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 Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 6:04 pm
"Hmm. Mm-hmm," the Fleshcrafter hummed to himself as he placed cool, inhumanly smooth fingers on the scarred side of Kalen's face, poking and prodding and running fingertips over scarred skin.
"Previous master must have been quite the sadist," the Fleshcrafter said, almost appreciably. "I can smooth the skin over, but I am not in the profession of replacing lost parts. For that you will have to consult with a wizard."
Alexander understood, nodding his head. "The eye doesn't concern me, unless it hinders his performance to a considerable degree. Proceed with your work."
Alexander walked out of the room. The Fleshcrafter leaned over Kalen, looking into his eye. Despite the closeness, he still wouldn't be able to see the Fleshcrafter's face, only his eyes, white and void of sight.
"This is going to hurt, but you must be used to pain by now." The Fleshcrafter's fingers began to dig into Kalen's face, striking fire against every nerve in his face, manually manipulating his tissue, stretching healthy skin across his scars and tethering it into place through some means. Like an artist playing with a clay mold.
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Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 7:48 pm
As much as it hurt, Kalen was grateful that it was being done. He hated the way his face looked. It scared him when he caught sight of himself in the mirror, it was a horrible reminder of what he had gone through. He also hated the way it made everyone look at him, or worse, the way it made everyone not look at him. Like the way his face was mangled made him inhuman.
The Fleshcrafter was right though, he was very used to pain. When he was with his old master he knew two completely opposite moods that he would be in when he was hurting him, one would be where he wanted to hear the boy's cries of pain as loud as they could go, and Kalen knew that any pain he felt he would just let it all out as loudly as he could. There were other times though, where any sound that he made would be punished, and he kept himself as still and quiet as he could, in spite of the pain.
The latter was the method that he chose for while the Fleshcrafter was working on his face. His hands gripped the blanket underneath him tightly, and occasionally the quietest of whimpers would escape him, but he kept himself as still and quiet as he could, and just kept telling himself that it couldn't possibly last forever, even if it felt like it would.
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Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 11:14 pm
The Fleshcrafter would work on Kalen's face for an agonizing half hour, peeling away the scarred tissue and knitting it back together, the entire time chanting unintelligible words under his breath. He was quite pleased that the boy didn't cry out in pain. After finishing his work, he opened his satchel and brought out a roll of gauze wrap, and began wrapping it around the half of Kalen's face he had been working on.
"Keep this on until one of the healers attends you," the Fleshcrafter began explaining, "which may be a while since many in this city are not of the living, and thus healers aren't exactly abundant. In any case, keep it on for a week, and do not touch it. I will return later to change the bandages. Your flesh needs to heal, but when it does your face will look as it did before your injury. I cannot do anything about your missing eye, however. You will rest now."
The Fleshcrafter wiped blood off of his hands with a dirty rag, tossing it into the satchel, along with the remaining gauze wrap that wasn't used. Rising to his feet, he walked to the door and stepped out. Judging by the faint voices that could be heard on the other side, the Fleshcrafter was likely informing Alexander of the situation, but he wouldn't step back into the room to check on him.
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Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 11:54 pm
Jadow was sitting in his room -- pfah! his den -- in the Nightlund Tower, enjoying a brief moment of relative sanity. As he made a pointless effort to clean under his ragged nails with -- what was it? A shard of bone? He was not so sure of things. His split tongue flickered out to dampen his lips, which were quartered with three vertical black lines. Said lips peeled back into their characteristic snarl, revealing that the black tattoos were continued over his gums, and that he had filed away his now yellowing teeth to wide-spaced sharklike points. Now, imagine the camera panning out to reveal Jadow in his full mutilated glory. His ears are cut away, but for the tragus and lobes, and from these hang heavy gold rings. His temples are shaven, and thrice-scarred on either side. Indeed his whole head is shaven and polished, save for a thick strip, a long flowing mane of snowy white down the back of his skull. Underneath his rag bindings, his build is large, but not quite so large as he often seems. Maybe the threefold scars running along his forearms are visible through a gap in the tattered fabric wound about his arms.
The room he is in can only be described as filthy. It is not merely messy, or any variation on that theme -- although it is that as well, with everything strewn about will-ye, nill-ye, broken and uncared for. It is truly filthy, like somehwere a wild has lived for some time. In his saner moments, Jadow wonders why he is allowed to remain in this room in the tower.
