entomophobiac
Low Prep High Play
...får gärna kommentera den här ohemult långa och snåriga texten:
(Och språket kan ni hålla er borta från, för jag har själv bara läst igenom den en eller två gånger...)
Säg gärna vad ni tycker om hela härket, så kanske jag får ett par trevliga expertutlåtanden bland er övriga rollspelare. För givetvis är texten till ett rollspel, för vad skulle man annars skriva?
Det jag är mest intresserad av är hur ni uppskattar "stämningen" i texten. Var den, så att säga, skulle höra hemma?
Anledningen till att den är uppdelad är att den är tänkt att spridas mellan flera olika kapitel.
The Master, part I
I remember the first time I laid eyes upon the Master. He was clad in the armor of the Legions, barely able to walk, and dragging the weight of his sword behind him. Blood pumped lazily from a wound in his chest, but it looked as if even the wound had given up. It had left all attempts to slay him behind, and now resorted to scaring the maid that stood by the door as it swung open.
"Help! He's bleeding, someone get water and a towel!" She yelled. And the other maid served, to the irritation of the young man that was trying to get her attention.
They patched up the Master, removed the arrow and put him to rest in the wine cellar. Not that I would have considered the cold and damp cellar the best place to rest in his condition, but it was as if the maids could feel that something was not right about this man. And where they knew fear, my own emotion became curiosity.
In the wine cellar, the only sound was water dripping from the ceiling into a carefully placed barrel; and the moaning of the Master. He was slurring and could nearly not speak at all, as if drained of the very life that made conscious thought a possibility. Not that his irregular gibberish made any sense anyway, but at least having the privelege of hearing what he was saying would have changed the whole situation, I believe.
I kneeled beside him and looked him up and down. He was grisly pale and his few movements were stiff to the point of rigor mortis. Still, his eyes... those eyes stared at me as if in desperation. And after a few minutes of my examination, he started to tremble. "No! Not again! Begone, I have done all that... ahgk!"
A struggle ensued, as if the Master was trying to remain in power over his own self. It occured to me that this man must either be gravely insane or ravaged by demons from some criminal past, trying to ignore the conscience of terrible acts.
After a few moments, with me just looking at him in admiration over the novelty of such an occurance, he was still again. And silent.
"Tamriel," he said, "you must do as I say. You must call me Master." I was astonished. First, by him knowing my name, and then simply by the fact that he told me to listen without even as much as a cough. His voice was perfectly clear and rid of all the thickness supposedly brought by the blood he had tasted due to his wound.
"You must find a man known as priest, and deliver to him the still pumping heart of this, my dying carcass. They would not let you inside the temple, and would it not be for the open window on the inner yard, this task would be impossible. But find this priest and leave him my heart and you will be infinitely rewarded."
Then he was silent, and had it not been for the obvious connection between the flickering torches and his wanning color I would have believed that he paled in front of my very own eyes, and that his skin stretched over his bones.
I felt a pull towards him and my mouth watered at the thought of breaking his ribcage and reaching for his heart. I took my knife and cut him open with one quick incision, and with my left hand I reached into what turned out to be his cold insides, my fingers guided by an invisible force to the single warm organ of his entity.
With a single twist, I held his heart in my hand. As the Master had said, it was still pumping, though I somehow knew that time was short. I put the heart in a small bucket I found in the cellar and hid my blooded left arm in my long flowing sleeve. Then I thought about his words; 'you must find a man known as priest.'
I replied in a frighteningly monotone voice before clearing my throat, putting a cloth over the bucket and walking up the stairs from the wine cellar; "Yes, Master!"
The Master, part II
Night ruled Umros, and if it would not be for the torches of the guards that patrolled them, only the stars would shed light on the streets.
Very well. "Priest" it was, and the only priest I could think of was Murius Lavonius; the Imperial governor's chief of rituals. A strange and severe man with few qualities that would ever make him popular. Quite frankly, everyone that knew him hated him beyond reasoning. As if an emotion conjured by some intangible aura of distrust.
