Silvi sat back with a satisfied sigh, chuckling at Mika’s comment. “Almost like they might have been checking up on the Academy’s only students.” Once again, she couldn’t quite keep a note of disappointment out of her voice. Still savouring the rich, meaty, she sipped a glass of water and sighed once more as her scroll began to vibrate. “Oops,” She said, pulling it out and looking at it. “That’s a timer I set; we should probably head back relatively soon…they might notice if we’re late…” She added with a smirk.
Sliding out from her seat, she rubbed her rather full belly appreciatively, before heading over to the till. There was no-one in sight, but when she rang the bell a mountain of a man, about the same age as Auntie Levi stepped out of the back. As he walked over to the till, it was obvious he moved with a limp. “You must be the students Levi told me about.” The man rumbled. “I’m Ube, Uncle Ube to my friends.” He added with a smile. “A pleasure to meet you.” Silvi replied. She was generally used to either looking down or at least across at most people, even full grown adults, but even she had to look up to look Ube in the eye.
“I was a hunter once.” Ube went on. “But I miss timed a dodge, and well…let me say this, at least the Beowulf never got a second swing in.” She was unsure how to respond to that, but Ube quickly moved on. “Now then, you kids come back here any time you need a good hot meal to fill your bellies.” Seeing Silvi pulling out her wallet, he waved her off. “That’s not need Ms. Wulka, I know you for sure are good for it, but think of this as me and Levi’s little way of doing what we can to help; for you three, your meals are on us.”
Her eyes widened and her tail twitched in surprise. “That-that is very generous of you, thank you so much!” Reaching out, Sivli shook Ube’s hand, his giant mitt enveloping her own hand. With the, aborted, attempt to pay done, she thanked Ube once more and stepped out onto the street.
Gerad let out a pained sigh as the lone human that had been being held at gun point, disabled one of his captors and then levelled his weapon at the being that seemed to be in charge of the group. Spirits Below, why’d he have to go and complicate things?
He was already bringing his Barrier into position when one of the henchmen called out his warning; the stun grenade went off, but it had no effect of Gerad as his armour’s systems automatically moved to counter-act the blinding flash and thunderous bang. Weapons fire erupted immediately, but all Gerad did in response was to hunker behind the Barrier a bit, more out of habit than anything else, and return fire. Scattered, light small arms fire was exactly zero threat to Milita armour.
His first targets where the two ‘tagged’ thugs that had wrecked his truck; he’d hoped he would have been able to convince them, forcefully if need be, to compensate him for his loss, but now seeing as he was being fired at, he decided to cut to the chase. The first one was simply trying to run away, so he fired a burst from his VLA into the runners back, burning a roughly fist sized hole in his torso. The second took cover behind a large waste bin and was firing a one handed automatic slug thrower at him, the bullets, spalling and fragmenting uselessly against Gerad’s Barrier. Another burst cut that thug down as well as igniting the contents of the bin.
“Ancestors…” He muttered out loud as some of the others continued to fire at him, despite it having no effect. “This is becoming a pain in the hind quarters.” The Barrier wasn’t really needed so he collapsed it and switched the VLA to his left main hand and unhooking the hammer from its mounting point between his shoulders. He snapped a few bursts off at targets of opportunity, chewing up the environment as he did, while advancing on the largest cluster of thugs who were in cover. “If you clanless stone-throwers are done wasting ammunition, I promise I won’t kill you.”
@Arthanus Wasn't too happy with what I first posted, so I've done a bit of editing, made Gerad a bit less hasty. Sorry if it messes with anything on your end.
To say Gerad was in a bad mood was to put it politely, not that most other species would have noticed. Garundin’s had a reputation for being a surly lot, so they’d have just assumed he was behaving like normal; but this was different. He’d just spent the past four hours walking back to Oasis after the hovertruck he’d been using had been blasted to shit. It’d cost him a fair chunk of his limited credits and much time modifying it for his own ease of use, and now it was a smouldering slag pile out in the desert.
He’d been planet side for a few months now, and between odd jobs to keep the credits flowing in, he’d spent much time at a relatively close exposed bit of the strange archeotech, trying to see if he could figure out anything about it; so far he’d been no more successful than anyone else, but that was no deterrent, like any other Garundin he was patient.
