esterhase

They say Krug was cursed with tusks and green skin because he violated the natural order this way.

I wish to play as Grom'aglûp, Grommash's merchant son who uses his large nose to sniff out the finest wares to grow his father's fat money-sac. His character flaw is his homosexuality, a taboo in the orcish kingdom as it does not often result in offspring.

"Light rain." Bluto pulls from the sleet-clouded window to spit a globule of phlegm and ale into the flagstone tiles of the Tunnelsmasher longhouse. "Must be those sick 'umri bastards."

"Theh' say them Veletz umri control t' banks. And t' weather." opines a malcontented Bluto Tunnelsmasher. "Wit' their machines and wily ways."

A wizened elf, long cloistered in a tower, stares at a fast-moving facial glyph to titrate its noospheric powers. "Thy portenous portly sphereings do sear my eyeballs, sigil. Let your bolus of hexed flesh be gone from mine sight lest I rend each frame in flame." He traps the thing in a draw, the glyph rattling at the locks as if pleading in an unspoken tongue to break free.

A Tarhadian Cavalier-Marshal rubs his long-unspurred heels with a calloused palm. His memories of the tea-serving traditions of the Acaelanites knot his stomach. He takes another sup of his pipe, hoping the acrid smoke will serve as some unguent to his moral unease. "Blots ae grease awn all ae creation..."

"Good fer him!" opines Bluto Tunnelsmasher on the radical poet's choice of lifestyle.

[ An aged man, face so embossed by wrinkles and the patina of time that you can only discern that the grim reaper has forgotten about him, holds a tome before you. His robe hangs limp at his wrists, threadbare and loose — possibly older than the man himself.] [ After blowing the layer of dust from the tome's leather jacket, you look upon its gilt title. ] "The Big Bad Book of Slurs" [ Durst you open the book of every slur you are not allowed to say on Lord of the Craft? ] > [ Yes. Burden yourself with the knowledge of the forbidden and let the Gods judge you for it. ] > [ No. This is enlightenment rightfully forbidden by the divine.]

"Strange. I didn't see you at Southbridge!" Comments Hugh Bloom as he reads the blogpost. "If you are trying to be a mincing intellectual that can't hold a sword, I think you are three emperors too late. You are an anachronism, little poofter out of time. Take your wig off and put your cuirass on."

Hugh Bloom raises his flagon high as he bobs around in his boat, his droopy mock-steppe moustache curled about his ear. With a smearing of lamp-fat on his paper, he writes a letter to the girl's parents. The spelling is choice and content most severe. " To Madam, I's reckon you an them Haensers don't realise what an existential threat do to a man. Aft'r one loss, the idea of their culture, existence, being snuffed out like a nightstand candle is enough to make even the meekest of noblemen gnaw their arm bloody from knuckle to elbow. Mortal terror is the greatest ally and most formidable opponent in a war. If yous remove the comfort and lackadaise behind fighting a war when you know you've got an overwhelming chance of victory, every nobleman that isn't unseaming his enemy from nave to chops is cheering those who are. The greatest military machine in this land is the one that stands to lose everything and gain nothing. They's goin to fight with those primordial lobes long dormant in hunters for sport because the threat is the oldest one their there is. There ain't no judgement from God in them halls, because judgement'd defeat 'em. You use the tools you's got. H. Bloom. Whaler."

Imperial spymasters decipher the secret code

"as a proud canonist i dont believe in nonsenses such as a hell. only the seven skies, the ground below, and the void without. god does sinners all they deserve by giving them an eternal nothing. cheers." says brother micawber the judite priest as he totters around the swiss cheesed infernum of whatever the last map was called.

"Dwarves you are in our fort." Replies Hugh Bloom.

Why your marj's roti so dusty ? ullu ke patthe maderchod

"I really really hope they don't double excommunicate the emperor. That would be super embarrassing!" Nudge Neatenthorpe comments to his pet rooster, a big bucket of milk in each hand.

