that regard, Roland is extremely lucky. If one or both of the ancients had been females, his plan would have been much harder and time-consuming to orchestrate.

Roland is not subtle, his polearm strikes the side of the mangrove he’s perched on low, denting the tree’s trunk. Both animals are still too frenzied by the bout to focus at first. But as another embrace-like brawl ends and they circle each other, one catches sight of him.

For a blink’s worth of time he sees the sun’s light, then instinct takes over and he falls backwards into the water. It’s barely high enough to cover his belly as his back hits the silty grey mud. But that’s all he needs to avoid the gout of flame visible even through his salt-stinged blurred eyes and the water’s own particulate.

His chest feels warm, uncomfortably so. It’ll probably be red and sensitive for days. Just another deficiency when compared to his scaled brethren.

No matter, he starts crawling back, deep into the wall-like tangle of aerial roots. Enough to avoid the snapping jaws of the second salamander as it too realizes him by recoiling from the flame breath.

Roland remains kneeling behind the momentary protection offered by the Old Ones’ gift that is the resilient mangrove. His lips taste of salt. It’s now or never, before they fire again and catch him with the tongue of orange energy, or before a snapping bite gets through the roots and branches.

They foul water. His body speaks in the language of the scaled amphibian. They make food-animals filthy to eat. Inhuman noises leave his throat. They steal the burning mangroves. They steal nesting grounds.

Both animals stop. Do they stop because they are confused by him speaking their “words” or do they stop because they understand what they mean? It doesn’t matter.

Come. He hisses as adrenaline courses.

Hunt. He carefully rises to his knees and shakes his head like a serpent, the polearm’s pommel sinking into the silt.

Burn.

Governor-General’s Private Office, Waldeswacht Fortress, Sudburg, Settler’s Cove​

23th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.17 10 Kab'an 10 Mol​

“What you are demanding of me is insane. And I’m not just talking about logistics, which are already stretched enough as is”

“I am not demanding, Siegmund. I am making a clear proposal for mutually beneficial actions. A demand would imply a negative condition were it not to be met.” Elma looks out the window into the busy streets of Sudburg below. The city is alive with activity even this late into the night. Many tradesmen have reason to celebrate as the city has once more been flooded by the kinds of goods only a once-in-a-decade expedition would be able to obtain and survive to make profit from.

A trade the people have no need or right to know the nature of. Just like the one Welser-Nakor proposes. “Oh, and not accepting this proposal will surely have no negative consequences?”

“None me or my brother could prevent, if that is what you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean girl.”

“My brother is Herald. I speak in his stead. We hold no authority.”

“And yet this is your plan.”

“His. And we have no strategic authority, merely tactical.”

“And how does this tactic in any way benefit Sudburg?”

“We think it's evident enough.”

“I do not.”

“My apologies,” Elma goes back to looking out the window. Towards the jungle now. Where her camp lays hidden. “I am not Herald, I am not trained in the efficiency of communication.”

“Your brother would have killed someone by now.” Siegmund blurts out with a morbid laugh.

“His performance would indicate that that’s an effective method of communication.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No. You are competent. And fearful. It would be a waste.”

“Explain. Now.”

“The continued existence of the illegal settlements of Swamp Town, Skeggi and Port Reaver must be either regularized or put to an end.”

“You are talking of three very different places. Were we talking of those two other dens of heathens and pirates you wouldn't find me as antipathetic… But a den of unimportant lepers and robbers… And how would that benefit Sudburg, in any case?”

“Lessened competition. And I believe Swamp Town was founded by defaulter debtors.”

“We trade with the other colonies as much as we compete with them. We all have access to disparate resources and markets.” Siegmund argues. “And Swamp Town… Sure, it was founded by runaway gamblers and remains a haven for such people nowadays. But those people still buy from us, exploratory parties stop here on their way there and vice versa. You are asking me to hurt Sudburg in the long-term in exchange for the due payments and requisitions of a few hundred lowlifes.”

“There are more than a few hundred warmbloods in Swamp Town.”

“I have an inkling a few hundred is all I will actually get from your brother’s scraps.”

“True… However…” Elma looks back at him. “Events are soon to transpire, Governor-General. It would be good for my brother to have further evidence of your cooperation. He will need it when the order you dread comes.”

“I’d rather die than-”

“Then you will do as we ask.” She cuts with a snarl. “You consider what happened to us monstrous, do you not Siegmund?”

He doesn’t answer with words, he doesn’t need to.

“We don’t. We know ourselves lucky, blessed by the Old Ones with a grand purpose. But we do understand why you simply can’t see that, your mind is too old. Your soul is already at the hands of others . If you wish to spare your kind’s offspring from a life of honesty, health and fullness. That is your prerogative. That is your right. Allow us to give you a chance to act so. If you think my condition truly monstrous, spare your own from it. And if you don’t… Then for the sake of future collaboration help us excise a tumor.”

Siegmund sighs deeply before he answers. “We will keep everything of value so I can make the council think this is a paid service.”

“We can agree to that.”

“My men won’t make landfall, I won’t have direct contact ruin this nightmarishly fragile setup.” He states his second condition.

“We can also agree to that.”

“I will need to talk with your brother when it’s done. Last time’s brazenness and now this…”

“Oh… I promise he will be there.”

“Glorious Sigmar you two people should learn not to sound like your favorite sound is the crunching of bone… Come, sit, we need to discuss the actual details of what is to transpire.”

“Gladly!” Elma smiles. It’s one of those smiles that bother him the most. Not the kind that hides something, the kind that is honest. She’s trying to get him and the city he rules in the name of the Emperor to participate in something just a step short of an act of war… And all she does is give him the smile of a sister doing her little brother a favor of a meeting. It is nothing more than a familial favor to her.

To Siegmund? He might as well be joining a war. A war to be won within a fortnight, yes… But a war nonetheless. And Governor-General Siegmund Armbruster is nothing if not tired of wars.

 

I think you can all see where this is going...

Thanks to Matkoc for the art of the Uakaris and to Legion for his models for salamander.

I hope you enjoyed the story and I honestly appreciate all and any kudos or comments you may be gracious enough to gift me! And in case any of you are interested, here's the link to my Discord server, where I discuss my projects and all are welcome


For those interested, work on the Lustrian Bestiary continues steadily! So much so that I belive it will be ready by newyears at the latest! It would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site.

 

Chapter 19: Kindling And A Spark

“Smoldering combustion, that’s the name I heard a pyromancer call it once. It’s what happens when you burn something with a lot of pores, the leaky and spongy stuff. Like cheap coal, cotton, peat or wet litter. Hidden fire, he also called it. Something about the material makes it so the fuel burns slowly, very slowly and without visible flame. It’s why you will find smoke wisps rising from the ground even days after rain kills a forest fire.

I myself have seen it most often during sieges and town assaults. Furniture, coals from fireplaces, dust from carver’s workshops. It means you have to be careful when digging around the remnant unless you have the time to spare. It burns faintly, so much so that you might not realize you are about to burn yourself by grabbing something until your palm’s skin begins to boil and blister.

Talked about it with the pyromancer -Who was he? She , Sienna something-something, didn’t catch her surname… Terrifying lady, as sharp as the spear of an expensive diestro, had a wicked sense of humor- She talked about how of the ones she had created, it was peatbog fire which really did it. Daemonic stuff, something about the peat and how deep it runs… She lit it on the outskirts of a beastmen encamped in a bog and just retreated to a hill to watch on. It burned for days with those mutants trapped in the middle, not even heavy rain killed it. And even when it looked like it had run out? The survivors would try to move out, their hooves would churn the scorched soil and reignite it, they’d be walking normally across a blacked field one moment, and the next flames as tall as their loins would be eating away at their flesh.

She smiled while describing it all, she stayed around for a full week just to watch on until they all just succumbed. I say, it’s hard to find a story about a pyromancer where the natural fire is what makes your skin crawl…”

-Accounts by mercenary Ralf Bönsch made at a Marienburger Inn.

The Undercrawl, Swamp Town,
Settler’s Cove 24th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.18 11 Etz'nab' 11 Mol​

It is almost midnight by the time Barra the Entrepreneur's modest rowboat of a home slowly reaches the Undercrawl. The red-head does so by carefully navigating between the slit supports with his oars. As he navigates the area, he is painfully and disgustingly aware of the stalactites of solidified filth around him. Unbelievable signs of decay which have congealed due to the dripping of filth in those points where the liquid has unevenly filtered between the fissures on the floorboards of the stilted buildings above.

Some part of him wonders how such retch-inducing features can even exist in a place so heavily washed by the tide as to necessitate above-ground construction despite the mangrove’s shielding. There’s only so much filth which should be capable of accumulating in a tide-reached settlement in the middle of a landscape mostly untouched by man. It makes him think of his own childhood village.

