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 Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 6:38 am
The women were, of course, unhappy with the events of the night before. However, they could not beat the displeasure of the guard who had been killed by an unskilled chamber servant in a surprise attack. The escapee had never been pinned as one who had inbred psychological problems, which is what the women called the desire to be free. But having the servant come to the border of the compound to tend to a small camp of visiting family was like a bear rediscovering sunlight after living in a dark cave all winter.
Fortunately for the escapee, he was not all that important to the women of Feretris. He held no government secret, no particular skill such that they could not replace him. He had been wounded by an arrow through the shoulder as he ran off, and so the women were convinced that he would not survive on his own, having no particular skill in hunting or the like. Let him run off into the plains; let him drown in lake Derr.
If they had known that he had wandered into the ruins of a long-ago compound, the Derr compound, they would have laughed at the image of him choking to death in the dust. His blood would spill on the land that they had not bothered to retake.
Lucky for him, there were other people in the world besides the cruel Feretris slave drivers. The people who retook the Derr compound long ago and left it stagnating as a record of their triumph over Feretris.
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Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 1:17 pm
((so I'll be rping with you if he doesn't show? what will happen?))
Arril Shepherd sat on a crumbling barrier that used to be the rim of some sort of fountain. His cloak lay in a heap over his possessions, along with his shirt. He had just finished bathing in the cool rainwater that had collected there over the years, and now he was watching Sih do the same. It had been an extremely hot day and they were both glad to enjoy the old fountain of his ancestors. He looked over the huge compound, still amazed by its size. The old fountain, and what looked like a half-standing pillar, were the two highest things in the ruins.
He looked at his possessions and then himself, wondering how he would explain himself to a person. He had been practicing his human tongue for a little over an hour now, and he was a little unsatisfied with his progress, but it would have to do.
He ran his tail into the cool water, making him shiver for an instant. He felt Sih climbing up, and raised his tail so he could take her in his hands and place her in her customary position around his shoulders and upper body. “You still haven’t thought of an explanation?” She asked, her tongue elegant and refined, just with a hint of hissing accent.
To most people who knew how to converse with animals, their poor grammatical skills were their drawback. They only knew a few root phrases in every general species and that satisfied them. They thought animals were just that, animals. Simple beings that could not really retain or process much information. They were wrong.
Living and conversing with only animals for just about all of his adult life, Arril had discovered that they were more than just animals. They were just like people, in a sense. Though most of the animal kingdom ran on instincts and survival, some could be easily pushed into intellectual matters. Canines were easier than reptiles, but Arril shared more of a bond with Sih than he did any canine. It did not matter how big an animal’s brain was, with the right triggers, a rational mind could be coerced out of the instinctual shell. It had taken him almost 16 years, and the end result was very satisfying. Sih was comprehending everything he conversed with her about, much like a human being would.
“No, I could only think of masking myself and wrapping my feet and hands so they wont see the scales underneath.” Arril said, scratching his scalp between the long spines of his ‘hair.’
“You needn’t worry about that, your scales are as fine as mine.” Sih remarked, settling in her spot around his shoulders with her tail wrapped under his arm.
“The pigmentation… they’ll spot it in an instant.” He said.
“Ah, yes. What about your face?”
Arril got up and looked through his things, putting his shirt on over the python. “I thought about putting some wraps around my face, but I’m afraid people might think I have some sort of disease. I’ll be better off staying at a distance with my hood up.” He explained.
He stood there, looking over the ruins, wondering what could have caused this. He was hit with a foreboding sense of danger, but he shrugged it off. It was probably an act of nature. A lightning strike, nothing more…
He shouldered his satchel and hung his cloak over the same shoulder, and began to leave for the west.
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Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 5:31 am
Manni's heart beat loudly in his ears, perforating the swooning landscape that inched passed him. He felt exhausted and thirsty, and his right arm was numb from the wound over his shoulder blade. He had tied it up with his torn shirt, and he thought that perhaps it had stopped bleeding.
At first Manni had stayed between buildings as he escaped the eastern most border of Feretris, but now there were only shrubs and the slight wave of the land to cover him from prying eyes. Then his feet reached another road, and his shoulder brushed another building. The way he was shuffling wearily through the streets, Manni did not understand why he wasn't already captured by the Feretris guards. He hadn't quite noticed that this place was abandoned.
