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Alumnus Post posted:“Take the pearl from your person and show me it, Ramona,” Scrimshaw says quietly, settling back on his triple hips -- his high-pitched, level voice somehow penetrates the sound of Branwen fighting through his ghouls, slithering into your ears like a mollusk out of its shell. He levels his crab-claw down the passageway like the point of a couched lance and opens the joint of it wide, shifting his bulk into an attitude of bracing for a charge. “He̶ do̸ęsń't de͟se̶r̷v͘ȩ yòu̵.͠ But I do.” Ramona 25/25 HP; 9/13 XP; 4 Armor; 11/11 Load While the dust settles I pick out a nice boulder-sized chunk of debris, lasso my chain around it and start spinning up the hammer throw. I'll knock the fool's trio of asses directly above the bomb-propellant–he won't be a bullet, he's going to be turned into shrapnel. The payload scrapes the walls of the corridor, but I maintain control and keep building momentum. For a split second I imagine I'm dancing with Serenity, the center of her orbit, but I snap out of it in time to throw my concrete haymaker right into Scrimshaw's solar plexus, where elf and crab meet. The positioning's perfect. Soon all he'll be is elf and crab meat. I re-coil my chain, preparing to dodge any dismembered leg or claw that might get blasted at me. "Uh huh, pleasure's all mine." @slydingdoor: 2d6+4 hns = (6+4)+4 = 14 [Smash! foe's positioning] @slydingdoor: 2d6+5 [dd str] bless and on the move = (1+5)+5 = 11 [controlled attack in narrow space] @slydingdoor: 1d10+1 MF damage = (6)+1 = 7 e; +2 from challenge = 9 total     quote:Name slydingdoor fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Mar 13, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2018 20:17
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Serenity HP 15/20 | Armor 2 | Load 4/9 | XP 19/13 Defy Danger...by getting out of the way: 2d6+1 9 As Scrimshaw bore down on her, Serenity dove aside and tucked into a roll. She felt something seize in her leg and she sprawled out onto the floor gracelessly. As she raised her head, she saw Branwen being swarmed and cursed. She could do nothing to fight either the formavit or the ghouls and it was infuriating.
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Feb 13, 2018 00:27
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R&S&B It’s dark as hell in these tunnels but for the carmine glow of Scrimshaw’s aura of power. That’s the problem with magic users. All that flashy lightshow makes them just impossible to miss. The formavit barely has time to see Ramona’s cinderblock suckerpunch coming. In the bloody glare you all see his eyes widen, then narrow, as her missile hurtles at him - a snarl of anger crosses his face and he leans backwards to embrace the blow as it strikes home, punching hard through his spellwards and shoving his six-legged bulk back into the passageway! Scrimshaw nevertheless moves with the blow, rather than let it spill him completely - but he trips on a rock while backing up and falls all over his tangled feet, straight into the knot of melee behind him. His ghouls are barely holding the struggling, smouldering Branwen away from their master when he slams right into them from behind, crushing all three beneath his smothering crustacean weight! Branwen, maybe one-on-one you could’ve bulled your way past, but two ghouls is just two too many. You slam a shoulder-charge square into one of them, meeting him rush for rush and stopping each other cold; you strain against each other, neither able to win leverage, the ghoul’s teeth snarling at your neck -- until the one who went high, having leapt right over you and turned around for another go, leaps right back in and pounds the first note in a symphony of pain into your back with its jagged hunk of rock. Involuntarily, your spine bows; staggered, you lurch off-balance -- then suddenly a horrible, crushing weight bulls into you, smashing you, ghoul, and all your gear to the ground. You hear a ghoul scream in pain, and a line of fire burns across your hip as your ammo box erupts in a fusillade of wild, crackling cookoff shots. The back of your head crashes against the tunnel floor, stars erupt in your eyes, and then everything goes black… Branwen, you take 1d8 damage. The ghouls soak most of the explosion, but you're still badly hurt, and out of action for now. Someone better come for you soon... Serenity, your graceless sprawl is what saves you from a braining - you belly-flop onto the floor just before Ramona’s boulder-onna-chain goes hurtling through the space you used to occupy, as finely timed as though you’d choreographed it. Scrimshaw’s driven back, driven down onto his beasts and the cleric alike, outsmarted and outfought! Nevertheless, however, you see that Scrimshaw’s wards have blunted that perfect strike, and though he’s clearly winded, he’s not anywhere as hurt as you’d like him to be right now. You pick yourself up off the floor, only to see him plant that massive crab-claw down into the pavement and use it like a pivot, levering himself up and off the crush and gaining his many legs afresh, reclaiming his space beneath the central junction. A wild and terrifying light blazes in his eyes, all flooded with black; feral joy and chill calculation at one within his heart...he thrusts his claw-tip up at the manhole cover above him, snarls a phrase in archaic elven, and looses all his marshaled force at once! A shotgun-blast of force and fire explodes from his outspread claw, ripping through brick and concrete like it’s plywood and rice-paper, blasting a hole in the street above wide enough for him to jump through. As Branwen's gatling-gun ammo starts to cook off beneath her, he crouches down and crosses his arms in another protective X. Sheathing himself in an aura of repulsive force, he crouches down and thrusts hard off the pavement, right as the flame-curse he applied on Bran's ammo goes off, using the momentum of the blast to propel himself away! A bloom of unnatural flame briefly blots out your vision; as it clears, you see the ghouls tottering to their feet, crook-limbed and reeking of cooked meat, but still somehow moving and hungry. As rubble starts to rain down into the chamber beneath, the smouldering ghouls totter to their feet, spy you still standing there in the tunnel, and charge full-tilt right for you! Only -- a split-second later you see their gaze isn’t fixated on you, it’s behind you - they’re coming for Ramona! Serenity, you can Defend or not; the ghouls go for Ramona unless you spend hold to redirect their attack. Branwen is temporarily out of action, and threatened by the falling rubble. What do you two do? Alumnus Post fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Feb 17, 2018 |
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Feb 17, 2018 03:08
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Serenity HP 15/20 | Armor 2 | Load 4/9 | XP 19/13 Serenity's eyes narrowed as she watched the ghouls sprint towards her. They were a minor distraction - her focus was beyond them, staring at Branwen's prone body. Only her keen hearing catching the thin, nearly silent sound of the girl drawing a labored breath proved she wasn't dead. Dragging herself to her feet, Serenity reversed the grip on the knife and stalked forward to meet the ghouls, violence in her eyes. All thought of her own wounds vanished. These beasts could take what they wished from her, but you did not hurt her children. Ever. As the first ghoul loped by, the bard's arm shot out and seized it by the throat. She hefted the foul thing into the air with hate-fueled strength and drove the blade into its sternum. She tore downwards until the weapon came free and cast the thing aside. The second ghoul tried to evade her to no avail. She shot out a boot and stomped down on its foot, relishing the sound of delicate bones breaking. As it stumbled she stepped behind it, threw an arm across its neck, and buried the knife repeatedly into it's chest. That one, too, she dropped before turning back to Branwen. Whether the ghouls were singlemindedly driven to attack Ramona or simply smart enough to fear the mad elf, they did not seize the chance to come after her. Whatever the case, Serenity was beyond caring. Once her path was clear, she sprinted to the cleric's prone form and knelt down, gently examining her injuries. Spending 2 hold to deal 6 damage to the ghouls going after Ramona.
