Publication:The woes of a thousand years

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“The New Year’s Day festival in Pleitsdorf gets longer each year,” chairperson Urszula Kachorowsky commented mournfully. Unlike Emperor Ermingeld Alchemhelm Fridrieckium, the chair was a quite withdrawn individual who dedicated much of her time to organisation as opposed to revelling in glory.

“And the problem with that is?” Asked the emperor, flopping into an armchair. In corner of the room the chairperson was still sitting at her desk, ordering and reordering the papers for the next day’s meeting in spite of the fact that she well knew there would be no meeting tomorrow, as the emperor was never in a fit state to attend and the other members of the council were off dealing with their nation’s politics that being an efficient diet of some kind they needed an eye kept on it there was always the routine administration that needed to go on around the palace.

"I do not enjoy getting drunk much,” replied the chairperson succinctly, momentarily looking up from the paperwork she was ordering. There wouldn’t be a meeting of the diet in the morning, no one would be willing to show up, but she was preparing anyway.

“I am not *hic* drunk,” slurred the emperor, in defiance of the obvious. “Just think: 1,000 years.”

“And if the next are as bad as the last, Achthal will not be around to celebrate,” remarked Kachorowsky morbidly.

“This is a new leaf *hic* for Achthal to turn over,” remarked the emperor, waving a hand vaguely.

“That may be so, but I have a letter here from Wilhelmina Borowicka informing me that she has seen goblinoids gathering on the eastern horizon,” countered Kachorowsky. Admittedly, she knew that it was just another letter of Borowicka’s pestering her for more money, but it was as good a weapon as any against the emperor’s remark.

“I must have the Dragon saddled,” said the emperor, staggering to his feet, “I must get there at once.”

“But, your Imperial Majesty, you are in no fit state to travel,” the chair objected. In reality, she knew that it was useless, but it was the principal.

“Nonshense,” quashed the emperor, stumbling out of the door.

Of all the different methods of transportation, dragon is the most luxurious. A dragon can fly with a large shed strapped to its back allowing for a viewing room, the emperor’s bedroom, two shared bedrooms for any guests they might be transporting and a dining room.

The imperial dragon had come to the empire during the Leonese invasion, raiding Leonese supply routes and slaying much of the army that had besieged Pleitsdorf. The dragon had then offered his services to the king.

Initially the dragon, who called himself Pthorchg but was colloquially known as puthpug (because it was the closest thing pronounceable to his name in Achthalian), had been used as a beast of war wreaking havoc upon the enemies of the kingdom, earning the nickname rabbit slayer for comparing his victims to mere rabbits who, when the eagle swoops low, would do well to run and hide.

However, successive kings had used it more and more as a means of transport, which had suited the now ageing dragon very well. So, by the time of the birth of the confederation, the dragon was used nearly exclusively for the role of transportation. A quick title change from royal to imperial and a clarification that it was the property of the rightfully elected emperor, as per the votes of the four electors in Pleitsdorf, and the dragon became all kitted out for its new role for ferrying the emperor between meetings with the leaders of the Allodiums (kingdoms and so on that were accountable directly to the emperor).

Trials had been conducted with people riding the dragon, but the results were unsatisfactory, especially to the dragon (who hated the rider) and the rider (who often went ‘missing’). With the exception of this, and one king who fell out with the dragon and was discovered to secretly have been replaced by a doppelganger, believed to be under the control of the dark elves of Scurwage in an attempt to destroy their forested kin, the dragon had dutifully served successive kings and then emperors of what had been Aruseus’s Land and was now The Confederation of Achthal.

So it was that the emperor was alone on the beast’s back. The dragon wondered momentarily if it would be so bad it an ‘accident’ were to befall the emperor. He was lazy and incompetent and there were far better people to do his job. The dragon quickly dismissed the idea. He, unlike others, was not actually corrupt and the succession struggle would weaken an empire always at its knees. ‘If only the humans could just appoint a dragon,’ the dragon thought, and flew onwards.

They were over WintersHalt now and someone looked up into the sky and shivered. Dragons always gave them the fears especially the imperial one. Though 500 more or less uneventful years had passed since WintersHalt had succeeded, the Awegonians were always resentful of it, and it was only by perpetual manoeuvres of wit that the rabbits avoided the eagle.

