Turn 5, Wherein Revelations Are ManyEmilia, wondering if perhaps her sales pitch could have been more carefully chosen, walks out of the inn, her palm squarely on her face. Perhaps she should seek out people less inclined to misconstrue her job-seeking behavior. She wanders the streets of Bantuk's Bend, but fails to see anyone at all in need of physical assistance - partly because this town is pretty dead in terms of any activity, partly because a lot of the people who do seem to be doing physical work seem to have a great number of helpers - job seekers like her, no doubt, but much more established and presumably far more hungry and thirsty by virtue of actually living here for some unknown reason. The streets are remarkably full of the starved and the penniless, both men and women, all of them looking for even the tiniest amounts of money to wring out of the few activities of interest in the area.
All in all, Bantuk's Bend seems to have its fill of the unemployed, particularly in the physical labor department. It seems odd jobs will be virtually impossible to obtain around here, since the unemployed that do exist in the area are no doubt much more desperate and could underbid her rates in a heartbeat. Even the town's notice boards are noticeably bare of anything beyond a few announcements of executions and such - there are parts of one of Bantuk's messages to the general populace, but large parts of it appear to have been torn off, possibly to fuel some fire or another.
* * * * *
Derek decides to give Ehran a compliment he has never heard before.
"You know, Ehran, you're a clever man. These are reasonable questions, and I will give God's honest answers. It is, indeed, easier to be as naked as God's will when it is hot - but who said following God's will was easy?! Who said being saved took no effort, took no will?! Your friend suffered, it is true. And I say not that he is a right eejit. But I do say, God would have ye all be prepared. Prepared for the end times, by embracing nudity. And prepared for nudity, by not fecking well going where it is right freezing. And prepared for going where it is right freezing, by being prepared to lose your bits, if you don't have faith strong enough to express itself as sheer wanton heat! Perhaps it is the sheer faith that prepared me to even lose me bits that was rewarded when Karse granted me the burnin'. Who knows. But look, Ehran. You're a poor man, right? And what is nudity, if it is not equality! Fairness! Naked, we are all just men! Or women, of course. But naked, we are all nude! There ain't no lords and peasant, or rich and poor, or... richly dressed or raggedly so! We are all just naked, and blessed in the eyes of God! So you see, this is why we should be naked, even in the cold - we must show our faith, for Karse will reward those who show their faith, by lightly reducing their temperature during the end times, such that they survive, without heatstroke. If you are not prepared to show your faith, or even, if you are ignorant of the ways of God - which you no longer are, luckily for you, having ears wise enough to open - if you are not prepared to show your faith, then beware of the frozen bits which droppeth off," he explains, rising from his seat with a pint in one hand. Ehran rises with him, looking somewhat intrigued.
"Come, Ehran. Let me show you some proper faith. Some proper powerful Godstuff. Bring yer drink. And yes, you don't have to be naked till yer ready, like.""Godstuff?" he wonders as he stands up, also with a pint in one hand, and follows Derek, who leads him outside into the street, where the skies begin to grow dark. Derek looks upward, and Ehran does so as well with bated breath.
"Look at this. Oh Karse, please show us how I am prepared to meet thine terrifying-whilst-naked cold!" he says, and focuses his drunken intellect upward, his mind bending and twisting freely as the fundamental lies take form. In this case, the form is that of a small ball of fire, flying upward for a bit before burning up and dissipating. Ehran, despite the lackluster performance, still looks impressed.
"Ooh! If I was all being with the nakedness, would I be getting to do that?" he asks.
* * * * *
Wilhelm, though disappointed at leaving the obvious hub of activity in the town, realizes that he can't go back - what if he were trapped in one of those hideous conversations about weighing salt or whatever it is merchants talk about? Unacceptable! He must make himself suitably foppish and unrecognizable first, he suspects, so that none will dare bore him with such trivia, or so that he would at least seem entirely a plausible sort to turn around and walk off when somebody so much as brings up the subject of the dreadful state of today's economy in conversation.
Wandering through the town, however, he discovers that any and all establishments that would sell him anything he might care about or use appear to be closed at this hour - clearly, a proper gentleman does all of their shopping in the afternoon around here. However, he does notice an establishment of interest - a drinking establishment, to be exact. An upscale one, no less, with what seems like a great deal of patrons, both lovely ladies and jovial gentlemen having fun - quite the contrast to the formal atmosphere of the inn. And, judging from the way the guard outside does not see fit to stop him, Wilhelm feels that he would fit right in without a whole lot of trouble amidst these individuals.
