Bright_Ops

Age of Darkness: Despair of the Golden Goddess (LoZ RP)

Grindan had been inclined towards towering over Ingo in a menacing manner. Both as a reminder of who he was talking to, but also to add some additional weight to the statement he had been about to make in regards to how adaptable children could be when they were allowed to step forward and face a challenge. In the end he didn’t… because it was hard to keep attention on oneself as a literal farms worth of panicking animals burst out into the open, making a racket and causing quite a mess.

The fact that a single rider on one of the horses was missed in the chaos was a stroke of good fortune for them… but the scales had to be balanced as Grindan slowly turned his attention away from the animals and focused on Ingo alone. What an unfortunate omen. Right as you claimed full responsibility in your brothers absence as well. I suggest you go and deal with that. We’ll prevent anything from leaving via the front gate.”

It was a slightly surprising offer; by all rights he could have just let the ranchers deal with their own mess and no one of importance would care. Yet, the executioner decided to make himself of help by blocking off the one clear path out of the Ranch in order to limit how far the animals could flee.

As such, when Talon was finally brought to Grindan, the executioner was in the process of grappling with a panic filled bull that had decided to try charging through the obstructions inbetween it and freedom. The ground was churned, both from the bulls wild trampling of the ground as it tried to keep the momentum of the charge going and Grindan’s own armoured boots as they had dug into the soil and been pushed back a few feet as the executioner had caught the bull by the horns and stood against the charge.

Only once the bull had started to tire did Grindan wrestle it to the ground, tilting its head in order to force its body onto its side before pinning it down under his weight with his knee.

@Product@Dark Cloud

Age of Darkness: Despair of the Golden Goddess (LoZ RP)

@Dark Cloud@Product

Grindan waited patiently as Ingo bolted like the spineless worm that he was. In part this patience was born of the fact that he was assured that Ingo would come back as soon as he possibly could; Anything else might invoke the Executioner's ire after all. The knowledge that the only way into or out of the Ranch was currently being blockaded also meant that he didn't need to keep an eye out to make sure that Ingo didn't just try and bolt. That would be... ill advised.

As Ingo quickly returned with... and for a moment Grindan paused in absolute shock. Grindan was a corrupted, jaded soul; He knew this as instinctively as the simple act of breathing. He had born witness to and committed cruel, violent acts both out of necessity and a deep seated need to hold power over others. He had never believed in things like divinity because if it existed, then it had long since abandoned their creations to achieve their own ends. But for just a moment, as he saw the untarnished innocence of Malon, he was fundamentally shocked by the possibility that there might still be a few lingering specks of true divinity left behind in the world and he just witnessed one in the flesh.

It was a good thing that he had his helmet on. This revelation was... confusing to him. It made him uncomfortable for reasons he couldn't really voice... or at least didn't know the words to do so. However, as they entered proper hearing range, the words of Malon... actually caused him to chuckle. Grindan's chuckle had always been a grim thing and the echo of his helmet only made it more sinister, but there seemed to be earnest amusement mixed into it. "All who encounter me fear me, little one. For good reason. I am Royal Executioner Grindan and I have been sent by his Majesty to answer a plea from Ingo here to change the course of Lon Lon Ranch."

Turning towards one of the two Stalphos with him, he gave a clear instruction "I want you to join your kin at the gate. A fat hyrulian man with a fat nose might arrive at the entrance of the Ranch, claiming to be the owner. I want him escorted to me." A small pause, before adding "Unharmed if possible, but in the unlikely event he offers meaningful resistance, violent or otherwise, I will settle for alive." The command given, Grindan trusted that it would be carried out as he turned back to Ingo and Malon.

"His Majesty has heard the plea for intervention in how Lon Lon Ranch is run, due to the chronic laziness of its current owner Talon. I have been sent to make this change in management on his behalf." Letting that statement sink in, Grindan looked between the two before smirking to himself under his helm as he watched for the understanding to reach Ingo's eyes that he might be becoming the new owner of the Ranch to overcome his innate fear. "However, I find myself with a difficult decision. After all, I have two worthy candidates before me."

