NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: RP limited to members of Eldire (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=569186), and more specifically, probably only to those nations in the southern Dolthiac and surrounding seas (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=569285) or those who might have characters who have a good reason for being in barbarian wastelands just west of the Ssek Empire!

It was an Age of Reckoning, and even while beastmen invaded (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14092464&postcount=45) the strange lands to the north and west, and vague but ill rumors from the Hefon Empire (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=569129), all seemed well in the Empire of Ssek.

Yet strangers (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14064061&postcount=5) wander in the Western Wastes (http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk173/clomata/ssekempirev1.jpg), with unknown pasts and unknown agendas. Ssloi (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14115190&postcount=95), a mercenary, now leads a company of Warriors under the King of Ssan on an expedition to investigate rumors (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14071827&postcount=9) about aggressive primitives and barbarians... and to fetch a strange item. 400 mercenaries march (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14133108&postcount=106) to assist the ailing Procan Confederacy.

The times are fraught with sand, sweat and blood.

Western Wastes

From the south they'd gathered. Waves of peoples had sent forth forces from this part of the world - many to the north, following Gothar, a powerful beastman warlord. Their numbers were vast, though, and the world had not now nor ever seen them at their mightiest, when dark forces could hammer their hot metal into a cold dagger to pierce the cities of the world.

Now they moved, north and east, resting during the day and hurtling onwards through the night. Leagues of barren, deserted badlands awaited them. But they were driven onward, propelled by some force unknowable to their wisest shamans, a raw power just being born, and far, far away.

It would be days. Weeks, even. But the monstrous slavers and their cities would pay.


south of Khrek

Ssloi's warriors, he learned, were no less than Royal Guards. He learned this quickly, and was not allowed to ever once forget it. And they did so enjoy waving their banners about.

For all their ridiculous pride and arrogance, though, they were professional, disciplined and exceptionally well-equipped. Better than any mercenary group he'd signed up with, that was for sure.

He had sixty infantry, thirty-two infantry and eight Grenadiers, plus company. Moreover, he had Slad. Slad was an agent of the King, and a 1st Rank Magus. It was hard to tell how old he was just by looking. Sometimes he seemed very young, other times more into his middling years. He kept up with the troops, though, and didn't complain about the meals. That earned him a bit of respect from Ssloi, but he didn't talk and was irritatingly silent when asked anything specific.

It was a few days from Khrek, and then they would go west to look into the human thing - but he was aware he was being kept in the dark about certain things. He had no idea what, if anything, had been learned from his human prisoner. He'd presumed the king knew a lot now, but because he wouldn't share that knowledge with a peon like Ssloi it was difficult to be certain. Perhaps his prisoner had known nothing, and this was some sort of twisted punishment.

He was overreacting. It was hard not to - not every day a High Council member and King hired you to command some of his warriors.

"...What do you think, Slad?" he asked with a grin.

The agent gazed at him inscrutably.

OOC: I started this post with a clear idea of what I was doing, and I sort of lost that as it went along. It's now become good background (and Jeffries may recur at some point), but I'm no longer sure if it belongs here. So, just let me know what you think over in the main OOC thread, I guess.

IC: Oh, most traders went to Ithilar, or to Angermanland, or Proca. Some even went to the Holy Empire, in either a difficult voyage or a transit over the mountains, with all the bad roads and long journeys that implied.
There were even a few fringe traders who went to the Ssek, though for the poor returns and social stigma that brought it was a wonder anyone bothered.

All these groups, however, were sizeable and well-established when compared with those who traded with the barbarian coast.
Few and far between, they were mavericks...broadly regarded as fringe nutters. Some were younger sons of merchant families; others retired (or semi-retired) privateering captains who found a regular trading run too boring.
The basic trade entailed taking poor quality Incognitian goods, usually sub-par iron-work, and exchanging that for anything interesting or useful the local tribes had to offer.
Sometimes it was a winner, as with that time Jeffries had come back with some ancient stonework that the Priests had ended up identifying as part of an ancient temple to the Lady which had been looted ages past, and had paid handsomely for, before incorporating it into the main temple in Nescia.

That was the magnate George Jeffries' third son, of course, Michael Jeffries. Peter reflected bitterly on the accidents of birth that had placed George and then Thomas ahead of them both; and the accident of trade that had put Michael in the way of a small fortune and a place in the family firm.
Mike was now in charge of three sizeable carracks, while Peter's own efforts had thus far only netted him the one, much older and in danger of falling apart at the seams.

