Tag Archive | innercircle

Looking for a Term

Nov21

I’ve started writing Inner Circle. (“…and a gladiator on top..”)

They like their titles (because I like my titles), and in the case of those who shortcut the Ladder (which is social upward mobility with a system), they gain a title/name showing that service.

Gladiator is easy.

What do you call someone who does it by agreeing to essentially debt/bond servitude for a period of xx years?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/605279.html. You can comment here or there.

First and Last Words: New Project!

Nov21

First Line of Inner Circle: “Kneel, Taslin Altreka.”
(the first ~300 words were a redo of The Test Intro)

Last line of the night:
The woman started walking, and Valran, having been given no other directive, followed her.

I wrote 2389 words (my goal is 1700/day for 11 days), bringing me to a total of 2389 words, and a nano grand total of 63,045

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/605019.html. You can comment here or there.

…This turned out a little creepy…

Nov12

The new fighter was tough, and, more than tough, he had that fire that the desperate often had.

He hadn’t learned how to hoard his strength, letting it out when he needed it. He hadn’t learned how to control his attacks, or understand his opponent.

If he survived, he’d learn all that in time.

In the meantime, Marri had to survive him.

His swings were wild, but they were getting too close to her, too often. She was trying not to kill him – it made the handlers frown, if they killed off the new meat before they had a chance to build a reputation and a following – but he was giving her no such courtesy.

He caught her in the leg, the big axe he was using smashing the plate of her armor. She went down onto one knee, shit, shit, swung low with her blade and caught him just under the pit-issue breastplate.

Her next swing was timed to move with his fall, and he ended up on his knees with her sword at his throat.

The audience roared. The Oligarchs in their box seats clapped. The fighter dropped his weapon and put his hands up.

She saw him going for his wrist-blade before he knew he was going to do it, and smacked him hard in the head with the pommel of her sword. He went down, and she rose, bleeding, to collect her lauds.

She managed to stay on her feet until the pit-servants bundled her out of the arena. She was particularly proud of that.

“Hold still.”

Marri held still. She was, above all, obedient. And Biccon was not exactly tolerant of disobedience.

She hadn’t been ordered to be silent, however, and she hissed as the antiseptic washed over her wound.

“You should be more careful.”

“Nalon should be more careful. He’s a brute.”

“And a dishonest one at that. There.” Biccon finished wrapping Marri’s leg in bandages. “You should have hit him harder.”

“As my patron commands. Next time I’ll break his teeth.”

“I’d like that.” Biccon had already peeled off most of Marri’s armour. “Tch. He dented the leg plate. I’ll have that re-done before your next match.” The leg plate went in one pile, the chest plate and the greaves in another, Marri’s shift and padded cuirass in a third. That left Marri standing in her collar and nothing else – the way Biccon tended to prefer her.

“My patron is too kind to me.”

“I’m as kind as I want to be. Lay down.”

Marri, of course, laid down, following the hand gesture to sprawl gracelessly on Biccon’s huge bed. She turned her face until she could look out the window; the tower overlooked the whole of the city. From here, she could see all the way down to the tenth circle.

“You fought very well today.” Biccon put a hand on either side of Marri and straddled her. Somewhere in the last minute, he’d lost his robes. It was surprising they’d stayed on this long, honestly. Marri fighting always made him… affectionate.

“Thank you, my Patron.”

“Marri, can’t you call me by my name?” He pressed his lips to her navel, and again to the bottom of her ribs, where he had, in times past, bound two other wounds. Biccon liked her scars. On a good day, Marri liked that he liked them. She liked his, after all, when she was allowed to touch them.

“I can do whatever you wish me to, Sir Biccon Arinstalla Gedon Rock-face.” She softened it with a smile, because he really was being kind.

“Of course.” His hand trailed up the inside of her uninjured thigh; she spread her legs further in response and closed her eyes. She could still see the city, stretching out beneath her. “You’ll do whatever I ask you to.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/599942.html. You can comment here or there.

Inner Circle (and-a-Gladiator-on-Top) test intro

Oct25

This is a draft/test/idea that came to me in the shower. There are questionable things in it, but this is how it started so far.

This is the Kink Setting, by the by, not the Steam!Goats setting, this one tentatively called Inner Circle.

“Kneel, Taslin Altreka.”

It was not the first thing the man had said to her; it was merely the first important thing.

He had begun, as law and conscience dictated, with the standard disclaimers and explanations. “You understand that once you take a knee, it is not something you can take back? You will be committing to ten years, or to death, or until a member of the first circle calls you to service.”

Taslin had nodded. “I understand.” Other cities had less rings, and thus less years of service. But she had been born in New Indapala, and her family lived here.

