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ladyswillmart · 1 year

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Serpent Isle Companion #5: Mortegro Base Stats:

Strength: 9

Dexterity: 14

Intelligence: 20

Combat: 6

Default Combat Style: Nearest

Carrying (07/18 Stones): Backpack x1 (Spider Silk x5, Ginseng x4, Skull x1, Spell: “Curse” x1); Scythe x1; Spell: “Death Bolt” x1; Red Cloak x1; Leather Gloves x1; Leather Leggings x1; Leather Boots x1

❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧✤☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙

“Dead?” Mortegro echoed the key word. “Old Gustacio’s dead, then?”

Stefano nodded. “Fairly.”

“What do you mean, fairly? He either is or he isn’t,” protested Mortegro. “Death isn’t a spectrum, it’s a binary. A boolean, if you will. Zero or One. True or false. He either is or is not dead.”

“Quite, then. He’s quite dead, I should say,” said Stefano, shrugging. “I say, I’m freezing my tail off out here!"

“We’re movin', we’re movin’,” Giselle told him. “And you could move a little faster, y’know.”

“Excuse me if I’m in no hurry. Something distinctly askew about this place,” he returned. “Seems haunted as all get-out but if you ask me,” (nobody asked), “I’d gladly take nobbing hobs with the local ghosts over becoming a frozen entree for the local leopards. How long were you stranded out here, Morty? How are you not dead?”

Mortegro, although gaunt and hollow-eyed with a slight droop to his otherwise lofty posture, was at the very least categorically alive. In fact, the suggestion that he could ever die made him bristle: “How should I know? Felt like only an hour or so to me—what do you mean by quite dead? You’ll have to indicate precisely what you mean to say.”

“I mean Gustacio, along with just about everyone else in the city of Moonshade, is very much pegged out, old friend. Popped clogs. Pulled up their stumps. They’ve carked it, Mortegro,” Stefano enunciated carefully. “Brown. Bread. Everyone.”

“Everyone...?”

Giselle was surprised to see Mortegro, the Necromage of Moonshade, very flustered and very earnestly looking to her for clarification.

“Alas, Stefano has the right of it, just about,” Gwenno intervened. “I am sorry you had to find out this way, Mortegro. There was a terrible occurrence in your city. I suppose you could call it an attack—well, the why of it is a little complicated—”

A strange, metallic keening, low in pitch and volume, rose from Petra’s voice box—the rare sound of an automaton sobbing. Something about this place evidently broke her last straw; not long after Giselle and the others arrived, her burgeoning sorrow surpassed the agency of consolation.

“I can handle complicated,” Mortegro said. “Perhaps not out here. The what of it should suffice for now.”

“The what was a Chaos Bane,” Giselle informed him. “Uh, kinda like a perverted spirit of one of the serpent gods what’re supposed to be custodians of this place. But long ago his enemies kinda cut him up into three pieces and he obviously wasn’t real happy about that, and then the pieces went kinda nuts so they had to be sealed up. Then some G. D. mudsill from Britannia came here and let ‘em loose—you met Batlin, right?”

For this, Mortegro had to take himself back. Several weeks ago, the most elite Moonshadian social circles were graced by a rather heavyset man with a withering scowl, accompanied by those suspicious minions of his; Mortegro did not use the word minions willy-nilly but those two characters were as worthy of the word as any junior dictionary could illustrate. And most of his fellow adepts found this stranger to be appallingly presumptuous, as if he—an outsider in every respect—intended to ooze his way into their favor by force. While Mortegro himself preferred to maintain a low profile on the fringes of high society, obscure and thus safe from most imbroglios, he recalled sitting in the snug of the Blue Boar Inn one evening, sharing a plate of breaded cheese sticks with fellow adept Gustacio and overhearing a distraught Celennia at the bar counter, pouring her woes into any sympathetic ear.

He thought he could threaten me into selling it! That I would dare name a price for something so precious, like a common strumpet! she cried while Petra swiftly mixed up another Fluffy Duck for the nice sorceress.

Scandalous stuff. But as it turned out, she was simply talking about one of her serpent’s teeth, an ancient relic of unknown provenance stolen from Erstam long ago, and the would-be buyer was that ill-mannered stranger.

Batlin was his name, Mortegro recalled. Yes, Batlin! And shortly afterwards, Batlin and his minions split town rather abruptly, hiring a boat to the Big Island without a single goodbye or cheers or sorry for being such a G. D. mudsill to anyone. That was when his fellow Adepts began to notice the thefts. And shortly after that, the storms started...

Before following Giselle and the others out of the courtyard and into the relative safety of the temple structure, Mortegro took a moment to eye the sky, understandably wary. The sun was high but the horizon resembled a fresh bruise in color. It grumbled ominously, like catarrh of the gods, ready to spew.

He shuddered.

“I have met Batlin, yes,” he finally replied. “I’m assuming then, he had some nefarious plan and Moonshade was the target.”

