#The netherlings are survivors!

[selemina]

The green names had a terrible time this session! :D

[dragons-ire]

Heavenseye

Not that long ago, there had been feasting in the village of Ok'Zundu. There had been dancing and gaming and the hosting of honored guests - the netherlings that had come to aid them. To be aided in kind in their hour of need.

Today, they laid the dead to rest, chief among them their war leader, Sona Vanu.

Today, instead of the fearsome Sundrop dance of battle, they danced the somber dance to send the warriors' spirits home. The bodies wrapped in fragrant cloth, bound with everything one would need to survive the journey to the world after. The old totems cleaned, new ones ready to be erected.

The survivors that had pried Sona Vanu from beneath the Cryodragon that had felled them were the ones to set the wrapped corpse onto the waiting Sanuwa.

In the clear air, high on Abalathia's Spine, there came the prayer.

O, mighty Bismarck, who breeches the cloud-waves between this world and the next world, receive of us this tribute. May they join our ancestors in the great Dance of eternity. May they smile upon our dance in this world  - like rays of the sun after a long night - until we are called to join them.

Today, the Hive was silent, save for the clicking of mandibles as the survivors laid out the bodies of the slain.

----

Not too long before, there had been trading and there had been deal-making. Tasks performed for information on what became clear was a shared enemy - goods and information exchanging hands and claws. The finest and most succulents of foods - delicacies they would never have been permitted in their former lives - for the finest and most succulent bits of gossip of movements in the Forelands.

It might be better not to know how the Nonmind of Loth ast Vath treat their dead. What tributes could be given to a Lord who would not have given them the choice to act? Who would have just bade them move in step to the swinging of his four great swords as nothing more than the flickering moths that heralded his terrible presence.

To devote to Ravana, Lord of the Hive is as much a burden as a blessing.

Today, a man who had terrorized Ishgardian and Dravanian and beastman alike on his quest was silent, as were his followers. As was the unfortunate soul chosen to be the vessel of a summoning  - mutilated and warped. Their crimes written on their own flesh as surely as the trail of carnage and devastation and heartbreak they had left behind.

----

In the Iron Feast above the Wilholm River, the smoke from the pyres smoldered long after those who had lit them had departed. Men and dragons heaped together in a parody of what this place might have been: a resting place for travelers, for pilgrims seeking the wisdom of ancients.

In the ruins of a shelter that had been refurbished  - part traveler's sanctuary, part hermit's cell at this point - a golden glow illuminated the small chamber. Cast eerie shadows on the ancient stone.

None of them could ever hurt anyone again.

----

The eye of a dragon lay in Breandan's gauntleted hand as he considered it. Eyes half-averted, not daring to look too deeply into the wellspring of aether and tormented memory that lay within.

The beast that they had driven off  - spared - not slaughtered like the rest: Rangridh of the Gilded Dirge. Whose crime had been to lose her brood-mother to Thordan's treachery, and her dearest friend to the turmoil that came after. Who desired only to see them again - in any form - no matter the price.

But - all that she had done after, and empowered others to do by trading away half her spirit to a heretic's cause.

Was it worth it, slayer of dragons? The words came and yet the silence remained unbroken Was this what you desired - a task worthy to your skill? To hold power in your fragile and mortal hands? To presume to absolve a creature you would have once just called unabsolvable?

...worth the strife, worth the cost? Worth dragging your friends with you? The lives laid down, the bloodshed? 

What is it you are hoping to accomplish here?

He wasn't quite sure he knew anymore.

----

(With sincere gratitude and many thanks to: @loadedmemory  @witchespromise  @stone-xiv  @thelemstar  and @mazinkhin )