Captain Brolin Muse's page

When Brolin Muse was very young, he thought that the kitchen table in his house was haunted.

He was, of course, right.

It was an old table, and it had seen a lot of things. Brolin would spend hours listening to the table, to the stories it had to tell.

His parents thought he should get out more.

But everywhere he went, he met the ghosts. They sought Brolin out, the only one they'd ever met who even knew that they were there. He'd tell them about how the other preschoolers picked on him, and they'd tell him about how when they were kids, decades or centuries ago, the other preschoolers picked on them too, and told him how they dealt with it or what their parents told them, tens or hundreds of years ago.

The table had particularly good advice.

Others . . . less so. Most of them were hardly recognizable as the remains of a human mind, most of them were nothing more than the psychic imprint of a once living person's strongest emotions, most traumatic memories.

As he grew up, it got harder to manage the ghosts. They came to him for advice and . . . absolution. It was too much for a young kid.

When he was old enough to realistically lie about his age, Brolin signed on as a boat hand on an understaffed merchant vessel. The ship was only five years old, it hadn't had time to accumulate ghosts. For a long time he stayed on that ship, save for short stays landside when it couldn't be avoided.

But eventually, he found the courage to approach the ghosts again, to hear and record their lives' stories. Older, a little wiser, and a lot better equipped to counsel the restless spirits, he tries to help the ghosts as best he can. The least, and often the most, he can do is to remember what they lived through, so that something of them persists when their decaying minds dissipate.

Character Sheet

Omit was a wizard with great potential, who dithered her life away and died unaccomplished.

Alignment: LN
Big 5: Cautious, Careless, Reserved, Challenging, Nervous

It's something of a cliche in death scenes.

"I see a light," the dying person says. "Go towards the light," someone else says. And then the first person dies, and context implies that the author expects the reader to be sad, which always made Omit a little uncomfortable. The light at the end of the tunnel is . . . death? whatever comes after death? Hell if Omit knows.

Omit went towards the light.

Thrashing frantically, fighting against the water and against her sodden robes, Omit went towards the light. Omit had heard that people often lose their sense of direction when drowning, and spend their last moments swimming down, away from the surface.

Omit doesn't see how that could happen. The sun, the surface of the water, was up. It logically followed that away from that was down. The weight pulling at her, the force of gravity, that was down. The corollary, that the opposite is up. But there was a nagging worry. If so many people lose their sense of direction, swim away from the light, towards the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, then there must be a good reason. The majority of people are of average intelligence, which, while not exactly impressive, should be enough to tell up from down.

Was it possible that whatever reason it was that caused people to swim away from the light had her in it's grip, and she was, in fact, swimming to her own demise?

There was no time to worry about it. But is that the wrong way of thinking? Like the person who rides down the road at twenty miles an hour while wondering if they're going in the right direction. Should she stop and try to get her bearings?

Obviously not.

Nethys, what a stupid idea.

The light wasn't getting closer. Omit redoubled her efforts, but the light wasn't getting any closer.

It was getting hard to think. She wanted nothing more than to open her mouth, to gasp for air. What was it that the famous scholar said, after he held the young man's head underwater? When you want knowledge as badly as you wanted air, then you shall have it.

Omit didn't hadn't wanted knowledge then as badly as she wanted air now.

It was a difficult thing to admit. It was a blow to her self-esteem, her self image.

If she had sought knowledge, flailed for it and fought for it and yearned for it, needed it like she needed to breath, she would have air. Or she wouldn't need it. There's a spell for breathing underwater, and she would know it. There's a spell for turning into a fish, and she would know that one too.

Is this how I die? Omit wondered to herself. Wasting my last moments going on tangents and beating myself up about things I can't, at this moment, change?

Fitting.

. . .

The man who called himself Brolin rubbed the water-stained pages of the spellbook. "What's this one?" he queried the air to his side, finger on a blurry blue-black smudge that had once been lines of orderly writing. It's a spell for turning invisible, Omit answered.

The man grunted, and then flipped forward through the ruined book. "Lots of empty pages," Brolin noted.

Yes, Omit answered him. But she'd had a long time to think about what to fill them with.

Character Sheet

Character Sheet

Rook is a spirit of defiance and dogged persistence.

Alignment: N
Big 5: Consistent, Efficient, Reserved, Challenging, Secure

one hundred and thirty six years ago

The trick, Rook had learned, was to never let up. To press every advantage, and if you don't have any advantages, to press anyway.

They might not be expecting that.

