Wiskaria

  The two prisoners were brought before the Lord, bound at the hands, and thrust to their knees before him. He looked down at the pair, the rough hewn edges of the ancient desk offsetting the understated elegance of his office. The prisoners, for their part, merely looked back at the aged figure before them.

“Karzent and Wisendon,” the Lord began. “Fomenting rebellion amongst your fellow slaves again?” Many would have quailed before this gaze, but these two, frequent visitors to this august presence, did not. “It has become apparent that the standard punishments are no impediment to the two of you, so I believe something different may be in order. We may even be able to get some use out of you.” The Lord smiled at this last.

The prisoners exchanged a look. Nothing that pleased the Lord boded well for them and their fellows.

The small band crouched at the lip of the ridge overlooking the valley. They had started on this adventure with ten, but now there were only eight, as two of their number now shared a common grave with the fell beast that had ended them. It had been distasteful to most of the band, but those in charge had decided that mere slaves deserved no better.

Karzent lowered the spyglass and handed it over to Wisendon. “I don’t see anything living, but some of the markings are fresh.” Wisendon looked through the glass, but not having the tracking skills of his partner just nodded in agreement. “I’ll go tell their Highnesses.” Wisendon snorted, but kept looking through the glass.

Karzent scrambled down the backslope, to where the horses and pack animals waited, along with Karzent’s minders. Despite her comment, the two minders were not royalty, but they were pure bloods, sent to mind their half breed slaves and make sure of their completion of mission. The slaves had not slipped blades into their backs, despite many opportunities, as the two did have their uses, and the mission was grim enough to require all the help they could get their hands on.

“We are there,” Karzent announced.

“And? Speak up, slave.”

“There’s something there, the signs are clear.” Karzent was used to being addressed as such, and had long stopped reacting to it. “Not sure how many, but it does not look like more than two or three.”

“Well, let us go see.” They deigned to dismount and climb the hill. Karzent would have demanded they keep low, approach the top below the brow and but peek over the top of it, but she was more than sure that whatever resided below had either already detected the band, or had no need of forewarning.

The castle was ancient, a legend and a nightmare. Built into the side of a now inactive volcano by the tyrants that once ruled the entire land, its current resident or residents were purported to have cast them down, long ago when the flow of lava had stopped and the fields of fire had died to ember and then to ash. Even though it had been generations, the area was still a blight in the heart of the land, for all who traveled through it were never seen again. All expeditions to find the missing never returned themselves. Eventually all of the surrounding city states learned to avoid the area entirely, counting the extra travel time spent going around a small price to pay.

Built to massive, nay gigantic proportions, the defensive works of the keep dominated the landscape. The lush greenery feeding off of the plain of volcanic residue would have overwhelmed and hidden works built by the smaller races, but here the towering giants of the forest just served to show how massive the walls and towers truly were. Even surrounded by the undisturbed vegetation of generations, it dominated the landscape.

“Should we wait until night?” asked Wisendon. They all looked to Karzent, her years of experience tracking and hunting in the wild making her a natural leader of the band.

“No point,” she answered immediately. “Whatever is down there already knows we’re here.” She turned down the hill towards the horses. “Or they don’t care.”

It was nothing more than luck that had saved them. The tyrant at the heart of the fortress had let the party come deep into his lair and played with them for most of a day, all the while killing them one at a time. Only when Karzent and Wisendon were left did he stop the games, and confront them directly. The dark giant, his skin covered in runes of power, was ancient beyond measure. The last of his tribe, they had defeated the former masters of the keep and enslaved them. They had lost control of the once great kingdom the previous masters had, but they cared not. Their slaves had served them as long as they could, but their new masters, more powerful than they had even imagined, ground their entire tribe to dust, and then themselves had succumbed to the vagaries of time. Until there was just one left.

He had gloated as he chased them, telling them of the vast expanse of history he and his tribe had been witness to. How insignificant the half-breeds were, how only because he had nothing to occupy his time and had no one else to speak to in a long while was he deigning to speak with such lower beings. One does not hold conversations with rats, one merely kills them, do they not? Karzent’s arrows and blade had bounced off the steel-like hide. Wisendon’s best magics slid off of the giant like so much water. The rest of the party, slave and master alike, their efforts had been similarly futile. He had laughed, time and again, at their impotence, and continued to hound them in and around buildings built at a scale almost beyond their comprehension.

