This is a tale of many rogues - It is a small saga of heroes breaking ancient bonds, of inky black ichor spilling through open eyes like baleful tears, and of curses being woven through generations with the bitter sting of unlucky ages past.
Let me tell you the dreaded tale of Skogenby. Skogenby, the storied town of the northenmost point of Anglafëll in the sainted wastes of Oeldgur, where the Chambling sea slams, bites and writhes deep into the land itself. Near Skogenby, an ancient tomb lies - a pyramid made of a hollowed-out-mountain - lies. Here, our tale of calamity and tragedy will play out. Such lay the land!
And with those words i will begin.
Chapter 1
Athothes, a priest-guard of the jackalheaded god of the dead, travels with Krummi, a warrior of an old tribe, a lithe berserker who lives under the sign of the raven, to slay the draugr queen. They come upon Skogenby a foggy morning, as hot as it can be in the cold winter months. As they tread inside the blessed log-gate and onto the bustling morning market, the rough smell of heady spices in the air assault their senses. thunder strikes the mountain behind them. Boulders fall. And then come the braying.
A horse is thrown over many streets, splintering a house to matchsticks. A woman is stuffed into a sack, and there is much wailing. Many such writhing bags lie on the back of a manbeast standing at the height of four men, like a twisting snail on top a halfman. Gaunt, with arms languidly hanging down to its knees, the blackskinned troll bellows curses towards our rogues as it claps one of its sacks
Athothes pulls out his trusty arakh, a crescent sword akin to a khopesh, making the first íncantations of battle as Krummi occupies the heltroll. Not for long though, as a single lazy swipe of the brute sends Krummi flying, then tumbling against the ragged cobbled road, into a house, ribs and logs creaking from the blow. Then Athothes os charged, whom without a word, his god pronouncing the ill fortune of the troll in his stead with the wind as its voice, slices into the ankles of the fell thing. With grim determination, Krummi stands himself upright on his shield, as the troll twists and snaps its curved spine to face him. With its distended arms, it claws itself towards him, leaving Athothes in a cloud of dust and upheaved cobble, a gash cast deep in his chest. As the arms of the troll pound into Krummi’s shield, nearly splintering it on the middle, the two rogues lock eyes. with a bellow, Skefi, Krummi's trusty sword is planted like a nail in the trolls hand. Athothes senses this opportunity and lodges the kopesh sternly in scalp of the beast.
As the thing dies, it spasms and reverts back to the form of a middle-aged woman, whom with a baleful finger points to the jarls house atop Skogenby.
“you, you hateful creatures, you took my children. Curse you to the tenth generation.”
It gargles as its still functioning eye rolls up its head and thick, pink brainmatter desecrates the womans face. Dead.
Krummi sees a vision of the woman having her children taking by the jarl. She swears revenge and seeks out the draugr queen in the mountain tombs. There, she is gifted with great power and claimed as a taker of men - a troll. His conscious is slammed back into his body. He hears a raven croak, but no raven is present.
In another part of Skogenby, at the very same time, five rogues fight another troll and gains entry to the jarls house as the horrors buried under the town reveals itself to them.
Hear ye, hear ye, the rest of the tale will soon be told. (i will update the post with the next chapter.)
chapter 2
Gwydion, tree-talker, druid of the ancient woods, she who mends with mushrooms had seen in the clearest water of the lake that she must go where it went, to its end. Over the Oeldgur wastes she went, and on those fields, where winds over the treestumps howl, she met other storied rogues. A swordwielder, shrouded in endless sorrows and guilt, carrying an amulet that seemed of better times, reminding him the small glitters of good. With him came Anraz the foreboding, a maddened man in whispering armour, whose eyes shone in the hues of the aurora. As they tread the last thousand feet to Skogenby in silence, the tomb sorcerer, ancient seer held captive by his lifegiving sarcophagus, joined them. Celen was his name.
Such calamity they would bring to the town of skogenby!
As they are welcomed by the sacred wooded arch, there is the shortest moment of silence in the windblown, birdfilled morn. Then the wood creaked as if under great duress. The gategods must have cried over the illfate the bore into the town.
Just then, a ruckus arose in the other half of skogenby. And there they ran, but they were stopped. A great beast, a mountaindweller, a troll, had barred their way as it created a plaza of broken men and houses around it. There they fought it. Anraz called on the truths he had found in the book of the crystal library as he tore through the city, mutilating troll as well as the inhabitants of skogenby.
One bloodied hour later, they stand at the corpse of a trollturned lady, as Celen and Anraz are bombarbed with the heinous truth, peering deep into the mountain as the town was filled with the wails of the women and the creaking of houses falling apart. A great heartbeat echoed through their bones - the greetings of the draugr queen. The swordwielder, Zygmunt Molotch, had broken his ribs in the fight, and Gwydion rushed to his side, to grant him the boons of the woodcaps, whose spores mend the direst of wounds, Krummi came to them.
Many lie dead, and long storied names were lost that fated day. From the mountain came thunderous laughter, as if a thousand voices joined in chorus. The ground seemed to writhe as they carried the still living to the house of the jarl.
