Promises to Keep [Closed] [End] - Printable Version +- Hydaelyn Role-Players (https://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/mybb18) +-- Forum: Role-Play (https://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/mybb18/forumdisplay.php?fid=27) +--- Forum: Town Square (IC) (https://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/mybb18/forumdisplay.php?fid=21) +--- Thread: Promises to Keep [Closed] [End] (/showthread.php?tid=11395)

Promises to Keep [Closed] [End] - Hammersmith - 04-30-2015 Thematic: Gorillaz- Three Hearts, Seven Seas, Twelve Moons It was a towering mountain of crap overlooking a small farmstead in the Noscean fields.  It was rumored the thing had been standing since before the Calamity 5 years ago.  It was rumored that there was a corprolite golem at it's core kept slumbering by applications of fresh dung.  Left sleeping by some mad mage until whatever final coprophagic cataclysm called for it to rise. Maybe guarding some treasure left under it's stinking mount. None of this was true, of course, but the local farmers liked to screw with city dwellers and predatory merchants.  Every outlander that went digging in the collective farm-hold's shitpile was another joke they could laugh about over grog that evening.   A shared joke they knew would never stop paying out. Good stories don't start with a pile of shit, afterall. This one does. This one starts with one of those farmers perched on the edge of their wagon, sipping from a steel flask.  He was watching something much larger than him dig through the pile of shit.  In between nips from the flask, he shouted to the thing tunneling into Crap Kingdom. "Geezer! Remind me again why you thought this was a good idea?" The thing that looked out of the hole was a mass of rich, blackened loam, and stinking brown.  Every inch of it's skin was covered in waxed leathers and stained the same shade of regret associated with a night spent on the porcelin throne.  It's voice was muffled from the mask tied tight around it's mouth but, even with that, it still sounded like stones grinding in a volcano. "Because y'still owe me for fixin the axel on that cart yer sittin in.  And for m'booze yer drinkin.  More importantly because I got princible y'wee shitball.  " There was a laugh from the cart as the farmer nodded and took another hit from the flask. "So you keep telling us.  What's it got to do with getting waist deep in waste then, eh?" "Because I told someone I'd come back here in a year and pull a stick out of their ass!" Grunted the excremental, who had returned to shoveling. "Lot of work just to make good on a metaphor I say." Quipped the farmer, starting to sway back and forth as another, longer pull from the flask was taken.  And then another.  And another.  As the filth laden laborer 's shovel hit something in the mines of disgust, the farmer had long since fallen backwards into the hay-filled cart, blessedly unconscious both to both toil and stench. The lord of shit, however, was pulling something from the hole.   The first came easy enough, the sickly earth sucking at the length of gnarled, barbed wood as he pulled.  It was a long length of wood, with a massive knot on the end.  Strait as anything.  It was wiped down with a rag before it was tossed into the cart alongside the unconscious farmer. The second length of wood took time.  The earth fought back, resisted.  There was grunting and bracing as the large, filthy man hauled and pulled to get it free of the noisome, spiteful terra firma.  Eventually the thing came free and was held up to the sky for inspection.  Another long length of gnarled wood, filled with barbs and a wide knot on the end.  This one's handle, as it were, had a complication that revealed why it had refused to come free. It had been wedged into a pelvic bone that still hung off the edge like an over-tight sheath. The giant chuckled as he looked at the stick and wiped it down.  A hammer was produced from a belt-loop and used to crack brittle, forgotten bone.  The stick was tossed into the cart along with it's twin and the farmer as the king of shit creek hauled himself out of the hole.  The remains of someone's hips and life were tossed back into the hole as it began to fill and swell with the unstoppable tide of shit from the peak above.   It would be gone by morning.  Not a trace. Under a bright moon, standing in the shadow of Shit Mountain, Hammersmith removed his mask and plucked a cigar and match from where they'd been left on the wagon.  A glittering red eye burned up at the sky alongside a bright, red coal as he spoke. "Never said it was a metaphor, did I?" RE: Promises to Keep [Closed] - Hammersmith - 04-30-2015 Thematic- Bastion OST- Bynn the Breaker Stories are strange when they center on sticks.  