Solo With Friends Like These

[Elias Caldera]

2nd Day of Winter, 517 AV

“You dimwitted, gutterborn slimes! Don’t you know who the petch I am!”

Guldo found he couldn’t quite bite back the snort of laughter in time, and realized with another snort he wasn’t the only one trying in futility to hide their amusement. He’d raised a hand to his mouth in hopes of muffling it, but he could see some of the others had been forced to go so far as to bury their whole face in their palms in hopes of quieting their chuckles.

It was just all the… feathers, that made the indignant demand all the more humorous. The way they twitched and wiggled in fury like that. Plus, all that nascent jingling of chains and the way the light caught on the shiny porcelain mask the dear commandant was wearing as he hollered and hooted didn’t help matters any. It was curious though, to be talking to a tied up man who’d actually paid for most of the binding and gagging to be done to them before he and his lads had even set work. It was a pleasant change of pace if the thug did say so himself, though this was certainly not something he intended to get used to.

“Oh, I know exactly who you are, commandant Jorah.”

The cruel, cutting tone of a new voice brought an abrupt end to the levity, and Guldo found himself straightening ever so slightly as a new face slowly sauntered into the room.

“And I know exactly how this conversation is going to end.”

Jorah’s chains shuffled loudly as he strained to peer over his shoulder at the new comer. Bound up in the manner he was, the guard captain was forced to face away from the door and the three of Guldo’s boys who’d taken up position on that side of the room. That was, unless an errant breeze decided to spin him around for a brief moment or two to face them before gravity set him right again.

“My name is-”

“I’ll see you petching hanged for this, you little shyke! You and all your gods damned friends there, you hear me! Hanged!”

Those cold blue eyes twitched a little, and Guldo could see his boy’s tensing up. They were more focused on the Stryfer than they were the one they’d been sent to capture, and he couldn’t blame ‘em. “Commandant,” the man went on after taking a calming breath, “You’re currently suspended from the ceiling of a whorehouse by your wrists, wearing nothing but a gaudy bird’s mask and… well, you know exactly where that feathery apparatus is plugged into, so for your sake and mine, lets expedite things and forgo the formalities like empty threats and idle promises. The sooner we reach an understanding the better, I think.”

Jorah was quiet for a while, the only sound he made the bristling of his feathers as he mulled his situation over. Clearly he didn’t like it, but by his silence, he had agreed.

“Good. Now, I’ve been told I need to start making some friends recently. I’m a man with far too enemies it seems, and i'm eager to amend that. So first I started with the girls here at the Immortal Pleasure.” Guldo turned to eye the whore standing patiently off to the side of the room just as the Stryfer did. She'd been the little minx who'd done most of the binding and gagging mentioned earlier, and by the sound of things before they'd made their 'grand entrance' and interrupted the guard captain's fun, most of the spanking as well. She smiled at Elias as he drew near, his gloved finger running across her cheek as he passed. Guldo had paid enough girls to suffer his grunts and groaning to know when they were grinning because they liked yah, and grinning because they liked your coin. This one was either the former, or very well practiced at hiding the latter.

“I frequent here so often, this is practically a second home to me. Now however, I offer more than just coin and my charming personality; I've promised to take care of these girls, making sure they never have to deal with trouble when it comes knocking, no matter how prominent or powerful. Now were all good friends, you see.” He went on, clasping his hands behind his back as he continued to pace the room. “Good enough friends that they tell me when dignified men like yourself show up to do very undignified things like… this.”

The guard captain growled something under his breath.

“Then, I moved on to… to the... alright, gentleman, I’m monologuing to a man’s hairy backside here, can we fix this somehow, turn him around I guess. This is very distracting.”

Guldo grunted as he lifted himself off the wall and nodded at one of the other boys to come help him. The thug frowned, and before long, they were both frowning as they wrestled with Jorah’s slippery, fat figure. Why was there so much damned baby oil?! He cursed, giving the brothel girl an angry look. She only replied with a giggle as she idly chewed on a nail and tussled her whip about.

“Ah, there we go, thank you gentleman, that’s much bett- oooh my god!”

