** Another post from our old clan forums. This one is posted by and from Xoco's perspective**
You get the Sword of Kirukan from the corpse of Benjen.
Excerpts from the diary of a Winged Guard....
Shaldine 28, 1055
The ancient Power-wrought blade of Kirukan, once borne in ceremony by the legendary Aramaellen Queen Mabriam en Shareed, now in the hands of criminals who seek nothing more than cheap slaughter and thrill, who understand nothing. The Dark One chokes us with his madness, and sometimes, against my own self, what I desire most is darkness, a blotting out of the unremitting commotion, of the limitless colour, of the vibrant noise of this living.... unnavigable oceans blanketed by icebergs of bodies, human bodies filled with compulsions, desires, habits, demands, obligations, duties, neuroses, longings....
Nesan 18, 1055
Travel was something I never enjoyed, nor sought out, and here yet again I find myself crossing the nations, this time in return, to near the border of Arafel.
Nesan 22, 1055
The long road through Far Madding, with its citizens stiff from paranoia, a city near as bad as Amador. May I never need see the walls of Amador again in my life....
Danu 24, 1055
Returned Malfeasor, the twin bladed scythe of blood ebony to safekeeping with its guardians at the southern border of Arafel, before turning west.
Danu 26, 1055
A band of paltry bandits attacked me just south of the Kandoran border today. I was dismounted due to a mild complaint in the left hind leg of my horse, and was not properly prepared for an ambush. They are all dead, now, and I have a wound on my right thigh that will begin to scar by the week's end.
Taisham 8, 1056
Chachin has stilled since the Feast of Lights and I passed through without fare, aside from the usual sidelong glances. The heraldry I now wear no doubt stands in contrast to my Arafelian features, else I would be wholly invisible. The Winged Guard is well esteemed in Kandor, it seems. The letter sent in advance had prepared the court for my arrival, and the Queen herself gave me audience. I presented her the sword. The was no real ceremony. It was better that way. I rest easier knowing it is returned to its proper place. For how long had it been lost in the world, wandering through the wretched hands of bandits and murderers? How much innocent blood did it spill?
Taisham 12, 1056
At sun down, I did not look out across the fields towards where Arafel lies. Mayene, so far to the south, calls me home. I have left everything else behind me. The only image I keep from my childhood is that of the snows, which left themselves hanging upon the branches of the bare, old trees in the miniature garden planted in the cloister for my leisure. They grew and aged as I grew and aged, each in our own way, as I pulled book after book from one or another of my library shelves, tomes on tactics and field command, monographs on botany or history or agriculture, reading each winter day past to the smell of lilac and frost. How short a time ago I did not think it would be possible to claim somewhere as my home.... They are dancing below me now, and feasting.
Taisham 18, 1056
Often a thought, visited hurriedly upon me, will vanish so swiftly that I feel it could not have belonged to me. On such occasions, which punctuate every one of my days and nights irrevocably and with excruciating frequency, I am left feeling as though I am possessing only of a series of glimpses meant not for me. Everything a complete inarticulacy. There is not only too much noise in the world, but too much noise in my own thoughts, for anything to be more than the faintest echo.
Taisham 20, 1056
I just awoke from a dream. I was home in Mayene, making love with K. But why was there was a dwarf with an insectoid helm watching us?
Taisham 20, 1056
The journey back has been entirely uneventful. I should arrive by tomorrow, early evening. I am simply exhausted.
Taisham 21, 1056
I am back home in Mayene at last. Last night, I was continually compelled to notice the part of the world at the corner of my eye where my lover would return, likely drenched in her armour. Through the hallway to the open back porch and opened window the oncoming of rain began to be noticeable as I handled the neat pages of Treatise on the Fishing Shoals of Mayene, procured for me at no small price. The stark echo of the thought within me of her return kept away the book in any considerable capacity, though the great unburdening of the outside wore soothingly upon my knotted eyes. As my wait grew prolonged, any sound became the sound of footprints: birds alighting from branches and fences, a neighbour's front or back door, a cart down the street, the creak of old wood in wind, a beetle dislodged from a pebble, water slipping off an overburdened leaf, the scrubbing of linen, or just rain landing on the rucked dirtways. Anonymous noises of the outside, all potentially masking the sound of her steps. Finally, the burden of possibility drove me back into formication, and shackled darkness, where hanging ceilings and narrow, empty hallways exuded all their fossilised sicknesses, their invisible gestures of ill will trained to crash against the head, my head, until it ached. Rain chirred on in ignorance of the onset of dusk. I eventually fell asleep in a chair, my lover as yet unreturned.