More likely, though, they are expecting just that, because it's an eminently predictable tactic. Fortunately, it doesn't matter what they're expecting because when your answer to every problem is a liberal application of dogged perseverance and desperate tenacity, you don't have to care what anyone expects of you. You just have to press.

It's hard to never let up when you're charging uphill towards braced spears through snow up past your shins, but Rook didn't let that stop him. Rook didn't let anything stop him.

When Rook was young and naive, almost a week ago now, he thought himself a skilled swordsman. Now he was old, heartbeats away from death, in fact, whether it be his own or someone else's, his small band of survivors outnumbered three to one on a treacherous hillside, the frigid air hitting his lungs like a physical blow every time he opened his mouth to gasp for breath, now Rook was old and he reflected on how foolish he'd been as a child, last week.

It wasn't that he wasn't a skilled swordsman. He was. He'd been trained to fence and duel by the best tutors in the Duchy since he was seven. No, he was a fool because swords were silly weapons.

The seemed like good weapons when he was young. All the weight in the hilt, easy to control and deftly maneuver, there were so many tricks to learn, parries and cuts and thrusts and feints.

All of them useless, with a wrist that won't bend.

Maces, now, those were some elegant weapons. No more complicated than they have to be, fewer points of failure. If you can swing your arm, you can swing a mace. No worries about finesse, or edge alignment. It's heavy. Just hit them with the heavy part. A child could do it, but the irony is that it took an adult to see that.

Maces don't start and stop like swords do. You have to keep them moving. You have to press. Press every advantage, and when you don't have any advantages you have to press anyway. As Rook forced his way inch by bloody inch up the snowy incline, ignoring the pain in his broken wrist as he hammered relentlessly at his hapless foe's legs and waist, shield arm blissfully numb from it's own savage beating, Rook appreciated how perfect he and his weapon were for each other.

twelve hours after that

"They aren't going to let us go," from Sir Thance. The aged knight sat with his back to the largest of the holes in the abandoned barn's walls, to block the wind. They were taking shifts, the five of them who were left, taking shifts blocking the wind.

"You don't say." Rook glanced at Thance askance. "Don't need them to let us, anyway," he grunts, wincing. He'd untied his wrist, which was now a lovely shade of fuscia and swollen to twice it's proper size.

Hurt, too.

Sir Thance follows Rook's gaze and grimaces. "You're hurting it worse by fighting like that."

"Doesn't matter. I'll find a cleric later, after we get out of this alive. It doesn't matter if we tear ourselves to pieces, when we get back to the Duchy there's a cleric who'll heal us." He adjusts his makeshift splint and wraps his spare shirt back around it. "Get up. My turn to sit in the cold."

Thance gratefully makes his way past Rook. "We know too much," he whispers, mindful of the others sleeping in the cave. "Lord Thurstan can't afford to let us live. He'll keep sending men after us. They aren't going to let us go."

Rook growls. "Doesn't matter. Don't care."

"He'll have guards posted at all the passes out of the mountains."

Rook snorts. "Sucks for them."

Needing something to take his frustration out on, he kicks a peculiarly shaped bundle of iron poles and leather straps on his way to take up position plugging the hole. Curious now, he picks the bundle up. It seems to be some sort of leg brace, similar to one he once saw a man with polio wearing.

one hundred and twenty seven years before the present day

"Braigrook is a hard teacher, but a good one. He taught me to fence when I was a boy. He'll make you tough," the Duke, Rook's father, had said. And Rook did want to be tough.

"Today I'm going to test your limits, find out how far I can push you before you break," Braigrook, the swordsmaster, had said.

Rook twisted his body, swinging the training sword at the training post in the manner that his training instructor had specified. The wooden sword rebounded, and Rook attacked the training post again. He pretended it was a dragon. "Gonna . . . stab you . . . dragon!" he panted at it.

"Today I'm going to test your limits. I need you to give me everything you think you have, and then I need you to give me a little more. So, I want you to practice swinging your sword until you can't anymore. Strike the post, and then strike it again, and then strike it again.

"If you're doing it properly, you're putting every muscle of your body into your swing. Power comes from how you move your feet, how you turn your waist, comes from how you swing your shoulders, comes from your elbow, comes from how you snap your wrist. You'll know that you've been doing it properly if your whole body is trembling so hard you can barely stand upright, and not one single bit of you can take another moment of abuse."

That point would be now. Rook had been working harder and longer than he'd ever before in his seven years of life, and fun as it had been, he was covered in sweat and his whole body was trembling so hard he could barely keep himself upright.

