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SERENITY These wounds are grave, but they're nothing you haven't seen before. Bitten, lacerated and...burned? Seems the Goddess of Explosions expects Her devotees to call down the blessed thunder with a certain degree of restraint. Or, at the very least, from a certain distance away. Your song will serve for these, as it served before, and will again in time. It makes you shudder to see your morning-glory hurt so gravely...but something about these wounds...they call to you, draw you nearer; tight windings of smooth muscle cradling the injured flesh of your lover's daughter. Her flesh, so fair, torn asunder by her own hand and the hand of her foes; but in your altered state the wounds seem strangely beautiful. Even the dumb hand of a beast can create something good and worthy...even from the blind strivings of nature can spring forth beauty. Entranced, you draw closer still. You can fix this. You can change her...remake her... When the healing is over, what do you do? ***** BRANWEN She carries you snakeback back to the watchfire -- your acolytes stoke it hot and bright, warding off danger while the thing Serenity's become cradles you tight in its coils and begin to sing. Now, having your flesh mended by the power of song is never exactly a pleasant experience, but something about this feels rather stranger than usual. Your leg is itching madly -- it feels like a swarm of tiny maggots is squirming around in there, debriding away the burned and lacerated flesh. Her eyes are oddly blank as she bends close, crooning in soft sibilants to your injuries. Okay this is starting to get maybe a little bit off here, and your acolytes seem to think the same -- as if from a distance, muffled by the newborn formavit's singing, you can hear their questions, then their shouts. When Serenity withdraws, you look down at your injured leg. It's all patched up...and then some. She didn't so much heal your burns and lacerations as she did embellish them. The row of tooth-marks on your lower calf have been softened and drawn out - now they're a striated, ropy keloid that looks a bit like braided match-cord. Your self-inflicted burns are now only a shiny, rippled scar...but the way your skin has tightened and ridged around the new tissue reminds you of the heart-shaped leaves of morning glory. Looks like Serenity healed you a little too much. What do you do?
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Jun 29, 2018 03:23
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 13/14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCsg32CnN0g Serenity cocked her head, gazing reverently at the scars. That her skin had been marred was infuriating. That her beauty was no less tarnished in spite of it fascinated her. How had she ever found it in herself to leave this girl? Her mother? She had done what she thought she must, it was true. Yet the sheer fact of being capable of it was baffling. Reaching up and tearing down the sky seemed trivial by comparison. Her eyes shifted up to Branwen's and than immediately away. If she looked into those eyes again she would drown in them, she had no doubt. Shifting her coils, she let Bran easily onto her own feet, ready to catch her if she were still off balance. Once certain of her daughter's steadiness, Serenity shifted again, her coils working together seamlessly to obey her will. She made a space between them and prostrated herself. Arms bent and head bowed low, she spoke. "I should not have left you. I should have taken you both with me, but I could not bear to see either of you at risk. I could not bear to see you come to harm. I had hoped and prayed that I would be the only one hurt in our parting, that you could forget me. For the pain I have caused you, I cannot ask your forgiveness. I can only ask of you; what I can do to try and make it right? What can I do as a derelict mother to a daughter she does not deserve, to make her happy? I truly do not know." Charming and Open What do you wish I would do? Branwen gets a question of her own.
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Jun 29, 2018 08:31
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RAMONA The elf and her daughter(?) are having kind of a private moment here, and the Bombardan acolytes don't seem to be willing to leave Branwen's side. That leaves you to watch the campsite, and the watchfire. And Nori. You haven't heard much from her at all. Are you entirely sure she's all right? The shock may be getting to her. Tian was bad, true -- but if it hadn't been for the breach, maybe that district could've been habitable again, after all this is over. The buildings were there, the life-support (sort of) still worked...but this? Look around you. This is catastrophe. This place is flooded six feet under. Maybe more. You haven't yet plumbed the depths; maybe a story, maybe less. It doesn't matter. Maybe that triton was right. Serenity and Stathis filled you in a little on that -- the one Nori dueled, the one who put out his own eye rather than concede first blood to her. Feed on what, Aqualantis? Breathe what? Sandbridge said the life-support's supposed to be on in here, so where the hell's the life? Did the crocodiles eat everybody? And what the hell was that noise? Sounded like a footstep, or maybe a scuff. The soft slap of bare feet on stone. The subliminal scraping of wet skin against coarse wood. Somebody's skulking around out there. What do you do?
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Jun 30, 2018 04:06
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Ramona 18/26-1 HP; 4/14 XP; 1 Armor; 5/11 Load, Scarred "I can hear you. Make yourself known..."
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Jun 30, 2018 04:32
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RAMONA The footsteps speed up! The skulker is running... Giving chase would lead you off in a different direction from where Branwen met the crocodiles. What do you do?
