9th Transmission:
… is essentially the study of how power is accumulated by individuals, the varying ways this manifests, and the effects it has both on the individual and the circumstances around them.
He continues: “The dragon’s hoard is perhaps our best observable example of this dynamic at play. Value exists throughout people’s lives in small things: coins, baubles, means of personal defense and the like. Practical things put to use without much thought. The hoard, the prize, the adventurer’s invoice, the need to effect some mobility in one’s life begins the change of practical value to potential, and in this way power can be transferred and accumulated.”
-Con’td from a back issue of the Knight’s Almanac
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There’s a bit of a goblin problem in Port Orbital. Thremp Fontaine was one possible solution. He liked to think he understood goblin behavior patterns well enough. Desperation, you see, was the hinge point of most people, monsters, beasts and fiends that roamed the world. Every living being was capable of experiencing a desperate situation, and how they reacted could reveal their very nature. Thremp had practical experience that showed that goblin desperation was a constant and tense thing. Their little minds wound up tight like a steel trap to be sprung in the most innocuous of circumstances.
It was better to simply set them off and deal with the violence than to tiptoe around it or disarm it.
Thremp was a tall and lean young thing who at this moment stalked the plains outside Port Orbital, its twisting spire of coiled streets and buildings silhouetted black against the hazy purple of the night sky. In this darkness, Thremp hoped to come upon an active goblin hunting party, slay a large portion and follow any survivors back to whatever stronghold they had put together. Tar soaked leather chords wrapped his body and scabbards, swallowing the moon’s light. The steel of The Whispy Stingers, his twin rapiers, would shine bright in the moon for but a fleeting moment before cloaked once more in blood. Thremp had not yet swung on the hinge of the desperate. He was a soul of stone cold cunning.
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A soft firelight glow hazed on the water, where the river cuts its most wide and shallow on the approach to the Port. Thremp watched at distance, where rocky hills made hallways for the hidden. It was a questioning ambient light, a cautious novelty to it that held Thremp from approaching or moving along. He knew a sight like this would compel only one course of action from his desperate quarry.
When the goblins approached the light, a dance of sound and shadows began. Thremp saw it had not been a singular glow but a collection of dozens that hung about the river’s surface. They began to zip through the air with a whistle, one by one. A loud pop and a pained silhouette of small stature cast into the night as each small glow struck. More moving shadows and the sound of clambering metal as Thremp skulked even closer.
A quick moving figure atop what was perhaps a boulder that had been rolled into the water. Spinning and hurling these little pin-pricks of gentle glow, they caused whipcrack explosions on their targets. This figure defended the rock they stood on best they could, but despite several now-burning victims of the magic flames they cast into the night, more pulled past and began clambering. Where some might see the play of nightmares, Thremp saw both opportunity and interruption. The Whispy Stingers would fly quickly and truly, and this goblin threat now distracted would be quick work.
Closing in on his first mark, hidden from the dance of shadows in the night, Thremp knew there would be none left to flee or follow. There would have to be more hunts yet.
The rhythm of a practiced hand sewing fast thread followed, and soon it was but Thremp and the rock dweller who remained. It was those little seed pods from the forest further inland, Thremp now noticed. But he had never seen them display any such radiant properties in the past. Some still remained about the rocks glowing with violent promise, lighting pale glares across the spilled blood.
Then the boulder opened its mouth, and started shoveling corpses into itself.