Short Story: Prelude to Towns

[evaldazz]

I thought I would write a back story about where the eleven townspeople came from. If you guys like these, say so and I'll keep doing them, enjoy.

Prelude to Towns - Part one

The seas were stained red. The horizon splashed by the orange glow from flames of ships breaking and sinking beneath the waves. Golden sails press though the battered husks of our once valiant armada, the golden sails of our enemy; the God King. All is lost. The God king drew us into making the first move. We had much confidence, with many ships from all the kingdoms. We were led to believe the God King had none. We were wrong.
The God King won many battles, conquered many kingdoms, all for the sake of greed. It wasn’t long before his eyes turned towards the gold of our own lands. He used his conquered coin to buy the loyalties of many of the kingdoms. Our futile politics blinded us from their treachery until it was too late. We knew who our friends were then. But after the battle, they were few.
With the surviving ships, we evacuated as many from the capitol as we could before the warships could descended on the harbour. We withdrew during the chaos of death and destruction. Few saw this turn of events. Even fewer took notice of the plan to meet at the southernmost islands if it all went badly. It was a safe natural inlet for the evacuees to take shelter. We’ve waited for our brothers for days, and still only three ships have arrived.
On the fourth day, we are awoken to the call.
Sails on the horizon!
Golden sails.
Not satisfied with just the victory, several ships of the God King’s fleet broke rank to pursue us. We cast sails, as the warships move in for the kill. We see one of the Armada ships move away to intercept them. It becomes entangled with a smaller escort as a larger warship drives its iron prow through its side. From the bow of our ships, we watched them helplessly. Men poured from the broken ship into the water, now entirely at the mercy of our enemy. But their sacrifice gives us a chance. The heavily armed warships are slow to rejoin pursuit. Every effort is made to gain as much distance as we can.
We sail for days. Spirits become low. Many realise that soon we will reach the southern archipelago. It is the last point of the kingdom, before the great unchartered southern ocean. We take a moment’s reprieve and the Captains discuss our options. We have few choices, turn and fight a battle already lost, find and rejoin any surviving ships from the Armada, or continue south. Before we can decide, we hear the call.
Sails on the Horizon!
Confusion sets in. The ships break formation and cover, scattering. Some turn towards the approaching sails. One ships runs into the rocks shattering its hull and collapsing under the shore waves. My own ship and another, turn for the open sea. This time I cannot bear to watch the fate of my countrymen as we escape. Their sails shrink as they approach the golden ones in the distance. Soon they are gone.
Myself, and the last free peoples of the Perussian Kingdoms leave forever. Our lands and loved ones now in the greedy hands of the God king. Our sails tighten as the winds pick up. The sky darkens. We know not what lies ahead. This whole ocean has remained unchartered, yet we’ve heard stories of strange lands and even a great continent somewhere south. We plunge into a sea of heavy storms.

[WillWycherley]

Awesome
Love it so far.

There needs to be a reason why the townies can't reproduce, perhaps the shock has made them all infertile

[evaldazz]

Nothing like brutal subjugation to get you out of the mood ... lol

[evaldazz]

I thought I would write a back story about where the eleven townspeople came from. If you guys like these, say so and I'll keep doing them, enjoy.

Prelude to Towns – Part two

It is said, those who venture into the Great Southern Ocean never return. Its storms and currents throw even the hardest crews of the sturdiest ships off the edge of the world. The skies were as black as coals, the seas like cliffs of broken glass, coming crashing down before us. We couldn’t tell night from day. Many onboard prayed, as we were lashed, battered and hounded by the God of the sea. Our rigging was removed to prevent the sails from being destroyed. Our direction was no longer our own. All we knew is we had escaped the warships of the God King.
The lanterns from the other ship are all we had to tell they hadn’t been swallowed whole. Was it days or weeks that passed before the storms finally ceased? The ocean mountains of glass finally flattened into dark rolling hills and we could cast sails again. It did little to help us. The stars are still obscured from us. We were directionless and lost.
Months passed as we drifted endlessly into the unknown. We lay out our line and bring in ever stranger catches. We find fish and beasts of the sea that only ever existed in legend until seen by our own eyes. Creatures with tentacles, clusters of eyes and snapping jaws, fish as large as cows. We eat whatever we find, but we can never catch enough. We have to pick our fishing times as a large shadow, the size of both ships combined, circles beneath. It closes with the surface whenever we try to bring things in.
The sheer size of the southern ocean is oppressive. Are we miles from land, or have we only scratched the surface. People are losing hope. We lost a crewman a few days back, no one knew why or how. Some believe he just walked off the edge one night rather than go on. Others say it was the thing lurking below. The thought had crossed my own mind more than once. I’m not sure what we have left that makes us continue.
Then some hope. A strange small green bird is caught on the ships railing. It creates great hope in us all, but fear in our ship’s navigator. He believes it is a special type of bird, used as a messenger by the fleet of the God-King. But how could they have followed us so far? Was their hatred of our Perussian Kingdom so absolute, they would press against the wind and rain toward certain death to finish us? True or not, it had been lost for a while, as it was without message or harness. We hoped it would lead us to land and not golden sails.
On three occasions the bird returned immediately. A fight broke out onboard about diverting our little amount of food to keep feeding the creature to send it out. Finally it pays off, a chain of islands was found in the distance. We find them rocky and lifeless, but there’s hope as each leads onto the next. Eventually we sight a great land mass we believe to be the great continent.
Once close enough, we are able to make out wildlife and fruit trees. We make the decision to take the smaller ships to the shore and set both larger ships ablaze. We send them back out into the ocean, in case the navigator had been right about the little green bird being from a nearby warship of the God-King. The fires would be seen far and wide, drawing off any pursuers in the wrong direction.
We step onto sands for the first time in what could possibly been beyond a year. Weak, skinny, in rags of our original clothes, we drag the smaller ships off into the land to hide the fact we had made landfall there. We find a rock with writings upon it, symbols long forgotten as the language of the old world. As we begin to move inland, I hang back to take a last glance at the sea which had been our prison for so long.
We look towards the dark jungles ahead and feel apprehension.
We feel eyes watching us.

