Legend of Ransera

10th of Searing Cuvindas, 120th of Steel

Death's Counterfeit had overtaken him now for hours, he considered briefly, a snore catching itself between his throat and his lips. The draw of sleep was so appealing, however, that he hadn't for a moment thought about actually regaining control of himself from his slumber. The way that his bed allowed his head to sink in ever so slightly was exceptionally comfortable, and while his eyelids now whispered conspiratorially that dawn had arisen, he condemned them to force themselves shuttered against the gleaming strength of the fiery star.

The gentle morning breeze was proving to be somewhat chill against his face, however, his right ear starting to feel all the more like it might freeze off of his face and slip off entirely. Furthermore, his stomach was wrought with a light cramp, causing him to grumble even in his rest from time to time, attempting to dispel whatever malignant force had managed to entrap his entrails. These nuisances hadn't been enough to stir the man from his rest, but they had at least roused him from total incoherence.

It had taken the slight motion beneath his tongue to draw his consciousness back into full-swing. The tongue recoiled slightly at the movement, catching onto the loose scrap of food and swishing it to and fro. Taste buds scraped against the intruding morsel, attempting to ascertain the unfamiliar delicacy and place when it had been consumed. Could it be a piece of a pastry that he had managed to eat before he had arrived here? It was not sweet by any means, but there was a certain doughiness to its consistency, the texture soft and weak. He felt certain that with a bit of applied force on the end of his tongue, he would be able to mash the offending meal into a paste and swallow it down.

Another wriggle against his tongue made him rethink his strategy, and with increasing worry, the eyes of the corpse snapped open at last. The light was blinding even fuliginous as it often was in the earliest parts of dawn. Mist still hung low against the ground, gentle droplets of water suddenly making themselves known upon his cheeks as he compelled himself to sit up. With a plucking finger like the beak of a cardinal, he freed the offending wriggler from his mouth, peering for a second at the maggot before the realization caused him to gag, flicking it away like detritus.

The stir of his stomach's ache struck him again, and with an uncanny understanding, he finally recognized what had been causing the stirring in his belly. The realization of a dozen miniature worms stirring about in his intestines was enough to force him to grumble and shake in absolute disgust. Yet, it seemed his body had grown attached to the growing larva, and there was no automatic response to expel them. Taking two fingers, still contaminated from earlier worm-plucking, he stroked at his uvula, the second touch causing him to vomit forth the contents of his guts. The spewing and fetid acid burned as it came up, but as it was painted across the ground, the writhing mass of maggots revealed themselves.

Uncertain that he had gotten them all, the process was repeated once over, covering over the unfortunate larva with another layer of pestilent acid and condemning them to slow dissolution. Even in undeath, the acidity of the liquid held true and covered as they were, it was unlikely they would survive a particularly long time.

On his feet now, the man stared at the field around him, at the trail and the shattered wagon-train and the fallen horses and men about the place. Where complacence had dreamed into being a fanciful bedroom, he now found that his resting place had been little more than a puddle of mud, and the impression his head had made within it was clear, his hair caked in the sooty substance.

Where was he? Who was he? What was going on?

The situation had turned from relaxing to utterly dire in a very short period of time. The awakened sleeper found himself stumbling with heavy footfalls towards the annihilated caravan, his eyes attached to the broken wagon as though it were a sage, and he a seeker of hidden knowledge. Even as he meandered through the field towards the selected target, his eyes shifted to and fro attempting to discern whether the monstrosity or robbers who had waylaid them in such a way still remained.

He still could not remember for certain who he was, but it was obvious that he had been a part of this group. The proximity between their lying corpses and his own resting body had been evidence enough that they had been traveling together along the pathway. Finally having reached the wagon after what felt like a small eternity, the sleeper began to rummage about through the remains for any sign or signal as to what had occurred. Part of him had hoped that there would be a living soul recovering underneath the cloth shell of the wagon, but he found nothing within except for the usual traveling provisions and a few pieces of basic outdoorsy equipment.

Compelled to continue his search through the equipment, he stumbled upon a trove of journals and ledgers. His wriggling fingers twirled the books eagerly about, cracking the tomes open so as to procure knowledge from their depths. The first ledger appeared to be a list of prices incurred over the last few trips in comparison to the expenses. It was a simple enough list to follow, but he ignored many of the earliest trips in favor of the final. It was obvious this had been a trading caravan of some form, hauling different goods they thought would strike a profit, but since they had not arrived, there was nothing written about their chances of success.

