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War Never Changes III: Annals of the East

@Wampower the Mad Trapper of Bar Harbour

Townsfolk of Lorenstad - A Fantasy Village RP

Kadoka

---

The elf was a few paces beyond his doorstep when he heard the cheer from the hilltop. He paused, squinting slightly against the sunlight, and then groaned audibly. The keg was heavy on his shoulder, and the wood warm to his cheek, but no one would be drinking its contents today.

"I'll be damned if I am going to waste any of my darlings hard work on a bunch of seaborne scum..." He muttered as he turned back and made his way inside. The warmth of the sun vanished at once and was replaced with the cool relief of the shade. The earth smell of the home always made him feel better but not today. Whenever that braggart and his band of murderers came to town, Kadoka headed out of town.

With a sigh of regret he set the keg back down in the store room before collecting his bow and spear. A sharp whistle brought Kita to her feet. She stretched, her shaggy coat a dull brown in the sunbeam she had chosen to occupy. Pudge stirred for a moment, eyeing them from beneath her wing before settling down on her perch again. She only joined the night hunts.

Kadoka slipped out the rear door of the house, made his way through the bee hives, and into the woods. He could be away for a day or two, with any luck, the pirates would be gone, or better yet, dead, by the time he returned.

War Never Changes III: Annals of the East

@Yam I Am, slapped down a CS. Hope it suits.

War Never Changes III: Annals of the East

Name: Royal Halifax Nature Trust
Nicknames: Halifax, The Trust

Territory: Encompassing the former American Military District of Halifax, once the Canadian Atlantic seaboard, the Royal Halifax Nature Trust controls the Gulf of St. Lawerence.

Flag:


History:

Annexed by the Americans during the Resource Wars, the Canadian Provinces of New Bruinswick, NOva Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island, were organized into the Military District of Halifax and garrisoned by a sizeable contingent of US Marines and other Naval assets. Relatively poor to begin with, and lacking any extensive resources worth exploiting, the initial American occupation was fairly light.

Never ones to be underestimated, the local population managed to become a serious throne in the side of the American occupiers with constant minor attacks and disruptions to local services. In fine local fashion, it often involved alcohol and a good old fashioned punch up. A lot of Marines posted to the area often had mixed feelings about the locals, undecided if they hated them or not.

The Great War largely left the region intact, well, explosion free anyway. The nearest major bombs hit American targets and Ottawa was deliberately blown off the face of the earth, by the Chinese or Americans, no one really knows. Radiation however quickly spread its way around and mutants, wandering without any serious competition, moved north into Nova Scotia and New Bruinswick.

The region might have continued into obscurity had it not been for the parade of tallships that had been present in Halifax Harbour at the time of the Great War. Local factions, including stranded Americans, quickly seized the tallships and any other shipping in the harbour. This would include a damaged Chinese Nuclear submarine that limped into port a few days after the exchange.

Since the Great War, the region has become something of an oddity with much of the initial radiation dropping to liveable levels while at the same time causing mutations that not only have led to creatures such as the Moose becoming even large, and very aggressive, but even local fauna has gotten larger and in some cases, dangerous to humans.

Nominally run out of Halifax, the Royal Halifax Nature Trust, has survived as a seaborne trading power, moving goods on the captured tallships. Largely staying out of any conflict, they have embraced the historic maritime lifestyle of history. They still hate the French, enjoy their booze, trade in "Keiths caps", and love their localized Celtic folk music.

Ties to the British monarchy remain strong, though no one has actually heard from the Royal Family in a long time. The Royal Halifax Nature Trust is ruled by a Governor General, flies the Royal Canadian Navy ensign, and is largely anti-American, or at least Florida.

Agencies:
The Wardens: Formerly the National Parks Service, these green coated soldiers/law enforcement types serve to protect the interests of Halifax on and off the water.

The Royal Constabulary: Good ole fashioned police types whose job it is to keep law and order inside the national boundary.

