Astarael42

Rites Of Passage (a High Fantasy/Forgotten Realms Adventure)

sure. It would be standard adventuring garb and common enough, just make it basic, inexpensive materials, medium quality, and non-magical.

Rites Of Passage (a High Fantasy/Forgotten Realms Adventure)

no worries....just making plans.

Life Continues

My character sheet has been updated, I may add more detail later but for now I must sleep. Let me know what needs to be changed, etc.

Rites Of Passage (a High Fantasy/Forgotten Realms Adventure)

ok...without pressuring anyone are there any posts in the works? no pressure...just planning.

Life Continues

I'm interested. Here is a bare bones character sheet, will be edited when I see answers to some questions and thus can create my history. That will affect which skills, weaknesses, psychology, etc as her history will shape her nature.

Selena

Name: Selena Karan

Age: 37

Occupation: Marine Invertebrate Zoologist. Research Scientist.

Appearance:

image

Hobbies: Longtime member of the SCA, regular SCUBA diver. She has many more hobbies—one must keep busy after all and she has no social life, but those are her two major ones.

Psychology If asked to describe herself Selena would use words like “nerd”, “weird”, and “quiet.” She is all of those of course. A scholar at heart she loves to learn new things, that’s one of the reasons she likes the SCA so much. There is always more to learn. She is very quiet, making friends is difficult for her, and she tends to make it worse on herself by refusing to leave her comfort zone if at all possible. Outside of her comfort zone (her lab, underwater, discussing one of the arts for which is a Laurel) she is the sort of unassuming and non-confrontational. She is the one at the party or the bar who was drug there by a friend, sits in the back, in the dark, nursing a drink and smiling politely at everyone while talking to no one. Few people ever get to know her well, and those that do are surprised at her range of interests. She is intelligent, loves her work, loves her hobbies, and in general her life. She even likes traveling though that took her some time to get enough out of her comfort zone to explore the places she had to travel to. She loves video games, writing, reading, camping, gardening, even just sitting on the beach doing nothing, but few people ever learn this about her. To most she is just another person who shares their space. She has a hard time tolerating stupdity or lack of common sense, but rather than say anything she will just leave if she can or retreat even further into silence if she can't. She hates public speaking unless its in front of her peers, then she feels at home. While Hawaii is a very open and welcoming place, and she is always cheerful and welcoming to others, she doesn't really stick around to 'chat.' She is loyal to her friends and though she has never had a long-term relationship, the longest was only a few months, she would never dream of cheating on someone she cared about. She has strong opinions on religion and politics (though not necessarily politicians) consequently she rarely talks about them afraid people will dislike her for stating her thoughts or she will create conflict. She loves her work and would gush about it if she ever felt comfortable enough with someone to bore them to death with it.

Brief History Selena studied hard, got good grades, went to college, went to grad school, and became a researcher for the University of Hawaii. She lives alone on a big plot of land on the big island and her only regular social activity is attending meetings and events for her local SCA, or occasionally traveling to the Estrella War if she can afford it. Basically she is the typical, and fairly normal, nerd. She spends most of her time at home, at work, underwater, or at the SCA. She does spend a lot of her time improving or practicing her skills for the SCA. She may not know where to shop to buy a formal dress, but she knows exactly where to order the material, thread, and trim and make one herself. She has a few very close friends from work and the SCA but that is about it. She does travel quite a bit for her work, despite or because of her specialization to her field she is actually a well known scientist and has several papers published in peer-reviewed journals. She hasn't made the cover of 'Nature' yet but she hasn't given up hope on doing so. That is her professional goal, that and the elusive 'tenure.'

Background: Selena had a pretty average life and childhood, nothing outstanding, nothing horrible, nothing great. It just was. She lived in a small town in northern California, which didn't help her exposure to social activities. Which meant that overall she “just was.” Oh she was a good enough scholar to get good grades at the private parochial school she attended, she was not popular but had a few good friends, and for the most part she just carried on mostly unnoticed. She had no extracurricular activities other than “science club” and “book club.” Those were just glorified names for a small group of people, the ones that were already her friends, gathering around and doing small experiments and reading/discussing books they would have read anyway were they not in a club. That was until she was introduced to the SCA. She immediately fell in love with the feeling of the organization, not really being exposed to the politics but just the glamor of it. She started attending meetings and events whenever she could, which only made her more of an outcast in high school. She did, however, get to use her 'mandatory' home economics class—the school was outdated enough that it still required all females to take home economics—to get the basics of costuming down. Others sewed shirts, quilts, quaint little dresses. Selena's project was a noble's surcoat complete with trim and embroidery. That of course placed her squarely in the “she's weird” category but it didn't really change much in the scheme of her life.

When she was old enough to sign up for the society she did so and began her progress towards the peereage of the laurels. She learned that it wasn't as glamorous as she had thought, and it was quite full of politics and procedures that, as far as she could tell, just gunked up the works. Still she stuck it out, she had been there for so long it was sort of a fixture in her life. And at least there she found people who shared her interests. She focused on the arts and sciences, preferring the creative outlet she found there rather than the combat. She did discover she liked archery, it was right up her alley. So that’s what she focused on, the arts and archery.

