Archive for January 2018

Many hundreds of ribbons fluttered in the summer air. Ribbons, tied to the spikes of a hundred soldiers’ helms. Armored men and women grumbled, queued under the swelter. Rough hands fanned sweated necks, tugged clinging metal collars.

“Butter me up and call me a beef, Suse. This is an oven,” said a freckly lass to her shieldmate.

“Don’t have to tell me, Lyd,” said Suse, pulling her breastplate on its straps to permit some air. “Least we’re not marching.”

Ahead, the line shifted. The double row of soldiers moved up a notch, closer to a table piled with small bottles. The shield sisters stepped up. Lyd sniffed, wrinkled her nose.

“Yeah, but we’ve gotta deal with that,” she said, gesturing to the southwest. A rank breeze floated from there, heavy with a scent of rot and curdled gore.

Lyd grimaced, continued. “Disgusting. Bloody dogs won’t even bury their dead.”

“Can’t blame ‘em,” said Suse. “Crawling with plague. The Eleventy Third Brigade caught their medical convoy.”

“Eh, true enough. Don’t make me pity them.”

The line shifted, showed the table laden in little bottles. A bored quartermaster in a kerchief stood there, scribbled on a clipboard. The women stepped forward.

“Afternoon, Fischer.”

“Afternoon, Lance Corporals,” said Fischer, barely looking up. He ticked two names on his list, handed each soldier a thumb-sized ampoule.

“Thanks,” said Lyd. They turned away, trekked into the bustling camp. Their helm ribbons snapped in the rotting air. Lyd sniffed.

“What d’you say,” said the freckled soldier, turning the vial of grey liquid in her hand. “We rustle up a bit of gin from Marcel and drink tonics to the poor, dead enemy?”

“Sure,” said Suse, grinning. She raised her own vial in a mock toast. Lyd mimicked her, watched the cloudy ampoule gleam in the sun.

“May we never live again!”

“How did it happen, again?” said Clovette, frowning at the covered well. Vines cracked its black-brick pier, thick and scraggy. A scent of watery rot filtered neath the locked wooden lid.

“Ah,” said Louis. He knelt on crunching cherry leaves, tried a ring of keys on the lock. “It was a drunk. Tumbled in. Nobody noticed til the water went bad.”

“Poor salaud...” said Clovette, looking out at the town. Leaning houses, as crooked and mossy as the choking cherry trees, clustered round the ancient well. Eyes peered from upper frames of windows, watched the cutters anxiously. Clovette, leaning on one bole, squinted at them.

“No one to notice he had gone.”

There was a thump and a wet gargle from the well. The cutters listened to echoing splashes, scraping on stone.

“Well, they noticed eventually,” said Louis, trying another key.

“A shame they did not medicate the well,” said Clovette, fingering the axe on her belt.

Another key failed to turn. “They are too poor for such salt.”

“They can afford us.”

“Bien sûr, we are cheap and hungry.”

“True,” said the gaunt Clovette. “Suppose they would need to retrieve the corpse, in any case.”

A key ground in the lock. “Here we are,” said Louis. Something bumped beneath the well cover, snarled in a wet and mangled throat. Watching eyes went wide, ducked down behind sills.

Clovette straightened, pulled the long hatchet from her belt. Louis brushed his knees, produced a net and long-neck bottle filled with something grainy.

“Ready? he said. Clovette hooked her fingers under the well cover, nodded. “Ready.”

She threw the well cover open. It creaked, crashed wide. The cutters crouched, listened to a scraping grow near. As soon as a scrape of spongy flesh peeled over the pier, they struck.

Louis’ net went flying. Clovette’s axe thudded into a putrid limb. There was a gargling screech, a splatter of grave water. Glass shattered. Granules of grey scattered on the beast, smoked where they touched the flesh. It gurgled, wavered, toppled back, took the net and hatchet with it.

There was a splash. “Merde,” grumbled Louis, tossed the broken bottle neck. It shattered on the pier. “Well...” said Clovette, peering down the shaft.

“Look at it this way. We did not say we would both salt the grue and remove it from the well, did we?”

