Fair warning: This one's gonna be pretty long.
This is the tale of Cerol Wurtumwist. A reisdent of a hopeless land. A land in which there were no cities, nor hamlets, nor homes of any kind. A land where dwarves, elves, goblins, and the like were naught but myth. A land with no gods or hope of any kind. Cerol knew this as truth, and sought to create a new hope for civilized life.
In the year 100, Cerol Wurtumwist found herself at a small human cave in the middle of a desert. She stayed there only for a small while. She had to be on her way, hoping to find a land full of grass and life. During her brief stay, Cerol Wurtumwist set off with the aid of a local man named Slagka. Hope or no hope, bogeymen would not stop her dreams. They traveled south, during their trip they everything from giraffes to hippos. All animals fled in fear; fleeing from the strange beasts that walked on two legs and hunted with tools. And while at points the trip seemed hopeless, Cerol and Slagka climbed sandy dunes and walked around rivers (for Slagka could not swim), until they found a small, benign desert to sleep in.
It was there Cerol found feather trees. She hastily crafted a diorite axe to fall trees and build a village. Try as she might, though, the trees stood. She chopped, but the bark resisted. She swung, but she might as well have missed. She hacked the tree, but it was if she was swinging only her hopes and dreams onto the tree. She swiped and swung for hours on end, with no results. Anger turned into despair and disbelief into destructive realization as the stone axe bounced off its intended target, and the sun began to sink below the horizon. Believing this to be her last hope, she slashed the tree with the first thing she could grab; a large copper dagger.
It worked.
She hacked and slashed the tree down, and joyously continued with the rest, as Slagka hunted down every honey badger in sight. It was not long before Cerol began building a house with the help of Slagka. It was slow, to the point of taking multiple days, but by their hands they built a small home. They named the surrounding area the Sands of Hope; for this was a place where a man could rest his feet for a night, or stay for a lifetime. Where humanity could finally rise above a life left in the faltering hands of luck. A home not only for Cerol and Slagka, nor humans, but for dreams and ambitions. But work could not end with a single house.
Cerol and Slagka quickly began quick work on a tavern to attract company; something to catch the ear of an adventurer or poet. Again, long hours were spent constructing. Cerol gathered logs, Slagka built the walls, occasionally trading off each other's task back and forth.
Eventually the building itself, while empty was done. Slagka went back to hunting honey badgers while Cerol began working on tables and chairs for the newly established tavern.
Unfortunately, it was during this time coyotes came into the small encampment, seeking the succulent taste of honey badger remains. Slagka, of course, took this as an opportunity to hunt
en masse. While Cerol worked tirelessly, Slagka was out of sight for hours, hunting everything that moved. After most of the work had been finished, Slagka still had yet to return. Cerol slept, but Slagka was not at the edge of the bed. Cerol worked, but Slagka was not there to assist. Animals prowled the sands, yet Slagka was not there slaughtering them to his heart's content. It soon dawned on Cerol that Slagka had perished somewhere out in the sands. While the prospect of being prone to bogeymen during nightly travels was sufficiently frightening, and the concept of an increased work load was heavy on the soul, the loss of Slagka, the only other person who built the Sands of Hope without a question or any doubts. The dawning of such a fact winded Cerol mentally, but physically, she carried on with the building of chairs and tables until the tavern looked presentable. She worked; she felt hollow, but she worked. When the end of the day came, she finally decided to lay claim to the site herself. She did her best not to falter, knowing that Slagka was not here to witness it. She opened her mouth to say it...
But she did not know the words.
She didn't know what to say, or what group she was claiming it for. She just knew she couldn't find the words. Was her work pointless? Would there be any meaning to it? Without any rulership of any sort, the camp would just remain another stop on an adventurer's journey to nowhere. Things were not looking good.
And that's it actually, I paused it there, and I'm unsure what to do now (not that I'm actually asking for help). All I know is now I'm stuck in a rut. I'm finding it hard to continue without any clear objective. It also doesn't help that I saved in the middle of a lag storm, thanks to the endless amount of corpses and coyotes. So, for anyone who was hoping a happy ending of some kind..
Sorry for the cliffhanger.
Also, yes, I did mod the game to make large coppers substitute for battle axes. Stone axes just don't work, apparently.
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Topic: Hope in the Sands (Read 597 times)