Graves Family/Alinys

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Items "Owned" by Alinys

  • One very carefully carved pendant necklace: a miniature coat of arms, with a shield crafted of bluish, translucent crystal covering crossed swords.
  • A sealed, leather-bound book, rumored to be the travels of Atwin Beijar through the void. (MISSING)

Roleplay Narratives Involving Alinys

Most take place on Dwilight but I do still have some RP saved over from the other continents.

Alinys, Turned Outlaw (FEI)

"Do it fast, and don't let them see your faces." She tied the scarf, knotted twice, at the back of her head as she spoke and afterwards lowered the half-helm, feeling uncomfortable and unusual in this garb -- not her usual. She wore the looted gear, with all her men, of a company of dead bandits. They'd found the men already dispatched, lying bloody on the side of the road -- luck for her because she seriously doubted her own men were good for a scrap if it came to that, and even more seriously doubted that they could pull this off. Still, she was desperate.

Alinys wore leather now, bulky and travel-stained and ragged; the vest smelled awful, a mixture of offal, alcohol and blood and sweat. With it she had her own sword (the bandit's had been too far beneath her to even consider) but had dulled the blade with mud, and covered the emblem on her own shield with a thin layer of black paint. Her men were likewise - bows, quivers, felt caps and soft hide tunics, with stiffer leggings. Each had a shortsword at their hip, but none had had the chance yet to practice it. She didn't think it'd matter if they had, fighting wasn't their intention here.

"Go," she whispered the word.

Near the Shrine of the Seeklander, Headed North to Darfix

The letter arrived a day late, its carrier looking haggard and the pony he rode in on gaunt, mangy and tired. The little beast's head dropped immediately after its cantering stride broke, and it didn't lift it again; bowed, beaten, it just whuffled pathetically at the scraggly yellowed grass beneath the mountains. It would have been a pretty little horse at any other time had the conditions been different: beneath grimed dirt, its coat would have shone dark, black-streaked bay and its hair would have grown out thick and furry in the cooler climates of the north. Its mane, trimmed short, would have ruffed up thick and broom-brush, while its tail would have grown out, hung loose and untamed. It was a stocky little horse.

"How much?" Alinys called out, but the words were ripped away by the wind and the rider gave no indication of having heard her; for the better, perhaps, as she only had some twenty gold left to her name - something she guarded carefully from the men. She doubted, if they had known she could not pay them once they'd entered that daunting, winding, narrow mountain path, that they would follow her north. Already they had braved quite a trek: the rogue City had been under marital law and in the process of a takeover when she'd arrived. Her men had gone largely unnoticed by the denizens, who'd been looted and razed to the ground just days earlier. The pickings, needless to say, had been slim: the most they'd squeezed out of that chaotic place was twenty gold - the same twenty gold she carried with her now - from a dour looking old innkeeper. Even that had been a trial. They'd had to hang the man upside down by his slippers and shake him. The last gold piece he'd even gone so far as to have hidden in his mouth; he would have swallowed it but for Henry - easily the largest man in her unit (who had only failed to make the grade of Captain because he was, coincidently, also the cruelest, crudest, and most careless.) The broad-shouldered behemoth had crouched down and poked his squat, ugly nose right into the innkeeper's face, stuck out a meaty palm, and rumbled: "Spit."

The man on the pony dismounted. What Alinys had mistaken earlier for a quiver, more obviously now a waxed leather scroll case with a corking cap, banged against the man's back as he swung out of stirrup. Her earlier assumption - that he would be as beaten as the mount he'd rode into the ground - here faltered: though tired, and though the man had a day's growth of a bristly black beard on his jaw, he did not look like common peasant stock. He was broad-shouldered and surprisingly pale - though showed the first signs of ugly red sunburns along his arms and face. He paused, fingering the reins of his mount, looped them about his arm and knotted them once (the knot itself showing he was no idiot when it came to horses. She'd seen that sort of tie before.) and then saluted her with a closed fist pressed up against the sweaty, quilted cloth of his tunic.

"Lady Alinys of Graves, I presume?" He asked, his voice slightly lilting and somewhat mocking, then continued - inhaling slowly first, then murmuring: "You're rather hard to find, lady. Several reports: it seems the rest of the nobility from Melodia has joined us, and Sir Valens gathers with them in Eidulb. He mentions in particular a "Sir Crispen" has arrived to join the Northern Expeditionary Force - "

"What," Alinys interrupted the man now, not bothering to ask first for a name, and neither bothering the least bit consideration nor manner - too furious, suddenly, "in the name of whatever damned god you believe in is that bastard doing coming up with us? Maybe they weren't content with ruining Melodia. Goddamned rats, or ticks. Ticks fleeing a rotted, stinking carcass - the selfsame, blood-bloated ticks that killed it in the first place and you stand there placidly and have the gall to tell me this - placidly! You... You bastard!"

The man stared at her for a moment, completely unruffled, then bowed his head slightly - that same slightly mocking smirk plastered on his face - and continued. His voice was soft, cursory polite, and she hated him already.

"...Might I continue, lady Graves?"

When she gave no reply, he did.

"He mentions in particular a "Sir Crispen" has arrived to join the Northern Expeditionary Force and acknowledges several others from the Republic of Melodia come as refugees to this land and seek to join it, as theirs is beset by problems from all sides. There are, furthermore, reports of monsters to the north in the mountains - a noble of Astrum bid me take several copied maps of the area to you, as they might serve you well in the coming travels. I am also bid, by my very father, to come and serve with you in stead of my brother, Captain Hendersen. He is my younger brother, and my father would be sore hurt were he injured in these coming adventures. I will stand in his stead."

Another pause, then:

"You may call me Reikhard. My father also bears my name. Captain Reikhard, if it pleases you, or else I imagine you'll go without, won't you, lady?"

"I hate you, you know that, Captain Reikhard? A single damned slip and I'll have more than your head. Your entire family will rue the day your father decided a mercantile fortune wasn't just good enough for his brood, and aspired to anything more than just another damned peasant wielding a pitchfork in the winter months. Do you understand?" Alinys couldn't think clearly - standing beneath the shadow of those great mountains, with blood pounding in her ears, and staring at this stupidly arrogant commonly born merchant's son.

"Crystal, lady."

"Then get out of my sight. See to the men. We're moving out - now."

"Where to, lady?"

"Up. We're climbing those damned mountains. And we're going to loot that golden shrine at the top of the first hill. I hope it's to no god of yours, Captain. He might take offense."

"Lady, if He took offense for every slight from every man or woman - low or high - He would hardly be a god."

The pony whuffled pitifully behind them both. The wind picked up. Feeling suddenly that things had taken a sharp turn for the worse, Alinys forced back a shiver and turned, stalking off.

