An Alehouse Story About Sload

Hey, buddy, gimme a drink?

Mebbe, if I get somethin’ outta it.

Well, I’ve been around longer ‘n you, so I’ve got lotsa good stories to tell.

Stories? They better be damned good stories. What’ve y’got?

I’ve got the story ‘bout the time I got caught in an Arkayist pirate attack, or the story ‘bout the time I got stranded in this podunk cratertown in the middle of nowhere and all these tribesman remnants of Reman’s colonies started attackin’, or the story ‘bout where the Sload come from, or—

Yeah, yeah, that ‘un sounds good. The one ‘bout the Sload.

Whoa, whoa, drink first. Mug a’ Ebonale, please. The kind outta Nunib.

BARKEEP! One Nuniben Ebonale fer my ugly friend here!

Thanks, pal. Okay. Sload. Well, I’ve worked with Sload plenty of times in the past, too many times. I was an airship deckhand, moving from ship to ship at each port, all across Nucyrod. I even worked on one of those Sloadships that’re actually just a really, really big, old, levitatin’ Sload. So—

Get ta’ the story!

So the Sload like to say that they came from Revenant or sommat, but who believes a Sload? You kin only ever believe them when yer talking business. So anyway, the story starts with Molag Bal.

Shocker!

Yeah, yeah. So Bal’s goin’ ‘round Oblivion, stealin’ souls and gatherin’ slaves and whatever else he does with his free time, when he sees this void he’s never seen before. It’s Namira’s Scuttlin’ Void, full of darkness and… scuttlin’.

I can see where this is goin’.

“Yeah, yeah, shuddup. So Bal sees the Scuttlin’ Void and, Bal bein’ Bal, the first thing he wants to do is to, uh, fill it. Now, if you see a woman with things scuttlin’ ‘round down there, I hope you know to pass it up, but Bal, Bal already had plenty of things a-scuttlin’ in his twisted locks, mudcrabs and land dreugh and who knows what else. So then Bal did what Bal does, and none too gently, I might add, and lo and behold…”

The Sload are conceived!

You got it. Some say the vampires came about then too, since they’re undead and they like the dark, but I think that’s a load of ox shit. Anyway. So the Sload come about, but at first they’re in their ad’lescent shapes, and they swim about, and they look like anythin’ else outta the Scuttlin’ Void.

Wet and ugly, y’mean?

Yeah, wet n’ ugly. So eventually they turn into the filthy adult Sload we all know and hate, and you kin tell pretty clearly what they got from who. They inherited their shapes from their ma, so that’s why they’re disgusting slug-worm-toad-things, and they inherited their brains from their pa, so that’s why they’re all a buncha greedy, calculating, soul-grubbing psychos.

That makes some sort of sense, I guess.

Make all sorts of sense, friend. So then they started pourin’ out of Namira’s place in Sloadships of all kinds, ‘cuz they act like their pa and they knew that Namira didn’t really have anything they wanted, and they set to colonizin’ Revenant and Thras and whatever and joinin’ in Bal’s big soul economy, and that’s my story.

That was an okay story. Tell me the one ‘bout the Arkayists, now.