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Jun 30, 2018 04:43
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Ramona 18/26-1 HP; 4/14 XP; 1 Armor; 5/11 Load, Scarred I hold up balancia to try to get a good look at the runner and decide whether to continue pursuit based on what I see.
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Jun 30, 2018 06:32
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RAMONA You raise your rod of power high and call light to its blunted end. Scarlet radiance flares, harshly illuminating the campsite...and the skulking sneak thief creeping away from it. The thief freezes like a deer in the headlights, then whips around in the balancia's red glare to meet your eyes. You have a moment or two to take them in: broad flat hands and feet, smooth skin glistening with moisture; a blunt bald bullet of a head; staring eyes a little larger than a dwarf's. Their only clothing is some kind of loincloth or short waist-wrap. One of the Bombardan acolytes shouts from over by the watchfire: they've finally cottoned on that something's up besides just the croc attack. The thief drops a coarsely woven cloth sack to the ground -- it lands with a clink and clatter -- then turns tail and runs like hell! What do you do?
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Jun 30, 2018 15:48
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Ramona 18/26-1 HP; 4/14 XP; 1 Armor; 5/11 Load, Scarred I carefully search the bag with a stick, make sure it isn't full of poison or disease or a bomb.
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Jun 30, 2018 18:24
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Branwen McAlister HP 20/20 | Armor 1 | XP 11/12 | Load 4/12 Spells: Light[ ] Sanctify[ ] Guidance[ ] CLW[ ] Bless[ ] Cause Fear[ ] Magic Weapon[ ] Speak W/ Dead[ ] Boom[ ] Bran, steady on her own feet again with her dizziness mostly gone as the bardic magic soothes her body's ills, waving off the fretting Bombardans. "Fucks sake Bigjob, it's song magic, y'wouldn't hassle a surgeon while their scalpel's in someone, breathe for a second." Serenity's prostration and questions catch Bran off guard. Her face dances between emotions, from anger to disbelief to deep thought. As she looks around searching for some kind of answer, Bran's gaze comes to her hand and her holy symbol clutched within her grasp, and her shoulders slump. Finally Bran speaks. "I don't. Know. I thought I'd get... Something, if I made you see how you hurt us. If I made you hurt like I did. Do... But... I didn't get, anything. At all." Bran's expression becomes lighter at this confession, realizing the words she's saying as she says them. "But I don't feel like we have the luxury to sit around and think through everything right this second. We're in this drowned poo poo hole, I'm looking for envoys, you're here for gods know why with the most infamous bounty hunter on the Crescent Sea, the animals in this overgrown hab are unafraid of proper explosions, there's a formavit who knows you working for a necromancer and now you're part snake? I've never seen anything about snake formavit and the temple has a lot of direct reports from the second war so... What the hell, Serenity?" Who does Serenity serve?
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Jul 2, 2018 01:33
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RAMONA The bag contains your party's treasure. That skulking sneak-thief somehow managed to gather up the Bodhi shell, that soulstone with the baby inside it, and Nori's stock of thaum crystals before you (or anybody else) noticed anything was amiss. Good thing you caught them before they could scarper with this purloined bounty, or you might never have gotten this stuff back. You can't hear the thief at all now, and they're doubtless swimming noiselessly into the gloom now that they've been caught. Maybe the crocs will get them. You'd hear that. There's some more weird stuff in here too. Something you haven't seen before. Four or five tightly sealed glass jars, none cracked, all a little different -- maybe salvaged canning jars or something. Each one has an inch or so of rich black soil in the bottom, coated in a furry mat of mycelial growth. Clouds of fluffy white sporophores fill the jars' interior airspaces, pressing up against the sides of the thick glass like elongated, wispy fingers. Well that's certainly interesting. What do you do?
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Jul 2, 2018 02:08
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 13/14 "We both serve our gods. Nashira has seen fit to bless me with her grace, that my tasks can be completed. But you are right. We have no time for this." Slipping past the cleric, Serenity slithered over to Ramona, curious what she's found.
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Jul 3, 2018 00:25
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Ramona 18/26-1 HP; 4/14 XP; 1 Armor; 5/11 Load, Scarred I hook the balancia to my chain, pull the loop off the reel of my shield, stoke it bright red and hurl it where it'll illuminate the fleeing thief. We're not square yet. Then I aim my blaster, wary of my audience. I fire the nonlethal ice beam to stun the thief, smirking as it strikes home. I gesture with an sideways inclination of my head to the bard to walk with me, and wind the chain back around my forearm on the way, while I explain that it's a thief and what it stole. I restrain it, say, "All yours," and free it from the ice so she can talk to it or whatever. 1d8+1d6+1 volley power over others = (4)+(5)+1 = 10 1d10 forceful messy near AP stun = (5) If the d6 is the higher die of the pair, the GM will also introduce a complication or danger that comes about due to your heedless pursuits.
