gorgenmast

Kneel Before Me (Medieval NRP)

I took the liberty of creating my own map suggestion:

Kneel Before Me (Medieval NRP)

I doubt that this part of the world will be hotly contested, but here is my claim:

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

That's what Steam group chat is for.

Also, plot development up in this piece.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Atlas Mountains, Spanish Morocco

Julio Zuraban struggled to keep pace with Joaquin as they and a hundred other former prisoners scrambled across the desert sands and up into the rocky crags at the foot of the Atlas Mountains. Their presumed liberators, these masked men of the Sahara, rode alongside the sweating, panting caravan of malnourished Europeans on camelback. The steeds snorted and growled in annoyance as their riders bounced upon their humps and harried the beasts onward, maintaining a steady trot at the same pace as the Spaniards. A few of the riders cantered back to the tail of the sweat-moistened gaggle, demanding they move faster The words of these veiled men themselves were utterly foreign to the Europeans, but their exasperation communicated a demand for urgency that needed no translation.

This running trek through the desert would have been a challenge for Julio even under ideal circumstances. Though his duty as a Senator of the Spanish Republic had been a taxing post, as was his self-exile afterwards, neither line of work was particularly strenuous at least in terms of physical exertion. Though he was always a wiry man, Julio had never been able to call himself fit. Complicating his softness were months of neglect and imprisonment that had left Julio positively emaciated. An evening jog along the riverfront in Madrid would be a difficult proposition in his current state - to say nothing of a forced dash across the Sahara at the height of summer. Thick, cottony foam bubbled up under his tongue; his palate and tongue felt as if they would mummify with every breath of dessicated air that passed across his mouth and into his lungs. Atrophied legs threatened to bear Julio's strides no longer. He could simply collapse into the sand, let the others pass him by, and allow the desert to consume him. He could escape the hardship that had been the last four months - the last three years - here and now. At Arratzu, Julio begged his captors for death, as Sotelo had hoped. Here he could have that death that days ago he had wanted so desperately, if only he could falter and submit to the sand and the heat.

But Julio did not submit. With every aching stride Julio chose llife: to accept this new lease at freedom offered by the camel-borne warriors who had saved him from a fate worse than Arratzu. He would not squander his newfound freedom.

The desert sands sloped up in rippling dunes toward the sheer walls of the Atlas Mountains. Half buried slivers of rock sheered off the jagged peaks poked up from the dunes and presented a maze to the approaching prisoners and their mounted escorts as they drew closer. The Spaniards slithered through the boulders in a single line after the rider leading the prisoners, the man who had spoken to them in Spanish.

"This way!" Their scarf-veiled leader commanded in perfect Castillian. "Keep moving, we are nearly there!"

This man was distinct from from the other warriors. He was no Saracen, Julio knew that much. He had seen Bedouin tribes before once; a tribe of wandering Arabs outside of Damascus in Ottoman Palestine. Just as the ones that escorted them now to safety, they were merciful to strangers and ruthless to their enemies. The leader of these Bedouin was no native man. His Spanish was well pronounced and his grammar far more precise than that of self-taught speakers - he had clearly been educated in a more formal fashion. More tellingly, he rode his camel in a noteworthy fashion. He kept himself rigid upon the bobbing hump of his dromedary, whereas his comrades bobbed up and down in tandem with the trot of their steed. His method of riding was not as natural and organic as his companions, but learned and practiced. He was a foreigner of some sort.

A distant, percussive twocking echoed through the boulders and against the mountain face before them. This rumbling, mechanized din built in pitch with each passing second. The source could only be but one thing: helicopter rotors, and they were approaching fast.

"The Spanish are coming!" The foreigner exclaimed, wide eyes visible through the open slit in his scarf as he turned toward the haggard escapees. "Into the canyon! Move!"

