Up a steep slope covered in scree, a hundred meters above the camp of the united clans, Grim sat alone between a pair of enormous standing stones. The stones were new. Monoliths erected just this afternoon, but likely to stand for millennia. Grim had determined that the clans would build these monuments at each place they camped, to mark their passage. He told the clans that it would be to display their glory to the world, so none of the other races would ever forget the season that the Gogajin marched united. In his heart, he also considered the possibility that it might be the only memorial left of his people's passing, if this offensive was a failure.
Below him the rowdy, merry sounds of a Gogajin gathering roared and tumbled about the landscape. With every clan represented, the racket could be deafening at times. On the other hand, even the Jevumm were leaving these travelers unmolested.
Someone scrabbled over the scree and came limping into view, a dark silhouette, illumined only by moonlight. By her pained gait he knew her for Keena, a clan-leader, a matriarch, and a wise one at that.
"You should be in the festivities, or in someone's bed, Keena."
With a grunt she sat down beside him. "I could say the same to you Grim, don't be an ass."
He smiled, showing his big flat teeth, and elbowed her in the ribs, a bit harder than he'd intended. "Well if you've come up here to chew on my balls, I've had enough today. A man can only take so much leadership and decision making. Then he has to sit quiet and drink mead until he pisses honey."
"The day you learn to piss honey is the day you might get me to chew on your balls. Till then, just pass me the flagon."
He gave her the mead and they sat in silence for a long time. To his surprise it felt better to sit silently with her beside him, than it did to sit alone.
"Keena," he started, "I've listened and I've listened to the advice of these Children of Steel. Ishikawa Tetsuro tells me things that are hardly to be believed. He tells me that the armies of Goshi will not only teleport and fall out of the sky, but they will roll across the land in metal fortresses. He tells me they will launch bombs that turn stone to liquid and people to ash. He tells me they will have things called cannons and artillery. None of this frightens me."
Keena just drank her mead and watched the encampment below.
"Having clawed my way out of the mines in Geneva Prime I knew some of this. I even knew, which is far more terrifying than all their weapons, that the Children of Steel are as numerous as pebbles on a mountainside. Ishikawa Tetsuro tells me that their population on Karia numbers over 400 million. It is a number I cannot even conceive of. What would 400 million Gogajin colts look like? Don't answer: a disaster, I know. With all the gathered might of all the clans at our disposal we have maybe a quarter of a million. Maybe. Still this does not frighten me."
He let the silence return for a few minutes, searching for the words he was after.
"We're Gogajin. We'll make our impact felt regardless of the odds. I'm not worried about my people doing their part. I couldn't be prouder to walk and work and fight and die alongside these people... It's just... High King? Me? I'm strong and I'm relentless, but I'm not wise like you Keena. I'm not..."
She tried to interrupt him then. He was being a damn fool and she was going to tell him so, but he talked right over her.
"It's more than me feeling out of my depth. It's like this whole thing, is bigger than us. I remember, when we were escaping from the mines. There were some people who helped us. When I was around them I felt like they were the kind of people who could pull this off. The kind who could keep it all from going to shit. One of them was a Vorax, the last Vorax I ever saw. She healed me with her tears. With her tears! It's like she could weep away the pains of the whole world if she tried. They were all like that - gifted."
"Grim, you idiot..." Keena interjected, but he gave her a firm look, and with his grizzled face he had especially firm looks.
"No Keena. I know I sound crazy, or like I'm forgetting who I am, but I'm not. I am Grim, Fiochmahr Clan. I am the strongest, fastest, stubbornest fucking Gogajin in this camp. I will out run, out throw, out crush, out fight, out drink, or out fuck anyone who says otherwise. But I'm also no fool and when I look up in that sky I see a universe which doesn't care how much you can lift or how far you can throw it. There are things at stake here beyond our ken, and there are people out there who have the power to influence things for good or ill, but I am not one of those people. The best I can do is gather all of these donkey-sons and daughters together to throw our might at the hungry maw of the beast and pray that it makes a difference..."
There was a long pause then, while Grim took the flagon back and drained it without taking a breath.
Keena looked at him appreciatively and he seemed to give her permission to speak, so she started softly, "Ah Grim. Even if what you say is true, what would we be if we didn't play our part? Could any Gogajin look themself in the face ever again if we didn't fight to our very last breath for what we love? If there is to be a future, I want to know that we will walk into it with our pride and honor intact."
In the moonlight she could see the tears glisten on his face even though he made no sound. His voice rumbled like stone as he said, "Then let us hope that the ones who hold the keys to the future decide to make it open for us."
Showing posts with label Gogajin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gogajin. Show all posts
Uniting the Clans
"Sons, daughters of Karia, ye knowe me. The name's Grim, of the Fiochmahr clan. Ye know them Cheldrun bastards, too. Goshi, they be called." He stood before the leaders of the clans, proud and tall, his heavily muscled frame yet marked with the signs of the last fortnight's festivities, and Ishikawa Tetsuro stood at his side, looking for all the world as though his tattered clothing were a kimono of the finest silk.
They stood before him, Gogajin all, listening as he spoke, forty five clan heads, male and female alike. The massive camps of all forty six of the clans gathered here stretched out as far as the eye could see around this large, central, rock-strewn meadow. Or at least it had been a meadow twelve days ago, when the games had begun. Now it resembled more closely a war zone. Around the clan heads, a larger crowd had gathered. The clan heads were all stood in a a large stone amphitheatre at the edge of the meadow - a traditional meeting place, and neutral ground - that carried their voices rolling across the crowd.
"Aye, we know them. Get on with it!" Shouted a middle-aged Gogajin from the middle of the group of clan heads.
"I've spoken with ye yche one, and there no nas never any one of us what's not been struck by them at least once since the new year began, and struck a sore blow. Well I say we've had enough! I say it's about time we stopped letting these Goshi types, these Heishi, raid us whenever the fuck they want!"
--------------
Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan stared at the ... man... in front of her in disbelief. Had this... this... donkey-man actually just propositioned her? HER? As if being dragged away from school in Matamos and into the wilderness wasn't bad enough, now there were overgrown donkeymen asking if she wanted to do... THAT, with them? It was an outrage! She wouldn't stand for it! She was going to tell her father about this, and then they'd see what happened to this presumptuous...
"If you fucked him, do you think that would count as bestiality for you, for him, or both?" Midnight asked.
The Gogajin burst into belly-laughs, and one of them clapped Midnight on the shoulder good naturedly, and the biomade girl staggered, but managed to recover quickly enough, and shot the Gogajin a cheeky grin.
Tomoe tried not to grind her teeth. "Remind me why you came with us again?" Tomoe asked. "It's not like you were in danger from Katashi Blade's purge. He's one of your kind."
When her father had said that he and his Gogajin ally were going to rally the clans, Tomoe had not expected this... carnival. They'd been at it for three days now, engaging in competitions so savage that she could scarcely believe that none of the participants had died. Certainly she'd never seen anything quite like their game of 'catch,' and the boasts? She knew what that was. That was a bunch of little boys trying to prove their virility. ... and she still didn't know what to make of the women who participated, and just as freely as the men.
The Gogajin... confused her.
Midnight raised an eyebrow and turned to face Tomoe, her long, dark hair catching in the wind as she did so, a look of surprise on her face. "... Are you serious?" she asked.
Tomoe blinked. What does she mean, am I serious? Doe she think I'm... oh. Oh. No, that couldn't possibly be the reason. "... Yes?"
Midnight smiled a pained sort of smile, and Tomoe's surprise grew to ever greater heights as the Biomade gave her reply: "Because you do what you can for your friends, yeah?"
... Friends?
Tomoe stared. In all their years at the Academy in Matamos, she had never, not once, thought of Midnight as her friend. She'd thought of her as a rival, as an enemy, as a classmate, but ... friends? She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but nothing came out.
Friends.
For the first time in her life, Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan was at a loss for words.
------------
"An' how do you plan to stop them, Grim? We already tried punchin' em in the face, and throwin' big rocks at 'em, and pushing 'em off cliffs, and punchin' em in the stomach and THEN punchin' em in the face..."
Some of the clan heads surrounding Orla of the Troid clan had the decency to look embarrassed. She'd got where she was by being young, charismatic, strong and tough, but had never been the brightest bulb in the bunch.
"Much as I hate to agree with Orla," said Keena of the Muintir clan, an old Gogajin well known for her wisdom, "She does have a point, if you turn her words inside out, stand them on their head, and look at 'em through a mirror. How exactly do you plan to stop a force that can appear and disappear whenever it wants?"
Grim clapped Ishikawa Tetsuro on the shoulder, and the Allskin staggered beneath the blow. "Old Tetsuro here tells me there's a place where these smoke-puff soldiers can't get to. A place where people are holdin' out against Goshi, mounting some real fightin' against them. He says that Goshi's mounting an army to take the place, and they'll probably do it, too, since they control all the other Cheldrun cities. An' he says that once we're on the move, it'll be harder for them to find us. Cheldrun folk don't do so well in the wilds. That's me plan, though. I say we march on over to this city, this Stardown, and we show those Goshi bastards what for!"
A murmur went through the crowd, then, and then Keena spoke up again. "Why should we march to defend a Cheldrun city, Grim? It's got nothing to do with us. Troubles come and go, but we endure, and the land endures. This is ours, isn't it? All this? Look around you. This is Gogajin land. Why should we up and march off to some Cheldrun place?"
----------------
Inari blinked. "You've got eyes!" He'd been trying to shake this zipsum for days, figuring that it was probably better to avoid the little bastards ever since he'd had to flee from a whole tribe full of eyeless turbo-squirrels.
"Uh, yeah," the Zipsum said, brushing the dust off his clothing as he strolled up to the young Prill. "You run into a lot of Zipsum without eyes?"
"Yes. Well, no. Well, I did once, and you can never be too careful. I think it's very important to have eyes, after all, and I don't think much of the idea of losing mine." He brightened. "But you've got eyes, so it's ok! I'm Inari."
The Zipsum raised an eyebrow at that. "Inari, huh? That sounds familiar..."
"I was named after a legendary Kyo-TeeShee," Inari offered. He thought about it. "Either that or a really big tree. I never asked."
The Zipsum wasn't really sure how to take that. "Uh, right. So Inari, you from around here?"
The woods were sparse here, and a bit further east the land began to rise into the rocky highlands of Gogajin territory.
Inari kept walking, and the Zipsum followed along behind him as they talked. "Me?" Inari asked. "No. No, just passing through. I'm on a quest. Supposed to gather up pieces of the lost music for Elder Winter." He never had managed to make it back to the Grand Chantry. Too many eyeless Zipsum. He'd been traveling ever since, and he'd seen things since then that had made him wonder what exactly was going on in the world.
"Lost music, huh? How's that workin' out for you?" The Zipsum didn't give him time to answer, but immediately went on. "Listen, Inari, I don't mean to sound rude, but have you seen a bunch of Gogajin running around with Cheldrun prisoners?"
Inari looked perplexed. "Gogajin with Cheldrun prisoners? Well... yes. But I don't think they were prisoners. Looked more like refugees, I think. They didn't seem too unhappy about being with the Gogajin, either."
The Zipsum brightened up at that considerably. "You've seen them? Really? You're the man, Inari. You are so the man. The man? That's you."
It occurred to Inari then that the zipsum's pupils were abnormally large, and his eyes bloodshot. What could that mean? Huh. "Uh, thanks?"
"No, thank you. Now, can you show me where you saw them? It's really important, Inari. I need to find them. I'm supposed to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't get into trouble."
"I guess I could show you," Inari said, now fairly certain that something was wrong. The Zipsum seemed too hyper, even for a Zipsum. He hadn't stopped fidgeting since he'd walked up, and his eyes were more intense than they should be, the pupils absolutely, fully dilated. "What did you say your name was?"
The Zipsum grinned good naturedly. "Tricks. Tricks the Wind. Nice to meet you."
-----------------
"Look around, Keena. What's happening is more than just troubles. There's a change in the air, and not one for the better. Ye kenne hit too, I wist. Ye've heard from the Griolsa clan, heard what's happened. Ben Hamor's been visited by the gods! There's eyeless demons takin' over zipsum bodies, and Cheldrun bodies too, and I'm not so blind as to miss that Goshi has sent eyeless monsters just as often as they've sent their smoke-puff men, and a Zipsum messenger from the Grand Chantry what arrived the other day said that there's huge demons fightin' heroes of Karia all over the damn place. This isn't something we can run away from, and I'd be no Gogajin if I tried!"