There was a very tangible wave of discomfort and… awe as commandant Jorah was swung around to face his audience, and even Guldo had to guffaw as he looked away. Someone whistled, and another man gave his solemn congratulations. “Good lord Jorah, these poor whores… Lets put a towel on that immediately, I think… Alright, there we go. Anyways, as I was-”

“Wait!” Jorah snapped, jiggling in exclamation as he abruptly turned on Guldo. There was recognition in the man’s eyes, even hidden behind the ridiculous mask as they were. “You’re one of Dresden’s boys!” The gangster sighed uncomfortably at the mention of his boss’s name.

“What the hell are you backwater idiots playing at trying to turn over guards, eh?”

Guldo didn’t respond.

“It doesn’t matter! You know well your boss and I have had an understanding now for months. I’ll pay you one hundred gold mizas to off this mouthy son of a whore and dump him in the lake! Well? What are you waiting for! Kill him already!”

There was an awful silence that filled the room, interrupted only by the sound of the girl nibbling on her nail in the corner, clearly bored by all this.

“We tried.” Guldo finally answered awkwardly.

“A lot.” Another of his boys interjected.

“It didn’t take.” Elias Caldera finished with a smirk.

[Elias Caldera]

Days Earlier...

“What the hell is taking them so damn long?” Dresden growled, scratching irritably at his neck as he glared at the tightly sealed warehouse door for the umpteenth time. Guldo’s chair creaked as he made to rise. “I’ll go find out, boss.” Anything to get away from this incessant whining.

“No!” The wiry man snapped, grabbing his second in command by his shoulder before he had a chance to escape. “Stay here, gods damnit. I told you not leave my side.” His other hand hadn’t stopped clawing at his throat as he talked, and Guldo found his frown difficult to conceal. Dresden’s whole neck was a red and green patchwork mess of colors, and everyone knew it was because of that ridiculous tattoo he was insisting the whole gang would soon get. The stupid thing was clearly infected, but Dresden refused to leave his hideout and have it checked. “No one is to leave until I'm bloody well sure its done.” He grimaced, clenching his teeth as a fresh wave of intensified itching began. He’d already torn the skin and drawn blood, now he was just picking at the same scabs over and over again in a grizzly display.

The big man sighed, leaning back into his seat with an air of contempt and resignation.

All this over a ridiculous little bit of ink in the shape of a hatchet.

Guldo had been doing this a long, long time now, and he’d been faithful to the same crew since he’d first earned his stripes in the gutters, even if that crew hadn’t been faithful to itself. Despite what he told himself, Guldo was an old fart, especially in this game, and like all old farts, he often found himself reminiscing upon the days gone by. To the days before Dresden started calling them the ‘Hatchet Crew’ and went around demanding they let his niece ink a little axe on their necks after she’d picked up the hobby one day. He remembers back to a time when they use to go by the name the Connoisseurs, on account of the fact that they liked to stuff their victims in old wine casks before they sank them to the bottom of the lake. Before that, it had been the Wave, when that foppish prick from Zeltiva had come in and tried to run things like some kind of para-military club instead of a proper gang. He’d pissed off the Ebonstryfe real quick with that nonsense, and it wasn’t long before he'd been disappeared for everyone's sake.

He remembers being the Red Sevens, the Sovereign, the Brimstone Brigade and so many more. He remembers all of it, because he was there for all of it. This gang changed names and personas more than he changed his bloody socks, but he’d been loyal, ever since they started and he was just another gutter rat trying to make his way up in the world. Back then, they were 'The Bastards of Brightbay,' and they had run this petching city.

Those were better days.

Now, they were reduced to… He stared at Dresden, shivering with fever as he cowered in his warehouse, waiting to die.

This…

They were all waiting to die, it felt like, but Guldo was feeling particularly remorseful that day. Looking back on it all, he regretted not taking over sooner, not having the balls to seize the reigns over the many years and dozens of worthless bosses he’d suffered under. How many times had they asked him to take charge, and how many times had he turned them aside? Now it was just too damn late. There was nothing left to rule over even if he wanted the throne. A crown of shyke and a kingdom of ashes. The cuthroat mused bitterly.

“How many of boys did you say made it back, Gramps?” Dresden asked shakily, his eyes glued to the door. Guldo didn’t like that nickname, but he answered respectfully anyway. “Not enough boss. We lost a lot in that last raid at the docks. They’re still picking bodies outa the harbor.”