Coastal civilization is forever besieged. The small, ragged realm which Litorans call their own is beset, predated by terrors from beyond frayed borders.

Beasts descend from trackless hills, eager for flesh. Predatory älves slip from darkened woods, itching for wickedness and abduction. Inexorable disease creeps in the very air; perverts humans' own bodies after death.

Little exists to favor the Litorans. Only by a few, key tools are the forces of the Other kept marginally at bay: Fire razes the pitiless wood, dissuades the beast. Iron breaks the careless ground, burns the älf. Grisodate salt purifies the squalid masses, quashes incipient life within the dead.

It is this last tool which is the most precious. Grey salt: Humanity's most precious armor.

Grey Salt

Grisodate is a precious salt dredged from the eponymous Bay of Grey. It is treasured for its antibiotic properties. Grisodate wards off a plethora of maladies, banishes latent plague infection. Without their salt, human populations would be ravaged by disease and murderous grues.*

Grisodate is a medicinal standard. It is widely consumed by the Coastal populace. General stores keep it in dry safes, sell it dry by the gram or bottled as a tonic. Pharmacies keep casks of the stuff, add it to any and all serums, potions, or elixirs.

People put it in food. Grey salt in cuisine is a tasteful show of wealth. It's mixed with gin to create the classic gin and tonic, patted on foie gras before searing, sprinkled on iced flowers with melted caramel.

By necessity, soldiers receive grey salt as part of their pay. A medicated force is essential, lest battlefields become like the crawling death-plains of old. Risky service professions, like soldiery, include salt in their pay. From this practice, we derive the phrase "worth one's salt."

Cutters carry grisodate, if they can afford it. It aids significantly in the hunting of grues, as it burns and immobilizes their diseased tissues. A grisodate paste may be concocted for such reasons. It is smeared on the killing edges of weapons for particular effect. Similarly, small bombs or handheld aspergiliums may be used to sow salt in the bony flesh of the scuttling dead.

A wise cutter will also carry grey salt to dissuade älves. A circle of piled grains sprinkled around one's camp will keep the creatures from wreaking mischief in the night.** Scholars suppose that the presence of such salt weakens the influence of the Otherworld in a given area. As a result, älves become wary in its presence, stripped as they are of the protections of their misty realm.

Grisodate is political substance. It is mined plentifully only in the Bay of Grey, a duchy of Firlund.*** Coastal powers are forced to maintain good relations with that northern realm, lest the Crown of Firls employ punishing salt taxes or trade embargoes. Due to its near-monopoly, Firlund holds both immense wealth and titanic political might.

Effectiveness & Side Effects

Despite grisodate's potency, it is an imperfect preventative. Its active duration in the human body is short and unpredictable. The salt may ward off infection for no more than a few days, and its effectiveness and duration are only partially influenced by dose.

To compensate for patchy effectiveness, Coastal folk consume grisodate as often as they can afford it. Aristocrats have it with every meal. The working class take it weekly or as a luxury. The poor and the peasantry are largely unable to afford their salt. They are most at risk. Wealthy metropolitan areas are mostly free of sickness, while slums and sorry countrysides crawl with affliction and plague.

Grey salt does not ward against all illness. While, syphilis, and consumption are prevented by the stuff, blight, grippe, and pox are not.† Grisodate may help clean a wound, but it will not save a person from pox outbreak.

Use of grisodate salt carries a variety of side effects. Its presence in the body curtails certain varieties of cell replication. Short term or immediate use produces no visible side effect, is valued for promoting general good health. Regular, light consumption of grisodate induces temporary sterility in both men and women after a month. This is valued, as it is a common means of Coastal contraception.

Heavy use over a period of several months induces fragility of the nails and hair, causes the skin to become delicate and transparent. Digestive and respiratory issues also ensue. Some circles of Firlish aristocracy find these side effects to be highly attractive. They value an air of fragility and wealth.

Some folk abstain from grisodate consumption. They ague it weakens the human race, inhibits the body's ability to fight disease, and lowers fertility to a rate of non-replacement. While these objectors may be true, they tend to live short, diseased lives.