At the Shrine of the Seeklander, Headed North to Darfix

The Shrine hadn't been made of gold after all; it was some sort of bronze, or brass, that glittered prettily but ultimately amounted to little more than nothing. She stood before it, staring over it with the appraising eye of one who had rarely seen its like before, but had heard of it often - critical, cool, crushed. Behind her, burning on pyres, laid eleven of her men. Two more had gone out hours before into the darkness and, after a piercing shriek, had not returned. Pieces of them did: blood, dribbles of gore splashed on the red-and-brown rocks of the mountains. What had started out as a formidable force had been reduced to mere mediocrity. Forty-three men stood wide-eyed around the shrine. Several prayed, others drank and ate what travel rations they had. Still others counted their newly won week's pay. One, alone of all others, watched her.

She hated those eyes on her back.

Captain Reikhard stepped up out of the shadow of the Seeklander's Shrine, arm lifted to shade his eyes against that dim glint of the setting sun that still refracted away from the slanted roof of the small building. It had been tiled once, and thatched once too - and had been patched irregularly between both those improvements with mud and metal slag, and even in some places some sort of granite stone. Beaten panels of yellow-bronze metal, thinly sheeted, panelled the rock. The man's spurs - he'd found them a day earlier in one of the bellies of the strange creatures they'd slain - clacked softly on the floor as he approached Alinys. He lifted his arm, fist closed, then relaxed the palm and laid the hand over her shoulder. If it had meant to have been reassuring, the gesture was lost.

Alinys scowled.

"Lady - lady, it was a victory. We killed eight of theirs, and some, for only eleven of ours. If they were men, then the gods made them in their image: strong, mangled, their faces a ruin - better suited to stories and not to battle, lady, but it was so and was our good fortune that we came out of such a fight with as many alive as we did. None wounded, none captured, praise gods. I will not serve under a coward, nor will I serve under a tyrant. The men do not grudge me my orders, nor I their duty. But they will grow to hate you if you brood over this."

Her scowl deepened, threatened something worse, and her hand ticked to rest uneasily on the hilt of her broadsword. The Captain noticed - he withdrew his hand, stepped back, and cleared his throat softly. That mocking arrogance, though tempered, was ever present. Now he played his hand at politics, and she both admired him and loathed him for it.

"A tyrant. But you would serve under me, correct, if you had sworn to - and it was your duty to. No matter what personal reservations you had?"

"Of course."

Alinys watched the last dying light play over the metal-panelled sides of the Shrine of the Seeklander, and listened to the mournful huff-huff-huff of the beautiful, ragged little bay pony behind her. A sharp, carrying screech cut through the dusk - no owl, eagle, falcon or wolf. Something darker stalked the mountains, chewing on the bodies of her dead men.

Smoke drifted in, burning her eyes and her throat. She inhaled deeply, then sat on the steps of the shrine.

"We'll stay here awhile, Captain. Let the men rest - see if we can't meet up later with the rest of the Expeditionary Force. Those foul creatures stalk the mountains north of us; there's no passage that way. Tell the men - we'll camp here for the night. Take what they can from this place; the gods care nothing for anyone but themselves. We must take what we can, while we can, or it will be taken from us."

"I'll tell the men."

"Then we'll move out."

Reikhard paused, watching this noble born lady mourn, and inwardly he knew it was not for these men of hers - hers, perhaps, but already closer to him than they had ever been to her. She mourned for other men, long dead, on other continents, in other countries and other realms - and far to the southeast, in a place he had only heard of briefly, where she had been happy once.

He snorted, scraped dirty palms against his chaps, then turned and swaggered back to the half-circle of tents.

The men milled about like cattle, spooked by the smell of their comrades burning.

"Listen up! We're camping here! Settle down, but keep packed! Those beasts might return in the night - keep the fires high, and your swords sharp! We'll send them back to whatever hellish crevice they crept from!"

A ragged cheer went up, died, and all was quiet again but for the snap and crackle of dead men.

Captain Reikhard sat among the men and watched.

Alinys stood at the foot of the Shrine of Seeklander and - in vain - listened.

The wind picked up, and the cracked grass sawed savage in the breeze.

In the Mountains of Woe and Betrayal, Headed North to Darfix

Captain Reikhard trudged along at the head of the column of men; mud-smeared and grimy, he did not so much resemble a man as a moving clod of dirt. Wrapped about a fist were the reins of the little bay pony who walked along at his side, wheezing and snorting, laden with the assorted gear, tents and wooden poles of the camp they'd dismantled nearly half a day ago. Forty men trudged along behind him - five to a row, eight rows deep. Two men ranged on ahead, lightly armored and as skittish as deer, spooking at every noise and rockfall.

The mountain trails were winding and narrow where they existed at all; where they did not the column broke apart and men scrambled on hands and knees to scale the steep, craggy sides of the mountain, over rocks and across windy crevices that, soundless and deep, were bottomless and eternal, deep wounds in the earth where heat churned up, steaming the otherwise cool, windy climate. One man already had nearly been lost to the pocked face of the mountain - walking single-file across one crevice, he'd tripped at the tail end of the line and tumbled into the blackness below, though the rope he'd tied about his waist and to the man infront of him had saved his life, and had come back up out of that darkness with ghastly cuts and burns and bruises. He walked in the middle of the column now, at its dead center, with a staggering limp.

The pony balked suddenly, shying from a gray shadow on the rocks, and Reikhard swore - with one hand, the reins still wound about his gauntlet, he pulled the little horse's head in sharply and with his other hand he signaled for the group of men to stop: arm lifted over his head, palm fisted, unmoving. He stopped and, at least from the sound of things behind him, the others did as well, if more gradually. Turning, he glanced back over his shoulder and murmured, his voice low:

"Bring the Dame Graves up front. She'll want to see this."

"See what, sir?" The man - he looked young, too young to even shave properly - looked as startled as the pony had and craned his head, trying in vain to see ahead of the Captain and his horse. "I don't see anything." He continued to twist his head about a few more times, storkish, then paled suddenly and, without another word, melted back between the ranks towards where the lady Alinys stood at the near-rear, hand on her swordhilt. A few of the men standing in row with the newly departed boy exchanged looks, but said nothing. Neither did the Captain.

-

The first thing she noticed wasn't the look on the young man's face but the way his hair stuck up - ruddy red, and faintly freckled across the bridge of his nose, and his hair stuck up in greasy tufts, making him look strangely puzzled. It was light-blond and looked to have originally been quite short; she wondered how long he'd served with her to have had it grow out already so far. She'd need to stress order among the men later, certainly.

"Ma'am?"

Alinys blinked - the young man went from pacing towards her to suddenly standing infront of her, wringing his hands awkwardly. Those too drew her attention: stained and gritty, they were bluntly misused and weathered and calloused, hardly hands to fit the still soft, innocent face of this youth. She cleared her throat; after all, it hadn't been so long ago when she was young and stupid.

"What is it?"

"Captain Reikhard, ma'am. He wishes you at the front of the column."

"Did the Captain say why? Or am I to serve at his leisure, now?"

"Uh. He said, ma'am, there was something up there you might want to see. And there is. Or - well, you'll want to have seen it I think before everyone else does, ma'am, if it isn't too big of me to say so. I don't think he meant any disrespect by it."

