Celina
Jaffar nods, his face solemn, as he begins to share some of the lore of his clan, heir history in brief, that which he has known, told in the tales of his elders and his mother, the clan shaman. Still, the Hivasa had long used the valley in the southern reaches of the canyons as a shelter and farming ground, a place to rest, grow crops and grow strong again before returning to the desert, to raid the caravans and make war on the city dwellers and rival clans.
Still, they were a proud people, if small in number, mounted on camels, sturdy and much more enduring of the harshness of the sands, as their sheep and goats grazed. Still, as they made camp, habving taken a rich prize of wine and silver, silks and dyes just hours before, they had been somewhat lax, even as the sky darkerned, and strange shapes could be seen from the corners of their eyes, man-like, but somehow strange and half beast, clad only in a girdle around the waist, and armed with crude axes. Still, as the alarm was sounded, they had surrounded the camp, located in a cleft between three great rocks emerging from the sand.
Rushing forward, and howling like beasts, several had been felled in the flight of arrows, before they were on the men, axes falling and blood spilling onto the ground, shouting and gibbering as they fought, exaulting in all spilled blood, their foes and their own, caring only that it was spilled. Kullash, the champion and chieftian of the clan, was in combat with a creature drawn from hell! Taller by half again as a mortal man, the creature was clad only in the dried, blackened blood of it's victims, and a belt of their skulls and head, several still slick with gore, as a pair of axes, each swung with the strength to decapiate a camel, and thrince in fact they did so, fell on him, a storm of bloody iron, even as he dodged each one, striking back with his spear, inflicting wounds into his foe.
Still, the third blow lopped off the head of the camel of Kullash, spilling him to the ground, as bleeding, his dark and monsterous foe stood over him, screaming a devotion to his dark master, Khorne. It was thus that my father died, his head taken, added to the creatures belt, as the savages of the Red Sands surged towards the tents, where the children and the woman had been waiting....
He pauses, alll three maiking a sign against evil, shivering and shaking, fear and hate on their faces, as they remember....
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Ceana
Nodding something close too, but not quite approval, he stands, and begins to walk out the door, his men moving with him.
The morning air is crisp and cool, the high peaks just having the sun touch them, painting them and the lands blelow in light and shadow.