Nar's Fantasy Setting

[0111narwhalz]

I guess this is as good a naming convention as any.

Table of contents:
Opportunity

• Opportunity 1
• Opportunity 2
• Opportunity 3

[0111narwhalz]

"Make way!"

Torrovauh stopped short as a stick swished before his face. The youth holding it smiled apologetically before trotting to the other side of the street to wave it there instead. He looked to his right: a great slab of blue limestone, an armspan wide and three times his height, hung from the rope above. It moved at only a brisk walking pace, though the power in something so large was formidable.

As it passed, the lewisman sitting atop the slab nodded down to him, blowing a puff of pipesmoke. Torrovauh raised a hand in reply.

The cleared street afforded him a good view of the hunter's usual haunt: a drinking house at the base of the ropeway's last tower before the quarry. Bare limestone without mortar, carved ornately in the imperial style. Like the rest of the stonecutter's village, it was well maintained and clean. Even the Ueyimalacatal's satellites, though austere, remembered their heritage. It was more than Torrovauh could say for Venstrom.

He entered through the open door, and the sound of conversation stilled. The sun-scoured men stared, but he forgave them. His coat was likely the most color they'd seen in weeks; nearly all the villagers wore the coarse, undyed city-cloth that was Ueyimalacatl's greater export. Back unbent despite their attention, he approached the counter.

"Not many travelers here." The barkeep operated some contraption which sprayed water into an upturned mug as she spoke. "Hope you like the local style."

"I'm not here to drink," he said levelly.

"Then why, in the name of the Spindle, are you in my drinking-house?"

"I'm looking for someone. Do you know a Janatl?"

She placed the mug on the counter with a clack. "I don't take kindly to folks harassing my guests, let alone my best customer."

He matched the gesture, a finger prodding at the wood. "There are stakes greater than your coffer here. Lives."

"You expect me to believe any old sob story?"

"I can also try authority, if you'd prefer." Torrovauh produced a seal: a jaguar creeping from the forest on one side, and a tangle of burning sails and spines upon a desolate wasteland on the other. "I am a member of a certain society, and by treaty that grants me limited powers within the Ueyimalacatl's lands. I would not recommend testing those limits."

She stared at the seal. "You just carry that thing around? Don't you worry that someone will try to steal it from you?"

"Try? Perhaps." He retracted the seal. "Where is Janatl?"

Rattled, she ran a hand through her hair and pointed to a table in a quiet corner. "Always the same place. He doesn't mix much."

Torrovauh nodded.

The man who slouched there regarded him steadily with hooded eyes. A mug of pulque rested on the table beneath a protective hand. Torrovauh noted a scabbard on his hip, empty. He sighed heavily when Torrovauh approached.

"I ain't half drunk enough for this shit," he muttered.

Torrovauh pulled a chair and sat. "You are Janatl, yes? Torrovauh. I have a hunt for you, a unique opportunity."

"What'll it be this time? Daughter ran off with the wrong lordling and you want him murdered? Farmers not paying their taxes? Augur giving you bad dreams? I'm bored of hunting men."

"No. Something you've never hunted before."

Janatl scoffed. "I sincerely doubt that."

Wordlessly, Torrovauh pulled a corundum rod from an inner coat pocket. Its end hit the table with a thud. Light danced beneath fluting facets.

Janatl stared at it. "Is that… Glazier's bone?"

"It is."

He straightened immediately, threw back his drink, and stood. "You killed a fucking Glazier? Where am I supposed to get good pulque if this place is cinders?"

Torrovauh spared a glance towards the barkeep. She looked away. He turned back.

"I'm afraid it wasn't up to us," he said with a sad smile. "The Mother has been busy this year. Last month, Venstrohemna burned. This was recovered from one of the two Glaziers felled by the garrison during the attack. As far as anyone can tell, it was unprovoked."

"And your little armies?"

"Are terribly underequipped for miasma and Glazier armor. If they meet on the field of battle, they will be devastated." He gestured vaguely. "Unless, of course, there were a substantial delay in the Glazier advance, one long enough to produce and distribute the air-lances and breathing masks they need. Perhaps such a delay could be achieved by twenty of our most skilled men—"

"Fifty."

"Pardon?"

Janatl sighed again and sat down. All the earlier traces of drunkenness were gone, his posture now straight-backed and his eyes focused. "I know what I'm worth: fifty of your best men." He inclined his head. "And I expect to be paid as such."

"Very well," Torrovauh agreed easily. It was no difficulty to pay a dead man, and if he lived then it was a matter of convincing the rest of the signatories to bear the burden.

His eyes narrowed. "In billet, up front."

