Not to make anybody sad but, well...misery loves company, and I'm currently miserably sick, replaying Fable 3 and remembering an old headcanon I have of Walter getting the dog you have in game for the Hobw's first birthday after Sparrow's passing. Jasper was originally against the idea, not fond of the thought of having to clean dog hair off of everything the young princess/prince owns, but when even Logan agrees it could be a good idea, he caves and agrees with the plan, if only to see the Hobw happy once more. It's the first time the Hobw, and Logan for that matter, smile since the Hero King/Queens passing. And if the prince/princess keeps and only ever rides an unusually beautiful mare that was gifted by a certain capitalist industry tycoon, well, nobody raises an eyebrow.
Hammer comments twice during The Ritual quest about how Sparrow doesn't talk much. So it's not just a skip over like Fable (TLC/Anniversary) in which the characters act like you talk.
Sparrow just doesn't.
So I think of them as a mute. Perhaps from a trauma in their childhood (like Rose's death) or a disability. Which would explain why they're so expressive.
I know that it's for gameplay reasons, but the fact that Hammer mentions it gets me.
A/N: mentions of sex, cheating, and marriage. I had only to revise it but for some reason it doubled.
The first time Blade married, she did it to prove something.
She was young, in her early 20s, and she had just recruited Hammer.
After doing so she decided to go around, becoming busy with both making her fortune grow with the trade of merch between cities and entertaining herself with her numerous lovers, especially in Bowerstone.
All the men of the Market and a good half of their wives had the hots for her, and most of them spent a lot of time in her bed. But her lovers didn't want just to fuck and not see her for days; they wanted to settle down with her. And with time they started to become more and more insistent.
Nearly every time, after fucking in her house near the inn they used to say that she could give them a ring, that they could get married, even if most of them were already married people.
At first she laughed it off, throwing off her lovers; then she started feeling annoyed at their continuous proposals, cutting off her relationship with the most persistent of them.
After a while tough, she started thinking about it. About marriage.
Settling down wasn't really a bad idea. She liked the thought of someone waiting for her at home, someone who cared for her. Deep down, she wanted the stability she never had, the sense of family and home she had lost after Rose’s death. And all those people longing for her made it seem like marrage wasn't a big deal.
If all of Albion was married, hell, she could pull it off too. Or at least so she thought.
She married one of the lovers she had had for the longest time, Mark, a man who carried boxes from the docks to the market, who was ecstatic when she had proposed to him.
Their wedding was celebrated in Bowerstone, and all of Blade’s lovers came to congratulate them on the outside, only to hate having lost her like this in the inside.
Mark's parents weren't happy with his choice of a wife because of Blade’s reputation, but Mark was too infatuated to listen to his mother’s words about how a woman like Blade would have never been happy in a marriage, and that he would have only hurt himself.
They started to live in Blade’s house near the inn, and for some time she was happy.
She traded, buying where things were on sale and selling them where they were required the most, and she never went too far away. Mark demanded to have money from her and she argued with him about it because he had a job too. Couldn't he survive just with it? At the end she gave him just a small amount of money, annoyed at his pretenses.
But after a month, things started to worsen.
Theresa had told her where to find Garth, and after he was taken away she started to explore in the depth Brightwood and the Bandit Coast, helping Giles with the bandits who threatened his life, and she started to stay away for as long as two days, only for her to come back for barely a full day before levaing again.
She continued her search for chests in all the regions she had reached this far, and she also started to often take jobs as bounty hunter.
Mark wasn’t happy with it.
He argued with her one of the few days she spent in the city, and Blade reprimanded him. She was a hero, not his housewife. He knew it before they married, when they used to be just lovers.
Why did it matter now? Was it any different? They just lived in the same house with a ring on their finger.
«You can’t be always away! We are married, you should spend more time with me!»
«I have a mission»
«A mission you never told me what was about!»
«You don’t have to know».
