Commentary on web design and other topics by Guy Leech, web fanatic.
A short story I wrote for the upcoming MMORPG Warhammer Online; I’m hoping to increase my chance of getting in the beta.
Blood flows freely, a gratuitous river of slaughter. From the hovels it flows; from the cities, the fields, and from the North. Disguised as men, women and beasts it flows, through mountains and forests, over hills and gullies; across rivers and fiefs it flows.
It is inexorable; the pent up flow of peaceful centuries crashing through the thin walls that hold it bound, just. This is a flood that will consume miles and kingdoms in that oldest of instincts: to kill or be killed.
This instinct is not unfamiliar to those meting out their life in the grim forests or mountains of the Empire, not is it unfamiliar to the marauders, bandits, faeries and other denizens of the land. It is this instinct that fuels the machine of war, and that drives entire civilisations into fire, and death.
When the time comes, the collapse of cities will mingle with the shouts and cries of battle, a chorus that becomes, to some ears, as charming as the gurgles of a rushing brook. Those to be entranced by this melody will soon become the next victims of it; the call of blood to blood too strong for the minds of mortals.
Those whom are not overcome by the melody will still join the dead, in time; only the truly deaf will live to see the world shatter on the delicate harmonies of steel and bone. This is a great irony of Fate: those who do not partake in the glory are the only ones to see its end.
However, when the drums of battle call, there are few who do not heed, and even less who hear, but do not follow. For the majority, it is their one chance to dance, to live. It is a calling that brings jewellers, tailors, barbarians and daemons to the open fields, to the cities, and, ultimately, to each other.
“Kissing” is how survivors describe this meeting; the cold, yet passionate kiss given by steel; perhaps a lingering, teasing kiss given by the mistress known as famine, or the fast climax gifted by boiling oil to her favourites. It is those that endure this love, without being overwhelmed by it, that become the Empowers, Champions and heroes of the Old World; those whose names are written in legend, and in blood.
It is these figures of legend, in their cities and castles, in their regiments and garrisons, and in their armies, who know to where they head. These few have danced to this tune before, and found themselves not lacking. These few know that which others only feel: war is coming.