The Journal of Nine Niyatharathi Emeada Athe (Nine Shovelmurders the Eternal Berry of Rock), ElfCHAPTER 6: TIME'S ARROW24 Hematite, evening. The castle guards jumped at my suggestion that we make a sortie for supplies; their lives have been aimless of late; their general died only last month, and it seems that none of them had the appropriate rank to step forward and take his place.. At the advice of my companions, I have decided that we will first make for Tongsrace, a dwarven outpost in the southwest that was founded within the last decade but has apparently been abandoned for unknown reasons. I am expecting an uneventful visit given that every other abandoned site that I've seen in my travels has been relatively benign.
We pass a battlefield littered with human corpses. Their garb is all the same, suggesting a one-sided slaughter; their dessicated faces are unknown to my companions but their purses are filled with coins recently-minted within the borders of Omon Woge, the realm once ruled from Dinnerwandered by the vampire lord Teshil Despairdaub. Since his death (so my guides tell me), the empire has dissolved into warring fiefdoms ruled by the emperor's former vassals.
To my shock, the face on the coins is familiar to me- a face that I first saw on a hideous statue in the stinking pit of Legendfountains- the notorious Logic Legendfinder!
"Oh, I remember that one", pipes up a grizzled oldster, squinting at the silver coin. "He passed through around 20 years ago, back when the old laird still lived. A very ambitious, active fellow he were, too; he killed the dragon Uslot Flareglows, which pleased the emperor so kindly that he granted him a deed of lands out east somewhere. A fort and a couple of hamlets. Seem's he's setting himself up as a king these days, if these coins are anything to go by." He absentmindedly bites the silver disc. "Adult'rated. Should've guessed. All these petty kings are the same, flash and procession on the outside but no innate nobility, no divine sanction, no ability to command mens' loyalty except for pay- fat lot of good it did these saps here. That's why our general, Komo Gleefulcuts, never pledged to any of them, and why we still guard the ramparts in Dinnerwandered. Komo was a great man- he fought off the werebeast Amxu Spiderdog when she seemed poised to overrun Wandercanyons- but he died of old age only a month before your arrival."
"And you say that your emperor- the cave fish man vampire- had noble, divine sanction?"
"Aye, he were a proper king, that one. The last this world will ever see."
"What makes you say that?"
"The world is dying, bairn; can't ye see? Abandoned cities everywhere; roads grown over and night creatures everywhere with none to put them down. There's no children been born these past 20 years and more, anywhere, except among the dwarves. Men leave their planted fields and turn to banditry, or hang themselves, or make deals with demons, or fall upon their own family members like wolves, biting and tearing. The last with the true noble blood have died and there's none to take their place, and the world will soon pass into another age."
"That can't be true! In the Conderacies of God I saw scores of human and elf babies! And in the forest retreats..."
"Child, I don't know much of the ways of the elves, and I suspect you don't neither, but I do know a little about history. I heard you talking with Vanod last night. You were born among the men in the west, in the Confederacies of God? The queen you named as ruling has been dead some 200 years now, and most of the bishoprics overrun by goblins. We heard of the burning of Budopictham when I was a wee child, and you said you were born there when it was a great city. If what you told Vanod is true, you must have been born around 860-someth..."
"That's mad! If I had lived 200 years I would remember it! I'm only 18!"
"And how many of those 18 years did you spend in the forest retreats, hm? You mark me, child; your kind have foreseen the end; they smoked it long before we did, and they made arrangements that you ken nothing of. When I was a lad we saw the mountain elves pass through Dinnerwandered on their way to the Land of Amethysts, a great procession, barefoot the whole way and harried at every step by the woods-elves. In the forest retreats the wood-elves made a secret pact with some power or other, and time is not the same there. You did right to leave that fools' paradise, but the world beyond the woods will not have much more for you, soon enough. You will never know motherhood, nor lasting love, nor a peaceful death among friends. In another 50 years my kind will all be dead, the dwarves dug under, and the elves locked away from you forever; and if you live, it will be just you, child; you, the goblins, and the beasts of the field until the end of the world."
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Topic: The Museum: Adventure mode succession world (DF 34.11) (Read 819368 times)