Drew
05-03-2011, 09:49 PM
In the orange mithril chest you see:
a pallid white veniom-threaded handkerchier
a battered vultite tower shield (5x)
a braided white leather bracelet
an eagle-winged blue vultite longsword (4x, swcw)
Minimum bid: 1 million
Loresongs galore:
longsword: 4x SWCW
Everything around you falls away with vertiginous speed. Without knowing exactly how, you understand that you are part of a small cadre of soldiers creeping along in the lee of an old stone wall. The night is dark, cold, and silent save for the hooting of a lone owl. Blood is pounding in your ears and your nerves are stretched as taut as bowstrings. You round the corner into a dense grove of oaks, and see Ethauc, your leader, raise his hand, signaling a halt.
With jarring suddenness you are once again yourself, the last notes of your song still hanging in the air.
With no transition at all, you find yourself back in the grove of trees. Ethauc gestures for you and your companions to gather around. There is an odd catch in his voice as he says, "My brothers and sisters, we have fought together, bled together, and survived together. We face a great foe tonight, but if anyone can turn the tide, it is us. But even we could use some help, so on a recent journey to Brantur I had swords made for us all, and each one of them I sharpened on the Whetstone." With great ceremony Ethauc withdraws one sheathed longsword at a time from his pack and hands it to a member of the company. When you receive yours, the cold weight of it is both surprising and familiar. Even in this watery moonlight the sapphire in the sword's pommel sparkles with life.
The illusion slips away, though the longsword is still in your hand.
Eagerly, you allow the song to send you back to that dark forest. Donning the sheaths, you and your brethren resume battle-ready positions. Ethauc whispers, "Drinks in Tyllan are on me tomorrow night!" As a unit you steal out of the woods and over a small hill, surprising a ragged band of undead beasts. You draw your sword and charge into the fray, cutting down your opponents right and left with startling ease. To either side you see your fellow soldiers taking out the few remaining creatures, when a trumpet blast echoes from behind. A man on horseback gallops toward you, shouting, "Blue Eagles, turn back to Elstreth! It is besieged and in need of aid!" He blows the trumpet again and races off.
You look around for your companions but the vision has slipped away.
It seems easier now, stepping back into that other life. Your legs ache from the hurried march back to the city. The walls of Elstreth are in sight, as is the great army of the Horned Cabal. A rush of energy floods your system, and you charge behind Ethauc toward the nightmarish creatures. You fall quickly into the rhythm of the fight, the sword in your hand moving almost of its own accord. You hear a sudden shout, and turn to face it.
The battlefield has gone, leaving you feeling unbalanced and anxious to return.
You are back in the battle, once again turning to face the source of that unexpected shout. The scene that greets your eyes chills you to the very marrow of your bones. Cutting a swath through the regiments behind you is the northern force of the Horned Cabal, the very army you had been sent to destroy in the first place. Caught now between the rotting jaws of these two merciless powers, there is nothing to do but fight. With a deep growl you raise your longsword and dive back into the battle.
The enemies become phantoms, then vanish altogether, although your battlelust remains.
With fierce determination you launch yourself back into the ancient war. Foes are falling away with a grisly sort of grace when three skeletal figures surround you. You hold off two of them but the third is too much. He lunges in to strike at your exposed side, then collapses with alarming suddenness. Ethauc is revealed, ichor-stained longsword in hand. You grin at him, but your smile becomes a gasp of horror at the sight of a spear head sliding out through his chest. Ethauc grins back at you before falling slowly to his knees. You move toward him, but feel something very cold on your left shoulder. Faster than thought, ice suffuses your system. The battlefield is silent, the sun goes out, and only the taste of metal lingers on your tongue.
Silently you stand as sound and sense return. The icy hand holding your heart is slow to release its grip. The blue vultite longsword you hold seems warmer than before, but also heavier, more substantial.
white leather bracelet:
As you begin your song, the white leather bracelet twists slightly in your hand. The world around you fades, and a series of images pass before your eyes.
A human and an elf barter over a wagon of pelts. They shake hands and transfer the goods from one wagon to another. The human continues on his way down the road, and he meets another man drawing a wagon of pelts. The furrier raises a hand in greeting and smiles at the potential customer. As they speak, his face clouds over, realizing his sale was lost to an elf just minutes before.
