North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
- Messages
- 18,165
Orders in two weeks, keep in mind.
End of Empires - N3S III
- Thread starter North King
- Start date
North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
- Messages
- 18,165
One week (and thirty two minutes)!
Jehoshua
Catholic
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2009
- Messages
- 7,248
Orders sent
Comments from North King regarding any obvious problems would be welcome if that is the case, if various persons wish to inform me of certain events that will occur at their hands that would inevitably precipitate an ecclesiastical response, I am happy to make appropriate amendments post hoc to the orders sent (re-submitting them to North King).
Comments from North King regarding any obvious problems would be welcome if that is the case, if various persons wish to inform me of certain events that will occur at their hands that would inevitably precipitate an ecclesiastical response, I am happy to make appropriate amendments post hoc to the orders sent (re-submitting them to North King).
North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
- Messages
- 18,165
I haven't had time to read the orders more than once, but on first look they are excellent. Thanks. 
My father fought in the long wars, and my grandfather also. My mother died in childbirth; my grandmother in the great plague that swept in from the north and killed half the village when I was only 9 years of age. I still bore the pockmarks where it struck me as well.
From when I was nine, then, it was my great-grandmother who raised me. An old women, and as I grew older, the eldest in the village, but a strong one, and one who never grew ill. My father never returned from the war, though he survived. We learned later, my great-grandmother and I, that he settled with a new family in a northern city, far from our quiet fishing village. He had another wife. But he never sent for me. My grandfather did die at war, though not in battle; struck down as so many others on all sides were in the plague that followed the war.
My great-grandmother taught me fishing, and the building of my own boat. So had my family plied the coast for generations, bearing always the harsh mistress of the Airendhe. In my great-grandfathers day, she said, the sea was far more dangerous. The Emperor, for all his faults, had made the waves safe. Safe was not a word I would associate with the sea, but wild and untamed. Yet truth I saw in the notion that they could be tamed, too, for many of my generation were fishermen and sailors again, a profession for which much expertise had been lost in the long wars and their aftermath.
When the time came, and the great merchant fleet, ever-swelling, came looking for sailors. My great-grandmother had passed the year before, at the ripe age of about one hundred and ten, or so she said. No one I ever met had ever heard of a person who lived to such an age, but my great-grandmother had. With her death, I had no ties in our town, and the merchants were a clear choice.
In those days, the merchant boom was just beginning. The war was long over, nearly two decades past. Life had gone on much as it always did for a long time, but eventually we saw traders even in our small town, selling wares from the most exotic locales of which even the wisest in the village had never heard. Once onboard a ship, I learned that I what I first considered exotic were often ports still within the Empire. Truly exotic products were not for sale to humble fishermen, or at prices they might consider.
Yet it was clear that something had shifted in the wind and the water. Where war had once been a way of life for two generations, now it was the sea. Once more for some, those whose blood ran with that of the Haina especially, or the roughest of sailors, all of whom seemed to have grown up in the muddy streets of Mara or the roughest slums of Saigh. We sailed all about the Airendhe, and even beyond, and every voyage many men would say it was the farthest they had ever sailed. Perhaps the world had truly changed, or at least our world had.
---
Orders should be forthcoming tomorrow.
From when I was nine, then, it was my great-grandmother who raised me. An old women, and as I grew older, the eldest in the village, but a strong one, and one who never grew ill. My father never returned from the war, though he survived. We learned later, my great-grandmother and I, that he settled with a new family in a northern city, far from our quiet fishing village. He had another wife. But he never sent for me. My grandfather did die at war, though not in battle; struck down as so many others on all sides were in the plague that followed the war.
My great-grandmother taught me fishing, and the building of my own boat. So had my family plied the coast for generations, bearing always the harsh mistress of the Airendhe. In my great-grandfathers day, she said, the sea was far more dangerous. The Emperor, for all his faults, had made the waves safe. Safe was not a word I would associate with the sea, but wild and untamed. Yet truth I saw in the notion that they could be tamed, too, for many of my generation were fishermen and sailors again, a profession for which much expertise had been lost in the long wars and their aftermath.
When the time came, and the great merchant fleet, ever-swelling, came looking for sailors. My great-grandmother had passed the year before, at the ripe age of about one hundred and ten, or so she said. No one I ever met had ever heard of a person who lived to such an age, but my great-grandmother had. With her death, I had no ties in our town, and the merchants were a clear choice.