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Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:42 am
Arril had been busy tying wraps around his hands as the scent of blood sent him and Sih into a state of caution. He shrugged his cloak over his shoulders and pulled the large hood over his head, blanketing his face in darkness. Sih, her head protruding from his shirt, nestled her head against his jaw, scenting the air with her tongue as Arril moved behind a tree that had seeded in the middle of the abandoned street, some decades ago. He got out his bow and strung an arrow from his quiver. It was one of his straight ones he made specificly for killing something that was a threat to him.
He waited, scenting the blood in his nostrils, the smell of it metallic and fresh. Then he and Sih both caught the unfamiliar scent of the human boy. It was so alien to him now, being away from his kind for so long, it seemed almost, bland in comparison to his own scent. Still, it was so strange... "Human... Boy, around 16." Sih hissed, her tongue flickering in his ear.
"Is that his blood?" Arril whispered, his nostrils flaring with the ominous taste of it in the air.
Sih nodded, her scales rubbing against his own. Arril gradually poked his head around the tree as much as he could, without being seen by anyone on the other side. with his one eye, he saw the boy, holding his shoulder and shuffling towards him. The heat radiating from the boy, is not something he would have expected from a human boy, full of liveliness. It was a bad sign that he had lost a lot of blood. "The boy will die, if we dont do something." Arril said.
Sih nodded, staring at the boy. Arril took a deep breath, and stepped out into the open, his bow still strung, in case whatever injured the boy was still lurking around.
his feet was wrapped in linen, and if someone didn't look too closely, they wouldn't see the green tinge of his toes or the talons there, instead of toenails. he would have to invest in some boots soon... His hands were wrapped in linen as well, his fingers wrapped tightly for better movement and control. His tail was bound uncomfortably to his leg, hidden by the cloak. His face was hidden, receded into the dark hood of his cloak. He had traveled far in it, and it was ragged and patched, but no holes were in it's tough surface. years ago, when he was afraid of human contact, with the help of some animals and some extreme patience, he was able to lift the cloak from a Kiyap Turea camp. It's hood was inlaid with an illusion that hides the wearer's face.
As he stood there, the boy shuffling towards him, Arril swallowed and tried to remember the human tongue he had learned so long ago. He hoped that he wouldn't scare the boy off with his rough and somewhat hidden apperance..
((I was wanting to somehow incorporate the cloak into his early history, but I just got carried away with the backstory of how he was transformed. forgive me for not mentioning it earlier, this is the only magic he owns and if you want me to elaborate on it, I'll do so. It will probably become moot anyway when he is discovered by Feretris guards. No matter what happens here, he will push to the east until he's in civilization. possibly with the boy in tow. Arril will assume anything the boy says to be fantasy, because of his blood loss, so he'll probably patch him up and take him back to Feretris, reguardless of any sort of weak protest. I suspect he will shortly fall unconcious anyway because of the amount of blood that he has lost. Any bandaged applied to a boy, by himself, has to be immensly inadiquate to cover an arrow wound... is the arrow still in him? but anyway, this is all speculation. Arril will continue east unless something drastic changes his mind.))
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Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 7:26 am
((about the arrow wound, the passing out, etc. - I know how to play my character, thanks. Sorry for the wait, though!))
Manni stopped his futile shuffling, groping at the crumbled brick wall he found beside him. He had ran into the corner of a dilapidated building with his good shoulder and side, prompting him to take pause and review his situation.
Women angry at him. Arrow in his shoulder. Red hard stuff blocking his way. Did woman magic have a limited range? How was he still on his own? Was he plain out of his head? He decided that he didn't care. His time seemed to be at an end, his thoughts just repeating themselves, cycling through since the moments after he broke the arrow tail off, and bandaged himself. Dying away from the confines of the compound would have to satisfy him.
Yet, he was not alone in the world. Turning his head away from the brick wall, he lighted upon a cloaked man standing to his right. The more he tried to concentrate, the more his vision blurred. "Leave me alone!" he said, expecting this stranger to be related somehow to his escape.
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Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 7:58 pm
Arril blinked at the boy, observing how he breathed and held himself. He would in fact expire, if he didn't do something. He swallowed, staring at the boy, marvelling at how he had the same shape and physical features as himself, yet they were both so different...
