The Conquerer (Dingo and Unnatural Selection)
<h1 id="title">Elliquiy Role Playing Forums</h1>
		<h2 id="linktree">Play-By-Post: Bondage, D/s, S&amp;M =&gt; Bondage: Human Solos =&gt; Topic started by: Unnatural Selection on 27-11-2007, 17:53:47</h2>
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				Title: <strong>The Conquerer (Dingo and Unnatural Selection)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Unnatural Selection</strong> on <strong>27-11-2007, 17:53:47</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				<em>In those days, before he crushed the marble thrones of men beneath his sandaled feet, they say that the Conquerer was a young man not unlike any other of his time or among his people.&nbsp; No hint of destiny lay about him, no stars attended his birth, nor did he distinguish himself in the traditional ways of his people; in the hunt or the care of goats, at song or in dance, by strength or skill at arms.&nbsp; If it had not been for the Shrike leading a party of slavers through the Northwood Valley, it is possible we might never have heard his name spoken at all...</em><br><br>The village was taken in the first engagement.<br><br>Shrike sat upon his horse, watching the smoke fill the sky with artificial night, indifferent to the screams of the women as they were found by his men in the wretched hiding places they had scrambled to.&nbsp; He'd kept his scouts in tight; even a people with as much woodlore as these had not known his coming until it was too late.&nbsp; The burning village signaled to the supply lines he'd left behind, and with no more need for secrecy, they would come, bringing with them the slave cages.&nbsp; By this time tomorrow, they would be back on their way to more civilized lands, and the profits from the sale of the hundred or so captives, stretched out over some weeks or months in various markets, would hire the Sarian mercenaries he'd been negotiating with.&nbsp; And then, the campaign would continue.<br><br>True, by attacking in secret, there were doubtless men of the village who had been tending the herds in the nearby hills, or at market or outside the village for any other of a hundred reasons, who he would miss in his haste.&nbsp; But their loss was an acceptable one to Shrike.&nbsp; Giving a nod to his captains, he wheeled his horse around to the inn, which had been left standing by his order, there to take food and drink and enjoy the conquests of spoils.&nbsp; There were very many lovely young ladies that had just become his property, after all.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Conquerer (Dingo and Unnatural Selection)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Dingo</strong> on <strong>27-11-2007, 19:36:18</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				Arnan was out hunting, or at least he told his mother he was out hunting rabbits, but that wasn't his intended prey.<br><br>Early that morning he went out tracking his first real man's prey, a full grown boar. Armed with a heavy spear intended for the hunt he quietely went out to make his name that day.<br><br>He was much older than the others in these rights of passage, and if it was up to his mother he would never have even allowed outside of the village to learn to hunt.<br><br>Bear, boar, and wolf. The prey a boy has to take before he's allowed to call himself a man. He already has the bear and the wolf, but now he's after the boar. The most dangerous prey of them all.<br><br>He has been on the track of the beast for nearly all day and he was so close when something spooked the boar and it ran away.<br><br>With a loud curse he almost throws away his spear when he sees a giant plume of smoke coming from the direction of the village.<br><br>He rushes through the woods to get to the village as soon as possible, giving no heed to anything is his way.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Conquerer (Dingo and Unnatural Selection)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Dingo</strong> on <strong>28-11-2007, 00:18:10</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				He rushed through the woods, his long musclar legs taking huge strides, and his broad chest heaving towards the burning village.<br><br>At nightfall he arrived at the edge and he saw the soldiers and what they had done to his village in the red of the setting sun.<br><br>With an angry roar he rushed forward only armed with the heavy boar spear.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Conquerer (Dingo and Unnatural Selection)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Unnatural Selection</strong> on <strong>01-12-2007, 21:12:33</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				His road might well have been the advance warning of his own scouts for the time it gave Shrike and his veterans to respond to Arnan's angry charge.&nbsp; With casual, contemptuous ease, the leader of the raiding party took on of his own men by the shoulder and shoved him in front of him, so that, instead of skewering Shrike through the chest, he instead had to make do with a rather surprised man-at-arms.<br><br>Even as the boar spear lodged itself in the man's bowels, Shrike had drawn his sword, a slender, curving implement that glinted red in the light of the burning village, and struck Arnan about the head.&nbsp; The general's tiny body hid a strength like that of a great brown bear, for the young man was knocked from his feet, colliding with the stone wall of the inn and laying in a crumpled heap, blood clouding his vision as the cut on his head began to bleed, and the world started to fade to black...
