From the recollections of Maltos Kilney:
Times were...bad. That is, perhaps, an understatement. I'm sure that this will be glossed over in a generation or two, but war, even a righteous revolution, is a terrible thing. Details get lost, though. The last time there was a revolution in Darbioa, there was certainly brutality and bloodshed, but all anyone talks about is the glory, the victory of justice and all that. Maybe this will be boiled down to that, eventually.
It didn't seem very glorious. It seemed bloody awful.
We were losing. The premier had managed to secure far more firepower than we had available, and there were whispers of a new weapon in development. We had some spies, but they were not able to tell us much. They had brought forth a man from another world, our spies told us, and were learning things from him. And they were building a device.
We didn't know just what the device would do. We just knew that it would be terrible. We did our best to fortify our bases, particularly our hidden headquarters, but we also knew we could not just wait. Waiting would only give them more power, so we continued with our raids, though we were more cautious than we had been. We knew something was coming.
One day, our spies sent back a message, telling us that the device had been activated. They were not able to see just what it did, but they said that lightning surged throughout the building housing the device, with a deafening boom. We stopped our raids and awaited their next move.
Later, perhaps a week, we saw streaks of red sparking through the streets. There were shock waves which rattled our windows. We were terrified of this new phenomenon, but it was not actively harming anything. We decided to resume our raids. It seemed that this was a mistake.
The red streak struck our raids. Our men vanished. When we realized this, what hope we'd managed to hold onto withered. We discussed giving up. Debated surrender as opposed to taking our chances with escaping outside Darbioa's borders.
It was only a few days. Having our men disappear, when the war had already been going badly, was a horrible blow. But then they came back. They had been prepared to ambush a shipment of plasma weapons; they felt the wind of a hurricane, then found themselves in a town miles away. It had only taken them so long to return because they had taken time to regroup. They had been stripped of weapons and com pads, which also slowed them down.
They'd led him directly to us.
One moment they were explaining their ordeal, and the next was consumed with a crash of thunder bringing chaos. We barely had time to blink, and our weapons were piled in the corner, behind a man clad in clothing the color of blood. We were sure that we were destined first for the premier's torture farms, then for execution. And then he spoke.
He identified us as terrorists, though his tone was questioning, and told us that he had been told we were trying to wrest power from Halstuf solely in order to raise our own man to power. Then he did something none of us expected. He demanded that we tell him our arguments, and what our goals were, in our words. Told us he wanted to hear both sides.
We stared in disbelief for a long time. He waited, fidgeting impatiently, while we conferred. We were sure that this was some sort of trick, but could see no harm in telling him what we knew. Our fates were already sealed, you see. Laspon stepped forward, bolder than the rest of us.
He told the stranger how premier Raplok had died suddenly, and how quickly Halstuf had risen to claim the position. Halstuf had already maneuvered people loyal to him into the positions that mattered, leading many to whisper that Raplok had not died by genuine illness. There was a new division of the national police, formed in secret, which began to...discourage such talk. When the more outspoken of Halstuf's detractors began to disappear, die suddenly, or be dragged off by ruffians that were far too efficient to be amateurs. At first, before they learned how best to keep captives, a few were able to escape, and spread word of the tortures being done. It was then that armed revolution was first discussed. And when the military began marching the streets to remind us of their presence.
The stranger listened quietly, then stood straight. And then he told us something that seemed too good to be true. He believed us. Then he told us how he had been brought to our land.
The man who had appeared in the government building was from the same world this stranger, who told us his name was Crim, had come from. The premier was simply looking for means to enter another world, in hopes of finding some weapon to give him even more of an advantage, but his scientists had inadvertently brought someone to them. They spoke with him, convinced him of the premier's virtue, and asked him if he knew any way to help. He had apparently told them of a man who could move faster than they eye could follow, a hero. Their device was designed to bring this hero to them.
Crim didn't find the premier's scientists' story as easy to believe as his countryman did. When he was tasked with finding our base of operations, he first ran along the streets to get a familiarity with the city. When we resumed our raids, he decided he could learn more about what had been happening here. He could have simply waited until after the raid and followed any survivors from our side, was told to do just that, but he decided to disobey his orders. He took our men away, then secretly followed them, listening to what he could. When they returned, so did he.
We had convinced him, and he agreed to help us bring down Halstuf. Plans were discussed, as he did not want to simply win our fight for us; he intended to leave as soon as he could, and felt that we would be vulnerable if it was known that the man who secured our victory was gone. He also refused to kill Halstuf, expressing the opinion that such final justice would be up to us.
