Who are the Great People?

[xienwolf]

Some very nice ones in there indeed Quite the lovely first post, I am honored.

 

[25_Hour]

Thanks!


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When prospective adepts first arrive, they are sorted into two groups. The first group is to learn the art and science of demonology, which is at the core of the Sheiam's military strength. The second, less promising group will also serve the One True Art, but in a rather different and more final sense.

---Luciaqua, excerpt from The Theory and Practice of Human Sacrifice, vol. 1

Your world shall surely succumb to the taint of Hell without our aid, and there is only one way to procure it: the sacrifice of a single city, to be the staging point for Basium's last stand against the Infernals. Tarry not, as Hyborem's kingdom grows daily with the souls of the damned.

--- The Scion of Heaven, conclusion of his speech to the Overcouncil

Revolutionary songs are like embers from a campfire, scattered by the wind. Most will be smothered before leaving their mark on the world; but once in a while, one will catch on a twig or a leaf, and before long the whole forest is aflame.
--Ofeofae

Music proves that the mind gravitates towards patterns. Consider the beauty of the major chords, or the augmented fifths, or that a phrase must always end with the note on which it started. Deviation from these established rules unnerves us-- in this, even the brutal Doviello make a concession to order.
--Airodaunt Balon


"Oh, you bureaucrats and your silly rules. Why should those apply to me? After all, I built our secret codes, and where would you all be without those, hmmm? Back to begging for technological scraps from those Bannor thugs, I should imagine. No, I think I'll keep it on me, thanks just the same."
--Narsiss, when asked to remove her sword before an Undercouncil meeting.

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Man, you're going to have quite a job filling the rest of those slots. I could be wrong, but you may get more participation if you post this in the General section. (The Lore section doesn't seem to get a lot of traffic; I imagine that quite a few people haven't noticed this thread.)

 

[nihonjeff]

Here's a handful. I took some liberties with the format, giving some quotes from the Great People, but also some about the Great People.


(Great Bards)


"The socialites shake their heads at my work, whispering that art should be pleasing to the eye. Bollocks, I say. If nature wanted her children to be shielded from her cruelty, she wouldn't have given us eyes with which to see it, or a brush with which to paint it."
-- Pramas Olds, in an address to the Avelorn Conservatory



"As she swept about the stage, the crowd was silent with a breathless joy. Every pose, every movement was... art. Her garments swirled and flowed as though they, too, were performers in their own right, shifting in patterns of color that spoke to the onlookers in a voice almost of their own. All of us were entranced. Which is why not a soul among us marked Pelia's associates as they slipped through the crowd, divesting us of our jewels and coinpurses."
-- Casper Turnis, following the one-night-only performance of Pelia the Dancer





(Great Commanders)

"When they come to engage, disappear into the trees. When they retreat to camp, pepper their tents and cook-fires with arrows. When they can no longer sleep for fear of knives in the night, when they grow weary and frustrated and careless, when they march in disorder, then, and only then, will we unleash hell."
-- Ducet the Patient



"It looks a little like ash, does it not? Careful, my liege, with your candle. This powder, these fine grains on the table before you, this is the future of warfare. This powder, in sufficient quantities, will crush walls and wills in equal measure. And once those are out of the way, the rest is just mopping up."
-- Morsuelis



"They march down our roads in brave, glorious columns, but the sunlight will never again glint off their burnished helms and fine mithril axes. They have spent months drilling their formations. Left turn. Right turn. But what good are formations when you don't know which way is up? What good is are war drums when nobody knows which direction to charge? The mists have closed in about them, and they will choke."
-- Averax the Cambion, at the onset of the brief Khazad/Sidar border war





(Great Prophets)

"What most mortals fail to understand is that we do not come simply to kill. Your orcs and barbarians derive pleasure from killing. We are more... sophisticated. It is not mere death that we seek, but suffering. Madness. Torment. When brother murders brother and daughter slays mother, and reason dissolves in the face of unutterable chaos, that is when we shall rejoice, dancing to the piping of accursed flutes as your world burns around you."
-- The demon-prophet Nyarlat, just after the signing of the Infernal Pact

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Averax the Cambion doesn't seem like a human female to me. Averax just sounds masculine to me (although Latin words with its ending are adjectives that do not change form based on gender), and "the Cambion" by definition means he is half demon.

I prefer to think that Averax is an elder brother of Mardero, another son of Lita the Witch and Hastur, the Lord of Nightmares, the Archangel of Mammon, the God of the Mind and King of Avarice. Averax sounds a bit like avarice, but it could also be "a"-"verax," which would mean not true. Both fit the mind sphere pretty well.

 

[xienwolf]

I hadn't thought about quotes ABOUT the great people, but it makes perfect sense there would be plenty. And excerpts from stories about them, or letters passed between them. Nice touch


MC: Not all names are literal, especially with Titles, and MOST especially on the Battlefield. There is nothing that says someone whose name means Fiend or Demon must automatically be one. Just as someone who is called "The North Wind" can as easily be an Eagle as the actual North Wind itself.