First in the literal sense. His had also been a coastal settlement of mostly fishermen where the only and perfectly serviceable way to get rid of detritus had been “if you are nearby a fire throw it in there, if not, just dump it in the bay once it starts getting bothersome.” And it had been a perfectly serviceable system, one that had -and probably still does- left the village with no smell to complain about other than that of fish guts during the most plentiful fishing seasons.

And secondly, the sight in the dark almost-midnight under Swamp Town’s most overbuilt core makes him think of his place of birth not as a place to be compared with, but as a place of memory.

Memories like those of the tales about the Norscans, traders and raiders alike to which Albion was subjected to all too often. What did they call it? Father of Urf? Something like that… No! Neiglen!

One Norscan -a trader, luckily- and his longboat had reached Barra’s home back when he had been on the cusp of manhood. A foul smelling trader of furs only there as a provision-gathering stop on the way to his actual markets. Barra remembers swindling the man out of his only rustless knife during a game of knucklebones. He also remembers the medallion hanging from one of the horns in the man’s helm. Three circles connected by three arrows, a raven’s ratty head lodged into the hard edges of it.

“Neiglen the Crow.” The Norscan whose name Barra has long forgotten had answered. “He is death, decay and rebirth.” The filthy Norscan had said, as if those words from a gummy and yellow-toothed mouth were reassuring.

They hadn't been, nothing out of a Norscan’s mouth is ever reassuring. Certainly not now. And if that disgusting Neiglen is as much in Swamp Town as Barra’s gods are in the henges and forests? Well, he hopes that that mite-encrusted bird god has already left the nest. For its own sake if nothing else.

But Barra isn’t in the undercrawl to gawk at never-ending and unjustifiable decay, neither is he there to muse on the nature of disagreeable gods he doesn’t believe in and their halitosic prophets.

No, he’s in the undercrawl because he’s been offered gold and a chance at not getting eaten in exchange for it. Because there’s only one kind of creature so sad, pathetic, unloved, uncared for, unimportant and irrelevant in all of Swamp Town that it’d be forced to hide and live in the Undercrawl while the nightlife of a den like Swamp Town stomps away just above.

Not the murderers, rapists, swindlers, mercenaries -such as his lovable self- or the defaulters. No no no, Swamp Town was built for those men. The filthy creatures who hide from them?

Orphans. A couple dozen at most. They don’t last long. Barra has never heard of or met a single man or woman born and raised in Swamp Town to an age old enough that they’d be worth doing business with. He just hopes that just means the few who make it just flee the den of decay on the first pirate crew willing to take them in…

“Who am I kidding? They probably all die before they are old enough to start growing hair on their armpits.” Barra laughs at his own joke as he continues carefully rowing towards his target..

They aren’t hard to find, there’s only one light source in the wide murkiness of the Undercrawl. A particularly large barge “secured” with algae-covered ropes to what are theoretically a few especially strong and stable stilts in the structure above. Funnily enough, Barra is pretty sure that said building is one of Swamp Town’s brothels. Why funny? As far as he knows the only women who could ever be found carrying a child in Swamp Town would be those prostitutes too poor to reliably buy the kinds of medicines -or poisons, for late-caught ones- from the apothecary to avoid getting with child.

Are they all abandoned? Or do their mothers all simply die sooner or later? Barra doesn’t know. But, again, the fact that in his years of exile he’s not seen a single woman raising a child tells him more than he cares to know about.

They are all huddled around a bonfire built in the middle of their barge, which is probably very unsafe but not his problem to fix. One of them, a dark-skinned lass wearing a sack for a dress, slowly turns a large skewer over the fire. The thing on the skewer is clearly not fish flesh, but it’s butchered and skinned up enough for Barra not to bother trying to figure out what it is.

None of the whole collection of matty-haired, skinny, and long-nailed children look surprised that he’s there. Why would they be? He is the one who tracked one of them down to spread word of his visit. They look untrusting and confused. But ultimately, they look desperate. And if there’s something Barra is good at handling? That’s desperate fools.

“Hello there,” He smiles as he stands up but not bothering to step from his boat into their barge. “Is this everyone?” He asks at the crowd overall, but specially at the one with a bandaged but clearly finger-missing hand. He’s the one who Barra had found to use as messenger. Paying the lad with a visit to the apothecary in order to deal with a festering and pus-filled right hand, the one he had seen said apothecary pull maggots out of.

“Everyone who could make it.” One of the miserable tiny voices calls out, not the one of the bandaged boy.

“Great!” Barra answers, not losing his stride. “I’m sure your friend has already told you what he got from me, But just to be clear. This is a once and done offer. Any of you who don’t leave with me tonight will be stuck here when it happens, and I’m not in a position to offer a second chance.”

“Are you really going to burn the town down?” A raspy voice asks.

“Yes.” Barra nods. “Among other things, but down here the fire and smoke will get to you before everything else, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

“Why?”

“Well I’m sure you all know the fine people of Swamp Town don’t have many friends so-”

“No.” Interrupts the girl with the skewer, the only one actually looking him in the face. “Why do you want to take us out, why are you offering copper coins for us to follow? Why?”

“Well I offered copper because we all know you wouldn’t have trusted an offer of silver or gold, which I do have now. But I digress. To the previous question? Not really complicated. My friends -the one who are in charge of the messy business- have an interest in children. And I’m being paid a year of safe passage for each young noggin I get.”

“We don’t like men who like children.” Skewer girl answers.

“Who said anything about men , lassie? And in any case. If I were you -and I have been just like you a couple times- I’d take the offer. I can’t promise a safe or good life, I don’t care much for that. But I can promise that you are for sure not getting either if you don’t start jumping aboard this little rowboat of mine.”

Judging by the height of the moon by the time Barra and his boat full of children exit the Undercrawl, it must be almost midnight. “Good, right on time.”

He spares a second to look back at skewer-girl, who indeed has not abandoned her skewer. She looks at him as if she were one of the men whose heads he has smashed with rocks.

“Cheer up lass, I just saved both our lives!”

Lizardmen Encampments, Salamander’s Cove
25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

Alpha Talon Pantoran is a very busy skink, informally in charge of a very hastily coordinated affair. In fact, it feels as if every time the green skink tries to put one of the “limbs” of the beast that is his xho’za’khanx friend’s plan in place it simply bucks him off… Yeah, bestial is one way to put it…

Much like a beast, the plan refuses to follow the planned logic his kin are capable of, and instead buckles at every attempt to be made specific and concrete, tears at the seams of preparations. If he is to continue his analogy of the plan being a beast, he can only assume it to be a huntipide, nothing else could have so many limbs while also possessing seemingly no brain complex enough to make them work. And yet the huntipedes move and hunt, and so does the plan move forward.

Perhaps he is being too harsh, he ponders as he flick his yellow-spotted crest to signal the skinks of his cohort. They have all finally mustered, with the outlier bands who haven't accompanied himself and the Herald directly having all converged by now. His cohort’s role in the operation is extremely clearcut, and only made easier by the fact that the forty members of the small unit have been bolstered by those of nearby and independent roving lizardmen. So much so that the unit has grown enough to almost double in size.

Just in time as well, had the newcomers arrived later they would have fully missed out on the raid, as it’s not much past midnight when the attack is planned to set off in the earliest morning.

Obviously the temporary members are far from as trained as his own from Pahuax. But their specific task tonight requires far less finesse than the raid he had to miss almost five haab’ ago had required.

Indeed, his fluttering crest earns the attention of Tek’Qila, arguably one of his best if not his very best skirmisher. His fellow green skink -although Tek’Qila is much more monochromatic- approaches quickly, leaving the continuing drilling of the cohort’s thirtyfive new temporary members to task on some formation work up to Ra'kaka. Quiriguá and the rest are nowhere to be seen, but Pantoran is far from worried as he’s the one who ordered them to already take position near the quarry’s outskirts.

“How are they doing?” He chirps.

“Rusty on cohesion and formation combat, spotless with their javelins and blowguns.” Answers his fellow.

“That’s the jungle life for you.” Pantoran bobs in agreement.

“Indeed, I’m thinking of putting them to duel a bit to wake up their instincts and get their blood pumping for the melee but-”

“Forget it, have them save their strength.”

“Understood.” Much of the skink’s jovial nature is… Not gone, but certainly put aside in the name of a clear task. “Have you heard from the chameleon? Oxyi-Cho'a?”

“Not heard, not seen, not anything else. He is what he is.” Pantoran points out. “He is most likely at his forward posting.”

“Do we expect to see him in battle after his task is accomplished? I have never seen a chameleon skink in battle.”

“I expect that whether he joins battle or notor does not… We will not know until after the battle and only if we ever see him again.”