"I know from history and your reputations that both of you are hard workers who have been making this Ranch successful, despite Talon's worthless dead weight. I believe I could entrust the Ranch to either of you and not only would it prosper, but be something the New King of Hyrule will be able to build the kingdom around. Yet, I can only select one of you to be the owner." Despite the fact that one of the candidates was a full grown man and the other was a young girl who might not have entered maidenhood proper yet, Grindan's tone suggested that he was considering both as equally valid choices... largely because he did.

DF: Lost and Losing in the Deep Unknown: A test for a short RP idea.

You have my interest, but do you mind a ‘quick guide for stupid people’ to this setting? I have some character ideas but I want to filter it so it makes sense lore wise.

Supernatural Monster Wars SPN RP Interest Check

I’m interested. How would you feel about a minor ‘pagan’ god of war (likely a minor Roman household/family god that never made it big) who takes the form of an arms dealer (both legal and illegal) in order to reap the ‘worship’ of conflict.

Tales of Azeroth: Flames of Chaos

Duskwood

A solution had been discovered to the problem of combining the Plague of Undeath and the Worgen Curse together!

...Well, part of a solution anyway. There were still a lot of unknowns for the wider plan, but at least there was a solid, theoretical foundation to make it work and instead of blundering blindly forwards it was now going to be a case of figuring out how to craft the path they needed.

As much as his pride might have stung to admit it, Bautic had not been able to come to the conclusion by himself. After trying a number of times by himself, he had at last decided to bring in his most advance class of necromancers into the fold of his plans to destroy the city of Stormwind, how they were going to do it and the tools they were going to do it with. He had only needed to kill one of them who suffered an unfortunate case of traditional light morality; Less then he was expecting but still more then he hoped. The loss was unfortunate, but it served to be educational in that it would help him better tailor future classes to try and weed such things out sooner.

Once he had a team to assist him, ideas that he hadn't considered were raised. Some needed to be turned down due to his understanding of why they wouldn't work, but he had made a point of giving those students who suggested them some credit for using their brains. It was actually Luther, the son of a doctor who had worked with the Stonemasons and joined them both in protest and exile, who had offered a seemingly novel idea that quickly gained ground.

"If the Worgen Curse fights the Plague of Undeath while the two are active in the body at the same time, what if we developed a strain of the Plague that remained dormant until the host body died?"

This... would require some work. A new strain of the Plague of Undeath would need to be developed, but even without the idea of combining it with the Worgen Curse the idea had merit. Long term infection who's only visible symptom was the occasional infected person dying and raising from the dead, seemingly at random with no clear cause. It had taken time to develop, with a couple of strains along the way that failed to live up to what it needed to be. But in the end, they had something that met their requirements.

They had tested it out on a Night Watch recruit they had caught on their own and one of the latest worgen test subjects. Both had gone two days without any sign of symptoms and when they were killed their corpses raise without issue or outside interference beyond establishing control. A more long term trial was currently underway, to see if the strain held up over a period of time. That was alright through; Because it gave them time to work on the next step of making this whole situation workable for the grander plan.

Namely, they needed to find a way of consistently killing the plague infected Worgen in a timely manner.

While the current stage of their creation would likely be enough to majorly damage, if not destroy Stormwind... and possibly other cities as well, but the issue was that while some Worgen would almost certainly die during the outbreak, there was a very serious chance that they would win the day and suddenly Stormwind would be swarming with feral death creatures that couldn't be controlled by necromancy or the Lich King... and they would scurry out of the city in search of food soon after.

The solution to this problem was currently a work in progress, but fundamentally it was this: Alongside the Plague and the Curse, they needed to infuse something into their delivery method that was completely harmless when it entered the human body, but turned decidedly deadly once they transformed into a worgen. Didn't have to kill them instantly, but it did need to end their lives before the critical mass was reached and the future of the Eastern Kingdoms belonged to those with fur and teeth instead of the Lich King.

