For all those who don't know, Joshua Yearsley is our Head
Editor for LPJ Design. Joshua was hired a few months ago after work for us in a
freelance capacity. One of the jobs that Joshua has taken upon himself is to
get our writer guidelines together. LPJ Design’s Writer Guidelines will tell
you everything you need to understand in the process of writing for LPJ Design
and what we expect from you as a freelancer. If there are any of you interested in working
in the area of freelance writer, check out these guidelines, send a pitch over
to LMPjr007 at Gmail.com and we will see where it goes from there. As always
thanks for your support. Talk to you later…
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Thursday, June 20, 2013
NeoExodus Legendary Tales: The Shield of Ignorance - Chapter Two written by Joshua Cole, edited by Joshua Yearsley
NeoExodus - The Shield of Ignorance: Chapter 2
I could
go into the jungle alone, Riss thought, if I wanted to die. With every mosquito
that found its way beneath her robes, it grew more tempting.
Awenasa had not been so bad. In the capital of the
Reis Confederacy, every street she walked had been a wide boulevard, shaded by
tall trees and cooled by canals that, as criers had eagerly informed her, were
literally endless. Riss had wanted to inspect one of the enchanted fountains
that spilled into the canals in an attempt to prove the criers wrong, half from
national pride and half from academic curiosity.
She’d thought she didn’t have time, though, and
only stopped in Awenasa to take her lunch. Twelve hours later, the pleasant
sting of peppers had faded, replaced with pangs of hunger.
She didn’t want to eat in Miska, though.
It was not one of the Confederacy’s great
cities. It only qualified as a city because it had walls to keep the jungle at
bay. No cool, clear magical water here, just rain that sizzled on the rough
stone streets and the sweat it failed to wash away.
Riss’s Sihr caste robes were not meant for wet
heat. She would have broiled in them if her gold equipage had not included a
charm for enduring the elements.
Unfortunately, it did not include charms
against insects or smells.
Nor did it include a charm to convince one of
the hunters who clustered near the Miska walls to act as her guide. Riss had
prepared a spell that could do so, but she didn’t intend to use it. She would
have to spend at least a week in her guide’s company; if he realized she’d used
a magical compulsion on him, she didn’t expect to survive the trip.
The best intentions, she thought, can lead to
hell.
As she fought the urge to slap at another
mosquito, she wondered if she'd already arrived.
She approached another group of hunters.
Crouched in the shadows of the city walls were two Enuka who could have passed
for beasts of burden if they’d worn fewer weapons, four gray-skinned Caliban
whom Riss hoped were at least semi-civilized Kalisans, and as many humans of
the bronze-skinned, black-haired local type.
They were already muttering and laughing when
she spotted them, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t directed at her. Riss wondered
if they were sharing a joke at her expense. She strode into the middle of their
semi-circle and repeated the words she’d spoken so many times. “I am looking
for a guide.”
Silence.
“I will pay well. Gold.”
One of the Enuka snarled something in an
unintelligible language or accent and shambled off. The rest of the hunters
hesitated. Riss thought she might have at least one, but then the most
weathered of the humans gave a little shrug and followed. The rest went with
him.
She watched them and tried not to scream.
A man’s voice at her side left her too startled
to stay angry. “You look tired, lady.”
She turned, forcing herself to seem calm.
The speaker was human, rangy, with
green-and-brown strips in his hair she assumed were dyed and tattoos covering
every exposed part of his body, which was almost all of them. He had a spear
slung at his back, a knife strapped to his leg, and a string of bone fetishes
and feathers on his neck. His equipment radiated enough magic that Riss was
sure she’d have sensed it without any spells or charms.
Riss noticed the fading aura around one of the
bones, which she recognized from carvings as from a jaguar’s paw; she knew that
however stealthy the man was naturally, he hadn’t crept up behind her by
entirely natural means.
“What is it to you?” she asked.
“I am thinking,” he said, “you would like to
stop looking for a guide.”
I would
like, Riss thought, to leave this cesspit and never come back. Burning the moisture out of
it is optional, but preferred.
What she would like didn't matter. No amount of
discomfort or local intransigence would keep her from finding Hadassi.
