Brothers Boulderheart, Earthsoul, and Erkeborn crouched around a tapped ale keg in the heart of the Chamber of the Seal. The air was almost freezing, which was why the once-sinister chamber had been converted into one of the most holy sites in Argatha. As Brother Boulderheart filled his gallon flagon with the last dregs of their current keg, and Brothers Herrman and Alarik carefully maneuvered a fresh one to replace it from the endless stacks lining the walls, Brother Erkeborn raised his own tiny flagon in a clawlike, palsied hand and sighed wistfully. "Wouldn't it be great if our Lord and Brew-Master-in-Chief wasn't trapped behind the fragments of the Seal? If one day - like today - the last shards of the Seal just burst, and there our Lord was? And he'd brought mead - really great mead, like Mictlan's Best?"
This contemplative reverie was suddenly interrupted by Brother Earthsoul - already deep into his cups - hurling his twenty-pound marble mug at the bent, frail Ulmsman. Fortunately for him, the Acting-Chairman-in-Chief of the Party Planning Committee wasn't a particularly good aim even when sober, if the histories from the dark days before the coming of the Ulmsmen were to be believed. The mug glanced heavily off Erkeborn's shoulder, leaving him crumpled unconscious on the cavern floor, but still alive. As junior brothers skulking outside the inner circle rushed in to set the wound and inscribe ribald figures on his face, Brother Earthsoul lurked to his feet shouting angrily that there was no finer mead than Eburhart Sapphire Banner. Brother Bitterface, who was only just arriving to the council meeting and thus quite testy from his thirst, laid the august Oracle out cold while bellowing that he'd not hear Anselm Dark slandered. The tumbling behemoth fell against Captain Pebblemined, the Doorman-in-Chief of the Iron Caverns, and spilled his drink, prompting an angry vow that Bitterface would pay in blood for every drop of Old Mictlan wasted as the Pale One threw himself at the larger Oracle. The junior brothers who had been tending their fallen fellow felt the courage churning in their stomachs get the best of them, and they charged into the developing melee with staves in hand shouting that none could match Schultz Mead, the mead that made Ulm famous. With that, chaos reigned. Countless brothers of YΓA poured out of the aisles of kegs, as did a few handful of lumbering Oracles and Pale Ones. The smooth-sculpted floor of the Cavern of the Seal grew slick with blood and spilled drinks, and it was beginning to look like it would be a two-or-three-day council meeting like any other, sure to push back Argathan science by years when the final death toll was calculated.
And then, a miracle occurred. It was poor, fallen Brother Erkeborn who noticed it first. The broken old Junior-Chairman-in-Chief of the Refreshments Subcommittee, having just come to with one working arm and half his tongue bitten off, mutely waved and cried to make himself heard, to no avail. The melee continued. But the glow he had seen emanating from the broken scraps of the Seal grew brighter. And brighter. And brighter. The combatants slowly fell still. A tall, smooth shadow appeared, and one by one, the brothers of Argatha fell (or pulled themselves up) to their knees. Silhouetted where the Seal had once stood was the Lord of Strength. The Guardian of Existence. The Old Old One Himself. Keystone. And He'd brought mead. Really great mead. Like, Keystone Thin. And as all the Argathans swarmed forward to get a drink - and pay homage to their Lord, of course - the bitterness was washed from their faces, and their hearts.
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Topic: Dominions 4 Round 4.01: wrapping up/AAR (Read 54838 times)