Digging up the City (Solo)

[Tetreka]

First light, Spring 3, 512 AV

Sleep had been easy, exhausted and sore as he was. He'd spent the previous day hoisting barrels of sand into carts, removing pieces of collapsed buildings so that survivors might be found, and towards the end of the day he was a brace for a constrictor Dhani - It would wrap its tail end around him as Tetreka braced against doorways and overturned buildings, and the half with the arms and head would use the leverage to pull useful things out from under sand and debris; a few carts, a pinned survivor and two and a half camels - one of the camels was even in good enough shape to haul around a cart! A horse had almost been pulled from its collapsed stable in a similar manner, but then an extreme pain in his side had him beating on the Dhani's sides to stop - a healer had told him nothing was broken, but that he should avoid letting giant snake-men constrict him for as long as he intended to continue living.

Having been too sore to go home, he awoke on a sand dune on the eastern side of the building, the sun crashing upon his face as it did the rest of the golden city. He contemplated moving to the western side of the building to steal another bells worth of sleep, but he heard screaming. He listened for a moment, trying to discern what the fuss was about when he heard the word all at once with frightening clarity,

"Yukmen!" One man, repeating it over and over as he ran, apparently running away from the source. Just as the screaming man rounded the corner, he was intercepted by a Jackal in especially elaborate armor demanding to know exactly where this threat was.

Tetreka was not a member of the guard, but he was a citizen of Ahnatep and armed - he was on his feet, threading his left arms and head through his quiver and tightening the strap across his chest as the Jackal received directions, and though he sprinted to meet the two men and accompany the Jackal, said Jackal understood the directions and was sprinting southerly before Tetreka could catch up - following the guardsman's dust and footprints across the newly formed city dunes, the slaver eventually caught up, though only because the Jackal had stopped to instruct a pair of foxes, and only in time for the tail end of the instruction at that, "-once you raise your skulks from their slumber, and ready torches, march on and keep formation - if you see any, even a single one of these monstrosities, immediately send scouts to Pressorah's palace and alert any Hawk you can find. Go now."

As the Foxes ran off, the Jackal turned his attention to Tetreka, who was clearly both confused and out of breath, "Have you killed?" Tetreka nodded sharply at the question, the Jackal motioned for him to follow, and they were sprinting off again - Tetreka was falling behind again immediately, and could see the leather armor the guard wore over his head and shoulders, but could not fathom how despite the armor and four full scabbards the man still managed to pull slowly but surely ahead of him as they raced at danger. Tetreka pushed as hard as he could to keep pace, his sides splitting in pain from running and the previous day's work and carried mostly by the adrenaline rush of impending battle. The Jackal stopped him just short of their destination, speaking at Tetreka in a harsh whisper, "Damnit man catch your breath, and quickly. Have you fought yukmen before?"" Tetreka shook his head to the negative. "They're probably eating some poor bastards. If they see anything alive, they'll swarm. Hold until a group of them gets close to me, and drop the one with the most behind it."

The Jackal put each of his hands upon a hilt and drew all four of his khopesh, "Are you ready?" With Tetreka's breath calming, he nodded and drew two javelins from their quiver. He followed the Jackal around the corner, and there not ten feet in front of them was the most disgusting thing Tetreka had ever seen; five foot tall, with three arms on its left and one on its right, the thing was covered head to toe in a dark crimson sand, its breathing coming in horrible shudders and limping along on mangled feet. Tetreka would have let loose a Javelin then and there if not for one problem.

It was wearing a kilt.

((More to come.))

[Tetreka]

"...That is not a yukman, is it?" Tetreka had only heard drunken stories about them while drunk himself, but what he was seeing didn't match what he'd heard.

"Quiet. We don't know what wounded him." The Jackal hissed at Tetreka, continuing down the street some ways, before getting to another corner, cursing, and returning all four khopesh to their appropriate sheaths - Tetreka was fairly impressed that the man was able to put them all away at once without stabbing himself, but rather than comment on it, he returned his javelins to their quiver one at a time. "Bring him over here. Don't need him scarying anybody else." While Tetreka wasn't the taking orders sort, so long as his city was in crisis and somebody was trying to right it, he'd comply... though he was never much inclined to argue with men that far over his station anyhow.

"Come on friend, there's at least two skalds out there who'd like to gut you, let's not wander." Tetreka put his three arms under the man's arms on the intact side, trying to pick up enough of the man's weight so that his mangled feet wouldn't drag on the ground so much. He was close enough to examine the man's arms wounds; there were no stumps to be seen, but there were pussed up boils over what looked like a burn all where the other two arms should have come out of the torso. He wondered what could have possibly burnt that precisely, but as he rounded the next corner where the Jackal stood, he had his answer. There was a building, what looked like cheap apartments, and in its courtyard were some two dozen people, most of them wounded to some degree. One man, a human, was at that very moment pouring something out of what looked like a perfume bottle very slowly over a gash in an Eypharian woman's leg - the liquid did violence to the wound, burning and twisting it, making bubbles appear on her flesh, but in spite of the sickening effects, the bleeding was stopped, though the woman was too busy expressing pain to express gratitude.

