Throne of Steel

Chapter 04 - Life in the Citadel

Despite the Commander's constant travels, living in the Citadel took a lot of getting used to. The repulsive smell of wet cat fur, the reek of general filth, not to mention the toxic fumes coming from the factories. Trash littered any part of the streets not consciously sweeped by the gladia assigned to street upkeep. Not to mention the poverty, the pods people had for quarters were cramped enough but a lot of Charr lived in tents. And the Charr were just okay with all this. None seemed concerned, there was no-one heatedly discussing whether they should change something.

He had little to do while he waited for the foreman in the factory to prepare his customer lists for the Commander's purposes, so he decided to pass the time but getting to know his newest aspiring guild member a little better. When he knocked on the door to her quarters, he heard rumbling sounds, like a Charr falling onto the floor. When she opened the door, she seemed startled, even though she must have known he was standing there. The vertical pupils on her grotesquely large eyes were narrowed down to slits. "Oh…you…I mean Pact Commander?"

"People just call me the Commander usually. And what do I call you? Shortfuse? Rokka? Rox?"

She shook her head. "Rox is good enough."

The Commander stepped aside to make room in case she wanted to come outside. "All right then, Rox. I don't have much to do here for the time being and you do have the Cantina here. How about we visit it, have a seat and you tell me a little more about yourself?"

"Are you buying?"

"Sure."

The Cantina was a giant dining hall of sorts, so spacious it seemed like it was made larger than it had to be, just for the sake of being large. The largest sources of light were the unmanned grills. Wide cylindrical vents extended down to the grills from the ceiling, as did the chains holding the braziers. Even here, in a gastronomical environment that the Commander assumed one would want to make pleasant, the walls, chairs, tables were crudely forged from cheap metals, dirty and bent from heavy use. The droning sound of strained steel supports roared through the hall from time to time.

The Charr's eagerness to look tough was hard to miss, as they insisted on attaching spikes on everything from their own gloves and gauntlets, to the holders for candles on the tables to the back leans of chairs. On one side, a Charr was manning a counter with stores of alcoholic beverages lining the wall behind him. Which the Charr were taking advantage of more than usual, there were entire crowds of them, from all three legions quietly searching for solace at the bottom of bottles and mugs. There were even public beds right in the hall where some of the really bad cases slept off their inebriation.

"A human?" the Charr behind the counter asked. "Is that the Pact Commander?"

He nodded. "I see word of my presence has spread."

"Not just your presence. Congratulations on your victory over the Shining Blade."

The Commander was used to simple life within the taverns of small villages on the road, but the Citadel was the closest thing to a city in Ascalon and the Cantina its largest gastronomic business, so he wanted to see whether nowadays there was some luxury to be had. "Do you have a bottle of Eldwin Red, maybe two glasses too?"

The grim expression on the barkeeper's face said otherwise. "While you're at it, you want the kitchen sink too? They don't make that stuff anymore. The monastery, vineyards, the winemakers at Beetletun, all destroyed when the legions moved into Kryta."

The Commander pulled a small spare pouch and poured a handful of gold into it before tying it shut and then placed it on the counter. Even a few gold pieces were a fortune for commoners. One of the perks of coming from old money was that he could afford luxuries like this, even during bad times. "I hear 'expensive', I don't hear 'it's gone'." Of course, the payments issued by the Pact during their campaign in Orr helped enrich him as well.

The barkeeper shrugged. "All right, customer is king I guess. I'd ask for more but this one time I'll let it fly. Also, we don't do fancy Elonian glass for drinks here, only mugs. Wooden or steel."

"Two steel mugs then." In hindsight, it made sense. The Charr were all 'function over form', no room for distractions, comforts, or culture of any kind. Knowing what the Charr were like, it was surprising enough that they had bottles and not just barrels.

With what he thought of as an investment in a good start towards his future guild and the mugs, he sat down at one of the many empty tables. The chairs and tables were all arranged at awkward heights. The seats were almost at the same height as the tables, which made sitting upright feel like one was towering over the table. They were designed to match the Charr's hunched physique, one was meant to lean forward onto the table.

