Found in a dwarf's notes

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Anime Sword Fighter
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Found in a dwarf's notes

Post by Anime Sword Fighter » Fri Jun 23, 2017 4:27 am

A Traveler’s Edition of Wharftown’s Demise
“Wharftown must be defended from the imperialist takeover. Death to Cordor. There is little time left comrades.”

The guard pulled down her visor. The squat guards beside her jumped up. They had been lying down, staring at the passing clouds. The sky was darkening greyer and greyer with each passing minute. There were only so many minutes until flags flying the colors of Amn would appear on the horizon, and blow the town off the map. Their commander could barely contain her displeasure that they had been slacking. With her visor up, anger was etched all over her face.

“And you, over there! Put that down, no looting!”

She waved her fist at a passing man, who was hastily carrying a dresser from the Mercantile Building. People were making away with all sorts of things from the town. There was not much left. Scowling, he yelled back at her, and they began arguing. Tom and William looked at each other sheepishly. They had both dozed off. They picked themselves up with their spears and gloomily slumped off to the shoreline.

People were still coming and going every day. Laurick’s ships were making a fortune out of all of the tourism Wharftown was receiving the past few days. He said he would keep business running until the first cannonball dropped. Everyone was making bets on when he would finally have to call it quits here. Tensions were the highest they had ever been.

In the temple, there was a racket stirring. The decades old priestess had resigned herself. She was much too old to make a journey out of the town. She had been here her whole life. There was no point in leaving. Besides, her joints pained her too much and it was too much to travel these days. The roads were too dangerous. Vagabonds already stretched the town’s militia thin as it was before this trouble with Cordor. She refused the request of the traveling knight and pilgrim accompaniment to come with them. This temple was her home. She continued praying at the altar in between dismissing every newcomer. One particularly forceful merchant had threatened to haul her out by force. Tom and William took notice whenever it had happened, and threw him out.

Now they gazed out into the distant horizon, thinking fondly of jumping into the ocean and swimming away. No doubt they would stay until the first ship was seen. “Hope you can swim well?” Tom asked.

“Aye, been swimming down these banks since I was a young boy,” said William, “know the rocks like the back of me hand.” He held up his open palm and waved it in the direction of the distant beach.

Tom smiled. He too had grown up with the other town children on those hot summer days splashing in the water. It was tradition to learn to swim from your fellow cousins, brothers, sisters. Soon it would be too damaged and dangerous, certainly, from the pounding the land was about to receive. Hardly anyone could believe it when it was announced an entire fleet of ships was being used to crush the town.

The few animals that remained were restless as well. On a normal Thursday, one could see possibly hundreds of tradespeople with caravans of animals passing through, usually with suitable guards to ward off dangers past the town’s gates. There was one of the few ports here, after all. Even if their trade was not as wealthy or strong as Cordor’s dock, Wharftown’s was still a major point of travel on around the island. But now there were only stray chickens, and even a few lonely oxen still meandering about, left from the hurry of villagers to become refugees from the bombardment.
The commander of the guard stomped from the Mercantile Building, having finally persuaded the man with the dresser to return it inside. She leaned against a pillar and pulled off her helmet. Wiping sweat from her forehead, she peered up and down the roads for any more stragglers. She slid down and sat on the ground. Within a week, all of this would be gone. A sigh left her, and she closed her eyes.

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