Now, however he was on a bit of a warpath. He’d been working at his usual site, when another vehicle approached. He’ been cautious but since it didn’t appear to be a Skull Taker’s ride, he kept working instead of just engaging as soon at the vehicle came in range, that proved to be a mistake; there were no warnings, no threats, a duo just dismounted and opened fire at him, lobbing an explosive charge at his truck at the same time.
Fortunately for the duo, Gerad had been at the bottom of a depression and was not able to bring any of his rather potent ‘guns’ to bear, the only weapons he had at hand where some homemade pheromone grenades that he’d put together as they seemed to be somewhat effective in dispersing, at least small packs, of ‘hoppers’. He lobbed a few of those at his attackers, causing them to remount their ride and retreat in the direction of Oasis.
Seeing as he need to go back there anyways, he’d followed, managing to make the trip with only a few minor scuffles with some wildlife. Once back inside the settlement, he began sampling the air with his armour, using the pheromones to track his attackers through the place. Too many species without a highly developed olfactory sense, the ‘tag’ was almost unnoticeable, to Gerad, it was a ribbon of brilliant light. Following the trails, they rounded a corner to where he could hear a rather insistent conversation.
"Welcome Mr Phoenix, So I heard you were looking for me. I think we should have a bit of a chat." "Yes, I think a chat would be nice."
He stopped short of the corner and listened. The ones that had shot at him and trashed his stuff were right there, and from the sounds of things they were not alone. Now most species, when confronted with a situation like this, would either back off and try again later or try and get some more information about what was happening just out of sight before they did anything, but Garundins just hit their problems head on and relied on their stubbornness and armour to carry the day, and Gerad was very typical for his people.
Stepping around the corner with his Barrier deployed and his V.L.A. in hand, he saw a dozen or so thugs all facing away from him and glaring at a lone human. "Hey," He said in a rumbling bass. "I don’t know what’s going on here, and don’t much care, but I do have a quarrel with those two." He added, using one of his secondary hands to point out the two ‘tagged’ thugs. "They come with me and I’ll get out of your way."
Silvi playfully stuck her tongue out at Aiden, more in response to his tone of voice, than what he actually said. “I’m not that rich, I mean, I’m no Schnee or anything.” She said brightly, before muttering. “Bigoted fuck-buckets.” She was chuckling at Mika’s ‘hyper-happy’ mode, but let out another surprised ‘yip’ as the short girl tried to wrap an arm around her waist, and ended up with half a handful of Silvi’s skinny backside.
Doing her best to extricate herself, without making it look too obvious that that was what she was doing. “Nice hammer.” She said as she slipped free. “Sometime soon we should bomb out to my place and introduce you two to my folks; I mean if you’re going to be hunters and huntresses, it wouldn’t hurt to have some personal contacts with at least one armourer.” She added, grinning playfully. “Anyways, back to food. ‘Little Ladle’ still sound good?”
With the other two in agreement, they made their way to the soup café. ‘Little Ladle’ was a local institution as far as eateries went; owned by an elderly human couple named Ube and Lavi Sno, it’d been selling good soups, quickly and for a reasonable price, for as long as most people could remember. As they entered, they were greeted by Lavi Sno, a bustling grey haired woman who seemed to exude large amounts of positive energy.
“Come in, come in!” She chirped brightly as she rushed towards them across the sparsely populated little place. “You must be some of our new hunters and huntresses to be!” Reaching the trio, she clasped each of their hands and shook them. “Well good for you kids, we can never have too many folks willing to keep the Grimm at bay.” Her words were caught by the few other customers, who added their approvals with a smattering of applause.
Having been seated at a window booth, they were all presented with simple menus and left to make up their minds while ‘Auntie Lavi’ as she insisted she be called, went to get their drinks; and once they had all made up their minds, the three of them quickly found a rather substantial bowl of soup placed before each of them.
Once again, there was a momentary flash of concern about Mika’s health in Silvi’s eyes, as the smaller girl injected her medication. Part of her really wanted to ask Mika just what was wrong, if they were going to be on the same team, then knowing stuff like that could be very useful if something went wrong while they were out; but Sivli couldn’t muster the nerve to ask, hell, she’d only just the other two.
Hi I’m Silvi, nice to meet you, by the way, just what are you dying of!? Yeah…that’d go over great… She thought sardonically to herself. As these thoughts rattled about, unconsciously she wrapped her tail up around her waist now, and began to idly play with the tip of it.
"Rather hungry now...."
