#but the ones who weren't with the vanguard are alive and well and considering the white knife when their lord stumbles back through | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

words-writ-in-starlight · 5 years

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I’m editing the latest episode of PBiPL and all I can think about is the absolutely FASCINATING AU where that conversation with Anar in the Haunted Lands Keep ended very differently.

By which I mean, Anar still decides take all the dishonor on himself in order to save Torisen from Ganth’s madness, but he decides to take a much more linear solution: kill Ganth and set them all free, and then kill himself for the dishonor of regicide.

Torisen wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of shocked screaming, and rushes to investigate, and he finds the body of Ganth in the hall of the family wing of the keep, throat slit, with Anar next to him, the White Knife in his chest and his face calmer than Tori has ever seen it.

Without a priest, they can’t hold out against the rot of the Haunted Lands, and--well, there’s precedent, for the possibility of a lord’s death with no one to succeed him but a fifteen-year-old boy. Torisen is the youngest lord the Kencyrath has seen in a very long time, the last survivor of a destroyed house, but when he fetches up on the doorstep of the Riverlands, he’s not a single wandering orphan. He brings every banished Knorth who could survive the crossing (Tai-tastigon has a lot of stories about that one time fifteen years ago where like three hundred Kencyr passed through the city on their way over the Ebonbane), and they don’t really cotton to the idea of letting their young lord be hidden away under the guise of Ardeth’s bastard son in the Host.

#kencyrath #torisen #chronicles of the kencyrath #i'm not sure how this pans out!#but tori probably still ends up with the southern host just...not as ardeth's probably-bastard-son #he's not technically allowed to bind kendar to him but the knorth survivors will be good goddamned before they leave him #he stepped up when ganth died and saw them over the ebonbane and fought like blazes to keep them knorth in name if not in binding #he's still given burr as an assistant probably and burr is still definitely reporting to ardeth #urakarn is still a horror show--a lot of the knorth die trying to save tori in the vanguard and he can't save any of them escaping #but the ones who weren't with the vanguard are alive and well and considering the white knife when their lord stumbles back through #bleeding and delirious and half-carried by burr but alive #(this wins burr a lot of credit with the knorth--tori thought he was worth saving and then he brought tori back to them so)#(they sort of quietly induct burr into their number)#the knorth division of the southern host is a precious hundred by the time tori is promoted to commander #they've died on the battlefield sure but more have died protecting torisen black lord from assassination #tori is the most valuable target in the world as far as the kencyrath are concerned #he sleeps with two knives under his pillow and the knorth kendar die and die and die for him #when he finally claws his way to the highlord's seat there are no more than fifty survivors of that tattered force #the knorth who crossed the ebonbane twice--once for loyalty to one highlord and again for love of another #they're nothing short of fucking legends

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