ad&d 2e – Page 2 – Mynochral

April 23, 2024May 31, 2024

The Straights of Penza and the Rush

On the eastern shores of the Surrounded Sea, between the northern tip of the peninsula that is the Kingdom of Tanzenel and the southern shores of the Syl lands known as Shil’Ta’Vel, there lies a passage through which the waters of that inner sea reach out to seek the greater spaces of the Sungiver Sea and the open waters of the ocean called the Starflow, beyond.

Through this channel, at times little more than a dozen miles across, the eastern tides shift and flow. The only outlet for the churning waters when the twin moons draw together and the tides are at their most powerful, the Straights of Penza take the brunt of this as it crashes forth from the Surrounded Sea. Pausing briefly in a vast bay between those lands, the channel narrows again into the gap known as the Rush.

Named by early sailors, the narrowest part of the channel can boast of currents that no ship can resist with rocky shorelines and jutting outcroppings that promise only death for those fool enough to risk hugging the coast and making the passage at its worst.

For those that live on and around these waters, the stories of the mariners point to something yet worse, as the great gouge that the timeless passage of these currents has carved into the floor of the channel is rumored to run almost impossibly deep. In places, so the stories go on, there is no bottom for a broken ship to settle upon.

And in the flickering of what sunlight tries to find its way into these waters, the shadowed outlines of great leviathans are sometimes claimed to be seen, racing with the surge of the tide as if seeking to outpace the draw from the moons and the crest of the surge as it crashes through the Rush and into the open ocean, beyond.

April 13, 2024May 31, 2024

The Tower of Sight

Set upon a rise in the earth, within the Queddsef port city of Tikla, the Tower of Sight extends toward the skies like a white finger that points to some truth that perhaps lies within the clouds…or beyond them.

Standing some 300′ in height, its white stone stands out for miles around, calling those seeking insights and knowledge to the only blemish upon her sheer and seamless surface.

The lone entrance, a pair of doors carved of stone and wrapped in bands and plates of a metal known to be harder than the finest steel, is said to see into the very souls of all who approach it; revealing to those within, the attendants who carry the responsibility of protecting the people and secrets of The Tower, all the wants and needs of each who present themselves. The Tower sees travelers from all parts of Mynochral, although many are turned away when they arrive, regardless of the length of their journey.

The chosen few who are granted entry find themselves in a place steeped in lore and the power of magic that is so focused on seeing and knowing all that occurs throughout the many kingdoms of Mynochral that it is said the air hums with its energy. Her Great Library contains texts from all of the ages of the world, and her residents, both novices and masters alike, are charged with adding to this knowledge whenever and wherever they can.

The Tower of Sight exists to seek the truth, to see what is to come, and to know what has already come to pass, for the sake of learning from the lessons of time and creating a better future.

April 5, 2024April 12, 2024

The last thread…

The shattered bowl, the last remnant of the life he had left behind, lay cupped in his trembling hands. The smaller shards slipped through the gaps between fingers, his arms twitched each time, barely resisting the urge to seek to recapture them before they could reach the ground.

It wasn’t that the bowl was particularly beautiful. It lacked the shine it had once possessed, and the color, the burning orange of a sunrise captured from a mountaintop, that had long before faded to faint yellows in places. In others, barely a pale shadow of even that.

It was that this had been the bowl his mother had fed him from, those long years before. Each spoonful gently stroked against its rim to loosen the broth that may have clung in hiding the underside of it’s well-worn, cupped end.

One tear, he allowed himself.

One tear to pay homage to the love of his mother, the peace of his childhood, and the warmth that those memories brought to his breast…one final time.

With hands already returned to the strength and steadiness that comes from a long years of discipline, born of necessity in the fires of what his life had become, he placed the remaining fragments upon the oaken table at the mouth of his tent.

They came to rest beside the small but spreading pool of broth that he had almost finished and the arrow shaft, which stood arrogantly at attention with it’s wickedly sharp tip buried within the wood where the bowl had briefly rested, just moments before.

Taking up his helm and cradling it in the crook of his elbow, the man came to the jagged edge of the rocky plateau and gazed down the steep rise that fell away to the broad flatlands below, ignoring the risk that the same archer might pose.

Men and beasts moved about there, in massed and synchronized formations. Clouds of dust sought to obscure them, but the faint breeze that drifted in from the distant shoreline offered both the cool scent of the sea and no place for the churned earth to linger. Their banners fluttered gently in the passing flow.

His last, lingering connection to the idealistic child he had once been was broken, seeming to take with it the love and compassion to which he had been taught to cling.

His hands, with fluid grace and no hint of urgency, brought the cold, steel helm up and slipped it over his head. They dropped to rest upon the twin axes that waited, tucked within his worn, leather belt, as he turned toward his closest advisors.

He gave them a solemn nod and snatched up his towering battle axe from where it leaned against his chair. The long face of it’s notched blade glinted in the morning sun, as he turned it over his in hands.

This had once been a struggle to keep his people free. To defend them against those that came to these shores in search of plunder and slaves. To drive the invaders from these lands and force them to return to the sea and wherever they had come from, beyond.

To be done with those that had once taken his mother from him, long before.

Those that now had taken the last thread that connected him to what that woman had represented to him, in his earlier life.

Those that would pay the price, with the final thread that had kept him here broken, releasing the grip that had kept him in check.

He felt the cold of this spread within him, as he looked upon the enemy and hungered for the first time not just for their defeat and expulsion from his homelands…but for their end.