There was an awkward pause after the young man finished, his ramble trailing off and his eyes egging down to stare at his muddied, beaten boots. She - as she mused privately - would need to see all her men received new boots, or kept theirs in serviceable condition, soon. Men could not march bare-footed for very long without suffering dire consequences and she had no desire to lead an army of cripples of the gates of Darfix.

"Fine. Stay here and take my place; I'll take yours, Milites." When the young man gave her a blank stare, she clarified and then went on, utterly ruthless: "It means 'soldier' - I'm assuming, of course, you aren't just conscripted rabble from Golden Farrow and are worth your salt in a fight. I may be wrong. In fact, judging by that stupid look on your face, I'd go so far as to warrant I am wrong, aren't I, Milites? You're just some dirt-eating peasant's son, who romped with dogs back on the farm, and lamented the day the Duke put forth a call to arms. You'd probably have liked to die on that little farm, wouldn't you, with dull-eyed idiots of your own and a fat, pliant wife to plow when you could, though admittedly I doubt that'd be much, or often. Well, Milites - for that is what you are now, whatever you were before you joined my outfit - let me be frank with you. You will die under my banner. You will die screaming my name, and even after you die your body will belong to me. The gods can have whatever is left of you when I am done with you. And, as hard as it might be to believe now, you will be happy to have served." Alinys paused, gauged the look on the young man's face, then turned without another word and stalked towards the front of the line with her hand resting on her sword's hilt. The young man at her back fell into rank wordlessly; his jaw was tight and his eyes were hard, and the softness was gone in them. There was only despair, rage, and hate. But everyone had to start somewhere.

-

"She doesn't look like she's in a good mood," one of the men who stood near Reikhard remarked, and ducked his head as Dame Graves approached. The Captain had to agree; she looked as moody as she had ever been, and he couldn't honestly fathom why. He'd heard a few of the key points to the tongue lashing she'd delivered the boy who'd gone to call her up along the line, and to him it had come as a bit of a shock - he had certainly never heard her that dark before, not openly to the men, and wondered if the mountains weren't getting to her after all. It was unlike her to be so violent and mean-spirited; depressed, perhaps, but not this. "Might wanna guard those balls, sir. She's looking like she's out for blood this evening. Gonna tear them off, chew them up and - " The man went quiet as the young woman shot him a positively venomous look, and looked as if he'd just swallowed his tongue.

Stepping up, Reikhard defused the situation with an easy grin; it was common speculation among the men now that they'd shared more than a tent on the trek up the mountains, though it couldn't be farther from the truth. He really wasn't interested in the noblewoman as she was - bitter, dark, angry, spiteful - and he was certain she wasn't the least bit interested in him, either. No, she was still devoted to something either long past or long dead - he couldn't tell which and, quite frankly, didn't care enough to waste more time on determining which of the two it was himself.

"Dame - this way, if you would. I thought you might like to see this before I have it cleaned up and thrown off the trail; it was a vulture, I think, at some point in time - oh, and if you're squeamish, I'd suggest you not breathe in too deeply. The smell's gone a bit ripe by now, lady."

-

"Oh? I can't smell anything." Alinys appraised the captain coolly, having already dismissed the other soldier from her mind, then drew her broadsword. It'd suffered its share of dings and battering since Lasanar, had nearly been reforged twice, and the leather on its hilt was worn thin and sweat-stained. Salt had licked at that iron; ate its usefulness away. Still - she was fond of it. It had served her faithfully in its time, when she'd actually deigned to fight alongside the men. "Dust, perhaps." Where Reikhard had indicated, she stepped - not bothering to let him take lead, but pressing on herself. It wasn't far - the smell picked up only several paces away from the main column of men, and further along down the trail she saw it, that queer and monstrous horror. It looked to have once been a vulture - which is to say it had a bald head, ringed about by prickly black quills, and had a long, curving beak. Its body was, in comparison with the rest of it, grossly misproportional: to say it was obese would be an understatement - the body bulged in places, was bursting with pusticles and tumors and large, uneven clots of blood and bile. Its feathers, save for along its wings, had all been stripped to the self-same dark, bristling quills. It had no tail but for a fleshy stub, and its claws were long, sharp, and sharply-curved. It had four taloned claws - two blunt ones protruded from its chest in a cruel parody of hands. It had no proper eyes: skin covered the sockets and dark shapes twitched back and forth beneath them.

The only truly familiar (and therefore most comforting) thing about it was, ironically, the intestines bursting out of the deep hack in its sour belly. They festered with flies and stunk, blue-and-purple coils looped about one another like rope, in the dull warmth of the mountains.

"One of the scouts reports it attacked him - he returned not an hour ago, but only mentioned it now. He dispatched it with a slice of his shortsword," Alinys watched as the captain stepped forwards and pointed with his own blade, tracing without touching the deep rent in the strange creature's belly. "And then proceeded to continue scouting. No reports of any further troubles, though he mentions the knight Valens seems to have overtaken us in the night, and travels on ahead of us some hours in advance.

"Dame?"

Alinys had sunk gracelessly into a crouch a few steps back away from the dead thing and, as gracelessly as she had collapsed, managed only a short "I'mgonnabesick." before she was. The dead vulture's eyes seemed to follow her under those thin flaps of skin, black and mocking, as she emptied her stomach of the past day's rations - bread, salted jerky, some souring wine they'd picked up in one of the mountain villages a day past.

It seemed every time she tried to lift her head and assure the captain she was okay, she vomitted again - those black marble eyes rolling beneath stretched, translucent skin mocking her all the while - until she was gasping nothing but dry heaves and wondered distantly if she'd even ever eaten cornmeal biscuits and gravy, or fish, or mutton on the long trek up. Finally, humiliated and drained, she lifted her head. Reikhard stared down at her, but carefully averted his eyes when she glanced up. The other men had as much courtesy; when she stood shakily, using her sword to push herself back to her feet, no one who'd witnessed her show of weakness even so much as looked her way. No one wanted that revelation: their commander was, no matter wo much armor she donned or how crudely she spoke, still a gentle-born woman.

"Have the men get rid of it," she croaked out, cursing inwardly at how her voice broke, then wiped an arm across her mouth and sheathed her sword, hoping she looked more confident than she felt. "Push it off the trail. Throw dirt over this place, to try to lessen the stink. And alert the men to march arms ready and keep a constant head count - especially of those at the front or rear."

"Should I tell the men to not eat any of their rations?"

Alinys paused, glancing back to Reikhard - the captain watched her steadily now, no trace of arrogance. The pity, she decided, was worse.

"Why would you do that?"

Reikhard didn't answer. Instead he turned from her and waved over one of the men who'd stood a short ways back from the entire scene, watching it play out with a stoic, stern sort of indifference. Alinys watched quietly, straining to hear what the two said when the man stepped up close and the captain leaned in to murmur softly to the grizzled veteran.