In those days, the merchant boom was just beginning. The war was long over, nearly two decades past. Life had gone on much as it always did for a long time, but eventually we saw traders even in our small town, selling wares from the most exotic locales of which even the wisest in the village had never heard. Once onboard a ship, I learned that I what I first considered exotic were often ports still within the Empire. Truly exotic products were not for sale to humble fishermen, or at prices they might consider.
Yet it was clear that something had shifted in the wind and the water. Where war had once been a way of life for two generations, now it was the sea. Once more for some, those whose blood ran with that of the Haina especially, or the roughest of sailors, all of whom seemed to have grown up in the muddy streets of Mara or the roughest slums of Saigh. We sailed all about the Airendhe, and even beyond, and every voyage many men would say it was the farthest they had ever sailed. Perhaps the world had truly changed, or at least our world had.
---
Orders should be forthcoming tomorrow.
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
Zalkephis was dead.
"Erdha! The baggage train comes under assault! We must repel!" He gestured with the point of a lance backwards to where a knot of Karganai swordsmen had outflanked them.
The kephaliha threw his blood-stained hair out of his face. "Until the wind leaves my chest, Oracle, I will not leave y-hrktggh..."
The man's fingers clutched at his throat where a grey-shafted arrow was buried in it. Soon he toppled from the saddle, his hands still wrapped around the arrowshaft, where they would remain wrapped in death. Like that, a man he had known two decades, gone.
The battle was lost. It had never been meant to be won.
He grabbed the warhorn from his saddle where it was tied, and blew four quick blasts. Draa draa draa draaaa. From all around the melee, men gathered, rallying and pulling back from their scattered engagements, knowing the signal. A cluster of perhaps three hundred men were soon there, the front rank firing bows to distract the enemy. Was this truly all that were left? He looked to the horizon, and saw the silhouette of running men against the red background of the setting sun.
Oh.
The Faronun seemed to know what was coming as well. They drew back as well, forming ranks, a line of spears and a line of shortswords behind. Scattered cries of "Hoyapalai" chased the retreating Satar as they gathered. Sweat-soaked bodies and blood-stained masks soon stared up at him on the horse, a sea of them. Even a few blasphemous faces whose owners had had their masks knocked free. Their faces looked so different. So beautiful in their difference.
"Today, our blood will glorify the Giver of Wind, the Bringer of Thunder," said Zalkephis. "To die, is to live." He had to tell them something.
One of the men echoed him in a thick northern accent. "To die, is to live." Then another in the harsh staccato of the Accan-born. Soon the others picked up the chant. Theirs were hoarse voices, run ragged from hours of battle cries and screams of pain and terror.
"Vexas-ven-atanas! Vexas-ven-atanas! Vexas-ven-atanas! VEXAS-VEN-ATANAS!"
The enemy began their chant again. Their absurd hoyapalai. The world was absurd. Empty words for empty deaths.
It was no glorious Satar cavalry charge of legend. Their horses were all dead or run off, except for the one of the Oracle. They slogged through the muddy ground chanting their words, and threw themselves on the wall of spears, hacking and screaming as their flesh was pierced from a dozen angles.
The end came easily. He fell from his horse in the midst of a sea of spears. A boy with green eyes stabbed him through the heart, and he died.
This had all been a game on a map for him, until now. Until now.
Zalkephis was dead.
His eyes opened in darkness.
His eyes opened, and shut. He was lying on stone that felt cool against his cheek. He pushed himself up from the ground, sitting crosslegged like a child, head hanging down. He looked down at his heart. There was no wound.
Slowly, lugubriously, he looked around. Motes of dust floated obscurely through the air.
He lay upon a mosaic. It covered the floor where he lay, and all around him. Vast columns like a forest of great trees surrounded him, and continued into the darkness. Up these as well the mosaic traveled, to a vaulted, shadowed dome somewhere miles above. His mind could not comprehend it. He knew, somehow, that each tile was the life of a soul. The picture, he saw, stretched on for miles. It was a battle. A battle greater than any that had ever been fought. And also every battle that had ever been fought.
He stood up, looking around. There was no exit. The domed hall went on forever in every direction. But the hall had a center. There was a hole in the ceiling, somewhere above, through which fell a column of red moonlight.
