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The Guardians of Dara: Fantasy City Governing

I should have one up by tomorrow evening. I'd get one up tonight, but my tabletop group is meeting up and I got some would-be heroes to disintegrate via beholder eye stalks.

The Guardians of Dara: Fantasy City Governing

Finally got the post up. I'll get to adding Ephraim in Relationships this evening, but I'm sure you and I will be at odds.

The Guardians of Dara: Fantasy City Governing

“I hate this.” Alaric mumbled, leaning against the wall. Two fingers holding back three fingers of window curtain lent him a view of the street outside. A group of a half dozen boys, all of them in long tunics and wearing no pants, stood on the deck of his curio. Four of them stood in serious vigilance, staring predatorily over the streets while one of the others cracked his knuckles and the last withdrew a spindly a finger from his hawk-like nose, admiring the catch. Alaric dropped the curtains and threw his back against the wall in a fine display of melodrama. His sigh seemed much longer than a man of his stature could emit and he emphasized it by slowly dragging his hand from his side to his temples, rubbing them slowly.
Across the room at a table, between bookshelves, a grey skinned woman covered in jagged black tattoos and storm cloud colored hair grunted. Inch and half long tusks, engraved with intricate knots, jutted from her angular jaw. Those with a more open mind would say that she was rather good looking, for an orc, but no one ever said that about orcs. She sat at a small table rolling bones in a cup, occasionally shaking her head.
“You don’t like much.” She grumbled, flipping the cup on the table and revealing the fall. The orc spat on the ground and scooped the bones back into the cup. She started shaking them again in search of whatever answers she needed. Alaric strode across the room and plopped down at a table not so far away. He reached out to the center of the table and snagged a nail puzzle from it; two nails bent into small loops and interconnected together via those loops. It was a simple puzzle, and by placing the nails so that they mirrored each other and making the same movements at the same time the puzzle was easily solved, pulling the two knots apart. The second part of the puzzle was putting it back together, which was something Alaric hadn’t quite managed yet. Moments later a light metallic clanking came ringing from the library as the Halfling casually tossed the two nails over his shoulder, knowing he’d find the again the next time he stepped on them.
“Those boys outside said you needed to meet with the others.” The orc offered, flipping the bones again. She gave an unsatisfied grunt and scooped them up. Alaric scoffed and pulled a leather tome from a side table without even looking at it. Flipping it open he skimmed until he was about halfway through, then abruptly jammed his thin finger into the book, muttering to himself.
“I never asked for this.” He moved his finger through the text never staying on a page longer that a few seconds, seemingly he just wanted something to do with his hands. He set the book down with a dull thump. “How did you not know any of this coming? You’re supposed to be a seer.” He pulled off his spectacles and stared at the orc woman. She gave an unconcerned shrug and rolled again.
“They don’t mention everything, the bones that is. Others mention everything, but very little of everything is important and no one should worry about the unimportant. She rolled again, but before she revealed them she scooped the dice back up. Alaric looked at her incredulously.

“What does that even mean?” He snapped back, nimbly hopping from the chair. He began to pace around the room, the clatter on the bones in the cup being the only sound therein. He was clearly agitated. He had been since he had completed his ceremony. Anu had lit the incense and said the ancient words that Alaric actually did have some passing knowledge of, but the chant was actually quite boring. Invoking Udrau’s blessing and protection. During the second part Alaric was taken to a meeting hall where he was sat at a table practically groaning under the weight of the feast in from of him. A dozen other halflings remained silent around the table until a holy man of Yon, the Halfling god, blessed the meal. The rest of the ceremony involved eating, drinking, singing, dancing, and all sorts of other activities with the other halflings. Needless to say, his ceremony went a lot smoother than what he’d heard about Kanros’s.

Alaric didn’t give a damn if the people thought he should be a guardian, he had little interest in doing so. Not only was he utterly positive he’d make a terrible governor, there was the fact that he had do it in a room of people that knew him as a fraud. The new Guardians had been chosen for being heroes, and everyone who fought Cyrabassis that day knew that Alaric was no hero.
“I’m definitely not going with all those boys. They don’t wear pants, Gretch! I’ll have front row seats to things not meant to be seen!” After he finished what he was saying Alaric went quite. He had in fact seen things not meant to be seen, twenty years ago, in Melazus. And now they were back. Only the silence of the room brought him back from his reverie. The clatter of bones had ceased and Gretch was staring over them, uncannily still.
“Then don’t go with them,” she murmured, her greasy storm cloud colored hair hanging in front of her tattooed face as she studied the bones in front of her, “But regardless of how you get there, you must still go.”
“Is that what the bones say?”
“No.”
“Oh fine.”

