Mythic Bastionland Myth: The Giants

Any power must always meet a greater power.

  

The Great Glass Mountain - Session Seven

Seghers

 

The Company ate with Boar, his wife Muriel and her bodyservant Glorietta at the great hall of Bravecrossing. It looked like the interior of a tavern, where Boar had spent most of his life drinking, with the addition of wood floors. The food was campaign fare with a few flourishes added by the kitchen servants. Simple ingredients stewed or pan fried with lots of salt. 

 

Glorietta sat away from the table and worked on a strange needlepoint design stretched across a frame while the others ate and went over what they had learned over the last week or two. The Red Mail Mercenaries were still operating in the region, though nobody knew how many were left. They used seals and sigils probably stolen from the herald to pretend royal authority, but were really after the Crown themselves. The Tangled Seer told Boar that the Crown would restore the Glass Knight's spirit. The flying swords were a rogue element, nobody knew if they were working with the mercenaries or if they were a separate group of bandits. They needed straw for their flying machine and had access to other advanced technology. 

 

Riverboat Gambler: Shrine of the Dragon

 

 

I swim in the water. I swim and eat the things that fall off the island. The island floats in the water. I gnaw the underside. The island tilts. The things on the island fall over the side. The rays burn me. The things fall in the water where the rays do not reach them. I eat them. I eat the island. The rays cannot harm me. I swim deep in the water. So deep the rays cannot reach me. I forget which way is up. I swim in a straight line. I breach the surface of the water and leap toward the burning eye. My jaws snap shut.

I am in the tomb. I am on the floor in the sand. There is a sound from the hall of reeds. A scraping sound from the floor painted like the water. Something howls.

I roll over and skate silently toward the sound. I imagine I am swimming.

Riverboat Gambler: Hunter and Hunted

Djemaleddin held his mug hard enough to dent the metal. The bar didn't use horn or wood because it splintered too easily in the clenched fists of overpowered adventurers, but the metal mugs had to be light and cheap so they still crumpled. He was nervous because there was too much clang in the room. Too much power in the opposing force. Fighting men at the bar counter with dates and parties and crowds on their hips. If the sorceress at the riverside window started casting the whole room was within her area of effect. He could make it to the door before the cloud swallowed him but that would mean fighting his way past the group of Sugarmen hauling the idol up to the trade booth. He had to hit first, it was the only way. Get close so she couldn't zap him without catching herself in the blast. Put out damage, force her back. Her comrades would rush him but then she wouldn't FF them, and he could handle them until- 

 

Gordy arrived with the refill. Gordastasia Greengloves, whose green gloves never came off even when she was naked. She put a green-gloved hand on his shoulder from behind and he sank into his seat with an instant scruffed-kitten reaction. Gordy was here. The only "encounter" was with the tray of river fritters and hippo steak and pickles and sweet pink guavarrack and beer so light and crisp and cold you could bathe in it. If he fell before the death spell or the plus ones and twos and threes of the bunched dunecrawlers, she'd catch him.

 

Mythic Bastionland Myth: The Wizard

The wizard is just that. 

He wears a pointed hat. 

The Great Glass Mountain - Session Six

The three Knights of the Company arrived at the Funeral Plain at the end of Spring, on Tax Day. The Green Season drew to a close as the days got shorter and the Great Glass Mountain sent its heralds to collect a share of coins from those of appropriate social standing to trade in currency. The Chain, Horn and Salt Knights would worry about that later. They had a funeral to attend.

They were not the only guests on the funeral plain. They heard it before they saw it. A man screaming. He knelt in front of a half-finished mausoleum, next to the one where the mourners interred the Pearl Knight. He slashed his arms with a flint knife and screamed. Two servitors stood by, wearing coats and trousers but no tunics. They had seen this all before.

 

The mourners emerged from the tombs and flower fields to take Reme's body off the Salt Knight's horse. They unwrapped the chains holding the shroud over him. The Knights saw that the half-finished tomb was roofed with sod atop the stone, in which the mourners planted seeds and bulbs. They had not delivered news of the squire's death but already the tomb was half finished.

 

One of the screaming man's servants handed Tiber a note, scribbled on birch bark paper.

He liked flowers. 

With his newfound clarity and his memories of what came before he emerged from the sea, Tiber recalled that Reme had been raised by the Screaming Seer.

Mythic Bastionland Myth: The Bear

  

The villagers called it the Third Bear because they had killed two bears already that year. 

 

But, near the end, no one really thought of it as a bear, even though the name had stuck, changed by repetition and fear and slurring through blood-filled mouths to Theeber. 