“Old Ones…” Tek’Qila moves to look back at the skinks he is leading through drills with an avian neck twist. “And to think Pahuax once was their home…”

“It still is.” Pantoran growls in determination before dismissing his skirmisher. Were it not for the fact that he knows of the mostly healed wound, he doesn’t think he’d be able to tell Tek’Qila’s slight limp as he goes back to the jungle-dwelling skinks. He notes in satisfaction how they have decorated themselves with grey muddy paints and what red and yellow feathers they have from local birds. It is a far cry from the ash-grays and fire-feathers of Pahuax’s hosts, but it is a welcome sight.

That, he has found with time, is a common sight with those Lizardmen who dwell and serve their Purpose far from the temple-cities. Their loyalty was quick to establish, their tasks not so much…

But then Pantoran has more tasks to take care of beyond keeping an eye on the locals, does he not? And his next task makes itself seen quickly and easily in the form of a green-banded saurus wielding a very new and very fancy macuahuitl quite literally breaching the treeline, his clawed feet crushing an arching mangrove root as he breaks his way into the constantly ballooning encampment.

Alpha Talon Uccuchtan of the Temple of Constellations. ​

“Alpha Talon Uccuchtan.” Pantoran thrills with a greeting by way of his crest.

“Alpha Talon Pantoran.” The saurus barks in response, shaking his head as it drips with the brackish mangrove water. “My cohorts are assembled.” His words ring true, it’s not hard to notice the nighttime mangrove treeline moving as shadows of all sizes traverse it aided by the high-tides opening of swimmable areas.

“Good. You will be leading the main push.”

“How many of the thieves are we expecting to encounter?”

“The bulk of them are of the servile and supporting castes, they will defend themselves if they cannot flee. But this is the beginning of the dry season, the settlement will be fat with newly arrived thieves.”

“Estimates?”

“At least five hundred heads stay all year long, but population is swollen currently, maybe double the minimum but unlikely. Impossible to get a good estimate of the armed encroachers but I believe as many as four hundred. It is a lopsided proportion, as the warriors are itinerant and not actually reliant on the structure of the settlement for long periods of time. How many saurus and skinks did you bring?”

“A hundred and thirty four skinks, half in a melee cohort, the other half specialized skirmishers. My saurus number is sixty two.”

“Have the skirmishers mirror mine on the left flank, keep the rest with your saurus and act as you see fit.” Pantoran confirms, to which the saurus agrees with a grunt.

“Tributes?”

“As many as you can capture.”

“Good. What of that warmblood you handle? Has it survived making itself into salamander bait?”

“ He has. We attack as soon as said salamanders reach the settlement.”

“If that beast-whisperer doesn’t get himself killed first, you mean?” A new voice calls to them. One Pantoran is happy to recognize.

Akro of Pahuax, Blessed Spawn of Itzil, hunting pack handler. ​

“Akro! I was hoping to see your arrival soon! The Pahuax detachment have been arriving all day long”

“Considering that we just finished a force-march all the way from Pahuax, you should be happy I have arrived at all.” The skink tiredly responds as they nuzzle each other in greeting. “Only Roland would ask of me to harry a hunting pack across wild salamander ranges during mating season. I have lost three skinks in the last two days alone.”

“But you are here!” Pantoran happily responds as he introduces the skink beat-handler to the saurus commander. Uccuchtan bows once Akro’s blessed nature is clarified, as any lizardman would do upon first meeting of such a rare individual. “Who leads your forces, Akro of Itzil?”

“Scar-Veteran Xohpe-Xlte.” Akro lands on his long handler’s spear. Pantoran needs not strain to hear the growling of his almost five meter long beasts, likely being kept at a secure distance from the main force as to avoid “accidents.”

“Then we better finish arranging the forces with him.” Pantoran follows Uccuchtan’s line of thought. “Recover and rest with your skinks Akro, you will need the energy.”

“You do not need to tell me that, this is Roland we are talking about. I would be planning on killing him if it were not for the fact that he is my venue to seeing ancients in action tonight.” The handler darkly jokes, his words becoming like the chirping of singer-lizards.

His voice is answered by that of something larger and distant which promptly bathes them in the shadows caused by a distant flame.

Swamp Town, Settler’s Cove
25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

General Helmut Nussbacker of the Empire of Man is not deserving of the title of general. That is not a condemnation of his character, as he is no less and no more honorable, praiseworthy or respectable than any other man who has earned the rank of general in the Empire of Man.

It is also not a condemnation of his skills as a tactician or strategist, as a leader of men, as a logistician or of any others of the battalion of skills which make part of the toolset for a military commander of his caliber. In this aspect, too, he is average.

But averageness, whether one likes it or not, still requires that a man be worse than half of all others in his profession. And by general rules, while worse than average generals are still generals… They do not tend to remain generals for very long.

And so, what makes it so Helmut can be described as undeserving of his rank? Well, it is a technicality, as most things are. Under the torturous and unknowably knotted laws which govern the Empire of Man there is no true definition of who or what an Imperial General is or must do to become. Of course there’s long and complex decrees which govern their duties and privileges, but these are for these men’s privilege and nothing else.

In truth, a general of the empire is nothing more than a man who calls himself general while having the implicit or given consent of his lord, his emperor, his soldiers, his populace or any combination of the aforementioned. And yet, under this maddeningly broad definition, Helmut Nussbacker is not a general.

General Helmut Nussbacker is not a general of the empire because, put simply, he doesn’t lead an imperial army. A reality that he, drunk as he is in the hours past midnight, will kill to deny.

There’s certainly imperial men in his force, some have indeed served under him for so long that they did in fact serve under him back when his status was uncontestable. Many of his men are certainly outfitted with imperial armaments, armors, decorations and heraldries. But then again, many are also not. Men in his force come from all human realms -with the noted exception of borderlands, who he has a deeply irrational hate for and deems as human as ogres- and not just the empire. But what none of his men -or Helmut himself- are under, is an imperial charter.

All that Helmut Nussbacker is, is an old angry man whose supposed retirement was ruined by one too many lost bets and idiotic gambles. All of which have led him to making the greatest gamble of them all by using his status to assemble an absolutely mercenarial force in order to tackle what most men don’t ever even consider, a New World expedition.

The man even has a handy map and arrangements to meet with a local and sought after guide. A “Barra the Entrepreneur” of whom tales have spread as fast as the port he had been wasting his money at when he won it in a game of dice.

Although, right now his only concern is a mug of the worst ale he has ever tasted.

“Hey, general?” One of his commanders slurs from his slouched bench near the “tavern’s” entrance as he continues losing an endless fight against the mosquitoes pushing their way through the bead curtain in the doorway. “Is that a bonfire? Who in Sigmar’s name managed to light a bonfire at a drowned forest? During the fucking high tide?!”

Gelückeshaven Port, Sudburg, Settler’s Cove
25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

Governor-General Siegmund Armbruster is well aware of the fact that he looks like a pile of dung, smells like a pile of dung and very much feels like a pile of dung as he watches his men board the galleys usually meant for patrolling the waters of Sudburg’s harbor. He has not bothered hiring mercenaries, despite the fact that there’s a healthy population of them in the city he rules, as they have a tendency to ask questions.

His men don’t, or at least they don’t ask too many questions. Even Hasso, standing by his side as the men board the ships, knows better than to sate his own curiosity. Not only about their surprising mustering and orders, but also about the idea of seeing his superior actually wearing his armor in a context where it is meant to be used.

Siegmund’s thoughts lie elsewhere, though. He is extremely aware of what is unfolding somewhere far from his sight but uncomfortably close by way of the ship he himself is to also board. And so, he doesn’t wonder about the task at hand. He wonders about what it means.

The Lizardmen have long desired to exportate mankind -and all other kinds- from their homeland. And while Siegmund does not share the outlook, he can certainly comprehend it. Which only makes their erratic way of going about the task more confusing.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Lustrian history can tell that every single time Lizardmen have encountered a new set of settlers and explorers, they have reacted to them differently and inconsistently. And he knows himself too old and too tired to attempt to find a solution. Such a task is best left to one such as his daughter.

But still, he can’t help but wonder which set of confounding variables have led his human liaisons’ masters to ordering that tonight -of all nights- Swamp Town -of all settlements- must be destroyed and that he must be strongarmed into taking part. And yet, he can’t help but feel it was bound to occur.

And, he does not kid himself, he is not exactly saddened by the idea of the gambling den’s demise. He’s only twice in his life visited Swamp Town. Both events he gained nothing from. Swamp Town is as Port Reaver and Skeggi are:

Places of scum and villainy, of man’s worst vices, places for the dark gods’ frail grasp onto mankind to become ever so tighter, dens of gamblers, thieves and pirates…

Siegmund can’t exactly say he is excited about the idea of sacking the town. But he definitely doesn’t expect to lose sleep over it. An idea he vaguely shares with his men once they have all boardaded and await his order to set off.