Alaric slipped through a first floor window and landed on the soft soil below. He furtively glanced about for any errant lictors roaming the grounds and after he deemed the coast clear, Alaric darted through the eccentrically decorated garden of his Tealeaf’s Curio. He passed little statues of red hatted gnomes holding shovels, a fountain in which a massive disembodied marble head of some lost king or some such eternally wept, and a tall, eerily thin sculpture of a creature made of bone and wood, reaching towards the stars with long appendages ending in vicious claws. He leapt onto a vine covered wall and scurried up it, pausing at the top to give his residence/business an appreciative glance. It was no palatial estate, but it was a large building. Its architecture had no semblance of consistency, as wings and rooms were added haphazardly and built by different laborers. One room would be rectangular and supported by pillars while the one adjacent was rounded and supported by arches. One wing’s roof would be flat and contain an exotic garden, while one of the other wings spiraled into a slender pointed tower. It was an eyesore to most, but Alaric believed it was his duty to stick in the craw of the hoity-toity aristocracy, and he enjoyed supporting the rumors of him being some sort of half-man warlock.

Alaric scrambled back down the other side of the wall and brushed dust from loose linen pants. He wore a billowy linen shirt as well, and a brown vest, cinched against his body. A green cloak draped over his shoulders and a gray bowler hat, cocked a little to the front and side, crowned his head. He wore nothing on his feet, as Halflings are wont to do.

No one payed Alaric any attention as made his way to the hall. Dressed as any Halfling would and with no entourage of noble purebloods scurrying about and flashing their dreaded thighs, his status as a Guardian was largely overlooked, and Alaric was fine with that. He’d spent his whole life being overlooked, literally and figuratively. He passed by the lictors and entered the hall, his eyes immediately drawn to the scorch marks and deep gouges on the walls. His heart began to hammer when he saw them. Alaric knew what kinds of things could do this. Trying to keep his composure, the Halfling strode into the room without pomp nodding to the other guardians who cared to look at him. He noticed a chair that was quite obviously meant for him; tall and much more narrow than the others. He appreciated the gesture as he tried to recall if there had ever been a Halfling guardian. Dismissing the thought he climbed into the chair and peered around to his fellow guardians. How long had it been since they had all been together?

After Anu opened the session, Alaric remained inattentive, his eyes darting to and from the walls and floor, thinking about the monstrosities of Melazus.

“…Cyrabassis.”

Kanros’s mention of the name snapped Alaric from his waking nightmare. He slipped his hand into his vest and pulled a pipe and an envelope stuffed with some sweet smelling dried leaf from pocket. He snapped up a lit candle at his side and started puffing on the pipe with determination. As much as he wanted to get to the bottom of this, working with some of these people would prove difficult. Kanros had always been a good man, and his heart lay with the city. Landar was a different matter entirely. Alaric held no warm feelings toward the Blood Rider, whose methods had always seemed extreme to him. Perhaps the years had tempered his blood lust, but Alaric doubted that was the case. Leytan and Alaric floated in similar circles these days, but the monk’s demeanor was unnerving to Alaric. For a soul that was so unsure before, he positively beamed asuredness and tranquility, two things Alaric was devoid of. Then there was Ephraim. The elf, much like Landar, was simply too bloody for Alaric’s taste, and his persecution of witches and hedge-wizards, some of which Alaric had personally known, was too much to bare. Alaric wouldn’t say he hated Ephraim, but he very much disliked the elf. Nasharia seemed a gentle woman, but Alaric knew that she possessed a very dangerous mind and strong ambitions. Out of all the people in the Hall of Guardians, Nasharia was the only one Alaric would have said fit the title of Guardian, in a classic sense. He wouldn’t mind working with the woman, but he certainly didn’t trust her. Haljon seemed to have let himself go since the old days, and the man slobbering drunk, which was publicly known. Still, he did command an impressive force and the city could use it. Alaric had barely noticed Erwun, lurking in the dark. Erwun, his old friend, taciturn as ever. Alaric almost looked forward to the reunion.