Sih hissed gently in his ear, urging him to act. He nodded once, forging the words he wanted to say in his mind. it was like talking to an overly feral dog... "I... Not harm you." He said, his voice heavily accented with a sort of out-of-breath complexion.
He thought it didn't sound half bad, but to a normal person, it would sound like he had athsma or was being melodramatic. If Manni was listening at all, it sounded something like, "Ehhy... Nohtahrm youh."
Arril peered closer at the boy, and reached out to touch him...
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Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:54 am
The boy did not have much of a choice but to let Arril come closer, and even touch him. His protests seemed weak and pathetic even in his own ears, his threats empty. What could he do about it?
"Please help me," he said after he heard Arril say something, but couldn't make out what it was. He had closed his eyes for courage, but instead of courage he found a blacker darkness than he had bargained for, as if his eyelids were made of stone. Manni's knees slowly buckled, his weight sliding down against the brick wall beside him.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 9:21 am
Arril lifted his hood away from his head and let it fall behind him. He kneeled down beside the boy and laid him out flat. He acted quickly, while the boy was naturally unconcious. "Why would someone shoot a boy?" Sih asked, looking down at the boy's unconcious form.
"I dont know," Arril replied, setting his satchel down and rooting around in it for some healing herbs "Maybe he was some sort of scavenger and he got too close to a predator's bounty? I dont know. I would shoot a scavenger if it got close to my bounty, so maybe it was that."
Sih hissed and slid her way out of his shirt and down his arm to slither onto the boy. "Maybe it was something else." She said, flicking a tongue at the boy's flesh.
Arril grabbed the herb he needed and started to grind the greasey thing in his fingers, spreading it all over. He had learned that things with hair get sick if he touches them without being clean. He had cleaned himself in the pond, but it was not as clean as he might have done at a river or a pond.
As he finished rubbing the ground up herb into his hands, he motioned for Sih to get off and turned him gently over when she was on the ground beside him. He tore the cloth away from the boy's skin until his whole back was exposed. Taking his knife, he hesitantly dug it into the wound, applying as little pressure as he could. "Careful." Sih said, noting the boy's prespiration and breathing.
"I know." He said, taking the knife away.
He saw that the arrow head was that of a hunting arrow, straight with a narrow iron head that bore no barbs. He puzzled at this. no arrow was very effective without barbs... at most it would puncture an organ. Luckily, this boy had been shot in the shoulder, the head stopping against the bone. He pulled it out with little difficulty.
"It was a hunting arrow, but with no barbs." Arril said, examining the head.
"Isn't the arrow supposed to have barbs? Why doesn't it?" Sih asked, flickering her tongue over the wound.
"I dont know... I think it's only meant to wound. I'm not sure why." He said, finding some more herbs in his satchel and grinding it up in his hands. He rubbed the salve over the wound, knowing that it would sting like a bee for as long as it was on there. The boy would just have to grin and bear it until he could transport him back to civilization... it wasn't that far, maybe a day's walk from here.
Arril wrapped the wound tightly anc wiped the salve off his hands when he was done. He packed up his knife and tossed the arrowhead away. He collected Sih and his satchel and looked down at the boy. He hoped he would be alright. "You aren't going to leave him, are you?" Sih asked.
Arril rubbed the top of her head delicately, raising his arms slightly so she could coil up in her usual spot. "We will take him with us to civilization. The people there can help him more than I can." He said, looking at the boy.
They stood in silence, looking down at the boy for a few moments. As the sun hit the trees, he bent down to pick the boy up in his arms and heading again to the scent of woodsmoke in the distance.
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School Of Dedicated RPers Captain
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Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:26 pm
Manni remained unconscious for many hours, unaware that he was being taken back to the very people who had shot him. His only hope at this point was that Arril would not manage to take him back to the exact compound that he had just left. Half out of his mind, Manni had not followed a straight path, so any road that Arril might follow had half a chance of bringing him to another compound.
The smoke was coming from a smelter, the wood-fed fire kept for the purpose of melting different metals. He was an old man repairing low-grade weapons used for practice in training guards. The man himself would know nothing about any escaped slave, although there were few reasons that a boy would show up wounded as he was. Hopefully Arril or Manni would come up with some story by the time the man got around to asking, or by the time a woman showed up.
