Madgod Options

[Colonel Mustard]

Hey everyone.

This has been rattling around my head for a while now, and I figure I might as well get it started with and continued while I've got the drive to write it. As you might have guessed, the following is based off the Shivering Isles, but I'm doing my own thing with it somewhat, so I should probably say now that, while there are bits of this that you'll recognise, there are a lot of parts that you won't; I'm bringing in a lot of new character ideas and so forth, and there will be interesting things done.

Anyway, I'm not very good at this whole introduction business, so I'll just let you get on and read it. Do enjoy!

Madgod

Chapter 1-The Champion

Sing deep, sing low, sing the song
pay the piper to play it on
to his tune you must dance
and slumber in eternal trance
for deep within its secret dreams
madness desperate plots and schemes
the gauntlet breaks the chain of snakes
and its bloody bounty it finally takes
the starving serpent eats the tail
consuming slowly as a snail
but patient, hungry, it awaits
the cyclic feast it anticipates
will we be free or forever slave
hear the siren call of ‘obey’
or will Madgod rise and strike down
mercury tide that would Isles drown?

Do not be here when it will come. It is hungry. It is angry. It has plans. Your nice little world which you’re reading this in won’t be all that nice if they come to fruition. Oh no. You lucky, lucky things. You honestly have no idea. Must I explain?

Very well. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

Let’s step back. Right now, we are at the end. To begin at the end is impossible. Not impossible, no, not here, nothing is impossible here, but to begin at the end here is implausible. Is that the word I want? No. Unnecessary. It is doing it wrong. Sometimes it works, but here it does not. So let’s take a step back from here.



His fished crashed down, crunching bone. A scream rang out.

“Mercy! Please, mercy!”

“Mercy?” he asked, gauntlet raised above his head, his scarred, battered face contorted with rage. “You want mercy? That’s just too good.”



No, not far enough, further back we go. We need to get to before that. No context. That’s too close to the end for what we want.



He and Her Ladyship turned around on the glass platter as it rose above the city, stepping around one another’s feet as they danced.

“See,” she said. “I told you you’d be good at this; it’s all about the rhythm.”

He nodded, glancing down at their feet self-consciously as they moved.

“Relax,” she said, steering a hand gently down his back, guiding him along. “You’re learning fast, my dear.”

The world spun below them as they danced on their rotating glass platform, hovering in midair.



No, further back still. Is this it? Is this the place?



He pulled himself up the top of the ladder, through the trapdoor, into the great glass globe at the tower’s very top. He stared at the figure sitting cross-legged a few feet from him on a cushion, and the eyes of the man stared back at him.

In a voice as thick and rich as Felldew, Sentinel said; “Ah, you’re here. I saw you coming, you know.”



Not here, no. No, no, where is it? Where do I start?



The Angel of Rage slammed down before him in a landing that sent a cloud of ash blossoming around her. Wings of flame and lightning pinned themselves to her back, and a mace of fire materialised in her hand. Her ruined face twisted into a grimacing snarl as she beheld the intruder.

“Why are you here, mortal?” she demanded. “Why should I not destroy you?”



Not yet. She comes partway through. This is all too late, nobody will understand it, you fool!



They opened with a creak, and he saw it spread before him. A twisted landscape of gnarled roots, growing upwards into the air whilst leafy branches clawed at the ground. Rock formations of shimmering, rainbow stone formed bizarre shapes, ones that seemed to gain form as you looked at them, moved, grew, reached towards you. Faces grew from the scenery, hungry mouths and gasping maws, clawing talons.

He blinked and glanced away, setting off for the city in the distance.



No, not quite. Nearly there, nearly there. Here we are. Here, we begin.



He was drinking to the death of his best friend.

He getting slapped on the back, cheered, toasted, hailed as a hero, bought drinks, and all for the simple reason that he had just killed his best friend.

The night was a blur of tankards, one swallowed after another. There were yells of encouragement, the crowd urging him on once more, their favourite, their hero, their champion. He could only remember them being quiet from earlier, when they had all fallen silent right after that moment.

