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4 yrs ago
Political opinions on a public forum? I just wanna rp for god's sake!
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Call me: Asuras

I like: Urban Fantasy, High Fantasy, Anime Aesthetics

I play: Anything. Mostly women.

I have a long history of GM'ing, perhaps even more than playing. I like art, and I commission a lot. D&D is my life right now.

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//A6 - Somewhere in the Adventurer's District

For a first foray into the Abyss, Sebi and Sumiye felt rather proud of themselves. They weren't dead -foremost on their minds- and they got a taste of the danger latent within. Neither quite felt like adventurers yet, but having gone through the ordeal they certainly felt like they'd earned some sort of stripes, however faint. After ascending back to the edge of Oratorio, their trio of colorful friends and one Ananta in tow and similarly intact, Sebi inquired about shelter with Allen. She and Sumiye were, of course, still homeless in the city, and she'd only agreed to venture with the fellow fox on the condition that she get more than just a scare out of it -whether she said so vocally or not. Wherever it was that Allen, Gam, and Millie themselves were staying, Sebi would follow. Tired and somewhat shaken, she couldn't muster the will to complain, even if it was a shack they led her to.

Come morning, Sebi awoke to her first sunrise in Oratorio and stretched the aches from her body. Youthful as she was outwardly, Sebi was still nearing forty, and no amount of pretty smiling could save her from being plainly tired. Leaving Sumiye to enjoy some additional rest, Sebi waited in whatever fashion and in whichever place for at least one of the other adventurers in her party to awake as well. She had no shortage of questions, and little intention of simply playing one of two mages to the group of five indefinitely. She needed to know what this all meant, and where it would go.

The next -or any number of them, really- to awaken or preempt Sebi were met with a sauntering woman and her light smile. She sat herself nearby, greeted, and wasted little time.

"The three of you... How much experience do you have, anyways, with adventuring?" she asked to whoever would lend her an ear. "While yesterday was... exhilarating, I still find myself a tad aimless I must admit. I'd not come to Oratorio for adventuring, per se, though I do not shirk it. What is it you're all seeking? Riches? Fame? To test yourselves, maybe?" she asked with a sly expression.

@ERode

//Abyss - First Layer

Sebi and Sumiye had opted to relegate themselves to observers for much of their foray into the Abyss. Though "into" still felt a tad exaggerated for how little they plunged thus far. On the First Layer, Sebi could still make out the rim of Oratorio's proper civilization, and questioned at multiple points how it was that anyone would deign to live so precariously close to a nature reserve of flying creatures perfectly capable of ascending up to the levels of buildings above.

The two kitsune followed just behind their more experience trio of adventurers, focusing on taking in the sights. Sumiye leveled no end of questions to Allen, Gam, and Millie about the First Layer, curious of its dangers and curiosities. Despite being surrounded by sheer cliffside and a gray stain of mankind, it felt miraculous that such a place as this 'Abyss' could remain in pristine condition -as wild as any other nowhere Sebi knew of.

The gang of five followed along already worn paths; sometimes upon established stony roads that death-wishing masoners decided was worth their time laying, and others upon not-quite deerpaths long trodden down into dense dirt by the countless adventurers before them. Things appeared to be going well -a chance Sebi and Sumiye continually relished in given their newness- minus infrequent moments that Millie cautioned silence and meekness as dark shapes swooped high overhead. Trouble granted them mercy, but showed no such favor to other divers nearby.

The kitsunes' first true taste of what the Abyss was made of came in the form of a tumult up from a winding cliffside path below their gazes. Their compatriots demeanor shifted to one of caution, and then combativeness as the noise drew closer. What sprinted into their visions first was not a crash of ugly creatures, but a dark-haired girl, frantic, fleeing something else unseen in the trees.

The young lady relayed to them her pursuer's number: eight beasts in all, and accompanied by a 'rider'. Sebi hummed at that word. Were there intelligent things down here in the Abyss? She and her daughter stood cautious of Ananta even as they surmised she was being truthful about her predicament -the shaking in her hands seemed genuine- unsure of what they could trust in this unfamiliar place. There was nothing stopping banditry from flourishing in this place, after all.

What's more, Sebi felt a pang of something familiar in the dark-haired girl.

"I don't suppose they're the sorts of beasts one could outrun or outwit?" Sebi asked Ananta, still hopeful they could avoid falling into combat. Her eyes glanced to the trio she'd originally arrived with, searching for false optimism in their expressions -whatever came out of their mouths, be it bravery or pragmatism, she had no intention on outright trusting.