I walked down the street towards the governor's manor and the temple that rested firmly on the hill behind it. I compulsively tried to avoid the guards, since they would not like what I had in my bucket, or the blood on my left arm for that matter. They would simply not understand.
As I walked through the streets, I realized that my feet were moving as if guided by the same invisible force, because as soon as a guard entered my field of view, I had already subconsciously avoided him through placing myself in the shades. It was quite a bizarre experience, but apparently bolstered my self-confidence. Not that I would have considered cancelling this enterprise, but at least having the aid of a mystic force made me feel more comfortable doing what I was doing. After all, it is not every day that a fisherman hacks out the heart of a legionnaire and lives to tell the tale.
Somehow, all the stories I had heard through my childhood about horrible things that the Guardian was said to protect us from had disappeared. I thought little about what I was doing, clouding it with disbelief rather than bringing it up for illumination. Instead, the "infinite reward" part of the story filled me with more enthusiasm than I had ever felt when a good catch sprawled in my nets.
But when I reached the temple, it seemed as though my luck had run out.
"Halt! Stay right there commoner," a guard screamed, simultaneously lowering his spear. "These are the Bouwan manor grounds and are off-limits, so step aside or suffer the consequences, commoner."
There were four guards by the bridge leading to the manor grounds. An unfavorable situation, to say the least, but the least I could do was try.
"Ehm... sorry, sir guard, but I must bring this bucket to the temple, and going to the temple sort of leads me right through the manor grounds; doesn't it? You can ask the priest in the morning, if you will, but right now I think he is in a hurry to get these... eh... fine smoked salmons for tomorrow's dinner."
Apparently, and not really coming as a surprise, the guard did not believe me. He walked up to me and demanded to see the content of the bucket, and although there was little I could really do I tried to delay him as much as I could with such excuses as the salmons being ruined when in contact with air.
"Is that so? I have had salmon myself, commoner, and know of no such thing as a fish afraid of a little air...." All of the guards laughed, and unfortunately got my attention, as one of them simultaneously reached for the cloth over the bucket and removed it in one simple move.
Try to understand my own surprise when the content of the bucket really turned out to be three fat smoked salmons and not a pumping heart. The guards approved my passage and also saluted me for being such a good fisherman, finding salmons like these in such troubled waters.
Well, I was definitely more puzzled than them, as I walked through the gates and was able to inspect the content of the bucket after passing into the shadows of the manor building itself. Because now, the content was once again the pumping bloody heart of the former legionnaire.
The Master, part III
The temple grounds were patrolled by even more guards, and I did not confide myself in the mystic force. At least not to the degree where I let reasoning depart my senses.
Instead, I tried to remember what the master had told me. "The open window on the inner yard," he had told me. Interestingly enough, there was an open window in the inner yard, but two stories up. I would have to scale the vines climbing the outer wall, and then cross the gap between the outer wall and the inner yard using only the single rope hung there to dry clothing. A dire task, of course, but I had not come this far to turn away.
First, I improvised by strapping the bucket to my belt, and then I started climbing the vines. And though the ale I had to drink before the Master had interrupted would normally cloud my senses, and definitely ruin my dextrous abilities, I managed to climb to the top of the wall, where I held on to the vines in desperation after looking down one too many times.
"Heights..." I tried to stay my tongue before it was too late, but the monk on the inner yard had heard me and was coming to inspect wherever the sounds came from. Fortunately, my position was high enough to avoid the lights of the lantern positioned outside the building, but if I couldn't keep still the lighting would make little difference.
Again, it seemed that the mystic force was with me, as the monk only stopped to inspect the doors on the inner yard, and never cared to look up to where I was hiding.
