PATRIARCH FOWL
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Chapter 169 - Intelligence
🕑 Added 2023-08-21 18:54:27 +0000 UTCSo, I would love today to take a moment for a very unusual Patreon shout to my dear friend and author Hanne. It'd be great if you could check out her novel Horizon of War. She's helped me a lot lately dealing with some shit on the side and it feels like she deserves the biggest shout!
As for the synopsis, this is a piece of the review she got from Razzmatazz, another well-known author!
Horizon of War: The Realistic Isekai Chronicles, written by author Hanne, is a deeply grounded fantasy story starring Lansius, a main character who sports no amazing magical powers, no rare talents, perks, skills, or other gifts. He’s just a normal guy who was reborn in another world, with only his most basic modern skills, such as school level math, hygiene, and general knowledge, to give him a way out of poverty and to thrive. The author never strays from this premise and explains all of the happenings and Lansius’ advantages by sharing real historical facts and stories in the author’s notes to give context.
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Next chapter comes out Monday, August 21th!
LAST CHAPTER UNTIL WE ARE BACK FULL-TIME NO JOEY! TODAY IS ABOUT SPOOKY VIBES!👻👻👻
1/7 chapters this week!
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Chapter 169 - Intelligence
"Would you agree that a [Guard]'s class is only as useful as their specialties, Lucillus?" [Captain] Drusillus asked the young man.
Lucillus, who had been given time to pull himself back together after the torture, nodded as he walked alongside the [Captain] atop the walls of Amorium.
"It is a rather derelict concept, sadly."
This was the chattiest Lucillus had ever seen the [Captain] in his entire career. It was probably a consequence of being inducted into the inner circle of the Watch. While Lucillus had always known that the Watch supplied many services to the country and, therefore, needed much specialization in its higher tiers, this was the first time he had actually witnessed a glimpse of the scope the Watch operated on.
"The [Guards] defend the walls," [Captain] Drusillus said, "because the [Guards] live inside the city and die together with it. They are the last bastion between the enemies and the civilians. Without [Guards], a city cannot function."
They both walked by several stations and stopped in front of one of the bigger towers the Watch had built upon the walls. [Captain] Drusillus turned to Lucillus and gave him a curious gaze.
"Do you know the difference between the Royal Guards and the normal Guards?"
"The Royal Guard's scope is the entire Kingdom of Lucerna," Lucillus replied promptly.
"Yes, it is," [Captain] Drusillus inhaled. "And it's a mighty job. In the same way that taking care of petty criminals is not our only job, placing spines under the rear-end of [Soldiers] and lazy Watches is not the Royal Guard's sole job either."
"[Captain], sir?" Lucillus spoke in a confused tone.
"There are many ways to protect our people. Petty theft in the Pratus is a drop in a bucket. Prevention, recon, studying the tax filings of [Merchants]… Many things. Come, let me show you something."
[Captain] Drusillus crossed the door and showed Lucillus inside the highly fortified tower.
The pair entered the tower, whose interior contrasted starkly with the cold harshness of the exterior walls. On the inside, it was meticulously organized and softly lit, a haven of tranquility. Tapestries were draped over the walls, depicting what Lucillus recognized as several stages of Amorium’s development back when the city was still just a marble quarry.
To one side, a staircase hugged the wall upwards, leading to the next floor. The two stepped into an antechamber that sported twelve[Guards] covered in either heavy armor, robes, or the leather garments typical of [Rogues]. Lucillus could feel his skin tingle from all the magic in the room.
Everyone saluted the [Captain] without saying a word but didn’t spare a single glance for Lucillus.
“What’s this, [Captain]?” Lucillus looked around, stunned. He had always thought this tower was, like many others, a garrison that doubled as storage. But this…
“This is our intelligence quarters, Lucillus,” [Captain] Drusillus said with a neutral expression. “Come.”
…
The first room they entered was a sizeable chamber filled with large wooden tables, each covered with meticulously organized pieces of parchment and quill pens. The walls were lined with tall, slender bookcases crammed with ancient volumes. At each table, one or two people were scribbling something from one piece of paper to the other. At most tables, some pens actually moved on their own, powered by some [Scribe]-specific skill.
“Here, the daily reports are analyzed by our best [Scribes] and [Clerks],” [Captain] Drusillus explained. “You’ll work alongside some of them yourself. They try and spot unusual patterns—some have high-level classes that allow us to track down trouble before it even gets reported. Three people from the same neighborhood complain to the [Guards] about stomach pain? There might be a disease that should be kept under control. Theft appears all over the city but always in a specific type of household? The industrious reports I request from my [Guards] make it possible to know as much as the general level and class of the perpetrators.”
The faint, rhythmic scratching of quill on parchment filled the air as the diligent Elves hunched over their work, their faces etched with concentration under the gentle glow of opalescent [Light] spells serving as light sources.
Lucillus looked around, astonished.
“It’s incredible,” he murmured, finally realizing why [Captain] Drusillus was such a stickler for long reports. This was the reason Antoninus had gotten so many night watches for his bad reports. The work they had been doing actually mattered!
They walked through another door on the first floor, and Lucillus found himself in a smaller room choke-full of maps. Huge maps of Amorium and Lucerna adorned the walls, where each pinpoint, line, and circle described something.