Taking a long draw from the pipe and blowing the smoke through his nose, Alaric piped up.
“It must be some kind of inter-dimensional travel that brought the beasts of Melazus back, and there are traces of the aether that are left behind. Perhaps finding these traces could lead us to Cyrabassis, or at least to wherever these nightmares come from. If I could be allowed to take readings here I may be able to provide some clue as to what was summoned.” The Halfling puffed again, the thick smoke starting to group into tendrils that drifted eerily across his ruddy face. He looked at his fellow guardians intently for a moment, purposely not looking in the direction of Ephraim, whom he could already hear objecting to his investigation.

The Guardians of Dara: Fantasy City Governing

I'll my IC up tonight.

The Guardians of Dara: Fantasy City Governing

Edited my char, patch notes as follows:

Changed name. Linric has become Alaric in an effort toward alphabetical balance.
I added a skill in the skill set, making Alaric more "in the know" in the area of magic
I added a new title, more out of jest than anything else, but it could come to be more of an influence later.
Edited minor sentences in the Relationships area, and added Leytan and Landar to it.

The Guardians of Dara: Fantasy City Governing

Name: Alaric Tealeaf
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Race: Halfling
Physical Description:
Alaric has long hair, dark and graying on the sides, usually pulled into a ponytail. Mutton chops cut across his jawline, an auburn color, contrasting the black and gray of his hair. Despite his years, Linric seems to have kept up his physical condition, his face charmingly angular and ruddy. His frame, while not as flat-bellied as it once was, is not as doughy as most of the other folks on the street. His dress stays rather bland, favoring loose pants, billowy shirts, bowler hats and vests with many pockets.

Skillset:
While Alaric hates the stereotype, it was his ability go places where you shouldn’t go, to see and hear things you weren’t supposed to see and hear, and acquire things that others had already acquired, that led to him joining the band of heroes.

Since the days of Pykas’s downfall, Alaric has given up on burglary. Mostly. After disrupting the ritual in the dark chambers of Melazus, Alaric was scarred in a way that only he could understand. He needed to know what had happened. He needed to know why it had happened. He sought to collect books, tomes of eldritch knowledge, ancient manuscripts written in long dead languages, artifacts of interest or dubious history. Anything out of the ordinary. Most were obtained from wandering peddlers, others brought to him from conspicuous agents, and some were right out pilfered by Alaric to further his collection and broaden his knowledge on the arcane and the otherworldly.

Far Ancestry:
Alaric doesn’t know much about his ancestry. His father was arrested and stoned to death for picking the pocket of a local noble and doing it wrong. His mother ran the home and worked the fields after his father’s death. He was always more adventurous than his siblings, ruffling the feathers of his community regularly. His mother had always said, “There ain’t no famous halflings, so take off that cape and pull these carrots.” To be honest, Alaric probably should have just pulled the carrots.

Character History:
Alaric grew up restless. His home was a tiny little farming hamlet (more of a concentration camp for halflings, as hindsight would lend) that he wanted nothing to do with. To dig the soil and feel the dirt under your toes, praising Yon for the gift of farming, was not the life Linric had in mind. He was served his first dish of what could be when he heard that his father had been executed for his “unruly nature”. His father, a peddler of ceramics, was stoned to death for the robbery of a minor noble from a city in the west. It had no real effect on the young Alaric, as his father was never really home. What had changed was that now they only got to eat meat once a week. At the age of seventeen, Alaric left his village and shortly thereafter he earned the illustrious title of “common thief” in Dara. For a while he robbed houses and picked pockets, before plying his hand at a smuggling operation based in and around the city. It was in the course of his smuggling that he ran across the heroic band and flooded Melazus.
After Melazus, Alaric’s mind was scarred. He stalled when the sorcerer’s power flared. He had broken when those beasts were called. He did nothing, he remembered little; the others jolting into action, how brave they had been in that moment, and he did nothing.

His brief encounter with the arcane and otherworldly power had marred his sanity and his thirst to know more compelled him. He searched for anything that could explain what he could not comprehend. Over the years his obsession had turned into his livelihood. Where once he merely collected and studied obscure artifacts and mysterious grimoires, in time he had become an established librarian and curio collector. Both commoners and scholars alike come to view his life’s work, a sprawling stone building loaded with oddities and curiosities. Because of this, he has many odd ties throughout the city, from networks of intellectuals, to bands of adventurers, to old hermits living in peaty bogs, praying to stumps.