“Perhaps,” she said.
“Then you are lucky,” he said. He flashed a
golden smile. It might have been a display of wealth, but Riss could only
wonder if who or whatever had knocked his original teeth out was available to
serve her. More interesting were his eyes, dark but twinkling in the fading
light. He had the look of a man with a secret he could hardly wait to tell.
“Fortune has been known to smile on me,” Riss
said, “but you’re going to have to explain how it has done so.”
“Because the great Quelpa is at your service,
lady,” he said.
Riss raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Are you his
herald?”
He laughed. “The lady is bright as well as
beautiful.”
“The lady is busy,” Riss said. “If you want to compliment me, you can follow while
I look for someone who wants to help.”
“Apologies,” he said, not that he looked the
least contrite. “It so happens that I am myself the great Quelpa. I will be
your guide.”
“Where I come from,” she said, “an employer
usually decides whether or not to hire someone.”
“The lady is not a fool, so I already know she
will hire me.”
“In my studies of divination,” Riss said, “I
have discovered an interesting fact.”
Quelpa’s grin didn’t fade at this apparent
change of subject, but he cocked his head.
“Knowing the future inevitably changes it.” She
gave him a thin smile and stepped past him.
He was laughing by the time her back was to
him. Since his laughter didn't fade into the rain, she knew she hadn't chased
him off. She put her smile away even though it threatened to turn genuine.
Quelpa seemed capable, quick-witted, and equipped with expensive magic—exactly
the kind of guide she wanted, provided she hired him on her terms.
She needed to know more before she did, even if
it meant staying in Miska.
He didn’t try to get in front of her, even
though his legs were long enough to. It seemed he understood the place she
expected him to occupy. “The lady is a seeress?”
“I’ve been known to make predictions from time
to time. Do you want your fortune told?” His equipment said he would see
through parlor tricks, but equipment could be inherited—or stolen.
“I would settle for being paid a fortune,” he
said.
“You have a very high opinion of your worth,
‘great’ Quelpa. Most people as confident as you are fools.”
“Are you?”
“What makes you think I have a high opinion of
myself?” It wasn’t that he was wrong, or that Riss took offense. Most were fools. The few who weren’t had
earned their confidence. That Quelpa recognized Riss's confidence gave her hope
his own was justified.
“Because the last one of you brought dozens
with her. You came alone.”
Riss froze.
She knew she shouldn’t have shown that he got
to her, but she was a scholar, not a spy. “‘The last one?’”
“That is why you are here, is it not?” Quelpa
remained at her back. Suddenly, his position felt more sinister than servile to
Riss. “Chasing the same ghosts the other Dominion woman was?”
Riss whirled. She had to regain control over
the conversation, but she couldn’t manage to master herself. “What do you know
about Hadassi?”
“Her name, now.” Quelpa was still grinning.
Before Riss could snap at him, he spread his palms and continued. “That her
party disappeared into the jungle eight weeks ago with five of the best guides
in Miska. That none of them returned.”
“Leaving the rest of the guides spooked,” Riss
said. “Except for you?”
“I am braver than any dozen men,” Quelpa said.
He gave a little bow. “I am also cleverer than
any dozen. I knew those guides. Any one of them might have made a mistake and
died for it. No one is perfect, not even me. But all five? No. Whatever
happened to them, it was not in the jungle.”
“You think Hadassi found what she was looking
for?” Riss asked.
“Was she looking for something bad and
dangerous? Because I know that must be the thing she found.”
Riss thought of Kynon Tehya’s warning.
“Sometimes ignorance can be a shield,” he’d said. He’d believed the ruins she
was looking for were left by the First Ones. If what little historical record
remained of their rule held any truth at all, then “bad and dangerous” didn’t
begin to describe it.
Riss said, “It’s possible.”
“Then when you reach it, the great Quelpa will
wait outside.”
Riss didn’t bother to claim she wasn’t going to
hire him.
***
Riss glanced over her shoulder. “You’re really
staying here?”
Quelpa spread his hands. The motion was the
only reason she could see him. Even when she knew where to look, his tattooed
body disappeared into the jungle. Six days together and she wasn’t sure if his
camouflage was natural or magical.
