Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby BDAdmin » Fri May 16, 2014 12:58 pm

Early in the morning, as promised, Baron Surdemer had passed through Myrkentown's gates and found his way to the Meetinghouse; as promised, Chairwoman Kaczmarek had been there to meet him.

The journey is remarkable only for the traffic they pass, carts and packhorses heading north towards Myrkentown; the Baron makes polite conversation, plying the Chairwoman with questions on more-or-less neutral topics - the spring planting, her hopes for a better harvest, whether she anticipates a return to something like prosperity now the roads are open again. No mention of the Governor, of last summer's sickness, of the near-absent Council.

By midmorning they have reached Fitchton, where Surdemer suggests a brief pause to rest the horses and stretch their own legs; not for too long, however, as they still have the climb into the mountains ahead of them.

As the Spring sun reaches its zenith they reach the end of the road - or of the dirt track which serves as the road for most of the way back towards Myrkentown. The air is still cold up here, the steep valley funneling the wind into their faces, patches of snow still clinging to the shaded slopes and hollows that the sun has not yet touched. Ahead of them stretches Burel's road of sorcerously-fused slabs, ruddy as if soaked in old blood. Surdemer reins in his horse and dismounts to take a closer look, stooping to run his hand over the seamless stone.

His palm comes away with a layer of fine crimson grit, and he frowns slightly as he dusts his hands against one another and gazes towards the pass itself; it coats the road, stains the earth to either side, speckles the lingering drifts of snow - coarse sand, gravel, with a few larger, angular fragments here and there. The roadsides are bare dirt, shallow furrows scoured into the earth parallel with the road. A moment's further inspection and he is apparently satisfied, climbing back up into his saddle.

"Curious. Onwards, Chairwoman?"
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby channe » Fri May 16, 2014 10:53 pm

"Yeah, that's what we thought." She pauses on her horse, patting the animal's neck, looking up and down the way. "The fort is not far from here -- technically, it's in Derry, although some of the farmers around here dispute that. Until recently, this was all dirt an' trees, nothin' to see until you get across the border. Baron --"

She pauses, attempting for some sort of tact, her hand hovering over the saddle for a moment in question. "-- if I may ask. The lady Egris. Why is she taking such an interest in the internal affairs of a province most normal ladies of her station won't even admit exists?"
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby BDAdmin » Sat May 17, 2014 1:29 pm

Surdemer nudges his horse into an easy walk, nodding as the Chairwoman speaks of the fort that lies ahead, the dispute over its location.

"I don't imagine they disputed it too loudly in Burel's direction. He has little interest in observing borders." Dry disappointment in his tone, as if the Duke's disrespect for boundaries is a personal failing. But there follows that question, that attempt to approach the matter with some delicacy, and it's enough to draw the Baron's attention back to his companion.

"Hardly my place to say, Chairwoman." An easy, almost glib answer, one that he leaves to hang for a moment before adding: "Most normal ladies of your station wouldn't be where you are now. You think you're the only young lady to kick against constrictive circumstance?"

They pass a small ruin at the side of the road, a mess of collapsed timbers and half-fallen walls, chunks of masonry and roof shingles strewn downslope from what might once have been stables, a cottage or lodge of some sort. Ahead of them, a broad wall of worked granite stretches from one side of the pass to the other; still indistinct at this distance, part veiled by the mists that stream and eddy between the mountain peaks.

"You've been to Razasan. You have some idea what it's like." His tone holds little love for the city, for the games played in the shadows at Chedwry's court. "Perhaps she seeks opportunity. Perhaps somewhere she might make a name for herself. Or where she might make a difference."
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby channe » Mon May 19, 2014 2:05 am

"Yeah, I do," she concedes after a moment staring at the fortifications, her hand lifted to shade her eyes from the sun. "And she could make a difference here, I think. We've had a lot of lean years, bad government... not Governor Burnie, mind, but the assholes before him, Bromn and the like, guys who took and took and gave nothing back. Glenn's not like that." She pauses here, her mouth half-open, almost as if she's stopping herself from saying something else. Finally, she narrows her eyes at the mist, and then sends a quirky smile back to the Baron.

"Of my station? I thought my station was pretty damn high." It's said in a joking tone. She won't mention that it was Thessilane that taught her. Not a moment of that. But -- "It's sad, really. Growing up we always heard tales of Thessilane being loyal subjects of the king. I don't know why..." she pauses, obviously choosing her words carefully -- "... they're making the choices they're making." As they grow closer, she shakes her head. "Damn, that's high."
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby BDAdmin » Mon May 19, 2014 9:09 am

When she refers to the Governor by his given name it earns a brief glance, a detail noted. An informality, a familiarity.