After the death of the previous guardians, Alaric went into a frenzy. After he’d heard of the flame scorched marble walls and the way the guardians were slaughtered, Alaric was almost always in meetings, with the aristocracy, with his peers, and with the stump worshipping hermits. He’d something like this once before, and this time he would do something

Psychological Profile:
Alaric remembers very little about the actual confrontation, and from his recollection he did near to nothing in those crucial moments. He was struck by a singular desire: to understand the power that Cyrabassis summoned. While the fire of that passion has dimmed somewhat, it still flickers there, and Alaric has no qualms with breaking rules to further his goals. He seems to have changed only little outwardly. His sides went grey, and he became a (mostly) legitimate businessman and scholar. His demeanor stayed true, ever inquisitive and always willing to mediate, but he barely speaks of the day the stopped that madness.

Equipment:
In his shop, Alaric has much equipment, but most of it is stationary and archaic and probably too alien to use anyway. Odd mechanisms that promise to see the stars via glass disks, and ectospectrometers and other such nonsense. While in the shop, he has various sets of glasses for different distances, a jeweler’s kit, notebooks, and a large knife, most of which he fits in his vest, with exception to the knife, which hangs casually at his side, an odd sight for a person who essentially equates to a museum curator.
While on a job of “Dubious Circumstance” _____ is likely to carry a climbing kit, a mask, a large bag, a lockpick set, wire, a crowbar, and the same knife, but this time much more carefully hidden.
The knife itself isn’t that important, a piece of foreign steel with dark dancing stripes that swirl and spiral throughout the blade, and a hilt made out of what someone once assured him was a honest-to-goodness dragon tooth. While the hilt is probably just antler, the steel is good and almost never needs to be sharpened.

It is worth mentioning that the shop is not entirely uninhabited. Alaric has kept in shape all these years by running with his two dogs. A pair of massive, slobbering beasts; Cinder and Tusk, are hulking mastiffs that guard the shop. Local children are positive that the hell beasts eat unruly kids, but it’s mostly just an old wives tale. (Mostly.)

Titles/Holdings/Power Base:
Tealeaf Curio: Books and Baubles (We Always Buy!) - Proprietor
Stoneface Street Voluntary Neighborhood Watch Committee - Chief of Security
The Gentlepersons’s Cabal of Arcane Practice* -Vice-President

* A group of about a dozen rotating individuals (male and female, as Lady Winthorpe once put forth a compelling argument about equality, thus nixing the “Gentlemen’s” in the club title formerly, and substituting the “Gentleperson’s”.) who get fabulously drunk, show each other their most recent acquisitions in the realm of the occult, and attempt to summon dead ancestors to play cards with them. To this day they haven’t summoned anything more exciting than a sigh, but a very ancient noblemen died during a séance once, and the Cabal refrained from assembling for six months out of fear.

Relationships:

Kanros: Kanros and Alaric never had much of a bond. Kanros had forged his way through life with force, be it the force of his will or the force of his arm. While Alaric had always held a deep respect for the man and all he had achieved, the two could never find common ground. After that day, they had as little to do with each other as they had in the time before.

Nasharia: While Alaric had enjoyed Nasharia’s company once, her acumen of draughts and ointments never ceased to amaze him and had been an unending font of delight, it was her ambitious inclinations after the confrontation that caused Alaric to cut ties with the woman. Having no interest in politicians or their ilk, Alaric and Nasharia simply drifted apart over the years, neither one of them running in the same circles and neither one caring to reach out to the other.

Erwun: Alaric had liked Erwun from the beginning. With a custom crossbow and an arsenal other neat gadgets, Erwun had been both an enlightening and educational companion. Even after Melazus, Erwun and Alaric could be seen walking the streets or talking hurriedly conversing over smeared diagrams of a baroque mechanism. More and more, however, Erwun had other business to attend to, and Alaric himself had something he’d been meaning to read anyway. A passing letter every six months had become the routine, more of a chore than a correspondence, if it even got done.

Haljon: Haljon, like Kanros, had very little in common with Alaric, and much of the time Alaric remained aloof and respectful of Haljon. They barely spoke, but when they did, the conversation flowed for hours, the affable Haljon speaking of his myths, and Alaric, studiously recording them, and occasionally responding with legends of his own. Afterward, life took its course, and the brief friendship was snuffed out as quickly as it was lit. Alaric craved answers, and Haljon was content to swing swords.

