[center][h2]Trial[/h2] [b]c. 16 PR[/b][/center] [i]"Nought is there greater a sin than to squander yourself! The teachings of your prophet are presented not as a new master to take the yoke from your slave driver Chaos. They sing in the order that makes us rovaick great in the eyes of our perfector! Would you shun your potential? Would you give yourself over to the filth of savagery only to till fields for fattened kings and manipulative ghosts while you chew cuds like a goat? Death is the fate of such hypocrites. Death in mind. Death in body. Death in breed. So says the words of our prophet. So shall be the fate of the heretic."[/i] Cralt did not lift his hanging head to any of the priest's scornful words. He let his shackles support him by his wrists as he hung from two posts, just painfully enough to keep his knees from supporting him on the ground. But he did not protest. They had broken his legs already. And if he could not suffer the pain now, he would not die well to his sentence. [i]"Cralt the tanner! Troll of Rulanah. He was your brother, o people! And now he hangs his head in shame! Look! He knows his fate. Toun has decided it. And what was his sin?"[/i] The priest in his white robes lowered his pitch menacingly. [i]"None other than consorting with Meteran barbarians!"[/i] The crowd in the cavern announced their displeasure. Growls and angry hoots bellowed from rovaick throats large and small. Cralt only blinked at the stone floor. [i]"But!"[/i] The priest continued, quietening the crowd. [i]"As is our law, Toun will hear your defence, Cralt the tanner. Speak, or submit to the wordless animal you have become."[/i] Chains rang a tiny ring. Cralt lifted his stony face to survey the crowd. They stared back with upper lips lifted and eyes narrow. Cralt's slow pan lifted up. He looked at the four metal-armoured rovaick legionnaires, their armour etched with red characters that gave them Toun's blessing and extraordinary powers. Their full, smooth-faced helmets allowed them the only notch less in emotional expression than Cralt himself. And then Cralt's eyes finally met the priest. That slimy green azibo priest. Slimy in mind, anyway. His countenance and clothing was immaculate white and red. The never-touching circles of Toun were emblazoned on his chest. Inquisitor Zaba. He had a fire in his eyes that fed on cruelty. "I won't allow you the pleasure of seeing me bleat, Zaba. You know the southern trade died in the ongoing war. You know I needed to feed my family. You know that Metera is trading with everyone. What I did, I did for my family. And my family have already escaped. So there is nothing you can do to me now that I'll care about." He hawked his dry mouth and spat on the floor. "That is all I need to say." The priest leaned down. The white scales jutting from the corners of his face indicated Toun's reward for personal worship. It only made him look blemished to Cralt. "We'll find your wife and two children, Cralt," he hissed through a grin. "We know you bought their passage to Alefpria. It is only a matter of time." "You..." Cralt pulled uselessly at his chains to shout closer to the priest. "You'll never find them! You hear me?! Never!" Zaba already sprang upright, turned to the crowd, and swept a gesture to Cralt. [i]"See already how his base Chaos overtakes him! He would lash out at a holy servant of Toun in passion! Only a beast cares so little for blasphemy!"[/i] The crowd sounded a low chord. Disgust. [i]"And you, Cralt!"[/i] Zaba extended an accusing pointed finger to the accused. [i]"No good Tounian would stoop so low as a Meteran. They wallow in their worship of ghosts, of their rejection of gods. Of their lies and their sloth. Gods, dear people, are the extrema of ourselves! So says our prophet."[/i] Zaba's voice softened to explain. [i]"We were born from Chaos in Vestec, cursed be him. Such an extreme is our fate if we lose sight of our other ideals! Such an extreme is our fate if we turn away from the gods, from Toun. From Teknall and his daughter, the toolsmith gift."[/i] A subcrowd of goblins chanted in the back. [i]Co-Na-Ta! Co-Na-Ta! Co-Na-Ta! Co-Na-Ta...