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Feb 17, 2018 04:23
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Ramona 25/25 HP; 9/13 XP; 4 Armor; 11/11 Load I grab and throw, kick, deflect and slingshot with my chain the chunks of debris back up where I last saw Scrimshaw. "Nice knife-work. I'm gonna go finish off Scrimshaw." I tap the side of the elf's helmet where I left my seal then get climbing. @slydingdoor: 2d6+5 dd str on the move blessed = (6+4)+5 = 15 When you defy danger, on a 12+ you turn the danger back on itself, the GM will describe how. slydingdoor fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Feb 17, 2018 |
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Feb 17, 2018 05:19
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Serenity HP 15/20 | Armor 2 | Load 4/9 | XP 19/13 Serenity grabbed Ramona's wrist before she left, staring into the woman's eyes for a long moment. "...Don't die." It was a ragged whisper. "I'm not done singing songs about you." She released Ramona's hand and nodded before turning back to Branwen. She was in bad shape but her heart still beat and that was something to be happy about. Bombarda. I don't follow you, but I care about this girl of yours. Lend her your strength. She doesn't deserve to die in a place like this. Cradling Branwen's head in her lap, Serenity leaned over her and sang quietly, willing the flesh to mend. Arcane Art: 2d6+2 11 Branwen heals: 2d8 13 damage and her mind is shaken clear of one enchantment.[/i]
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Feb 17, 2018 14:22
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RAMONA Some faint sound from above tweaks your ear as you climb a fallen foundation-stone and begin to mount up. You step neatly to the side as the manhole cover plummets from above and guillotines straight into the place where your collarbone would’ve been a moment ago. It’s been soaked in heat somehow in the seconds since the blast, spun out and molded into a lenticular shield-shape with an edge sharp enough to crack stone. A pair of holes have been punched into its center, the metal pinched and crimped into a knurled pillar thick enough to get your hand around comfortably. Scrimshaw’s handiwork, no doubt. Now it’s yours. You may claim the manhole cover as weapon and shield before you enter the fight. It has the tags (near, thrown, +1 armor, 2 weight). Have you divested yourself of everything you don’t wish to carry into battle? If not, you have time to do so first.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:44
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Ramona 25/25 HP; 9/13 XP; 4 Armor; 11/11 Load I see the old disc and get ideas. Out comes my bag of scavenged parts as I look for what I need. A beautiful auger bit and chuck, bearings and a shaft and spindle wheel. I secure them all to the shield, attach the grappler and wind the chain around the shaft, making it into a secret drill, minoring as a rotary saw and maybe even an enormous bandalore. "What manhole cover ever dreamed it would be used to make holes in men, eh? That it'd fall from the sky like starmetal and be forged by a goddess into a tool of justice. Write a line or two about that when we're done with all this." Spending all my adventuring gear to make this shield into a gimmick weapon.
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Feb 17, 2018 23:43
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NORI Before you can come to a decision, the ghouls make one for you - they share a glance, break in separate directions, and charge in a pincer motion towards the knot of rescues and refugees! Zilch and his band of interdiction techs draw together and brace for the ghouls’ charge with nothing more than fists and feet. Sandbridge snarls a curse from her voxponder and slips from her perch on the highway roof, kicking herself out as she falls so that she spins in a wide arc, the better to get a clean shot onto a flanker... What do you do?!
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Feb 21, 2018 02:57
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SERENITY AND BRANWEN Ramona claims her gladiator’s weapon and climbs out of the pit to face the monstrous Scrimshaw alone. Perhaps she goes to her victory….perhaps defeat, death or worse. You two are left behind in the aftermath of his ambush, both of you kept from the Black Gates by little more than sheer stubbornness, Serenity’s magic, and the joined wills of several major and minor deities. You’re both resting on a low mound of rubble in the center of a chamber in the Aqualantean undercity, a six-way intersection where several maintenance crawlways once met at a manhole up to the surface streets of Tian, Nori’s childhood home. Neither manhole cover nor the way you came in is now in evidence, the former having become a six-foot gash in the road above and all this rubble that’s all over the place; and the latter having become an impassable rockfall of brick, concrete, twisted rubble, and shattered, steaming ceramic pipes. Neither of you have the slightest idea where you are in relation to Tian’s street grid, let alone how to reunite with Nori so you can all get the hell out of here before it’s too late. Sandbridge’s comms drone is quiescent in Serenity’s pack, shorted out by the sheer metaphysical pressure of the formavit’s Power. While Serenity sings her adopted daughter back to (relative) wholeness, a faint pale blue shimmer emerges from a ways down one of the tunnels, rising slowly out of the floor, up into the ceiling, and away. Another one follows from another tunnel, and another, until they’re emerging up from the lower levels at a rate of one or two a second. The shimmers move with a drifting, languid grace, like sodden sailor’s rags drifting in a gentle surf, or slow steam rising from a sewer grate. It seems like they’re starting to emerge a little bit closer and closer to the central juncture each time a new one appears. What do you two do?
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Feb 21, 2018 03:43
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Serenity HP 15/20 | Armor 2 | Load 4/9 | XP 20/13 Serenity struggled to her feet as she watched the activity. Trouble apparently never ended down here. "Morning Glory, you need to get up." She offered Branwen a hand while she flipped open her mental encyclopedia. Will-o'-the-wisps? Some sort of elemental? Wait... Spectres. Why was she not surprised. Every undying abomination in the world was finding a place down here, why not them? Bardic Lore: Are these things intelligent, in the sense that they can be communicated and reasoned with? As she pulled the relevant information, she watched their actions closely, trying to discern their intentions. That was the trouble with more esoteric entities. A zombie or a skeleton was easy to understand. Zombies mindlessly ate the living, and skeletons did as they were told. Spirits though? Not so simple. Discern Realities: 2d6 6
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Feb 21, 2018 04:29
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RAMONA Hand over hand, you climb. Scrimshaw awaits you at the summit. You and he are at opposite poles of the hole he blasted into the city streets - about six feet wide and six feet deep, roughly circular. The tips of his crab-claw are black and smoldering. The formavit’s acquired a weapon of his own: a longish rod of some dark-grey metal alloy, gnarled like a tree-limb. It’s sharpened to a wicked thorn-point at one end and smoothed down into a knoblike shape at the other. Some kind of sorcerous focus….not to mention an effective stabbing implement. Scrimshaw spreads his arms in mocking welcome. Pale blue light pulses along the edges of his rod of power, waxing and then raggedly waning like the waterlogged breath of a man about to drown. A sardonic, half-appreciative grin spreads across his face as he sees how well you’ve shaped his murder-tool against him. Aside from a minute catch in his breathing and a spreading bruise blotched across his solar plexus, there’s little indication you’ve hurt him at all. ”You did us a great disservice, you know,” he says quietly, ”when you robbed the Abatement. You laid hands on some of our very best prototypes.” He makes a negligent motion with his rod of power. A ghost-trail of fluorescent light passes in its wake. His skin ripples, quivers, and splits like an overstretched sheet of gum. Two paired racks of micromissiles emerge from the flesh of his shoulders, mounted on skeletal armatures of the same dark metal as his rod. ”We’ve really made great strides since then.” He licks his lips and twitches his head at you. The missiles burst from their shoulder-racks and shriek towards you on wings of flame. What do you do?
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Feb 21, 2018 05:13
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SERENITY Spectres can barely be reasoned with at all. So narrow is the focus of their obsession that they often are unable even to clearly perceive anything but their ties to the living world...or anything, or anyone, that threatens that tie. The shapeless mists gradually grow clearer, resolving one by one into the translucent, misty-edged remnants of living men and women. One after another, they ascend from Tian’s bowels and drift gradually up to the city streets. They're nothing more or less than the shades of ordinary people. Maintenance workers. Domestics. Grocers, priests, plumbers, and haruspices; fishermen, electricians, soothsayers, office-workers, welders, metrographers, architechs...all the fallen people of Tian, lost in the Sink or soon thereafter. They're unable to move on, unable to let go; each one nailed to the hard earth by the weight of their sunken city's story. If the whole district’s dead are like this...this must only be the fraction of them you can see. There could be hundreds of them. Thousands. Unasked-for, Branwen’s harsh Bombardan light blooms again. The spectres don’t even seem to notice it. A few of the nearest drift away from that glaring light, as gently and naturally as smoke blown on the breeze. Nothing about their vacant, empty-eyed stare alters even the least little fraction. Men, women; half-elves, orcs, humen, frogmen, goblin and dwarf, they all pass one by one up into the war-shadowed Tian streets. You’re missing something here. You’re not seeing it. Something important...perhaps of grave and fatal import. But what? Why all these spirits? Why would they be called up now? These spectres seem less threatening even than the meanest ghost or ghoul. They don’t even seem to notice you! What do you do?
