ooc. As a heads-up to anyone reading this thread, sex is not a stable category in this roleplay. The carrier will be a hermaphrodite generally presenting as male, but his/hir appearance will become increasingly feminized.
The name of her people was whispered.
Poor farmers, forced to play foot soldiers, shivered the word, trembling in their cheap sandals and badly wrought helmets. Villages and cities across the Mediterranean simply didn't speak it, to evade invoking their arrival. A very few, mortals who fought like gods and the unhappy children born from divine and earthly unions, sang over their wine of a Hyperborean feast, where the Mountains' Mother lay with a hero -- a hero whose name meant "to waste."
So began, they hymned, the Amazons.
"Mistress, please disregard this alarmist. Our seed did not take three years, it is hardly cause for -- "
"Fool," Shrieked the priestess, ecstatic with prophecy, "Fool, our mother has turned her faces from us! We are left with the venom of her pets' fangs! This blight, this barrenness, will continue."
The scene was an interesting one, particularly for any Greek citizen. To begin with, not a man was present. Instead, musky smoke filled a temple rioting with bright paint upon the stone walls, and an oracle writhed on her back on the ground. Blood speckled the gravel she gyrated on. Sneering at her, a young warrior in the bronze armor of men leaned even more dismissively upon her spear.
In a throne before the altar sat the chieftain of the Amazons.
No one sang of Dykte's beauty, for Dykte was not beautiful by the standards of Greeks nor men. Dykte's skin was not marble but the color of dusky desert sand. Her body was not smooth and soft but corded powerfully with muscle, particularly her arms and torso. Her hair was not finely spun of gold but coarse, cropped close to her head and choppier than the sea. She showed far more than a teasing ankle -- all Dykte wore was a light chiton, belted at the waist and crossed by the strap of her quiver. She wore sturdy sandals and gauntlets of black leather, lacking the dewdrop gems of a princess or goddess.
More horrifying to the genteel poets would be her chest: as was the custom of her people, she had cut away her left breast, to arch an arrow better. However, after finding the other to be a nuisance, she had it removed as well, leaving her completely flat from neck to abdomen.
There was yet more horror for those Greeks, those lovers of order and men, those so desperate to categorize the world with science and warfare. However, for Dykte, her body was simply her birthright, and she spent as much time considering her features as she did art -- which is to say, none.
Now, she rose, hefting her spear.
Silence fell on the small gathering.
"Sister Brites, you are practical. So you are my best general and swordswoman. Our mother loves practicality, but she is not wholly of our blood, and so we must remember her dreamlike reasons do not always make mortal sense," Dykte dipped to one knee before the priestess, bowing her head: "My grace, whatever rituals you order, whatever sacrifices Artime breathes into you, you shall have. Should it be a hundred castrated black rams or our youngest child, we will remind our mother that we, her children, love her boundlessly. We will also remind her we are a warlike people and make our own fates."
Brites straightened, the smirk wiped from her mouth. "Mistress, what are we to do, then?"
Dykte grinned the gleaming smile of a lioness whose mouth had found the neck of a young gazelle. "Tomorrow, we ride. We capture Thracian Taurunum, whose people have double bodies and laughing Kytherea's promise of swollen fertility. We will make peace terms with them ... on our couches."
Brites, face splashed with blood, leaned against a door gold and embossed with the bodies of monsters and their broods: "Some city, Dykte. They fell before the dawn greeted our struggle. It will be no hardship for them, to do what they do best and in return receive the loyalty of the Amazons."
Dykte lowered her helmet over her hair once more. Only her eyes and mouth (her eyes, golden and raging; her mouth, a hard slash of lips) showed. She draped the pelt of a leopard over her shoulders but did not bother to wash the blood and gore from her hands, armor or brow.
Taurunum had fallen, fallen before their paltry militia even recognized they were attacked. Their ruler lay in his chambers. She had no fear of entering alone -- this was not a king that could withstand her strength or hope to match it.
Mantled once more as the chieftain of the Amazons, Dykte clasped Brites's shoulder and entered the royal bedroom. Letting her spear's butt crash to the ground, she cried, "He who holds the throne over this city, let him come out. I will make terms with him, or I will burn every home to the ground, with the families inside. I am Dykte, and the Amazons, children of the Mountains' Mother herself, obey my words."
