1????????Soul Bound
1.3??????Making a Splash
1.3.1????An Obligated Noble
1.3.1.27 Soul raiders!
Soul Raiders! Daily Top Ten List of the Hottest Raid Recordings from Soul Bound.
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#3 Torello, “Not A Kraken Hunt”, 120 mins, from streamer @Oswaldson
: Shot pans out, to show the southern end of the Canalassoa, where the big ships moor to load and unload their cargoes. One ship has a massive triangular knot dangling below its yardarm, tied from hawser thicker than any python. Vast numbers of enthusiastic adventurers and angry sailors, all armed to the teeth, are crowded next to the Valorosa, listening to words booming from the barrel-like torso of a captain looking down at them from its forecastle. His words crackle with energy and hatred like the edges of shattered glass, and within minutes the crowd has become a mob, piling into anything that floats and flooding north along the wide waterway, inevitable as a rising tide.
I like to think of myself as a fly kind of guy, who works hard and stays in control of himself, but now I’m on a boat too, rowing as hard as I can, and I don’t remember having decided to join in. Oh well, it looks like fun, and there’s been little enough of that lately, working on my Weaponsmith apprenticeship. In arlife I’m an engineer for a small Lunar company, down earthside on a year long contract to help set up a new Hyperloop for the ‘Common Heritage Belt’. The launcher stretches from Zhangmu to Everest, and its G-forces restrict it to cargo and fit military personnel only, but it’s still going to see a lot of traffic and it’s my job to upgrade the receiving facility at Lake Puma Yumco, which ain’t easy, let me tell you.
: Shot showing reflection of Oswaldson in the water of the canal, revealing a stocky Viking blacksmith whose muscled arms bulge with every oar stroke.
So I need my downtime and, while Puma Yumco is so starkly beautiful that people think postcards of it must be faked, it’s the rooftop of the world - so high I need medicine just to breathe properly, and cut off from everything except a handful of brutalist concrete cubes containing locals they treat little better than slaves. That’s why I’m here in Soul Bound, where you feel you’re making stuff with your own hands, not just using a computer. Making your own sword is nearly as satisfying as the crunching sound you get when you slam it into a skeleton’s face and the jaw rips away in a spray of shattered teeth and bones.
: Shot showing the flotilla of gondolas, gigs and jolly boats pouring through a nondescript arch, into a long pool that’s enclosed by tall forbidding buildings. The pool is teaming with ugly fish and Oswaldson puts his hand on his sword hilt as some of them jump over the gig, revealing the size of their vicious jaws, but they don’t attack and the flotilla vomits the mob onto the wide wooden dock.
The captain is speaking again, and pointing a crossbow at the fancy entrance of a large building at one end of the pool. A couple of masked men wearing lace and pink petticoats are trying to pull closed a heavy brass-bound door, but something seems to have jammed it. Someone starts chanting “Kill, kill, kill” and soon we’re all shouting it as we pile inside, looking for monsters and bad guys.
: Shots showing a sequence of polished marble corridors and dimly lit rooms decorated like sets from theatrical plays, containing a variety of wooden devices and the occasional customer bound to them with padded leather straps.
At first I think the raid is a bust. There’s a lot of bluster from scantily clad nobles, and outrage from costumed staff members when we confiscate their whips, but nothing worth killing. My hopes are raised briefly when I find a room full of goblins leering at a maiden tied up inside a large cooking pot, but my vision of rescuing her by slinging her over my shoulder while one-handedly slaying her foes is dashed as she icily informs me that the goblins are law-abiding employees and that she would very much like me to leave. Immediately.
I do. So much for gratitude.
: Shot looking down into a statue-lined central hall from a balustrade high above.
I’m nearly half way up the building when I finally hear fighting. Proper fighting, not just screamed complaints. I follow the sound out onto a walkway, and discover there’s a battle taking place below me. Some looter tried smashing the eyes on a statue, to see if they held gemstones and now, instead of holding braziers above their heads, the statues are swinging them around like maces, setting fire to sailors and wall hangings with equal abandon.
I produce a rope from my stash, attach it to the balustrade, and abseil down. If there’s one thing I learned from my time in the Lunar LARPers, it’s how to swing a sword, and I’m not about to miss my chance. I land on the head of a statue, and with all my strength I attempt to skewer it using Dáinsleif. I’m very proud of my most recent sword. It’s a replica of King H?gni’s famous twilight sword (or an artist’s guess at it, anyway), and even Scaramouche, the greatest warrior, poet and sword smith in Torello, says it matches up to the standards of his shop.
There’s a small dirty-faced urchin who watches me and winces. I give her a grin to reassure her, and announce loudly that the statue stands no chance now that Oswaldson is here, but she’s turned away, slipping behind one of the hangings, followed by a small bunch in anonymous hooded robes. I swing Dáinsleif again, even harder.
It shatters.
I’m left holding just a hilt and I spend the next ten minutes clinging for dear life onto the back of the statue, with my legs around its neck as it careens about the hall, occasionally hitting swearing sailors and embarrassed highborns with a glowing brazier that leaves a trail of embers suspended in the air to mark the circles of its swings.