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Feb 21, 2018 06:00
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Nori 17/23 HP | 1/1 Armor | XP 8/11 | load 8/14 | shaky -1 DEX "Sandbridge, do what you can! We'll find the others as soon as we can move without one of these fuckers chewing our asses off!" I put thought to action, whirling my mysterious sword in a quick parry and defense before slashing once more at the nearest ghoul. Hack and Slash 4 +xp Oh loving poo poo rear end gently caress drat fuckin gently caress rear end...
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Feb 22, 2018 06:35
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Serenity HP 15/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 20/13 Serenity watched the specters warily for a moment. Her shattered voice came out as barely a whisper as she looked back to Branwen. "I don't think they care about us, and that suits me just fine. Ctach your breath." The nagging sense that she was missing something bothered her but there were far more pressing issues at hand. Pulling the comm device back out, she fruitlessly attempted to raise somebody. Nothing but static. Stuffing it back in her pack in disgust, the bard stared upwards where the battle continued. The smart move would be to stay here and let Ramona handle things. What could a crippled elf do against a war machine like Scrimshaw? Not much, probably. Yet letting a comrade go it alone against such a formidable foe was simply not in her nature. Swallowing the agony suffusing her body, Serenity reached up for a handhold and began the climb. Shardix fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Feb 24, 2018 |
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Feb 24, 2018 17:19
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RIP OOC thread Serenity Greymist, the bard quote:STR 09 (+0) quote:Starting Moves quote:Hypnotic Shardix fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Dec 27, 2018 |
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Feb 24, 2018 17:58
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NORI You break right while Sandbridge breaks left. Her gun speaks, chewing a shallow furrow into the other ghoul’s forehead and blasting away its nose - an inch more in the right direction and it’d be dead on the ground. You hear a faint ting as she releases her rappelling cable, dropping quickly to the pavement from a dozen feet up -- but then your own enemy is upon you. These ghouls are canny. They’ve learned from the deaths of their brethren. Your quick parry is met not with slashing claws but a cunning feint! As you whip your sword out in a slashing sweep, the ghoul ducks under the flickering edge and leaps past you, talons slashing almost in afterthought - pain rakes your sword arm from elbow to wrist. The ghoul doesn’t stop to follow up but bounds away on taloned legs, cannoning into the knot of civilians and refugees - the other ghoul joins it a moment or two later. You see Zilch grab his medical satchel and swing it like a mace, catching one ghoul across the jaw and driving it back a step. A bubbling snarl tears free of its chest and it leaps forward, driving him into the dirt. The ghouls and civilians vanish into a knot of desperate fists and feet. You take 1d8 messy damage, piercing 1. Your gun nest is currently free of ghouls. What do you do?
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Feb 24, 2018 18:58
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Ramona 25/25 HP; 10/13 XP; 4 Armor; 11/11 Load Rocketry starts poking out of the mutant's body and I make my choice to charge him. While I lunge into position over the pit I free the other end of chain from my spinning shield and pull the main one to start the drill, the saw, and now also the line trimmer, whose reach is more than enough to swat away the missiles trying to surround me before they explode. They can go everywhere except where they can hurt me. I make it over the pit and through the barrage, hit the ground running, then I drive my apparatus into Scrimshaw auger bit first. 13 DD strength turns the danger back on itself. 6 hack and slash though. slydingdoor fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Feb 24, 2018 |
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Feb 24, 2018 19:27
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RAMONA Your whirling chain-wrapped shield bats Scrimshaw’s salvo away like so many botflies. They fly wide or skim off at an angle - and instead of your heat signature, the missiles lock onto his! Their main engines flame out and jets of air spurt from their fins in the fractions of a second before the afterburners ignite -- his eyes widen in amazement and bloodthirsty delight. He interposes rod and claw and meets the missiles squarely. Scrimshaw and salvo vanish into a blinding flashbulb of flame and smoke! You leap through the flames and keep on sprinting, not even slowing down - if he could take Branwen’s volley at point-blank range, you think, he might even be able to survive a shot like that.. Sure enough, you’re right - a moment or two later you clear the smoke cloud and see him picking himself up off the crumpled ruins of a groundcar. Six furrows mar the pavement, terminating at the tips of his legs, and a network of charred lines are seared black into the chitin on his claw. Looks like you burnt out one of his wards with that love-tap. But even so, even for all that, he’s still barely even scratched. He cracks his neck, side to side, rolling the muscles in his shoulders as he gets up. His left midleg moves stiffly, on the side of his human arm - not broken, but maybe wrenched or badly sprained - you can see him shifting more of his weight to the crab-claw side. ”Ahhhh, your story burns, Ramona,” he purrs as you advance on him. ”Gods below, it burns so bright. I can hardly stand to look at you.” Your shield-thrust he bats aside with a blow from the blunt end of his rod. He traps the rim of it between the edges of his outspread claw and clamps down hard, cold-working a pair of shallow Vs into the rim. He reverses his grip on his rod of power, jerks you forward with his grip on your shield, thrusts the thorn-tip into your chest, and--  You don’t really have a clear picture of what happens next. Your vision flashes stutter-stop, red and white. Your head snaps forward and back so hard that your forehead smashes against the armor’s faceplate hard enough to draw blood. Your breath freezes in your lungs; your muscles spasm, lock, and then just shut off. It feels like he’s taken a soldering iron and welded a wire of scarlet agony to the traceries of your nerves. You try to get up but your muscles won’t respond. Neither do your lungs - you can’t find a breath. Black flecks dance in front of your eyes and start to grow. The world narrows to Scrimshaw’s blank pale face as he stoops above you, then fades away into darkness. He got you good. You take 1d10+2 messy damage, ignoring armor. Like Branwen was, you’re out of action for a little bit. You can DD+WIS to overcome your pain and terror. Sit tight in the meantime and wait for... ...SERENITY to get her chance in the spotlight. Streaks of flame fly across the blank eye of the crater mouth as you climb, batted back just as swiftly by a dark leaping shape twirling a blurred disk in its hands. There comes a blinding flash of red light and a thunderous roar. Shrapnel sprays across the opposite wall. Your hand closes on cold asphalt. As quietly as you can, you heave yourself up over the lip of the crater and rest a moment, catching your breath - only for your throat to lock up again in a silent scream. Scrimshaw’s alive and kicking, unbroken even by a salvo such as that - and oh Goddess, he’s caught her shield, no Ramona you need to get away now -- Scrimshaw blasts a thunderbolt of scarlet power through Ramona’s heart and out the other side. Her armored form is silhouetted in an arch of agony. Lesser forks of lightning leap from her back, arcing randomly throughout the battlefield, an anonymous, desolate city street - one leaps up into the air and forks between a knot of spectres, searing their forms instantly away like gauze held to a blowtorch. The other spirits nearby turn slowly towards the remains of their kin, a faint furrow of concern easing its way onto their blank faces. The others continue to drift aimlessly upwards. Ramona crashes to the floor like a sack of tin cans, suddenly and terribly strengthless. “All that power,” he says to himself, pensively. He adjusts his grip on the thing he drove into her chest - a long glistening needlepoint of dark metal, a sorcerous rod of power - yanks it out, and drives the tip into the road, where it holds fast. “All his centrality at your fingertips and you had only to grasp it.” He’s talking half to himself, half to the thing that used to be your friend. “Gods, what you could have been, Ramona,” he says. “The force your story has. Oh, the the light, the heart of it. Karthas would tremble before you. Í̦̳͕̲̩͖ ̮̺̩͇͔ẃ͍͔̼o͚̥̥̫͇̱͠u̞̭l͖̫͍̯d'͡v̴e̖̩͙̙̭͍͢ ͍͓̦͉̜͙̭́ḱ̩̼͖͚͓̩̲n҉̥̼e̺͎͢l̛̠̝t̹͉͚͕̩͓ ̨a̝̲ṯ̛̱̞̝͍ ͓̯̟̘ͅy̼̦̩̗͔̭̕o͢ṳr̢ ̛͈̹f̗̜͖̤͝ee҉̲̩̼͎ͅt̗ ̮̬̞̖̬̖͡ͅan҉̖̟͈d̡͈̖̠͚̤̖ ͔̲̯͉̞̠̜͠p̟r̰a̦̤̫̘̤̘i̵s̹̟͚͍ḙ̖̰͇͔̣̖͡ḓ͔̕ ̧y̨̜͔̟o̫̫̙͙͢u̙̟̯̝̜r̬̩͎̗̻̱ ̳͚̮c̭͔̗͝ó͚͙̞̙mi͇̟̳̬̱͓n̢͖̮̜̭̜̩̺g̨͕̳̮͓͓.͎̹͞” A low chuckle as he kneels before Ramona’s prone, motionless body, going down on his foreknees and one midleg. Pale blue corpselights chase themselves up and down the surface of his rod of power. The spectres seem to be changing their motion, drifting in a slow swirl around the rim of the crater. He holds his claw against her upper thigh and grips it gently. Sickly green light flickers, and a plume of foul steam rises into the air. “Ḑ̫o͕̜̥̩͕̟̮n͚̯͍̮’̫̟t͕̲̬̯̻͙ ̣͚̗͇͚͖͓b͖̯̩̫̜e ̨̩ͅa̶̦̮̙̭̝̦̭f̵̖̘͓r͖͕̀ai͜d͙̺̤,͖̮” he whispers to Ramona's body, as he reaches into the hole he etched in her armor and probes for something with his humanshaped hand, “...I'll make sure you're still here to see the end.” Scrimshaw’s back is turned to you, and he doesn’t know you’re there yet. What do you do?
