Avernite said:Some nice articles in the AARlander, especially about the Roman senate.
Now write an update!
Working on it XD
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Working on it XD
canonized said:
I've been tricked! Next time I do any work for you, I want payment in advance
ForzaA said:I've been tricked! Next time I do any work for you, I want payment in advance
So sorry =( . So much to do so little time ! Update is already 20% done though . Expect it in the next few hours !
Too late..canonized said:
sleep in a few hours, getting up early tomorrow, and then moving to Stockholm (and unfortunately, move means "no internet")
ForzaA said:Too late..
sleep in a few hours, getting up early tomorrow, and then moving to Stockholm (and unfortunately, move means "no internet")
Oohh you're moving ! Very interesting !
Unfortunately I only got to about 70% of the update before I have to call it quits for the evening . Sorry for the delay , managing the AARlander this time got me and that sucked up a big part of the weekend x.x . At least you guys got a canonization interview after so long ! I plan on having those on a semi-regular basis too ! I have tomorrow off from school so after I go do my civi duty and vote i'll have the update up !
Elidioemperor said:
Update's done
just going to format it and then upload ! It's a page longer than usual too
Chapter CXVIII: Abduction
25 May 1642
Everywhere, the look of suspicion was projected onto the three mercenaries as they made their way through the streets of Amsterdam. They had heard that the discontent of the citizenry was growing due to the war, but they were not prepared for the chilly looks the men and women gave them as they made their way through the alleys. Mistrust was the common mode of expression between those walking along the path and the three men. The three could hear the grumbling of those passing them by and it filled the air with muted tones of anger.
Even the local inn in which they managed to find rooms did not feel welcoming. The Spanish soldiers stationed there were disdainful towards mercenaries and the Dutch resented them for their part in the wartime burdens of those provinces. The indiscretions of the more unprofessional mercenaries were especially infamous amongst the Dutchmen and only helped to encourage the burgers in avoiding the three soldiers of fortune as they made their way into De Wallen district.
Already, this respectable area was beginning to feel the weight of the Spanish presence. The undisciplined lower ranks of the soldiery (and those in higher ranks that were subtle enough) had already begun converting the scenic De Wallen area into a debauched avenue. Breweries soon became rowdy taverns and the ladies of the evening flocked to the neighborhood hoping to take advantage of the soldiers away from home.
“She’s supposed to be around here,” Diego told them in a whisper as he drew his hat further down over his eyes while they passed others along the canal-walk, “at the distillery before the next alley.”
Lope sighed out some relief at the information. As much as the open air was welcoming to him after the sea-travel, the unforgiving looks and suspicious movements made him feel more trapped than wood and tar and sea. “This one?” he asked as they stepped to the end of the block.
Diego nodded and approached the door with some caution. Lope quickly checked the alley in case any exit or entrance could be gleaned at the side of the building—there was nothing. The distillery was a small one and it seemed to specialize in local beer. Diego’s knock was unheeded at first although movement and shadows could be seen from inside the glass windows. Diego knocked again before a voice rang out from inside—a woman’s voice: “We have no more room here for any more soldiers.”
Diego looked at Lope for a moment before answering. “We’re not here for quarters. We’re here to meet someone.”
“Who?” was the quick reply from the other side.
The question surprised both Diego and Lope. In all the excitement with the assassins and the notes stolen from El Sid, it did not occur to them to speculate as to the name or identity of the woman they were looking for. As such, neither seemed to have any answer on their tongues and Lope even looked at Íñigo who only returned a blank expression. Diego quickly came up with: “We’re acquaintances of El Sid.”
There was silence for a few moments before the heavy clang of the lock gave way to the creaking hinge of the doorway opening. A young lady, who seemed only as old as Íñigo greeted the men with a heavy stare. Behind her, the busy work of several day labourers filled the inside of the building with a bustle. The door was only opened halfway, however, as the woman remained protected behind the heavy wooden frame and only allowing her exotic features to peek out through the gap. Immediately the three noticed that she was Middle Eastern in ethnicity. Lope could not help but get a sudden queer feeling in his chest as if he should know this young lady, but could not place her face in his memory.
“What do you want?” she asked curtly.
Diego and Lope both examined the strength in the young lady's face; the resolute rigidity of someone used to protecting herself behind padded lock, perhaps. Íñigo, who had been so affected by the constant danger since they had captured Oslo, paid more attention to the beauty in those exotic features. Perhaps it was because his eyes were more level with hers... but Íñigo noticed something special in those eyes-- like a flash of jade.
“Do you own this place?” was the ridiculous question from Lope. He already felt awkward just asking it, but it seemed like the safest thing to query without giving away their hand.