"At that point, I want you to strike the post. And then I want you to strike it again. Hit the post as many times as you can, and then hit it two more times. Then you'll be finished.."

Rook stopped, leaning on the heavy training sword. Heavy to him, at least! "I'm going to do my two more, and then we're done, okay?" he told Braigrook.

"This is as many times as you can strike the post?" the teacher asked.

"Yup." Said Rook.

"Then do two more, and we're done."

Spurred on knowing that the end was in sight, Rook struck out at the training post. He made sure to throw his whole protesting body into the attack, so that Braigrook could have nothing to complain about.

The pride was clear on Rook's face as he beamed at his teacher. This was the hardest and longest that Rook had ever worked in his life, and he did it.

"I," said Braigrook, "don't like being lied to."

Rook didn't have a response to that, so Braigrook continued.

"You said that you had reached your limit. But you hadn't."

"That's not true!" Rook protested. This was unfair! Even right now, he was shaking and sore and dead on his feat. He'd worked himself to exaustion!

"Pick up the sword," the teacher demanded, "and keep at this until you can't any longer. Today I want to learn your limits."

"I can't go any longer," Rook cried, slumping to the ground.. He was only seven, and was really very tired. And he had thought he was doing everything right.

"Then hit the post twice more. Then we're done." Braigrook offered Rook a comforting hand, and helped him to his feat. He looked at Rook with kindly eyes.

Straining, Rook struck the post. And then he struck it again. Every bit of him screamed out in protest, but he didn't want to disapoint Braigrook.

He looked at his teacher with piteous, tear-filled eyes. "Can I go lie down now?"

"Can you go any longer?" Braigrook asked, his voice soft.

"No."

"Then I want you to strike the post again. And then one more time. And then you'll be done."

Rook wasn't that gullible, even at seven. "You'll just tell me to do two more after that!" he screeched.

"Likely," said his teacher, without a hint of shame. "Likely we'll be at this for a while yet."

that night

The Duke stared at his son, asleep in his bed. "I don't know that it was necessary to push him that far, Braigrook."

"He'll be stronger for it," said the wizened swordsmaster, unapologetic.

nine years later

When Rook was young, almost a week ago now, he thought maces were elegant weapons. He shakes his head, reflecting on how foolish he'd been.

The problem with maces, he'd long since realized, is that you need your hips and shoulder to swing them. Of course he'd been infatuated with them as a child, as long as you were in near-pristine fighting condition their brutally effective weapons. It isn't until things start breaking that you realize all the points of failure.

Now Rook was old. He'd learned from his mistakes with the sword and the mace. Finally, he'd found a weapon that could keep up with him.

He limped across the river, leaning heavily on his spear. He was glad for the light dusting of snow on the frozen water, he was in no condition to be fighting for his footing on a slippery surface at just this moment.

Spears were wonderful weapons. The end is pointy. You stick them with the pointy part. Child's play, really. And there isn't anything in the world that can stop you from using one.

The fingers of his left hand weren't bending anymore. They were black colored, and one of them had broken off the day before yesterday or the day before that. It was getting hard to tell the days apart. He hoped the clerics could fix it when he got back to the Duchy.

But his fingers weren't bending and couldn't grip a shield or weapon. What a travesty, his hand as good as useless, right? Wrong! Because spears are unstoppable. He just tied the malfunctioning hand to the end of the spear, and now it was as good at aiming the weapon as the day he was born. Unstoppable.

His leg wasn't supporting his weight anymore. An arrow had embedded itself in his kneecap. In the bone. He'd tried taking it out but that only made things worse. Now he was on his way back to the barn he'd stayed in a week ago. He didn't like backtracking, but he couldn't see himself fighting with his leg like this, and he remembered seeing some sort of brace in the barn.

Squinting against the glare of the sun off the snow, Rook saw a bird flying overhead. He pointed at it, excitedly, and exclaimed, "Look! I think that's . . ." he trailed off as he remembered that there was no one around to hear him.

Rook watched the bird until it was out of sight. His dad had been an avid falconer, but Rook had never seen one in the wild before.

days later

The leg brace made things much easier.

It still hurt, but he could ignore pain. It was only when things stopped working that Rook was forced to pay attention. With the brace, his leg was working again. He could stand on it. That's all that mattered.

He rammed the man with his shoulder, knocking him to the ground. He nearly fell himself, which would have been disastrous. He wouldn't have gotten back up again.