Blade’s gaze was cold, irritated, and anger was starting to rise. Since when they married, she felt guilty in spending the nights with her lovers, and it had been some time since her and Mark had been together and the thing was annoying.
Mark was shocked at her voice.
«I don’t- I’m your husband! I’m not just your lover, as we were before! Don’t you understand it? There is a difference between marriage and a casual relationship» he argued, feeling even more angry «You should tell me these things!»
Blade stood up with a grunt.
«I don’t want to. You should respect it»
He didn’t answer, and she looked at him with cold eyes. And for a long, terrible moment, Mark asked himself if she had ever really loved him.
The following day she left early. Asking around Mark discovered she had gone to Oakfield with a carriage because it seemed she had something to do there.
He had had enough.
When after two days Blade returned, she found Mark with all his belongings in the kitchen.
He looked at her, a sad look on his face.
«I'm leaving you».
Blade didn't say anything. She didn't care, she was even relieved to see him leave.
Leaning on the kitchen table she watched him leaving her house, only for him to stop on the door.
«Blade, there is something I want to know» he murmured. His eyes met her cold gaze, and he found out he already knew the answer to what he was about to ask «Did you ever love me?».
She looked at him, the man she had married three months ago.
Did she love him? No.
It was just a game. Just a game to see if she could live with someone like everyone else.
But she wasn't like everyone else. Marriage was suffocating, was a cage, and she wanted freedom.
Mark read the answer he feared on her face. He nodded, and he left.
Blade didn’t try to stop. She had tried to prove herself that she could have handled a marriage. But she couldn’t.
The second time Blade married, she did it for hope.
They divorced after two months of marriage, and they never saw each other again.
She had known a sweet, lovely lady in the Old City, and she was deeply attracted to her.
Her name was Carol. She had a kind smile and sweet brown eyes, but she never became her lover; she was one of the "old school", she didn't want to do sex out of marriage.
Her sweetness and softness made Blade have hope. Hope that she could settle with her, because she was caring, loving, and she was bored of those men in Bowerstone, who always asked for marriage with a snob voice. Carol was sweet, gentle. She often worried herself when Blade came to town with a new injury, and how could she not care for her?
Blade thought it was love, and she proposed to Carol, who said yes without hesitation.
They married on the shore of the Bower Lake, and after their marriage Blade moved her to Oakfield, to the Serenity Farm she had recently discovered.
Carol loved that place, where colors were more intense than in the outside world, and where she could sit outside with her animals and read, or tend to the chickens, or plant flowers, or doing all the things Carol loved. She had told Blade before that she had always dreamt of a house in the countryside.
Seeing her so happy, Blade felt hopeful for the first time in a long time. It was different from Mark; this time, Blade cared for Carol.
For the first month they were happy.
Blade had to enter the Crucible, but she wanted to do a bunch of quests before it, to both gain more experience and achieve the top score. She then started doing all the quest she could, killing all the monsters she found and hunting them wherever they went, but she came back home as often as she could.
Carol was alright with this; she enjoyed her alone time, and she understood that Blade had to go away, even if she didn’t know the reason.
Every time Blade came back she used to take the first carriage she could find, and once she came back they sat at the table, drinking tea and eating cake.
When Blade had injuries, Carol traced them while they were resting in bed, making the redhead feel loved, cared for. She craved that feeling more than anything.
For some time it worked.
But then, Blade started to be always away.
Oakfield was far away, and her points of interest had start to spread in far away regions like Westcliff, and she couldn’t think to always go back to Oakfield.
Carol didn’t want to leave the Serenity Farm, claiming she could do it without her; but one day, when Blade came back from Westcliff, she found her in bed with someone else.
The other person left in a hurry, and Blade looked disgusted at her wife.
«B-Blade! I’m so sorry… please let me explai-»
«Leave»
Carol’s eyes became big in surprise and filled with tears.
