The Fellowship of the Fourth Age (Part 1): A New Beginning RPG

[Folwren]

“Oh!” This time the explosion of vexation was loud enough for most of them to hear. Athwen pushed her way forward to the very forefront of the crowd, her face red and her eyes flashing blue sparks. “You speak of justice!” she cried, motioning towards Khamir, “and you throw it in the face of our honor! You talk of rightful vengeance,” she fumed, looking at Beloan, “as though vengeance and revenge were all that mattered here! You - my very husband - talk about killing them simply because long ago some other orcs killed your family. And you! You, a woman,” turning savagely on Shae, “a girl - you speak like a hardened warrior - or murderer - yourself! Ridiculous? To consider sparing their lives? Why? Do they not breath the same air as we? Do they not drink the same water? Do they not bear children and bring them up, in their own time and way? Beasts? Even a wild beast has a right to live when it has done nothing wrong!

“Oh, you all make perfect sense. ‘Let’s kill these because sometime ago some others of their race hurt and killed us.’ Perfect reasoning!” Athwen threw her arms up in the air. “Morons! Brutes! You’re as bad as they are! I’m not quite so oblivious as you may think,” she went on, her voice shrill with emotion. She stared hard at a couple who wanted to interrupt her as she continued to speak, and they shut up and withdrew. “I’m not quite so as untouched and unharded as you imagine. I, too, once lost everything I ever held dear to me. Every single thing and every single person. And not to orcs, but to men. Do you suppose we should despise and kill all men then? According to what your saying - yes, that’s exactly what we should do.

“And you may hate me if you like, after this. I’ve said what I have to say, but I wasn’t about to keep it all shut in. Their blood won’t be on my head, do you understand me? I won’t be-” but her voice suddenly broke and her mouth clamped shut. Sudden tears bleared her eyes - tears of fury, loathing, and fear. She saw someone approaching her slowly and the next moment, Dorran took her gently by the hand and drew her away from before all those people. They stood on the fringe of the crowd, and she huddled close to his chest, protected by his gentle arms. Perhaps he thought she was going mad, perhaps he imagined it was exhaustion taking over. He’d be wrong if he thought such things.

“Dorran,” she sobbed quietly, “Dorran, it’ll be just as bad as what they claim the orcs did to them. Can’t you see that? They can’t be pure if they kill the orcs now - not without a fair trial, at least.”

[Durelin]

Khamir felt the unbridled hatred he had allowed to fester for years - a deep-rooted hatred not only of Orcs, but of the day he was born and the family he was born into, the life he was forced to lead in captivity and then as a killer and a thief, the people of the West who sat in their ivory towers and thought of him as scum like the rest of his people - he felt it rise in him, wanting to explode. He hated so much of what defined him, he was only glad it left no room for him to hate himself. It filled him up, it kept him going.

It was obvious that simple words were not going to get through to this old man who Khamir was, who these creatures were, and what the laws of Mordor were. The only sort of person who could be so concerned with hierarchies of morality was one that saw the world through eyes distorted by wealth and intellectualism: exactly the sort of condescending do-gooders Khamir had expected to come from Elessar.

If he had to endure this much longer, he would kill every one of those Orcs himself, with his bare hand, with his teeth…he would make sure they felt pain.

But before he could say more or act on his anger, Shae spoke up, and Khamir felt his eyes glue themselves to her, watching and listening to her strength. Seeing her own anger was soothing, and the man found himself smiling. She…she defended him, stood up for him. He met her eyes for a moment, and found it difficult to turn away. His focus was still on Shae even when Beloan began what would surely prove a speech.

The man had some charisma, that was sure. He put value in inspiration as a leader, something Khamir never really did. He was practical and perhaps reckless, and was accustomed to having natural purpose driving him that did not need to be justified, explained, or encouraged. He supposed Beloan was more the sort of person many of these former slaves needed.

But was he ever kissing up to those Westerners, as if they determined who may speak, who may think. And at the word ‘forgive’ and at the way his name was used, Khamir’s rage was fully renewed, and he felt like a cornered beast in a mad world, not knowing who his friends or his enemies were. The one armed man’s breaths were quick and deep, and his hand was itching to tear something apart.

And then the woman started…the brainless, spineless woman who thought she could speak to them that way, who could not stand the weight of killing even someone or something out to kill you.

They didn’t know when to stop. They would persist with their nonsense until he broke. They were provoking him.