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Feb 25, 2018 02:23
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Serenity HP 15/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 21/13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew3--XVFioU A piercing scream of fury tore out of the bards lips as she saw her friend fall. A small part of her mind, cool and detached from it all noted the rod and its effects. Taps into, channels and directs power. Utterly unsurprising. It also possessed the secondary feature of being very good at beating someone to death with. Spout Lore: 2d6+2 8 Forcing her body into a sprint, Serenity darted past the formavit and seized hold of the rod, staring death at the creature. She wanted to hurl a searing verbal barb into the depths of his soul, and she knew just what to say. Yet her voice was gone - that scream had finished the work she had started. She only hoped he could read her face well enough to know exactly what she wished to convey. Even if she died here, let him live with that humiliation. Tightening her grip on the rod, she wrenched it upwards - Defy Danger (+STR): 2d6-1 1 Shardix fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Feb 25, 2018 |
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Feb 25, 2018 03:14
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Ramona 16/25 HP; 11/13 XP; 4 Armor; 11/11 Load I start having a panic attack and that elfhand doesn't help. I'm reminded of unforgettable memories, of men I couldn't kill yet. Of being all alone. I see another elf volunteer her maimed hand for more punishment, and just shake my head at her, loosing tears from the corner of my eyes. You fool. Help me. Stop trying to save me and help me save myself. Us. 6 dd wis. Wishing I had aid :P slydingdoor fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Feb 25, 2018 |
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Feb 25, 2018 04:00
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Branwen McAlister HP 14/20 | Armor 1 | XP 7/12 | Load 4/12 Spells: Light[X] Sanctify[ ] Guidance[ ] CLW[X] Bless[X] Cause Fear[ ] Magic Weapon[X] Speak W/ Dead[ ] Boom[X] Branwen's arm slumps back down as the ghosts brush past them and she pushes herself to her feet as Serenity stands up. "Nah, he ain't dead yet, an' he's prolly riling up these damned souls." Right behind Serenity, Bran hangs back when she lets loose a warcry and charges the elfcrabthing. After a moments uncertainty, Bran mentally tosses aside the hesitation and does what feels right. "Oi, ya crustacean gobshite! Yeah you! Ye bleedin' t'ick, barnacled dope of a gently caress! Pointy eared lickarse, corpse lovin', face of a cabbage arsehole, worm eyed carrion feeder! Course yer a drat necromancer I can smell ya from here, I'd hate to run into whatever poo poo you out, must be three stories tall for how much of a pile ye fuckin' are. Becomin' a crab make y'ferget how t'bathe? Nah ye jus' too much of a plank t'figure it out. Here's a hint, walk into some of that fuckin' water mate, y'got a whole fuckin' ocean to clean yerself with! An' here ye are gettin' grabby with Ramona de Sahagún, like she ain't the most dangerous bounty hunter in the Crescent Sea! I'd feel sorry fer what she's 'bout t'do if ye weren't such a fuckwit!" With that she thrusts out her holy symbol and with a silent prayer to Bombarda both the symbol and Ramona's armor begins to glow with the golden incandescence of divinity, before the latter starts humming with an electrical whine. "I'd run if I were you. Yer th' only one here without Bombarda's blessing." Sidekick Bot posted:@ArkInBlack: 2d6+2 Aid Ramona = (2+6)+2 = 10
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Feb 25, 2018 09:33
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SERENITY Scrimshaw freezes at the sound of your shriek of rage. He rises slowly and turns to face you. He’s holding something in his left hand. A rough clamshell-shape. A tiny sarcophagus. Something small clinks and clatters restlessly in its confines. Oh Goddess no. Not this. Not now. Steam curls up from his fingers. A smile of utter, silken satisfaction sheens his face like oil. You lay a hand on Scrimshaw’s rod -- and it’s like you just laid your hand on the axis mundi of the whole city. A tidal wave of power blasts up your arm, down your legs, sears shimmering on the tips of your tongue and teeth. Your hand clenches convulsively onto the cold metal. You couldn’t release it if you tried. A fresh scream bursts flaming from your lips and breaks against the formavit’s chest, exploding out over the city in a wave of undirected sound. The power; oh Goddess, the power. The earth’s molten blood runs in your veins. It’s too much to take. Your heart swells with light. You feel like you could burn Scrimshaw to ashes with a glance. Like you could give yourself to the power and burn like a votive flame. Your light could outshine the moons’. Oh Goddess, it’s too much. Your hair is smoldering. Jaira give you strength.  You’ve grasped a power beyond your ability to withstand. You can make moves with effects well beyond their typical limits, but take 1d8 damage as the energy sears your fragile flesh. You can still apply your armor to this damage, but anyone without Divine Protection would take that damage ignoring armor. You’ll keep taking damage until the flow of power through you is broken. What do you do? *** BRANWEN Every spectre you can see finches visibly at Serenity’s awful shriek, like one woken from a deep and restful sleep. Slowly, they turn to face the axis of their slow orbit. Fleeting expressions of shock and grief flicker across their faces. You see their blank eyes start to blink and squint, slowly coming into focus...casting about for the nexus of their discomfort, the perceptible threat to the city they once loved. Scrimshaw listens with gloating malevolence to your flow of vicious invective. You see him shift restlessly as your fear-spell sets in, edging away from the fallen huntress. He looks from you to her to Serenity, welded to his rod of power and shivering like someone who’s just been hooked into a ley-line - in fact, she probably has just been hooked into a ley-line. A crafty, calculating look comes over his face. “Herald of war!” he barks, thrusting out his human hand in a peremptory gesture. The circling spectres respond, coming visibly into sharper definition. “Daughter of the Allflame!,” he cries, a fear-stretched grin exposing his carved, stained teeth. “Ah, what destruction you’ve wrought this day! What exquisite sacrifice! What passionate tribute unto the Flame Imperishable! I tip my hat to you.” A thousand shades stare down at you. The grief and wrath of the spectres’ unwarranted deaths is written on their faces as plain as day. Then Scrimshaw turns tail and runs. He just up and books it, leaving his rod of power behind. You have drawn the spectres’ attention, and they do not look happy. What do you do? *** RAMONA Savior has been taken from you, and Scrimshaw is fleeing with him. The spectres are circling. They’ve noticed Branwen and perceive her as a threat. Serenity and Branwen together have allowed you to overcome your fear and act. What do you do?
