Lore:The Lawless Frontier: Difference between revisions

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"So, walk careful—head on a swivel, hand on the hilt, all that—cuz that glare you feel is the narrowed eyes of ill-intent aimed at your honor, your heart… your head.

"Some say you can still hear the screams—echoes of the lost and damned ringing from just out of sight. Don't believe 'em. That's just the stretching and bending of the supports—old metal moaning in the celestial breeze, the grinding of scrap and stone calling out, giving warning.

"There's no way that's a direct translation."

==By Thy Tongue Be Damned==

In that secret is his strength.

Truth is, only Hiraks knows. Truth as simple as it is puzzling: Yes. Yes, he did. Scour the Grave. Hear the whispers. Only then could all that followed transpire.

For Hiraks succeeded where so few have. He crafted his own throne world and began a monstrous quest to expand his knowledge, etching its harshest truths upon his enemies. And his work has progressed unchecked.

Hiraks, the Twisted. Hiraks, Ascendant. The mindbender whose tongue is a weapon, whose experiments seek to unravel sanity and reshape imagination that his subjects may become other—tools of his vile bidding.

What then of so many who are one—a single scourge, responsible for many varied tragedies?

What is known and unknown? None can say. And the sly prankster would have it no other way.

—Excerpt from C.C. LaGrange's translations of "Writings and Observations from the Tangled Shore: A Fallen Text"

But Reksis Vahn's rage was not sated, as the Wolves alone were not the architects of his fury—all Fallen who clung to the ritual of House politics were his enemy, total and complete.

But where others slipped toward insanity, Reksis's mind and intent were clear—the agony of a terrible death was his aim. The target of his wickedness, the very Servitors he had been denied. The very machines that sustained the Fallen.

And he would do so gleefully, watching the life drain from their eyes.

—Excerpt from C.C. LaGrange's translations of "Writings and Observations from the Tangled Shore: A Fallen Text"

He was unseen during the Wolves uprising, but many credit him with the assassination of the Queen's palace guard. None can verify, but each fell to a single shot—clean, precise, fatal.

What he hits, he kills.

The Barons and Taniks and the Splicers are each and all individual dangers, driven by their own ambition. They are more likely to wage war with one another than see their commonality.

They call it a "valley" to be poetic, but in truth, it is simply the chaotic space between massive rocks that scrap and smash into one another in a violent dance. The distances from mass-to-mass ebb and flow without warning—a constant, deadly repositioning of the landscape. That ever-changing hollow is the Valley. Only the mad and desperate would dare run its length. With one exception…

None of that matters. Not to me. Each version of the start is as interesting as the next. But the run itself? Her ride through the gnashing jaws of death?

But he tried again, and on the fifth go, he scraped through a narrow as the collision hit. He'd made it. The impossible was possible, though he refused to admit Yaviks could've done the same. Not that it mattered.

If you had not heard of the Machinist before, know that others had. While her crimes may not live in infamy in the hearts of City-dwellers, the Reef and its Awoken know all too well her long reign of terror.

But should those names be new to your ears, there are others you trust who have felt the pain of her vile campaign.

Ask your Arach of the Machinist's deeds. Ask him about the Siege of Arran—the hijacked ship, its stolen contents and its Guardian protectors lost or captured at the hands of the scorned.

The lowly Dreg who challenged tradition only to be cast aside. The lowly Dreg who found her own strength in a troubling bond with forsaken kin. She grew strong as an outcast—grew mean. Then found her purpose with the guidance of a preacher of sorts and a new, more driven crew.

—Excerpt from C.C. LaGrange's translations of "Writings and Observations from the Tangled Shore: A Fallen Text"

Then Fikrul took a fall—beaten, docked, and banished for heresies against Eliksni faith.

Before his banishment—before his clarity of purpose—Fikrul was a celebrated leader of Fallen faith and a savior to those who embraced his teaching.

That need became worship. That worship became faith. And the Archons—those who oversaw the care and consecration of the Servitors—were looked upon to provide hope through their words, teachings, and interpretations of the machines' wants, needs… desires.

Fikrul is a Fanatic.

There are many tales of the time between Fikrul's fall and his rise again as spiritual leader of the Scorned Barons—his struggle to find strength as a battered Dreg, his journeys across the system to challenge his faith, his joining with the other outcasts who were scorned, and his eventual union with his "father." The only thing that matters, however, when confronting the dangers of Fikrul is this: He is a creature of faith.

And everything you stand for is wrong.

The questions no one asks…

Did the struggle for survival outside the structure and ritual of the House system crack his mind? The things he'd seen? Done? The Shore asks much of those who call it home. Most simply find their end through the harsh will of these harsh lands or by the hand of the hardened agents who stalk its fractured expanse—bandits, cutthroats, cannibals, Awoken patrols, Guardian "heroes."

These points—an examination on the birth of madness—I raise to address a lingering concern.

Allow yourself the comfort of knowing the sinister creature is now dead and gone by Guardian hand. But linger on victory's pride for only a short while, because the truth I seek to tell has yet to be revealed, and it is this…