Fable - Ask Duty Calls

[Allirian City Watch]

(OOC: The thread is open to all characters wanting to become members of Alliria's City Watch/Standing Military)

The courtyard of Allir Keep yawned like a stone mouth, teeth of white masonry gleaming in the noon. The barracks doors stood flung wide, exhaling the breath of oiled leather and old drill—an animal scent that promised order. Tables had been set like confessionals beneath pennants of the Watch, and officials in dark half-capes bent over ledgers, their quills pricking names into the city’s living hide. Beyond the arch, the bridges hissed with foot traffic, the city’s twin hearts pumping faces from Inner to Outer and back again. Here, in this brief pause between the walls and the markets, Alliria measured its protectors like a jeweler weighing coin.

A placard on a pike made the invitation plain: ALL CITIZENS OF EIGHTEEN YEARS OR MORE—IF INTERESTED, PRESENT YOURSELVES. PHYSICAL TRIAL REQUIRED. The letters were fat with fresh ink, still wet enough to smudge on a nervous thumb. In the shade of the towers that housed them, the Watchmen moved in small knots, mail whispering, voices tarrying in low, pleased murmurs about the Merchant Council’s promised increase in pay and the new lodgings—dry rafters, real windows, the mildew driven out like a bad spirit. Their satisfaction had the mild, feline warmth of men who had slept poorly for years and at last smelled soap. They watched the would-be applicants the way lighthouse fires watch the sea: steady, appraising, a little hungry.

The line itself was a cross-section cut from Alliria’s own flesh. Dockhands from the Inner City with salt still caking their cuffs; leather-fingered smiths of the Outer City, eyes like quenched iron; a trickle of slum-thin youths from the Areck camps, and a few slick-heeled fish from the Shallows, their smiles as narrow as canal water. Between them all moved the promise that made this city throb—work, coin, the safety the Watch sold by the watchtower—because prosperity here was not a virtue but a mechanism, and someone had to keep it greased. The officials stamped seals, measured chests, made men run until the stone shone with footprints. And the Keep, last bastion and first bureaucracy, looked on with its patient, mercantile gaze, as if to say: be fit, be useful, and we will make a wall of you.

In a city that straddled continents and strangled the strait with bridges and chains, the Watch’s smile was part welcome, part warning. Come in, it said. Stand the test. Join the rows of polished steel and iron will that keep the markets bright and the nights mostly quiet. The ink dried. The mouths of the barracks stayed open. And Alliria—old, wealthy, beautifully practical Alliria—kept counting.

 

[Hugo Farlance]

Hugo stepped into the courtyard of Allir Keep, dusty boots thudding cautiously over flagstones, leather and gear creaking softly, as he admired the mighty walls.

Being a former officer of siege engineers, he could appreciate the strength of its walls, the clear funnel of coin that kept its stone well-repaired and maintained, barely a scratch to be found. It nearly rivalled the strength of Vel Anir. It would be tough as nails, if not near impossible, to breach this castle.

Though its guards, he noted, held some complacency compared to the discipline he was used to in the Anirian Guard. The soldiers - mirroring the walls - carried their confidence and armour like they were invincible, unspoiled by dents, cuts or defeat, all polished and oiled in the manner of a defence that had never suffered a serious assault.

A set of Anirian trebuchets and Cortosi ballista would quickly teach them a thing or two about true warfare.

He shook his head, willing himself not to think like an enemy. This might be a new chance for him to gain a decent living, at least for a time. He took off his black beret, folding it between his hands, gaze locked by the faded gleam of its officer insignia. It was time to leave the past behind. Time to put his hard-earned uniform in a dusty shelf - perhaps never to be seen again. Only to take up the humble mantle of the city watch. Start from the bottom, once again.

It would be better. Better than wandering the roads like an emaciated wolf, all claw and teeth, but no pack. Besides, it wasn't a life sentence. This would allow him to serve for a time, stabilising himself, save up a little coin - and then, once he had refound his rhythm, to satisfy his honour.