So in any case, here he was, the Incognitian merchant equivalent of a man wandering in the mountains hoping to fall into a silver mine. From flea-speck village to flea-speck village, trading quality ironwork (for the locals) for knick-knacks and gew-gaws, all the time hoping for a lead on something truly valuable, something that could buy him a cargo worth taking to a decent market.

That had been a fortnight ago. Then they'd started hearing from some of the coastal villages that there were a lot of raids going on inland; then found refugees who'd escaped from one such attack. Peter wouldn't have cared, but they were prepared to trade all their valuables for passage overseas, not thinking anywhere closer would be safe. Money was money, and saleable goods were money waiting to happen.
Then this morning as the sun rose, they saw a pillar of smoke above the horizon. Not a huge, town-sized pillar of smoke....more like a village or a hamlet burning.
After a little consideration, Peter had decided they would go closer to investigate. A little risky, perhaps...but dealing on the Barbarian Coast, no risks got you nothing but a steadily deteriorating ship, and ever less money with which to repair and provision her.
Besides...few were the barbarians who would stick around once they'd burnt an outpost of civilisation. They tended to either flee for fear of a response (unlikely here, beyond the borders of Ssek) or press further on, towards larger settlements and greater plunder.
Truly enough, on approaching it, the village turned out to be empty; a scorched husk of what it once was, the inhabitants dead, their belongings stripped from their homes, their food stores emptied.
A scatter of items looted and then deemed too heavy, too useless, or just plain not as desireable as the new owner had initially thought, scattered the tracks of a large band heading east from the village.
"Clearly Beast-men."
"I admit it seems most likely, but couldn't it be a local rival or something?"
The villager shifted uneasily. Hailing from only a few days back up the coast, he had not long ago handed over all his valuables to escape something just like this...and here he was in the middle of it.
"No lord, see, the tracks come in from the West, and here they leave again on the East side. Also it was a large band, too many for a village to send out."

Peter reflected on the archaic word 'lord'. Sir was much more customary...then again, the men of this coast had not changed much in all the time since their ancestors left Incognitia, whereas the homeland had changed much...

"Run, lord!"

Peter Jeffries didn't get much more chance to reflect on much of anything.

***

It exploded across the scandal sheets; it soon dominated the coffee-houses. The men of the Barbarian Coast were a right mixture, of old Incognitian Royalists, barbarians who'd lived there since days of yore, semi-civilised beastmen...within weeks, all of them had come under pressure. Many settlements had been over-run. Every trader to the Barbarian Coast had found trouble, and some hadn't escaped it.
And once it had emerged that one of them was George Jeffries' son, the political pressure had mounted to do something. Jeffries was quiet personally, of course - in mourning, all understood that. But his hand could be seen in the call. To act! The Assembly must be seen to do something.
So a scheme had emerged; the inhabitants of the Barbarian Coast would be offered the chance to re-settle into the lands north of Incognitia, between the Republic and the Holy Empire. It was hard land, and quite different from the lands they were in, but it was safe as could be from marauding barbarians, and the Assembly could help with re-settlement.
The traders with the Barbarian Coast would be sent back there, with the offer, and to take the first few away. They would be sent back time and again until no more humans or civilised beastmen wished to go. The Royalists had been ostracised on the Barbarous Coast long enough...it was time to bring them back into the fold, along with those they'd intertwined and interbred themselves with during the interim.

A few prescient souls cried Whoa! and inquired as to how the civilised, presumably good beastmen were meant to be discerned from the other kind. A few even more acutely asked the same question of men. Both were shouted down amid the clamour for action, and the scheme was enacted.

Western Wastes

The slaves were quiet. As the wagons in which they were bound trundled across the land, the slavers took worrisome note of how silent, calm - watching - their captives were, very unusual for the primitive humans. They would, traditionally, try to resist, until the pain taught them their futility. They would screech and make noises when startled, or frightened - as they easily were by the hulking mercenaries, their gleaming halberds and scowling.

Not this bunch, though - the slaver's caravan had fifteen, and they were all like this. They weren't exactly tame or docile, either - they didn't seem to feel intimidated, let alone subjugated, though they so obviously were.

Leagues of windswept, dirt-scrabble terrain, dry grasses dotted by the occasional small patch of dying woods, awaited the caravan before they could offload their cargo in Ssan.

And the mercenaries calmly informed him that night that they were being followed, but by who or how many they didn't know.