| The Kingmaker: prologue; Nemesis Crown fluff | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 4th July 2007 - 11:43 PM (294 Views) | |
| scrivener | 4th July 2007 - 11:43 PM Post #1 |
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*toot*
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Prologue: By Order of the Council The rat scurried through the Under-Empire. Up tunnels and down burrows, through winding crannies and under rocks, it pelted helter-skelter on its four small legs, following the instructions that had been welded to its small mind. It paused once to sniff the air, whiskers a-twitch, then turned down another path, pushing its way through the loose and lightless dirt. To a rat, the underground realm was far easier to traverse than the surface: to a top-dweller it was an unsurmountable mass of soil and rock, but rats know it as a complex dimension unbounded by any sky or plane. Here, one’s choice of route lay not just to the four winds, but in every possible direction. The rat ran on through a cavern filled with belching furnaces, scampering up a pipe hot with steam. It disappeared into a crack in a wall and squeezed through a tunnel barely wider than its body. Its path took it through a pile of mouldering bones long buried, through a cleft in some ancient rock-face, then down another narrow tunnel that twisted and turned in all directions. Up ahead was brightness. The rat darted out of the tunnel into a wide cavern illuminated by dim candlelight. In its path was a table-leg. It clambered up. The rat found itself suddenly snatched up. It would have had more time to react against a viper's strike. It struggled furiously, trying to bite the hand that held it, but found it could barely move. The grip was as unmoveable as rock and as fluid as water. The Skaven assassin casually raised the rat in his hand to study it. Cool, beady eyes beneath a cowl flickered over the intruder to his chambers. He drew his dagger, and with a practised flick gutted the rat from tail to jaw. As the rat squirmed in its death-throes, the assassin hooked a claw into the slit and ripped its innards free. He dropped the rat to his tabletop, where it lay squeaking weakly, and turned his attention to the bloody tangle in his fingers. Raskill Greytongue, for that was the assassin's name, coaxed the contents of the rat's stomach onto his table. He separated a thin tube from the half-digested paste. It was fashioned from the shin-bone of some small animal, straight and hollow. He snapped off the wax that sealed one end, noting the sigil that had been stamped into it. He tapped the tube against his tabletop and something slid out. It was the smallest of scrolls, a narrow strip of parchment tightly rolled. Raskill unfurled it, weighing down one end with the body of the rat and the other with the dagger. He brought a candle closer and studied the parchment. There was nothing visible written on the scroll, or at least what had been written on it was not visible. Raskill grinned to himself. It had been a while since his superiors had delivered a message this way. He got up from his seat and went to a corner of his chamber. The walls were lined with a strange assortment of possessions: pigeon-holes crammed with scrolls, exotic weaponry of all manner of purposes, a stuffed cockatrice that now served as a cloak rack, small wire cages holding a menagerie of creatures. He lifted the lid on one of these cages and plucked a purple-shelled snail from it. Returning to the table, he laid the snail on one end of the scroll. It took an interminably long time, but the snail eventually slid its way down the length of the parchment. The track of its passage gleamed with slime. Raskill put the snail aside and lifted the scroll to the light. The slime of the snail had reacted with the ink, and now faint scrawls were darkening on the scroll. The assassin read what was written. By order of the Council of Thirteen, be an eye and an ear. Crown an emperor. The Council had always been enigmatic with their messages. Even if the scroll had been intercepted by one who knew all the secret tricks, the message they would have obtained would still be meaningless. Only one such as Raskill Greytongue, master assassin, knew precisely what the Council was referring to: his network of spies and informants kept him in the know of everything that occurred above and below. He knew about the tales of a Crown of Warpstone and the war that was brewing on the surface between all races. This was, though, quite an unexpected turn of events. This might prove to be the most interesting mission in his illustrious career. Raskill grinned wide-jawed in silent laughter, and the tongue that lolled within was indeed as dull and bloodless as his name implied: a testament to a lifetime spent sampling poisons. It is said that Raskill Greytongue could identify every known poison by taste, even the tasteless ones. Satisfied with the message, Raskill held the scroll to the candle and watched it catch alight. He next picked up the corpse of the rat by the tail, and carried it over to another cage. In this cage was a large, bloated toad that peered at him with blinking copper eyes. He dropped the rat in and watched the toad gulp it down. Next he went to the shelf where he kept his sword. Shrewstooth, he had named it. Its straight and narrow blade was bereft of an edge, but ended in a needle-like point: a thrusting weapon. Such a sword was not a quick and efficient killing tool on its own, but the secret of the Shrewstooth lay not in the sword but in its scabbard. A small vial fitted alongside the scabbard fed into its collar, so that each unsheathing treated the blade with a fine coating of poison. A single prick could kill a man in fifteen seconds, an orc in forty: the poison was derived from the glands of the toad Raskill had just fed the messenger to. Raskill picked up the sword and a brace of throwing daggers and belted them on. He added a pouch that held his vials of poisons and drugs. One more thing. He dug about his shelves and stuffed a few more oddments into a sack: a pair of iron gauntlets, a mask, a small box carved from horn. Satisfied, he plucked the longest cloak off the cockatrice's wing and left his chambers. There was one place he had in mind to visit. He already had an enterprise established there for some two years now. Perhaps it was time to grease those gears and see what it could do for him. Plots to weave, emperors to crown. |
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| Scarfester | 5th July 2007 - 01:09 PM Post #2 |
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Scaaarrrrghhh
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Absolutely fantastic writting scriv!An ingenious way of sending a message, I say. ![]() Really well written and very stylistic. All the information about your character got across well, in a short space of time. Can't wait to read more! |
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| Bodacious | 5th July 2007 - 01:22 PM Post #3 |
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Doomwheel Fanatic
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Wow. That was great. I've actually read books that I found were written worse than this. Seriously awesome material. If this doesn't get the message across I don't know what will. Cheers, Bodacious. |
My Blog - My Army Diary - Twitter: @DaanofWar - Steam: DaanofWar
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| Morgoth | 5th July 2007 - 01:23 PM Post #4 |
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The Ancient Evil
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you never seize to amaze............ just.........great. In Denmark pigeons are called "rats of the skies" so it is only fitting, that a carrierpigeon from the underworld is a trained rat.more please
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Greetings from Morgoth Mostly Clan Eshin, occasionally Clan Husk.Proud keeper of the Poking Stick of Doom, known to many a RPG-player ![]()
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| Demagorgon | 5th July 2007 - 06:00 PM Post #5 |
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Demaaaaargh
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Amazing writing, it makes the Black Library look like fanfiction.net Really compelling, elegant writing.
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Absolutely fantastic writting scriv!

In Denmark pigeons are called "rats of the skies" so it is only fitting, that a carrierpigeon from the underworld is a trained rat.
Mostly Clan Eshin, occasionally Clan Husk.