“Petch!” He cursed, his long jet black hair quivering with either rage, or the sickness burning its way through his blood. “When the petch are these useless louts gonna get back? I told them, eleven bells and not a tick-”

Bang. Bang. Bang

There came a knocking at the massive warehouse doors, the shuddering wooden thumps reverberating across the entire empty building and silencing all within.

What was left of the Hatchets had been languishing in here with their boss as they waited for the last raiding party to come back with news of success. This had been the third they sent out after the Stryfer, and no one had been expecting their return. Even Guldo was shocked into quiet contemplation. Had they actually done it this time. Had they finally killed the son of a bitch?

“Petching finally!” Shouted Dresden, clumsily stumbling from his seat and pointing a boney finger at the door. “Someone go let them in so I-”

The whole world seemed to shake all at once as the front door burst open. A massive explosion of hellfire and fury consumed the entrance, sending chunks of wood and anything else caught in the blast flying in every which direction. Guldo’s hand wrapped itself around Dresden and dragged the squirming bastard to the floor before a length of chain blown off the nearby racks decapitated the pair of them. The rest of the gang that were quick enough followed suit, diving for the deck to save their lives.

There was an eerie quiet for a while as men coughed and stumbled in the dizzying aftermath, trying to find their feet again amidst the acrid smoke. Against it all though, the sound of boots casually crunching their way across the wreckage was what caught the underboss’s attention first. He looked up warily, wiping the soot and splinters from his eyes as he squinted through the haze.

He saw them then, clad in falling ash and the midnight black of their holy order, three shapes in the smoke, growing closer and closer still.

“Oh shyke!” Dresden moaned, fumbling at his belt for his iconic hatchets. Guldo was doing much the same by the time he heard a laughter emanating from the dust, and it felt like the mocking cackle was coming from everywhere at once.

“You see children, what did I tell you? Knock on enough doors, and eventually the right one will open.”

[Elias Caldera]

They should have never taken this job.

“My commander?”

They should have never kept pushing and pushing like things were ever going to stop getting worse.

“You mean to tell me it was my dear Castion behind all this!?”

Ever since that debacle at the markets, events had only continued to spiral out of their control, and each passing day since was but a new misery born upon them as they struggled in vain to right their course. Too little, too late. It had all finally come to a head, and Guldo knew they’d be lucky if any of them would be walking out of this with theirs still intact. How many were already dead because of this? How many more were going to die?

“I can scarcely believe it.” The mocking tone in the pale man’s voice was annoyingly overbearing as he slowly paced the line. They had been arrayed like slaves at auction, forced unto their knees in single file and made to watch in helpless prostration as the stryfer strode amidst their feeble remnants in triumph. He’d won, the arrogant petch, and now he was making sure they all knew it just as well as they knew his name.

Elias petching Caldera. The single worst mistake they’d ever made.

“To think my dear commander would hire you all just to bring me low… well it breaks my heart.”

The man he spoke of with such poorly hidden contempt, this Castion bloke, had made the deal with Dresden to assassinate his subordinate behind closed doors, far from Guldo or the rest of the gang’s consultation, let alone their knowledge. He wished he’d bloody known sooner. If the big man had discovered that one black cloak was trying to off another and wanted to use them to do the deed, well he’d have taken the only sane option available and run the petch away before they had a chance to involve the gang any further than that. Dresden on the other hand, ever the greedy little bastard, had gleefully signed their lives away for a fistful of mizas none of them were ever going to get a chance be able to spend now.

Now, said leader was on his knees like the rest of them, his infamous axes tossed aside like trash as he tried to hold onto whatever semblance of pride and dignity he still had left. They had placed him at the front of the assembly, forcing the wiry fool to suffer the worst of Caldera’s taunting as the scarred soldier circled and toyed with his prey.

Despite everything, Guldo could still feel his rage building anew as his boss was made to supplicate before this uppity son of a whore, and he could see a few of the others shared his sentiment just by the wicked glares they directed at the invaders. That fire in his belly fizzled into smoke the moment his gaze fell upon one of the dead lying nearby.

They had tried to fight back of course. When the doors had fallen and the stryfe had made their grand entrance, more than just a few of the boys had charged into the fray, either brave beyond belief or just too ignorant to know better. Either way, they had died before they’d even reached Elias, felled like insects by his two snot nosed accomplices. The two apprentices, one a grinning little she-devil of a girl, and the other, a watchful and mace wielding young whelp of a boy, stood at their pale patriarch’s side like a couple of guard dogs, snapping and slicing at anything that dared approach.