Torrovauh frowned. So much metal was a significant fraction of Venstrom's treasury. "Normally we'd pay our men in coin, or maybe trade gems. Surely you'd like something more… portable?"

"Absolutely not. I need steel. Can't fight a Glazier with no blade, can I?" He spread his hands, then thought for a moment. "Well, maybe one. But that's not what you're asking of me, is it?"

"You'll have full access to our armory—"

"Your iron? You've already said you don't have what it takes. I need a real smith's work, and there's only one of those around here."

"You can't mean the forge saint? Nobody's seen her for decades."

"Ah, don't worry about that. Athame and I go way back. Listen, I'll need a week or two to get everything together, and that starts after I'm paid."

Torrovauh huffed. "You're lucky you're good."

"So are you."

[0111narwhalz]

"O Forge Saint, I beseech thee, make me a sword!"

The voice struck Athame from her meditation. "You make one cursed blade…" she grumbled, and threw the shutter open to look down the path.

On the path, just outside hammer-throwing range, stood Janatl. He was loaded with a heavy pack, an empty scabbard, and a shit-eating grin. As her hand moved for a drift with good ballistics, her eye caught the earthen jar at his feet.

"Is that chicha?" she asked warily.

"It is," he said. "Do you still have your qero?"

She glanced to the shelf where the ornately carved cup stood. "Maybe I burnt it for coals. Fuel costs out here."

Janatl bent to pick up the jar. "A shame. I guess I'll have to share this with someone else, then."

"Ha! If you had another drinking buddy, you wouldn't be on my doorstep. Get in here."

---

The two of them sat in a cool corner of the smithy. Athame had brought out two cushions, and sat straight-backed on hers. Janatl sprawled, his back braced on his pack. They made it halfway through the chicha before the real talk started.

Janatl looked at the tools standing in a rack beside the door: rakes and shovels, mattocks and a ploughshare, a sledge and a felling axe. He knew the drawers next to that contained a variety of increasingly specific carpentry tools; the local cooper thought himself something of an artist. Not a single weapon of war in her inventory, and hadn't been for years.

"Do you know where it is?"

"Bisection? No, not exactly. Last I heard, it was across the sea, getting into another bloodbath." She sighed. "I should have turned it to nails when I had the chance."

"Ah well. I guess I don't have the time to go questing anyway."

Athame stared at him. "You come to me for the first time in three years, with the old fire in you again, and now you ask after Bisection." She drained what remained in her qero. "Are you going to do something monumentally stupid?"

Janatl clutched his chest. "Ah! I thought you knew me better than to ask that. Of course I am."

"You've found something new to hunt."

"No." He rummaged in his pack. "Something old. All those years of talk…"

The chunk of Glazier's bone hit the floor between them. Janatl's eyes pierced her.

"It's time, Athame."

[Fawkes]

Under the assumption that I am allowed to post in the thread...

Let me start off with me thinking back to all the descriptions, explanations, drawings, snippets, etc you have created over the years...

So using this meta-knowledge, I claim that you got the worldbuilding down.

As for the two scenes you posted:
It reads like a proper start to a story / book. Scenes that are familiar enough to get into the mindset quickly, but with enough details and names thrown in that keep it from being mundane. You also have a solid writing style that feels engaging.

Admittedly also a mark of many good stories....the reader does not have the information the characters have.
For one, heck is a Glazier? It sounds like a dragon, but I cannot know for sure

All in all, I like what you put into words at this point, and future snippets or a continuous storyline would be neat to read

[0111narwhalz]

At last, my agitating bears fruit. Yes, you are encouraged to post in the thread!

As for the two scenes you posted:
It reads like a proper start to a story / book. Scenes that are familiar enough to get into the mindset quickly, but with enough details and names thrown in that keep it from being mundane. You also have a solid writing style that feels engaging.

Thanks! I hope to continue this sequence. It might not last too long (I have a limited amount of plot juice) but it'd be nice to have something at least a little bit longer-form than usual.

For one, heck is a Glazier? It sounds like a dragon, but I cannot know for sure

You may find out soon…

[Hekx]

I think you posted the first scene in discord at some point.
I agree with Fawkes, you seem to have a good grasp of describing stuff but not too much so it becomes boring, more setting the environment. The prose keeps moving and is not repetitive.