With even greater reluctance, he pulled the black officer's coat from his shoulders, his sleeves hanging free, wearing it like a cape. This he folded over his arm, along with his hat, doing his best to hide any identifying marks.

His accent, however, he couldn't hide. Perhaps the Watch would not want a foreigner in their ranks.

Only time would tell.

Drawing a deep inhalation through his nose, Hugo stepped into the queue of other aspirants, wearing loose and dirty linens and leather bandeliers, a longsword clanging on his back and a shorter blade glinting with its polished hilt in his belt.

As he approached the tables below the pennants, awaiting the sentence afforded him by a scribe's slashing quill, Hugo remarked to the one in front of him:

"Hope the pay's fair. If they can afford all that ink, they oughta spare a decent coin for their watch."

What better way to pretend at being a citizen, than a chin-wag with said citizens?

 

[Allirian City Watch]

Hugo Farlance
The man at the table inclined his head, a slab of green-brown muscle given the courtesy of a nod. He was built like siegework—broad-shouldered, neck thick as a bull’s yoke to keep the skull moored—and his tusks shone with a butcher’s polish. He lifted one arm, forearm the girth of a tree stump, and idly scraped along a tusk with a little length of metal, a toothpick turned tool, a glinting tick-tick that matched the scratch of the scribe’s quill. Around him the recruitment tables breathed ink and leather; banners hung like skinned colors; the Keep’s mouth stayed open to swallow names.

“Aye, somethin’ like that,” he rumbled, voice gravel in a bucket. “Everyone got a raise, an’ new kit, an’ new lodgin’s. We got real beds this time ’stead o’ straw-filled mattresses.” The words came with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes; those stayed hooded and busy, skimming Hugo the way a butcher pats a haunch—testing age, guessing weight, measuring the set of the shoulders. He smelled foreign coin and old travel on the man and, in that whiff, made the easy arithmetic: mercenary.

“Rumor has it our new Lord Commander strong-armed the council into payin’ for the lot, hah, hah.”

 

[Hugo Farlance]

Hugo smiled - a small slash of teeth between his straw-coloured beard, reminiscent of a content snarl. He was happy to recognise the familiar roughshod humour of men-at-arms. Though he would have to get used to serving alongside orcs.

"Good to hear. Sounds like the Lord Commander's got proper sense for his footmen." His smile dampened at the coastline of paper along the table, their inky words as incomprehensible to him as runes. "So, how does one sign up?"

Allirian City Watch

 

[Allirian City Watch]

Hugo Farlance

The orc’s mouth spread in a carnivore’s smile, lips peeling back to show four tusks crowding his jaw—mercifully, the rest of his teeth were a near-human picket. His knuckles, knotted like river stones, drummed once on the ledger before him; the quill stood ready like a thorn.

“Right, then,” he said. “You tell me yer full name, race, age, yer trade, an’ where ya lay yer head. I’ll scratch it down an’ pawn ya off to the nearest senior leftenant. They’ll weigh ya—mass, height—an’ put ya through a few tests. Run. Lift. Push. See if the meat holds. If ya don’t fold, the leftenant’ll tell ya the rest.”

He clicked the little metal pick against a tusk—tik—then angled the quill, the page waiting like pale skin for the needle. The banners above gave a slow, breathless stir.

 

[Hugo Farlance]

Hugo hesitated for a beat. His arm tightened around his old, raggedy uniform and hidden hat. They seemed to want a lot of information out of him, but that appeared to be the way with these Allirians. Wedded to their own rule of desks, paper and ink.

It felt dangerous to divulge this. But he had prepared himself a cover identity. Surely his status of outlaw wouldn't reach this far beyond the border of Aniria?

His back straightened into a military pose, legs spread, chin raised with the dictum of army discipline, one palm resting on the pommel of his shortsword.