When the monk had finally left the inner yard, I focused my eyes on the rope leading me to the open window hatch. Slowly, I crawled onward upon the wall, extremely careful not to lose my balance. It may have taken as much as a few sun hours before I reached the rope, but vertigo was almost getting the better out of me, so time was really not my chief concern.
Eventually, I reached the rope, and slowly started to redirect my weight from the wall to the rope, using both legs and both arms to drag myself along on the lower part of the rope. It was terrible... it truly was. But I could still hear the Master's words echo through my mind; "infinitely rewarded."
After a few moments of fright, I finally came upon the window and managed to climb into the unlit room within the temple. I had arrived at the scene... now all I had to do was to find that priest.
Luckily, the place I had found was where they dried the monks' robes, so I clad myself in one of the clean ones, and treaded carefully onward, now in disguise. A mishappen disguise though it was, since close inspection would show anyone that I had a large bump inside the robe, representing the bucket that was still strapped to my belt.
But the only thing that remained now was to find the priest; Murius Lavonius.
The Master, part IV
One of the rooms on the upper floor where I had arrived had an open door, and I could hear ghastly chants from within. I slowly approached the door, intent on sneaking past it when no one was watching, but someone must have caught my shadow at the back of their vision, because when I walked up to the door, they called out to me. "Finally, Tamriel. You took forever."
Inside, five or six people were kneeling before a burning ragdoll put at the center of a cauldron. The ragdoll was so engulfed in flames that the features of the obviously human-shaped doll were hardly recognizable. One of the people rose to face me, and demanded the heart I had brought in the bucket. When I reached for it, I realized that my hands were trembling. Probably out of fright or excitement. "Yes, Master," I yelled, "of course, Master!"
The voice was not mine. It was a whimpering voice making the kneeling figures seem infinitely more powerful than my own pathetic self. I felt ashamed, and kneeled in front of the tall masked and robed figure that approached me.
"Thank you, Tamriel. You have no idea how much this means to us," the figure said. "It will serve us well in the coming ritual. Please, Tamriel, join us. Come in, and close the door behind you."
I did as he said, and as I entered the room everyone rose up and turned their masked faces in my direction. Six masked figures, and ghastly golden masks they donned, were examining me like cattle at the market.
"What? What exactly is the infinite reward? Coins?" I said, almost regretting it seconds after I had uttered the words, because it sounded nearly as pathetic as the whining I had performed earlier.
"No, Tamriel. Coins are for sheep; you will be rewarded with power. Power greater than any other," the taller figure responded. He then stretched out his left hand in the direction of one of the other masked figures, that produced a knife from his robe and put it in the taller figures hand.
"Come, Tamriel. Come into the circle."
He held up the heart in his right hand, before throwing it into the fires that were slowly eating the ragdoll. As if the result of some invisible force, the fire burst out with clear white flames and the five other masked ones kneeled and began chanting anew.
I obeyed the tall figure's words, and slowly stepped into the circle. When I stood in front of him, he bent his head to look into my eyes, and I could see that his eyes were the eyes of a madman, and for the first time my emotions were desperation rather than embarassment, for I slowly realized what he intended to do.
But I hardly had time to realize where the door was before he had lashed out and slit my throat. He then grabbed hold of me and cast my face into the fire near the doll, spreading a cascade of ashes and flames across the room as he rustled the fire with my head.
The pain was unimaginable, and I could see flashes from my days as a fisherman, the birth of my daughter and son and the arrival of the Master all at once. But I did not die. Instead, I rose to my feet with both of my hands clawing at the gaping wound in my throat. Yet, where I would normally feel and taste blood, I could now feel liquid fire, and a voice started speaking in my head. "Slay them," it said, "slay them all!"
And so I did. And I burned the temple to the ground. I killed the guards that had refused my entry. And I wandered away from Umros and the life I had known. I had a new quest to fulfill, though its exact nature would probably not be known until it was my turn to let my heart go on to the next Tamriel in line to spread the legacy.
