Rihyan gets his bedroll and blanket out of his pack, and lays it out near the cave entrance, laying his sword and bow down by it. He piles the rest of his equipment in front of the cave mouth, looks to the others and smiles "That should provide us with some warning if someone tries to get in." he says.<br/><br/>"Now I believe some of you are wondering who I am, and why I am out here, so I guess I owe you this story, some of it is history I have managed to piece together over time, a lot of this I did not know at the time it actually happened, but will place it in it's correct place in the story"<br/><br/>"My name is Rihyan Ahzranthi. I am not sure where I was born, but my earliest memories are of a town, that I think is far to the West of here. I lived with my parents, my father was a celestial centaur, at least I think he was, he had feathered wings like me anyway, and my mother was a normal centaur."<br/><br/>"One day, when I was four, not long after the autumn harvest festival, the town was attacked. The attacker was a Half-Dragon Succubus, who I later found out was called Jinnai. She subdued most of the townsfolk easily using some form of sleep spell, but due to our natures, my father and I were unaffected by the spells. Unfortunately for us, Jinnai had brought many demons with her to help subdue the town. I was easily overpowered, and it did not take them much longer to subdue my father. What happened next to my father is burned into my memory, Jinnai turned herself into a white dragon, and ate my father whole. I could see his struggling outline through her neck as she swallowed him, and.. and..", Rihyan blinks back the tears as he tries to level his voice out, "the bulges in her stomach as he struggled there too. Jinnai then called out to her troops. 'Time to feast'. And they did, probably about half the towns population ended up within demon bellies that night."<br/><br/>"Those of us that survived that night, mainly females with the odd male like myself, were rounded up and put into stockades. The following day, Jinnai had us breach the granaries, and carry most of the food with us. We were then herded out of town and through a teleportaion circle that Jinnai had created. I don't know how far the teleport took us, no-one else from my town survived to escape, so I don't even know what the towns name was, or where it actually is. At the other side of the teleport we found ourselves within the courtyard of Jinnai's Stronghold, where I was seperated from the other slaves and placed in a seperate cell."<br/><br/>"About a week after we were captured, Jinnai had me brought to her, as you can expect, I expected to die like my father, but instead she had worse planned for me. She brought out a set of magical manacles, that she affixed around my wrists," Rihyan subconciously rubs his wrists as he is saying this, where a set of scars can be seen. "She then smiled evilly at me, and ordered me to do various silly things. To my horror I was unable to disobey her, my will was no longer my own, but I was capable of remembering everything that happened, and as much as I struggled to disobey, I wasn't able to."<br/><br/>"Jinnai then laughed at me and said, 'These manacles are special, while you wear them, you only have self-control when I wish you to, and I can sense every emotion within you. You will also be unable to wander beyond my strongholds boundaries. You wish for an easy death, but I am going to make you suffer, and break your will'. I of course expected physical suffering, but that wasn't what she had in mind. 'Now go to the slave pens below, and bring me a friend of yours.' She then told me where the slave pens were, and against my will I went."<br/><br/>"Down in the pens, the other slaves were suprised to see me. I had been the only one seperated from the others, so they had thought me dead. The first slave that I knew that I found was a young elf girl called Liasana. I told her to come with me, and trustingly she followed, not thinking for a second that being with me would prove dangerous." Rihyan closes his eye's, seemingly in pain, and his voice become monotonous, almost forced. "When we got back to Jinnai, Liasana became a little afraid, and stayed close to me. Jinnai ordered me to strip her, and then hold her up. I was unable to stop myself, and ripped Liasana's clothes off. Liasana started struggling at that, and then she panicked when Jinnai ordered me to feed Lisiana to her. But even then, my strength was significantly better than my peers, and Lisiana was unable to break free. I struggled hard in my mind, but was unable to break the control. The look of betrayal in Lisiana's eyes as Jinnai swallowed her stays with me to this day." Rihyan re-opens his eyes and pain can be clearly seen in them. "Jinnai then ordered me to massage her belly, and feel the struggles of Lisiana in her. She seemed to enjoy the emotions of guilt and horror that I was feeling."<br/><br/>"Unfortunately that was not the last time I was forced to feed Jinnai, she made me her body slave, and I had to feed her all her meals and help her bathe afterwards. I tried to escape during the times that she let me have self control, but I never made it past the walls, each time I was brought down by intense pain."<br/><br/>"I lost track of time, but eventually after many years it got worse. Jinnai started to make me eat live people, starting small and working up in size. She revealed then another property of the manacles, I was unable to willingly bring up any live food I had eaten, even when she allowed me self-control. At the same time she started using me for her physical pleasure. Damn I wish I could block those memories out."<br/><br/>"Again many years after she had started to make me eat others, Jinnai made a mistake. She captured a young Cat Thief called Kharia. Kharia was apparently quite well known in the regions that Jinnai was raiding for new slaves, as a good thief, but an even better escape artist. Kharia had been caught several times, but no cell she had been put into had been able to hold her, even once when she had been searched very throughly and placed in the cell naked. Jinnai decided to place her in a more fatal cell, and had me eat her. Now over the few years before this, I had found that I am able to suppress the digestive acids of my stomach, at least while I am awake, and thus keep anyone I had been forced to swallow alive in me for some time. Although due to the manacles I was unable to regurgitate them. I was thus able to talk to Kharia, and find out how she was so good at escaping. It turns out she had had a special Nutrion made for her, that allowed her to summon a set of thief tools. She told me the command word to activate the nutrion, and when she eventually died, and I digested her, I was able to use the nutrion to summon myself some tools."