Category: Ridsekes

Dawn came to Bri-sean. Unfortunately, even the first rays of the sun can’t improve on the aesthetics of the place. I imagine that at one time, the stone tiers looked forbidding and imposing. Those days were long past.

The enterprising and the clever arrived in Bri-sean a few decades late and found that the landlords of even the deepest, most suffocating chambers of the vast hive-city charged exorbitant rents and expected to be paid in coin or work. As most people who come to Bri-sean have an allergy to halfway honest work and the nobility doesn’t take kindly to freelance crime, they built their own ramshackle homes and businesses from wood and stone that jutted out into space right off the side of the tiers. The looked like thorns festering in a limb.

Sunrise didn’t even make the city more safe. In fact, it was just the opposite. The light of day chased away the cowards who needed shadow and surprise to ply their villainous trade. And when the mongrels fled the field, the wolves arrived; those confident enough in their strength or skill that skulking was no longer necessary. The wise hid their wealth and tried not to draw … Continue reading

“Let me tell you a story.”

My signature line. Yes, I was being paid to tell stories. Yes, many of the guests at the party were there purely because they were promised that for that one night, the entertainment would be classic tales weaved with expert care by the Traceren Ridsekes. But none of that really mattered. It was all part of the atmosphere and illusion of the exotic to entreat the audience to hear my tale as if I were a stranger who had come to their fire in the night.

And I certainly wanted ot keep the entertained. Not just from a sense of professional pride, or because I felt I owed it to them because I had been paid. In normal circumstances, that was enough, but I was surrounded by the ‘nobility’ of Bri-sean.

Nobility was their word, not mine. There weren’t any bloodlines in the Rogue City, just blood spatters. I hesitate to use call them upper class either, because class varied from nation to nation, or in some cases, city to city.

In Harpsfell, where I live when not earning my coin, they would grudgingly be upper class, because Harpsfell will let you call yourself … Continue reading