 

[Darksaber1]

Yeah, Averax the Cambion could just use highly brutal stategies, or fight like a beging posseded by a demon. In other words: not a demon, but demon like in war.

 

[xienwolf]

I forgot to link it in the first post, but the point of this whole project is to eventually have the pictures and quote in-game, via this Modcomp.

 

[Aoleleb]

My little contribution. Maybe I'll come up with more later.

"Did you consider the impact our magic would have on the battle? Did you consider what would happen if the air and earth turned against you? Did you consider what would happen if half of your well-trained soldiers suddenly stopped attacking in the midst of battle? Did you consider what would happen if our soldiers' weapons cleaved through iron and steel like air? No? I didn't think so."

--Anthony Callier, right before executing a captured general of the Calabim army

 

[Kael]

Of the brothers Khord and Cabal Tenhare:

Khord lept over embankment and slammed his warhammer into the ground. The blow resonated through the serpent's canyon and served as a beacon for the Grigori soldiers behind him and running along the canyon walls. Even the horsemen had trouble keeping up with him across the rough ground. The Dumannios moon provided reasonable light in all but the canyon’s shadows, which were lost to darkness.

Khord cleared another ridge and came to the canyons dead end. He had worried that their prey had escaped by magic or hiding in one of the many shadowed outcroppings along the canyon walls. But this wasn’t an opponent who was accustomed to hiding.

The Grigori infantry fell silent behind Khord, finally stopping their forced run. The box canyon had a rise in its center, a stone mound more primitive cultures would attribute to a natural altar of Kilmorph. Stephanos sat on his horse atop the mound.

Shadows fluttered across the Grigori soldiers as Khord’s brother Cabal and his hunters jumped off the canyons walls. In flight the ravens feathers woven into their cloaks made a sound like hundreds of ravens as they transformed in flight from men to birds and back again. They became a black cloud reaching down to the canyon floor where they reappeared in formation with their weapons ready and raven mask drawn down protectively in front of their faces.

Stephanos’s white horse glowed in the moonlight and appeared unafraid of the army of men arrayed against his rider. Stephanos himself looked like a glorious conquerer returning from battle to meet the adulation of crowds, not a refugee forced into a dead end. He looked up smiling, you could almost hear the distant triumphant cheers that followed him.

Cabal rushed out screaming “Attack, don’t let him speak.”

Unfortunately no one in the canyon heard anything beyond “don’t”. At a glance from Stephanos a dull throb pushed through the air, a blanket of sound that cut Cabal off from the rest of the men and sent everyone else stumbling as their ears reacted to the change in pressure. By the time they had recovered Stephanos had already started addressing the men.

“Of the empires of men I value the Grigori the most. For they have recognized that the gods are not worthy of their worship. To you as men, I offer my admiration. But, of your leader, I can only say that he does not carry his goal far enough. He sulks in Erebus when he should be leading the revolution. It is not enough to refuse to obey the petulant war games the gods have planned for men, but we must overthrow those games as well.”

The men stood quiet. Stephanos’s voice echoed through the canyon and as Khord looked around he saw that in the brief interlude between Stephanos’s sentences other men nodded as if confirming statements Khord couldn’t hear. Stephanos’s mouth also continued to move even when Khord couldn’t hear him speak, his lips drawn back in a deformed smile and his long thin tongue slipped easily about as he spoke.

Khord would have remained entranced by the words except that he caught sight of his brother laying on the ground by the canyons walls. Blood ran from his ears and he was gasping as if under a great force, yet the men around stood listening to Stephanos. Khord willed himself to run to his brothers side but it was as if his body was asleep. He was able to move his mouth enough to bite down on his tongue, and that pain woke up his body and allow him to stumble forward.

Above him Stephanos continued.

“Cassiel tells us that the gods are corrupt. But then why does he command us to live peacefully within this jail they have built for us. If your king was corrupt would to follow the governor that still requires your gentle sublication to his orders, no matter how benign? Or would you march upon the palace and pull it down around him? We have been told this is impossible, but who has said this? The king and the governor they sent to control us!”

Khord fell down beside his brother. Stephanos’s words still resonated within him and each one called for his joints to stop moving, his mind to stop questioning and his soul to accept. Belief’s he held for his entire life seemed little more than fairy tales compared to the immutable force of Stephanos’s speech. It was becoming the foundation of everything he believed and everything else would have to be reevaluated to conform to this new ideology.

Cabal was close to death, his hair was matted with blood and it pooled on the canyon floor. Cabal looked up at his brother and summoned enough strength for one last action, to reach up and box both sides of Khord’s head.
Khord howled in pain. His ears range from the blow. He yelled again when he saw Cabal’s eyes close for the last time. He was overcome first with despair, and then with anger. Stephanos stopped speaking, or so he thought. When he looked he saw that Stephanos was still speaking, Khord just couldn’t hear him beyond the ringing of his ears.

Rushing forward Khord once again called upon the magic of his warhammer. Aiming not for Stephanos, but the earthen mound his horse stood upon, he struck it with enough force to shatter the rock and send the crack of the hammers impact echoing through the canyon.