Grim looked out across the crowd, and he raised his voice. "This is bigger than any of us, but it's not so big that we can't do somethin' about it. There's to be a fight, and it's to be at Stardown, and it's lookin' to be the biggest thing we've seen since the night of bonfire skies. Sons, daughters of Karia, we are Gogajin! And if we don't unite, if we don't take a stand against these Goshi bastards, then we might as well just slink away into the hills and wait to die, because we'll none of us deserve to be called Gogajin ever again, and we will never, ever be free of those bastards. Some of us may die, but at least we'll die free, with our own two feet on the ground, and fightin' for each other, and for Karia! Are you with me!"
A roar erupted from the vast crowd of Gogajin all around them at that, a terrible thunderous roar that utterly drowned out whatever response Keena might have tried to make. For a long moment the forty five clan heads stared at one another, uncertain exactly what to do. Then, after a good five minutes of shouting, the crowd began to die down, until finally those in the center could be heard again.
In the end, they had only one response. In the end, there was really nothing else to say: "You're a crazy bastard, Grim," Keena said, and then grinned widely, "But I'm with ye." And then, one after the other, the other clan heads each pledged themselves to the cause, and cacophony erupted in the crowd once more as Gogajin shouted, cheered, banged drums, banged stones, banged each other's heads, and made ready to march to war.
------------------
"That's a nice gun," Inari said as he led Tricks the Wind up the rocky slope towards Gogajin country. He'd picked up a walking stick somewhere along the way. It was just the right size, too. Very quarterstaffy. Idly, Inari wondered if he had just coined a new word.
Tricks grinned. "Thanks. Haven't met many Prill who know what a gun is. You been around the Cheldrun?"
"Some," Inari replied, watching Tricks warily out of the corner of his eye. He no longer had any intention of leading the Zipsum to the Gogajin, but he knew it would be very, very difficult to lose him. Scratch that. Losing a Zipsum that wanted to follow you was damn near impossible. And by 'near,' Inari meant 'completely.' "I found a fragment of a song in one of their cities. Kaberra was the name, I think."
Tricks nodded, and then looked like he was growing impatient. "Look, Inari, are you sure this is the way the Gogajin..."
Tricks trailed off as the roar of a vast, vast, vast crowd erupted from not too far away, and both he and Inari stared as a huge column of Gogajin crested the top of the hill and began marching down it.
More.
More.
More.
One hundred.
Two hundred.
Five hundred.
A thousand.
More.
Inari lost count.
Wagons were pulled by Gogajin in donkey form, laden down with supplies. Men, women, a small contingent of maybe a hundred Cheldrun, more Gogajin, even more Gogajin.
An army.
He stared in awe as they marched, and Tricks stared, too, his jaw dropped open, though for different reasons.
The Gogajin were on the move.
"... went?" Tricks finished.
That was when Inari lifted his quarterstaffy walking stick, and bashed Tricks over the back of the head as hard as he could. The Zipsum went out like a light.
Inari breathed a sigh of relief. He scooped up the furry little body of Tricks the Wind and headed over to figure out who was in charge. Zipsum were a pain in the ass to keep prisoner. He knew that from experience. Hopefully, the Gogajin would have some rope. Lots and lots of rope.
And as it turns out, they did. More than enough for both the suspicious, drug-addled Zipsum and for the troublesome Prill prankster what had been causing trouble with the local villages over the last few weeks. A few minutes later, Inari found himself bound hand and foot in the back of one of the Gogajin wagons, with the unconscious form of Tricks the Wind bound securely a foot away, and the Gogajin army marching towards the western horizon.
"Well," Inari said, "This sucks."
They stood before him, Gogajin all, listening as he spoke, forty five clan heads, male and female alike. The massive camps of all forty six of the clans gathered here stretched out as far as the eye could see around this large, central, rock-strewn meadow. Or at least it had been a meadow twelve days ago, when the games had begun. Now it resembled more closely a war zone. Around the clan heads, a larger crowd had gathered. The clan heads were all stood in a a large stone amphitheatre at the edge of the meadow - a traditional meeting place, and neutral ground - that carried their voices rolling across the crowd.
"Aye, we know them. Get on with it!" Shouted a middle-aged Gogajin from the middle of the group of clan heads.
"I've spoken with ye yche one, and there no nas never any one of us what's not been struck by them at least once since the new year began, and struck a sore blow. Well I say we've had enough! I say it's about time we stopped letting these Goshi types, these Heishi, raid us whenever the fuck they want!"
--------------
Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan stared at the ... man... in front of her in disbelief. Had this... this... donkey-man actually just propositioned her? HER? As if being dragged away from school in Matamos and into the wilderness wasn't bad enough, now there were overgrown donkeymen asking if she wanted to do... THAT, with them? It was an outrage! She wouldn't stand for it! She was going to tell her father about this, and then they'd see what happened to this presumptuous...
"If you fucked him, do you think that would count as bestiality for you, for him, or both?" Midnight asked.
The Gogajin burst into belly-laughs, and one of them clapped Midnight on the shoulder good naturedly, and the biomade girl staggered, but managed to recover quickly enough, and shot the Gogajin a cheeky grin.
Tomoe tried not to grind her teeth. "Remind me why you came with us again?" Tomoe asked. "It's not like you were in danger from Katashi Blade's purge. He's one of your kind."
When her father had said that he and his Gogajin ally were going to rally the clans, Tomoe had not expected this... carnival. They'd been at it for three days now, engaging in competitions so savage that she could scarcely believe that none of the participants had died. Certainly she'd never seen anything quite like their game of 'catch,' and the boasts? She knew what that was. That was a bunch of little boys trying to prove their virility. ... and she still didn't know what to make of the women who participated, and just as freely as the men.
The Gogajin... confused her.
Midnight raised an eyebrow and turned to face Tomoe, her long, dark hair catching in the wind as she did so, a look of surprise on her face. "... Are you serious?" she asked.
Tomoe blinked. What does she mean, am I serious? Doe she think I'm... oh. Oh. No, that couldn't possibly be the reason. "... Yes?"
Midnight smiled a pained sort of smile, and Tomoe's surprise grew to ever greater heights as the Biomade gave her reply: "Because you do what you can for your friends, yeah?"
... Friends?
Tomoe stared. In all their years at the Academy in Matamos, she had never, not once, thought of Midnight as her friend. She'd thought of her as a rival, as an enemy, as a classmate, but ... friends? She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but nothing came out.
Friends.
For the first time in her life, Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan was at a loss for words.
------------
"An' how do you plan to stop them, Grim? We already tried punchin' em in the face, and throwin' big rocks at 'em, and pushing 'em off cliffs, and punchin' em in the stomach and THEN punchin' em in the face..."
Some of the clan heads surrounding Orla of the Troid clan had the decency to look embarrassed. She'd got where she was by being young, charismatic, strong and tough, but had never been the brightest bulb in the bunch.
"Much as I hate to agree with Orla," said Keena of the Muintir clan, an old Gogajin well known for her wisdom, "She does have a point, if you turn her words inside out, stand them on their head, and look at 'em through a mirror. How exactly do you plan to stop a force that can appear and disappear whenever it wants?"
Grim clapped Ishikawa Tetsuro on the shoulder, and the Allskin staggered beneath the blow. "Old Tetsuro here tells me there's a place where these smoke-puff soldiers can't get to. A place where people are holdin' out against Goshi, mounting some real fightin' against them. He says that Goshi's mounting an army to take the place, and they'll probably do it, too, since they control all the other Cheldrun cities. An' he says that once we're on the move, it'll be harder for them to find us. Cheldrun folk don't do so well in the wilds. That's me plan, though. I say we march on over to this city, this Stardown, and we show those Goshi bastards what for!"
A murmur went through the crowd, then, and then Keena spoke up again. "Why should we march to defend a Cheldrun city, Grim? It's got nothing to do with us. Troubles come and go, but we endure, and the land endures. This is ours, isn't it? All this? Look around you. This is Gogajin land. Why should we up and march off to some Cheldrun place?"
----------------
Inari blinked. "You've got eyes!" He'd been trying to shake this zipsum for days, figuring that it was probably better to avoid the little bastards ever since he'd had to flee from a whole tribe full of eyeless turbo-squirrels.
"Uh, yeah," the Zipsum said, brushing the dust off his clothing as he strolled up to the young Prill. "You run into a lot of Zipsum without eyes?"
"Yes. Well, no. Well, I did once, and you can never be too careful. I think it's very important to have eyes, after all, and I don't think much of the idea of losing mine." He brightened. "But you've got eyes, so it's ok! I'm Inari."
The Zipsum raised an eyebrow at that. "Inari, huh? That sounds familiar..."
"I was named after a legendary Kyo-TeeShee," Inari offered. He thought about it. "Either that or a really big tree. I never asked."
The Zipsum wasn't really sure how to take that. "Uh, right. So Inari, you from around here?"
The woods were sparse here, and a bit further east the land began to rise into the rocky highlands of Gogajin territory.
Inari kept walking, and the Zipsum followed along behind him as they talked. "Me?" Inari asked. "No. No, just passing through. I'm on a quest. Supposed to gather up pieces of the lost music for Elder Winter." He never had managed to make it back to the Grand Chantry. Too many eyeless Zipsum. He'd been traveling ever since, and he'd seen things since then that had made him wonder what exactly was going on in the world.
"Lost music, huh? How's that workin' out for you?" The Zipsum didn't give him time to answer, but immediately went on. "Listen, Inari, I don't mean to sound rude, but have you seen a bunch of Gogajin running around with Cheldrun prisoners?"
Inari looked perplexed. "Gogajin with Cheldrun prisoners? Well... yes. But I don't think they were prisoners. Looked more like refugees, I think. They didn't seem too unhappy about being with the Gogajin, either."
The Zipsum brightened up at that considerably. "You've seen them? Really? You're the man, Inari. You are so the man. The man? That's you."
It occurred to Inari then that the zipsum's pupils were abnormally large, and his eyes bloodshot. What could that mean? Huh. "Uh, thanks?"
"No, thank you. Now, can you show me where you saw them? It's really important, Inari. I need to find them. I'm supposed to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't get into trouble."
"I guess I could show you," Inari said, now fairly certain that something was wrong. The Zipsum seemed too hyper, even for a Zipsum. He hadn't stopped fidgeting since he'd walked up, and his eyes were more intense than they should be, the pupils absolutely, fully dilated. "What did you say your name was?"
The Zipsum grinned good naturedly. "Tricks. Tricks the Wind. Nice to meet you."
-----------------
"Look around, Keena. What's happening is more than just troubles. There's a change in the air, and not one for the better. Ye kenne hit too, I wist. Ye've heard from the Griolsa clan, heard what's happened. Ben Hamor's been visited by the gods! There's eyeless demons takin' over zipsum bodies, and Cheldrun bodies too, and I'm not so blind as to miss that Goshi has sent eyeless monsters just as often as they've sent their smoke-puff men, and a Zipsum messenger from the Grand Chantry what arrived the other day said that there's huge demons fightin' heroes of Karia all over the damn place. This isn't something we can run away from, and I'd be no Gogajin if I tried!"
Grim looked out across the crowd, and he raised his voice. "This is bigger than any of us, but it's not so big that we can't do somethin' about it. There's to be a fight, and it's to be at Stardown, and it's lookin' to be the biggest thing we've seen since the night of bonfire skies. Sons, daughters of Karia, we are Gogajin! And if we don't unite, if we don't take a stand against these Goshi bastards, then we might as well just slink away into the hills and wait to die, because we'll none of us deserve to be called Gogajin ever again, and we will never, ever be free of those bastards. Some of us may die, but at least we'll die free, with our own two feet on the ground, and fightin' for each other, and for Karia! Are you with me!"
A roar erupted from the vast crowd of Gogajin all around them at that, a terrible thunderous roar that utterly drowned out whatever response Keena might have tried to make. For a long moment the forty five clan heads stared at one another, uncertain exactly what to do. Then, after a good five minutes of shouting, the crowd began to die down, until finally those in the center could be heard again.
In the end, they had only one response. In the end, there was really nothing else to say: "You're a crazy bastard, Grim," Keena said, and then grinned widely, "But I'm with ye." And then, one after the other, the other clan heads each pledged themselves to the cause, and cacophony erupted in the crowd once more as Gogajin shouted, cheered, banged drums, banged stones, banged each other's heads, and made ready to march to war.
------------------
"That's a nice gun," Inari said as he led Tricks the Wind up the rocky slope towards Gogajin country. He'd picked up a walking stick somewhere along the way. It was just the right size, too. Very quarterstaffy. Idly, Inari wondered if he had just coined a new word.
Tricks grinned. "Thanks. Haven't met many Prill who know what a gun is. You been around the Cheldrun?"