“Not exactly,” said Giselle. “Moonshade was just collateral damage, honey. As was pretty much everywhere else on the Isles.”

“Seven stars,” Mortegro whispered. “Everywhere? But surely not the knights of Monitor?”

“Monitor, yes sir. Wiped out by another one of them Banes.”

“And Fawn? Not Fawn, my birth city?”

Giselle nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

“Even the Sleeping Bull?”

“Especially the Sleeping Bull!” rounded Stefano, bitterly gleeful. “Now now, don’t look so sour. Think of it this way: Everyone and their dog knows how you would’ve done anything to get out of serving on the Council of Mages. Now there’s hardly enough mages left to put together a football huddle much less a whole bloody council.”

“Hardly...?”

“Some of them did survive, yes, but don’t pin your hopes up.”

“Who?”

“You did, for a start.”

“Obviously, Stefano. Who else?”

“Scum of the Isles himself.”

Mortegro nodded, downcast. “Torrissio. Anyone else?”

“Fedabiblio and his little budding con artists.”

Referring to the Seminarium’s two student mages—Mortegro faintly recalled an episode where the younger of the two handily swindled the Thief Himself out of 40 Guilders but declined to bring it up in a place like this. The sunless, motionless interior of the building made it feel more like a forgotten tomb than a place of worship. While it was no match for the biting chill of the courtyard, the air inside seemed to stifle the warmth of life itself with its vacuous draft.

“And?” Mortegro resumed.

Stefano shoved his hands into the pockets of his ill-fitting coat and plodded forth with the others, thoughtfully. “Hmm. Well, you see Miss Petra here, hale and whole, lighting the room with her beautiful smile,” he offered.

She shuffled along in somber silence, too distraught for comment.

“Oh! And Ducio somehow made it out. Probably got mistaken for a slug and left alone.”

“But how could everyone—I mean, just like that? I mean, we adepts are not exactly easy to kill. You of all people should know that, Stefano.”

“I know! Believe me, nobody knows that better than me, Morty. But that Bane who visited us, named Anarchy as I recall, was probably the absolute very worst adversary a city like ours could’ve ever met. See, first thing he did, he threw Filbercio out on his arse and installed himself as the new Magelord,” he recounted. “And then he did exactly what it said on his tin: Anarchy. Threw out all those pesky rules and regulations so it was pretty much every adept and every mundane for themselves.”

“So you’re saying this Bane of Anarchy thing killed everyone?”

“The Bane hardly lifted a finger!” Stefano snorted. “It was everyone else, old bones. They all turned on each other within days! Hours, even! I say, the carnage was fantastic!”

“Don’t be so flip, Stefano,” Gwenno warned him. “I seem to recall you very nearly met your own end at the hands of that Death Knight—”

“—Wait! Days? You said days,” Mortegro echoed another key word. “Just how long ago did all of this happen?”

“Few weeks, give or take. See, I was smart. I holed up in my bungalow for the worst of it, lived off potted meat and tried growing out a beard...”

As Stefano blathered on, Giselle was surprised to see Mortegro, the former Necromage of former Moonshade, very flustered and very earnestly looking to her for clarification. Again.

“Honey, you’re gonna have to stop doin' that,” she told him. “I dunno what exactly but there’s something really strange going on in this here temple. Some kinda time-travel booshwa that gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinkin’ about it.”

“I gathered as much,” Mortegro said. “But we are leaving, then? Like, now?”

“Nope,” Giselle replied. “We’re goin’ deeper, darlin’.”

“Deeper!”

“Yes sir! You going on about death being a matter of is or is not and whatnot got me to thinkin’. And what I’m thinkin’ is, I reckon there’s someone in the basement you ought to meet...”

❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧✤☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙

Side Notes: I guess this is officially an alternate ficverse, as trivial as the fics themselves may be. Narratively speaking I always felt that Mortegro and Sethys got shorted a bit, among other things that got cut short. Does that make it a Fix-It AU?

I guess?

Among other things, maybe?

This is another one of those things I like to do where I make the actual Earth-equivalent time period a bit more vague, in terms of technology. I feel like one can get away with fudging this aspect a little, given the content of Ultimas I and II...

Anyway, Mortegro. Ill-starred necromage of Moonshade. He seems fairly well equipped when he joins, with at least some gear and a weapon which he won’t use, which is fine because he also comes equipped with the Death Bolt, which means if he stays in your party he will be doing a lot of heavy lifting in re combat (despite having the lowest strength out of your companions... seriously even Sherry the Mouse is tougher than him 💀).

Those spells are never really supposed to be seen or equipped by you; it’s just a workaround for giving NPCs magic spells. I don’t remember for sure what happens if you try to nick the Death Bolt off his paperdoll but I think it’s just kinda... superglued to it. LOL

I always thought it was cute that he comes with a cape, a scythe and a skull. Talk about commitment to the bit!

#ultima vii #serpent isle #pixel art

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