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Epic of Beginnings - Dawns Cradle

Lissa

A ’regional difference’? Well, the rat was certainly cheeky, at least. Lissa could almost respect that, if she wasn’t outraged on behalf of all merchants as well as being put in an exceptionally difficult spot. “And you’ll find that our true purpose here… was always to gather information for the road and to sell or trade our inventory.” She gave him a baleful stare, not helping the tense moment. She was about to turn and leave with Eirhild and Nylah, taking advantage of his ‘offer’ –still better than the previous guards, really—when she was suddenly hugged by a random Yaga girl.

“Abwah!?” She was taken aback by the sudden, unexpected affection, followed by what was a very amusing contrast of emotions as the second girl –was that the girl from before?—snapped at the general.

Lissa was quick to pick up on the out, though, and it took a snap second to decide to play along. “Well,” she began awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head, “it’s true. I’m not much for ostentatiousness either,” she explained, spreading out her arms and opening her palms wide in gesture. From there on, she just nodded along in approval at the girl’s antics, even if she privately questioned the duo’s motives.

“Well, we still do have real goods with us, so if you fancy some trinkets and jewelry, then you know where to find us.” Parting from the general with a half-cheeky offer of her own, with a glance at her companions, she followed after the Yaga, at least until the guards were out of earshot. The comment about being 'hollow' from the other girl, though... that was interesting, even if she didn't outwardly react to it. Well, if she knew... it wasn't the biggest secret.

“Eh, well, lacking better options, sure. Do you… mind explaining what that was all about, though? We appreciate that bit of help, though. Thanks.”

The Maids Guide to Demon Hunting

Polina Laye

Farisian Maid

---

They had their marching orders, even if the briefing they received was a little less than satisfactory. If anything, it was very unorthodox, and even Polina gave a bit of a start when the catgirl maid was unceremoniously heaved over the side of the airship. All things considered, it was a very audacious move, coming on the heels of disparaging the demons for lacking ‘decency or human morals,’ but who was Polina to judge?

No, screw that, she was going to judge.

Not that it was the right time to. She already considered it a win that Myrilla hadn’t noticed her new gift, yet. She simply gave a nod at the woman after receiving her parachute and additional supplies before launching herself over the side alongside the rest of her squad. In the air, feeling the wind buffet against her and her billowing maid uniform, she let herself freefall until she was halfway to the ground. Deploying her parachute ahead of many of the others, she trailed almost leisurely behind in the air, giving her time to unsling her battle rifle from her shoulder, affix its scope, and to make sure her weapon was loaded, finishing her little checklist with satisfying rack of the bolt once she was sure that its ten-round magazine was in place.

That done, she took in the situation before her from her slowly descending vantage point. The northern quarters of the city had been just about destroyed, as described. Yet Polina knew enough about human resilience and determination that there were likely still survivors in that zone, and the faster they intervened, the more could be helped. She began to look through her scope down towards the north, and then towards the defensive line to evaluate its strength, but then the reverberating sound of demonic roaring took her attention to the east. Just as she neared rooftop level, she spotted it—a strange, large lumbering black mass.

Hesitating for a few moments, she squared the butt of her rifle on her shoulder, and three carefully aimed shots rang out in sequence, aimed center-mass at the creature in the distance. With luck, it would do some damage, or at least she could gauge its reaction. Either way, she would likely get its attention.

A moment later, she sank below the rooftops and into the landing zone. Quickly cutting herself free of her chute with one of her many bladed weapons, she took stock of the situation around her, spotting the rest of her team nearby. Without any obvious assigned leader, she decided to take charge, having the larger share of experience among a decent number of them… and also the fact that they needed to know about the colossal amount of trouble she had intentionally dumped atop them.

“It may not be too late to save some civilians. The problem is big, black, lumbering, and coming to us, I made sure of that. Girls, let’s get into defensive positions. That thing is probably the biggest threat all around, and I want to see what it can do before we commit to assaulting it.”

