FA+
Shop
632
Views
Views
5
Favorites
Favorites
Category
Story / Fantasy
Species Exotic (Other)
Size 120 x 120
File Size 126.3 kB
Report this content
More from dankedonuts
Listed in Folders
An unofficial sequel to a few D&D campaigns I was in. Featuring a character from one, an organization created in another, and a cameo by someone I’ve yet to use. An exotic (some would say ‘monstrous’) woman resigned to military service amid a squadron of other ‘irregulars’ meets her latest commanding officer.
This is a submission to the Thursday Prompt writing group. Using the prompts ‘species’ and ‘launching’ Check out the group's user page here: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/thursdayprompt/
And the other stories generated from these prompts here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/28588475/ and here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/28508753/.
This story has headed my FurAffinity page as a Featured Story
THURSDAY PROMPT STORY INDEX
Indentured Platitudes
By: DankeDonuts
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dankedonuts/
A coil of serpentine forms writhed atop a rounded perch. Below them, more, and more still. All of them holding three colors of scale; thick banks of alternating red and black separated by thin ones of yellow. Colors which announced to the world that their stark white fangs held doses of lighting-fast death. Dozens upon dozens of them, heads and bodies without tails framing and draping below a sharp-chinned, feminine face. One with blazing yellow eyes.
The Medusa's own fangs held no venom. As evidenced by the coloring of her body scales; predominately scarlet with the yellow patches kept isolated by rings of black. It was in fact her arms and hands that were her most lethal features. For they wielded a powerful longbow, with which she launched another red-fletched arrow streaking through the sky. It contacted the hay bale backed target exactly where she wanted it to. Not in the bullseye, no. She was leaving that be, preferring instead to trace the outermost circle. Five shots in, and she now had a perfect half-circle. A lady had to keep things interesting. Two more years, and she wouldn't be so starved of diversion.
Her living headdress was long enough to extend well past her waist, when it could be bothered to lie flat. Several of the snakes draped along her back suddenly rose, exposing her tunic to the slight breeze. And, incidentally, alerting her to motion behind her several seconds before her ears could detect it. Steady footsteps, coming towards her, muffled. Bare feet marching on the grass. Coming fast and soft, the diminutive stride of one of the Goblins. “Griznik,” she created before turning to face him.
The scout wasn’t particularly surprised to have been identified so. The little brown-green fellow was wearing his blue-marked studded leather armor, as always. But never his books when he could get away with it. “He’s looking for you,” the soldier said, crooking a thumb backwards. Towards the center of the encampment. Which sat between a ramshackle watch tower and a jagged line of oak trees. “I told him where you could be found, but…”
“But he wants me to go to him.” The Medusa let out a rueful breath. ‘Two more years’. Well, she wasn’t going to leave her practice area in a mess and give Archibald Rihorn something to hold over her head on day one. She walked towards the target to collect her missiles.
“Small wonder they call his outfit Darion’s Hounds,” she scowled as she plucked out the first shaft. “Every time we get a new commanding officer, he’s got to make a show of being top dog.”
And piss all over everyone at the bottom.
. . .
The serpentine woman had traded her loose practice gear for her own set of armor -- light leathers streaked with blue -- before coming to the large command tent. The sole figure inside was leaning over a great table, and the large map atop it. Despite what must have been a long and exhausting journey, the Human had a well-trimmed beard of black and his steel half-plate was polished to a shine. His sword belt was pristine, and set for a left-handed draw. His blue command cape had been inherited from his predecessor, but already looked like it had just been pressed, or run through some repair spells. ‘This is someone who values precision and efficiency,’ she surmised. ‘Being sent out here, sent to us, must feel like an insult.’
Tough owlbear pellets. She didn’t want to be out in the Black Stones region, either.
“Sergeant Philida Rosestone reporting as ordered, Group Captain.”
“Acknowledged,” said the man, not looking up from the great map.
“You can look me in the face, sir. The most I can do to you wit my gaze is knock you out for a few moments.” She’d never worked out how the whole stone-vision trick worked. Nor how she felt about that.
