Linkman226
#anarchy
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2007
- Messages
- 2,493
This story is positively epic.
Unbound
- Thread starter the unbound
- Start date
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Part II
Chapter XIX
Two days up river, we ambush some bleating sheep and roast them on spits as twilight creeps into the expanse of the western sky.
By the fires, the men tell stories of the spider that created the world out of forever.
Then they ask me if I was there.
"My father, before he died, said he had known you since the first voyages beyond the mountain ridge, and that you had not aged in all that time," Ariki, a chieftain among the Maori warriors, says, gnawing on lamb meat and eyeing me as one does an old friend who's played a trick on you. "I have watched you, every day for six years and it is true, you do not age."
So was I there, they wonder, when the world was new?
I know many things he could never understand because I do not understand them myself.
I know that this world is new. I know that only a few dozen generations back, it was reshaped, reformed. Continents that were molten in the wake of a dying sun's fiery splash were frozen whole, seeded and populated. I know this world is a created thing.
But they weren't your gods, Ariki. The things that did this, that gave life to your forefathers and stitched these legends you tell into the fabric of their minds were not gods. They do not want your worship.
They want nothing from you.
Or from me.
So I tell him, "You are right that I have lived a long time. So long I don't know how long it has been anymore. I have also died many times, but I never really die. Whenever it happens, I always end up here again. At the beginning of things, but this is not really the beginning, either. The beginning was somewhere else." I look up into the velvet sheet just giving way to pinpricks of light and see if I can pick out the star I'm thinking of. Something aches inside me when I try to see it, try to look back across the eons at the world that was. I hear voices. Laughter. There's a warmth inside me and I feel as though I am about to say someone's name. A few names, maybe.
Ariki is about to ask me to decode this puzzle, to explain myself in terms that make sense--as if such a thing were possible--when the perimeter guards sound an alarm.
Men arm themselves.
Human shapes bearing torches approach from the north, following the bend in the river.
The sentries scurry up to us.
Men. Men approaching. "Pale faced," one tells me. "Like you."
"Your kind?" Ariki asks.
"I doubt it," I tell him, walking forward to meet the torches. "But you never can tell."
The scouts are bearded men in hides and bearing only staffs as weapons. If they feel any fear at the sight of our war clubs studded with shark-teeth, then they give no outward sign.
I wait for them to speak.
"Qui êtes-vous?"
"We are," I answer in their language. "Travelers."
They ask me where we are traveling to.
"We have heard stories of ancient stone buildings on the hills up river. We are curious."
It is theirs, they say.
"We were told it was abandoned," I say.
It is theirs now, they say again. They have claimed it for their nation. We may not pass.
They go, saying little more. I do catch one of them looking at the fine, white points of one of the shark clubs and it makes me a smile a little to see through their bravado.
"They are few," Ariki says. "And weak. They cannot stop us. We have come a great distance to see this place. Who are they to turn us back?"
"No, no," I say. "The world is broad and wide. Let us not seek trouble with these people." I turn to the others and grin. "It would only embarrass them and shame their children's children if they had to live up to their bluster with those stupid sticks!"
They laugh and set themselves back to feasting.
I watch the torches recede. "We will go down river. Let them claim what they will," I mumble to Ariki. "We still have the sea."
Chapter XIX
Two days up river, we ambush some bleating sheep and roast them on spits as twilight creeps into the expanse of the western sky.
By the fires, the men tell stories of the spider that created the world out of forever.
Then they ask me if I was there.
"My father, before he died, said he had known you since the first voyages beyond the mountain ridge, and that you had not aged in all that time," Ariki, a chieftain among the Maori warriors, says, gnawing on lamb meat and eyeing me as one does an old friend who's played a trick on you. "I have watched you, every day for six years and it is true, you do not age."
So was I there, they wonder, when the world was new?
I know many things he could never understand because I do not understand them myself.
I know that this world is new. I know that only a few dozen generations back, it was reshaped, reformed. Continents that were molten in the wake of a dying sun's fiery splash were frozen whole, seeded and populated. I know this world is a created thing.
But they weren't your gods, Ariki. The things that did this, that gave life to your forefathers and stitched these legends you tell into the fabric of their minds were not gods. They do not want your worship.
They want nothing from you.
Or from me.
