The Raze of Amaethea

[Xergarok 297]

After the long council meeting the Beardling had fallen asleep in his chair. Apparently the longbeards had left him to sleep, or perhaps they had forgotten about him entirely; it was early the next stone day when the news reached him. His mouth opened to gape for an awkward 30 seconds.  "T'es can't beh, can et? Ah t'ought Azdromoth was loike ah creature en some distant realm or sumfin, nae ah giant bein' sleepin' in some far corner 'o dah werld!" the Beardling huffed and puffed, clutching his head as he pitied the families of those who had perished in the hellfire. "May t'eir Gods guide t'eir souls." he said quietly, heading for the temple. 

[Punished_Pup 1355]

The 'Ame managed to escape the inferno that had engulfed Elvenesse, angry at herself as she and many others were unable to do anything. She let out a howl of pure wrath, barely able to contain her fury. She knew they fell due to the forces being divided by the trickery of the Azdromoth forces, letting them to being scattered, unable to enact on whatever plans were brought forward to stop the beast. Certainly frustrated with the turn of events of the past Elven week, and all she was able to do was let out a scream in petty name-calling "No dragons were fought this day, only snakes suffocating around my kin." 

She dropped to her knees, a crest-fallen sensation washed over her "Perhaps we will learn to unite, more so, after this terrible tragedy.." She'd mutter, coming to a rise after some minutes past, whistling for her horse as she rode to Krugmar, preparing for training the next Elven day.

[AstriaS 3696]

Sylvia Camian, having a decades-old grudge against fire-breathing reptilians, grumbled and complained about nothing in particular, mostly bitter that she didn't have the opportunity to attend the battle.

[Adelemphii 952]

Adresin had sent his voice to the heavens in his shouting about taking the injured across the waters, or to the throne room, but his favorite moment of all was watching three druids jump from a 50+ meter cliff into a 1 meter shallow water. The fact that they got away with it while simultaneously being injured, makes him want to rethink the probability of death in this world.

 

P.S., He was indeed there.

[Tulan 443]

My sympathies to the lost in the raze of Elvenesse, Malin must weep for the countless losses." Ruathar Indoren sighed deeply as he heard the news. "Velulaei y nae ilumeh, Mali'ame." 

Edited October 24, 2021 by Tulan

[DahStalker 2846]

A shrewd flaxen-haired woman sits beside her slumbering vacation pal donned in a tight crimson bathing suit as his disgusting pot belly rises and deflated after eating a whole Yong Ping meal. @Heero She looks over the recent newspaper with the article titled; “Wood Elves ironically not destroyed by mass population of deranged women but a DRAGON!” Hands trembling in a spasm as she reached out for her morning martini in dread. “F-F-FFFF-Fuyck!”

[TaytoTot 1155]

Syllana Brylynn wandered around the burnt city with her husband, in hopes to find any other survivors. "Though it is so warm here, it seems the nights get colder and colder." The two would go throughout the city, pointing out places and telling eachother of the battles that went on.

[Ibn Khaldun 7728]

 

 

 

The foul horrors that tested the wits and mettle of the Orcs left Mugdul'Yar gazing toward a burning Amaethea with a thousand-yard stare. The fatigue set in, restraining Mugdul'Yar, and keeping him in the formation that marched away from the smoldering ruins. Mugdul'Yar retreated with the Krug'hai host back to the Iron'Uzg.

 

 

Spoiler

OOC:

 

I am really impressed by this event from an analytical and mechanical perspective. As an old head who once led the Event Team in an antagonist iteration, the degree of difficulty in managing that many players while playing out an antagonist that relied on world-editing is something I've not seen and I consider this innovative!

 

Also, Zac Clay flying around in fullscreen looked like the old cutscenes from Rome: Total War's historical battles. I definitely think he is a good asset.

 

Spoiler

Definitely OOC:

We smokin' that Boston dragon pack! (New York Knicks fans will get the reference)

 

 

 

[TwiSama 331]

'Cebisa' would sit within her home upon the ground as she huffed for air, her right wrapped around her chest, the other within a sling as she let out a sigh. "May Elvenesse rebuild and become a strong nation once more.."

[Dry Crackers 230]

[[I got very carried away with this, so it's in a spoiler.  I hope I got the feeling of the wrecked Elvenesse right just from wandering around it on the server for a while the other day. 

 

[[Since I don't know of anyone else who's played out Elf-old-age-madness, I'm just making it up as I go.  Count this as an entry in how I see their situation.]]

 

Spoiler

Music here:

Spoiler

 

 

An old Elf on the road to Elvenesse quickened his pace at the smell of smoke.  There was more to that acrid tang in his mouth than the civilized smells of stoves and lamps, some deep part of his mind recalled.  And as he rounded the bend and saw more smoke than a thousand furnaces could throw rising in a pillar above the trees, the dread seeping into his heart became a flood. 

 

His movements, though, were automatic.  In an instant only his footsteps were left on the road.  From behind a tree on the side of the road he watched the silent forest while his hands, moving almost without thought, unwrapped his sword from the banner he carried it in, and passed the belt over his head to hang from his right shoulder.  Three feet of Sylvaeri starsteel fell into its familiar place on his left hip.  The road was still quiet.  In the direction of the city, only smoke was moving -- that horrible, billowing plume, pale ash wafting up.  The old elf took his staff in both hands and struck off through the woods, moving north and east.

