Athol

Tales of the Crimson Legion - Galaxy at War

Gerad

@CaptainSully

With the blast doors finally closed and the remaining swarmers dead, Gerad returned to the console he’d been at and continued his own expolrationof the Balrog’s computers. As he flash copied chunks of data and loaded them into his armour’s data storage, he kept an ear on the comm traffic between the rest of the Legion members.

When the question of how to proceed came up, he let out a chuff and first turned his attention to Gaz. ”Ye right Fungi I don’ trust ya; fact is I’d gut ya in a tick if I fig’rd letting Hive chew on yer green arse mite nick us sum time t’ leg it, but I seen ‘em mulch bigger piles o’ meat inna snap.” Disconnecting from Enviro, he looked up at Cyne and shook his head.

”Smart move says we bounce. Contract said no ‘bout clearin’ a Hive nest, that be an extra expense, an’ credits can’ be spent by dead men. We scarper back to the Fang, I can rig some of t’ Balog’s light stuff t’ blow at m’ say. Send the Rog, the bugs an’ th’ sorry ass scavvers screamin’ t’ th’ Void inna flash.”

In fact he’d already been trying to do that pretty much from the moment he’d gotten back to the Environmental console, the data mining was all done via automated subroutines, but several security inter-locks and the catastrophic damage to the ship had stopped him from backdoor-ing his way into the ship’s power systems.

He stood and glared at his companions for another moment or two before letting out a deep sigh. ”Tha’ said…if ‘n ye’ be keen on goin’ the stupe way, I got atmo control right here. Mayb’ give us a leg up tha’ way.”

Bloodrose Irregulars - After The Fall (Dark Fantasy Adventure) -=Remake=-

Not bad. Happy the weather here had cooled off, sad it's going to warm back up.

Bloodrose Irregulars - After The Fall (Dark Fantasy Adventure) -=Remake=-

FINALLY!

After much writer's block, some outside interference and a bunch of heat induced fatigue, Yui's post is done.

Bloodrose Irregulars - After The Fall (Dark Fantasy Adventure) -=Remake=-

@Lyla NOOOO!...fair enough. Best of luck with all that, hope to see you around sooner rather than later.

Also, while showering had idea to keep Nanami available. Takes a bad knock to the head and is evac'd to the Sanada Estate, where she remains in care until your life has calmed down enough for you to rejoin.

Bloodrose Irregulars - After The Fall (Dark Fantasy Adventure) -=Remake=-

Yui Ren

@Sync@Lyla

Yui chatted with Nanami a bit longer while the day began; a few small jokes, another bout of over the top flirting and flattery that got some more laughter and blushing from Nanami. Eventually though, they said their goodbyes and went about their day.

Heading out, Yui made her way to the market district in search of a few things; lead for more bullets, ingredients to make more black powder, and a few other odds and ends. Once she’d gotten her ‘essentials’, she did a bit of browsing amongst the blacksmiths stall, before returning to the inn for lunch and starting work on making another small batch of powder and bullets.

Later

She woke almost immediately as the bells began to toll, rolling out of bed and piling on her gear almost by instinct. She saw Alm disappear out the door to find out what was going on, so while she waited she tweaked her armour and double checked her weapons; she could hear cries on the night air, things were going to get bad for them soon.
--
Alm’s statement about the approaching threat did little for her mood. Normal bandits were bad enough, but they were in it for the coin, hit ‘em hard enough and they’d leave. Orcs…orcs liked things to get bloody. As Jing divvied up everyone into teams, she looked over her ‘team’ and was a tad concerned; going into a fight like this with two unknowns was not something she was looking forward to.

As they set out, Half spoke up. ”Well there’s a rarity,” She quipped, trying to settle her nerves with a bit of humor. ”It’s not often you meet a guy built like you that speaks so well, and like you said, it’s all our asses on the line.”

As they hustled towards the fires and sounds of fighting, Yui began to scan for the best vantage points to shoot from. Rounding on the main fighting, she saw a party of orcs appear out of a side street, between them and their goal. ”Fuck me running.” She muttered. The orcs were still a bit out as she finally spotted the perch she wanted, a small balcony that over looked the street. ”Half,” She called out, pointing to said balcony. ”Gimmie a boost.”