They’d cut his boys down like it was nothing, and Guldo had watched, stupefied by the ease in which they’d done it. The two of them were barely more than pups fresh off their mama’s teat, yet they held those weapons of theirs as if they’d been shedding blood for a lifetime with them. Perhaps they had been. At their age, Guldo was busy running around cutting purse strings and chasing skirts, but these two, they held an air about them that told the old man that while he was enjoying his rotten dockside youth to its fullest, they had spent their childhoods being honed into finely tuned killing machines from the moment they were old enough to wield a sword and drool out Rhysol's holy name.

A life dedicated to a fulfilling a god’s wrath couldn’t be an easy one.

He almost felt pity for them… Almost.

Naturally, a little bloodshed wasn’t enough to dissuade the gang from keeping up the fight. This was their home turf after all, and crossing blades to keep it safe wasn’t exactly something they were unaccustomed to. They would have kept fighting, and they might have even won in the end, but all hope of that died the instant poor ol’ Cline had. The wretch had burst into flames as if by some divine act, though the way he screamed as he burned made Guldo wonder what kind of god would do that to a man. Unfortunately, there was no god there that day, just a gods damned sorcerer and his wicked bag of tricks. No one wanted to go out like Cline had, especially not Dresden, and once Elias had turned his attentions to the terrified gang leader, their struggles had ended with a prompt surrender.

“It makes sense though. That scroll your people tried to use against me at the market, his doing I imagine?”

Dresden hesitated at first, but it didn’t last long under the Stryfer’s scrutiny. “He said it would be easy. He said all we needed to do was say the right words and point the thing in your direction.” Dresden licked his lips, eyes restlessly scanning the floor in an effort to avoid the blue gaze burning into him from above. “He didn’t say nothing about that spell tearing a hole across half the damn plaza. If I had known-”

“Yes, yes, it was all very exciting everyone involved. Now Dresden, tell me, who is your second?”

The bossman seemed puzzled, then from his place on his knees he turned around and gave Guldo a quizzical look. Petch... It wasn’t long after that the big man felt an armored hand take his neck from behind as one of the apprentices rushed over, roughly trying to drag him to his feet. Guldo didn’t give the punk a chance to realize how bad of a mistake that had been as he delivered a hard left into the little petcher’s gut. The boy doubled over with a gasp, and the old veteran lunged for the mace in his other hand before he had a chance to recover. If this was his time to go, then by god he was going out with a bang.

Or so had been the plan…

Something hard and fast struck him from behind before he could grab the weapon, and Guldo felt the world go topsy turvy as he collapsed to the floor with a bone jarring thud.

From his place on the ground, Guldo could see the others starting to rise to their feet, angry growls and shouts rippling through the line as their underboss went down before them. It looked as if the rest of the gang were about to swarm the boy and the cheap-shotting little bitch who’d decked him from behind, but something made them freeze in their tracks before they could attack.

Straining to move his gaze, Guldo moaned as saw the reason why.

Elias had waved his hand at the crowd, and as he did so, nearly two dozen swirling spikes of crackling ice appeared before him, born from some kind of translucent smoke that had trickled from his fingers.

Magic… petch.

A tick later and Guldo was crudely dragged and dropped next to Dresden like a sack of shyke, the boys pacified and helpless once more as they watched in silence. No one wanted to die like Cline...

“I’ve crushed more of you rats under my boot than I care to count anymore.” He heard Elias saying, his tone now drastically changed from whimsical to something far more sinister. “and now that I’ve followed you back to your nest, finishing the job once and for all would be triviality.” Guldo was struggling to get back to his hands and knees. He wanted to be on his feet for what was coming next, not on his belly like some gods damned dog.

“But… so much blood has been spilled, and what do I have to show for it? A warehouse full of bodies? More bodies? It feels like a such a waste.” By then, the big man had finally managed to rise to one knee. He was glaring at Caldera, but the stryfer had turned his back to them, gloved hands clasped behind him in aloof contemplation. After a moment however, the scarred mage raised a finger in feigned revelation. “So here’s how its going to be.” He turned around suddenly, and with two quick strides, he was looming over Dresden and Guldo, his icy retinue hanging perilously just overhead.