The young lady, expectedly, screwed up her face at the strangeness of the question and answered with no little twist of annoyance. “No. My mother owns this place.”
“Mother,” Diego and Lope both said under their breaths. The clue from the notes stolen from El Sid now seemed to be more believable. “May we see her?” Diego applied to the young lady.
The young woman steaded her stare at the taller gentleman as if hoping to detect treachery in his eyes if she squinted enough. Apparently satisfied with Diego's face, she called out: “Mom! We have visitors!”
A few more moments passed of staring before the young lady looked at something behind the doorway and stepped back. Immediately, the large entrance flung open. Standing in resplendent Dutch affair like a minor aristocrat, the woman owner of the distillery now faced the three men at her door, but her eyes were fixed at only one of them. “Señor de Balboa!” she cried out with no little surprise.
Lope locked eyes with the lady and caught his breath. It was her again. “Señora--” he began to say but immediately turned his eyes to Diego while keeping his head steady.
“Amatallah,” she said quickly, as she watched Lope's eyes indicate the man next to him. “Your memory is as terrible as always, Lope.”
“Señora Amatallah,” Lope replied with a huff to stablise himself, “this is my charge Íñigo and a colleague, Señor Diego. We... would like to ask you a few things.”
The proprietress looked at the other two and examined them quickly before edging a nervous smile and stepping aside. “Please come in,” she said, “I hope my daughter Alia was not too rude to either of you,” she added looking towards the young lady who visibly scowled.
The strange exchange between Lope and Señora Amatallah was not lost on Diego. It was his turn to quietly enter into mystery. He watched the strange interplay of expressions that bounced off the lady and Lope; Lope knew something that he was not telling. Diego hoped to force the issue. They entered and were being led to a table at the far end of the work area in a separate room which seemed to be where Señora Amatallah had her meals.
“You two know each other?” Diego asked Lope as they walked towards the room. His voice was masked by the clang of metal and wood in the background as workers checked the state of the vats and barrels.
Lope kept his eyes forward while following the two ladies cordially. He calculated his answer behind the protection of his even motions. “I know Señora Amatallah through El Sid,” he replied.
“Is she the one we're looking for?” Diego whispered at Lope's back.
Lope gave no answer as they now entered the relatively spacious dining hall. “Have a seat, gentlemen, please,” Señora Amatallah bid them as she brought forward some of the home-brewed beer she had on a counter opposite the table on the far end. Once all three were comfortable and young Alia positioned herself at the head of the table with a suspecting look at the others, Señora Amatallah permitted a sigh before settling into her own seat. “Tell me Sid has not gotten himself into any trouble,” was the first thing she said while scanning the eyes of her guests.
“No, Señora,” Lope answered almost instinctively, “not yet at least... You see, my young charge here has been the target of assassination attempts recently by a group of three men who--” and here Lope stopped as all three of them could see the visible change in Amatallah's face.
“Alia...” the mother said, “go check on the workers for me, please.”
“But--” the young lady attempted to protest but cut herself short as she looked up at her mother's grave visage which continued to project astonishment at Lope. She complied despite her curiosity and quited the room.
“I'm assuming you already know of what we speak of, Señora Amatallah,” Diego said once the daughter was out of earshot.
Señora Amatallah folded her hands in front of her and straightened her posture on her seat. Her lips were no longer parted in surprise but had regained a kind of composure that kept Diego quiet in anticipation for an answer. It was now Íñigo who caught her attention. “And they were after you?” she asked in a deathly tone. Íñigo almost felt cold just listening to her Middle Eastern accented Spanish.
“Yes...” the young man answered quickly as if the coldness from the Lady's voice squeezed the words out of his constricting lungs.
“Why are they trying to kill Íñigo?” Lope leaned in on the table as if to disrupt the strange spidersilk that traveled from Amatallah's eyes to the paralysed Íñigo.
“They are not trying to kill him,” Amatallah answered slowly. “They are trying to take him.”
“Take him?” Lope was beginning to be annoyed by the confusion.
Amatallah was too busy boring her gaze into Íñigo's eyes to give heed to Lope's question. It was that instant when both Diego and Lope thought that she was going to provide an answer was when she shot up from her chair. She stepped towards the counter, procured some paper, a stylus, and ink. Lope and Diego could only furrow their eyebrows almost angrily at what was happening.
When she returned, Señora Amatallah began to scribble quickly on the piece of paper. The stylus dipped into the ink every now and then before scratching strange markings onto the surface. Lope was once again about to speak when he was interrupted by the harsh slide of the paper from Señora Amatallah's side of the mesa towards Íñigo. The stylus and the ink followed suit.
