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Narbith


Spindle
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[!] The following incomplete manuscript would make its way around all those shabby circles of literates and literacy. Or perhaps it was found on a certain abnormal advertisement.

m0YHMJWjHabUlks2fxpRVof3KlswVEBWaIiY34eKqMDaANtnsK5_ar0bupi5VRrBshWob3CyPdURIBdCxkOMLrCtvSzIkR4bUgK4smT31X8jLQ_Rcn_ZzYDMcoVG64gTSbf6LIbo

Spoiler

A previous post that has been expanded and reused for roleplay purposes

 

Narbith

JANSGH679Gt-mWbRD959y1Fsx2yBXA8L-RU-eVfdX0p1P4QDXL4WzcUrKxovKc8y4B65AV-Y_99vc44aoGUhpzFzIcper3JJ2DD2wBQBJ-zV8HWEwwD2-ZQk2SBjea8FBxG4t04LlrDsXC2xKO8

 

Netzhal Kazimira Othaman

m0YHMJWjHabUlks2fxpRVof3KlswVEBWaIiY34eKqMDaANtnsK5_ar0bupi5VRrBshWob3CyPdURIBdCxkOMLrCtvSzIkR4bUgK4smT31X8jLQ_Rcn_ZzYDMcoVG64gTSbf6LIbo

F6XwAJwayzeSa_nQl6vZ1ALsPx1j6YlpS1ywl1pUy-bY0UrsgEE0C3Ow97zNKz1bdwHnI9scz6M_PbXXPL-vQpzfzMkx9vV6eN76zFxrOGoNz6PLEbJavHzCsDG10ZZUXQgW2Xq1jRGAwKMvrLc

A Castle of Peculiar Consitution

 

Narbith: A castle of peculiar constitution, cast its shadow evilly over an encasing forest teaming with all the fell things that inhabited the world. The main massing of stone, that is, the original dwelling of House Creak, jutted out like a lone candelabra, gnarled and clinging to a circumfusion of floating balusters, the stone perpetually thawing with a stalactitic quality of melting wax. Skein-like dwellings clung about this assemblage of unnatural stone like molluscs to a rock, the lacunas hollowed by the denizens of these dwellings crept fungally, up, and up, seemingly appearing of themselves, or so the Duke of Castle Narbith would Groan

 

Equally cretinous characters comprised the swarming architecture nestled snuggly at the foot of the castle, enshaded in the umbral cast of the towering stone and thick-limbed trees. Little imparting was made between the castle proper and the decrepit denizens of the encompassing village Skëorn, although it could be concluded that the sprouting of those clinging dwellings was the doing of these substraten residents.

 

 

I

Cast away in the infesting sprawl of the Skëorn, a forlorn hovel of no discernable feature was presided over by the occupant Spindle, a man unsightly in figure and cantankerous in spirit. One dark afternoon, whose noonday gloom would appear uncanny to those unfamiliar with the nature of Castle Narbith, the man Spindle pranced about his dilapidated abode, chattering to himself in a truculent fashion. Spindle’s words seemed to carry easily in this particular nondescript recess of the Skëorn, aided by a half-fathom of water that pooled to his boney knees, echoing his babble with a dialogic quality. “Yesh the gate! Yesh,” Spindle barked, “That vill do, yesh, yesh indeed it vill!”  

 

“But vat of the Bunyans, yesh and the Gimblehawksh, the Goblintrollsh too, and the Onion Eatersh”

 

“Do not forget the Rotary Robinsh of a Rakishh Reputation,” he replied with a cackle. 

 

“Bah! ish it imposshible? Ish it? I think not.”

 

“It ish not…”

 

“Then it vill be done. Ve jump shaid gate, then up, up, up, and up again to the very top of the cashtle, perhapsh we pay the Duke a vishit, eh? Eh!” Spindle said, his spidery arms clung about what little figure of his was left consolingly, “Are ye not up for it? Are you not? I did not take ye for a coward… But alash, what can be done, eh?” Thereupon Spindle outstretched, his form unravelling outwards like the skeletal structure of a kite bound together with patchworked rags. His two beady eyes, if you could call them that, were glazed with an ineffectual milken hue, yet the manner in which he carried himself, and the manner in which he gangled, betrayed any semblance of sightlessness. “Fine!” he barked, donning a brightly embroidered eye cover of a similar ragged patchwork, “Good heavensh, I can shee now, oh how good it ish, oh yesh!”