The taste of ale, the smell of smoke, the offensive eye-watering blur of flaming torches. He couldn’t focus his gaze properly, he noticed, and his tongue felt numb. He was getting drunk. Good.

“’nother drink!” he slurred out, swaying as he did so. Behind and beside him, the rest of the Blue Team cheered their approval and assent, ordering another round. He wasn’t paying tonight. He didn’t know who was paying tonight, and he didn’t care. What he wanted right now was noise. What he wanted right now was cheering. What he wanted right now was distraction.

His head was numb, spinning, buoyant. He managed to grin as complete strangers approached him, shook his hand, and grinning was good. Grinning meant he was happy, and he knew that it was important that he felt happy, that everyone expected him to be happy. He thought he was happy, so he was. He had the ale down the hatch, and that was good. That was a good way to get happy, get happy quickly.

“That’s our Carnius. Ain’t that something? Our Carnius, of all the people.”

That was one of the boasts. One of the favourites

“Waterfront boy, he is. Knew him since he were a kid.”

And there, another. He could pick the threads of conversation out as the Waterfront locals boasted about him, their Carnius, who had grown up around here. A real local hero. Something to boast about. Something to be proud of. Just went to show.

He stood, the sudden movement sending him swaying. There was a chorus of questions about what he was doing, where he was going and he answered them with; “Goin’ out back. Be back in a minute.”

He stumbled outside, moving through the inn, the crowd of blurry faces parting before him. He caught snippets of detail, a grin from an admirer, an alluring look from a hopeful wench, a torch burning in a bracket, a knot in the wooden surface of a table. The din of the tavern muted as he entered the back alley. It was a good tavern, that one. Good stories there. That time he and Agronak had nearly got arrested for brawling, only for the Watch to recognise who they were and haul everyone else off but leave them be, shaking their hands as they did so. That was one of the good ones. One of the favourites.

He urinated down the back wall, in the quiet, concentration taken up by the task at hand, before he finished relieving himself. And then, for a moment, in the quiet that followed, he was drawn back to earlier that day, in the hush that had come. The hush that had come when the battered, broken corpse had slumped to the floor of the arena, armour clattering, as Carnius had stepped back from the body of Agronak Gro-Malog, the Grey Prince. The hush that had come as he had limped away, down to the bloodworks. The hush that had come as he had done so without acknowledging the silent crowd, with the cheering only rumbling into his range of hearing as he had splashed chilly water from the Basin of Restoration onto his face.

And for a moment, the clarity and the harsh reality he had been avoiding since then hit him like the blow from a warhammer. Agronak was dead. He had killed him.

Carnius Hackelt, new Grand Champion of the arena, leant forwards against the wall and quietly wept for what he had just done.

[Colonel Mustard]

Lady Saga: 16, with more planned? Blimey, I've got 3 and I've done a good majority of the main questlines you can do with them...

Darkness Eternal: God no, I'd hate that.

McBadgere: Ask, and ye shall receive.



Chapter 2-Her Ladyship

Carnius walked through the streets of the Imperial City in the same way he always did; disguised and unseen by its people.

To them, he was just an ordinary man, muscular in build with battered features, a scar on his left cheek, a nose that had been broken and clumsily reset. An adventurer, a mercenary, a hired thug or perhaps a soldier. Perhaps not worth the time of someone looking to mug an easy victim, but nothing out of the ordinary.

People only recognised him, Carnius found, when he was wearing his gauntlets. That was his mark, his uniform, and bystanders realised who he was only with those on. The rest of the time, he was nobody.

Today, he liked that. He felt like being nobody. Though he could do without feeling like his skull was lined with dog hair.

He made his way past the tall, vaulted, white stone buildings of the market district of the Empire’s capital, along the cobbled streets. The streets bustled around him, people both rich and poor brushing past him, while the stink of horse dung and sewage pervaded the air. He avoided the main road, where carts and horses rumbled along, and kept a wary eye looking skywards in case anyone was dumping waste out of a window.

