imported>Soranin Don't worry, I have a permit for this |
imported>Soranin |
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==9th Anglo-Saxon England== | ==9th Anglo-Saxon England== | ||
===Warden of War== | ===Warden of War=== | ||
<tabber> | <tabber> | ||
|-|Kjotve the Cruel= | |-|Kjotve the Cruel= | ||
Akantha liked men. They were useful and tragically easy to manipulate. As the faithful wife of Makedonia's Leader, she was almost untouchable. Her husband was the perfect cover behind which to weave a web of death and manipulation. Akantha's position gave her immunity to hunt down Tainted Ones, and that, to the Huntsman, made her very useful.
Bubares always had a gift for discovering the weaknesses in others. What could have been a curiosity, he turned into a career and then, through the Order, into a calling. The Huntsman saw his talent and gave him power to recruit the likeminded. With it all came a singular purpose: finding the Tainted Ones, discovering their weakness, and using it all against them.
No one noticed Echion. He was in all ways unexceptional. Then the Huntsman offered him a way to server an exceptional cause — help him find the Tainted Ones. Suddenly Echion's weakness became his power. People still didn't notice Echion, but now he noticed everything...
The Huntsman had the plan, and Ares the god of war had the means to achieve it. Konon understood the balance. It was his faith that determined his choice of weapon. A sword would have been deadlier, but his blunt polearm did more damage. The deaths were harder. That pleased Konon and, he thought, probably Ares as well.
After the first blow against his temple, he barely heard the roar and the screams. When consciousness returned, Pactyas opened his eyes to see a huge grey wolf over the last of his attackers, licking gore where once there had been a throat. Nature preserved Pactyas, chose him to be the Huntsman. So he became nature's defender. And few things offended nature more than the Tainted Ones.
Phratagounè preferred her animals to people. Animals didn't lie, they were loyal, and they didn't kill without reason. The trick was to give them a reason. That was Phratagounè's gift, and why the Huntsman put his animals in her care. He knew she would teach them loyalty, and that loyalty would teach them to trust him when he sent them to kill the Tainted Ones.
Few understood that the physician's art lent itself as naturally to talking lives as it did to saving them. Timosa, however, did understand. The Huntsman gave her the opportunity to use her art to reshape the world and wash it clean of the Tainted Ones. He showed her it wasn't the lives she saved that mattered, but the ones she didn't.
Democracy made the Greek world weak, delivered it into the hands of charismatic fools who ruled the mob with gilded words, no matter how stupid the cause. So Augos fought back, striking from the shadows. But one blade would never be enough against the tide of mediocrity. Then she found the Order, or it found her - it was a sublime melding of purpose.
Megakreon despised talkers. He'd watched the Greek world consume itself with empty prattle, falling into endless debate and war. When an argumentative noble threw an arrogant final challenge at him, Megakreon answered with his sword. There had been no more debate after that. His superiors hadn't understood, and banished him. But the Tempest understood, and welcomed him into the Order.
Wind stinging his face and salt white on his beard, Nestor shouted his jubilation into the storm. Another vanquished opponent tipped and sank beneath the dark Aegean waves. Nestor had burned his youth marauding across the oceans of Greece. But with each victory he had felt less. Then the Tempest spoke to him of the glory of Greek warships, and the Order's plans. He was perhaps their easiest convert.
All Phila wanted was for people to get out of her way. It wasn't their fault they were slower and weaker. She didn't blame them. But if they impeded her, their inadequacy became her problem. And that wouldn't end well for anyone.
Drachmae was power. To Sophos that truth was as obvious as the sun. The rich ruled, not emperors. Kings and paupers were all equally held to drachmae's necessity. The Order understood this, which is why the Tempest had come to him. She saw his wealth, and his gift for acquiring it. Sophos knew the Order was using him. What he thought they didn't know, was that he was using them.
When Amorges stood against his friend Darius over the fate of Artaxerxes, he was fiercely certain. The first death he ordered, he was almost as sure. Then the next, and the next... The years since so stained by necessary death he no longer remembered it all. Now, at the end, certainty had abandoned him. Peace was maintained, perhaps, but Amorges was lost. And too weary to care.
Subversion could be messy. Whenever there were problems - and there were always problems - Artazostre was Amorges's solution. She fixed things, restoring order when the Order created chaos. She would never use those words out loud of course, but they often brought a secret smile to her face as she removed yet another inconvenient corpse or awkward piece of evidence.
The irony wasn't lost on Dimokrates - he relished it. He knew the truths by which nations were upheld, armies conquered, and kings ruled. They had become his most powerful weapons in serving the Order. With them he had destabilized governments, split families, and nurtured rebellions. The irony so delicious to Dimokrates was what the truths were... Secrets and lies.
Gaspar was born a slave, like so many before her. The First Civ had made humanity to serve them, but they weren't gods and weren't infallible. They'd mistakenly made humans tooo much like themselves. Gender, race, nation - studying the First Civ taught Gaspar all distinctions were meaningless. She knew that like her makers, she was destined to surpass them all.
The best victories were those won without fighting, and winning by persuasion was Gergis's gift. He could convince people to act against their own interests and think it was their idea. Amorges recognized his talent, bringing him into the Order as Persia's most respected diptlomat. After years of watching his beloved country strangled by thoughtless policy, Gergis was easy to convince.
When Amorges needed a trusted enforcer, he chose two. The Immortals were twin brothers so potent and similar in combat that many thought them one - a single, unbeatable warrior who could be in two places at once. Seemingly untouchable, wordless, and always masked, they became a fearful legend.
Pithias saw the man's battered mouth, his teeth uneven after the torturer's blows. As Amorges's foremost planner, he valued balance and order above all things. That he'd wandered into the wrong room wasn't important. That the man screamed when Pithias calmly took up a metal chisel and removed more teeth was similarly irrelevant. All that mattered was that the teeth were now even.
Tough northern winters and seasons of raiding hardened Kjotve as it hardened many young Norse, but Kjotve always took extra pleasure in his kills.
A passing trader saw the potential in Kjotve and inducted him into the Order, making the young vikingr Norway's first Order member. His natural cruelty served him well as he sought to bring his family and clan wholly into the Order's fold.