“And if you could do more?” He did not look up.
“I’d use the ability to defeat my enemies,” She answered, gingerly placing her hand around one of the snakes and lifting its head upwards. “As I do the venoms I harvests from these.” She took one of her snake heads just behind the jaw, gingerly, and leveled it own to meet his eyes. That got him looking up at her.
Philida game him a diplomatic smile. “May I ask how it is you came to be in command of the Hounds?”
“No,” he said flatly. “But you can tell me how you came to be one of its first members.” And there it was. ‘Look at me. I’m in charge. I take and you give.’
She decided to push a littler herself, turning her gaze to one of the nearby chairs. One of the snakes mounted the forward-left of her head turned its head the other way, continuing to stare right at the Group Captain from the within camouflage of its sisters’ shifting bellies, and would continue to do so as was its want when encountering strangers. A snake mounted near the neck joint, the one that liked to hide its head between her breasts once again found its access cut off by leather. Others lazed atop her shoulders, or shifted along her back. The one in her hand patiently waited for release. She couldn’t see through their eyes, or they hers, but they shared a musculature and a pulse. She knew where each one was in relation to the other as intimately as she did her fingers. “It’s quite a story. Permission to sit down to tell it?”
“Denied.”
The short version, then. “The Medusa who bore me terrorized a number if fishing villages down east of here. They hired a team of adventures to end the problem. They did, but found an unattended baby -- me -- among the burnt remains of her lair. One of them took pity upon it, me, and set herself to raising me to better than scrabbling an existence of predation on others.”
Rihorn’s mast of military stoicism faltered into a brief sneer. “Predation? Is that what you call hunting and killing sentient beings for sport? As Medusa I’ve ever heard of prior to this week is want to do?”
He was baiting her.
Philida didn’t bite. She shared a pulse with the snakes around her. Dumb animals who would be charged by her risen adrenaline and launch into wild movements, defensive postures, hissing, threatening glares. Prove the expected stereotypes true.
“Even before the recent regime change…” She paused to steady her breath, and study face of her commanding officer. It wasn’t often that a King was revealed to be illegitimate and removed from power in a duel he publicly agreed to. Rihorn gave away nothing. “... there were those who rejected the notion that one’s kin-line condemns them to the embrace of Evil. Or Good, for that matter. Goblins, Kobalds, Sahuagin, Tieflings, and the like.” It was not a coincidence that she was listing off other species to be found amid the Hounds. Named for none other than the new and progressive king, Darius I. “Remove such a being from the toxic environment they were born to, or welcome them when they find their own way out, and you give them a chance at a productive and honorable life.”
“I’m well aware of the new edicts,” Rihorn glared.
“I am merely reporting the reasons for which my mother chose to take me in. And let me be clear, when I say Mother I refer to Leadora Rosestone.” The first Group Captain she’d served under had refused to address her as ‘Rosestone’ at all simply to deny the connection. It seemed His Majesty had better places to put the more idealistic members of his military than at the head of his pet project. Or his generals were quietly set upon its failure.
Philida, for her part just wanted to earn her silver fang, the token that would declare her freedom to walk the roads and streets of her adoptive home realm in relative peace and done with it. Assuming no one turned up out of nowhere to discredit and depose Darius I. ‘Two more years’
“Continue,” ordered the man. As if he hadn’t read through her parchment-work repeatedly already. And confirmed her alignment with the regiment’s Paladin.
Philida refused to hand over any memories of her childhood under these circumstances. Those were for those she held as friends alone. “Even though her decision cost her much -- her place in the crew, her position back home -- my mother remained true to her principles. And raised them up in me. We lived off the fortune she’d amassed vanquishing evil-doers, which ran out just as I became of age to start making my own. I took up her bow and her cause. Largely as a bounty hunter. Sometimes I worked my way into a team of dungeon crawlers for the really big game.”
“Easier to collect a bounty through an intermediary, eh?” Rihorn’s barely restrained grin was a dark one.