 

Having concluded his false dialogue and having solved his equally false unsight, Spindle scuttled out of the forlorn hovel of no discernable feature, moving along the well-hidden pathways of slopping earth that only a truly wretched denizen of the Skëorn would employ.
 

 

II

Beneath a massing of time-gnawed turrets and up through endless aged stoneworked passages and manifolds, upon the seven-hundredth-and-fifty-second floor of the Castle Narbith, past the forty-second preceding archway with a moon-leaking embrasure, lived a boy named Guile. A boy of sound mind yet plain countenance. He was clad in fine raiments of sea silk, wrought from the fillaments of metre-long molluscs native to the eastern shores, and were it not for its flayed fringes and its sheer overdrapery the thing would be considered elegant. His chin was smooth, for he was not of the age to consider shaving. His eyes were shadowed by an overbearing brow. His neck mired with epidemic spots, blazened and angry.  

 

The boy sat musingly. His legs splayed about the chill floor in a hollowed out chamber devoid of any clutter, his sole companion a solitary door of heavy wood. This particular door was left ajar whereat a cool breeze crept through, superimposing itself over the floor and adding to its bitting. A ***** rapping resounded at the door, and then another softer rap, or perhaps it was a tap, and then a third. The rapping was an odd thing, for a massing of dirty rags pitched over a spindly frame, clutered up the entirety of the doorframe in clear view of the boy, unobstructed and unneeded. 

 

“The kitchen, vhere ish it?” the figure paused, gazing about the empty room with veiled eyes clad in some colourful patchwork, “Veird place eh, empty, very empty, and cold!”

 

“I do not think so,” Guile replied awkwardly, following the figure’s odd gaze, “Follow the hall up the stairs, and then down, and down again, spin on the spot, take a right by the moon-leaking embrasure, and then a left past the cat with one eye, up another flight of stairs, and it is on your left.”

 

“Many thanksh,” the figure replied, darting out as quickly as it appeared.

 

A question rankled Guile, for the halls upon the seven-hundredth-and-fifty-second floor past the forty-second preceding archway with a moon-leaking embrasure were entirely forgotten and untreaded, hidden amongst countless identical turnoffs, alleys, and doors of the castle. An unfamiliar shuffle resounded once again outside Guile’s hitherto quiet dwelling. A lingering of padded feet and a flapping of matted fur sealed this unfamiliar gait until it came into sight of the boy. Before Guile stood a Bunyan. Darkly furred with the quality of thistle. A rictus snarl revealing wicked teeth plastered over a bestial skull of the shape of a great ape. Stout in stature and menacing four spans above the floor. 

 

The boy would have cowered ought it not for a familiarity with the nature of Bunyans - as all subjects of Narbith were, and a sharp transformation of mood seized him. “A creature of the forest now calls to visit. In the wake of another his stop’s explicit.” 


It did not seem that such a zoic thing could usher any utterance, yet as the boy’s words left his mouth and danced upon his lips with exceedingly poetic spirit the Bunyan returned in a gnomey tone:

 

“An iamb, and hexametre too;
 Thou ought to have heard the Bunyan’s game.
Perhaps thou knows of the riddles fame?
Answer me wrong and thy flesh I’ll stew!”

 

“Four jolly men sat down to play,
and played all night till break of day.
They played for gold and not for fun,
with separate scores for every one.

 

Yet when they came to square accounts,
they all had made quite fair amounts!
Can you the paradox explain?
If no one lost, how could all gain?”

 

The riddle tumbled in his mind’s ear. Gnawing, festering for a time, repeating and bubbling into images commuting to the facilities of the mind’s eye. As Guile sat before the Bunyan in his cold recess high atop the strange gathering of stone called Narbith, a sole thought flashed in his head: The answer. “Musicians. The players were musicians,” he hummed jovially, permitting a smile to wash over his face.

 

 

 

The Manifold of Duke Creak

A lone marble dais presided over an encompassing sea of stone that was the manifold of Duke Creak. Lone and crested by a throne of a similar gilded marble. Lone like a conical lump of wax bathing in the gentle lustre of its solitude.