"Tell... stop here for awhile. Dame Graves... bad travel rations," raising his voice, Reikhard added, "likely from that last village. Have each Corporal watch their men for any signs of the sickness. We'll move on in several hours time. Understood?" The grizzled veteran snapped off a smart salute, turned, and trudged back into the ranks of men. Soon - Alinys watched this all unfold with a sudden, strange sense of disattachment - the men had unpacked their gear and several were digging at the outskirts of the crude encampment: a trench latrine. Several others threw up the tents, and one stubbornly dedicated man swore at the wind, trying to start a fire. The wind picked up, blew out another sputter of flame, and the man bellowed. Alinys quirked a slight grin, then felt a chill run down her spine. Turning, she noticed the captain watching her again, his eyes unreadable and his face hard.

"You didn't have to do that, you know, Captain. If Lord Valens already rides on ahead of us - we cannot delay any longer than we already have. Gods curse it, we'll enter the city dusty and tired and spineless. I don't want to look like a coward." She glanced down at her feet, where the vomit still pooled, then grimaced and started to pace from it. Captain Reikhard, his eyes still unreadable, moved easily at her side with all the grace and poise of a predator. She hated him now for how damnably capable he was proving. "I don't want to be a coward, Reikhard. I don't want to be a brigand, or a thief, or an outlaw. I don't want to stare down the backs of our comrades as they race to glory, and hang back like - like some godsdamned weak, baseborn woman chewing her cud in some potted field!" The words, though passionate, were quiet, pitched low to him and only him, angry and shamed and desperately restless. It was as if the knowledge of all her failures weighed more heavily upon her now.

Reikhard said nothing.

"You know," Alinys murmured after a time, unconscious that her stroll took them farther from the column of men, "I once was a priestess. In - another land. I once had faith, and preached to peasantry - all across the lands. I'd sleep in farmhouses, eat their food. Me. And now when I think back on it - that life is gone entirely. I don't even remember the commandments of that religion, and I was the damned one teaching others of it. He was a god of war, though, and I relished the idea of it. All honour and nobility and sacrifice in death. That sort of thing. Ideals. But that wasn't even it. That wasn't it at all." Alinys went quiet, had stopped walking, and considered the sky. High sun was steadily approaching, most welcomed by her and her men even if the warmth it provided was minimal. Few things ever seemed to attack at noon. "He was, of course, an older man. One of their high priests, if not one of the founders - you could say I was young and stupid and impressionable. I was, to a degree. It was easy to fall in and out of things. And the land I fought for had been in a lull for quite some time - nothing to do but that, so I did. Become a priestess, I mean. Not the man. He left, and it might have been for the better. Chances are I would not be here had he stayed. But he left and I tried my hand at preaching, but the peasantry are fickle and cruel - you would not believe how base they are, really, when you come to them and preach your beliefs and eat their bread in their houses. I spent most of those years unconscious or bleeding or limping about. God of War, indeed. And then I came here. Well - other places first, briefly, but then here. Madina. Melodia. And north, to Darfix."

Here she went quiet and glanced aside at Reikhard, who still paced along as quiet as death beside her and looked as steady as ever. "You know - " "Perhaps we should head back, Dame. We'll want to get a move on." The Captain tilted his head slightly, then lifted it as a dark, undulating cry went up throughout the mountains and the hills. Alinys, wordless, nodded.

-

Three days later and they had left the mountains, and Captain Reikhard stumbled away from a battle with blood pouring into his eyes and leaking out of his body, and Dame Alinys turned the remaining five men east. A day after that, they died to a man. Reikhard, beaten and broken and separate of the group, went south. Alinys, however, turned back doggedly north - the little bay pony beneath her, woeful and sad.

Alinys, Preaching in the Pirate-Haven of Itau

Recently Arrived, and Preaching in an Outlying Village

At noon the ruined city of Itau was swelteringly hot and humid; its old, broken walls radiated heat, and brown-leafed, fragile weeds grew from between the cracks in the stone, desperate and reaching. Most of the city itself remained empty: the interior was a barren, dangerous place, and sometimes a lone scream or thick, wolfish bay rose up from within those buildings still standing, but more often there was peace. Several small skiffs - all bearing either black sails and banners, or no markings at all - were moored along the coast, where along the beach a crude dock had been constructed. Several shanty houses had been built along the length of that pier, and sometimes the smell of fish, or urine, or alcohol would drift in on the breeze, to miles away, to those eastern villages far from the waters, to where Alinys slept on a straw-mattress in a mud-brick hut, restless and disturbed.

The locals of the area, mostly to avoid working in the middle of the day, had adopted the curious custom of sleeping in the middle of the afternoon, and conducting most of their usual business - eating, farming, herding, socializing - in either the early hours of the morning, or late at night. It was not, however, their most curious custom; Alinys had noted a number of quirks among the natives already, from the way they self-governed, to how they humored the bandits and pirates of the region, to how their marriage and burial customs. Even their faces were different, and their skin - they had a particular, sunburned tinge, and were not a tall people, but rather slender and lean and made hard by the elements, their skin and faces wind-weathered and ravaged by time and toil. They were, however, quite friendly - especially to outsiders, and more especially when they had heard she hailed from Caerwyn, to the east. The prospect of trade, or an end to their bandit troubles, had obviously kindled the flame of brotherly love in their collective hearts. For being poor, common, and peasantly, these men and women were some of the better serfs and freemen she had preached to.

Lettuce, gone soft and brown and wilted, and a tomato turned black - the way they had come out of nowhere, stung her skin, and earned the laughter of toothless, cackling old bawds. The way the crowd had rushed her - screaming - when she had mentioned that old god of war. The way her faith had first died, under fists and beatings, slowly, slowly driven away.

Alinys sat up on the straw-mattress with a start, her pulse hammering, and stared at the far, plain mud-brick wall. The heat, she thought. It must be the damned heat getting to me at last - but those old memories of shame and denial and betrayal lingered. The heat, she rationalized, starting to slowly push up, cast the ratty old woolen covering back, and reach for her baldric. It was not usual for a priestess to travel armed, even in these areas, but she would not explain herself to the hill-folk of Itau, either. Why should she?

The wind had kicked up outside, and was pushing cooler air from the coast into the stiflingly hot room - the mudbrick sweated damply and had that thick, cloying earthy stink about it. Ignoring the smell - and the idea that soon she would smell just like the mudbrick and people of these hills - she stood, buckled her baldric on over her simple attire: a long-sleeved tunic and loosely-cut breeches, almost shamefully masculine, and reached for her robes. She could see where, just outside the doorway, the shadows of men and women stretched - they had been as unable to sleep as she had, apparently. They waited anxiously for her to step into the afternoon heat.

When she did, her robes draped loosely over a shoulder, one peasant - an elderly man with worn hands and a hard face - stepped forwards and lifted an arm, jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. His dialect, still strange to her ears, was coarse and rough, but his tone was not cruel, and his voice was - while not as warm as the others had been - casually amused.