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Jul 3, 2018 21:34
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SERENITY Ramona leads you down to the edge of the water, where there's a slushy iceberg the size of a wardrobe floating about ten feet offshore. She reels it -- and the struggling form embedded within -- back onto the damp concrete. At first glance, the thief seems feral - bestial - but no mere beast would know the value of your Bodhi shell, or of the abyssal power-crystals mined from an elemental's welling veins. Eyes gleaming with intelligence and a veteran's cunning dart from your face, to Ramona's, to the watchfire and the mold-choked corpse near it. The hard tension in their broad face doesn't relax an inch. Ramona's caught the thief cold - for now - but stronger restraints will be needed if you want to hold them, and soon. What do you do? RAMONA ☆☆☆☆★  You've made some new enemies. Congrats.
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Jul 3, 2018 23:53
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Ramona 18/26-1 HP; 4/14 XP; 1 Armor; 5/11 Load, Scarred I'm a drat bounty killer, I know how to restrain a fugitive with my grappler chain.
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Jul 4, 2018 02:10
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 13/14 Serenity gathered up her stolen things and gently set them in her pack. As Ramona hauled in her catch, the bard moved forward to examine their captive. Shifting this way and that, she sought to get a full picture of the thief. Bardic Lore: What exactly is this person/creature? Another mutant like Nori, or something else?
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Jul 4, 2018 06:11
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SERENITY You scrutinize the captive thief from every angle. The slowly melting ice blurs their body's contours, but their head, neck, and shoulders are open to the air. You in turn are scrutinized by this creature, this animalistic robber with a soldier's eyes. No detail is missed: your eyes a-smolder with the banked fires of your faith in Nashira, the ruins of your elaborate hairstyle, your ragged garb and long luxurious coils of snake-flesh. It feels uncomfortably like you're being watched by an eagle on the wing. You've met nearly every kind of people on your long wanderings beyond the Elven Dominions. Humans of every shade; orcs, dwarves, half-elves born in exile or driven into it; the frogmen of the brackish marshes and the tritons of the pelagic flats...but this little devil is someone, and something, that you've never quite seen before. In brighter days, the Aqualanteans were known as enthusiastic experimentalists, molding their bodies and minds to fit the demands of their labor, or the whims of upper-crust fashion. You remember the tales you've heard of the infamous natural philosopher, Silas Greene, and his investigations into the elasticity of the vital humors...experiments which bore fruit both horrifying and sublime, until his greatest invention broke free its chains and devoured him alive. What have you heard about this luminary of dark science? What accomplishments, what tragedies? The captive might have been a frogman once, or a particularly well-muscled woman -- but whatever their former species or gender, now they're something lean and rangy, well-adapted to the stygian swampland Silver-home has become. They regard you impassively...and as the silence stretches past the breaking point, a strange thought occurs to you. An ordinary thief would be negotiating for his freedom by now; a soldier might be tighter-lipped, but not to the point of total silence. You start to wonder...are they so silent not because they choose not to speak, but because they can't? Your captive is mute. They're unable to speak, but can understand the speech of others. If you want a two-way conversation, you'll have to figure out how to do it. What do you do?
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Jul 5, 2018 01:19
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 13/14 Silas Greene. The name was not unfamiliar - rumor had it that the aberrations plaguing coastal towns of late had his fingerprints all over them. Monstrous and inhuman, the Gibberwocks were a plague. They devoured everything they could and drove the survivors mad with their lunatic howling. They were in theory intelligent, but whatever process had spawned them rendered them incapable of rational thought. Still darker rumors suggested these things were once people, crossed with something far darker and much fouler, and only made worse under Silas' scalpel. What had the man hoped to accomplish? If ever he had intended a benefit to society, he quickly lost sight of that goal.  A Gibberwock Noting their captive's gaze, Serenity raised herself up, hands on her hips. She was proud of her new form, and if this creature wished to stare, so what? She'd been stared at before by more disgusting things than this person. "I harbor no ill will towards you, but we cannot allow you to steal from us. Can you speak? If not, do you know a sign language?"
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Jul 5, 2018 12:05
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SERENITY The captive just looks at you. You think there's a trace of exasperation in their features, something like "are you making GBS threads me?" But they do nod. Sign languages generally need their speaker to at least have a hand free. 
Alumnus Post fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Jul 5, 2018 |
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Jul 5, 2018 12:09
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Serenity looked over to Ramona. It was the bounty hunter's call on how to proceed.