 

A lone dais like a single peak

 

And an empty chamber.

 

Lone and raised like the castle itself.

 

The manifold was of pristine condition, an oddity against the cluttered apparatus that was Narbith with its branching halls of aged stone. The Duke sat atop this particular assemblage of marble, cast in the silent brooding of those men familiar with an esteemed stationage. His hair was of a messy brown. His body, boyishly gangly and clad in silk raiments of a haar-like quality, sheer and unobstructive of his lank.

 

The expanse that was the empty stone bellow the Duke’s seating stretched outwards and to his sides a hundred spans, wherein a looming arched door vacillated between open-and-shut to administer a flock of attendees and servants. They scurried about, and about, until the snapping character of the Duke announced itself: “Intruders, and then a Bunyan! wandering my halls for all of three days. And you all teem about me with your nonsense. Your nonsense tasks, and nonsense hushed utterances… like I am in need of your attendance. Begone with you all. Vacate my sight and find me these annoyances at once!” 

 

And with that, they scattered epidemically, pervading through the sole outlet of the manifold and into the winding stone vascularity of the castle’s many corridors.

 

The Duke became lost again in his solitude. What thoughts penetrated his mind. What thoughts contributed to his silent brooding. It would have been impossible to know.

 

He watched as an idle lump of wax dripped from an overhanging candelabrum onto the floor, tempering as it struck into stone and interrupted the silence of the room. And then again was the sanctitude of the Duke’s chamber interrupted as a loud rapping resounded at the door. His eyes took on the cast of ire. His hands gripped at the throne’s cold steel rails. A solitary vein writhing under the hand's skin marked his displeasure.

 

“What,” the Duke demanded when so suddenly the door was blasted asunder, violently swinging on too-old metal hinges, and with those movements emitting an aged screech and a fat voluminous figure into the manifold. 

 

“Thire,” a teetering blob of a man panted, his sickening figure forced into an all-too-small shirt of a navy fabric, amassing at the mighty buttons that contained his girth. His tortoise-like head protruded smally from the cavernous folds of his neck and was topped with a peaked cap - denoting him the warden of Castle Narbith. A lumpy wooden baton swayed from a suspected belt-fastened anchorage, hidden under the undulating mass of the wardens overhanging belly. The effect this creature produced was in spite of all that was the manifold of Duke Creak. This wretch that drew itself before the Duke pained his gaze and sullied his surroundings.

 

And he was chiefest amongst his attendees.

 

“Thire,” the warden continued, “We ought be r’warded for thith. We ought be r’warded for our ‘ard work. We found ‘em walthing abouts we did, up near tha theven-hundredth-and-fifty-thecond floor, past tha forty-thecond precedin archway with a moon-leakin embrajure.”

 

A boney figure like an immense spider was brought before the Duke. His wrists only ceremonially bound on account of their slender nature and for all the world he would appear sightless, his eyes characterised by the limpid white so often seen with the blind.

 

“Spindle,” the Duke announced.

 

“Shpindle I am. Shpindling around and about. Shpindly in configuration. A Shpindler!,” the boney man cried, jumping a few inches into the air in spite of his assultive utterance. A funny little dance proceeded that jumpy display, whereat his weedy knees fluttered to a silent rhythm and shuttled up his torso like a wind caught banner. The extremities of the head, arms, feet, and hands caught up with no hurry, lagging behind the main massing of patchworked cloth and flapped about flaccidly to his ***** jig. “Oh how ve did missh you Shire, oh yesh ve did mish you very much. Had to shpend shome time down in the Shkëorn - that vas all.  

 

“So it was you? Entering unannounced. The cause of the alarm?” the Duke asked. 

 

“Oh yesh, although it vash not jusht ush. Another trailed in behind. A Bunyan, yesh.”

 

“And you brough it in with you, hm?” 

 

“Yesh,” the lanky man returned.

 

“So not only does my retainer journey off on some nonsense escapade, he makes sure to let in whatever cretinous wildlife scurried after him? Nonsense! It is all just nonsense! Come Spindle, you will aid me in ridding the grounds of this thing. You are a man of rhythm? A man of metre and feet. Of lexical stress and all that other nonsense. Well you proclaim yourself to be, no? Come now! Off we go.”

 


 

Edited by Spindle
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