Human and elven children play in the forest, their laughter ringing through the trees. They are interrupted by the angry father of one of the boys, who grabs his son by the arm, shouting all the while. The young boy is dragged from the woods, leaving his playmates behind. The other human boys look at their elven compatriots with suspicious expressions, and their previous light-hearted game turns to vicious fighting.
You find yourself inside a pub, observing a group of men dressed in the garb of several professions -- merchanting, lumbering, and trapping. They are having an intense discussion over something, many motioning this way and that with their tankards. Most of the gestures are in a particular direction and you follow two men as they leave the pub, curious to see the source of their argument. On the pub's steps, you look in the direction the men were gesturing and see an enormous expanse of forest. You turn to get your bearings and see that you are surrounded by forest on all sides. One of the men says to the other, "The Wyrdeep holds dangers, aye, but none as dangerous as us." The other man glowers silently as he makes his way down the steps.
As you continue your song, the white leather bracelet twists slightly in your hand. The world around you fades and is replaced by a different scene.
You have returned to the pub where the discussion has escalated to an argument. Groups of men knot on either side of the barroom and the bartender is between the two with his arms raised, speaking in firm tones in an attempt to bring the men to their senses. The opposing factions raise their fists and holler across the empty space, but neither seems ready to meet the other in physical violence. Finally, the argument settles down and the bartender returns to his familiar place behind the bar.
As you continue your song, the white leather bracelet twists slightly in your hand. The world around you fades and is replaced by a different scene.
A group of men, each wearing a white leather bracelet, square off with a cluster of elves who staff a series of stalls in one corner of a marketplace. The humans gesture angrily, pointing at the marketplace's exit, but the elves stand firm. A crowd gathers around the arguing parties and a few men step forward in preparation to assist the elves, each wearing a single hawk feather in their hair. The protesting humans continue to argue and point at the elves, but gradually relent and return to their varied businesses in the area.
Greatshield
As you begin your song, the shield begins to thrum in your hands and your vision grows dim.
A man passes through a darkened street, torch in hand. Ahead of him, the street is silent and dark, wet with a recent rain. Behind him, men stumble out of doors in a great hurry, fastening their cloaks and slinging their shields. Their wives follow them, speaking quickly and placing small parcels of foods into their packs as they kiss them good-bye.
Roundtime: 8 sec.
As you begin your song, the shield begins to thrum in your hands and your vision grows dim.
A company of men eat dinner in a wilderness camp, which has obviously been put together hastily. Nearby, a messenger, his uniform tattered and caked with mud, speaks to their captain in an almost hysterical tone. He begs the captain to hurry, to keep marching. The soldiers chew slowly and exchange quiet glances as they watch this man make a spectacle of himself. After the messenger is shown to a tent to have his wounds dressed, the captain studies the columns of smoke rising from the mountains.
As you begin your song, the shield begins to thrum in your hands and your vision grows dim.
The twisted visages of the undead scream with fury as battle rages in a narrow mountain pass. Bodies are piled throughout the rocky enclosure, but are no barrier to the fierce creatures assaulting the armies of humans that continue to fight valiantly, despite the loss of their companions. As you watch, a general calls out an order, and the soldiers reform their ranks, creating a three-deep wall of humans that spans the width of the pass. Their leader barks out a second order, and they begin to press forward, slaying the undead in their path and driving them slowly back.
As you begin your song, the shield begins to thrum in your hands and your vision grows dim.
Mournful wailing fills a city square as wagons bearing piles of military supplies, most battered and bloody, are rolled through the expanse. Occasionally, a single woman will dart forward to pull something personal from the wagons' loads. The faces of the few soldiers that accompany the wagons on their journey are drawn and distant, as if their minds are still on the battle that robbed them of kith and kin.
a pallid white veniom-threaded handkerchief
Dates to the First Elven War.
Loresong
As your song resonates deeply, an answering tremor from the hankie in your hand sends a shiver through your body. Light fractures and separates into shards, then reforms into a vision.
Sunlight floods your senses and suddenly you find yourself floating high above a great shining city, looking down with an eagle's view at a small caravan winding its way out of the arched gates. A tiny figure below, armored in the regalia of Tamzyrr, urges the wagons onward with haste. With three laden wagons of crates and sixteen armored guards on horseback, the convoy snakes away from the city and heads south.