«W-what? Blade no… please! Please let me-»
«No».
Maybe it was her punishment. How many times had she had an affair with married people?
But how could little, sweet Carol do it? Carol, with her sweet brown eyes, and her caring smile.
She realized that she was jealous, but not because she loved her. It was because she wanted Carol to only care for her, to tend to her wounds, to feel attached to her, and her only.
Love was far away from her. She just wanted to have someone who she could rely upon.
Carol cried and screamed when Blade throw out all her belongings, but she didn’t let it touch her. She had had enough of marriages.
She divorced from Carol, and didn’t look at her one more time.
The third time Blade married, she did it for love.
After that, they never met again.
After spending ten years in the Spire, she started to feel lonely.
Her lovers weren’t enough; always so pestering with marriage, wanting to cage her again.
Theresa told her to reach for Reaver, and so she did.
She reached Bloodstone after a day and a night in Wraithmarsh running with the gun in one hand and the katana in the other, and when she finally reached Bloodstone her clothes where stained with balverine’s blood and hollowmen’s ashes.
Once she arrived there she went to sleep as soon as she could in the local inn, and the day after she went to see Reaver.
She didn’t like him from the start, and felt almost relieved when he sent her away to become more famous. She decided to tour the city instead, and to do the quests she was asked to help with later.
She hooked up with three other people: a prostitute in pink, a woman with soft breasts and a harsh attitude, and the smith.
She did a few rounds with them (bless heroes stamina), and then, while the other two went back to work, she drank an ale with the woman, listening to her talking about something she could have never remembered. But what she never forgot was the fierce light in her eyes, the way she sat like she owned the place and how her grey eyes seemed to dig into Blade’s soul.
«The name’s Sam by the way»
«Blade»
«Blade? Oh, so you’re the hero I’ve heard many people talk about. I had heard you came back after ten years. Good to have ya back» was all she said.
For the first time in her life, Blade fell in love. And she fell hard.
Sam became one of her lovers, but soon she became almost the only one. Blade didn’t need anymore the boring people of Bowerstone, and while she had two lovers in Oakfield she soon forgot them, they were too far away.
Sam was the one to whom she went the most. She wasn’t married, so they could fuck whenever the want to in her house, or in one of the houses Blade had bought and renovated in Bloodstone.
They spent a lot of time together, and slowly Blade felt herself opening up to Sam. Maybe it was because she was so welcoming, with her grey eyes that seemed to destroy all of Blade’s carefully built walls; or maybe, it was just that she was becoming old.
«How old are you Blade?»
Sam’s question had taken her by surprise. She had to stop what she was doing, reparing the door, to remember. How old was she?
«Thirty»
«You’re young. I didn’t expect for you to be so young, ya know»
«Do I seem older?»
«Yes. Not in your appearence, but in your gaze. Sometimes you look like you bear the weight of the whole world on your shoulders».
Again that gaze.
Blade raised up from her crouching position and murmured something under her breath.
«Whatcha muttering old thing?» said Sam with a smirk, poking her side.
«… I feel like it sometimes. Bearing the… weight of the world».
Then, Blade took Sam’s surprised face between her calloused hands
«But you help me».
«Of course I do. You may be hardened from battle, but I’m hardened from working in that old and smelly inn» she said with a hearty laugh, before kissing her passionately.
Later in bed, Sam, who was snuggled in her arms, raised her face towards Blade’s
«I don’t know what you have to do. But I know that I will stay by your side».
That was the moment when Blade finally realized two things.
The first, that she was deeply, inevitably in love with Sam.
The second, that she would have been the only one who she would have married for love.
Just not now.
After some days, Blade finished the quest, recruited Reaver, and all the events that lead to her shooting Lucien’s heart ensued. Now, she felt extremely tired.
From Oakfield where she had end up in, she took the carriage for Westcliff and there she reached Bloodstone with a ship.