[/i] Their voices faded as Zaba continued. [i]"But Toun, at the end of our path, he is our ultimate perfection! Our zenith of existence! He is the opposite ideal -- nay, the counter! -- to our inexorable slide back into savagery. It is by his challenges upon us that we have the strength to repel the beastly dwarves of the evil empress Lazarus! It is by his demands that we enjoy strength from sustenance and knowledge! We prepare for his call!"[/i] Zaba leaned and lifted a finger. [i]"It is by his will that we improve every day."[/i] He turned slowly to Cralt. [i]"And slough off the dead weight!"[/i] He straightened. [i]"Cralt, you have turned your back on Rulanah, on Toun, and on yourself."[/i] The chains tightened as they winched Cralt up until his feet left the ground. He snarled at Zaba defiantly as the priest was handed a porcelain tabled, written with red calligraphy. [i]"For your betrayal of self and your pursuit of betterment, you shall meet the fate of all heretics,"[/i] Inquisitor Zaba read from the tablet. [i]"You will be left behind in the mud we washed away years ago."[/i] More white-robed priests ascended a podium behind cralt with styluses and inkpots in hand. [i]"You shall die in mind, you shall die in body, and -- whereon your family is found -- you shall die in breed."[/i] Zaba ended the last word with a sinister grin. The priest atop the highest podium step laid a hand on Cralt's bald head. Cralt immediately tensed to a wide-eyed paralysis. A small glow told of the mind magic holding him in place. The other priests took delicately to his flesh with pen and ink. [i]"May you return to the wraithstone, feeding the fate of a better cause."[/i] The first character was finished on Cralt's arm. It was a deadly simple character. One that took hardly any time at all and yet caused so much pain. It was at once his sentence and his punishment. It read [i]waste.[/i] [i]"So says our prophet."[/i] Cralt's arm ached. The energy faded from it. The strength, too. The pain of his own nerves shrivelling wracked his body. He could scream, but he closed his eyes instead. He thought of his wife and his children. Safe behind the golden walls of the City of Demigods. Another character was complete. Another would go somewhere else. Soon he would lose the strength to breathe and think. Soon he would die. His family would not. [hider=The Showtrial Must Go On!] A quick fluffpost showcasing the state of the Tounic Rovaick in the Ironhearts. They be cray-cray now! This post was written fast and loose. It shows an inquisition trial of a troll tanner named Cralt. He has been accused of trading with Meterans, which is very naughty because they're savage pagans who worship a ghost and dislike the gods. Cralt's judge and prosecutor, Inquisitor Zaba, is clearly an azibo who loves his job. He loves the spectacle, the crowds, and the look on a desperate criminal's face! He preaches to the crowd using a set of self-improvement morals that could have once-upon-a-time been quite healthy, but have since been twisted by the totalitarian pursuits of war and purity-testing. Cralt accepts his death in the knowledge that he was able to buy a smuggler to take his family to Alefpria. Being a heretic, his immediate family would be killed as well if they stayed. Here we can see that the rovaick Tounians are now a rather touchy lot. They have holy texts now, which they selectively cherry-pick as the situation suits, both to enrapture the populace and crush dissent. This is as much a natural evolution of Toun's original dogma as it is a reaction to Chiral Phi making cults a nice fashion and Lazarus having cool invading armies. We can also see that the rovaick grasp on Tounic calligraphy has been developing nicely! They now have a metal-equipped military augmented by Tounic calligraphy (and possibly more in behind the scenes!) Writing effective Tounic calligraphy is usually a long process for anything useful, but for narrative reasons, and because the symbol is very simple, the Tounic character for the verb 'waste' is being used to cruelly execute criminals. If written on a living being, it causes the local area to atrophy in a rather painful manner. Enough instances of the character inevitably cause said criminal's death. Oh yeah, and Teknall and Conata's cults are tolerated because they bring in good advances in crafts and technology, as well as being already entrenched in the culture. Goblins rather like Conata because her persona isn't as stiff as Toun's. [/hider]