Motivated by sheer terror for closing gunships, the prisoners burst forward as quickly as their legs could carry them after the foreigner Bedouin. The scarf-clad warrior dismounted from his camel and tumbled into the sand before leading his camel and the prisoners on foot into a craggy fissure running up a solid face of the mountain above. Joaquin stood at the threshold of the crack in the rock face, beckoning his companions through into the fault. Julio fell in behind a dismounted camel being walked through the narrow pass by one of the Bedouin. The Spaniards behind him pressed Julio forward into the rear of the camel, which groaned with annoyance as those behind him shoved him into the beast's haunches.

Though his face was firmly planted against the camel's ass and he hadn't the faintest idea where they were going, Julio felt the sand give way into a coarse gravel crunching underfoot. A moist, refreshing breeze coursed through the chasm, beckoning the prisoners further into the shadowy depths of the fissure. Cool blue light filtered into the chasm as the gaggle of escapees pressed forward after their liberator. Over their anxious murmurings, a gentle babbling could be heard like that of running water falling onto stone. Julio glanced over the camel's hump and saw a gout of cold, clean water spilling out from a hairline in the rock above his head and patter against the gravel below in a waterfall of fat, sparkling waterdrops. The trickle carved a gurgling ribbon through the chasm that ran into the blue light beyond.

With little warning, the camel moved ahead and gave Julio and those behind him a glimpse of what lay beyond the chasm. The fissure opened up into a massive gorge walled on either side by sheer stone walls some twenty or thirty meters high. That tiny rivulet beneath their feet joined with the larger brook that had carved this canyon out over millions of years. Olive bushes grew from the watered banks, each quivering of the in the shade-cooled breeze that coursed through the canyon. Camels attended by turban-sporting natives slurped water up from the deeper pools, menacing schools of tiny minnows as they did. The herders beheld the gaggle of prisoners with palpable suspicion, which seemed to be partially soothed when the Spanish speaker addressed them once again.

"We are safe here. Their gunships will not find us in these canyons. We must keep moving, but you need not exhaust yourselves. Move at a relaxing pace within reason and refresh yourselves with the stream water if you wish, I assure you that it is clean."

Julio acknowledged the foreigner by collapsing onto his knees and dropping his head into one of the pools beside the camels. The surge of cold, bubbling water instantly extinguished the throbbing heat on his cheeks as he imbibed the surrounding water in humongous gulps. Upon surfacing, he found that nearly all the other prisoners had joined him in drinking from the canyon stream. The camel herders, still wary of the newcomers, had pulled their beasts away and continued down the gravelly corridor through the mountain. Joaquin, however, kept pace with the Bedouin leader as he and his fellow warriors went down through the canyon with camels in tow.

"Do you honestly think we are safe here?" Joaquin demanded of the foreign warrior. "You don't think that they'll not be suspicious when they find the wreckage completely empty when it should have dozens of people inside?" We can't afford to slow down. We need to put as much distance between ourselves and that plane or we will be found."

"The Spanish already know we are here, it is only that they do not know exactly where to find us. The destruction of their airplane will embolden them, their commanders will send more patrols out into the desert to locate us, leaving fewer men at their Mountain. We know full well what we are doing; who are you to question us?"

"He doesn't mean to come across so critically." Julio exclaimed, butting into the exchange. "Joaquin here is only concerned for us. He was a leader by profession, and he has his opinions what the best course of action is. We are all very grateful for you and your companions, and we are in your debt."

"We will address this debt of yours soon enough. The Amghar will see you now. He shall decide how your people will assist us."

The foreigner drew his hands across the scarves obscuring his face, loosening them and allowing them to fall upon his shoulders. He was a Subsaharan with characteristic nappy hair cropped short upon his head and forming a long yet well-kempt goatee that maned his mouth. His hazel eyes, light skin, and narrow nose however were decidedly un-African.

Julio's obsession with this man's identity distracted him from the walk through the canyon, as well as Joaquin's palm extended before him that immediately brought him to a halt and galvanized him from his reverie. It was then that he noticed the contingent of armed men standing before them at a bottleneck in the shady chasm. Great War machine guns nested behind stacked blocks of sandstone flanked either side of the narrowed pass, behind which turban-sporting North Africans trained on the Spaniards. The light-skinned African continued ahead, addressing them in Arabic once more. After a brief exchange, the guards lowered their guns and stepped aside, permitting the African and his following of liberated Spaniards into the narrows, but only with suspicious glares at the passersby.