"The station into which you were born, Chairwoman." A mild correction, but in the span of those few words the differences between the two of them are crystallised; the Baron, a nobleman born to command, to rule, for all that his career as a soldier has scuffed away the more delicate and frivolous trappings of his birthright. A subtle reminder of his station.

As to the Dukes reasons, though, Surdemer's answer comes quickly enough.

"Too long a leash, and a poor grasp of scale. The Crown has left this province to govern its own affairs, for better or for worse. Some regions have managed well enough - Amasynia and Xanth Grange, for instance. Some have suffered under inadequate rulers, as you say. Thessilane found itself under a pompous warmonger who mounted a surprise attack on a peaceful neighbour, has spent five years beggaring himself at the walls of Wrexham, and now reckons himself a conqueror. Thessilane is a large minnow in a small pond, Chairwoman Kaczmarek. Myrken Wood is not even that, for all that your Governor wishes it were otherwise."

The snow at the roadsides is deeper as they near the pass itself, shovelled away from the road and stained throughout with red stones and grit; part-melted by day and frozen again overnight, still piled taller than a man in places even this late in the Spring, and reaching halfway up the stout ramparts that at last they are close enough to view properly.

The Baron reins in his horse an arrow's flight from the walls, brows set into a disapproving frown as his gaze sweeps the fortifications from one end to the other, and when he speaks his verdict has a soldier's bluntness.

"Might as well have carved a hundred-foot cock into the mountainside."

It had been built to dominate the mountain pass, an obstacle to all who would travel further into Derry, its granite walls clad in striking crimson sandstone, no doubt transported from leagues away by Burel's Channelers. An arched gateway thirty yards wide spanned the magewrought road, and beyond it a covered courtyard, vast and cavernous beneath a slate roof supported by stone buttresses and stout timbers, a wonder of dwarven masonry. To one side of the hall, space for stables hewn from the living rock, with further hallways and quarters chambers excavated from the cliffs above. A garrison, a gatehouse for the whole of Derry, a very visible demonstration of the Duke's power and authority over a conquered land.

Now, after a single lean winter, the proud fortress has an air of ruination. The source of the dust that streaks and bloodies the snow becomes clear on inspecting the upper reaches of the castle, vivid sandstone stripped away to reveal dull bones of granite beneath; the lower sections still bear some of their skin, yet even here it is torn and battered, peeling away in places to lie in heaps of ragged scree below. Beyond the walls the slate roof is gone, mountain mist eddying past jagged ribs of stone and timber supports, and the gateway is a gaping mouth, lined with the uneven stumps of iron-bound oak. Along the battlements can be seen diminutive figures in blue-and-green coats, moving back and forth like blowflies on a carcass.

Surdemer lifts his gaze to the top of the fortress walls, and raises his hand a moment later to draw the Chairwoman's attention. A bright banner whipping briskly in the mountain air, a quartered field of blue-and-green with a silver lion as its blazon.

"Count Delamont's standard, I believe. His Majesty's Nineteenth Regiment of Foot."
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby channe » Sun Jun 01, 2014 3:44 am

He's already taken the Pass.

She's silent for a few moments. The first few seconds, her mouth hangs open; and then she shuts it abruptly, breathing out quickly. Of course they've already taken the Pass. They've probably already taken Wrexham. This whole afternoon had been an exercise in making Agnieszka Kaczmarek feel like a maggot, a street rat, a little farmer girl with a kitchen knife. Here she was, thinking that she was going to do something for this asshole, when, in reality, he had seen it a nice afternoon's diversion to take what was left of the Chairwoman's ego and grind it into the dirt with his stupid Baronly thumb. She knows how this game is played. She's supposed to go back now and tell Glenn how powerful the Trae Kelsan troops are, to not resist what's happening next, because if they pulverized Duke Burel --

-- Well. She tried to tell him that before, but he didn't listen. He never listens. And now Agnieszka Kaczmarek finds herself Surdemer's laughing-stock because of it. Damn it.

"Congratulations," she finally says. She pauses. Decides not to mince words, now that she knows what's going on. "You knew this before we left, didn't you." Is that another pause? Yes. "My lord."
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby BDAdmin » Sun Jun 01, 2014 4:39 am

Surdemer is quiet while the Chairwoman gapes and stares, giving her time to take in the details, the thoroughness with which the fortress has been taken. When she looks back to him he is grinning, pleased and amused by her reaction. He nods easily enough at her accusation, as if admitting to a friendly prank, though there's a small gesture of dismissal for her congratulations, for that my lord.

