The tipping point was the obliteration of Smithcrypts by dread Osram. So close had Smithcrypts been to achieving a semblance of autonomy from the Wet Papers, to forging peace with the elves and fair trade agreements with the downtrodden humans under the rule of conservationist Baron Momuz Wireentrance. Then, without warning, after years without an attack, Osram swept down from the peaks.
"The Rags of Paint," they called themselves.
Descendants of the founders of Lashsavior, they sought to find some evidence that our useless copper-sword of a king at the time Prophetcrafted was an enemy of the people. They declared openly that he and the monarchy itself was being manipulated from the shadows.
The Rags of Paint set forth with their propaganda campaign against him, taking testimonials from the citizenry. He was well-hated, of course, for his inability to protect the common folk like so many before him. At the forefront of the Rags of Paint was our own queen Zasit Sizzlebasements, who shared a similarity in name to the terrifying enemy of us all and also possessed a fair fraction of the wyrm's tenacity.
In <997U> they discovered what they needed: Prophetcrafted had fled his station at Blotmines in utter selfishness, damning them and their hounds to be crushed under the heel of the blizzard men.
Again! The blizzard men!
With this evidence having been discovered, the Rags of Paint rallied. Soon Lashsavior began to suffer heavy losses from beasts, titans and hydra gone unreported by the Merchantsalves loyalist scout group "The Passionate Girders." Certain that their time was nigh, the Rags of Paint marched upon Merchantsalves and seized the throne. With Prophetcrafted deposed and evidence of his treachery clear for the working classes to see, our queen Zasit Sizzlebasements was crowned.
I, myself, was not party to the following but the unthinkable truly followed . . . and yet, does it not seem altogether likely? The same year that our queen was crowned, Osram assaulted Merchantsalves itself. The Passionate Girders ushered the citizenry to safety right under the nose of the Rags of Paint, who were caught unaware. Queen Sizzlebasements managed to play cat and mouse with the beast through these winding halls, keeping Osram from devouring any of her loyalists, although not without a price.
She wears a patch over that eye still.
Now this is where I make my pitiful mark on contemporary history. I was one of the first to travel to Merchantsalves after Osram's retreat, bearing her the ill news from Clashesboot: her husband was devoured by a dread hydra that had assaulted us late in the night.
He had come on appointment as our liason from the newly formed regime, and his death simply cannot be accounted for. The hydra entered, stole him away, and vanished without much more than a snort in the direction of our ill-equipped militia.
She bore the news well, allowing me to help co-ordinate and clean up Merchantsalves for it had become an administrative nightmare. The stout and loyal Stukos Skunkgravel was appointed general and sent off to Seigefountains as an emmisary.
Her loyal servants were being killed off. I became something of a confidant of the queen who must have seen in my meek behaviors a certain, to use what Elvish I know,
naïveté that comes with youth and office work. I was appointed as bookkeeper and archivist. She told me that she had found herself right in their trap: queen of a corrupt kingdom, surrounded by poisonous nobility and surely soon to be targeted herself.
The kicker came when the shifty Lanceboots, commander of The Passionate Girders, was appointed to the general's post by the remaining Merchantsalves nobility.
That night I heard the queen utter that fateful question, and I knew that neither of us had much time left. She, myself, the remaining Rags of Paint, all of us had found ourselves exactly where they wanted us: at the seat of power, their power.
She drew to her seven dwarves, Rags of Paint loyalists she knew she could trust with her life, and laid out a plan of action:
Rebuild anew.
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Topic: Areliton Ador, Community Fort - XXXXU: [The End] (Read 34192 times)