Bible of Ichor: Septet for the Dead

Giselle de Farry

Undead Princess, de Farry

---

Considering her experience with her previous encounters with the mindless undead of Alavaris, Giselle was not too surprised to see that despite hitting her marks, they were not as fatally debilitating as she wished the projectiles to be. In the past, she would pour more energy into the bullets if she so wished for a far more devastating effect, but that was then and not now. Still, it was enough to make a difference for the others to finish them off, even if she wasn’t the one to personally deal the blow herself.

It seemed the fracas had done what was expected and drew the skeletal monster back out into the open. Giselle hasn’t seen the creature previously, but from its size, appearance, and armor she had no issue believing that was their mark… until she and the others realized the distinctive lack of silver sword. She frowned from her vantage point. Had the cleric been wrong again? It would not be the first time.
Additional intelligence from the mad cleric gave her some more pause. The two ‘Society’ humans were still in the vicinity, together with what sounded like a second creature, and with the sword to boot? Giselle’s encounter with Rikard didn’t give her the impression that he was a necromancer aside from his vials of blood, or that he was manipulating the skeleton beasts, but the presence was a concern. Perhaps they would take the sword for themselves? She supposed it would be a valuable relic in this lost age.

The sword itself mattered little to her. Unlike others who took unsilvered weapons for granted, she was a vampire that preferred to treat any weapon as potentially lethal out of an abundance of caution.

Not that she ever had to be concerned of being attacked overmuch until the end days.

“Let us deal with this swiftly, then. Damaging the structure would be unfortunate, but even a relic such as it is less important than our lives at this juncture.” They were, after all, resurrected by Ichor for this mission. A mere building paled in the face of that.

She reloaded her weapon, taking a few moments to place each bullet into the cylinder of her new revolver one-by-one. As Luna worked her song, Giselle held her fire, waiting to see what control the songstress could wrest. She would save her shot for when the skeletal creatures would come into range. Once it did, she would fire at its head and gauge a reaction— or otherwise find its weakness. She sorely wanted to engage it more meaningfully rather than plinking away with a sidearm, but she knew better.

Epic of Beginnings - Dawns Cradle

Lissa

Lissa gave Nylah a stare and a glare as she started to babble on at the rat guardsmen. Oh, she was sure that the girl was being well-intentioned in an attempt to navigate the situation safely. Right now, she didn’t care. With the aggressive disposition of the guards, she couldn’t predict very many good things happening from being detained by them. Entering a potentially hostile place by yourself was one thing, being arrested in a definitely hostile place was another, the original plan be damned.

The ratman said they weren’t being arrested, but Lissa knew a hot steaming pile of bull when she saw one. The deal with ‘her majesty’ was intriguing, though, but that was something to ponder when she was not being harassed by short little men. She loved talking and interacting with people, but not like this. His words were hardly conciliatory, either. “A vagrant!? Well, I never!”

Lissa was about to leave, dragging Eirhild and Nylah with her and fighting through the guards when another Krysa man joined the ‘conversation.’ He wore quite a peculiar hat, and if anything, he seemed to be a bit more amicable. Their little observer, however, didn’t seem to like the man, which was a bit of a contrast to his friendly tone…

“Perhaps, but I see no reason to detain every traveler that passes by your settlement just for the virtues of a witchhunt.” Her side was jabbed by Nylah, telling her to be careful no doubt, but she continued on, hedging on his friendlier tone. “If you’d like to have a discussion, please forgive me for asking that we have it here out in the open, rather than someplace enclosed. You would not insist otherwise were our positions swapped, I’m sure.”

The Maids Guide to Demon Hunting

Polina's handgun is also a semi-auto. Looks close to a 1903 pocket hammerless, but more... steampunky for reference.

The Maids Guide to Demon Hunting

Polina Laye

Farisian Maid

---

Once on deck, Polina began to hand out her little ration packets, ahead of the arrival of the officers. This she carried out mostly silently, almost as if she were handing out actual field rations. Depending on how things turned later on, they might actually act as emergency field rations for some. Regardless, it gave her a good excuse to look nearly each maid and fellow ‘recruit’ in the eye and get their measure.