"Some," Inari replied, watching Tricks warily out of the corner of his eye. He no longer had any intention of leading the Zipsum to the Gogajin, but he knew it would be very, very difficult to lose him. Scratch that. Losing a Zipsum that wanted to follow you was damn near impossible. And by 'near,' Inari meant 'completely.' "I found a fragment of a song in one of their cities. Kaberra was the name, I think."
Tricks nodded, and then looked like he was growing impatient. "Look, Inari, are you sure this is the way the Gogajin..."
Tricks trailed off as the roar of a vast, vast, vast crowd erupted from not too far away, and both he and Inari stared as a huge column of Gogajin crested the top of the hill and began marching down it.
More.
More.
More.
One hundred.
Two hundred.
Five hundred.
A thousand.
More.
Inari lost count.
Wagons were pulled by Gogajin in donkey form, laden down with supplies. Men, women, a small contingent of maybe a hundred Cheldrun, more Gogajin, even more Gogajin.
An army.
He stared in awe as they marched, and Tricks stared, too, his jaw dropped open, though for different reasons.
The Gogajin were on the move.
"... went?" Tricks finished.
That was when Inari lifted his quarterstaffy walking stick, and bashed Tricks over the back of the head as hard as he could. The Zipsum went out like a light.
Inari breathed a sigh of relief. He scooped up the furry little body of Tricks the Wind and headed over to figure out who was in charge. Zipsum were a pain in the ass to keep prisoner. He knew that from experience. Hopefully, the Gogajin would have some rope. Lots and lots of rope.
And as it turns out, they did. More than enough for both the suspicious, drug-addled Zipsum and for the troublesome Prill prankster what had been causing trouble with the local villages over the last few weeks. A few minutes later, Inari found himself bound hand and foot in the back of one of the Gogajin wagons, with the unconscious form of Tricks the Wind bound securely a foot away, and the Gogajin army marching towards the western horizon.
"Well," Inari said, "This sucks."
Unlikely Alliances
The Clan-Record of Kennard Fiochmahr, Tale-Teller and Lore-Keeper of the Fiochmahr Clan
Three Weeks Before Midsummer
It's not what ye are, it's what ye're willin' ta die for, that's the thing. Most Gogajin weren't willin' to die for all that much, but loved a good natured fight like they was bloody married to it. 'Course, this was anythin' but a good natured fight.
It started all at once about three weeks after Grim and the lads had tossed that underhanded mechified over the walls. There weren't no warning, no announcement of intent, no speeches, and no time to do anything but stand there like a bunch o' asses: the blue-armoured Cheldrun appeared in little wisps of smoke and started layin' waste to the clanhall right quick. Afore we even knew what hit us, three lads had blue knives buried in their throats, and one of them Cheldrun refugees had one blooming from her heart like a pretty blue flower. She dropped dead, but the lads, Sages bless 'em, they knew that they were dying, but they weren't dead yet. Each one of them plowed into the crowd of blue-armoured figures and started brawlin' like the best of em even as they bled out.
That were what bought the rest of us enough time to rally and drive the devils back. Things got heated then, and all the clan was roused to arms, and out came old Grim shouting and hollering like a madman about thieves and murderers in his house. Their popping in and out in little wisps of smoke made it a harder brawl than it should have been, but we brought them down, and those what we didn't bring down vanished for good.
When it were over, three of our gogajin lads were dead, a score more wounded, and five of the Cheldrun refugees were dead, too.
That weren't the last attack, either. They came again the next night, and the next, and soon it were clear as a Zipsum on gostberries that they would not stop until every last one of the Cheldrun refugees we'd taken in was dead. Men, women, and children. Some nights we fought them off without any losses at all. Some nights three or four guards were found dead along with a refugee or two. It went on like that for a week afore Old Grim had enough.
That's where we are now, the whole clan and our Cheldrun guests marchin' to Blackfield to air our grievances. That's what Grim called it, 'airin' our grievances.' Grim says that it's not just us, that these blue-armoured folk are raidin' all across Gogajin lands. He says he's not heard of a village or clanhold that's not been attacked at least once. I don't know if that's true or not, but I hear we're not the only clan to be attacked this way, neither - rumour has it the Griolsa clan way out near Ben Hamor took a beatin' something fierce half a year back, and the Dilseacht clan got raided a month back for their store o' Whiterock and lost fifty people in the battle.
Grim says he means to unite the clans. Some doubt him, but he's got that fire in his eyes, and I've seen that before: that there is the look of a hero.
Sages help us all.
Three Weeks Before Midsummer
It's not what ye are, it's what ye're willin' ta die for, that's the thing. Most Gogajin weren't willin' to die for all that much, but loved a good natured fight like they was bloody married to it. 'Course, this was anythin' but a good natured fight.
It started all at once about three weeks after Grim and the lads had tossed that underhanded mechified over the walls. There weren't no warning, no announcement of intent, no speeches, and no time to do anything but stand there like a bunch o' asses: the blue-armoured Cheldrun appeared in little wisps of smoke and started layin' waste to the clanhall right quick. Afore we even knew what hit us, three lads had blue knives buried in their throats, and one of them Cheldrun refugees had one blooming from her heart like a pretty blue flower. She dropped dead, but the lads, Sages bless 'em, they knew that they were dying, but they weren't dead yet. Each one of them plowed into the crowd of blue-armoured figures and started brawlin' like the best of em even as they bled out.
That were what bought the rest of us enough time to rally and drive the devils back. Things got heated then, and all the clan was roused to arms, and out came old Grim shouting and hollering like a madman about thieves and murderers in his house. Their popping in and out in little wisps of smoke made it a harder brawl than it should have been, but we brought them down, and those what we didn't bring down vanished for good.
When it were over, three of our gogajin lads were dead, a score more wounded, and five of the Cheldrun refugees were dead, too.
That weren't the last attack, either. They came again the next night, and the next, and soon it were clear as a Zipsum on gostberries that they would not stop until every last one of the Cheldrun refugees we'd taken in was dead. Men, women, and children. Some nights we fought them off without any losses at all. Some nights three or four guards were found dead along with a refugee or two. It went on like that for a week afore Old Grim had enough.
That's where we are now, the whole clan and our Cheldrun guests marchin' to Blackfield to air our grievances. That's what Grim called it, 'airin' our grievances.' Grim says that it's not just us, that these blue-armoured folk are raidin' all across Gogajin lands. He says he's not heard of a village or clanhold that's not been attacked at least once. I don't know if that's true or not, but I hear we're not the only clan to be attacked this way, neither - rumour has it the Griolsa clan way out near Ben Hamor took a beatin' something fierce half a year back, and the Dilseacht clan got raided a month back for their store o' Whiterock and lost fifty people in the battle.
Grim says he means to unite the clans. Some doubt him, but he's got that fire in his eyes, and I've seen that before: that there is the look of a hero.
Sages help us all.
The Troubles
The Troubles. That's what they called it. Or that's what the Fiochmahr clan called it, anyhow, and it seemed a decent enough name for the last few years. Of course, things hadn't been altogether untroubled before that. Not since two hundred years previous, when the Fiochmahr clan had seen its very last Dusk Sage. They'd called him the Ash-Faced One. Cheeky bastard, he was; walked right off out of the clanhold with nary a ceremony of the parting but just a distant sort of look and a walking down the mountain. He'd faded into the dusk, and neither song nor legend had spoken of the passage of him or any other Dusk Sage since.
But tonight wasn't a night for brooding on the past, or feeling sorry for yourself. Tonight was a night for celebration! Tonight, the famous mead of the Fiochmahr clan was open for one and all. Four days previous, the Fiochmahr clan had destroyed the Cheldrun logging expedition sent out from some steel city or another. Pepsid Five, or something like that. Surely that was as good a cause for celebration as any. So old Grim Fiochmahr, Head of the Fiochmahr clan, had declared a celebration, and they'd been partying nonstop ever since. After all, it wasn't every day you put an end to the Cheldrun logging operations in your area, and if the guards had seemed only half hearted at best, well, they just weren't real fighters like the Gogajin were.
Old Grim hadn't always been the head, of course, but the tale he'd told of his escape from the mines of a dark Cheldrun city, and his rescue of a whole group of their women had gone a long way towards boosting his popularity in the clan, even if none other of his companions in the mines had made it out of Geneva Prime with him. Diarmaid, Adar, Rogan, Donald, Baldur, these were the new heroes of the clan. And as for old Grim, well, he had ne always been Old Grim. The mines, and what had happened after, they'd changed him. Aged him before his time, maybe. Or maybe it was that age didn't cling so tightly to his shoulders as he felt it, but he felt it. At least, that was the story everyone told, though it likely found its source in younger minds than his. Two children on the brink of their teenaged exile were particular suspects, but no one could prove their involvement in the starting of the rumour, and the name had caught on regardless. Old Grim it was.
The mead-hall was full of Gogajin, male and female alike, each of them eager to get roaring drunk as quickly as possible. They were seated at a series of long wooden benches that filled most of the room, and already the mead was flowing freely. Boisterous does not begin to describe a room full of partying Gogajin: a few good natured fights broke out, and a few couples decided that their time would be better spent in a dark corner with each other than at the table with the others, and all that was before the boasting competition began. The Fiochmahr clan had a tradition, you see: two Gogajin would tell increasingly wild and unbelievable boasts, and whoever it was that told the wildest, most unbelievable one, well, he or she would have to go out and try to accomplish it. Usually it ended in hangovers and a Gogajin sleeping with someone they wouldn't ordinarily have been inclined to, but a few weeks back, it had brought about the raid on the logging camp, and tonight, well, tonight it was a good bet it was going to...
The partying came to a sudden halt (though the couples in the dark corners didn't bother to stop) when a pair of Gogajin slammed open the doors to the mead-hall, with a group of Cheldrun in tow. They were badly emaciated, half starved, and looked more than halfway dead. About a dozen of them came in - a middle-aged man at their head, wearing the tattered remains of what had probably once been a fine silk kimono - and many more of them were crowded around the entrance.
Silence hung heavily in the air for a long moment before a young Gogajin - only just returned from his adolescent exile - rose to his feet and shouted, "What kind of fucked up shite is this!?"
"You shut your mouth, Hagan!" a middle-aged female Gogajin bellowed back.
A number of other Gogajin joined in then, until finally Grim rose to his feet and banged the table in front of him with an enormous fist. "ALL OF YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTHES!" he bellowed.
Silence.
"Right. You two," he looked to the two Gogajin leading the Cheldrun. "What kind of fucked up shite is this?"
One of the two Gogajin spoke up. "They showed theirselves at the gate a bare few moments ago, askin' fer food and water, uh, Grim."
Grim looked to the Cheldrun. "I wist they ne be speaken Gogajin?" he asked, his regional accent coming to the fore as he spoke.
The middle-aged male Cheldrun in the tattered kimono stepped forward. "Your pardon, sir, but I do."
Grim looked at the man. "... Well, what do ye want, then? Ye must be either very brave or very stupid to come here. Qwich is it?"
"I am Ishikawa Tetsuro of the Ruby Hawk Clan," the Cheldrun said. "My companions and I are... exiles. Refugees. There is no place for us in Katashi Blade's new regime, and we thought it better to try our luck in the wilderness than to die at the hands of a Goshi Assassin, or a bounty hunter... please, sir, we have nowhere else to go. We are hungry, we are tired, and many of us are sick." He swallowed, and what he said next had the feel of an old tree toppling over: "Will you help us?"
Grim took a long moment to think about that, weighing it out in his mind. Of course, in the end, looking at the Cheldrun all helpless and starving-like, there was only one conclusion he could have reached: "... Aye. Ye clepen for me help, and I hear ye." He rose up to his full, massively muscled height. "All right, listen here! Listen here! These wights be safe with kith and kin tonight. None harm nor hounde them here on pain of a beatin' the likes o which you none never seen!"
The other Gogajin shrugged. One of them thought about shouting, "Ah, fuck you Grim!" but thought better of it at the last moment. The Cheldrun did look pretty desperate, after all.
Grim gestured, and a pair of Gogajin, a wer and wyf (a male and a female, that is), came forward and led the Cheldrun away to the Clanhold's guest quarters so as they could stow their things before they came to join the feast.
The feast went on.
------------------------
Later, when the shadows had had faded into gloom, the moon had set, and the only sounds were the frantic scrabblings and brayings of donkeysex in the hall, and the peace of the predawn hours hung heavily over the land, there came a stranger to the Fiochmahr clanhold. Stranger than even the Cheldrun refugees. A mechified. He came creeping through the corridors, almost his entire body made of metal save his face and his middle, the sounds in the hall masking the clunk-clunk-clunk of his footsteps. His eyes had been replaced with gleaming red lenses, and they allowed his vision access to the infrared: it was with this that he tracked his prey.