His journey had the final destination of the Arena, and as he reached the imposing stone building the sound of cheering reached his ears. A match on, he thought, and judging by the volume and relatively scant enthusiasm of it, probably a pair of pit dogs. He smirked at the realisation that he was able to judge that just from the sound of the crowd, but he supposed that wasn’t surprising; he knew the crowd, knew its moods and fickle favours, had performed for it more times than he cared to remember.

“Carnius,” Hundolin called as he approached, the Arena’s bookie raising a hand in greeting. “Back here already? I though Ysabel was letting you have a little time off.”

“Thought I’d work off the hangover on a punchbag,” Carnius said.

“Might not be happening,” Hundolin said. “Her Ladyship is watching the match at the moment; she’ll want to talk to you.”

“Oh, she is?” Carnius asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll go speak to her.”

So his sponsor had turned up to match the day after he’d won his title as Grand Champion. He’d seen her at the match, of course, but to have her coming back now was surprising. She was probably looking for new talent.

Nobody was quite sure who Her Ladyship was. She was nobility, without a doubt, a duchess or lady or something similar, but anyone Carnius asked was never certain about what she was duchess or lady of. But she had money, excellent taste, was a regular customer to the arena and had, in her time, sponsored several promising gladiators, Carnius included. That sort of thing was enough to make sure people didn’t ask too many questions, even if nobody actually knew her name.

He made his way up through the stands, to the top where the boxes for the richer customers were reserved. At the busier matches, the top corridor was usually lined with bodyguards for each individual box, but this time it was occupied only by the twins Her Ladyship employed. They nodded a greeting to him as he approached, which Carnius returned, and one of them pushed the door open for him.

“I wasn’t expecting a visitor,” Her Ladyship said as Carnius stepped into her private box. “But it’s good to see you, Carnius.”

Carnius was unsure exactly how she had known it was him, but he supposed it was just one of the things Her Ladyships was capable of. A perfectly manicured hand, kept with a near-obsessive meticulousness by some beautician, patted the vacant seat next to her, and she said; “Please, take a seat.”

“Thought you might want to see me,” Carnius said, looking down at the arena. “Seeing as your sponsorship’s over now. Ysabel’s disappointed.”

“I’m sure she’ll live,” Her Ladyship said. “No doubt she’s already lining up candidates for me to invest in.”

This got a chuckle from Carnius.

“Either of those two pit dogs down there worth my coin?” Her Ladyship asked as she noticed the direction of his gaze.

“Blue team one, I reckon,” Carnius said after a thoughtful minute, watching as the Argonian in question blocked a flurry of axe blows from the Nord he was fighting with his shield. The lizard-man made a spirited swing at the yellow team fighter with his flail, but the Nord simply stepped back out of the attack’s reach before it could hit home.

“Really?” Her Ladyship asked. “He appears to be losing. You aren’t just saying that out of a sense of patriotism, are you?”

Carnius shook his head.

“He hasn’t been trained,” he explained. “That Nord’s only winning because he has been. And he’s not exactly making all that good a job of the match.”

“I see,” Her Ladyship said. “A potential Grand Champion, do you think?”

“No,” Carnius said.

“What makes you so sure?” Her Ladyship asked.

“He’s a pit dog,” Carnius replied. “Too early to tell.”

“And when can you tell that someone is a potential Grand Champion, then?”

“When he’s in the arena facing Agro…facing me,” Carnius replied. “That’s when.”

Her Ladyship nodded.

“Well said,” she said.

There was a silence between them as they watched the match. The yellow team’s fighter split the Argonian’s shield, before a kick sent the blue team gladiator sprawling to the floor, knocking his flail from his hand. The Nord’s heavy boot stamped down on his opponent’s chest, pinning him to the ground, axe raised to split his skull.

“Kill him! Kill him!” some members of the crowd chanted as the Nord looked around for confirmation as to whether he should spare the lizard-man before him or not. Beast-folk always seemed to get more people chanting for their blood, Carnius had noted in the past.