[ThePlanckEpoch]

Nice writing there!

[evaldazz]

Thanks man, part three coming up soon.

[evaldazz]

I thought I would write a back story about where the eleven townspeople came from. If you guys like these, say so and I'll keep doing them. Probably only going to be one or two more parts to this, so enjoy

Prelude to Towns – Part three

Trekking into the Dark Continent was like stepping into a fairytale. We saw many things from the old world legends, some amazing and others terrifying. These lands have an unnatural and magical feel to them. The land looks as though it were moulded from the hands of a great sculpturer rather than by nature. The wildlife is also unreal. We pass tall swan like birds with green and black feathers. Some recognize them to be the Skootenbeaten, which was hunted to extinction in Perussian lands, many thousands of years ago.
From the onset we found our movements tracked by a band of waste-high spear armed human-like creatures. They have completely black eyes, pointed teeth and speak in a high pitched chirping like a cricket. They wear bunches of brown feathers in their head dress and have earned a nickname from the colour. They live in hollowed out tree trunks and seem quite hostile, so we’ve kept our distance.
We manage to scavenge fruit and cherries of a tree with pink leaves in the snowy foothills leaving up into the mountains. We have little in the way of supplies, only what we could carry from the ships after we set them to flame. One of the Captains suggested we set up camp. Cherries and pears here were plentiful, despite the cold. We figured the worst was behind us, we had managed to escape from the wrath of the God King and his Skarlettan Kingdom. People were already talking about how to make a home out of this strange wilderness.
Perhaps we spoke too soon.
That night hidden in the white out of falling snow, something monstrous came down from the mountains. It was a massive ape like creature with thick white fur and gigantic fangs. It busted into the camp seeking out its first victim. A sailor in plate mail armour was crushed beneath its great fists. Another scored a cutting blow along the creatures hide only to be grabbed and dismembered above its head. We scatter in all directions. Some ran into the area where the brownie huts were and are never seen again. The screams of dying men and monstrous roars fill the night. We hide out and wait once silence sets in before we make for the grassy plains east.
By the sunrise of the next morning, the survivors gathered and decided to disperse. Distrustful of the Captain’s abilities on land, many decide they would be better off on their own. We break into groups of a dozen or so. Some leave for the warmth of the sandy, palm tree coasts, like Perussia itself. An armed group of sailors head back into the snowy foothills after the beast to avenge their fallen comrades. Others make for the grassy plains and jungles to look for the missing of that terrible night.
Despite my own reservations, I make the loyal decision and remain with our Captain, the only authority of our Perussian Kingdom remaining. We move into a mixed land of both tundra and grasslands, past the snowy foothills. A few days pass and we come to a flower laden valley with an abundance of fruit trees and wildlife. We figure the valley walls would give us a defensible position. There is a slate like stone perfect for creating basic tools and spears. But as if a constant in these dark lands, we are set on by stranger beasts yet again.
While looking for trees to fell, some of the civilians are surrounded by a group of upright green amphibian monsters with stone tipped spears. They are lead by a larger golden skinned toad furious at our invasion of his lands. Combat begins. A sizeable amount of brownie warriors are drawn down from the forests above the valley by the fighting. Our Captain kills several of the brownie warriors and a frog with his sabre before the golden skinned toad strikes him in the chest. We pull him back inside our ever shrinking circle. Surrounded on all sides, we prepare to die like good Perussians. It felt strange that this should be the final stand of the Perussian Kingdoms. Despite this I fell honoured and I was ready.
With the golden skinned toad at the lead, the final assault comes.

[EnvizionRev]

It's been an interesting story so far. A much earlier start of events than my own. But I like it. Very dark like mine as well, but I think that's due to the nature of the game. It's hard to have an uplifting story about death and dungeons. And your story is the first not only to explain how your townies get to your own map choice, but to all of the maps. I'd hold onto this story if I were you.

[evaldazz]

I did REALLY like your journal, (To those who haven't checked out 'Terra Aeternam', make sure you do!) and I didn't want to copy your idea, so I began before it all. As like many I'm sure, I was wondering what could possibly have driven 11 people out into a frog/brownie infested wilderness, above a dungeon. I completely agree with you, how Towns does have a dark side to it also. Despite the funny jokes, the dev's put in the game, it can be creepy at times. But that is what makes it so incredible and unique. As for holding onto it, I'm not too worried, as I kinda do this for a living. It is fan fiction after all and if the dev's wanna pinch some ideas, they're welcome to. Thanks Envizionren.

[EnvizionRev]

Oh don't worry, you can copy all you want. I'm just here to get creativity flowing. You're not the first person wanting to do something similar, and I encourage anyone and everyone to use the idea for their own uses or to expand on it, as you did. And I say hold onto it because as you might now notice, I'm holding a weekly building contest sponsored by the game developers. One week MAY be a Towns Introduction Story theme. It's a maybe. But you should keep it in mind just in case. Looking forward to the story continued.