"Lourke Lockheed. Human, as you can see. Three odd decades or so, I wager. Trade's swung 'tween sellsword and courier - mostly between here and Aniria." He felt right devious about that one. It would explain away his Anirian accent. "Alas, work's short these days, hence why I'm here. Currently catch me shut-eye in the Seven Stars Inn."

Allirian City Watch

 

[Allirian City Watch]

Hugo Farlance

The orc snorted—one blunt, bovine huff that stirred the fringe of the ledger—and set his quill gnawing the page. Ink spidered from the nib in hungry strokes as he ground each syllable of Hugo’s answers into the parchment, like a butcher working salt into meat. When the last letter lay pinned, he snapped the quill upright, lifted the sheet to the light, and squinted along it with a single baleful eye, as if the words might wriggle and try for escape. Satisfied, he gave the page a curt shake, then jabbed a knotty finger toward the Keep. The gesture had the finality of a gate slamming. Off you go—into the machine.

Inside, the Keep was busy the way a heart is busy. Corridors pulsed with men in layers of iron and ink: clerks with lips blue from sealing wax; sergeants whose mail whispered like rain on a tomb; orderlies ferrying bundles of spears as if feeding wood into a furnace. Ledgers flapped, seals kissed parchment, boots drummed a tattoo that traveled through stone and bone alike. Brass plaques gleamed like well-scrubbed teeth. The whole place smelled of oiled leather and old decisions.

Amid this tide, one figure held like a pilaster. Tall. Armor worked in rich relief, gold picking out beasts and vines; a dark gorget at his throat; a red mantle folded with miser’s precision across one shoulder. His hair was winter-pale and receded to a patrician brow; his beard close and exact, as if trimmed by a ruler. He was finishing a quiet flaying of words with two soldiers—no raised voice, only a measured cut here, a stitch there—when his gaze slipped to Hugo. Those eyes were coins struck from cold metal; their weight did the summoning before his hand did. Two fingers beckoned, economical as a ledger line.

“Come, come,” came the man’s voice.

Up close, the gold on his breastplate showed tiny hammered scars, like an old lion’s hide that had learned to heal without fuss. He accepted the orc’s parchment from a waiting adjutant, read without moving his lips.

 

[Charlemagne]

The banality of a dead dream kept his nights sleepless and his days long.

Long had he wondered what the course of fate had designed for him, and it seemed pitiful mundanity won out in the end. Months of marching and plodding through thickets and fens had left his knees creaking by the time he made it to Alliria. Once, he'd sought to see the walls toppled and the bureaucrats within strung up by their necks.

Now he meandered through its gates like a march to the gallows. Perseverance and grit were worn with the sands of time and had dithered beneath heat of the savannahs. Part of him longed for the uncertainty of the wilds, but he would find no further solace in isolation. There were no more worlds left to conquer, and no souls he would dare to call brothers any longer.

He'd thought to send himself into the arms of butchers in some vain hope that an honorable death might please the gods and see him spat back out into the mortal plane with a better life. A second chance, a new body, a cleansed soul - that too had proven folly. It'd taken half a day to wash the dried vitae of his former comrades from his clothes. Enough time to think.

There was redemption in purpose, or so he told himself. It was a lie comforting enough to send him toward the courtyard of Allir keep where he watched purposed men recruit new souls. Even now, on the precipice, the desire to flee back to the wilds gnawed at his aching bones.

But that would just be more of the same. More struggle. More hunger. More killing for the sake of it and justifications that grew flimsier by the day. He needed change, and to stand with the guard of a city he'd hated was the most radical his mind could concoct.

Perhaps he'd finally have steady coin, maybe meet a woman. Tiny idling hope stirred his steps as he drifted into the queue and watched the brute of an orc send an older man on his way. Time would tell.

