Epilogue: Keeping Up With The Kestrels
GM Kenstrom has written the Epilogue for the Keeping Up With The Kestrels storyline that wrapped recently. It was a year-long journey of intrigue, plot twists, and envelope-pushing revelations that challenged the proprieties of our mores. What a cast of characters!
Category: Towns
Topic: Wehnimer’s LandingDate: 12/21/2017 11:14 AM CSTFrom: GS4-KENSTROMSubj: Keeping up with the Kestrels – EpilogueI had about 8 ideas but I cut some because I want to explore them more naturally in-game without the cart before the horse so to speak.I also decided to shorten the length of the epilogues a bit this time around, just because, I think they get my point across without a bunch of extra flare.
Enjoy!
The tattered end of his grey cloak swept across the floor as he approached the bar.
The hour was late, and only a handful of inhabitants sat at various tables or corners within the bar, some of them watching as he entered.
He sat upon the stool, setting his dented helm down on the countertop and nodded as the barkeep slid him a bottle of ale. He looked up, steel grey eyes staring coldly into the bartender’s face and suddenly the tavern grew quiet.
“Where is she?” Thadston snarled more than asked.
The barkeep furrowed his brow, “Where is who, sir?”
With a blur of speed, Thadston smashed the bottle on the counter and lunged forward, driving the jagged and broken glass bottle into the barkeep’s face with gruesome results. He leapt up to his feet and kicked back with one leg, sending his stool flying towards another man who had now been encroaching on the commander. The stool broke against the attacker and he stumbled away.
Thadston grabbed his helm and hurled it at another attacker who came from his left, the side of the helmet breaking the man’s nose and dropping him to the ground. Thadston growled as an arrow arced across the room and bit into his shoulder, but he simply grabbed the arrow, pulled it from his flesh and flipped it around and charged the archer. His assailant was caught off guard by the man’s speed, and Thadston drove the arrow into his throat.
Effortlessly, he drew his sword from its sheath and had it to the neck of the last person in the room.
“Where is she?” He snarled again
“Up…upstairs…” the younger man whimpered, before suddenly having Thadston’s sword cleave him from neck to groin.
The grey-eyed man charged up the stairs like a rampaging bear, door after door splintering into a thousand pieces with each kick. He reached the final door and bashed it open, only to find a half dozen bodies scattered about, their blood painting the floor and walls like a crimson tapestry. Standing near a wooden chair and some frayed rope bindings, stood a woman with wide hips and curly bluish-black hair. She twirled two polished daggers between her fingers before placing them back into her baldric. Her dark brown eyes regarded Thadston and she smirked.
“What took you so long?” Casiphia smiled.
Thadston did not.
The air shimmered before her.
She watched helplessly as the caverns began to fade, the others watching her, many of their faces twisted in anger or scorn. She reached out with her hand and her mind. She tried to grab one of them, any one of them, to try to latch on and not be left behind. Then, in a final desperate attempt, she tried to twist one of them, any one of them, to try to pass along one final strike.
Then just like that, the plinite cavern was gone.
Naimorai stood for a moment, frozen in disbelief over what had just happened. Her mind raced with a thousand different thoughts, calculations, and she dare not admit it, but fears. She heard the stomping feet of the Chastonian soldiers approaching to where the ruckus had been, and so she quickly slipped into an alleyway, tucked away into the shadows. She held her breath as they passed.
Just then she turned to leave the other way and she bumped into a young man who had been reading through a thick tome and paying no attention to his path.
“Oh! I am so sorry!” The young man said as he fumbled and dropped his book. Naimorai was quick to bend and pick it up. She flipped the tome open, viewing its inside contents and a scribbled name.
“Peter?” She asked.
The young man nodded, taking back his book.
Naimorai smiled, “I’m going to need your help.”
The faint light of a torch cast shadows in the divot of the scars along the man’s scalp in the shape of a crown.
He marched silently, dragging a body behind him, before hoisting it up and tossing it onto a pile of other corpses. “These are all we’ve collected for today.” He then turned and positioned himself along a wall within the earthen chamber.
Shambling out of the shadows came an old woman, her back gnarled and bent, her fingers long and twisted, with her eyes green and glowing, like two swirling pools of acid. Her hair was frazzled and her scalp speckled with blisters. Raznel cackled at the sight of the corpse, “Oh, that will do just fine my boy, that will do just fine!”
The old witch sifted through the bodies, running her jagged fingernails along their arms and faces, muttering to herself, and at times licking her lips. “Yes, these will be fine for now.”
The young man turned to leave, but the witch stopped him.
“Disean?”
The young man nodded, his eyes cold and solemn.
Raznel smiled, “I’m going to need your help.”
The pool of blood began to bubble as the blue-eyed man slowly emerged from its depths.
Two Tehiri women approached, carrying a long red robe for the man and draping it over his flesh as he ascended from the sanguine pool. He nodded to them both before crossing the chamber and pausing before a smooth obsidian wall covered in archaic sigils. Hovering in the air beside him, was a red orb. He held out his hand, and the orb floated down into his palm. His eyes went to the sphere, regarding it, as if studying something within.
One of the Tehiri women interrupted the silence, “As the harvest comes closer, what will be done now, lovib o keke?”
Grishom Stone grinned from ear to ear, as the scarlet glow of the orb bathed his face in a crimson light.
“We will make the heavens bleed.”
A cold wind passed through the woods, stirring the deep blanket of brown fur needles covering the ground. Snow continued to fall, gradually blotting out the earthen tones of the forest floor. Heralded by a heavy snort, a large brown boar slowly moved south across a moonlit valley, approaching an expansive black forest.
Stretching out like a blemish against the natural surroundings, the black forest looked foreboding, resembling a tangled nest of huge black roots, twisted and coiled over one another like a gnarled black ribcage.
The boar sniffed at the ground and then suddenly paused, as if on alert.
With blinding speed, a length of thorn-covered black roots burst out of the forest and speared the side of the boar! The animal squealed and frantically tried to charge off, but the roots pulled the beast to the ground and dragged it into the depths of the black woods.
Shortly after, the dying cry of the beast was replaced by the silence of night.
-GM Kenstrom-
Waylayer of Wehnimer’s Landing
Human GuruStrongest foe vanquished: Roblar
https://gswiki.play.net/Keeping_up_with_the_Kestrels
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Kim – pulling the strings that give life to Rhayveign
~Kayse’s figment of her imagination.
Retser says, “Can you ask for easier alters so I don’t have to scrounge through obscure documents to find out what you’re asking for? xoxo.”