• PM To Join • So Said the Crow

[Tio Silver]

So Said the Crow

13th Cylus, 720
Almund

It began with a peculiar sight.

Whatever business had brought Zekuseeyros to the backstreets of Almund that night was his own. Perhaps he was lost? Perhaps he was looking for something? Whatever the case he found himself in the shadier part of town; the sorts of slum where the lowest of criminals and curs hid away from the prying eyes of the public. It was late enough now that the only people outside were the odd party of drunkards staggering back from a tavern, and the occasional loners in ratty clothes who pulled their hoods a little further across their faces whenever anyone came near. Grime seemed to be permanently stained onto the walls of the run-down houses around him, and the air was tinged with the faint smell of sea salt and rot that tickled the nose in all the wrong ways.

It was as Zeku made his way through these streets that string of curious sights caught his notice. At first it was a black dog that came trotting past him, completely unassuming save for one small fact: in its mouth it clutched a pair of human fingers. It did not seem to acknowledge Zeku even if he called out to it, and had soon disappeared round a corner before he could give chase. Not a few minutes later he spotted a trio of rats scuttering down the side of a street, each carrying the end digits of a human finger in their mouths, that immediately bolted and hid in a nearby hole when he saw them. Finally came a small fleet of moths, flying along just above head height and tightly bunched together as they carried between them yet another human finger. Clearly there was something weird going on. Something related to fingers.

Due to their heavy burden the moths at least were easy to follow, and within a few minutes of pursuing them Zeku found himself at the foot of a side alley. There was something about the atmosphere around it that put his hairs on end, that made his instincts warn him to go no further, and yet nothing about it looked more unusual than any other alley around here. What harm could one little alley be?

When he stepped inside, Zeku took a turn around a corner and immediately found himself at a dead end. Set up right at the end of the alley however was a market stall, a drab and raggedy little thing, upon which a range of small but unusual trinkets were spread out. There were a few things Zeku would recognise; daggers, candlesticks and chalices all carved out of bone, but the purposes of a lot of the other items were a complete mystery to him. In the corner two wooden crates were stacked against a wall with a young boy sitting on top of them, no more than ten arcs old and with fiery red hair betraying aukari heritage. The boy's clothes were plain black but well repaired and he looked pretty healthy, but there was a sorrow to his expression that looked out of place on a child's face. Yet perhaps the oddest sight of all was the dusty grey rug spread out on the ground in front of the stall, upon which a small menagerie of animals were packed together. There was the dog, the rats and the moths he'd seen earlier as well as a range of other city animals, all clutching fingers in their mouths.

"Aha, here we go."

A man's voice, deep and smooth, rang out from the stall, yet there was no man there to be seen. Instead a crow popped its head out from behind the stall with a dark green marble in it's mouth and glided down to the rug, dropping the marble before a warty toad that stood at the front of the animal gathering. The toad croaked, shot its tongue out to grab the marble and swallowed it whole, then nudged a pair of fingers in front of it towards the crow. The crow picked up the fingers with its break and dropped them in a large pile of fingers at the corner of the rug. "A pleasure doing business with you." The voice rang out again, and this time Zeku would notice that the voice was coming from the crow! It was talking!

The toad turned around to leave, spotted Zeku, and let out a loud warning croak. Immediately the others animals looked around to see him as well and bolted, charging past his legs and shooting out away from the alley before he could react. Only the aukari child and the crow remained, the crow watching Zeku with a beady eye.

"Hmm... a warrior I see." It eventually said. "A mercenary perhaps? Come, three faced one. Come sit at my shop. I have a special deal for you, if you would care to listen."

General Info

Welcome to the thread! Let's get this show on the road!

This is going to be a bit of a creepy, gothic-style story with a medium-chance of leading to combat if you pursue a certain route.
I would ask you to please respond by the 1st of April, or to PM me if this is not possible.

Rules

Other than violence and the odd swear words I would ask that there not be any explicit adult themes.

Mod Style

I am shamelessly copying this style of moderation (and the template structure) from Pegasus, who I gather was taught it by someone called Crimson, because it looks like it works really well and I'd like to give it a try. Imitation is the highest form of flattery after all. My thanks to both of them.

The NPCs do not reflect my own personal thoughts of feeling on any subject. They are just characters.

As I'm only a guest mod I'm not going to kill your character, severely wound them or anything like that, but I would like to give fair rewards/consequences for any actions taken in this thread. If you feel that these are at all unfair please let me know.

Otherwise let's have some fun!

Obectives

Must Do

1. Talk to the crow. Find out a bit about who he is.

Can Do

1. Take a closer look at the items at the stall, then describe something you see there in detail that interests you. It should be hand-size or smaller, made of bone and kind of creepy.
2. Talk to the child. What's his deal?

