Yyanu’s Saga

Part I Killing Mood

On her first day after escaping the desert and finding water Yyanu came across the kind and gentle Sekhmet who, though she was branded and chained like a slave was generous to Yyanu. She laughs to remember how only minutes into their meeting a horde of raiders descended upon them both and though strangers they fought side by side to protect Sekhmet's masters property. When Yyanu looked at Sek's lovely face and perfectly sweet body blemished only by marks of her servitude her blood boiled with rage toward Bran as she learned he was called. Although her geas demanded she only seek the Dark Sigil her heart was haunted by thoughts of Sek and she lingered in the "Bay" hoping to find a way to free the girl. These feelings would be her undoing.

To survive she began to haunt a large sprawling Darfari encampment, raiding their supplies at night, killing their patrols when she could take them by surprise. Eventually she was able to craft a tiny homestead on a ledge overlooking their grounds. To make them fear her she behaved as savagely as possible. Over time she began killing when ever the mood took her and what was left of her humanity began to leak out of her much as the blood leaked out of the Darfari she killed on the hot sands.

From time to time she encountered her nemesis, the slave keeper of Sekhmet and tyrant of the Bay. She set up a small camp above his main house both to observe his projects and in hopes of catching site of Sekhmet again. Disappointingly the fair one never re-appeared but Bran the brute on the other hand was always about. More than once her bloodlust got the better of her and she almost engaged him in a duel, but he brandished devilish weapons that could kill a Darfari warrior that Yyanu might struggle to vanquish in a single blow. She suspected his strange head gear and garb would also protect him from her crude weapons. If only she had not lost Sekhmet's gift a beautifully crafted broadsword upon the Tower of the Bat. That was a bitter memory of defeat to be sure. In any event each time she felt consumed by fiery hate she would stalk up to Bran and taunt him only to waken to her folly at the last minute and slink away before the thug could crush her skull with his unholy hammer. Each time she backed down a little bit of her spirit was depleted.

After many days, hunger, thirst, bloodshed and the stress of resisting her quest to seek the Dark Sigil began to crack her mind open. She began wandering the highlands again, carrying a few supplies. Pursued by some rocknoses she blundered straight into another Darfari camp. Caught between two petty foes she was quickly outnumbered and captured. Whether the Darfari had heard of her predations upon their cousins in the Bay or whether their innate savagery is enough they used her so cruelly as to strip what was left of her sanity away even as the stripped her of her clothing. The men of the camp violated her obscenely while the women taunted and tormented her, all of it clearly leading up to her ultimate dismemberment and consumption at a feast for Yog. Like many before them, the Darfari under estimated her deep reserves of endurance and eventually they exhausted themselves with tormenting her and allowed themselves a moment of rest, satisfied that after what they had done to her she was subdued and as good as dead. In this moment she called upon the same soul of iron that sustained her upon the desert crucifix and willed herself to tear away her bonds and stand. Grabbing one of their own weapons she erupted from the sacrificial pit and lay about her like a hag from hell, not stopping until every last member of the camp lay in bloody ruin. Then trailing blood---hers and theirs---fled into a canyon to rest and heal... or wait for death.

And there, at her lowest point, crammed into a crevice in a rock barely alive, barely human she has the horrible misfortune to run into him again. Bran must have tracked her spoor into the cleft because he arrives like a blood hound or hyena and corners her. Once he has her in such extreme disadvantage he heaps contempt upon her. Just as Yyanu has learned all men who keep women as slaves are wont to do. Naked and unarmed she throws herself at him expecting to die but some how escapes out into the cliffs. This time she even surprises herself with her grit as she had expected to faint but finds she has the energy to lead him on a wild chase ending only when she throws herself into a ravine and then out of sheer obstinacy doesn't die but instead climbs a waterfall to escape.

After this harrowing escape her next adventures are almost comical in their pathos.

Yyanu makes one bad decision after another...

But avoids getting totally boned...

Steals a moment of rest and luxury on someone else's property.