Beyond the narrowing, the canyon opened into a massive sinkhole nestled within the bosom of the jagged mountains. The stream coursed through the narrows in a shallow riffle down to a cataract that emptied into a great blue pool. Waterfalls spilled out from cracks in the algae-stained walls of the sinkhole, feeding the oasis with meltwater from distant peaks. Majestic date palms grew to massive stature along the gravely shore of the oasis, their fronds forming a dense blanket that obscured the sunlight. Presumably, this curtain of palm leaves also hid the inside of the crater from anyone looking down from above. This, Julio presumed, was was the reason the Bedouin had chosen to place their camp here.

A small city of tents and tarp-roofs covered nearly every meter of available space in the sinkhole. Under draped tarps and betwixt palm trees, makeshift shelters housed every sort of supplies needed to fight a small war. The ancient clashed with the modern here; farriers hammered out horseshoes on forges built from oil drums and fueled by prepackaged grilling charcoal; horses and camels stabled under the same tents where anti-tank rifles were inspected and cleaned. Storage areas held dozens of sheathed swords resting on tables beside metal ammunition boxes. Julio had to make a double take when he saw a swarthy Saracen unloading long, silvery rockets from a crate stamped with Chinese lettering.

"Where in the Hell did all of this come from?" Joaquin blurted, wondering aloud.

"It was difficult." The African responded, slinking past a duo of natives carrying a long wooden crate down the path between the tents. "The weapons especially. Good men died to bring them here. It is my hope that they kill many Spaniards."

At the far end of the sinkhole, the African and his company came to rest before a pavilion - large and made from a rude, beige fabric. As the Spaniards caught their breath, a wizened and stoic Sarecen clad in a billowing robe pushed his way through the door flap. A long, gray beard hung from a face made into tanned leather by a lifetime in these inhospitable lands. It was face whose features spoke of immense displeasure.

"You have brought the enemy to our camp!" He rasped, a trembling hand feeling for the pommel of the sheathed sword on his hip. "This is a foolish thing indeed. You told me that you were wise in the ways of war. What wisdom is this, what kind of adviser are you? God willing, you have an explanation."

"These are no enemies, Amghar." The African explained, reverting to Arabic. "They were aboard the airplane of the Spanish that was shot from the sky. We slew the pilots, but found these people within the airplane's belly. I think that they are prisoners of some kind."

"Prisoners? This plane was flying toward the Mountain?"

"There is nowhere else it could have been going, Amghar. It is possible that every plane we have witnessed passing over these lands is carrying prisoners like them to the Mountain."

"That is impossible." The ancient Saracen huffed. "It defies logic. Why would the infidel expend such resources to transport their prisoners to the Mountain? Are there no prisons in Spain? I cannot believe such a thing. These men are agents of the Dajjal. What else could they be?"

The Amghar drew his sword, eliciting visible fear in the prisoners as the straight-bladed longsword cleared the sheath. Despite his advanced age, the Amghar found ample strength to point the silvery tip at Joaquin's chest.

"They are agents of the Dajjal. They are captive enemies. Our people do not keep captives. You know this, Dejene."

"These men are prisoners, Amghar." A woman exclaimed, commanding the attention of everyone. A silky hijab obscured her hair, but left her face visible. Her skin was fair and light - far lighter than any Arab or African. She was of obvious European descent. How she had come to arrive at this place was anything but. She made her way to the elder. "Please, lower your blade."

"You would let them live, Graciela? So that they will betray us and deliver us on a plate to the Dajjal?"

"Sotelo is as much an enemy to these men as any of us. Dejene could not have found more dependable allies than them. They have been beaten within an inch of their lives, this because they threatened Sotelo's autocracy. In the past year, some among them have been taken from the prisons and sent away by plane. My father and his people were likely among them. I didn't imagine that they would send them here."

"They are taking Spaniards to the Mountain? As they have with my people?" The Amghar asked, lowering his sword from Joaquin's breast at last. "I had thought that place was a fortress. Now you are saying that it is a prison?"