@ERode@Kero

//A5 - Market Plaza

A bit like hunting for the perfect pebble upon a shoreline for skipping, Sebi was in need of a suitable crate, not just any old discarded box. Commonplace or not, it still needed to look at least serviceable -something that reflected a certain measure of cleanliness, but nevertheless was rugged enough to stand the journey she was planning on faking. As with a shoreline too, totally covered in stone, it wasn't hard to find as much, which she'd begun to lug along through the markets.

Homing in on the chatter of the district delighted Sebi's ears. Plenty of tales were told of just how deep into the adventuring spirit Oratorio was, but it was only in hearing the gossip and news straight from its uncountable legion of dungeon-delvers that she truly understood what this city really was. Opportunities whispered in her perky ears until she felt overwhelmed. A young voice, directed at her, drew her out of the frenzied storm of thoughts she was stuck in.

Putting on her best smile in a new town, Sebi swiveled around to be faced with a rather young adventurer. She couldn't help -frozen in her silent smile- to dwell on the discrepancy here for a brief moment. Was this child actually prepared to venture into a place like the Abyss? Aged as his apparent party-members were, Sebi still felt a pang of worry for the kid.

The two kitsune glanced at each other. Ultimately this was a city for adventurers, from top to bottom. No doubts they would dip their hand into such matters eventually, and what better way to understand that spirit than to participate in it?

...is what Sebi wanted to think, but with such a young, timid -no, not timid. He was brave enough to ask two strangers to join his party, wasn't he?

"Well, I suppose it'd depend on what you're planning on doing in the near-future," Sebi said pleasantly before looking past the boy to the troll and the woman that insisted on suffering as a pack mule. "You look like you're about to delve soon. My daughter and I... we're not exactly prepared at the moment, you see... And furthermore we're both quite new to Oratorio. Quite unused to adventuring and such."

"But we are mages," Sumiye chimed in, seemingly trying to sweeten where Sebi was souring.

"...So, it would again depend. Are you up for two greenhorns?" Sebi smiled again. Conning an artist didn't have to happen immediately, and if the stars aligned, they'd at least get some shelter and food for this spontaneous venture -two things they were going to be in desperate need of by the end of the day.

@ERode

//O4 - Main Streets

Sebi and Sumiye left 'Sunchy' to his dreary position as they departed -but not without a delicate wave on Sebi's part, to add another final seal to Sunchy's even more delicate psyche. The two ladies left the wall partitioning the Royal Road and made for the 'Onyx Sardine'; a terrible name for a bathhouse if ever there was one. Who would think to give their establishment a connotation of saltiness and fishy smell? Sebi hoped dearly that it was some sort of historic joke to the place, and not any genuine descriptor.

Leaving the Outer Layer via the Royal Road's underpass, the two kitsune delved into a dark, perhaps even seedier stretch of the city wherein their foreign appearances earned them no less of a staring audience. At least there were no guards here to make comments on their race. Poverty appeared even more rife down in the tunnels, and Sebi's mood turned sour.

It was not a feeling of revulsion, but of helplessness.

In the city she lived in for most of her life, poverty was not an alien concept -but the depths of it she saw here cursed her with a kind of eldritch knowledge that threatened to drive anyone suitably unaccustomed mad. In the city of Tairyo, she was priestess, and for all of her unaccountable behavior after defending the city, her responsibilities never quite went away. It was perhaps when the needy were in need that she was most attentive. Tairyo was so loveable in part because of the tiny fraction there who suffered in ways like she was seeing here in Oratorio. A great amount of the pleasure she took in playing priestess was in the happiness she saw in those starving given food, and those cold given shelter. These were the things she loved the most herself -a warm cushion, and hot food- and so in giving them to others...

But here... how could she even begin to fix something like this?

"It will take time," Sumiye said sagely, eyes forward amidst the shadowed suffering. Sebi's worried expression was yanked away from the source of it, and she blinked. Had Sumiye once again read her mother's mind, or was it merely coincidence? Sebi knew her daughter shared similar values, and so it was just as easily that she was feeling the same things. She said nothing to her daughter, but the silence spoke volumes.

//A5 - Adventurer's District - The Onyx Sardine

As a distraction, Sebi relayed her "plan" to Sumiye under whispered words, earning a smile and a sigh from the more pragmatic daughter. She went with it, nevertheless. Their first step of course was to get a bath, and approaching the Onyx Sardine as they made it out of the underpass and into the Adventurer's District, that first step was at hand.