“Quite. Though I was, and remain, quite skilled at the ...predation... the job entails.” One of the more galling aspects of her service to the Hounds was that she’d been forced to start at the bottom of the rank ladder. The third Group captain she’d worked under died specifically because she refused to accept her experienced advice. Rank being all that mattered to that one
What was left of Group Captain Testral after the necromancers were done with her was, in point of fact, rather rank.
“Following your natural inclinations, then?” another jibe, a triumphant.
“Leading unjust men and women to their just ends.” Was it the simple truth of the woman’s words that slapped the smirk away? Or the ice-cold way in which she’d delivered them? Or perhaps it was the way that every single one of her snakes suddenly stopped and looked dead at Rihorn. Having picked up on the very slight shimmer of hunt-lust that went up her spine at the very thought of her past and future occupation, they’d set their eyes on the nearest obvious prey.
For the first time, the Group Captain’s hands left the table. Slowly approaching that left-handed blade...
The Medusa stepped back, taking a few calming breaths. Slow and cool exhalations. The snakeheads obliged, returning to passive postures. “I happened to be on one such hunt when I ran afoul of a sizable army contingent. Several of whom were in league with the pirate band I was tracking. They had laid out a siege line to block my path -”
“You dare accuse members of the Royal Army of Ethalwald of criminal impropriety?!” Rihorn taken in a deep, furious breath through his nose. Snakes be damned, he glared at the woman intent on staring her down.
Several of the snakes stared right back, drawn by instinct to return the threatening display. The tingling in her spine was not entirely of her own cause.
She stood firm. “I can only accuse, as I’m sure any evidence for such was destroyed. I was thus placed in an impossible position. Fight the former King’s men for my freedom, and be marked a monster and killed as such. Or surrender and be executed after a show trial, if that. I was hauled into a cart in chains, and as he closed the gate on me, the squad leader made quite clear that I he would see his friends’ crimes applied to my head before it came off. ‘Just another beastie making trouble,’ he said.” The sides, back and top of her head became a river she could hear without ears. She was getting worked up. Couldn’t be helped. So were they.
“I was still awaiting my day before a tribunal when Darius assumed the throne.” Rumor had it the new King had himself been the member of a group of adventurers, and it was one of his comrades-in-arms that set him towards the path of offering amnesty for ‘non-conventional citizens’ in exchange for military service. She’d likely never know for sure, unless she lived long enough to see a history book or two written about the days she was living in. Her own lifespan was something of a grey area.
“You don’t want to be here, do you?” he asked.
“Two more years and I won’t be,” she answered.
“And what is to become of those members of the should you take your leave of us?” Philida had never spoken the name.
“That depends entirely upon their ability to last five years in the new King’s army,” she answered, speaking up slightly raise her voice above the din of scales sliding on scales. “And whether or not they could resist getting themselves into any more trouble with the law, without a scapegoat to hide behind.” She very much needed to get back to the practice range. Or find some food-based hunting to do. Anything to draw down the tense energy coiling up amid her ‘headdress.’ “Have you heard enough.”
“For now.” Rihorn’s knuckles returned to the table, as did his eyes.
“Am I dismissed, then?”
“Dismissed.”
Sergeant Rosestone turned on her heels and left. Giving the latest Group Captain not another word to mark her passage. The only words she left to herself were yet another iteration of her mantra; ‘Two more years.’
THURSDAY PROMPT STORY INDEX
This is a submission to the Thursday Prompt writing group. Using the prompts ‘species’ and ‘launching’ Check out the group's user page here: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/thursdayprompt/
And the other stories generated from these prompts here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/28588475/ and here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/28508753/.
This story has headed my FurAffinity page as a Featured Story
THURSDAY PROMPT STORY INDEX
Indentured Platitudes
By: DankeDonuts
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dankedonuts/
A coil of serpentine forms writhed atop a rounded perch. Below them, more, and more still. All of them holding three colors of scale; thick banks of alternating red and black separated by thin ones of yellow. Colors which announced to the world that their stark white fangs held doses of lighting-fast death. Dozens upon dozens of them, heads and bodies without tails framing and draping below a sharp-chinned, feminine face. One with blazing yellow eyes.