The giggle snapped her out of her own thoughts, and she smiled at Mika. “That sounds like a good idea. I dunno about other faunus, but wolves like me have a pretty fast metabolism, and I had breakfast like 3 hours ago, so yeah I’m getting kinda hungry myself.” Letting go of her tail, she turned her smile towards Aiden, she started to head for the door. “You coming? Hey, tell you what.” She said with a moment’s inspiration. “Food is on me, so long as I don’t go crazy with my spending, my folks are pretty generous with the lien.”
@ArthanusSorry about that...guess I was looking at the wrong page when I posted :(
Name: Therak oz Gerad nil Mizol (Gerad son of Mizol of the Therak tribe)
Race: Garundin
Garundin’s are a fairly new player on the galactic stage, but even so they have already made their presence known as premier engineers, technicians and heavy assault troopers.
The Garundin home world of Eshan sits at the extreme outer edge of the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ created by their home star. Eshan itself is a high gravity world, with a surface gravity being just over three times Earth-standard, which produces very high atmospheric pressures as well as being largely made of carbon dioxide. This has led to an ecosystem that produces flora and fauna that are short, dense and in the case of the fauna, powerfully muscled.
Garundin culture, even know, it still tribal based; though now each tribal council sends a representative to the planetary Grand Council who then appoints representatives for Garundin affairs off-world. Within each tribe, life has always about working for the good of the tribe; work delegated, resources shared, the elderly and infirm tended to by all. While internal conflicts were rare, inter-tribal conflicts were almost constant. Tribes fighting over land, water, minerals, and stronger tribes conquering weaker ones; the centuries passed, the technology changed and improved, but the fighting went on.
One major difference between Garundin’s and other sentient species was their near total lack of development of ballistic weaponry or attempts at heavier than air flight; the dense atmosphere and high gravity made the energy expenditure for such things too great to be overly practical, so such ideas were of little use. All that changed during what became known as ‘The Fall’; 200 years ago, on the plains between three great tribes a starship crash landed, coming to rest near where all three territories met.
Garundin’s were never a people that looked ‘up’ much, but with this arrival they started to, and wonder what else may be out there. Once they thought they were many tribes on one world, but now they realized, they may be one tribe amongst many worlds; this realization rippled across Eshan and within only a few years many old tribal conflicts where cast aside for the good of the ‘Greater Tribe’.
All across Eshan, great thinkers and tinkerer flocked towards the newly founded, and rapidly growing, City of the Great Fall (Great Fall in common usage). Sadly the crew of the vessel didn’t survive the crash, something caused an inertial dampener failure and they most likely died before the ship even hit the atmosphere, but the automated systems did their best to bring it down relatively intact. With methodical care, the Garundin’s began to investigate, first the small parts they could safely remove, then as their knowledge grew, and they began to translate more of the off-world language, they began to dig into the ship proper.
By their nature, Garundin’s are a patient and practical people, so there was no rush to discover all there was to know in one lifetime; but they also took to the new technology and in a remarkable short amount of time, they went from an early industrial tech base, to launching their first heavier than air craft, which was also their first trans-atmospheric vessel in less than two generations. From there they expanded exponentially, moving into their home system, and exploring the celestial bodies they found there. By the time the Garundin’s made first contact with S-GAF, ten years after Gerad’s birth, they had already successfully industrialized much of the system.
Physically, Garundin’s are a four armed, quadrupedal, mammalian species. They average in height from between 125 to 135 cm and generally weight in at between 160 and 200 kilograms. Though the high gravity of Eshan has led to a very thick atmosphere, the planets extreme range from the rather weak star means that even at the best of times, Eshan is a rather cool world. As a result Garundin’s still maintain a thick insulating layer of hair that covers everything but their faces, the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet.
They share a very similar facial appearance to Terran ‘gorillas’, with a heavy brow, flat nasal openings and a protruding jaw, though they lack the same elongated skull; as a result it’s not uncommon for humans to refer to them as ‘Spider-Gorillas’. Males and females are indistinguishable from each other unless one can actually see their reproductive organs; Garundin’s tell by pheromone traces that an individual produces.
Age: 52 [Average lifespan 200 years. 1 Eshan Year = 2 Standard Terran Years]
Appearance: Gerad is pretty average for a Garundin; 130 cm tall and weighing in at 180 kilos, he’s covered in light brown air, with dark brown eyes. On Eshan, he’s the type of man you’d forget you saw almost while you were still looking at him.