[Zekuseeyros]

Beguiled, perhaps, by the eloquent seller, Zekuseeyros’ eyes fell upon the rug. A myriad of objects awaited his attention, begging, perhaps, to find a home in perhaps a pouch, or a drawer, or perhaps somewhere else. They begged, truly, for they gleamed with a macabre delight as they sat there, dead and useless, atop an unintriguing rug. The collection was extensive, surely constantly expanded and yet all objects were impeccable in their presentation; the chastity of that pale white was such it felt saccharine. They were presented in an order the aukari failed to comprehend, a hoard of items that, despite being spread upon the surface of the stall, seemed more akin to a discarded pile of odds and ends dug up from some forgotten drawer. Even so, there was both a pull to them as much as a push, an endless struggle between trying to be owned and demanding to be destroyed.

There was one small carving that immediately begged for attention, so much that Zekuseeyros leaned forth from his enormous height to better drink its sight. It seemed a pendant of some sort, an amulet. It was shaped in an unintriguing, unpretentious sphere - much resembling a pebble in both size and its imperfect curves. It was not its shape, nor it was its pale white cast, but it was its carving. Two small beads were faintly seen, two round eyes lacking both soul and sentiment, and a wide, disproportional toothless mouth. Evil itself, thought the warrior, was carved onto this bone, so simple and undecorated and yet so powerful in its message. A neverending mouth that only consumed until there was nothing else. There laid both its allure and its repulsion. Temptation drew Zekuseeyros’ hands, and he would’ve stepped forth and taken the bone had his eyes not caught the sight of the fingers. As his hand drew back, his eyes drifted up towards the crow.

It had been a lonesome night, dark and cold. The aukari had found his bed an evil thing, women a pretty trap, and company a strange concept, and so he roamed the night in search of meaning. Much like all those souls that hid themselves in the shadows of the streets, Zekuseeyros hid himself under the boundaries of his helmet. There, he mourned a life that he couldn’t have, and reasoned a finale he couldn’t choose, much like a moth drawn from one flame to another - not a finger. There was a need in him to get lost, to deviate from the beaten path and shovel his own road ahead. Surely that did not involve dark alleys and midnight wanderings, albeit lonesomeness was, in his opinion, the only way to be.

These alleys and these midnight wanderings had brought him here.

“I bring no fingers to trade, Lord Crow,” said his muffled, reverbering baritone, donning an etiquette that felt only natural when addressing the stall keeper. “Nor I find myself willing to spare any of my own.”

A short, covert glance was shot out to the boy nearby, albeit Zekuseeyros’ eyes were immediately drawn back onto the crow. Those black beads resembled those carved in the bone, and a wild speculation was made superstitious connection; that same gluttonous devil from the bone made home in the black head of the lordly crow. The aukari was intimidated by the scene despite his steel-clad attire. Not even the zweihander on his back, a gigantic sword even longer than the aukari’s height, could protect him from the irrational fears present when facing the surrealistic and spooky. That a crow could weaken a giant’s knees and bristle his hairs was as fascinating and dangerous as flirting with death itself.

Questioning the crow’s nature or his ability to talk, let alone the animals that had come to bargain on its stall seemed secondary objectives, queries that felt out of place both in speech and in mind. Instead, questioning what animal would Zekuseeyros represent seemed more appropriate. He was no rat, no toad, no moth. If anything, he’d be a gorilla- unfitted for urban life albeit too dangerous to oust.
“What is it that you sell?” asked Zekuseeyros after a pause, glancing covertly towards the boy. “And why do so here, wherein nobody can find you?”

Perhaps an evil bed would've been a better shelter than a crow's stall, but if felt as if dense shadows had closed the aukari's way back.

[Tio Silver]

So Said the Crow

13th Cylus, 720
Almund

"Lord Crow? Hah!" The crow tilted his head back and laughed; the rich, melodic baritone a dire contrast to the small and scrawny body it came from. "And he has manners too! This is pleasing! So many men only seem to remember how to be polite when begging for mercy." He swept one wing under his chest in an imitation of a bow. "Well three-faced one, you have shown me respect so I would be remiss not to show the same in kind. I am Allicere, a humble merchant. Please sit, make yourself comfortable. You are most welcome in my shop."

At Zeku's question about what he sold, Allicere raised his head with clear pride. "I provide the means with which the weak and oppressed might change their fate. I suppose you could call me a rebel or sorts, or maybe an arms-dealer? Those without power come to me when those with power take advantage, and I equip them with the means to fight back. For a price of course." He looked over to the pile of fingers with fondness. "It is the hands of men that separate them from beasts. With them they can wield the tool that allow them to build wonders. Each time one looses a finger they loose a bit of that dexterity, and thus loose a part of what gives them worth in human society. That sacrifice has a weight to it, a value, beyond any currency. Sacrifice is powerful."