Leytan: Before Melazus, Leytan and Alaric were friendly toward each other. Leytan, seeking Enlightenment then, showed promise as bright young man with a drive. Occasionally Leytan could be seen with Alaric, as the Halfling smuggler pointed out the constellations of his people, or demonstrated various nautical knots. In return the young monk taught Alaric a right proper hand chop that Alaric, due to his diminutive stature, had an advantage delivering to the average human man for crippling effects. After Melazus, Leytan had become something else, and he disappeared entirely. After ten years he’d shown back up, and while Alaric somewhat resented him for leaving like that, it seemed that they bore a similar interest in the unknowable.

Landar: Alaric had found Landar charming at first, a real swashbuckler and rather charismatic. It occurred to him much later, once Alaric had lost his naivety, that Landar was only charismatic so long as he had uses for you. Still, at the time Alaric had liked Landar, but not enough to put up with his violent nature after everything that had happened. Words were said, bridges were burned, and Alaric and Landar hadn’t spoken since. It was with great trepadation that Alaric would face Landar again, this time as Guardians.

Ehodr: TBD

The Guardians of Dara: Fantasy City Governing

I would join this as well. I saw Lovecraft's name and I'm a sucker for that stuff. Still taking folks?

The Pickett County War: A Rural Noir RP

I'm super down to play a gun runner in this.

Welcome to Santa Somabra [Fantasy Noir]

Definitely interested. I'm thinking about playing Rats thug. Maybe a goblin, maybe not.

Tverios: The Conquest

Name: Verkis, “Skybreaker”

Nationality: Orkantor Desert

Occupation: Mercenary

Religion: None

Appearance and Personality:
Half-man, half-orc, Verkis stands taller than most others. His years of nomadic living have kept his body leaner than most, and some orcs used to describe him as willowy, but by human standards Verkis is a veritable giant of a figure. His skin is a pallid green color, his hair a rugged black, shaved on the sides and top-knotted. Finely groomed black mutton chops cut their way half way across his leathery face. With a low, heavy brow, small black eyes, and a pair of not-so-impressive tusks, he has all the iconic features of a spectacular orc specimen, however something about him is unusual. His eyes move, never staying in one place for long. He speaks fast and unaccented, both eloquent and passionate. While Verkis seems more than orcish in looks and culture, there is something decidedly human about his mind.

Biography:

Verkis was born to the future king, Rusadir, and slave girl from his harem. From this unhappy union an unorthodox whelp was conceived. Verkis, never knew his mother. She died the day he came screaming into this world, and her frail body was never meant to handle rigors of orcish life. While custom dictates that children of mixed blood should be abandoned, Warlord Rusadir had never been one for tradition, and Verkis was kept within the harem until he could walk. Once orc children can walk they are put into bands of whelps their own age who are then tutored in combat and survival. While Verkis was widely hated and ostracized for his heritage, adversity proved to be the crucible in which the young being was forged. His human ingenuity kept him ahead of his peers, it was as if they all lived at a naturally slower pace than he did. What would take hours to teach a young pure-blooded orc, Verkis could master in minutes. However, his intelligence had not been going unnoticed.

When the time had come for his father, the Warlord Rusadir, to lead his armies into the Conquest, Verkis was just coming of age. Rusadir appointed Verkis to a small scout unit in the country far from all the real fighting. “Skybreaker” and his Company of Eagles are widely spoken of in Orkantor to this day, in equal parts awe and sorrow. While Verkis Skybreaker and the Eagles' exploits in the Conquest certainly shifted the wars favor to Rusadir's side, Verkis’s success was his downfall. His siblings began to get jealous of their father’s favorite pet mongrel, and they hatched a plan.

It all seemed so obvious now. Verkis was too dangerous to keep around, a man with a loyal army and an uncanny intellect could too easily dethrone the current regime. He was too much of a hero to be killed, so he was slandered instead. Verkis was charged for the murder of a high chieftain’s daughter, and banished from the newly formed Kingdom of Rusadir along with his men. He returned to the deserts of Orkantor but found no home in the wastes. Wherever he went he could hear the hushed whispers, see the glints of sun on steel, smell the hints of blood on the air.

He had no home anymore, but he had an army, and you can get whatever you want with an army.