Terra Incognita
Terra Incognita is a story written by Iron Eater. It ran in Issue 52 at http://s2b2.livejournal.com/, and will be mirrored Wednesday at http://www.shousetsubangbang.com/.
Summary
It's harvest time in the stronghold of Naar Rhoan, but not everyone is feeling the seasonal cheer: things are tense between Sarouth and Riaag, and one of their allies has made a concerning discovery.
The problem with bandits, Riaag mused to himself as he stirred the pot, was that they were just too damn stupid to know when to quit. Someone who stole to feed a hungry mouth could be converted, and someone who fought because they were scared could be soothed, but someone who made trouble simply because they had a sliver of opportunity was a particular species of dickhead that they didn't truck with much in Naar Rhoan. The most recent crop of bandits had been a gaggle of stragglers from the northern mountains—dressed in colors almost certainly stolen—who'd tried to ambush some traveling merchants. Said merchants had luckily been within earshot of a patrol band. Those who threatened the safety of the basin were dealt with harshly by the Rhoanish; it wasn't like they'd stopped being orcs the minute they sat down to till fields.
A skull bobbed to the top of the boiling water and stared at him with empty sockets. "Shoulda fucked off back when we done warned you the first two times, asshole," said Riaag to the skull before he thwacked it with his ladle. It went back under the surface with a bloop.
This story contains no human characters.
Connections
This story is the third in a series of stories also including The Stones' Earthen Grasp and Seismic Gap, featuring the same world, cultures, and protagonists. While the author recommends reading the stories in order of publication (in no small part due to increased writing ability and familiarity with the characters), it has been intentionally written so new readers won't feel too left in the cold.
The setting itself is very loosely based on the freeware game Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup.
Related Links
This story has no related links.
Author's Notes
This is the longest standalone work I've created to this date, and I owe a great deal to my friend and beta-reader for not only helping me figure out what I even wanted to cover with this particular story but also reading through four(!) different versions of the manuscript, at least half of which stopped mid-section when I shared the Google Doc. I am also grateful to the editing team for not immediately bouncing this brick of a story and placing a block on my IP.
While some animals present in the story are extinct in the modern day, and moly flowers are of debatable nature (I intentionally interpreted them as something other than members of the Galanthus genus), just about everything else is sourced from actual flora and fauna from a specific part of the world. The saber-tooth mentioned is meant to be a type of Eusmilus.
The term "Faaroug" is intentionally not italicized here despite being so in previous stories. Aside from being defined frequently, no other word in the Rhoanish language is given the same treatment, and fewer italics make things a little bit easier to read.
Certain parts of this story are of an extremely sensitive nature, as mentioned in the content warning, to the extent that I had a sex-educator friend review them for accuracy. The work as a whole focuses on the recovery angle of an abuse narrative but may still be difficult for some readers in places; please take care of yourselves and ask a friend to read first if you suspect this may be a problem for you!