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Feb 25, 2018 22:41
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Serenity HP 15/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 21/13 Incoming damage: 1d8 1 2 armor, reducing the damage to nothing. Serenity's mind was in thrall to the vast power coursing through her - it was blistering agony and yet she could not help but revel in it. Every nerve was on fire and she could recall nothing that felt so good nor hurt so badly in her life. She wanted nothing more than to bask in this terrifying reverie. With this power there was nothing she could not do if she so pleased. Crush those who angered her and cast their ashes into the wind. Debase herself before those she favored in whatever fashion pleased them. All things were possible and she was inclined to indulge in every passing whim. First things first. Serenity's voice could be heard plainly, yet it seemed to come from some place deep within. In the Ancient Tongue, she spoke her challenge to Scrimshaw. She did not raise her voice and yet it reverberated like a thunderstorm. "I am Serenity Greymist, daughter of Kyriander Greymist. Chosen of the moon and stars, mother of half elves, breaker of enchantments. Bane of darkness, sworn enemy of the Choir. I am wife, mother, daughter, sister, or friend, to any who would seek my grace. And to you I say: Turn and face me. Explain yourself and your offenses against me and mine. Lay bare your desires and cast aside your iniquity and know the mercy in my heart." Charming and Open on Scrimshaw - What do you most desire?
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Feb 26, 2018 01:22
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Nori 14/23 HP | 1/1 Armor | XP 8/11 | load 8/14 | shaky -1 DEX taking damage: 3 messy I grit my teeth at the ghoul's slash, blood runs freely from my arm, but it's not immediately threatening. I steady my grip on the blade with both hands. My eyes feel hot with tears I can't allow loose at the screams of Zilch and the people I couldn't save. Some part of me, cold and calm, takes center stage in my thoughts. Well, now the tactical picture is somewhat cleaned up. I don't have time to hate myself for the thought, I charge through to the shack the Bombardans are holed up in, some backup, some shelter, somewhere not completely in the open. Defy Danger 8 "Sandbridge, we gotta go now!" I shout.
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Feb 27, 2018 06:46
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Branwen McAlister HP 14/20 | Armor 1 | XP 7/12 | Load 4/12 Spells: Light[X] Sanctify[ ] Guidance[ ] CLW[X] Bless[X] Cause Fear[ ] Magic Weapon[X] Speak W/ Dead[ ] Boom[X] "Are you really such a eejit that you're conflating Bombarda with the Fire Archomental? gently caress's sake, y'probably need to be reminded to breathe. Got a fancy computer installed in ya just for that? Here, let me educate you." Bran sharply inhales before bellowing out "BLESSED BOMBARDA! MATRON OF DETONATIONS, MOTHER OF THE BOMB, BRINGER OF THE EXALTED BOOM! HEAR YOUR HUMBLE SERVANT'S PLEA AND SHARE WITH US YOUR ECHOING MAJESTY!" Holy symbol still thrust out the glow intensifies to white hot, and suddenly from the shell clutched in Scrimsaw's hand bursts forth an explosion of sound, conjuring to mind in all the furious flame and force of a dropped bomb performing it's final and only purpose in a cacophony of noise, heat, and concussive force, while the looking spectres see the white hot symbol of Bombarda and it's radiant light to be their anathema. Sidekick Bot posted:@ArkInBlack: 2d6+2 Cast A Spell:Cause Fear = (2+6)+2 = 10
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Feb 28, 2018 17:40
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Ramona 16/25 HP; 10/13 XP; 4+1 Armor; 11/11 Load I remind myself I can't feel under my armor, and blessed Bran's spell makes my enemy recoil from me. That's right. He starts scuttling away and I start rolling my shield across the ground to reel my grappler back around its axle. I look at Serenity and see her suffering, her hands fused to frosted metal. I imagine running over, getting behind her and supporting her arms from underneath, lending her my strength and heaving the thing out of the ground together. Half Excalibur, half a witch pulling up her own stake– No. She can take care of herself for now. Scrimshaw can't get away unless I let him, and I'm not gonna let him. I kip up and sprint after him, and once I get in range I switch my shield grip onto the end of my chain instead, whip it out once like a bandalore, swing it around once over my head and try to bring it down at full spin, bit first onto the unarmored elf part of the formavit. The spiral spike rolls over his arm like the one on the wheel of a scythed chariot before finessing Savior in his shell out of the thief's hand as a final flourish as I awaken my fitfully sleeping weapon and it reels back into my hand. @slydingdoor: 1d8+1d6+4 hns blessed herculean = (8)+(3)+4 = 15 Smash! taking away Savior @slydingdoor: 1d10+1 messy forceful damage = (3)+1 = 4
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Mar 2, 2018 05:52
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RAMONA, BRANWEN, SERENITY Ramona, your spike-tipped trick shield augers up Scrimshaw’s arm, and white sparks fountain from your weapon’s tip as it impacts the formavit’s layered spell-wards. With a quick flick of your wrist, you dig the spike in between his thumb and forefinger, and neatly evict Savior from Scrimshaw’s ownership just before Branwen casts a fear-hex on his exorcium shell. The look of stunned, half-deafened surprise on his face is almost more valuable to you than the satisfying new gouge along his arm. It’s not a debilitating wound, not with his spell-armor still getting in the way - but crucially, your fresh and bloody mark on him looks like it damaged the fancy scar tattoos that seem to play a role in how he focuses his magic... Branwen, you couldn’t have timed that better if you’d tried. Scrimshaw’s rodless and Saviorless, bereft of his ghoulish allies, and ripe to feel the punishment of Her Echoing Majesty. Fortunately (for him), you’re a bit preoccupied right now fending off the hundreds of enraged shades that are slamming against your holy bulwark in a solid and unrelenting flow. They’re seeing you as anathema, alright: the spectres scarcely even need Scrimshaw’s urging to fly at you with total abandon! In brighter days, your sort wasn’t welcome in Aqualantis after sundown, sister; any more than magi of Scrimshaw’s caliber were allowed to walk the city streets without a municipal damping collar clamped around their necks. Unfortunately, he’s the necromancer right now, and you’re the besieged cleric fending off the spectres’ maddened assault. The pressure of their rage is sudden, violent, and completely without restraint. If that ward falters or is overcome, you’ll be ravaged: body, mind and soul… Serenity. Your voice is like a lightning-bolt from a clouded sky. Like the farmer’s sickle, scything cleanly the harvest from the chaff. Like a tuning-fork pressed up against the throat of God. Scrimshaw stops cold before that challenge. He stares at you in utter amazement as the secret power he tapped pours out raw and blazing; from your ears and eyes and nose and navel, from the tips of your fingers and toes. Then he starts to laugh. He laughs and laughs and laughs, as the spirits above coalesce into a rabid tidal wave and slam down against Branwen’s sacred ward, scattering away in all directions like the ocean crashing against an iron sea-cliff. He laughs until the tears run down his face. “Oh, what fine trick is this to play on your humble servant?!” Scrimshaw howls it at the open air, an awful look of anguished hate and unhinged joy blazoned on his tear-streaked face. “The prodigal daughter! Kyrie’s little girl, oh it’s been so long!” His wild cackle sounds just like your father’s hunting hyenas. It’d raise goosebumps on your skin if you had any hair that wasn’t already standing straight on end. “Oh, what fool me to miss that twist! Mercy, oh yes, mercy! Mercy on your poor cousin Ighirian! A-ha-HAAAAAA!” Scrimshaw asks in return: How can I get you to listen?, and most desires his niece to know the truth. But will Ramona and Branwen let him live long enough to tell you it? Something deep beneath you cracks. Your vision is whiting out. You can barely see Scrimshaw anymore, or hear the sounds of combat...you’re conscious only of the presence intruding into your consciousness. A presence of tectonic scale and inchoate rage, white-hot and molten; it presses against the bulwarks of your mind and heart like a fountain of magma boiling up from under a thousand feet of sea. Emotions, as vast as mountain ranges, are bleeding through that link. Anger. Anguish. This presence has been bound before. Exaltation. Joy and sorrow mingled. The presence was once set free, and forever altered by its release. Frustration. Resolution. Bitter wrath. The presence, you see now, has been bound anew; bound in part by the artifact you now clutch in an unbreakable grip. An elemental. A genius loci. The gate and guardian to an unformed well of incredible arcane power. And you just knocked on the door of its prison cell and dangled a key in front of its metaphorical face. Also, you Charming and Opened this thing too! It most desires to break free of all restraint. Including the restraint you’re placing on it by being too small for it to fit all its power through. You also take 1d10 damage this time as this power continues to pour through you, and it’s going to keep getting worse until you die or someone unplugs you. What do you all do? Alumnus Post fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Mar 3, 2018 |