Finally Yyanu returns home only to find her worst nightmare realized; the slaver Bran has found her house. For a time she contemplates going out in a desperate duel but her adventures have taken their toll on her. She tries to maintain her dignity, but he shows no mercy, no compassion. Even after she admits defeat and agrees to his dominion over the Bay he will not leave her until she acts as though his feelings matter. Exactly like every man ever, the notion that a woman has her own pride and autonomy is offensive to him. She must perform for him until his own hurt ego is soothed. If doesn't he'll resort to violence just like they all do.

"You is broken thing"

After he leaves, just to prove his point he casually slaughters the entire Darfari encampment while she watches impassively. When he finally returns to his home she wanders through the carnage. Numb and truly dead inside she come upon a dancer and a tanner who died together as they probably lived.(edited)

Yyanu tries to tell herself that she did the right thing, making peace. That it is a woman's role to comfort the violent men around her to reduce the bloodshed. She tries to convince herself it was worth it to keep her home, her freedom. Freedom? She laughs without humor. No. There is no freedom here anymore. She realizes by giving in she's more of a slave in her mind now than darling Sekhmet. There is no home here anymore. In final despair she gathers her pathetic treasures from her and starts to leave. But something calls her... something pulls her toward the ancient ruin beyond the camp. Stepping inside she encounters a warrior probably still hiding in this haunted place fearing Bran's rampage. Yyanu bears her no malice but the warrior attacks out of fear and Yyanu slays her there upon the antediluvian stones. And then something astonishing happens. Great mechanisms grind and the floor lifts up revealing stairs. Yyanu, almost in a trance descends.(edited)

The pull or call turns into a voice, a loving powerful and inhuman female voice that draws her away from the hateful world above. As she descends the attraction grows. She feels all her anger and shame melt away from her as she approaches her destiny.

As she gets closer, the feelings of love and attraction too also fall away as her last shred of humanity is consumed. She surrenders to the utter indifferent power of the elder beings and becomes perfectly at peace. Finally she reaches the end of her journey. Laying eyes upon the being that summoned her she sees only beauty and joy, even as the acid melts the flesh from her bones in searing agony, even as her bones themselves dissolve into the void... Yyanu feels peace. At last.

Part II The Dark Sigil

CW: nudity, swear words, and not learning from your mistakes!

Yyanu could not forget her quest. Nightly it tormented her: “Find the Dark Sigil.” “Seek the Dark Sigil.” “Possess the Dark Sigil and all will be revealed”.  Obviously this Dark Sigil was an artifact of great power, a mythic or cursed talisman of power. Yyanu knew it was her destiny to take it for herself.

Seeking clues in Shapnur she met with cagey and suspicious answers. Strangers, at first friendly, would turn hostile when she asked too much about the Dark Sigil. One bold man complimented her at first “I like a woman who can look after herself”, but then turned very hostile when she asked about the Dark Sigil. “I’m not going to let you assassinate my friends!” Yyanu rolled her eyes. Who said anything about assassinating anyone even?  She dove into the river to escape him.  “Stop!!” he yells at her as she swims away. Yes when a man starts ordering you to stop when you walk away it is always a good sign you made the right choice ending your conversation with him.

While the Dark Sigil still haunts her dreams Yyanu despair of finding it but dedicates her days to learning everything she can about thievery. She travels north and west to seek out teachers and she plums the archives to learn about locks, and sneakiness, and general trickery. She builds devices and traps and locks at home and practices disarming them. She grows proficient at these skills but still grows no closer to learning the location of the Dark Sigil.

Until one day, passing through the Shapnur market the Dark Sigil all but introduces itself to her:

Obviously this was a trap but Yyanu could not ignore her destiny. Tearing the note away she set off down river until her quarry revealed itself.

A spectacular pyramid looms out of the jungle. Such an ominous and grand edifice could only contain the powerful Dark Sigil.

Despite devoting the past months of her life exclusively to training for this task, Yyanu was (is) a naive and inexperienced thief. At first she bungles two attempts to even get past the threshold.

