Akkad.*The harem of the upper tower. There's a table with a gameboard and some dancers that are... dancing. There are two men sitting on huge pillows. A warm breeze is blowing from outside, where it is day*
Jafar, The grand vizier of Akkad, coughed loudly and sneered on the gameboard as the sultan made his move.
"Checkmate, Oh grand sultan Suleyman. You see... when i move my cavalry like this... and the tower like this... You are defeated your highness"
Suleyman cast a critical look on the board. Finally he sighed and leaned back.
"Jafar... This playing of games, and you always seem to win, is becoming boring... Shouldn't we be steering the sultanate towards greater glory?"
Jafar lifted his eyebrow at the sultan. He was really good at lifting eyebrow. Everyone knew that he was the true ruler around here, steering the sultan in the right direction.
"Surely you know that we have very little information about our surroundings, Oh sun of desert?"
The sultan waved dismissively to the Jafar, sweeping his pieces from the board at the process.
Jafar bowed and gathered the pieces, dropping them to elaborate wooden box with golden handles.
At his leaving Jafar only had one thought: He needed to get rid of the sultan.
Meanwhile, at the tower depthsThe summoning circle was pulsating with the flow of magic as the liches waved their hands over it, chanting somesort of spell.
slowly a twisted stoneform began to rise from the circle, revealing itself to be somesort of winged creature. In its wake, nine more rose from the circle, their footsteps thumping on the cave floor.
Then, they unfolded their stonewings and rose into air, defying all the laws of gravity.
"Gargoyles, we've noted our summons used in the north. The caravan needs help and reinforcing. Fly there and protect them."
At the streets of the cityThere was a scuffle at one of the merchants stall as three of them were talking about their things in their midday nap.
"Have you heard? The people of the merchants guild are forming an union of ALL merchants in the city! You do know of course that previously only the wealthiest have been members..."
"Yeh, well i cant but wonder what they mean with that..."
Somewhere in the desertYusuf was examining the dirt under his finger nails, researching its movement on the bumpy camel ride. At one moment he was incredibly bored, and then he was full of action. There was a gigantic desert scorpion in front of the caravan. It hadnt seemed to notice them.
The caravan came to an immediate halt. The merchants went into huddle to think what they should do, and eventually decided to attack the thing, since avoiding it would be nigh impossible in the open desert.
The merchants picked up took their hunting bows and quivers, while Rahas, the one with the control talisman of the skeleton defenders of the caravan went about to raise the skeletons.
There were several bags on some camels that were actually full of human bones rather than merchandise. Rahas walked over to them quickly and fumbled with the small metallic circle inscribed with the words required to raise the skeletons and to put them down.
As he was incantating the sentence, he heard a shout from behind him, probably indicating that the scorpion had spotted them.
The bones rose from the sacks and quickly formed into human skeletons. Rahas commanded them to arm themselves from the weapons carried by the next camel and to attack the scorpion.
The giant scorpion charged towards the merchants, its target clearly the meaty camels.
"Alright, aim for the eyes! And DON'T get onto its way or it will rip you apart!"
The skeletons charged silently at the scorpion. The creatures clashed in a fraction of a second, the skeletons swarming over the scorpion hacking, slashing and stabbing it. Two of the skeletons got crushed by the gigantic pincers, but soon enough the scorpions head was full of arrows, its eyes pierced and it was far too enraged to attack coordinately. It charged through madly, reached the camels and slashed one with its tail and continued to cut two of them in half after that.
At that point the creature was so full of wounds and stab wounds that it simply collapsed onto the ground. It was promptly finished off.
The merchants looked around and sighed. The greatest harm in this would be the loss of goods and cathing the scared camels tumbling around in one big snake of camels.
Later timeAt the desert, northern caravanThe merchants had traveled quite a bit northwards when they began to see shapes gliding through the sky towards them. This set them on alert, but soon they realised the flying creatures coming to them were gargoyles, and as such most certainly agents of the tower.
In few minutes, the gargoyles had reached them, one of them handing the merchants a message.
Signed, sealed and sent from the higher authority of the Sultanate of Akkad.
Northern merchant caravan, as per se of the decree of the merchants guild, must seek out any possible traderoutes to new civilizations.
To further this goal, we now order you to head straight to the northern jungle and to spy any possible traces of ancient civilizations. If some are found, you are to direct your travel to the possible heart of this cilization.