Follow where they fall and you'll find a weirder tale woven into the bark and bite. It's dawn in Limsa.  Sea bright sunrises pouring through hollow cliffs and chilly stairwells.  Lighting up wide rooms and workshops. It's in one of those workshops those sticks were waiting.  They were laid out on an anvil. Clean and cleansed of the charnel pit they'd been buried in.  It's where one of the blacksmith's forgemasters found them when they came in to start the day.   He was curious, picked them up, examined the long hawthorne lengths and the weight of the end.  It was good wood.  Being toughened and cured for a year in preservative peat and hellish affluence would do that to some kinds of wood.  Make them stronger, harder, crueler.  He was more curious who'd leave something like this behind but, when the voice from the corner rolled into the empty workshop, that curiosity flickered into fear. "Like what yez see there Jan-boy?" In the corner sat the monster from shit mountain, similarly clean and combed.  He was pulling the fresh locks into painfully tight braids with a methodical precision.  He was patient and waiting, his one red eye locked on "Jan-Boy". "You don't see this kind of method used much Geezer.  Wouldn't think someone your age would bother with something that takes that much time, given how little you might have left." Jan circled around the anvil the sticks were resting on.  It put the metal between him and the giant "Not many left call me Geezer Jan-boy.  Outlived a lot of them.  Might out-live you yet too, now you mention it.  I figure, by that way of thinking, I got plenty of time t'do things right, like them sticks."  The giant ducked his head as he spoke, continuing to braid the lengths of dull white and grey hair. "You were pretty good at not dying.  So you're. what. going to slather these with grease and shove them in your chimney to finish the process?" Quipped Jan.   "Something like that." Grumbled the giant, pinning one last part of hair in place. He kicked a bucket across the floor, the thing sliding on it's bottom side.  Jan looked down into it when it hit his foot.  In it's depths quivered a mass amount of lard. "Don't have a chimney though.  Ain't for five years now. So I came t'see if I can rent one.  Wanted t'borrow your guild's furnace stacks for a little bit.  Give those a proper black treatment after I coat 'em.  Figure I can buy you and the apprentices some drinks as payment for the rental.  I can give coin for use of the furnace after that's done." Jan stopped his check of the stick, looking back over to Hammersmith. "What do you need a furnace for?  You know you're not allowed to carry a weapon in Limsa.  Not after what happened.  Not even if you make it yourself in house, here." Hammersmith had reached up to one of the tool-racks and pulled a wood auger off. "Aye, well. Unless y'can make a sword or axe outta lead, that won't bother me much.  Just need some weight."   Jan set the stick down and stepped away from the anvil, nodding. "Alright, but there's an extra cost on this.  I want to know who you're after. And why."  He kicked the lard-bucket back across to the massive Roe and tossed one of the blackthorne lengths after it. "Simple debt unpaid Jan-boy.  Got a few years interest on it now.  Gotta settle it before I move on t'other things." Mused the giant, one hand scooping a dollop of lard out of the bucket to smooth over the stick.  There were leathers near-by to wrap it in after.  It was going to be a slow process, both coating, packing, and waiting for curing. "There was only one tracker stupid enough to take that job, Geezer.  They're good, but I don't think even you thought they were that good."  Jan sat on the anvil, laying the other length of black-wood over his legs. "Why collect on a bum deal?" "Aye, well. I think different.  And I think they've been holding out on me.  I need t'collect.  Have to.  Besides.  N'old Geezer like me needs a walking stick in his old age. A good one. A fine one.  A lacquered work with brass on the end...." Jan interrupted. "...and molten lead poured into the head to load it?"  The large knot at the top of the stick in his lap was tapped with a knuckle to emphasize. "Maybe."  Grinned Hammersmith. Jan shook his head and stood up, moving for the door. "Apprentices will be in shortly.  Try not to scare them too much."  "Wasn't too long ago I was helpin teach sprats like that Jan-boy.  Won't break em too bad, promise."  Hammer growled from his place near the furnace, still working at a slow and thoughtful pace. Jan was already out the door and gone.  In the guild workshop an old monster sang to itself as the sun rose.  