“You. Work. For. Me. Now.”

His eyes, though they had never been anything one could call gentle before, were now a dangerous kind of callous as he considered the pair of them.

“Your men, your enterprise, every coin you earn, every breath you take, as of right now it all belongs to me. You'll bark when I say bark. You'll fetch when I say fetch. And when I say jump, you will be delighted when you ask me 'how high.'”

Guldo looked at Dresden, and Dresden back at him, both men caught off guard by this abrupt turn of events. Was this madman petching serious? The crimelord took a brief moment to shake the cobwebs from his mind before turning to the soldier with renewed gusto. “Um. Absolutely! Whatever you say, master Caldera. Were yours-” Dresden’s shameless bootlicking ended with a sudden and sickeningly wet thud before it had even begun. It had been a blur, moving so fast he could hardly see it, but as Guldo slowly turned to peer at his boss next to him, he realized in horror what had happened.

A shard of ice, wide as his fist and twice as long was now jutting out of Dresden’s chest, the crimeboss's mouth agape in shock and agony as the crackling spike slowly began to rise. “I wasn’t talking to you.” The mage growled. Guldo found he couldn’t move, couldn’t’ talk or think, he just stared as Dresden was pulled off the ground, a guttural scream bursting from his blood drenched lips as his limp body lifted off the floor. In the next instant, a dozen more shards tore into him from every direction, rending his body to pieces in the air where he’d been suspended. An instant later, the ice in his chest had begun to crack and expand, growing as more of the strange substance from earlier began to pour from Elias and into Dresden.

Guldo finally found the wherewithal to begin crawling away as the first stems shot out and took root along the floor where he’d been kneeling. Like a tree sprouting before his very eyes, Dresden’s ruined form was hoisted even higher, crimson ice cascading and spreading from his chest and out his back until each end found purchase on either the ground below or the ceiling above. By the time the nightmare was over, the boss of the hatchets was a frozen banner of blood and gore, caught between two gargantuan pillars of crackling magic made ice that saw him pinned in midair.

Guldo hadn’t realized it until he felt the hot breath on his face, but Elias was kneeling next to him, his sobering blue eyes digging into the big man with an unnerving malevolence.

“Have I made myself absolutely clear?” The stryfer hissed.

Guldo gulped, then slowly, he began to nod.

[Elias Caldera]

2nd Day of Winter, 517 AV

“Ah… I see.”

The commandant muttered ominously. “So you’re…”

“In charge now.” Guldo finished flatly. The old boss was still at the warehouse where’d they left him, as per Elias’s instructions. ‘Leave him there until the ice melts,’ the mage had ordered, ‘leave him there until his flesh begins to rot, until they can smell him from the temple to the shoreline. Leave him there until everyone understands, because Guldo, I don’t give second warnings…’

“With dear Guldo here rising to the occasion and taking over the reins, I find myself with even more amenable the company than ever.” Elias chimed in, that unbearable, insulting tone of his as arrogant as ever. “So you see, I’ve got my fingers in all the pies. The whores, the gangs, the stryfe, I’m turning into quite the glutton.” His grin was sickening.

“And now you think I’ll roll over and be your ‘pie’ for the city guard do you? You’re dumber than you look, you ugly petch. You think because you wear the black I’m afraid of you, boy? I take scarier shits than you before breakfast. You’re nothing, and when I’m done with you, you’ll wish you never crawled out of your mother’s wretched snatch in the first place!"

Guldo’s little arrangement with the Caldera had only been going on now for less than a week, but in that short amount of time he’d realized just how unstable and prone to outburst the man was. Elias liked to put on airs of distinction and control, but those were just a fading façade, and poor ones at that. The man was mad, plain and simple, wielding as much refinement and elegance as a bloodbane in a butcher’s shop. So when Guldo heard the commandant’s less than subtle response to the news of Dresden’s demise, he winced. That would have been more than enough to cement his fate if history was to judge, but the irascible fool just kept piling it on, one insult after another. The thug had to give the guardsman his due; he was a brave son of a bitch, especially considering his current ‘predicament’, as it were. Boldness in the face of certain death didn’t often equate to salvation however, not like it did in the fairy tales anyway. More oft than not, it just got you killed in a lot crueler means than initially intended. Knowing Elias, Guldo was half expecting to be tasked with cleaning up the mess that once was their dear commandant before the man had even finished his defiant spiel, but to his surprise, dear Jorah hung still from the ceiling, frothing with indignation, but miraculously still in one piece.