: Shot revealing the wreckage of a once pristine hall, now scorched and covered with rubble from statues who’ve been tied up with anchor chains and then smashed to pieces with gaff rods and belaying pins. Captain Lazarillo has organised the mob into groups now, and each one is surrounding one of the downwards leading passages that have been revealed by the destruction of the wall hangings.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
I end up in a group filled with crew from the Beccadelli line. A bosun lends me a heavy cleaver and growls an explanation at me when I ask why we’re not charging down the passage. He says that he’s here for vengeance, because the assassins murdered Lord Adelchis Beccadelli, but that dying to a poisoned spike trap won’t revenge anyone and that I should have a little patience.
He’s just nervous and trying to cover it up, but I humour him anyway. I can’t expect everyone to be a bold adventurer like myself, and no doubt when it comes to sailing he’s competent enough.
Then a drum starts to beat. I don’t know what the hell is being used, but chips of plaster fall from the ceiling high above and I feel each stroke vibrate through my entire body. *BOOM* long pause *BOOM* long pause *BOOM*
Lazarillo: “Ready now, lads. That’s the signal that their escape tunnels have finished flooding. They’ll be boiling out of those passages like rats from a sinking ship in a minute - don’t let any of them past - Kill Them All!”
The chant of “Kill, Kill, Kill” starts up again, sounding much more ominous in these dark scorched surroundings than it did on the brightly lit dock. Moments later a tall man in a flowing dark cloak runs incredibly fast out the passage to the right and tries to jump over the crowd. A grinning sailor with a boathook snags the cloak and pulls him down into the mob, which despatches him like a floundering fish. Not graceful, but very effective.
*BOOM* long pause *BOOM* long pause *BOOM*
As more and more soggy assassins try escaping, I start to appreciate the virtue of kills that are quick. Only a few of the adventurers are priests or mages, and when I attempt to challenge a particularly cruel eyed assassin to a one-on-one duel, my words just give her time to chuck a glass sphere that smashes at my feet, releasing a rotten smelling cloud of sickly yellow smoke. I fall choking to my knees, lungs burning with acid, and only narrowly avoid death by desperately gulping down the single healing potion I’d been able to afford.
*BOOM* long pause *BOOM* long pause *BOOM*
: Shot centered upon a figure who strides with ominous deliberation from the center passage. He isn’t wearing a hood, and calmly looks about him with a confident sneer upon his lips. For some reason there’s a tattoo on his forehead which, in small feminine letters, reads:
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
3/10 Elegance
5/10 Practicality
8/10 Lethality
0/10 Originality
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
*BOOM* long pause *BOOM* long pause *BOOM*
The figure waves a short wand, ice spreads across the floor, and suddenly I find myself frozen. Literally. There’s a deep chill in my bones and I can’t so much as twitch a finger.
In a clear, cold voice he speaks. He doesn’t need to speak loudly, because everyone else in the room is also motionless.
“Who ordered this? Speak, or I will see every one of you held in agony, an inch away from death, for the next three months.”
The threat doesn’t scare me, as I know I can just log out of the game, though I kind of feel sorry for the little vessel guy I merged with. I only saw him briefly, but he looked an okay kind of guy, and there was a priest who mumbled something about it being a good idea to be nice to him. Guess I’ll fail a quest on that one, if I can’t escape. Damn. I try to speak up, to tell the wand guy that it was all Captain Lazarillo’s idea, but my jaw won’t move.
* B O O M *
With an ear splitting crack the floor splits in two, directly beneath the figure and he falls into the room below with an annoyed look upon his face. I can move again. Luckily I glance upwards, and spot what must be half the building’s roof formed into a twenty tonne spear that’s also falling. I grab the bosun and dive out of the way, on the grounds he did lend me the cleaver which, despite not being a sword, actually works remarkably well. Who knew?
The spear fills the hole as neatly as if it had been a peg shaped especially for it, and turns the boss assassin into a fountain of blood and puréed organs that paint us red like woad-covered savages. I laugh, triumphant at surviving, and others join in.
For about ten seconds.
Then we all run like hell as the rest of the building starts to collapse. I end up near the back with a dozen of the biggest ugliest sailors and we encourage our friends ahead to move quicker with the timid gentility of a Samoan rugby scrum until we finally reach the narrow remains of the front entrance. Of course they act like prats and all try to jam through at the same time as myself, nearly resulting in a timeless but fatal moment of classic comedy. Luckily we''re drenched in blood, which has made us so slippery that instead of getting stuck we pop out, like the cork of a shaken champagne bottle, and half of us land in the pool of water as the building crumples inwards. Surprisingly neat really, it didn’t even damage the properties next to it. Guess they build well, here in Torello.
I’m surprised I don’t get eaten by the fish, but apparently they’d already stuffed themselves on assassins who tried using the underground escape routes without realising someone had systematically broken the protections on them. Nasty. Still, if your business is knifing people for money, you can’t really complain about injustice, can you?
My buddy, the bosun, gives me a hand out of the water and I promise to forge a fine sword for him if I can keep the cleaver. He declines, but slaps me on the back and tells me I can keep it anyway.
*ding*
The pleasant feeling tells me I’ve gained some reputation as well as a bit of loot. I had a fun time, so I think I’ll upload this now.
Happy raiding, y’all.
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