The Medusa's own fangs held no venom. As evidenced by the coloring of her body scales; predominately scarlet with the yellow patches kept isolated by rings of black. It was in fact her arms and hands that were her most lethal features. For they wielded a powerful longbow, with which she launched another red-fletched arrow streaking through the sky. It contacted the hay bale backed target exactly where she wanted it to. Not in the bullseye, no. She was leaving that be, preferring instead to trace the outermost circle. Five shots in, and she now had a perfect half-circle. A lady had to keep things interesting. Two more years, and she wouldn't be so starved of diversion.
Her living headdress was long enough to extend well past her waist, when it could be bothered to lie flat. Several of the snakes draped along her back suddenly rose, exposing her tunic to the slight breeze. And, incidentally, alerting her to motion behind her several seconds before her ears could detect it. Steady footsteps, coming towards her, muffled. Bare feet marching on the grass. Coming fast and soft, the diminutive stride of one of the Goblins. “Griznik,” she created before turning to face him.
The scout wasn’t particularly surprised to have been identified so. The little brown-green fellow was wearing his blue-marked studded leather armor, as always. But never his books when he could get away with it. “He’s looking for you,” the soldier said, crooking a thumb backwards. Towards the center of the encampment. Which sat between a ramshackle watch tower and a jagged line of oak trees. “I told him where you could be found, but…”
“But he wants me to go to him.” The Medusa let out a rueful breath. ‘Two more years’. Well, she wasn’t going to leave her practice area in a mess and give Archibald Rihorn something to hold over her head on day one. She walked towards the target to collect her missiles.
“Small wonder they call his outfit Darion’s Hounds,” she scowled as she plucked out the first shaft. “Every time we get a new commanding officer, he’s got to make a show of being top dog.”
And piss all over everyone at the bottom.
. . .
The serpentine woman had traded her loose practice gear for her own set of armor -- light leathers streaked with blue -- before coming to the large command tent. The sole figure inside was leaning over a great table, and the large map atop it. Despite what must have been a long and exhausting journey, the Human had a well-trimmed beard of black and his steel half-plate was polished to a shine. His sword belt was pristine, and set for a left-handed draw. His blue command cape had been inherited from his predecessor, but already looked like it had just been pressed, or run through some repair spells. ‘This is someone who values precision and efficiency,’ she surmised. ‘Being sent out here, sent to us, must feel like an insult.’
Tough owlbear pellets. She didn’t want to be out in the Black Stones region, either.
“Sergeant Philida Rosestone reporting as ordered, Group Captain.”
“Acknowledged,” said the man, not looking up from the great map.
“You can look me in the face, sir. The most I can do to you wit my gaze is knock you out for a few moments.” She’d never worked out how the whole stone-vision trick worked. Nor how she felt about that.
“And if you could do more?” He did not look up.
“I’d use the ability to defeat my enemies,” She answered, gingerly placing her hand around one of the snakes and lifting its head upwards. “As I do the venoms I harvests from these.” She took one of her snake heads just behind the jaw, gingerly, and leveled it own to meet his eyes. That got him looking up at her.
Philida game him a diplomatic smile. “May I ask how it is you came to be in command of the Hounds?”
“No,” he said flatly. “But you can tell me how you came to be one of its first members.” And there it was. ‘Look at me. I’m in charge. I take and you give.’
She decided to push a littler herself, turning her gaze to one of the nearby chairs. One of the snakes mounted the forward-left of her head turned its head the other way, continuing to stare right at the Group Captain from the within camouflage of its sisters’ shifting bellies, and would continue to do so as was its want when encountering strangers. A snake mounted near the neck joint, the one that liked to hide its head between her breasts once again found its access cut off by leather. Others lazed atop her shoulders, or shifted along her back. The one in her hand patiently waited for release. She couldn’t see through their eyes, or they hers, but they shared a musculature and a pulse. She knew where each one was in relation to the other as intimately as she did her fingers. “It’s quite a story. Permission to sit down to tell it?”