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Conquerer (Dingo and Unnatural Selection)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Dingo</strong> on <strong>02-12-2007, 20:15:30</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"Urgh, what .. happened." Arnan moans as his conciousness returns. The entire world spins around him as he opens his eyes and his feels very light even though throbbing with pain. He closes his eyes again and tries to get up, but his body is just too weak from the loss of blood.<br><br><em>"Left for dead."</em> he thinks as a bitter grin appears on his face, <em>"his mistake."</em><br><br>And his world turns black again.<br><br>***<br><br>"It's Arnan!" one man called out the others. "He looks bad, but he survived."<br><br>Soon the other survivors come closer, all wanting to press the unconcious Arnan for anwsers.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Conquerer (Dingo and Unnatural Selection)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Unnatural Selection</strong> on <strong>05-12-2007, 21:15:50</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				Ten, twelve...fourteen.&nbsp; Fourteen alive, of a village of hundreds.&nbsp; They had set up makeshift tents in the clearing nearest the village, for though the fires had burned down, the smell of smoke was still bitter, the air still poisoned and foul, and the carrion birds had started to come for the bodies of the dead, no matter how much they were driven away with arrow or stone. <br><br>Fourteen.&nbsp; Arnan was brought back to consciousness with a bottle of wine, stronger than boys had been allowed, as the men moved back and forth, faces numb with shock, trying to understand how the world had turned upside down so quickly.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Conquerer (Dingo and Unnatural Selection)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Dingo</strong> on <strong>05-12-2007, 21:59:31</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				<em>"This is like hunting the boar. I have to keep my emotions in check. Can't let them go now."</em> Arnan realizes as he takes another gulp of the wine and gets up.<br><br>His legs still wobbly he looks around and smells the stench of smoke and carrion.<br><br>"Get together!" he calls out to the dazed and shocked men. "Split up into two groups. One group goes to gather everything that can burn, the other goes to ... gather the dead."<br><br>He stays quiet for a bit as he puts together the thought he wants to project.<br><br>"We must honor the dead with proper, though improvised burial rights. And then we must avenge them."
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Conquerer (Dingo and Unnatural Selection)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Unnatural Selection</strong> on <strong>05-12-2007, 22:04:22</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				The men, though older than him, and many blooded in brief clashes in the past, though nothing like the totality of this, obey the first confident, commanding voice.&nbsp; Anything to give themselves the illusion of stability, anything to make it seem better.<br><br>They obeyed.&nbsp; Seven gathered unburned wood and dried leaves, lamp oil and the like and made a pyre, while the others gathered the bodies.&nbsp; Every now and then a cry would wring out as a man saw the face of a friend or sibling, wife or child, but the work proceeded.<br><br>Sometime later, one of the men approached him.&nbsp; He had a sword in its sheathe; not village work, and a scrap of fabric.&nbsp; "Arnan, we found these on the body of the..of the one you killed."&nbsp; On the fabric was a painted design of a bird, talons outstretched, diving.&nbsp; The symbol of the one that had done this.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Conquerer (Dingo and Unnatural Selection)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Dingo</strong> on <strong>05-12-2007, 22:09:10</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"Leave him for the birds." Arnan says with venom in his voice as he accepts the sword and the piece of fabric. "As soon as we are done here, we will hunt these bastards down and kill them all. Very .. very slowly."<br><br>Arnan is still dizzy from the loss of blood, but anger and the desire for revenge, as well as the determination to keep these men around keep him standing. His resolve not to let his emotions run rampant keeps him rational, at least a semblance of rationality.
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