“Men of the Sudburg colonial guard!” He addresses with a booming tone he had expected himself to have forgotten from his time in the eastern electorates. “Our duty has always been, and will forever be, the security of his imperial majesty’s holds and interests in the New World! And to defend the people, the families, who make those interests into a physical reality by choosing to come here to build new lives.” He remembers to add that last part, as those families are the families of the men he is visibly rallying up. “We are not here for glory, we are not heroes, we are here to cull jungle beasts and hunt pirates. Need I explain to you why we are sailing southwest? Do we all not know what lies there?”

The men stay silent, but in those close enough to himself he can see the excitement of battle. He can even remember, back when he had it in his heart too.

“We are going out there, and we are going to kill those vermin in Sigmar’s name. In the empire's name… In SUDBURG’S NAME!”

It is more a testament to the nature of his men than of his skill how easily such a subpar speech manages to somehow drive his men to shout and clamor for battle. There is no subtlety as the three galleys leave the harbor in plain view for all those awake this late in the night to see.

The men of the Sudburg garrison are killers and self-imposed exiles. Of course they are excited to crush Swamp Town under their boots.

So is the very much imperial governor-general who leads them.

“Ahhhh… If only I were a few years younger…”

Outskirts of Swamp Town, Settler’s Cove
25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

What warmblooded historians will call the Battle of Swamp Town or the Massacre of Swamp Town -and what coldblooded historians will record in their glyphs as the Fifth Cleansing of the Isthmus- starts with a silent strike.

The Swamp Town apothecary is perhaps the only truly sacred or respected institution in a city which has come under the Fly Lord’s domain despite an utter lack of his servants to orchestrate such a thing.

This apothecary sells lotions that ward off the worst of the biting insects. The shop, however, isn't so much a building as a stall that has gradually evolved. A small structure built between the walls and over the stilts of surrounding buildings like a bird building a nest out of another’s branches. Even its thatched roof looks more like a collection of palm fronds which have simply fallen off the roofs of neighbors than anything else.

The salve and potion peddler who commands this stall is a humble man, one of the oldest in the port. An old gambler long ran out of Cadavo -back when it still stood- who has truly learned the best lesson the vice can teach: Stop gambling, do something else.

The strings of multicolored herbs and vegetables which hang from the ceiling should usually be a thick forest of raw materials, interspersed here and there with the dried carcasses of lizards, or monkey paws, or other, stranger things. But now they are all stored away, hidden in the compartments and reused boxes which make up the stall’s flooring .

The apothecary himself, the peddler of salves and magical cures, is also nowhere to be seen. But that should not be worrisome, for on nights such as this one -when the tide is high and the full moons make vision most easy- he takes a simple fishing rod to the outskirts of the stilted town, sits on the edge and gets some fishing done. The fish who swim under Swamp Town may not taste great, but free food is free food.

Free food is free food…

A love of free food is certainly a sentiment shared by the one who finds himself standing on the apothecary’s usual fishing corner. The wood of the walkway cracks under his weight. For a saurus finds himself enjoying the texture of the wrinkly and small human’s head trapped between his jaws as the rest of the body weakly squirms and convulses due to the broken neck caught between his teeth.

The saurus warrior raises his great weapon, a brutal mauling mace, as a simple signal while blood and brains start flowing, both drowning his throat and spilling out his jaw with a quick crunch.

Just in time, for moments later, two great columns of flame rise from the mangroves, heralded by an inhuman roar braying out of an all too human throat.

 

hus, the bloody battle for Battle of Swamp Town commences with a salamander's scorching bellow.

Thanks to Flying Scanian for his miniature of Akro and and to Angel of Steel, likewise, for his model for Uccuchtan.

I hope you enjoyed the story and I honestly appreciate all and any kudos or comments you may be gracious enough to gift me! And in case any of you are interested, here's the link to my Discord server, where I discuss my projects and all are welcome

For those interested, work on the Lustrian Bestiary has reached a new phase, the writing itself is done at more than 100k words, and the first section is currently being edited so that I may post it before year's end!
It would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site.

 

For any interested on updated, besides tomorrow's chapter 20 update, I have already posted the first two chapters of The Great Lustrian Bestiary! I will bne posteing atround one chapter of the Bestiary a month, for a total of 11!

 

Chapter 20: Fire
"The raiding army of Dark Elves aboard the Umbral Tide, a notorious Black Ark of the Naggaroth fleet, was surprised in the Black Way by a Lizardmen army. Beached by powerful spells, the city-sized ship was swarmed over by Skinks, Kroxigor and Salamander Hunting Packs that rose out of the water to clamber aboard. Although the ship’s many towers launched flights of quarrels, the flame-spouts of the Salamanders soon silenced them, save for the cries of the hopelessly burned. Not a single Dark Elf survived and the ship’s massive hull remains, sticking out of the mudbanks, as a charred skeletal reminder of the fate of those who dare enter Lustria."

-The Battle of the Umbral Tide.

Outskirts of Swamp Town, Salamander Cove​

25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

Pantoran -scale-leather shield on one four-fingered hand and Macuahuitl on the other- easily traverses the deepened waters of the brackish mangrove forest. His lithe body squeezing and swimming under the arching aerial roots with slow and careful swishes of his long tail. He does not enjoy the amphibian motions as any skink usually would, however.

The waters he swims are murky, cold and foul. The two former he would never complain about, for not only is that beneath him as an alpha skink, but it would be spawnlingish of him to do so. Silt is as much part of the great plan as he is, one would be pressed to find clear water in the Isthmus anywhere outside of the ts'ono'ots or a temple-city’s canals. The cold is natural too, he is swimming through what is mostly seawater at high tide, of course it is slightly colder than what he would enjoy. But the latter… The water is not foul in the way stagnant water of an abandoned canal or a mosquito larvae-filled puddle should be, it's much worse, worse even than what one would find in a watering hole where a messy eating predator has abandoned the scraps of a not-recent-anymore meal.

It is a foulness most Lizardmen can go decades or an entire lifetime without encountering, a foulness he himself could barely even sniff when his cohort first scouted the settlement’s perimeter. But now he is entering it, swimming the waters of what truly is , without a shadow of a doubt…

Anathema.

Not just the physical foulness of the fetid settlement’s exudates seeping and mixing with the seawater, directly assaulting his nostrils, but a much deeper one. It is the pus of a festering wound which has been seeping for more than eight millenia.

As he continues swimming -dozens and dozens of skinks following him in snaking routes hidden by the darkness and the sound of water lapping at thousands of roots- he can feel himself beginning to be overcome by rage. The very thought of the suppurant foe’s presence, under the very snouts of Pahuax’s outlying sphere of influence…

But then, with a quick and crocodilian movement he raises just a sliver of his head above water to take his first gulp of -contaminated- air in half an hour… And what his eyes see as their nictitating membranes recede turns that un-cold-blooded rage into something much more natural to his kind.

Excited ferocity.

For the world he sees around him isn’t just a gangrene growing out of Lustria’s neck.

It is a gangrene that is currently being cauterized.

The massive gouts of flame leaving the maws of at least a dozen salamanders, are bright enough that Pantoran can feel it as his eyes sting and his slitted pupils contract. Two of the vividly orange quadrupeds do indeed fit the descriptions he’s heard -stories told in encampment-tales of the ancients, salamanders large enough to fend carnosaurs off- perfectly. The complete lack of handler skinks harrying them and the lack of glinting golden pieces scattered across their bodies differentiate them further. But the fire-spitting reptiles are far from the only source of light. The Silvered One hangs beautifully in the sky. She, the world’s singular true moon, shines in her full form, so bright and clear that it breaches the voids of darkness left behind by the flames, so strongly that she almost manages to hide the existence of the Chaos Moon.

She is the eye of Tlazcotl The Impassive, and knowing that fills Pantoran with determination. After all, if one of the Old Ones has deemed tonight’s battle worthy of keeping his eye on, it is their utmost duty to give him a spectacle to be proud of.

Pantoran begins to submerge again just as a new source of light arrives, the burning pires that are the first stilted huts the salamanders reach with their ranged attacks, the filth burns. The cleansing has already begun.

And in those bonfires he sees something else as his advance continues, tall shapes casting taller shadows in the ever-churning flamelight.

One stands out for being unique, a tailless and straight-backed shape that harries one of the ancient salamanders with a great swinging halberd, wordless cries seemingly not offending the beast, but only exciting it into releasing a jet of flame directly towards a large barge moored to the base of another elevated construction.