“Denied.”
The short version, then. “The Medusa who bore me terrorized a number if fishing villages down east of here. They hired a team of adventures to end the problem. They did, but found an unattended baby -- me -- among the burnt remains of her lair. One of them took pity upon it, me, and set herself to raising me to better than scrabbling an existence of predation on others.”
Rihorn’s mast of military stoicism faltered into a brief sneer. “Predation? Is that what you call hunting and killing sentient beings for sport? As Medusa I’ve ever heard of prior to this week is want to do?”
He was baiting her.
Philida didn’t bite. She shared a pulse with the snakes around her. Dumb animals who would be charged by her risen adrenaline and launch into wild movements, defensive postures, hissing, threatening glares. Prove the expected stereotypes true.
“Even before the recent regime change…” She paused to steady her breath, and study face of her commanding officer. It wasn’t often that a King was revealed to be illegitimate and removed from power in a duel he publicly agreed to. Rihorn gave away nothing. “... there were those who rejected the notion that one’s kin-line condemns them to the embrace of Evil. Or Good, for that matter. Goblins, Kobalds, Sahuagin, Tieflings, and the like.” It was not a coincidence that she was listing off other species to be found amid the Hounds. Named for none other than the new and progressive king, Darius I. “Remove such a being from the toxic environment they were born to, or welcome them when they find their own way out, and you give them a chance at a productive and honorable life.”
“I’m well aware of the new edicts,” Rihorn glared.
“I am merely reporting the reasons for which my mother chose to take me in. And let me be clear, when I say Mother I refer to Leadora Rosestone.” The first Group Captain she’d served under had refused to address her as ‘Rosestone’ at all simply to deny the connection. It seemed His Majesty had better places to put the more idealistic members of his military than at the head of his pet project. Or his generals were quietly set upon its failure.
Philida, for her part just wanted to earn her silver fang, the token that would declare her freedom to walk the roads and streets of her adoptive home realm in relative peace and done with it. Assuming no one turned up out of nowhere to discredit and depose Darius I. ‘Two more years’
“Continue,” ordered the man. As if he hadn’t read through her parchment-work repeatedly already. And confirmed her alignment with the regiment’s Paladin.
Philida refused to hand over any memories of her childhood under these circumstances. Those were for those she held as friends alone. “Even though her decision cost her much -- her place in the crew, her position back home -- my mother remained true to her principles. And raised them up in me. We lived off the fortune she’d amassed vanquishing evil-doers, which ran out just as I became of age to start making my own. I took up her bow and her cause. Largely as a bounty hunter. Sometimes I worked my way into a team of dungeon crawlers for the really big game.”
“Easier to collect a bounty through an intermediary, eh?” Rihorn’s barely restrained grin was a dark one.
“Quite. Though I was, and remain, quite skilled at the ...predation... the job entails.” One of the more galling aspects of her service to the Hounds was that she’d been forced to start at the bottom of the rank ladder. The third Group captain she’d worked under died specifically because she refused to accept her experienced advice. Rank being all that mattered to that one
What was left of Group Captain Testral after the necromancers were done with her was, in point of fact, rather rank.
“Following your natural inclinations, then?” another jibe, a triumphant.
“Leading unjust men and women to their just ends.” Was it the simple truth of the woman’s words that slapped the smirk away? Or the ice-cold way in which she’d delivered them? Or perhaps it was the way that every single one of her snakes suddenly stopped and looked dead at Rihorn. Having picked up on the very slight shimmer of hunt-lust that went up her spine at the very thought of her past and future occupation, they’d set their eyes on the nearest obvious prey.
For the first time, the Group Captain’s hands left the table. Slowly approaching that left-handed blade...
