Scuff-covered feathered hide mantle edged with hexagonal rolaren studs
This item was a prize from the Hunt for History.
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a scuff-covered feathered hide mantle edged with hexagonal rolaren studs
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The feathers of this mantle originate from a curious eagle from the year 4605 M.E.
Loresong
Part I:
An eagle's view of the world slips by below you as you soar over Turamzzyrian lands far different than modern days, long before the cataclysm sculpted Tempest Falls with natural violence. A quiet voice fills your mind, and you are told as though by a local the brief lore of the surrounding region and era. The age of inland smuggling has blossomed. Emperor Krellove has turned much of his forces toward patrolling the rivers for those secretly supporting his enemies with supplies. Justice is decisive and severe, and the best most men who support these causes can hope for, when caught, is being strung by the heels with their gutted entrails muffling their dying breaths.
The sharp eyes of the vision focus on a quick-moving shape in the river below, cutting a sleek wake through the crystalline waters. By the dark-stained narrow hull and scrambling occupants it appears to be a smuggler's vessel. The hectic mania evident on the deck of the smuggler's cutter becomes apparent as the view rotates to see downstream, and a large imperial ship giving dogged chase.
Slowly the images fade from your mind's eye, and you settle deeply back into your body.
As your song envelops the mantle, a heavy murk washes over your vision, darkening and pulling you downwards.
A momentary sensation of weightlessness precedes the return of the eagle-eye view of the river to your eyes, and the vision reforms of the smugglers and the chasing soldiers. The cutter is pulling farther away from the heavier Imperials, and soon it passes out of sight around a long bend in the river. The captain of the ship below stands in the prow, leaning outwards as if the extra hand-lengths would avail him a view of his escaped quarry.
Slowing to a stop and turning lazily to starboard, the vessel prepares to return downriver. Turning far less lazily from his vantage, the enraged imperial captain spins and begins to bellow commands and stomp back toward the helm. His step falters, however, as he notices a man sneaking along the roadside beside the river, darting clumsily from bush to bush. His bright orange pantaloons bulge at the legs oddly, as if stuffed with contraband.
Spears of color jar you from the vision, and your voice falters.
As the pitch of your melody pierces the mantle, a slow tug becomes a deep pulling sensation from within your chest.
Streams of light twirl and wind about each other like a blazing dance of comets, and the bright retinal burns left on your eyes darken and then resolve into the branches of a tree. From your vantage in the boughs you see a rowboat loaded with soldiers slurping into the weedy shore of the river, and the men leaping to the land with weapons at the ready. Dashing over the pliant waterside greenery with unforgiving imperial issue steel-shod boots, the men quickly form into a circle around a nervously quivering bush positioned by the wheel-rutted road. With a nod from the sergeant, one of the soldiers unlimbers a spear from his back-sheaths and gives the shaking foliage a sharp prod in the nether regions.
A wild yelp splits the air, and from within the leafy confines erupts the sneaking man seen before, trying to rub his leg through the oddly bulging pantaloons. Shifting immediately to a defensive posture, the man demands a reason for the errant poking. Noticing the curious glances at his extremely odd apparel, the man reaches down one of his pantlegs and produces a rumpled head of cabbage. As the soldiers roll their eyes and begin to lower their weapons, the man makes a sarcastic remark about cabbage smuggling. Suddenly, the soldiers' swords return to bear on the surprised man.
Light convulses into brilliant flashes that leave you momentarily blinded, and then slowly your vision returns.
The vibrato of your voice echoes back at you from the mantle, lulling you into a peaceful trance.
Fresh wind caresses the skin of your face, coercing your eyes to close for a brief instant. When they reopen the skies again host your perspective, and the Imperial Guard vessel is slicing downriver with renewed vigor. Swooping down to a parallel vantage beside the ship, you can see the cabbage man from before, slightly more bruised, staring through the bars of a narrow window in the hold. His arms bear manacles and his face a mask of panic, yet his eyes project great confusion and regret.
Behind him in the small holding chamber are two other men, massive and scar-mangled, swaddled in customary river pirate regalia. They seem far from impressed with the new addition to their sullen club, and they stare hot bars of murder at the man cringing at the porthole. A mammoth of a smuggler heaves into view behind the frightened man. With a delicateness belying the cracked and beaten mush that is his face he leans over and plants a huge wet smooch on the cheek of the frightened man, an innocuous yet disturbing harbinger of the waiting life in the dungeons.