"I did. Or at least, I was assured it would be the case by the time I arrived." He turns back to the scourged walls, the banner snapping in the wind above. "The advance has been faster than anticipated. The Duke's men are hungry, undersupplied, and there've been a few outposts where they've not been paid for months. Some commanders tried to put up a fight - a couple of those had their men mutiny - but more surrendered or fled. There's been reports of some units - guarding the Duke's new roads in the mountains - who hadn't been resupplied since before the first snow."

When his gaze returns to Agnieszka it is thoughtful, calculating; weighing up her worth, her usefulness.

"You've met Burel. You've been to Thessilane. What can you tell me of how he embarked on his war of conquest? His methods, his tactics."
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby channe » Sun Jun 01, 2014 2:05 pm

Her usefulness.

A Thessilanean gave her the first sword she ever owned. A Thessilanean gave her the first rank she ever bore. She feels a pang of guilt, and decides to leave that fact out as she looks across the short distance to the Baron. "I was actually in Razasan for the first attack," she says, "so I'm afraid my knowledge is all secondhand. Trae Kelsa should know his tactics already; they allowed him the channelers. Why he waged a ground war with troops and shit is beyond me, when all he needed to do was walk one of his Aegis to the center of town and have him put up a 'surrender or burn' notice." Golben.

She clears her throat. "But the Duke's a wildly inventive tactician, a real dodgy thinker, but he did make some weird mistakes that makes me think he ain't all there in the head. He marched up the North Passage to some Amasynian town, bashed its walls to bits and then walked off as if he'd actually lost. Then he went to Derry, sat around sieging Wrexham, and we freaked the shit out about that, conscripted to fill out the ranks of the militia, thought we were next. He never came." But Surdemer should know all about Collingford, now, shouldn't he? "When it comes to regular ol' stabbing and stuff, he has a very strong cavalry. He's willing to break a lot of the rules of engagement they teach you down at soldier school in Razasan there, but --" She pauses, knowing she's on strange ground. "He really believes what he says about him having the right to rule."
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby BDAdmin » Wed Jun 04, 2014 4:19 am

"The Crown has its own reports, pored over by countless dusty tacticians. I'm after your view." And she gives it with a soldier's bluntness. The Baron listens, nodding at this point or that until the last, which earns a grin.

"The only difference between Burel and a madman who fancies himself King is that Burel has men who'll follow him, more fool them. He'd not have embarked on this ridiculous war if he didn't believe in it."

His eyes drift towards the gates again, a monument to one man's ambition.

"So. Burel made great gains early on, mainly by virtue of his Channelers. I've read the reports from his initial assault." A brief tightening of the man's jaw, a pause before he continues.

"Wrexham defeated him. His Channelers couldn't take the city, and so he spent six years laying siege. Six years with thousands of his men camped around that city, rather than marching out across the peninsula. Wrexham fell eventually, yes, but how much did it cost him? Fielding that many soldiers for that long, keeping them paid, provisioned?" She'll have a good idea of what an army costs - wages, arms and armour, supplies - and he lets her dwell upon the arithmetic for a time.

"Can his Channelers summon up gold sovereigns by the bushel? Because those thousands of men in the field, they're not tending their flocks or crewing fishing boats and paying taxes to the Duke. They haven't been for six years, and the land around Wrexham was a wasteland after the first." A steadily-expanding circle of despoiled fields and raided villages as the invader's army foraged further and further afield. Land left untended, herds butchered, vineyards abandoned.

"All this, and only a few years after his war with New Dauntless. So, that's part of why the advance has been going so well. He's beggared himself at Wrexham's walls and his men are too exhausted and demoralised to put up a fight worthy of the name."

He looks back to the Chairwoman again, and there is a challenge in his tone, in his gaze, as of a tutor who seeks to gauge his student's wits.

"Given all this, and knowing what you do of the Duke's methods and resources - were you in his position, what would be your first response to news of the King's army marching in from the south? What is the obvious reply?"
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby channe » Wed Jun 04, 2014 11:50 am

Ambition. Agnieszka had never understood why Burel had made the choices he'd made. Razasan could have cared less about the principalities in the Peninsula; Burel had been well-loved by his people, a king in all but name. Everything had been just fine. Just dandy. Fantastic. In a world where you are let well enough alone, anything can happen; a farm-girl can learn the secrets of the King's Own and rise to a decent enough position. And then she thinks of the Eight, and wonders.

... if that bottle ain't capped. If those demons are still out there. If one of them's in Burel, just like it was in Aeryn.

And wonders why she hadn't thought of that before.

"I think," she says, "that there's something in Wrexham he wanted. Something special. Don't know much about Collingford 'cept it's where one of our governors was from, and he said it was a university with a real important vault." She thinks of the Eight, and the book he casually threw at Myrken Wood, and wonders. When Surdemer asks his question, a smile quirks her lips.