"I don't know. Arratzu - where these people came from - was a prison. The facility here, La Cabeza... I don't know.

But these people might. If anyone knows what lies in wait for us in that place, it will be them. Let them live and allow me to speak with them. They will fight alongside your warriors, Amghar. But we must show them that they are safe here first."

The Amghar stood silently for a time, staring into the gravel beneath his feet as he thought to himself.

"I will let this be.

Graciela, Dejene... speak with the Spaniards. Feed them as we are able, and find out all that they know of the Mountain. Find out what is in store for us."

Kneel Before Me (Medieval NRP)

Tentative interest.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Hi there, Bee. I'm sorry, but I just saw your post now due to holiday goings-on and the Guild access being craptacular lately.

I would be happy to collaborate with you on anything, but first the status of the Philippines under you needs to be ironed out. Aaron has a lot invested in the lore of the Philippines and I'm sure he doesn't want to have that undone by a new player - especially when new people sometimes bail after realizing how daunting the RP can be. I would speak with Aaron again over steam, and maybe include me. We can work any discrepancies in the lore and make things agreeable for all parties involved.

In any case, glad to see that you're interested. Looking forward to seeing your IC soon.

Also, Happy New Year to everyone. I've got a post halfway done and I'm getting around to responding to a certain PM convo. I swear that I'm not procrastinating or being lazy.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Merry Christmas from Googermats.

Amongst Living Gods (Sci-Fi NRP)

Name: Ari [The Custodians]
General Galactic Location: The inner third of the Sagittarius arm
History:
Set Aolimun - The Age of Ignorance/Apathy

Those humans who have had the opportunity to meet individuals of the Ari almost-universally describe them as a species with scant regard for humanity. While generally peaceful toward humans, the Ari make no effort to keep their condescension toward humanity a secret. Human xenobiologists find this cold sentiment toward their kind perplexing, seeing as humans and Ari share so much in common. Superficially, they are extremely similar in appearance to humans, appearing as slender, lithe humanoids with fair skin. Their faces are gaunt and gracile; their ears long with pointed lobes. With only minor anatomical and physiological differences distinguishing them from humans, it is perplexing to many humans that the Ari do not show a greater appreciation for their similarities.

The Ari, contrary to the beliefs of some human xenobiologists, do indeed recognize the similarities between themselves and humans. They see themselves in the human race, a darker, more primitive form of their own race. To the Ari, humanity harkens to their own bleak past.

The race that would become the modern Ari arose on a world phenomenally similar to the Earth: a mild planet with an agreeable nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere and a world of large landmasses rich in diverse biomes. Like humans, the Ari evolved from tree-dwelling beasts that learned to walk on two legs and went about the grasslands in a bipedal fashion. Their kind developed from hunter-gatherer clans into specialized societies as humans did. Agrarian city states became empires that vied with one another for dominance. Weaponry advanced, empires ascended and died out, but war was a constant on the Ari homeworld. The wars were fought - as they were on ancient Earth - for greater dominance of the planet's natural resources.

The ancestors of the Ari, known in this epoch as the Aolimi - the ignorant - developed the ability to travel across their own star system; a technology derived from the construction of ballistic weapons for their wars. The first terraformation efforts of the Aolimi were attempted soon thereafter, but their aims were shortsighted and bellicose in nature. Terraformation in this era was performed only to allow future colonies to develop so that native materials could be harvested for conflicts. It was in this dark, primitive time that the Aolimi first dabbled in the art of creating life on dead worlds. In this age of ignorance, the Aolimi could have never guessed that they were setting the foundation for what would become the very purpose of their race.

The-sem Sarac- The Catastrophe

The earliest of the terraformed worlds - both of which confined to the home system - increasingly became factories for conflicts being fought on the homeworld. The Aolimi homeworld had at this point suffered catastrophic environmental changes caused by a swollen population and exploitation of resources. The society had become one of decadence and consumption - native cultures having long been assimilated and forgotten.The richness of life on the planet had been stripped clear. Two biomes now existed on the Aolimi world: vast, swollen megalopoli and barren wastelands .In their greed for greater control of their world, the Aolimi had failed to recognize that anything worth fighting for on this planet had been consumed.