Scar-Veteran Xohpe-Xlte of Pahuax, Head of the Salamander Cove Army ​

The other stands farther back, but is equally unmissable as golden armor glints, revealing the pallid blue shape that wears it, and the clay-red beast he rides. Scar-Veteran Xohpe-Xlte roars out complex orders from atop his cold-blooded mount in the highly sophisticated and simplified sub-language of the militant saurus, the war banner bolted to his saddle shaking with a jade-like shine with every step the predatory warbeast takes deeper into the brackish lagoon of Swamp Town.

Behind him, hundreds of lizardmen march, spreading out as he issues position updates with skillful twirls of his great lance. None of those are intended for Pantoran, as he has a great deal of autonomy by way of leading the right flank, but they do give him useful information.

The time is nigh, he gives a frog-like chirp as he fully submerges again, his cohort understands, so do the rest. It is time to pin whatever defenders the rotting outpost is mustering.

In a few minutes’ time, the first wave of skinks reaches the bases of the constructions lining Swamp Town’s southwestern flank. He needs not shrill any orders out. He is first to start scaling one of the thousands of stilts, followed by the rest, all climbing like geckos with their clubs, macuahuitls, shields, spears, javelins and blowpipes slinged somewhere on their bodies.

As they do so, Pantoran can hear the general ruckus above. The warmbloods are unorganized, not brainless. They know that the jungle-facing area of their city is being attacked. They can see the flames, hear the fire and the roars and the screaming, even the smell of burning wood and sizzling filth should be unmistakable to their addled minds. So they run around like beheaded junglefowl, making the boards above bend and shift with endless thudding. Elevated paths and rope bridges swing as men -some armed to the teeth, some barely clothed- run this and that way.

Once Pantoran reaches the somewhat level floor of the shack supported by the stilt he had chosen, he simply keeps climbing the convex wall, aided by the uneven and knotty planking which makes it up.

His clawed hand eventually finds the lip of an opening. Unlike the ones in Port Reaver and Sudburg -which usually are closed by small gates of wood, glass or both- this one is irregular and fully open, likely to give the bad smells an easy way out and the “fresh” air from the surrounding tidal lagoon in.

Pantoran lets go with one hand, the other more than enough to support his weight with the help of his clawed feet digging into the moisty wood.

By the time he jumps up and in, his obstinate shard-covered weapon is already raised. Inside he finds what his keen senses had warned him of. The smell of warmblood sweat and the shoddy fermented alcoholic drinks they so enjoy.

Two sleeping cots, thin and filled with moldy straw, a ratty hammock above each.

Only three are occupied, only one’s eyes are open.

It manages to let out a warning scream before Pantoran strikes. It quickly turns into a pained one as his weapon cracks the tibia and snaps the fibula of a leg conveniently within his reach.

Pantoran goes to the one in the hammock above the screaming one next. There is little finesse in what he does to the awakening and groggy mosquito bite covered fourth-racer. His macuahuitl digs into unprotected belly flesh and pulls, some organs get cut through, some get snagged and annoyingly pulled out.

As he does so, his clawed foot slams into the head of the amputated individual below. He isn’t heavy enough for the hit to kill -neither does he have a saurus’ sickle claws- on the first try, he basically just does it because it stops the screaming by turning it into sob-moaning.

The third one, on the opposing side of the room, is already scrambling by the time Pantoran turns around, forcing him to hack away at it multiple times until the compounding damage makes it stop moving.

Pantoran moves on quickly, slamming open the simple door, which is visibly not even the right size for the frame, into the narrow street of other stilted shacks. There’s bodies around him, sadly almost but not all of them human. Above and around him skinks jump over the thatched roofs and slink across the narrow and twisting walkways, all moving as one like snakes slithering into a rodent den.

Pantoran roars out a shrill warcry as the cohort advances around and over him, with the dozens of others following in suit. Like a wave, the simple word will reach Xohpe-Xlte, informing him that his half of the flanking forces has bitten down…

“BOK! BOK! BOK!”

… So that the main force can bite deeply.

“BOK! BOK! BOK!”

He doesn't turn back to execute the crippled one, if another lizardman of the many scaling walls around him doesn't find the anathema-dwelling wretch, the flames will.

Outskirts of Swamp Town, Salamander Cove​

25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

​

If Roland didn’t regularly shave most of the bothersome fuzz which naturally grows on his skin, he’d be pretty sure that much of it would have burned away by now. Thankfully, the farther forward he walks, the deeper the water becomes, soothing the nocturnal sunburn.

Of course, the water itself is disgusting, and whatever pollutes it has turned his already faded body paints into fuzzy-edged splotches of muted color. But the Herald will take his small comforts from wherever he can find them.

And it is all worth it, by the Old Ones it is…

His newest “friend” stomps down with massive webbed claws just by his side, the ripples created by the salamander’s movement twinkling with the warm light of the mass of burning wood before them.

The orange-red striped animal gives out a warbling roar as its frills rise and shudder menacingly, thick spittle flying off and landing on the water, floating on the surface in undiluted blotches.

“YES, YES.” Roland harries in the tongue of reptilian predators, his throat croaking in a way that should be painful for a warmblood, but which comes as naturally to him like fighting to a saurus. “Burn more! Burn rot! Reclaim territory! Burn territory!” He continues to call in a tongue that doesn’t even use tongues when being “spoken.”

The salamander follows his excited request, taking in a long drag of air through its teeth, visibly coiling and contracting itself into a taunt s-shape and resting most of its weight on its haunches. Then the tension snaps as the great predator lurches forward, its front limbs rise above the water line to seconds later land a few meters forwards as it stretches its body so taunt and flat that its lower jaw skims the waterline as it opens its jaws.

The stream of fire is concentrated and long, quickly covering the distance between the ancient salamander’s head and the next closest hut, blooming just below it like a blooming flower, expanding into a hut-sized ball of flames carried further by the peat of its muddy sealings. Only a warmblooded settler, Roland reckons, would be stupid enough to use peat as a replacement for mud and clay in adding sealing and mortaring to their huts.

Then again, the more he interacts with his matrilineal kin, the more sure he is of their pathologic lack of intellect. Building one’s home out of wildfire-producing materials really is the dumbest thing he’s seen with his own eyes since he learned that many human cities will knowingly allow their hatchlings to starve themselves into serfdom of crooked thieves.

But his mind quickly returns to action, as he is startled by a second, albeit smaller, jet of flame to his left in the form of the other rivaling male ancient also deciding to let forth another toungue of flame, this one hits a boat tied to an old rotting tree stump with such force that the rowboat overturns and then starts burning, the air trapped under it sizzling as the flame’s pressure forces it to steam out.

Further left even, Rolan spots his good friend Akro, carrying out a similar task as his lance carefully directs one of Pahuax’s much smaller yet better trained salamanders into firing a fireball arching into the thicket of Swamp Town. Roland waves at the skink with his own great weapon; once Akro sees him, the skink climbs up a scorched and crooked dead tree to signal with his crest. The exchange is simple, both the hunting packs and the ancients are fulfilling their roles as expected and they are to continue offering covering fire, which they do, as Akro and Roland get another coordinated volley-stream going.

The fire-spit of the Lustrian Salamander is a brutal concoction of globular and inflammable liquid which easily sticks to any and all surfaces, seeping into them.It is extremely hard to put out once set alight, even with plenty of water.
​

Roland’s two friends lack such an ability, as it is one which needs to be trained into the pen-raised salamanders of the Temple-Cities. But what they lack in arching range, they make up for with sweeping gouts of flame as long as themselves.

The fireballs might be reaching the core of Swamp Town long before the skink and saurus warriors will, softening the enemy. But the ancients are making it so there’s literally nothing left standing between said forces and their quarry.

Still, it is not as if the battle is just being a fire-setting party. Roland can see the fires constantly being put out for ahead, relatively easy considering that Swamp Town is built over water, and that gives a chance to those not in firefighting duty the chance to actually set themselves up. A few volleys have already glanced the forwardmost skink skirmishers of the army’s main force as they traded metal pellets for javelins, exacting heavy but rare losses, and the fires do give out glimpses of hundreds of figures running across Swamp Town.

Likely to combat the already engaged flanking forces, yes, but also amassing to fight the one Roland himself is part of…

The battle’s momentum is definitely on their side. But that does not mean the battle is won.

Swamp Town, Settler’s Cove​

25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

“COME ON YOU FILTHY FUCKING BASTARDS, FORM A FUCKING LINE AND GET TO SHOOTING THOSE DAEMONS DEAD!” Helmut Nussbacker screams his throat raw as a line of about ten of his men turn a corner -doing so in a row due to the oppressive narrowness of the walkways between buildings- and run past him to meet the rest of his men in facing the foe.