A challenge, to be sure. But there were always more worgen to test theories on.

Age of Darkness: Despair of the Golden Goddess (LoZ RP)

@Dark Cloud@Product

Flanked on both sides by the pair of armored Stalphos, Grindan came to a stop in front of the farmhouse in silence as their presence was announced by the braying of panicking horses; It made sense really. Animals tended to be skittish around Stalphos unless actually trained to stand them. Something about the undead spooked them.

They served to alert at least one of the residents that they had company. Watching as Inigo poked his head out of the window and realized who was waiting outside. Despite the helmet that hid his face from the rest of the world, Grindan would privately admit to himself that he found watching the spineless worm squirm. Inigo might have been a hard worker who was willing to submit himself to Ganondorf's authority, but at the core he was still a weak man who was unworthy of actual respect. Still, stoic professionalism needed to be maintained.

As Inigo came out and asked his panicked question, Grindan may have leaned forward a little in order to remind the string bean of a man who the taller of them actually was. "My presence here is because of your petition to his majesty. Having heard your pleas, he has been moved and deemed that change needed to be brought to Lon Lon Ranch. He has sent me to bring about this change."

Giving this declaration a moment to sink in, Grindan let out a deep breath that came out of his helm in a manner that made it sound like a territorial beast that wasn't happy that someone had trespassed on their domain. "I suggest, Inigo, that you go and gather the rest of the farm stead. I have been given leave to take as long as needed to resolve this issue to the King's satisfaction. Don't let me detain you."

Grindan fully expected Inigo to enter a blind panic before moving as fast as he dared to try and find everyone else on the Ranch with this dismissal. In part because of who Grindan was, but also because if the King wished for a situation resolved to his satisfaction, 'In a timely matter' was one of the best ways to make that happen.

Tales of Azeroth: Flames of Chaos

Duskwood

Experiments had happened. Interesting discoveries were made.

The earliest of which was that the Worgen Curse seemed to hate the Plague of Undeath on a fundamental level. The early attempt to distill the two into liquid forms and mix them together had ended in a violent manner; Bautic had witnessed oil and water maintaining separation and chemicals react to each other in an explosive fashion before, but this was honestly the first time he had witnessed two liquids engage in a full on fight to the death with each other inside of the vial. It was the only way to truly describe what he had witnessed.

It was fascinating in a frustrating way.

The tests to infect worgen with the Plague likewise ended in interesting results due to the fact that the illness completely failed to find purchase in their bodies. At least, while they were alive. Once they were dead, whatever protection that the curse had been providing them disappeared... or at least weakened enough for them to be raised. The nature of what it was that the Worgen seemed to share with the Nerubians that offered them such immunity to the Plague while alive was still unknown.

Interestingly enough, Bautic was able to note a... quirk of this immunity. Something that could make this whole enterprise worthwhile.

The Curse seemed to make the Worgen immune to the Plague; However it didn't do so by stopping the Plague dead as it might appear on the surface. The Plague, from what Bautic could tell, still infected the Worgen, but the curse prevented it from digging in and really doing anything. The way that Bautic had come to picture it, the Curse was an advanced form of the body's natural defenses against illness. It attacked the Plague so aggressively that it simply didn't get the chance to really get started and the Curse would sooner or later wipe the body clean of Plague.

The thing was, if the Worgen died while the Plague was still active in their body, then the Plague would do what it did best and raise the corpse into undeath. Exactly how long the Plague remained active in a living Worgen body before it was destroyed was still to be worked out. How to infect a number of people with both the worgen curse and the plague of undeath before reliably killing them before the curse defeated the plague was also a question to be solved... but Bautic could see the outlines of a plan. He just needed a little more time and creativity to bring it all together and history would be made.