It was late afternoon, so the women who supervised the repairs had already gone home, to sleep in more secure buildings near the center of the compound. The old man slept in the same building where he did his work, along with two other, younger boys who assisted him and were already fast asleep. He was puttering around, putting the fire out and double-checking his work from that day.
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Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 10:56 am
"Have you thought of anything yet?" Sih hissed. She had been thinking for the past few hours along with Arril and between the both of them, they couldn't think of anything relevant to the situation.
"No. Nothing." Arril said, pulling his cloak over his head, concealing both of them under the veil of magic. "Just that we found him in the forest. I hope only that will be sufficient, and they wont want to see my face."
they traveled in slilence, hoping one or the other would come up with something signifigant. When they arrived at the smelter and they both hadn't come up with something, Arril whispered, "Say nothing and dont move. I dont want any of the people to have any suspicion other than my face. It's bad enough that it's veiled in shadow."
Sih nodded and rested her head against his neck. they both tensed as they entered the light from the fire, coming into view of the old man. Unknowing of the brutal slave trade of the men of this country, they both had no idea of the trouble that they were about to start up.
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Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 6:15 pm
The old man greeted them at the door with a short knife at his belt, and his hand on the hilt. The fact that he was old did not negate that he also lived on the outskirts of the compound, which, while he did not face south, still suffered from the occasional scalawag. It would be unusual, however, for a common thief to first knock on the door.
"Yes?" he asked in a gruff tone.
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Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 9:20 am
Arril hesitated before speaking out, still unsure of the words he tried to remember so long ago. "Brother, I come to you with nonviolent intention. I mean you no harm. Please pardon my gruff appearance, I have been traveling long and far to get where I am today." He said, eyeing the man's knife with his hand on it.
He placed the boy at the man's feet, careful to keep as much of his wrapped hands out of veiw as he could. It was a needed precaution, but he didn't want people to think that he had the plague. Little did he know, his horrible accent would give him away as a wild 'man' as soon as anyone civilized heard it. "I found him in the woods... near my home. I bandaged him up as best as I could and I headed towards the woodsmoke from your fire." He said, keeping his hands away from his body.
By his cold judgment, he knew he could best the old man; he just did not want to enter a confrontation right now.
With his horrible accent, rough- traveled appearance, simple but functional bow slung across his back, and bandaged hands, He was the bane of what the slave trade stood for. He was free. And with his comment of traveling far conflicting with 'finding the boy near his home,' He was a terrible liar. not known to most common folk, it was extremely hard and complicated to lie in any tongue of animal.
Arril felt sih tighten her constriction around him, as his own muscles tensed for whatever it was that was going to happen. something didn't seem right about this place. not right at all...
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School Of Dedicated RPers Captain
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Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 11:27 am
The old man was not stupid, but neither was he looking for trouble. At his age he had learned how to keep his mouth shut and even play dumb when he needed to. He would have preferred that trouble had not come to his door, but he thought that perhaps he could keep the situation under control.
He nodded with a bland smile, on hand still resting on the hilt of his knife. "This man needs a healer. I can get one in the morning. Are you in a hurry?" He preferred that either Arril take the boy and go right now, or else he leave the injured boy here. In either scenario it would be easy for the old man to claim ignorance about the strangeness going on around him. He didn't want to know!
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Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 9:12 am
"sss.... something's not right, Arril..." Sih hissed silently. She was close to Arril's ear, her tongue flickering against the fine scales.
He nodded, his hood bobbing ever so slightly. He watched the man, a friendly smile on his face, yet his hand still on his knife hilt. "I am not in a hurry good sir. Is there a bed available? I haven't slept in a bed for a long time..."
Arril waited for the man's answer.
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 10:46 am
"A bed?" he grumbled absently. "Yes, but you would be sure not to disturb my superiors in the morning?"
His question was slow and calculating, trying to hint that there might be persons for the traveler to be wary of in the morning, probably his supervisor(s). The old man didn't plan to be of any help if it would endanger himself, so he didn't want to give the wrong impression. But neither did he want to piss a man off who could just as easily be a renegade warrior as a beggar.
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