Both Diego and Lope leaned over to see the strange writing. They were strange combinations of squares and rectangles with some shaped like “L”s all within a rectangular box although there were also some outside of the rectangle as well floating on the dirtiness of the paper. “What is this?” Lope asked Amatallah taking his eyes off of the strange symbols on the paper.
“A test,” replied the woman, “to find out if this is the reason why these three men are after this boy.”
“A test? What reason?” Lope was beginning to hate being forced to repeat things, “and what are--” he was interrupted by the sound of writing once again. Looking down at the table, he could see that Íñigo's hands were guiding the inked stylus across the paper connecting shapes with lines and forming his own figures. Lope caught a glimpse of Íñigo's face and all he could see was a kind of blankness... a vacant stare.
“I see,” Señora Amatallah mused as Íñigo finished with his movements. Leaning forward on the table, she could see that the lines constructed had formed a symmetrical shape... a kind of rose within the box that blended seamlessly with the shapes she had placed there before. But the sight of the beautiful image brought no joy to her face. Instead, it seemed to sag against her cheeks and made her eyes constrict. Íñigo gave a strange look back at the woman as if he had just awoken from a strange nightmare. The stylus dropped from his hand onto the wood of the table.
“What's this meaning of all of this?” Lope interrupted the strange tension his voice rising slightly.
“Where did you get this boy?” Amatallah shot back at him with an urgency that pacified Lope's anxious face.
“Lope adopted me from the orphanage in Seville,” Íñigo spoke up. “The monks there had raised me.”
“Do you know who your parents are, boy?” Amatallah asked impatiently. Íñigo shook his head. “You all want answers,” Amatallah announced to them much more calmly, “then you will get them tonight. You three will stay here...”
“Why?” Diego asked suddenly suspicious.
“Because they will not resist coming here tonight. If what you've said is true, then they've let you alone on your journey here for one reason: so that they can find me, too”
---
“Giles,” the informal inflection of the Cardinal caught the Englishman as he was walking down towards the another room in the Palace.
“Your Eminence,” the Englishman responded while proffering the usual obedience, “I suspect from that smile that you have a new assignment for me.”
“One specially tailored for you, in fact,” the Cardinal replied as he matched steps with Giles as they traversed down the long hall. “I would like you to go to Antwerp and keep an eye on the growing rebellion there.”
“That doesn't sound as dangerous as I thought now that I've been fully inducted,” Covington chuckled.
“Perhaps not for a man of your experience,” the clergyman replied, “but there are a few things I'd like for you to look into. An abduction masked as a murder was committed earlier in the year and I'd like to get some details on it in the next few months. I'm going to pair you up with one of our Walloon operatives working in Antwerp, a M. Vermeer. I chose him in particular because of he speaks English better than he does Spanish.”
Giles chuckled a bit more, “When do I leave?”
“Tonight,” the Cardinal smiled while pressing an encouraging palm on the Englishman's shoulder. The clergyman's wiry yet tall frame wrapped in scarlet robes made him seem like a towering vermilion cormorant as he guided his more regularly proportioned protégé. “I have all the clues we've acquired so far in this bag here,”
Procuring the equally red felt bag from his pocket, the Cardinal opened the small opening to reveal a glimmer underneath. “A crucifix,” Sir Covington noticed, “is that all?”
“It's our only clue; M. Vermeer can tell you the rest.” With that, the Cardinal handed him the small item and turned the other way. Giles gave a courteous bow as the Cardinal left his presence before placing his fingers into the pouch and pulling out the small item. The corpus was a bit worn out but the metal of the cross remained mostly in tact. Turning it over, Giles noticed an engraving: “v. A.” He pondered over the possible meanings, but did not seem to find anything satisfactory. With a serious exhale, he placed the crucifix back into the pouch and into his pocket.
Interlude
Trey quickly placed the crucifix underneath his costume as he entered through the double doors of the house. Already, the sound of the bass bounced through the crowded halls and added an extra layer of sensation on top of the glittering dance lights shimmering against the spectrum of costumes, the feel of the heat rising from the dancing bodies, and the smell of sweat, cologne, smoke, and alcohol. At first, the atmosphere hit him like the onrush of lava hitting the ocean, but Randall-- his room mate-- tugged at his sleeve to bid him into the deeper portions of the house.