And there, upon the necessary circle of grass in the center of the hall, stood the man wearing a mask of reeds.
The Oracle's face twisted, first in incomprehension, and then awe, and then finally, hatred. His breath shuddered out of his lungs like a stutter. He walked forward, slowly at first, like a child learning to walk. They were both naked but for their masks but somehow it did not matter. He pointed a finger at the man as he jerkily walked, his steps echoing in the dark immensity, the only sound that had ever existed in this place.
"YOU," he snarled at the man, "are not REAL!" He gnashed his teeth at the man, a shriek of bestial, wordless rage coming from his mouth. "All of the prayers, the...drugs, the sacrifice, and you showed me nothing! You...gave me...nothing! Why? WHY?"
He crouched down at his feet, his arms around his head, grasping his hair just to have something to grasp. "Why...why...."
"I do not consume like the Flame."
And as he pronounced the word 'flame', the mask of reeds burned away, leaving only the Face of Taleldil. Zalkephis found he could not turn away.
The Face gazed upon him.
And he understood the rules that bound gods and the universe. He understood the prophecies and the portents. He understood the past and the future. He felt the sorrow and the wisdom of the god, and it consumed him. It. Consumed. Him.
A century later, when his sanity returned, he looked again at Taleldil.
He had two great wounds on either side of his torso, from which bled silver blood.
And as Zalkephis watched, a third wound appeared, the flesh seeming to split under the skin of the figure's mighty arm. And down it trickled the same silver blood, blood that seemed to *feel* like an unanswered prayer with each fallen drop. And Zalkephis, the High Oracle who had followed his father to power, who had never truly believed, wept.
"Zalkephis."
"My God."
"The Enemy has grown."
"We have tried to protect you."
"It was I that tried to protect you. But I cannot end the War. To die in Heaven is to be reborn in Earth. There is no escape."
"All people are locked in endless torment," whispered Zalkephis.
"The War in Heaven is hell unceasing. I am trapped in hell."
"What must I do?"
"Free me from hell."
Taleldil opened his divine fist, and wind from every corner of the endless chamber gathered itself into his hand, forming a blade that could only be seen as a ripple. In a fluid motion that eclipsed the beauty and grace of the most practiced Aspect Master by a thousandfold, Taleldil stabbed Zalkephis through the heart with the sword of wind, the wound mirroring with exact precision that which the blade that had killed him had made.
As his vision blurred and faded, he saw the mosaic break apart and come to life. Enemies came at his god from every direction.
But darkness.
---
In a valley wreathed in mist and dominated by the unmelting glacier, a woman in the final throes of childbirth screamed. The wise-woman attending her cast the bones to determine the child's fate. As she threw the bones, a wind blew in from the open window, scattering and reforming the pattern. The child's head crowned, and the woman let out a shriek of utmost anguish as blood and bodily fluids trickled down her bare legs, crying for relief in the midst of unbearable pain.
But the oracle, such as she was, merely bowed before the writhing woman and her attendants, and uttered a prayer of supplication to what had just come into the world.
The End of the Unbowed
Jehoshua
Catholic
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2009
- Messages
- 7,248
In wrath and malice born of frustrated fury, turning completely in will and purpose from the plan of the One, the first treachery and homicide came to pass, as Istria walked in spirit amongst the first nation, the first family, saying unto them "With each step you take marvel at perfection, for it is fleeting." Thus it was that Istria corrupted their souls of light with the taint darkness and sin with the iniquitous design that they and all their descendants might be consigned to oblivion never to return to their origin in the divine and living light.
~ The Abharavastra
"The impure cannot exist in the presence of the most pure, corruption cast before the living god is burned away as reeds cast into the flame. Only in being refined as ore in the smiths fire is refined to bring forth gold, with all impurity burned away, can a soul face the god who dwells in Iralliam and live."
~ Sayings of the Prophet
~ The Abharavastra
"The impure cannot exist in the presence of the most pure, corruption cast before the living god is burned away as reeds cast into the flame. Only in being refined as ore in the smiths fire is refined to bring forth gold, with all impurity burned away, can a soul face the god who dwells in Iralliam and live."