With a quick flurry of wing-beats Allicere hopped over to where the carved amulet Zeku had been eyeing earlier was, seized the trinket between his beak, and brought it back before the armoured man. He dropped it on the ground between them. "This pretty little thing caught your eye, yes? Its name is Inedia's Maw. A curious treasure indeed, and one I should think would be well suited to you. Perhaps you would be interested in purchasing it? Worry not, the price I would ask of you is not fingers. I believe there is a greater service you could do me in exchange."

"You asked me why I set up shop here? Well in truth I have little choice in the matter. You see I am being hunted." If it was at all possible to pull of an expression of displeasure on a bird's face Allicere managed, scowling in a way that almost seemed to curl his beak into a sneer. "A monster called The Executioner stalks my steps. It cannot touch me within this alley, but by the same vein I am trapped here; locked in a cage of my own design. How distasteful. When he realised he could not get to me The Executioner began hunting down my customers to try and lure me out, which as you can imagine is bad for business. Even my regulars dare not come to me personally, instead sending their servants and familiars as envoys. This cannot be allowed to continue." His beady eyes stared directly into Zeku's. "You must destroy this man. Utterly eradicate him. Do this and Inedia's Maw will be yours. I shall tell you how to lure him out, but I warn you that the battle itself will require more than brute strength in order to prevail. What say you three-faced one? Do we have a deal?"

General Info

Welcome to the thread! Let's get this show on the road!

This is going to be a bit of a creepy, gothic-style story with a medium-chance of leading to combat if you pursue a certain route.
I would ask you to please respond by the 2nd of April, or to PM me if this is not possible.

Rules

Other than violence and the odd swear words I would ask that there not be any explicit adult themes.

Mod Style

I am shamelessly copying this style of moderation (and the template structure) from Pegasus, who I gather was taught it by someone called Crimson, because it looks like it works really well and I'd like to give it a try. Imitation is the highest form of flattery after all. My thanks to both of them.

The NPCs do not reflect my own personal thoughts of feeling on any subject. They are just characters.

As I'm only a guest mod I'm not going to kill your character, severely wound them or anything like that, but I would like to give fair rewards/consequences for any actions taken in this thread. If you feel that these are at all unfair please let me know.

Otherwise let's have some fun!

Obectives

Must Do

1. Make a decision: will you accept Allicere's deal, or turn him down?

Can Do

1. Introduce yourself.

[Zekuseeyros]

The aukari listened carefully, but he heard little. He looked with great attention, but saw nothing. Judging a masked man or a crow was equally as futile. In no moment did he try to get comfortable in the alley; he leaned not against a wall, or broke that tense stance in which he seemed perpetually locked into. By far, the only thing he’d do while he listened was jump his eyes from the crow to the ‘Maw’ down below. Working for bones seemed about the lowest point in his career. He was an elite soldier, a honorary infantryman of Sirothelle, and thus one of Faldrun’s warriors.
“Kill for a piece of bone?” He asked, expecting no answer. “You ask steep prices for small rewards. You either deem yourself charming enough to trick lost men in dark alleys, or truly offer something worth an act I personally abhor.”

Zekuseeyros looked up, up up up into that cursed cloud that followed him everywhere, and gave it a look. It was grey and misty and calm, and by its image judged his own feelings. Knowing he was calm and collected, the knight looked over at the crow first, then at the child. A happy customer? Or perhaps something else? Back to the crow, Zekuseeyros proved himself a tough negotiator for his services - it seemed that, despite being trapped in what deemed to be a surrealistic night, he’d nonetheless fight.
“I won’t bother you with questions, Lord Crow,” he said. “What happened between you and this man is none of my concern, but you must understand a guilty conscience weighs more than a dead man but less than a bag of coin. Whether it was fate or luck what brought me to your keep I do not know, but I’d judge to say you seem desperate to be free from these walls and this gloom. Seems to me, as well, I am, so far, your only hope of escape, for we know your customers care more for your stock than your safety.”

A small pause. Zekuseeyros cocked his head to the side.
“I’d also speculate not many handy warriors stumble upon your alley, and even less willing to do your bidding against such individual as this ‘Executioner’ - which you’ve described in such manner even bigger and prouder and soberer warriors than myself would find terrifying enough to be scared back to bed. Your honesty is appreciated, Lord Crow, and while I admit I am fond of sincerity, I must also point out it is bad for business.”