We began more raids. Having learned something of the weapons we would face, he moved before us and disabled them. We were able to triple our supplies in less than a month, with no loss of life. Some of the men in the military even defected, though we kept much secret from them for fear of spies.
We prepared for our last battle, a raid on the premier's residence. Because of the fortifications, Crim would be unable to disable the weapons we would face. This battle would be hard to fight, and we intended to parlay before firing. We all wanted to avoid what bloodshed we could.
Crim acted as our envoy. It had been months since he had last been seen by one of the premier's men, and he hoped to go unrecognized in normal, albeit strangely loose, clothing. Whether he was fired upon because he was wrong, or because of simple treachery, we will never know. We watched our savior fall, and the battle began.
We fought like madmen, all of us. It was brutal, but brief. Crim had anticipated this possibility, and had prepared to be attacked. He had been hit, true, but he had worn a sort of layered armor under his clothing, and was merely knocked unconscious by the blast. When he awoke, he decided not to let the battle play out.
It seemed to be a series of explosions without fire, passing between our forces and our enemy. The blasts of air that assaulted us all made aiming nearly impossible, shaking our weapons and watering our eyes. When we stopped trying to kill one another, he stood between us in his blood-colored clothes. It took a long time, and I did not hear the words he spoke, but the premier's men eventually decided that they did not want to be his men any longer. His residence became his prison, for the time being.
We met in a government hall to discuss our victory, and there we learned that our savior had burned himself out while running between our lines. He'd had to push himself too fast and too long in order to keep up creating those blasts while darting aside to push a man out of the way of a plasma burst now and then. He had been bluffing when he told our enemies that he could kill them all before any managed to fire a shot, which was part of the discussion we had not heard. He could manage short bursts of speed beyond what was natural, but could not move as fast, or for as long, as he had.
Several months passed, and I worked with Crim to try to learn of a way to take him back to his home and restore his full strength. We were unable to find anything which would increase his speed once more, so we turned all of our efforts to getting him home. The device that had brought him here was dismantled after he had vanished, and many of the scientists who had worked on it had gone into hiding out of fear for their lives. It took time, and much hard work, but we managed to partially rebuild it. Somehow he managed to use his diminished powers to get back home, to the land he called Rhy'Din.
------
((Crim actually returned to Rhy'Din two or three months ago. As his powers have been burnt out, he has not been out in costume since returning. So far.))
Times were...bad. That is, perhaps, an understatement. I'm sure that this will be glossed over in a generation or two, but war, even a righteous revolution, is a terrible thing. Details get lost, though. The last time there was a revolution in Darbioa, there was certainly brutality and bloodshed, but all anyone talks about is the glory, the victory of justice and all that. Maybe this will be boiled down to that, eventually.
It didn't seem very glorious. It seemed bloody awful.
We were losing. The premier had managed to secure far more firepower than we had available, and there were whispers of a new weapon in development. We had some spies, but they were not able to tell us much. They had brought forth a man from another world, our spies told us, and were learning things from him. And they were building a device.
We didn't know just what the device would do. We just knew that it would be terrible. We did our best to fortify our bases, particularly our hidden headquarters, but we also knew we could not just wait. Waiting would only give them more power, so we continued with our raids, though we were more cautious than we had been. We knew something was coming.
One day, our spies sent back a message, telling us that the device had been activated. They were not able to see just what it did, but they said that lightning surged throughout the building housing the device, with a deafening boom. We stopped our raids and awaited their next move.
Later, perhaps a week, we saw streaks of red sparking through the streets. There were shock waves which rattled our windows. We were terrified of this new phenomenon, but it was not actively harming anything. We decided to resume our raids. It seemed that this was a mistake.
The red streak struck our raids. Our men vanished. When we realized this, what hope we'd managed to hold onto withered. We discussed giving up. Debated surrender as opposed to taking our chances with escaping outside Darbioa's borders.
It was only a few days. Having our men disappear, when the war had already been going badly, was a horrible blow. But then they came back. They had been prepared to ambush a shipment of plasma weapons; they felt the wind of a hurricane, then found themselves in a town miles away. It had only taken them so long to return because they had taken time to regroup. They had been stripped of weapons and com pads, which also slowed them down.
They'd led him directly to us.
One moment they were explaining their ordeal, and the next was consumed with a crash of thunder bringing chaos. We barely had time to blink, and our weapons were piled in the corner, behind a man clad in clothing the color of blood. We were sure that we were destined first for the premier's torture farms, then for execution. And then he spoke.
He identified us as terrorists, though his tone was questioning, and told us that he had been told we were trying to wrest power from Halstuf solely in order to raise our own man to power. Then he did something none of us expected. He demanded that we tell him our arguments, and what our goals were, in our words. Told us he wanted to hear both sides.