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Jul 5, 2018 14:04
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Ramona 18/26-1 HP; 4/14 XP; 1 Armor; 5/11 Load, Scarred I don't want to stick around for hypnosis time. It disgusts me, but I'm not about to stop Serenity from using her gifts and might as well just trust her to be responsible with them. I put the concerns about the power corrupting her in a box and nail it shut. "You're just going to let it go in the end anyway, aren't you?" I gesture to her boa coils, "Why don't you use all that instead of my chain, I'll go keep watch in case there are more. You know all sorts of sign languages I'm sure." So do I, but do I want to play interpreter? Nope.
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Jul 5, 2018 19:05
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 13/14 "Yes...most likely I will." Fixing her gaze on the prisoner, Serenity licked her lips absently. With shocking suddenness the ice surrounding the thief shattered as several coils looped round and round the waist and tightened. Not enough to hurt, but enough to keep her prey in one place and permit arm movement as necessary. "I beg your forgiveness for this. I am returning an ill turn with one of my own, but I have questions. Possibly you do as well. Neither of us will get answers if you flee." As she spoke, her torso swayed just so. Her every action - breathing, the movement of her eyes, the way she pitched her voice - was deliberate and carefully measured to put a haze over the minds of others. Her body language all but screamed a mixture of maternal warmth and barely suppressed carnality. It crossed wires in the mind that put people entirely off their guard and made them pliable. It was a skill she was both ashamed and perversely proud of. "Do you have a preferred tongue?" Her voice shifted near imperceptibly to take on speech patterns similar to Nori's. Someone who sounded like they were from Aqualantis' working class might garner better results. As she speaks, Serenity will be laying her enchantments over this thief. Hypnotic: 2d6+3 14 Hold 3
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Jul 6, 2018 02:05
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SERENITY The thief lets out a long, low, hissing rattle of breath, and the hard tension drains out of their neck and shoulders like water running down a drain. They start to shiver -- as much from the aftereffects of a good hard freeze as from the witches' brew of love, hate, lust, and entirely rational fear you're easing into their brainstem with your every word. The ectoplasmic ice doesn't really melt, per se: instead the fragments just soften and drift away, like smoke at dawn, or dry ice on a hot day. It leaves a faint scent of violet water and stale machine oil in the air. The thief's eyes are locked hard onto yours, tracking every sensuous motion of your hands and lips. The thief bares their teeth - widely spaced, short, and uniformly conical - and chatters their jaw rapidly, a sound eerily evocative of rattling bones. Then they haul an arm out of your gently imprisoning coils and trace one fingertip in a sinuous S motion over a few of their teeth. The chattering doesn't stop - lizards don't exactly shiver, so you've got the feeling this genotype has something of the warm-bloods in its ancestry. The thief's meaning couldn't be clearer: rattling bones. Decorated teeth: scrimshaw. You've been mistaken for one of Ighirian's lieutenants - or maybe the man himself. Which means this canny gently caress thought they could steal from a formavit and get away scot-free. And if they were expecting Scrimshaw (in all probability at the head of a force of ghouls and risen dead) what on this or any other earth would lend a single infiltrator the confidence to come so close? What do you do? Alumnus Post fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jul 6, 2018 |
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Jul 6, 2018 02:22
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 13/14 Interesting. Chattering teeth was a new one for her, and not likely something she could learn very easily. Her child's level ability with the Triton tongue was as alien as she could manage - if you didn't count otyugh mating calls, anyway. "We are not Scrimshaw's lackeys. My companion's wounds can attest to that well enough. That great calamity earlier? He was on the other side of it." Settling back, she idly rubbed the bullet wound on her shoulder. Though a pale starburst upon pale skin, it still stood out. And this thief did not need to know that scar had not been won against Ighirian himself. "You are a bold one though, to think to steal from him. What were you truly after?"
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Jul 6, 2018 02:48
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SERENITY ●●◦ One hold spent, to: give you something you want. The thief gradually stops shivering, warmed by the exertion and by the holds you keep both psychic and physical. They still, and take a long look at you, imprisoner: all clutching coils and bestial grace; the very image of a formavit in truth, made into a flesh more pleasing to your chosen gods. You, star-child, the prophesied; whose comrades bear dreadful tools of destruction at their finger-tips, who sings the songs that reach out to dead flesh and coax it back to writhing life, who walks amidst signs and portents, who struggles against the undertow of an ancient and terrible curse. Certainly not, that remote, alien gaze says: you're no lackey, you're his family. They seem to reach a decision. A burnt-out log falls into the watchfire, casting a flare of lambent sparks into the night -- and the thief casts a quick, flickering glance out into the dark flooded streets. Was there a glint there, just for a moment? A glimmer of eyeshine? No matter: it's gone now. A quick flicker of sign in their hands. A swift hand-gesture, then another, until there's a flicker of recognition in your eyes -- there, that one was the sign for "boat". This language is unfamiliar to you - many of the signs you know, from Sailor's Paw or its dialects, but some seem entirely new. *[hand across throat],* they sign to you. *[untranslatable] [sound of rattling bones]. Go down, follow me, follow [soft clap], go [untranslatable]. I - S - H - A.* *Go that way, go around the [the sign for 'boat' but upside down], get with each other, hold on. [upside-down 'boat'].* *The air is [the opposite direction from] wrong. Your [placing a hand on your chest] is [the opposite direction from] wrong. Get with [pointing a finger at their chest] [soft clap].* The thief points at Ramona. *Look. Think.* Then they point at the watchfire timbers, sharply. *Stop. OK? OK. This is not A - Q - L.* What do you do?
