Solo All in an Honest Day's Work

[Belugnir]

The 50th of Winter, 516 AV - Port Silence ; Continued from Arrival

Frankly, he couldn’t believe his luck. And how rotten it was. Not only did he end up shipwrecked in the middle of nowhere with no means of returning ‘home’, but that middle of nowhere just so happened to be Sahova. Of all the places in this gods’ green world, this warlock infested island was the one place he didn’t want to be stuck at. Good gods, how many stories of unexplainable horror he had heard of the isle. Of the walking corpses that’ve lived for centuries who dwell there, of countless monstrous miscarriages of nature that prowl the island. Of how the sorcerers did unspeakable things to creatures both living and dead… and those trapped inbetween. Naturally, as with any rumours that travel through Sunberth, likely over half of it was hyperbolic, for one, that gibberish about a never ending, relentless mass of storm clouds that looms over the island and smites intruders with lightning. It was the middle of bloody winter and the weather was rather warm, not a cloud in the sky. Yet, either way, life’d taught Einar to always expect the worst from his surroundings. And the worst that he could expect from this place, from what he supposed he knew of it… well it made death by drowning seem like a perfectly pleasant way to go. In a silent tantrum, he swore by his good right hand that if he ever comes across a temple dedicated to the god of fate, he’d burn it to the ground and relieve himself across the ashes with great joy.

For a good half an hour he stood observing the odd harbour market from the overgrowth of the forest that surrounded it. There were a few undead and one fellow whom he was halfway sure was a human like him, probably either some sort of slave or an assistant, browsing the stalls managed by golems. None of them seemed to care for the browsing itself so much, they seemed to be in a rush, looking for the right quality and quantity of whatever the hell it was that they wanted to use in their unholy experiments and rituals up in that castle of theirs. Something that caught his attention, however, was a particular couple of the… what did the rott’n bastards call themselves again… Niut? Nitu?... bah. Said couple were dressed in considerably more decorative attire than the rest of the folks who were doing trade with the golems, they proceeded to enter a small brick shack, where he imagined another golem held its shop. The two undead only truly caught his attention a minute after they’d entered the place, as they came out, carrying a man-sized shape, wrapped into linen, and proceeded to load it onto some abominously complicated cart with great care. If he were a bettin’ fellow, which he on occasion was, and if at least half the messed up tales of Sahova he’d heard were true, those two buggers had just bought a humanoid’s corpse and were about to take it up that one dusty road that led uphill from the market… Einar’s mind immediately went to the wreck of the ship that he arrived here with, and to the five or so dozen men who he had only imagined died in the incident. If he could get his hands on at least a couple of their carcasses, he stood a good chance to make some decent coin out of it. It didn’t take long for him to begin tracing his trail back to the beach where he awoke soaked with water not a couple hours ago.

[Belugnir]

He was reconsidering his recently given oath to desecrate a temple or shrine of Lhex when he made it back to the deserted beach safely, as he was yet to meet some carnivorous monster. Right off the bat, he spotted a bloodied, pale body that had washed up shore while he was away. Naturally he first proceeded to strap off his weapon and rucksack and leave the latter safely in the sand nearby before approaching the fellow to check if he was alive. The arm-sized splinter of a plank that stuck out of the man’s belly had soon convinced Einar it was not so. He’d dragged the body a ways away from the water and removed the piece of wood that had no doubt torn the man’s spine in its lower region. If he does sell this one, it certainly won’t be for full price.

Then was the time to cover the rotten bastard with a couple of severed branches from the first tree he got his hands on, to conceal it from possible scavengers as much as possible while he disrobed down to his trousers and carefully began exploring the shallow, wavy sea near the shore’s line. Minutes later, he’d dragged another poor bastard beside the first, this one had began turning all sorts of purple, and bloated, with eyes that went a good distance beyond being ‘bloodshot’. Concealing the second corpse some with the branches, he proceeded to explore a little bit deeper into the waters surrounding the beach. He came across all sorts of trash left in the wake of the ship’s wrecking upon the rocks near the beach. He never ventured into water that stood deeper than his waistline, not knowing if some unspeakable monstrosity will just go and snatch him if he did so. Man was hardly a coward, but he didn’t exactly wish to end up like those two bastards he was planning to sell. For about half an hour his searching yielded naught but shattered wood, slimy rocks, and several yards of rope that he was going to use to drag the corpses back to the harbour. As he began checking for any sign of life, possibly life forms that dwelled in the water that’d like to bite and chew away at his bones, he noticed another human carcass, and an ironic, spiteful smile shot over his face with a cracking ‘’HAH!’’. Moments later, he was dragging the bloated corpse of his employer, a fat, pig-faced slave merchant who was all but honest when hiring him, across the sand. As soon as he’d dumped the heavy body besides the other two, he took a pleasant moment to collect all the saliva he could muster into his mouth, and juicily spit onto the conman’s corpse, not one bit shaken by the utterly morbid visage of the drowned men.