We stared in disbelief for a long time. He waited, fidgeting impatiently, while we conferred. We were sure that this was some sort of trick, but could see no harm in telling him what we knew. Our fates were already sealed, you see. Laspon stepped forward, bolder than the rest of us.
He told the stranger how premier Raplok had died suddenly, and how quickly Halstuf had risen to claim the position. Halstuf had already maneuvered people loyal to him into the positions that mattered, leading many to whisper that Raplok had not died by genuine illness. There was a new division of the national police, formed in secret, which began to...discourage such talk. When the more outspoken of Halstuf's detractors began to disappear, die suddenly, or be dragged off by ruffians that were far too efficient to be amateurs. At first, before they learned how best to keep captives, a few were able to escape, and spread word of the tortures being done. It was then that armed revolution was first discussed. And when the military began marching the streets to remind us of their presence.
The stranger listened quietly, then stood straight. And then he told us something that seemed too good to be true. He believed us. Then he told us how he had been brought to our land.
The man who had appeared in the government building was from the same world this stranger, who told us his name was Crim, had come from. The premier was simply looking for means to enter another world, in hopes of finding some weapon to give him even more of an advantage, but his scientists had inadvertently brought someone to them. They spoke with him, convinced him of the premier's virtue, and asked him if he knew any way to help. He had apparently told them of a man who could move faster than they eye could follow, a hero. Their device was designed to bring this hero to them.
Crim didn't find the premier's scientists' story as easy to believe as his countryman did. When he was tasked with finding our base of operations, he first ran along the streets to get a familiarity with the city. When we resumed our raids, he decided he could learn more about what had been happening here. He could have simply waited until after the raid and followed any survivors from our side, was told to do just that, but he decided to disobey his orders. He took our men away, then secretly followed them, listening to what he could. When they returned, so did he.
We had convinced him, and he agreed to help us bring down Halstuf. Plans were discussed, as he did not want to simply win our fight for us; he intended to leave as soon as he could, and felt that we would be vulnerable if it was known that the man who secured our victory was gone. He also refused to kill Halstuf, expressing the opinion that such final justice would be up to us.
We began more raids. Having learned something of the weapons we would face, he moved before us and disabled them. We were able to triple our supplies in less than a month, with no loss of life. Some of the men in the military even defected, though we kept much secret from them for fear of spies.
We prepared for our last battle, a raid on the premier's residence. Because of the fortifications, Crim would be unable to disable the weapons we would face. This battle would be hard to fight, and we intended to parlay before firing. We all wanted to avoid what bloodshed we could.
Crim acted as our envoy. It had been months since he had last been seen by one of the premier's men, and he hoped to go unrecognized in normal, albeit strangely loose, clothing. Whether he was fired upon because he was wrong, or because of simple treachery, we will never know. We watched our savior fall, and the battle began.
We fought like madmen, all of us. It was brutal, but brief. Crim had anticipated this possibility, and had prepared to be attacked. He had been hit, true, but he had worn a sort of layered armor under his clothing, and was merely knocked unconscious by the blast. When he awoke, he decided not to let the battle play out.
It seemed to be a series of explosions without fire, passing between our forces and our enemy. The blasts of air that assaulted us all made aiming nearly impossible, shaking our weapons and watering our eyes. When we stopped trying to kill one another, he stood between us in his blood-colored clothes. It took a long time, and I did not hear the words he spoke, but the premier's men eventually decided that they did not want to be his men any longer. His residence became his prison, for the time being.
We met in a government hall to discuss our victory, and there we learned that our savior had burned himself out while running between our lines. He'd had to push himself too fast and too long in order to keep up creating those blasts while darting aside to push a man out of the way of a plasma burst now and then. He had been bluffing when he told our enemies that he could kill them all before any managed to fire a shot, which was part of the discussion we had not heard. He could manage short bursts of speed beyond what was natural, but could not move as fast, or for as long, as he had.
Several months passed, and I worked with Crim to try to learn of a way to take him back to his home and restore his full strength. We were unable to find anything which would increase his speed once more, so we turned all of our efforts to getting him home. The device that had brought him here was dismantled after he had vanished, and many of the scientists who had worked on it had gone into hiding out of fear for their lives. It took time, and much hard work, but we managed to partially rebuild it. Somehow he managed to use his diminished powers to get back home, to the land he called Rhy'Din.
------
((Crim actually returned to Rhy'Din two or three months ago. As his powers have been burnt out, he has not been out in costume since returning. So far.))