L.G. Surgeson's Blog, page 11
May 14, 2013
The Summer of Fire: Prologue
The Time Before… .
One speaks of the time before the Summer of Fire in the same hushed tones as one speaks of the time before the cataclysm. As though the world was somehow softer then, as though we were more innocent and more lovely. As though no trouble existed. It is the golden age, not long ago but far away. It is seen as almost out of reach by those who do not really know of what they speak.
To speak of a time before the Summer of Fire, a time truly before the cacophony of events that chose to confluence in those short months, is to speak of a time more than four hundred years gone. Few have a genuine understanding of what lead to the time known as the Summer of Fire, of the rising powers that had grown, with the patience of mountains, over centuries. Only in looking back could scholars rightfully understand the full scale of events that preceded it.
It is difficult to distinguish therefore what came ‘before’, as this is a relative term. Each individual will have a point in time that they consider to be the time ‘before’, after which their life will have changed irrevocably. General consensus suggests that by 1099ac it was already too late, but for some it started long before that.
April 26, 2013
April 20, 2013
Josephine
aka: Josephine deBeauglais, Josephine Freemonte, Mrs Freemonte,
Age: barely 20.
Religious views: irrelevant
Adventuring skills and specialities: Fighting, empassioned speeches, being youthful and beautiful and other talents best not disclosed
Marital Status: Married to Captain William Freemonte
Family connections: Daughter of a high ranking Queen’s Guard commander from Albion.
Bio:
Josephine was born into a military family in Albion. Her father was a high-ranking member of the Queen’s Guard. She grew up around the officers and learnt to idolise them as paragons of heroism, honour and virtue. She trained hard hoping to join the Queen’s Guard herself one day. Then at sixteen things changed. She joined the adventurers guild after the Summer of Fire and fell in love with William Freemonte, who she had first met on the parade grounds when she was a small girl. For all that happened afterwards, she trully and deeply loved him and this was perhaps her one redemption.
April 18, 2013
Clara Cropper
aka: Clara, Clara Euphemistia Cropper
Age: no bloody idea
Religious views: whoever’d have ‘er… Trickster mainly
Adventuring skills and specialities: appalling street performance, theiving, scrounging, creating a disturbance of the peace, getting arrested.
Marital Status: …. hahahahah…none
Family connections: A street urchin that survived to adulthood, she has a couple of siblings knocking about but family doesn’t really mean a lot to her.
Bio:
Clara Cropper was born and grew up on the streets in the rough end of Aberddu. She never had nothing or nobody… and she was used to that. Resourceful and wiley she avaded hanging and starvation to survive into adulthood. She then joined as many guilds as would have her – most notably the Bards Guild, The Adventurers Guild and the Other Guild. This would have been a lucrative lifestyle had Clara understood what it meant to have one of those. It did bring her to Pudding the Goblin who was probably the only person she trusted enough to consider a friend. A sticky end was fitting for Clara, because she’d had a pretty sticky exsistance one way or another.
Quotes:
“Disguise?” snarled Clara, thirty minutes later, “Disguise? It’s practically fancy sodding dress.” Iona sniggered. The tiny urchin was standing gazing at herself in an enormous ornately framed looking glass in Mademoiselle Mantovan’s back room. Her old clothes had been chucked into a sack by Mademoiselle Mantovan herself. She had used the coal tongs to lift them and had been most affronted that she was not allowed to burn them. She had bagged them up with her nose upturned against the stench. Now Clara was done up like a horse for carnival, by comparison to her previous attire at least. She was wearing a well made simple little tunic and a pair of loose fitting hose that were made from heavy weight black cotton. They were probably the first articles of clothing she had ever had that were actually the correct size for her. - In Shadows Waiting
April 14, 2013
Tollie & Sylas
aka: .many, many things including The Duchess of Montrone and Mattocks the coachman, Uncle Jack and Eloie the mouse, Marietta and her father, Doc Tolliver and his daughter, (real names: Tolliver Marchant & Sylas Benn)
Age: unsure
Religious views: sceptical and mercenary.
Adventuring skills and specialities: deception, disguise, theft, innovative ways of escaping, the tarantella.
Family connections: Tollie’s father was a very important Death Priest.
Bio:
Tollie and Sylas work as a pair. Tollie is the main ideas man, although Sylas is not without his own brains. Sylas is a master of disguise – his tiny frame and feminine face make him a natural at pretending to be a girl. They have worked their way across the continent making a buck or two in any way they could think of posing as everything from a travelling medicine man and his daughter to an Albion Duchess and her coachman. They joined the Adventurers Guild shortly after the collapse of the non-existent Guild of Thieves and Assassins and after the Summer of Fire, found a new interest in bringing down the Frisian Inquisition (if a buck can be made on the way then all well and good).
Extracts:
“Excuse me Brother, but why do you have two magical mice in your pocket.” His little shake of the head told Tollie that he couldn’t believe he had just said these words.