Gently, ever so gently, he pushed open the large wooden door that led into the room where his target slept. A bounty hunter he was, and a good one. He always got his man, or so they said. This man, well, they'd specified dead or alive, and he figured that dead would be easier than dragging him back through the wilderness, so once he was sure that the middle-aged Cheldrun sleeping on the bed in the tattered Kimono was in fact Ishikawa Tetsuro of the Ruby Hawk Clan, Winston reached out with his right hand and placed it almost gently over the sleeping man's heart.
Then he reached over with his left hand and flipped the switch to activate the pneumatic spike. Or would have, if a grip as strong as steel itself hadn't caught his hand mid-flight.
Winston looked up in alarm. The occupants of the beds around Ishikawa Tetsuro's were not asleep at all, but awake and very very angry.
An angry looking Gogajin stepped forward and glared poor Winston in the face. "I given these wights safety here with kith and kin," he cracked his knuckles, "And unfortunate fer you, I meant it."
An hour later, three Gogajin tossed the bruised and battered body of Winston the Mechified over the walls of the clanhold, and down he tumbled into the brush with the long, loud, trailing clatter of metal sliding down two hundred yards of loose rock.
Grim dusted off his hands, wiped the sweat off his brow, and went back to bed, satisfied that that was the end of it.
But the troubles were only just beginning.
But tonight wasn't a night for brooding on the past, or feeling sorry for yourself. Tonight was a night for celebration! Tonight, the famous mead of the Fiochmahr clan was open for one and all. Four days previous, the Fiochmahr clan had destroyed the Cheldrun logging expedition sent out from some steel city or another. Pepsid Five, or something like that. Surely that was as good a cause for celebration as any. So old Grim Fiochmahr, Head of the Fiochmahr clan, had declared a celebration, and they'd been partying nonstop ever since. After all, it wasn't every day you put an end to the Cheldrun logging operations in your area, and if the guards had seemed only half hearted at best, well, they just weren't real fighters like the Gogajin were.
Old Grim hadn't always been the head, of course, but the tale he'd told of his escape from the mines of a dark Cheldrun city, and his rescue of a whole group of their women had gone a long way towards boosting his popularity in the clan, even if none other of his companions in the mines had made it out of Geneva Prime with him. Diarmaid, Adar, Rogan, Donald, Baldur, these were the new heroes of the clan. And as for old Grim, well, he had ne always been Old Grim. The mines, and what had happened after, they'd changed him. Aged him before his time, maybe. Or maybe it was that age didn't cling so tightly to his shoulders as he felt it, but he felt it. At least, that was the story everyone told, though it likely found its source in younger minds than his. Two children on the brink of their teenaged exile were particular suspects, but no one could prove their involvement in the starting of the rumour, and the name had caught on regardless. Old Grim it was.
The mead-hall was full of Gogajin, male and female alike, each of them eager to get roaring drunk as quickly as possible. They were seated at a series of long wooden benches that filled most of the room, and already the mead was flowing freely. Boisterous does not begin to describe a room full of partying Gogajin: a few good natured fights broke out, and a few couples decided that their time would be better spent in a dark corner with each other than at the table with the others, and all that was before the boasting competition began. The Fiochmahr clan had a tradition, you see: two Gogajin would tell increasingly wild and unbelievable boasts, and whoever it was that told the wildest, most unbelievable one, well, he or she would have to go out and try to accomplish it. Usually it ended in hangovers and a Gogajin sleeping with someone they wouldn't ordinarily have been inclined to, but a few weeks back, it had brought about the raid on the logging camp, and tonight, well, tonight it was a good bet it was going to...
The partying came to a sudden halt (though the couples in the dark corners didn't bother to stop) when a pair of Gogajin slammed open the doors to the mead-hall, with a group of Cheldrun in tow. They were badly emaciated, half starved, and looked more than halfway dead. About a dozen of them came in - a middle-aged man at their head, wearing the tattered remains of what had probably once been a fine silk kimono - and many more of them were crowded around the entrance.
Silence hung heavily in the air for a long moment before a young Gogajin - only just returned from his adolescent exile - rose to his feet and shouted, "What kind of fucked up shite is this!?"
"You shut your mouth, Hagan!" a middle-aged female Gogajin bellowed back.
A number of other Gogajin joined in then, until finally Grim rose to his feet and banged the table in front of him with an enormous fist. "ALL OF YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTHES!" he bellowed.
Silence.
"Right. You two," he looked to the two Gogajin leading the Cheldrun. "What kind of fucked up shite is this?"
One of the two Gogajin spoke up. "They showed theirselves at the gate a bare few moments ago, askin' fer food and water, uh, Grim."
Grim looked to the Cheldrun. "I wist they ne be speaken Gogajin?" he asked, his regional accent coming to the fore as he spoke.
The middle-aged male Cheldrun in the tattered kimono stepped forward. "Your pardon, sir, but I do."
Grim looked at the man. "... Well, what do ye want, then? Ye must be either very brave or very stupid to come here. Qwich is it?"
"I am Ishikawa Tetsuro of the Ruby Hawk Clan," the Cheldrun said. "My companions and I are... exiles. Refugees. There is no place for us in Katashi Blade's new regime, and we thought it better to try our luck in the wilderness than to die at the hands of a Goshi Assassin, or a bounty hunter... please, sir, we have nowhere else to go. We are hungry, we are tired, and many of us are sick." He swallowed, and what he said next had the feel of an old tree toppling over: "Will you help us?"
Grim took a long moment to think about that, weighing it out in his mind. Of course, in the end, looking at the Cheldrun all helpless and starving-like, there was only one conclusion he could have reached: "... Aye. Ye clepen for me help, and I hear ye." He rose up to his full, massively muscled height. "All right, listen here! Listen here! These wights be safe with kith and kin tonight. None harm nor hounde them here on pain of a beatin' the likes o which you none never seen!"
The other Gogajin shrugged. One of them thought about shouting, "Ah, fuck you Grim!" but thought better of it at the last moment. The Cheldrun did look pretty desperate, after all.
Grim gestured, and a pair of Gogajin, a wer and wyf (a male and a female, that is), came forward and led the Cheldrun away to the Clanhold's guest quarters so as they could stow their things before they came to join the feast.
The feast went on.
------------------------
Later, when the shadows had had faded into gloom, the moon had set, and the only sounds were the frantic scrabblings and brayings of donkeysex in the hall, and the peace of the predawn hours hung heavily over the land, there came a stranger to the Fiochmahr clanhold. Stranger than even the Cheldrun refugees. A mechified. He came creeping through the corridors, almost his entire body made of metal save his face and his middle, the sounds in the hall masking the clunk-clunk-clunk of his footsteps. His eyes had been replaced with gleaming red lenses, and they allowed his vision access to the infrared: it was with this that he tracked his prey.
Gently, ever so gently, he pushed open the large wooden door that led into the room where his target slept. A bounty hunter he was, and a good one. He always got his man, or so they said. This man, well, they'd specified dead or alive, and he figured that dead would be easier than dragging him back through the wilderness, so once he was sure that the middle-aged Cheldrun sleeping on the bed in the tattered Kimono was in fact Ishikawa Tetsuro of the Ruby Hawk Clan, Winston reached out with his right hand and placed it almost gently over the sleeping man's heart.
Then he reached over with his left hand and flipped the switch to activate the pneumatic spike. Or would have, if a grip as strong as steel itself hadn't caught his hand mid-flight.
Winston looked up in alarm. The occupants of the beds around Ishikawa Tetsuro's were not asleep at all, but awake and very very angry.
An angry looking Gogajin stepped forward and glared poor Winston in the face. "I given these wights safety here with kith and kin," he cracked his knuckles, "And unfortunate fer you, I meant it."
An hour later, three Gogajin tossed the bruised and battered body of Winston the Mechified over the walls of the clanhold, and down he tumbled into the brush with the long, loud, trailing clatter of metal sliding down two hundred yards of loose rock.
Grim dusted off his hands, wiped the sweat off his brow, and went back to bed, satisfied that that was the end of it.
But the troubles were only just beginning.
At a Loss for Words
All the noise makes reading very difficult. The irritation is like a itch that doesn't need scratching just yet, but you might pre-empt it with a lazy claw before it gets out of hand.
"Would you kindly quiet down? I need to concentrate."
Sloan grunts as he plants the blunt end of the haft he's holding into yet another security soldier's face, snapping his head backward and making his knees buckle. He flinches as a shower of stray bullets tears past him and hammers against the far wall.
"I swear by Ben Hamor that if these bloody ::grunt:: bastards ::crack:: ever get tired of gettin' knocked on their asses ::thud::, I'll bloody well kill you!"
Gogajin. So excitable! Amazing they have any semblance of society at all.
Varissa is out of feathered shafts and is behind Sloan, crouched, ready to hamstring any that get past with her wicked curved blades. She glares at Jin and shows her teeth to him.
Jevumm, of course, have not even a semblance of society, and not for the first time, Jin is happy that the blood covering her arms up to the shoulders is not his; yet at the same time regretful that he has been forced to endure such odd bedfellows (as the Gogajin say - something about mammals sleeping in groups).
But there are more important things to concern him now. Jin needs to activate this fantastic Cheldrun device, and he can't find any kind of instructions anywhere on it.
The device itself offers no hints as to how it functions, exactly. It does not draw on a visible power source (the Cheldrun use veins called cables to carry mechine-energy, Jin knows). It is simply a textured cyllindrical object, dull black, with six spokes rising up from the edges of it, a bit like metallic teeth. In the center on the top a small circular depression is visible. There are what appear to be written characters etched into the surface at regular intervals - not Cheldrun, even more alien.
Jin sighs, and for a moment notices that Sloan is on the floor grimacing in a small pool of blood. Varissa leaps through the air, shifting into a massive hunting cat in mid-air. She slams into the first soldier who tries to enter through the wrecked security door and disappears in a spray of gore. Jin blocks out the screaming from outside the room which is now echoing in the hallway. He notices a device he's always been curios about.
It is, he believes, a data port. Data, as in ontologies; port, as in the place where Cheldrun oceangoing vessels accumulate to disgorge their cargo. It appears to have two cables attaching it to a pair of orifices in the wall. He touches it gently with the tips of his claws, presses the button that bears the symbol the Cheldrun use for the transmission of energy into or out of a mechanical device. The data port lights up and he flinches back as a ghostly, pixellated image erupts out of the device.
He smiles a long smile, and begins manipulating the keys of the machine, assembling Cheldrun words in order to instruct the machine to reveal what it contains. He quickly finds the collections of information pertaining to the device in the room - the data port seems to have been used as supplemental memorization for whoever has been working with the device thus far. The notes are laborious to read, clearly written by a borderline imbecile who needs to record every detail of every activation method attempted.
Finally Jin finds what he wants, slows to read very carefully, unblinking.
Both Sloan and Varissa are outside the room now, shouting to each other. There is the percussive thudding of bodies against floors, walls...ceiling? A collective shout and Sloan is driven back through the door into the room, his feet sliding in the blood on the floor, grappling with four soldiers. A fifth soldier climbs through the wreckage, sees Jin near the wondrous device, and raises his weapon.
A small sign escapes before Jin's dewlaps erupt in a riot of bright colors. His mouth opens suddenly and with a coughing sound he sends a spray of acidic fluid into the face of the soldier. He falls back, wiping frantically at his face and then beginning to scream as he drives more burning fluid into his eyes. The other four soldiers have dragged Sloan down the floor and they are trying to beat him into submission. Jin hunches and leaps, catching one of their helmets in his claw as he passes over the mound of struggling mammals, jerking the soldier's neck and unbalancing him - Vorax-Snatches-Zipsum. Another tries to rise and Jin ducks down, whirling, his tail slamming into the soldier's shaky legs and sending him sprawling - Rising-Water-Trip. As he falls Jin snatches a truncheon from his belt and cracks the temple of a third soldier who has lost his helmet entirely.
The first soldier has righted his helmet and lunges at Jin. They fall in a tangle, but Jin quickly maneuvers out of his grasp, scuttles around to his back and grabs his limbs with clawed feet, left hand, and tail, immobilizing them with a Relentless-Clinging-Vine technique. With his free hand, Jin pulls off his helmet and beats his skull with it until he goes limp.
Sloan, covered entirely with blood, rises to his feet, gasping for air, looking at Jin with his mouth hanging open. "You -"
"Behind you."
He turns just in time to grapple with a fresh soldier. "Reinforcements!" Varissa shouts from out in the hall. Sloan grimaces. "This had better be worth it you bloody lizard." Jin just watches, unblinking.