And thus, the Master and I were one...
(Och språket kan ni hålla er borta från, för jag har själv bara läst igenom den en eller två gånger...)
Säg gärna vad ni tycker om hela härket, så kanske jag får ett par trevliga expertutlåtanden bland er övriga rollspelare. För givetvis är texten till ett rollspel, för vad skulle man annars skriva?
Det jag är mest intresserad av är hur ni uppskattar "stämningen" i texten. Var den, så att säga, skulle höra hemma?
Anledningen till att den är uppdelad är att den är tänkt att spridas mellan flera olika kapitel.
The Master, part I
I remember the first time I laid eyes upon the Master. He was clad in the armor of the Legions, barely able to walk, and dragging the weight of his sword behind him. Blood pumped lazily from a wound in his chest, but it looked as if even the wound had given up. It had left all attempts to slay him behind, and now resorted to scaring the maid that stood by the door as it swung open.
"Help! He's bleeding, someone get water and a towel!" She yelled. And the other maid served, to the irritation of the young man that was trying to get her attention.
They patched up the Master, removed the arrow and put him to rest in the wine cellar. Not that I would have considered the cold and damp cellar the best place to rest in his condition, but it was as if the maids could feel that something was not right about this man. And where they knew fear, my own emotion became curiosity.
In the wine cellar, the only sound was water dripping from the ceiling into a carefully placed barrel; and the moaning of the Master. He was slurring and could nearly not speak at all, as if drained of the very life that made conscious thought a possibility. Not that his irregular gibberish made any sense anyway, but at least having the privelege of hearing what he was saying would have changed the whole situation, I believe.
I kneeled beside him and looked him up and down. He was grisly pale and his few movements were stiff to the point of rigor mortis. Still, his eyes... those eyes stared at me as if in desperation. And after a few minutes of my examination, he started to tremble. "No! Not again! Begone, I have done all that... ahgk!"
A struggle ensued, as if the Master was trying to remain in power over his own self. It occured to me that this man must either be gravely insane or ravaged by demons from some criminal past, trying to ignore the conscience of terrible acts.
After a few moments, with me just looking at him in admiration over the novelty of such an occurance, he was still again. And silent.
"Tamriel," he said, "you must do as I say. You must call me Master." I was astonished. First, by him knowing my name, and then simply by the fact that he told me to listen without even as much as a cough. His voice was perfectly clear and rid of all the thickness supposedly brought by the blood he had tasted due to his wound.
"You must find a man known as priest, and deliver to him the still pumping heart of this, my dying carcass. They would not let you inside the temple, and would it not be for the open window on the inner yard, this task would be impossible. But find this priest and leave him my heart and you will be infinitely rewarded."
Then he was silent, and had it not been for the obvious connection between the flickering torches and his wanning color I would have believed that he paled in front of my very own eyes, and that his skin stretched over his bones.
I felt a pull towards him and my mouth watered at the thought of breaking his ribcage and reaching for his heart. I took my knife and cut him open with one quick incision, and with my left hand I reached into what turned out to be his cold insides, my fingers guided by an invisible force to the single warm organ of his entity.
With a single twist, I held his heart in my hand. As the Master had said, it was still pumping, though I somehow knew that time was short. I put the heart in a small bucket I found in the cellar and hid my blooded left arm in my long flowing sleeve. Then I thought about his words; 'you must find a man known as priest.'
I replied in a frighteningly monotone voice before clearing my throat, putting a cloth over the bucket and walking up the stairs from the wine cellar; "Yes, Master!"
The Master, part II
Night ruled Umros, and if it would not be for the torches of the guards that patrolled them, only the stars would shed light on the streets.
Very well. "Priest" it was, and the only priest I could think of was Murius Lavonius; the Imperial governor's chief of rituals. A strange and severe man with few qualities that would ever make him popular. Quite frankly, everyone that knew him hated him beyond reasoning. As if an emotion conjured by some intangible aura of distrust.