“What say, then, if you’d lend me this Maw? See that its a good enough price for my services, for we both know you trade with fingers and that a bag full of fingers buys no bread, no wine, and no company save, perhaps, for those morbidly obsessed with sadism. Thus, I judge I’ll see no coin from you, and if I were to cull this man’s life, I’d also have guarantee you’d still wait for our deal to be honored. You may easily bat your wings and become, for all intents and purposes, an hallucination in my mind that deemed it funny I murder an unknown man for no reason at all.”

No pause. Zekuseeyros kept going in a rather forceful manner, as if trying to dissuade the crow from shaking his argument with questions or remarks.
“Lend me this Maw, I say, and speak your plan, because although fingers of men separate them from beasts, a clenched fist of an unsatisfied customer is no better than the hoof of a bull.”

[Tio Silver]

So Said the Crow

13th Cylus, 720
Almund

It was difficult to read the expressions of a bird, but that faintest glint of amusement in Allicere's eyes as Zeku bartered for his services betrayed that he was pleased by this development. Like a true merchant the act of haggling seemed to be enjoyable to him. Though if the way the aukari boy huddled in on himself and looked away was any indication, Zeku's decision to play along with the bird's game might not have been as simple as it appeared. "And he has a way with words too. Impressive." Allicere cackled. "But sadly no business sense. I think I see now why you chose the simple path of a sword for hire." He tilted his head to the side in a distinctly bird-like manner. "It is a foolish merchant who lies to his customers; who cheats them with false promises of value and flees. Though he makes coin that trial he leaves behind an unsatisfied customer, and that customer is always sure to spread the word about his fraud to those who listen. Thus he finds that cheating one customer has cost him a hundred, and flee as he might that trial, eventually there shall be nowhere left to run too. Within an arc his good name is worthless, and without it he may never be in business again."

"A wise merchant however is honest. He leaves his customers happy, and they in turn spread the word that his services are true. Thus with each sale he sows the seeds of a hundred more, and like a farmer he shall reap the harvest of trade forever. I am a wise merchant three-face." He nodded to the pile of fingers, of which there seemed to be around thirty. "This is but the bounty of a single trial for me, and at a time when my trade is under attack. Do you think so many would be willing to sacrifice a part of themselves to me if they were not confident that I would deliver? I will not lie to you about the value of my goods nor the price that I ask of you, for it is my wish that this be the beginning of a strong relationship between us. Merchants always have need of good sell-swords after all, and you impress me: you have strength, a blunt honesty and the right attitude. This is not flattery three-face, simply a statement of facts. You would make a good business partner."

"But I suppose action speaks louder than words, doesn't it? Very well three-face, just this once I shall give you the reward up-front. Inedia's Maw is yours. The knowledge of how to make it work however stays with me until the job is complete. Consider that my guarantee that you will wait for our deal to be honoured. Worry not, I swear upon my good name that I will give you the required knowledge upon completion, and that the reward will be satisfactory to you. After all to lie would gain me nothing, but would loose me a partnership with a competent partner. Thus the only way for us to both get everything that we desire is to see our bargain completed. You felt it demand your attention too didn't you? Felt the Maw call to you? You know that it is no mere bone. Does this deal sound fair?"

Allicere looked over to the aukari boy and, with a nod of his head, gestured for him to come over. Without hesitation the boy obeyed, but his gaze remained firmly fixed upon the ground. "The plan is simple." Allicere continued. "This boy will take you to a hill on the outskirts of the city; a place once called Headsman's Hill. Don't mind the boy's silence, he is mute. The Executioner will come for the boy, and all you need do is destroy it there and then. The only difficulty will be in the combat itself. I cannot say too much for free, but I can say this: to defeat it you must be the executioner, not the executed."

General Info

If you accept Lord Crow's deal this turn you can describe yourself following the boy out of the alley and along the dark streets of Almund, eventually arriving at a hill just outside the city.

This is going to be a bit of a creepy, gothic-style story with a medium-chance of leading to combat if you pursue a certain route.
I would ask you to please respond by the 7th of April, or to PM me if this is not possible.

Rules

Other than violence and the odd swear words I would ask that there not be any explicit adult themes.

Mod Style

I am shamelessly copying this style of moderation (and the template structure) from Pegasus, who I gather was taught it by someone called Crimson, because it looks like it works really well and I'd like to give it a try. Imitation is the highest form of flattery after all. My thanks to both of them.

The NPCs do not reflect my own personal thoughts of feeling on any subject. They are just characters.

As I'm only a guest mod I'm not going to kill your character, severely wound them or anything like that, but I would like to give fair rewards/consequences for any actions taken in this thread. If you feel that these are at all unfair please let me know.

Otherwise let's have some fun!

Obectives

Must Do

1. Make a decision: will you accept Allicere's deal, or turn him down?

Can Do

1. Describe what weapons you have on hand and ready in case of a fight.
2. Think about what Allicere might have meant by "you must be the executioner, not the executed."