by Jean C'est Magnifique Try Baptise
There are two ways to tell the story. The way it happened, and the way we learned it… And honestly? I feel we simply explain too often in the world. Let's go tell the story of the Risen Kingdom as it was told to me. With plenty of wavy flashbacks.
We first met the Risen Kingdom… some undetermined time ago, like twelve years or so. Back then the Risen Kingdom claimed very strongly they were simple merchants, building a road. That road happened to go through hell but little matter. Then that road started to go through the Faewylds. And you may thing, well you CANT put anything in the faewyld the faewyld barely even IS, it’ll change or vanish or turn into a popsicle if you look away. And that is true.
So they used cold iron.
Cold Iron you might recall, is one of the 13 big no nos to the fae, right up there with round rocks and… idk mistletoe? That sounds right. Im sure there is at least one fae who doesn't like mistletoe… Anyway Cold Iron is not just any type of iron it’s… um… er… well its COLD innit? You leave it out in the ice box, make it get chilly, give it some mittens and a scarf you aren't a monster, and then it kills fae… i think. I am not a blacksmith, ask Tulli, he colds all sorts of iron.
The point is the land is a lot like its inhabitants, and its lord, and we can write treatises on THAT but once cold iron was bound to the very dirt of the land the fae lands became a LOT more manageable to them. We fought them off a few times. But… well you know how you really only do something like 4 times a year? Sometimes less?
Eventually they just started working when we weren’t looking. And once the iron was in, nothing could take it out…
MEANWHILE we were playing with Jack, not that Jack, another Jack. The little kid who puts weird marks on your wrist. Anyway we were hanging out, eating some baked Alaska and the kid goes “All that Was Will Be Again, The Death of This Universe is Coming, See The Fate Of What Came Before”
And then, mysteriously, tragically, we were having a flashback.
And listen, we’ve all been there. I’ve been to the bathroom and when I got out we were in a different nation. I’ve listened to a long winded speech and was brought back to happier times when I was dead on the battlefield. The difference was THOSE times we were all ourselves. Now I was a blacksmith. From a different nation in a different universe… and the universe was dying.
See this is the thing about kids, they can be pretty nasty little squirts. As we all were once… or are continuing to be. Like they could've asked, or written a book. But instead we were facing certain death.
Fortunately I was able to infiltrate enemy ranks as a spy and sure enough… it was the Risen Kingdom! They weren’t merchants at all! They tricked us! What they did have was a SHOCKING array of Void related monsters, including one that really looked like a Boi, a bedlam boi that is, but was totally different. (If you think about it, if Bedlam is the fountain of terror… well people have to find SOMETHING to be afraid of, so maybe this was the source of that fear, or maybe some monsters just look alike, convergent evolution and all that).
Anyway after fending off the forces of the void, there was this giant snake that got summoned, and for a void beast it was SHOCKINGLY bright, in such a way it was sortof hard to see, and we lost. We lost and we lost BAD and we lost SLOW. But that was the point.
It wasn't a happy flashback.
You can’t just flashback someone like that, its pretty heavy.
Flash forward and the Iron Road, with work done by Emissary Starblade, is mostly finished, and Lord Goldmane was not happy. Lord Goldmane is the sorry faelord who got stuck with a iron road going through his lands. Fortunately we had just enough time to deal with the road that we could try to change it. It was always going to be iron and it was always going to be a big straight line, but we could do a lot with it.
Since it seemed the road was a barrier of sorts, I felt we could just flood the thing. The road itself would hold the water up and wed have a giant canal pouring water out the gate and damaging stuff. This was not really viable for reasons.
But we switched the waters to the ones from the Delta of Possibility. The Delta of Possibility is a part of the Dreaming, sort of the closest part to reality and thats what makes it the weirdest. The Delta contains every what if, when and where in the world, in the form of “realish”. It's very dangerous. And it's easier to manipulate fake metaphorical water then real water because… well its the fae, its only sort of real like that.
One ritual later and the portal was having a time of it, and we were able to put on our wading boots and kill Emissary Starblade. We were helped in this through no small part by Lord Trystwater, another member of the Risen Kingdom, who was very upfront that he was only helping us so he could get the job of attacking us.
And now… it was Trystwater's turn.
Next week
The one with all the flashbacks!!!
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