Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

In the privacy of a tent she did not need, and only used to bolster the familiarity of having the troops see that structure that military commanders were wont to employ, Sintra sat in disturbed muttering. She had suppressed it as she had given out her blessing to those she deemed worthy, and who wished it, but now the unsettling memory returned. What she had seen in the brief tear in the fabric of Emean membranes was beyond the simple terror that mortals experienced when faced with a monster, however colossal. Hers was the terror of discovery of a lost vein of cataclysmic history now seen to still exist.

It was far beyond what these lesser beings could hope to understand. How could they when she herself was stricken nearly speechless by the epic scale of what might be undone if it were to ever to be known. Surely some mad zealot faction would rise up, trying to worship the creatures and seek their release, thinking to enjoy a share of titanic power. The only sharing would be an equal portion of frozen rubble, floating in space when Idalos was destroyed.

"The Arotinin...." she muttered, still in some disbelief. It was only the incalculable good fortune that they were in Emea, where she could draw on the forgetful haze that could be imposed on anyone present, even herself. Dreamwalkers could possibly thwart this imposition, if it were truly the Dreamscape, and if they were the more powerful Dreamwalker. And while Immortals were not technically Dreamwalkers, what they were essentially transcended that skill by a great deal. And her domain of Manipulation gave her en edge even beyond most other Immortals.

But she would not have been able to impose any such force upon an Arotinin, if that what the monsters beyond that wall had truly been. She saw what they'd done to an admittedly spent Lisirra, and it confirmed what she believed the gas to have been. As a relatively insectoid being, an Arotinin would not have attacked Lisirra, not only out of recognition of her Insect Domain, but also as an acknowledgement of an ancient alliance.

Lisirra must have kept that gas as a last resort, to be used only when she was weak. It was not so much of a physically debilitating toxin, as a mentally confusing one. She must have based holding it in reserve on the very likelihood of being finally faced with a force that could beat her; and its purpose was to make this powerful force turn on itself! It would cause everyone who was affected by it to see everyone around them as enemies. The mighty army of Etzos would have used its hatred and resolve on itself, essentially seeing everyone around them as agents of their enemy, as she sat back, exhausted, to enjoy the spectacle.

Even though the Arotinin would be far too powerful to be affected by such a gas, they would immediately know its design and take it as an attack. Sintra felt, for the first time in arcs, a genuine shiver of sympathy for how helpless and doomed Lisirra must have felt as the great beasts closed upon her.

But the thing that truly had shaken Sintra was that odd pull that had surged everyone forward and briefly opened the door to where she believed, in honest horror, that she had seen one or more Arotinin, creatures formed of the ancient animosities between those powers that existed before the Original beings gained supremacy over Idalos. What had caused that? It was nothing she had done, as far as she knew anyway. If there was some trigger that had been this exposed all this time, it was a miracle Idalos still turned.

And to add to all this was the certainty that the Arotinin had seen out, for perhaps the first time in millennia. The one upside was that everything she had seen suggested that they were as surprised as any. In truth, Sintra was not all that sure of the accuracy of what knowledge she held in regard to these ancient beings. The fact that there was much she might be mistaken about only made things worse. But the one thing she knew was that she had to eradicate all knowledge of them among these simple mortals. They would never grasp the terrible glory and menace present in those blurry visions.

But she could hardly begin by killing this same army. Not only was she weak herself, and not entirely sure she would survive before eliminating even half of them; But she truly needed Etzos now, and could hardly hope to sweep such complete genocide under the rug if she returned to the city alone. As well, those that survived might wonder what had caused her betrayal, and maybe some sliver of memory might return, and she could well set in motion the very "Cult of Arotinin" she had to prevent.

No strict plan had formed by the time she realized a mortal stood before her. Her startled outrage shook Marshall Webb to his knees, begging for forgiveness for whatever he had done, and insisting that he had announced his arrival and intent to enter. Sintra seethed before him for a few trills, then quickly went to the flap to ensure anyone that had heard her that everything was fine. She pulled back in laughing and apologizing, to set Webb somewhat at ease, while asking him in skillfully casual tones what he had overheard.

He stammered enough to convince her that he'd heard too much. Though he recounted only a litany of mundane things, she knew that nothing of a mundane nature had been on her mind or on her tongue for several bits. He was clearly trying to cover for something he'd heard that he did not understand. She was not about to speak the word 'Arotinin' to him to see if he responded, just in case he hadn't actually heard it, but as the army made its slow victorious way back to Etzos, she had already made up her mind about him...


Kasoria would find later that whenever he Dreamwalked, whether alone or with others, if he was ever to brush by a Dreamscape that seemed to hold a distorted image through a thick transparent wall, a strange recall of some horror hidden beyond the veil of familiar realms would trouble him for a trial or two before once again sinking into obscurity.

Maude did not see the vision directly, but as those that did came stumbling in bleak terror past her, one of them had grabbed her, citing some gibberish about monsters from the Beneath. It was not that this traumatized her after what she had already been through, but his grasp had loosened her own upon her beloved fiddle, and she had plucked a uniquely dissonant trio of notes as she made to clutch it more securely. Any time now that she hits a similar trio of notes - most likely by mistake - the memory of all these soldiers quaking in fear of some unknown, unseen threat would return to her for a short time.

In the future, Ulric would find that if he syphoned a consistent torrent of fear from a number of people, this group fear would trigger a brief recall of the events in Emea. It would only happen if it was a considerable number of different people that were stripped of their fear. The fact of so much similar emotion coming from so many different sources seemed to hold the key that triggered the memory of this similar situation.

All of them would come, each time, to grow progressively more curious about this phenomenon, as it begins to take on the sense of something that should be remembered, yet was being suppressed somehow...for some reason...

And who knows how many other soldiers of Etzos are troubled by such odd recollections...