Sam was waiting for her, and when she saw Blade entering the house she didn’t even had time to greet her before being scooped in her strong arms.
«Blade! Have you seen?? The Spire let out a big energy wave! Ya know what happened?»
«Marry me»
«I- what?»
She put her down, took out a ring, the best she could find, and offered it sheepishly to her.
«Marry me. Please».
Sam took her face between her hands and kissed here with passion.
Then, her grey eyes locked with Blade’s blue ones
«Yes».
They almost didn’t have a marriage. Not because they didn’t care, but because they both felt like that they didn’t need to do a big celebration.
They hosted a party in the inn, drank a lot and then Blade smirked
«I wanna buy Reaver’s house and live there»
Sam laughed «Fuck, yes. Let’s do it»
And while they were baptizing their new home, Blade realized another thing.
Sam was the first person with whom she had ever made love with.
She was happy. Finally, after many years, she was happy, and it was amazing. They made love, they walked by the docks, they talked, they teased each other.
At first Blade visited only Westcliff to be closer to her, scared that she would have done the same as Carol, but Sam reassured her that she would have been fine even if she went away for some days. She knew that was her life, and she wasn’t bothered by it.
«I trust ya love. I’ll be always here to wait for you» she said with a smirk, making a show off of her soft curves «And you know you can’t resist me. You’ll come back»
And she did. She always came back.
Blade searched for gargoyles, opened the Demon Doors, and everytime she came home, Sam was there with a smile and her arms open.
Blade found comfort in her embrace, warmth in their house, love in their nights together.
One of those nights, she woke up with a scream echoing in the walls of the Manor.
Before knowing it, Sam’s hands where on hers, and her concerned eyes tore Blade away from the depth of that ngihtmare.
«Love, what happened?»
And Blade, finally, broke down.
She made herself little, curled up in a ball against Sam’s soft breasts, and let it all out.
She cryed, she trembled in anger and sadness, while recounting her long, long journey. She started with her childhood. She remembered Rose, sweet Rose, and how she was taken away from her.
She remembered all the fights, all the battles, all the wounds. And she remembered Mark, who only wanted a normal wife, and Carol, who wanted more than she could have.
Sam listened to her stroking her hair and kissing her forehead, reassuring her when Blade’s voice crackled, and after all this she hugged her wife with all her strenght.
«You fought all your life. But you don’t have to do so anymore. Lucien is dead, the world is saved. You can rest now».
After this, Blade’s attitude changed. It was subtle, like everything that concerned her feelings and emotions, but Sam was so used to her that she noticed all the small changes in her way of living.
She wasn’t so tense anymore, she started smiling more, and not the smiles she made to seduce people, real smiles. Blade finally felt at peace. She could have lived like that forever.
But Blade and Sam had been married for barely three years when it ended.
And it wasn’t Blade who left her, it wasn’t Sam who couldn’t stand her anymore.
The reason, was a bullet in Sam’s heart shot by one of the assassin that had started to went after Blade.
She fought easily, but when she turned on Sam, she found her sitting on the ground, her hand grasping at her chest where a hole was bleeding out, her eyes filled with fear.
«No… no Sam! Sam!» she cried.
The woman in her arm smiled briefly, while tears filled her eyes
«I’m sorry. I love you. I always will».
Life left her soft body, and Sam closed her eyes, becoming heavy with the weight of death.
The last time Blade married, she did it for her kingdom.
And while clutching to the lifeless body of the only one she would have ever loved like that, Blade hoped that one day they would have met again.
She had just become queen, a title she never wanted or aspired to, but Albion was slowly descending into chaos, and she had to mantain the peace she had fought for. Even if she was just thirty-five she felt old, and she knew that to maintain her kingdom in peace she had to leave it to someone. Her children.
During the quest to reunite Albion, she had met two men.
The first was Walter Beck, a warrior younger than her who loved to tease her and drink together; the second one was Walter’s comrade, Alan. He was a nice guy, but after Sam died, she couldn’t trust anyone again in that way.