“[Cartographers],” the [Captain] explained briefly. “Ligatum,” he addressed one of the [Guards] who looked up, stared briefly at Lucillus, and nodded. He went behind a massive bookcase and came back with a thin stack of papers.
“Those are reports of disappearances—your first job,” [Captain] Drusillus said, unceremoniously dropping the stack into Lucillus’s hands. “Come with me. We are going to the next floor.”
…
Lucillus entered a half-decorated room that was still mostly bare and completely empty.
“We are building a new unit,” the [Captain] said. “So far, two [Guard] patrols have disappeared just outside the walls. We have a separate quarter that manages the patrol turns on the other side of the city, but they couldn’t find anything. The same goes for the [Scribes] here. However…”
[Captain] Drusillus took out a massive tome whose pages were made of leather and the cover of scaled…
“Is that Dragon leather?” Lucillus’s eyes went wide. Dragons had very strong opinions about artifacts made from their own body parts. So strong that entire cities had been attacked and razed to the ground over them.
“You have already taken your [Vow], Lucillus,” the [Captain] said nonchalantly. “And on the black market, there are many more of these than you might imagine.”
“Amorium’s black market?” Lucillus frowned. He wasn’t even aware that they had a black market in the city.
“We run half of it,” [Captain] Drusillus said off-handedly.
Lucillus waited for the end of the joke, but it appeared the man in front of him was dead serious.
“So… what am I doing here?” Lucillus asked.
He had been abducted and tortured until they had made sure his loyalty rested with the Elves and, specifically, Amorium’s Watch. After that, they simply congratulated him on passing the test and made him swear a series of [Vows] that had almost rotted his brain from how complicated they were. It was a complex series of chained [Vows] that would protect both the secrets and Lucillus – or at least that’s what the [Captain] had sworn under a superior truth-stone.
That’s why the man before him trusted him with such off-handed remarks about the black market.
“You’ll have to deal with black market items on a daily basis,” the [Captain] explained, almost answering Lucillus’s mental questions. “All that you saw today will be necessary to your work. [Scribes], [Accountants], [Clerks], and [Cartographers]. We have many [Guards] with specialized classes in all these roles. However, I recently found out that one can never be prepared enough. I consulted with the Royal Guard on this matter and was advised to build a unit I had not thought of.”
“Because I’m a [Historian]?” Lucillus frowned.
“Yes,” the [Captain] nodded curtly. “[Historians], [Linguists], [Scholars]. You are the only [Guard] in Amorium that fits one of those three classes. In turn, you will temporarily cover all three roles.”
“[Captain], sorry, sir, what do you mean?”
“Take a seat,” [Captain] Drusillus continued in his uncharacteristic manners.
Both sat by the table with the giant leather tome resting between them.
“How much do you know about Epretosian history, Lucillus?”
“I know quite a bit,” the [Guard] replied with a hint of pride.
“Who was here before us?” The [Captain] asked.
“Humans,” Lucillus frowned.
“And before Humans?”
Lucillus was stumped.
Humans had been the main inhabitants of Epretos for a good millennium, perhaps even more. He wasn’t sure he had ever read something that pre-dated the Human presence on Epretos.
“Sir, I… I don’t know.”
“Dragons,” [Captain] Drusillus stated matter-of-factly.
“I know that the Capital is supposed to be a Draconic Stronghold, sir, but…”
“Dragons, [Guard],” [Captain] Drusillus cut him off. “I don’t know why, but Dragons inhabited the continent before Humans and then suddenly left.”
Lucillus felt all his class senses tingling.
“Do we know why they left, sir? Was it the Humans?”
[Captain] Drusillus shrugged.
“This,” he pointed at the text, “is a historia of the Human kingdoms that came to Epretos. It was compiled roughly three-hundred years after they had come. As such, it lacks all the interactions with our people since we came two hundred years after the book was written.”
Lucillus regarded the tome with an impressed look. He had tried shopping for history books, and many of them were dated roughly to the arrival of the Elves on Epretos, but those that talked about Human history before the Elves were extremely sketchy. It was hard for the Elves to get their hands on reliable information on their sworn enemies… at least through conventional ways.
“The book focuses on one aspect in particular: the dangers that Humans faced when they first came here. Many old Dungeons, as you know, have been sealed, and many natural catastrophes have been reined in by [Archmages] before our time.”
“Sir, are you saying that…” Lucillus frowned and looked at the papers he had received. “The patrols that have disappeared, sir?”
“You’ll find reports on that soon. I have reasons to believe that the Humans are not behind this.”
“Who is it, then?” Lucillus asked.
“The land,” [Captain] Drusillus spoke ominously. “Something is happening to the land. It’s your job to learn more about it and pass it on to the other units.”
Lucillus felt a shiver run down his back and peered at the title of the book written in the ancient language of the Dragons.
Historiae Obscurae.
Comments
Loving this story so much, huge fan of the original, the new version is incredible, gotta read something between releases, Horizon of War actually sounds pretty cool, can't wait
Thomas Keller
Ooo I like this, I like this a lot. A Legends and Myths Unit designed to figure out the more esoteric and exotic scenarios of what goes on under the idea that history *rhymes* more often than not, and half an idea of what a thing might be is better than no idea at all.