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Jul 10, 2018 04:41
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 13/14 Serenity crossed her arms and called back to Ramona. "Apparently this isn't Aqualantis."
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Jul 11, 2018 23:14
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Ramona 18/26-1 HP; 4/14 XP; 1 Armor; 5/11 Load, Scarred "What is it then? How do we get where we need to go?" I'll go try out whatever sign languages I know to get some clear damned answers for once, if it's even possible.
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Jul 12, 2018 00:04
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"I think it is a metaphor. This is not the Aqualantis they signed on for. That sort of thing."
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Jul 13, 2018 18:58
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Ramona 18/26-1 HP; 4/14 XP; 1 Armor; 5/11 Load, Scarred I let out some sarcasm, "Of course. I wonder where they think it all went wrong?" poo poo was doomed from the jump, like cults and cons.
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Jul 13, 2018 20:15
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quote:> WIDE WANDERER RAMONA The thief twists around in their snaky prison and glares at you -- looks like you touched a nerve. You've seen that same fire in Nori's eyes, in Sandbridge's, in the Ikarian survivors: the will to survive, no matter how dark the road or how strange its turnings. And there's something else there, too, the sort of quiet, bedrock faith you're used to in Serenity, but tinged with a certain shade of feral disregard for mortal law. You're in the jungle now, hunter: a wilderness deeper and stranger than any ecology constrained by the Law of Light, well-fed on the fertile corpse of what Silver-home used to be. Here, far from the pitiless sunlight, strange magics have taken root and grown, shaping buildings and bodies to fit into their precarious new habitat. This is a place of change, of growth, decay, and transformation -- all wrapped up inside a fragile soap-bubble of decaying civil infrastructure. Whatever culture ferments here will have adapted to this fact. Faced with the rising lich-king Murgo seems to be becoming, they'll have learned to honor and defend their living home. Honor that, and maybe you'll make a few new allies, or at least make it out of here alive. And the name Isha -- you know that name all too well. Isha Akkermans, a disbarred senior researcher from the Alchemists' Guild, who fled to Aqualantis after his fall from grace. There's still a hefty bounty on his head. The disastrous fallout of the Wormwood Incident still scars the hills north of Crystal Bay, holding on against the Guild's efforts to cauterize those blighted lands....so if his hand is at work here, who knows what strange chimaerae could be born from this bubbling cauldron of urban decay? Better walk carefully. Or boldly, as the case may be. This is not your ground, and you're not the only hunter in these woods. Unless there's more to do here, it's time to get moving. What do you do now?
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Jul 14, 2018 19:39
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 13/14 Their erstwhile prisoner slowly descended to the ground as Serenity loosened her coils. Shifting about, she made room for them to take their leave. "We are not your enemy. Yet I cannot say for certain that we are allies, either. Tell your fellows we would appreciate no interference in our work and that we will attempt to return the favor." Stretching, she glanced over to Ramona. "Anything else you wish to ask or say, or shall we move on?"
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Jul 14, 2018 23:59
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Ramona 18/26-1 HP; 4/14 XP; 1 Armor; 5/11 Load, Scarred quote:There's some more weird stuff in here too. Something you haven't seen before. Four or five tightly sealed glass jars, none cracked, all a little different -- maybe salvaged canning jars or something. Each one has an inch or so of rich black soil in the bottom, coated in a furry mat of mycelial growth. Clouds of fluffy white sporophores fill the jars' interior airspaces, pressing up against the sides of the thick glass like elongated, wispy fingers.