Soldiers on the road stop to cheer, inducing straight backs and prideful salutes from the mounted guards. Wives, husbands, and children rush forward, wishing their loved-ones safe journeys or thrusting letters for distant recipients into gauntleted hands. Nearly a parade with its buoyant wake of enthusiasm rippling the crowd behind them, the stream of marching soldiers and the wagons wind away from the gleaming walls of civilization toward the unknown highway beyond, carrying their cargo crates marked as weaponry, food, and medical supplies.
Rejoining the eyes of the soaring avian, your view expands into a twilight landscape high above the crawling caravan. With cheers and comfort dwindling far behind on their hard road, the soldiers and wagoners wend their way through the foothills ever southward. The line slows and stops in a wide clearing, the men beginning to dismount and pull bedrolls and cooking supplies from their saddlebags.
Without warning, a barrage of crude spears splits the air, and two men fall with lengths of wood through their innards. Raising the cry of alarm, the men scramble behind wagons and horses to shield themselves, and a moment later dozens of slavering orcs burst from hiding and charge. The battle is swift from your vantage, though surely endless-seeming to the combatants, and in the end two more guards lie dead in the blood-speckled dust. What orcs that have not fled are mangled and motionless, and the remainder of the caravan quickly stows their gear and remounts, speeding away from the unsafe hills and continuing on into the night.
Silver-limned clouds above resolve into clarity within your vision, threatening to split open and deluge the caravan below. The wagons are slowly working their way down a rocky pass, the horses nervously picking their steps through the rocks that are slippery from the pre-storm precipitation. Thunder rolls across the land, vibrating the very soil in its thrumming impatience.
A misplaced hoof and startled cry from the rider precede a sudden tumble down the shale-covered slope by one of the horses, ending far below in a bleeding heap that will travel no more. Continuing even more slowly, moving at a rate nearly imperceptible to the eye, the wagons and horsemen part the storm forcefully with their bodies, shoving through the barrage of rainwater.
Reopening your illusory eyes to the grey landscape lighted by ominous clouds, the storm, as if on cue, begins to pound the shivering travelers below. Puddles swell into ponds almost instantly, and the skies seem to be channeling directly from the domain of Charl. Birds nearby are crushed to the ground by the force of the downpour, and the hapless caravan slows to a straining bent-necked plod. Trekking along the edge of the dark Wyrdeep Forest, an elven village that has been razed can be seen nearby marring the terrain.
Passing close to the wreckage, the horses begin to show nervousness not warranted by either the fresh reek of the burned village, nor the continuing torrential rain. Leaping from their hiding places, a band of barbarians howl with bloodthirsty ire and attack the procession. The military cohesion and skill of the caravan's guards is evident, and with short shrift they dispatch the grubby tribal men, but only after taking a few losses of their own.
Soluble colors waver into clarity and again you view the convoy from a perch in midair, though now there are only a handful of harried-looking guards accompanying the wagons. Still, luckily for them, the journey seems to be finally reaching its close. A small fortress comes into view, still being built in some places and with dozens of men hauling and sharpening logs for the barrier surrounding it. A contingent of human soldiers in battleworn armor rushes out to meet the wagons, and the sight of the caravan rouses cheers fraught with relief from every man nearby.
Like starving hounds the men surround the wagons, some hugging each other and nearly crying while others pull a crate from one of the beds. Laughing and nudging, the men gather around as an officer works his axe's head under the chest's lid and pops it free. As the cover falls away, the cheers and ribbing falter and the soldiers all stare silently for a moment into the open container. Your aerial view swoops down amongst the men as they begin cracking open chest after chest, roaring in frustration greater with each, and you get a clear look inside one. Nestled in neat rows inside the crate are hundreds of pallid white handkerchiefs, each bearing the veniom-threaded monogram and seal of Emperor Krellove. A string of curses erupts from the officer about the incompetence of the royal shipping clerks.