He turns from the tumult to the device, bends down, and begins depressing areas around a specific series of "First Mind" runes (whatever Cheldrun fallacy that represents). With the last one, the device begins to shift and change. It comes alight, the runes shining out and projecting their images on the walls in bright purple light. As the device shifts and swells, the runes move in whirling patterns. Jin steps back, watching raptly, revealing its internal workings.
There is a chamber at the center through which its energy passes, from the Power Core to the Differential Layer. It is designed to hold a special substance in inertial suspension, altering the charge of the energy passing through before it is projected outward. But the machine has an immediate effect as well - the room quickly begins cooling as particles slow and vital energy dissipates. Jin feels a tremendous weight when he tries to move, and the hallway is suddenly quite quiet. He slowly, gruellingly reaches down into the padded satchel that he's been carrying for months now, reinforced by a careful geodesic latticework of reeds to protect the Vorax egg from being broken. Jin heaves it out of the satchel, already slowing down drastically, feeling an overwhelming need to go to sleep. His steps shuffle forward toward the device.
Clawlength by clawlength he heaves the egg outward and upward, bathed in flickering purple light, until it comes into contact with the stasis field at the center of the machine. Suddenly it slips into the field effortlessly. He watches, heavy-lidded, a distant part of him grinning in triumph, as the egg is burned, cracks, and is incinerated by the energy, rendered from sold and fluid to a colloid inside the chamber. The colloid has its effect, imparting its unique charge to the energy passing through the chamber.
There is a blinding flash of purple light that passes through Jin's body, through the walls of the chamber, outward until it passes through the streets of the city, outward and upward, a rising tide of shimmering purple light, First Mind runes crawling across the surface of the bubble of radiance that is quickly rising to cover the entirety of Stardown, stretching even further, kilometers in every direction, passing over villages and towns and farms, until it comes to rest at last, a vast purple dome.
At first there are screams, panic, scattering, shouting, alarms, and then the sounds die away, until the vast city of Stardown falls silent, watching the dome of light cover them until even the light of the sun takes on a faint purple tinge, seeing the ancient runes on its surface and feeling that they are somehow both alien and familiar, like a half-remembered dream.
Hei-Shi break from their stupor of suprise, their ear-pieces exploding with frantic traffic. They attempt to activate their Dis-Locators...and nothing happens. There is a faint sound of burning circuitry. Nothing.
About this time, Stardown rises up. Hei-Shi blood flows, broken blue armor is stuffed with straw and rags and burned in effigy. Goshi representatives sent to maintain the peace are chased through the streets and beaten by mobs. Goshi monitors are smashed and torn down by shouting revolutionaries. The city scrambles to find some way to respond.
They are suddenly at war.
"Would you kindly quiet down? I need to concentrate."
Sloan grunts as he plants the blunt end of the haft he's holding into yet another security soldier's face, snapping his head backward and making his knees buckle. He flinches as a shower of stray bullets tears past him and hammers against the far wall.
"I swear by Ben Hamor that if these bloody ::grunt:: bastards ::crack:: ever get tired of gettin' knocked on their asses ::thud::, I'll bloody well kill you!"
Gogajin. So excitable! Amazing they have any semblance of society at all.
Varissa is out of feathered shafts and is behind Sloan, crouched, ready to hamstring any that get past with her wicked curved blades. She glares at Jin and shows her teeth to him.
Jevumm, of course, have not even a semblance of society, and not for the first time, Jin is happy that the blood covering her arms up to the shoulders is not his; yet at the same time regretful that he has been forced to endure such odd bedfellows (as the Gogajin say - something about mammals sleeping in groups).
But there are more important things to concern him now. Jin needs to activate this fantastic Cheldrun device, and he can't find any kind of instructions anywhere on it.
The device itself offers no hints as to how it functions, exactly. It does not draw on a visible power source (the Cheldrun use veins called cables to carry mechine-energy, Jin knows). It is simply a textured cyllindrical object, dull black, with six spokes rising up from the edges of it, a bit like metallic teeth. In the center on the top a small circular depression is visible. There are what appear to be written characters etched into the surface at regular intervals - not Cheldrun, even more alien.
Jin sighs, and for a moment notices that Sloan is on the floor grimacing in a small pool of blood. Varissa leaps through the air, shifting into a massive hunting cat in mid-air. She slams into the first soldier who tries to enter through the wrecked security door and disappears in a spray of gore. Jin blocks out the screaming from outside the room which is now echoing in the hallway. He notices a device he's always been curios about.
It is, he believes, a data port. Data, as in ontologies; port, as in the place where Cheldrun oceangoing vessels accumulate to disgorge their cargo. It appears to have two cables attaching it to a pair of orifices in the wall. He touches it gently with the tips of his claws, presses the button that bears the symbol the Cheldrun use for the transmission of energy into or out of a mechanical device. The data port lights up and he flinches back as a ghostly, pixellated image erupts out of the device.
He smiles a long smile, and begins manipulating the keys of the machine, assembling Cheldrun words in order to instruct the machine to reveal what it contains. He quickly finds the collections of information pertaining to the device in the room - the data port seems to have been used as supplemental memorization for whoever has been working with the device thus far. The notes are laborious to read, clearly written by a borderline imbecile who needs to record every detail of every activation method attempted.
Finally Jin finds what he wants, slows to read very carefully, unblinking.
Both Sloan and Varissa are outside the room now, shouting to each other. There is the percussive thudding of bodies against floors, walls...ceiling? A collective shout and Sloan is driven back through the door into the room, his feet sliding in the blood on the floor, grappling with four soldiers. A fifth soldier climbs through the wreckage, sees Jin near the wondrous device, and raises his weapon.
A small sign escapes before Jin's dewlaps erupt in a riot of bright colors. His mouth opens suddenly and with a coughing sound he sends a spray of acidic fluid into the face of the soldier. He falls back, wiping frantically at his face and then beginning to scream as he drives more burning fluid into his eyes. The other four soldiers have dragged Sloan down the floor and they are trying to beat him into submission. Jin hunches and leaps, catching one of their helmets in his claw as he passes over the mound of struggling mammals, jerking the soldier's neck and unbalancing him - Vorax-Snatches-Zipsum. Another tries to rise and Jin ducks down, whirling, his tail slamming into the soldier's shaky legs and sending him sprawling - Rising-Water-Trip. As he falls Jin snatches a truncheon from his belt and cracks the temple of a third soldier who has lost his helmet entirely.
The first soldier has righted his helmet and lunges at Jin. They fall in a tangle, but Jin quickly maneuvers out of his grasp, scuttles around to his back and grabs his limbs with clawed feet, left hand, and tail, immobilizing them with a Relentless-Clinging-Vine technique. With his free hand, Jin pulls off his helmet and beats his skull with it until he goes limp.
Sloan, covered entirely with blood, rises to his feet, gasping for air, looking at Jin with his mouth hanging open. "You -"
"Behind you."
He turns just in time to grapple with a fresh soldier. "Reinforcements!" Varissa shouts from out in the hall. Sloan grimaces. "This had better be worth it you bloody lizard." Jin just watches, unblinking.
He turns from the tumult to the device, bends down, and begins depressing areas around a specific series of "First Mind" runes (whatever Cheldrun fallacy that represents). With the last one, the device begins to shift and change. It comes alight, the runes shining out and projecting their images on the walls in bright purple light. As the device shifts and swells, the runes move in whirling patterns. Jin steps back, watching raptly, revealing its internal workings.
There is a chamber at the center through which its energy passes, from the Power Core to the Differential Layer. It is designed to hold a special substance in inertial suspension, altering the charge of the energy passing through before it is projected outward. But the machine has an immediate effect as well - the room quickly begins cooling as particles slow and vital energy dissipates. Jin feels a tremendous weight when he tries to move, and the hallway is suddenly quite quiet. He slowly, gruellingly reaches down into the padded satchel that he's been carrying for months now, reinforced by a careful geodesic latticework of reeds to protect the Vorax egg from being broken. Jin heaves it out of the satchel, already slowing down drastically, feeling an overwhelming need to go to sleep. His steps shuffle forward toward the device.
Clawlength by clawlength he heaves the egg outward and upward, bathed in flickering purple light, until it comes into contact with the stasis field at the center of the machine. Suddenly it slips into the field effortlessly. He watches, heavy-lidded, a distant part of him grinning in triumph, as the egg is burned, cracks, and is incinerated by the energy, rendered from sold and fluid to a colloid inside the chamber. The colloid has its effect, imparting its unique charge to the energy passing through the chamber.
There is a blinding flash of purple light that passes through Jin's body, through the walls of the chamber, outward until it passes through the streets of the city, outward and upward, a rising tide of shimmering purple light, First Mind runes crawling across the surface of the bubble of radiance that is quickly rising to cover the entirety of Stardown, stretching even further, kilometers in every direction, passing over villages and towns and farms, until it comes to rest at last, a vast purple dome.
At first there are screams, panic, scattering, shouting, alarms, and then the sounds die away, until the vast city of Stardown falls silent, watching the dome of light cover them until even the light of the sun takes on a faint purple tinge, seeing the ancient runes on its surface and feeling that they are somehow both alien and familiar, like a half-remembered dream.
Hei-Shi break from their stupor of suprise, their ear-pieces exploding with frantic traffic. They attempt to activate their Dis-Locators...and nothing happens. There is a faint sound of burning circuitry. Nothing.
About this time, Stardown rises up. Hei-Shi blood flows, broken blue armor is stuffed with straw and rags and burned in effigy. Goshi representatives sent to maintain the peace are chased through the streets and beaten by mobs. Goshi monitors are smashed and torn down by shouting revolutionaries. The city scrambles to find some way to respond.
They are suddenly at war.
Accidental Freedom Fighter
Jin blinks slowly. He can see the glistening scratches curving evenly along the inside of the gun barrel - "rifling" is the Cheldrun word for that method of scoring the barrel. To impart a rotational force on the round when it is expelled, helping it maintain its trajectory for more of its swift parabolic arc. In the darkness, deep in that barrel, he knows there is a bullet, surrounded by a casing, seated on top of a charge of explosive powder. They make the powder in it from charcoal and urine, if such a thing can be believed. The barrel is shaking slightly, making it hard to see more of the mechanisms clearly. How are old casings expelled to make way for new ones? Perhaps the explosion itself provides the motive force...
"Just...stand right fucking there and don't fucking move!" The Stardown Technology and Research security soldier holding the weapon is already sweating, though the ambient temperature and humidity inside this building are carefully controlled. The machines are called "compressors" and Jin is anxious to see one in action. The soldier speaks into a box on his shoulder. "Captain, captain...we've got a...a fucking lizard up here, and...what the fuck? No one's supposed to be in here!"
"I am not a lizard, I am an Anakarix, which any reasonably educated -"
"Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Lizard." With the last explosive phonemes he jabs the end of the weapon into Jin's chest. He doesn't even ask how I can speak Cheldrun. I suppose only their leaders are ingenious, and use ones like this for menial tasks.
The Cheldrun grunt continues to mumble into the box on his shoulder - doubtless a distance-communicator of some sort - and Jin has time to reflect. He'd wished that his first close-up view of a gun would be at a time of more leisure.
***
When it came down to it, Jin was unable to convince the Griolsa to mar their sacred Blade, so it became necessary to travel up and over the roots of Ben Hamor to the ancient site where a star had fallen to earth long ago. The contours of a telltale impact crater were clearly visible, and using a lodestone floating in a bowl of water, Jin was able to locate a fragment of the superheated star-metal which had been used to forge the Blade. Taking this back to the village, Sloan had successfully, under Jin's direction, forged a sort of chisel, which was then mounted on a sturdy hardwood haft and reinforced with steel.
"This should suffice." The edge, laboriously sharpened to a brilliant keen line, caught the afternoon sun. Jin couldn't even lift the thing, but it was like a training-rod in Sloan's meaty fist.
"How d'you know?"
Jin pursed his lips and said "Heuristics of course." Which settled nothing, but the longer explanation helped not a whit.
***
When they encountered their fist logging camp, still many days from Stardown, Jin insisted on going to speak with them and see if they could find a way to negotiate safe passage. He was immediately accosted and tackled to the ground, then wrapped in a net by two impolite Mechified guards who handled him like a bundle of twigs - until a bloom of thick arterial blood blossomed in one of their throats, the shaft of Varissa's arrow buried almost to the fletching.
The second died similarly. That night, Varissa dined on all the raw Cheldrun she could eat, while Sloan and Jin exchanged queasy looks and shared the last of Sloan's mashed oats.
Jin never asked how many she killed, but she smiled for days.
***
It was surprisingly easy to enter Stardown. The city had descended into chaos as various groups attempted to resist the grip of Goshi. When challenged by a particular group - the Stardown Freedom League - Varissa was able to produce a pair of severed Hei-Shi heads, communicators still in their ears, wearing almost comical looks of surprise. One was missing an eye because she had replaced it with an arrow. Jin could still see the image of her languorously licking it clean after she removed it.
