Board Thread:Off-Topic/@comment-25270243-20150203005815/@comment-24108228-20150212173302

Stealthbomber16 wrote: ''Nice one there, Banana. The houses on Normkin however are, on average, not mansions.'' ''Well, you're behind a massive stone wall. As far as Banana knows, there could be a massive sign consuming the whole island saying "We give up."''

Banana was about to infuse dyes into his metal (a complicated process that was taken up only by trained blacksmiths) when he was interrupted by one of the other smiths. "Hey, you've finish your sword?" said the smith. "Yeah, it's finished. Watch!" replied Banana, twisting the handle and hearing the satisfying clunk of the sword morphing. "That's pretty cool. Could you try it out? We have a few bets running on it." explained the smith, the others following up behind him and nodding. "Sure, I guess." said Banana, and the group walked outside to a patch of rocks outside the mine.

Banana unsheathed his sword, and found a decent sized rock at the entrance to the cave. As he was about to swing it, he heard another smith yell: "Look out!" Banana looked up, and indeed there was a runner who had drawn their bow, and was aiming it at Banana, the only one armed at the time. Banana had little time to react. He twisted the handle to unlock the sword, and began to swing, the others standing well clear. As he swung faster, the five individual scales formed what looked like a vortex, and the runner let the arrow fly. Banana caught it in his blade vortex, at which point the crude sandstone tip was snapped off the rest of the arrow, making a grinding sound similar to that of a chainsaw, as the shaft fell to the ground in three pieces. After a couple seconds, the grinding sound stopped, and a pile of sand fell next to the shaft.

After watching in horror as his arrow was turned to dust, the runner legged it, only to be stopped by Insignia's men, forcing him to leap into the water. They fired a volley of arrows at where he had become submerged, and deemed him dead. At this point, Insignia himself ran up to the scene, the and for the first time Banana saw him genuinely worried. He then surveyed the scene, saw nobody was hurt, and went back to his usual grim facial expression. "What happened?" asked Insignia, in his deep unforgiving voice. "A runner came up and attacked The Red Sun smiths." explained a troop of Insignia's. "They're all ok, one of them was armed with one of their super-weapons they make up there." Insignia seemed less concerned about the blacksmiths than he did the runner, and turned to one of the smiths. "Why was there a runner here?" "It seemed to want to mine here. It had a pickaxe in hand before it noticed us, at which point it swapped out for an iron bow." explained the smith that saw the runner. "It probably would have got us if it wasn't for the new sword." Insignia was no longer paying attention however, having stopped listening after 'It seem to want to mine here'. He turned to his guards and ordered a patrol of them to guard the inside of the mines at all times, muttering curses under his breath. They did as he told them to, and he went back to the guard house, still angry at the runner.

"Well, I think that concludes our bet." said one of the smiths, and there was a murmur of agreement as they all exchanged gold coins. "Seriously though, why haven't we just gone and killed the full Normkin fort though? They've got plenty of runners, we can't just do this forever." said Banana. "I think I heard something about a raid happening today. It was from one of the other islands though. The messengers never came here." explained another blacksmith. "Yes. That is correct." Banana spun around to find a handful of The Red Sun fighters had sneaked up on them, and were listening in. "How long have you been there?" asked Banana. "Since Insignia left. Let's go up to the balcony to watch the walls crumble, we'll talk there."

The group (which Banana noticed now conatained the majority of The Red Sun, which he found pretty impressive) headed up the stairs, and into The Red Sun's forge, where he and the rest of the Red Sun found places to sit so they could watch the fight. "So what's the deal? Why are we being left out?" asked Banana. "The Thornhus are aware of our abilities, and want us to be an integral part of the future of this Archipegalo." explained the leader of The Red Sun. "That doesn't sound too bad." piped in the smith sitting next to him. "Yes, that's why it's all they told us." continued another fighter "However, as one of our spys found out, that integral part is a prison." Suppressing the questions he had about the spys and why he hadn't heard about them, Banana asked "So they want this to be a prison island?" "Exactly! That's why we're planting a large bomb inside the guard house as I speak." explained the leader, and indeed one of the fighters had left the balcony, and Banana could see a red blur dashing towards the back of the Guard House. "We're lighting it when the attack fails and the Thornhus is at it's weakest. We'll take out any remaining guards and have the island to ourselves." "When the attack fails? That's a tad optimistic." pointed out Banana. "Is it?" replied one of the fighters, this one known well for his sabotage abilities.

At this point, two war sloops full of men suddenly burst into flame and exploded, in a spectacular manner. The party watching burst into applause, although quickly stopped before Insignia realised what was going on. "So this leaves one more question." said the leader, "How many of you are experienced enough masons to build a wall?"

''I thought I'd add a bit to the story. A one-sided fight of good vs evil was somewhat cliche. Also, this doesn't mean I'm going to join the Normkin, just that I won't be with the Thornhus either. I'll explain with more detail in my next post.''

Hope you enjoy the little help we gave you with the war :D