Randall was an interesting fellow, or so Trey thought. He was always out partying or attending other social gatherings. What made it interesting was that he never thought twice about asking Trey to come with him. It always seemed like wherever the young social butterfly would go, Trey was the first to be asked if he'd like to come along. Randall himself was wearing some flimsy excuse of a costume that was more an excuse to show off his boyish figure more than be anything scary or clever. It suited him, Trey thought. Randall was shorter than he was, much more spritely that made him seem younger than Trey although they were about the same age, and sported his brown hair like some Japanese pop idol.
Trey himself threw a getup together at the last minute opting to go with the tried and true pirate (which he started to feel embarrassed about when he saw how many other 'pirates' there were at the gathering). As he weaved his way through the writhing mass of partying college students, he kept asking himself why he allowed Randall to convince him to go. It wasn't that he was necessarily anti-social, but these were the kinds of events that he'd like to make fun of-- something to degrade over a nice cup of coffee-- even though he hated coffee (it was just the thing New England college students should do, right?).
Nonetheless, he wanted to try to enjoy this moment of distraction from the studies. He would submit his essay tomorrow to the publisher and he wanted to celebrate now that he was finished with the drafts. Yes, that's why he wanted to come. Everyone else was busy or going to this party so he might as well come along, right? If only the headache would go away...
Trey attempted to distract himself with the myriad of costumes around him. Fairies, devils, soldiers (especially Spartan ones)-- they were all rather stock. Except for the three strange ones. Tall and wearing purple cloths. It seemed like they had gauntlets made out of steel and visors that would not betray their eyes. Trey supposed he noticed those three mainly because of the way they circled about the room and one never coming too close to him. Watching them made him more dizzy, however, and despite the hard thump of the base, the sound of his heart pumping blood through his skull became louder and louder.
Each time he looked up at one of those figures as they shifted along the skirts of the room he would feel a little bit of vertigo each time. He decided it was time to move out of the main room. Bursting in through the far door and closing it behind him to dampen the noise, he nearly jumped at the sight of a man in a full body rabbit costume sitting on the couch in front of him. “I... I'm sorry to interrupt--” Trey wanted to say as his headache seared against the back of his head like something was burning there.
“It's alright,” the voice from behind the bunny mask replied, but the voice only seemed to deepen the weight inside Trey's brain. There was something about that voice. It was then that from underneath a couch pillow, a black metallic object was now handled by the man sitting. Trey tried to focus on what it was but each time he squinted his eyes, the pulse in his brain shot up. “You don't look so well, Trey,” the voice said again sending Trey into a kind of delirium.
“W... who are you?” Trey tried to ask as he slammed his back against the door trying to keep himself up. The man sitting on the couch, illuminated only by the dull orangeness of the nearby lamp, slowly took off the headpiece of his costume revealing first his chin and then that mouth and then a nose-- before, finally... Trey felt the room spinning when he saw those eyes-- those familiar eyes--his eyes! That face... was he going mad? It was as if he was looking through a mirror. That face... it was his.
Chapter CXIX: The Face (coming soon)
I wonder if Íñigo has headaches or will have headaches...
And probably Íñigo is the son of some monarch and the assassins want to capture and ransom him, but that doesn't explain why Amatallah is being chased.
And probably Íñigo is the son of some monarch and the assassins want to capture and ransom him, but that doesn't explain why Amatallah is being chased.
Hmm. Full body rabbit suit at a fancy-dress do: Frank from Donnie Darko (if so, awesome!)
And of course The Face...if there's not an A-Team reference of some form in the next update, I'm going to cry. :'(
And of course The Face...if there's not an A-Team reference of some form in the next update, I'm going to cry. :'(
comagoosie said:
son of some monarch eh ? XD interesting theory
ColossusCrusher: haha , no
Incognitia: Haha , I was thinking of Donnie Darko actually . Been a while since I saw that movie
Grubnessul: Seems like it XD
canonized said:
I wonder if Monty Python had this image in mind when they released to the world the infamous and vicious Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.
Kurt_Steiner said:
ROFL . Maybe we should make a 'modern' version of it , eh ? XD
Murmurandus: Haha , that's why we love having you around , Murmy XD
ElidioEmperor: Kind of creepy isn't it ?
Can you guess the actor and hence who is portraying Trey ? XD
Yes, suspicious it was indeed that they made it to the boat so easily, especially if it's to allow them to lead their pursuers to even more fruitful grounds.
The slow unravelling of mysteries like this (each showing a new mystery, or several, behind it - the more you know, the more you don't know!) is the thing I love the most about this story.
The slow unravelling of mysteries like this (each showing a new mystery, or several, behind it - the more you know, the more you don't know!) is the thing I love the most about this story.
Judas Maccabeus said:
It's definitely for comments like these (though I love everyones' comments XD) that I enjoy writing such chapters XD thank you very much , JM !