“The lady must have something to inspire her
return.” His grin gleamed from the shadows.
Riss cracked a smile; a man who could swagger
while he cowered deserved at least that much. Besides, she didn’t blame him, as
he was probably the wiser of them.
“Then I’ll see you shortly,” Riss said.
“Something much to be hoped for.”
Certainly, she thought, since it meant he had not abandoned her.
Between Quelpa’s knowledge of the Wildlands of
Bal and the map Riss had pieced together from Hadassi’s notes, they’d made good
time through the jungle. The trip could as easily have taken months—or
lifetimes. Riss had no illusions as to her chances of returning to
civilization, or even Miska, without her guide.
Before she concerned herself with returning,
though, she had to find Hadassi.
She turned back to the walls.
They were shorter than Miska’s, but cut from
similar limestone and only a little more vine-choked. Riss had half-expected
the whole city to be carved from obsidian, like the tablet she’d left in her
study in Anidem.
Only the carvings, the same deep, straight, angular carvings,
told her the city and the tablet were of the same origin.
That, and the fact Hadassi and her party had
disappeared inside.
Riss picked through the underbrush to a gap in
the walls. Mud of a different color from the surrounding terrain marked where
adobe bricks must once have sat. Riss found no foot- or handprints. Either
Hadassi hadn’t come in through this gap or the daily rains had washed away
signs of her passing.
The wall surrounded a wide outer courtyard. It
might once have held structures of wood or brick, but time and weather had
wiped them away. Nothing remained to obstruct her view of the central
structure, which looked—well, not quite like a pyramid. Unlike the step-pyramid
temples and palaces Riss had seen in Awenasa, Miska, and countless books, the
structure at the heart of this city was round. Four limestone terraces, of a
height—if not a floorplan—similar to those she was used to, formed the lower
layers. Atop those sat the obsidian she’d been looking for, a single too-tall
terrace, like a great black beetle overlooking the city.
Riss shuddered. Something about the vista
tugged at her mind, but she couldn’t figure out what. She glanced back at
Quelpa again. He might not come inside, but she could at least get his opinion.
She could have if he were visible, anyway. He
didn’t wave this time.
Had he left?
No. She had not been fool enough to pay him
more than a retainer. To make the kind of coin he had to be accustomed to, he
had to find her when she emerged from the city.
She couldn’t emerge if she didn’t enter first.
Riss slipped through the gap in the limestone
wall. She dropped half a meter to a floor that had turned to dirt ages ago, and
to mud with yesterday’s rain.
She realized what had bothered her when she
first looked through the wall. The courtyard should have been distinguishable
from the jungle only by the wall’s presence, but all she saw inside was bare
dirt, ruined buildings, and patches of limestone and obsidian flooring. No
growth, no life. “Bad and dangerous,” Quelpa had said. Riss hadn’t doubted it.
Seeing the evidence firsthand shook her in ways speculation had not.
This wasn’t climbing over the skies of Anidem
or chasing rumors in its streets. It wasn’t opening burial grounds claimed by
families even more exalted than hers. It wasn’t even running into the jungles
of the Reis Confederacy with only a glib-tongued guide for company, following
in the footsteps of a mentor who had to be dead and gone by now.
Riss had always taken more chances than her
colleagues were comfortable with. But for all that, she'd never chanced
anything worse than death.
This was worse.
She felt her hand close on the limestone of the
outer wall.
And then, she yanked it back.
This city was a scary place, a bad one and a
dangerous one. Perhaps even, and Riss did not use the term lightly, an evil
one.
But it wasn’t what was frightening her.
She straightened up and faced the empty
courtyard. “I did not come this far,” she called out, “to turn back now.”
Quelpa’s voice came from directly behind her.
“That is a shame. I did not want to kill you.”
***
Riss understood several things the instant she
heard Quelpa’s voice.
If he was native to Miska, he’d left it long ago,
because he’d picked her up in Anidem and followed her through two Nexus
Gateways. He wasn’t a hunter, at least not of beasts, and he certainly wasn’t a
guide. His mental powers had almost discouraged her from pressing on; they had
kept the real guides from taking her custom.