In that instant the men awoke from their trances. Stephanos’s horse stepped back away from the crumbling rock and Khord climbed up the mound to attack Stephanos directly. Spurred on by the death of his brother he charged, yelling for his men to join with him.

They did join the fight, but not as Khord wanted. Before he got to Stephanos nearly a dozen arrows had pierced him. His own men were quickly on him and dragged him down from the mound, chopping him to pieces on the canyon floor. When it was over Stephanos rode out of the canyon with his new army of Grigori soldiers behind him.

Khord Tenhare:

"To this day the Grigori travel down the length of the serpent's canyon and offer small tokens to the stone mound at its end. This is a reminder of their own failure, and the screams of Khord Tenhare are said to still echo within the canyons walls."

Cabal Tenhare:

"The streets of Junon were said to be safer during the night than during the day. Cabal Tenhare and his hundreds of pet ravens watched over the sleeping city. If any crime was commited there caws, a flurry of black wings and a black cloud would descend on the criminal."

 

[xienwolf]

Sweet. Now I just have to look at some old Burger King adds to see if I can find a suitable picture for each of the brothers...

 

[25_Hour]

Burger King ads? Wait, are those names other anagrams? I'm horrible at those.

----Adventurer---

It has always seemed to me that one cannot partake of a Sheaim rite without being changed irrevocably. Our new ritualists all seem to grow slightly paler, more lifeless, after their first sacrifice; I can only count myself lucky that on me it had the opposite effect. It woke me up, made me see the soul-killing decadence that our reliance on demons had brought. That was when I knew I had to leave.
--Nosamonce, Memoirs

----Bard---
It was clearly to be no ordinary summoning; the rituals here were not to gain powerful demons, as before, but rather to procure the legendary Samawen, greatest bard of the First Age. As she floated through the planar gate, she sang, in an unknown language, but with a hopelessness so profound that half the men present-- hardened ritualists all-- were sobbing bitterly by the last stanza. I do not know what she had seen in the Great Beyond, to make her despair so. I'm not sure I want to know.
--Nosamonce, Memoirs, on Samawen the Ghost

--Sage--

Kylorin taught me that, given enough mana and skill with the flame, everything burns-- wood, steel, even rock. Therein lies the solution to most problems a mage might encounter during his career.
--Mikel Dylantyr

 

[Darksaber1]

Burger King ads? Wait, are those names other anagrams? I'm horrible at those.

Look in the Art Blog.

 

[xienwolf]

I like the tie-in of having one of the GP talking about one of the others But both of the Nosamonce quotes are quite lengthy. Generally the impact and effect of a quote is measured by how short it is. I can trim up the one about Samawen, it's a nice scene and I don't want to lose it But I can't think of much for the first just yet to make it seem strong (not that all the current quotes are that great anyway mind you... but I do plan to improve on what I can when the list is nearer to complete).

On the note of quotes from one great person about another... I'm still looking for a good place to fit in a pair of Great People with quotes mocking one another (I swear that Neitzsche was involved in something like that, can't remember who the other quotable was though to look it up. Thinking of Neitzche though, I need to look over his stuff for some material. He's perfect for FfH mentality).

EDIT: Trimmed down Nosamonce a tad bit, seems to flow nicely enough for now. Also added my favorite from Thus Spoke Zarathustra to one of the Sheiam Prophets.

 

[Darksaber1]

Some say the gods are unknowable, others say their will is obvious. Me, I will stick to teaching all people of themselves, simply letting them chose the lyrics to my songs -Kamen Shandoun, Bard
-----
Some people wonder why I left my people. It's simple. In my world, the evil aristocricy ruled everything. I found I couldn't take it. So now I seak a way to end my curse, and end Flarous and Alexis-Comillo


Just my attemps.

 

[evanb]

The Nietzsche ones were: "God is dead, said Nietzsche" and then "Nietzsche is dead, said God".

 

[KillerClowns]

A possible quote for Needles, going with the assassin theme:
"You want to know why I'm called Needles? Keep asking questions and you'll find out. It's very... interesting. To die for, even..."

 

[xienwolf]

No, there was another philosopher at the time who really hated him, and the feeling had been mutual. So I mean actual quotes from real people (though the God is Dead is a real quote, or at least paraphrase, or Neitzsche)

Or I might be thinking of Churchill...

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Some people wonder why I left my people. It's simple. In my world, the evil aristocricy ruled everything. I found I couldn't take it. So now I seak a way to end my curse, and end Flarous and Alexis-Comillo, reformed Vampire, seeks to end Vampiric tyrany.

you really don't need the "reformed vampire, seeks to end vampiric tyrany." part on there--it is evident in the quote itself, and so should be left at that.

 

[Skitters]

A nice quote from CS Lewis that may suit a Great Prophet;

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

and one perhaps more suited to a General

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.


A George Orwell quote perhaps suitable for adaption
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

and another

He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him. (perhaps convert "atheist" to "Grigori")

 

[Darksaber1]

you really don't need the "reformed vampire, seeks to end vampiric tyrany." part on there--it is evident in the quote itself, and so should be left at that.

Yeah, I posted that pretty late at night.