Retreating into obscurity, the vision splayed before you tunnels into a pinpoint of light and then winks out. Your eyes readjust and you take a moment to balance your equilibrium. The magic drains from your connection to the hankie and you feel very tired.
a pallid white veniom-threaded handkerchier
a battered vultite tower shield (5x)
a braided white leather bracelet
an eagle-winged blue vultite longsword (4x, swcw)
Minimum bid: 1 million
Loresongs galore:
longsword: 4x SWCW
Everything around you falls away with vertiginous speed. Without knowing exactly how, you understand that you are part of a small cadre of soldiers creeping along in the lee of an old stone wall. The night is dark, cold, and silent save for the hooting of a lone owl. Blood is pounding in your ears and your nerves are stretched as taut as bowstrings. You round the corner into a dense grove of oaks, and see Ethauc, your leader, raise his hand, signaling a halt.
With jarring suddenness you are once again yourself, the last notes of your song still hanging in the air.
With no transition at all, you find yourself back in the grove of trees. Ethauc gestures for you and your companions to gather around. There is an odd catch in his voice as he says, "My brothers and sisters, we have fought together, bled together, and survived together. We face a great foe tonight, but if anyone can turn the tide, it is us. But even we could use some help, so on a recent journey to Brantur I had swords made for us all, and each one of them I sharpened on the Whetstone." With great ceremony Ethauc withdraws one sheathed longsword at a time from his pack and hands it to a member of the company. When you receive yours, the cold weight of it is both surprising and familiar. Even in this watery moonlight the sapphire in the sword's pommel sparkles with life.
The illusion slips away, though the longsword is still in your hand.
Eagerly, you allow the song to send you back to that dark forest. Donning the sheaths, you and your brethren resume battle-ready positions. Ethauc whispers, "Drinks in Tyllan are on me tomorrow night!" As a unit you steal out of the woods and over a small hill, surprising a ragged band of undead beasts. You draw your sword and charge into the fray, cutting down your opponents right and left with startling ease. To either side you see your fellow soldiers taking out the few remaining creatures, when a trumpet blast echoes from behind. A man on horseback gallops toward you, shouting, "Blue Eagles, turn back to Elstreth! It is besieged and in need of aid!" He blows the trumpet again and races off.
You look around for your companions but the vision has slipped away.
It seems easier now, stepping back into that other life. Your legs ache from the hurried march back to the city. The walls of Elstreth are in sight, as is the great army of the Horned Cabal. A rush of energy floods your system, and you charge behind Ethauc toward the nightmarish creatures. You fall quickly into the rhythm of the fight, the sword in your hand moving almost of its own accord. You hear a sudden shout, and turn to face it.
The battlefield has gone, leaving you feeling unbalanced and anxious to return.
You are back in the battle, once again turning to face the source of that unexpected shout. The scene that greets your eyes chills you to the very marrow of your bones. Cutting a swath through the regiments behind you is the northern force of the Horned Cabal, the very army you had been sent to destroy in the first place. Caught now between the rotting jaws of these two merciless powers, there is nothing to do but fight. With a deep growl you raise your longsword and dive back into the battle.
The enemies become phantoms, then vanish altogether, although your battlelust remains.
With fierce determination you launch yourself back into the ancient war. Foes are falling away with a grisly sort of grace when three skeletal figures surround you. You hold off two of them but the third is too much. He lunges in to strike at your exposed side, then collapses with alarming suddenness. Ethauc is revealed, ichor-stained longsword in hand. You grin at him, but your smile becomes a gasp of horror at the sight of a spear head sliding out through his chest. Ethauc grins back at you before falling slowly to his knees. You move toward him, but feel something very cold on your left shoulder. Faster than thought, ice suffuses your system. The battlefield is silent, the sun goes out, and only the taste of metal lingers on your tongue.
Silently you stand as sound and sense return. The icy hand holding your heart is slow to release its grip. The blue vultite longsword you hold seems warmer than before, but also heavier, more substantial.
white leather bracelet:
As you begin your song, the white leather bracelet twists slightly in your hand. The world around you fades, and a series of images pass before your eyes.
A human and an elf barter over a wagon of pelts. They shake hands and transfer the goods from one wagon to another. The human continues on his way down the road, and he meets another man drawing a wagon of pelts. The furrier raises a hand in greeting and smiles at the potential customer. As they speak, his face clouds over, realizing his sale was lost to an elf just minutes before.