So I tell him, "You are right that I have lived a long time. So long I don't know how long it has been anymore. I have also died many times, but I never really die. Whenever it happens, I always end up here again. At the beginning of things, but this is not really the beginning, either. The beginning was somewhere else." I look up into the velvet sheet just giving way to pinpricks of light and see if I can pick out the star I'm thinking of. Something aches inside me when I try to see it, try to look back across the eons at the world that was. I hear voices. Laughter. There's a warmth inside me and I feel as though I am about to say someone's name. A few names, maybe.
Ariki is about to ask me to decode this puzzle, to explain myself in terms that make sense--as if such a thing were possible--when the perimeter guards sound an alarm.
Men arm themselves.
Human shapes bearing torches approach from the north, following the bend in the river.
The sentries scurry up to us.
Men. Men approaching. "Pale faced," one tells me. "Like you."
"Your kind?" Ariki asks.
"I doubt it," I tell him, walking forward to meet the torches. "But you never can tell."
The scouts are bearded men in hides and bearing only staffs as weapons. If they feel any fear at the sight of our war clubs studded with shark-teeth, then they give no outward sign.
I wait for them to speak.
"Qui êtes-vous?"
"We are," I answer in their language. "Travelers."
They ask me where we are traveling to.
"We have heard stories of ancient stone buildings on the hills up river. We are curious."
It is theirs, they say.
"We were told it was abandoned," I say.
It is theirs now, they say again. They have claimed it for their nation. We may not pass.
They go, saying little more. I do catch one of them looking at the fine, white points of one of the shark clubs and it makes me a smile a little to see through their bravado.
"They are few," Ariki says. "And weak. They cannot stop us. We have come a great distance to see this place. Who are they to turn us back?"
"No, no," I say. "The world is broad and wide. Let us not seek trouble with these people." I turn to the others and grin. "It would only embarrass them and shame their children's children if they had to live up to their bluster with those stupid sticks!"
They laugh and set themselves back to feasting.
I watch the torches recede. "We will go down river. Let them claim what they will," I mumble to Ariki. "We still have the sea."
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Thanks for all the positive feedback, folks.
As to the question of this story's scope and duration: It will not be "unbound" in the sense that I'm going to play as all the civs. That would really be epic, but I'll leave a project like that to someone else. Me, I've got an end in mind.
Hopefully, I'll find time to post again tomorrow.
As to the question of this story's scope and duration: It will not be "unbound" in the sense that I'm going to play as all the civs. That would really be epic, but I'll leave a project like that to someone else. Me, I've got an end in mind.
Hopefully, I'll find time to post again tomorrow.
christos200
Never tell me the odds
Nice update.
Linkman226
#anarchy
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2007
- Messages
- 2,493
I have serious issues treating you as a mortal after this story, unbound. I'm fairly convinced you're writing this from the top of Mount Olympus or something.
clearmurky
Emperor
HIS SECRET HAS BEEN REVEALED!the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Okay, now you guys are just getting ridiculous.
More soon.
More soon.
clearmurky
Emperor
Seriously, you're amazing.
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Part II
Chapter XX
Where are the people?
Gone.
What became of them?
The desert seems to have overtaken the city.
He says the desert swallowed them up...How can the desert devour a whole city?
Maybe they stripped away the trees and the winds swept away all the good soil. Or maybe the groundwater was too shallow and they depleted it. It happens. A civilization can bleed the environment around it dry.
Did they perish here?
Maybe. Maybe they moved on. Maybe they set their rafts adrift among the stars and landed in another world.
Poetry?
A hazy memory.
This place, what was it?
A rotunda of some sort. These benches are where people would sit.
So many?
This amphitheater seems big enough for the whole community. I doubt it was for entertainment, but it's possible. Either way it's like Greece.
Like what?
Somewhere far away. They built places like this. It could have been for drama, or it could have been a public forum.
We don't understand.
They were governed by each other. The whole city ruled by the whole city. Democracy.
No chiefs?
No. They decided things together.
How? Why?
"So that no man would have power over another," I tell them and I see them eye old Ariki warily as he stomps about the edge of the amphitheater, grumbling about the length of the journey. I've seen his spirit dry up with age, like a city gone dry at the desert's edge. Now the younger men resent his longevity and cast their eyes forward.
