Years were wasted, shifting her way out of the hot sands of Near-Harad. She was there to collect her life’s savings which consisted of a mound of gold and silver ingots contracted to be safely stowed in the great banking institutes of the Dar. The hope, however, was squandered when discovered that all holdings of Mordor’s clients were dissolved by order of Gondor’s new king immediately after the war. And if any of these clients come calling, they were to be arrested on sight and extradited. She barely escaped the Dar with her life, and here on the outskirts of Mistrand and in the company of Sauron’s former worshippers, she feels no less safe. All of Mordor’s former emissaries, if they survived, have prices on their heads, and the purse is high enough to interest any mercenary from here to the eastern horizon.
As a collective, the present company does not need coin – but as a bargaining chip, the new member might hold some purpose. If handed over to the Lôke-Khan as a sign of good will, would not a former emissary of Mordor then make a wise offering of assurance to the Western king? This makes the Lôke-Khan’s appearance at a requested council (one purposefully left out of the agenda and thus to her knowledge), so troubling. Form, which appears lither than before the war, tries to slink away, but eyes, also stripped of their former sharpness, meet the dragon leader’s before she knows it. She can go nowhere now without her existence being known. // @burkhanlig
Pultic Crow ;
Vezely’s chin raises as she stews in thought over the tentative campaign. She is aware of Kravod’s current state of dilapidation. Its decay arguably began after the fall of the Putlai and the splitting of the realm into three kingdoms. Kravod remained the capital of the realm of Narimanush, but its power dwindled, and its funds slowly ran dry. Upon its transition under the Jhangovar tribe, corruption plagued its leadership and led to further neglect of its infrastructure. It now sits forgotten in the Great Khaganate despite its infamous past.
Upon mention of the cult, the estranged emissary stiffens her posture, finding discomfort amid the reflection — even if she grew to hold the highest esteem for its members and was in their debt for her survival, it was not always so. When she held some worth among the Pultai, she often found the cult and its requests meddling and unwise, especially when it came to coin.
❝There was only one Dark Lord,❞ she counters politely, lips slanting in mild amusement over the question (and in a desire to disregard the past tense she must use). ❝It is others who created his many faces and skewed his truth. For the Pultai, it is true we acknowledged him as our War-God, Maladûm, and for him, we crossed the Anduin. But we also knew the Northmen called him the Necromancer — The Shadow of Dol Guldur. But they were not afforded an audience with him as our own. Only fear were they so graciously bestowed. As for the cult,❞ she realizes she went on a tangent, so she cycles back. ❝They held power in the council. More than might be considered wise for Kravod’s growing infrastructure.❞
— “I understand” — Margöz said. The influence of the ecclesiastical power was nothing unrelated to what he lived day to day since he had become the religious and political leader that he was. Flatterers (whom he secretly hated), spewed out words soaked in honey just to gain the favor of the one they themselves had chosen, granting him more power even than themselves, and sometimes, he thought, than he should have. Sometimes the democratic ways of his own religion were a bit strange to him.
However, the great capital of the Pultai dynasty, Kravod, remained a mystery to unravel. Where had these followers of the Cult of Shadow come from? He knew that this doctrine had been born in the ancestral land of Kykurian Kyn, but how had that crooked root that crawled between the crooked forks of the pagan paths of the dynasty that at some point dominated much of the central steppe seen the light? of Middle Earth?
—“In Dorwinion they called him The Dread God. In Khand he was known under the pseudonym Thûmraki, but in the end, Maladûm was one.“— Said the Lôke-Khan, implying that he had understood her point perfectly. — "Sorry if I don’t get out of my astonishment for the things you are telling me.” — He said, almost sincere, almost without being able to hide that smile that appeared at the corner of his lips, as if he was a child in a toy store, of those that abounded in the square of the northern district of Mistrand, where the carpenters manufactured humanoid dolls with small pieces of wood.
—“Religious beliefs can be a great means of control, if you allow me to be honest”. — Margöz commented as he dyed his lips violet again from the wine coming from the vicinity of the fertile bay of Dacranamel.