I walked down the street towards the governor's manor and the temple that rested firmly on the hill behind it. I compulsively tried to avoid the guards, since they would not like what I had in my bucket, or the blood on my left arm for that matter. They would simply not understand.
As I walked through the streets, I realized that my feet were moving as if guided by the same invisible force, because as soon as a guard entered my field of view, I had already subconsciously avoided him through placing myself in the shades. It was quite a bizarre experience, but apparently bolstered my self-confidence. Not that I would have considered cancelling this enterprise, but at least having the aid of a mystic force made me feel more comfortable doing what I was doing. After all, it is not every day that a fisherman hacks out the heart of a legionnaire and lives to tell the tale.
Somehow, all the stories I had heard through my childhood about horrible things that the Guardian was said to protect us from had disappeared. I thought little about what I was doing, clouding it with disbelief rather than bringing it up for illumination. Instead, the "infinite reward" part of the story filled me with more enthusiasm than I had ever felt when a good catch sprawled in my nets.
But when I reached the temple, it seemed as though my luck had run out.
"Halt! Stay right there commoner," a guard screamed, simultaneously lowering his spear. "These are the Bouwan manor grounds and are off-limits, so step aside or suffer the consequences, commoner."
There were four guards by the bridge leading to the manor grounds. An unfavorable situation, to say the least, but the least I could do was try.
"Ehm... sorry, sir guard, but I must bring this bucket to the temple, and going to the temple sort of leads me right through the manor grounds; doesn't it? You can ask the priest in the morning, if you will, but right now I think he is in a hurry to get these... eh... fine smoked salmons for tomorrow's dinner."
Apparently, and not really coming as a surprise, the guard did not believe me. He walked up to me and demanded to see the content of the bucket, and although there was little I could really do I tried to delay him as much as I could with such excuses as the salmons being ruined when in contact with air.
"Is that so? I have had salmon myself, commoner, and know of no such thing as a fish afraid of a little air...." All of the guards laughed, and unfortunately got my attention, as one of them simultaneously reached for the cloth over the bucket and removed it in one simple move.
Try to understand my own surprise when the content of the bucket really turned out to be three fat smoked salmons and not a pumping heart. The guards approved my passage and also saluted me for being such a good fisherman, finding salmons like these in such troubled waters.
Well, I was definitely more puzzled than them, as I walked through the gates and was able to inspect the content of the bucket after passing into the shadows of the manor building itself. Because now, the content was once again the pumping bloody heart of the former legionnaire.
The Master, part III
The temple grounds were patrolled by even more guards, and I did not confide myself in the mystic force. At least not to the degree where I let reasoning depart my senses.
Instead, I tried to remember what the master had told me. "The open window on the inner yard," he had told me. Interestingly enough, there was an open window in the inner yard, but two stories up. I would have to scale the vines climbing the outer wall, and then cross the gap between the outer wall and the inner yard using only the single rope hung there to dry clothing. A dire task, of course, but I had not come this far to turn away.
First, I improvised by strapping the bucket to my belt, and then I started climbing the vines. And though the ale I had to drink before the Master had interrupted would normally cloud my senses, and definitely ruin my dextrous abilities, I managed to climb to the top of the wall, where I held on to the vines in desperation after looking down one too many times.
"Heights..." I tried to stay my tongue before it was too late, but the monk on the inner yard had heard me and was coming to inspect wherever the sounds came from. Fortunately, my position was high enough to avoid the lights of the lantern positioned outside the building, but if I couldn't keep still the lighting would make little difference.
Again, it seemed that the mystic force was with me, as the monk only stopped to inspect the doors on the inner yard, and never cared to look up to where I was hiding.
When the monk had finally left the inner yard, I focused my eyes on the rope leading me to the open window hatch. Slowly, I crawled onward upon the wall, extremely careful not to lose my balance. It may have taken as much as a few sun hours before I reached the rope, but vertigo was almost getting the better out of me, so time was really not my chief concern.