 

Sometimes it even sounded like “seether” or “seabird.”

Riverboat Gambler: Shrine of Sanctification

 

she threw a rock. she didnt want to throw rocks at him because he was her brother. he found a thing in the hard stuff. it was like the gold blades they carried but it was blue in color. he kept it because he had never seen anything like it and he didnt understand it was forbidden. he had no way of knowing because hed never seen it before. the others knew and they caught him swinging it at a cactus and they threw stones at him until he died and she had to throw too even though he was her brother. they were all brothers but they still threw the stones. a large stone fell on him where one of the older brothers threw it and he died.

 

the judges came and burned him and burned the blue knife. the body of her brother burned but the flames made the blue knife glow bluer. the judges sang a song and the tribe went away but when the sun went down the blue glow was still visible. it lit the glass around it so it looked like the little moon had fallen and got stuck in the bled. she thought of her brother and his blade and thanked god.

 

Riverboat Gambler: The Dent in the Shield

Stomp your foot
Flick your sword

Across the body

Of the fat

Thing from the

Jar and toss

With the same 

Motion your shining

Sword to the 

Man waiting to

Catch it so

The blade is

Not lost as

The pincers close

Around your head

You are not

The dancer you

Are the dance 

So if you

Miss one step

The part that

Matters will 

survive

 

The Great Glass Mountain - Session Five

Chain Knight Valenta, Horn Knight Auckland and the Squire Reme rode back to the orchard. They got there at sunset and caught Sparenot and her kids putting away their tools for the day. She invited them inside for dinner and a drink. Valenta sent Kemp and Kana outside to go get grandpa Crucifer, what she had to say wasn't suitable for children. Sparenot wouldn't have tolerated anyone except the queen of the realm issuing direct orders to her children. She feared the worst.

Riverboat Gambler: Three More Tombs

David Roberts

 

The enormous statue had once stood over the river but the river had meandered in the ages since it was erected. The sages at first believed the features had been scraped away. A supernatural confirmation kill in one of the dynastic struggles on the ancient Plain. But it had simply been sculpted like that. Faceless except the open mouth. Without eyes and ears and nose the expression was unreadable despite the carefully sculpted teeth and tongue. It communicated fear or laughter or pain or hunger as the viewer wished. 

 

The engineers clustered around the statue at the neck and prepared to blow it up. The Bronze Head was going to open a new restaurant in Hylem-Xylem, which everyone just called Sugar City now that the rhyming slang of the chaotic argot was out of favor again. They couldn't find another bronze head, or they just didn't believe in doing the same thing over and over again.

  

Gorgojo had never been to Last Autumn. He had the architectural drawings. The sketches of the streetscape and planned exterior facade and interior decor. He knew how much space he had to work with and the maximum weight the structure would support. But he had no real sense of the place to which he would take his prize. He was from the pampa, the sea of grass where a single tree was a sight to behold. A city rising out of an ocean of trees shaded red and purple and yellow and orange sounded like something out of a dream.  

 

The charges would break the head free and the sorcerers would catch it with floating discs. They would bear it to the barge, and from there down the river where it joined with the river Hog. From there to the sea, and then back to the world. Once aboard the ship it was the responsibility of the captain. Gorgojo would, nonetheless, accompany it to its new home. He wanted to look up at it while he drank annix and ate purple worm in mole negro. Then look up further still at the trees.

 

The engineers verified, for a third time, that the charges had been set correctly. The mages promised, again, that they had triple checked the carvings at the base of the statue. Lorem ipsum. The same word repeated again and again without meaning. They had to move soon. The potions would wear off and they'd have to dip into the reserve during the trip back.

 

The heat haze made the tongue dance in the statue's mouth. Gorgojo thanked Logic and The Draftsman for checking his work and lit the fuse.

Riverboat Gambler: Three Tombs

Clearing a tomb of undead was routine. You approached by half light or by day and you used a weapon that burned everything inside. The average grave was no more than a few rooms deep. Enough flasks of alchemist fire generated convection sufficient to cook unliving flesh until it fell off the bone. Skeletons charred into heaps of cremains, wights came gibbering out the entrance to dissolve in the sunlight. Mummies made sounds like a man suffocating in a bag. The loss of scrolls and cloth and delicate artwork was regrettable. So was being chewed for an hour as the potion of troll blood surging through your veins kept you alive just long enough to feed the ghouls.

 

For living things it was the same. Set an ambush at the entrance, smoke them out and slaughter them. 