* * * * *
Brennus is quite cautious of revealing information about himself - after all, who knows how noose-happy the locals are? Presumably very - there was an air of boredom about this town, and boredom does breed excessive cruelty.
"Do? Well I do a bit a this an a bit of that. I trap for furs when the mood strikes, hunt, I'll do anything that requires true strength.""Anything that requires true strength?" the woman asks.
"Anything that requires true strength," Brennus confirms, his eyes narrowing into slits as he nods.
"Hm... well... that is quite interesting," she replies, leaning forward, then leaning back.
"It actually isn't. In fact, with my current lifestyle, I need to come into town to ward off creeping insanity regularly," he admits.
"Oh."There is a moment of grim silence.
"So, how about those mountains, eh?" Brennus asks with a smile.
"Mountains?" the woman wonders.
"Yeah, mountains. What's up with them?""Er... quite a few things, I would guess. They're pretty high up mostly.""Indeed. I've always wanted to explore the mountains, but I've never really known where to start," Brennus confesses.
"There's dragons there now, I hear," the woman offers a tad nervously.
"Oh? But don't people live there?""They do, yes... there's actually a lot of towns up there. Heh. Me and my father are actually from around there," she elaborates.
"Don't the dragons eat them regularly? Or set them on fire and then eat them?" Brennus wonders.
"No, no, not at all," she says, shaking her head.
"They live pretty nicely with the dragons - you just need to give them all of your dead, and then they're fed and there's no corpses, and everyone's happy. Erm, generally.""Generally?""Well, yes. There's no corpses anymore. And we're gravediggers by trade. So... yes, not everyone likes the arrangement perfectly. We didn't have much to do, so we moved north. There's a lot of dead here, and somebody needs to bury them all. And it's easier to dig 'round here.""Oh. Say, you ever hear of a mountain peak that looks like a gravestone? A sort of knobby thing on top of a regular kind of mountain? With a town located at the foot, or maybe on the slope?" Brennus ventures to ask, veering away from the corpse talk.
"That's Giltie. The town, that is. They've got doors of gold, they do. Got more gold than they know what to do with, and nobody else in the mountains wants it, either. And the mountain is Grobbisol Peak. Very distinctive, and you can see it from pretty far off on a good day. There's many of those in the mountains, unlike down here. Blasted rain.""Well, is it really that bad here? You have work. That's good.""That's the only good thing about it, actually, between the depressing people, death in the air, druid arsonists, the rare orc and the rampant disease. And even the work there is too much of. Can hardly handle it all these days, frankly, there's so many corpses. Corpses everywhere, I tell you," the lady explains, looking slightly miffed, though not at Brennus.
"I keep looking for an assistant gravedigger-""Nuuuu!" her father interjects, sounding displeased and lightly confused.
"Shush, father. You're getting on in the years, and we need to keep up with the times. It's either that or getting a husband," she tells her father, who gives her a gaze full of disapproval while she, in turn, looks at Brennus again.
"I've been looking for someone, like I said. Somebody to help me dig graves, so that my father can have a rest once in a while, you know? It can be hard work at times, but there is money in it. You did well with the caskets, I saw. Maybe you'd be interested?" she asks, looking a tad hopeful.
* * * * *
Edwin is a little curious about what sort of thing he may have just destroyed, and conducts a close examination - he can't really see, but from the size and general shape he deduces that it's probably a sign of some kind. And, considering he can't see a dang thing anyway, he just sits down and waits for conditions to improve - trying to discover more about the area under these conditions can only end humorously, tragically or as a mixture of both.
Of course, it takes a while for conditions to improve, but the Moon prevails eventually, freeing itself of whatever dark force was enslaving it and shining down on Edwin's path once more, and at once he sees the vague outlines of a dark, entirely lightless town. A town in quite a state of ruin, he deduces, from how many of the roofs have evidently collapsed. And this, as far as he can tell, is the main street of the place. If there is anyone at all living here, they seem to be very good at hiding this fact.
Derek: 5 MP
Wilhelm: 6 MP
Emilia: 5 MP
Edwin: 5 MP
Brennus: 5 MP
Okay, so, from tomorrow onward I'll be gone semi-outside the reach of the Internet for two weeks, so don't expect any input from me in that period. Sorry for the delays!
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Topic: Birth of a Deity: Turn 17, Multitudinous Failures of Words (Read 26112 times)