A deserted pass passed beneath them, and a goblin spotted them. It was in this kind of deserted and barren wastelands that goblins and their kin were most at home, but they spread everywhere. He thanked the gods that the dragon was not after him.

Above the mountains, they climbed. A dwarven watchman spotted them, bellowed a command to ready a crossbow thrower, and raised a telescope to his eye. The imperial insignia persuaded him to lower it again and then to mutter to his clansmen that it was okay.

The humans and the Duradin coexisted because they could work together more efficiently than they ever could apart. Humans worked the land, and the Duradin mined the mountains: a perfect symbiotic relationship playing to both races’ strengths. It had been the break the Duradin had so desperately needed.

A forest passed below. In the forest was one of the few elves that had made it into the middle mountains. She gazed up into the sky watching the dragon fly past. She was old enough to remember seeing dragons as a little child. Back then her people, the Alran, were on the up. Now they were falling like the dragons.

Onwards the dragon flew, ever onwards. Never fearing the cold or an attack from a large beast of the air (it helped that there were not many of those larger than a dragon) until the dragon was flying over the first valley. He recognized the place; he had landed there during the rise of Necromancery while ferrying the king to investigate stolen weapons. He did not like that era and nor had anyone else. No one knew what would happen next, no one knew whether they would survive and worst of all no one would work together to do so. It was bad.

The dragon began to descend. He was aiming for the entrance into a smaller V-shaped valley carved out by a river. Trees lined the mountains on either side of the valley; the dragon began to fear that there might be nowhere to put down.

Then he saw the castle. It was of modern design with multiple concentric rings of defences surrounded by an all-important empty space, allowing for enemies to be pelted with arrows before they got the opportunity to scale the walls. No doubt he was being tracked with a bolt thrower now, for all the good it would do against his thick scales.

It was into this outer space which the dragon glided slowly to a stop, and lowered his back to allow the king to disembark. The king did so and thanked the dragon before walking over to and in through the gates.

The castle looked worn and, as he could not tell which it was, the king put it down to battle damage. The gates were swinging in the wind, and when he went in, the courtyard was deserted with and strewn with upturned barrels and the odd raging fire and one particularly prominent cart which he thought must have been used by the defenders.

‘Where were they,’ the emperor wondered. He was slightly nervous now. Could the goblins have won? Could the goblins be lurking here now? Could the goblins be about to kill him? He was going round in circles. Then he heard a group coming in through the gate. He turned to see who or what had entered.

There was a column of human guards entering. They seemed in a jovial mood, or at least they were until they saw the emperor standing in the wreckage strewn castle they had left almost unguarded. They stopped suddenly and looked to each other and then Borowicka for instructions.

Fridrieckium had met Borowicka at a ball in Pleitsdorf. She was the only child of Karl Huser, the burgrave who occupied the castle before her. The emperor remembered some minor upset from his margrave about not being able to pick his own man (man being the operative word) for the job after Karl had died. Needless to say, Karl was not too happy about that and spoke to the Archduke in charge of the region. The Archduke sided with Karl and Borowicka was appointed, less because of any moral ideals and more because Karl had hand groomed her for the job for all of her life.

She had struck Fridrieckium as alright, especially given that she was a fop. She seemed vaguely competent politically and militarily and had led an uncontroversial border defence project which sounds like false praise before you consider that it is in one of the most vulnerable areas of the confederation making it less a hot potato and more a molten rock.

Borowicka was shocked, and to an extent scared. She had not expected a visit from the emperor, and was worried about how degraded the castle looked and more importantly that he might realize she had left it virtually unguarded. Nevertheless, she remained composed, bowed, and uttered a long, courtly, greeting.

That gave her enough time to make up an excuse for her absence. “Terribly sorry for the state of affairs around here, your imperial majesty, we have just been attacked by a goblinoid army.” It was a good guess that the emperor had come about the letter she had just sent.

“And the bodies?” the emperor inquired dubiously.

“We've just been to burn the bodies: necromancery is active around here too,” she gave her ready-made reply.

“Alright,” sighed the emperor and Borowicka tried to visibly let out the breath she was holding. “keep up the good work.”