Sitting atop the wagon's chest, he began to sift through the next document. This one appeared to be a journal being kept by one of the caravan members. They had been attached for a significant amount of time to the caravan, apparently, and the sleeper found himself skipping through pages in an attempt to find the date of the last trip as had been seen on the price ledger. Eventually, he reached it, and read as the mention of newcomers to the group was inscribed within the private tome. The author of the document had apparently had a great deal of difficulty with some of the travelers going alongside them, the nature of their strife becoming apparent as their soul was spilled upon the pages.

The final document shed further light on the situation, revealing itself to be a manifest for all of those who had accompanied the shipment. The dates of their employment or companionship had been listed, and it made all the easier to distinguish those few who had been new to the crew. In truth, he was uncertain as to whether or not he was one of these newcomers, but they were a lead he wished to follow to its conclusion. If he could ascertain the identities of the corpses splayed out on the field, then he would be able to determine his own heritage.

Here: Three newcomers. A caravan guard, a nobleman -- was that really a profession --, and a bard had been listed as joining the caravan's company during roughly the same interval, a span of about two days.

He'd seen the guard lying crumpled about their chosen spear a few feet away from the wagon, their body having fallen into its rest with an almost gentle collapse. Perhaps the polearm had provided support as they had fallen, allowing them to curl about it in unnatural tranquility instead of falling face-first into the mud as many of the others had done. While he hadn't gone through the trouble of sifting through their figure for the presence of wounds or the ailing grievances of illness, it was not difficult to determine that they had met their end.

That left the bard and the nobleman as definite possibilities; if he found both of them, then he would need to retrace his steps and start working through the more regular members of the crew, a process he found utterly unappealing. There had to have been at least a dozen of them in total, and while he knew little of his circumstances, he hoped fondly that he would uncover the truth of his identity before having to separate the corpses from one another and identify them based off of the paltry information stowed away in a pair of records and a disgruntled fellow's diary.

It had proven more difficult to determine the identity of the bard than had been expected. While the guard had fallen with their spear in hand, wrapped around the implement of war, the musically-inclined entertainer of the crew had not fallen with their equipment so close to them. In fact, despite all of his scouring of the local area, he hadn't managed to find the instrument they were meant to play at all. There had been plenty of weapons drawn which told the sleeper that a violent altercation had led to the sudden deaths of his companions instead of any sort of natural calamity.

Yet, there had been no musical instruments to be found anywhere. Perhaps they had slid down into a patch of mud somewhere and sunken to the bottom? Perhaps the bard's instrument had broken several days before and they'd simply forgotten to have it repaired, or were on the way to get a replacement? The sleeper knew for a fact that he wasn't an investigator, at least, having stumbled back and forth over the scene of the incident for what felt like two hours at the least.

He felt the wear of exhaustion begin to set in on him, even though he had only just awoken a short while ago. Clearly, he hadn't been accustomed to a great deal of motion before the incident, because he had only been walking and the terrain while unpleasant hadn't been exceptionally hostile. Nevertheless, he was in little rush to flee alone into the woods into the maws of a wild beast, and so he simply hid within the shell of the wagon, letting his sore legs recuperate in the process.

Scooping clumps of mud out of his hair had been something he'd waited far too long to begin, but he went about the gruesome work now, scraping the dark soil from his scalp as if it were an offending parasite. A strand or two came loose in the struggle, and he came to the realization that he possessed silver hair. That was indicative of something at least, but he wasn't absolutely certain what it meant. A gnawing sense of despair began to coalesce in his head as he realized that he didn't even know what he looked like. There were no bodies of water around, but he reasoned that there ought to be a mirror somewhere in the confines of the wagon, and he set about the process of locating one.

What if he was utterly hideous? A deformed mess of a man who had been brought along as some sort of sick entertainment? What if he was the 'bard', but his only skillset was his disgusting appearance, and the profession had been cruelly applied to him instead of a true musician? The search for the mirror became all the more desperate until he was knocking over barrels and shoving crates and tossing garbage he had no use for out of the wagon entirely. When the mirror was finally uncovered, he nearly broke it in his excitement, beginning to drop a crate directly back on top of it before remembering the cursed effects of gravity.

