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]

Chapter 8-Flesh and Bone

Carnius sipped at his ale as he looked at the diagrams on the table before him. Situated as he was in the Wastrel’s Purse, Passwall’s local tavern, he had been hunched over the slate for the better part of an hour as he sketched out chalk diagrams and plans for dealing with this Gatekeeper; he had often done this before key matches in his gladiator career, working out how he would deal with an opponent, using what information he had on them to try figure out how to bring them down.

So far, he knew his strategy was going to involve getting in and out of the Gatekeeper’s reach; even with the magical enhancements to strength and endurance that his armour and gauntlets provided to him, he knew that if he was grabbed by the giant guardian or took one hit from that cleaver he would be dead. He had taken a leaf out of that dead Khajiit’s book, and many of the diagrams he had sketched out had circular arrows to work out how he could hit it in the back of the knees and legs; laming the thing would make it far easier to kill. The only problem was the thing’s regenerative abilities, and that rendered the entire exercise theoretical.

“Another ale?” Dredhwen asked from where she was leaning on the surface of the inn’s bar.

“Alright then,” Carnius nodded, looking up from his plans and draining what was left of his current ale. “Could use a few drinks.”

The Bosmer nodded and opened the tap on the casket on the bar’s surface, letting the cooled drink pour into the tankard she held. She held it steady as she approached his table, setting it down and glanced at the slate Carnius was drawing on.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Trying to work out how I can kill the Gatekeeper,” Carnius replied, tapping the slate. “Problem is that it’s all theory at the moment.”

“You want to kill it?” Dredhwen said. “I don’t think it-” she yawned, holding her hands over her mouth as she did so. “Sorry about that. I don’t think it can be done.”

“There’s got to be a way,” Carnius said. “Somehow. Spells or something, maybe. Are there any spellcasters here in Passwall?”

“Well, there’s Relmyna, but I don’t think that she would help you,” Dredhwen said. “But you should ask Jayred Ice-Veins. He keeps saying he has a plan to kill it, but nobody will help him; he needs to go into the Gardens of Flesh and Bone, and that place is just too strange for anyone else here.”

Carnius was quiet for a moment, watching her face. He could detect nothing that suggested she was making a joke.

“Where is he?” Carnius asked.

“His house is just to the southeast,” Dredhwen said. “He should be out tending to his Swattle around now.”

“I’ll go pay him a visit,” Carnius said, glancing back down at his slate. On the ‘G’ he had managed to form to mark out the Gatekeeper, he sketched out a rough star shape of arrows, his theoretical self darting in and out of the colossus’ reach. His drink and plans finished, he placed a handful of coins and his borrowed slate on the counter next to where Dredhwen had started to doze and headed out into Passwall. The damp feel of the air had receded somewhat as the sun had risen higher into the sky, burning some of the moisture away, but the clouds that muffled its glare prevented it from going in its entirety.

He found Jayred’s house just a few dozen yards away from the Wastrel’s Purse, the building raised up on stilts like all the others in Passwall, no doubt to protect it from flooding. He remembered what Dredhwen had said, about him being out and attending to his ‘Swattle’, whatever that was, and skirted around the back of the house to see what he could find there, not bothering to knock on the front door which, he noticed, had a human skull hanging on it.

He found Jayred in a patch of swampland that had been fenced off, the Nord standing next to what looked at first glance to be a moss-covered boulder. He gave Carnius a cheerful wave as he approached, and called; “I’ll be with you in a moment, friend! Old Betjar here just needs sorting out.”

He slapped the boulder on the side, and Carnius blinked as what he thought was stone wobbled. Six flabby legs, each tipped with webbed feet, unfolded from where they were tucked against its flank, and a wide, jowled head rose up from where it rested against the ground. Watery amber eyes looked up at Jayred, and the Nord folded his arms.