On the second attempt she recruits the even more inexperienced @Adele and stumbles into a rather large gathering in front of the pyramid: a mysterious shemite merchant (you know who you are) apparently at odds with the current regime grumbles about trade restrictions; a totally hot battle maiden sporting a deadly looking axe ((@Makeda)); and some red-headed riff raff.

Yyanu beats a hasty retreat and tries to comfort herself by ransacking some poor homesteaders ((Sorry @Varinia)).

After a night to meditate on her mistakes, Yyanu decides to reconnoitre. It turns out that there is a tavern of all things near the main gates of the pyramid. While contemplating the lack of sewrvice the unexpected happens. The great front gate swings open as someone hastily departs and it stays open! Now an experienced thief would tell you not to dive heedlessly into a fortified building without a plan for getting out. But luckily (for the sake of this story) Yyanu is not an experienced thief.

Once inside she is overwhelmed by the opulence of this place. Many doors are locked but the one thing her months of practice has prepared her for is locks. A few deft turns and the riches of this place will be hers… As she climbs up levels inside the pyramid she can only assume she is getting closer to the great treasure, the Dark Sigil itself. Before she can get too far she opens a door to be greeted by 300kg of terrifying white tiger! It lunges for her and tears open a great gash on her leg before she is able to retreat. Crouching in a corner she trembles and hides until the beast tires of hunting her. She bandages her legs and decides it might be time to terminate this recon mission and go look up “how to defeat a tiger” at the Shapnur public library.

This is where it’s time for the reader to recall the bit of foreshadowing about experienced thieves not diving heedlessly into a fortified building.  Yyanu is about to become significantly more “experienced”. She gets back to the great gate that welcomed her so graciously an hour ago and finds it shut. There is no lock or mechanism that she can attack with her devious tools. She pounds the wall in frustration and now must begin a methodical tour of the premises seeking egress.

It is in the midst of her quest for egress that she has the terrible misfortune of once again meeting up with the unbelievably hot battle maiden from the other day (@makeda). Soiler alert: the unbelieveably hot battle maiden from the other day wasn’t merely a passer-by; she’s the loyal and (totally hot) body-guard of the incredibly evil bitch queen who rules this place!  After a fraught and definitely sexy bit of banter with the extremely hot battle maiden, Yyanu surrenders and ends up a prisoner of the evil witch queen.

Some debased man servant ((@shah)) does everything the monstrous queen asks (short of raping poor Yyanu) and leaves her naked and exposed and at the depraved witch queen’s mercy.

[spoiler nsfw]

Before the venomous queen has finished with her, who should enter the picture and join the fun but the unbelievably hot battle maiden.  If Yyanu thought the pain was too much before, the added humiliation of being abused in front of the UHBM is enough to break her. Soon she’s sobbing and moaning and promising to do anything the hateful queen asks…

[Spoiler: nsfw]

At long last, the tyrannical queen becomes bored or tired and permits @Makeda (Oh joy the unbelievably hot battle maiden has a name!!) to place Yyanu in a cage to recuperate. Yyanu thinks she’s won the lottery since no one has noticed her spare lock pick hidden… (in a very very secret place).  But no, the despotic queen thinks of the fucking hilarious idea of leaving the cage unlocked while putting that savage tiger that tore Yyanu a new one only hours ago into the room with her. It’s named “Soft Paws”; omg we’re literally dying here.

Yyanu fumes and glares pure hate at the unbelievably hot Makeda:

[picture: gratuitous picture of the totally hot battle maiden]

When everyone finally leaves her in peace Yyanu cries herself to sleep on the cold floor of the cage.

[picture: crying herself to sleep]

Strangely the sound of purring is not all comforting.  After an hour she’s had enough. She takes back any humble and contrite protests she made under duress. She decides not to trust the vile queen’s promise of “merciful release” in the morning. Taking matters into her own hands she invites Soft Paws to play a game of cat and mouse with her and then springs her trap.

[picture: cages and cat]

More than a little pleased with herself Yyanu dances over the furniture pretending the floor is lava; and pretending the lava is infested with thief-eating tigers because it is.