Alan was different from all her past lovers; for once, he traveled with her. He could fight really well, so she wasn’t constantly worried about his wellbeing like when she used to accompany villagers from one place to another.
Alan was lighthearted and kind, but he never managed to push through Blade’s walls. They had fallen down once; they would have never fell again.
Even if Blade wasn’t sure about it, she decided to marry him, to at least make it seem to have a stability in Albion.
Her and Alan had two sons, Logan and Finn. And, as Alan often said affectionally, they were the exact copy of their mother.
Logan had that same lingering darkness inside of him, while Finn’s eyes were cold, like the bricks of the wall that Blade had built around her heart.
Alan was kind, and they had a good time together, but he was more of a friend with benefits rather than a husband, and they both knew it.
They were comrades, too; often they went around Albion, sometimes Walter tagged alone too.
After some time, Alan died in a battle against the hollowmen in Wraithmarsh, and seen how dangerous the place had become Blade closed it off.
She mourned Alan, she mourned her friend, but she suffered more the broken habit of having him around rather than his life gone. The only people she still mourned where the only two she ever loved, even if in two completely different ways.
Blade and Walter started to go around together too, and Blade found comfort in him. In some ways, he reminded her of Sam.
But Blade was a loner by heart, and she still needed to travel alone, because being alone was something she couldn’t live without: and one day, while she was in Westcliff fighting Balverines, she heard it.
A crawling darkness, a whisper in the dark.
In a moment she was surrounded by shadows. She tried to fight them, but it was night, she was alone, injured, tired, and they were too many.
She fell on the ground, on her knees; the sun raised on her, and the darkness ran away.
But it was too late for her. She felt the life living her, she felt her powers falter.
She wasn't scared, though: she knew it was her time.
A guard found her, while doing his rounds. The princes were alerted, sir Walter Beck was alerted.
“The Queen is dead. The last Hero has left Albion”.
And Blade lied there, in the sun, with a small smile in her face; because even if life had already left her tired body, her soul had finally reached again to the one she had loved the most.
Finally, they had met again. And they would have never left each other’s side again.
It was decreed that Erda would belong to the Void, and be fed upon by the Void, and would not belong to itself until the Act was committed.
For only by commission of the Act would all Forces ken that Erda’s Ka had evolved, and only a world whose Ka has evolved may participate in the Great War, and only a world who has won many battles in the Great War may be granted custody of the Body of Light, and named its Guardian.
And so it came to pass that Erda was made anew, and the Void made its preparations within it, to ripen the world.
The one who would be First Archon was born, and the Sword made itself known to him. The Void, hungry, awaited. But the one who would be First Archon infuriated the Void, for it sensed the potential of the Act within him, and the Kingdom suffered for his existence.
The Void gave him the illusion of the Jack’s defeat, to thwart him. But the First Archon had a kenning that stretched beyond the Void’s reckoning, and he knew the Darkness was within him, growing, expanding. He understood the Darkness for what it was -- Sunderer, Devourer, World-Eater -- Mouth of the Void. And the Void was where it belonged.
He did not ken enough to know that it is not death that awaited him in the Void, should he journey there to expunge the Darkness from him, but a neverending life with no relief or solace. But kenning nothing except the duty to protect Erda, a duty that had been planted in him at the moment of his birth, a duty that he nurtured and never ignored, the First Archon entered the Void, and rebuked the Darkness, and cast it from him.
And so it passed that the Darkness only devoured the First Archon, his body and his mortality, and though the Darkness would return to harry Erda many times hence, it is recognised that these battles are a part of the Great War -- for Erda’s Ka had evolved with the Act of William Black, and the name of the Act is “Sacrifice”.
The in-game representation of the City of Aurora is a perception cobbled together from the minds of modern Albans -- people who are made to believe, for better or worse, that their country is upwardly mobile and markedly progressive. Albion has a central government, a bustling industrialised city, sewage systems, a monorail... atheism...