The complex itself had every outer wall standing, but out its front door spilled tons and tons of sand and debris, much of it stained with blood. Somebody had told the residents that hallways were the safest place from storms, and it turned about the weakest part of the building was the roof - it collapsed just over the stairway, where the fewest supports existed, crushing and injuring many of the people in the halls, and keeping all of the upper floor residents trapped, while only after much painful digging did the first floor residents manage to squeeze out.

The Jackal cleared his throat very loudly; nobody in that lot was asleep, having apparently just recently escaped confinement, and Tetreka was guessing that they were about to get told they'd be working, "Friends, citizens, honored guests of Ahnatep," Tetreka was guessing that they were about to be asked very nicely to get to work, "The city needs us, every one. Our land and home has been ravaged in ways not seen for half a millennium! And before us here in wake of this disaster lay two paths, of inaction, where our homes, families and lives are swept into the burning sands, our people and culture reduced to dunes in an endless desert. Or we fight, we can work, we can pass this test from the gods and with our sweat and our tears form the mortar with which we'll build our golden city so strong, and so high and so bright that the gods themselves are struck with awe! I for one, can't wait to see the looks on their faces. Are you with me?!" The Jackal raised his fist to the crowd, expecting them to cheer along; one Benshira child, who had apparently been hiding behind her mother's robes, jumped out and cheered so hard she fell over, cheering all the way down.

Not a single other person in that courtyard voiced being with him, and a moment later, voices of dissent could be heard; nobody had bothered to come help them, they were half starved and nearly dying of thirst, and generally none of them were enthusastic about having clawed their way out of a building only to be asked to claw at other buildings. One six-armed Eypharian approached the Jackal to vocalize exactly how unhelpful he would be, "You know for this talk about hard work I didn't exactly see you strolling up with four shovels, so here's a better idea: piss off. I've got a brother in Zeltiva, I'll go stay with him. So have fun with dunes, tell the pressorah to pick a thumb and climb it for me." The Jackal was aggravated enough to rest a hand on two hilts, but before the Jackal could think of a way to inspire the man without drawing a weapon, Tetreka was taking action.

"Come here and tell me about this brother of yours, friend." Tetreka was setting down the injured man, and then stomping in the direction of the rather rude dissenter, "Is he a mage? Can he see you now?" The moment Tetreka was close enough, he had an arm on the smaller man's throat. "Can he protect you from there?"

Tetreka tended to think pain and fear were much more inspiring than any nonsense about how the gods felt. The smaller man devoted all six arms to removing the hand from his throat, and in return, got two palms pressing in on his temples, two hands pressing in at his ears, and one pinching the bridge of his nose; between Tetreka already being bigger and stronger than the dissenter and having not spent the last several hours squeezing out of collapsed building, the dissenter had no chance of removing the hands. "Who would stop me from crushing your head like a grape I wonder? My honored friend behind us, the guard with the swords, who you told to piss off and insult the lady of the city? No. I don't think he would."

Tetreka gave the squirming man's head an extra little squeeze, and shoved him to the ground, "You owe a debt to this man, to the whole guard, and to the Pressorah, for keeping you from me. Today, they would like to collect on that debt - those who make good on their dues get rations, precious water, and protection from evils. Fail to pay, and you are mine. You will still work, and I will hurt you, and I will beat you when you stall, and when they come with water and rations I will eat and drink your fill and as you whither and die, I will sleep soundly. You can work as citizens and live, or you can be worked to the death as slaves. Choose wisely."

Tetreka didn't get an immediate enough answer, so he took a Javelin from his quiver, and whipped the man on the ground with the flat of it, "What was that dog? I. Can't. Hear. You." Tetreka punctuated each word with a strike from the blunt end of his Javelin, and then just continued beating the man until a patheic enough cry of submission eventually came out, and Tetreka begrudgingly stopped, pacing away from the courtyard and telling the Jackal loud enough for everyone to hear, "Let me know which ones are mine."

The Jackal started doling out orders immediately; none objected.

[Tetreka]

The Jackal's ability to quickly put together plans was impressive; two chimes after he'd started actually assigning tasks, people were already working to free the second floor, some were off fetching tools and water, and the small Benshira girl was even tasked with delivering a message - stand down orders for the skalds that might still be approaching to deal with an imaginary Yukmen. The Philterer was sent to the docks, to see if he might be able to devise a way to make seawater drinkable in quantities large enough to help the thirsty city.

