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Prolific Writer
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 300
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Another section of Paladin's Mess
There were a great many awe-inspiring elements to the city that greeted them. Most of which were its size. It defined “bigocity”. This is a word derived from the logical constructs “big-ol’-city”, and not, as it has been claimed, a stupid word that has just been made up to sound clever and intelligated. But whatever its origins and precise meaning, it was defined here, in stone, mortar and wood.
The most striking thing about the city was the wall. It ran out from a central fortress, and around a large part of the city; gigantic, magnificent, and lined with buttresses, ramparts, battlements and fortifications at regular intervals. It was a wall built with a purpose, and it looked the part; giving an impression of sentient nobility, power, and of strength. If you looked closely enough, you could see the odd spike glinting in the sunlight.
These spikes were the few leftovers of an initiative dreamt up by the then-Lord-Governor of the city. The idea was that they would embed a great number of lethal spikes around the giant wall, and in doing so, give the city an impressive, menacing, impenetrable look. And, in the event of a siege, any attackers climbing up or trying to run across the wall would find themselves impaled on the gigantic spikes. The plan was sadly doomed to failure, however, as -in a totally unexpected and unpredictable flaw- the spikes, which were erected for the express purpose of impaling people, had rather unfortunately impaled some people. Quite a lot of people in fact. And quite a number of times.
Around the giant wall, the city had evolved. Within the confines of the wall, space had run low, and people had built outwards, seemingly by taking any piece of land which didn’t currently have someone standing in it, or at least nobody important, and building on it. Building materials ranged enormously in this outer city, and while some of the buildings were just rickety structures fashioned haphazardly from timber, mud and straw, there were some proper buildings, made out of proper materials – usually taken from the collapsed remains of similarly indestructible structures. The city had simply sprawled outwards.
Graham and Arkanth weren’t used to anything like this. They had never laid eyes upon the city, although they had obviously heard of it, but the tales hadn’t prepared them for its sheer size, and the incredible vastness of its fortifications. Another thing they didn’t expect, was that the city had also heard of them. Up on one of the aforementioned watch towers, a watchman, armed with a description of the travellers and the terrifying accounts of what had happened to places Graham had tried to “help”, identified them. For a second, he just stared open mouthed in astonishment, but the sentries were a well organised force, and they had been given training for this exact eventuality. With a sullen professional quality, the watchman sent off the signal. The signal was then repeated, and thanks to the efficient system and all the practice, it was relayed from man to man along the wall. Large signal flares were lit, drums were banged, and at the gate, the heavy iron portcullis came crashing down, barring off entrance to the city.
Unfortunately, by this time, Graham was already through the gate, and was talking to a child, trying to track down the nearest retailer of heroic-strength armour polish.
Seeing that Graham had got through during the myriad of signal-sending, the watchman who had sent the original signal dutifully moved to send another, informing everyone of this fact. This message set off, making its way around in a spectacle of whirling red flags. At the other end, a message set off the other way round, telling people that the portcullis had been successfully dropped.
Amongst all this frenzied signal waving, the beacon master, already standing next to one giant flaming beacon, turned to light the second one. He danced between these beacons frantically, waving a ragged piece of cloth to produce smoke signals, trying to keep up with the hectic inter-crossing messages. Seeing the signal master at work, a man on the other side of him dutifully raised his flags and signalled back, returning the helpful message that “your cloth is on fire”. The beacon master read this message and discovered it to be correct. He screamed.
On the other side of the man who sent that signal, a puzzled looking flagman was shocked to be told that his cloth was on fire. He quickly composed the message “no it isn’t.” This message also started to work its way around.
Back on the centre of the southern wall, the beacon master had been feverishly attempting to extinguish the cloth. This had resulted in the ignition of some of his clothing, and he was now beating at it manically with his other arm, which too caught fire. This is the danger of doing fast paced smoke signals above two large signal beacons, using only a flammable rag.
The watchmen at the front-gate, who had just sent the message that the portcullis is down, were rather startled to receive the reply that “no it isn’t”. Feeling somewhat bewildered, they started pulling on chains and turning wheels trying to fix this.
Back on the main wall, the signal-passing had intensified to such a hectic display of arm waggling that one of the most respected guard squadrons in the World now resembled a rather under-rehearsed cheerleading routine. On the Southern wall, the beacon master, now fully alight, launched himself into the moat. This would have worked better if the Southern wall had a moat. Instead, it had a flammable sprawl of makeshift houses.
The mismatching of inter-relaying signals had got to the point where nobody could really make any sense out of the confusion, and this situation wasn’t helped when the gate guards added another message: that they had broken the portcullis.
On the Eastern wall, a signal lieutenant was in the rather unfortunate position of having the messages he was trying to relay collide, combining in his flag movements to make another message altogether – one which happened to say something rather rude about the next man’s mother. Further along, a signal clerk was frantically searching the code book for any references to setting yourself alight and jumping off the wall.
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