Personality: Like all Garundin’s, he’s a pragmatist which serves him well on Trylin. ‘Deal with the reality that is’, was something he was taught at an early age, and something that he has carried with him into adulthood; because sometimes the reality of a place like Trylin means you have to do some unpleasant things. Inside this pragmatic soul though is still a curious child, one who is fascinated by the machines people create, and wanting to know all there is to know about them.
Weapons: TXZ-11/A Variable Laser Armament - To most species the TXZ series of weapons would most likely be classified as medium lascannons, suitable for vehicle or fixed emplacement use, to the Garundin’s it’s the standard issue primary infantry weapon for their ‘Militia of the Grater Tribe’.
A single handed weapon, which uses the Militia’s issue power armour to stabilize aiming, it has ‘beam’ and ‘pulse’ modes to swap between for its firing modes. ‘Beam’ mode fires a continuous 4 terawatt beam at long range, with a maximum sustained rate of 10 seconds, with a 15 second cool down between each firing. ‘Pulse’ mode fires 2 terawatt pulses at short to medium range, with a maximum sustained rate of 30 seconds with the same cool down time.
VVD 45-30/R Plasma Rail Projector (flexible mount on left shoulder) - Standard Militia issue anti-bunker/vehicle weapon. Can fire 3 10 terawatt pulses in 6 seconds before a 30 second is required, and can fire a total of 9 times before the canister of ionizing medium is expended.
Type 9/BS Collapsible Breaching Hammer - A 45 kilogram head, with a hammer face on one side and a spike on the other. Collapsed, it is compact enough to be used single-handedly, while extended the handle doubles in length allowing for two handed use and greater striking power.
Abilities: Combat Engineer – He knows the best ways to disable and destroy hardened positions, infrastructure and pretty much anything else you can name, quickly, efficiently and while being shot at.
Soldier – He’s no stranger to combat, though compared to most species, Garundin tactics are a bit on the basic side; relying on their physical durability and their incredibly tough armour, they simply bully through their objectives.
Mechanic – If Gerad can’t fix it, then it truly can’t be fixed.
Bio: The fifth of twelve children, Gerad was lucky enough to be left to make his own choices in life; being part of an old and influential family inside Clan Therak, many of his older sibling were expected to become great leaders or warriors or other such things, and as a result were groomed and pushed and prodded to those ends.
Showing an aptitude for technology, even beyond Garundin norms, his schooling was tailored to those ends. Once he reached adulthood, like all Garundin he did his mandatory service in the Militia, helping to protect his people, and the Grand Clan in general; while only 2 years of service is mandatory, he found the Militia life appealing and being sent off world let him more easily interact with the technology of other species.
He would have probably spent the rest of his life in the Militia, after three consecutive volunteer contracts on top of the mandatory one, his superiors had been grooming him for greater things; but then, just as his fourth contract was coming to a close, the news of the incident on Trylin rippled across the news nets. Eshan was about as far away from Trylin as one could be while still in explored space, but when Gerad heard that news, he knew what he needed to do.
At the end of his contract, instead of reupping, he retired from the Militia, bought out his armour, sold off much of his possessions and caught the first transport he could that was heading in the right direction. The trip between Eshan and Trylin was long and at times frustrating and more than a little dangerous; but eventually he made it. His goal now was to find these ancient ruins and the tech there in, discover their secrets, and then return to his people with what he’d found. It might take a while, but Garundin are long lived. Personal equipment: G-11 Type 4 Mk.3 Militia Power Armour – Each armour is custom fitted to the user. If a citizen fulfills a 10 year (Eshan Year) term and retires in good standing with the Militia, they have the option to purchase their arms and armour if they intend to go off world; should they ever return to Eshan with the intent of staying they must surrender the arm and armour to the Militia.
The armour is a sealed and self-sustaining unit, allowing the user to operate in a variety of hostile environments, including hard vacuum for extended periods of time. The armour’s utility pack houses the power supply, atmosphere generator, nutrient processor and a whole host of other critical tools. So long as the armour has power it can maintain its user indefinitely.
Nano-assembler – Built into the back mounted utility pack of the armour, the assembler allows the user to manufacture small to medium sized components for repairs and constructions while in the field.
Combo welder/cutter – Mounted on a folding, multi directional arm that comes up over the right shoulder.
Multi-tool manipulator units – Both of the power armour’s secondary arm gauntlets are equipped with precision tools for working on smaller objects.
Defensive Barrier – An extremely durable kinetic and energy resistant shield that unfurls from a mounting on the armour’s left primary arm gauntlet.
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