Eventually, I reached the rope, and slowly started to redirect my weight from the wall to the rope, using both legs and both arms to drag myself along on the lower part of the rope. It was terrible... it truly was. But I could still hear the Master's words echo through my mind; "infinitely rewarded."
After a few moments of fright, I finally came upon the window and managed to climb into the unlit room within the temple. I had arrived at the scene... now all I had to do was to find that priest.
Luckily, the place I had found was where they dried the monks' robes, so I clad myself in one of the clean ones, and treaded carefully onward, now in disguise. A mishappen disguise though it was, since close inspection would show anyone that I had a large bump inside the robe, representing the bucket that was still strapped to my belt.
But the only thing that remained now was to find the priest; Murius Lavonius.
The Master, part IV
One of the rooms on the upper floor where I had arrived had an open door, and I could hear ghastly chants from within. I slowly approached the door, intent on sneaking past it when no one was watching, but someone must have caught my shadow at the back of their vision, because when I walked up to the door, they called out to me. "Finally, Tamriel. You took forever."
Inside, five or six people were kneeling before a burning ragdoll put at the center of a cauldron. The ragdoll was so engulfed in flames that the features of the obviously human-shaped doll were hardly recognizable. One of the people rose to face me, and demanded the heart I had brought in the bucket. When I reached for it, I realized that my hands were trembling. Probably out of fright or excitement. "Yes, Master," I yelled, "of course, Master!"
The voice was not mine. It was a whimpering voice making the kneeling figures seem infinitely more powerful than my own pathetic self. I felt ashamed, and kneeled in front of the tall masked and robed figure that approached me.
"Thank you, Tamriel. You have no idea how much this means to us," the figure said. "It will serve us well in the coming ritual. Please, Tamriel, join us. Come in, and close the door behind you."
I did as he said, and as I entered the room everyone rose up and turned their masked faces in my direction. Six masked figures, and ghastly golden masks they donned, were examining me like cattle at the market.
"What? What exactly is the infinite reward? Coins?" I said, almost regretting it seconds after I had uttered the words, because it sounded nearly as pathetic as the whining I had performed earlier.
"No, Tamriel. Coins are for sheep; you will be rewarded with power. Power greater than any other," the taller figure responded. He then stretched out his left hand in the direction of one of the other masked figures, that produced a knife from his robe and put it in the taller figures hand.
"Come, Tamriel. Come into the circle."
He held up the heart in his right hand, before throwing it into the fires that were slowly eating the ragdoll. As if the result of some invisible force, the fire burst out with clear white flames and the five other masked ones kneeled and began chanting anew.
I obeyed the tall figure's words, and slowly stepped into the circle. When I stood in front of him, he bent his head to look into my eyes, and I could see that his eyes were the eyes of a madman, and for the first time my emotions were desperation rather than embarassment, for I slowly realized what he intended to do.
But I hardly had time to realize where the door was before he had lashed out and slit my throat. He then grabbed hold of me and cast my face into the fire near the doll, spreading a cascade of ashes and flames across the room as he rustled the fire with my head.
The pain was unimaginable, and I could see flashes from my days as a fisherman, the birth of my daughter and son and the arrival of the Master all at once. But I did not die. Instead, I rose to my feet with both of my hands clawing at the gaping wound in my throat. Yet, where I would normally feel and taste blood, I could now feel liquid fire, and a voice started speaking in my head. "Slay them," it said, "slay them all!"
And so I did. And I burned the temple to the ground. I killed the guards that had refused my entry. And I wandered away from Umros and the life I had known. I had a new quest to fulfill, though its exact nature would probably not be known until it was my turn to let my heart go on to the next Tamriel in line to spread the legacy.
And thus, the Master and I were one...
och passar till The Dark Spire. (Eller är det ett annat projekt?)