A Pleasant Morning
40 Saun 724

All but the Ghost Burho had been adorned with sea-green streamers and sky-blue balloons which stood out against Yaralon's unusually prismatic skies. Saun was the wet season and by most accounts that would have made it a bad season to be wed but on the fortieth...

Woe was watching a trade underway, just as a lark, perchance to people watch and learn how bartering was done in the midst of the Parchment Burho's market. The negotiations weren't going well for the prospective buyer. Woe watched his lips twitch, his fingers curl as they went against him, driving...

The merchants' square in the Parchment Burho was feisty today. Woe felt relaxed, in his native form, his self-totem. Feeling more himself than he had in seasons, perhaps. It'd weighed on him, he realized, the political position, being a public figure, accessible to everyone. It was not the life for...

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Blind Oarsman and the Albatross

Kalortah rested in his bed in the Temple of Delroth, a windowed suite that they'd afforded him, in due course because of his high status in the estimation of their patron. It wasn't far from the Golden Gate of Yaralon, and the...

The occasional dinners with Mervani, before he deigned to give Zemos lessons on this or that aspect of Necromamncy were pleasant enough. He almost felt a familiarity with Mervani and his dead wife and daughter, as if they were kin. Indeed, Zemos held the offspring spark of Mervani's own spark,...

No hidden knives lay in wait for Zemos as the cycles passed, and his unfulfilled contract didn't seem to set any alarms off. He always intended to keep his end of the bargain, just on... his own time. Which was an elusive concept, at that. The Sev'ryn people, even those not devoted to Moseke, often...

Job thread.

It'd been some weeks since the Campaign into Bastard's Grove had stalled, and then retracted, back to ground at Yaralon. Zemos was among those sent back to the city proper. The logisticians and other supply lines were needed to keep the people on the frontlines from failing due to morale,...

Doctor Zemos came, as bid by the note left from a beggar in the Burho. Along with the Burho Coin that would serve as his advance payment. Perhaps his only payment, but then a Burho Coin could buy a great deal depending on the desperation of the one who received it. Favors were traded on a higher...

The Petal and Thorn Games
The city was more alive than it had felt all season. Every corner of every Burho was decorated with a rainbow of different flowers, even the Ghost Burho saw a rise in flora. The tunawa who usually resided within the Tree Burho had been working tirelessly through the...

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That it then?

Yeah, that's it.

The Revitalist nodded his head and lifted his hat off the table. He slapped it against the side of his thigh before setting it snugly atop his head. The cigar in his mouth glowed brightly with a stiff inhale. He rose from his chair...

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The man slept with a soundness he had no right to. If anything resembling justice truly existed, a man like him wouldn't have been able to even catnap without the nightmares coming to rend his peace. Maybe that had been the case, the first few arcs. Maybe then, enough...

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Continued from here

This one is trouble.

Kasoria could not read minds, but he didn't need note to translate the look on the old woman's face. The moment she looked up from her desk he could see her features pinch, the lines around her eyes tighten right before...

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Your way won’t work,” Max shook her head as she raised the tankard of ale toward her lips.

Oh!?” one of the younger men in the meeting raised his voice and his brow. He wandered closer to the Rusalka, hands on his hips. Do tell, Ms. Expert! Tell us why a Yari, who...

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This's gunna be a rough one, mark me.

Makes yeh say dat?

He's got dat look in 'is eyes.

... 'is eyes're closed, Raand.

Aye, well, it's still fuckin' there.

That might have drawn a smile from him at any other time. A nice bit of absurdist Etzos humor, and...

Kalortah had made his acquisition at the market, quite a good one. The merchant was none the wiser to the stone's nature. To blame for the poor appraisal by the merchant, the porous nature of transformation gems. It was simple to get them dirty, not as easy to polish to where they could retain...

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He'd been patient. All night he'd minded his duties and focused on his tasks. Not shirked his responsibilities at all. That wouldn't be fitting, for a warrior of the Knights Saccharine.

Plaven truly believed that. But then, he was young, and had much to learn that...

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Too much of Maxine’s time and energy was put into involuntary rumination. It beat on her like a relentless downpour over a once-still lake, disrupting her surface over and over until it was becoming impossible to ignore its effects. From the moment Kasoria and Max...

A Champion Arrives

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It was raining hard when the traveler slouched into the village. That alone was hardly notable: it had been raining for the last three trials.

Dust turned to dirt turned to mud and after a while the flow of passing traffic slowed to a trickle. Now only the caravans...

Zemos had assembled his small army of thralls from their storage in his little hovel. He kept them in storage in the basement, which was hidden from the hut it lay beneath by a flat floorboard that could be removed at need. While it wasn't necessarily frowned upon to be a necromancer, operating on...

The swarm of insects flew haphazardly out of the vents and open gaps in the gates to the sewers. Their movements, while done in tandem, appeared to sway from side to side in confusion, as if the whole of the hive-mind governing them couldn't quite make up their minds about where to go, and what to...

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She wanted to wash her hands of the bloody business completely. The meeting with the necromancer and his ugly request, the conspiracy leading up to the ambush in the alley, and the kidnapping of that Biqaj girl while she watched. She stuck to her lukewarm conviction....

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What are you worth? The things you love, or the people you hurt.

They didn't speak as they walked through the bowels of Yaralon. After what they had done , knowing what they would do, what words were left to speak?

What you've done, old man. You dragged her...