Footnotes

* Plague infection does not kill directly. Read more on that here.
** Unless, of course, the älf has a long broom.
*** Other mines exist. They are fearful, frigid places.
† Doubly unfortunate, as pox is usually the disease to spark off a plague epidemic.

The consortium doors banged open. Noses lifted from oaken counters, distracted from their paper-stamping and coin counting. Three pairs of boots stamped in, trailed mud and snow. They clicked, hobnailed, on the stone tile.

The leading pair belonged to a cutter in a leather duster. A considerable amount of something red and drying clung to his leather chaps. A fresh split leaked on his unshaven lip. He licked it as he walked, dragged a sack of something dense and clinking.

Of the boots which followed, only one pair walked with a steady gait. The first was a spindly woman with scarred, outsized knuckles. The second, a man with gore and vomit in his beard, leaned on her. A thick girdle of stained bandage bound his belly. He stumbled, wretched occasionally. A crass scent of spoiled potato drifted from the pair.

A pimply clerk looked to the man in the duster, smiled feebly. “What can Tiber and Fellowes do for you, Master?”

There was grunt and a crash of coins. The countertop shook. “Ewan Hallson, of Jengory,” said the man, sneering as his lip stretched. “With Rowan Per, of Statton, and Chaemus Blake, of Down. Returned from the venture to Leeland Haunt.”

He took a leather license fold and tossed to the counter. A rolled document followed. The clerk plucked them up.

“This says you departed with a Sam Perryton, as well.”

“The good Master Perryton didn’t make it. Ragman stuck him in the groin. Bled clean out. We got him outside, on the mule, if you wanna see.”

The clerk peered around Hallson, out the open door. A mule was roped outside. A figure wrapped in carpet was tied over the beast’s rump. Atop it, a raven pecked idly.

“I’ll arrange a coroner.”

“Best ye do,” said Hallson, dabbing at his lip with a filthy kerchief. Behind him, Chaemus wretched. A greasy red gob fell to the scarred woman’s boot.

The clerk stretched a thin smile. “Report?”

“Hill was filled with ragmen. Distilling some piss. Approximately eight.”

“Approximately?”

“Hard to tell. Rowan boiled some,” said Hallson, pointing back with a thumb. The woman smiled with yellowed eyes, waved with a twisted hand. Her knuckles clinked audibly.

“I see. Casualties?”

“Well, the chap on the mule. And Chaemus got shanked in the guts.” Behind Hallson, the bearded cutter groaned, wretched again. “He’s fine.”

The clerk scratched something in a ledger. “Thank you. Yield?”

“Some silver on the ragmen. Whole pile of coins under the midden. Some foreign.”

“No antiquities or items of exceptionality?” asked the clerk, looking to the other two. Rowan shook her head. Chaemus whimpered.

“Noted. Your standing and reputation with Tiber and Fellowes are high, which would have earned a fourth of ten percent,” recited the clerk, scratching a pink pimple. “Due to fatality, your shares will be adjusted to a third of ten percent.”

There sounded a series of wheezing, wet gasps. Rowan made a disgusted face, dropped her retching comrade. He wriggled, clutched his gut, produced a spout of red and pus-filled fluid. He wriggled, went limp.

Rowan stepped round the pooling vomitus, pressed two fingers to his bearded neck. She shook her head. Hallson shrugged.

The bank clerk tried a consoling expression. “My condolences. Five percent, each.”

On a high veranda overlooking the sea, a dozen folk had met. Folk in suits of pitch black and bloody scarlet, clutching flutes of wine darker than the placid waves. They milled, idled with eager smiles, as if sharing in the presence of some secret.

A high tone struck the air, clear above the murmur of surf. Heads turned. At the railing, a woman in apple red tapped a knife on the bell of her glass.

"Good evening, everyone," she smiled. "As Vice Director, I'd like to welcome you to this celebration of our year's success."

A general tittering of approval went up. Glasses raised, flashed in the low sunlight. A single, fat mouse, leaning by the door, applauded.

"This has been a time of outstanding growth for Péridot Firm: Our manufacturing investments hold strong. Lending in the Belvirinian conflict is seeing massive returns. And our ventures in the Sea of Grass have been unprecedentedly fruitful."