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Jul 15, 2018 00:09
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SERENITY The thief gives Ramona an assessing gaze, then digs one such jar out of their plunder sack and saunters over to the watchfire. Ignoring the stares from the Bombardans, they kick apart the burning logs and hurl the jar straight into the embers. The flames flare up in a flashbulb burst of light as the spores within catch fire, and a choking cloud of gritty white dust spews out over Branwen, her acolytes, and the campsite! BRANWEN   What do you do?RAMONA The thief walks calmly back to you, heedless of the commotion at the campsite, and casually tosses you another one of the spore jars. *Mine,* they sign; *This is [finger across throat] for [untranslatable?] [sound of rattling bones]. OK? My help, my work: my OK [signal]. My help[ers?] see it, think OK, [and] descend. All [clear] now.* They unscrew another jar, stick their blunt slit nostril into the wide mouth, and take a deep sniff of the contents. *Mmmmmm. Best from I - S - H - A,* they sign with a broad toothy grin, and if you could read those facial expressions (and that harsh sigh of outbreath) a little better, dammit, you'd be able to tell if they're mocking you or threatening you or just giving you a hard time. What is this poo poo? Throat-cutting for skeletons? Whatever it is, it must not be dangerous to Serenity, or to anyone that thief sees as an ally to Serenity. Maybe it'll come in handy. Maybe it'll just give you all a really bad case of trench foot. Add a jar of necrocide spores (area, thrown, 1 use) to your inventory. Alumnus Post fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Jul 15, 2018 |
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Jul 15, 2018 04:58
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 13/14 Serenity raised an arm to shield her eyes from the burst of light. Given the circumstances, she couldn't fault the person for being short on manners but people presumably still slept down here. The thief was not going to get to act surprised at Morning Glory's reaction to being woken up just as soon as she'd managed to fall asleep.
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Jul 18, 2018 03:54
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Branwen McAlister HP 20/20 | Armor 1 | XP 11/12 | Load 4/12 Spells: Light[ ] Sanctify[ ] Guidance[ ] CLW[ ] Bless[ ] Cause Fear[ ] Magic Weapon[ ] Speak W/ Dead[ ] Boom[ ] Blood shot eyes snap open as the flames burst outward, Branwen turns over only to spin back around as the dust flies out. Throwing the raggy blanket off Bran glares death across the Bombardans, each pointing directly at the thief, walking away like he hadn't just caused a mess. Bran follows him, simmering anger replacing his lackadaisy strides. She can't see what he's doing, signing, and wouldn't care if she could. She catches up as he hands Ramona a jar and taps him on the shoulder and meets his face with her fist as he turns to face her, sending him to the ground. Looming over his prone form she sticks a gauntleted finger into his face and starts shouting. "TH' gently caress WAS THAT poo poo?" Her other hand gestures to the fine coating of dust along the side of her armor. "TH' gently caress IS THIS poo poo? WHAT POSSESSED YA TO BE A FUCKWIT? SOME PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FUCKIN' SLEEP!" The thief starts to crawl back a bit but Branwen matches his movements, not letting up. "SOME PEOPLE MARCHED THROUGH A DANK FUCKIN' OCEAN FILLED WITH MURDEROUS FISHMEN TO SAVE PEOPLE, THROUGH A GODS DAMNED HORDE OF UNDEAD, CONFRONTED A YEARS LONG GRUDGE, FOUGHT A FORMAVIT, GOT CHEWED ON BY A GATOR, FOUND THEIR MA'S OLD FLAME AS HALF A SNAKE. AND NOW ME AND MINE ARE COATED IN WHATEVER THIS poo poo IS, I'M TOO GODS DAMNED AWAKE TO GET DECENT SLEEP, AND YOU'RE HERE FULL OF YOURSELF LIKE AIN'T NO HARM WAS DONE! gently caress OFF WITH THAT! DON'T loving DO THAT! gently caress!" Bran straightens back up, finally relenting and letting the thief get space and stand up. Standing, panting, and wiping some spittle from her chin, Branwen looks to both Ramona and Serenity, pointing once again at the thief before finishing with "Make sure he understood all that." Before she turns and makes her way back to her resting spot, muttering darkly all the way. SidekickBOT - @ArkInBlack: 2d6+2 HnS = (4+4)+2 = 10
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Jul 18, 2018 12:56
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Ramona 18/26-1 HP; 4/14 XP; 1 Armor; 5/11 Load, Scarred I sign like I learned from the mother and infant child ghosts that taught me, "You understand why?" Their kind's young were born mute, so as to not draw predators, and had to grow into verbalization if they wanted to. Always in contact, those families were, not wandering around alone like me. Stomping on scorpions...