 

The loamy soil, the outcroppings of rock, great roots underfoot, here and there a path; this stretch of wood was so familiar to him again that he could cover it with hardly a sound, with hardly a thought; his bare feet settling gently on moss, grass, the thick carpet of needles beneath the pines -- the forest all but untouched by the evident devastation ahead.  And with each step another memory of the place came back to his conscious mind.  Images of the city he knew would be ahead, of the woods his feet knew so well; the memories fell in behind him as he moved, and before long he found he could guide his feet with purpose.

 

The bay side, at the cliff, he decided, the first positive decision since he had set out along this road, and he found to his surprise he was already making for it, his feet carrying him nimbly up the steep hillside, cresting it, scabbarded sword held securely in his left hand, the iron-shod end of his staff held well clear of the stones where it might strike and make a noise.  Along the top of the cliff, then, with the bay spreading away to the north beneath his left hand -- a strikingly empty bay, no great forest of masts rocking there -- he would return to that.  Ahead was that awful smoke, rising from a hundred little fires, ash falling around him now.  And there was the city wall at its lowest point where it climbed to the cliff, a tumbledown heap of masonry, earth, and living stone a mere three rods high.  With the aid of a nearby log and slab of cut stone-- he would have shuddered to think how it had been flung so far, had there been any of his mind free for shuddering -- he mounted to the top of the wall, reached down to pluck his staff from where he had leaned it, and hopped down into the city.

 

Emanaf Delsaran -- he could remember his name now, his right name, given one thousand years ago and more -- made his way across the Sirame ironwood forge where he had landed, down the hill past their hall, and crossed the gardens of the Green Priesthood.  Cinders were everywhere as he made his way through the city.

 

Here was agony, in the fires that burned on every dry piece of timber, on the strewn stones of the houses, the great chunks that had been taken from the hillsides, the trees that lay felled and beaten to splinters.  The pain rose, and his determination faded.  The battle was done, long done.  No reason for stealth, no reason to grasp his staff so tightly, no need to wear that awful sword -- the weight began to pull at him now, plucking at his shoulder. 

 

A ghost wandered through that shattered city.  He saw, but there was no one who could see him in turn.  And the prospect of action -- that liberating flurry of violence for which he longed, a blessed period where there would be no thought, only the silent, desperate struggle -- it faded as he walked through the desolation.  There was his old house, remarkably intact, yet the despair was welling in his stomach, lapping his heart.  Along the road, skirting a great hole blasted in the earth where blue flames still sputtered.  The very threshold of the old Taliame'onn hall he had helped to raise was broken, the pillars of its face leaning into that awful pit which had exposed the building down to its deepest foundations.  The garden hung on, four bushes barely clinging to their hold above the smoldering gulf.

 

It might have been that that broke him at last, or a hundred other sighs, none quite so horrible, but all familiar.  He tried to close his eyes, to turn away, as he walked, surrendering to cowardice at last, to cowardice and self-hatred, but even with his eyes closed he could see destruction.

 

A hundred images offered themselves to his closed eyes.  The smoke rising from the battle on the cliffs of Haelun'or, not so long ago.  The blight taking Leumaelin, the forest purifying before his eyes.  Elves calling out to him, shrieking, weeping, from atop the pillars where they were tied or transfixed; the pillars where they would die of hunger and thirst.  The fierce triumph on the face of the Human who broke his knee with a kick, four hundred years ago, and the Elf's own impotent rage and shame as he felt the bones give.  The flames overreaching the canopy of the Great Tree even as his ship stood from the doomed island, stemming the tide that would drown it but could never put out the fire that even yet burned there.  Thirteen black dragons in the air over Laurelin.

 

How he found himself above the gate he could not tell.  There, the whole wrack was spread before him:  a city now more the flotsam of an inferno than a place to live, and never again a sanctuary.  Smoke still rose from the fires; trees were missing from the skyline.  The very hill before him had a crater in its crown. 

 

The blackness had long since covered his heart, but now it broke out, a furious wail and a desperate dash through the undergrowth; south along the cliff; away, away, not to anywhere but only from here, from himself, away; away down a cliff so steep he could never have managed the descent in his right mind, through the clean forest, far from the cinders, away, away, always away; and under his wretchedness and the agony of one thousand years and the shame that filled him there was fury -- how could he do this? -- Abandon his people again? -- But the agony drove him on, as he knew it would, as he had always known it would, from the very minute he began to run.

 

By the time he stopped he did not know what land he had come to.  He had crossed rivers and ravines.  He was bleeding from his hands, arms, feet -- all that had been exposed to the thorny underbrush during his flight.  He was weak from hunger and nearly sick from thirst.  His eyes could barely focus -- his body could carry him no further.  And his mind was finally, blessedly, totally dull with exhaustion. 

 

On the bank of some nameless river Emanaf Delsaran laid down in the dusk, wearing his sword still, staff clasped in his hand.  He went right down there, falling into the leaden-gray sleep of the miserable and exhausted even before his eyes closed fully.  Not even that deep part of his mind could give a thought for whether he would wake again.