The Medusa stepped back, taking a few calming breaths. Slow and cool exhalations. The snakeheads obliged, returning to passive postures. “I happened to be on one such hunt when I ran afoul of a sizable army contingent. Several of whom were in league with the pirate band I was tracking. They had laid out a siege line to block my path -”
“You dare accuse members of the Royal Army of Ethalwald of criminal impropriety?!” Rihorn taken in a deep, furious breath through his nose. Snakes be damned, he glared at the woman intent on staring her down.
Several of the snakes stared right back, drawn by instinct to return the threatening display. The tingling in her spine was not entirely of her own cause.
She stood firm. “I can only accuse, as I’m sure any evidence for such was destroyed. I was thus placed in an impossible position. Fight the former King’s men for my freedom, and be marked a monster and killed as such. Or surrender and be executed after a show trial, if that. I was hauled into a cart in chains, and as he closed the gate on me, the squad leader made quite clear that I he would see his friends’ crimes applied to my head before it came off. ‘Just another beastie making trouble,’ he said.” The sides, back and top of her head became a river she could hear without ears. She was getting worked up. Couldn’t be helped. So were they.
“I was still awaiting my day before a tribunal when Darius assumed the throne.” Rumor had it the new King had himself been the member of a group of adventurers, and it was one of his comrades-in-arms that set him towards the path of offering amnesty for ‘non-conventional citizens’ in exchange for military service. She’d likely never know for sure, unless she lived long enough to see a history book or two written about the days she was living in. Her own lifespan was something of a grey area.
“You don’t want to be here, do you?” he asked.
“Two more years and I won’t be,” she answered.
“And what is to become of those members of the should you take your leave of us?” Philida had never spoken the name.
“That depends entirely upon their ability to last five years in the new King’s army,” she answered, speaking up slightly raise her voice above the din of scales sliding on scales. “And whether or not they could resist getting themselves into any more trouble with the law, without a scapegoat to hide behind.” She very much needed to get back to the practice range. Or find some food-based hunting to do. Anything to draw down the tense energy coiling up amid her ‘headdress.’ “Have you heard enough.”
“For now.” Rihorn’s knuckles returned to the table, as did his eyes.
“Am I dismissed, then?”
“Dismissed.”
Sergeant Rosestone turned on her heels and left. Giving the latest Group Captain not another word to mark her passage. The only words she left to herself were yet another iteration of her mantra; ‘Two more years.’
THURSDAY PROMPT STORY INDEX
Category Story / Fantasy
Species Exotic (Other)
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 126.3 kB
I almost didn't read this.
I was on break at work, only 30 minutes of freedom and quiet. As I churned through my submission feed, I saw this story and gave it a glance. The description in the beginning was heavy and didn't quite capture my attention, but rather than give up, I chose to start more in the middle and see how things looked there.
It hooked me. I read to the end, then read the beginning. I can't say I've ever found a writer who handles a Medusa so effectively. You touch on so many points I've wondered about, specifically how the snakes act according to the physiological responses she has, but not necessarily within her direct control.
Add the additional layer of political posturing and a new edict regarding unusual citizens earning status among the populace, and you've hit several key interest points in my book. Nice work.
I was on break at work, only 30 minutes of freedom and quiet. As I churned through my submission feed, I saw this story and gave it a glance. The description in the beginning was heavy and didn't quite capture my attention, but rather than give up, I chose to start more in the middle and see how things looked there.
It hooked me. I read to the end, then read the beginning. I can't say I've ever found a writer who handles a Medusa so effectively. You touch on so many points I've wondered about, specifically how the snakes act according to the physiological responses she has, but not necessarily within her direct control.
Add the additional layer of political posturing and a new edict regarding unusual citizens earning status among the populace, and you've hit several key interest points in my book. Nice work.
Admittedly, the early part before the scene change was expanded to fit the 'launching' prompt. I started this for the previous week's prompt, 'species' but I couldn't post it then because I'd forgotten the name of the campaign world and a had to go digging and asking around for it. I guess it got a little front-loaded.
But I'm really glad you liked the later parts. Thanks for the compliments. :)
But I'm really glad you liked the later parts. Thanks for the compliments. :)
Comments