"Ah!" Letwin smiles, catching up easily on his long spidery legs. "Every tree of its kind has a name, based on the events they've seen in their time. The Mourning Tree, the Orphaned Tree, the Broken Tree and so on. Very rarely are they happy names." He pauses for a bit to collect his thoughts and make sure he stays composed. "The Mourning Tree gets its name from the events of a civil war, when one of the most vicious warlords made his seat of power here. He and his followers kept slaves, which they called 'cattle;' they killed them off by cruelty at astonishing rates, and were constantly raiding smaller towns to get more. Many of those towns still lie ruined, as demons had been drawn to the slaughter and they claimed the rubble as their own. People tried to go and rebuild of course, but they were slaughtered -- ah, here we are."
They've arrived in a cobbled square overshadowed by the strangest tree Martis has ever seen. An eerie bluish smoke seems to cling to it, collecting in the hollow spaces in the trunk. Its massive branches are separated into clear layers and 'unnaturally' level with one another, the better to support the many platforms stretching between them; those platforms bear countless dragons, from small and colourful Beauties to full-grown War Angels, socializing and looking after their offspring and tending to the tree. Their primary activity seems to be guarding the tree's fruit from the many birds and insects that are drawn to it (this guarding is done by eating anything that comes too close). The fruit itself sways back and forth in a nonexistent wind.
The Mourning Tree sits in a circle of grass in the middle of the square; Letwin kneels down in the grass and bows his head. "It's a stone tree -- light as wood, strong as stone. They're Iaoth's living will (that will being of course to shelter her children and stand inviolate) and they produce gargoyles to serve it. See the fruits? Those are new gargoyles growing." His voice has dropped to a fond, reverent whisper. "The warlord's troops did everything they could to destroy our tree, because it recognized them for the scourge they were and produced legions of gargoyles to drive them away. It survived, though much weakened for a time, and bore witness to the slaughter of innocents that took place; that is why it mourns. And because it survived, the reapers couldn't take hold here the way they did in other towns. This tree . . . it's the reason Geiriskali stands."
I want to create a scenario where a lone Aldenbourgian submarine treads the briny waters of the western continent and eventually arriving in Intoriorem's colony there. A short interval and boom, a deafening blast caused by a torpedo crashing into a ship. The torpedo left a hole in the well, hull.
Ah When I take up command of a section of an army, I would need to know what I am commanding and what is acceptable/inappropriate and what is my reward for working for the Volinovian Military.
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