While Rox followed him and took a seat, he quietly popped the cork off and filled the mugs. When he was done, he took his mug and shuffled back into the chair to sit upright. "So. Rokka Shortfuse…Rox…I don't know anything about you other than your name and your - uh - streak of luck. Tell me about yourself."

"I…uh…", she stammered. "I'm not even sure where to start…I've been in all the legions, there's something…except Flame Legion I guess."

"I take it that isn't usual?"

"Oh no, no way. When a gladium pledges themselves to a legion, that's for life, usually at least."

The Commander was curious, but he figured this may have been a touchy subject. It was clear from what Goreblade had said, that the reason the legions passed her around was because of how catastrophically awful she was at everything they tried to teach her. Talking at length about her failures may not have been the right way to go, so he switched subjects. "When I offered for you to join my guil- my future guild you…"

She cut him off right there. "I already agreed."

The Commander froze and stared at her. "Yes, about that. You were very quick to agree. I'm not sure if you're really aware of what it means. We might spend a long time far away from here. We probably will. Do you have nothing keeping you here?"

She shook her head and flatly answered: "Nope."

"No friends? Nothing you would miss?"

She folded up her arms and leaned back in her chair. "Nope. I told you, nothing's keeping me here. I've been around the Citadel all my life. If a ticket elsewhere comes my way, I'll take it and run any day."

The Commander was in disbelief about her complete indifference about her life here. He shrugged in a questioning way and asked: "If there really is nothing to…what do you even do here all day? Aside from mine drills, do you have any hobbies?"

"Hobbies?"

"Anything you do to pass the time. Some activity or interest to occupy yourself with."

Her stance eased up, she leaned onto the table and drank from her mug. "I mean, others do, they pick up various trades to work on in their spare time. You know, in case the legion life doesn't pan out for some reason."

"And what about you, did you do the same?"

"I tried. One of my instructors took me to Canton Factorium and tried to get me an apprenticeship with one of the public workshops."

"I'm guessing it didn't go well."

She shook her head. "Nope. Tried to get me into carpentry, whenever I tried hammering dowels into the planks, I would break the dowels, except when we tried steel ones, I bent those instead. He tried to get me into blacksmithing, but the first iron I held, I dropped on the foreman's foot while it was hot. We didn't even touch gunsmithing after that."

When she looked back up and at him, her face contorted into a grimace. "Hey, what's so funny?"

The Commander almost didn't notice, but her stories of repeated comical failures did make him grin. He tried to repress his own laughter but the movements of his shoulders betrayed him. "I apologize, I can't help but find this a tad amusing."

She kept glaring at him for a few seconds with her teeth showing, but after a staring match with the Commander's sideways glance, she turned away again. "You know what, I can't even blame you. I guess it is kinda funny when you think about it." By the end, she was smiling as well. "So what do humans do for hobbies?"

The Commander was a little startled. He arranged all this to sate his own curiosity, not hers. "Well, before Kryta was destroyed…Divinity's Reach has of course all kinds of businesses with manufacturing halls. We have a long circular street that revolves around the upper city called the Promenade, there's a few businesses there similar to the stations in Canton Factorium that are accessible to the public if you need anything made. So of course, picking up a trade is always an option. And beside that, we had an entire industry built just around entertaining the masses. Troupes of actors putting on plays where they would…imagine people engaging in play pretend, acting out a story in front of an audience. That's the theater, then we have lots of musicians working in tandem to make more intricate music, circuses where people show off curious tricks they've learned or they parade around…"

Where they paraded around freaks of nature to sate people's morbid curiosity. The same kind of people a Charr with the face of a lynx or a housecat, like the one listening from across the table would fall under. Maybe talking about parading around freak shows for people's amusement wasn't the best thing to talk about in front of Rox.

"Nevermind, point is, we had all kinds of entertainment where people could just sit back - or stand - and watch and spend entire afternoons with their families like this."