Morons! Brutes! Their blood won’t be on my head…

Her voice was loud for one so weak. Khamir would have almost pitied her, had she not also turned her lofty, insulting tone specifically on Shae.

“You can show me as much disdain as you please in your self-righteousness,” he exploded at Athwen, “and you can call me all the names a child would, but you do not insult my…my people! Shae speaks like a hardened warrior because she is one, and an excellent one at that. You watch your own tongue, girl!”

Suddenly Khamir felt a hand grasp his arm not roughly but tightly, and he turned to see Adnan staring up at him. The one armed man froze in surprise, and in that moment the younger man spoke softly.

“And how does vengeance feel?”

~/*\~

“Enough!” Aiwendil shouted with even more power in his voice than when he had spoken to Khamir. “We will decide this as people and not as animals. It is left up to us all, no one can avoid the responsibility of this decision…and so I call for a vote.”

As the old man called first for those who wished to spare the Orcs’ lives and then for those who thought they should be killed, Khamir watched those around him with a troubled mind. Holding up his hand as part of the second group, he did not need to count to know the verdict. But he could not feel smug. No, this was not the sort of battle that had a winning side.

“Sense prevails,” he muttered to Adnan.

“Then it is death,” Lindir announced, for Aiwendil stood in silence.

[Tevildo]

For the past ten minutes, Dorran had been struggling to find the right words to bring some small comfort to his distraught wife. As upset as he was about the orcs and the even more difficult prospect of confronting the olog-hai, these problems seemed to dwindle in his mind as he saw the depth of feeling that underlay Athewen's hard words and bitter tears.

"There is no easy answer here," he whispered softly under his breath. "These creatures have done bad things......terrible things. I have no doubt. I have seen this too many times. I am willing to bet my life on that. And I am truly not sure that they could ever change their behavior. Still, even I would like to know what they are doing here in the middle of a barren plain with no orc army anywhere in sight. But what else can we do, my sweet? How would we feel if, two nights from now, a child was struck down in sleep by one of these orcs who returned to our camp? Could we look each other in the eye, all the while knowing that we had the monstor in our hands and yet did nothing to stop them from such an evil deed."

Dorran looked hopelessly down at his wife. None of his pleading words or soft gestures seemed to be doing any good. She continued to stare at him with a hard look. At that moment, there was a slight pull on his sleeve. He turned around to see Azhar, whose frozen face held the same message.

"I feel no different," the young girl spat out her words in an even sharper tone. "But I will not stand here and watch the punishment given when I cannot even agree with it."

Azhar turned towards Athwen and spoke, "I do not think the children should see this. I plan to take them down by the stream to play. Will you come with me to keep an eye on them?"

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Carl

Carl was sitting next to Vror, no more than a yard or two from Khamir, when the vote was cast. And the hobbit shook his head in disappointment as he heard the disfigured man's aside, followed quickly by Lindir's pronouncement. He had had the chance to do some of his own thinking, as he listened to the others. And the conclusion that had been reached by the group, the hobbit envisioned as their own death sentence. Moved to speak, he stood up pulling himself as straight and immovable as a rather stubby fence post, and shouted over the commotion.

"So we move from the King's justice to the justice of Mordor. Death it is then, and I'm the last to begrudge you for it, as I haven't a share in your grief. But before you go burnin' that particular bridge, I feel I should remind you all that if you choose to live by such justice you will be judged by the same measure. And I hope you all plan to grow in number and strength right soon, as you're fixing to place a brimful of hot coals under any orc that hears tell of it. Unless of course you see fit to route them out of every corner of Mordor like so many spiders, before you get down to the business of living. I personally don't think that it can be done, or that the orcs will take well to our ragtag group, who go around executing them every chance they get."

Carl relaxed his stance a bit, bending under the weight of frowns and sharp glances directed at him, and he thrust his hands in his pockets. "You certainly must think me mad or deaf, but think on it. When you're walking, your bound to fall if your eye is always fixed on what's behind you and you are not looking ahead. Like Beloan said, look ahead... past these orcs and past the Olog-hai too, if you can see past them! What your doing now with this decision might be sowing the salt that blights your very future."

Greatly discouraged, Carl turned to go, wondering if this whole journey would turn out to be of no use at all.