The Vice Director nodded, accepted more gentle applause. "In that distant land, our venture on Tacenda Gate has breached a fifth level of the complex. Treasures beyond reckoning have been found inside. Some are arcane and will take time to decipher. Some are simple. The wine we are enjoying now was found in those antique halls."

A gentle exclamation rose from the crowd. Folk peered into their glasses. A woman by the railing gasped.

"All these successes have been informed by our mutual friend," said the woman in apple red. "He has guided us since the beginning. Join me in saluting our founder. Our Director."

She raised her wine, turned to face the water. The others followed, mimicked her. "Our Director."

Far below, something tremendous listened, dark beneath the gloaming sea.

Banks

To many, a bank is just a counter. It has a scale, and a grille, and a lot of papers and stamps. It has a clerk, who's likely bored, who will give you loans and banknotes and lock your golden savings safe away.

Few guess the truth of banks. Few know the crushingly dull titan of bureaucracy which keeps their pennies holds clout to rival nations.

While the patronage of a thousand laborers looking to borrow a crown may earn a bank a tidy sum, the interest on a single loan to the War Department of a foreign country may rake in millions. Every coin minted by a Coastal nation will likely see its day in the vault of a bank.

Banks, however, are not satisfied by their immense reach. While lending and investment may churn an appreciable sum, there remains more to be had.

Not all the money in the world is yet exploited. In the antique depths of tombs* and hidden places, untapped sums languish in the dark, ownerless and ripe for the picking. All an enterprising financial institution need do to make a bit of extra wealth is pay some fools to go and pluck it.

Many banks operate on the Coast, but only those who find profit in venturing are the richest.

Mantilla Profiteers is a Mapolitan institution. The mercenary bank is notorious for serving the highest bidder during times of war. In the past, Mantilla hasn't balked at such tasks as paying for and raising its own troops to support their chosen side. No price is too high for the Profiteers, if it ensures the survival of their military debtors. In these times of relative peace, Mantilla hires cutters as privateer crews. Their stated goal in naval venturing is seagoing security, but has ofttimes slipped into the bounds of piracy.
Péridot Firm is a new influence on the Coast's economic sphere. Through a series of uncannily powerful moves, the group has expanded from a small band of gem buyers to a massive player on the financial stage. It has made these advances solely through calculated, meticulously-researched raiding of ancient sites. Cache after vault of hoarded wealth has been breached and claimed by the skilled cutters of the Firm. Some have wondered at the accuracy with which Péridot targets and cracks ancient sites. Whispers say a single source of ancient knowledge serves as the Firm's guiding light, illuminating darkened riches with secrets of the past.
Tiber and Fellowes is an old bank. Its power has risen and fallen with the iron-bound pound of Firlund, its mother state. T&F nearly saw their end some two hundred years ago, when one of the country's famously mad kings refused to repay debts accrued while hosting near-constant tourneys. Now, the institution keeps friendly ties with the North's powerful salt-mining families, granting it a steady, profitable ally. T&F are deeply involved in colonial efforts. From frontier settlements, the bank organizes and sponsors thousands of cutters on hundreds of monthly raids into the tomb-filled Gorathian Mountains. Above all other banks, good standing with Tiber and Fellowes is most certain to guarantee a Cutter a hearty share in any venture's yield.
Lagão Treasury is an Alagórian firm with a certain reputation. The bank's stricture to Avethan ideals dictates that it deal only in business with human partners and customers. Thus, mice (let alone other, uncommon folk) are shunned by the zealot Treasury. In more cosmopolitan locations, the bank will, at best, offer non-humans substandard rates. Though Lagão deals mainly in civilian lending, they have made concerned venturing attempts on ancient sites of Avethan significance. The may be found, represented in the consortium of any Southern frontier settlement.

Author's Note

I use banks as quest givers. In many games, a tomb-venturing sign-on with, for instance, T&F may serve as an entry point to a larger mystery of the past. In other games, banks serve as easy sources of side jobs for characters. The unpredictability of raiding tombs, coupled with the gamified element of tracking standing, can be a fun game, on its own.

Some time in the future, I'll have to post a system for determining bank standing.