Predictably, the various resistance groups failed and were forced underground, or in less fortunate cases executed on closed-circuit viewing screens mounted throughout the city. Otherwise, the screens showed flashing Goshi commercials and news of Goshi victories as city after city was forced to surrender, either by the teleporting Hei-Shi or by Washi San mecha.
The message: The age of corrupt politics is at an end. Commercialism is the new world order, and the market shall rule forever after.
Roving death-squads made people view the claims of meritocracy with more than a little skepticism.
But none of this concerned Jin. He was busy reading - every leaflet, every scrolling news story, every broadsheet, ever official document, street signs, trade-'zines, everything. Sloan made the mistake of asking.
"The heuristic process begins with information-saturation. From this information is derived the salient question, and from it variables are also inferred. We then move to the algorithmic stage wherein mathematico-logical processes are utilized to eradicate the erroneous terms, leaving only the ontological relationship expressed in its most elegant form. This form, a system of mathematical relation, is then applied through the governing model, in this case a modified, shall we say nona-iterational -" he took a moment to savor the invented word, then continued "heliophilic formal logic, essentially nine-trees formal logic squared, differentiated and then reintegrated. The resulting schema will give you the two foci. The second focus is the mathematical representation of that which you have found. The answer."
After that, Jin found he had all the alone-time he needed to run the numbers. Once complete, the answer was clear. Obvious, really.
***
Stardown Technology and Research had been working on a final prototype of a revolutionary inertial dampner, a kind of fail-safe security system which would immobilize everyone within its field of effect, sapping the ambient kinetic energy away from them. Given enough time, it would in fact freeze them, but this would be sufficient to stop any kind of violence, incursion, and so on. The head of the project, an Allskin genius (Jin didn't use the term lightly) named Sousauryoku, was widely considered certifiably insane. He was famous for having invented an incredibly inefficient weapon which fired metal projectiles using only electromagnetic force, claiming it was based on lost First Mind technology.
What wasn't widely known was that he did in fact have a First Mind artifact, and had discerned how to activate and, to a degree, control it. It was designed to manipulate forces at a distance - hence the idea for the revolutionary defense system.
***
Which brings us to Jin, standing near a security door in the Stardown Technology and Research facility, staring down the barrel of an automatic rifle. (Sousauryoku's electromagnetic gun design was far too expensive to actually use to equip mere security personnel.) Until now, security had been quite light. The real difficulty was in finding the installation, deep beneath the city proper, built in an abandoned underground train-tunnel purchased from the government years ago. And of course, once the necessary conclusion became clear, Jin realized there was only one place it could be.
Suddenly, Jin throws his arms in front of his face (they can't stop bullets!) and collapses to the ground, just as the soldier's knees buckle and he collapses bonelessly to the concrete floor. Sloan is standing behind him, hefting a rifle he's using as a bludgeon for a second strike.
"I think" Jin says, standing slowly, "that will be sufficient. Just smash open that last security door, and we'll be there." Jin's clawed hand unconsciously slips down to rest on the thick, padded pouch hanging from one shoulder. It is thoroughly reinforced to resist impact and insulated against heat and cold, but it is a gesture of habit. Sloan drops the rifle and hefts the heavy chisel forged from the star-metal.
The first blow hammers deep into the metal of the door like an axe to balsa wood.
Jin wonders when Varissa will be finished and will rejoin them. If ever. In a few minutes, it will hardly matter.
"Just...stand right fucking there and don't fucking move!" The Stardown Technology and Research security soldier holding the weapon is already sweating, though the ambient temperature and humidity inside this building are carefully controlled. The machines are called "compressors" and Jin is anxious to see one in action. The soldier speaks into a box on his shoulder. "Captain, captain...we've got a...a fucking lizard up here, and...what the fuck? No one's supposed to be in here!"
"I am not a lizard, I am an Anakarix, which any reasonably educated -"
"Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Lizard." With the last explosive phonemes he jabs the end of the weapon into Jin's chest. He doesn't even ask how I can speak Cheldrun. I suppose only their leaders are ingenious, and use ones like this for menial tasks.
The Cheldrun grunt continues to mumble into the box on his shoulder - doubtless a distance-communicator of some sort - and Jin has time to reflect. He'd wished that his first close-up view of a gun would be at a time of more leisure.
***
When it came down to it, Jin was unable to convince the Griolsa to mar their sacred Blade, so it became necessary to travel up and over the roots of Ben Hamor to the ancient site where a star had fallen to earth long ago. The contours of a telltale impact crater were clearly visible, and using a lodestone floating in a bowl of water, Jin was able to locate a fragment of the superheated star-metal which had been used to forge the Blade. Taking this back to the village, Sloan had successfully, under Jin's direction, forged a sort of chisel, which was then mounted on a sturdy hardwood haft and reinforced with steel.
"This should suffice." The edge, laboriously sharpened to a brilliant keen line, caught the afternoon sun. Jin couldn't even lift the thing, but it was like a training-rod in Sloan's meaty fist.
"How d'you know?"
Jin pursed his lips and said "Heuristics of course." Which settled nothing, but the longer explanation helped not a whit.
***
When they encountered their fist logging camp, still many days from Stardown, Jin insisted on going to speak with them and see if they could find a way to negotiate safe passage. He was immediately accosted and tackled to the ground, then wrapped in a net by two impolite Mechified guards who handled him like a bundle of twigs - until a bloom of thick arterial blood blossomed in one of their throats, the shaft of Varissa's arrow buried almost to the fletching.
The second died similarly. That night, Varissa dined on all the raw Cheldrun she could eat, while Sloan and Jin exchanged queasy looks and shared the last of Sloan's mashed oats.
Jin never asked how many she killed, but she smiled for days.
***
It was surprisingly easy to enter Stardown. The city had descended into chaos as various groups attempted to resist the grip of Goshi. When challenged by a particular group - the Stardown Freedom League - Varissa was able to produce a pair of severed Hei-Shi heads, communicators still in their ears, wearing almost comical looks of surprise. One was missing an eye because she had replaced it with an arrow. Jin could still see the image of her languorously licking it clean after she removed it.
Predictably, the various resistance groups failed and were forced underground, or in less fortunate cases executed on closed-circuit viewing screens mounted throughout the city. Otherwise, the screens showed flashing Goshi commercials and news of Goshi victories as city after city was forced to surrender, either by the teleporting Hei-Shi or by Washi San mecha.
The message: The age of corrupt politics is at an end. Commercialism is the new world order, and the market shall rule forever after.
Roving death-squads made people view the claims of meritocracy with more than a little skepticism.
But none of this concerned Jin. He was busy reading - every leaflet, every scrolling news story, every broadsheet, ever official document, street signs, trade-'zines, everything. Sloan made the mistake of asking.
"The heuristic process begins with information-saturation. From this information is derived the salient question, and from it variables are also inferred. We then move to the algorithmic stage wherein mathematico-logical processes are utilized to eradicate the erroneous terms, leaving only the ontological relationship expressed in its most elegant form. This form, a system of mathematical relation, is then applied through the governing model, in this case a modified, shall we say nona-iterational -" he took a moment to savor the invented word, then continued "heliophilic formal logic, essentially nine-trees formal logic squared, differentiated and then reintegrated. The resulting schema will give you the two foci. The second focus is the mathematical representation of that which you have found. The answer."
After that, Jin found he had all the alone-time he needed to run the numbers. Once complete, the answer was clear. Obvious, really.
***
Stardown Technology and Research had been working on a final prototype of a revolutionary inertial dampner, a kind of fail-safe security system which would immobilize everyone within its field of effect, sapping the ambient kinetic energy away from them. Given enough time, it would in fact freeze them, but this would be sufficient to stop any kind of violence, incursion, and so on. The head of the project, an Allskin genius (Jin didn't use the term lightly) named Sousauryoku, was widely considered certifiably insane. He was famous for having invented an incredibly inefficient weapon which fired metal projectiles using only electromagnetic force, claiming it was based on lost First Mind technology.
What wasn't widely known was that he did in fact have a First Mind artifact, and had discerned how to activate and, to a degree, control it. It was designed to manipulate forces at a distance - hence the idea for the revolutionary defense system.
***
Which brings us to Jin, standing near a security door in the Stardown Technology and Research facility, staring down the barrel of an automatic rifle. (Sousauryoku's electromagnetic gun design was far too expensive to actually use to equip mere security personnel.) Until now, security had been quite light. The real difficulty was in finding the installation, deep beneath the city proper, built in an abandoned underground train-tunnel purchased from the government years ago. And of course, once the necessary conclusion became clear, Jin realized there was only one place it could be.
Suddenly, Jin throws his arms in front of his face (they can't stop bullets!) and collapses to the ground, just as the soldier's knees buckle and he collapses bonelessly to the concrete floor. Sloan is standing behind him, hefting a rifle he's using as a bludgeon for a second strike.
"I think" Jin says, standing slowly, "that will be sufficient. Just smash open that last security door, and we'll be there." Jin's clawed hand unconsciously slips down to rest on the thick, padded pouch hanging from one shoulder. It is thoroughly reinforced to resist impact and insulated against heat and cold, but it is a gesture of habit. Sloan drops the rifle and hefts the heavy chisel forged from the star-metal.
The first blow hammers deep into the metal of the door like an axe to balsa wood.
Jin wonders when Varissa will be finished and will rejoin them. If ever. In a few minutes, it will hardly matter.
...For Binding Things Together
(This is Part 2 of A Talent for Binding Things Together - Part 1 is the previous post)
Sloan is with Angus as usual. He's spent a lot of time with Angus as he recovers, slowly but surely, wounds healing and leaving scars, scars smoothing out. He's still marked; he will be marked forever, but Sloan is helping him pull himself back together. He's out working, was out soon after he came home, but now he pulls his weight, stands tall, is proud.
There is a soft knock and the sound of a throat being cleared. Its the noon rest-time, gleanings from the field still lying out in heaps, to be gathered when the air starts to cool.
Sloan gets the door, and standing outside is a lizard standing on its hind legs, swaying slightly, bright-eyed, carrying a chunk of slate in both hands like it can barely lift it. Its covered in some kind of scratchy scrawl and whorling lines intersecting each other.
It blinks. "You must be Sloan. I was told I could find you here."
"You were told right." Sloan flashes a grin, but there's a suspicious gleam in his eyes that doesn't leave. "You looking for me?"
It nods. Smiles uncomfortably. "Yes. I was. Am. We need to talk, you and I. I have a proposition for you."
"A - a what?"
Pause. "A quest."
Sloan's look smooths, says 'go on...'.
"It...it involves a Jevumm." He tenses. Jin quickly continues. "And the Griolsa Blade. And a great deal of mathematics, which - don't worry, that's my part - where was I? Yes. And a city called Star-Down. And saving the world."
Another pause. A laugh that threatens to swell out of control. "You too, eh? You missed your caravan, friend. All that's here is work and rest and mead, and every other good thing. I've got no notion of leaving."
"I have thought of that. Perhaps you are thinking that you are needed as a worker? In exchange for your help, I will help your village for years to come. I can design a barn from local materials which will reduce the amount of grain you lose to pests in the fall and winter dramatically. That means less hunger. No lean times, at least until your numbers swell healthily once again, and then you can build another barn like it. And the drainage of your fields encourages insects to lay their larvae in the standing water. You are all quite robust, but it would help not to get fevers every spring, yes? A few days of hard work and you won't have to worry about that."
"Look, lizard, I mean no offense, but -"
Surprisingly, Jin steps closer. Sloan can smell his breath, a slight burn in his nostrils. "Listen. I can't make you come with me. With us. All I can do is talk to you. Yes? So let's talk. You have some respite before you have to return to the fields. I will help your village either way, because I see that I can help you and not delay my mission significantly. A lot has happened recently, some of which you know, some of which I can only guess. But I can connect some things for you, bring some sense to it. There is...an elegant underlying symmetry, which is manifesting as we speak. It is elegant like an adder - if we do nothing, it is just as lethal. And you are part of it. Let me talk, and you just listen, for two hours. Then we will call your clan together and I will explain my plans for the barn and for the improved drainage. Then, if you wish, we will 'raise the barn', I believe the expression is, and dig the new channels. Then I will go, and I hope you will go with me. Yes?"
Sloan watches him for a moment, sips his mead, then sips it again, longer. "How did you learn Gogajin?"
Jin blinks. "That is another story."
"You want me to come with you, you say. But we just met."
"I can see patterns. I have someone with me who can seek things out. I need someone with a talent for binding things together. You may not know, but he" Jin points to Angus "will live a long, happy life because of you. You are capable of much more. Just two hours. Then we help your village. Then...then we will see."