They mumble to each other, stringing together some notion of liberty from the faded frescoes of a dead race. Was it actually Greece that perished prematurely here in the sands? I touch the panels at the rear of the stage, tracing my fingertips through the reddish smudges of paint left behind by the ravaging desert winds and trying to feel the lost vibrations of odeon lutes or the bristling noise of political discourse.
All so familiar. A shadow that falls every noon without you ever knowing its source.
Chapter XX
Where are the people?
Gone.
What became of them?
The desert seems to have overtaken the city.
He says the desert swallowed them up...How can the desert devour a whole city?
Maybe they stripped away the trees and the winds swept away all the good soil. Or maybe the groundwater was too shallow and they depleted it. It happens. A civilization can bleed the environment around it dry.
Did they perish here?
Maybe. Maybe they moved on. Maybe they set their rafts adrift among the stars and landed in another world.
Poetry?
A hazy memory.
This place, what was it?
A rotunda of some sort. These benches are where people would sit.
So many?
This amphitheater seems big enough for the whole community. I doubt it was for entertainment, but it's possible. Either way it's like Greece.
Like what?
Somewhere far away. They built places like this. It could have been for drama, or it could have been a public forum.
We don't understand.
They were governed by each other. The whole city ruled by the whole city. Democracy.
No chiefs?
No. They decided things together.
How? Why?
"So that no man would have power over another," I tell them and I see them eye old Ariki warily as he stomps about the edge of the amphitheater, grumbling about the length of the journey. I've seen his spirit dry up with age, like a city gone dry at the desert's edge. Now the younger men resent his longevity and cast their eyes forward.
They mumble to each other, stringing together some notion of liberty from the faded frescoes of a dead race. Was it actually Greece that perished prematurely here in the sands? I touch the panels at the rear of the stage, tracing my fingertips through the reddish smudges of paint left behind by the ravaging desert winds and trying to feel the lost vibrations of odeon lutes or the bristling noise of political discourse.
All so familiar. A shadow that falls every noon without you ever knowing its source.
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Yeah, this was pre-patch on the Mac version. According to the dates on the screenshots, it looks like I played this game back in September.
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Part II
Chapter XXI
It seems they've been talking about it for years.
From beneath the vaulted "V" shapes of the pavilion buildings, I listen without comment to the public meetings--young recruiters once again urging emigration to the desert colonies.
I want to go to sea again just to get away from the propaganda.
"But isn't it terribly dry and hot?"
"The seasons are mild," the promoter says. "That is all. No fierce storms."
"No agriculture!" someone shouts from the back of the crowd.
"Who has need of it, when the sea produces all we will need?" they always answer. They fill the people's heads with visions of fish leaping willingly into baskets so they can be taken in and fried up. They pitch dreams of silver mines and houses made of marble. Most listeners shake their heads and go on--life is perfectly pleasant here, after all--but some listen.
Enough have already sailed that there will be a proper city to the east in a generation or two. All my fault, of course. I marked the spot for them. Said, "This place would be good." We buried Ariki there and I sailed back, letting others press on and explore.
"West," I mumble.
"What's that?" I have no attendants. No official trappings of power this time. Still, some of them hover over me, listening carefully. It is through them that I nudge their whole civilization one way or another. One man may shape a nation with suggestions alone if he lives long enough.
"I want to go west."
"Just as everyone is going east?"
"Or north."
"But there is nothing to the north. It's only open ocean.
"Yes," I say. "Exactly."
The late afternoon crowd is starting to dissipate, to drift off to their huts nearer the coast or into the grand wooden houses the wealthier have taken to building closer to the edge of the swollen river valley. A daily exhalation through which the city stretches and looks lazily at its own idyllic girth.
But something is amiss. There's a stirring spreading through the crowd. I hear gasps. Rapid, nervous talk.
So of course, they come to me.
The whole throng converge around me and becomes grave and silent.
"Have you heard this news?"
"What news?" I ask plainly.
"French warriors," they say. "in the hills."
"They want the silver."
"Yes, you said it was valuable--that we should claim the hills and begin mining it! That must be why they're coming."
"Are we sure they're hostile?" I ask, swiping dust off my clothes as I rise.
"The messengers from the warriors in the inland hills say yes, that they are marching for war."
Their wide eyes lock, unblinking and needy. I've raised a flock of sheep. Little babes of Eden, crowd around me and ask your lord for protection.
