Datasets:

ToastyPigeon

/

SpringDragon

like 1

Perhaps he is content on being a coward all his life, but you were meant for much more! You are an Eternal and the Emperor himself will reward you himself when you make the first steps in civilizing the desert. You slap him again and tell him that you'll need as much water as everyone can carry.

After a period of rest, you, your team and Delan's men set off for the desert. You figure the best way to approach this is to follow the usksha's tracks. This works out well at first as the lizard mounts are heavy footed creatures that leave deep prints, so you come across several small bands of fleeing usksha.

When you begin to leave the Nalin province and enter the desert, the prints get harder to track. You follow tracks for two days before you find more usksha. Still, you aren't finding any large settlements.

By day four and Delan's men are starting to complain. He tries to maintain order, but it's obvious they can't take the heat of the day and cold of the night. Your own team is fairing better, but even a couple of them are starting to make comments.

On the seventh night, you're ambushed by several usksha who spring up from the sands itself; they manage to kill several of Delan's men before you dispatch them.

"Sergeant, I think we need to get the hell out of this desert. There's nothing here, but sand and death!"

"Then leave weakling! We're more than able to carry out this mission ourselves! We don't need anybody! We're Eternals!" Edgar shouts.

"I don't doubt our abilities sir, but I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't a waste of time. We've defeated the usksha and chased them deep into their own land. Maybe we've made our point." Roldan says.

"I'm finding myself agreeing sir, we could better serve the Empire elsewhere." Gerald adds.

"Duly noted. We're sticking with the original plan and as for you Delan, you're under my command too, so you aren't going anywhere either, now I advise you to find your guts and keep what men you have left in line, before I take away what little authority you still have left."

Corporal Delan obeys and silently slinks back to his men. Your own people obey as well, but you know that the voices of dissent are already there. Still, you're convinced that you'll find something of importance out here along with wiping out usksha.

On day ten, a strange reptilian creature attacks you. The first instinct is to defend yourself of course, but when it turns Warrick and Gerald to stone instantly, even you find yourself worried.

"Don't look at it! It's got some sort of magic attack!" you shout and put your shield to cover yourself.

Delan and his couple remaining men don't even stick around they turn and run completely. Edgar closes his eyes and swings wildly at the beast, but only manages to get himself mauled by the creature's sharp teeth and claws. The distraction is enough for Brenda to shoot several arrows in the beast while its back is to her. The beast gives a final bellow and dies.

You survey the damage and it's pretty bad. You've lost two men, and looking at Edgar on the ground it'll soon be three. He can't even form any words, he just looks up at the sky gurgling and spitting up blood and trying to clutch at an arm which is no longer there.

"I told you! I told you we should've gone back!" Roldan screams.

"Silence! I'm in charge here and you won't speak to me like that again!" you say.

"Somebody needs to tell you something, because…"

You lose your patience from a combination of the disrespect, the loss, the failure, the heat, all of it. You punch Roldan causing him to fall to the ground. He looks up in disbelief at first, but then begins to laugh.

"Ha ha…ha ha ha ha ha! We…ha ha ha! Found more usksha!" he laughs and points. You all turn to see a sizable group of mounted usksha in the distance. They don't move in either, instead they shoot at you with their bows.

Brenda catches an arrow to her leg before you can sound a retreat. You and Kane run, but Roldan just sits there still laughing, the next time you turn your head to look back, he's no longer sitting up. Brenda tries to keep up, but the arrow in her leg slows her down and eventually she catches two more arrows in her back, killing her much in the same way she killed that strange beast.

Eventually you and Kane get away, but in all the excitement you don't know where you are and you don't even have the tracks you were following to go back to. Under better and less stressful conditions you might get your bearings again, but you never do.

Your next few days involve wandering the desert being continually worn down by usksha ambushes and the sun. You leave Kane's dehydrated body and continue alone, but not for long as you eventually also succumb to the heat.

As you lay dying your thoughts of glory are gone and though dehydrated, you manage to shed a single tear for your failure to serve the Emperor.<|end_of_text|>

<|begin_of_text|>You decide that it might be wise to maintain a presence here, after all there is still work to be done and you're confident that things will be better at the fort now. Lieutenant Anu nods and says you can set out in a couple days to the town of Jekka. He mentions that the nomads have never been a problem like the kobold are, but lately they have been reaching that level. He also says they aren't native to Nalin, but rather the desert land south of it.

You spend the next couple of days at the fort are spent honing your weapon skills and telling your team to do likewise. Gerald joins you after being released from the stockade. He looks a little embarrassed and you reprimand him for his lack of finesse, but welcome him back.

Eventually you set off for the southern Nalin border. The journey isn't as uneventful as the first mission and you encounter a few kobolds attacking travelers along the roads. You easily dispatch them of course.

The town of Jekka is in much better shape than Dalt, but its obvious the people here have been suffering from attacks.

"Empire soldiers? Here? I thought you lot were chasing down kobolds to waste time with the likes of us." A man says to you. He looks to be some sort of town sheriff.

"All Empire towns are under our protection citizen. We have heard this one is suffering heavy raids from the desert nomads."