Hugo Farlance, Allirian City Watch

 

[Afanas]

Charlemagne
The courtyard breathed with restless ambition, a living tableau of flesh pressed against stone. Beneath the Keep's towering shadow, the recruitment continued its methodical pulse, officials bent like carrion birds over their ledgers, quills scratching names into existence while the sun carved harsh angles across the flagstones. The air hung thick with the metallic tang of anticipation and the musk of unwashed bodies pressed too close together.

From the periphery of this mortal theater, Afanas observed with the patience of a predator. The wide brim of his dark hat cast a crescent of shadow across features that seemed carved from moonlight itself, pale as winter bone, sharp as broken glass. He stood head and shoulders above the crowd, a dark tower among the scrambling masses, his presence drawing nervous glances like iron filings to a lodestone. Only the handful of ogres and hill giants scattered throughout the square matched his imposing stature, their crude bulk a stark contrast to his elegant menace.

The procession of men moved before him in waves, dockhands with salt-crusted fingers, smiths whose eyes held the memory of forge-fire, slum-children thin as whispers carrying dreams too large for their hollow chests. They flowed like a river of ambition toward the recruitment tables, each soul seeking transformation through service, coin, and the promise of dry beds.

A talon-like nail, lacquered black as midnight oil, caught the light as Afanas placed his large, clawed hand upon his subordinate's shoulder. The orc beneath his touch was broad and scarred, leather and mail hanging loose on his frame like the shed skin of some lesser creature. Where Afanas moved with liquid grace, the orc was all angles and blunt pragmatism, a hammer to his master's blade.

"All going according to the plan, I take it?" The words fell from Afanas's lips like drops of poison honey, soft yet carrying the weight of absolute authority. His voice held the quality of distant thunder, a rumble that promised storms on far horizons.

The orc's response came in the guttural cadence of his kind, each word hewn from granite and tempered by years of harsh service. "Aye, boss, but we's gettin' tired. Too many puny ones, eh? Some ain't from Alliria, some don't speak gud. Grunt an' point, they do." His voice carried the weariness of a soldier who had stood too long at his post, watching the endless stream of hopefuls crash against the bureaucratic shore.

Afanas's dark eyes swept across the courtyard, taking in the polyglot chaos of tongues and dialects that rose like incense from the crowd. Foreign sailors gestured wildly at confused clerks, refugees from distant conflicts clutched papers in languages the officials couldn't decipher, and merchants' sons practiced speeches in dialects that would have been better suited to drawing rooms than drill yards.

"I'll see to it that another group of translators is dispatched," he murmured, his voice carrying the casual certainty of one accustomed to having his wishes made manifest. The words were silk wrapped around steel, a promise and a command rolled into one. "In the meanwhile, see to it that the applicants do not start scuffling with each other."

The instruction hung in the air between them, weighted with unspoken consequences. In the distance, the bridges of Alliria hummed with their eternal traffic, the city's twin hearts pumping life between Inner and Outer districts while the Keep's shadow stretched longer with the declining sun. Here, in this crucible of stone and ambition, order would be maintained, not through the crude application of force, but through the more refined art of anticipation and control.

The orc nodded, understanding passing between them with the efficiency of long partnership. In this dance of recruitment and surveillance, each knew their steps.

 

[The Spear Thistle Fairy]

Spear Thistle fluttered between Alliria’s imposing spires, grasped by a pervasive boredom. The free spirited Sidhe wasn’t really a human city kind of gal, and Alliria sure was the most human city human city that ever did human city.

“Like seriously!” The small fae suddenly exclaimed at a flock of perching birds. “Why do they even make these things? Like, ooo look at how high we piled these rocks up. Look at how much cool stuff we put in our rock piles.”

“Mountains are already a thing. You can already live in one if you’re weird like that. Just go be a dwarf.”

The birds flew off as they did not share or understand Spear Thistle’s views on human architecture. The lone fae huffed and kept on fluttering until she noticed a fascinating sight.