Sloan nods slowly. "Alright. Talk, lizard, but I'm not going to stop drinking."
Jin's mouth quirks at the corners. "That is for the best. The alcohol will likely help. Now..." he enters the house, puts the slate down with a sigh and shakes his claws to get blood to return to them. He continues, "Now, imagine that you are the sun, standing in a flat elliptical field, surrounded by nine trees..."
It takes a lot longer than an hour.
Sloan is with Angus as usual. He's spent a lot of time with Angus as he recovers, slowly but surely, wounds healing and leaving scars, scars smoothing out. He's still marked; he will be marked forever, but Sloan is helping him pull himself back together. He's out working, was out soon after he came home, but now he pulls his weight, stands tall, is proud.
There is a soft knock and the sound of a throat being cleared. Its the noon rest-time, gleanings from the field still lying out in heaps, to be gathered when the air starts to cool.
Sloan gets the door, and standing outside is a lizard standing on its hind legs, swaying slightly, bright-eyed, carrying a chunk of slate in both hands like it can barely lift it. Its covered in some kind of scratchy scrawl and whorling lines intersecting each other.
It blinks. "You must be Sloan. I was told I could find you here."
"You were told right." Sloan flashes a grin, but there's a suspicious gleam in his eyes that doesn't leave. "You looking for me?"
It nods. Smiles uncomfortably. "Yes. I was. Am. We need to talk, you and I. I have a proposition for you."
"A - a what?"
Pause. "A quest."
Sloan's look smooths, says 'go on...'.
"It...it involves a Jevumm." He tenses. Jin quickly continues. "And the Griolsa Blade. And a great deal of mathematics, which - don't worry, that's my part - where was I? Yes. And a city called Star-Down. And saving the world."
Another pause. A laugh that threatens to swell out of control. "You too, eh? You missed your caravan, friend. All that's here is work and rest and mead, and every other good thing. I've got no notion of leaving."
"I have thought of that. Perhaps you are thinking that you are needed as a worker? In exchange for your help, I will help your village for years to come. I can design a barn from local materials which will reduce the amount of grain you lose to pests in the fall and winter dramatically. That means less hunger. No lean times, at least until your numbers swell healthily once again, and then you can build another barn like it. And the drainage of your fields encourages insects to lay their larvae in the standing water. You are all quite robust, but it would help not to get fevers every spring, yes? A few days of hard work and you won't have to worry about that."
"Look, lizard, I mean no offense, but -"
Surprisingly, Jin steps closer. Sloan can smell his breath, a slight burn in his nostrils. "Listen. I can't make you come with me. With us. All I can do is talk to you. Yes? So let's talk. You have some respite before you have to return to the fields. I will help your village either way, because I see that I can help you and not delay my mission significantly. A lot has happened recently, some of which you know, some of which I can only guess. But I can connect some things for you, bring some sense to it. There is...an elegant underlying symmetry, which is manifesting as we speak. It is elegant like an adder - if we do nothing, it is just as lethal. And you are part of it. Let me talk, and you just listen, for two hours. Then we will call your clan together and I will explain my plans for the barn and for the improved drainage. Then, if you wish, we will 'raise the barn', I believe the expression is, and dig the new channels. Then I will go, and I hope you will go with me. Yes?"
Sloan watches him for a moment, sips his mead, then sips it again, longer. "How did you learn Gogajin?"
Jin blinks. "That is another story."
"You want me to come with you, you say. But we just met."
"I can see patterns. I have someone with me who can seek things out. I need someone with a talent for binding things together. You may not know, but he" Jin points to Angus "will live a long, happy life because of you. You are capable of much more. Just two hours. Then we help your village. Then...then we will see."
Sloan nods slowly. "Alright. Talk, lizard, but I'm not going to stop drinking."
Jin's mouth quirks at the corners. "That is for the best. The alcohol will likely help. Now..." he enters the house, puts the slate down with a sigh and shakes his claws to get blood to return to them. He continues, "Now, imagine that you are the sun, standing in a flat elliptical field, surrounded by nine trees..."
It takes a lot longer than an hour.
A Talent...
(This is Part 1 of A Talent for Binding Things Together)
Gentle, cool rain falls off of Jin-Kalys' scales in rivulets. Spring in Griolsa territory.
But he doesn't notice the rain, except to note that it is making him sluggish. Sol is hidden behind glowering clouds, promising more precipitation. About thirty reaches ("meters", the Cheldrun measurement he's learned, rises unbidden to his mind) distant, a trio of massive Gogajin are huddled together, speaking softly, glancing at him periodically. Nearby there is a pile of stones.
Upon reflection, Jin is reassured that no one is trying to eat or maim him. Gogajin are vegetarians, of course, but perhaps he should amend the thought. No one has tried to main him yet.
Perhaps it is a compliment that Adana Griolsa herself is the one who hunches down and lifts one of the stones off the ground, over her head. She tenses, and heaves.
Jin feels his cloaca clench.
The off-white stone sails into the air, turning ponderously, making its way to him. Its motion appears to slow, the raindrops on his scales becoming a periodic typmany. Its arc is true, and it is heading straight for him.
No...no, the arc is off. Its parabolic path is bent, the exponent increasing erratically. Something is wrong. Gravity is constant. The mass of the stone must be constant. What is the variable?
The wind is at his back, pelting him with little drops of rain. The wind. Of course. Trust. The Gogajin are concerned with trust. If it were warmer, he would have seen it immediately.
Jin opens his arms wide to receive the stone, grinning to himself as it shatters on impact, showering him with moist globs of some kind of plaster, already falling apart in the incessant rain. The Gogajin cheer, and he wipes himself off assiduously. Trust indeed. How very quaint! If Jin were a mammal, he imagines that the feeling would warm his blood. As it is, he blinks sleepily as the Gogajin come stomping over, shouting.
The embraces will hurt far more than the stone did, but Jin accepts them quietly.
***
Varissa does not fare so well, and is relegated to the edges of the village. She is instructed to avoid contact with any roving adolescent Gogajin she might encounter. Its been a hard winter, and they'll be closer to the village than normal, hoping for occasional gifts of food from concerned family members. Left at a careful distance, of course. She spends the night up a tree, growling to herself.
***
Thanks to his breathing exercises and powers of concentration, Jin is able to make the room stop spinning. Briefly. Long enough to feel vaguely ill. And to ask "Could you repeat that, please?"
Adana grins, takes another drink of mead (how can they drink this?), and says in clear, unslurred Gogajin "As I told you, you're not the first uncommon visitor we've had of late. There were another couple of groups been by; one Cheldrun with a Zipsum guide - city Zipsum, mind - and the other the strangest we've ever seen. Three Cheldrun, three Karians, headed up to Ben Hamor to meet the gods."
"How many Cheldrun in the first group?"
"Three Cheldrun - and they brought back our Angus! - and there was the Zipsum. Now, one of the Cheldrun is dead, eaten by a Jevumm if you can believe it, then other when we were attacked. A second, big metal fellow, left on his own with the Zipsum, headed home I guess. The last one, Reeyoo No Sookay was his name as I recall" there are scattered nods at the strange sounding name "broke the hearth law, then disappeared."
Jin feels it is appropriate to touch the mead to his lips again, blinks at the way it makes his nose burn to smell it so close. "Broke the hearth law? How was that?"
"Stabbed another Cheldrun, up on this very roof, when the mad Zipsum attacked." Those gathered in the longhouse grow quieter now, looking down, thinking of the past. Jin waits what he thinks is an appropriate amount of time.
"Yes. You spoke of them, and there are still...marks which winter has left behind. The eyeless Zipsum." There is another long pause, as Jin touches the mead to his lips and then sneezes, spraying mead out of his horn. It is an incongruous moment.
"Ah, so...would you tell me more of the other...six visitors you had? The three Cheldrun and the three Karians?"
And she does, with eager additions from the others there. Some stand to drunkenly re-enact the battle; others have rendered parts of it into bawdy, roaring songs. Jin gleans a great deal from all that they offer, and a feeling grows in the pit of his stomach. It has been growing since he arrived, since he learned of the many strangers who have passed this way already, of the apparent visions of the gods on Ben Hamor. He learns about the blade, which explains a great deal that he sees no reason to try to explain now.
Why did they move on? What are they thinking? Where are they going now? Do they know who they are -
"...and that's when the eyeless Zipsum came at us, in waves!"
The answer is there. Wait for it. It is...something. Jin sees the branches breaking apart, settling, bending into new forms -
"...was huge! Like a great house of a machine-man, swinging his arm like a mattock..."
No. Not nine branches. Nine trees. Nine trees! Each tree stretching out, twisting in response to the pull of unpaired loci -
"...stabbed him on the roof, the bastard, but then the Vorax got him -" "...a Vorax! Still can't believe it..."
Nine trees stretching upwards from the eccliptic into the future, roots reaching downward into the past, branching potentiality, tendrils of causal precipitate-
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I have to go. Do you have a piece of slate I can use? Very sorry. And some chalk? Mine us used up..." Caught up in the story, the Gogajin hardly notice that the audience has excused himself.
Hours later, he has an answer, a new algorithm, and shortly after, a name.
Gentle, cool rain falls off of Jin-Kalys' scales in rivulets. Spring in Griolsa territory.
But he doesn't notice the rain, except to note that it is making him sluggish. Sol is hidden behind glowering clouds, promising more precipitation. About thirty reaches ("meters", the Cheldrun measurement he's learned, rises unbidden to his mind) distant, a trio of massive Gogajin are huddled together, speaking softly, glancing at him periodically. Nearby there is a pile of stones.
Upon reflection, Jin is reassured that no one is trying to eat or maim him. Gogajin are vegetarians, of course, but perhaps he should amend the thought. No one has tried to main him yet.
Perhaps it is a compliment that Adana Griolsa herself is the one who hunches down and lifts one of the stones off the ground, over her head. She tenses, and heaves.
Jin feels his cloaca clench.
The off-white stone sails into the air, turning ponderously, making its way to him. Its motion appears to slow, the raindrops on his scales becoming a periodic typmany. Its arc is true, and it is heading straight for him.
No...no, the arc is off. Its parabolic path is bent, the exponent increasing erratically. Something is wrong. Gravity is constant. The mass of the stone must be constant. What is the variable?
The wind is at his back, pelting him with little drops of rain. The wind. Of course. Trust. The Gogajin are concerned with trust. If it were warmer, he would have seen it immediately.
Jin opens his arms wide to receive the stone, grinning to himself as it shatters on impact, showering him with moist globs of some kind of plaster, already falling apart in the incessant rain. The Gogajin cheer, and he wipes himself off assiduously. Trust indeed. How very quaint! If Jin were a mammal, he imagines that the feeling would warm his blood. As it is, he blinks sleepily as the Gogajin come stomping over, shouting.
The embraces will hurt far more than the stone did, but Jin accepts them quietly.
***
Varissa does not fare so well, and is relegated to the edges of the village. She is instructed to avoid contact with any roving adolescent Gogajin she might encounter. Its been a hard winter, and they'll be closer to the village than normal, hoping for occasional gifts of food from concerned family members. Left at a careful distance, of course. She spends the night up a tree, growling to herself.
***
Thanks to his breathing exercises and powers of concentration, Jin is able to make the room stop spinning. Briefly. Long enough to feel vaguely ill. And to ask "Could you repeat that, please?"
Adana grins, takes another drink of mead (how can they drink this?), and says in clear, unslurred Gogajin "As I told you, you're not the first uncommon visitor we've had of late. There were another couple of groups been by; one Cheldrun with a Zipsum guide - city Zipsum, mind - and the other the strangest we've ever seen. Three Cheldrun, three Karians, headed up to Ben Hamor to meet the gods."
"How many Cheldrun in the first group?"
"Three Cheldrun - and they brought back our Angus! - and there was the Zipsum. Now, one of the Cheldrun is dead, eaten by a Jevumm if you can believe it, then other when we were attacked. A second, big metal fellow, left on his own with the Zipsum, headed home I guess. The last one, Reeyoo No Sookay was his name as I recall" there are scattered nods at the strange sounding name "broke the hearth law, then disappeared."
Jin feels it is appropriate to touch the mead to his lips again, blinks at the way it makes his nose burn to smell it so close. "Broke the hearth law? How was that?"
"Stabbed another Cheldrun, up on this very roof, when the mad Zipsum attacked." Those gathered in the longhouse grow quieter now, looking down, thinking of the past. Jin waits what he thinks is an appropriate amount of time.
"Yes. You spoke of them, and there are still...marks which winter has left behind. The eyeless Zipsum." There is another long pause, as Jin touches the mead to his lips and then sneezes, spraying mead out of his horn. It is an incongruous moment.