In the end, age and luck, bad luck, had done the tyrant in. Karzent had managed to trip the tyrant and it had fallen against an aging wall, and its protective spells, weakened by time, had reacted with the monster’s own runes, bringing enough weight down to crush the tyrant. The last of the party, they had not survived without wounds of their own. Only by searching the body of the fallen giant and drinking deeply of several healing draughts they had found did they manage to survive. They both had lost parts of themselves, but they still lived and huddled in the still ruins to gather themselves.

“We won,” said Wisendon, his remaining eye closed against the pain. “But for what? So our pure blood masters can expand their control and grind us further under their heels?”

“Yes, Wis, that’s exactly why I came here, to lose half my leg and watch you hover near death just so that goblin’s dung heap of a Lord can clamp down on trade with the south even more,” Karzent said. They were tucked into a corner of a long cold hearth, many times the size of the shacks they and their fellow slaves enjoyed back home. A small fire crackled before them, the wood hacked off of a chair that had towered above them both. “Though I have to admit, watching that monster squish those two uppity bastards like so many mice under his sandal, that was almost worth all of this.” They were quiet for a little while. “What do you suggest we do, Wis? We barely made it here with ten of us, and everyone had all of their legs and hands.”

“Don’t forget eyes,” said Wisendon. “The hand was bad enough, but at least I don’t appear to need it to manipulate magic.”

“I’m sorry, Wis, I am,” said Karzent, and sat silently for a long, miserable while. “You know, we could just build a home here. If we didn’t tell anyone all the giants are dead, who’d come looking for us here? We could settle down, stop the constant moving, raise a family…”

“Karz, I’ve told you, while our people live under the lash…”

“...of pure-blood hatred and oppression, you do not have the time nor the interest in any type of relationship,” Karzent quoted at Wisendon, having heard the sentiment far too many times. “I know, but I’m on the old side of middle-aged, Wis, and a girl won’t wait for…”

“Wait,” he said, “what did you say about building a home here?”

“We could build a house here. Only we know the giants are all dead, and since everyone avoids the area out of fear, we’d get at least a couple of years alone. Just you and me and...” She stopped and looked at him intently. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Wis?”

“I think you’re right,” he said, his eye open and staring intently at the ceiling of the hearth, many feet above him. “I think we could build a home here.”

The journey back had been harrowing, but they made it, and more importantly, without running into any of their masters or their minions. They slipped into the slave slums and word spread quickly through all of the camps, for fear of their masters catching word from one of their many spies. The word was such a shock to the community that several such spies revealed themselves in trying to run to their masters, a boon to the slaves as it allowed them to eliminate those leaks and gain more time. The slower, more careful spies were too cautious, and by the time the slaves made their move, it was too late.

The slaves revolted, along with many of their former guards. Even in a land of slave and master, many of the so-called masters were treated not much better than the slaves they guarded. They escaped into the night, half of the land on fire and in chaos, Karzent and her fellow trackers obscuring the trail and misleading the pursuers in many different directions. Tens of thousands of slaves, from the old to the newborn, all vanished into the wilderness.

They could have left years ago, generations ago, but they had nowhere to go to. Bastard half breeds of two proud races, unwanted by one and enslaved by the other, they had tried going to the other races in the surrounding lands, but beyond weapons and equipment, supplied more to twist the nose of their masters than out of a sense to help them with their plight, no one was willing to open up their own lands to these unwanted children. Now, with an entire fortress, the most recent owner dead at the hands of their own with no one else the wiser, they had that somewhere to go, somewhere to call their own. And took it they did.

The fortress, built to the scale of giants three times the size of its new occupants, had been crafted by masters of stonework and magic, protective energies woven into the near seamless stonework to make it as indestructible as anything else worked by mere mortals. As such, the new inhabitants could not alter the structure, they had not the skill nor the equipment to rework the bones of the fortress, bring it down and build it back to suit their size. So they left the stone as it was, and built everything else to their scale. Hallways became two story dorms and apartment blocks. Kitchen ovens became smithies and forges. Extra steps added onto every staircase made them accessible, while the unused portions of the stairs were used for market stalls. The mighty forest that had grown up in the nutrient rich volcanic ash was quickly cleared, first to provide lumber for all of the projects, and second to provide planting area to grow crops. Used to the hard labor under the lash of their former masters, the people worked even harder to build and grow what was now theirs.

