Post by Dredka on Apr 23, 2019 19:38:22 GMT
The Field of Triumph was very different to the slave pens in which Dredka had earned the scars that criss-crossed her body beneath the patchwork of metal, fur and spiked chain that wrapped her green-skinned form. Death, she was led to believe, was a rarity here rather than the norm. This was an arena built in the name of competition and sport, not so that a brutal upper class could relish the death of their slave caste.
She was too old to change her ways now.
That was what she told herself as she stepped out onto the field. She had been fighting for decades. She despised those who made her do it; who had profited from the tapestry of misery now writ large across her skin, but that did not mean that she could stop doing it. It was a physical need within her; a hunger which demanded that it be satisfied. If not for this outlet, she’d only wind up getting herself in deeper trouble elsewhere in the City.
“From distant lands, a newcomer to the Field!” The announcer’s magically-enhanced voice boomed for the midday crowd. She was a warm-up act. She had yet to make her name here. Perhaps she never would. She knew little about the competition she was likely to face in this distant land. For all their vaunted civility, perhaps she would bleed out her last on the sand here, and that would be an end to it.
“Dredka! Chain! Breaker!”
She did not know these people. She did not know these lands. But she knew the Arena. It was a universal constant, and as she was announced, she strode, tall and proud, so that the civilians could see her form.
There were whispers, uncertainty, curiosity. She was tall, heavily-muscled, and garbed with those viciously spiked chains she had taken from the slavers that had bound her for so long. They wove across corded muscle and scarred green flesh, they coiled about dreadlocks the colour of dried blood. Her face was brutal. Hard. Her tusks were pronounced, her brow heavy-set, her ears long and pierced with tokens of triumph and conquest.
She was the monster that so many peasants feared, and with good reason. But she did not hunch; she held herself with purpose, and power. As they tried to gauge her, the woman threw her head back, and BELLOWED.
Her roar almost seemed to shake the ground, and she raised her fists to the sky in pantomime fury. She was terrifying, chilling… and utterly glorious. Her shout sent shivers up the spines of the gathered crowd, and then the announcer continued.
“We have a clash of the beasts today, it seems! Dredka will be starting against a favourite… KAG!”
The roar which echoed the pronouncement was coupled with the heavy portcullis opposite her being lifted by an enormous hand. The creature that lumbered out onto the field was half again her height, wore only a loincloth, and carried a massive fencepost in one hand as he emerged squinting into the daylight.
There was no mistaking the lank hair and bulbous, distended stomach. Kag was an ogre. They really were pitting her against a potent foe. Apparently, she had done too good a job convincing the organisers of her prior prowess.
He roared to answer her shout, and Dredka felt her palms itch. She’d wanted battle, hadn’t she? It looked like she was going to get it.
The bell rang, and the ogre immediately came charging towards her. Quick as a flash, one of her javelins was in her hand, and she flung it at the charging monster. The sharpened stake dug into the monster’s shoulder, but didn’t even slow his stride as he closed the sixty feet between them as though it were a mild jog, sprays of sand kicked up all around.
Dredka’s hands wrenched her axe free from the chains, and she greeted the giantkin with a glancing blow across his thigh, drawing a thin streak of blood as she managed to cut through toughened hide and into the meat beneath.
Unfortunately, her clever attempt to roll to the side of the charging monster was neatly undone with a wild swing of his makeshift club. The weapon caught her under the chin, and she was lifted bodily to her feet to smash down into the sand, her head ringing as though it were a struck bell. If it weren’t for the adrenalin coursing through her veins, that alone might have spelled the end of the battle before it had even begun.
But Dredka’s fury was always close at hand. Her shout of defiance was flecked with blood as she tore back to her feet, and this time, there was no intellect in the motion, no attempt to think or plan. She simply hewed her axe into the ogre’s side as though she were attempting to cut down a tree.