‘’And good riddance, you fat bastard!’’

Just as he was pondering on taking a brief rest, a horrible shrieking noise pierced Einar’s ears. His head, and afterward his stomach, turned at the sight of a great black bird, standing at least a foot taller than him, of crimson gaze and disturbing features. The creature was charging his way. He hardly got to pay attention to the fact that the creature’s left wing was injured, that it couldn’t fly. He was far more concerned with its beak and talons, and the fact that, given its appearance and the furious flapping of wings, with which he imagined the creature wanted to scare him and drive him away, this abominous bird wanted to feast itself either on his own or the corpses that he’d spent the last half an hour dragging ashore. Most likely it wanted to scare him away and have the carcasses to itself. But that wasn’t happening any time soon. Naturally Einar knew nothing of the Noktals, the great scavengers of Sahova, yet he wasn’t about to let some warlock-spawned freak ruin his chance to earn a batch of coins. Greed conquered fear.

[Belugnir]

‘’Oh, no, no, you won’t.’’, he spoke, with his poleaxe now in hand, extended towards the Noktal that had quieted down, realizing that frightening this human and avoiding a fight over the dead flesh won’t succeed, that it’ll have to fight for the food. The Noktal lowered its head, stopping the frightful flailing of its wings so that its belly won’t be as exposed for an attack. It’d use its head in the fight, quite literally, as an attempt to claw at the man without doing so from an aerial assault would leave it exposed to have its guts spilled across the beach. The bird, unlike the man, had no choice. It’s been driven to the brink of starvation, and could hardly hunt any meaningful meal in form of a smaller animal with its injury. It’ll risk its life for a slowly decaying feast like the one this human had dragged from the sea. The two combatants began circling across the sand, measuring each other, neither quite willing to rush into a fight. This creature was obviously more intelligent than some back alley pigeon. Einar was now quite a bit louder than the heavily breathing great bird, taunting it.

‘’See those bastards here? Huh? They’re mine.’’, he made a single threatening stab towards the creature, one that’d never reach it, but was merely meant to test its nerve. The bird merely took an uneasy step back and flailed its already injured wing a single time in a defensive movement, before almost reflexively stabbing its beak into the thin air in the human’s direction.

‘’Hah! Got you to jerk like a chicken, I did!’’, he mocked the creature, hardly caring if it understood him or not, chances are it did, and he could possibly unnerve it and thus undo whatever portion of fighting ability that it still had. ‘’Those are my corpses. Mine.’’, he dominantly struck his chest with the fist of his left hand, never lowering the weapon he extended towards the bird held in his right. ‘’Go find your own. Or I’ll sell your carcass to those metal cans as well. Shoo.’’, he made another, this time bolder jab at the bird, fiercely stepping forward, though this time the creature didn’t retreat, instead it used its chance to spring its neck forward, above the weapon, and bite at the man. It hardly succeeded, as its beak closed around the weapon's wooden handle, perhaps unsuccessfully aiming for the man’s hand, as it remained but a couple centimeters away from his fingers, meanwhile he began advancing forward, placing his left hand onto the faraway end of the poleaxe's handle, before using every bit of strength and momentum he could to bring the weapon’s blade up from pointing at the ground, across the creature’s exposed throat. The grip of the weakened Noktal’s beak was overpowered, it couldn’t hold onto the weapon’s shaft, let alone bite through the full wood, and a spray of dark blood came spilling across the sand as Einar’s swing came to an end, before he made another one, to slap the now unbearably shrieking creature’s head away and onto the ground. The monster continued to spasm violently and scream, in tones that the man didn’t imagine he'd get to hear within his lifetime, before finally stilling into a lifeless state several moments afterward.

‘’Ploughin’ told you so, you ugly bastard.’’, Einar spat at the creature’s corpse, unaware of the luck he had in this confrontation, with an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment, having killed this monstrosity in face of which at least half of his crew members would’ve pissed their own breaches. ‘’Fuckin’ wizards with their mutants… gods forbid you spawn something pleasant to the eye…’’, he mumbled, moving the Noktal’s corpse alongside the other three. ‘’Those crazy bastards better not go and revive your ro’en arse…’’

[Belugnir]

Another hour of searching went without disturbances, thankfully and oddly enough, yielding two more drowned bodies to add to the cargo. Though his search was becoming quite fruitful, that is, if one could bear the stench of flesh that was slowly being driven to decay, Einar was anxious to go back to the harbour and sell those dead bastards off, especially not wanting to meet up with any more of those bloody black winged shriekers. Doing his best to ignore the spreading smell of decay, he began building the worlds’ poorest excuse for a sledge from the rope and scattered planks he scavenged along the beach. If he even were to look for more corpses, he was risking another monster catching scent of the bodies, and besides, he will just barely be able to drag back what he has. And by the time he sells the corpses the day will already be at an end. No amount of money was going to lure him into wandering this whirlpool of insanity at night.