The old gangster turned to his pale counterpart curiously, but the stryfer was seemed unfazed. Hell, he was already moving past it, as if he’d not even missed a beat.

“I’d figured that would be your answer. It was much the same thing you told my father, wasn’t it?”

“What?”

Guldo’s ear’s perked up. This was new…

“I’m not surprised. I’ve been trying for weeks to find a foothold in the guard. Time and time again I reached out, but all my bribes and threats were rebuffed my proud men just like you. I swear, the damn guard is more self-righteous and principled than a Sylirian squire boy!”

“Who are you?” Jorah’s inflection had hardened into something notably suspicious and dire.

“I tried my best, I truly did, but none of your comrades would budge. I was on the verge of giving up my search, until I remembered my father’s final gift to me; a little red book.”

“No…”

“There's more than a few names in here, but yours was the one that caught my eye in particular. ‘Proud. Greedy. Family man." The stryfer's smirk widened until his scars pulled taught across his ghastly visage. "'Sexual deviant.’ All little notes next your name that got me wondering, who exactly this Jorah Hercan could be. Torian had been curious too it seemed.”

“Unbelievable…”

“Enough that you earned yourself a whole page worth of notes here, Jorah. Do you know what it says about you in here, dear commandant? Do you know what it says you did? Why you changed your name? Why you fled? I can read it if you-”

“Stop!” Jorah snapped, roaring over the din of shivering chains. “Just… don’t. God help me.” The guardsman shook with rage, but his voice was hollow, a distant and defeated thing already. “The spawn of Torian petching Caldera… I can’t believe this. I thought myself free of your accursed kind when that bastard burned. Now his poisoned seed is all grown up and come back to take up the father’s mantle -h-hey!”

The guardsman angrily protested, realizing Elias had not only been ignoring him, but leaning in with Guldo and his boys while quietly pointing out his favorite passages about the guard’s ‘extracurricular activities’ from the book. And I thought we were the bad guys… Guldo thought.

“Sorry, were you saying something? I was just showing the others the bit about the slave boy and your-”

“Gods damn you, enough!”

“It says here you have three daughters, Commandant. You’ve a fourth now on the way I hear? Seems my father’s records are a bit outdated. How many years of your child’s life do you think she’ll have to carry the weight of your sins before she’s finally allowed back into the good graces of society. Because this, sir,” Elias said, waving the book in his hands with an astounded look on his face “this is the kinda of shyke that haunts a man for a lifetime. His family even longer still.”

“Damn… damn you.”

That had done it. Guldo could tell. He’d seen that look in men’s eyes a thousand times before, and like a thousand times before, he knew what would follow next.

“Like father, like son… fine, what do you want from me?”

“Cut him down.” Elias ordered abruptly with a wave of his hand.

Before long, Jorah was released of his binding, his mask discarded alongside his chains. With his freedom however, came a lethargy, and the man did not rise to meet the eyes of those that loomed over him. Instead, the stryfer had crouched down to meet him. “You.” The mage began, tapping his little red book with all the power its pages contained atop the balding head of its latest victim, “Work. For. Me. Now.”

"And your first task for me, dear commandant, is an important one, so do listen closely; There is a girl, a slave who goes by the name Shiress. She is very important to me, Jorah, and from this day forth, she's going to become very important to you too..."

[Okara]

Elias Caldera

Rhetoric 1
Persuasion 2
Reimancy 1
Leadership 1
Intimidation 1
Intelligence 1
Tactics 1

Jorah Hercan: Commandant of the City Guard
Hatchet Crew: Under Elias’s Control
Tactic: Kill the Leader, the Minions Will Fall in Line
Jorah Hercan: Connection in the City Guard
Persuasion: Using Knowledge of a Person’s Misdeeds to Persuade

Rewards/Penalties/Notes

This was an interesting thread, Elias is building quite the connections in Ravok. There were lots of social skills used, please let me know if you disagree with my spread or if there are other specific lores you were hoping for.

Please edit your post in your grade request to reflect that it has been graded. PM me with any questions.