The big man cast a wary eye on the advancing threat, before nodding and positioning himself, cupping his hands to act as a step. As she stepped up, Half lifted Yui rapidly, almost tossing her up to her spot. ”Thanks,” She called out as she made ready. ”I’ll be down shortly.”

Glancing through the glass door that lead inside, she guessed this was the home of the owner of the business below; she hoped they were already long gone. There was no time for any further thoughts in that direction though, the orcs were almost on top of them. Cocking her rifle, she took aim and fired; the gun bucked and a half inch diameter chunk of lead slammed into the chest of an orc moments later. The one Yui hit simply pitched forward, dead before it even began to fall; however it was carrying a torch, a simple affair made of a branch wrapped in cloth and dipped in pitch. When the first orc died and went over, its arm flailed out and smacked the orc beside it with the mass of flaming pitch. As Yui reloaded, she say one orc down and another peeling away from its group, screaming, as the pitch clung to it.

---

---

Isbeil Camshron

@13org@HowlsOfWinter

”I do understand,” She replied to Ehri. ”If for no reason more than the fact that we do not really know one another, your caution would be warranted.” As Ehri spoke of the potential dangers of her powers to the unprepared, Isbeil regarded her gravely. ”I assure you I will take your warnings to heart, and I would welcome your assistance. When I was a young girl one of the first lessons Mistress Thalia taught me about magic was that it was like a finely honed blade. A useful tool in the hands of a skilled user, but liable to cause harm if handled poorly…”
--
Standing back while Alm spoke, she watched his own display with open, and muted, interest. Another beastmaster of sorts? How fascinating…though perhaps I shall wait a while more before I ask the same as I did of Miss Kahn. Perhaps my own talents may have the answers Master Saito seeks. That of course would add a whole new layer of complications to things, because as far as she could figure there would be no way for her to broach the subject without revealing what her true skills were.

She gave a polite nod as Alm left, though her eyes followed him intensely; even though he’d seemed to return to normal, something still seemed to be dragging at him. Two beastmasters of sorts, and that young one-eyed woman with the dark aura; this is a MOST interesting Company.

Later That Night

Ever since her transformation in the desert all those years ago, Isbeil had found she required far less sleep than she’d once did; so while the rest of the Irregulars settled in for the night, she’d gotten herself a pot of tea and sat in her room with her grimoire, watching at a most basic level, the interplay of Ehri’s magic between her life-force and the life-force of her companions even as they rested. Her observations however were cut short by the clangor of bells and a sudden prickling in the back of her mind.

When she’d first arrived in the city, before she’d even made contact with the Irregular’s recruiter, she’d taken a day or two to set up and cast ’Greater Life Leech’ over the place. In its original form such a spell would have wiped out much of the life in the city, but such action were barbaric and a grotesque abuse of power; instead, she had modified her version of the spell to be much weaker, but also much longer lasting.

Instead of killing anyone it came in contact with, it instead just siphoned off a small part of the life-force of a recently deceased and channelled it to Isbeil. Every chicken or hog killed by a butcher, every rat caught by a cat; a tiny amount of every death was sent her way. Now she could actually feel the surge in power flowing to her as the Orcs slaughtered their wat into the city. Through me the dead will have their retribution. She thought as she hurried down stairs, her bright red hair spilled out behind her; she’d removed her head scarf when she’d sat to relax and in her haste, she’d forgotten to re-wrap it. While Jing gave them what little information they had and began to issue orders, she quickly got herself ready.

Soon she found herself in the company of one of the young female warriors that had signed on when Isbeil herself had, and the one-eyed woman; Jing mentioned that they were to be accompanied by another, but so far they’d yet to appear. She hoped that whoever ‘Pox’ was, they’d not gotten caught in the attack. ”Come,” She said, heading for the door. ”Let us see what we can do to help.”
-
It was calm so far, but Isbeil had little hope that it would stay that way. ”Isbeil Camshron.” he replied as Octavia broke the group’s silence. ”Forgive me, but I prefer to no shake hands.” She added with a bow; raising her right arm, she briefly showed her ‘withered’ gloved right hand. ”The result of an illness as a child.” She explained, the lie an old and easy one. ”It moves well enough, and I can still hold a pen or the like, but it lacks much strength.”