“Don’t know why you’re looking at me like that, girl,” he said. “Go on, off you go, I’ve saved you a nice patch of moss to help that down and everything. C’mon, shoo!”

The creature made a noise that sounded like ‘mwap’, and waddled away, fat belly sliding against the swampy ground it went. Jayred watched it go and then stepped to where Carnius was leaning on the fence around his land.

“What can I do for you, friend?” he asked.

“Well,” Carnius began. “I was going to see if you could help me with something, but I’ve really got to ask; what on Nirn is that?”

“Those?” Jayred asked. “That’s me Swattle herd, that is. I farm ‘em; good eating on a Swattle, and their hides are well waterproofed once you’ve tanned ‘em. Plus they’ve got a nice skeleton, too.”

“You farm them?” Carnius asked. He was a city boy, through and through, and while he would be the first to admit that his knowledge on animal husbandry was severely limited, he was pretty certain that all farm animals either had fur or feathers and went ‘moo’, ‘baa’, ‘cluck’, ‘quack’ or ‘oink’.

“That I do,” Jayred said. “Damn fine herd, too.”

Carnius decided not to press that subject any further.

“So what can I do for you, friend?” Jayred asked. “You said you wanted some help?”

“The Gatekeeper,” Carnius said. “I’m trying to kill it so I can get into the rest of the Isles. Drenhwed over at the Wastrel’s said that you were planning to do the same. I figured we could help each other out, combine resources, that sort of thing.”

“How soon do you want to deal with it?” Jayred asked.

“Soon as possible,” Carnius replied. “I want to get through that gate.”

Jayred grinned and clapped his hands together.

“Excellent,” he exclaimed. He vaulted the fence, and clapped Carnius on the shoulder. “Just wait for me round the front of my house for a few minutes; we’ll head for the Gardens of Flesh and Bone and I’ll explain my plan along the way.”

He emerged from his front door a few minutes later, the flaxen farming clothes he had been wearing replaced by a suit of leather armour, with a strung bow slung over his shoulder.

“You ready?” Carnius asked.

“That’s right, friend,” Jayred said.

“Good,” the Imperial said as the pair set out up the path. “So what’s this special solution you have for killing the Gatekeeper, then? Some kind of magic?”

“Magic?” Jayred asked. “I’m not like Relmyna, no. I don’t believe in magic, but I do believe in bones.”

“Bones, you say,” Carnius said as they passed under that archway that marked the way in and out of Passwall.

“Aye, that’s right,” Jayred said. “Bones. Relmyna thinks that her Gatekeeper can’t be killed, that no power in Oblivion or Nirn can bring it down, but if I know one thing, it’s that anything can be killed by the bones of its own kind.” He tapped his skull, as if to emphasise his point. “There’s power in those things, even if nobody but me realises it. Enough power to kill the Gatekeeper, certainly.”

Carnius nodded as the path they took began to wind up a hill, deciding that he might as well humour the Nord; he didn’t have any better ideas for killing the thing, after all.

“So I’m guessing that there are Gatekeeper bones in these gardens, then,” Carnius said.

“Aye,” Jayred replied. “Only problem is, the Gardens are guarded; skeletons, shambles, that sort of thing. Anybody who goes in gets attacked by them in minutes.”

“Well, you’re the bones expert,” Carnius said. “If you get these Gatekeeper bones, I’ll hold them off for you.”

“Exactly what I had in mind,” Jayred said. “Don’t worry, I know where it is. Though if you want to hold them off, I’d recommend you get your weapons out of your pack now, friend. They aren’t going to wait around for you in there.”

“I’m already armed,” Carnius replied, raising a clenched fist to show the wicked spikes of red and black on the knuckles of his gauntlets. Jayred grinned.

They stopped before wall of thick white stone, ramparts weathered smooth by time out in the elements. A door was set into it, made from solid iron and carved with pictures of bones, skulls and organs. Carnius could hear a faint, regular thudding on the edge of his hearing, seeming to come from within the garden itself.