It seemed, at the very least, her cohort was a very eclectic bunch. One, clearly, was a simple chef pressganged for something far over her head; another, a rare dark-elf, and one that seemed to genocide the culinary arts at that; lastly, there was also a cat with a small marching army of dolls. There were a few more that stood out too, though it became very clear that the Firbolg had some sort of the death wish by the way she controlled her dolls.

Not that it was a criticism in any way. It was amusing if anything, and Myrilla was the sort of toxic authority figure that commanded more ridicule than respect. That, like many other things, was an opinion that she would keep to herself. Polina did however, decide to go out of her way to stoop down and present the cheeky doll with its own bag of confections, still maintaining her characteristically serious face as she did so.

She’d finished handing out most of the sweets when she got into line with most of the other recruits. It was a bit of a jarring change, transferring from a position of relative authority to a junior role once more, but for a temporary assignment, it was not so bad for the sake of the mission and for the pursuit of more experience. From the position of a somewhat older, more experience maid –even if she was in her early twenties, she been a maid for almost a decade now—the mind games that Myrilla played were obvious and far more tolerable knowing what was up.

So when the taskmistress of a maid disparaged her cooking and ground her pastry into the wooden decking of the airship, she offered her a raised eyebrow. Polina knew her cooking was good. Especially her baking skills. It was Myrilla’s own loss if she tossed out her own macarons.

She did, however, use some slight-of-hand to slip the woman a new bag of macarons into one of her dress pockets as she turned away to dress down another hapless maid down the line, which in this case, seemed to be Kat. Well, that would be interesting.

Bible of Ichor: Septet for the Dead

Giselle de Farry

Undead Princess, de Farry

---

The flurry of activity within the cathedral was an interesting feeling. Even before their great slumber, it had been many hundreds of years since she’d banded together with others in something that actually felt like it had… potential. It would have been a heady feeling, had the circumstances the surrounded it all not been so dire.

Giselle hadn’t paid attention to the thrall that Luna had picked up until now, having had other things to do, but she spared her a nod of acknowledgement when the woman voiced her agreement of her observation. “If there is something to be salvaged, I would like to have a hand in rebuilding what was lost.”

The attack of the paladins upon what once had been sanctuary ground remained her greatest and most severe failure, even if it had been inevitable. Being given the chance to rebuild it all once more, in a time that needed it more than ever more than fueled her desire to see the directives from her goddess through. It would certainly be interesting to see her queen once more, at least.

For now, though, there were more undead and a certain paladin to enact some revenge upon.

Going about it was something else, though, especially when the beast seemed to have taken notice of her groups’ activities. She gave her own input on the matter. “Perhaps, perhaps not. One or the other may be harder than one might think, but its sword would certainly make a lovely trophy for one of our number. That said, let it drive itself and its hordes against the gates of the cathedral. Best not squander the advantage we have been given.” She briefly glanced over at the red-haired priestess, idly wondering for a moment if the zealot would raise an objection in the grounds of desecrating the monument.

It seemed Illena agreed with her position, as a moment later, the brim-hatted witch ferried her up on top of the gatehouse alongside Aleksiya. It wasn’t as optimal as it could be, but it still worked. If she’d known, she would have spent more effort on restoring a rifle, though… But in times like these, beggars could not be choosers. Drawing her new revolver, she made sure the weapon was loaded before she leveled the weapon at the undead below. Were she a lesser being, it would have been impossible to land a shot with such a weapon from such a distance. But she was not, and each of the six shots of her opening salvo found their mark.

Epic of Beginnings - Dawns Cradle

Lissa

Now Lissa was getting very tempted to give these guards –more like thugs—some lip. If this was how they treated every outsider then it was no wonder that people didn’t come here often. It would also explain why the entire place looked poor. “Eh, well hold up now. You can’t just go arresting every merchant or traveler that comes by just because one outsider was a bad egg.” Lissa placed her hands on her hips in a displeased manner, a pose that only slightly coincidentally placed her hands closer to the sidearm at her hip.