The rape of their world saw its climax in one final globe-spanning war. In desperation or unbridled hatred, a weapon of last resort was used. A machine that focused the energy of the sun itself was activated. In a single, blinding flash, the homeworld was bathed in sunfire. The oceans vaporized, continents melted, and more than twenty billion souls perished. The Aolimi had all but annihilated themselves. Those spared of the Catastrophe watched from the colony worlds as the world that had birthed their species was obliterated.

The survivors were wracked with grief to see the fruits of their greed and savagery. They mourned their dead, but most importantly, they grieved the loss of their world. Expanses of smoldering glass rising from seas of magma were all that remained of the world that had given birth to their ancestors. The perfect nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere had been addled in the Catastrophe as well; noxious gasses released during the melting of the landmasses had permanently rendered the very air toxic and thick. The refreshing thundershowers that rolled across the ancestral plains of their race had become hazy mists that yielded only drizzles of sulfuric acid. The paradise that had birthed the Aolimi had been transformed into a sterile hell through their own recklessness.

In the aftermath of the Catastrophe, the Aolimi as a race came to agree that what had transpired on their homeworld was a heinous sin that would disgrace them and their progeny for all time.The survivors recognized that it was not just the lives of their own kin that had been lost. An uncountable number of living things had been destroyed forever, an entire living world had been snuffed out. It was not sufficient for the Aolimi to vow that the errors made on their homeworld would never recur. As species, they felt the need to atone for their destruction.

No longer would they allow their greed to poison and destroy another world. As a race, they vowed to foster and create life - never to destroy it except in the preservation of other living things. From thence onward, they referred to themselves as the Ari - the Custodians.

((To be completed later.))

Amongst Gods (High sci-fi NRP)

Name: Ari [The Custodians]
Logo/flag:

Location: Inner Sagittarius Arm
History: To be RPed.

I really fucking hate faction sheets.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

((The following is a collaborative post between RisenDeadand myself.))

Port Said, Egypt

The fires were slowly dying as the sun rose over the smouldering heap that used to be Port Said. What had once been a city was now a mass of shattered stone and concrete, the streets littered with bodies and shattered vehicles.

Delgado sat alone on the edge of the Canal, the sun on his face. Never before had he been so happy to see a sunrise in all his life. The explosion that had blinded him had been close, the same wall that he sheltered behind moments earlier had probably saved his life. One of its stones had come loose and hit him in the head, the instant gushing of blood had blinded him completely.

For one terrifying moment he had thought he was blind forever until his desperate pawing managed to get the blood from his face. He could see enough to pull a bandage from his battle harness and push it to his forehead. A splash of water from the Canal later, the salt stinging his eyes and wound, he could see again. He had sighed a breath of relief.

Not far from where he sat, his compatriots had already rounded together a cleanup detail. A tow truck that had evaded destruction the night before had been requisitioned for the task of clearing the Suez of debris. With a sputtering, diesely roar, the truck’s winch spun about and pulled against some submerged mass. The truck’s wheel sank into the mud, resisting and gently sliding about in the silty muck on which it parked. But the machine proved triumphant after some struggle as a rusting, twisted I-beam crawled up out of the canal and onto the shore like a beached whale. A team of “divers” - a pair of Egyptian men dressed in naught but their underwear - emerged from the canal to assist the Spanish infantry remove the clamps from the steel cable. Even as a foreign volunteer to Spain himself, Delgado was puzzled by their motivation in assisting the very soldiers that had utterly destroyed their city.

The sound of a helicopter pulled him out his reverie and he glanced up just in time to see a massive Barracuda gunship sweep overhead, the down draft buffeting the men who stood along the side of the Canal. Everyone paused to look up at the aircraft as it circled once, looking for a landing area. The only space available was what remained of a plaza some 100 yards away. Delgado watched as the aircraft hovered down behind the damaged buildings before turning back to the Canal and slinging his rifle and hurrying towards the men with the tow truck to lend a hand.