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Mar 3, 2018 09:15
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Serenity HP 11/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 21/13 White coronas of ethereal flame blazed along the edge of her ears, and power burned within her gaze. She could feel the limitless energy surging in her extremities, feel it pooling within her core. There was nothing she could not do, no enemy she could not lay low. Was this what it felt like to be one of the Choir? All creation before her, throat bared. All she had to do was make known her will and it would obey. And the first throat she could see was... Ighirian? No. No no no. What kind of sick joke was this? Were the gods just seizing every bit of her they could find and hurling it back into her face? Ramona channeling Maximilian's spirit. Gretchen and her vanishing act. 01 dying and his body used for experiments. Anastasia proposing and than spurning her. Branwen's appearance, and now her cousin twisted and mad. It had all hurt, but this was a cruelty that was beyond the pale. "Call off your servants and forswear any further violence against my companions. If your fury cannot be checked, I will accept onto myself. But you will not harm my friends!" Her voice was a whisper, choked and tearful. There was no way for this to end well. Ramona and Branwen would not permit Ighirian to live after what he had done. And how could Ighirian permit them to live? And in the midst of all this Serenity felt a new force tear at her thoughts and drag her awareness down. It battered at her mind, an irresistible force far greater than she. Knowledge of what it needed - demanded - flowed through her. It wished to be free, and it would destroy her in the process. She was a tiny insignificant girl-child staring into a sun that swallowed everything, and all she could do was beg it to spare her. @Shardix: 1d10 = (6) = 6 damage, minus 2-armor
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Mar 3, 2018 22:18
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NORI You already made your ugly choice. The next time you post, please include an updated copy of your character sheet. Our OOC thread got archived so you need to keep things up-to-date here instead. Swallowing your grief and fear, you run. The civilians’ cries of pain fade away as you break into a sprint. Sandbridge’s rifle cracks once, twice. There’s no time for them anymore, not now. Sandbridge can handle herself, and as for the civilians...should’ve asked Ramona about them when you had the chance, maybe. You had met your allies already battle-scarred when they were coming down that highway earlier. When Ramona leapt into that teleportation terminus after Serenity, her suit was fresh-polished and gleaming, all tooled up with enough firepower and servo-assists to take out a basilisk without hardly even needing to aim. But when you saw her last? That suit was inert, half-melted across the chestplate by some colossal electrical discharge. It looked like she’d somehow managed to get into (and win) a small war in the ten minutes since she left your sight. How much time really did pass between then and now? * * * * * A tremendous, thumping blast shakes the air as your long legs eat up the distance. It’s dulled by distance and the intervening buildings, but clearly an explosion...Branwen had better not be loving with your city or there’ll be hell to pay. Another one, smaller; then the pavement starts to quiver...what in the blue blazing gently caress is going on with those idiots?! What the hell do they think they’re doing? The ghouls, at least, can’t wait to find out. As you charge flat-out for the shack, the other dozen ghouls also break ranks and run! They pour out from behind their cover and….disappear, again, into the maze of alleyways and access shafts that make up Tian’s undercity. Branwen’s merry boys seize the opportunity, and cut three of them down in a fusillade of bullets - but the other nine win free and disappear into the dark. The cleric’s soldiers creep cautiously down from their firing positions on the second floor. They receive you warily, still on the lookout for more ghouls...but none come. “Y’fought well out there,” one of them says, a hard-faced woman in dust-stained fatigues - she claps you roughly on the back and slaps a fresh clip into her plundered rifle. “Wish I c’d say the same for them.” She gestures to the civvies you left behind. They’re…alive?! No...yes, at least someone is...but at a terrible cost. The two ghouls are staggering away from a heap of bloody rags on the pavement. They appear disoriented and in pain. One of the piles of rags stirs and rises...looks like Zilch or one of his cronies...and shambles to its feet. Sandbridge, too, is among that pile. She rises like a panther, strides up behind the disoriented ghouls, and drives a quick, clean rabbit-punch into the backs of each one’s neck. With a sound like a steel piston being driven into a glass ball filled with rancid bacon, each ghoul crumples bonelessly to the ground and does not stir again. “You’re all alive. Good. Get moving. Up to the surface.” She doesn’t even break stride. With quick, efficient motions, she draws a rag from a pouch on her thigh and cleans the blood and brains off the mechanical apparatus strapped to the back of her wrist. She’s been wounded in that struggle...many little scrapes and one terrible slash on the inside of her thigh...three talon-swipes an inch deep into flesh and muscle...but she doesn’t even seem to notice. It doesn’t even seem to slow her down...and there’s far too little blood. Far too little from any of her wounds. And she just jumped a dozen feet and landed without even a whimper of pain. What the hell is she? A quick flick of her head as she assesses the survivors. Her opaque gaze is hidden behind a mirrored visor, blood-spattered. “That must have been Scrimshaw. My superior. He was formavit once. An elven war-priest. He’s...something much worse than that now.” “He may have found what it was he wanted. It’s a fragment of an ancient piece of metamachinery. A curse. Your friend Sahagún has been carrying it for years. I had hoped to reach Panakteia ahead of him and spirit it away.” “Now I know we have no chance. His ghouls will be coming to his aid. We need to move to intercept. If he can’t take it, he’ll run. If he can take it, he’ll run. Move. Now. Up to the streets. We’ll hit him from all directions.” She turns away from you and the Bombardans, and without looking back or waiting for your response, starts striding away. It looks like she’s going to just walk up the highway off-ramp and out into Tian proper. She pays no heed to the stumbling Zilch, bleeding from a dozen wounds. “F’kin ‘ell, formavit?” a bald-pated Bombardan whispers to one of his comrades. “I didn’ sign up for no bleedin' formavit...what t’hell do she think she’s playing at?” What do you do?
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Mar 4, 2018 02:14
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Nori 23/23 HP | 1/1 Armor | XP 8/11 | load 7/14 Time's up. That's what those distant explosions mean. The ghouls went charging that way, and we'll have to follow, there's no time. I dig in my pack for my last 2 healing potions, they've survived since the raft, and I'd figured I'd save them until I faced Murgo. At the mention of Formavit, I think back on what I've seen of Stathis' prowess and sigh heavily. I pop the seal on the first potion, and down it. immediately I feel the slight tremors in my arms steady. (removed debility) I pop the second seal and down it as well, immediately the blood stops seeping from the dozen wounds I've taken, tears and rents in my flesh begin closing and sealing back up (hp back to full) I let the empty glass vials drop to the ground with a clink, I check over my gear, reload the HMG to ensure it's ready and swipe the worst of the ghoul gore off of my blade. Without more than a glance back at the Bombadils and Sandbridge, I head up to the streets and the direction the ghouls ran. I think of Stathis again, and how this Scrimshaw is similar. "Alright team, let's go get kill't."