“Well what have we here?” Down below she saw a gathering of various mortal races all getting together for what seemed to be a physical event or something.

She hurried down and got a better look at the city guard recruitment drive, overhearing quite a bit while staying out of sight. The more spear thistle heard the more interested she got, this seemed like a lovely blank canvas for a crafty fae such as her. And she had oh so much magic on hand with which to paint.

 

[Hugo Farlance]

As Hugo walked through the complex, he was amazed at the intricate web of people working together here. It felt well-oiled, timed and organised like some grand mechanical contraption, cogs and gears grinding through lives and passing them along with on-point punctuality. And if he didn't fit into this machine, then it would surely grind him to dust.

There was something comforting in that. He knew this better than the aimless, wandering danger of the high roads. Here, actions held clear consequences. Follow orders, do as you are told, and you can go about your day.

“Come, come,” came the man’s voice.

Hugo hearkened the summons of the lieutenant, recognising in that severe countenance someone who had to issue through many orders in the span of a single day, and who would not broker any obstruction to his operation. His armour was an impressive blend of a blacksmith's work and an artist's vision and probably rightly deserved.

He stood stiff and on point, every bit the model soldier - except for his tattered clothes and scruffy beard. But his stance held the expected, unflinching forward-stare of someone militarily trained, hands clasped behind him.

He couldn't help but wonder if the orc had written his own account, word for word, or if he had added something else. Patiently, he awaited a verdict, staring right past the shoulder of the officer.

Allirian City Watch
Afanas

 

[Allirian City Watch]

Hugo Farlance

The Marshall's eyes, blue as artic glaciers and twice as rigid, tracked their slow appraisal down the length of Hugo's frame. From crown to boot, the inspection moved with the methodical precision of a man who had assessed ten thousand soldiers and found nine thousand wanting. The scrutiny lasted perhaps five seconds, no more, but in that brief span Hugo felt the weight of judgment settle upon him like mail across weary shoulders.

When the examination concluded, Baelor Rothfuss gave a single, approving nod, curt as a blade's kiss, and extended his hand.

"Baelor Rothfuss. High Marshall." The words carried the unmistakable cadence of Aniria, each syllable measured and deliberate, as if speech itself were a resource not to be wasted.

The Marshall's attention shifted to the parchment in his other hand, the document the orc scribe had thrust upon him earlier. He studied it with the same cool assessment he'd given Hugo's person, as though weighing the ink itself for truth. His jaw worked slightly, a muscle tightening beneath skin weathered by years beneath sun and storm.

"This says you were a mercenary." Rothfuss raised his gaze from the paper, and those blue-grey eyes found Hugo's with unsettling directness. He let the silence stretch for a breath before continuing, his tone flat and factual. "Your posture suggests otherwise. Army proper, I'd wager. Not some cutthroat battalion."

The statement hung in the air between them, neither quite accusation nor compliment, but something of both. It was the sort of observation that demanded honesty, delivered in a tone that suggested lies would be identified with the same ease the Marshall had identified military bearing beneath tattered cloth and unkempt beard.

 

[Hugo Farlance]

Spoiler: Music

The shadow of a smirk tugged at his lip, almost pulling his mouth sideways, before he wiped his face clean, still looking past the marshal in professional deference. Birds of a feather recognised one another, indeed.

"I served during the Siege of Alliria, sir. When every spare blade was summoned to relieve the city. Even us couriers and caravan guards operating on the border." His head turned ever so slightly, looking into the eyes of the marshal, oak-coloured orbs glinting like polished wood. "They taught us harsh discipline right quick, sir. Never left me bones since."

It irked him to lie. But he thought he knew enough of that battle to make a passable performance. It might also serve to garner some immediate credit here.

He would have liked nothing more than to tell of his true achievements in the Anirian Guard. But associating himself with Vel Anir's military was too dangerous, too risky - even here.

Allirian City Watch