I imagine that a group of characters, upon finding a ruin, might feasibly sell its location to a bank. This will have to be the starting point of an article on cartographers.

Footnotes

* Tombs are a notable historical phenomenon. Few cultures bury their dead (rather than burning them) due to the prevalence of plague. A tomb is, rather, a place for secrets best forgotten, but too beautiful to bear destroying. The ancients, though they dearly wished to, could not kill their secrets. They built Tombs, that they might die and slip from memory. More on this, another time.
** "Cutter" is a term for hired specialists and mercenaries, usually of a sort who delve tombs and wilderness locales. More on that here.

Chips of sticky bark scattered on the snow. Hod wrenched his axe from the fir trunk, hoisted it. His shoulders knotted, lifted under furs and wool. Steel bit deep again into white wood.

Hod levered the axe away, swung again. He huffed and puffed, breathed deep the winter air. A musk of pine and frozen soil sat dull on his palette. Steaming breath rose from the woodsman, filtered through snowflakes and waving needles.

A rhythmic, hollow clop of steel on tree echoed in the silent wood. Wedges, bleeding sap, dropped to the snow. Hod shifted his blistered grip on the haft, circled to the reverse of the trunk. He began again.

Hod slammed his blade into the fir, widened a triangle in its flesh. Frost shone like flat spiderwebs on the chilly wedge of steel, glimmered under the setting winter sun. Hod grunted, grit his teeth. The fir quaked with every strike.

With a long, corky whine, the trunk began to tip. Hod hopped away, watched his handiwork tumble. There was a slow series of cracks; a quick, snapping crash. Snow burst about the toppled bole, began to settle. Hod huffed, surveyed his work.

Ice slipped, spattered to the forest floor from broken branches. With a few rustlings and clicks of glassy debris, the wood was silent once again. Hod stretched, rolled his shoulders, groaned.

From some nearby hilltop, a cry went up: A long, high rattle, like teeth dropped down a washboard. Hod froze.

The woodsman hunched his shoulders, scanned the trees with wide eyes. Branches shifted, not far away. A ripple of motion bled through the trees, barely there.

Another rattling caterwaul sounded, terribly close. It was dry and piercing; a sound made in no throat imaginable. Hod squeezed the haft of his axe, watched the shadowed spaces beneath pines' branches.

Something shifted there. Something with rustling, furred legs and shining eyes. Hod saw it scuttle in the dark, silent on the crunchy snow.

Slowly, it emerged, clicking throatily. One leg poked from the dark, set a hoof-like print in the snow. Seven more undulated, rippled from the branches, conveying a low, hunched body. Mandibles hung close to the ground, twitched neath a cluster of roe-eyes set in fur.

The arachnid stared at Hod, worried its sickle-jaws. It stamped with thick, hairy limbs, gouged the snow.

Hod widened his stance, locked his two eyes with the creature's many orbs. He held his axe high, stamped with one foot. In response, the spider jerked at him, clicking. A snort of air kicked up snow, huffed by the thing's heaving breath.

Slowly, Hod approached the beast. He whipped the axe to and fro, watched steel flash, duplicated, in eight glaring mirrors. He grumbled, croaked deep in his throat, matched his adversary's breathless clicking. The beast widened its serrated fangs, crouched even lower. In an instant, it leapt.

Eight hairy feet threw up gouts of frozen soil. The beast crashed inches before the woodsman. Jaws twitched before his legs, wide and sharp as logging tongs. Long front legs hung over his head, lined with black hooks. Hod merely twitched an eye, blinked away snow.

The spider clacked its jaws, huffed again, ceased its clicking. It lowered its legs, ruffled its brindled fur. Slowly, almost calmly, it hiked itself up, turned its abdomen under elevated legs. A dollop of stringy goo landed on Hod's boots.

The thing turned on the spot, scuttled back into the darkened fir boughs. Hod didn't watch it go. He loosed a long-held breath, made swiftly away from the valley of the wolf spider.

"You hear that?" said the old man, turning his ear to the shadowed trees. Firelight wavered in the fleshy grooves of his wrinkled jowls.