[picture: lava]

Not trusting the tiger to stay put she can’t sleep on the floor anymore but resigns herself to crouching on a cabinet until daylight.

[picture: cabinet crouching]

Epilogue:

By morning light Yyanu is able to retrieve her last lock pick from (a very awkward hiding place) and has the run of the place again. It would be fun to say that she had the wisdom to focus on getting out immediately but it would also be false. Instead, seduced by prospects of riches she can’t stop herself from picking open one more tantalizing chests. She is only just easing the lid back down when the insidious queen arrives. I’ll spare you the witty banter Yyanu came up with because you’d only roll your eyes in probably the exact way the perverse queen did before resignedly leading Yyanu safely out of the labyrinth to freedom.  Finally outside the locked gate Yyanu can’t quite tear herself away. The magnanimous queen offers her a treasure unasked for and presents Yyanu with legendary weapons admonishing her to be good and behave herself in the future. Yyanu taxes her tremendous intellect to come up with a stinging and witty retort ... but gives up and slinks into the jungle with her gifts. “Ha ha suckers!” she thinks to herself examining the treasure, ”I win!”

It’s not till many nights later, back home in her desert hiding spot, still marvelling at the precious booty she “took” off the dottering queen does she realize she never stole the Dark Sigil and still has no idea what it is.

“Oh fuck!”

Part III Love, Death and Rum.

This is the story about how a thief got caught a second time but in a completely different fashion, how she made peace with the evil bitch queen from episode two, and finally discovered that rum could help her make even more better bad decisions.

It all started with the Ravens. Well it actually started with what happened before, being tortured, (not badly), and humiliated (horrendously) by the powers of the Dark Sigil. With wounded pride and aching body parts Yyanu slunk back into town vowing to get her revenge. If the locals thought she had some ill intentions toward the Dark Sigil before… well now they had something to talk about. But, as foolish as Yyanu can be, she’s not stupid. No wait, hear me out. Come on. It gets better I promise. She’s not stupid and she had a little taste of what she was up against and she wasn’t going to throw her life away on a stupid attempt. She needed an angle.  And that’s where the Ravens come in. (See how we foreshadowed that? It’s called writing. Take notes.)

Rumours of war were everywhere. Once couldn’t be half sentient, (and Yyanu is like pretty  sentient), without hearing that the Ravens were at War with… I don’t know it seemed like ... everyone. “Everyone” in this case included the Dark Sigil and that is all Yyanu needed to hear. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Just this friend doesn’t know me or care. Yet. Turns out the Raven's have a super scary magical Queen named @Cordelia. Yyanu’s at least half-sentient plan is this:

1. Go meet this Queen Cordelia,
2. join the war effort…  
3. …
4. …
5. … gloat while the evil Queen of the Desert bleeds out in the sand.

Brilliant!

Musical montage of Yyanu trying to find the Ravens. At one point she stumbled into the Crimson Lotus. Wouldn’t it suck if the Raven’s didn’t win this?  Yyanu decides she should try to help out however she can.

And decides maybe to stay out of macro-politics.

[Picture of getting recked by that thrall]

So here’s where this lovely story arc get derailed worse than an eight season epic… some meddling teenagers AKA the Messengers get mobilized and do an awful lot of cowardly diplomacy and shit and somehow end the war… or at least the only part of the war Yyanu cared about.  On the very night she finally finds the Ravens’ rainy castle, who does she run into? The hateful Queen of the South and her unfairly hot swordswomen Makeda. Apparently they are returning from some debauched peace and love orgy with the Queen of the North.

The next morning however she’s in better spirits. The rain, finally, has stopped and the Raven’s town and Palace look positively inviting. Actually they don’t look inviting at all; but Yyanu invites herself in anyway.

Creeping around she tries out some new tools but these rusty northern locks are treacherous and one snaps loudly. She hears some locals have taken note of her and she scrambles to retreat.

Diving and tumbling off the castle walls she makes it to the valley but she can’t go home in case they’re on her tail. So she runs into a busy workshop in a neighbouring chateau.  (Thank you @Jin).