Gripping the small silver implement and raising it up to peer at his face, he became aware of several truths: He was, frankly, pretty good-looking. His skin tone was exceptionally pale, but there was a glisten to it that improved his natural disposition. Of course, without the gleam, he would've looked altogether like a corpse walking around, the pallor of his flesh being not dissimilar from that of the bodies outside in some ways. Secondly, he determined that he had been correct about his silver hair, and the pair of physical features were probably enough to determine his race with a little research.

The third and fourth things he noticed were certainly the most traumatic. He didn't recognize his own face at all. It was like staring into a stranger's visage, an uncanny picture of oneself distorted enough that it no longer felt familiar. The fourth thing he noticed, of course, came by accident. Staring into his own face, he took notice of his nostrils, the stillness of them, and with that stillness came an examination of his torso and the fine garments he found there.

There was no rise or fall to be seen, nor any inhalation in his nostrils. The nature of this realization didn't kick in for a few seconds, but when it did, the mirror was dropped to the ground, shattering in the process against the ground, another casualty of an unfortunate series.

He was the nobleman. The cloth on his body was fine, even if it was utterly filthy. The ring on his hand was large, and while it had broken rather severely -- he had probably fallen on the thing, or bashed it against the vegetation or rock on his way down -- it was apparent that it was a symbol of authority. Of course, he held very little authority now, he presumed, on account of the fact that he was dead.

How could this have happened to him? Was it possible that whatever creature had terrorized the caravan to the point of extermination had also managed to bind a soul to his corpse after the carnage? Perhaps a wandering briomancer had thought it humorous to afflict a living being so, their minds always experimenting with the flux of life and death. The idea of that came from somewhere deep within the recesses of his skull, as if though some remnant of memories had been stowed away into the meatspace of his brain before his sudden ascension into life.

In truth, it made sense that certain things might have carried over from his past life -- if one could really make the assumption that this had ever been his life, and that he was not merely a hijacker having taken control of an organic form -- while he hadn't given it any thought at all, he had been capable of reading the ledgers without much difficulty, which meant he understood the local languages at the very least. Yet, for all of the sudden insight into basic attributes of the world around him, there was still a massive deal that he did not understand. Would he be reviled if the living took notice of his undying plight, or would they revere his potential for survival? Could he die again, or was he now condemned to eternity as a revenant?

Althalos scooped up the ledgers and the journal, placing them into his coat pockets, though they were large enough to jut out at least halfway and require a constant hand to keep them secured. The acquisition of one of the corpse's belts was enough to secure them more firmly, and re-analysis of the crew manifest was enough to solidify some aspect of identity. Althalos Sil-- and then an utterly inconvenient ink splotch had fallen on the page -- he possessed only half of a name. Nevertheless, how often would he really need to give people his last name, and how often would they understand that we hadn't given them its entirety... would they even care?

Resolve to overcome his gentle oblivion stirred in his unbeating heart as if a mind of its own, and casting a look at which direction the wagon had been going before coming to its pause, he recognized civilization wouldn't be far. He began to collect supplies from throughout the caravan, recognizing that he wouldn't have the opportunity to do so once any guards or outlaws had arrived to lay claim to the spoil. Even common folk passing by would probably be tempted to take whatever leftovers they could scavenge since dead men in most circumstances needed very very little. Rations collected, along with some basic survival gear, and what appeared to be the key to a residence -- he was incredibly happy that a number had been impressed on it, which would hopefully make finding it that much easier -- he set out towards Alfsos and the new unlife that awaited him.

And for a while, at least, there was no hunger to afflict him.

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[indent=30]Experience: 5 points

[indent=30]Knowledge:
[indent=30]Navigation: Using a Wagon to Know Civilization's Direction
[indent=30]Physics: Dropping Fragile Things Breaks Them
[indent=30]Acting: Pretending To Be Alive
[indent=30]Investigation: Reading Nearby Books and Documents
[indent=30]Investigation: Using Clothes to Ascertain Identity
[indent=30]Investigation: Examining Corpses for Loot

[indent=30]Alert! Alert! Bonus Knowledge!
[indent=30]Investigation: Making an Educated Guess

[indent=30]Injuries/Overstepping: Oops, you're undead!

[indent=30]Comments:

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