With an abundant supply of struggle, he had finally dragged the sledge bearing the corpses of five humans and that of a single unspeakably ugly bird-monster back to the harbour. Deciding, for the sake of coin, to simply try passing by as any merchant would. After all, he imagined this was how the fat bastard he was dragging was going to do it with the unfortunate sacks of meat that they were transporting from Sunberth. Upon entering the harbour somewhere mid-afternoon, one could hardly say that he went unnoticed. To his delight, there were none of them undead whoresons at the market currently, however one of those walking metal cans came and approached him, he knew next to nothing of those creatures, save for the fact that some of them were apparently sentient enough to serve as traders, though this one did appear more complex, in its design, if anything else, than the rest of the metal fellows who tended to the market. Unknown to him, Einar had just been met by an Overseer.

[Belugnir]

As the metallic hulk approached, Einar felt a rather imminent unease, urging him to reach for his weapon. An instinct one could only naturally develop growing up in Sunberth… yet any fool would recognize that he could hardly fight his way out of a square full of those automatons after waltzing in like he did, and that it’d likely be the last thing he did if he made the attempt. The golem spoke up, though Einar couldn’t understand a single supposed word at first, all that he did know, was that this thing was gesturing him to halt. He was quite quick to regret letting his desire for a quick cash-in get the better of him.

‘’What the ploughin’ hell are you jabbering on about, you misplaced can…?’’, he asked with a fair bit of frustration in his tone, as the golem stood unresponsive. Then he got to remember that he was no longer surrounded by tavern drunkards who spoke the most vulgar and basic dialects of the common tongue, so he conjured up the best of the Nader Canooch that he’d learned while employed by the merchants who occasionally did business with Sahova.

‘’You understand me now?’’, came the young man’s question, to which the golem began producing some incomprehensive noises for a moment before replying in the same tongue as the one Einar now spoke.

‘’Yes. Hand over your weapon and introduce yourself. How did you come here?’’, came an utterly stoic reply.

‘’I ain’t lett’ng go of nothing you fat bag of scrap metal’’, was what he wanted to say, yet Einar’d hardly weigh possession of his weapon with the possibility that those things will just openly kill him if he didn’t cooperate. So he unbuckled the belt that held his poleaxe strapped to his back and left the thing in the sand for a smaller, more mobile golem to approach, retrieve the weapon, and hand it over to the Overseer.
‘’I was guarding a merchant’s ship that got wrecked to the East of here this morning. Woke up on the beach, salvaged what I could, and decided I might as well try conducting some business with you lot.’’

The golem remained quiet for an instance, its lenses moving to the cargo of corpses that the youth hauled with him. Obviously its intelligence rivaled that of a human, and that was something Einar began to guess at when the thing spoke again.

‘’Did you kill that one yourself?’’, it asked, referring to the great black bird.

‘’Y-yes, I did. Why?’’, there was no response to this from the golem for several seconds… was it pondering on the man’s answer…?

‘’You shall now be escorted to the Citadel. There you will be placed before higher authority. Bring your belongings but consider them forfeit until there. Proceed.’’, with that, the weapon was handed to a nearby, much simpler looking golem, mounted on four wheels with glassy surfaces for eyes. Ein never really got a chance to speak up again or ask why was he suddenly to be taken to this citadel of theirs.

‘’Do come with me.’’, the follower golem spoke up without waiting for any sort of reply, meanwhile, what Einar thought was naught but a simple metal wagon nearby began to move on its own and load up his cargo of corpses onto itself, before slowly starting to move after the apparent guide, as did the man himself… For what it’s worth, those things seemed a decent lot more polite than any man he’s met on the streets of Sunberth. However, the duration of this trio’s way up the mountain would’ve been spent in utter silence from there on.

As evening began to descend, the odd trio slowly gained ground towards the top of the mountain. The young man was rather anxious as to what awaited him there.

[Languish]

Your grades have been summoned
________________

Belugnir

■ Logic + 1
■ Salvaging + 2
■ Intimidation + 1
■ Weapon: Polearm + 1
■ Gadgeteering + 1
■ Observation + 1

Lores

Lore of Sahova Location: The Great Harbor
Lore of Logic: If Rumors Match What You're Seeing, They Might be True
Lore of Scavenging: Conceal Your Finds
Lore of Self: Greed Conquers Fear
Lore of Gadgeteering: Creating a Slough of Wood and Rope
Lore of Intimidation: Doesn't Matter if They Can't Understand You
Lore of Golems: Talking Tin Cans
Lore of Golems: More Polite than Humans

Additional Information

One job thread completed here.

________________

Comments:

Don't forget to delete your post in the grading queue. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to PM me about your grade.

template by Orakan