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- On fairly regularly, every day. I'll notice a PM almost immediately. Replies come randomly.
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- Primarily Prefer Male
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- High fantasy is my personal favorite, followed closely by modern fantasy and post-apocalyptic, but I can happily play in any genre if the plot is good enough.
[fieldbox=-, forestgreen][dash=saddlebrown][fieldbox=Oak Haven]When the letter from Dragon's Gate arrived, sealed with the personal crest of King Sternfire, the Mayor of Oak haven had sealed herself away in her office, ordering that she should not be disturbed. Half an hour later, the door had still not opened.
The letter that had been carefully unrolled with such hope half an hour ago was now nothing more than a crumpled mess, wadded up and tossed onto a corner of the Mayor's desk. She sat, her brows contorted with rage, but deep sadness marring the corners of her eyes and mouth. That letter had just damned her people.
The Mayor's mournful contemplations were suddenly interrupted by a rapid knocking at her office door. Before she had a chance to order whoever was disturbing her to go away the door burst open, and the giant form of the captain of the guard spilled through the frame, followed by the more reserved and stooped form of the Great Mage.
The Mayor straightened promptly, erasing any traces of her burden from her face with a politician's mask. "What is the meaning of this?"
"Maam," the Captain of the Guard said, slapping a gauntleted fist to his cuirass. He bowed briefly, before straightening. It was clear, from his face and posture, that the Mayor was not the only one carrying a monumental burden. "The next wave is coming."
"Then, by the name of the Hawk, what are you doing in here?"
"We have nothing left with which to fight. The trebuche broke several days ago. Our smiths have run out of materials to make more bolts for the ballista. Our walls are severely damaged. They won't hold off another attack."
"And the mages?"
"Exhausted," replied the Great Mage, his voice hoarse. "They need at least twenty four hours of rest, or else they will kill themselves."
The mayor took a shuddering breath, rising from her seat to approach the window. It was impossible to see the walls from her office, but her eyes seemed to stare straight through the trees that filled the village to the wall and beyond, past the clearing that kept the forest from encroaching on their walls and blocking their site, to the line of the trees. It didn't take her much to imagine the sight that confronted the soldiers on the wall. She herself had been out there several times over the past weeks, trying to rally the falling morale of her troops.
When the undead had first wandered into the clearing, the guard hadn't even bothered to report it. The Forest of Oak had always been home to the strange and unusual, it was one of the few places in the Kingdom of Sarok that was not firmly under the control of the King and his Guard. The forest was one of the few places that necromancers could practice their craft without disturbance, and the Mayor and her people had learned to work around it. At times the necromancers had even pledged to support the village, hunting down a rogue beast that was attacking travelers. As long as their thralls did not go out of control and start killing people, the necromancers were left be, even if most of the merchants refused to trade with them.
The guard had incapacitated the wandering undead, as was the standard policy, and burnt their corpses. The ashes had been scattered with all due respect, and a couple of the Mages had sent a message into the forest, reminding the necromancers that the undead would not be tolerated near Oak Haven. Usually that was the end of it.
Not this time. The next day double the number had found their way to the city gates. The day after that, double the number again. It was only then that the guard realized that something was horribly, horribly wrong. The day after that, the siege had begun. The city was only barely holding out, and the lifeblood of the city, the trade between the merchants of Sarok and Elinshire that passed through their walls every day, had been completely cut off by the undead threat.
The Mayor had sent a platoon of guards into the forest, desperate for them to find the council of Necromancers that would be needed to raise and control such a massive army, and come back with a report on their numbers, but none of them had ever returned. After that, anyone who vanished beyond the tree line outside the clearing was never heard from again.
Desperate for aid, the Mayor had sent a letter by a carrier hawk to the King, begging for aid in defending her city from the undead. Nearly a week later, the letter had finally come back, and it now lay crumpled on her desk, its words of denial hidden but not forgotten. She didn't know why the King would reject her request. Perhaps he simply wanted to punish the village that had always been somewhat beyond his control, perhaps there truly was some pressing need for the troops elsewhere, but what she knew for sure was that not even a single platoon of soldiers would be coming to relieve them.
"Mayor?" the Captain asked, interrupting her thoughts. "What do you want us to do?"
She took a deep breath, before facing the Captain, her expression fierce. "Send out the soldiers. We are going to have to fight back man to man."
The Captain's eyes closed, but he nodded. He knew this moment had been coming, but a single tear still rolled down his cheek to vanish into his black beard. So far they had managed to keep the deaths to a minimum by only directly confronting the undead when there was no other alternative. Now the dead would begin to pile, and the families would not even get a chance to hold a proper funeral for the fallen, out of fear that the necromancers would awaken the bodies of their loved ones and turn them against the city.
He straightened, bowing again, and turned to go. But before he fully left, he turned back to the Mayor, and offered her a smile. "Our guards are fierce," he told her, a touch of pride glowing in his eyes. "They will hold out until the reinforcements from the capital get here."
A spasm crossed the Mayor's face, and the guard paused. "Ephenia," for the first time he broke protocol, and called the Mayor by her given name. "What is wrong."
For a moment the Mayor hesitated, before she spoke. "There are no reinforcements coming. We will have to do our own fighting."
These words seemed to do more to crumple the Captain of the Guard than anything had in the past weeks. "What are we going to do?" he asked desperately.
"What we've always done," the mayor replied, seating herself at her desk and lifting a quill. "Survive, by any means necessary."
The last of the nine messenger hawks present in Oak Haven was released carefully by its handler. The dwarf watched them go with a worried look in his eyes. The nine hawks would scatter all across the continent, carrying the Mayor's message through Sarok, Elinshire, and Iron Rock. It would be distributed through massive cities and small villages alike, and people would read the message.
They would come, too. No mercenary would be able to resist the temptation presented by that letter. He could only pray that the people would reach the city in time to save its inhabitants.
Quietly he unfurled one of the messages that had fallen into the mud and been rudely shoved into his pocket. He wiped away the stain of dirt, before sighing and reading the message once more.
10,000 gold in exchange for all of their lives.
[BCOLOR=#ffff99]Find the source of the undead plaguing Oak Haven, put a stop to it, and 10,000 gold shall be yours.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=#ffff99]Signed[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=#ffff99]~Lady Ephenia Cordell[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=#ffff99]Mayor of Oak Haven[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=#ffff99]Signed[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=#ffff99]~Lady Ephenia Cordell[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=#ffff99]Mayor of Oak Haven[/BCOLOR]
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