"Da winds, dey comin' up hard an' fast dey be, missus. Da winds real be-like one yer gods, den you know da ways of dem. Da winds, dey stormin' over da waters. Da work needs gettin' done soon. Den da storms come, hard an' fast. Early in da season dey are. Maybe you brought dem. Da Hound's men, dey be comin' with da storms, though. We be needin' to prepare for dem. Else we get da bad of da deal and dey be dyin' a foot."

Squinting, glancing off over that peasant's shoulder, Alinys could see the black sky in the distance, and felt the wind pick up again - more whiplike, now, and less of a breeze.

She could taste alcohol on it, and ash.

Da Hound, He Ain't So Good.

"Missus."

Alinys glanced back at the elderly man's craggy, old face and watched a thin trickle of sweat bead down from his temple and trace the line of his jaw to his chin. The old man, he smiled humorlessly and dipped his head, nodded back off over his shoulder - towards where she'd been caught staring at the roiling storm clouds, and continued:

"Da Hound. Dey men of da Hound, da Hound is dey biggest warlord in da eastern hills. Dey fearin' his dogs most, my people, but da outsiders like da missus, dey be fearin' more den da dogs. He be catchin' quick da outsiders come in, come in an' catch dem an' sell dem to da pirate captains, he do. You best be leavin' before da storm come. Den you is hopeless - da Hound come after, an' there ain't no runnin' from da Hound."

But thunder rumbled in the distance, and a single drop of water fell, soaked into the dusty earth, and heralded in greater things to come.

The old man's smile grew, gap-toothed but sincere.

"Da ain't so good, dis."

One Storm, Another Storm

The storm had taken the better part of the day to pass, and during much of it Alinys had huddled on the floor of the largest mudbrick hut in the village, surrounded by peasants, and had spoke of the wind again.

"The wind," she had murmured, watching each peasant's face change at every thunderclap, every streak of lightning, every time a tree toppled in the distance, or a more poorly constructed hut crumpled inwards into mud and fell to pieces in the rain, "has no loyalty, and is never selfless. The wind does not love you and will not care for you - it is and will always be a destructive force. It can only destroy. It will only ever destroy."

It was not an uplifting speech, and it was not meant to give any of these commoners hope, or joy. It was meant to instill faith - hard faith bought by the realization that it was unavoidable: it was no summertime god to worship casually, and forget, when autumn drew in. This was a winter god, a winter faith, a religion of colonists who had fought and bled and died in droves for tiny scraps of land with foreign names, who had fought tooth and nail for positions, had killed kings at the thought of glory and had corrupted masses for a shot of fame. This was, and had always been, her religion: a wintry one. A hopeless, hateful, hard faith that was as much loathed as loved: this is mine, and it will kill me one day -

"But."

A few peasants glanced up at the change in her voice; many more did not, but stared at the floor and watched shadows whip across the dirt, listened for the sound of their livelihoods dying.

"But the wind is fair. It does not love, and it does not hate. It destroys without compunction, without motive, without purpose - it will spare no more the lord in his estate than it will spare the peasant eeking out a living in the offal and bile beneath him. Its heavy hand is felt by all; the young, the old, the rich and the poor, the men who live behind walls or on ships at sea, the hill folk and mountain men, and those who hide in caves by the coast, shivering in seal-skin. It is the only thing in your short and miserable lives that will treat you equal to men of much greater standing, and this is a reward in itself. Those you serve, your neighbors, your enemies - they all hurt as much as you do, or will, or have in the past and will again."

The rain had gradually ground down to a stop, and there was little more than a breeze outside again - but Alinys did not realize this. She was absorbed entirely in her preaching, which was little more than a rant in the end, a revolt against everything she had endured - or fled from - and she did not notice that a thin, dark-eyed man stood in the doorway of the mudbrick hut, and watched both her and her flock with open amusement. His arms were crossed over his chest, which was bare and nearly hairless, and each arm was sleeved in brightly-inked tattoos.

"You fail to mention," he called out suddenly - sounding cultured, completely lacking the dialect of the masses who crouched between them, "that wind, like fire, is a tool. It will destroy, but not all destruction is bad. What is gone was weak, and what will come is better. This is the way of the world, outsider." A pause, a smile - entirely cruel, and his eyes remained blank. "I do not believe we've met. They call me the Hound. You may call me nothing at all; you have not earned that right. Are we understood?"

Alinys reached towards the sword in her baldric, hand flexing as it neared the worn old hilt; the peasants nearest her scattered, peeling backwards in sudden, chaotic babble. But the man's words stopped her:

"I would not do that, priestess."

The Hound pushed away from the doorway, and standing in his shadow, in the muddy yard, were his men, a mob of them milling about, leering, grinning. Some of them held torches, damply lit and smoking in the humid air. He took a step towards Alinys, and she was seized by sudden desperatation - her hand tightened on the sword hilt at her side and, the words barely above a whisper, choked out:

"Fire may be a tool, but wind is not!"

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the Hound had seized her by the hair, hauled her up, and tossed her easily - as if she were nothing - over a bare, bony shoulder. He turned - she felt her head connect sharply with something and then - nothing - and the Hound barked laughter, rabid and fierce.

"Tell that!" he bellowed as he stepped out of the mudbrick hut, apparently unaware the priestess was unconscious, "to sailors!"

Then the man was quiet for a moment, his laughter stopped dead - his face tightly controlled, his eyes empty.

"Burn it."

Most of the smoldering, smoky torches guttered out before catching on the thatched roof of the large mudhut, and bounced off harmlessly, spooking the peasants inside.

But some did not.

Onwards to Itau

The bandits had spent several hours travelling to other, nearby villages, and collecting tribute as it suited them, before turning back towards the distant stone walls of the city of Itau. The Hound drove his men - his dogs - mercilessly, snarling curses and barking orders at them, and laying about with the flat of the blade he'd taken from Alinys - beating men without compunction, wild-eyed and manic. The smell of rain was what drove them; another storm was blowing in after the first - the wind picking up, the quiet dying quickly and noisily in the growing dark.

They ran on foot, huffing and cursing and inhaling as a single, violent mass, and dogs ran in their midst, snapping and biting and baying - three-eyed, or salivating, eyeless, earless, mutated and mutilated into monsters of myth and legend. One trailed behind the rest of the pack, rabid and with only three legs, a fourth one stunted and twisted, dragging behind it. It had no tail, no fur, only scarred, pinkish gray flesh and clotted blood clutching tight to old - and new - wounds. Somewhere along the way, it would lay down and die.

No one would care.

For the better part of the mad march towards the pirate city of Itau, Alinys had been unconscious. There was a knot on the back of her head, and blood was drying in her hair. Her baldric, and sword, had been taken; her boots were gone. A gap-toothed bandit with no ears wore her robe tightly about his scrawny, emaciated body. Sometimes he would rub his face against it, bury it into the wool, and leer.

The priestess was carried on the shoulder of the tallest man of the impromptu warband, and this brute of a man did not stray at any time more than five paces from the Hound. He wore ragged maille armor rattled at every thunderous step, and a broad axe had been belted to his back. Its haft pressed into Alinys's throat, and at times gagged her into brief, unsettled wakefulness - before the world turned in on itself again, and she slept, feeling sick.