Sang to itself as it worked. RE: Promises to Keep [Closed] [End] - Hammersmith - 04-30-2015 Iron Maiden- Number of the beast. Days are hard to track in Limsa when the mists roll in.  Day and night turn into shades of dark grey and darker grey, always punctuated with points of light straining against the smothering fog.  It was one of the reasons Tywllen liked pulling patrol on those kinds of nights.  The fog muffled the sounds.  Made the world quiet and grey, even in the chaos of the day and, at night, the world was truly still.  The fog seemed to calm the pirate port down a few notches.  Enough for you to breath, just a little, in peace. That illusion was ruined when a manic Hyur broadsided him near the Tempest gate. The man had an already swelling bruise across his face and below that his jaw was hanging loosely.  Someone had broken it.  Given how quickly the Hyur stumbled back to his feet and took out through the gate, they most of done it quickly because the man could RUN.  Tywelln knew he should probably do something.  He was even about to step out in pursuit when a and coiled out of the mist behind him and pulled him back into the guard hut. "Not yet friend.  Not if you like being able to chew." A glance over his shoulder revealed Jandawn, from the smithing guild, a finger held to his lips, pleading for more silence in the cloying fog.  He'd pinched Tywllen's lantern out.  In the dark, the pair of them could hear a lumbering thud of heavy metal at high speed, paired with a foghorn level howl of hate and fury. "I SAID DON'T RUN YOU COWARDLY LITTLE SHIT. I TOLD YOU NOT TO RUN." Something tall and howling rocketed past the hut in pursuit of the wounded Hyur through the dark and the void. Then out the gate like a violent, loud, warmongering star after it's prey.  Tywllen looked over his shoulder at Jan, mouth hung open in confusion.  Jan merely shook his head and waited, holding up his fingers in a silent count down. One. "I. SAID. DON'T. RUN." More than twenty yards out the gate since Jan had started counting.  Whatever was happening was happening at a full sprint. Two The flat, hard, packing sound of meat as something made impact.  The hate-star had caught whatever it was chasing long enough to make contact. Three. The howl of pain that followed trailed off.  Still running away.  Still trying desperately to find safety in the dark fog's embrace.  Both the hunter and the prey had stopped screaming.  Tywllen could hear something dragging in the dark.  A broken leg still being used? A body crawling through the tall grass towards shelter? Four. They'd gotten far enough away that voices were indistinct.  The conversation was both loud, mournful, and filled with pain. Five. The crackling impacts of abused flesh.  Over and over again. Jan dropped his hand, nodding out towards the gates. "And that's why he doesn't come home often." Tywllen poked his head out the guard hut, trying to find some sign of the struggle in the fog. "What in the black hells was that Jan?" "Man trying to find someone.  Man finding out not everyone wants to be found.  No matter how much you pay some people, there's always someone with more coin if need calls." Jan had pulled up the single chair in the guard post and lit the lantern, restoring some light to the small space. "So that was a weasel paying for a doublecross?" Murmered Tywllen as he pulled back into the hut. "Something like that.  That was a weasel finding out it's best not to take sides between two demons.  Chose poorly the moment he signed on with either of them."  nodded Jan."I knew he'd go running.  Thought I'd come back and spare a Yellow-jacket getting their head stove in.  He's a little blind when he's mad.  Think my skull's still got a dent from a mood like that when he was still teaching." "Er...thanks? I...think?" Muttered Jan "I'll have to report this.  Willing to make a statement?  Sounds like you know what's going on." Jan was already on his feet and heading for the street.  "I'd let it lay.  Whatever he's chasing is personal.  He knows he's not welcome here in Lominsa.  It's why that guy was hiding here.  Whatever he's doing is important enough to make him step foot in the town again and no amount of warrants would have stopped what just happened."  Jan took a step out into the barely lit cotton-white fog around the lantern of the guard-hut. "If you ask me offically, I'm going to say I don't know anything.  Because I don't want him to find a reason to come back home with a grudge the next time he's in the area." Jan slipped off into the fog without another word, melding into the walls of mist and the obscured umbra beyond.   Tywllen stood, silent. He knew what he had to do. He was just going to wait a little while to do it. Maybe the beast would have moved on by the time backup arrived to help him muster the courage to do it.