She glanced over her companions, and leaned into them with a hush voice for their opinions. “Thoughts? They’re more aggressive than I’d thought… might be best to cut our losses here.” Lissa was willing to march right up inside if the cues they gave were right, but she wasn’t willing to march right up into actively hostile territory and be immediately taken prisoner, either. If her companions didn’t have any objection to what she was about to do, then she would continue on. The lady shaking her head at her made it all the more prudent to her, even if she couldn’t quite tell if she was shaking her head no to leaving, or shaking her head no as in ‘don’t go in there, it’s dangerous.’

Lissa gave an indignant protest. “We came here to offer some wares and to see if there were any dangers on the road ahead. Most villages I know of pride themselves on their hospitality and good business sense, but if you insist on breaking the established rules of hospitality and being that danger, then I think we will be taking our leave. Thank you, and good day.” And leaving a bad review of the town everywhere else, but that was an obvious statement best left unsaid, as was the fact that they would give the patrol a pretty good match for a fight, with escorts and heavily armed weapons and all.

The Maids Guide to Demon Hunting

Polina Laye

Farisian Maid

---

Polina regarded the tray of macarons with a critical eye. Bringing the confections to level with her face, she frowned as she found the desserts lacking, the sheen of its coat a notch or two duller than what passed as acceptable to her standards. The galley of the airship, while well-appointed by the standards of what could expect for a craft of its size, could only be so well equipped, especially for a trip on such short notice and she recognized that fact, however much it galled her.

Taking sets of preprepared silken pouches, she emptied the tray of colorful confections into the containers before tying their drawstrings together and carefully placing them into a woven handbasket to later distribute.

For Polina, this was not the first time she would be going into battle. This was something that she always found profoundly ironic, considering her entire raison d’etre for being a maid had been fleeing conflict. It had been almost ten years since that fateful day, though, and she had found her purpose since. She could count herself as a veteran maid, but as a battlemaid, she still had things to learn despite her splendid education. When you lived in a state that didn’t see an inkling of conflict during your entire span of service there, there was only so much experience you could gain outside of special assignments given by your mistress. Fending off suitors and crazies didn’t much count, though she considered it a personal failing that she hadn’t been able to prevent the assassination of the Grand Prince.

She was still apprehensive about her tour of duty with the Violet Garden. It would do her well in treading new ground, and she was ostensibly among friends to learn and rely on. Yet the mutual pact of trust was not yet there, and likely would not ever be there unless circumstances changed. It was a far cry from her experience at home, but that too was why she was here. Depending on what she learned, the two mistresses she now served would either forge a new friendship that was more than just the simple platitudes it was now, or the relationship would be forever lost with a wall firmly in place between mutual reconciliation.

She was a well-rounded maid with a very good set of skills that just wanted to meet new people, but she hated playing the spy. Yet from what her mistress had told her, what was going on in the Maison d’Violette could have wider implications.

Such was the cost of living in interesting times.

In the meantime, though, she would feed her new maidenly comrades sweets and prepare for battle. As the voice of the Kyrsan veteran barked over the intercom, she slung her rifle over her shoulder after taking it up from its place against the wall. Even with a basket of macarons in her hand, she was combat-ready— she always kept her sword openly at her side, as were her more concealed weapons closer to her body.
With a spring in her step, she stepped out onto the deck to hand out her confections—even if she didn’t fully trust everybody yet, she would still feed them sweets and be fed the same in return, ‘accidents’ be damned.

The Maids Guide to Demon Hunting

Serious Meido

Polina Laye

Human. | ♀

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Relevant Abilities

Polina is the consummate maid, highly educated, and fit for service in all scenarios, whether that be in a royal palace, in the field in the thick of it, or in covert missions of subterfuge and intrigue. She is very good with wielding and throwing all manners of bladed instruments, often concealed. Most importantly, she is very good at baking… putting things to the sword, and shooting the mad minute… scoped.