“Ah,” said Brother Tollie, looking abashed but grinning, “a little indulgence I’m afraid.” The guard gave him a highly suspicious look. “A left over from my dreadful heathen past. Allow me to introduce Eloie and Merkadi, my mice. That one is Eloie,” Tollie pointed at the disgruntled blonde one that narrowed its eyes at the sound of its name.
The homunculus was now trying to take a step away from him whilst remaining a menacing presence. Tollie knew he was on to a winner, and continued. “I was, in my bad old days, before I saw the light,” with his free hand Tollie theatrically waved his ankh at the guard, “I was in a travelling fair. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? Uncle Jack’s amazing magical mice?” He said it with such a convincing air of despairing hope that the guard felt obliged to shake his head and mumble ‘sorry no’ under his breath. “Ah well, it was a long time ago.” Tollie had the ability to sound like an old man even if he didn’t look like one and talking the talking was far hard than shuffling the shuffle of the old. It was something that Sylas admired in Tollie when he wasn’t a mouse waiting for an inevitable humiliation.
“What kind of amazing magical mice?” said the guard with a grudging curiosity and Tollie was ready for the question.
“They squeak the Paravelian National Anthem and dance the Tarantella. Although I’m afraid they’re a little out of practice.” – Dawn of Darkness
“Would you take that ridiculous wig off?” snapped Tollie.
“It’s no worse than your badger’s bum beard,” grumbled Sylas, stubbornly refusing to remove it.
“It’s going bald, and it’s got lice,” spat Tollie, leaning over to snatch it from his head.
“It’s realistic,” retorted Sylas ducking skilfully out of his grip.
“It’s revolting,” groaned Tollie making another grab for it.
“Would you two just shut up,” snapped Jason Devere irritably. He was leaning against a nearby tree just off the path trying to pretend that he wasn’t with them. Next to his feet, Pringle was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his hammer across his knees, playing with the grass. It had been a very long walk from Neckard not because it was far away but because Tollie and Sylas hadn’t shut up the whole way. - Summer of Fire (coming soon)
April 12, 2013
Who’s your favourite adventurer?
So, those of you who have read any or all of the Aberddu Adventures series, a simple opening question (well two actually) . Who is your favourite adventurer and why?
(Maybe it’s the one you’d like to meet most, the one that makes you laugh, or cry or want to slap them…. it’s up to you what you mean by favourite but it’d be good if you would explain.)
April 9, 2013
Gerard
aka: Viscount Gerratti Baranetti.
Age: Old enough to know better
Religious views: complex
Adventuring skills and specialities: wizarding, thinking, portals, reading maps, giving lectures, changing into birds.
Marital Status: Bachelor
Family connections: Related to half of Paravel…the rich half.
Bio:
Gerratti Baranetti came to the Mage’s Guild of Aberddu shortly before the summer of Fire. He was apprenticed to Elor Nybass, a wizard who spent most of his time interfering in the Adventurers Guild. Curiousity and little better to do with his free time lead Gerratti to become a permanent fixture in the guild. He was renamed Gerard by a bunch of Greenskins who liked him but thought his name was stupid. He is treated with affectionate contempt by the majority of the Adventurers who like him, but don’t want him to get ideas. It’s taken him five years to discover the purpose of pantaloons.
Extracts:
Gerard was clearly no danger with a weapon, except perhaps to himself. Unfortunately, it did not stop him from trying. Keeping him on the right track was proving to be like trying to herd frogs with a teaspoon. The problem was that he was fixated by the fact that she was a woman. He had somehow got it embedded in his head that he would have to escort her; a thought that would have offended Iona had it not been so laughable. She took a deep breath and pressed on to the peak of the mountain. – The Freetown Bridge
“It’s not difficult you moron,” Derek could hear Cassandra saying up ahead. He couldn’t see her, as most of the party had crested a hill and were out of sight on the other side. It was just that the Jaegars’ voices tended to carry. “We’re following a main road, how complicated is that?”
Then he heard Gerard’s nasal retort and sighed. Someone had let Gerard get ahead of the scouts again. For an extremely intelligent man he was useless with both maps and directions. His haughty voice wafted in the afternoon air.
“…and furthermore Madam, I’d be extremely grateful if you could step back out of my personal space.” Derek pushed forward passed the gaggle of Clerics in front of him. He needed to reach the front before Mr Adarius Jaegar decided, for a laugh, he was going to defend Mrs Cassandra Jaegar’s honour by punching Gerard on his somewhat ill-defined chin. Just as he overtook Dingelo the tiny bard, who was clanking like an out of tune one-man-band with every step, he heard the sound he was expecting and dreading. Adarius Jaegar’s distinctive baritone split the stillness.
“Don’t you speak to my wife like that, wizard-boy.” Derek broke into a trot and as he reached the top of the slope. He could see the knot of adventurers where they had collected at a fork in the road about fifty yards ahead. Adarius was squaring up to petulant looking Gerard, whose flabby chin was wobbling with self-righteous irritation. The two men were of roughly comparable and not inconsiderable size. - Dawn of Darkness
