This will be a short post, as I am weary. I have just returned from a long weekend spent in a hotel near the Dallas/Fort Worth airport where I joined 500 or so like-minded individuals playing games. The North Texas RPG Con was my first gaming convention. I’m minded to return next year. I had fun. I ran into some old friends from various states, made some new friends, shared stories, and played games. I even managed to sell a book or two. (A reminder: you too could purchase a book or two, should you be in the mood for two-fisted fabulism.)
Now, on to the next entry in Magnus Stoneslayer’s diary. (See, I told you it would be a short post.)
SAVAGE JOURNAL
ENTRY 46.
I’ve been recruited more than once during the course of my meandering career, dear diary. The reasons varied, but the result was always the same – me carrying arms under someone else’s direction. Not in itself necessarily a bad thing, yet it did tend to squeeze a temporary crimp in my freedom to rove.
Yaslina is raising a legion, which means recruiting. It is fascinating to observe the seduction – of both the innocent and the jaded – from the outside. My two former crewmen, ex-legionaries both, are valuable sirens, singing songs of camaraderie and adventure, not necessarily untrue, these songs, but not the saga in its entirety either. The local farmhands eat this up, as they almost always do. Spending one’s entire existence seeing nothing but the wrong end of a plow horse day after mind numbing day engenders a hazy dream of far lands and new sights in all but the dullest clodhopper.
The call of the drum can still evoke a response in even retired troopers, the years eroding the sharp edges of experience, leaving smooth, rosy hued memories of fast friendships, travel, carousal, pulse quickening danger (recalled as excitement), and life on a more elevated plane than the safe, humdrum now. Ancus performed wonders with these targets; Yaslina’s uncle was a respected war hero, one whose accolades were, by all evidence, actually deserved. He stoked the banked embers of bygone martial fire until it blazed once more in the hearts of some still fit to bear arms (and some who weren’t.)
Itinerant ne’er-do-wells at loose ends in the port of Tarpeius also provided a receptive audience. These men, it should not surprise you to learn, dear diary, I felt some affinity for. At just such times – low on coin, prospects, or luck – I was most wont to enroll my name on a company’s books. Such men often require little more than refresher training and provide a solid framework upon which to layer on the raw recruits.
Yaslina cornered me in Ancus’ study today, asking me to take legion matters in hand, both training and command. Her trepidation was poorly concealed; she was patently anxious lest she ask too much of me, push me away and back to my aimless peregrination. She need not have worried, dear diary – she’s long since recruited me.
Magnus Stoneslayer
2 comments