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Old 06-26-2006, 11:41 AM   #73
Nogrod
Flame of the Ainulindalë
 
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Wearing rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves in a field behaving as the wind behaves
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Upgraded versions. 010706

Major character -- SLAVE ESCAPEE:

NAME: Hadith (or ”Apples”).

AGE: 18

RACE: Human.

GENDER: Male

WEAPONS: A crude sling made of a single-layered string and a leatherband, a pouch of pebbles, a selfmade knife that is both dull and impractical.

APPEARANCE: Tall and slender, somewhat skinny indeed. Dark-skinned and brown-eyed. His father was a southern man and her mother a Gondorian from Osgiliath. Only his high cheekbones and ears betray her mother’s blood in him. As all the other somewhat healthy slaves, he’s muscular and agile for the hard physical work they have been forced to do from the age of 10 onwards. Thereare scars all around him, but one is exceptionally nasty. It’s on his right cheek, from years ago when a guard-orc hit him with a whip he had been too slow. He wears basic slave clothing, a dirty tunic and loose trousers of low-quality cotton. As Hadith has lately been working at the masonry he has been given rough shoes and a belt to tie his tunic. His most valuable possession is his father’s headband, rescued by the other slaves in the crude funerals when he died.

PERSONALITY/STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES: Basically Hadith is an easy-going young man, just like her mother had been. At times the impulsiveness of his father turns on and he can be quite stubborn with his ideas. He’s also quick to laugh and join the fun in a familiar company as his father was, but recent affairs have made him more serious and reserved. Even though some might think of him as a nice person, he seems not to have any close friends. The older slaves have pitied him because of his losses and helped to take care of him when he was younger, but with other slaves of his age he’s not very familiar with.

HISTORY: Hadith was one of the many who were born after Sauron was defeated. A child made with great expectations and hope of the new and free world. But still he had been born a slave. He had been raised a slave and he grew up to be a slave. His identity was that of a slave. Until lately he saw no other future available for him but ending his days as a slave too, maybe getting a child or two with some of the slave girls.

His father died when he was four. He doesn’t remember much of him. He has some vague memories of a bearded dark man giving him an orange – a rare gift indeed – and a remembrance of eyes that shone brightly with love and care. He also remembers the soft voice that said: ”Here’s a treasure Apples, bite and taste the times gone by so that you know…” But that was all there was about his father.

Hadith’s mother had died only a year ago. She had been caught up trying to smuggle some wheat into the barracks. She had been made an example in front of a crowd of slaves. She was old and weary anyhow, so the plantantion owners could afford a little showdown to curb the unrest that seemed to be piling up day by day. Hadith had regular nightmares about the torturing ever since. He had been called up to the gallows to witness her slow, painful and humiliating death. He was seventeen then. There were stains of blood in his tunic even today. That piece of cloth he would never wash or change. That was his oath to himself.

But on that day the seeds of rebellion was definitively planted in him. He would do whatever he could to get out of that terrible condition that was called his life. He made plans and revised them. He turned to those he thought he could trust but found himself disappointed time after another. It was quite near he didn’t got to the gallows himself as one of his ”friends” turned him in in hope of a reward for revealing a mutiny. He still remembered the voice of the Easterling captain as he coldly looked at the two of them in front of a host of others. ”That skinny loser would not be scheming anything! Look at that dull look on his face and the skeleton he call his body! Give him a sightseeing!” They had tied him with a rope to a horse that was then beaten to run all over the camp. The Easterlings and the orcs were laughing, but the slaves looked at the terrible show in silence, their hearts slowly sinking once again with the sight of one of them being mutilated and humiliated. He was bruised all over, he lost two of his teeth and his left arm was broken from the elbow. But he was alive.



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Minor character:

NAME: Gwerr

AGE: Not known

RACE: Orc

GENDER: Male

WEAPONS: His favourite weapon is a Dwarven battle-axe he looted from a battle long ago. He uses it with deadly precision and brutal force. Gwerr also carries a long dagger or a short saber – whatever way you like to look at it. That also is an earlier possession of someone already dead. It used to belong to an easterling captain with whom Gwerr had an argument over a game of dices.

APPEARANCE: Gwerr is a bit short even by orc-standards, but he is sturdy and muscular. He’s just the one you wouldn’t like to pick up a fight with. He has a battered helmet with a visor that covers the eyes and the nose. He wears a fur coat of a black elk tied up with a metal belt and uses his old heavy leather-metal boots of the times of Mordor’s flourishing. He has lost his right eye and the empty eyehole is covered with a metal plate stiched into his skin. He also wears an elven bracelet under his furs, but he doesn’t actually like to show it to others. It’s something that is his and only his secret.