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Mar 4, 2018 02:42
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Ramona 16/25 HP; 10/13 XP; 4+1 Armor; 11/11 Load I sense Serenity getting roasted faster than I thought, and Nori coming with backup, and have to make a decision. I trust the little mutant–she's come a long way–and my instinct is to tell her to take care of Serenity while I finish off Scrimshaw. But she's not closer to either as far as I can tell, so I snatch Savior and my spinning wheel back up and focus on damage control, shouting to warn the kid about the tattoos while I settle in behind the bard just like I imagined earlier, but worse. From over her shoulder I see that thing trying to cross over. I know that elemental, though. It's Fitzl, the thing that my old Aqualantean amigo, the mutant fish thief, would stick into various rocks to animate them. Starved though, desperate. There'll be no talking to him until I'm holding what he wants well out of reach. Leverage. I need more leverage. So does the elf, so I growl the stakes in her ear: "Come on, bard, you let this big baby come out and he'll kill you: pull!" @slydingdoor: 1d8+1d6+4 ddstr bless power over others = (4)+(1)+4 = 9
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Mar 6, 2018 05:03
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Serenity HP 11/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 21/13 As the pain and exultation exploded beyond all description, Serenity was reduced to a near mindless recitation of litanies to Nashira and Jaira and Shula and Eihaix and Xvedon and all the rest. She had given herself up to them, sworn her service entirely, and they were all her shattered mind could seize upon to save her. It was that black temple so long ago as Julian died badly. It was that desolate tomb of absolute silence shattered only by the beating of her own heart. It was Meathammer looming over her with that hungry look in his eyes. No hope whatsoever but that the gods would see fit to spare this fragile child. Hope that they would be enamored by her blind manic outpouring of faith when all else was eclipsing horror and pain. She served as well as an imperfect creature could, and when her strength was not enough and sanity fled her? They were all she had left. In her mindless terror she felt strong arms around her, grasping the conduit rod. She was nearly blind to the world but in that moment she managed to grasp hold of herself for one brief but critical moment and find the vestiges of strength within her. As those arms lifted, Serenity's babbling stopped and she recognized Ramona's strong brown hands. A single world of the old tongue managed to claw it's way out of her shattered throat, and the bounty hunter's prodigous might was redoubled, power flowing through her. Aid Ramona: @Shardix: 2d6+2 = (5+6)+2 = 13 Shardix fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Mar 6, 2018 |
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Mar 6, 2018 05:51
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RAMONA You plunge into the heart of the maelstrom and lay hands on the white-hot shaft of lightning impaling the pavement. Your face is just inches from a column of blazing flame. It pulls at your vision, tugs at the corners of your hearing - the flames, seen from this close in, appear semi-transparent; in their deadly lambency, you think you see a shape you recognize...not just from your memories of Fitzl’s luck, the prize you once took from Murgo aboard his Priceless, but from your trip to rescue the Hvalreki too. The ruby glitter of natural thaum-crystal, aspected in earth and fire. The secret behind Aqualantis’ mighty industry. No wonder Scrimshaw had so much force to bring to bear against you. No wonder the Ikarians would’ve paid the worth of a ship for that measly handful of crystal you brought up from the depths, if this is what they thought they might be able to do with it. Your new weapon is at once the turbine-shaft driven into a titan’s molten veins...and the slave-collar locked around that titan’s neck. Its power throbs in your hand, barely tamed, sending waves of prickling heat all through your body. Your lungs sing with it. Your heart burns like a captured star. Needles of sweet agony shoot through your chest and out into your extremities. Your suit lights up again, all at once, telltales and diagnosis reports flickering to clamorous life in a split-second. You look down: a light like liquified rubies is shimmering out through the hole Scrimshaw blasted into your chest-plate.  Oh it's on now. You found  Scrimshaw’s rod of power. (You can give it a better name if you think of one.)It has the tags (2-weight, dangerous, close, messy, precise, +2 damage, ignores armor). When you hold the rod bare-handed, the city’s genius loci is powering your armorsuit, with all its weapons, at full efficiency. You can’t turn this effect off. The spectres of Tian are aware of you. They don’t consider you a threat yet. Because you have Savior, you can communicate with them. Also, Savior is red-hot in your other hand, and his exorcium shell is melting into your gauntlet.  What do you do? Alumnus Post fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Mar 11, 2018 |
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Mar 11, 2018 02:46
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SERENITY You dig deep, down to the very roots of you, and find one last kernel of unburnt strength. A word of unbinding swells in your larynx like a fist pushed through fabric. Ramona heaves with all her strength, and the rod slips free with the sound of one single beat on an enormous drum. For one single moment, everyone’s hearts beat in unison. Yours, Ramona’s, Nori and Branwen, even Scrimshaw. The city’s spectres slow their raging tide and drift, spiraling out in wide and lazy arcs. Hundreds of blank eyes look down on you. You and him. Scrimshaw. Ighirian. Your father’s brother’s son. Unspent power hangs thick in the air, like moisture after a thunderstorm. Stark silence reigns. Ighirian’s wild laughter dies. The tears dry on his cheeks. He wipes the rest away with a swipe of his hand, leaving a bloody streak across his face. ”I see it all now,” he whispers hoarsely into the middle distance, his eyes aglow with a fanatical light. ”I...I see the truth.” ”Little niece. Serenity.” A wild giggle bubbles its way up out of his chest. “This is all your fault, isn’t it?” he says to nobody in particular, not looking at you at all. ”I knew it. You and that assassin of yours. I knew They would send Their agent in opposition.” Scrimshaw takes a step forward, and his eyes lock on yours. “I KNEW IT!” he shouts suddenly, and his face contorts in passionate rage. Ighirian’s tongue darts out to lick his bloody lips and the fit is passed. Fear and anxiety wrinkle his brow; his gaze fixates again on Ramona’s black pearl. “Shhhh,” he soothes pleadingly, “don’t wake him. Please, please...it would be the end of us. Only hush, only listen, let me tell the tale, let me tell you how all this happened...” His eyes dart nervously to the thousands of drifting spectres, and down to the bedrock beneath your feet, as a restless quiver passes through those watchful shades. A silken scarf of glittering power coils away from the blood dripping down his elbow and fades away. You can hear footsteps distantly, many heavy boots on concrete and metal deck-plate... That counted as striking coup on Scrimshaw. Your voice is repaired, Jaira's blessing is restored to you, and you have one use of Metal Hurlant available in this scene only. What do you do?
