[HQ Ignorance] Scene 101: On the Blue Moon plateau - storytelling

[Nic Hughes]

The big man sat himself down amongst the darkmen, against his host he 
seemed to loom very large but against others in the crowd he seemed 
almost as slight as his elven companion. He took a long drink of water 
to help soothe his cough before starting, his voice dropping into the 
telltale cadences of the storytellers of his youth.

"I will tell you the tale of the fellowship of Talor. The fellowship has 
touched the lives of thousands of men, trolls and others but this is not 
their story, it is mine.

A story like this does not have true beginning and I do not yet know its 
end, although I have been told enough dark prophesies to fear that end. 
So where to start? Should I start in the times of Sheng Seleris when 
some of the Lunar faith fled rather than see their blood and principles 
wasted to maintain the power of the Empire against that barbarian? 
Perhaps I should start when a noble prince saw his people being 
converted by those Lunar refugees and decided to kill the god of 
communication so that his people could not be tainted by the words of 
alien Lunar religions? These things were before I was born so I will 
start when the curse that came from killing the god of the silver feet 
finally ended."

"When the curse ended it was like a fog lifting and people could find 
one another again and resume communication and trade, one land at a time 
as the curse slowly lifted. At first people rejoiced at the new freedom 
but during the time of the curse a horror had entered the world and 
forged a place for itself, the horror was a kingdom dedicated entirely 
to death and war. As soon as the fog lifted this kingdom of war began 
its campaign of conquest and enslavement, each city that it captured 
became new slaves for its army or else corpses if not fit to fight. All 
the peoples nearby were threatened by this evil but to fight against it 
openly only made it stronger, for the very act of war seemed to give 
strength to this kingdom of war. At last each of the peoples of the far 
West, the last lands inhabited by mortals before the shores of the 
sunset seas, sent an emissary to the immortal wizards of Sog City to 
find a way to undo this evil. Amongst that company were myself, the Lady 
Icthya and many others of note amongst their own peoples. The prophesies 
revealed there led us to join together and reform the fellowship of 
Talor which had not existed since the first age of the world. The 
fellowship then sought out the words of an ancient, mysterious and 
fearful spirit, the nameless man. There the first of the fellowship 
fell, but in falling revealed that the spirit was none other than the 
ghost of the man who was the ancestor of all of us, whether man or elf 
or troll. Revealed the ghost of Grandfather Mortal told us that the 
kingdom of war was a harbinger of the return of Gbaji to the world. He 
then spoke of three weapons and of three guardians of those weapons each 
of which was necessary if the return of Gbaji was to be stopped and the 
world saved for his descendants to live in."

His throat becoming raw, Aalmon took another drink before continuing. He 
told of the journey to speak with Dwarves, of werewolves and walking the 
heroquest paths of the Trolls of Arkat. Then he spoke of the journey to 
Seshnela and of how the kingdom and religion of that land were rent 
asunder as the wars of those lands were finally brought to an end by the 
reconciliation of the fellowship with the holder of the first weapon and 
his werewolf followers. He spent much time musing on the mysterious ways 
in which events seemed to crumble to dust seemingly endless institutions 
that stood in the way of the quest. He spent even longer describing the 
many evils from kings to vampires or chaos monstrosities or werewolves 
that had threatened the slight elf at his side, each time remarking half 
in jest how strange it was that she was still here and they were no 
longer in this world.

By the time he came to describe his journeys into and beyond the empire 
his voice was tired and his prose became less florid. A sensitive 
listener might have been able to make out that he had some reluctance to 
talk about this at such length, that it was almost as if he were 
discussing something distasteful.

Finally with his voice failing him the lone man in the room stopped 
talking. He opened up a flask of watered wine and took a deep drink.

Nic