"You are quite correct, you are." Dom Jajix said, his mood turning dour. A groom, one who had barely managed to keep both hands after stabling the knight's erne, lead them to a large room, the largest in the tavern. Cloudstrider eased the wounded woman down onto one of the small cots, her complexion was pale, but she seemed to be looking a bit better. It would be a good while before she felt like climbing back into the saddle or picking up the bow again. That of course was moot if she didn't wake up.
"Friends, I feel I may call you such, I will share my tale, though it is a sour one. I assume you all know what occured to Sharashka, her cities ruined, her people slain, and my once great order shattered and reduced to a half-handful of surviving Skyknights. The Hununttons still hunt anyone who wears the skyknight's device. I know of the means by which Sharashka was laid ruin, and for that knowledge my life is no longer forfeit, but has a bounty attached to it." He took a deep breath and looked over at the woman on the cot, his expression was mixed.
"They have a new type of weapon, a new sort of skyship that is nigh impervious to arrow and bolt, built all around like a beetle but the size of a Sharashkan Cloud Galleon. It destroyed our ships, the rest of the Hununtton fleet following it like starlings, our strongest ships were broken, our faster ships fell to theirs, we were defeated through and through. We skyknights braved attack after attack against the thing, but our arrows only found metal, though theirs found flesh and blood, man and avian alike. Then, it disgorged from it's keel barrels that blew apart with great force, and stones the weight of a man that cracked walls, broke bridges, and killed any who were unlucky enough to be caught under one. After this I do not know how the Hununttons were able to so quickly law waste to the Citadel of the Boyar, but indeed they did. I was wounded and came close to death's shadow, but Tierney, my erne, she flew me away from the battle and to a safe place."
He sighed, his shoulders slumped. The story was painful to tell, prior to their breaking, the Skyknights of Sharashka numbered nearly 200 mounted warriors of the first quality, plus the Sharashkan armada, though the product of but one island was considered large and strong. Those ships were flinders and flotsam on the sea so far below. Those brave men and women were dead, their graves lost in the waves. He took a deep breath. "My health recovered, I sought to find revenge, and I found where this behemoth make's it's roost, a high island, a monsterous place where stone has been joined with pantarbe and steel, dozens of small and tiny islands hammered together with girders of metal, moorings of rope, and the sweat of many men."
"I know where it sleeps, and for that, they will hunt me down and do their best to kill you. To speak the name of that island makes you a marked man. I seek others to help me spread the word, so that Sharaska's fate doesnt befall other islands, and that I might infiltrate the island and see some method to destroy that infernal vessel..." He said, looking weak for the telling.
(OOC - feel free to PM me your intentions, actions, questions.)