She stayed in the society through college, in Hawaii, and through graduate school as well. It became almost normal to her...expected. She was happy that at least in Hawaii people were more laid back. In fact she felt at home in Hawaii unlike anywhere else she had ever lived. She attended grad school in Australia but as soon as she finished she returned to Hawaii. She was actually well known in her field, and had put in lots of hours working for various research facilities while she tried to figure out where she wanted to end up. She got a job at UH Hilo, bought a house in the Puna District way back in nowhere on a 3-acre plot of land, and settled down into a very solitary but contented life. Like most people in the rural areas of the Big Island, she had her own small garden, chickens, a couple female goats, rabbits, and tilapia pond. She enjoyed working her land as much as she enjoyed her research and diving, But all those activities-- research, tending her homestead farm, even diving and her work in the SCA tended to be solitary activities she worked on at home and only showed off at gatherings, she taught others, she was expected to, but she wasn't very skilled at teaching.

While she lived in Hawaii, she was obligated to attend various scientific conferences across the country and occasionally even in other countries. Japan in particular was making great strides in marine science and she had been there on multiple occasions.

Skills: She is skilled in several SCA arts and skills and in fact has her Laurels in several including cheese making, tanning, bowyer/fletcher. She is currently pursuing brewing, cordials, and herbalism though they are coming along slowly. She has not pursued many of the combat arts, at least not vigorously, save for archery. She is a very skilled marksman with her longbow, both in target shooting and combat archery. She is also quite good with mundane bows, though she has never used them for anything other than target shooting. Of course she also has quite a bit of schooling under her belt, culminating in a PhD in Marine Invertebrate Zoology.

Weaknesses: She is very socially awkward, spending most of her time in her lab, at Kingdom events and activities, and just at home. She doesn't really enjoy the company of others, preferring to talk to people through the safe distance of a computer or mobile device. She has a very specialized focus in her field of work, eschewing most other disciplines. She keeps abreast of the current work done in many of the marine biology fields but not many other ones. In fact she rarely keeps track of ordinary news, she might be able to tell you who the current President of the United States is, beyond that probably not much. She knows where the lava is actively flowing near her property but she wouldn't pay much attention to hurricanes, earthquakes, or similar that hit other lands. She doesn't own a TV and relies on the computer and mobile devices for all her news, research, and entertainment. She is the typical nerd and thus really only feels comfortable around other nerds, loves computer and virtual life, shuns a real life, and has very little feeling for how the world works outside her very narrow circles of interest. She's a skilled archer, able to hit targets most wouldn't, but the one time she went pig hunting (at the insistence of one of her very few friends) she felt so sad for the pig she couldn't shoot it. She even has to have her neighbors butcher her rabbit clutches when its time, though she has no problem working with them once they are dead. It's the killing that bothers her.

Welcome! Welcome to De' Seil Carnival!

This slipped under my radar and I feel awful about missing it...is it still in the works or did it fade? Have ye room for a siren and two human younglings again? there are 240+ ooc so hopefully no one is insulted if I don't read them until I know that this is still slated to take off.

The Journey [Fantasy]

still looking?

Rites Of Passage (a High Fantasy/Forgotten Realms Adventure)

mass fear/zeal spell...

this spell only affects HUMANS...half humans get half the effect. Good & neutral inclined people suffer crippling fear, evil inclined people feel a boost in morale. Aiden & Brisa are basically rooted in place unitl they are shocked out of it. Jatan can feel the effect of the fear but both monk and elf help him resist the effects. Argurios is only half-affected...he is held for a second, but the fact he's got enemies rushing him will snap that rather quickly.

Rites Of Passage (a High Fantasy/Forgotten Realms Adventure)

Hairlissa had watched the whole spectacle of the hanging, the preaching, all of it with an impassive face. She was a visitor to the town, but she did not intend to stay any longer, she had found what she had come to find out. Eshowdow had the town under his control, that was clear, and the weak creatures that inhabited the town were too spineless to withstand him. She actually felt a bit sorrier for towns like Twiddledale, towns that had stood up to him and been eliminated for it. At least they stood for something. Loudwater keeled over and died, or might as well have.

She spun on her heel and left town, heading back towards the sea. She had seen all she needed to here, now she needed to keep on the trail of Eshowdow's real priests. The woman, the one who had overseen the hanging, was a devout servant. Hairlissa had seen the divine aura around the woman. The rest of the priests were nothing...fanatics with no real power or threat. The enforcers were slaves, their shadows bound to Eshowdow's will, and they too had no real power though they were stronger, faster, and far more powerful than they were when they were free. Two of them had tried to stop her as she left town. Hairlissa smirked at the memory as she strode confidently down the road. The two who had tried to stop her were dead, their bodies snapped in half like a twig, and stuffed in an alley.