Here in the Adventurer's District, things were considerably more quaint and sturdy, but still maintained that deeper nature of Oratorio Sebi and Sumiye were only still getting used to. A large building of stone stood before them, with clouds of water steam billowing out of chimneys and ajar windows. Inside was an army of workers -and an army of smells. Oils and perfumes saturated the interior giving Sebi a moment of nostalgia and Sumiye a developing headache.

Excited for a proper bath, the two ladies' hopes were to be dashed by the scaly, intimidating, bouncer-receptionist heading the front counter. The baths were closed until evening, and all that they could be offered was buckets of water and malnourished slivers of soap.

They'd take it, of course.

Unfortunate, but not a total defeat. Sebi would accept the lesser bath with a disappointed demeanor, but nevertheless make the most of it. She and Sumiye would make the buckets and soap work between them efficiently, given that the buckets themselves were some change-per-fill. The truly awful part was finding a spot to even do the cleaning in private. That, and Sumiye leveling several complaints about the length of her mother's hair and how much water it was taking to properly wash out. By the end, though, Sebi and Sumiye had rid themselves of dirt and smell and were as pristine as they'd ever been in some time. The two couldn't help but exhale in deep satisfaction as they stepped away from the Onyx Sardine.

Next on the list for Sebi's plan was to buy some innocuous items -specifically a carryable crate or box of some kind. Along the way through markets in the district, Sebi engaged in a very specific gossip with whoever might lend her an ear.

@ERode

//O4 - Main Streets

"Hmm, hmm..." Sebi hummed with a thinly-hidden smirk beginning to grow across her lips. Visibly vested interest in the man's tale -a hand to her chin, a nodding head, a swishing tail- belied the woman's disinterest in his plight. After all, the boy managed to do exactly what she'd have done in his situation too... minus the murder accusations, of course.

Sebi added once the guard offered a pause in his rant. "Sounds like a right scoundrel, he does." A pause. "And he certainly never gave me the impression of someone fit for guard duty. Too dainty," she said, throwing in a subtle compliment to the guard himself for good measure. A part of her almost hoped he wasn't even perceptive enough to pick it out.

"Indeed there is little justice here. Not every city's like this, though. It certainly shouldn't have to be this way," Sebi said, drifting off into her own sagely tirade -not without ulterior motive. "Even in simply trying to see the rest of the city, my daughter and I have been treated so poorly, but seeing that even the guards who protect it aren't given the basic decency of fairness it comes as no surprise."

Sumiye cleared her throat conspicuously, perhaps cutting Sebi off from possibly ruining her attempt at wooing the one guard that gave them some measure of respect. There were only so many times she could try getting past the guards before it became embarrassing. Sumiye, unlike her mother, acted with a tad more pragmatism -albeit with an accompanying defeatism too.

"At the very least, we could do something to save those two other ladies from making the wrong decision. That much justice could be done," Sumiye said.

"It'd be a poor image to come knocking at his door after being considered second... no, third! -to a pair of elven women," Sebi grumbled, paying no mind then to the guard that stood by.

"Stay your pride, mother. It's the right thing to do, no?"

The golden fox grumbled again, darted her glance between her daughter and the guard a few times, and then capitulated.

"I've an idea, but it will involve a bath," Sebi said to her daughter.

"And you're not just using this as an excuse...?"

"Come now! Even if it were, we've a mind to do ourselves a favor anyways," Sebi said, waving a hand dismissively. Sumiye said nothing -she couldn't argue that she wished to feel clean after having finally reached their destination. Almost reached, anyways. Sebi turned again to the guard.

"Mister...?" she trailed off, awaiting the guard's name. Whensoever he offered it, she smiled and continued, "Know you of any bath-houses nearby?"

@ERode

//O4 - Main Streets

Sebi fully expected the young man to continue on between the guards which had denied her access with the two elves in tow. But as he instead ventured perpendicular, both she and her daughter's ears perked to some unspoken confusion, and exchanged one another knowing glances. Sebi offered Camille, Meisa, and Firenze a wide distance between as they tailed them. Why the young noble thought it best to continue inside the Outer Layer, rather than retreat into the relative safety of the Royal Road was beyond the both of them.

Of course, this was supposing this 'noble' was actually such, and the two kitsune had a mind that not all was what it seemed.

The thought was the briefest of brief, but with little else to go off of, Sebi found herself guided on by the minute chance that something beneficial might come out of this. She supposed -if but half-jokingly- that these two elves were about to be conned. The feeling grew as her quarry passed by the next gate. Seeing the actual atelier of the artist still firmly entrenched within the Outer Layer, it seemed all the more certainly odd.

