Weasel Hills Golf & C.C. (hole 19)

Adventurer who has many, many pages of lore.

The Caravan has stopped for the night, its wagons enclosed in a loose circle, around a large bonfire. The tables and half-logs have been set up, and the smell of flame-grilled meat fills the desert air. Upon one of these half-logs sits a hulk of a man, whose arms seem as if they're too large for the rest of his already-massive body. His oversized hands cradle an old volume of text, that holds his interest so well that he almost does not see the armored mercenary approach him from the side.

"What's that you're reading?" she asks, as she grabs a seat next to the behemoth bookworm.

"The War of the Courtesans. It describes a vast rebellion among the courtesans of Gozen, from a few hundred years ago."

"Courtesans? Like, prostitutes?"

"I thought it strange as well, myself, but it seems that the professional companions of Gozen did stage a rebellion across the Shogunate, many years ago." The large man inserts a large leaf into the book and closes it. "It stemmed from the Shogunate's unusual economy. A Gozenjin does not pay for services with coins or gems, but wooden tokens intended for various specific things. Tokens for food. Tokens for physical labor. Tokens for goods. Companions and concubines were paid for their services in special tokens for 'high services.'"

"High services, like sex and child-bearing?" The woman mercenary is positively riveted.

"In so many words, yes. The courtesan's work was only paid in high service tokens, meaning they could not spend their earnings for food or the basics of living without finding someone else to trade their tokens with. Since they could do nothing about it otherwise, they staged an uprising. First, on their home city, and later, across the entire Shogunate."

"I'm gonna have to get back to you and see how that ends, sometime." She stretches her legs out in front of her. "I'm really surprised a big, huge dude like you is so interested in reading. I guess it takes all kinds."

"Believe me, yours is the calmest reaction I've seen." He extends one of his hands - almost twice as large as her face - for a handshake. "My name is Argur, by the way."

She doesn't quite know how to shake a hand that big, so she settles for shaking his middle finger instead. "I'm Ruby."

"It is a pleasure, Madame Ruby. I've seen you fight before. There is a beautiful fierceness in you."

"Madame... yeah, nah, I'm gonna have to say 'drop the Madame.' Doesn't suit me."

"A hero does need a title."

"Buddy, I don't think you know enough about what my deal is to be assigning me a heroic title." She seems dissatisfied at the idea of being idolized.

"Perhaps at a later time, then." Argur picks the book back up and just gazes at its cover. "Forgive me my flight of fancy. I spend much of my time reading the old heroic sagas."

"Ah yes, our heroes, the sex-havers." Ruby smirks to herself, observing the painting on the cover of the book. It depicts a woman in rather immodest silk clothing, a fierce expression on her blood-flecked face, having run-through a distinguished-looking military tactician with a short sword. The tactician's face looks more disappointed than anything, looking his attacker in the eyes as if to say, Really? You, too? "But y'know? I get it. A lot of these cultures seem to have no idea how to treat their women. If that's the kind of tale I think it is, it ought to be a cautionary tale. 'Women want to live, too, so pay 'em what they're damn well worth, or this'll happen to you.'" She pokes at the cover, around the sword's point of impact, with her armored mitt.

"You speak a plain truth. Would that more women like yourself existed here, those hundreds of years ago."

"What, did the courtesans lose their war?"

"I don't know yet. I haven't finished reading the book." Argur's shrug looks as if it takes a considerable amount of effort. "I only have so much time to read while the light is good, but the caravan librarian says this is the fifth book I've borrowed from her this week. I'm her best customer, she says."

"That's... impressive."

"Not that there's much competition. Much of the caravan spends their free time training, or practicing their trades. Except for that dancer over there, for whom I'm sure those are one and the same." He gestures towards Jasmine, the caravan's star talent, who is in the middle of rehearsing some complicated-looking maneuvers with her tulwar, while a few members of the Wagonsguard watch her. "The books have always been available for anyone to borrow, and yet, I'm among the few that do."

"Yeah, really. Jesus, it's like nobody around here knows how to read."

"...They don't. At least, it seems fair to assume."

"I mean, would it kill them to--wait, you're serious?"

"Outside of the very rich. Books and tomes are a luxury that a common man cannot afford."

"How do you afford it? How'd you learn to read?"

"My father - a librarian, himself, appointed to a noble family - taught me at a young age." He sighs deeply. "The day his books were requested to be delivered someplace else, he accompanied them personally on their trip. The coach was robbed. The books... I know not what became of them. Father, though... was left to rot."

"All that for books...or was it just for the sake of robbery?"

"They do go for a fair sum on the market. There is always someone who wishes to exhibit their grandeur with a shelf full of expensive texts, whether they read them or not."

"Shit... nothing worse than a book that doesn't get read."

"Technically, I cannot afford to own these books. In my...less wise days, I made it a habit of raiding caravans like this one. Not for coin or creed, but for knowledge."

"Because books really are that expensive?"

"Many are kept in royal libraries, far out of the reach of the common man. I'd wager few are ever opened."