PERSONALITY/STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES: Gwerr is a walking and breathing example of orcishness: battle-hardened, quick-tempered, dogged, but also resourceful, firm and able. Gwerr has lived too long to be any more a hotheaded berserk that young orcs sometimes are. He may flare up from nothing, but more often than not, he is also able to tone down his primary reactions and to think before he acts. Lately he has fallen to thinking more often than before and his view of his current situation is quite gloomy. The Easterlings have taken just too much power and command over their lives. There was no future for the orcs in this system that was unraveling itself. Alone he could not change it and so other ideas have started to form in his age-old mind. Gwerr is one of the planners of the orc-runaways.


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Nogrod's post - Hadith


Hadith heard of the plan two days before it was going to be put into action. It was not a clumsy one of his own making, but a realistic one embedded in the grander scale rebellion that had been talked quietly for months all over the plantation. Kurrah and Zilin, the influential elders in their barracks were the minds behind it. Their barracks would not take part in the rebellion but would use the opportunity to just go for their own. Kurrah and Zilin thought the whole idea of a common rebellion to be pure madness and fantasy of the hotheads. It would just lead to more suffering: many would die and the rest would in any case be rounded up and the conditions would turn even worse with lots of new tougher rules and regulations, not to talk of some general punishments everyone would have to bear after the uprising. But the general disorder could be used for their benefit. They could sneak out in the overall confusion by first giving an impression to the guards that they were not involved.

The rebellion broke some moments after midnight. All the doors of the barracks were bursted open with the forordained signal from one of the barracks and the angry slaves ran out from them, challenging the guards on duty. There was a general alarm and in an instant the frenzied slaves saw the orc and easterling soldiers rushing in to bring order to the plantation and cut the rebellion down to its beginning.

Kurrah and Zalin had waited a short moment after they heard the uprising had begun and then carefully opened the door of their barracks. As their door had stayed closed when the mayhem started, only three orc-guards were left to keep an eye of their barracks. The others had rushed to help in the fight that was now in full flare. Kurrah and Zilin had distracted the orc-guards by quering them about the situation when the general uprising had begun. While their guards were busy trying to have an eye of the general situation and explaining it to Kurrah and Zilin, the others from the barracks had a chance to sneak out. Soon the guards got hang of what was going on, but then Kurrah and Zilin attacked them with forks and spoons. All items one could call a weapon were left to those who would try to escape. Hadith had not been given a weapon as he was deemed too young to claim one with the shortage of them, but he had his sling and the crude knife that he had made himself in the general anticipation of the rebellion.

Those two older men sacrificed themselves to get the others out that night. And they made it. Some of the other older men – and a few women - had decided to sacrifice themselves too, and that really made the difference as they entered the battle between the two older men and the three orcs. The orc-guards had no chance to report that the “peaceful“ barracks had done a runaway as they had to fight for their lives against a dozen of elderly people armed with kitchen utensils. The heroism of these elders saved the others of that barracks on that night. The fleeing slaves heard their cries as they ran away from the barracks.

Before long one easterling chieftain noted the escape of one of the barracks in the middle of the fight. Even though bringing down the general rebellion tied up lots of the orc-forces and the Easterling guards, some horsemen were sent to trail them too. Soon the escaping slaves heard the horses coming after them. Hadith looked back to see the whole plantation lit and full of movement. Other slaves fought bravely but most of them were fast rounded up and beaten back to their barracks. Two small groups of riders sent after them both were seemingly taking a wrong direction.

Hadith’s heart was thumping and his hands were trembling from excitement. They were free! Or at least they might be! After they had crossed the fields, the small hills and knolls covered them with the aid of darkness spreading over the plains. They had actually escaped! The thought kept crawling into his mind, and everytime he tried to push it away. It’s not sure yet, anything could happen. It was an idea so huge he couldn’t just take it. To be free! To be not pushed around, to be not told what to do. How could he decide what to do? Like for example tomorrow morning? Whether to wake up or not, whether to dress or not? It was fantastic and scary at the same time. Well the remaining elders will tell me what to do and where to go, he thought to himself, a bit saddened and relieved at the same time. There was some order in his life anyhow.

A riding search-party of the Easterlings actually spotted them on the next day, but they were so clearly outnumbered and being so far away from any reinforcements, that they didn’t even try to round them up but let them go. That was the confirmation for Hadith. They actually were free now.

During the same day some individual escapees from other barracks who had escaped the searching parties joined their ranks. They were welcomed, but there were no great hurraahs’ about. After a couple of days they were taken unawares by a small group of other ex-slaves. They seemed a ragged and tough party of people. To Hadith they were heroes – and he was thinking, that he would too become like them. A hero, no longer a slave. A freee man.

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__________________
Upon the hearth the fire is red
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet...

Last edited by Nogrod; 06-30-2006 at 07:52 PM.
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