Human and elven children play in the forest, their laughter ringing through the trees. They are interrupted by the angry father of one of the boys, who grabs his son by the arm, shouting all the while. The young boy is dragged from the woods, leaving his playmates behind. The other human boys look at their elven compatriots with suspicious expressions, and their previous light-hearted game turns to vicious fighting.
You find yourself inside a pub, observing a group of men dressed in the garb of several professions -- merchanting, lumbering, and trapping. They are having an intense discussion over something, many motioning this way and that with their tankards. Most of the gestures are in a particular direction and you follow two men as they leave the pub, curious to see the source of their argument. On the pub's steps, you look in the direction the men were gesturing and see an enormous expanse of forest. You turn to get your bearings and see that you are surrounded by forest on all sides. One of the men says to the other, "The Wyrdeep holds dangers, aye, but none as dangerous as us." The other man glowers silently as he makes his way down the steps.
As you continue your song, the white leather bracelet twists slightly in your hand. The world around you fades and is replaced by a different scene.
You have returned to the pub where the discussion has escalated to an argument. Groups of men knot on either side of the barroom and the bartender is between the two with his arms raised, speaking in firm tones in an attempt to bring the men to their senses. The opposing factions raise their fists and holler across the empty space, but neither seems ready to meet the other in physical violence. Finally, the argument settles down and the bartender returns to his familiar place behind the bar.
As you continue your song, the white leather bracelet twists slightly in your hand. The world around you fades and is replaced by a different scene.
A group of men, each wearing a white leather bracelet, square off with a cluster of elves who staff a series of stalls in one corner of a marketplace. The humans gesture angrily, pointing at the marketplace's exit, but the elves stand firm. A crowd gathers around the arguing parties and a few men step forward in preparation to assist the elves, each wearing a single hawk feather in their hair. The protesting humans continue to argue and point at the elves, but gradually relent and return to their varied businesses in the area.
Greatshield
As you begin your song, the shield begins to thrum in your hands and your vision grows dim.
A man passes through a darkened street, torch in hand. Ahead of him, the street is silent and dark, wet with a recent rain. Behind him, men stumble out of doors in a great hurry, fastening their cloaks and slinging their shields. Their wives follow them, speaking quickly and placing small parcels of foods into their packs as they kiss them good-bye.
Roundtime: 8 sec.
As you begin your song, the shield begins to thrum in your hands and your vision grows dim.
A company of men eat dinner in a wilderness camp, which has obviously been put together hastily. Nearby, a messenger, his uniform tattered and caked with mud, speaks to their captain in an almost hysterical tone. He begs the captain to hurry, to keep marching. The soldiers chew slowly and exchange quiet glances as they watch this man make a spectacle of himself. After the messenger is shown to a tent to have his wounds dressed, the captain studies the columns of smoke rising from the mountains.
As you begin your song, the shield begins to thrum in your hands and your vision grows dim.
The twisted visages of the undead scream with fury as battle rages in a narrow mountain pass. Bodies are piled throughout the rocky enclosure, but are no barrier to the fierce creatures assaulting the armies of humans that continue to fight valiantly, despite the loss of their companions. As you watch, a general calls out an order, and the soldiers reform their ranks, creating a three-deep wall of humans that spans the width of the pass. Their leader barks out a second order, and they begin to press forward, slaying the undead in their path and driving them slowly back.
As you begin your song, the shield begins to thrum in your hands and your vision grows dim.
Mournful wailing fills a city square as wagons bearing piles of military supplies, most battered and bloody, are rolled through the expanse. Occasionally, a single woman will dart forward to pull something personal from the wagons' loads. The faces of the few soldiers that accompany the wagons on their journey are drawn and distant, as if their minds are still on the battle that robbed them of kith and kin.
a pallid white veniom-threaded handkerchief
Dates to the First Elven War.
Loresong
As your song resonates deeply, an answering tremor from the hankie in your hand sends a shiver through your body. Light fractures and separates into shards, then reforms into a vision.
Sunlight floods your senses and suddenly you find yourself floating high above a great shining city, looking down with an eagle's view at a small caravan winding its way out of the arched gates. A tiny figure below, armored in the regalia of Tamzyrr, urges the wagons onward with haste. With three laden wagons of crates and sixteen armored guards on horseback, the convoy snakes away from the city and heads south.
