There's 9 pages left of this and I haven't finished. It was originally intended to be part of Will's entourage storygame, but I took so many liberties with the setting/structure of CYS and all the other characters that I theorised it was no longer compatible with the rest of the game. Eventually, writing ground to a halt, but now that I've found it in a pile of old documents, I feel motivated to pick this up again.
Here goes, +3 extra-shiny bonus frijoles for anyone who knows what movie Silas is referencing/paraphrasing:
It was a dark, dark age. An age darker than anyone could possibly have wanted. An age so dark, even Charlemagne would’ve frowned at it. It was an age when the Mods were few and very stressed at the amount of shit they had to plough through. A time when the site was flooded. Flooded with cats. This was the age of Warrior Cats…. And during this age, one beast in particular proved themselves a cut below the rest. This is the old saga of the hunt for a monster they called ‘Darkscar’…
A cloaked wagon driver urged his horses along through the dark, marshy fields. It was a chilly, wet, cloudy day near the end of Harvest, and the leafless skeletons of trees made black silhouettes against the cold, featureless sky. The leaves that covered the ground would have been considered a contrasting flash of color, had there not been plenty of red on the ground already.
The wagon rolled past, and over, several bodies as they went along. There were smoking embers in the fields, splintered shields, broken swords, spears, and axes. Two looters could be found in the distance, bickering over the valuable metal still left over by those less observant. They attempted to remove a helmet that had been dented into some poor corpse’s skull. The struggle, they thought, was not worth it, and they instead opted to cut off the man’s head to take it with them.
Eventually, the wagon arrived at a village. Most of the buildings had caved in from the burning rooves. Pillars of smoke rose up into the low, pale sky, and bits of mutilated corpses, broken bones, and torn armor were strewn about, each at different stages of sinking into the mud beneath them. Women and children wept, and silent, stone-faced individuals seemed to look right through their surroundings as if nothing were there. Multitudes of fat, greedy ravens hopped from body to body, fighting fitfully over who would get to eat the eyes.
The wagon driver halted his horses, and tied them up to a post that used to hold up the balcony of a tavern, taking a deep breath and sighing. The air smelled like dead things and ozone. He walked over to the back of the wagon and kicked it, jolting something under a burlap sheet into the waking world. He then removed his hood. A penguin-like bird-man drawled, in a buttery Scottish brogue, to the very startled fox in his wagon,
“This, James, is what we in the business call a ‘shithole’.”
The little red thing was rather perturbed at this manner of waking, and he gaggered some fox curses under his breath before answering.
“Why do we have to be here, Silas?” was his yipped reply, “I thought we just had an entire argument several battles ago about how we’re not supposed to fight trolls back!?”
Silas casually leaned on the wagon and pulled an iron flask out of his jacket.
“Thing ye gotta know about trolls is, there’s two kinds. One of ‘em wants you to hate ‘em, and the other one doesne’. The cats that’re invadin’ from the outerlands, they’re the second kind. We can kill these ones, and, given the fact that they’re startin’ to turn our whole kingdom into a shithole like this un’, we prob’ly should.”
He took a long, heavy swig before continuing.
“This isne’ jus’ us common men fightin’ the war this time, James. This is everybody. The Mods themselves are gettin’ angry. Hammers fall from the sky, I hear. Sir Playa rose from his grave not that many morrows ago…”
“You think the mods won’t save us in time?”
“Accoursenae! The Mods above never do anythin’ in time! They gotta make sure it’s good an’ judicial first, and that takes forever!”
“Does it really? Do they really not do anything in time?”
“On the chance they do, I think we oughtta help ‘em out, before we regret not helpin’ ‘em out.”
The fox yawned and arched his back, then rolled onto his side.
“Why’d you have to bring me along? I was having a good enough time actively avoiding them in the safety of my burrow, you know. You should’ve brought someone else. Join Playa in the Cysade.”
“If yer gonna have any sorta custody over my grandson, yer gonna need to know how to protect ‘im. Sentinel’s got many enemies. There’s a faction who would see me stripped o’ my land an’ titles!”
The man bent over and picked a bloody hairball up off the ground, putting the flask back in his coat.
“Can ye smell down the source o’ this?”
James gaggered and giggered with incredulous indignance, “Is that what you brought me here for!? You just want me to be your bloodhound? I’m hurt, Silas. I won’t do it! I’m going home!”
The fox turned to go, but Silas snatched him up by the nape of his neck.
“I told ye, yer here fer my grandkid. Now sniff this shit and point me where to go!”
So began a game of ‘Warmer/Colder’ which led Silas in circles around the village square once or twice. The
villagers looked upon these foreigners with confusion and some small modicum of personal offense, before Silas got his bearings right and was led into the ruins of a house.