The tense quiet evaporated into panicked screams as four goblins on spiderback came into view, one of them running down a civilian and impaling her with its spear. Isbeil felt the woman’s death as her previously prepared and implemented spell, functioned true to her design, and channelled a small portion of the victim’s life force to her.

The power tickled almost imperceptibly at her nerves as Isbeil’s lips moved with a silent ease as she invoked her native born magics. A flick of her left hand in a short slashing motion, sent a nigh invisible ‘blade’ of force against the rider’s mount. It lacked the raw strength to cut right through the spider’s carapace, but it did score it heavily; more damaging though was the fact that her attack got through enough to reach the spider’s eyes. Suddenly blind, the creature seemed to panic, tossing its rider and turning to run; which let it to slam hard into an abandoned fruit seller’s cart.

Cursing the goblin staggered to its feet, and enraged by being thrown, stabbed its mount while it lay dazed on the street. Turning to fix its glare on Isbeil, it hollered a war cry and charged at her, but sadly for it, she had not been idle. Reaching into one of the many pockets in her robes, she came out with the same small stone that she’d shown Jing when they’d first met. Now with another invocation it flicked from her hand like a sharpshooter’s bullet.

The stone was a rough pieced of granite no larger than a peach pit, and with the speed Isbeil accelerated it to, it hit with spectacular result. There was a sharp crack as it punched through the shield, followed shortly by a high pitched howl from the goblin as the stone continued on its way, through its midsection and out its back, shattering its spine on the way. The goblin slammed into the street and skidded to a halt writhing in agony still well short of the small band of Irregulars.

Bloodrose Irregulars - After The Fall (Dark Fantasy Adventure) -=Remake=-

Still busy, but hopefully I'll have some time tonight. *cookies for all*

@Lyla

Yay!!
Does a lurid happy dance in Lyla's direction

Tales of the Crimson Legion - Galaxy at War

Gerad

The trip over to what was left on the Balrog was uneventful…right up until the new boy started playing target practice with the rocks. ”Flat-brain’d, o’er stimm’d young blood,” Gerad chuffed. ”Lucky hes not Militia. Be on shit buckets ‘til he be a silver back.”
-
Once the shuttle had touched down, he followed Cyne outside and down the corridor. Unlike either of the human’s suits, Gerad’s armour lacked any thrusters as ‘flight packs’ were only issued to Militia troops that were expecting to be operating in low/null gee environments. Gerad followed along by de-activating the mag-locks on his hind legs and reducing the ‘grab’ on his fore legs; this allowed him to ‘bound’ along at a similar pace to Cyne, using his stronger upper arms to help turn by grabbing bits of bulkhead for turning, while his legs provided propulsion and breaking when needed.

Moving deeper into the ship, they began to find signs of fighting, though strangely no bodies. ”Best I got is ‘Somethin’ Bad’,” Gerad replied, his eyes trailing over the burns and blood. ”Th’ went down swingin’ tho…”

Passing a large hull breach he let out a low growl. ”Like somthin’ took a taste…” The only thing he could think of that might do damage like this was a grav-lance on a salvage station, but those were huge, and rather immobile, and from what he’d seen the Balrog had taken far too much damage to have moved much after she got hit. Getting to the bridge there was more signs of combat.

”Gonna need ta punch de new meat if we gettin’ out.” Gerad muttered, surveying the darkened consoles. He shot Pathfinder a short glare as Cyne sent it off to restore power, it wasn’t that he didn’t like the drone, it was just that he had a hard time trusting tech that he hadn’t laid eyes on how it worked…and for some reason Cyne was unwilling to let him open up Pathfinder and have a look at its internals.

As soon as power came on, Gerad began to interface with the console before him. Using his smaller lower arms and their more dexterous fingers, he flashed across the console, while at the same time using the tools built into the gauntlets to tap directly into what was left of the ships systems. He was at a tactical console, but very little of the Balrog’s weapons survived, and what was left was more likely to cause more harm than good if he’d attempted to use them on the approaching ships. Built in protocols were ripping as much raw data as they could from any system he could access, though with the amount of damage, much like the weapons, there were few of those intact.