" Well, we've been doing okay so far, but a few of the other border villages have gotten it pretty bad. One of them was totally destroyed. Those lizard riders have never been this bad or numerous before. The weird thing is, they just destroy and kill, they don't actually do any proper raiding or looting, not that it really matters. but for the past few months."

"We heard rumors of a shaman uniting them."

"Yeah that's the rumor, but really nobody knows what's going on with them. They make quick attacks and then run back to their accursed desert. So when are more Empire soldiers coming?"

"They aren't."

"What?! We've been holding out for months with no hope in sight and now that you give us a little bit, you take it away again?"

"Citizen, I advise you to calm yourself." You warn, wondering if you're going to have to make another point like you did in Dalt. You don't since thought since the sheriff has more sense.

"Alright, alright, but I'm telling you there are a lot of those lizard riders! I hope you're more than just regular Empire soldiers. You guys Shadow Guard or something?"

"We're Eternals."

You set up your staging point in Jekka. The desert raiders will probably attack this town again as usual, so you might as well take advantage of the fact. The waiting is tedious, but eventually after few days it pays off.

Several of the raiders appear in the distance and make no hesitation in their attack. The raiders are trying to rely on intimidation, because they sure aren't relying on strategy and only attack the town from one direction. The lizard creatures that the raiders ride might be intimidating to the average citizen, but you've fought bigger creatures during training. They're rather clumsy beasts actually and when you and your team begin to use your own hit and run tactics, they start to collide into each other causing problems for the raiders.

As for the raiders themselves, they prove to be barely better fighters than the kobolds after dismounting several of them. Underneath the desert protection gear they wear, they don't appear to be human or any other race you're familiar with, but they bleed just like all them and that's the important thing.

As many battles often go, this one is over quicker than it felt. The remaining raiders run off and you order your people to mount up and chase them down which is fairly easy to do.

Jekka suffered some damage and a few dead, but overall the townspeople couldn't be happier with the outcome and most shower you with praise. However, you get the impression that you're going to be facing more of these raiders in the near future and you're right.

A couple days pass and another raid on the town of Jekka occurs in the same exact manner, then again a few days after that. A week passes and there are no more raids, but that doesn't mean they've stopped. You already know they've been attacking several settlements, so you tell Warrick and Roldan to scout out the closest ones to see what their situation is while you try to build some proper defenses for Jekka.

A week passes and you learn more about your foes from a villager who survived the destruction of his home. The desert raiders (or the Usksha as you've come to find out their proper name) have indeed been united under one banner by a shaman of some sort. The villager says he saw this being with his own eyes and was spared for the sole purpose to warn all that the Usksha will no longer tolerate a foreign presence encroaching on their desert. This shaman said he has been chosen personally by their god Usk to destroy all those that do and that the town of Jekka will not be able to resist the inevitable destiny that it will fall.

"So, he's coming here then? Good, saves us the trouble of hunting him down." You reply.

"Combined with this information and based on what Warrick and I have scouted out, it sounds like there will be even more of them. Possibly a full blown army. We might need reinforcements from Fort Glory." Roldan says.

"Reinforcements? Hah! We've beaten them several times with ease!"

"Would they even get here in time? We don't exactly know when the attack will come." Brenda asks.

"They might or they might not, still we should try. Find out who the best runner is in this town and have them travel to Fort Glory with this news. We can continue to prepare in the meantime." You say.

The next morning several Uskshas appear in the distance like the other times you fought them. Then more show up, then even more. The town sheriff completely panics and says he's never seen this many before. This of course causes most of the other townies to panic as well. You slap him and tell him if he and anyone else aren't going to be helpful then they need to stay out of the way and find someplace to hide.

They come at you screaming and yelling in their barbarian language and suddenly a huge worm thing comes out of the ground in the center of town.

"Ha ha! At last a real fight!" Edgar yells and runs at it immediately as it destroys the nearby tavern. You order Kane to come with you to help Edgar while the rest try to delay the rest of the usksha. You just hope the barricades hold up long enough for them to greatly whittle the numbers down.

You, Edgar and Kane approach the great worm, which bashes its great body into the side of another building, killing many townspeople hiding inside.

"YOU! You think you can destroy me? I am an avatar of Usk! How can you destroy a god when you are, but a mere child of a corrupt empire?" you suddenly hear in your mind.

It takes a split moment, but you realize that this beast is the shaman. He has used magic of some kind to transform himself into this thing. It doesn't matter how much favor he has from his god though, he isn't one and will die like the rest.

Using his daggers like climbing gear, Kane jumps as high as he can and sink them into the shaman, while you and Edgar attempt to chop at his body like it was a tree. The shaman roars and attempts to smash you with his body, but you pull Edgar out of the way and Kane jumps off before being crushed. The shaman burrows back into the hole he came from and a few moments later he breaks through in another area of the town and begins destroying the barricades. You reach the shaman just in time for him to sink back into his hole again, while usksha pour in through the broken wall.

"Shit!" Edgar shouts in exasperation.

"Plug up that opening with their dead bodies!" you shout as you chop off the head of one their lizards before doing the same to the fallen rider.

Holding the back the tide of usksha isn't exactly what you want to be doing though, you want to take down that shaman, do that and this battle is over.