Song of the warrior

So I lie in this attic room, and try to sleep. Most nights sleep brings memories of pain and loss, of war and death, of things I have never seen, and things I would rather not see.

Yet every night I throw myself into sleep, for instead of the damnable city that lurks outside of my walls I may dream of you my love.

A moment of peace is all I seek, to sleep here and feel you beside me, it is too much to ask I know. Yet still I strive for sleep and do so that I might dream of you.

I am tired almost to death, the endless days without you wear me down. I am so much less than what I was the last time I found you that I fear if you saw me now you would not recognise me, that you would see nothing of worth left in me. So I sleep, and hope for dreams that I know when I wake will make me weep.

I will find you my love. Though it take a thousand lives each as terrible as this I will find you. They cannot keep us apart forever.

And if they try... They will see me go to war.

Ivy grows over the walls of my room. A cocoon against the world.

Winter Induction

So in the manner of the Wintermark Scops let me set the scene for you.

Above Anvil squats a storm, unlike the storm that brought the Steinr this storm seems to be intent on replacing the land with the sea, and the roads and camps of the nations begin to look more and more like the marshes from which the Hautakorpen come. The only difference is that no dead faces stare up through the puddles.

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Cog-worked

The Machine stopped and raised its head. Far away ahead of it the glinting of light that the Machine had seen, the glinting which had given it a purpose had resolved itself into an impossibly high tower sticking like a dagger out of the heart of what seemed to be a city. The walls glowed with light, all lit up by huge balls of glowing light hanging from chains and below them was what looked like a thick band of forest and farm land. It was too far away for even the Machines eyes to resolve details, but it did not need to the light was what drew the Machine on. The Light meant other creatures, and for some reason the Machine felt driven to reach a place with more people. It didn't have a word for the feeling, the empty desolation inside it, but it knew if it reached the City it would be gone. It set off again placing one foot in front of the other over and over again.

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Rain Falling on the Black City.

The Rain is falling again, drizzling down from clouds infused with the smoke of a million Corpse-oil lamps, staining everything with the sticky foul smelling residue of burning corpses. The top of the Great Lantern Spire cannot even be seen from here, the spire truncated about three quarters of the way up by the smog, and the lantern itself does nothing for the gloom, just makes the ominous dark clouds around it glow with the greenish white of the corpse-light it gives off.

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Zhan shi

This is actually quite an old piece of writing, but I finally feel brave enough to post the thing.
I am proud of this piece even if it is a little bloody

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Anatomy of a Roleplaying Group

Anatomy of a Roleplaying Group.

I've spent an inordinate amounts of time with Roleplaying Groups in the capacity of GM over the years. Every group is different, and yet at the same time every group is somewhat similar.

So in this post I'm going to add a few of my observations.

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The Hayte War

Harold Godwinson was beset on all sides by enemies once he took the crown that had previously been Edward the Confessors. In Normandy William the Bastard claimed that Edward had offered him the crown, and that Harold had offered his allegiance, in defiance of the normal method of the crown being given by the decision of the Witengamot. While the bastard threatened the south of the country, the Viking Harold Hardrada and Harold Godwinson's own brother Tostig invaded the north intending to retake the lands that Harthacnut used to hold and which Magnus the Good had allowed to pass to the Anglo Saxon King.

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