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Jul 19, 2018 01:21
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BRANWEN You turn your heel on the git and stalk back to the tense silence around the watchfire. Everyone's wide awake, staring at you. "You feckin' tell him, lass," Lighterman says, quietly. "Little git scares me. Th' gently caress they think they're playing at...?" Do you agree with him? NORI Are you still with us? Silence gives dissent, and sooner or later, the story will need to part with its absent friends. RAMONA The thief struggles back up to one knee, and flicks away a smear of thin pinkish blood from the corner of their mouth. *You understand why?* the thief signs, right back at you, *I know she alive, her help[ers] alive. You’re alive. Only [Scrimshaw] help[ers] are [sound of rattling bones].* Their face is grave as they look back to the campfire, and the offended Bombardans, now too awake to really bother with another try at sleep. *M - U - R - G - O is...* The blunt head shakes. In denial or despair: it's hard to tell. *Come,* they motion, *come and [see]. My n͕͇a̗̮me̛ is K - A - U - D - E.* * * * SERENITY After an outburst like that, there's no way anyone is getting back to sleep. The Bombardans strike camp with many a surly mutter, packing themselves, their dwindling supplies, and Nori neatly up onto Ighirian's re-purposed hoversled. Lighterman, as is his duty, douses the fire's embers with a pail of brackish swamp-water. The darkness descends like a damp curtain until the Bombardans crack a few of Nori's chemlights. They seem unaffected by their dosing of fungus-dust. This murk is no sensuous spa, certainly...but your sinuous new body is perhaps better-adapted for these urban swamplands than anyone here - including the thief. You have a few minutes to glory in the feel of slipping smoothly through the shallows, getting a feel for the way your body moves in the still waters, until the thief drapes a makeshift harness across your shoulders and motions for you to get a move on. Ah yes. Because nobody else wants to get soaked to the skin pulling this thing. But in fairness, nobody else has a layer of warm thick blubber to keep hypothermia at bay, and the thief too takes up a line of rope and starts to haul. Unbelievable. Nashira's chosen, reduced to a pack-mule hauling a sled full of bomb-worshipping zealots in company with an entirely too drat mysterious thief. Your goddess is laughing up there somewhere. * * * RAMONA, BRAN Are you two: riding in the sled with the others, helping to pull it, or going for a swim? You've both seen some poo poo since your precipitous descents to Aqualantis. Tian, Ikaria, the ruined wreck of the Alembic, but there's something frankly eerie about Silver-home that surpasses any of them. Aqualantis is alive here; the fallen city lives on...but there seems drat little room here for the lives of mortal men. You can navigate only by hearing and scent and the spare, silent orders of your thief-turned-native-guide. The insects start to come out before you've gone more than two hundred feet. Droning, whining, buzzing, chirping; an invisible chorus from everywhere and nowhere. Occasionally one lands flitting on a hand or ear, to be swatted or brushed away. Frogs croak mournfully from the tilted shells of ruined buildings, and once, something like a heron emits a shockingly loud hunting-cry. Kaude leads the sled around the flank of one such: a large, four-story, vaguely kidney-shaped building. Maybe in better days it was a wealthy artisan's workshops, or a labor-house for the poor. In the acrid glow of your chemlights you can make out thick stands of some sort of reed or swamp-grass growing in clumps around the perimeter -- good cover, for you or for anything else. The ground level entryways appear to be entirely underwater, but the second-story windows are only a few feet above sea level, such as it is. Suddenly your guide freezes like a stalked deer. Very very carefully, with no noise or ripple, they pull one hand out of the water and sign: *M - N - S - T - R. [biting motion with thumb and fingers].* Then they point delicately ahead with one finger. Something is moving nearby, just below the surface - the dim chemical light only barely picks out the telltale vee of ripples. There are five or six of them, moving in slow questing curves between the tussocks of reed, directly between your sled and the building ahead. Whatever this is, Kaude is clearly wary... You all have time to prepare a response and decide on a plan. Take +1 forward. What do you do?