"...You know, I guess you're right. Huh." Ruby stands up. "You said the caravan's got a library cart? Might have to have you show me which one that is. I feel like I haven't read a good book since I got here."

"Perhaps I ought to recommend some to you, Madame Knight."

"Madame--uh, okay, whatever." She shrugs and marches off, feeling it better to accept the unwanted title than to debate with a well-read giant.

Mech Pilot who has married into the Royal Family but is not prepared to pilot the Ancestral Mech.

Roughly five thousand miles north of Sunnr's Twin Cities, Mimisbrunnr and Idunn, and well into the territory of Kerlaugar...

It is the twentieth year of ongoing hostilities between the Viscountcy of Kerlaugar and the Sunnr Principality. What was borne initially of petty disputes and squabbling between two hopefuls to rule the Star System, had come to lethal blows between them over rightful ownership of planet 44. Not for want of natural resources - there were plenty of those elsewhere in the galaxy - but over questions of loyalty, moral fortitude, and many other nebulous concepts, meaningless to anybody without a noble title to their name. For it is upon planet 44, bereft of most plant life and only livable with significant effort, that the nobility seek to prove their worth to each other.

They would find ways to make even this place habitable, and to Hel with anybody else who can beat them to it.

And that was precisely the motive behind the forthcoming assault on the Twin Cities. It had been in the works for months now. Border skirmishes were commonplace enough between Sunnr and Kerlaugar - the South and the North - that the customary retreats were being observed to extra-fine detail by both sides. To most authorities, just knowing where the forward operating bases were located was enough; the strategists and tacticians would be able to form logistical plans to crush them, one by one.

To Baron Kjell Lennartsson, the newest member of the Kerlaugar Royal Family - at least, the newest one with an active title - there was one detail that interested him above all else.

He had a score to settle with their White Thorne.

Kjell had certainly heard the legends from both ends of the tale. Such historical knowledge was essential for a nobleman joining the fight. Some time, not terribly long ago, the White Thorne - an epithet derived from the rune "thorn" or "thurs" and associated with the Giants of old - had met Kjell's father-in-law, Edvin Sievertsson, then the Baron of Kerlaugar's southernmost stretch of land. That land, by its very nature, was constantly in a state of contest. It was the border, the most fortified part of Kerlaugar. And as the Baron who oversaw the land, keeping it under Kerlaugari dominion was a matter of utmost honor. To lose it to those bastards from the South would be an offense so unforgivable as to have all noble titles stripped.

Which was precisely what happened to Edvin Sievertsson, and why Kjell Lennartsson - the son of a Duke who had married Edvin's eldest daughter only five years ago - now held the Barony. The White Thorne, the terrifying monster from Sunnr, whose pilot must have been enhanced in some way to behave twice as fast as a normal human. Kjell had not heard the exact nature of how it had gone down, but if his father could not maintain control of one lousy strip of borderland on account of that beast, then that task now fell to him.

And while Kjell was not quite ready to assume his title so soon, at only 25 years old, he had spent the last seven years reading all that there was to read about the tools of the trade. The soldiers and their weapons, the vehicles, the noble art of fencing (should it come to that). Kjell fully expected to march into combat as a captain of the 99th Border Vanguard, and from there, he had a Giant to hunt.

On his first day of deployment, though, he was abruptly recalled - a matter of the utmost importance to troop morale, the Viscount had told him. There was one thing that the rest of the family had not told Kjell. That he had a Giant of his own. There would be yet more training involved, but ultimately, it would feel roughly the same as fighting on foot.

As soon as Viscount Wallin showed Kjell into the suspiciously large doors, several hundred feet below the Palace, Kjell recalled more of the old legends. The tale of the Red Baron, the only equal to the White Thorne.

He faltered at the mere sight of it in the underground hangar. ZpTL 45, "Richthofen." A towering beast of metal muscles, anodized armaments. Its crested helmet brought to mind the centurions of old. Each of its arms wore what first appeared to be a thick bracer, but surrounded each hand with a trio of attached weapons. At each hip, an oversized handle that the mech's hands could grab, and a telltale prism at the end of each that told Kjell that these were directed-energy weapons, probably heat-foils.

It was almost too much for one young officer to take in at once. This beast was only a rumor, even among the family. He hadn't known that his father... that the former Baron Sievertsson had actually driven this thing. He felt unworthy of it, nearly as much as he did of his inherited title. There was no way he could fill shoes that big. The legend of the Red Baron would come crashing down as he stumbled into combat in such an unfamiliar interface.

Viscount Wallin's hand on his back was a needed slap of reality. "Don't panic, boy. You'll be ready to ride soon enough. It'll just take a few extra weeks of special training. It will all be to our advantage. The strength of the Red Baron...is in his mystique. Nobody fully knows what the Red Baron is, because he is only rarely seen, and those who see him, only rarely survive."

Kjell quietly wondered if that would eventually include himself.

(Formatted using cohoard. thank you.)