Soldiers on the road stop to cheer, inducing straight backs and prideful salutes from the mounted guards. Wives, husbands, and children rush forward, wishing their loved-ones safe journeys or thrusting letters for distant recipients into gauntleted hands. Nearly a parade with its buoyant wake of enthusiasm rippling the crowd behind them, the stream of marching soldiers and the wagons wind away from the gleaming walls of civilization toward the unknown highway beyond, carrying their cargo crates marked as weaponry, food, and medical supplies.
Rejoining the eyes of the soaring avian, your view expands into a twilight landscape high above the crawling caravan. With cheers and comfort dwindling far behind on their hard road, the soldiers and wagoners wend their way through the foothills ever southward. The line slows and stops in a wide clearing, the men beginning to dismount and pull bedrolls and cooking supplies from their saddlebags.
Without warning, a barrage of crude spears splits the air, and two men fall with lengths of wood through their innards. Raising the cry of alarm, the men scramble behind wagons and horses to shield themselves, and a moment later dozens of slavering orcs burst from hiding and charge. The battle is swift from your vantage, though surely endless-seeming to the combatants, and in the end two more guards lie dead in the blood-speckled dust. What orcs that have not fled are mangled and motionless, and the remainder of the caravan quickly stows their gear and remounts, speeding away from the unsafe hills and continuing on into the night.
Silver-limned clouds above resolve into clarity within your vision, threatening to split open and deluge the caravan below. The wagons are slowly working their way down a rocky pass, the horses nervously picking their steps through the rocks that are slippery from the pre-storm precipitation. Thunder rolls across the land, vibrating the very soil in its thrumming impatience.
A misplaced hoof and startled cry from the rider precede a sudden tumble down the shale-covered slope by one of the horses, ending far below in a bleeding heap that will travel no more. Continuing even more slowly, moving at a rate nearly imperceptible to the eye, the wagons and horsemen part the storm forcefully with their bodies, shoving through the barrage of rainwater.
Reopening your illusory eyes to the grey landscape lighted by ominous clouds, the storm, as if on cue, begins to pound the shivering travelers below. Puddles swell into ponds almost instantly, and the skies seem to be channeling directly from the domain of Charl. Birds nearby are crushed to the ground by the force of the downpour, and the hapless caravan slows to a straining bent-necked plod. Trekking along the edge of the dark Wyrdeep Forest, an elven village that has been razed can be seen nearby marring the terrain.
Passing close to the wreckage, the horses begin to show nervousness not warranted by either the fresh reek of the burned village, nor the continuing torrential rain. Leaping from their hiding places, a band of barbarians howl with bloodthirsty ire and attack the procession. The military cohesion and skill of the caravan's guards is evident, and with short shrift they dispatch the grubby tribal men, but only after taking a few losses of their own.
Soluble colors waver into clarity and again you view the convoy from a perch in midair, though now there are only a handful of harried-looking guards accompanying the wagons. Still, luckily for them, the journey seems to be finally reaching its close. A small fortress comes into view, still being built in some places and with dozens of men hauling and sharpening logs for the barrier surrounding it. A contingent of human soldiers in battleworn armor rushes out to meet the wagons, and the sight of the caravan rouses cheers fraught with relief from every man nearby.
Like starving hounds the men surround the wagons, some hugging each other and nearly crying while others pull a crate from one of the beds. Laughing and nudging, the men gather around as an officer works his axe's head under the chest's lid and pops it free. As the cover falls away, the cheers and ribbing falter and the soldiers all stare silently for a moment into the open container. Your aerial view swoops down amongst the men as they begin cracking open chest after chest, roaring in frustration greater with each, and you get a clear look inside one. Nestled in neat rows inside the crate are hundreds of pallid white handkerchiefs, each bearing the veniom-threaded monogram and seal of Emperor Krellove. A string of curses erupts from the officer about the incompetence of the royal shipping clerks.
Retreating into obscurity, the vision splayed before you tunnels into a pinpoint of light and then winks out. Your eyes readjust and you take a moment to balance your equilibrium. The magic drains from your connection to the hankie and you feel very tired.