The milkman Nudge Neatenthorpe looks up to the stars and wonders.

"Bein' so close to God." comments Nudge Neatenthorpe as he milked his cow. "Ottomar the Innocent must've died of a happiness unknown to any man."

"I cannot be an homophobe, your holiness. If you can't tell by the horns I'm milking a steer." Nudge Neatenthorpe confesses, nodding to the empty milkbucket.

"An odd time to want to be an Orenian, maybe they've got the same vices as those revealed about the current emperor." Considered Nudge Neatenthorpe as he milked his cow.

Hodge Beernet, publican and taverneer, refuses the petition, glad to finally see an emperor that wears his heart on his sleeves.

Joe; I agree with you wholly but cry that in my profession for martial acclaim you see savagery. Crazed by potestas and the fear of losing it (or, lowly, a lead-tipped quill), you no longer remember clearly that we were once a nation of knightly folk. You take to the quill and paper like a rider to crop and blade, coming to believe that the conditioning of the army and the esteem of fought-wars will return through the screed of a pamphlet talking of centuries past. I fear for the still-present use of the rhetoric of tarring me with that black brush of a 'barbarian other' - I am no occidental beast with a mouthful of hay and a bed full of sisters. We are both of noble blood, and perhaps in a time less political we would dare be good friends. To call a fellow man of empire a barbarian for talking of the same victories that you astutely regail debases your own virtues. You praise the left hand, and I the right; this is no betrayal. I do not provide you with nauseating mimicry of your nameless 'barbarians' or a sterile Khaedreni-Canonist litany against the "dress-wearing ***** palatials". To clarify in brief, this empire is never done talking of Joseph I, yet refuse to accept the same notions that spurned his revolt. It is not emotional talk, burning with love and fury, that drew men to fight other men (I include myself as a fellow country-man in this part), but a long-dormant sense of imperial pride. Involution of pride starts when you recreate the same chivalrous Imperial whose revolt you praise, as the barbarous not-Imperial; we both too fear of Oren falling victim to the frontal sluggishness of complacency, decay, lechery and rot - that in this tea-partying time of sandwiches and sororal gossip, an unguided violence comes back on its tracks, accumulating in the very depths of the empire and seeking to cut a way out of these vices. It is not my talk of violence that repulses you, but your own talk turning back on it-self and rending you. How do you take your tea? I am partial to it black, a cube of sugar only when away from home. Cheers, Alcuin Johannes.

Woman; In these modern times the Orenian 'man' is bound hand and foot, humiliated and sick with fear of both his gossiping wife and the unnamed beast of the ever-war; it cannot fall lower. Happily, this is not yet enough for the Imperial aristocracy; it cannot complete its debasement of its knightly classes through schoolgirl whispers and lamenting phantoms in the broom-cupboard alone. Every day its military is encouraged to retreat in front of real battle, but ever reminding them that years ago (centuries, soon), that it did not wholly avoid war; it is enough today for the cake-eating to lose a thousand battles and talk between the corpses of their ancestors about coming from a father's father who had a noble defeat while never striving for a contemporary victory outside of a war of letters fought in his ink-blotted cubicle. The modern imperial will never let loose that old violence that raises up to the throats of mankind in times of existential peril. They busy themselves with dress-up, the thrum of war an unfamiliar and sickening din to their ears. The soldiery of the time only considers himself a potential corpse. A rebel's violence is proof of his humanity, for in the days of rebellion they must actually kill; there is no dead man at the foot of a free man in the land of Oren, only men in dresses. It is not through writing pretty essays that you make a nation, and it does not happen immediately. It is the bitterness and spleen of war, the ever-present desire to kill (or be killed), by a permanent tensing of muscles of the sword-arm which the knight is afraid to relax, that they become a nation of strong men: men because of the enemy, who wants to subjugate their crown and bed their wives - because of him, and against him. You can not write yourselves back to greatness. You must take off your dress and wig and seize it. Cheers, Alcuin Johannes xx