Like a God again.
"You will know what to do," one says firmly. "What must we do?"
I look at him, at his entreating eyes. How will this be any different? If I answer this question for you, someday your great great grandchildren will rub their knees raw in worshipping me.
"March against them?" a spindly man with over-large ears offers when I say nothing.
"Flee? Abandon the settlement," whines a woman near to soaking her pregnant belly with tears while gripping her husband's arm.
"Offer them the silver for peace!" another says.
"No," I say and they fall silent again.
"What then?"
"Let us make our preparations," I answer. "Pull back our warriors and let them come."
Some gasp.
"Draw them in, stretch their supply lines."
Men nod to each other, tightening their faces.
"Smash them in the valley. Force them to accept peace."
Chants go up. Men break into war dances. The town will not sleep. The children will stay up late, listening to men chewing thick roots of courage and women weeping over the men's great strength.
And I will watch, firelight on my face beneath the clear sky, thinking forward, thinking past each of their lives, to what will come...
Chapter XXI
It seems they've been talking about it for years.
From beneath the vaulted "V" shapes of the pavilion buildings, I listen without comment to the public meetings--young recruiters once again urging emigration to the desert colonies.
I want to go to sea again just to get away from the propaganda.
"But isn't it terribly dry and hot?"
"The seasons are mild," the promoter says. "That is all. No fierce storms."
"No agriculture!" someone shouts from the back of the crowd.
"Who has need of it, when the sea produces all we will need?" they always answer. They fill the people's heads with visions of fish leaping willingly into baskets so they can be taken in and fried up. They pitch dreams of silver mines and houses made of marble. Most listeners shake their heads and go on--life is perfectly pleasant here, after all--but some listen.
Enough have already sailed that there will be a proper city to the east in a generation or two. All my fault, of course. I marked the spot for them. Said, "This place would be good." We buried Ariki there and I sailed back, letting others press on and explore.
"West," I mumble.
"What's that?" I have no attendants. No official trappings of power this time. Still, some of them hover over me, listening carefully. It is through them that I nudge their whole civilization one way or another. One man may shape a nation with suggestions alone if he lives long enough.
"I want to go west."
"Just as everyone is going east?"
"Or north."
"But there is nothing to the north. It's only open ocean.
"Yes," I say. "Exactly."
The late afternoon crowd is starting to dissipate, to drift off to their huts nearer the coast or into the grand wooden houses the wealthier have taken to building closer to the edge of the swollen river valley. A daily exhalation through which the city stretches and looks lazily at its own idyllic girth.
But something is amiss. There's a stirring spreading through the crowd. I hear gasps. Rapid, nervous talk.
So of course, they come to me.
The whole throng converge around me and becomes grave and silent.
"Have you heard this news?"
"What news?" I ask plainly.
"French warriors," they say. "in the hills."
"They want the silver."
"Yes, you said it was valuable--that we should claim the hills and begin mining it! That must be why they're coming."
"Are we sure they're hostile?" I ask, swiping dust off my clothes as I rise.
"The messengers from the warriors in the inland hills say yes, that they are marching for war."
Their wide eyes lock, unblinking and needy. I've raised a flock of sheep. Little babes of Eden, crowd around me and ask your lord for protection.
Like a God again.
"You will know what to do," one says firmly. "What must we do?"
I look at him, at his entreating eyes. How will this be any different? If I answer this question for you, someday your great great grandchildren will rub their knees raw in worshipping me.
"March against them?" a spindly man with over-large ears offers when I say nothing.
"Flee? Abandon the settlement," whines a woman near to soaking her pregnant belly with tears while gripping her husband's arm.
"Offer them the silver for peace!" another says.
"No," I say and they fall silent again.
"What then?"
"Let us make our preparations," I answer. "Pull back our warriors and let them come."
Some gasp.
"Draw them in, stretch their supply lines."
Men nod to each other, tightening their faces.
"Smash them in the valley. Force them to accept peace."
Chants go up. Men break into war dances. The town will not sleep. The children will stay up late, listening to men chewing thick roots of courage and women weeping over the men's great strength.
And I will watch, firelight on my face beneath the clear sky, thinking forward, thinking past each of their lives, to what will come...