The crowd shouted their approval. It had looked for a moment as though the fight was going to be over before it had even begun; how glad they were that this wasn’t the case. The ogre’s roar of pain and anger mirrored the bellowing orc, and the two monstrous warriors fell upon each other with bestial fury.
Her axe flashed out again and again. It was rare that she was the more nimble competitor, but here her gladiator’s training worked to her advantage, the orcish warrior’s axe carved through the top half-foot of the enormous weapon on its next downswing, sending a hunk of wood spiralling off into the dirt before the axe completed its momentous swing into Kag’s foot.
A vicious punch in return had her stagger, her head whipped to the side, her tusk cracked by the impact of the blow. She took a savage satisfaction in the tearing of his calloused knuckles against her bone, and spat blood and fragments into his face before she managed to rip the axe free from his foot and slam it with all the force she could muster into his belly.
This was not the sort of match that the genteel crowds were used to seeing. This was not the flashy sport and joyous expression of craft that the Field of Triumph ordinarily played host to. This was pure rage. Dredka and her ogre competitor traded blows back and forth that would have killed weaker beings, and for a moment, Dredka thought that she had done just that.
Blood poured from the ogre’s flesh from the wounds inflicted. Deep, dark gashes carved through toughened flesh. His skin was rough, but her axe was sharp. She had honed it to a razor’s edge, and she was not accustomed to pulling her blows. She could feel how close she was to her own defeat. The edges of her vision were dark. It was only the hot wellspring of her rage which kept her on her feet.
And then her opponent roared once more, and brought the club smashing down in a heavy, overhanded blow, both meaty fists wrapped about it.
The thunderclap of the impact rang in Dredka’s ears, and she groaned as she hit the dirt. The axe tumbled from her fingers, bound to her arm by the lashed chains, but even her capacity for punishment had its limits.
She pushed against the sand for a second longer, and then she went limp.
When she awoke, she saw immediately that the heralded differences were not lies. Her wounds had been tended to with expert hands, and one of the staff was there to greet her as consciousness was restored. She grunted as the young acolyte moved to help her up to her feet, and waved him off, standing under her own power.
“That was a good performance.” He said, enthusiastically. “You might not have won, but I’d wager you’ll have people vying to sponsor you from here on!”
The word was unfamiliar. It didn’t help that her head ached, and his energetic, cheerful voice grated on her ears. Her head was still filled with the pounding rush of combat. Her limbs ached with receding adrenalin. Her lips framed the word slowly.
“Sponsor?”
“Oh yes.” He said, nodding sagely, “The nobility love a fighter with a touch of… exoticism, if you don’t mind me saying so. You made quite an impression just holding your ground against old Kag. I daresay they’ll want to put their name on yours, cross your palm with silver and take the glory for your future victories.”
Her expression was a dark cloud before the storm. Her eyes the promise of lightning as she rose to her full height, and reached down, plucking up her axe from where it lay next to her cot, and beginning to wrap the spiked chains once more about its haft.
“No.”
The young man looked perplexed, as though he genuinely couldn’t understand the very simple word she’d just said.
“What do you mean no?” he scoffed, “Everyone wants sponsorship! That’s what the Field is all about! Gold and glory!”
She held her arm up in front of her face. She saw where her axe had carved through the steel. Every night she had been kept warm by her hatred alone. Every day that rage had filled the pit in her stomach where there was no food. Every moment where her life or death balanced on the edge of someone else’s steel; every drop of blood soaked up by uncaring, thirsty sands for the entertainment of those who would call her betters.
It had taken all of that, a lifetime of it, to shatter those chains.
“No.”
She repeated the word, and with a hard shove, she pushed past the confused acolyte.
“But, but, don’t you even want your purse?!”
The tremulous query followed her into the hallway as she began the long walk back to her filthy tavern room, there to drink deep and eat well and sleep on a bed, even if it was one too small for her enormous frame.
A purse? She hadn’t earned a purse as well.
She would take it when she came back and stood over Kag’s prone body.
