"Take this amulet. Find my daughter, do whatever it takes! Make those knife-ears pay for stealing my girl. Make them regret the day they crossed the hatched crest!"
-Lower Council Member Frederick Chermain, unnamed house of Vel Anir
-Lower Council Member Frederick Chermain, unnamed house of Vel Anir
Hate was a difficult emotion, requiring a certain level of investment to truly precipitate into something even remotely resembling the frothing spittle with which humanity was so often encumbered. But if he had to put his finger on it, on that particular subconscious response to the conversation with the illustrious Frederick Chermain, Rain imagined that hate would get him pretty close to target. It was the airs - superiority, holier than thou, and that notion that money could, in all its absolutism, buy anything. It was simply a matter of which numbers came after the currency symbol.
If he were being entirely honest with Chermain, he would have admitted that he held elves, and particular elves even more so, in far higher regard than the majority of humans. The idea that there was a roving band of feral elves, running off with the barely adult children of lesser house members of Vel Anir for the sake of a pittance of jingling metal, was a difficult serving to swallow. And yet he took the assignment, and the assumed fallacious explanation, with a nod and grunt because that shining metal was something of which he was in terrible need.
Vel Anir stood as a monument to the impenetrable nature of the Falwood, residing south and east along the ever gentle slope of the continent that eventually bled off into the coast. Where the mature woods resisted the buffeting arid push of the northern savannah and ravenous humanic need to plant a flag in something unclaimed, it had no such power over the temperate rains. Thousands upon thousands of years of natural development, plus the failed attempts of ambitious humans to develop polders along the north and west borders of the Falwood, had left scars and cuts across the vast expanse of hardwoods and evergreen forests. The sort of scars and cuts that mobilized and concentrated water.
Chermain had called the extensive wooded complex by the derogatory term, established in Vel Anir by the elite and beggars alike. The Bowels of Dryadalis. The shit remains of the Fal'Addas. When the gods bent down to inspire Vel Anir in service to humanity, what came out of the other end was this place, mired in shit and the stench of the Dryadalis. Rain was certain there was a far more eloquent old-world name for the location, but he didn't keep the sort of company that would make him privy to it. Instead, he was forced to partner with someone of a similar occupation as him on account of perceived difficulty of task. Whatever the reason, he wasn't a fan of being told what to do or how to go about practicing his craft.
The still waters of the slough stirred and swirled, pulling together a convection of verdant algae that eventually billowed out into a sphere. Once it couldn't take it anymore, the bubble popped and the algae curled back, releasing a belch of methane that was indistinguishable from the odors of the rest of the swamp. Eventually, the bubble capsized to the disturbance of a diving snake, bolting off from an overhanging cypress tree. The water was only currently knee deep but the hazards of the Bowels paid little mind to the depths of the water - everything presented a risk. Their movement so far had been slow, forced to wade between high points in the topography as they navigated the thick and clinging fog. The sort of the fog that wasn't likely to burn off in the morning sun.
"The amulet is quiet..." Rain had no sense of the range on the item but based no Chermain's accounting of the family relic, it would hum or throb when they got close enough. "We should look for a scouting point out here, something with a better view."
Plop
Another snake.
Gannis
If he were being entirely honest with Chermain, he would have admitted that he held elves, and particular elves even more so, in far higher regard than the majority of humans. The idea that there was a roving band of feral elves, running off with the barely adult children of lesser house members of Vel Anir for the sake of a pittance of jingling metal, was a difficult serving to swallow. And yet he took the assignment, and the assumed fallacious explanation, with a nod and grunt because that shining metal was something of which he was in terrible need.
Vel Anir stood as a monument to the impenetrable nature of the Falwood, residing south and east along the ever gentle slope of the continent that eventually bled off into the coast. Where the mature woods resisted the buffeting arid push of the northern savannah and ravenous humanic need to plant a flag in something unclaimed, it had no such power over the temperate rains. Thousands upon thousands of years of natural development, plus the failed attempts of ambitious humans to develop polders along the north and west borders of the Falwood, had left scars and cuts across the vast expanse of hardwoods and evergreen forests. The sort of scars and cuts that mobilized and concentrated water.
Chermain had called the extensive wooded complex by the derogatory term, established in Vel Anir by the elite and beggars alike. The Bowels of Dryadalis. The shit remains of the Fal'Addas. When the gods bent down to inspire Vel Anir in service to humanity, what came out of the other end was this place, mired in shit and the stench of the Dryadalis. Rain was certain there was a far more eloquent old-world name for the location, but he didn't keep the sort of company that would make him privy to it. Instead, he was forced to partner with someone of a similar occupation as him on account of perceived difficulty of task. Whatever the reason, he wasn't a fan of being told what to do or how to go about practicing his craft.
The still waters of the slough stirred and swirled, pulling together a convection of verdant algae that eventually billowed out into a sphere. Once it couldn't take it anymore, the bubble popped and the algae curled back, releasing a belch of methane that was indistinguishable from the odors of the rest of the swamp. Eventually, the bubble capsized to the disturbance of a diving snake, bolting off from an overhanging cypress tree. The water was only currently knee deep but the hazards of the Bowels paid little mind to the depths of the water - everything presented a risk. Their movement so far had been slow, forced to wade between high points in the topography as they navigated the thick and clinging fog. The sort of the fog that wasn't likely to burn off in the morning sun.
"The amulet is quiet..." Rain had no sense of the range on the item but based no Chermain's accounting of the family relic, it would hum or throb when they got close enough. "We should look for a scouting point out here, something with a better view."
Plop
Another snake.
Gannis