The delegation from the Lords Under the Mountain entered into the grand hall of the new nation. The hall had been built into the old inhabitant’s own great hall, but with so much extra space, much of the upper areas of it and the sides of the hall were being walled off and made into offices and apartments. The delegation was met by the council of the new city state and quickly escorted into the feast hall for a welcoming meal. The grizzled head of the delegation’s guard excused himself from the meal, and with two of his guards left the hall for one particular, newly-built apartment overlooking the hall. He knocked and stood with his hands tucked into the belt under his prodigious gut.

“Yes?” asked the face behind the door.

“I would like to talk with the Lady Karzent and the Lord Wisendon, if they are not indisposed,” the grizzled veteran said pleasantly.

“I’m sorry, they don’t live…” he tried, before the man before him snorted and gently, but inexorably, moved him and the door out of the way and walked into the cozy domicile. The man attempted to protest but stopped when a voice from the next room stopped him.

“Let them in, Lenet.”

Lenet bowed the grizzled veteran in, while he motioned for his own men to stand in the hall outside.

“Stay here, boys, I’m sure if they wished me harm, you couldn’t stop them anyway,” he smiled at his men and motioned for Lenet to accompany them. “You too, kind sir, I hold no harm in my heart for your master nor your mistress, and I assure you they will have no trouble from me, as I don’t wish to perish anymore than you do.” Lenet bowed at the grizzled man’s sincerity, and left. When Lenet had secured the door behind them, he walked into the next room to find a very pregnant Karzent reclined, with her foot and jewel-bedecked wooden leg propped up.

“Lady Karzent, I presume?”

“I’m not a Lady of anything, in this nation or the next,” she said, her eyes peeking out from under a damp cloth. “The council runs things, we did our part, igniting the revolution and bringing our people here, and they honor us by letting us work for our new country.” 

“Nor am I a Lord,” said Wisendon, coming down the staircase, “but you are, aren’t you? Not some mere guard from the Under Mountain, are you?” Wisendon stopped behind his wife and began to massage her shoulders.

“You have me there,” he said, setting his bulk down gently upon a plain, but comfortable chair. “May I? The wife and I have ten of our own, adopted more than a few, and have more grandchildren and great-grandchildren than I care to think about, and even starting to get some great-great-grandchildren.” He began to massage her remaining foot and ankle, his massive callused fingers gentle on the swollen appendage. “But you are correct, I am no mere guard. I am Hlerzod.”

“Hlerzod? One of the Five Lords Under the Mountain?”

“Aye, that I am,” he continued to massage, even though both Wisendon and Karzent had stopped and stared with intent. “Let the delegations talk and look pretty to each other, I wanted to come out here, see this new nation for myself.”

“But, your Lordship…” began Wisendon.

“Please, if you both are neither Lord nor Lady, then here, in this time, I am not Lord anything either,” he smiled, continued to knead away. “We Under the Mountain, we may live in darkness, surrounded by those who hate us, inwardly focused on our mine works and projects, but we hear things even still. You are bastard children unwanted by both of your parent races, except to be slaves to your former masters. Your leaving has crippled one of the largest and oldest countries, upset trade, and nearly started three separate wars. The whole western half of the continent is in an uproar thanks to your little revolution, which is the only reason no one has shown up to see exactly how impenetrable this ancient fortress really is.”

“We just wanted to be our own people, have our own place,” Wisendon said. “It’s been almost ten generations since any ‘slaves’ were born due to infidelity between the races. My parents, Karzent’s parents, almost every parent of the half-children in this place were half-breeds themself. We aren’t bastards, merely Master Hlerzod, we are a new race, a new people that have bred true. We are not mules, unable to reproduce, we are a people!” Wisendon’s face was suffused now, the fervor that fired the entire revolution shining through.

“It matters not whether or not you are a race, not-a-Lord Wisendon,” Hlerzod said, “that is not the question. No, the question at the heart of the matter, is whether or not you are a country and can remain a country.” He stood, slapping at his vast belly. “Can the other nations trust you, can they count on you, to keep and hold any treaties with you a generation from now? Two generations? Three generations? Three years? Three months?” He paced around the room, studying the items the pair had gathered over the years. “It’s not that we, the other countries around you, that we care not for your plight, but we have our own problems and issues and enemies, and the most any of us can do is sit back and watch.” He turned to the pair. “Well, most of the countries in the area can only watch. We Under the Mountain can possibly do more than just watch, but you can’t expect us to sacrifice our own country, own safety and stability, just to prop yours up. We can provide instructors and weapons to build up your army and defenses, markets to trade your goods for, and I think, most importantly, someone to recognize your legitimacy, confirm to the whole continent that you are indeed a nation in your own right.” He sat again and looked at the two younger leaders.

