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Notice: This is an intermission/recap, not actually really part of the story. You will miss nothing by skipping to the end of this and on to the next post of the story if you understand everything that's happened so far.
All great stories need a storyteller, a voice, someone to tell the tale. There must be a survivor, for if everyone dies in the end nobody can ever know what happened. But that's a bit morbid. A figure sits in a chair in an old inn somewhere near the border between Rithara and the Republic of Ardan. He is a Shadow Fang with graying fur across the top of his head, his ears, tail and face, all of which was once a solid dark brown. A long stick, a simple cane rests against his chair. And a crowd is gathered before him. He's been speaking for a while now, yet his voice is not hoarse; and now he speaks again.
"What? You want me to go over all of that again? I've barely even begun to tell...yet, I suppose, it was a little hard to keep track of everything that was going on the first time I heard it, too. It's only going to get more complicated from here, so I suppose it is best you have the simpler beginnings of this tale straight first.
"Captain Conall Morgan Reynolds, a Red Dragoon, owner and operator of the Farran, was under attack by a dragon named Arizan. She had been told a vague prophecy by a Choneiji known for causing trouble through such, and who had once been a passenger on Conall's ship. Fortunately, Among Conall's crew there was the progressively-minded Fylenis Whyskars. He was able to convince Arizan that the airship's crew were not, in fact, assassins sent to kill her. So she joined them and went to the engine room for a while. Then the real trouble started.
"Verra Kriset, a notorious, powerful and insane pirate who Conall had dealt with on the very same flight as the troublesome Choneiji--whose name was Raoclem, by the way--spotted the Farran on the horizon. As her loyal helmsman, Callor, pointed out they were well under their usual force of pirates, but being generally reckless and overconfident, and quite motivated by revenge, she pushed the attack anyway. It went badly. Every pirate who tried to attack the Farran was taken down: Two by the captain himself; one by Xachariah, a Shadow Fang with a mysterious blindfold; two by Ann, an Eagle Woman who preferred efficiency of speech and used a pole-mounted axe to do her dirty work; three by the Fylenis, a feat made easy by his control of illusion--eight in all, Verra's lucky number, for all the good it did her. Meanwhile Verra herself tried a one-woman assault on the ship, which gave her increasingly more injuries as she fought and escaped Xach's unseeing gaze, revealed that she could see through Whys' illusions through a strange spell, and eventually came to Conall--her true target. By then everyone was set to fight her as a team, and they very nearly caught her--if not for a little intervention. For Ann had been sent to wreck Verra's ship and take out any remaining pirates, but she only found the one..Callor, still manning the helm. He told her she shouldn't approach him, and she didn't take the threat seriously enough, leading him to use his own spell, setting off a line of explosions that not only allowed Verra to escape, but nearly threw two of the Farran's crew off the ship into the ocean.
"In the aftermath of the battle, Arizan was informed, and the Farran's crew tended to their wounds the best they could for the moment. The Gran Daora, Verra's ship, crash-landed on its captain's directions--less skilled than the helmsman, but good enough for that moment--in some woods, hidden from the eyes of authorities. So ended chapter one.
"The Farran landed in the city of Rysinth, and the money earned by turning in the captured crew of the Gran Daora was sufficient to pay for the healing of wounds, both of ship and crew. The people were tended to far faster, and soon all were gone from the hospital, spread throughout Rysinth. The Fylenis met with an old friend, Leona, an elvish actress who was young at the time of the Ardanian war, now transformed by the transformer to a partially Fylenis form, at her own request, for she had always admired the Fylenis. Whys taught her the ropes and rules that the race may use and must adhere to, though he neglected to warn her of their relation to the Ekim. Conall, wandering the town, happened upon his sister, Charlotte, telling a one-man unwilling audience an inaccurate if entertaining tale. She saw his healing injuries from the recent fight and had to know the story behind that, of course, but it saved her 'victim' any further muddling of his own history. This person was Khazu, a young Black Earth with a little Blue Tail a few generations up in the line, and a very good friend of Leona's, as fate would have it. Once Conall finished his story, Charlotte insisted that if he could procure an Ekim weapon like Verra's it would afford him an advantage in her inevitable next revenge attempt. She explained that a noble of some sort by the name of Bernard had suggested the location of just such an item, and in no time had convinced or verbally bullied both men present into joining a quest to do just that. But three is hardly a proper adventuring party, and Khazu wanted to find Leona first, so they set out to find more people to join their mission.