None of them are fully ready and fully equipped. Helmut is even forced to hold one back due to his lack of a crossbow or gun and sending the man out to the outskirts to help fend off what cannot be mistaken for anything but a surrounding maneuver.

All the “general” can hope for is that while his men hold the front, the hundreds of other adventures stacked out in the wretched settlement will focus on the outwardly safer task of fighting off the lighter surrounding attackers.

Or they might all just flee, that is also a very likely option considering the many ships moored on the sea-facing side of the lagoon-bay Swamp Town is built as a hump of. He would have had his men do the same thing, in all honesty, were it not for the fact that…

The ship convoy his “imperial army” had arrived at Swamp Town by way of is not there anymore. It’s not been there for almost an entire week. And very much by design, as one does not tend to like wasting his money on paying for idling ships when he plans on leading an inland expedition which is to last more than a year of New Wordly plundering.

Even if he and his men could commandeer every last ship and boat in Swamp Town -which he doesn't believe for a second he could manage- there would still be far too few ships to carry everyone to a safe port like Sudburg.

Their only hope is to hold out and outlast those fucking scaled beastmen. And that is what his men will do even if he has to melt their swords and pikes to their hands with hot coals.

So far, it is not looking good.

News comes in bursts and are almost universally unhelpful, contradictory and exaggerated. But even with that fog of war, he can ascertain that two things are clear. Firstly that the reptilian foe has surrounded them, with lighter troops slowly killing their way in from the flanks. Secondly, the bulk of these forces -supported by artillery-like monsters- makes no attempt at hiding that it is meant to methodically burn and take down every stilted building they find on their way to the sea by way of a frontal assault.

Helmut doesn’t have enough men or good enough communications to attempt to deal with both. But he does have enough men around him to deal with the ones clearly visible ahead of himself.

Volley after volley, as more and more men arrive to either add their guns or be ready with swords and makeshift weapons for when the melee comes, the enemy comes closer and the gunpowder weapons -the ones the humidity hasn’t damaged, that is- become more effective. With each beat of combat, the volleys rip into more lizardmen, the blasted monsters being shoved back by the force of impact with their corpses sinking below the waters.

Helmut simply cannot estimate how large the enemy forces are. He has lost his spyglass in the general chaos. And even if he hadn’t, a full moon wouldn’t provide enough light to make it useful against the contrast of the streams and comets of flame constantly being fired towards him. And even if all those conditions were perfectly fixed, he’d still have no possible way to discern exactly how many beastmen might be hiding under the mangrove’s canopy.

But what he does know is at what rate they are moving towards his men as they mass on the gangways and stilted bridges. And he also knows that if no one was dealing with the flanking lizards he’d already have had a javelin stabbed through his back.

As long as the people at his back keep managing to put fires out, the battle is nothing more than a simple test: What will last longer? Their ammunition… Or the foe’s resolve…

And knowing that fills Helmut with a grim hope. He has fought beastmen in the Old World before. They are crazed things, but of a morale which is easily broken. If he shows them - truly shows them - that the humans they are hunting won’t be easy prey, they will flee like wolves after taking a sniff of the mastiff’s scent.

Helmut sees his theory tested and proven right as he continues dragging and browbeating more and more men to be ready for the final phase of the battle, shouting cries such as “I AM READY MEN, ARE YOU?” and “BE ASHAMED TO DIE UNTIL YOU KILL ME YOUR AGE’S WORTH OF BEASTMEN, SOLDIERS!” He continues focusing their fire on the different clusters of lizardmen until, miraculously, he starts seeing less and less march into the range of his men’s firing.

His heart is filled with joy, men around him clamor and hail.

And then he notices that the rest, the amphibians drakes and other entire formations haven’t just been decimated.

The reason why the battlefield is emptying is because they are… Standing back.

But… Beastmen don’t stand back, never.

CRA-CRA-CRACK

And then the world under his feet explodes, throwing him back with the force of an explosion. But it’s not an explosion, explosions aren’t covered in green bands of scales, or wear golden pauldrons.

Or impale his men on blades of hooked gold wider than a grown man’s calves. Or bite down on helms with enough force to dent them and crack the skull inside like an egg.

More and more explosions of wood occurs under and around the firing lines, and Helmut understands.

The lizardmen hadn’t been going down, they had been going under .

When a new volley of flames hits Swamp Town, this time, for the first time, directly pointed at his scrambling men, “General” Helmut Nussbacker does the last thing he had mentally mapped while trying to plan his shoddy defense of Swamp Town.

He flees.

Coastal Waters of the Settler’s Cove​

25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

Guido, long-time owner of the Rotting Tongue Tavern, is not the smartest man out there, but he is no fool. A good example of this rare amount of intelligence for a year-long inhabitant of Port Reaver is his willingness to put up with a man like Barra the Entrepeneur.

Why? Because everyone else hates Barra. For many reasons, but chiefly due to the drunkard’s ability to continuously luck and deal his way out of trouble. No one in Swamp Town likes a winner , least of all the men unable to leave the settlement due to being wanted dead everywhere else in the New World.

But not Guido, because he is not a fool. And so he had understood that, if nothing else, putting up with Barra’s constant bullshit and annoyingly tidy clothes would give him access to a somewhat stable source of money. Money the redhead had gained by guiding unready parties to their deads, but money nonetheless. There is no meaningful difference between clean and blood money in Swamp Town.

Such blood money had needed an outlet, however. No stash, no savings last that long in Swamp Town before their legitimate owner is robbed or murdered for it. And so Guido had spent his Barra-based earnings on a small sailing boat. One he had spent the last few months using to fish edible seafood outside of the feverishly misty waters of the mangroves surrounding Swamp Town.

A sail-boat he is currently using to get out of dodge as the fighting and burning becomes an ever-louder background to his escape attempt. The sailing dinghy is barely large enough to hold himself and what few belongings had been worth salvaging from the Rotting Tongue: A few of his pans, pots and other cookware, the rest of his savings and a small sack containing his only change of clothes.

But that also means it travels light, zigzagging between the mangroves as they slowly become less and less common. He knows that he has truly reached the edge of the ocean once the smell of Swamp Town -one of burning shit- becomes less prominent than that of the seawater.

And as he finally breaks out into open waters, leaving the last final wall of mangroves behind, he reaches freedom from utter destruction.

He also reaches the sightline of what cannot be mistaken to be anything but three impressive war galleys cutting the water in a direction opposite to his in an edge formation.

For a second Guido is enthralled by a sight he’s not seen since debts forced him out of his homeland of Tilea almost three decades ago. Then his moderate intelligence kicks in, and he moves to grab onto the ropes used to control the positioning of his dinghy’s sail.

He does so quickly, but it matters little when talking about war galleys with dozens of oars paddling in unison each. He manages to avoid getting rammed and crushed into a salty paste. But not enough to avoid the reach of the rightmost galley, with one of the men aboard through a three-hooked gaff which catches the hull’s lip. Guido could cut the rope currently being pulled with the knife on his belt, but that would probably mean getting a second gaff thrown at him and/or getting killed for the insolence.

Once his small dinghy’s hull is rubbing against the many-times-taller hull of the galley, he looks up just in time to see a man jumping down from a rope ladder down on the bow. The man wears a queer mix of yellow shirt and green pants, and dresses like an imperial adventurer who has managed to clean his Lustria-weathered equipment but who has lost half the pieces.

Guido expects to be questioned, likely to be made to pay all his coinage to be allowed to leave with his life as what can only be a small pirate fleet enters Swamp Town. He considers warning them. Then decides not to, considering that he is about to be robbed.

Except the man just looks around and then back up at his friends, shouting out something in reikspiel, a language Guido isn’t fluent enough in to understand amidst the chaos and sounds of the sea before him and the butchering behind him.

Then the man looks back down, unsheathes a short sword to -using the dinghy’s mast as a support to quickly lean forward- casually gut Guido like a fish.

The man then steps forward again and uses the blade deep in Guido’s belly like a pry bar, leveraging him out of the boat and allowing his sputtering and dying body to collapse aboard.

A few minutes later, the imperial man shouts back up at the war galley.

“He only had a small coin pouch and a bunch of pots and pans. Whoever helps me back up and hauls them out gets dibs on selling the latter when we get back home!”

The Sudburg guardsmen above start laughing at the darkly funny proposal.

A few minutes later, an empty dinghy drifts alone in the water as the galleys start slowly maneuvering into one of the mangrove forest’s larger canals, the corpse of a tavernkeep drifts out to see, where an adolescent pliodon will enjoy the easy meal with the exception of an arm stolen by a bothersome sabertusk shark.