Pressing Issues:

Rising Neighbours: Neighbours to the South are growing in power once again and the Royal Halifax Nature Trust is hardly prepared for any sort of major land conflict. Undoubtably able to handle itself on the high seas, the landward defences have long been left to the mutant wildlife and whatever else is out there. The recent trickle of wanderers out to the wastelands have suggested this strategy may not work any longer.

Maritime Trade: The Royal Halifax Nature Trust has over two dozen vessels plying the oceans that move trade between surviving factions, as well as salvaging those regions that show little human life. The ocean is hostile as all hell now, however, with the creatures of its deep mutating as much as those on land.

Canadian Nationalist: The Great War, and the Resource Wars before that, has left the regions residents hateful of both America and China. Their closest ally is Ronto, the ultra-Nationalist Canadian state to the West and they work together to suppress the French, as much as American, influence in traditional Canadian territory. That hatred does nothing to stop trade of course, caps are caps, no matter who has them.

Going A-Viking: The modern term might be "Nuclear-Privateer", but some sea going Captains, notably those from Newfoundland and Labrador, had taken their Viking roots to heart and now range the oceans raiding civilized neighbours. Well forbidden from flying the Ensign, they, and their cargo, are nonetheless welcome back in Halifax.

War Never Changes III: Annals of the East

Thinking of setting up in Boston or Halifax. That clash with anyone?

Townsfolk of Lorenstad - A Fantasy Village RP

Kadoka

---

The hum of thousands of bees was almost deafening at times as Kakoda moved carefully through the cone shaped hives. The air around him was thick with small yellow and black bodies that occasionally bounced off him as they zipped through the air. None stung him, that rarely ever happened; only when they felt their hives were in danger did they lash out.

Around the hives, spreading in reckless abandon from the rear of his house, right up to the edge of the forest, were meadows of flowers that crawled with more of the industrious insects. It was a beautiful thing to behold, the workings of nature. His late wife had loved flowers and he did not have her skill with them. The bees had taken over the roll for him and as long as the rain fell and the sun shone, the flowers grew. It was a simple time.

He made his way back into the house. His bow and quiver were racked by the door, along with a short spear and a longsword. Kita, her shaggy tail thumping on the floor, eyed him from a nearby sunbeam. She licked her chops as he knelt and scratched her belly; she stretched out at the touch, all four legs pointing into the air. A last scratch of her ears and he was headed into the cellar. Unlike many, this one was above ground. He had obtained a scroll of freezing from a wandering mage and cast it on a stone that sat in the middle of the floor. The temperature in the above ground stone room, mixed with the freezing stone, was ideal for storing both honey and mead.

Two dozen barrels sat neatly to one side and he selected the one closest to the door. It was mead from a month ago and in its prime now. The barrel itself was not much larger than a Pudge, who hooted from a room behind him, likely at a passing person. The dog never moved, and the owl hooted, whenever someone came by. An odder pair he did not think existed.

Lifting the barrel he shrugged it onto his shoulder, closed the cold cellar behind him and made his way outside, pulling the door closed behind him. He took a breath of air and made his way toward the tavern.

Townsfolk of Lorenstad - A Fantasy Village RP

Name: Kadoka
Race & Appearance: Wood Elf [200]

Kadoka

Birthday: 31st, Fallsa
Occupation: Hunter, bee keeper, and maker of fine meads.

Background: Kadoka, like so many others, hails from somewhere else. Unlike others, however, he came to Lorenstad on purpose after meeting a young woman from the region and falling in love. The pair wed and had two children before returning to the village where they bought a large property. They made a living as a tailor and hunter, their children growing quickly. Being of half-elven descent they outlived their mother who died in her early forties. Both children chose to leave the village while their father remained.

He still lives in the house they bought together so many years ago and continues his work as a hunter and steward of the forest around the small hamlet. In more recent years he has begun keeping bees and making mead as a way of passing the time. He now lives with a his wild companions, a wolf (Kita) and an owl (Pudge). Occasionally he has a female visitor who helps pass the time. His life is simple and honest, perhaps that may change but for the time being he is happy and content.