"The dragon stayed with Ann; Arizan was quite unused to human culture and had to have the concept of a restaurant explained for her. Unfortunately, they had barely finished their meal before Ann was arrested. However, she revealed to the captain of the guard that the wanted poster he based her arrest on was quite out of date, and further explained that she would be glad to help capture the man who had been her employer at the time that poster was published..someone called Rixxan, leader of the Fox Bandits. Arizan eventually agreed to help in this effort, as well.
"Xach, meanwhile, went to an arranged meeting with a young woman he had mentored in the art of fighting blind. Her name was Arozi; she was of the same mix as Kalzen, Blue and Yellow, but with quite a different shade as the end result. And she had no eyes. However, that hadn't stopped her from already becoming a Peacekeeper captain--the Peacekeepers are an organization who seek to fight off pirates and thereby make airship trade and transport safer. They spoke of how they had been since the last time they met; Arozi explained the situation with her future mate, Karua; and eventually Xach told her the full story of Verra's attack. It contained vital strategic information a Peacekeeper could use against such a notorious pirate, and added to Verra's impressive list of crimes.
"When the two blind Neshoba left the bar, they found Leona waiting, and Whys disguised as Karua. Leona meant to test Arozi's loyalty to Karua, even in the face of him apparently changing his mind, but Whys quickly realized what her game was and got out of it as soon as he could. A brief fight ensued, in which Leona demonstrated the surperior skills that come with age by deflecting all of Arozi's attacks, always coming close to hitting the other woman but stopping just short--fighting the way an actor fights onstage, in other words. Whys used illusions to send them both away in opposite directions. Then Edward, Blue Tail helsman of the Farran, arrived.
"Edward had run into Raoclem, who was half Yellow Moon and half Shadow Fang; and a friend of his, Aurica, who had in fact taught Charlotte in the arts of both entertaining if inaccurate storytelling and katana-wielding, the latter of which was much more useful to her occupation as a hunter. Edward didn't know who Aurica was, and had never met her before; he gave Raoclem a punch for the trouble he'd caused, and Raoclem revealed an impending Blood Moon as a distraction from the questions Edward really should have been asking. He left before thinking to ask those questions, wanting only to tell Xach.
"Conall and Khazu tracked Leona as far as her meeting with Whys, but lost the trail due to natural Fylenis paranoia. However, The Spirits had it that a Shadow Fang by the name of Terminus, who had once been deceived by Verra--again, the same incident with Raoclem--and whose spell allowed him to go instantly from one place to another, saw where Leona was and knew Conall wanted to find her. He led the two straight to her; she agreed to go along with the group because she wanted something to do, Terminus decided to join them to repay a debt owed to Conall for the damage his deception by Verra had allowed him to cause, and Khazu had already been firmly roped into the scheme by then. They went back to Charlotte.
"Charlotte, while seeking people to join her tomb-raiding campaign, came upon a strange, black-scaled Ekim woman named Shazak, whose soul weapon was a long-barreled metal crossbow. Then Conall and the others met up with Charlotte, and they agreed to gather supplies, sleep that night, and leave on the next morning on their strange and impulsive quest.
"While all of that was going on: Callor was blind from the use of his spell, but still able to heal and patch up some of Verra's wounds from the battle. When he was finishing up, a man named Bernard appeared--possibly the same Bernard who had given Charlotte supposed directions to an Ekim weapon--and suggested that Verra would fare better at taking her vengeance on the crew of the Farran if she had a better crew herself. He even brought along a candidate for this new dream pirate crew, a knife-wielding elf called Ewk. Callor, meanwhile, was annoyed as usual by Bernard's pet cat, Gretchen. He left to his quarters to try and sleep off his remaining hours of blindness from the spell.
"And that, was chapter two.
"Hn...on second thought, I have no idea how I was ever confused by any of that. Anyway, it's time for a little change of pace. For while the heroes set out on their various trips, and Verra and the enigmatic Bernard plotted, Callor fell asleep in his room, and had most unusual dreams..."
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From: http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?42524-Airships-Over-Aranor-Prose
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