(Wordcount: 1690)
(The fight rolls etc are below, because I am a massive dork)
Init: Md6XrIdJ1d20+2
E Init: 1d20-11d20+2·1d20-1
She was too old to change her ways now.
That was what she told herself as she stepped out onto the field. She had been fighting for decades. She despised those who made her do it; who had profited from the tapestry of misery now writ large across her skin, but that did not mean that she could stop doing it. It was a physical need within her; a hunger which demanded that it be satisfied. If not for this outlet, she’d only wind up getting herself in deeper trouble elsewhere in the City.
“From distant lands, a newcomer to the Field!” The announcer’s magically-enhanced voice boomed for the midday crowd. She was a warm-up act. She had yet to make her name here. Perhaps she never would. She knew little about the competition she was likely to face in this distant land. For all their vaunted civility, perhaps she would bleed out her last on the sand here, and that would be an end to it.
“Dredka! Chain! Breaker!”
She did not know these people. She did not know these lands. But she knew the Arena. It was a universal constant, and as she was announced, she strode, tall and proud, so that the civilians could see her form.
There were whispers, uncertainty, curiosity. She was tall, heavily-muscled, and garbed with those viciously spiked chains she had taken from the slavers that had bound her for so long. They wove across corded muscle and scarred green flesh, they coiled about dreadlocks the colour of dried blood. Her face was brutal. Hard. Her tusks were pronounced, her brow heavy-set, her ears long and pierced with tokens of triumph and conquest.
She was the monster that so many peasants feared, and with good reason. But she did not hunch; she held herself with purpose, and power. As they tried to gauge her, the woman threw her head back, and BELLOWED.
Her roar almost seemed to shake the ground, and she raised her fists to the sky in pantomime fury. She was terrifying, chilling… and utterly glorious. Her shout sent shivers up the spines of the gathered crowd, and then the announcer continued.
“We have a clash of the beasts today, it seems! Dredka will be starting against a favourite… KAG!”
The roar which echoed the pronouncement was coupled with the heavy portcullis opposite her being lifted by an enormous hand. The creature that lumbered out onto the field was half again her height, wore only a loincloth, and carried a massive fencepost in one hand as he emerged squinting into the daylight.
There was no mistaking the lank hair and bulbous, distended stomach. Kag was an ogre. They really were pitting her against a potent foe. Apparently, she had done too good a job convincing the organisers of her prior prowess.
He roared to answer her shout, and Dredka felt her palms itch. She’d wanted battle, hadn’t she? It looked like she was going to get it.
The bell rang, and the ogre immediately came charging towards her. Quick as a flash, one of her javelins was in her hand, and she flung it at the charging monster. The sharpened stake dug into the monster’s shoulder, but didn’t even slow his stride as he closed the sixty feet between them as though it were a mild jog, sprays of sand kicked up all around.
Dredka’s hands wrenched her axe free from the chains, and she greeted the giantkin with a glancing blow across his thigh, drawing a thin streak of blood as she managed to cut through toughened hide and into the meat beneath.
Unfortunately, her clever attempt to roll to the side of the charging monster was neatly undone with a wild swing of his makeshift club. The weapon caught her under the chin, and she was lifted bodily to her feet to smash down into the sand, her head ringing as though it were a struck bell. If it weren’t for the adrenalin coursing through her veins, that alone might have spelled the end of the battle before it had even begun.
But Dredka’s fury was always close at hand. Her shout of defiance was flecked with blood as she tore back to her feet, and this time, there was no intellect in the motion, no attempt to think or plan. She simply hewed her axe into the ogre’s side as though she were attempting to cut down a tree.
The crowd shouted their approval. It had looked for a moment as though the fight was going to be over before it had even begun; how glad they were that this wasn’t the case. The ogre’s roar of pain and anger mirrored the bellowing orc, and the two monstrous warriors fell upon each other with bestial fury.
