Quietly listening to the brief on the other three Horsemen, an idea struck him. ”Tha’ Deval one…locals say they c’n get in all sneaky?” He let out a short chuffing laugh. ”Den tha’ one we c’n get flat landed.”
Once he was sure he had Silas‘ attention, he went on. ”Easier den a suckler get ‘is mamma’s milk. Locals get me in ta th’ underside o’ his place, I set up a demo charge…like dat las’ job we got skagged on, an’ den we skip. Once we sure ‘es ‘ome, hit da button, and Deval is no problem. All th’ defence in th’ ‘verse can’t stop that type o’ bang. We hit Madlock an’ Deval; one, two sharpish th’ other’ll get skittish an’ dumb.”
He looked about the room, still smiling slightly. ”Dat, or we jus’ hit up th’ local Belt once we in-system an’ drop some rocks on ‘em. Sometimes easy be th’ best way.”
True Name Risyla Sarora Nemoress (Her true name is not something she has shared with anyone other than Aiden)
Stage Name Lady of Blades
Appearance
’Nerissa’ in her human form
Date Joined August 12 1890
The Act
Knife Thrower, Juggler and Acrobat. She does precision and trick shots while using dynamic movements along the lines of parkour to hold her audience’s attention. While she leaps and flips about the arena, she will use her powers to ‘stretch’ her leaps to make jumps that the audience is sure she’s not going to make; or to make moves that border on the impossible, without fully crossing the line.
While moving, she produces a seemingly endless series of thrown weapons at targets all across the stage; hitting them with improbably speed and accuracy.
Her most popular piece is when she selects skeptics from the audience and let them propose a challenge to her, which she then inevitable completes, much to the shock and awe of all.
Nerissa’s Contract is a bit different than others. Given who and what she is, there was little Aiden would be able to offer in terms of Powers, instead he offered her shelter and anonymity on the condition she would never raise her hand against the Powers that Be again.
Why She Joined
To put it plainly, survival. She’d already burned her bridges with the Powers that Be once, and more recently with the Powers that Were; the Circus was the only option that didn’t include being hunted by both sides.
Biography
Once she was an ‘Angel’, a compatriot of Aiden’s brother, and soldier for the Powers that Be. For a long time she was a good soldier, followed orders, did what she was told and never asked any of the ’wrong’ questions; but as humanity began to grow and flourish, she began to see things that upset her, the arrogance and, to use a human term, benign racism of the Celestials towards humanity. She’d always believed they were there to try and guide humanity as teachers and to protect them from dangers they were ill equipped to deal with, not sneer at them from on high and dictate how they behave.
Such thoughts sat and festered in her mind for a long time until a supposed ‘chance’ encounter with an agent of the Powers that Were. He came to her under a banner of peace, saying he wished only to talk, and while she was most suspicious, she let him speak his peace.
The agent spoke of how he had been observing her for some time, not something she found overly assuring for a lot of reasons, and he’d suspected she was not as happy with the decisions of her superiors as she let them think. He spoke of how the Powers that Were wanted to free humanity of the invisible shackles that the Powers that Be had ensnared them with; he spoke at length and with passion about how all the terrible things she was told about the Powers that Were, were simply lies to blind her to the truth, and to her eternal shame, she bought it.
When she returned from the patrol she’d been on when she’d encountered the agent, she calmly made her way to, for lack of a better term was the armoury for the host she was a part of, and cast her power against it destroying it utterly, before escaping in the ensuing chaos.
Once it was discover who was responsible, she was branded a traitor and called a Demon, with orders given to destroy her on sight should she be found. She cared little for all that, pushing herself full time into what she thought was freeing humanity from her old masters, and for a time it was good and she felt happy…but bit by bit cracks began to show in that pretty façade that suckered her in, until one day it broke and she realized the actual truth. The Powers that Be may have some, pretty serious, issues, but at least they don’t see humanity as so much disposable cattle something to either be consumed or used and discarded.
That nearly shattered her, for a time she even considered ending her existence, but before she got that far, she caught wind of the Circus. At first she shied away, she knew what Aiden was and figured he would try and kill her, and despite her own thoughts of suicide, she couldn’t let that happen; but still, the place called to her, so she watched it from a far, watched it genuinely trying to help humanity defend itself, not with beings from another plane, but with humans themselves…yes granted powers, but still humans.
Eventually she worked up the nerve to approach Aiden, to ask if she could be a part of it all.
Connections
During hunts, she’s either scouting ahead to find their target(s) or flanking to hit from unexpected directions; that said, even playing the role of ‘merely’ a human with powers, she’s a good heavy hitter; and if she find she needs to go all out, there isn’t much that can stand against her for long.
If not preforming on stage she will wander through the crowds in costume, doing small juggling routines, a bit of slight-of-hand magic and bantering with the guests. Off-duty she can be quite sociable, and is generally game for a bit of partying.