~ Sayings of the Prophet
Lord of Elves
Suede-Denim Secret Police
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2009
- Messages
- 6,976
Orders may be in an hour or so just after the deadline
In which I am a useless, procrastinating arsehammock
In which I am a useless, procrastinating arsehammock
ChiefDesigner
Sunset Emperor
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2007
- Messages
- 761
wait I thought we had another 24 hours
TheMeanestGuest
Warlord
You've got 23 >:[
Get those orders in.
Get those orders in.
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
My orders will make it by the deadline. I'm mostly sorry because I promised NK them Wednesday. But Wednesday's orders time was spent making an alphabet and yesterday was spent licking wounds with my girlfriend who I accidentally stood off, in part because I was very concerned with doing stuff for N3S. I have to grow up and be able to manage both things without hurting people lol
thomas.berubeg
Wandering the World
Adulthood, lol.
Terrance888
Discord Reigns
NAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Bane of my NESing Career.
The Bane of my NESing Career.
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
My split personalities definitely dislike each other more now that they've been forced to fight each other all the time. 
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
Excerpts From The Prime Treatise, Caracenis-ta-Atracta, High Confessor of the Sephashim
Humanity, from the ancient times of the God-slayer [1] to the days of the Silver Prince, Avetas the Wise, and Talephas the Great, and even unto these lesser days, has been engaged in a process of discovery. That which can become known from observation has been chronicled, and the chronicles chronicled, until the accumulation of knowledge has allowed us to claim to be wise men. Yet, the presence of knowledge does not equate to an understanding of how to know.
As it can be seen that many of the chronicles are false, or containing legends, while others contain information that is seen to be sound, we approach the unevenness of past knowledge as a sailor approaches an uncertain and storm-wracked sea. But as augurs and oracles claim to predict and control the pattern of the storms, and Disciplinarians to understand the causes of the storms and their appointed times, we learn of their behavior, such that storms are fiercer during the winter, or that a red sun at dawn is a warning of the storm's approach.
It can be seen that although the rules of Kepha [2], such as the timing of the storms, the composition of metals in the earth, and the distribution of fruits upon the trees, do not adhere to a pattern in the whole that is not arbitrary, what remains is that there are rules, even these rules do not make sense or were made by no-one. Trees grow where there is water, and not fire, though one could just as easily conceive of a land where trees grow where there is fire, and not water. The wisdom of knowledge is that Creation, such as it is, adheres to no pattern, or system of rules that might make it all intelligible to us as a whole, as it was not created by any divine being, as the chaos of the Heavens gave respect to nothing during the Creations.
Yet, as we know men have the ability to create gods by giving them power, and in doing so create wonders and enormities, we may also create, and impose by creating, order upon the rootless chaos of existence in establishing rules of knowing. And by observing these rules through systems of action, they can be categorized and understood, keeping in mind that their causes cannot.
We must be inspired by the Oracles, not count them as foes as so many do, for theirs was the first profession to approach systema. Codification of rules for ritual and belief, and so on, has given them strength, and also confidence in purpose. They do not see the god of man and the Heavens as an incomprehensible collection of indeterminate phenomena, but rather as a Force which benefits us, if channeled and applied in ways which are exatas.
What, then, is proper for knowledge? If we seek benefit from sephas as the Oracles do from Taleldil, we must order our examinations with respect to proper ritual. We must aim to set forth a proper ritual of examination free of falsehood. Observe the proofs set forth for the tri-angle by the Faronai idolaters. They do not declaim why the shape assumes its form or how it has come to be so, for they do not know, nor can they; however, they show that in assuming the shape that it takes, numerical principles apply to its formation which can never be false.
We, in our new knowing, in advancing and perfecting what lesser races have merely observed, must apply this mathematica to all of the other Disciplines. We must seek to establish proof for each claim, and do so by repetition, as do the mathematicians with sums and angles.
Of course, in doing so, we must retain the guarded understanding that the rules, such as they are, have been broken. Latakar once flew in the skies but do so no longer, and ancient bones have been found belonging to no animal. The same wound causes some to live and others to die. What is clear is that though some rules exist, some rules also change. And perhaps it may be that no rule can be proven as absolute, but we must establish frameworks of rules that are seen to be true, and change them as they are found to be false.
In constantly finding new rules of knowing and changing those which are found false, or become false, we humble scholars may evade being called useless by the Princes, and cast out of our halls. But further on this subject, the application of knowledge in a way that is useful to those not seeking it for pleasure, but for worldly use, is a topic we must examine in further detail...