(Albans, as people are wont to do, casually ignore the fact that all of these things, while fine in theory, have all been corrupted.)
Albans think themselves modernised because of the influence of people like Reaver, experts at large-scale social manipulation for the sake of getting what they want out of the common man.
People like Reaver point to a place far across the ocean like Aurora and paint the picture that they want Albans to see -- a picture of a provincial desert (”desert! whoever’d want to live in a desert, except people that don’t know any better?!”) hamlet where people languish in antiquated religious customs that blind them from the fact that they have no creature comforts, a static culture, and no one like Reaver to propel them into the New Age.
So no one goes to Aurora, because why would they? What can Aurora possibly have to offer the modern Alban but a bit of exotic amusement?
No one goes to Aurora, so they don’t see the painted sandstone stretching high and wide, shaping little tribal residential districts and expansive evocative temples, shaping monuments and historical landmarks and art-filled spaces that seem to have no secular purpose but which are places where Aurorans go to commune with that which Albans can’t see.
No one goes to Aurora, so they don’t see the thriving trade network. Thriving, because what Aurora produces is valued the world over: the land produces hardy sugar-rich fruits and sturdy plant material, minerals and gemstones, and the people produce furniture, glass, clothing, sweets, and art, art like you cannot imagine. No one realises the size and might of their navy; they don’t use it to attack Albion, so why should Albion care?
No one goes to Aurora, so they don’t understand the richness of Auroran culture, the spirituality and the community, the relevance of ancestry and the importance of history, the strength of identity and the beauty of belonging. They don’t understand that respect for the land is directly tied to respect for self and each other, for Aurorans still understand the oneness of things. They don’t understand that the reason why Auroran culture seems to rarely change is because for Aurorans, their culture works -- through it, they have thrived in a land that would be utterly inhospitable otherwise, and their pervasive disinterest in materialism and wealth has only strengthened them as a nation, not weakened them.
(No one goes to Aurora, or anywhere really, so they also don’t know that Samarkin and Aurorans are distinct and separate peoples that just happen to share common ancestors, and so they wouldn’t realise that you can’t just look at a brown person and figure out where they’re from, and it’s intensely insulting to presume that you can.)
There are many people in Aurora, many people, because Aurora has endured for centuries and the bloodlines run thick and fertile.
Albans imagine Aurora as a little desert town, so they cannot grasp the true magnitude of the statement “The Crawler swept through the City of Aurora night after night until their numbers were severely diminished.” They think, Well, Aurora wasn’t that big anyway, so how many people could have been taken, really? A few dozen? Maybe a hundred?
In total, hundreds of people fell to the Crawler.
But the number doesn’t even matter, not to an Auroran. To an Auroran, even one person taken by the Crawler would have been a great and terrible loss. Imagine the weight of knowing that hundreds of people you know and love were all devoured by a force you couldn’t fight.
Hundreds of people fell in the Rebel Monarch’s revolution, but who in Albion mourns every single person that did? Who in Albion can even fathom doing so?
Kalin knows what Albion thinks of Aurora. Sie knows how easy it is for Albion’s Crown to look away when hir city is being ravaged, how reluctant Albion is to extend aid to people they regard as other. Sie knows that every time sie helps Albion, sie is setting herself and hir nation up for a lack of reciprocity, for forgetfulness in time of plenty.
Sie knows that, and sie agrees to help Albion anyway, because sie’s Auroran, and when sie stands before hir ancestors to account for who sie is and what sie’s done in life, sie wants to be able to say, “This is the truth. I did all I could for everyone who asked me for aid. This is the truth.”
Chaser generally has two ways of learning. Either he completely obsesses and tries to learn all he can about a subject, or just learning enough to get by. There are few things in Albion that he will take his time to learn at a decent pace.