He flicked the bone shard across the room and spits over his shoulder onto the floor. He was musing upon the fact that he is not yet dead. He should be, by now: he has been in this forsaken place long enough.
With no answers, he settled back, and waited to be called.
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Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 11:56 am
Valas Zauviir was sitting in his study, pouring over the thick pages of an old leather bound grimoire. It was a journal of sorts, filled with mostly random notes about the writer's travels, but it was the other things written inside that Valas paid more attention to. The writer had written of a place in the Mithral Mountains - a keep that was haunted by spirits, and avoided by animals. From the description, it sounded like one of the many sights of the necropolis. Valas wondered why he had never known of this area before, and he was curious to find out more.
The lichdrow was the cautious sort however, and not privy to go on random tours of new sights just to see what was there. That's what adventurers do, and Valas was an archmage in charge of an order of necromancers and other wizards. Why go himself and risk falling into some kind of predicament that he could otherwise prevent himself from getting into in the first place by sending someone else instead? For this, he knew of a perfect candidate, whom Valas was growing tired of seeing wandering aimlessly around the tower, as if waiting for someone to give him something better to do. Plus, the lichdrow was tired of the complaints about the stench coming from his room, let alone his person.
Summoning a wraith, Valas ordered it to seek out Jadow and summon him to his study at once.
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Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 12:30 pm
Kalen let out a sigh of exhausted relief when the fleshcrafter was finished with what he was doing to his face. One thing was certain, the entire procedure had hurt like hell. The whole side of his face was throbbing. Aside from the fact that it would make him look normal again, the only thing he could be thankful for was that it had only lasted for half an hour. Half an hour was certainly no small amount of thime to feel the constant ripping at the flesh of his face, but he had gone through much longer tortures than that. It was horrible, but he consoled himself with the fact that it could have been much worse.
He nodded slightly as the Fleshcrafter gave him instructions and wrapped his face up in the gauze. He'd keep the bandages on for a week, leaving it entirely alone, as he had been told. Even with his face still throbbing painfully, he couldn't help but look forward to his face looking the way it had before his master had mutilated it. Even without his eye there it would be a huge improvement.
When he was left alone in his room, Kalen got up, removed his shoes, socks, and shirt, then turned down the blankets of the bed and got under them, preparing for a much needed rest, as he had been instructed to. As he started to drift off to sleep Kalen wondered what his life here would be like. It was looking a bit bleak, but at least he wasn't still with his last master. Things could always be much worse.
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Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 6:22 pm
Jadow was minutes away from winning the battle against his hair. Somewhere in that den, he had found a comb, several of its teeth missing from previous skirmishes, and he was now dragging it fiercely though his white mane. The hair had put up quite a fight at first, resisting the comb so strongly that it had caused the bald part of his scalp to pull, puckering about the scars on his temples. Now, however, it had very nearly submitted to the superiority of the comb, only snagging a little as he dragged the ivory thing through its flowing length. Once he had done this, he thought, he might even try to have a bath. Or maybe next time. He'd been almost sane for nearly an hour now. A bath would undoubtedly be pushing his luck.
He never got the opportunity to find out, as the lichdrow's wraith drifted into the room. Den. Dropping the comb, he growled at the shade as it entered, baring his filed-sharp teeth. He knew the message it bore before it gave it to him, and meekly folowed it to the lichdrow's study.
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Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 4:28 pm
The door to Valas' study opened as the wraith introduced Jadow. Valas was sitting behind his desk, waiting for the crazed necromancer. Valas had no traces of flesh remaining on his body. He was a skeleton in wizard robes, with a jeweled, many-spired gold crown atop his skull, marking him clearly as a lich. Crimson pinpoints of light glowered from the depths of his empty eye sockets. His robe looked expensive, made of some fine fibers, in shades of black and dark red. A collared mantle covered his shoulders, decorated in runes and arcane sigils. Each of the bony digits on his hands had a ring of some sort, still turning the pages of the journal Valas had been pouring over for a while now.
"Take a seat, Jadow. I have an assignment for you," Valas said without looking up from the pages of the journal.
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Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 3:25 pm
Jadow bowed deeply but awkwardly as he entered the lichdrow's study, ushered in by the wraith. It occurred to him as he straightened that he really, really wanted to bite something.
