Post by scarlet on Jul 6, 2007 15:57:14 GMT -5
The City of Hope. No one today knew the real name of the city. Those who did died a long time ago. It was founded by the first kings of the lands. The nine original tribes. They worked in harmony, each one as pure as their species could allow. The tribes respected the earth and took only what they needed, evolution was slow, but that was fine. The people were content. The tribes worked together each benefiting from everyone's strengths. Something happened so slowly it took a century to notice. Something was poisoning the ninth tribe, often called the most noble of them all. Greed. They had power and wanted more. Their sorcerers and witches drew power from negative forces. They pulled away to the edges of the map, they abandoned The City of Hope. They built their own city in the shadows of The Dark Mountains. One by one the rest of the tribes returned to their homelands, occasionally meeting at The City of Hope. Only a few people lived in the City of Hope, those who couldn't leave. Every so often they would light a fire at the top of the tallest stone building, that would signal another and another, calling each tribe back to the city. Only the ninth tribe refused to go. They would meet and every twenty years pass along a trinket of some kind to name a new heir,a new representative for that tribe. There were good leaders and bad leaders. As was life. Eventually all contact ceased. Years later, after centuries of being corrupted the ninth tribe attacked a near by tribe. The first taste of a serious war, one by one tribes began to fall until only a few met. Currently one tribe, the Breydon, were keeping the ninth tribe at bay. Then someone from the City of Hope lit the fire. It did bring hope to the Bredyon people. The leader of the military sent two solders to the city. It took them two months for them arrive, and now this is where the story begins. The two representatives arrived, war had aged them. They were young, hardly adults. By logic they shouldn't be fighting, they should only be finishing up training. They had no choice. The two were of similar height and both had many scars, but that is where the similarities ended. The eldest was only nineteen. A male with sandy blond hair highlighted with gold, his hair was pulled back No one had time for simple things, like cutting hair or shaving, his beard was also braided in two thin braids. His name was Erno. Erno had blue eyes, clouded with the memories of war. His skin was bronzed and he walked with a limp, an injury from an early battle. In the same battle he lost a finger. He and his companion arrived early in the morning and were shown to a room. He was sitting on the floor in an ash gray shirt mending his only pair of pants. his companion let him bathe first. Leitha was kind like that. Erno was her brother and best friend. Right now she was cleaning years of soot, grime and blood off of her. Yes, her people were desperate. They were letting a woman fight. She was a skilled archer. She carried herself stiffly, she knew no other way. Leitha was only seventeen, and had blossomed into a woman, even with the small bit of food solders had. She had long brown hair streaked from the sun. Her eyes were a deep green only broken by thin lines of gray. She stood in the stone washroom drying herself off . She looked at the leather armor she had discarded, it was mismatched, taken from dead solders and solders she killed. Around her neck was the trinket, a 'black' pearl in an usual looking setting. She pulled her hair back into a braid. She was as clean as she would ever get. Leitha pulled on her brown pants, her ash gray shirt and a tanned leather jerkin. She was never with out it. "Erno" She said leaving the washroom as she tied a leather belt around her hips, she was also never with out a dagger or three"We 'ave to make them see our case." Erno looked up from his sewing "I know." In a few moments time they would be called for a meal. Real food. "I think we are the only solders here" He continued. Leitha nodded "then we'll have to appeal to logic, try to get them to see our side of the issue" Her stomach rumbled. Erno laughed a surprisingly still lighthearted laugh "I've never heard that sound before sister" She smiled. "I think that means we have to be diplomatic"