In a haze, she watched herself from a distance: she was standing on rock in a mountain pass, yelling at a young, clean-shaven, red-haired boy who had come up to relieve her. "It means 'soldier' - I'm assuming, of course, you aren't just conscripted rabble from Golden Farrow and are worth your salt in a fight. I may be wrong. In fact, judging by that stupid look on your face, I'd go so far as to warrant I am wrong, aren't I, Milites? You're just some dirt-eating peasant's son who romped with dogs back on the farm and lamented the day the Duke put forth a call to arms. You'd probably have liked to die on that little farm, wouldn't you, with dull-eyed idiots of your own and a fat, pliant wife to plow when you could, though admittedly I doubt that'd be much, or often. Well, Milites - for that is what you are now, whatever you were before you joined my outfit - let me be frank with you. You will die under my banner. You will die screaming, and even after you die your body will belong to me. The gods can have whatever is left of you when I am done with you. And, as hard as it might be to believe now, you will be happy to have served." She remembered the boy's face then, and when he had died: there had been no softness left, only rage. But he had died quietly, in the dark, sobbing softly as he held another man's hand.

The brute leapt a rock and his shoulder tensed; Alinys jolted into consciousness again as an elbow drove into her stomach, coughed, tried to retch, and watched the ground run past beneath her. She thought of the past. She thought of the boy who had died in the mountain pass, crying, entirely too young for the world and all its horrors. She thought of Reikhard. She thought of an old priest standing on the bronzed steps of his temple, watching the world burn. And then, when she had run out of the past, she thought of the Hound.

And when there was nothing else, she slept.

Ahead of them, several miles in the distance and framed by the setting sun, Itau stood sentinel over the black-sailed ships and the coast.

After the Dead Rose, or the Hound and his Brother

An eerie calm floated over the city of Itau, and its surrounding villages. A single, black-masted ship drifted in the harbor. There was no breeze, and the air was thick, humid, cloying. Old pyres burnt in the muddied streets, smoldering wood and blackening bones. Newer pyres dotted the hillsides. The undead hadn't changed much; peasants still avoided the city, and thugs and thieves walked with eyes downcast along the filthy roads, shoulders hunched, from house to house with purpose, if unease.

The Hound raised a hand, braced it against the doorframe, and ducked as he entered the cabin; he straightened, body swaying with the ship as it rolled lazily in the shallow waters, and then slouched back, leaning, against the wall. He could see the city from here, through the doorway and past the deck, the dip and crest of the ship's prow. He could smell it: the bile, offal, disease, death, poverty and misery of the masses.

A man screamed on deck, something shrill and sharp - a terrified animal's dying wail - then went quiet. There was the soft hiss, hiss, hiss of rope uncoiling, an audible jerk: a crisp snap. The unfortunate scribe voided his bowels, hanging limply from the mast by a thick, coarse rope. The Hound smiled.

"You would think, after awhile, they'd not know where to find our dear priestess." He nodded towards the bed at one end of the cabin, where at the far end, a woman huddled close to the wall, face to the wall, eyes shut, quiet. The other man in the room - the man who sat, bare-chested, on the edge of the bed - chuckled. It was a strange sound in the dimness of the room; the Hound crossed the floor to turn up one of the whale fat lanterns, and watched the man's face glitter in the dark. His right eye had been replaced with a cut ruby - round, blank, blood-red. "The messages are, nonetheless, quite entertaining. Niselur. That is the kingdom to the north? Port out of Darfix, yes?"

"Samhain." The one-eyed man nodded agreeably, pushed standing, and reached easily for a tunic he'd draped over a nearby chair. It was loose-sleeved and had drawstring cuffs, and the throat opened across the collarbone, bearing old scars and burns. "Where I was born." He adjusted the shirt, tucked it into his breeches, and slide a small scabbard into the hem of those pants, letting an ornately-detailed silver hilt protrude. The knife itself was beautiful: the blade was steel, engraved, gold and silver-work, razor-sharp. "What of it?"

"Nothing," the Hound murmured, stepping to the side and out of the ruby-eyed man's way. He moved surprisingly gracefully, the new leather of his boots creaking. "But you read the letters as well as I. There was mention of their armies, the easterners, coming here. Bringing this wild land into the noble fold of Caerwyn," his tone, sarcastic, bit, "and civilizing the savages. And you know as well as I what the undead cost us, cost me. They tore half my band to pieces in a day and now here I am, at your mercy, on your ship, with only a blue-blooded priestess to show for all my troubles on land. And her I've already given to you." He leaned back against a table in one corner of the room and turned his head, watching the bed again. The woman there, all but hidden under a swathe of blankets and sheets, bare-shouldered and silent, may as well have been asleep. "You owe me, brother, a little kindness."

Alinys was not asleep.

There was no wind.

Not yet.

Nightmare: Dreams Have No Meaning

"You seem to have a knack for embracing doomed causes, priestess." The man who spoke sat on the edge of the bed, and half of his face was missing. Alinys knew this because she sat next to him, cradled a shattered sword in her lap, and could see pieces of bone and chunks of flesh strewn across the floor. The man smiled - or would have, had he more of a mouth - and reached over, across the space between them, and laid a hand on her shoulder. His hand was cold, and coarse black hairs peppered the backs of his knuckles, sparse and thin. The pale skin of the back of his hand was spotless.

There was a momentary silence. The man watched Alinys, and Alinys watched his hand. Her fingers traced the broken blade resting against her thigh - the splintered iron, the jagged burrs, the rough patches where the metal had been burnt too long, blackened, and warped. The man's one remaining eye glittered off the steel: it was a ruby.

"You've been dreaming of me." The words, casual, were almost kind. Conversational. The man did not look away from Alinys. Alinys, however, looked away from him, from his hand, turned her head and stared at the floor - at, she realized a heartbeat too late, the puddle of meat and blood pooling nearby. "For the past few days, priestess, you haven't been able to get me out of your head." He chuckled quietly and the ragged ends of his lips turned up in what must have been a grin. The dead man was delighted. "Your church has abandoned you - again, left you to rot in the guts of a caravel flying no colours, your faith has broken against the rocks and shoals of the coast - your heroes have turned tail and fled, crying out, weak-minded and infirm. Your precocious wind has abandoned you. And yet," his voice dropped, was all causality and kindness again, even charming, "and yet, all this aside, all you've thought about is me."

Something wet sloshed out of the man's broken skull as he leaned sideways, hand tightening on Alinys's shoulder, into the woman. It flopped onto the floor, oozing blood, and wriggled pathetically - slug-like, twitching - one massive blood clot with creeping, translucent tendrils crawling across the floor. The ruby-eyed man paused, stared at it contemplatively. "The me you've made of me, at any rate. Is it really so terrible?" He glanced aside, part of his face expressive: almost amused, almost concerned, almost gentled. The other half of his face was gore: shattered skull, sunken cheekbone, part of his nose shorn away, bone shards and muscle glistening wetly. Alinys met his stare - returned it, absolutely silent. "Of course it is," the man murmured, blank-faced again, and glanced back down at the piece of himself cooling on the floor.

