September 25, 2021
A bladesmith once did craft it
A sword made entirely of glass
T’would shatter after one hit
T’was not made to last
Some folk might wonder why it was
A blade so sharp and keen
Was made so delicate, because
Its use could not be seen
The smith did smile and shake his head
When asked about his blade
“Think carefully before someone’s dead
and your hand may yet be stayed.”
September 24, 2021
Sanguinaire vampires supposedly roamed the land in the time of Eyon II and the Long Interregnum, using their wiles to drain the populace of both wealth and blood. It was said that the surest way to detect one was their inability to bear the touch of silver, and that beheading with a silver blade was the surest way of killing them.
It is said that their dominance was strongest in the barony of Exor, where the lord had fallen under their sway. The folk hero Nobudua Half-Naïx is often credited with their destruction, with the stories usually hinging on his cunning in the face of sanguinaire trickery.
Nobudua was supposedly the son of a father from the Seven Sisters of Naïx and a Pexate mother, carrying his father’s cutlass that he reforged to contain silver.
One of the most popular anecdotes is the Surrender at Serpeé, where a magistrate demanded Nobudua’s sword, little knowing that it was silver-imbued. The resulting furor resulted in the liberation of the town, and the beginning of Nobudua’s campaign in Exor.
September 23, 2021
The Purposeful Blade was forged for King Eyon I in the days when magic was common in Pexate, long before it began to wane from the world. In the great battle at Moxtun Moor against the Layyians under Seraq II, every member of King Eyon’s personal retinue carried a magic weapon. The Layyians’ defeat was made clear to the House of Owls when Eyon cast upon its floor twenty-seven magicked weapons, taken from their slain owners.
Eyon had the blade enchanted so that it would glow when held by someone of his line; the closer to direct descent they were, the brighter the glow. It could also at one point cast a powerful beam of light, allowing the king’s men to find him in the dark or in a melee; this has not been seen since the death of Alaric II. As Alaric was murdered by False Eyon the Usurper, he never taught the command word to anyone and it was lost.
Needless to say, the Purposeful Blade’s current status as a coronation artifact, and the exalted position of Bladekeeper held by the barons in Aiov, are not ancient. Kings carried the blade into battle and even used it for executions until Veilsunder, the Black Blade of the Mountains, was destroyed at the Battle of Toan.
With the remaining magical weapons in Pexate falling into single digits, and the ability to create more long gone, the Purposeful Blade was relegated to its current use as a coronation tool and rough paternity test.
Though rumors that the blade was smeared with phosphor for the coronation of False Eyon the Usurper persist, especially once his true parentage became known.
September 22, 2021
King Jean III of Layyia has been remembered as both Jean the Good and Jean the Mad, for in truth he was both. A dashing warrior and ladies’ man in his youth, he suffered a psychotic break about ten years after he took personal power from his regency council and spent the remaining twenty years of his life gradually descending into alternating bouts of frenzy and catatonia.
One of his most famous delusions is called the Talking Sword.
As is true of most kings, Jean III was gifted with a fine and ornate sword when he came of age, in this case a gift from his grandfather Jean II, held in trust for many years. A fine blade in the old Crimson Empire style, it featured an affectation common in Late Imperial blades, namely a man’s face on the hilt by way of decoration.
His courtiers found Jean III engaged in deep, if one-sided, conversation with this face one day. He insisted that the blade had told him it was alive, that its name was Horace, and that Horace was filled with incredible wisdom.
That was all well enough, and might have been dismissed as a mere eccentricity, if not for one other thing. Horace was thirsty, and he bade Jean III slake that thirst. Four courtiers were slain before the blade could be wrested from the king’s hands.
Afterwards, Jean had screamed and wailed for hours, demanding to see Horace. Fitted with a wooden blade, the sword was dutifully supplied to the king, who promptly used it to beat several of his ministers black and blue.
For the remainder of his reign, when he was coherent, Jean blamed his worst excesses on Horace. When the king finally died, ten years after a new regency had removed him from power, he was found with his throat cut. But, strangely, neither Horace nor his removed blade was ever recovered afterwards.
Some say, having tired of King Jean, it travels the world to this day, still alive and still thirsting.
September 21, 2021
Puck Evereyes was the name the gob took for himself, and it is worth looking at why. For many years he worked as a nameless bodyguard, appearing in sellsword alleys every morning looking for work as a bodyguard.
When he found it, he would often help his clients gird themselves before going out. Invariably, they would hide a dagger or smallsword in among their things as a weapon of last (or first) resort. Though they were not always drawn, they were always girded.
Evereyes developed a keen sense of where these weapons were kept, the subtle methods used to disguise them, and the telltale signs of their presence. Soon, he was disarming foes before it was even clear that they bore swords at all.
That explains the name Evereyes, then. But what of Puck?
Not long before he took his name, Evereyes was acting as a bodyguard for a mercenary in Toan, and the man sought to swindle the gob out of his fee by murdering him. When he tried to draw a boot knife to do the dirty deed, he found that Evereyes, suspicious, had removed the blade already.
“You puckish little thing!” the man had cried, before beating a retreat.
In his latter days, Puck Evereyes operated a school for sellswords in Toan, accepting only gobs and refusing payment until they had completed his third lesson, to give the young, the poor, and the nameless a chance at the same success he had enjoyed.
September 20, 2021
One of the gobs approached Lord Muolih, the Spreading Darkness, and asked him to bless a smallsword.
“Why should I bless such a small sword, weilded by such a small gob, when I could instead place my blessing on the blade of my finest warrior?” asked Muolih.