Reaver’s Last Henge, Port Reaver’s Western Outskirts, Settler’s Cove​

25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

“If that is not a response, my King,” Von Danling rasps as his bark-like weathered skin is bathed in warm orange light. “Then I believe the word answer should outright be exiled from our vocabulary, for it has lost all meaning…”

Cryston von Danling had grown desperate, he will admit. Anyone would, having to defend himself alone while in the “new” camp built and guarded only by his new and unique king’s guard.

The lizardmen hadn’t shown up, that was self-evident. Not even a single skink envoy. leaving him at the stockade in the sepulchral silence as his errand boy hid inside one of the safer upper structures and the boar-king fumed a bonfire’s width away from straggling the jade wizard for wasting years’ worth of resources, men, favors and goodwill.

Sadly, Cryston was fully ready to see things become ugly. He would survive, as he alway had, in case of a physical confrontation. But that would cost him decades of hard work and the best pirate king in…

Perhaps the best ever in terms of level headedness and responsibility. And it would have cost him the young boy too, that and all the unanswered questions attached to the lad. But no, no…

Because just at the crossroads moment, as a full Mannslieb had hung proudly in the sky and the King had been looking like he was about to snap…

Stefan had called, called from above, pointing at something with a mix of awe and excitement. Something distant, something only visible from above the treeline.

Now they all stand even higher, on the structure’s masterfully carved off of one of the blocky structures. Himself, that gods’ gift of a boy, the king, his most important guardsmen.

The distant southwestern horizon burns like a signal fire the size of a town. Willowing clouds of smoke glint with strange colors as the firelight from below mixes with the moonlight from above. And the fire seems only to be starting.

Cryston von Danling might not have gotten the diplomatic contact he had hoped for. But as far as acknowledgments go…

Yes, this will do.

The Undercrawl, Swamp Town, Ş̶̢̙̼͙͚͇̼̼̰͓̌̍̃̅̈́̀͘̚ë̵̜̻͈̰͓͙͓̱́͆͌̌̐̈́̎̃̕t̵̨̬̯͉̮̮̻̭̯͇̐͗̍͐̿̈́͋̀̿̚̚t̶̛̛̯̳̽͊̒͊̑͒̾̇̀͒̈́̀ļ̸̧̢͎̩̭̪̟̲̬̹̲̙̔̆͐͌̈́̐͜ẹ̷̡̢̢̼̼̬̹̙̅̔̈̾̄̃͋͗̋̈́͝r̶̘̦͚̫̀͆̔͑̆͊̊̌̕͝'̸̨̢̨̤̩͖͚̯̟̩͕̖̓̈́̋̎̍́̃́͜͜s̴̨̧̧̖̦͈͎̮͉̯̥̪̚̕ Cove​

25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

Oxyi-Cho'a moves as fast as lightning across the maze of abandoned barges, stilts and boats… Sunken and waterlogged shacks that is the undercrawl of Swamp Town.

His movements are smooth despite the unnatural terrain, constantly leaping from structure to structure and crawling up and down stilts for the best positioning to reach the next target. The fire above filters in through cracks and seams in what to the battlers above is the floor. Just enough to aid his night vision instead of hurting it.

The movement is single-minded. Just as the chameleon skink is. For he knows where he is headed thanks to lengthy interrogations of “The Barra” brought back to him by the Herald of Pahuax.

The information had been hard to pry out. Not due to a resistance to sharing it. The Barra had been extremely willing to share anything in exchange of assurances of its continued role in Pahuax’s advancement of the Great Plan. Instead, difficulty had come from the time spent in translation and the complexity of what information Oxyi-Cho'a had sought out.

After all, warmbloods hardly understand or know off the anathema with any amount of appropriateness. That was a large part of why they are so generally susceptible to it.

But eventually, communication had breached a phonetic language. The Barra may not have understood the nature of anathema or why its visible lack of it had made it important. But the Barra had understood that the anathema Oxyi-Cho'a was seeking out makes itself visible in disease, disrepair and decay.

Once that had been made clear, a location had been all Oxyi-Cho'a needed.

As the chameleon skink crawls forth into the very depths of repugnity at the heart of Swamp Town, he cannot help but think of his kin of the long ago. Those who had fought such rot for centuries on end, those who had been banished in the great last act of cleansing.

He’s far too young to have ever met one.

But stories live longer than any lizardman, and so those shared by his caste do still tell of the corruption without but never within.

He is far from the first lizardman to seek and find it in the current age of the world, but that doesn’t make what happens next any less fulfilling or glorious.

For at the very heart of Swamp Town, below meters and meters of decades of accumulated abandoned constructions built over by corrupted men it “stands.” It stands, crooked and bleeding, upon an island of calcified excrement and food-filth, like a blade stabbed into a piece of discarded meat-scraps.

A piece of wood, likely an old stake dating back to the first attempts at building elevated housing in a Swamp Town which didn’t yet have a name. Encrusted upon the stake, oozing menace in a way that makes Oxyi-Cho'a recoil, is a mass of gunk-covered pulsating flesh.

Three large pustules dripping with puss make up the bulk of it, with a further three pieces of rusted and bent metal nailed through it and securing it to the stake.

A Mark of Nurgle, symbol of the Chaos God of Decay. ​

And at the base of this structure, a begging, sobbing , kneeling form.

“Please Urfather, I pray to you, I beg of you!” The shape moans with noises born of a mouth full of misshapen teeth. “The foe, the Great Stagnator! It burns away your gifts, splinters the walls which are shrines to your inspiration! If not you, who will come to the aid of mankind in this wretched land of uniform devouring which refuses to end?”

Oxyi-Cho'a is a chameleon skink. He is invisible unless he wants to be seen, impossible to hear unless he wants to make himself heard, his scent is imperceptible, his very soul muted into undetectability.

Which is why, when the stilt he has coiled himself around cracks under the force of his claws digging into the softened wood, this is not a mistake. For he may not understand the tongues of the warmblooded kinds. But he knows a prayer to anathema irregardless of what mouth it is vomited from.

The servant of anathema turns, startled, looking directly at Oxyi-Cho'a but seeing nothing but the darkness of the waterlogged dumpsite that is Swamp Town’s foundations. Giving Oxyi-Cho'a a good look at it.

Anatomically, it is as human as the Herald or the Barra. Yet its body -half naked in untreated and rotting pelts- is covered in massive boils which wobble like the balloons of infection they are, some as big as āhuacatl fruits. Where there’s no boils, there’s teeth-like growth in seam-like lines which crisscross the body with random lengths, all with raw and bleeding skin between the interlocking fastener-like lines of “teeth.”

The entire body is a sickly yellow. The arms are green, not merely covered in a green honey-like mold, but producing it in pulsating grooves.

Oxyi-Cho'a blows into his meters-long blowpipe.

KA-THUNK

The dart punctures the transmission vector’s skull just between the eyes, an obstinate nail as long as a finger stabbing into the brain. The limp body falls forward with a convulsing moan, toppling over the slippery edge of the island of filth and collapsing halfway into the water.

Oxyi-Cho'a doesn’t roar in victory. He merely looks back at the heart of corruption with a disgusted chirp, and leps backwards following his exact entry route.

His task is far from done.

Swamp Town, Sala-Ş̶̢̙̼͙͚͇̼̼̰͓̌̍̃̅̈́̀͘̚ë̵̜̻͈̰͓͙͓̱́͆͌̌̐̈́̎̃̕t̵̨̬̯͉̮̮̻̭̯͇̐͗̍͐̿̈́͋̀̿̚̚t̶̛̛̯̳̽͊̒͊̑͒̾̇̀͒̈́̀ļ̸̧̢͎̩̭̪̟̲̬̹̲̙̔̆͐͌̈́̐͜ẹ̷̡̢̢̼̼̬̹̙̅̔̈̾̄̃͋͗̋̈́͝r̶̘̦͚̫̀͆̔͑̆͊̊̌̕͝'̸̨̢̨̤̩͖͚̯̟̩͕̖̓̈́̋̎̍́̃́͜͜s̴̨̧̧̖̦͈͎̮͉̯̥̪̚̕-mander’s Cove​

25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

Bullets of round metal ping off of Scar-Veteran Xohpe-Xlte’s armor as he charges into another fragmented mass of would-be plunderers, his great weapon butchering at least one foe which each heavy swing. His mount lands on top of a warmblood, killing it instantly, and quickly turns to snap at limbs and claw at chests. Saurus and cold one are a flurry of rending winds, and they are far from done.





Uccuchtan lumbers across an already won piece of the city, tired from having led the underwater and upwards charge into the main forces of the gathered foe. Flames lap at buildings around him, but he is not worried.

His hide is plenty thick, and once the fire truly becomes unbearable, all he needs to do is leap over some edge or drive down his new and beautiful weapon to quickly access the waters below.