The Audition
The audience sat in tiered benches before a massive stage, a dull roar of side conversations that rapidly died as the lights dimmed. ”Good evening to all and welcome,” A voice said out of the darkness. “We’re glad to have you with us, and we hope you are all having a fantastic time. Now, for your enjoyment and amazement we are proud to present the Lady of Blades!”
A single spotlight illuminated a woman standing in the middle of the stage. She appeared to be dressed in a mass of feather weight blue satin ribbons that twisted and flowed like they were alive. Moving with fluid grace, she made her way to the edge of the sage and bowed, just as music began to play. In time with the beat, small targets, no bigger that a smart phone started to light up, and as they did, she flicked a knife out of her hand and into the target.
As the show went on the targets got harder, and she began to move about, flipping and vaulting over set pieces, all the while either throwing a variety of knives, darts, axes and swords into various targets, or while juggling said knives, darts, axes and swords. Finally it all came to a spectacular conclusion, targets moving so fast it was inconceivable that she could actually hit anything and yet she did, picking tennis balls (or smaller) out of the air with lightning reflexes while both juggling blades and balancing on wires, the lot.
The stage lights died down until, once more, the Lady of Blades stood under a single spotlight and bowed to the applauding crowd. “Now,” She said, speaking for the first time. “Is there anyone out there who is skeptical of me? Please, don’t be shy. Doubt can be a good thing, especially when confronted with the fantastic.” Eventually a man in the crowed put his hand up, and as soon as he did a light shone on him. “Ah excellent,” The Lady exclaimed. “Please sir do come down. If you are truly skeptical about what I can do, then please…give me a challenge.”
It took some time for the man to make his way out of the audience, but eventually he made it to the stage, where he joined the Lady. After asking his name, she asked what his challenge was. He challenged her to hit a dime, in the air, at fifty feet, with a throwing dart. After letting him inspect, and mark, both the dime and the dart, “Please be careful Sir, they are very sharp”, there was a drum roll and a stage hand flicked the dime into the air. The Lady moved in a blur of blue, and there was a faint clatter in the darkness. Moments later the stage hand came forward, with the dime impaled on the dart. The crowd broke out into cheers and applause as the house lights came up and the Lady handed the dime to the stunned man from the audience.
@Majoras End Okay, a question I've been having issue with. How would a Contract with a demon work? Presumably, said demon would already possess powers of their own.
P.S. The formatting in the C.S. hider needs a touch up.
One more thing! The Powers that Be and the ones that Were. Is it a conflict between two long standing rivals or did one party rebel against the actions of the other and split off?
Not finding anything else of particular interest in the market, Gerad headed back to the ship and promptly disappeared into the ship’s machine shop to begin installing his new toy.
Absorbed as he was in his work, he barely paid any attention to what was going on around him, save when a harried looking Maklata tried to enter the machine shop. It hadn’t noticed him as it rushed in, and unfortunately, it jostled Gerad just as he was doing some fine tuning. He sent the little rat-like sapient running with a string on invectives that by all rights should have melted the decking. - Now he ‘sat’ in the briefing room as Silas and their newest hire, Ducaelia, covered the mission brief. Hmmm, ‘nother Vandrell; He thought, not for the first time. Meyb’ THIS one’ll let me take a peek at th’ tech…meyb’ ask after.
He’d only been partially listening to the brief, but when some of the words finally clicked, he let out a low whistle. ” ‘Pocalypse you say? Seen a bit on ‘em just ‘fore I mustered outta th’ Milita.” He smiled a bit before rumbling with a small chuckle. ”Never got stompy wit’ ‘em m’self but I know they was pok’n ‘bout some o’ da solo systems to the Great Tribes ‘south’…last I heard Mr. Death there got his fingers burned ‘bout a year after I got out.”
Despite her casual remark, Ceva was actually kind of worried. The Imps usually stuck to their outpost on the other side of the city; other than the occasional ‘bike patrol around the outskirts, they mostly kept to themselves, but with the landing in Haven she figured things would be changing.
Dropping back into her seat, she finished her drink and got back onto the ‘net. Carefully, she made her way into the ‘deeper’ recesses of the local ‘net; buried in there she’d found a message board dedicated to ‘Resisting the foul scourge of the Empire’. They were all talk, but they did do a fair job of keeping track of Imp movements, so they were at least useful. Now there were posts, with images that showed several shuttles, both light and heavy lift, landing at the Imp base.
Disconnecting, Ceva pocketed her key and quietly exited the cantina out of a back door. She was fairly sure the Imps were aware of the message board she’d been watching, and as such she’d made her own plans to keep herself safe; that said, she figured it would be best to relocate. - Back at her own apartment, she gathered up all her identification; a splendidly false collection that identified her as one ‘Riv Hayoa’, droid tech, down on her luck ex-spacer and all around general nobody. Clothes, credits and a few other essentials went into a bag, while the ID went into a ‘flash tube’, a locking plasteel tube with a thermal charge inside that would destroy the contents.