<br/><br/>"After many attempts, I was able to pick the lock on the manacles and remove them, but that left me with a dilemna. I didn't want to leave the rest of the slaves behind, but how to neutralise Jinnai. The only idea I could come up with was to somehow spike her next meal, but that would involve sacrificing another slave to actually be her meal. I went down to the slave pens, and as normal the guards ignored me, thinking I was on Jinnai's business. The slaves on the other hand, knew anyone that left with me never came back, and by now distrusted me. I explained what had happened to me, and my idea, and somehow one of the believed me and was willing to sacrifice himself for the others. His name was Jhaen"<br/><br/>"I took Jhaen to the apothecary, and had him swallow a large number of sleep nutrions. The plan being that he would trigger the nutrions as Jinnai started to digest him, meaning that his body would be flooded with the sleep effect. Hopefully enough of this would be absorbed by Jinnai, to knock her out aswell."<br/><br/>"Amazingly, in hindsight, this plan actually worked. Jinnai never noticed that my manacles were missing, and she ate Jhaen, a little after she had eaten him, she passed out. I triggered the nutrions that I had taken earlier, that I hoped would counter any residual sleep effect, and swallowed Jinnai, the only way I considered at the time that I could get rid of her."<br/><br/>"I then headed back down to the slave pens, and was able to take the guard out by suprise, he joined his mistress in me. Freeing the slaves I then led them to the armoury. About here the plan seemed to fall apart, as we reached the armoury an alarm was sounded, and some of the guard force started heading to the armoury to get their weapons. The slaves and I fought a defending action at the armoury, actually managing to hold our own against the unarmed guards. We then found out what the alarm was actually about, when the attacking guard force was hit in the rear by another force. Jinnai had apparently started to annoy a powerful kingdom near her fortress. The kingdom had been unable to successfully attack Jinnai's fortress even though they knew where it was because of Jinnai's guardspells. When Jinnai had died in my stomach, the spells had fallen, and the kingdom's head mage, Tuli, was able to open an teleport circle into the stronghold. This is what had triggered the alarm. Fortunately for the attacking force, and unfortunately for us, most of the guard force was off duty at the time, and so had attacked us at the armoury as they had no weapons. This meant that the attack force had relatively little opposition, so was able to subdue the demons quickly."<br/><br/>"The freed slaves were taken to the kingdom's capital, Casa, where they were healed and freed, and where many of them settled. I chose to leave, wishing to seek out my people. Tuli gave me directions to a druidic circle to the east of thier kingdom, they were most likely to be able to tell me where my people were to be found. He asked me in exchange to ask them if they knew of why the winter had come so early the previous year, just before the harvest, ruining it, and as to why spring had not yet come. This was the first I learned of this prolonged winter, as I had been pretty much confined indoors by Jinnai."<br/><br/>"The druids, when I found them, shared the mages concern about the winter, and confirmed with me that they would contact Tuli with what knowledge they had. They then told me where I should find 2 of the local centaur villages. I flew to both of them, and in both places found the same. There was no trace of any remains of the centaurs, just very large amounts of blood, like a huge battle had been fought there. Many of the houses had been destroyed, like a heavy weight had landed on them, or smashed into them from the side. From what I could tell, the eastern most village had been hit first, maybe a month before I got there, the second village maybe 2 weeks later. On returning to the druids I found that they were starting to panic, apparently they had been loosing contact with druidic circles further to the east. The fact that the centaurs were being hit too they took to mean that something was going after the peoples that were attempting to slow the progress of this winter, those that were trying to keep nature's balance. They asked me to go visit an enclave nearby, where a group of mainly elves worked closely with fey and unicorns to keep the balance. They told me that they were going to Casa, to ask Tuli for his protection and help, and to seek them at there after I had warned the fey."<br/><br/>"Unfortunately once more I was too late, the elven encampment had already been hit. This time though there were 2 survivors, that somehow had been able to avoid being consumed, a young elven lady and a unicorn mare. They were both badly injured, but told me what had attacked them was a large White Dragon. He had come from the East, and returned that way after consuming all the dead from the encampment, along with those he had consumed alive during the battle. Though I wonder if he did consume them all, how much can a large dragon consume anyway, I'm wondering if he did something like what Jinnai did, and took the survivors away for later meals."<br/><br/>"I escorted the survivors back to Casa to the druidic circle. The circle with the mages help, had managed to find out that the winter seemed to be spreading Westward from a point near or possibly within the Orev Valley. I volunteered to come East to see what I could find, as I wanted revenge for the slaughter of my people."<br/><br/>"I left Casa about a month ago, the king had this armour made for me, and Tuli enchanted it, as I am a bit of an unusual build for any of his already made armour to fit, and allowed me to pick the weapons from his armoury, and have been travelling ever since. The weather has got steadily worse the further I have come East, and I have come across several smaller settlements devoid of life, but like the centaur villages, drowned in blood. The larger settlements for the most part seem to have been left alone, but many are running short on food, and tensions between the townspeople seems to be getting higher"<br/><br/>{{hope I havent gone too far in fleshing out the campaign Praexon, but 1. I thought it likely that those working for nature's balance (eg druid, centaur, fey, elves etc) would be trying to counter the spread of the winter. 2. Lord Gyriax wouldn't like 1, so would be doing something about it, and 3. its a vore campaign so Gyriax is most likely to eat his opponents<img alt=":)" src="./images/smilies/smile.gif" title="Smile"/>}}