Conscription
Sylrah is sitting in the grass, staring at a contraption as ancient as ingenious. A makeshift rigging of metal beams and wooden planks, mounted atop an odd construct made of bone and other, more intricate mechanisms.
She had been studying the airship up close for most of the afternoon, and she was aware that it was one of the salvaged wreckages from the old Titan civilization: the strange construct is covered in all its surface with runes and diagrams very suggestive of something magical, but she has no idea what they mean. On the inside of the bone plates, copper and silver wiring and bolts crisscross to hold the thing together. She has no idea how, but they had managed to tap into this device and put it to levitate in the air.
“I’ll crack your secret one day…” she rises up, and decides to join the campfire, as night sets in.
“Can I come in?”
A lean man peeks inside the tent, with a stack of parchment under his arm.
“Where were you? Come, let me hear about all this.” says a hoarse voice. A middle-aged, stern man is sitting at a makeshift desk, a dagger in his hand. A map is spread over the desk, with thin nails, each of them with a coloured string attached, hammered into certain locations in the region. “What do the east scouts say?”
“They say the moors are suffering from an even more abnormal weather. They say they saw a dark cloud in the distance, but did not want to risk going into the territory, as per your orders.” He hands him a sealed roll of parchment. “The details are all there. More and more hauntings are showing up everywhere. And, of course, more vampirs.”
The attendant proceeds to unfold the rest of the paperwork, as the man in charge reaches for his metal-rimmed glasses. “Vampirs… too many and without cause. Someone or something is doing this. Let’s see… Field-fires, draughts… and thunderstorms and gale-force winds…” he reads “And quakes as well?” he inquires his subordinate. “Only around the area of the Forbiddance. But from what we’ve seen in the last week, it might well probably spread.”
The attendant hands his superior a stack of parchment. “We’ve got new… recruits. You might find these interesting. They claim they were this year’s Chosen, and witnessed the events at the center of the Forbiddance.” the attendant says, smirking and raising an eyebrow.
Rigfennid Connall looked up through his glasses and his eyes thinned to slits. “Tell me more”.
For the next half hour, the attendant recounted the story related to them by the group. When he finished, Connall crossed his hands and stayed silent for a few moments.
“We need confirmation of this. Find those ritual circles. And see if you can still track those wagons. In the meantime, keep them under watch. I want them trained quickly. They might be just what we needed.” “They have been resting for the last days. They were quite debilitated and probably contracted some disease before we found them. They should be in top form by tomorrow. I just hope this new policy of ours won’t come to bite us in the arse.” shares the attendant.
“You let me worry about that. Now got get me those freaks trained.”
In his assigned bunk-tent, Osric struggled to find sleep. Though he had already recovered from his infirmity, he had been worrying about an itch that had bothered him for the last week. On his back, where he had felt the vines of the Forbiddance Tree creep into his skin. His skin felt more coarse there, like cured leather. He scratched again, cursing.
On the other end of the bunk, Corvus likewise scratched at a spot between his shoulders, where the vines had also penetrated his skin.
--Nuno 03:09, 1 March 2011 (UTC)