(OMG what a good hiding spot this was… if only someone had tried harder to find her).

After inadvertently putting in almost an hour of honest work (oh hell no!)  Yyanu finally decides to go home. But why go home when you could go right back to where you almost got caught? (I know, I know, I said she’s not stupid… I meant not stupid ALL the time.) This time she might have got away… she was prepared for all kinds of things but not this:

[naked Sigryn on the wall]

[chit chat inside]

After being lured inside, and chatting with the sweet elf for the entire night Yyanu takes her leave but not before giving the magical angel the tiniest kiss on the cheek …  and what sorcery is this. It tastes as if she has just licked a honey-comb. She stares in surprise and Sigryn turns bright red.

A mystery!!

So,  rage has turned into something else.  Weird missions and quests and revenge plots are starting to give way to a new motivation in Yyanu’s uncomplicated mind.  But the feeling of unfinished business leads her inevitably back to the Dark Sigil. Maybe this is simply a matter of  confronting the Queen. Live or die, let this be settled. Yyanu  turns south intending to find Queen Bastet and end this battle in her soul, one way or another.

But even this simple plan is foiled. In Shapnur and overhears a disturbing rumour.

[The queen is dead?]

No one will explain but with a sinking heart Yyanu turns and begins rushing downriver. In almost a panic.  Why? Shouldn’t she be thrilled to dance on the grave of the vile monarch?

[Night shot approaching DS]

[B&E attempt. Ghostly voice. Haunting.]

Indeed, the Queen is dead. “Go away thief!” says the dead queen disembodied and invisible, like  a helpless whisper on the wind. Yyanu ignores the order, but stops trying to break in. She settles down in front of the pyramid, “I don’t want any of your shitty stuff anyways!” she shouts into the night breeze. She is suddenly filled with an inexplicable sadness.

Against all reason, Yyanu cannot help but feel responsible for what has happened to her tormentor, and revenge tastes like sand in her mouth. She spits it out. Discarding that feeling, something new grows. A deep respect for the imperial Settite rises in her. She offers the Queen her friendship but refuses to join her domain. She even offers secret fealty, which the Queen pretends to reject.  But Yyanu leaves the Dark Sigil, successful at last carrying the treasure with her inside her heart.

That looks like the end of a chapter but it isn’t. Cause remember the rum part?

Still stunned by the strange twists of fate, and feeling more free and directionless than she ever has since entering exile Yyanu finds her way into a quaint little Tavern operated by the most earnest innkeeper (@renato) she’s ever met. As soon as she steps inside her face begins to turn red, her heart rate increases and she begins to tremble. She hasn’t even tried the spiced rum either! No, the tantalizing little sprite from Raven’s castle is here, in the naked flesh!

Have you ever had one of those classic experiences… where you meet a naked dwarf at an open air tavern. Half drunk on black cove rum…  And the inn keep let you and her go up to the roof, and you are totally hot for her but you can’t stop listening the sweet thing she says.  And then the sun comes up and you realize you’ve spent the whole night listening to her voice and staring into her eyes and admiring the honey golden light reflected off of her supernaturally beautiful skin… and then as the sun rises you hear the voices of a moralizing Messengers (@Orizaba) and her psychopathic beloved (@Morgana) and so you jump off the roof and swim across a river full of crocodiles trying to get the vision from heaven out of your fever stricken head?  

Yeah? Okay well then I’ll skip this part because it will be old news to you.

But then you also probably know that feeling when you meet her again and since you’ve been planning this next meeting for days (and sleepless nights) you know exactly what to say and you’re going to be really  suave and you will definitely be bringing this honey snack back to your little bedroom in the Messengers Antistar for a little snap crackle pop if you know what I mean (eh?? Wink wink, nudge nudge say no more)...

… But once again one look into her eyes and words fail, you end up sobbing uncontrollably, resting your stupid head on her tiny little lap and completely forgetting everything you were going to say and just letting the sound of her voice fill you with wonder, and hope?

Well of course you have.  I don’ t even know what I’m doing here.

Except still hoping…