He was currently patched into Environmental, and had been about to inform Cyne that he could override the blast doors, when he saw the same readouts. ”Shadow an’ Pit, what do-” Anything further the Gerad may have been thinking was cut short by a sound he’d hoped to go to his grave never hearing again. ”Oh I be hearin’…an’ I wish I wasn’t.”

The thundering deck plates and Cyne’s shouting snapped him out of it as the first Swarmer burst into sight, moments before it exploded in a pile of gore. Separating from the console, his VLA was in his hand in a flash, while the PRP unfolded from the mount on his shoulder.

To most species, the VVD 45-30/R Plasma Rail Projector would have qualified as a ‘Heavy Weapon’ and mounted either in fixed positions or on armoured attack craft; to the Militia it is simply the standard issue anti-armour weapon. He cursed himself for being too slow to stop the initial break in, but he could at least slow down whatever was behind it.

Even as he saw the Swarmers rush him, he sent a mass of super-heated plasma through the way they’d come in, filling the opening with a momentary tiny star as the plasma packet struck something solid. There was no time for follow up shots however as the ones that’d headed his way were upon him.

He met the leaper with his raised left upper arm, letting the creature jam its mouth onto his forearm…then he simply deployed his Defensive Barrier. The shield was meant to deploy as fast as was possible, no matter the condition; so when it opened up inside the Swarmer’s mouth, the beast’s head simply exploded, showering Gerad’s armour and the console with blood and bone.

At the same time, he’d brought his TXZ-11/A Variable Laser Armament to bear on the remaining four. Like his PRP, the VLA would probably been classified as a vehicle grade weapon, so when his sight aligned on the next Swarmer, and he fired, the blast flashed right through its chest, the head of the one behind it and the front leg of the last one in the pack, before boring into the light internal bulkhead of the ship.

Unfazed by its companions demise the fourth one slammed into Gerad. Taking the hit on his barrier, he pushed back, launching the creature back, but only for a moment. Realizing this was to be a point blank fight, he bared his teeth and with one fluid motion swapped his VLA for his Hammer. Meeting the Swarmer’s second charge, he lifted it into the air as it clawed at the Barrier, before collapsing it while simultaneously swinging the hammer to meet it. There was a dull thud as the head connected, followed by a much louder bang as he drove the being to the floor. It let out a surprised squeal and tried to attack once more but the impact had stunned it enough that Gerad has able to recover from the swing and bring the hammer back for a vicious, spike first, blow to the top of its head which was followed by an extremely satisfying crunch.

Prying the weapon free, he looked to where he’d last seen the wounded Swarmer, only to find it missing; that said he didn’t need to look for it. While he’d been distracted, it had circled around behind him, and pounced as soon as it had seen a clear chance. The Swarmer’s intention had been to drive the annoying little morsel to the ground and then bite its head off; instead when it hit, Gerad’s armour automatically triggered the grav-locks in his boots to prevent such a thing.

Due to their physiology one of the Garundin’s biggest weaknesses was their near inability to twist their torso to any meaningful degree, or rotate either set of arms enough to reach their own backs. It had landed in the near perfect place to attack without Gerad being able to respond…assuming he’d been without his armour. As it was, he deployed his combi-torch and used the plasma jet to gut it from end to end.

Tales of the Crimson Legion - Galaxy at War

@ShiningSector I'd hoped fuckery like that was done with when Matt Ward went away...sad to see I was wrong. (Can't afford to *play* 40k, but I'm a bit of a lore-whore.)

Bloodrose Irregulars - After The Fall (Dark Fantasy Adventure) -=Remake=-

@Arthanus

*Converts the number to Celsius* That is disgusting...we had a few days like that, but mostly it's been in the more tolerable 20s. (High 60s, low 70s for you folks still using antiquated measures :p ). Other than that, my week has been alright, though it could be better.

*Glances @Lyla*
XD

Bloodrose Irregulars - After The Fall (Dark Fantasy Adventure) -=Remake=-

@Lyla Well, deep breaths and best of luck