As Delgado approached the tow truck, a body of soldiers could be seen moving down the path. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed one amongst them that stood out from his peer in terms of dress. Surrounded by a cadre of khaki tan uniforms was a man clad in a jacket - that alone was enough to give Delgado pause in this arid land. Forest green, lapelled, and festooned with golden epaulets. His knowledge of the Spanish Ejercito’s structure was limited, but Delgado could only assume that this was a man of substantial import. He halted on the spot and snapped in salute.

The newly arrived soldiers marched alongside the officer in a dignified manner as an entourage or unit of guards with weapons snugly cradled in their arms. They approached the tow vehicle and halted before him, taking position amongst the rubble as their superior approached. His arrival prompted the regular infantry to salute as well as Delgado had already.

“I am looking for one Francisco del Cal Delgado of the International Brigade.” The stoic-faced officer announced to no one in particular once he had the undivided attention of the regular infantry. Delgado’s heart seized upon hearing his own name from the mouth of this imposing figure. “I am told he may be found here.”

“I am him.” He uttered, captivating the commander’s attention. The man in the lapelled jacket pivoted and approached. The officer came in close - closer than Delgado appreciated - and scanned the Argentine up and down. Stern, cold eyes swept over him, noting every scrape and wound earned the night before.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Sir… no, sir.” Delgado admitted, still locked in salute.

“I would be your General - Victor Ponferrada.”

“Good morning, General. You honour us with your visit.” Said Delgado as he dropped his arm and shifted slightly, strangely aware of how disheveled and battle stained he was compared to the men who had come with the General.

“Likewise, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Francisco - Sergeant Delgado… You know that this is a rare thing in our army? I can name on one hand enlisted men that have climbed in rank with such speed.”

“Sergeant Delgado, I understand that you are no Spaniard. Tell me, “the General pressed closer in, “were is it that you call home?”

“The Mendoza region of Argentina, sir. My father owns a small vineyard there.”

“A vinero?” Ponferrada asked incredulously, almost seeming amused. “That is what you are? Are you certain?”

“Well...” Said Delgado after a small pause. “Truth be told, it seems I have a talent for this sort of work.” He gestured about him. “Though I am not certain it is something I would chose to brag about. Though I make a rather terrible farmer.”

“A talent?” Ponferrada shook his head. “My understanding is that you took the life of no fewer than thirty men last night. A man with no military training that took the life of thirty men? I have never heard of such a thing - in all my service to this Ejercito. This is no talent, Sergeant. You are born for this.”

“You may be right sir, though I think my initial success came from being too foolish and ill-trained to know when to run the opposite direction, but now…” He glanced down at his hands, his arms were soaked to the elbows in the blood of a man whose throat he had slit in the fighting. “I suspect you may be right.”

“I know this much. I am a man who recognizes merit; I see a wealth of it in you, Sergeant. I see a potential in you that would be wasted in the Brigada Internacional. I have greater things imagined for you.”

“Once we have cleaned… this mess,” General Ponferrada gesticulated briefly to the canal and those working to clear it of debris. “our Armada will make for the Horn of Africa. The enemy expects a landing - even now they fortify their coasts in anticipation of our attack. It will require hard men to storm those beaches, men like you.”

“I give this offer for you to make, Sergeant Delgado: remain here with the International Brigade here in Egypt. Or you will leave this force and join with the regular Ejercito and fight to clear the coast in preparation for our landings with the understanding that you will be see rapid promotion. But there is no shame if you wish to remain here with the International Brigade in Egypt. There is much work to be done with this canal in the coming years, and the International Brigade will have no small part in seeing that realized.”

“I’d like to fight with the regulars, sir.” Delgado decided without hesitation. Ponferrada seemed nothing short of delighted.

“I am pleased to hear that, truly. You won’t be alone in this, I have selected a handful of others from the Brigade to move into the regular forces, though none show nearly as much promise as you. Your advancement will reflect that.”

“Which reminds me, Sergeant Delgado. By any chance, are you familiar with the Cazadores?”