Twisting away from the horror of your vision, you feebly attempt to halt your melody, desperately aching to return to the safety of your reality.
Part II:
Singing to the mantle, twinges of pain flutter across your eyes. As your voice delves into the hide and feathers, you blink with the escalating agony.
Neither the cool air currents nor the gentle sway of the river ease you into the vision this time. A wash of spice, sweat, and stink collides with your senses like the inexorable crush of a landslide. Frolicking colored lights toy with your equilibrium before resolving into dozens of soldiers and merchants crowding a city dock. The orange-pantalooned quasi-smuggler is being roughly ushered onto the planks along with a handful of seasoned ne'er-do-wells from the brig. Stepping up to the first prisoner at the far end of the line, an officer of the Emperor demands curtly to hear the crimes of the man before him.
After a list of charges has been read, the pirate spits at the feet of the soldiers and prepares a sneer for his sentencing. In a smooth, almost conversational tone, the officer assigns the scallywag to be transported to the personal Inquisitor of the Emperor. Down the line faces clench in abstract and sudden dread, and the sentenced pirate collapses to his knees begging for death. Kicking the groveling man aside, the officer continues down the line of men, issuing the words sealing them from freedom by means most horrible. Quivering like a shorn lamb lain in snow, the cabbage smuggler at the end is beginning to weep.
As you dissolve from the scene that is playing out before you, the remnants of your song linger in the air for the merest moment longer.
Voicing the melodic cadence of your song, your throat slowly constricts, and you feverishly clutch the mantle as your eyes swim.
Carving away your sensory awareness like a butcher hewing meat from bone, the visions again intrude into your mind and place themselves between you and the world. The anticipated moment has arrived on the creaking docks, the soft-spoken officer finally stepping up before the cowering man in his orange pantaloons. The prisoner straightens and meets the surgical gaze of the officer, and while the short list of charges is read they stare at each other silently, two eyes of fear and two of calculation.
When the Imperial quietly asks the man what he can say as defense, the proverbial damn is broken, and a flood of whimpered utterances erupt from the tear-streaked fake smuggler. He admits to stealing cabbages, but for his own hunger, not for adversarial foreign bellies. He admits to fleeing the farm, stuffing the cabbages in the only container he had, his own pantaloons. He admits to his misplaced sarcasm, he admits to skulking without official sanction, in fact, he admits that he will admit to anything. His gibbering trails off and dies, and the silence-bound staring contest again resumes between him and the officer.
Moments pass, eons to the condemned and timeless to those farther down the line, and suddenly the officer chuckles. He shakes his head with amusement, pulling the man from the line and walking him down the worn boards of the dock. The officer admonishes him for stealing and suggests perhaps a tighter set of lips to prevent further misunderstandings. With an almost heartfelt-seeming wish to have a nice, long swim home, the officer propels the man from the edge of the dock to land spluttering in the water below.
The view resolves down into the merest pinpoint of light, and a slow hissing sound fades into the background as you reawaken.
As you sing, a soft humming resonance comes from the mantle, mixing with your melody and swelling with power.
With almost an ease of familiarity, your perceptions meld again with your visual host and a scene splays before you. From a perch atop a low branch you can see the man heaving himself up onto the riverbank, his troublemaking omnipresent pantaloons drenched and stained with mud. A grumble from above his waistline is a not-so-gentle reminder of his woeful lack of sustenance, and he begins to forage around for something to appease his aching stomach. He roots through bush and weed, crawling around the ground and momentarily beneath your line of sight. Suddenly, the man's face is directly in front of you, and two pruned, waterlogged hands reach toward you!
*Squawk!*
*SNAP!*
Your vision blurs as the world seems to lurch wildly around and a poof of dust rises as you are roughly pinned to the ground. The man reaches out toward your limp form, pulling handfuls of noble feathers from your body, and a trickle of drool breaks free of his mouth as your world darkens and turns black. You have a brief out-of-body sensation and then a blurry glimpse of the man sitting at a small fire, roasting an eagle. Your last sight is of the man admiring your once-pristine plumage, placing the quills roughly in his pocket and one in his hat.
You are left with a niggling suspicion that this man will be abstaining from his vegetables for years to come.
The vision winks out suddenly and you find yourself reeling for balance.