The Crocodile

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The Greater Good
Posts: 97
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2018 7:18 pm

The Crocodile

Post by The Greater Good » Thu Mar 08, 2018 3:56 am

There passes a time of happiness in your life, which I will not describe to you. It is unimportant. Perhaps you think it wrong that I dwell so much on the horrors, the pain, but pain is what shapes us, after all. We are creatures born of heat and pressure and grinding, ceaseless movement.
-The Fifth Season
Pounding drums in my ear. I sway with the music. Warm night air against-
No. That was before. The ritual. I am- Here.

This cliff. Overlooking. I see them taking my people in chains, to-
No.

This did not happen. This is the vision. Purple smoke and stinging eyes. Chanting priests and sacrificial lambs. Possible outcomes. Likely futures. Concentrate, child. I screw my eyes shut tight and think of home. Try to breathe. Try to remember. I will start again.

There is a man perched on the tower. There is a square in the middle of a city, half-ransacked. Drums beat. Smoke wafts. Foreigner celebration of heathen holiday. They are killing us with their rituals, with their Helm, and with their devilish magic. With their language and their hatred of our own. In defiance, I wear-

No. That way be dragons. The man wears the now-forbidden festival garb of our- his- people. Snub-snouted mask from the jaw of a young crocodile. Gift from Azul, wrestled into submission. Cape of feathers cleverly crafted to appear as vibrant, shifting scales. In this man there was hate. Wild, unruly. A conflagration, all-consuming. This is not the way.

There was a ritual.

There were flame-cooled embers. Scalding stones.

A river's path is diverted by neither heat nor hate.

The man remembers this and calms himself. This is the way of Azul. Flowing rivers, careful movements. The trickle, the flood, the unending torrent at the end of all things. A dam begins with a single stone. It can be scalding, if you like.

The man would very much like it to be scalding. He takes a pair of obsidian knives from beneath his downy cape. He would very much like for it to hurt. His eyes have not left his target- the leader of these so-called conquistadors- for nearly an hour. It is almost time. The knives have been coated in ash so they do not glint. They do not shine, or make an impressive tearing sound as they move through the air. They are just knives. Just tools. Still.

The man hopes that at the last moment, the enemy with his golden armor and with his evil, guarding god, will see some tell-tale. Some glint. And know.
Monte Cook wrote:The idea here is that the game just gives the rules, and players figure out the ins and outs for themselves -- players are rewarded for achieving mastery of the rules and making good choices rather than poor ones.

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