Her axe flashed out again and again. It was rare that she was the more nimble competitor, but here her gladiator’s training worked to her advantage, the orcish warrior’s axe carved through the top half-foot of the enormous weapon on its next downswing, sending a hunk of wood spiralling off into the dirt before the axe completed its momentous swing into Kag’s foot.
A vicious punch in return had her stagger, her head whipped to the side, her tusk cracked by the impact of the blow. She took a savage satisfaction in the tearing of his calloused knuckles against her bone, and spat blood and fragments into his face before she managed to rip the axe free from his foot and slam it with all the force she could muster into his belly.
This was not the sort of match that the genteel crowds were used to seeing. This was not the flashy sport and joyous expression of craft that the Field of Triumph ordinarily played host to. This was pure rage. Dredka and her ogre competitor traded blows back and forth that would have killed weaker beings, and for a moment, Dredka thought that she had done just that.
Blood poured from the ogre’s flesh from the wounds inflicted. Deep, dark gashes carved through toughened flesh. His skin was rough, but her axe was sharp. She had honed it to a razor’s edge, and she was not accustomed to pulling her blows. She could feel how close she was to her own defeat. The edges of her vision were dark. It was only the hot wellspring of her rage which kept her on her feet.
And then her opponent roared once more, and brought the club smashing down in a heavy, overhanded blow, both meaty fists wrapped about it.
The thunderclap of the impact rang in Dredka’s ears, and she groaned as she hit the dirt. The axe tumbled from her fingers, bound to her arm by the lashed chains, but even her capacity for punishment had its limits.
She pushed against the sand for a second longer, and then she went limp.
When she awoke, she saw immediately that the heralded differences were not lies. Her wounds had been tended to with expert hands, and one of the staff was there to greet her as consciousness was restored. She grunted as the young acolyte moved to help her up to her feet, and waved him off, standing under her own power.
“That was a good performance.” He said, enthusiastically. “You might not have won, but I’d wager you’ll have people vying to sponsor you from here on!”
The word was unfamiliar. It didn’t help that her head ached, and his energetic, cheerful voice grated on her ears. Her head was still filled with the pounding rush of combat. Her limbs ached with receding adrenalin. Her lips framed the word slowly.
“Sponsor?”
“Oh yes.” He said, nodding sagely, “The nobility love a fighter with a touch of… exoticism, if you don’t mind me saying so. You made quite an impression just holding your ground against old Kag. I daresay they’ll want to put their name on yours, cross your palm with silver and take the glory for your future victories.”
Her expression was a dark cloud before the storm. Her eyes the promise of lightning as she rose to her full height, and reached down, plucking up her axe from where it lay next to her cot, and beginning to wrap the spiked chains once more about its haft.
“No.”
The young man looked perplexed, as though he genuinely couldn’t understand the very simple word she’d just said.
“What do you mean no?” he scoffed, “Everyone wants sponsorship! That’s what the Field is all about! Gold and glory!”
She held her arm up in front of her face. She saw where her axe had carved through the steel. Every night she had been kept warm by her hatred alone. Every day that rage had filled the pit in her stomach where there was no food. Every moment where her life or death balanced on the edge of someone else’s steel; every drop of blood soaked up by uncaring, thirsty sands for the entertainment of those who would call her betters.
It had taken all of that, a lifetime of it, to shatter those chains.
“No.”
She repeated the word, and with a hard shove, she pushed past the confused acolyte.
“But, but, don’t you even want your purse?!”
The tremulous query followed her into the hallway as she began the long walk back to her filthy tavern room, there to drink deep and eat well and sleep on a bed, even if it was one too small for her enormous frame.
A purse? She hadn’t earned a purse as well.
She would take it when she came back and stood over Kag’s prone body.
(Wordcount: 1690)
(The fight rolls etc are below, because I am a massive dork)
Init: Md6XrIdJ1d20+2
E Init: 1d20-11d20+2·1d20-1