“I don’t know which promises any of us can give you, sir,” Karzent said, “all we can do is try.”

“Well, you have a better start than I did,” Hlerzod said. “What? That surprises you, that I struggled and had a start? How do you think I became one of,” and here his voice swelled, “The Five Lords Under the Mountain?” He smiled at that. “No, I certainly was not born into it, and while it seems a long time to you and yours, it has not been all that long when me and mine moved and settled a new mine away from our home shafts.”

“What now? Where do we go from here?” Wisendon asked after a few moments of silence.

“I go back to acting like a guard, for form’s sake, and once my delegation returns home, the Five Lords will decide to extend you the copper nugget of friendship.” Hlerzod stood, creaking and groaning, and slapped his ample belly. “We may not be able to keep you safe, but for nothing else, tweaking your former masters’ collective noses is worth the help we can give. And,” he continued, “we need every friend we can get. It doesn’t hurt that this will open trade with you and your very skillful craftsmen, but will also open up another trade route and byway to us. Until you two killed the tyrant in this keep, we had despaired of ever using the old lava tubes on this side of the peak.”

“Pretty quiet trip up into our deepest basement, was it?” The delegation had indeed come up into the lowest levels of the keep, as the original builders had tapped directly into a lava flow underneath their keep, possibly to use the lava in their workings, or to commune directly with fire elementals who had lived in the volcano. As both the volcano and the original builders were long dead, the current occupants did not know for sure, but the lava tubes underneath the dead volcano proved to lead almost directly to the caverns of the Under Mountain.

“Pretty quiet, aye,” Hlerzod said, rubbing his face, “and it will get quieter still the more we travel it and clean it up. There are a few chasms that we will need to fortify to keep the very deep ones from using, especially now that they don’t have the tyrant of the keep to fear.”

“That’s what my trackers told me,” said Karzent. “Do you really think we have a chance?”

“My dear lady,” Hlerzod said, smiling, “if any of us have a chance of giving our children, and their children, and their children, a better world than the one we were born into, it is you, here.” He paused, thoughtful for a moment. “By the by, what are you going to call it, this new country of yours?”

“They want to call it Wiskaria, for Wis and me, but…”

“Wiskaria, hmmm. Yes, I think you should let them give you that honor. It may just serve as a warning to not attempt to enslave your people ever again.”

WISKARIA: LAND OF BASTARDS AND HALF-BREEDS

When I originally wrote about Wiskaria, I had just grown tired of always finding that half-elves (long my favorite race, pretty much thanks to Weis and Hickman’s Tanis Half-Elven) were the bastards, the unwanted children of the world, despised by most and ignored by the rest. I wanted these half-breeds to have their own place in the wider world, and roughly at the same time that was percolating through my brain, another idea of a city built into the ruins of a castle built into the ruins of a giant’s castle was also rustling through my subconscious (too many sources to cite them all here, though Terry Pratchett - the Nomes books and the Carpet People - comes immediately to mind), and Wiskaria was born.

I kept the history above as vague as possible so that you could pick just about any half-breed race to be the base Wiskarian, any race to be their new allies Under the Mountain, and modify the rest of the background as you see fit. In my version of Wiskaria, the people are half-elves, who have recently escaped their elven slavemasters, and settled halfway between the elven lands and the human lands. The humans, of course, care little for the half-elven slaves, mostly because the half breeds have been slaves for so long, their human parents have all died out and they have been breeding true amongst themselves for several generations now. Once they are free, they settle in the now abandoned castle, former center of a fairly large fire giant kingdom that had fallen, after the volcano had gone dormant and deprived the fire giants of a lot of their power, to the depredations of a tribe of rune giants. The rune giants (yes, completely stolen from Pathfinder, you're welcome Paizo) in turn had slowly died out over the centuries, until the last one fell to Wisendon and Karzent. The Five Lords Under the Mountain are dwarves that have recently (in their terms) settled a new mine under the mountain range the castle’s cinder cone is a part of.