Rook wasn't sure that he was thinking clearly. He was running a fever. That worried him. The sweat froze on him as it came out of his skin, but he was warm inside. That worried him more than anything. He'd been pushed too hard, for too long, in too foul weather. He knew he couldn't sustain it. He felt like he was on fire. In a metaphorical sense. He felt that he was a fire, but one that was running out of fuel.

Managing something approaching aim with the hand he'd lashed near the tip of his spear, Rook threw the weight of his body on the prone soldier.

He was outnumbered, five to one, but the odds had been six to one a moment ago and Rook was evening them fast.

He didn't waste his breath speaking as he hobbled towards the five rushing towards him. With his leg, and his fatigue, there was no way he could escape this fight. He was slow, they were fast. There was nothing to do but to press.

If he'd been more mobile, less injured, perhaps he would have tried to position himself where he could fight them one on one, try not to get surrounded. That wasn't an option. There weren't any tricks to try. There was nothing to do but to press.

He took hits. He took them with his armor, he took them with his helm, he took them with his flesh. There was nothing for it but to ignore them and press on. The spear was an extension of his tenacity; crippled as he was he couldn't put any force behind his attacks, so he pointed his spear at his enemy and shuffled his feat and pressed until they died.

It wasn't the world's most effective strategy. But Rook didn't let that stop him. Rook didn't let anything stop him. Alone, cold, hobbled, frostbitten, feverish blood staining the packed snow wherever he walked, Rook was unstoppable. Methodically, he gutted his opponents one by one by one.

He didn't chase the two who ran. Didn't respond when they shouted at him. Couldn't spare the breath. He just made his weary way through the pass and down out of the mountains.

One foot ahead of the other, he made his way out of Lord Thurston's lands. He walked until he couldn't walk another step, and then he walked some more. He walked until the sun set and the moon rose before the cold and hunger and the blood loss finally caught up with him, and he collapsed on the road, never to rise again.

Savvy was a street urchin turned self-made millionaire. Cleric of Abadar.

Alignment: LG
Big 5: Inventive, Organized, Outgoing, Challenging, Secure

Commandeer Isabelle Dora Scabb ruled her armada of pirate vessels through intimidation and cruelty. Despite going down in history as one of the worst monsters to ever prey on merchant vessels, Scabb considers herself a good person, and insists that everything she did she did for the greater good.

Alignment: CG
Big 5: Inventive, Efficient, Solitary, Compassionate, Secure

Asher was a serial murderer who was eventually brought to justice.

Alignment: CE
Big 5: Curious, Organized, Outgoing, Detached, Confident

Asher had at one time lived five simultaneously. He'd packed his years with experiences, experiencing everything that the world had to offer. And this was the end.

All of a sudden, his eminent death seemed real to him.

Asher was going to die, and no one who watched him do it even knew his name.

"Count Destrian?"

It was Forthwind. Asher could recognize him by his voice. Forthwind had been one of Count Destrian's greatest friends. When the count lost his manor, along with much of his family's wealth (wealth accumulated by Asher in the guise of Dandylion, the eccentric drug lord who never showed his face, rather than by the ficticious Destrian family) Asher slept in Forthwind's guest room until he got his feet back under him.

Now Forthwind was standing ready to pull the lever and kill Asher.

"Why did you do it? Why did you kill those people?"

Asher came to a decision. No final act. Instead, he'd finally not act.

"I don't regret it."

The crowd fell silent at that. At the admission of guilt. Despite the evidence assembled against him, right until the end, Count Destrian had maintained his innocence.

"I don't regret anything."

Asher took a moment to put his thoughts in order. "Most people, you see, they die with regrets. With their final breath, they think, well gosh, I wish I'd had the courage to do this thing or that thing. I'm lucky. I've always done the stuff I want to do."

Forthwind didn't want to believe it. "Why did you want to kill them?"

Count Destrian was a serial killer. No one knew his body count, he didn't leave a calling card, but the remains of at least thirty people were found in the count's rebuilt manor house. Asher thought it ironic, that in the end this was the lie that cought up with him, the one traced back to somewhere he was.

"You don't know the half of the people I killed," Count Destrian told his longtime friend. "You don't know the . . . the hundreth. And that's only counting people I killed directly."

The executioner didn't speak, so Asher continued.

"I'm free," Asher told him. "If you wanted to know what it was like to cut out someone's eyes, what they looked like without any eyes, you couldn't. Because you're a slave. A slave to the things that tie you down, a slave to your humanity-"

Forthwind pulled the switch.