Is this meant to be part of a short story or a longer novel? If it would be a novel, it seems to be going very quick, but it might be fine depending on what else all needs to go in there. I'm not bothered by it at this point but I can see it becoming too fast if this keeps up (i.e. "nobody has seen her in years" one sentence further, bam, there she is.). At this point it's still ok though, you don't want to add unnecessary fluff right at the start. But I know you most want criticism and that's the closest I can get

[0111narwhalz]

Is this meant to be part of a short story or a longer novel? If it would be a novel, it seems to be going very quick, but it might be fine depending on what else all needs to go in there. I'm not bothered by it at this point but I can see it becoming too fast if this keeps up (i.e. "nobody has seen her in years" one sentence further, bam, there she is.). At this point it's still ok though, you don't want to add unnecessary fluff right at the start. But I know you most want criticism and that's the closest I can get

I absolutely do not have the attention span to write a novel, so it will run as long as it must and no longer.

Athame hasn't been recognized in years, but Janatl already knows where she lives :V

[Dinosawer]

I remember that first part from Discord! I look forward to reading whatever rest there will be

[0111narwhalz]

A week of long days and longer nights laboring over the forge had left Athame red-eyed and weary. But the weapon she had made was just what she and Janatl had planned so long ago, never quite believing it would be needed.

The oversized pair of shears had something of a sword in them, despite their shape. The two handles were stacked one atop the other, and a glassbreaking cone made a fine pommel. The blades were hinged with a polished brass rivet, and their edges bore serrations, each carefully filed to neatly hold a thread of the Glazier's mantle-cloth. Athame had engraved Janatl's greatest hunts upon the spine: here soared a two-headed bird wreathed in storm-clouds, there strutted a reptilian beast with a faceless rider.

His human marks were not represented. She knew his pride in them had long ago soured. They would have no place on his memorial, if he had a choice in the matter.

"Bring it back," she said, handing him a work of art. "When its work is done. I want to be sure it doesn't get a taste like the other one." Her face was stiff. It was painful to make an expression because of a forge burn, she had explained.

"Of course," he replied, taking a keen tool. "I wouldn't deny its destiny to be made into nails." And they parted, his heart light.

The heat and smoke of the forge had stopped mattering to Athame decades ago.

---

Janatl and Torrovauh arrived at the ruined Venstrohemna a week later. Janatl almost expected a curl of smoke, though it had been nearly two months. Still, the stripped skeleton of a Glazier remained partway through a breach in the wall, and the peaked mantle of the second was visible over the town. Presumably the survivors had other priorities.

Janatl insisted upon circling around the town before meeting with the townsfolk. Torrovauh shrugged, said something about his duty, and left him to it. That was fine. He was no longer really paying attention to the noble anyway.

The wall had multiple breaches, each one torn through like a burst dam. Stones had been thrown inwards, through houses and bouncing over streets. Some of them were as big as him, though none nearly the size that the Ueyimalacatl's quarries produced. Siege wyrm, then. That also explained the sharp-edged trenches at intervals in the field outside the walls, and some of the scorch marks.

Glazier tracks were everywhere. It had rained since the battle, but not enough to erase the narrow pits of their stilt-like limbs and abrasions of hanging mantle-sails entirely. It was impossible to discern their true numbers, but he counted half a dozen distinct gaits.

He came to the Glazier corpse in the breach. It still had most of its spears and blades; a pike urchin. Some of the glass spikes were drenched in blood, still bright red even this long after drying. Probably it had been killed by air-lances, breathable air burning out its vital organs. Several of its leg-spines had been truncated after its death, cut for tokens like the one Torrovauh had presented to him.

The question of where its mantle had gone was answered when he entered the town. Not one building within the town was unscathed, though a scarce few were still standing. Pieces of the urchin's mantle were tied over their roofs and across new windows.

The largest piece was strung between the stone ground floor walls of three burnt-out buildings, forming a sort of pavilion. It was there that Torrovauh held court with some fifty ash-stained townsfolk. Torrovauh's eyes met Janatl's as he scanned the scene, but he did not demand his attendance, so Janatl moved on.

The residue of Glazier miasma was everywhere not washed clean by the rain or the locals. Wood, stone, and crockery shone as though gilded, and in some places an oily red liquid collected in droplets. Janatl took care not to touch any of it, and closed up his mask. The axolotl gills would purify any trace of miasma that remained.

The second Glazier corpse was nearly the size of a temple, though he struggled to name it. It was the size of the largest Glaziers known beyond the Valley, the military haulers, but they had more legs and carried rows of ampoules filled with ichor and liquid miasma. This one sagged on just eight leg-spines, its distended mantle laying on the ground. A mesmerizing bluish flame danced over the surface of the mantle. Janatl did not stay close to work out what had killed it. Besides the miasma risk, he was not confident that it was entirely dead.

By the time he returned to the pavilion, Torrovauh had apparently finished. The people turned towards him, faces too exhausted for despair. It was Janatl's turn.