Pieman
Prince
The great unbound one sure has curious ideas for the guidance of this particular civilisation - first time I've heard of someone gunning for a desert settlement 
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
The great unbound one sure has curious ideas for the guidance of this particular civilisation - first time I've heard of someone gunning for a desert settlement
Marble, silver and three sea resources (plus, it's the desert; you know there'll be oil eventually.) Besides, this game was always for the story, so I wasn't exactly playing to win.
; )
Pieman
Prince
Heh, quite true. Let's see where the mysterious traveller takes us
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Part II
Chapter XXII
You’re probably expecting the story. The whole tale of valor and valiance. Of blood and brutality. You want the details of which bare-footed warriors roared up hillsides, studded clubs swinging. You want epic prose depicting the French hordes as they charged forward under archer fire, marched to the city edges against determined counter-attacks, only to find when they reached the boundaries, they were too few to press the assault.
All the gory details. Is that what you want? Too bad. I’m done with it. Stories of gallant warriors. Men falling under elephants in the name of glory. Long rows of honored graves. I’m through with glory and honor. I’m done cutting out hearts.
Maybe I should blame my memory again; pretend I can’t recall. But I can. I can see them all. Nameless numberless. Eyes swollen with bubbling fluids, looking out from death at the nothing of a featureless sky. The weeping of survivors bounces in my ear canal interminably, year after year, defying several laws of physics that won’t be discovered here for millennia.
I didn’t fill up my lungs with brine to go through all this again. I came here to be free of all that, to sail over the skin of the world and just breath. I promised these people peace and liberty. A web of colonies stretching around the globe like gossamer. Commerce and prosperity built with silver and cotton. Marble and whale oil. Spices and gold.
We just want to peddle our wares on the sea breeze. Why can’t the bastards leave us be, let us alone?
And when we’ve beaten them? When their invasion is foiled, crushed? When their dead lay in mounds fouling the entire river basin? What then? Do they accept the failure of their cruel errand? Do their leaders repent their misdeeds and cede us our serenity once more?
No. The fools come to us with demands.
Five hundred years they have refused a lasting peace. Five centuries of abstinence and intermittent incursions. Just enough to bleed off their best and brightest while thwarting our ambitions. There’s no logic in the world. They’ve sucked it out with their idiocy. Each time their envoys come under a flag of truce to petition for land and silver, I wonder what my people would say if I ordered them to cut out the messengers’ organs and offer them to the gods?
Once you’ve set the indelible stamp on a people, can you rub it off and begin again? Twist the inner coil of their essences a different way? Could I fill these placid souls with the blood lust that fueled my Mexica devotees? Could I make them monsters?
Should I?
We make our way in the world. Setting colonies down on the shore to harvest goods. We reap gold for opening our borders to Scandanavia and Persia for trade and some of what I have promised comes to fruition. Always, though, there are the unimproved hills and the wild fields in the distance, taunting me, feeding the undercurrent of dissatisfaction in the people. They remember, some of them, the plans I spoke of to their forefathers. The silver mines that were never dug. The cotton plantations that were never built.
The best laid plans...
Chapter XXII
You’re probably expecting the story. The whole tale of valor and valiance. Of blood and brutality. You want the details of which bare-footed warriors roared up hillsides, studded clubs swinging. You want epic prose depicting the French hordes as they charged forward under archer fire, marched to the city edges against determined counter-attacks, only to find when they reached the boundaries, they were too few to press the assault.
All the gory details. Is that what you want? Too bad. I’m done with it. Stories of gallant warriors. Men falling under elephants in the name of glory. Long rows of honored graves. I’m through with glory and honor. I’m done cutting out hearts.
Maybe I should blame my memory again; pretend I can’t recall. But I can. I can see them all. Nameless numberless. Eyes swollen with bubbling fluids, looking out from death at the nothing of a featureless sky. The weeping of survivors bounces in my ear canal interminably, year after year, defying several laws of physics that won’t be discovered here for millennia.
I didn’t fill up my lungs with brine to go through all this again. I came here to be free of all that, to sail over the skin of the world and just breath. I promised these people peace and liberty. A web of colonies stretching around the globe like gossamer. Commerce and prosperity built with silver and cotton. Marble and whale oil. Spices and gold.
We just want to peddle our wares on the sea breeze. Why can’t the bastards leave us be, let us alone?