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Mar 12, 2018 05:12
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Serenity HP 11/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 21/13 Serenity collapsed to her knees like a puppet with its strings cut, her hair a vast curtain surrounding her. No longer in contact with that source of power, her legs lacked the strength to keep her up. Her mind was faring about as well. Her senses were clearing a bit, but her thoughts were a churning sea of terror and rapture and fascination and sorrow. She dearly wished she were stronger than she was proving to be. Her companions deserved as much. A shake of her head scattered that unworthy thought, and one of her eyes pulsed in agony at the motion. Words were being spoken. It took her a long moment to recognize what they were and what they meant. Ighirian. He sounded...broken. A man not in control of himself. His own personal madness, or had that pearl sunk its claws into him so quickly? Serenity took a deep, ragged breath and tried to center herself and clear her thoughts for what lay ahead. She could make out the silhouettes of her friends and was afraid for what was next. Anything she attempted was probably wasted effort. Violence was inevitable and she was powerless to stop it. That did not mean she had the right not to try, however. That sort of thinking was the one weakness she would not allow herself. Ladies and Lords that I serve. I know that I am an unworthy vessel. I am selfish. I am childish. I am a creature of vice and sin. I am often a hypocrite, and despite all the indignities and pain I have suffered in my life, that alone in all the world brings me shame. I rebuked a brother in Lady Jaira's service, as if I had a right to do so. I bared fangs at the people of this city as though I had any idea of what they have suffered, as though they should thank me simply for existing in their presence. In spite of this you permitted me into your sight and gave me your blessing, and continue to grant it. I only ask now for your help in being my best self. I do not know that my best self is capable of doing all the good I wish to do, saving all that can be saved, or serving you as well as you should be served. But until my dying breath, I will try. It was difficult to do something as simple as raising her head. It felt as though it took years to simply look up at her companions and at Ighirian. Hauling herself back onto her feet was an excruciating trial. Centuries passed as her nerves screamed at her to stop. A hesitant step forward as she felt more than saw where her kin stood. The overwhelming power of the rod had left great splashes of black in her vision and they were slow to dissipate. A scant few paces away from Ighirian she stopped and peered up at him from behind a layer of charred red hair. Words were hard to formulate and they passed her lips reluctantly, her voice a shattered and tremulous thing. "Cousin. It's alright. Say what you must say. If, when you are finished, you are yet unsatisfied, I will grant you what is mine to give if it will ease your burden." She placed a hand on that great claw of his and sang a small, quiet song. It was a little thing. A silly song she had sung for him now and again when they were young. She only hoped enough of the elf she used to know remained for it to help him regain himself. Arcane Art: 2d6+3 13 Breaking Ighirian free from
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Mar 14, 2018 02:50
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Serenity, since you did Arcane Art on him, and it worked, that must make you Scrimshaw's ally. Branwen, you’re Serenity’s ally. Does that make you Scrimshaw’s ally?
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Mar 14, 2018 04:15
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SERENITY Scrimshaw’s eyes drift closed, and he listens. The world narrows to nothingness. It just drops away, until it’s only you and him; just niece and nephew, reaching out to each other. Your cousin’s eyes open. Ighirian looks out at you across a gulf of centuries.  “We’ll have this much, at least,” he says quietly, after a long while. For the first time, you can hear the weight of years in his high, girlish voice. No blood-lust in his eyes now. No words of power twist the wan curve of his lips into a sneer of cold command. He rolls the shoulder of his tattooed arm as if to work out a stubborn knot. Drops of blood run down his fingers and into the dust. His smile could be a ray of heatless sunlight on a barren winter hillside, snow-choked and silent. “They will give us this much. Oh, Serenity. Oh, how you’ve grown.” The clear stigma of prophecy overlays the clear remembered brown of his eyes. A milky sheen clouds that once-bright sparkle, hiding the gleam of hot intelligence you remember from his younger days. “How bright the company you keep now, cousin.” His eyes fill with sudden tears and he struggles to speak through the thickness in his throat. “Ah, how rich the shadows their hearts have cast. I can, h, hardly see you there.” He draws a shuddering breath and begins to speak his tale. “When I went into the Choir’s service, my heart was swollen with love for Her. She treasured my mind. My skills. I rose high in Her estimation. My research pleased Her. I was given materials, and servants, and a mandate. She sought a way to take our peoples’ lives beyond the clutch of Death.” “The Elvenwars cut our efforts short. Hundreds of my brothers died. Hundreds more were crippled. My Queen was inconsolable. She demanded of me what I knew I was unable to give. What else could I do, but seek to give it all the same? I tried. I tried to save them...” Ighirian looks blindly upwards, lost to you for a moment in his grief. A new vessel cruises calmly above Tian’s protective dome. Glittering lights pick out the contours of its flanks, tracing a slim sharklike cigar-shape against the far-distant sky. The drifting skein-lights of the triton army, still locked in combat against Aqualantis’ infantry forces, seem suddenly smaller against that shape’s cold rigidity. “I was gelded, he tells you, looking abruptly down at you, “stripped of my power, and sent into exile among our foes. I wandered, hunted and hated, for decades. When at last I found shelter amidst the Rimewash, I could scarcely believe it. It seemed too good to be true...” The corners of his lips quiver, and an odd, distant look comes into his eye; like he’s listening to a piece of music no one else can hear. “It was your daughter, Serenity...true flesh of true flesh, although warped and foreshortened...I doubted, at first...but in degrees I induced the truth. My exile had nonetheless left me with certain skills...Shallendo she called herself, after my grandmother’s grandmother, and I could not gainsay the testimony of her blood.” What do you do?
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Mar 20, 2018 03:47
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NORI AND THE BOMBADILS You juice yourself up on healing potions and lead the Bombardan troops out of Tian’s underbelly. Zilch lags far behind, unable to maintain even a walking pace. Sandbridge isn’t waiting up for him. You emerge after a short hike onto a broad curving thoroughfare in an outer-ring Tian neighborhood, not far from the Panakteian district locks. Tian isn’t all one place. Where did you grow up? Was it in a neighborhood like this, or somewhere else? Oh, what a bitter way to come home. Your heart could break open at the sight of this. There’s a sign in amphib textura script, hanging drunkenly from one support, advertising fried fish and cold algae beer from the storefront of a gutted and ruined bar. Some Wunderlander’s flowform sculpture lies in a tumbled heap at the center of a roundabout, nothing but artistic rubble without the flowing power and seawater needed to enliven its gravity-defying curves. Groundcars lie slumped on the pavement like some landlubber’s donkey-carts, their pressure skirts deflated, many displaying the ugly impact wounds of what could only be the Sink. What waste. What awful loss. How many of your neighborhood’s departed souls still linger here? The answer soon becomes terrifyingly clear: it’s pretty much all of them. The unquiet dead are emerging from the city’s underbelly at about the same time as you: shade after shade after shade, at first only pale blurs of ill-defined color, then slowly resolving into the shapes of people who you might, but for the Sink, once have passed on the street without a second glance. They pass you and the Bombardans by without even seeming to notice you, their attention fixated on something else nearby. Cover your eyes. Turn away quickly; let the memories of your parents pass through your psyche and depart. It’d be just too much to see them there, among that horde of thousands - or worse, to seek and and not to find them, and wonder where they might be. Do they yet live? Did they perish? Have their shades been lost into the all-encompassing Sea? Do they even now serve the monstrosity at your city’s heart? What begins as dozens quickly becomes hundreds of spectres, then thousands. They begin to drift in a slow whirling arc as they rise into the dead city air, a slow whirlpool motion centered on one of the nicer midring neighborhoods, close to the market square at Shad and Palace. Your childhood memories grind into tentative gear: from there, you think, you'd have a straight-line approach to Slipway Boulevard, the district sea-wall, and the massive airlock to Panakteia at the end of that road. If you’re looking for terrain or positioning that would give you or your allies an edge in a fight, roll Discern Realities. If you want to set traps or ambushes for Scrimshaw, or fashion weaponry or tools, roll Jury-Rig. Use the terrain, and the tools available to you, to create and set your traps. If you know something special about the terrain, or a faster way to where you want to go, roll Spout Lore, and then tell us where it is, and where it goes. What do you do? Alumnus Post fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Mar 22, 2018 |
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Mar 21, 2018 03:52
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Nori 23/23 HP | 1/1 Armor | XP 8/11 | load 7/14 Tian district was made of multiple neighborhoods, radiating out from the central market/entertainment hub. I lived on a small side street that I can't remember the name of, but it wasn't far from the docks. It's how I escaped the sink like I did. I keep my eyes focused on the direction we're headed, so as to avoid looking too closely at any of these marching ghosts. poo poo, Ramona does the ghost thing, she must be Ramona-ing again. At least the mass of dead shades lets us know we're going the right direction. The church folks are low on ammo, but so far no signs of anywhere to resupply. Discern Realities 10 What should I be on the lookout for? What here is useful or valuable to me? What is about to happen?
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Mar 22, 2018 21:48
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