Having doled out orders there, the Jackal approached Tetreka who was ready with idea on how he might help; "If we can find a way to get me on the roof with some rope and an axe, I might be able to start dislodging and removing debris from the collapse. Or maybe we will be able to pull people from the second floor to the roof, and get them down from there with the rope?" For all his cruel words and actions, Tetreka's biggest concern was genuinely helping Ahnatep get back on its feet - of the four old grand cities it was the only one that retained it's glory - and as his namesake, its life and his pride were very closely linked.

The Jackal patted him on the shoulder, "You know I had you pegged for a goat herder?" Tetreka opened his mouth to respond to the notion, but had no notion of the appropriate response and so just shut it again. "You hear of danger and you go running at it, like you've a flock to protect. Walk with me." The Jackal motioned the direction, and Tetreka obliged.

"I've worked with goats, was a farmhand when I was younger. Now I do small personal loans." Tetreka was sugarcoating it.

"You're a slaver." The Jackal was having none of it.

"Yes." There was no shame in his voice, but there was no pride to be heard either. They walked on in silence for a moment, and just when Tetreka was about to ask their destination, the Jackal spoke up again.

"I've never had any trouble whipping foxes or my junior jackals into a frenzy, but, they are all volunteers, I just ignite the desire to serve that already rests within them." The warrior took a breath, "I don't know what I would even do with conscripts, making the unwilling work isn't the style of leadership I have learned - it is making the willing perform perfectly I aim for."

"You might find that beatings work well - let somebody be wrong and punish them so harshly that the rest comply out of fear. Very rarely have I ever put hands on a slave that I sell - but often I have put hands on others in front of them." Tetreka knew his business well, "Pain is tolerable - many realize that if they can stomach that pain and are too valuable to kill, they just have to take longer to break than I have time for. But if they never experience the pain, but see others crippled by it, then they comply to avoid a feeling they'll never learn they can stomach." Tetreka was aware of how much he sounded like a monster at the moment, but a slave that required beating to do work was not a very good slave at all - and any man who owned another knew it.

"Perhaps, but seeing the protectors of the city beating on it's citizens is the last thing we need right now." The Jackal paused for a moment, "But slavers going about their business is perhaps a step in the direction of normalcy."

"You're taking me to the Pillars of Dust, aren't you?" Tetreka guessed not because of their direction, but because that's where he went when he wanted to take slaves that nobody would miss much.

"We thought they would comply as soon as thirst and hunger set in, but we find them with cool heads and full bellies as shops across the city are looted." The Jackal then lowered his voice, "And we don't currently have the time or resources to fully stop them."

"Very well, you keep my throat from being slit and I shall find the city workers." Tetreka didn't imagine for a moment that taking slaves all day would be any easier work, but if he could strike the fear into ten men to get them helping, it was nine more men's worth of work than he could do otherwise. "I am Tetreka re Ahnatep, and it is an honor to be picked for this task."

"Jet'a the Dira Jackal. And you need not be so on your toes with me about rank or class, I am happy for your help." The Jackal was not so concerned about having his station acknowledged, but Tetreka only felt more awkward knowing the man's rank.

"Which skald do you lead then?" Tetreka was making an assumption based on lack of knowledge about how the guard was organized, but then the man had referred to a group of goats as a flock earlier, so he hoped misunderstanding groups would be allowed to slide.

"None technically. Occasionally for ceremony I am among the Pressorah's personal guard, but, I am an instructor at the courtyard usually; once foxes become competent with their weapons, it is I who leads them in learning to use two at once." The Jackal clearly took pride in his work, and to be skilled enough with a technique that one's job became teaching others was certainly worth being proud of.

"Perhaps one day you could give me some lessons then?" Tetreka's question was met with a bewildered look - Javelins were pretty much unheard of when it came to dual-wielding, as if their large size wasn't bizarre enough to make the task unthinkable.

"Perhaps one day. You would need to join the guard first, though." It sounded more like a polite 'no' than an invitation, which was just fine with Tetreka.

He liked slaving.

[Colombina]

The XP Wand Is Waved! A solid thread and fun storyline. I appreciate that you wove lore and seasonal events throughout. Attention to setting details is a surefire way to make me happy. I also appreciate the Ahnatep "civic pride" your Eypharian displays. Many are fiercely loyal to the city and the Pressorah. (I mentioned this before, but next time you want to use a highly ranked NPC, run it by me first. I'll probably say yes, but I like to keep track of "bigger" NPCs.) Tetreka's Loot 3 XP Intimidation 2 XP Unarmed Combat 1 XP Persuasion Lore of Jackals Lore of Yukmen's Appearance Colombina is pleased.