"And that was all in the past?"

"We've just been through a civil war. When people are busy starving or freezing in the streets because the woman in charge wants everybody to die, there's little time for music or entertainment. We're rebuilding Kryta, but it'll take a while until it gets back to its former glory."

"At least that's over, right?" She raised her mug, but instead of a toast, she just downed it in one go. "To new beginnings."

"To new beginnings…"

She put the mug down and went on: "You know, we do have something kinda like that…sometimes."

That piqued his curiosity. "I'm all ears."

Rox got up and waved at him to come along. Follow me, we're going to the Bane."

"The what now?"

They left the drinks behind and headed to the Core. Various hatches around the Core on the outside led through wound and constricting tunnels into a ring-shaped tribune looking over a Colosseum the size of which must have spanned beyond the full width of the Core. The ring had sparse viewers in small groups looking down onto a dirty arena covered mostly in sand with the outer walls built to incorporate a leftover chunk of the human city's ruins.

Rox led the Commander down a few rows and then took a seat on the rough stone benches. Once they were both seated, she pointed to the arena. "That right there, that's the Bloodsands. Being able to fight on foot is really important in all the legions. There's this law from even before the legions were a thing, where if you can kill your superior face to face, you get to replace them. Blood Legion still practises this every day, mostly in arenas like this."

"I heard about that. Considering, why haven't all the Charr killed each other over this?"

"There's more to it of course. There's got to be a good reason or you need to do it in a really humiliating way, otherwise other legionnaires will do the same with you immediately afterwards."

He nodded. "I see. Makes sense. So it all depends on popular approval."

"Yeah…", Rox stammered. "Whatever that means, sure."

They sat there and watched intently at what happened below. Only three Charr were in the ring. Two appeared to be here to fight each other, a third was standing off to the side but watching them. If fights that went down here were relevant in a legal capacity, he was probably there to bear witness to how the fight went down in the event that one of them died.

The two combatants circled each other slowly, never closing in on each other and with each step over a minute apart. When one tried to move in on the other, the other backed off. After what seemed like an eternity of staring and avoiding each other, one of the two finally threw his sword in the sand. He turned around and left for one of the large, cylindrical exit hatches while the bystander addressed the crowd and raised his voice so they could barely hear him: "The challenger has forfeited! Spike Warband retains its leader!"

And just like that, Rox turned back to the Commander. "Yeah I'm thinking that was it for today. Bane isn't really crowded lately."

"I take it there's more people on other days?"

"Yeah…", she sighed. "This whole Fla- there's some bad stuff happening that's keeping people on edge. No-one knows if anything here will still be around for long."

"You mean like the Flame Legio-"

Rox leaned the Commander's way at a pace that startled him into silence. She placed one finger on her mouth and made a loud shushing sound. "Keep that stuff quiet! You'll get us both in trouble with Ash Legion."

"I knew that…" the Commander took a moment to rephrase his response. "I was aware about the Ash Legion suppressing any talk about it, but…you just let them do this to you? You're all living in this constant existential fear and you can't even talk about why? In a fortress that supposedly doesn't even belong to them. Last I heard, the Black Citadel was under Iron Legion command."

Rox settled back in her seat, giving him his personal space back. "I don't make the rules. Nobody knows what's up with the Imperator, so of course Tribune Desertgrave is making this her own turf as much as she can."

"Nevertheless, I struggle to understand her motive here. The 'bad stuff' as you call it concerns all three legions, including the Ash Legion. What does she have to gain from silencing any discussion of it?"

"Who knows? Maybe she's taking orders from outside or working with some foreign party. Either way, doesn't change the fact that she's doing this, and there isn't much we can do about it."

The Commander wasn't as easily dissuaded. "Maybe not yet, but if she has some foreign loyalties she's being evasive about it, the other legions might want to know. When the Iron Legion sorts out their issue, the question of whether Desertgrave has been thinning the other legions' ranks on behalf of some party potentially hostile to the Iron Legion, will become very relevant."

