Xenolith Cache
Xenolith Cache is a story written and illustrated by Iron Eater. It ran in Issue 82 at http://www.shousetsubangbang.com/mirror/xenolith-cache/.
Summary
Whatever's going on south of the river, Naar Rhoan's founders are determined to put an end to it by whatever means necessary. That was the plan, anyway.
"I know you're not really an animal," they said, this time in the more intelligible of the unfamiliar tongues he'd heard that day. "Your eyes are too clear for it and you know how to put pants on. You don't understand Orcspeak, though, which is a problem. Orcs are meant to understand it by nature. You're clearly an orc, and yet here we are.
"I wonder, though: Do you know what I'm saying to you now?"
Riaag paused, then nodded once in affirmation.
"Fascinating," said the seneschal. They sat in the fancy chair with one leg up across the other, or at least that's how their robes made it look. Once again, the more comfortable they made themselves the more concerned Riaag became. "Now, let's see if you're responding to more than just the sound of my voice. Can you tell me how much is two plus two?"
Riaag held up four fingers.
The seneschal hummed in approval. "Capable of sums, are you? Well then, can you give me the total of twelve sets of seven, plus twenty-seven more, minus fourteen less?"
Riaag glanced down at his fingers, glanced back at the seneschal incredulously, then wrenched off a vestigial part of the cot to carefully scratch out ninety-seven tally marks with one of his claws before he flipped the wood back around for inspection.
"Very clever! Never would have guessed it from one of your lot. Now for a harder question: Why aren't you talking?"
This story's main characters are not human.
Connections
This story is the eighth in the Rhoanish Works series. 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 can jump right in if they so desire. It is also the cumulation of several entries' worth of foreshadowing in previous stories.
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
It's December, which means it's time once again to check in on the status of Riaag Bough-Breaker's ongoing recovery narrative.
There's a lot in this story that I've been sitting on for literal years, waiting to spring on the reader, and I still had to cut threads for the sake of brevity (yes, in a 75,000+ word monstrosity, I actually worried about brevity!). My favorite is probably Riaag explaining how he was able to pierce a particular illusion, as it says so much about him and Sarouth alike, and given that the both of them exist to be examinations of masculinity in an environment that's fairly free of modern toxicity I think it's a nice little moment of emphasis. Sarouth and Riaag aren't human, with brains and bodies that can do a lot of human things but differ in important ways, and the plots wouldn't work if the reader wasn't able to understand this; that I've ended up with so many people who so sincerely care about my green sons despite the alarming amount of time I spend explaining their carrion-rich diets implies I'm doing something right!
Writing fantasy is a joy of mine because I get to practice a balancing act of showing readers how the world is different without bogging things down in too many details. I frequently rail against "social studies report" exposition in genre fiction and use my Rhoanish stories as a chance to put my money where my mouth is, trying to get to things happening as quickly as possible with as few undefined (or awkwardly-defined) unreal concepts as possible until I'm sure the reader is invested enough to actually care about what these weird words mean.
Seeds for this story were first sown all the way back in Brittle Limit, in a side-plot I had to almost wholly remove; Sarouth and Riaag were originally going to meet with servants of the wizard all the way back then, giving them cause to investigate for themselves. That obviously went in a different direction, though not so different there wasn't a mention in Aventurescence of weird stuff going on down south, and of course Knickpoint was arguably one big setup. Previous stories with supernatural elements tended to have them connected to unreal beings of some sort, whether Agritakh Himself or the work of ghosts and demons, and I wanted the wizard to have that same sense of unpredictable menace to his actions. One reason we don't learn much about him is to preserve that sense of uncertainty.
It should be of little surprise that I decided to use "shitty techbro" as a template for a being of unbelievable power, vast resources, overblown self-importance, and general cluelessness about those even slightly less well-connected than he is. My beta reader dubbed him "Juicero wizard" and another peer of mine called him "fantasy Bezos," and neither of them are wrong. I wanted a villain whose goals were clearly monstrous but who had convinced himself he was in the right, someone who would be satisfying to eliminate even if cleaning up the aftermath would be neither quick nor simple. Him rambling on about orcish willpower is also a slight nod to the nature of orks in the Warhammer 40,000 setting, in which they're all technically powerful psionicists but are too dim to make use of this outside of making things work because they believe they ought to. Rhoanish orcs aren't quite so gifted, of course!
Alas, there's only two sex scenes in this one, but given that our leads spent most of the story in prison on opposite sides of a magical tower I think it's excusable. There's still a heady combo of Iron Eater signature content (loving descriptions of bathing, people fantasizing about one another, lots of worrying over the logistics of pre-industrial daily life) that I hope my readers can forgive me, especially since the second scene is the capstone of literal years of what amounts to cleric-dispensed talk therapy. Riaag is not "fixed" by having sex, but he can at least take steps to reclaim his sexuality from his past, and finding ways to cope with his ongoing brain problems while still being a competent fantasy protagonist continues to be satisfying to write.
The non-plot reason the lads went to return the scrying orb to Ayyisha is because I'm tickled at the idea of orcs rescuing professional adventurers. Sometimes mine are simple pleasures.
What's to become of Coral? Good question, since his character changed a few times before I settled on him being a deposed lieutenant (and ex) of the nameless wizard who didn't exactly consent to getting made into a not-quite-mermaid. I'm sure the Leopard's Breath Company will have a few ideas. Whether those ideas are good ones or not remains to be seen, as while his condition is inexcusable, one must remember this is someone who willingly helped and consorted with a man who thought mindjacking an entire populace to further his own goals was a good idea...
Yes, I already have ideas for next year's plot lined up, in no small part because I realized it was too big of an idea for the time I had to write. I'm sure it'll be all the stronger for not being relegated to a lengthy denouement. See you then!