Home: Kadoka lives in his family farm right on the main street, the front door only a single step up from the well trodden laneway, while the rear of the property looks over his bee fields and into the forest beyond.

Townsfolk of Lorenstad - A Fantasy Village RP

Name: Kadoka
Race & Appearance: Wood Elf [200]

Kadoka

Birthday: 31st, Fallsa
Occupation: Hunter, bee keeper, and maker of fine meads.

Background: Kadoka, like so many others, hails from somewhere else. Unlike others, however, he came to Lorenstad on purpose after meeting a young woman from the region and falling in love. The pair wed and had two children before returning to the village where they bought a large property. They made a living as a tailor and hunter, their children growing quickly. Being of half-elven descent they outlived their mother who died in her early forties. Both children chose to leave the village while their father remained.

He still lives in the house they bought together so many years ago and continues his work as a hunter and steward of the forest around the small hamlet. In more recent years he has begun keeping bees and making mead as a way of passing the time. He now lives with a his wild companions, a wolf (Kita) and an owl (Pudge). Occasionally he has a female visitor who helps pass the time. His life is simple and honest, perhaps that may change but for the time being he is happy and content.

Home: Kadoka lives in his family farm right on the main street, the front door only a single step up from the well trodden laneway, while the rear of the property looks over his bee fields and into the forest beyond.

Townsfolk of Lorenstad - A Fantasy Village RP

Thinking a bee keeper who makes mead for trade and the local tavern. Thoughts?

Not a Step Back - a World War II Inspired NRP

AIHTARAQ

The last despairing wail of the air raid siren died away to nothing, leaving Lieutenant Adrias Wiyyan and the rest of the Rieyks garrison in Forward Base Delta staring out over an ocean of sand that still shimmered with the days heat. A final scout plane roared overhead, waggling its wings at the waving infantrymen below; that pilot was one lucky bastard. Already long shadows were beginning to creep over the sand as the tallest dunes hid the sinking sun. The night was growing cold and he knew that it would soon be time to find a jacket.

"Do you think they'll come tonight?" Wiyyans company sergeant, Licas Torenas, asked from where he stood nearby, hands clasped behind his back. A rifle was slung over his right shoulder and bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossed the chest of his khaki desert uniform.

How many times had someone asked that question in the past weeks? Wiyyan could have been rich if he had a coin for every time he had heard it. For the past three days the desert had been quiet, utterly still. That, he knew, was a trap if ever he had seen one. All his studies in the military academy had trained him to adopt tactics to an enemy who could be driven to ground, bombed from the air, sunk from beneath the waves. None of his instructors had talked about fighting an enemy ancient as the land it inhabited, whose cities were buried in caverns he could only imagine, and who fought with a savagery that brokered no prisoners.

The shadows marched steadily onward, reaching out like long fingers toward the concrete platforms that housed the garrison. He was still in awe of the complete darkness that seemed to lie beneath those ominous appendages of the drawing night. It always struck him as though the landscape was being painted black by some crazed artist, one piece at a time.

"I don't know," He said finally. "Aerial recon found nothing, as they always do, and even the supply column hasn't reported a single attack. Command thinks our show of force might have worked. Driving a desk must qualify them as experts." The sergeant snorted in laughter.

The sun sank so rapidly that even as they spoke the first of the shadows touched the edge of the garrison and seemed to ooze its way through the rows of barbed wire. The ranks of vehicles parked in the centre of the compound were next and he marvelled at the variety he could see. It was clear that high command wasn't entirely sure what they were facing out here, neither did he if he was honest, but that was nowhere better exemplified than in the motor pool. Several tanks, both medium and light, anti-aircraft guns, armoured cars, half-tracks, even a number of small staff cars that were utterly useless on anything but a packed roadway. A complete mishmash of equipment no one else wanted. He wasn’t even sure any of it was from this war.

"They're waiting." Torenas said, a bleak statement in the gathering gloom. "They're fucking waiting. They’ve fought this war for a lot longer than we have."