And now he was going to kill her. She felt the
impact of his spear on the shield she’d raised with the same breath she had
used to call out her challenge. Even blocked, the blow sent her reeling to her
knees. Her shield didn’t so much shatter as fade, dispelled or absorbed by
whatever enchantments his spear held.
Riss rolled onto her back and flung her hands
up, conjuring not a shield—that obviously wouldn’t work—but a wave of flames.
If she’d landed on stone instead of soft dirt, it might have jarred her
concentration too much, but as it was she managed to keep hold of the spell.
Quelpa ducked beneath the blast, hardly losing
momentum. Riss hadn’t expected to hit him; she did it just to buy herself
another breath, another spell.
Quelpa whipped his body upright, muscles
gleaming in the evening sun, and spun his spear toward where Riss lay.
He pierced the illusionary duplicate she’d left
there. It didn’t surprise her that his spear sucked away her invisibility as
well, though she’d dared to hope it wouldn’t. She gasped out another spell,
audibly this time since stealth had failed her, and lifted into the air a few
meters from him.
He smiled sadly. “You should have gone back,
lady.”
Under the circumstances, she couldn’t exactly
disagree. “I suppose an explanation is too much to ask?”
“I trust you to understand,” Quelpa said.
Riss suspected she did, but she wasn’t about to
devote time to thinking about it. “What is understanding worth at spearpoint?”
He shrugged. “You are the scholar, not I.”
Riss tried to thrust her hand forward in an
arcane gesture. Her body refused to obey.
Quelpa tapped his temple.
If Riss could have nodded, she would have. She
understood, all right. The power he wielded wasn’t magic, not as she practiced
it. She could have shielded herself against his psionics if she’d prepared the
proper defenses, but considering she’d had a telepath meddling with her mind
for days at least, was it any surprise doing so hadn’t occurred to her?
Quelpa’s expression hardened, and he pulled
back his spear.
Then obsidian swallowed him.
The black stone erupted from thin air. Before
Quelpa could dodge, it snared his arms and legs. Before he could fix on its
source, it covered his eyes and mouth. He must have been too surprised to
scream.
The obsidian seemed to compress, wrapping
itself around the telepath's rangy frame. In seconds, only the crackle of
energy in the black stone indicated it was anything but a crude statue.
Released, Riss stumbled to the dirt. She looked
up at the terraced structure at the heart of the city. As she’d expected, her
rescuer was descending its steps.
Riss didn’t recognize the spell. It wasn’t the
kind that mages broke out in casual contests. It didn’t matter.
She recognized the caster, though.
The afternoon sun at her back and the purple
energy limning her outstretched hand cast weird shadows across her face. Her
headscarf was missing, her skin was drawn tight over her high cheekbones—but
she was unquestionably Hadassi Al’meram.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
More cool stuff coming in for Obsidian Apocalypse...
Friday, June 14, 2013
What has been going on with Grand Theft Exodus webcomic?
Well, let me tell you is simple plain English: Not that much.
The real reason for this? Well we can start with life in general, and then our
two kickstarter projects could be an issue. Then add on the regular business
stuff and secret projects with LPJ Design and you can say that I am a live overloaded.
But now that I have been assigning several projects to freelancers, I have
moved Grand Theft Exodus from the graveyard of ideas to the front of my mind. So
here is a little rough sample of what we have been doing on it. So now that it is back in the forefront
expect to see more material coming out for it.
Back to the salt mines. Talk to you later…
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
[LPJ Design] Pay What You Want pricing on the NeoExodus Adventures!
Monday, June 10, 2013
LPJ Design Invades PaizoCon in 25 days!
Plus you can attend the three seminars Louis Porter Jr. will be taking part in: So You Want To Be a Pathfinder RPG Compatible Publisher, How to Find an Artist for your Pathfinder Compatible Product and NeoExodus: Inside the Campaign World of Exodus!
If you are going to be at PaizoCon, come to our booth and say "Hi"! You never know what we might have for you to take a look at! Talk to you later...
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Monday, June 3, 2013
Action and Plot Deck for Obsidian Apocalypse moves into production…
Sunday, June 2, 2013
And the gamer mentality of "girl gamers" still rolls on...
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