"Sir. I would have stood up an' made the Earth move an' fire rain from the skies." She pauses, sitting on the horse, her face adjusting to be neutral and nicely politic. "But I'm not the Duke, and you can be sure I'll never end up in the Duke's current position, because I know where my bread is buttered and I'm not a blithering moron. I wouldn't say he's scared shitless -- he's got far too big an ego for that -- but he's certainly on the retreat, and I'd guess that he's not only on the run from just you an' yer men, but maybe his own as well. It's all well and good to have your own pet world-killers, unless you forget to pay 'em and they get... hungry."
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby BDAdmin » Thu Jun 05, 2014 11:37 am

"If nothing else, Wrexham had something that could thwart his otherwise-unstoppable mages. If nothing else that'd be work keeping out of anyone else's hands. Possibly he thought Collingford had something similar - something that'd stop him. But when he managed to take down their walls without a problem it became apparent that they didn't, and he lost interest." Ideas, possibilities, and the Baron grins ruefully and dismisses such thoughts with a shake of his head.

"Speculation. It might just be that his pride refused to allow him to march on until Derry was entirely his." A sidelong glance at the repeated declarations of loyalty, but no comment beyond that. Instead Surdemer nods at her appraisal, finding it in keeping with his own.

"Burel's power is trivial, in the larger scheme of things, for all that he's a menace on the local stage. The Aegis are what makes him any kind of a menace at all, and he must be aware of that - however much pride he invests in his cavalry." He might be a fool, but surely not that much of a fool.

"A choice between paying thousands of troops, and paying a handful of sorcerors who can each burn thousands of troops with a thought? No choice at all. The Crown has magicians of its own, but even so - a squad of the Aegis in the right place could have brought the whole advance to a halt as soon as we'd crossed the border." A grim prospect, given the likelihood of such a confrontation becoming an arcane brawl, each side unleashing unthinkable power upon the other. A horror left unstated for now; instead Surdemer drops his voice, leaning towards the Chairwoman as if wary of being overheard.

"The Crown has eyes and ears throughout the realm. Even here. We know the traitor Duke's never been hesitant to put his sorcerors to work - boiling armies alive, opening gateways here, there and everywhere, building roads or monstrosities like that." A nod to the fortress ahead of them. "But do you want to know something funny?"

His grin is conspiratorial, delighted, as if sharing a hilarious but not entirely tasteful joke.

"No one's seen a single one of those black-coated bastards since last summer. Not in Derry, not in Thessilane, not in Meadowford."

He straightens in his seat, eagerly watching the young woman's reaction to this news.

"He's got nothing. Not a fucking thing."
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby channe » Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:19 am

Not a fucking thing.

It's something she has suspected, to be honest. That doesn't stop the surprise in her eyes -- surprise, and a little shock, too. It was something she's wondered, on the bare hill with the small roundhouse. Where is the Aegis? Surely if he were serious, there would be a swath of destruction across Heath, in Razasan, even more refugees in Myrken. Where are they?

She chews her bottom lip, steeling her reaction. "Um," she says, "so do you think they turned traitor? Gone to ground? Or have they all --" Slaughtered each other. Burned themselves alive for what they were, like she'd seen Kerrak al'Nerun do. "I'm not sure this makes me feel better, Baron. At least with the Aegis under Burel's thumb we knew what they were, where they were, and what their agenda was."
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Re: Look on my works, ye Mighty...

Postby BDAdmin » Sat Jun 14, 2014 10:04 am

"Your guess is as good as anyone's. The best the Crown can work out is that there's been a parting of the ways - if they still gave a damn for Burel we'd've met them by now; if they'd fallen prey to their curse His Majesty would've heard it from Razasan. That and Derry would have a new coastline."

Think on it for a time; imagine the scale of it, destruction vast enough to make Golben seem like a pothole. Consider how close Amasynia might have come to such a calamity without even knowing it.

"Point is, Chairwoman, the Crown's spent five years getting ready for this war. Five years building an army that could hold its own against Channelers - that could win against them." An unthinkable war, one which would have seen unspeakable forces unleashed, wielded as a weapon. The thought is a sobering one, even for the Baron. "Burel brought magery onto the battlefield - killed a lot of good men in ways no one deserves. Now it's come to a reckoning, and what's he got? Bows and arrows against lightning and hellfire."

No less than what the Hawk had brought to Derry.

"If we're all lucky and the traitor sees sense it'll just be a rout. If we're not it'll be a massacre."

A stretch of contemplative quiet before the Baron eventually shakes himself out of such thoughts; a glance for Agnieszka, and he nods towards what's left of the Crimson Duke's monument to himself.

"Seen enough?"
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