And when we’ve beaten them? When their invasion is foiled, crushed? When their dead lay in mounds fouling the entire river basin? What then? Do they accept the failure of their cruel errand? Do their leaders repent their misdeeds and cede us our serenity once more?
No. The fools come to us with demands.
Five hundred years they have refused a lasting peace. Five centuries of abstinence and intermittent incursions. Just enough to bleed off their best and brightest while thwarting our ambitions. There’s no logic in the world. They’ve sucked it out with their idiocy. Each time their envoys come under a flag of truce to petition for land and silver, I wonder what my people would say if I ordered them to cut out the messengers’ organs and offer them to the gods?
Once you’ve set the indelible stamp on a people, can you rub it off and begin again? Twist the inner coil of their essences a different way? Could I fill these placid souls with the blood lust that fueled my Mexica devotees? Could I make them monsters?
Should I?
We make our way in the world. Setting colonies down on the shore to harvest goods. We reap gold for opening our borders to Scandanavia and Persia for trade and some of what I have promised comes to fruition. Always, though, there are the unimproved hills and the wild fields in the distance, taunting me, feeding the undercurrent of dissatisfaction in the people. They remember, some of them, the plans I spoke of to their forefathers. The silver mines that were never dug. The cotton plantations that were never built.
The best laid plans...
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Part II
Chapter XXIII
“Where are we?” the captain asks. He is bundled thick with furs, but still he trembles.
I think it is awe that shakes him, that rattles his bones.
The prow is only a few arms’ lengths from the ice, and the ice is without end, stretching to the western horizon. My eyes, though, are on the passage of cobalt sea reaching northward.
“Further,” I say.
“How?” he balks. “It has grown colder every day we’ve pointed north. The supplies and rations are too low and every time the spray touches our bodies, they cry out for more sustenance to warm us again. We can go no further.”
“Where is your faith?” I ask, without looking at him. “You have to believe. Believe in me.”
“I will not follow madness,” he answers. “I will not lead my men to death. We must turn back.”
Why not? Why won’t you? Did I weaken your mettle with thoughts of freedom. Little man, you are not free. I have built you, molecule by molecule. One cell for every directive I gave your people. I’ve shaped you into this and now you defy me. Now you question me? I wrote that question into your very soul, don’t you see. Even your doubt in me, I have authored.
I brought you here to the edge of the world just so we could live this moment, just so I could pretend you have free will. Just so you could believe it. Why else would I lure you here? I’ve seen the ocean stretch from pole to pole a thousand times. I’ve seen sheets of ice that cover whole continents.
There is no room in me for awe. It’s spent.
I did this for you. Are you grateful? Do you cherish it? Are you satisfied with what I’ve made of you?
Chapter XXIII
“Where are we?” the captain asks. He is bundled thick with furs, but still he trembles.
I think it is awe that shakes him, that rattles his bones.
The prow is only a few arms’ lengths from the ice, and the ice is without end, stretching to the western horizon. My eyes, though, are on the passage of cobalt sea reaching northward.
“Further,” I say.
“How?” he balks. “It has grown colder every day we’ve pointed north. The supplies and rations are too low and every time the spray touches our bodies, they cry out for more sustenance to warm us again. We can go no further.”
“Where is your faith?” I ask, without looking at him. “You have to believe. Believe in me.”
“I will not follow madness,” he answers. “I will not lead my men to death. We must turn back.”
Why not? Why won’t you? Did I weaken your mettle with thoughts of freedom. Little man, you are not free. I have built you, molecule by molecule. One cell for every directive I gave your people. I’ve shaped you into this and now you defy me. Now you question me? I wrote that question into your very soul, don’t you see. Even your doubt in me, I have authored.
I brought you here to the edge of the world just so we could live this moment, just so I could pretend you have free will. Just so you could believe it. Why else would I lure you here? I’ve seen the ocean stretch from pole to pole a thousand times. I’ve seen sheets of ice that cover whole continents.
There is no room in me for awe. It’s spent.
I did this for you. Are you grateful? Do you cherish it? Are you satisfied with what I’ve made of you?
clearmurky
Emperor
Who have you met?
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
I don't remember for sure, but from the mini-map, it looks like Ghandi's down there somewhere. I mention Persia and the Vikings because, well, they'll be important later.