"If you say so. I'm not holding my breath. I'll be going back now. You'll find the way back, you can't miss it." She got up and made her way to the tubes leading down here, clearly not swayed by the Commander's optimism.

This wasn't the only time they met during his time here. During his time in the Citadel, the Commander and Rox would sit in the Cantina almost every day, where Rox would regale him with the tales of her life up to this point. Failing entire disciplines, casually switching from legion to legion getting passed from warband to warband - until at several occasions she was placed into recon teams, sent on what turned out to be suicide missions only to come back as the sole survivor. That was when she and the legions started to catch onto her strange streak of luck.

It took the Commander some time to fully wrap his head around the whole situation, but the relief on both sides was undeniable. As the days passed and their storytimes in the Cantina would continue, it would become increasingly clear that the reason why Rox jumped at the opportunity he presented, was that she was as glad to be rid of the legions as the legions were to be rid of her.

It took nearly two weeks until the factory workers were done assembling their customer inventory. And the Commander had little to do spending that time other than occasionally hanging out in the Cantina. When he felt particularly lucky, he took a several-hour trip out of the Citadel. But there wasn't much nature to see on the road. The poisonous exertions from the Citadel's heavy industry took a heavy toll, what little grass was there was already wilted, the small lake within the outer wall's perimeter was so completely and utterly polluted from past oil spills, that the oil coagulated into living elementals which attacked the local wildlife, as well as himself when he passed by.

And when he finally had this inventory he was waiting for, it became clear that he would need a lot more time working with it than he would have before Goreblade planned to move out their army. He promised to join them and he had a feeling that he had to, like their offensive would take a really bad turn unless he was there to prevent it.

The problem was that despite the length and the time it took to assemble it, the inventory was kept very simple and lacked information he would have preferred: It listed all work orders and custom purchases issued by warbands. Each listing featured the warband's leader by their second name, but not their first name or the name of the warband.

"Steelshard, 50 boxes, explosive tipped - Emberspike, 40 boxes, standard rounds, Ironclaw, 30 boxes, standard rounds…" It was stacks upon stacks of listings like this, sorted and separated by year which at least allowed him to somewhat narrow it down to what he was looking for. The queen was assassinated in 1325 After Exodus, so any listing from after that, he threw out.

Even after that, it took him a while to glance over all the listings. Enough of a while that time was soon running short before the army's departure to face the Flame Legion. Most custom purchases from warband were more or less in the same ballpark, but there were a few outliers. "...Bloodfang, 300 boxes, explosive tipped, 400 boxes, standard rounds - Fourshot, 2000 boxes, standard rounds - Singematch, 800 boxes, standard rounds…" A few of those listings had quantities attached that were far removed from the usual numbers. Were they amassing backup stockpiles for the legions? Or were they supplying small armies of their own?

The Commander copied all the unusually large listings onto a separate piece of paper and stared at it with his eyes narrowed. This seemed significant, at least it felt that way. But he was plagued with doubts. Was he imagining things? Was he seeing patterns where there were none? There could have been various explanations for why someone would order that much ammunition. He thought of asking about those names in particular, but if he went around pointing fingers and ended up being wrong about it, it could jeopardize the new Krytan nation's peace with the Citadel.

Why the name sprung out to him though was clear before long. Jennah was shot eight times total. Four shots in quick succession all aimed at her head and four shots in quick succession all aimed at her neck. And both times, all four shots came from four different locations. A great degree of precision and coordination was necessary to pull that off. If this was some kind of signature move, rehearsed and practised routinely by some group of Charr, it wasn't far-fetched to assume one of them could take on a name that referenced it

He wanted to know more about this 'Fourshot' person. He spent hours in his quarters, sitting on the chair or the bed, thinking of schemes and ways to ask about them without directly mentioning the name. He had a few ideas, but by the time he could resolve to act on them, the day had already come. The day that the legions would depart to face the Flame Legion. And the closer that day had come, the more the growing dread among the Charr made it clear to him that he couldn't stay behind.