With her bed/sit apartment cleared, she tossed the place to make it look like it’d been robbed, before leaving the building. Moving at a brisk pace, she dropped her door card into the tube, locked it, and set it to flash on a ten minute timer. Making a fairly direct route, via side streets and alleys, to Woln’s shuttle port, she tossed the tossed the tube into a passing dumpster.
Arriving at the port she bought a ticket for the next outbound flight to Haven using another totally genuine, but utterly fictitious ID of one ‘Pasca Iik’; a newer member of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild with a valid B23-1-14 permit to boot. Shea was worried that the bucketheads might halt flights out as they began to move on Woln, but as the shuttle lifted off that didn’t seem to be the case. As it banked away from the city, Ceva settled into her seat for a nap.
Gerad had spent the rest of his time either working on his gear, or just tinkering in the Legion’s End machine shop. One of his ongoing projects was an ignition catalyzer for the main engine; he was certain he could boost the efficiency over the old ones the ship was using, but Sven had barred him from doing anything to the ship without his approval, going to far as to set up monitor programs to make sure of that, while at the same time ignoring Gerad anytime he tried to push the issue…and all because one time, not long after joining, he blew a main power relay and left them all adrift for a few hours…the panel should have been marked more clearly. -- After touch down, Silas gave them the rundown and timeline for their pit-stop on Noctus IV. ”Ta Boss,” Gerad replied as Silas transferred the promised credits to everyone. ”Be back in riky-tik time.” Once again in his armour he set off into the city, using a map download as a guide. While he generally had little use for ‘Free Ports’ like this, he did appreciate the lack of Customs while on a time crunch; most non-Garundin ‘civilized’ planets were a bit hesitant about letting someone as armed and armoured walk about.
As it was, he merely stumped away from the dock to an auto-cab and got in, setting the map for one of the larger arms bazaars. A few minutes later the dilapidated, but serviceable, speeder set down near the bazaar. Vendors were selling everything from easily concealable hold-out guns to shipboard main batteries…though from what Gerad was seeing on his armour’s sensors, some of those weapons were just barely stable piles of scrap.
Winding his way past vendors of all sorts, he made his way to his destination, an old cargo shuttle near the back, which had long ago been parted out of all its flight worthy components. Over the main cargo door was a sign, that in several common languages, simply said ‘Weapons’. Stepping through the hatch way, the crowded space inside had a few display pieces, but very little floor space as the counter was right close to the hatch.
The proprietor was another garundin, though wearing a slightly older model of Militia armour. “Oi Militia, what ya need?” They called out as they saw Gerad. ”Oi Shoppie.” He said in greeting. Crossing the tiny space, they reached out to one another and each grasped the other’s Main hands before touching their helmets together. ”Gerad, ‘lancer now, no been Militia since th’ Trylin Failure.” There was an old hurt there, but it was a familiar pain that Gerad knew how to bear. “Tevan,” The shop owner replied, a whisper of pheromones through his armour filters said ‘female’. “Ancestors keep you.”
”Preciate, Tevan.” He replied, greeting and sympathies exchanged, Gerad got to business. ” ‘eard ye were th’ bes’ shoppie on dis rock fer true kit.” Tevan smiled, her teeth bared in amusement. “Truth dat is, wat ye be lookin’ fer, ‘lancer-boy.”
”Ionize fer my PRP ‘sall I really need. 100 rems should be tik.” He replied. “Youngblood easy dat is,” Tevan said, tapping a few keys on a stand-alone console. “Tell ye wat, 2500 for th’ ionize, an’ I’ll toss this in.” Ducking below the counter for a moment, she came back up with a complete lensing array from a Militia VLA. “My 602 is all spic, an’ I wouldn’ trus’ this lotta cloud-lookers with tech this shiny… ‘side you been th’ firs’ o’ th’ People in me shop in cycles.”
Gerad stared at the array. At first he’d been all set to haggle Tevan down a bit, 2500 was a bit steep for 100 rems of ionizing medium, but the array…unless he was way off, it was much newer than what he had. That said, he was a tad jealous that Tevan had a 602 series VLA; in the Militia the 602s had a near-legendary reputation for power and reliability, and any good Militia Trooper was more than willing to trade some the newer models versatility for a 602. Needless to say those that did get one hung onto it for dear life.
”Dat, Shoppie Tevan, is a might fine offer,” He said after a moment. ”An’ I’d be Ancestor’s Damned if I said nay.” Tevan rumbled in laughter and set to working up the order. After a farewell, Gerad stepped out of the old shuttle with a canister of ionize and a shiny new lensing array that he was really looking forward to playing with. Back out in the bazaar, he made his way around, just in case there was something else interesting there.
Member
Quest Abandoner
ASDAValueMilk
Arthanus
Bastian
Apollosarcher
Knight 7
Krusader
Bartimaeus