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Jul 24, 2018 04:43
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Branwen McAlister HP 20/20 | Armor 1 | XP 11/12 | Load 4/12 Spells: Light[ ] Sanctify[ ] Guidance[ ] CLW[ ] Bless[ ] Cause Fear[ ] Magic Weapon[ ] Speak W/ Dead[ ] Boom[ ] "Shaddup Lighterman. They're a survivor, set against Scrimsaw and whoever he works for. The exact kind of people we should be helping down here, even if the git forgot their manners. Worry about whatever poo poo might be around here looking to eat us." ~~~ Bran's eyes drift over to where the thief points, draws back a hand, and hurls a radiant grenade conjured from nowhere directly at the spot, detonating on impact with the surface of the water. SidekickBOT @ArkInBlack: 2d6+3 Cast A Spell - Boom = (5+1)+3 = 9 Bran puts herself in a bad spot SidekickBOT @ArkInBlack: 2d6 Boom Damage = (6+4) = 10
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Jul 30, 2018 03:30
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 13/14 As Branwen called upon her divine power, Serenity began to sing, reinforcing the magic behind the fireball. Aid Branwen: @Shardix: 2d6+2 = (2+1)+2 = 5
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Jul 30, 2018 04:17
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BRANWEN You're riding in the sled. Lighterman doesn't say anything, but out of the corner of your eye once you catch him watching you. The hoversled passes close alongside a drowned stand of parkland, fungal filaments spillling from the truncated stumps of branches. You're in the right, of course. Anyone among the living is your ally, when the dead march. Even this bizarre flora may be more friend than foe. Still. He knows it; you know it; but all the same he's got his eye on you. Your uncontrolled display of temper shook him and the others more than they probably want to admit. ~~~ The thief has about a quarter-second to turn to you, hands flying up in some sort of useless defensive gesture -- then the Maiden of Detonation flings her holy Word right into the midst of the knot of submerged monsters. Fire in the hole!  Your holy hand-grenade goes off with a thunderclap of noise and a tremendous thunderhead of brackish spray! The blast wave smacks into your hoversled before anyone on it has time to react, knocking first bow and then stern into the air like a bucking mule! Passengers fly like ninepins -- including yourself! You're knocked rear end-over-teakettle, describing a neat somersault in the air before you crash facefirst into the water six feet away. The world dissolves into a kaleidoscope of bubbles and gloopy noises and whirling vertigo... Woman overboard! Also, your crew! (Your stuff's okay, though, and you're still conscious and combat-capable.) What do you do? ***** SERENITY You're helping to pull. You get out three notes, exquisitely pitched and focused, and then your morning-gory's flashbang goes off before you can properly disengage your power from the cleric's spell and while you're still in the water. Lucky you, you're not at the epicenter, or the blast wave would've turned your innards into pudding -- instead, it only feels like an ogre slaps you across the face with a beanbag the size of a horse. The magical backlash of a spell-connection prematurely severed reverberates through your skull, giving you an instant, splitting headache. You're blown back in the water, tumbling and disoriented and without reliable light, and monsters of uncertain size and number are prowling about in the dark searching for a meal...this is starting to feel distressingly famillar okay maybe you'd better get out of the loving water right now before you slap into the eye of an Abyss Wurm or something. Again. You've been stunned, and kind of a little freaked out! Also, something big and hungry is probably coming to eat your face again! You used your +1 forward. Let's hope you have a plan. What do you do? ***** RAMONA You're on a high perch, in ambuscade. Tell us how you got up here. Blast fishing. Of course. drat the ecosystem, full speed ahead; take whatever you can harvest and scarper...it was such a fun pastime before the Sink, why would the Bombardans bother to give it up? You're the only one who sees the blossoming outrage on Kaude's face as Bran's God-bomb goes off. There'll be hell to pay for this one. Branwen blows two of the "MNSTR"s into sacks of pudding straightaway -- you've got a great vantage point to watch the mangled bodies drift back up to the surface -- but the blast wave nearly capsizes her own hoversled and does forcefully evict some of her crew from safety. Oh god drat it all that's Serenity and Kaude in the water too, drifting like fish kill...okay no, no that was a twitch, they're both (still) alive. Something tight in your chest unhitches. And then it seizes right back up again... You see the four creatures Bran didn't manage to insta-kill shrug off the effects of the blast and rear up out of submersion like a seafood chef's sherry-soaked nightmares. Enormous crustacean beasts, vaguely manshaped but twice the size of men, sheathed from neck to nuts in thick chitin, and clacking pairs of mighty claws distressingly like the one that Scrimshaw carried. One threshes its lobsterlike tail, surging through the water towards a knot of three splashing Bombardans - the other two converge on Branwen and Kaude -- and the last one goes for Serenity! Oh where's that bloody orc-chef when you need him?! And where the hell is Nori?! Two down, four left. Everybody else besides you is either swimming or stunned or both. You still have +1 forward. What do you do? ****** NORI  glub, glub, glub...
Alumnus Post fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Jul 30, 2018 |
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Jul 30, 2018 05:20
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Serenity HP 20/20 | Armor 2 | Load 1/9 | XP 15/14 Serenity ran a hand across her face, both to shift her hair out of her eyes and ensure those eyes hadn't ruptured in the explosion. They were fine, but the rest of her, less so. Her arms were a bit numb and everything below the navel was firing off nerve signals with wild abandon, her tail twitching erratically as her system tried to get things back in order after the explosion sent everything out of whack. At least she had air - she'd only gotten a few notes out before everything turned upside down. Forcing herself to remain calm, Serenity surrendered control and let herself drift slowly downwards. With luck their enemies would ignore her. At least nobody had a knife to her throat this time. Defy Danger by playing dead. @Shardix: 2d6+1 (+Con) = (3+2)+1 = 6 Shardix fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Jul 31, 2018 |
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Jul 30, 2018 06:56
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