“You understand that one out of five who take this route die in service?”

Again, she’d nodded. “I understand.”

“You understand that two out of three who do survive are maimed or crippled?”

“I understand.”

“There are easier routes up the Ladder.”

Taslin had finally looked the man in the eye. “I have a little sister and a little brother.”

“Aah. Then we will continue.” And they had. “Kneel, Taslin Altreka.”

She took a knee, her head bowed. The man snipped the cord that had been around her neck since childhood, removing her ID chit. Her neck had felt empty without the light tug there.

That had lasted only a moment. Those who knelt did not wear their ID on a cord, but they wore it nonetheless.

The collar was the thinnest metal she had ever felt, jointed like mail. It moved with her, but at the same time, it pressed against her.

“Rise, Taslin Gladiator.”

Thoughts: I know how the names work, at least. That’s a whole post of its own.
Ten years seems ridiculous, but I wanted New Indapala (which is also a question, I need a name there, but I’m not sure how that one flows off the tongue) to be a large city, and thus a large number of rings.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/589433.html. You can comment here or there.

This one at least moved past the architecture for a bit…

Oct22

Unnamed Kink Setting Worldbuilding 2: Inside and Outside

Travel between cities is rare; caravans that do so carry twice as many guards as they do passengers, and are prohibitively expensive. To travel on your own, or with a couple guards, is to risk, in order of likelihood:

* Attack by “bandits;” groups who live in tiny walled settlements and range out as far as they dare in search of prey, whether human or otherwise.

* Death by thirst or starvation if your supplies run out, if you get turned around in one of the wild storms.

* Death by wild storm.1

* Transformation or twisting – or engulfment – by a Lantern.2

* Attack by a Creature3 or a mundane beast.

* Being shot down by the guards of your goal city.

The cities are the primary population centers; farmers live outside the walls, but close enough to flee within them if any of the aforementioned threats attack. Bandits, too, the occasional marauder, and a few tiny, terrifying settlements also exist outside cities, but they account for less than 10% of the total population of the continent.

Inside the cities, the population follows a structure as tiered as the concentric walls, and, indeed, marked by and inspired by those walls.

    1. Wild Storms are just what they sound like, massive storms – dependent on the locale, tornado, hurricane, sandstorm – with the added benefit of sometimes having magic twisted up within them.

    2. A Lantern is someone who lost control of their magic, and are now simply a conduit for the power. The power spurts from them in unpredictable bursts, or sometimes just flows out until the human at the core is entirely lost. The only plus is that Lanterns are generally stationary.

    3. A Creature is, well, a creature, one that has been warped by proximity either to a place of power4

    4. A place of power is assumed to be an opening from the magic to our plane of existence, although nothing but magic ever comes through.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/587761.html. You can comment here or there.

This was going to be about the setting but then I spent 300+ words on the architecture…

Oct17

Unnamed Kink Setting Worldbuilding 1

Envision elaborate architecture – arches, steeples, towers – all of it built with an eye to defense.

These are cities which have been under siege before; which have been attacked by human foes and by monsters, by magic and by war engines. War isn’t a constant state, but someone might be coming next week is a constant mindset.

Start with the walls: any city in this land is surrounded by at least three tiers of walls; even the smallest town has two tiers. The largest cities have seven to ten, added onto as they have grown over the last hundred years.

Inside the outermost ring is grazing land, crop land. There are these things outside the walls, too; what’s inside the walls is a refuge when attacks come.

There are always houses on this land, unless the wall has just been built. When there is no more grazing land, work begins on another wall outside the last one.

Inside this level is cheap housing. These houses, like ancient Pueblo dwellings, have no doors on the first floor – often on the second floor, either. Access is from the third floor and up, via ladder from below.

There are so many wards around a city that, even if you can fly, flying in a city is almost impossible. Almost everyone uses a ladder.

Back to the buildings. These buildings are often adobe-covered. Deeper into the rings, the buildings have often been joined together; three or six one-family homes are used as the foundation for a taller multiple-family dwelling. The further towards the center you get, the more elaborate the buildings get, and the taller. The houses of the elite in the center are said to touch the sky (although generally no more than 13 stories tall, in modern terms).

As you look at the construction, you will easily note that both buildings and walls appear to be made out of a mish-mash of building materials. A great deal of effort has been made to unify the mish-mash into attractive patterns – sandstone spotted with brick in some sort of checkboard, for instance – but the materials themselves, on very close inspection, have very likely been used for something before.

Indeed, the gates that stud each wall look as if they are built from I-beams and odd slabs of wood, shaped into a pleasing form.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/582574.html. You can comment here or there.