"Ah, so...would you tell me more of the other...six visitors you had? The three Cheldrun and the three Karians?"
And she does, with eager additions from the others there. Some stand to drunkenly re-enact the battle; others have rendered parts of it into bawdy, roaring songs. Jin gleans a great deal from all that they offer, and a feeling grows in the pit of his stomach. It has been growing since he arrived, since he learned of the many strangers who have passed this way already, of the apparent visions of the gods on Ben Hamor. He learns about the blade, which explains a great deal that he sees no reason to try to explain now.
Why did they move on? What are they thinking? Where are they going now? Do they know who they are -
"...and that's when the eyeless Zipsum came at us, in waves!"
The answer is there. Wait for it. It is...something. Jin sees the branches breaking apart, settling, bending into new forms -
"...was huge! Like a great house of a machine-man, swinging his arm like a mattock..."
No. Not nine branches. Nine trees. Nine trees! Each tree stretching out, twisting in response to the pull of unpaired loci -
"...stabbed him on the roof, the bastard, but then the Vorax got him -" "...a Vorax! Still can't believe it..."
Nine trees stretching upwards from the eccliptic into the future, roots reaching downward into the past, branching potentiality, tendrils of causal precipitate-
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I have to go. Do you have a piece of slate I can use? Very sorry. And some chalk? Mine us used up..." Caught up in the story, the Gogajin hardly notice that the audience has excused himself.
Hours later, he has an answer, a new algorithm, and shortly after, a name.
Rei's Legacy
The Gogajin might have written this for Rei:
Rei, she was a wee lass
Who thought that we were too crass
She stood up to our women
Who put Kiyoshi's head a-swimmin'
And now she's lyin' on her ass!
Rei, she was a wee lass
Who thought that we were too crass
She stood up to our women
Who put Kiyoshi's head a-swimmin'
And now she's lyin' on her ass!
Gogajin
Bawdy Brawling Burros...
Players who wish to play a Gogajin should take plenty of time to detail her relations to her clan and the many members of her family. To a Gogajin nothing is as important as kin, so the character should have a well developed family background with details about each person and what they mean to the character. Why is this character out of the village? Are you a laborer or mercenary? Are you a slave or prisoner of war? What achievements are your proud of? What happened during your adolescence? Players should put some thought into the character’s spirit. How resilient is it? Has time away from home weakened your heart?
Up in the misty highlands, dancing to boisterous fiddle music, the rambunctious Gogajin have changed little since the days of the Dusk Sages. True, life is a little harder now. The land doesn’t yield its fruit as easily, and those who go off to serve other Karians sometimes end up enslaved or dead under the advancing armies of the Cheldrun. But the Gogajin have never feared hard work or danger. Nor have they ever changed even the slightest bit because of outside factors. They remain stubbornly free. Stubbornly poor. Stubbornly happy. They will die stubborn if need be.
Gogajin are known as donkey-sons, because in their animal forms they look like oversized, muscular… well, donkeys. They can get as big as thoroughbred horses, and they come in a wild variety of grays and browns. Gogajin have a lifespan of 70-80 years, though they live hard so their later years are often spent as invalids. They have a tight-knit intensely communal society which cares for the young and the elderly even in times of hardship.
However, Gogajin have a wild, uncontrollable adolescence that is spent outside the clan for the clan’s safety. In their adolescence Gogajin are raging hormonal balls of destruction. When the 3-5 year period of adolescence has passed the donkey-son may petition the clan to be permitted to return. The clan subjects the petitioner to tests of stability and self-control before eventually admitting them back in. The alternative is permanent exile, which to a Gogajin is an unthinkable punishment. An eternity away from kin is worse than death. Gogajin that commit crimes or are rejected by the community get exiled. Often those Gogajin kill themselves rather than live alone.
Even beyond adolescence the Gogajin have a rowdy culture. This requires a lot of adjustment when the Gogajin interact with other races – the usual hearty backslap is “aggravated assault” to a Cheldrun. When new Gogajin meet, they posture, they flex and heave and try to stand as tall as they can. If this doesn’t resolve things, they invite each other to engage in absurdly energetic and violent sports that are best played far from furniture or members of other races. One popular example is “catch” – which involves each competitor choosing the largest object he thinks he can lift and throw. If he fails to lift it he loses. However, if he succeeds, the other competitor is obliged to catch it. A dare is a deadly serious matter in Gogajin culture.
Donkey-sons live, work and play hard. They are fond of alcohol and they make many varieties of potent brew which other races cannot stand. They are bawdy and rude. They do not mate for life and they have a communal ethic which basically allows men and women to sleep around quite freely. Gogajin therefore come across as coarse and unrefined to other races. A Gogajin would not understand why his sexual advances were unwelcome to a Biomade woman, particularly given how well endowed he is…
The Gogajin live together in small villages, mostly made up of kin, in highland and mountainous areas. They work the land and forage, but their rough habitats mean they are never farther than a hard winter away from starvation. Thus they send many of their strongest and ablest to work as menial laborers and mercenaries for other races in return for trade. The Gogajin have a very low racial self-image so the highest status among the Gogajin have no trouble being considered servants to other people. Though they are proud and stubborn as a people they do not consider themselves above servitude. This humility means they often get abused by less kind Karians, and they are favored slaves of the Cheldrun.
***Players who wish to play a Gogajin should take plenty of time to detail her relations to her clan and the many members of her family. To a Gogajin nothing is as important as kin, so the character should have a well developed family background with details about each person and what they mean to the character. Why is this character out of the village? Are you a laborer or mercenary? Are you a slave or prisoner of war? What achievements are your proud of? What happened during your adolescence? Players should put some thought into the character’s spirit. How resilient is it? Has time away from home weakened your heart?
Appearance: Though few people would consider a Gogajin beautiful in human form, most would consider them impressive. They are built like they were chiseled from granite, with muscles that other races don’t even have. They tend to wear their hair long (men and women) in braids or dreadlocks and often full of beads and feathers. They favor loose, light clothing with open necks and no sleeves to show off their form. Kilts are in style among them, and if the weather is hot they are just as comfortable working naked as anything else. In human form they retain the long ears and tail of their donkey shape. As donkeys, they are larger and bulkier than a normal ass would be.
Example Names: Adair, Ahern, Andraste, Bran, Cairbre, Casidhe, Diarmaid, Edana, Fodla, Grim, Hagan, Keena, Kennard, Larkin, Mab, Maghnus, Orla, Rogan, Sloan, Troya, Una
Example Attributes: Armour, Combat Technique, Damage Absorption, Extra Actions, Extra Defences, Jumping, Massive Damage, Melee Attack, Melee Defense, Shield, Special Defense, Superstrength, Tough
Example Skills: Acrobatics, Animal Training, Artisan, Climbing, Cultural Arts, Domestic Arts, Gaming, Intimidation, Powerlifting, Swimming, Wilderness Survival, Wilderness Tracking
| Gogajin attitudes towards…. | |
| Cheldrun | They are a people without a soul. No love for the land. No kindness for their kindred. Why do they live? |
| Allskins | Seems like these people have a healthy admiration for tradition and heritage. We can respect their adherence to their lineage despite the odds. |
| Biomade | These poor bastards have no respect for kith or kin. Their lives are empty and without purpose since they have no blood ties to build upon. |
| Mechified | Well now if you aren’t born strong as a Gogajin I suppose it makes sense you’d want to try and build yourself that way. |
| Karians | We are the salt of this earth. We spring up out of the dust so that Karia will have someone to love her. Someone to climb her heights and plumb her depths. We are her admirers. |
| Anakarix | No sense of fun, these philosopher dragons. What if we like to spin ‘em by the tail? Can’t they laugh? |
| Gogajin | We are the ones who get the most joy out of life. |
| Jevumm | Many a Gogajin has gotten tore up good because he underestimated these kittens, but they’ll respect you if you’ve got a torch in your fist. |
| Prill | Now here are some folks who make some pretty music. If only they appreciated our style of dancing more. |
| Vorax | Boy it would do my heart good if I could see one of these birds again. |
| Zipsum | Ha ha! Perhaps the only people with a sense of humor to match our own, these little furballs are as fun as they are fast. |
Steel Driving Man
They're all having a good laugh at your expense, Grim. He twisted his head to each side cracking his neck and making the muscles stand out like cords. You're their freak, their cheap entertainment. They put you up to these stunts so they can have something to tell the wife and kids when they get home tonight.
No matter how much he told himself he didn't have to go through with it, he knew he would anyway. He would play their game, partly out of defiance, and partly because he liked the attention. Yep Grim, that's you - one half 'fuck you', and one half 'look at me!'.
So now he was staring down a freshly drilled tunnel in the biggest blackrock mine in the world, preparing to engage in a competition of such ridiculous testosterone fueled idiocy even he was incredulous. At the far end of the tunnel, out of sight around a bend, was a hulking man-machine, a rolling, clanking, smoking, blackrock burning engine of destruction called by his friends "Pile Driver". He was a Mechified built for one purpose - plunging metal spikes through stone, a specialized job requiring plenty of force and apparently not too much in the way of brains. Hell, you're a bit of a blunt instrument yourself, Grim. Which was true. The new tunnel needed rails laid in, and the competition would be to see who could lay the most iron in the shortest span of time. They would start at opposite ends and when the rails met they would measure who had gone the farthest. Grim reached up and tucked his jack-ass ears into a loose coif with his coarse black dreadlocked hair.
Excited miners gathered around and placed bets on Pile Driver, swigged from illicit flasks when the foreman wasn't looking, and generally made asses of themselves. In a sense it was understandable why they would find the spectacle amusing. Ever since Goshi Mining Corp had made the decision to put Karian prisoners of war to forced labor, most of the forest-dwellers had been dying off at a rapid rate. Few Karians were equipped for either the strenuous work, or the noxious fumes. Grim, who had been laboring in the mines for over a year with no sign of slowing, was a complete novelty.
Among members of his tribe, however, Grim was nothing unusual. The Gogajin were known for being able to rip trees out by their roots. Gogajin children are famous for eating whole bushes of poisonous berries and getting only a mild case of gas. If there is a people anywhere on Karia made of sturdier stuff than Gogajin meat and bones no one has heard of them yet.
One of the miners who had replaced most of his face with sensor equipment got right down in front of him and said something obscene and rude. Cheldrun is a harsh, angular language, but coming from an artificial voice box it is even more jagged. Grim, wrapped his fists around the shaft of his sledgehammer and clenched his whole body, the effect was subtle, but awesome.
Fuck you. Look at me.
No matter how much he told himself he didn't have to go through with it, he knew he would anyway. He would play their game, partly out of defiance, and partly because he liked the attention. Yep Grim, that's you - one half 'fuck you', and one half 'look at me!'.
So now he was staring down a freshly drilled tunnel in the biggest blackrock mine in the world, preparing to engage in a competition of such ridiculous testosterone fueled idiocy even he was incredulous. At the far end of the tunnel, out of sight around a bend, was a hulking man-machine, a rolling, clanking, smoking, blackrock burning engine of destruction called by his friends "Pile Driver". He was a Mechified built for one purpose - plunging metal spikes through stone, a specialized job requiring plenty of force and apparently not too much in the way of brains. Hell, you're a bit of a blunt instrument yourself, Grim. Which was true. The new tunnel needed rails laid in, and the competition would be to see who could lay the most iron in the shortest span of time. They would start at opposite ends and when the rails met they would measure who had gone the farthest. Grim reached up and tucked his jack-ass ears into a loose coif with his coarse black dreadlocked hair.
Excited miners gathered around and placed bets on Pile Driver, swigged from illicit flasks when the foreman wasn't looking, and generally made asses of themselves. In a sense it was understandable why they would find the spectacle amusing. Ever since Goshi Mining Corp had made the decision to put Karian prisoners of war to forced labor, most of the forest-dwellers had been dying off at a rapid rate. Few Karians were equipped for either the strenuous work, or the noxious fumes. Grim, who had been laboring in the mines for over a year with no sign of slowing, was a complete novelty.
Among members of his tribe, however, Grim was nothing unusual. The Gogajin were known for being able to rip trees out by their roots. Gogajin children are famous for eating whole bushes of poisonous berries and getting only a mild case of gas. If there is a people anywhere on Karia made of sturdier stuff than Gogajin meat and bones no one has heard of them yet.
One of the miners who had replaced most of his face with sensor equipment got right down in front of him and said something obscene and rude. Cheldrun is a harsh, angular language, but coming from an artificial voice box it is even more jagged. Grim, wrapped his fists around the shaft of his sledgehammer and clenched his whole body, the effect was subtle, but awesome.
Fuck you. Look at me.
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