From this angle, Alinys could see everything: brains, blood, and thready, black syrup leaking past the jagged stump of his left ear. It smelled sweet, sickly sweet, like infection. "Of course it is," the man echoed, almost smiling again.

Enlightenment, she thought suddenly, desperately, is freedom.

Alinys reached out - uncertain why, unable to stop herself - and pushed her hand into the souring flesh inside the dead man's skull. It was warm, and soft, and molded to her skin. The man blinked - just once - and turned his head towards her, one black brow arching. He looked genuinely surprised, even startled. When he spoke, though, it was not his own voice but another entirely that chided her, amused but confused:

"You really didn't think it was that easy, did you?"

With a start, Alinys opened her eyes. The wind had picked up, bringing with it a fresh salt-tang on the air, and the cry of a gull came from somewhere above, nearby, and the heavy downdraft of many wings all rising together, at once. Away.

She shut her eyes, and willed herself back to sleep.

Travelling to Port Raviel via Paisly, in Vashgew

Alinys rode down the dusty thoroughfare on a sweat-lathered bay gelding, her hands lifted and laced behind her head, guiding the horse with her knees. It had been a hard ride, and she hadn't stopped to sleep for nearly a day and a half - the unpopulated woodlands to the north had been, while empty, unforgiving. She had seen only one man there, hidden away in a ramshackle hut, his back hunched and his eyes gleaming. He had rushed out at her as she rode past, preached of Bloodstars and the end of days, and thrown rocks. Blood had dried in a trickle down her cheek: one stone had smacked her soundly on the temple, though small, and her head still rung occasionally. And now, as she guided the tired horse down that long, wide dirt road, she realized she wanted nothing more than to sleep awhile in peace and comfort.

Vashgew, she thought, trying to stay focused, looks different. Is different. Not the same as when I was here - the burnt fields, dead cattle. A wild place, then. There had been no road, and yet here it is. And yet, so far as she could tell, there were none of the faith here. No one seemed to notice or care that the Ak'tari of Wind, symbolic embodiment of that elemental domain, one of the elder council of the Verdis Elementum, one cursed - or blessed - to sit under the watchful, spiteful eye of Eulus himself, rode past with a bloody face. Admittedly, she hadn't seen anyone yet, not anyone, anyway, who was in any position to notice her: a peasant far out in the fields, working and singing stoicly, a three-legged dog limping in the opposite direction, a few who passed once on a wooden cart, faces downcast and eyes wary.

"I am," she murmured softly, reaching across the horse's neck to fondle at one of his tufted ears, "in want of a bath, dear friend. You as well, I imagine." The horse, predictably, gave no reply. He ambled onwards at a steady, quick walk, shoed hooves clopping rhythmically. Alinys leaned back in the saddle, twisted the worn leather reins around one hand, and pinched the back of her neck with the other. She missed Mech Derris already - she had missed it before she had even left the region, the estate, that room, him - and, clearing her throat, shut her eyes tightly. She was not yet even halfway to Paisly. Ferries, she thought, damn them all, and their lying bastard captains, too. The horse, again, remained silent.

Writings (IC) by Alinys

"Address a letter to the Northern Expeditionary Force," she began, her back to the straight-backed young man, and watched the waves of the inland sea beat back and forth across the shore. A small sheaf of parchment lay on the battered table of the small room she'd rented, and through the shuttered window she could smell salt on the air. A pause, that same wry grin as ever - she waited for the scribe to first clear his throat, and then waited for the gentle scratch of quill point on paper. "Make it good," she murmured, more to herself now than to anyone else; hadn't she learned enough in the short few months she'd been on this godforsaken island that she could succeed after all, and that there was no baseness to her blood? She could, at the very least, pursue the bluff...

Treatise on the Effectiveness of a Militaristic Government

There are several forms of government commonly seen in the Modern day and age. These are:

  • Tyranny
  • Monarchy
  • Oligarchy
  • Republic
  • The City-State (from this is commonly seen the two divisions: namely "democracy" and "confederacy."

Many of these governments are quite similiar to one another; for instance, you could subdivide the group above into two further categories by drawing a line between Monarchy and Oligarchy and essentially call one the realms of Government of One, and then the others the realms of Government by Few. For instance:

A Tyranny has been defined by those in the past as a realm that is led by a single enigmatic force, and those around him that he has appointed to sub-leaderships. That is to say the ultimate authority is in no way a figurehead and holds complete and absolute power over all beneath him, to the point of not only owning the lives of his own serfs and peasants but of the lives of his vassal states, his sworn knights, his freemen, and even owning the lives of his own government appointees. There are many negative conceptions perpetuated by the Governments of Few that Tyrannies (and Monarchies too) are irrevokably corrupt and inevitably doomed to failure. This is hardly the case; in truth, they are no more prone to anymore noticeable corruption than any other realm. Their only true failings are in that an unpolitical Tyrant may be easily overthrown by his subjected majority; unless the Ruling Party can control the Majority by eiher force of arms or of words, they are ultimately impotent and in charge of nothing and only serve at their vassals' leisure. This is not a true Tyranny.

The Monarchy falls in much the same line of a Tyranny with only one or two very important major differences - whereas a Tyrant typically leads because they have consolidated that power for themselves and hold onto that power because of force of arms or their own forceful personality, a Monarch need not be Charming and nor need he be even Capable. Many Monarchies in the past have suffered under inept Monarchs and have been incredibly stable due to their nature in contrast sharply with inept Tyrannies that have fell within the hours. The difference lies in that while a Tyranny has no social or governmental (no true routine, suffice to say) assurances, many Monarchs rule by Divine Right and Divine Right alone keeps them in power. No God Fearing peasant - or even truly God Fearing noble - would dare upset the Natural Balance that is illustrated in the following: God, the King, the Nobility, the Peasantry. In doing so they would understandably risk the ire of their god: in the past, this has been amply shown to be a proven fact that destroying the Natural Balance of things will destroy the Organization of the Common Order. Peasants, seeing a noble overthrow a King they had thought declared by a god, will overthrow the nobility who have used for centuries much of the same claims as their Monarch, but to a lesser scale: blood, debased, will mean nothing and amount to nothing and, furthermore, prove northing. Still, for all the failings, a Monarchy is typically more stable than that of a Tyranny. All Tyrannies, in time, either fail or become Monarchies.

This is not to say all Tyrannies fail and fall into anarchy, or that a rebellion is needed to destroy any type of government; it is not. Many governments of their own accord - or even otherwise, without their own willful intent - revert or evolve accordingly over the years. This leads then to the Governments of Few, born out of that of a Government of One, and they are as follows, though in no order and by no means the only examples: Oligarchy, Republicianism, Democracy, Confederacy, Federation, and Tribalism to a much lesser, more barbaric extent.