These gargoili are ordered to protect the caravan and do your bidding.
Yusuf put the note away and examined the other merchants. They were clearly uneasy.
"Well then Effendi's, we're given directions. We must thrust into that... jungle ahead"
The merchants gave a notable sigh. Jungles never bode good for camel caravans, with its numerous predators lurking in the trees and general dangerousness. At least they now had ten gargoyles at their disposal.
Southern caravanThey had traveled in the desert for... seven weeks now. The time had not been spent in boredness, since the two carpets they had brought with them had been taken into creative use. racing.
Even now two of the merchants were speeding low above ground hurling insults to each other, their target the large dune on the distance that covered the horizon.
The other merchants were shouting and betting at the head of the caravan while at the same time leading it forward. Hasan particularly keen on the bets. He had already won twenty gold coins to accompany his silvers and coppers.
As the carpets burst on the top of the dune, the faster one, Qatib, was already shouting in fervor of victory. As he cast his eyes ahead to see the next great dune to race for, he didnt see it.
His shout of victory quickly turned into a scream of surprise as he saw the river out in the distance, the greenish swamplands behind it disappearing in the faraway fog.
There was a smoke rising from somewhere of the river banks.
The merchants had soon decided to head for this peculiar column of smoke and the swamplands, for nearly always, such things could mean only one thing. Trade.
Few days later
The merchants had finally reached the river. The distance that seemed so short had actually been long, clearly over a hundred kilometers. Curse the beguiliness of clear days.
The column of smoke had stopped, but that didnt worry the merchants since they already had reached the river and could see the crudely build buildings on northern and southern sides of the river. Homever, the one large brick building with the chimney was wellbuilt and strong looking. It was evidently the place where the smoke had come from.
There wasnt a soul to be seen.
The talisman for the skeletal defenders was set ready by Qatib, and the magic carpets hid amongst the bonebags to defend their most valuable merchandise.
After these necessary steps of precaution they began to set up their tents in hopes of someone turning up at the spot, and also set up a stall with some of the less valuable trinkets on show.
By the stroke of bad luck, Qatib was set on the watch the merchandise and the camels which were let to the river to drink up and rest.
Finally as the dusk was setting in, Qatib noticed movement from some of the huts around the large building.
He stood up quickly and hurried to wake up the other merchants.
Nothing could have struck them with more surprise at the moment as they saw the comers. They were somesort of... Frogs.
Standing somewhat at the height of an Akkadian, they had long hindlegs, clearly capable of jumping great distances, and hands that ended in three fingers that had somesort of webbing between them.
Two of them carried spears and evidently were soldiers by their stiff looks. The two between were carrying somesort of plates, and on the plates there were glinting pieces of colored glass.
The creatures did somesort of formal greeting, followed by a group bow and salaam by the merchants.
"Greetings people of the swamps! We come from the distant city of Akkad, and represent the Sultanate of Akkad! In short, we are merchants."
One of the creatures spoke out.
"Greetings... Akkadians. Your manner certainly gives away you are merchants. So let us get to the tradings..."
The Akkadians bowed, quickly gathering an assortment of merchandise on the makeshift stall. There were weapons, foodstuffs, casks of strangely smelling spices, some Akkadian armor, rugs, and two expensive looking carpets.
Eyes were cast upon the creatures.
"Anything that interests you, Sah?"
Some appraising looks were cast upon the plates with glass, and some pieces discarded until several pieces of clear glass remained on the merchants hands.
The creatures browsed the stall with their frogeyes and finally pointed towards some of the weapons. Swords, spears, knives. They gestured towards the glass and looked on the merchants.
Some eyebrows were raised.
"Well, you can buy SOME weapons with glass... But not too much. There are a lot more you know... I might note you that we always accept technological curiosities and all sorts of books for merchandise"
One of the creatures produced a looking glass and handed it over to the merchants.
Qatib tried it on and was baffled for a moment how things seemed larger. He resolved something in this leather tube made them so. Nodding to the creatures he pushed the batch of weapons from the stall to the creatures.
"We accept this item as a good item of worth, we can buy this from you for 40 weapons including these on the stall"
"Homever, as we notice that you currently dont have much objects of merchandise present, we shall stay here forawhile. Bring forward interesting items and we'll exchange them to our merchandise, or you can always buy these things from us with... Gold."
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Topic: Battle of the Gods III+ (Read 64823 times)