No, he told himself firmly, as he eyed the available object in the room. This is important. Just a little longer.
Turnning a page in the journal he was reading, Valas rasped, ( ? ) "Take a seat, Jadow."
Softly, politely, his voice coarse, his speech made sibilant and slightly unclear by his split tongue, Jadow hissed, "Thankyou my lord."
"I have an assignment for you."
"Yes, my lord?"
Jadow's eyes were following the lich's long, ring-encrusted bone fingers, as they moved across the pages of the book, like great ghost spiders. He wasn't curious about this assignment: curiousity was something he had forgotten. Moving independently of each other, the two halves of his tongue crept across his teeth, his tatooed gums as he waited to be told what it was that he was to do.
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Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 3:30 am
The lichdrow finally stopped turning pages, his dark, grinning skull tilting up to turn undead eyes to Jadow.
"I want you to investigate an area of the Mithral Mountains called Sorrow's Keep," Valas began explaining, "According to the writings of this journal, its ruins seem to be haunted, and possibly occupied by undead. I would like you to see if there is anyone controlling these undead, and if it wold be possible to set up some sort of route of travel between the city and Sorrow's Keep as an alternate route of bypassing Lament."
"You will communicate with me via this ring," Valas opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a small silver ring, engraved with small, intricate words of magic, holding it out for Jadow to take. "T'is a Ring of Sending, so your messages cannot be too long, and you can only use it once a day. I expect to hear from you daily once you've arrived at Sorrow's Keep. Any questions?"
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Posted: Sun Nov 26, 2006 8:49 pm
"'Tis a ring of sending," Valas explained, holding the intricately detailed ring between two skeletal fingers, "so your messages cannot be too long, and you can only use it once a day."
Jadow reached out a hand a little less grubby than it had been yesterday, and, taking great care not to touch the lichdrow's bone digits, accepted the ring.
"I expect to hear from you daily once you've arrived at Sorrow's Keep."
"Yes, my Lord," he replied, with great deference, in that hissing growl of his.
"Any questions?"
"What company shall I be permitted, my lord?"
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Posted: Sun Nov 26, 2006 10:29 pm
Valas brought his bony hands together in front of him, touching his fingers together in a steeple. "With the construction of Necromon going on, there are not many we can spare at the time, but you may be allowed one or two to go with you. I would suggest that if you bring any undead with you, that you don't make it known to anyone who may be watching you that you are in the company of walking dead. Mortals don't take kindly to our lot. Disguise them in whatever fashion you see fit."
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Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 12:31 pm
The door to Kalen's room opened and a deadite shuffled inside, stopping just inside the room. "The master summons you," it rasped dryly, before shuffling back out into the hall, leaving his door open.
* * *
Much work has progressed, and Necromon is nearly complete, with only the lowest levels of the tunneled city left to construct. The upper levels already had work going on in them. The hangar was moved to the top level, where work on the new airship, Vengeance, was coming along well. They were ahead of schedule, and the airship was nearly complete. The new engines had been installed, and were so far functioning to all expectations. Work was now being done on retrofitting the outer hull with the airship's arsenal of cannons, turrets, and launchers.
With Necromon nearly complete, there was now room for more undead to occupy. The perimeter wall, with it's protective dome of magic, filtered out the sun's rays through the scintillating colors, making it safe for even vampires to roam during the daytime. Other projects were now starting up, using the space provided by Necromon's honeycomb chambers to begin them. With the airship project ahead of schedule, the gnome engineers had an opportunity to work on these projects on the side.
One of the lessons learned after the battle against Ymiristan was that the airships were too vulnerable to air attacks. They needed smaller, swifter aircraft to protect them against threats in the air. Utilizing what they learned from building the airship, the gnomes started drawing up designs for these smaller craft. Inevitably, it would lead to making a few adjustments to Vengeance's own design, and increasing the airship's overall size.
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Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 8:01 pm
Kalen got out of bed. He'd been sleeping for quite some time, he had no real way of knowing how long exactly, because it was always dark here. He didn't know if it was night or day when he had fallen asleep or if it was night or day now. It was odd, but he supposed that it would be something he would get used to in tim.
He pulled his shirt back on, being careful of the bandages on the side of his face, then put his shoes back on and quickly left his room to find his master. He didn't seem like the type that it would be wise to keep waiting.
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