“Well, shall we let him live?” Her Ladyship asked. The Nord’s gaze had fallen on her, of course; getting the favour of a noble was a good way to win future funding for better equipment and training, and it always did well to do what they demanded.

“Let him go,” Carnius nodded. “Owyn can give him a dressing down, but he won’t be half bad once he actually figures out how to use that weapon of his properly.”

“Very well,” Her Ladyship said, sounding somewhat disappointed. “If he proves himself, perhaps I’ll give him a little funding. I’m feeling generous, now that my primary investment has paid off so handsomely.”

She stood, and said in a voice that somehow carried, despite the fact that it wasn’t raised; “Spare him; he’s proven himself well enough to earn that.”

The Nord nodded, getting a mixture of cheers and jeers from the crowd, stepping off the Argonian’s chest and allowing the beast-man to rise. The two fighters limped away to their respective exits, each one of them going to their own Fountains of Restoration to heal up.

“I remember your first match quite well, you know,” Her Ladyship said after a moment, returning to her seat. “The youth stepping out of his cage armed with nothing more than a pair of steel gauntlets and punching the other pit dog into submission. You were the first unarmed fighter I’d seen in the arena. Do you remember that, Carnius?”

“Course I do,” Carnius replied as the arena began to empty. How could he forget? That first, bloodthirsty thrill of victory, the elation of the crowd cheering him, and that beautiful, golden-skinned woman standing in her box, smiling at him and raising a goblet of wine in a toast.

That had been nearly fifteen years ago, and somehow Her Ladyship hadn’t aged a day since, keeping her looks of a woman in her mid thirties. Probably some enchantment they put into the makeup of the nobles or another trick like that, he reckoned; it was the sort of thing the rich folk could afford, after all. There were dark rumours that her agelessness was because she was a vampire, but Carnius couldn’t help but feel that that was nonsense. She simply didn’t seem like a vampire; vampires were, according to rumour, able to turn men mute with terror with a look, but when she smiled at Carnius she had a way of somehow making him feel a little taller and a little better about himself. Probably had some High Elf blood in her or something like that.

“So what does the future hold for you then, Carnius?” Her Ladyship asked.

“Now?” Carnius said. “I’m not sure. Training, a few matches here and there, that sort of thing, I suppose. What Agronak did before…you know.”

“You sound like you’re at a bit of a loose end, there,” Her Ladyship said.

“I suppose; I was so focussed on actually become Grand Champion I never actually thought about what I’d do after it.”

Aside from them, the arena was now empty.

“Well,” Her Ladyship said. “Perhaps you will find something new to fill your time soon enough. Maybe it is time to move away from the Arena.”

Carnius snorted at that, and got a raised eyebrow in return.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“It’s a gladiator thing,” Carnius said. “You can’t leave the Arena, once you sign up. Sure, you can go work as a mercenary or an adventurer or something like that, but you can’t leave it.”

“Why not? Is it part of your contract? Are you hunted down if you go?”

“No, it’s just…you can’t leave,” Carnius replied. “It’s a rule, or an obligation, something like that. It’s not written down, but you come here and you stay here. You don’t die of old age; you die down there, in the ring. Every gladiator does.”

“I’ve heard of plenty of who died elsewhere,” Her Ladyship said.

“They aren’t proper gladiators.”

Her Ladyship gave a quiet chuckle at this.

“If you’re sure that you are,” she said. “Then stay.”

Carnius frowned for a minute, trying to figure out what she meant by that, before she rose.

“I suppose I should leave, seeing as the match is over,” she said. “Good luck with holding that title of yours, Grand Champion.”

She swept away towards the door, before Carnius called out; “Wait a minute.”

Her Ladyship stopped.

“Yes?”

“I never asked,” Carnius said. “Why did you choose to sponsor me? Of all the contestants down there in the arena, all that time ago, why me?”

“Because I saw potential for a champion,” Her Ladyship said. “That’s the only reason why.”

“And why do you want a Grand Champion?”

“Everyone needs a champion, sooner or later,” she said. “I’m just looking out for the right person for the job.”

She stepped through the door, and was gone.