[h3][center]Rewan Treave[/center][/h3]


[i]What in fuck's name[/i]... 

Rewan awoke caked in sweat and the sticky leavings of overturned wine. Light filtered through the rain-mottled canvas of his tent, casting uninvited beams into his eyes. 

He had known that his actions were foolhardy; but seeing as he, along with uncounted thousands of others, were on the brink of a long march into the very precincts of Hell, and, more-than-possibly, a painful death at the tip of an undead blade, he thought that his sin would be, at the very least, understood. No matter their professed intent, no matter their piety or zeal, the assembled ranks here at Belias Shield Encampment were mercenaries. Thus, a little mercenary behavior would not be too harshly judged. 

Rewan had always found it simple to find others like him. A certain look, a certain coarseness of tongue, a certain laugh. They drew one another with the magnetism of rogues. So it was that he found himself with a group of miscreants huddled over a low table out of the rain with dice, wine, and gleaming coin. It was a shame, he thought, that the Duchess had forbid camp followers in this most holy and righteous of crusades. 

"Even the gods need their cocks licked, from time to time," a greasy and red-faced dwarf (whose name escaped him) japed, eliciting a raucous cackle from them all. 

But, barring the absence of whores, they had passed a convivial and wine-soaked evening of debauchery and gluttony. At dice, of course, Rewan had cleaned them all out, had not even made use of his Illusion. A much-too-drunk Operath axeman had called foul play after a particularly embarrassing round, but the others had shrugged it off even as the man stumbled off into the humid night.

"Sore loser." 

They themselves had not been too happy about their losses, but after a while, they were too drunk to much care. In the small hours of the night, they had, with confusion and barks of laughter, called it quits and traipsed back towards their own tents. In the end, Rewan had come away with the lion's share. 

Then, he drank himself into a blind stupor, until sleep claimed him. He slept in fits and starts, and when morning came, it burnt him like holy fire on undead flesh. 

He dressed slowly, fumbling about his increasingly hot tent, pausing here and there at the suggestion of rising bile in his throat, before cautiously continuing. He emerged into the sunlight with a grimace, ejected some unidentifiable particle from his dry mouth, and set off numbly towards the aroma of breakfast. 

He grumbled something at the nearest cookfire he found, and weathered the tirade of some fat dwarf who had a stick up his arse. But, eventually, he was ladled a thin rye porridge and given a few strips of fatty bacon. 

He sat in silence by a pair of Gray Elves, who talked quietly amongst themselves. The porridge was hot, and thick with butter and salt (as per the Dwarven custom to take it savory, not sweet), the bacon greasy and rich; soon, Rewan found himself to be revived. 

He looked about the great war camp curiously. He had arrived two days before, at nightfall, and had to this point only been able to see the barest fraction of the city of tents laid out before him. But, even among the tents, you truly felt the great heaving organism all around you, how truly [i]massive[/i] this assembled host was. 

People of all stripes were streaming in one direction, towards [i]what[/i], well, he did not know. Warrior priests in their colorful liveries, armed with maces and grimiores of divine magecraft; ragged sellswords, like him, with rusted armor and notched swords and toothy grins; hedge mages, shamans, witch doctors, in their curious garments and with their curious ways; aristocrats and their retinues shimmering in gilded armor atop their barded destriers, pennants flailing in the breeze. 

Every race, every nation, every caste, united by the potency of what...faith? Coin? Adventure? Some combination of the three? 

In a way, it was fascinating. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and Rewan knew it. He had come to join the Duchess's crusade without quite realizing its consequences. He had come for the promised coin, of course, and he still thought that to be his prime motivator. But he knew, implicitly, despite himself, that that was not all there was to it. 

Perhaps it was not adventure he sought, because he realized that this would be no romp that one might read in the knightly romances---it would be a war, a long, brutal, relentless struggle, into which "adventure" did not enter. More than anything, he thought that he wanted some alleviation of boredom, some sensation of being alive. And faith? Well, certainly he envied the faithful. He wanted desperately for something to move him like it moved others. He felt, in a way, jealous, in a way, scorned. What, he wondered, did they know that he didn't? What, he wondered, did they see? Or was it some mass impulse towards self-delusion? 

His instincts told him that that, surely, was [i]not[/i] the case. 

Faith had merit. One need only look at this war camp to know that. 

Rewan ate another two bowls of porridge, though the tyrannical dwarf swatted at him with a wooden ladle in protest. While he was downing his third bowl, the two elves rose and began to gather their kits. 

Rewan looked at them, and asked, in decent Feoln, "What is happening? Where is everyone going?" 

The two started at hearing their own tongue, and swallowed a grin, but replied courteously enough, "The Duchess herself is set to give a speech in a moment. You'd better eat quickly, friend." Without a further word, they joined the jostling crowd that streamed towards the heart of the encampment. 

Rewan rose to their challenge, wolfing down the last dregs of his bowl and tossing a silver towards the dwarf. He gathered up his staff and meager belongings, and himself joined the press. A fresh waft of armpit and unwashed genitals assaulted his nose as he passed a group of Melfic mercenaries, who, he thought, had a look about them that suggested incest. That must mingled with the perfumes of the woodsmoke and the still bubbling cauldrons of porridge and roasting meat, and he thought it to be an unpleasant, although not altogether unfamiliar smell. Even the gods shat, or so the saying went. 

[i]Let's test the mettle of this Duchess[/i], he thought, as sweat began to bead at his brow, [i]and this "Undying Crusade"[/i].