About her

Polina is a serious girl on the surface. Indeed, she has a serious face, is serious about her work ethic, and will never give doubt to her loyalty to her mistress. Her interpretation of marching orders is not so strict, however, when she deems a need for it to be so, and is very much a ‘spirit of the law, rather than letter of the law’ type of person. In other words, she might have a loose interpretation of marching orders when it's convenient to her... but it's usually to the benefit of her mistress. Usually.

She is cheeky in a subdued sort of way. She may not be the type to look like one that'd initiate a joke or prank, but many would be surprised that she would go along with one if asked, or even start something herself. She might even crack a smile doing it.

Her sense of justice might be slightly loose, but she has a soft spot for those down on luck. Polina will do you right if you are in trouble, and give a cheeky victory sign as she departs afterwards. She can and will be ruthless if you cross her sword, however. Polina may be creative about the ways she might carry out some orders, but she will kill without a thought if instructed to do so, even if she may have other feelings on the matter.

History

Polina was born to a minor noble family on the border of the Oros Empire. Not a particularly lucky house, its fortunes fell during the Great Holy War, when the Laye family and its lands were utterly destroyed in the first years of the conflict. Bereft of most of her family, and with many of her family’s former friends and allies themselves indisposed or turning a blind eye, Polina fled with her younger sister Nephenee as refugees to the neutral Grand Principality of Farry, a small state surrounded by tall, impenetrable mountains and located on the borders between the Oros Empire and the Kyrsan nation.

There, she was received with hospitality by the young princess Giselle de Farry, who took on the two siblings as her personal maids. At the palace there, Polina and her sister would receive a rigorous education in all that was fit to be a maid, from cleaning, to etiquette, setting a table, knowing how to prepare a banquet… to defending her charge with sword and rifle, to performing reconnaissance and intelligence operations, and to even knowing how to operate a marine steam engine.

Even with the strict education and busy workdays in the employ of the princess, Polina knew peacetime, even as war raged outside the mountain ranges of the Grand Principality. Growing up together with their princess, in time she and her sister became close confidantes of the soon-to-be sovereign, attending and waiting on every tea party, event, and excursion with their charge. In one of those events, Polina would meet a young Livia, a friend and acquaintance of the princess, someone that she would eventually meet again...

Even with peace, though, they remained in interesting times. Intrigue was ever-present as the threat of demons and instability in the Oros Empire loomed, spurred on by the devastating conclusion of the empire’s holy war, and a few years later, the unexpected assassination of their royal mistress’s father, the Grand Prince, and the princess's subsequent coronation.

Despite remaining in an isolated, protected land, Polina did not neglect to pay attention to her former country, and nor did her mistress. With the developments in Alavaris and the subsequent succession of Livia as the head of the Fiore family, Polina was dispatched to return to Oros for a stint, ostensibly as a gesture of friendship and goodwill to augment the young lady’s fledgling force of battlemaids in her quest to protect humanity against demonkind. She would arrive, however, to not just aid her new mistress, but to also find out just what the bloody hell was going on in the Maison d’Violette… and perhaps the greater world at large.

Tools

True to her origins as a battle maid, Polina is a skilled expert in the sword, rivaling her skills as a rifle markswoman. She is well-appointed, with a knightly sword as her sidearm, and a bolt-action battle rifle as her service weapon of choice. She has an accompanying detachable scope and bayonet for the weapon secreted away within the folds of her skirt, and a hidden semi-automatic handgun strapped to her thigh underneath her maid’s dress, together with countless numbers of dangerous, sharp instruments. She always carries her pocket watch, the twin of her sister's and an heirloom from her long lost family.

Occult

Polina can manipulate small to medium-sized objects around her and multi-task with them to a surprising level of finesse. Indoors, she uses her magical skill to manage her duties as a maid to a level never seen before. In battle, she uses it to a similar effect to distract or otherwise gain an advantage, especially when manipulated to propel large quantities of sharp projectiles…