“It is the way of elves and men, who strut around so tall, to ignore the smaller gobs and then, to not see us at all.”
Muolih, impressed by the small gob’s rhyming song, directed it to continue.
“A blade in cavalry leader’s hand when he is leading a charge? This is a blow they’ll see, for he is fast and large. My smallsword, though, is small and quick and the tall ones pay no heed; they will think themselves quite thick once I have done the deed.”
Muolih, amused, granted the gob’s request. And thus was born Doggerel, the Blessed Blade of the Spreading Darkness, which offered a boon to whomever could ask for one with a rhyme. But it was also fickle, and could be rhymed away from any owner by a sufficiently talented poet.
September 19, 2021
Forsooth there was a jaunty gob
A master swordsman he
But murdering was not his job
He kept instead a beat
A set of musick blades he owned
Their steel was finely wrought
Carefully their blades he’d honed
For the music that he sought
When each blade did cut the air
Or strike against something
A musical note would linger there
As the steel did ring
And so the gob put on his show
To crowds both large and rapt
His music ringing with each blow
As melodies he tapped
Daredevilry it was as well
No simple parlor trick
For to ring out like a bell
The blades were sharp and thick
He made a name with breathless feats
Of notes both cut and struck
But there were some who held his deeds
Were nothing but pure luck
A jealous bard, an elfin mule
A challenge he laid down
The finer musician would keep his rule
While the other gave up sounds
They met one day in a public square
To finalize their duel
Harsh words were said, along with dares
Most unpleasant and cruel
The bardish mule did play his lute
And sang a comely tune
The crowd was left completely mute
And several ladies swooned
The gob went next, and with his swords
He slashed a symphony
Astounding all the gathered hordes
As people strained to see
No lucky fluke this goblin bard
No trick within his blades
The elvish mule was put down hard
And on the ground he stayed
For the last note of the goblin song
Was a blow both short and sharp
And though it went a little wrong
It wound up in the harp
September 18, 2021
A wise man once did so decree
A grave and desperate prophecy
The man whose throne had just been made
Would fall upon a floral blade
The new king wasted a moment not
With the prophecy in his every thought
Every sword and blade he did collect
Which had any hinto of floral aspect
The smiths and smithies watched close
Against the prophet’s future boast
A kingdom was neglected thus
To parry this uncertain thrust
Until one day to the garden took
The king who his very lands forsook
He chanced to graze across his nose
The thorns from a humble royal rose
Gangrene soon reared its ugly head
And by week’s end the king lay dead
A lesson lies inside these deeds
One you would do well to heed
The road one takes to avoid one’s fate
Oft brings them to its very gate
September 17, 2021
In the days of old, before the slow fading of magic, a knight visited a dragon high in the mountain. Before their extinction, the sorcerous wyrms were widely feared, for they had powerful magicks above and beyond their terrible fires. It was said they could read minds, change shape, create precious metals from base ones, or even raise the dead. They would entertain requests, perhaps out of boredom, but if the supplicant failed to make a positive impression they were eaten or incinerated.
“What would you ask of me?” the dragon said.
“I ask only for a weapon that I might defend my village with, as we are beset with ogres that steal our crops and slaughter our men.”
“Why should I?” the dragon replied.
“If the ogres destroy our village, they will rampage throughout the valley, despoiling it. I know you love the beauty of this place as much as we, and if you give me what I ask it will benefit us both.”
“Very well,” the dragon said. “I will give you a sword made of my tooth, which will pierce all before it. But I will extract from you a promise: this sword is not to be used upon me. I have ensorsclled it to strike any man dead if they dare do so.”
The man agreed, and the dragon gave him the sword. After a week’s preparation, he attacked the ogres in their cave and slaughtered them with the dragontooth sword. In doing so, he freed seven men, four women, and three children that the ogres had taken to eat. One of the women was a radient beauty, and she soon fell in love with the man and was married to him.
They built a home overlooking the valley and lived as its rangers, preserving it against all threats. But in time, the man’s wife grew bored with the vistas and the work, and sought comfort in the arms of a nearby miller while the man was away.
He returned early, however, and discovered the liason. In his rage, he drew his dragontooth sword and swung it…only to be laid stone dead before the blow could land.
For his wife had in fact been the valley’s dragon in disguise, intrigued with his quest and bored from guarding her hoard. The mercurial perniciousness of her kind had led her to stray, and led the man to slay himself.
The dragon was never seen again in that valley.
September 16, 2021
A sellsword walked into a crowded inn, carrying a hilt with no blade.
“What’s with the broken sword?” the innkeep asked.
“It’s a long story,” the sellsword said. “Give me a drink.”
The barmaid arrived not long after with his drink. “What’s with the broken sword?” she said.
“It’s a long story,” the man said. “Give me something to eat.”
When the cook arrived with the sellsword’s meal, he saw the hilt on the table. “What’s with the broken sword?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” was the reply. “I need to stable my horse.”
While leading his horse in for the night, the stablehand saw the hilt. “What’s with the broken sword?” he said.
“It’s a long story,” the man said. “I need a room for the night.”
The innkeeper’s wife was leading the sellsword up to his room when she noticed the hilt. “What’s with the broken sword?” she said. “You’ve avoided telling my whole staff the story, but you’re not going to evade me so easily.”
“It’s a dagger,” the man said.
“A dagger?” said the inkeeper’s wife. “What has that got to do with anything?”
“I said it was a long story. I didn’t say it was a longsword.”
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 