The name of her people was whispered.
Poor farmers, forced to play foot soldiers, shivered the word, trembling in their cheap sandals and badly wrought helmets. Villages and cities across the Mediterranean simply didn't speak it, to evade invoking their arrival. A very few, mortals who fought like gods and the unhappy children born from divine and earthly unions, sang over their wine of a Hyperborean feast, where the Mountains' Mother lay with a hero -- a hero whose name meant "to waste."
So began, they hymned, the Amazons.
-- -- -- -- --
"Mistress, please disregard this alarmist. Our seed did not take three years, it is hardly cause for -- "
"Fool," Shrieked the priestess, ecstatic with prophecy, "Fool, our mother has turned her faces from us! We are left with the venom of her pets' fangs! This blight, this barrenness, will continue."
The scene was an interesting one, particularly for any Greek citizen. To begin with, not a man was present. Instead, musky smoke filled a temple rioting with bright paint upon the stone walls, and an oracle writhed on her back on the ground. Blood speckled the gravel she gyrated on. Sneering at her, a young warrior in the bronze armor of men leaned even more dismissively upon her spear.
In a throne before the altar sat the chieftain of the Amazons.
No one sang of Dykte's beauty, for Dykte was not beautiful by the standards of Greeks nor men. Dykte's skin was not marble but the color of dusky desert sand. Her body was not smooth and soft but corded powerfully with muscle, particularly her arms and torso. Her hair was not finely spun of gold but coarse, cropped close to her head and choppier than the sea. She showed far more than a teasing ankle -- all Dykte wore was a light chiton, belted at the waist and crossed by the strap of her quiver. She wore sturdy sandals and gauntlets of black leather, lacking the dewdrop gems of a princess or goddess.
More horrifying to the genteel poets would be her chest: as was the custom of her people, she had cut away her left breast, to arch an arrow better. However, after finding the other to be a nuisance, she had it removed as well, leaving her completely flat from neck to abdomen.
There was yet more horror for those Greeks, those lovers of order and men, those so desperate to categorize the world with science and warfare. However, for Dykte, her body was simply her birthright, and she spent as much time considering her features as she did art -- which is to say, none.
Now, she rose, hefting her spear.
Silence fell on the small gathering.
"Sister Brites, you are practical. So you are my best general and swordswoman. Our mother loves practicality, but she is not wholly of our blood, and so we must remember her dreamlike reasons do not always make mortal sense," Dykte dipped to one knee before the priestess, bowing her head: "My grace, whatever rituals you order, whatever sacrifices Artime breathes into you, you shall have. Should it be a hundred castrated black rams or our youngest child, we will remind our mother that we, her children, love her boundlessly. We will also remind her we are a warlike people and make our own fates."
Brites straightened, the smirk wiped from her mouth. "Mistress, what are we to do, then?"
Dykte grinned the gleaming smile of a lioness whose mouth had found the neck of a young gazelle. "Tomorrow, we ride. We capture Thracian Taurunum, whose people have double bodies and laughing Kytherea's promise of swollen fertility. We will make peace terms with them ... on our couches."
-- -- -- -- --
Brites, face splashed with blood, leaned against a door gold and embossed with the bodies of monsters and their broods: "Some city, Dykte. They fell before the dawn greeted our struggle. It will be no hardship for them, to do what they do best and in return receive the loyalty of the Amazons."
Dykte lowered her helmet over her hair once more. Only her eyes and mouth (her eyes, golden and raging; her mouth, a hard slash of lips) showed. She draped the pelt of a leopard over her shoulders but did not bother to wash the blood and gore from her hands, armor or brow.
Taurunum had fallen, fallen before their paltry militia even recognized they were attacked. Their ruler lay in his chambers. She had no fear of entering alone -- this was not a king that could withstand her strength or hope to match it.
Mantled once more as the chieftain of the Amazons, Dykte clasped Brites's shoulder and entered the royal bedroom. Letting her spear's butt crash to the ground, she cried, "He who holds the throne over this city, let him come out. I will make terms with him, or I will burn every home to the ground, with the families inside. I am Dykte, and the Amazons, children of the Mountains' Mother herself, obey my words."