Tabor fondled his amulets and mouthed a prayer to the Hungry Dungeon before tossing the flask. Eda and Salvador had thrown theirs unlit, a "wet shot" to splash fuel into the corners before igniting. With the God propitiated, he threw.

 

A word came from the cave. He didn't understand it.

 

The burning oil went out. With it, the sun.

 

Eda kindled a Light spell but it would not spark. Without even the moons to light them the dunes looked like waves in some primal watery abyss, awaiting the creation of the world.

 

The sound came again. Tabor realized it was his name, spoken from the mouth of the tomb. 

Riverboat Gambler: Twelve Points of Interest

 

 

She stood at the helm of the riverboat and raced the pike-shaped congregation of egrets above as it flew across the Plain. The cold surged up from the swift water and dueled with the killer heat that scoured the land beyond the river of life. 

 

It passed over her and for a moment she was back.

 

On the lakeshore, one side of her shivering and one side warmed by the bonfire that ate the snow before it touched the beach. The Giantess' heavy body fit to burst out of the dozen animal skins she wore for her wedding, flushed red and blue. The Giantess surging down to embrace her new husband, then exploding when the rebels struck her with the death spell, splattering blood over the freshly crowned King of the Giants. The brawl that erupted in the stands as the Red Ball wizards raised their winestained fists and struck with their wands, battering the Giant clergy with magic missiles that smelled like juniper and blossoms of annix. The adventurers lashing out with poisoned bolts and bullets and strokes of their enchanted blades. The cake leaping in the air with the lifting charge and detonating at chest height to cut down pikemen and ogre doppelsoldner before they could reinforce their deceased mistress and her guests. The brave mage and his stone men who held the wedding ground against all comers until the red dragon incinerated the proceedings. The mage transformed into a red dragon himself in a gambit to escape the consuming flames, holding off the ancient worm in a desperate melee until it tore out his throat. 

 

She couldn't go back. Not to the path of agriculture and the social contract and duty to family and the Goddess. The path that led her family through the ovens and onto the Giantess' table. 

 

No. For her there was only the life of adventure. Men and monsters. Spells and magic swords. Step into the grave and catch the blade with your heart. Strike while your foe's weapon is immobilized and trust the Godman behind to heal you through the damage. Snap back from unconsciousness or from death and leap back into the fight to be struck down again. O Sun chased over the horizon by Great Moon, then chased by the sun, then the moon again.

 

The Halflings lying around on the deck were friends she met on the killing floor after the wedding. She had said nothing in the kitchen when the little alchemist had crawled out from under the cake, black with chocolate and coffee dust after planting the bounding mine inside. He held a gloved finger to his lips and replaced his beret and she let him leave without telling the guards, although another bomb would have meant complete extermination of all the slaves in the holding. For this they named her a Neighbor Man when they found her scavenging magic items on the beach. One of the good humans, who could be trusted to accompany them on adventures. Because for them, it was the same. Their village too had been fired and there could be no return to bass fishing and meat pies and blocks of cheese. The only holes in the earth they could now delve were tombs.

 

She gave a cry, because up ahead were the rapids. The rapids that ate the hulls of ships so the things that lived in the rocks could eat the crew. In an instant the hairy little gluttons came to life. They prepared to repel boarders and to guide the vessel through the cataract into the uncharted waters beyond. They yanked dust tarpaulins off the swivel guns. They pulled on their hoods of dark cloth, leaving only their grinning mouths exposed.

 

The Great Glass Mountain - Session Four

 

The Company woke up atop the sea cliffs to the sound of shouting. It was audible over the sound of waves and it came from the landward side. The Company shouted back, unsure if leaving their camp was wise in the middle of the night, worried it might be another mirage out of time. Kemp shouted that the voice was his grandfather Cruicifer. The Salt Knight ran down the mountain path, Reme and Kemp following him. He rapidly lost his way in the dark, less concerned with following the path than descending quickly, but avoided injury as he hopped down the boulders and rocky slopes. 

At the bottom of the mound was an old guy dressed in nothing but a breechcloth, cloak caught on a gnarled tree root sticking out of the earth. He was trying to climb a boulder and getting nowhere. Kemp rushed past Tiber and went to help him up, but something yanked Crucifer's leg down. The Salt Knight and Reme rushed to help. A gnarled root wrapped around the old man's leg. Tiber leaped down to hack away the root and the old guy was yanked downward into the earth. The Salt Knight grabbed onto him and was pulled with him. The earth closed over them without a sound.