“Give me a hand with this, will you?” Jayred asked, rapping his knuckles on a thick bar that was swung down across the gateway. Carnius complied, taking a moment to dump his pack by the side of the door so that it wouldn’t impede him in a fight in the garden itself and to check the two waterskins filled with a healing and a stamina potion were in position at his belt. The two of them heaved the bar up and swung open the door.

Carnius had not been quite sure of what to expect from the Gardens of Flesh and Bone, but he had certainly not thought it would be quite so literal in its adherence to its title. There were no plants in here, or at least nothing that he would call a plant, but it was certainly full of life.

Human eyes in the centre of fleshy petals turned on muscled stalks to stare at the newcomers as they made their way along the pathway that ran through the garden. There was a bush that had thousands of tiny blood vessels for its branches, each one swollen and engorged with sanguine fluid. Another plant seemed to be made from nothing more than nerves spreading and flowering from its root which was, Carnius noted, a large mass off grey brain matter half-embedded in the ground. Despite the fact that he was well used to the gore and viscera of the arena, had seen men and women alike gutted on its sands and had done the deed himself more than once, Carnius began to feel nausea rising from his stomach.

At the centre of the garden, a massive tree rose from the ground, one that seemed to be put together from thousands of bones; he could see skulls, femurs, vertebrae, the individual digits of fingers all meshed together to form its trunk, with yet more branching out over his head. From it, that same regular drumbeat sounded, and Carnius peered through the gaps in them to see a heart suspended by strands of muscle in the very centre of it, swelling and shrinking in time to that beat.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Jayred asked. “The tree of bones; the very centrepiece of the Gardens. Now come on, friend. We need to get to the Gatekeeper’s body, and this place’s guardians are going to wake up soon.”

Carnius nodded in agreement, and he followed Jayred as the Nord headed towards one of the walls of white stone that surrounded the garden. The Gatekeeper skeleton was waiting for them, massive sun-bleached bones sat upon a throne set into the garden’s wall, a dead king holding sway over a macabre court.

“Right,” Jayred said, rubbing his hands together and approaching the throne. “Let’s get to work.”

Carnius glanced behind them, back along the pathway that ran through the grisly garden to see if anything was approaching as the Nord climbed up on the throne. For a moment, it seemed all clear, and then three figures came into view. Sun gleamed off bare skulls, and flesh-stripped digits clutched rusting weapons, and the three skeletons advanced.

One with a mace, one with a sword and shield and one with a claymore, Carnius noted, raising his hands to a position that would guard him from the three enemies. They were undead, so wouldn’t be particularly intelligent, and seeing as they were skeletons, they wouldn’t be as hardy as most other types of the walking dead either. Carnius could deal with one without too much trouble, he thought. Three, however, would complicate things.

Whatever rudimentary intelligence that they had was enough to direct them to fan out as they approached in an attempt to flank him. Carnius watched them move, noting how the one with the claymore was ahead of its fellows, and stepped into action. Three swift steps brought him within the undead creature’s reach, and as he expected its swung its claymore at him, the long blade swooping towards him at a horizontal. He moved to his right, left palm pressing down onto the flat of the blade and jarring its tip to the ground, stumbling the skeleton. His right fist crashed into its ribs, knocking it back and sending lightning-bolt cracks snaking across the bone. It stumbled away, and he saw the one with the mace pressing forwards. He stepped into its reach before it could swing, and an uppercut slammed into its jaw with enough force to send its skull, unfettered by sinew, tumbling away, bones clattering to the ground.

The one with the sword and the shield hung back as the skeleton armed with the claymore regained its footing behind him, clacking its jaw together in a challenge. They were going to charge him together, unless Carnius did something.