Free of the town the woman stopped and shed her clothes, clothes she had stolen from the town. With an effort of will she shifted to her preferred “human” form...a tall woman of over six feet, muscled and toned, naked and hairless. Her amber eyes shifted to a mad orange color and she grinned mercilessly. With a nary a backward glance she took to the road, running with grace and ease of a predator on a cross country hunt.

She had learned much, about where the shadow god had been, and what he was doing, but not a way to stop him. Except...except for children. He seemed to ignore children. There must be some way she could use that. She would meditate as she ran, commune with her own god to share what she had learned. And she would hunt...she still had three priests to run down.

****

Kief disembarked the ship at Baulder's Gate, his eyes studying this port town with intense interest. This was his first trip to this land, despite that Fort Belurian and Baulder's Gate were sister cities and trading partners. He had never left his own land, now an exile he had no real place to go. So he would try and prove that he was right, that his theory was right. It was hard to be a priest of Ubtao, he had never mastered it. Not truly. Maybe that was why he could see the shadow gods plan and the others could not. Or maybe it was his own nature. Whatever it was it was frustrating, none believed him. After all how often do you notice what your own shadow is doing.

He had tracked Eshowdow's priests to this land, followed in their footsteps. Now he just had to find them. He stood alone in the swirl of activity among Baulder's Gate's docks. People stared at him, dark skinned and dark haired, he looked like a wild man. But they only stared a second or two, then went about their business. Oddities were common enough, as long as he kept away from them they would avoid the stranger on principle.

Shouldering his satchel he strode off into the...well the locals called it a city. Kief thought it looked like nothing so much as an unsophisticated backwater burg. This was where the three priests had been dropped off, the ship captain had told him that, and so here was where his hunt would begin.

****

The strange man finished his speech, seeing that Argurios was no longer focused he shrugged. He had done what he could. But he sensed that the young orc-blood and his mageling companion were drawing too much attention to themselves. Yes they had found allies, but also enemies. And it was the enemies that concerned him now. .

“Go” he said abruptly to Argurios. “You have to get out of town. Wait till everyone is distracted then head to the river. It will take you where you need to be.” With that the man turned on his heel and vanished between two buildings. Literally vanished. He had some skill with enchantments and illusions, and while he couldn't match the shadow priest, he could at least provide some distraction. In the children he had seen what the priestess and her cohorts hadn't and he was willing to take the gamble.

****

Dreknor had been content to follow the three children. He didn't consider them dangerous per se, but it was good to keep the locals separated from the visitors. The town needed visitors and outside money to survive, that didn't mean they had to socialize with them. He had been about to step up and direct the strangers to leave the local elf boy alone, when he caught sight of two of his comrades sleeping in an alley.

Not sleeping. He forgot, the chosen warriors didn't need sleep. So what were they doing. He slipped into the alley and suddenly felt confused. The two men there were wearing broken bodies, snapped in half, but they were alive of course. They couldn't die. Not now. But they didn't seem to be able to speak or move either. Their eyes, solid black orbs like his own, stared at him with a void expression and Dreknor didn't know what to do.

So he did the first thing he could think of, he went to find the priestess.

***

Brisa glanced over her shoulder, trying to figure out what Aiden was looking at. There was nothing there. No one following them, no one watching them. She frowned and ran anyway though to her mind running would draw more notice than walking. And she was right. No fewer than three enforcers saw her run by, but they paid the children no mind. Children were unimportant after all. Their black eyes watched them but didn't linger, focusing instead on the adult townsfolk traveling back to their jobs.

When they slowed as Jatan led them towards the merchant section Brisa breathed a little easier.

“Brisa” she said by way of introduction. She didn't want to introduce herself, but it would have been rude not to. Politeness won out.

“Look” she said finally when they halted in the merchant row “What is...”

She stopped talking abruptly, very nearly swallowing her tongue, as one of the lesser priest she had seen from earlier, and one of the townsfolk with the black eyes, rounded a corner.

Behind them she spotted Argurios exiting one of the shops, their eyes met for a fraction of a second before Brisa looked down. Shuffling her feet she turned trying to look as innocuous as possible. It might have worked except for bad luck and bad timing.

A soundless roar filled the air. While it made no noise it thundered in the skulls and bones of all in town, filling the all the people with a nameless dread. Brisa felt in in her mind, a fear clawing at her thoughts, and she shivered as he legs locked in terror. The fear washed over the children in a wave, the spell working to root itself in their minds.

The priest and the enforcer felt it too, but it affected them differently. It filled them with a righteous indignation, adrenaline, and a will to serve their god. Their eyes, human and no-longer-human, fell on Argurios.

“Halt Orc” the priest spat out, disgust plain in his words when he said “orc.” That Argurios was not fully orcish made no difference. He was a stranger, he was different, and that made him a target. They rushed at the boy, eager to capture him for their god. All across the city of Loudwater the same thing was happening to others, to newcomers and outcasts alike. Enforcers and lesser priests, filled with zeal, eager to please, attacked.

Rites Of Passage (a High Fantasy/Forgotten Realms Adventure)

Post s/b up today. Mother is visiting me and she's a time vampire so I've had to do all my writing after 10 pm