Wiyyan couldn't argue. The utter stillness was unnerving, especially when you knew that somewhere out there, an army was gathering. The Sahalia risen to meet every invader and he had no illusion that they had failed to note the presence of the Reiyk in the desert. He turned to look East and could see the very tops of the oil derricks, still clattering away, bathed for a brief moment in brilliant red sunshine before they to faded to black, just tall branchless trees against the rapidly darkening blue sky.

"Activate the perimeter." Wiyyan said, and Torenas echoed his order in a crashing bark across the garrison. Floodlights burst on, illuminating the ground all around the garrison while specialized sensors sunk into the sand listened for any sound of tunnelling beneath them. Soldiers everywhere checked their weapons and settled in for another long night of staring into the artificial daylight. None of them had seen the night sky in almost a month now.

In the darkness beyond the, the other forward bases and the oil drilling camps similarly lit the desert like glowing hives of activity among a land otherwise blanketed an inky blackness. Wiyyan waited until he was satisfied before turning and starting to walk back across the compound; his duty officer rotation was done and he was ready to get some sleep.

He was almost at the steps of the headquarters building, a fancy term for a series of metal shacks on a concrete platform, when he became aware of a sound he had not heard before. At first he thought it might be the wind but a glance at the flag slumped above his head told him that no breeze blew. Around him every face was turning toward the wire and the light drenched dunes beyond; faces pinched with worry and, for many, fear. Not a single man here was ignorant of the staggering numbers of dead that already lay beneath the shifting sands.

"It could be... maybe... someone, or something, is whispering..." Torenas, not far behind Wiyyan, was now in front of him and had cupped both hands around his ears like a parabolic sound mirror. "Oh Saints above... They must be coming."

Soldiers were already running from the huts that served as their barracks toward firing positions, sandbagged fortifications built on top of more concrete. Hard lessons had taught the Reiyk that digging down into the sand was a sure fire way to lose thousands of soldiers.

"Alarm!" Wiyyan roared and the air raid siren shattered the evening air, rising in a furious pitch until it screamed its sound all across the desert; beyond it the other installations took up the cry. Everyone not already at the firing line came tumbling out into the open and made for their assigned positions, rifles in hand. He couldn't help but feel a sense of pride as they did so. No soldier was going to die because he had failed to train them properly.

The siren died away, echoing back from the distant dunes and Ridgeback Mountains, and beneath it the whispering sound continued unabated. Nothing was moving that Wiyyan could see but all at once his seismic operators clapped hands to their ears. Eyes bulging from their heads as they frantically gestured at the machinery stacked neatly around them.

"Holy shit! We've got sign! It's fucking everywhere!" The whispering had grown slowly now until it was a rushing sound, like the wind through the leaves of a spring forest.

"Sign to the West!" More shouts, and then the cracks of rifles. Wiyyan turned toward the West and began to run, ripping his pistol from his belt as he did so.

More shouts, the clatter of a machine gun somewhere else in the garrison, it didn't matter now. His responsibility once the alarm had been sounded shrank to the Western perimeter only. He could see soldiers firing rapidly into the light beyond the barbed wire and then the heavy "thunk" of a mortar firing a parachute flare into the night sky.

It burst high above, illuminating the desert in a bizarre blue glow far beyond the edge of the floodlights. Wiyyan felt his blood go cold and he stopped dead in disbelief. The desert was moving, the surface of the sand look as if it were alive and it moving East, directly toward him.

An explosion shook the night and he risked a glance over his shoulder to see a distant oil derrick going up in flames. The flash of gunfire around it rapidly dwindled to nothing and the banks of floodlights went dark one by one. Firelight flickered across the sand now as the oil derrick collapsed, and black smoke billowed across the sand toward Wiyyan.

"Gas masks!" He shouted, pulling his own from his waist pouch and dragging it over his face. It wouldn't be much, but it might keep the men from inhaling the fumes; a man who couldn’t breath couldn’t fight and they needed every rifle they could get right now. He tugged the straps tight, took his pistol from beneath his legs, and hurried to his fighting position. The night had barely begun.