“And yer sure it’s comin’ from here, this time?” Silas said, waving James around slowly to give his nose a better view.
The fox nodded. “Something’s breathing in there. Be careful.”
Silas took a step back, tossed the hairball aside, and withdrew his right arm, his cape sinking back down around his shoulders. A brilliant gleam of steel shone in the pale light of the clouds as Silas drew his longsword, Penguinite runes of raw Cat hatred, which roughly translated to “Fuck off, you rotten shitstains!” shone from within the fuller. James eyed the handle with contempt.
“Was it necessary to make the pommel out of those bones? Dragons are an endangered species…” James squeaked, his eyes rolling.
“Well, yeah. Dragons kill cats, so a dragonbone pommel’s gonna kill cats too, probably. It’s like silver with vampires, I think.”
Silas walked into the house, pushing open the bottom 1/4 of a bashed-in door with his foot. It fell off of its abused hinges and down to the floor with a clunk. A small, ashen floorspace was lit by the sickly white sky through a hole in the ceiling, but it was very dim inside. Silas only heard a woman crying.
“SHOW YERSELF!” Silas bellowed, raising his sword up in a battle stance and holding James up higher like a lantern.
“P-please… The other looters already took everything of value…” blubbered the voice of a suffering widow.
“LIGHT A FUCKIN’ CANDLE OR SOMETHIN’!
“Y-yes, sir!” the peasant whimpered, moving to a hearth in the corner and stirring some old coals to life. Slowly, a one-room house came into view. Tables in the middle, beds in the corners, cabinets in the back, and a toolchest in the front. A girl no older than 10 or 11 lay motionless in the bed, blood dripping from her mouth. Silas, shocked, turned to the woman.
“What’s her deal?” Silas asked, pointing his sword at the child.
“M-my daughter… She’s very ill…” The peasant woman began, “The Clans that raided the village before Sir Malkalack arrived and fought them off… They… They…”
“By the Mods, woman! What is it!? Spit it out!”
She broke out into hysterical sobs, clearly not in the mood to talk about anything worthwhile.
“Still got the scent?” he asked the fox in his hand.
“Yeah. It’s under the bed.”
“Ew… You go get it.” Silas said, setting James down. He whined begrudgingly and moved down, under the bed. Within seconds, James was dragging out the mauled corpse of a very large, feral house cat.
“Anythin’ else under there?” Silas asked, rolling the corpse over with his foot to inspect the damage.
“Yes.” James said, “Runes of some sort. This was sacrificed in a circle of cat runes.”
“Well fuck me and the horses that dragged us here…” Silas growled, “We’re gonna have a shitty time…”
“I also noticed something else… Unfortunate…” James yipped, almost scared to say…
“Well, what is it then!?”
“The corpses of the cats around here… The cat under the bed… These aren’t normal Warrior Cats, they’re uhh… Anatomically cor-“
“MADGLEE ALMIGHTY THIS THING’S GOT A BIRTHOLE!” Silas said, punting the carcass across the room in shock, the widow in the corner wailing more pained than ever, “WHAT HAVE THEY DONE!?”
“I… I can’t say…” the woman wept, “I really can’t…”
“We’re Cat Hunters, Professional Cat Hunters! We can help! Tell us what they did!”
“They dragged her to the house, and then started fighting and… and… Ohh…” She bent over, vomiting, and then fainted back into a chair.
“Odd… That sounds rather like every other case of Cat Indoctrination and possession we’ve encountered before… I mean, aside from whatever it was she was going to mention…” James said, his head tilted.
“There’s as many different kinds of Warrior Cats as there are birds of prey, James… I believe we’ve stumbled on some of the rarer scum, but I aine’ sure what this ‘un does…”
Silas reached into his satchel and procured four shackles, tossing them to his furry compadre, “Chain this girl down ‘fore she wakes up, an’ put a warnin’ sign up on the doorway. We’re gonna have to exorcise ‘er later.”
“Where are we going now?” James oarfed inquisitively, picking up the chains in his teeth, “Isn’t this more important?”
“Nah. We gotta get to Kiel’s place on time. Shouldne’ be too long, the road through this village goes right t’the fort.”
Silas sheathed his blade and walked out of the building, trudging through the muddy streets, and kicking a broken shoulderplate to the side. With care, he took good stock of all the supplies in the wagon, doublechecking to make sure none of the desperate villagers stole anything, and then moved to untie the horses. By the time this was done, James had arrived and was ready to join him. Silas picked up his son-in-law and dropped him gently back in the burlap nest in the back.