He threw himself towards the one with the claymore, deciding to get himself between the skeletons and Jayred. Surprised by the sudden manoeuvre, the skeleton tried to block him and parry any attacks, but Carnius' bare hands were a far cry from conventional weapons, and the reinforced vambrace that guarded the back of his left wrist pushed its blade away. The back of his right hand slammed across its jaw, the ebony spikes slashing across the bone and gouging four parallel lines across where its face should be. Its stumbled back, thrown from the impact, and Carnius slammed his boot into its spine, sending it tumbling into its fellow.

At the end of the path, between the greenery, something else appeared behind the two toppled undead. It was a large beast, easily a good head taller than he was, a crude construction of bones chosen at random that were held together with twine and wire. The head of what he guessed was a mer or human glared at him with empty eye sockets, and a lower jaw taken from an Argonian opened and clacked shut as a challenge. It raised its hands, each one tipped with wicked talons, and charged ignoring the skeletons it leapt over.

Carnius blocked its first swing, stepped out of the reach of the second. He tried to step round to its side, where the its shoulder and back was open, but it recovered its footing too quickly and the counter he launched was blocked by it throwing its own wrist up. It was enough to stumbled him, and he cursed as its other pair of claws slashed into his right shoulder, deep gashes already running red. He gritted his teeth, right hand snapping out to grab its own shoulder and forced it into a bow. The back of his left hand smashed into its skull and drove it to its knees, and a second blow snapped the bone in its entirety.

He screamed as a wave of chill burst from it, frost snap-freezing across his skin and armour. He stumbled away from the body as it became coated in ice crystals along with the ground around it, cursing as pain ravaged across him. He could feel hot blood seeping from where the skin froze to the metal and tore, and he fumbled at his belt for the waterskin filled with healing potion. He popped off the stopper and took a deep drink, feeling the wounds begin to heal and the flow of blood slow.

He was panting for breath as the two remaining skeletons rose, and he could see more skeletons and another construct approaching them. He was good, but he was realist; even with his skill, he wouldn’t be able to take down all of those. And it wouldn’t matter how many he would take down before he was overwhelmed, he would fall all the same.

“Jayred!” he called over his shoulder. “We need to get out of here, now!”

“Fine!” Jayred replied, his bones filmed with what looked like the legs and arm bones of the deceased Gatekeeper. “I’ve got what we need.”

Carnius barrelled forwards, throwing his shoulder into the breastbone of one of the undead that tried to stop him and knocking it to the ground, Jayred in his wake. The next few moment dissolved into an insane blur of blocks, parry and counters as Carnius battered a path to the gate through the undead, ignoring the nicks and cuts that assailed him. At one point a mace slammed into his stomach, the impact almost enough to double him over, but he drew upon some reserve of bloody-mindedness and strength and shoved the offending skeleton away, all too aware that the gates were in sight. He just had to hope that his Arena raiment would have absorbed the worst of the impact for him.

He reached them, slamming the knuckles of his gauntlets into the chest of one of those bone-constructs that tried to stop him and knocking it away, and gestured to Jayred to follow. The Nord barrelled through the threshold a few moments later and Carnius followed, slamming the door shut and pulling the bar into place. They stopped outside, panting as the adrenaline began to subside, both of them leaning against the wall.

“That was amazing!” Jayred exclaimed after a few moments, raising his hand and grinning. Carnius slapped his palm, grinning. “To think you went at those things with just yer fists, too! I’d like to have you at my side in a tavern brawl, friend; you and I would be unstoppable!”

“Hah, cheers,” Carnius said. He groaned suddenly and clutched his stomach, pain returning in place of the adrenaline. He doubled over, grabbing at the skin filled with healing draft and took a deep swig. After a few moments, the agony began to fade, and he stood up straight, grinning a grin with more than a few glinting gold teeth in it.

“Right,” he said. “How soon can you get those arrows ready?”

“Tomorrow morning, I’d reckon,” Jayred said.

“Good,” Carnius nodded. “Because after that, we’re going to kill the Gatekeeper.”

This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Aug 27 2012, 11:06 AM