Age of Darkness: Despair of the Golden Goddess (LoZ RP)

@Dark Cloud

The ranch wasn't far from where battle had been waged.

It would be somewhat unfortunate if Grindan and his troops arrived at Lon Lon Ranch to find it ransacked and the ranchers slaughtered; Talon was a worthless, fat waste of a man and in death he might be more useful in that his remains could be used to fertilize the soil somewhere, but Ingo was a hard worker... if an opportunistic sycophant. While he had never really had a reason to meet Talon's daughter directly, from what he had heard about her she was the true reason that Lon Lon Ranch was as successful as it was. Clearly, she had taken after her mother... or been forced to step up because of father was worthless. Their untimely deaths would actually be a loss... not to mention that if the Ranch was destroyed by rampaging monsters, they couldn't use it as a ranch anymore.

At least not right away. It would require finding suitable people... or at least people who can be motivated to learn in a hurry. Not to mention rebuilding times and... honestly it was just better if monsters didn't attack the Ranch in the first place.

Speaking of, as they arrived at the gateway of the Ranch, Grindan signaled his forces to stop before turning to look at them. Selecting two of them at random, he simply commanded "You two with me. The rest of you, hold this position. I don't want anyone coming or going until our business is done." As he turned to trod the Ranch proper, Grindan paused for a moment before feeling an urge to turn and add "Only use violence if they're hostile or try to force themselves past you. Otherwise just bar them."

Age of Darkness: Despair of the Golden Goddess (LoZ RP)

@Dark Cloud

There was a moment when Grindan considered just stepping forward and swinging the axe down on the first of the undead fools that were crawling out of the ground... but as it became clear what their numbers actually were he changed his mind. Despite the size difference, wild Stalphos... weren't as dangerous as common knowledge would paint them as. A child with an old, dull piece of metal could down such creatures without much in the way of issue. Wild Stalphos relied more on numbers, surprise and terrifying their prey into not fighting back properly or attempting to flee rather then fight.

As such, Grindan calmly slammed the bottom of the shaft of his axe into the dirt and leaned his axe towards one of his nearby solders, simply saying "Hold this." Once the axe was securely held by the armored Stalphos, Grindan strode forward with murderous intent.

Wild Stalphos weren't exactly...intelligent. They were more animal then anything. Smart enough to understand that having one of their prey closing the distance with them wasn't how this situation was meant to be going, but stupid enough not to have the survival instincts to withdraw and try again later with something that wasn't a threat to them.

The first one to get within melee range of Grindan took a swing at him with their fearsome claw... only for the swipe to be intercepted and stopped dead as Grindan's hand lashed out and grabbed the creatures lower forearm (he would say wrist, but it was a little lower then that due to... well, the lack of wrist), squeezing it tightly enough to cause the bone to groan before yanking the limb downwards. The Stalphos was not expecting this turn of events and tended up being pulled forwards and off balance... right into Grindan's waiting hand. As thumb and little finger entered its eye sockets and the other three fingers grasped on tightly, the arm was let go so that Grindan could combine slamming his forearm into the upper torso of the bony enemy while pulling downwards on its head.

When the Stalphos went backwards, it did so with the cracking of bone, a lack of skull and a cut off scream of pain.

Turning towards the nearest of the five remaining Stalphos, Grindan didn't hesitate as he pulled his arm back and hurled the skull in his hand towards its face. Fast moving bone impacted still bone with a heavy thud and an ugly crack as the second Stalphos reached up to cover its now injured skull on some instinctive response to pain, leaving it open for Grindan to swoop in and grapple it. One hand on a shoulder/torso, the other grasping pelvis, bone wasn't that heavy by itself as Grindan lifted the creature off its feet turned it into a projectile as in one motion the flipped over the executioner and thrown into a third Stalphos that was trying to get a swipe at his back. The force behind the throw and the nature of naked Stalphos resulted in both creatures being scattered into a makeshift bone pile made out of their parts. Some of them cracked and broken.

3 down, 3 left.