She hummed to herself, standing at the corner of the street opposite the atelier, and Sumiye pried.

"What are you thinking?" she asked, hand on a leaning hip, "I suppose the poor guy could simply be pretending. That or his family had little inclination to entertain his hobby."

"Few people pretend without purpose," Sebi said sagely, nodding to herself, "But it is all too convenient, isn't it? A spritely young man, artistic, decorated... finding two pretty women hoping to land themselves in the better part of town, but himself having no key in? What promises might he make," she said. Her gaze opened, and drifted off behind her, down the ways they'd just come from.

"I wonder..." she hummed.

Sebi wordlessly doubled back, followed by her daughter, and went straight for one of the guards they'd passed. She approached them with a bright smile and a swagger to her step -one that she already knew failed, though this time employed for a different intent.

"Good day gentlemen," she greeted, her tail restlessly swaying, "I don't suppose either of you are familiar with that atelier just down the way? Used by the boy 'Moissan'?"

She herself was a sore thumb, but the young 'noble' must have been much more of a known face around these parts, she presumed. Surely the stoic eyes of the city would know a thing or two?

@ERode@Click This

//O4 - Main Streets

Was it really that bad?

Her own appearance, of course, not the city itself. That much was assuredly awful to behold, and downright torturous to smell -certainly by comparison to her home city, but by now Sebi had long come to grips with the reality of Oratorio and its surrounding legion of despondent hovels.

Tied up into a long, waving tail, Sebi's normally floor-and-then-some length hair was supposed to be protected from the elements, but even being spared from dragging directly across mud and muck it was still always teetering close to the edge, and every step taken along her and her daughter's journey meant a chance that something got kicked right up and into it. Her clothing, bright and soft, stood out against Oratorio's commonfolk, and much like the citizens themselves, dirt also stood out just as starkly... which also clung tenaciously to Sebi's attire.

She would admit -in her own head, anyways- that the journey did not treat her regal appearance well. The smell she would thoroughly reject, but she was just as tenacious as the dirt, and took it all in stride. Her daughter would object to such an assessment -at least towards the start of their trek.

For the time being, the two vulpine women took the guard's racist comments with little more than a blink of the eyes. They'd already heard it several times before on their approach to Oratorio, and until a time as their newness (and filthiness) no longer seemed the driving factor for mistreatment, they'd let them slide.

The two stepped away from the guards, even as Sebi continued mulling over responses and excuses in her head to try and convince the guards one more time. But her legs realized the defeat before her brain did, and carried her away anyways. Perhaps attuned precisely to the sound of windfall itself, Sebi's pricked ears turned unnaturally quickly towards the source of a young man's greeting, and she practically whipped her ponytail into her daughter beside her as she turned around. It took nary a millisecond before her assessment of the young noble sparked a glimmer of hope, and Sebi put on her brightest smile, and her proudest posture.

"Why cer-!"

He went right past me!

He went right past her.

Sebi's glittering expression soured immediately, once more dragged down by the wear and tear of harsh travel. Sumiye, ever-attentive to her mother's thoughts, allowed a giggle to escape her. Sebi leveled a sad, puppy-eyed look to her daughter, begging for sympathy, but received nothing but smug amusement. She wouldn't allow herself to be defeated twice in three minutes. Sebi began to approach the noble, but before she could speak, Sumiye grabbed her gently on the shoulder and shook her head -a gesture to give up. Sebi sighed petulantly.

Still, the blonde woman beside this noble's interest seemed a touch more... important, in some ways, and Sebi wondered to herself if the artist had made not one but two mistakes in so choosing the dark-haired girl. With crossed arms and a pouting face, she watched and waited, perhaps even somewhat hoping that the artist was reprimanded for his terrible taste.

@ERode@Click This


Luna Emeraltide


Considering their destination, and the persistent chittering of wary beasts that lined the path up until then, Luna had her saber out and prepared long before the roc made its presence known. She dodged backwards as its beak plunged into the dark dirt, and shielded her face of the upended sod. She assessed the creature for a moment, and wondered how the village could have ever survived as it did with things like this about. Either it was conveniently terrified of the so-called Silverlight -moreso than the beasts- or it was only now active at the behest of something else. Something told her it was more likely the latter.

If so, any illusion of a stealthy approach was shattered.

Luna arced her saber over her head, and a hand slid along the flat of the blade, coating it in a gleaming, starry pattern that twinkled with each chanting word of her ritual. Enchanted with an aura of cursing stupefaction, she set to work cutting and binding at the bird, first lunging for the apex of its limbs where she could immobilize it.
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