Alfarell

A 387-post collection

Challenge #04893-M144: Something's in the Water

The laundresses of three neighboring noble estates have long come the same bend in the river to clean the fabrics of their masters and chat about the day’s trivialities. All seemed right and normal for years, until one day the laundry emerged from the waters covered in strange, flowing symbols too neat to be stains, too precise to be meaningless. -- Deathshead419

Three Baronets held neighbouring lands, and it was a lucky thing that they were friends. The shared hunting grounds were a forest where a majority of the three realms' politics happened whilst riding out and locating their shared quarry. Most of the rest happened over ales at the feast for the victor.

It was therefore no shock that the servants were also fast allies. The neighbouring holiday castles shared the same stream where the laundresses clustered to chatter and scrub. Most of the news that didn't reach the town criers exchanged itself at that junction.

"M'lord's young lady's come to bloom," cheered the laundress for Ronchenac, Nellie. "She'll be meeting her fiancee very soon."

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Challenge #04892-M143: False Fate

Some hold that the fates of all men are carved into stone. What happens when a miner breaks into a cave and discovers tablets seeming to record all events of the miner’s life up until that point and then details what is to come thereafter? -- Deathshead419

Some legends say that the Great Silver Dragon curled up and became the moon. Some say that she became the very world upon which all other life depends. Some legends say that all the

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Challenge #04891-M142: Live to Serve

Vichelle had known little in life aside from washing the laundry of her noble master’s family. She kept her head down, her ears plugged, and tried to act like a shadow in the night. But when she finds blood on the linens one time too many, a vision at the river tells her that she must do more… -- Deathshead419

Servants should never be seen or heard. They're meant to serve without thanks, without notice. Without merit. Silent as the walls,

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Challenge #04886-M137: Go Back to the Fire

A devotee of Khasis and Gibil, the fire and the forge, arrives to give libations to the Divines. Only, the devotee becomes confused, as one God is singular non-binary and the other is a hypostasis of multiple divine aspects…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypostasis(philosophyand_religion)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYOUFGfK4bU -- Deathshead419

Offerings to gods can vary in substance, but agree on theme. Various deities all over Alfarell are offered various liquids to drink. Few take blood

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Challenge #04885-M137: Familiar Divinity

Word has reached Wothyn that his ravens did their duty, and gave the new Goddess Vykoria the dream of where his son was entombed. After [Insert Here] number of years, Thor has returned. The Pantheon may at last be able to reconvene…

Follows on from: https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-04866-m117-dredging-up-blessings -- Deathshead419

[AN: Yeh nah not gonna put a number in there]

Wothyn, Thor, Freja, Tyr, and even Loki gathered in the mead hall specific to their shared legends. Given that

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Challenge #04881-M132: First Steps to Peace

Nine Princes and Princesses from across the realms receive a mysterious letter, that they must attend an important gathering of unspecified content; one to be held in a peaceful land which has no quarrel with any of the nobles. Indeed, the ruler there declares no knowledge of the invitations nor that he had ever heard of the sprawling palace where the nine gather with their servants and favorites. What unfolds next surprises everyone involved… -- Deathshead419

Eighteen letters. Each on high-class paper,

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Challenge #04876-M127: Invasive Plant Control

It took Vholno some time to understand that his father was once regarded as a blushing maid who found his true self through the care of the dryads. Though wind pollination makes humoresque paternity all but impossible to determine, still, Vholno is desperate to learn the one who’s pollen took root in Gyethamp the Bard all those years before.

Sequel to https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-04709-l325-difficult-history -- Deathshead419

There was a lot to take in. A lot to understand. A

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Challenge #04875-M126: Wrath of the Dark

Deep below the vale of ancients, in ruins so deep and layered as to become a cave-like labyrinth, is an effigy of a goddess. A small posse of dare seekers ignore the fell myths whispered of the buried divine, though they may come to wish they had heeded the warnings... -- Deathshead419

The world was built by Dragons, then built upon by various civilisations. Some cities, like Arbordeep, have been built up on previous iterations of Arbordeep as various cataclysms, floods, and

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Challenge #04873-M124: Fishing For Converts

A new faith in a single God has captured a polity, raising or replacing the old temples and extinguishing the old gods. All except one, a "Tree Mother" whose grove Deep in the wilderness has been out of reach, for all who have tried to burn her put have returned shaken, wounded, or not at all.

Yet one priest is insistent, and takes the task of eradicating this last bastion of paganism to heart. -- Deathshead419

The story is told of a

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Challenge #04872-M123: Best Defence

Yu-Cian was conscripted for his year of service in the city watch some months ago. Since then he has been mocked mercilessly by the veteran who signed on for life, has had his wages stolen by his sergeant, and was even spat upon by merchants leaving the city who assumed he was there for a shakedown.

So imagine his surprise when one of the horsemen of the plains arrived one night and had a civil conversation with him after all this time.

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Challenge #04870-M121: The Right Fulcrum

"You can have money or you can have Justice." - Which do you choose? -- Prompey

[AN: Very sorely tempted to do so many Leverage riffs]

The right to reign is often accepted to mean: anyone who reigns has all the rights. And when anyone is both rich and powerful, they can take what they want and make consequences happen to others. Naturally, the people on the wrong end of that exchange tend to get irritated by that attitude.

So rebellions rise

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Challenge #04868-M119: Tested Not in Vein

Legend holds of a harsh God, who’s marked have the blood drained from their bodies until expiring, this life force fueling the God’s power. The God has no use for the souls of those who are not devotees. So what happens when Elizabeth is dragged into the body of a ghoulish divine and accidentally invokes the right rite to bind her soul to her blood and become a simple blood cell inside the sepulcher halls of Godly flesh? -- Deathshead419

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Challenge #04866-M117: Dredging Up Blessings

Eons ago, a temple with ten divine statues sank into the sea and then were pulled into the mantle of the planet itself. Now they have come to life, trapped below the crust of the world. Only Nalani and Vykoria can plunge down a lava plume and guide these divines into the light, though a path no human has ever walked will be treacherous and full of dangers unknown to mankind.

Sequel to: https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-04849-m100-stolen-mercy -- Deathshead419

Vykoria

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Challenge #04863 -M114: Love of Perfection

A skilled Sculptor has created a beauteous statue of a woman. It is so beauteous that the sculptor has fallen in love with her. And so the Sculptor implores the Gods to bring her to life so that she might become the Sculptor’s wife. Boons from the Gods always come with a price, especially ones reflecting love. And it may be that the Beauteous woman will wish to sculpt the Sculptor into her vision of an ideally aesthetic form… -- Deathshead419

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Challenge #04862-M113: Fearsome Hero Hunvug

In a Tavern on the outskirts of Pildile, four men gather around a table for drinking, dicing, and a night away from the troubles of the world. Only, all four saw a hero’s exploits first hand, yet, none of them have the same story of what really unfolded… -- Deathshead419

Three beers in, Vaelin muttered, "Bloody heroes..." He took another swig before taking his turn at the dice.

"Aye," rumbled Goran. "Breaking in where they don't barge in, sticking their noses

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