Well, 2 left. It seemed that rather then get tangled up with the rest of the pack around Grindan due to their size, two of the pack had instead opted to try their luck against the armored Stalphos instead. Despite their size advantage, the armored Stalphos increased intelligence when it came to combat, the usage of their shields and weaponry and greater numbers had already caused one of the wild Stalphos to die without doing anything more then scratching some of the shields and being on its own was only speeding up the demise of the second.

The last unoccupied Wild Stalphos lunged at Grindan, both arms pulled back to try and deliver an overwhelming heavy blow to the executioner. Grindan counter charged him in return, ducking his head down as he dodged the two claw strikes by shoulder checking the Stalphos, carrying it several feet before coming to a stop and causing the bony creature to be flung forward onto its back. Before it had a chance to recovery and get back up, Grindan had already moved forward to bring a heavy, metal coated foot down on its skull in a bone crunching stomp.

Breathing deeply as the last of the slaughter wrapped itself up, Grindan calmly walked over to the Stalphos that was still holding his axe; It hadn't joined in on the fighting, likely because holding the axe upright required most of its attention. Despite the fact that it likely wouldn't care or needed, Grindan did offer a gruff "Thank you." as he took the axe back. After which all that was needed as a bark of "Onwards!" got the group moving again.

Age of Darkness: Despair of the Golden Goddess (LoZ RP)

Grindan didn't mind the company of Stalphos.

Considering that the Executioner had built a fearsome reputation around grinding the bones of the condemned into dust to be used to create some of his stronger, more refined items in the forge, the fact that he didn't have an issue with traveling alongside the armored bones of men that had either been horrid enough in life to rise from the grave again or had been raised by Ganondorf to serve as foot solders might have been surprising to some.

The sad truth was that they were simply better company then the solders of the former King. They generally didn't talk unless spoken to and an verbal answer was needed, followed Grindan's orders without hesitation or question and most important of all, never looked down on him. The former King of Hyrule had drawn solders from many parts of the kingdom, but those entrusted to positions of rank or guarding Castle Town and the Castle were often selected due to their connections; Most had been connected to the nobility in some way, be they minor nobles, bastard children or servants of a noble family that had been sponsored by them to serve their interests in the military... but others had come from the wealthier merchant families who had influence and connections of their own due to coinage rather then land or birth.

While the exact nature of the status and wealth they were connected to varied, all of them tended to come from Castle Town. In their eyes Grindan had been an a sick and twisted country bumpkin militia man with delusions of grandeur, entrusted to perform the jobs that decent folk shouldn't do and thinking that gave him the right to talk to them, let alone give them orders. He also didn't have the ability to effectively discipline them due to those very connections that got them trained as professional guards in the first place. The fact that the Stalphos were generally more competent at doing what they were ordered to do was merely a bonus in Grindan's eyes.

The state of Castle Town was somewhat ...unfortunate in Grindan's opinion. It was a waste, abandoned and left to ruin and the Redeads. Even as they started the trek across the fields towards Lon Lon Ranch, Grindan was considering the logistics of the proposal to present to his old friend and new King. The former capital of Hyrule being left to rot was not just a bad look as far as legitamizing Ganondorf's rule was concerned, but it also represented a loss of an industrial base that could strengthen the new King's grip on the land.

It was while Grindan was contemplating how best to sell the idea that the next time there was a revolt in one of the towns big enough to start getting stupid ideas, once the brave and the stupid had been culled the rest should be clamped in chains and dragged back to Castle Town to start their lives as slave labor by tearing down the ruins and starting to rebuild something new in King Ganondorf's image when the first of the wild Stalphos rose from the ground.

It was easy to tell one group of undead bones from the one following his command by the fact that the latter had armor and equipment while the former merely had their claws to work with. The helm that Grindan wore covered his expression from the outside world, but the annoyed huff that came out of it sounded akin to that of an angry beast... and the two handed axe in his hands looked sharp as he brought it around for combat.