Recent content by Ruka Kargatal

"I am hoping so," Ruka said. "But that is something waiting for another day. You are the impressing one today, Ispir! Maybe even Big Man Regel and Big Man Threshkuul watching you, if they are having curious like me!" She leaned forward and set her big elbows on the table, holding up her hands...

Ruka listened to Ispir's story, and her expression was a clear map to all she felt during the story's various parts: wonder at the mention of Alliria, indignation on Ispir's behalf when he spoke of his would-be kidnappers, warm and grinning regard when he said he would have felt safer if she was...

Ruka laughed along with Ispir, his pratfall not an occasion for embarrassment, but one for genial humility, and for rising again. There was not one person on Arethil who did not ever fall, but there were some who stayed down—but Ispir was not one! "You are being both of the gentle and of the...

"A drink, ye say?" said the dwarf, more heavily accented than other Gildan dwarves. Threads of gray went through his beard and hair here and there, and he had one eye, his left one, that was mostly closed due to some rough weathering of his face, this asymmetry giving him a mildly deranged look...

"Ohhhhh," said Ruka, pausing for a moment afterward, and then saying further, "That is being opposite problem to what I having! Sometimes I am going places, and not all places are big like me, and I am trying to get in the door, or I am hitting my head on the ceiling, or I am sitting in chair...

Confused, Ruka cocked her head and leaned slightly on the table, asking, "Why so shy now, Ispir? Is The Thunder and the Lightning not to your liking?" Very bright he had been, back on the street, wandering as he was. Now he looked almost afraid. Sometimes size was intimidating, this Ruka knew...

The Thunder and the Lightning was a tavern that simply could not be mistaken for another. The sign itself could be recognized even by the illiterate, and murals all speaking to the tavern's name adorned the facade of the building, making it quite the colorful neighbor to the adjacent shops. The...

Ruka had little awareness of Ispir's gradual falling behind. She kept on with her giant steps, sweeping her arm (not the one with the flowers!) toward this place or that, giving off loud descriptions of who lived here or what was sold here. Every now and again she'd have the opportunity to meet...

"I know many places where we can be drinking," said Ruka proudly, patting herself on the chest for extra emphasis. "A good place is near. It is being called, The Thunder and the Lightning! Mighty name for a mighty tavern! It is run by a Gildan ogre, and I am having friends with him, and I lose...

Ruka quite nearly forgot what it was that she wanted to ask him, and why she was here, such was the distraction now presented to her. "Ohhh, I like flowers!" she said, and very carefully accepted them. Flowers were very delicate things! And small! They needed great taking care of, and such was...

"You cannot be musicing beasts!" Ruka protested against the dwarf's story. The argument had drawn a small but respectably sized crowd in the Forum of Gild; curious onlookers pondering the substance of the question, citizens merely enjoying a spot of entertainment from the amusing idea, some...

MEETING WITH THE OMMITES And so the Gildan army marched at once from the city. Even with the closeness of Gild proper to the edges of the Spine, still after a full day's march of many miles the army required a night at camp. The foothills of the Spine lay ahead, and then the Spine itself was...

The sort that helps only when there's something to gain. Ruka hefted her axe from her shoulder and thumped it into the ground, hands on the bottom of the haft, for added emphasis to what Emmeline had said. It was true! The Ommites only committed to the fight against the Druga once Gild had...

Ruka's face scrunched with vexation, her lips in particular puckering in a grand show, but she was more than happy to vent to the two Yaegirs about the Ommites. And she said, "Our neighbors to the southwest, those Ommites. They are calling themselves "Iron Aristocracy". The nobles rule...

Damir brightened when Monroe mentioned the number of wyvern skulls her blade had thus far collected, smiling then as if the Yaegirs had already delivered to him the severed head of Gormeddon. And now they were well met, Monroe and Emmeline and Damir, and the Gildan Commander greeted them in the...