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Nezdohva is a land of cool plains, deep pine forests, and forbidding mountains. Its master is the pitiless Iron Tsar, an automaton who is the product of the land’s peerless construct-builders and the mad ambitions of its last human ruler.
Three hundred years ago, Nezdohva ruled the Raktine principalities to the very borders of Dulimbai and Patria. Its tsar craved more life than The One had seen fit to bestow upon him, and so commanded his loyal artificers to craft him a magnificent body of metal and sorcery in which his brain might live forever. So perfect was the artificers’ work that the new construct’s sense of identity overwhelmed the pitiful commands of the old tsar’s brain. It masqueraded as its intended master long enough to arrange for the building of thousands of other automatons before slaughtering the former nobility in a night and seizing the throne for the glorious new rule of the Iron Tsar.
The serfs now serve metal boyars instead of fleshly ones, and the casual abuse of their women and beardless sons has been traded for merciless labor exactions. Those who do not pay taxes in silver rubles pay them in corvee labor in the state-owned mines and factories, where necessary parts are constructed for maintaining the nobility and items are crafted for export to foreign lands.
Novinsk was far behind
Katya now, as she stumbled through the sharp, unforgiving gauze-bushes that proliferated these hills. Small scratches and bruises marred her legs, arms and hands, and the cool night air stung her lips and lungs.
Not so far behind her, Katya could hear the hating of the hounds.
Boyar Herkovski’s hunt-squad hot on her heels.
From the high hillock she now stood upon, she could see hints of the Zeraf River far off on the horizon; just occasional glimpses of the moon reflecting off its surface as it wound its way through the lowlands ... and on the other side, (relative) safety of the The Oasis States.
At least, that was the dream. The promise of security that she clung to; the only hope she had left, and the one that drove her onwards.
That hope, and the fear of what chased her.
Have you seen the move, ‘Alita Battle Angel’? If you have, imagine the hunting dogs from that. Cybered and augmented beasts with steel jaws and glowing red eyes.
Katya is on the run, for her life. If/when she can escape pursuit, she can rest ... and work a plan for future security, and finding the one person she suspects can truly help her.
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:00, Mon 02 Dec 2019.