[Durelin]

Hardly to Khamir’s surprise, various members of Elessar’s envoy voiced complaints regarding the decision, but it was done and even they knew it. He, Shae, and other familiar faces marched dutifully to the pit, some seeming more eager than others. Khamir avoided looking at Shae perhaps so she would not see the confusion in his eyes and take it as a sign of weakness.

The silent consensus among the volunteer executioners seemed to be that the deed would not be done in the pit, but rather a little ways outside their camp. If they moved the living bodies away from where they would sleep, there would be no need to drag the corpses very far. It would all be very logical, very practical from here on out. The sensibility of the plan was obvious to Khamir, but he could not completely ignore a feeling that he was going through the motions of some ritual. His knife felt particularly heavy in his hand.

But the Orcs were not prepared to have their throats slit as simple prisoners. Something did not feel right about the apparent resigned nature of the orcs to their fate, and then Khamir noticed...ropes? “Look down there, at the low end of the bars!” he shouted with great urgency, and Shae, Qat, and Beloan were quick to follow his discovery to the same conclusion.

“The orcs are on the loose! We need more men here!” Beloan cried, keeping his head and realizing that they needed more than one man to each Orc to manage them now they were free and desperate to save their lives or bring down as many men with them as possible. Khamir’s own desperation drove him far more than his anger or loathing.

The fight ended with the Orcs recaptured and some of them much worse for wear. Even Khamir agreed with Beloan when he spoke of dignity when he saw what shape Makdush was in at the hands of the former slaves. Surely many of them had seen men and women brutalized in such a way at the hands of Orcs - though also likely at the hands of certain men - but…that was what Orcs did. Beginning to feel he was getting too close to agreeing with Aiwendil, Khamir fell back into focusing on the recaptured Orcs and the knife in his hand.

Weapons drawn and held close to the victims, the Orcs were led away, the men and women who were not their executioners still standing by with their own knives, bows, slings, and spears at the ready. They all understood that any animal was most ferocious when it was cornered.

The general quiet as the Orcs were marched a short distance from the camp made the situation darkly awkward. The heat in the air from the passion and anger of the debaters had dissipated, cooled to a chill. Nothing seemed to be fueling the ceremony: no hatred, anger, or fear; and no spark to light them. A number of people followed the party, but very few threw out the rare jeer or justification, and even fewer paid them any mind.

Sweating, aching, light-headed, heavy…oh yes, Khamir remembered, that’s what it was…tired. They were all so tired, weren’t they?

“Let’s get this over with,” he said, typically curt and gruff. Agreement was voiced among the spectators - or the guards, or the witnesses; whatever they might be called - as a final verdict not on the guilt but on the fitness of the punishment.

Man liked lines and order, they liked having a system to things. So the Orcs were haphazardly lined up, then forced on their knees. The scowls, the snarls, and the snapping of the cornered animals were ignored, and instead each creature was given the privilege of a personal executioner. Man watched each other, learned from each other, copied each other. Once one or two held their knives at the throats, the rest followed suit.

For a moment the Orcs were suspended just before the end as the Men waited for the word, the sign; and the first laceration of flesh; and perhaps even the last, vain effort of the captives to alter their fate.

But none of it came.

[Firefoot]

Grask had watched the entire proceeding with increasing anxiety. The subtleties of conversation had been over his head, but he had caught the drift: there were a few who wanted to let Ishkur and the others live, but most of them had voted for murder. He did not know why he had hoped at all; the stories were true, it seemed; Men were just as vicious as they reported Orcs to be. What would he do? Where would he go? His path had been bound up in those of these Orcs that were about to die.

Their meeting broke up; the Men hauled up the Orc males from the pit none too gently. Grask strove to catch Ishkur’s eye in hopes of some guidance, but to no avail; Ishkur was not looking for him, and even if he was, Grask was too well hidden. The Orcs were marched out of the camp, and Grask, seeming to have no will of his own left, trailed behind as far as his cover extended. They were lined up; knives and swords were drawn.

Grask’s heart beat wildly and he looked around frantically. What should he do? Somebody must do something! But he was alone - where were the females? Help – he needed help! They needed help!

Suddenly Ishkur’s words to him thudded strongly in his mind: “Someday I may need you to guard my back." Without any thought of what he was doing, Grask hurled himself from the brush, a war cry of utter anguish sounding from his mouth. He fumbled one of his long knives from his belt as he ran, then held it point first in front of him. He had to stop them. Ishkur was depending on him.