An Oligarchy is widely one of the most accepted forms of government among the Nobility, and ironically one of the most hated and stigmatized as well. An Oligarchy is a realm composed of the government of a key few nobles who, not voted into their positions, lead much the same as a Council of Tyrants would. In the past this has included powerful families, the military elite, and religious leaders - effectively leading a realm of many more than their own small numbers, and doing so without rumblings by those they have led. I will speak more of a Militaristic Oligarchy at length. For now I will continue with my treatsie on the other governments for the leisure of the Wayward Knight, far from home, and pray that it will find some use in this foreign duchy for more than just kindling.

Now, while I have said that an Oligarchy is most accepted, it serves to say that one of the most common in this Modern Age is that of Republicanism. Republics by their nature function in much the same way as Oligarchies with a few key points - while Oligarchs rule through power, the leaders of a Republic lead through the majority will of the people. This can be a key stablizer, but ironically more often it breeds discontent and ill-will among the populace. Traditionally, the leaders of a Republic hold very little actual power as their positions are paper-thin and incredibly temporary, and because many Republics are bred out of the failure of Tyrannies, those nobilities in power and reorganization make the positions effectively ineffective to keep from a repeat of history: that is to say, to keep another Tyranny from rising up out of the ash of the other. In a Republic, a small body of Nobles (often those with considerable tracts of land, or those who have spent considerable time among the landholding class; vassal-knights traditionaly have not been accepted in the past) decide what in a Tyranny a Tyrant would; for this, Republics have been known as sluggish and slow to move, as well as prone to civil war.

Much the same as a Republic, Democracy (though suffice to say "true Democracy" does not exist, god forbid it!) too relies on the rule of a Select Few over the minds of many. A Democracy also elects its leaders, with the exception that they serve for an even briefer time than those of a Republic, and all Nobility regardless of land rights or senority, votes. That is to say while in a Republic only those on a Council may vote, or those who hold land, in a Democracy every knight - vassal or no - may vote for their leaders. All government positions are electable, the same as in a Republic. Truly, a Democracy and a Republic differ often only by name - each usually may be found with a Council or Assembly, both elect their officials, and both are incredibly unstable. I say this because until in Oligarchies, Tyrannies or Monarchies, any noble is legally allowed by law and tradition to seek Power. Many of these nobles attempt this through war-mongering, civil unrest, or by a newfangled system of "Political Parties" - essentially just Soceties that promote ideals, and are cohesive enough to function as a single body instead of a seperate many. Instabilty results when one power beats the other; contrary to being sporting in the least, many nobility (perhaps due to their closeness in associating with the more unruly peasants who demand much the same thing before they are put to the sword: Freedom and Democracy) instead seek to upset the ruling party by a small, dedicated minority. They often succeed.

Such governments as Confederacies, Federations and the lesser Tribal Organizations of Savages and Demons are merely just some version of the above: altered, perhaps, but ultimately answerable to a single descriptor if needed, as needed. I won't address them here now as I'd been hoping for some sort of brevity in these matters; however, rereading now what I have written that seems a fruitless pursuit. Suffice to say I will move on now to that of a Militaristic Republic, or Oligarchy.

The Militaristic Republic, or the Militaristic Oligarchy

This realm organization is essentially taking much from that of a Republic or an Oligarchy; usually more of an Oligarchy in that once appointed they do not have set terms afterwhich they must step down, and afterwhich appointed they no longer serve "at the leisure" of those they govern but on the behalf of those they govern. These realms, few and far between, are often the parabals by which other realms exist. Military authority is key; obedience is rigid. It is comparable to religious fervor in the manner in which men and women go about their duties: over all, man, woman, serf, noble, ruling body, the Realm remains. I mean this in the sense that identity is not often with an organization as it often is in truer Republics or Democracies (there is no Coucil that the Nobility will die in defense of) and nor is there a single Enigmatic Personality as there are in Tyrannies, nor is there Loyalty to Divine Right as there are in Monarchies. Loyalty - what a Knight is willing to lay their life down in the service of - is ultimately and entirely to the good of the Realm.

While they vary in specifics, it can be agreed most have the following:

  • Rigid Military Discipline. This is not to say the nation is warmongering. Often this is entirely untrue; a strong military is more than an aggressive military. A strong military is composed of one that has one, or several, key army units that follow orders to the letter. Often this is enough to keep a realm out of war indefinitely: there are always enough monsters or demons in the land (what with that rumored Dark Keep I have heard of to the southwest) to keep an army from being bored, and Tourneys and Competitions of Sword and Joust keep every good noble's skills sharp.
  • Obedience to the Realm. Patriotism is key in a Militaristic Realm, no matter its subdivisions. A realm such as this must have not only the obedience and loyalty but the love of its troopleaders. Men and Women should be proud - as should others, and honour the dead - in dying. The greatest thing you can achieve as a member of a realm such as this is not a governmental position or a lordship or a dukeship; it is serving your realm, and dying in the service to your realm.
  • Stability. These realms are often stable, if they are a true Military Oligarchy or Republic; while the topmost governmental positions may be at first voted for, they serve then until they die or are no longer able. The rigid heirarchy - taken from that of an army - keeps the realm organized and keeps dessention low. Those who have a place, and know their place, are more inclined to be content in that place if there are those above them and those below them in a convienent, logical manner.
  • Pride. This ties in heavily with Patriotism and Obedience - but Pride is another key thing that these realms have and must have. One must be proud to serve, and proud to die. The sense of, even, betterness over other realms may be noted or even encouraged in some cases. Suffice to say that Pride can only be achieved in the competent ruling, running and administrating of a Realm. It is not up to, however, the region lords, rulers or Dukes to see that a Realm is well run, though this helps. Nor is it even up to the General. It is ultimately up to the Vassal Knights and Troop Leaders of the Realm.
  • Culture. Contrary to popular belief, a Militaristic Realm is not Barbaric by any means. If perhaps we lusted for blood and reveled in the art of war we might be Savages, but a Militaristic Realm does, by nature, none of these things. To say that would be to simplify things immensely: barbarians are disorganized, fragmented, and glory in wars of individual against individual. A Militaristic Realm would only glory in a Conflict because it would allow them the chance to, for all other realms, boast of their organization and devotion and brotherhood. A Militaristic Oligarchy or Republic could be as Cultured as any other realm, and even more so since - without petty squabblings - there would be more opportunities for such Culture. True - a Noble General is not one who is purely skilled on the battlefield, but one who is knowledgeable. The same can be said of any Ruler in this form of Government. A Ruler must be, while skilled in Tactics, also knowledgeable of Geography, History, Literacy and Diplomacy.

One cannot have Obedience without Discipline, or Stability without the former two, or Pride without Culture and Discipline, and et cetera. Much of this goes all hand in hand. This is why, with Lord Valens, I believe that a 'Militaristic Organization' is best suited, and would provide for all of us the most chance of honour, glory, and ability to exceed.

I apologize for the length, and here lay down my pen.

Humbly,

Dame Alinys of Graves

Miscellany

Echiur

left‎

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