He is a saurus, born for combat. But that doesn’t mean combat until exhaustion-induced death.

And so he continues lumbering forth, taking great gusts of air in through his nostrils until…

His arms shoves into and through the wall of the not-yet-burnt hut he had been walking past, eliciting screams from something which had been silently hiding inside. Then the rest of his body breaches the wall like a screen of fronds.

Inside, illuminated by the fire leaping at the opposing hut, he can see a skeletal warmblood, a mare of the human variety, chained to a wall by what is now a bloody and raw wrist. Raw is also its voice, screaming in animal fear at the sight of the saurus warrior.

Well… If tired is what he is…

A meal will definitely help fix that.





Over at another edge of the town, two massive salamanders pull at the same human corpse like two dogs competing over a chewed-up rope. As the body tears unevenly on a line from shoulder to opposing hip, the rain of blood is avoided by the humanoid below them, who charges forth to bash the shield of a third race prospector. The stout and short thief with pickaxe and regular-ax in hand, a whirlwind of danger.

But Roland has the reach advantage, and the prospector’s allies are all dead already -all Roland’s work as well-, so with jabs of his halberd he pushes the enemy back again and again.

Until the dwarf’s back touches an uncomfortably hot wall, blocking him. Roland’s halberd will have a hard time getting through the multiple layers of padding and mail the dwarf wears, but by the time he is done, another party has been killed to the last member. The corpse is a mess, its chest a bloody pulp. But Roland reckons that what survives of his equipment will be good for the Governor general’s payment.

With another disjointed roar, he earns the attention of the two ancient salamanders, who continue to climb into Swamp Town and crush buildings down with their weights. A great swing of his halberd is followed by their reptilian eyes. Once it stops, twin rivers of flame erupt in the chosen direction.





Tek’Qila moves as one with the cohort, falling upon a group of about eight warmbloods dressed in absurdly thick pelts and armed with massive two-headed axes. The melee is fierce and the taller foes keep the skinks from swarming them with sweeping attacks.

From the corner of his eye, Tek’Qila see Quirigua being thrown off with a direct axe-strike, the skink landing as a bleeding heap a fair distance away.

Almost at the same time, Ra’Kaka’s spear pieces through the calf of one of the warriors, forcing it down and giving Tek’Qila the chance to finish him off by slitting its throat open.





The corpse of Pantoran of Pahuax floats gently in the waters to the side of Swamp Town, his weapons aren’t with him.

His macuahuitl lies, stabbed into the shoulder of a dead adventurer.

His shield rests close by, embedded into the mouth of another downed foe in a grotesque fashion.

His smaller club is discarded in some street, the human he had stabbed it into fails to crawl away due to a broken spine, flames start lapping away at his body while he is still alive and cognizant.





Akro is quite confused as he and the rest of his salamander-handling crew are guided by a chameleon skink he has never before seen. The stealthy warrior in question has them direct their salamander across a great length of the city, over a seemingly mundane minor temple to some kind of warmblood godling of the sea.

The chameleon skink orders them to have the salamander fire at it so it may collapse, and then to keep firing into the hole the collapse makes, until the burning of the city forces them to leave.

Akro is confused and may ask questions in the future if he ever comes across the venerable elder again.

But he is a lizardman, and so he serves the Great Purpose. There is not room or need for doubt when the Great Purpose thrums.

One careful jab of his spear later, the cleansing begins anew.

Aboard a Sudburgian Patrol Galley, Coastal Waters of the Settler’s Cove​

25th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.13.19 12 Kawak 12 Mol​

“General” Helmut Nussbacker gets fished out of the water unceremoniously by way of a fishing net thrown out by one of the galley’s crew. Which he is at first thankful for, because the barge he had attempted to escape on had long-since sunk due to old rot-damage, leaving him adrift in perilous waters teeming with carnivores looking to enjoy the feast offered by the battle.

He is not exactly happy about having ran through the man who he had taken the barge from. But better than some filthy defaulting gambler.

He recognizes the colors of the men who haul him up before the man who commands the ship. Sudburg is too close and relevant to the situation of Swamp Town not to. Likewise, even soaked in filthy brackish water, the men of the Sudburg colonial guard are smart enough to recognize him as important due to the quality and signifiers of his armor.

He is confused when he is made to kneel before the man who stands with a commanding presence atop of the war galley’s combat platforms, but is truly too exhausted to think anything of it.

“Who is this?” The man asks.

“I- gasp -I am General Helmut Nussbacker of the empire. And you are?”

"Governor-General Siegmund, of the Autonomous Imperial Colony of Sudburg. I assume you must have been in charge of a large contingent of men in Swamp Town?”

“Yes! There’s, there’s still time to break the siege. I’m sure that your galleys could-”

“My business here is not that of mounting a rescue mission for thieves, pirates, addicts and general whitebait, General Nussbacker. My business here is you and you alone.”

“... What?”

“You see, a helpful contact of mine told me of your enterprise, about a week ago, give or take, General Nussbacker. I actually found it mighty queer that a force of your size would entirely forgo his imperial majesty’s mighty colonial hold on the Isthmus in favor of a hovel like this one. But I did not consider it much of an issue at first. You are not a man within my jurisdiction, after all, neither are your men, as none of them have ever set foot in Sudburg.” The Governor-General paces. “My pride as colonial authority was bruised, I will admit, that you seemingly considered that ,” He glances out to the burning hell that Swamp Town -now fully consumed by flames both from within and without- has become. “Better than our well-maintained docks and vermin-free barracks and inns.”

“I chose my itinerary based on the reports of my advisors. I meant no insult.” Helmut wheezes out between gulps of air.

“So I became curious…” Siegmund walks back to face his contemporary, fully ignoring his words. “And I made some inquiries and had members of my council ask some questions. Would you like to know what I learned?”

“What are you talking about, you madman! This is - was, dammit all my men are dead or dying!- an expedition, looking for gold, silver, emeralds! What in Sigmar’s name are you talking about?”

“Piracy, I am talking about piracy.”

“PIRACY? I’M NOT A BLASTED PIRATE YOU-!”

“SILENCE!” The older veteran silences him. “You are in command of a large armed force in waters under Sudburgian protection with no colonial permit or known imperial charter. You have been accused of piracy and will stand trial for this crime! And so will any and all of your men we fish out. Which you should be thankful for, as it is not a mercy from Lustria’s beastmen which we are extending to the rest of tSwamp Town’s criminal population.”

“This is madness, my men are men of the empire, here to plunder Lustria, not trading vessels, much less Sudburg! And since when do you have a claim to the entire Settler Coast? All I see here are a few city guards in a couple coastal galleys. This is an affront! I will NOT have this travesty stand!”

“And I will not have a pirate insult my authority like this!”

“I am not a pirate!” Helmut Nussbacker shoves back the two men holding his shoulders down, stumbling forward to stand his ground before the man slandering him. Helmut Nussbacker might not -currently- be a general of the Empire. But if that colonial self-exile thinks he can-

BANG

Helmut’s limp body collapses against the chest of the surprisingly solid veteran, wheezing out a thread of blood as he fails to enunciate a confused question.

“Do not take this personally, general , you and your men’s deaths are regrettable. But they are part of an agreement bound to keep thousands of people safe, and that will pave the way for thousands more. May Sigmar see that you have a hero’s welcome in the beyond.” He whispers.

“Officer Hasso.” Then he lets the dead man’s body unceremoniously collapse, splotches of blood from the gunshot staining his chest’s coverings.

“Yes sir?”

“These men are clearly too far gone from Imperial civilization. No prisoners.”

“Yes sir,” The man salutes and quickly turns to address the men below the fighting platform. ”NO PRISONERS.”

In a few minutes, dozens upon dozens of men line the railings of all five war galleys, creating a wall of gunfire and crossbow bolts which go on to spend hours killing every last person who tries to flee.

By the time the sun starts to peak on the maritime east, they will have boarded and confiscated more than sixty vessels, killing every last sailor, merchant, fleeing local and adventurer inside with only a dozen or so losses of their own… No doubt thanks to the softening and battering of said fleeing people by their cold-blooded friends.

It will be a testament to Swamp Town’s nature that -once the butchering is done and the sun fully rises -the tidal lagoon will be revealed by sunlight to be a corpse-filled mess of burned wood framed by mangroves as far as they eye can see.

And yet, as carrion-seeking and sea-going birds start landing on their plentiful breakfast barges lead by a massive bluish vulture, what once was Swamp Town will be looking the cleanest and most pure it has for the last five hundred years.

 

Hope you all are liking the reptilian violence

I hope you enjoyed the story and I honestly appreciate all and any kudos or comments you may be gracious enough to gift me! And in case any of you are interested, here's the link to my Discord server, where I discuss my projects and all are welcome

It would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site.