(Thanks to Necron-Lord at sb.com for helping me with editing)







Tolish, third of Coreth had a rough life which got rougher. Born into a lumber camp in Galthirith, his life had involved long days of felling and planting trees, hacking off branches, gathering resin, doing the odd bit of repair work and chores in and around the stables, cramped, cold barracks and far flung work cabins of the estate. Like most of his fellows he went about his duties quietly and with enough diligence so that the overseers rarely bothered with him for forty years of work. Then one day a badly aimed axe took off his right hand. The wound was burned and tarred and the man who'd made the blow was whipped to an inch of his life for his blunder. For the next nine months he'd tried to adjust as best he could and continue on but eventually he was replaced. His masters sold him off to one of the big chattel dealers in the city who put him in a caged pen in a warehouse with a couple dozen other cripples. They were rented out to do a few odd jobs and were given a couple of bowls of slop to keep them going in the short term. Over a month in the pen twelve more came into into the pen, nine of it's residents were sold and five were taken out to the blade drop machine and were no more. Unmovable inventory was a waste of food.









He was spared from that fate by the Navy, who'd bought him up with the entire lot of cripples for the fleet. He had been told that he'd learn the job of sailing as they went, even if there were few people to teach him. Not that he had much time to learn as in the first battle his sloop had been blown to pieces . He'd known enough basic swimming to keep himself afloat and avoid drowning long enough for him to be scooped out, even if some of the Drow grumbled about salvaging him. He'd lost a finger and an eye, maimed his left foot and suffered some other minor injuries escaping the blast. Never the less the ship's healers gave him enough treatment to pull through. He'd heard a bit about how they'd been fighting "Infrastructures", whatever they were, but it was not his place to pry in to such things.





After that, Tolish was dropped off in Valnothron's main naval base and since he'd done a bit of basic woodworking he was assigned to the repair crews. He came to the opinion that this was a better job than hauling logs through the frozen forest in the dead of winter, or it would have been had he been if he'd been all in once piece. Less because the simple tasks he had been assigned were hard and more for the fact that he'd only been put there because the navy had been pressing a lot of their yard carpenters into shipboard service and needed to fill the gaps with someone. His overseer Bariath was not happy with this: his well drilled skilled team had been gutted and replaced with half trained apprentices, untrained workers who'd never touched a saw and worst of all "Excuses". Those that were still learning he could cultivate, those that were outright incapable at carpentry he could comfortably delegate simple tasks such as lifting and holding while he had them shown how to do basic things properly. Excuses however were those older slaves which had served as handymen making the odd chair out of old boxes or fixing doors every now and again in an easy "a few nails and she'd be right" sort of way which the clerks thought were acceptable substitutes for real carpenters in a pinch but as far as Bariath was concerned only had a collection of presumptions and bad habits that made mere ignorance look like actual skill. The fact that he was a crippled Excuse earned Tolish the lion's share of Bariath's frustrations for a year and no shortage of cane strokes.





Then about two and a half months ago he and a few other yard workers were taken away from the yard and put into a holding pen in the port in a gradually growing crowd of his fellows. The day after that they loaded onto a steamship with a bunch of crates with the Valcas logo. He spent six weeks below deck in that hold ship's hold which was at first cold, then hot and always damp. He'd noticed they were in a small fleet when they were let above deck for exercise and the priests assigned to them ran sermons on their new lives in a new lands. The crew were always a bit wary. How they would face new challenges, from wild men to the wicked men cursed with the six sided mark who desired their corruption and remember to keep the faith. The voyage also ended unexpectedly at sea at night. The ships dropped anchor with land a distant line on the horizon and readied launches. At dawn he and the remaining slave passengers were instructed up to the decks and shortly afterwards a purple triangle went into the air from the shore in the lingering twilight. Then the captain came up on deck, pulled out a piece of parchment and read it's contents.







"Listen Now and Take Heed! For I speak the words of her excellency Lady Talnara of House Valcas. Remember this mission as you go forth, subdue this land in honor of your Mistress, multiply and thrive, heed the Priests and their wisdom, the scribes and their knowledge, the adepts and their skill, the Jannssaries and their bravery, work with the wild mercenaries and their kin and count them as being your half brothers, beware those corrupted by Infrastructure and above all else Keep the Faith. Take these lessons to heart. Do you understand?"





"Yes." The gathered slaves said in chorus.





"Very well." He extracted a piece of parchment and signed it. "Then by the word of Lady Valcas and before these witnesses on the sixteenth day of the third month of the year 4246 of the Age of Ascension the Breaking of Bonds is made*." Several of his officers signed the document as well. "She renounces legal claim to you as her chattel. One day the world shall be under the yoke of it's Rightful Masters, but for now your fate is your concern."





And with that, the newly freed slaves were sent onto the launches and made their way to the shore. Enough fishermen were on board to make the trip to the landing site without any accidents. They set up a camp and began to wall it off with logs. Over the next two days the ship was unloaded, concluding with a bag of red rocks being sent to the ship in exchange for a single link coin and a piece of paper which were shown off. Tolish did not see the point of that, so he focused on work. He soon set up a lean-to of his own and focused on his work. He may have been just an Excuse for a carpenter here, but his workmanship was good enough for most people and to got his measure of biscuits, bread, dried vegetables, fish, salt meat and grog from the stores even if the land was dreadfully hot and he came to spend the noon day in his little lean-to. He also earned the interest of Unmis, a short thin woman who'd been a scullery maid before her right foot was crushed, leaving her with an unsightly limp. Her and now she did work in the fields. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt that his lot had actually improved.







Not that everything was perfect. It was hot and even for a slave his shelter was crude and bare. There were wild men out there, some of which ran of the backs of giant chickens (he would not have believed if he had not seen and eaten a few of them) which had been causing problems and had killed a few people. Fortunately their little town of ex-drow slaves had some protectors. There were about sixty former-janissaries armed with rifles who guarded their little town from attack who took their job seriously. They had the respect of most of the freed slaves. The same was not true about the foreign mercenaries hired by House Valcas to bolster the guard. They kept to themselves in their own small section of the camp when off duty, most of them barely spoke anything in the proper tongue and they had impropriety woven into the fiber of their being. This ranged from mockery of the rituals of deference to a instances of them being disgracefully and dangerous drunk. They were useful in a fight and he saw the wisdom of keeping the around for defense but they were still feral and wild.





Not that he wanted to pick a fight with them or anything, even if he had not been told not to do that as long as they did their job he had no delusions on how a confrontation between a cripple. Even so, he had a tendency to glare at them from time to time when he heard of some bad news relating to them. Generally when their attention was elsewhere, but still he knew he added to their discomfort by just that bit. But even with these untamed men that they had to work with, a heavy load of things needed to be done and aside from the threat of attack by savage chicken riders he was actually looking forward to the future in this new land.







*While rarely utilized for obvious reasons, the protocols of Renouncement and Release from slavery exists in Dark Elvish legal code, being penned by the First Dark Emperor herself. Primarily to allow for the ransoming of hostages.





Next: Infrastructure: Part Two Hundred and Eighty Two