A hollow clicking echoed in the snowy foothills. Powell cocked her hooded head, listened. "Woodpecker?" she said, prodded the campfire with a stick.

The old man grinned, showed a distinct lack of teeth. He chuckled wetly. "No bird. Never been this far south, Ranger?"

"Never."

"That's the howl of die wolfsspinne," said the man. He coughed briefly, spat into the fire. "Wolf spider."

Another howl went up, replying to the first. It was distant, nearly lost in the crackle of the fire. Powell smirked. "Don't suppose they're itty-bitty little spiders, are they?"

"No, Ranger. Worse. Much worse."

"Come on. It sounds like there's only a few," said Powell.

"Aye, but that how it is," said the old fellow, shifting on the his stump. His jowls wobbled, liquid. Powell made a face. "Don't roll yer eyes, lass. These beasts hunt alone. Jaws like sickles. Larger than wolves, they are, and silent. Only howl to mark their territory."

"Yeah?"

"Aye," said the man. He coughed, wheezing. "Dead quiet. Could be one here now, at the light's edge. We'd never know."

Powell tossed her stick in the fire, looked to her tent. "Think I might turn in. Lot of walking, tomorrow," she said, rising. "Thanks for being such an entertaining guide."

"I'd not take such a lighthearted tone if I were you, lass. It's the small ones they go for, and you're just about the right size for a bite."

Powell made a derisive snort, ducked under the canvas. She yanked off her belt and boots, tucked her cloak about her, settled into the near-silent night. Her guide's wet coughing carried on for a while, before turning to damp, low snores, and, eventually, silence.

Come dawn, Powell stumbled from her tent, rubbing hair from her eyes. Her breath hung in the winter air. "Brown," she said, called the guide's name. "Why's the fire out?"

"Brow-" she started, choked. By the firepit slumped a husk. Powell, wide-eyed, turned it with a toe. Bones and gristle slid from a lacerated shell of cloth and leathery skin.

Skin, pierced at the neck by jaws like sickles.

The name "wolf spider" is a dreadful misnomer. A wolf is a social, cooperative creature which hunts in packs. A wolf spider hunts alone. It is as antisocial as creatures come.

A wolf is a threat, but it fears humans. While it may eat your fleeces or your grandmother, it won't do so unless the deer have all gone. A wolf spider is a terror without fear. It will eat your grandmother because she's fattier than a deer, and it will eat her cats, too.

A wolf howls to rally its kin, to bond, to celebrate the birth of new pups. The wolf spider howls because it wants you off its territory and it's going to come and fight you if you don't shove off.

These terrific arachnids are at home in the tree-clad foothills of the Coast's central interior. There, they stalk the rolling pines in utter silence, dwell in deep, glacial caves.

They are unhurried predators. Once fatted by a meal, a spider need only eat once more in a month. A wolf spider may creep on its target for days before finally feeling the urge to strike. The only sure way to shrug a trailing spider is to leave its hunting grounds, or meet it in combat.*

The territory of a wolf spider may encompass a small mountain valley. This hunting ground will feature a high place (a treed hill, an old tower, a cliff) where the spider watches its domain. Here, the beast squats, observes. It watches with keen eyes for intruders and prey. The former will be challenged with a rattling shriek. The latter will be noted for later gobbling.

Wolf spiders are possessed of terrible fangs (frequently compared to grain sickles.) With these mandibular instruments, they catch and crush prey, relying on the force of a single bite to sever vertebrae or induce shock. Slain prey are pumped full of a liquefaction agent, reducing the subject to a nutrient slurry. This goop is gobbled straight away.

Notably, wolf spiders spin no webs. The small spinnerets they possess serve as a mode of marking territory with pheromone-laden goo. This goo, spied on the sides of trees or rocks, may indicate that a walker in the hills has entered spider territory.

Some time ago, a clever zoologist known as Marcelle began breeding a smallish variety of wolf spider in captivity. Nowadays, these tame arachnids are popular on the island nation of Empereaux. They are treasured for their large, glassy eyes and orange, velvet coats.**

Inhabitants of the mainland see no use in being friendly with the little beasts. Their larger cousins bring terror to the countryside with rattling, territorial screams.