---
[1] A common name for Taleldil, whose many exploits in the Kaphaiavai involved killing the spirits who had set themselves up as false gods requiring worship.
[2] Kepha - The Earth. As opposed to 'keph,' some earth. A term for the whole world growing in popularity in the north as the consciousness of the world as a planet emerges.
Humanity, from the ancient times of the God-slayer [1] to the days of the Silver Prince, Avetas the Wise, and Talephas the Great, and even unto these lesser days, has been engaged in a process of discovery. That which can become known from observation has been chronicled, and the chronicles chronicled, until the accumulation of knowledge has allowed us to claim to be wise men. Yet, the presence of knowledge does not equate to an understanding of how to know.
As it can be seen that many of the chronicles are false, or containing legends, while others contain information that is seen to be sound, we approach the unevenness of past knowledge as a sailor approaches an uncertain and storm-wracked sea. But as augurs and oracles claim to predict and control the pattern of the storms, and Disciplinarians to understand the causes of the storms and their appointed times, we learn of their behavior, such that storms are fiercer during the winter, or that a red sun at dawn is a warning of the storm's approach.
It can be seen that although the rules of Kepha [2], such as the timing of the storms, the composition of metals in the earth, and the distribution of fruits upon the trees, do not adhere to a pattern in the whole that is not arbitrary, what remains is that there are rules, even these rules do not make sense or were made by no-one. Trees grow where there is water, and not fire, though one could just as easily conceive of a land where trees grow where there is fire, and not water. The wisdom of knowledge is that Creation, such as it is, adheres to no pattern, or system of rules that might make it all intelligible to us as a whole, as it was not created by any divine being, as the chaos of the Heavens gave respect to nothing during the Creations.
Yet, as we know men have the ability to create gods by giving them power, and in doing so create wonders and enormities, we may also create, and impose by creating, order upon the rootless chaos of existence in establishing rules of knowing. And by observing these rules through systems of action, they can be categorized and understood, keeping in mind that their causes cannot.
We must be inspired by the Oracles, not count them as foes as so many do, for theirs was the first profession to approach systema. Codification of rules for ritual and belief, and so on, has given them strength, and also confidence in purpose. They do not see the god of man and the Heavens as an incomprehensible collection of indeterminate phenomena, but rather as a Force which benefits us, if channeled and applied in ways which are exatas.
What, then, is proper for knowledge? If we seek benefit from sephas as the Oracles do from Taleldil, we must order our examinations with respect to proper ritual. We must aim to set forth a proper ritual of examination free of falsehood. Observe the proofs set forth for the tri-angle by the Faronai idolaters. They do not declaim why the shape assumes its form or how it has come to be so, for they do not know, nor can they; however, they show that in assuming the shape that it takes, numerical principles apply to its formation which can never be false.
We, in our new knowing, in advancing and perfecting what lesser races have merely observed, must apply this mathematica to all of the other Disciplines. We must seek to establish proof for each claim, and do so by repetition, as do the mathematicians with sums and angles.
Of course, in doing so, we must retain the guarded understanding that the rules, such as they are, have been broken. Latakar once flew in the skies but do so no longer, and ancient bones have been found belonging to no animal. The same wound causes some to live and others to die. What is clear is that though some rules exist, some rules also change. And perhaps it may be that no rule can be proven as absolute, but we must establish frameworks of rules that are seen to be true, and change them as they are found to be false.
In constantly finding new rules of knowing and changing those which are found false, or become false, we humble scholars may evade being called useless by the Princes, and cast out of our halls. But further on this subject, the application of knowledge in a way that is useful to those not seeking it for pleasure, but for worldly use, is a topic we must examine in further detail...
---
[1] A common name for Taleldil, whose many exploits in the Kaphaiavai involved killing the spirits who had set themselves up as false gods requiring worship.
[2] Kepha - The Earth. As opposed to 'keph,' some earth. A term for the whole world growing in popularity in the north as the consciousness of the world as a planet emerges.
Golden1Knight
Emperor
Orders sent. If there is anything that needs to be corrected, let me know. I had to send two messages, due to the character limit.
Sorry for the delay, but know that I spent the whole week working on it, and I had the exhausting work of having to translate everything.
Sorry for the delay, but know that I spent the whole week working on it, and I had the exhausting work of having to translate everything.
